EFFECTS OF EXCESSIVE TAXATION. 



perience and observation have furnished me, to 

 those persons and quarters only, where I know them 

 to be really applicable. 



That noble national manufacture, the PUBLIC 

 BREWERY of civilized and commercial England, has 

 long subsisted and flourished, and must continue so 

 to do, in full and increasing prosperity, so long as 

 beer is the staple beverage of the country, and so 

 considerable an article of export trade. Houses of 

 public entertainment, or ale-houses also, there al- 

 ways must be, in a great commercial and luxurious 

 nation ; and it is against the abuse of these solely, 

 that the objections and complaints of the economical 

 writer can have any force. To digress for a mo- 

 ment : it is not because we have brew-houses and 

 ale-houses, or on account of the number of the lat- 

 ter, that the manners of our commonalty are corrupt 

 and dissolute ; the fundamental cause subsists in the 

 excess of taxation, and the general inadequacy of 

 the wages of labour. Hence is generated a despera- 

 tion naturally leading to indolence, the neglect of 

 social duties, and ultimately, or rather by conse- 

 quence, to crime. The favourite plan of removing 

 taxation, shifting it from one article or class to 

 another, can have only a palliative, temporary, -and 

 deceptive effect ; nothing short of economizing the 

 expenses of the state, and rendering the means of 

 living more easily attainable, can lay the axe to the 

 root of that quantum which remains, of national 

 difficulty and distress. 



Throughout the country, and among the classes 

 of property, from the highest to the lowest degree, 

 o 3 



