380 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1818. 



mittee wish to call to the recollection of the House the difficulties 

 which they experienced, as they stated in that Report, in forming 

 the Estimate required upon the actual state of the Revenue as exhi- 

 bited in the accounts of the latest year then before them, owing to 

 the very peculiar circumstances by which the produce of that year 

 (1816) had been impaired; several of which, even at the time when 

 your Committee were considering the subject, were still in operation. 

 It was for this purpose deemed expedient to have recourse to the 

 accounts of the three latest antecedent years not affected by these 

 circumstances; viz. 1812, 1813, and 1814; the average of which 

 three years, when divested of all augmentations and diminutions 

 occasioned by alterations in the rate of duties, was found to corres- 

 pond very nearly with the average of the two years 1815 and 1816, 

 taken upon the same principle; the year 1815 having yielded a very 

 large, and the year 1816, a proportionably reduced, produce: — And 

 your Committee farther remind the House, that after having assumed 

 those averages as a fair basis for their Estimate, and having thereby 

 arrived at the result which they presented to the House, they ex- 

 pressed distinctly their " wish to be clearly understood as not 

 " stating a confident opinion, that the Estimate thus framed would 

 " be realised within the (then) present year. For though they saw, 

 " on the one hand, reason to expect that the receipts of the Ex- 

 <' chequer might (when the change which they anticipated took 

 " place) be swelled, in the first instance, somewhat beyond the 

 " actual increase of consumption, by the replenishment, in the 

 *' hands of the dealers, of the average stocks of their respective 

 " trades (which stocks, they had reason to believe, had been greatly 

 " reducea); yet, considering how much of the year must have 

 " elapsed before the relief to be expected from the ensuing harvest 

 " could be felt, together with other circumstances which might 

 " operate to delay the expected improvement, they deemed it 

 " safer to present a less sanguine view, and to assume, that even 

 " with the aid of the arrears of the property tax to the amount of 

 " 2,800,000/., the average receipts of the (then) present and next 

 " ensuing years might not exceed the limits of their Estimate." 



Your Committee having thus referred to the opinions which they 

 entertained last year, and to the principal considerations whereby 

 the views which they then took of the subject were influenced, are 

 now enabled to state, that the progress of the revenue up to the 

 present time, has justified those views, and affords ample reason for 

 anticipating, within the current year, the fulfilment of their expecta- 

 tions. • . , --• 



It will be apparent, indeed, from the following comparative 

 statements, that the Committee were fully warranted, as well in the 

 doubts which they entertained with respect to an immediate im- 

 provement of the revenue, as in the confident hope which they 

 expressed of its accelerated return to that state (at least) of pro- 

 ductiveness from which it had suddenly declined, whenever the 



peculiar 



