336 EFFECTS OF EXCESSIVE TAXATION. 



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 always 

 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 moment : it 

 is not because we have brew-houses and ale-houses, 

 or on account of the number of the latter, that the 

 manners of our commonalty are corrupt and disso- 

 lute ; the fundamental cause subsists in the excess 

 of taxation, and the general inadequacy of the wages 

 of labour. Hence is generated a desperation natu- 

 rally leading to indolence, the neglect of social 

 duties, and ultimately, or rather by consequence, 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, 



