APPENDIX ‘tothe’ CHRONICLE. 
A detainer was lodged) against 
Mr. Stone-for a’ considerable debt, 
immediately ‘after bis’ acquittal. 
He was, *however, liberated from 
his confinement in Newgate on 
Saturday the 13th of February 
following. 
Petition of Sir Fancis Blake to the 
House of Commons, presented by 
Mr. Grey, 8th February, 1796. 
To the Honourable the Commons 
of Great Britain in Parliament 
assembled. 
The humble Petition of the sub- 
scribing party, 
Prayeth, 
That your petitioner may be per- 
mitted by this honourable house to 
sketch, for their consideration, the 
outline of an arrangement, which 
takes for its aim the political sal- 
vation of this country, the happi- 
ness of the community at large; 
and of every individual, and which 
proposes to work its effeét by means, 
which are apparently, both easy, 
certain, safe, and honourable. And 
your petitioner further prayeth, 
that it may be permitted him to 
State to this honourable house, for 
the purpose of their more ready 
determination, the reasons which 
have influenced him to suppose the 
arrangement in ‘question to be 
fraught ‘with the benefits suggested 
by him—which are briefly as 
follow : 
That from sources of informa- 
tion the best within his reach, it 
has appeared to the complete sa- 
tisfaétion of your petitioner—That 
trade is not an object, which by any 
possible human contrivance can 
be made amenable to the payment 
of any tax, that can affect the 
parties concerned in its manage. 
ment, inasmuch as the parties 
[ris 
so)concerned, can always contrive 
to relieve themselves by shifting the 
weight, which in that case must 
ultimately and principally fail upon 
the proprietors of land, who have ne; 
such means of shifting the weight. 
That uniformly as the trade of the 
nation has more or less flourished, 
the territorial rental has, in like 
manner, and in some such propors 
tion, been observed to advance. 
That in the year sixteen hundred, 
the territoria! rental did not éx- 
ceed six millions per annum. 
That from the year sixteen hun- 
dred and eighty-eight, under all the 
difficulties and distresses of the in 
tervening space, the trade of the 
country increased, and the rental 
advanced from six to fourteen milli- 
ons per annum. sf 
Computing, therefore, by the 
vast increase of trade, from the 
period last named to the present 
time, comprising: a series of years 
for the most part favourable, the 
final result must be, that the pre 
sent rental cannot reasonably: be 
supposed to fall short of fifty milli- 
ons per annum; which led of course 
to the following conciusions: 
That the way to advance the land 
is to give every possible encourage~ 
ment to trade. ‘i 
That the way to depress the land 
is to burden trade. 
That to burden trade is, in effeét; 
to burden land besides depressing it. 
Taking, therefore, the present 
territorial rental at fifty millions 
per annum; the funded rental at 
ten millions; the two, together at 
sixty millions per annum; the pre- 
sent payments to government at 
fifteen millions per annum; the 
pressure of those payments on the 
rental named, as authorised by ge 
neral acknowledgment, at fifteen 
shillings in the pound, your. petis 
12 tioner 
