by Edmund Burke
This might perhaps be enough to show the entire falsity of the complaint concerning the decline of our manufactures. But every step we advance, this matter clears up more; and the false terrors of the author are dissipated, and fade away as the light appears. “The trade and manufactures of this country (says he) going to ruin, and a diminution of our revenue from consumption must attend the loss of so many seamen and artificers.” Nothing more true than the general observation: nothing more false than its application to our circumstances. Let the revenue on consumption speak for itself: —
Average of net excise, since the new duties, three years ending 1767
£4,590,734
Ditto before the new duties, three years ending 1759
3,261,694
—— ——
Average increase
£1,329,040
Here is no diminution. Here is, on the contrary, an immense increase. This is owing, I shall be told, to the new duties, which may increase the total bulk, but at the same time may make some diminution of the produce of the old. Were this the fact, it would be far from supporting the author’s complaint. It might have proved that the burden lay rather too heavy; but it would never prove that the revenue from, consumption was impaired, which it was his business to do. But what is the real fact? Let us take, as the best instance for the purpose, the produce of the old hereditary and temporary excise granted in the reign of Charles the Second, whose object is that of most of the new impositions, from two averages, each of eight years.
Average, first period, eight years, ending 1754
£525,317
Ditto, second period, eight years, ending 1767
538,542
—— ——
Increase
£613,225
I have taken these averages as including in each a war and a peace period; the first before the imposition of the new duties, the other since those impositions; and such is the state of the oldest branch of the revenue from consumption. Besides the acquisition of so much new, this article, to speak of no other, has rather increased under the pressure of all those additional taxes to which the author is pleased to attribute its destruction. But as the author has made his grand effort against those moderate, judicious, and necessary levies, which support all the dignity, the credit, and the power of his country, the reader will excuse a little further detail on this subject; that we may see how little oppressive those taxes are on the shoulders of the public, with which he labors so earnestly to load its imagination. For this purpose we take the state of that specific article upon which the two capital burdens of the war leaned the most immediately, by the additional duties on malt, and upon beer.
Barrels.
Average of strong beer, brewed in eight years before the additional malt and beer duties
3,895,059
Average of strong beer, eight years since the duties
4,060,726
—— ——
Increase in the last period
165,667
Here is the effect of two such daring taxes as 3d. by the bushel additional on malt, and 3s. by the barrel additional on beer. Two impositions laid without remission one upon the neck of the other; and laid upon an object which before had been immensely loaded. They did not in the least impair the consumption: it has grown under them. It appears that, upon the whole, the people did not feel so much inconvenience from the new duties as to oblige them to take refuge in the private brewery. Quite the contrary happened in both these respects in the reign of King William; and it happened from much slighter impositions. No people can long consume a commodity for which they are not well able to pay. An enlightened reader laughs at the inconsistent chimera of our author, of a people universally luxurious, and at the same time oppressed with taxes and declining in trade. For my part, I cannot look on these duties as the author does. He sees nothing but the burden. I can perceive the burden as well as he; but I cannot avoid contemplating also the strength that supports it. From thence I draw the most comfortable assurances of the future vigor, and the ample resources, of this great, misrepresented country; and can never prevail on myself to make complaints which have no cause, in order to raise hopes which have no foundation.
When a representation is built on truth and nature, one member supports the other, and mutual lights are given and received from every part. Thus, as our manufacturers have not deserted, nor the manufacture left us, nor the consumption declined, nor the revenue sunk; so neither has trade, which is at once the result, measure, and cause of the whole, in the least decayed, as our author has thought proper sometimes to affirm, constantly to suppose, as if it were the most indisputable of all propositions. The reader will see below the comparative state of our trade in three of the best years before our increase of debt and taxes, and with it the three last years since the author’s date of our ruin.
In the last three years the whole of our exports was between 44 and 45 millions. In the three years preceding the war, it was no more than from 35 to 36 millions. The average balance of the former period was 3,706,000l.; of the latter, something above four millions. It is true, that whilst the impressions of the author’s destructive war continued, our trade was greater than it is at present. One of the necessary consequences of the peace was, that France must gradually recover a part of those markets of which she had been originally in possession. However, after all these deductions, still the gross trade in the worst year of the present is better than in the best year of any former period of peace. A very great part of our taxes, if not the greatest, has been imposed since the beginning of the century. On the author’s principles, this continual increase of taxes must have ruined our trade, or at least entirely checked its growth. But I have a manuscript of Davenant, which contains an abstract of our trade for the years 1703 and 1704; by which it appears that the whole export from England did not then exceed 6,552,019l. It is now considerably more than double that amount. Yet England was then a rich and flourishing nation.
The author endeavors to derogate from the balance in our favor as it stands on the entries, and reduces it from four millions, as it there appears, to no more than 2,500,000l. His observation on the looseness and inaccuracy of the export entries is just; and that the error is always an error of excess, I readily admit. But because, as usual, he has wholly omitted some very material facts, his conclusion is as erroneous as the entries he complains of.
On this point of the custom-house entries I shall make a few observations. 1st. The inaccuracy of these entries can extend only to FREE GOODS, that is, to such British products and manufactures, as are exported without drawback and without bounty; which do not in general amount to more than two thirds at the very utmost of the whole export even of our home products. The valuable articles of corn, malt, leather, hops, beer, and many others, do not come under this objection of inaccuracy. The article of CERTIFICATE GOODS re-exported, a vast branch of our commerce, admits of no error, (except some smaller frauds which cannot be estimated,) as they have all a drawback of duty, and the exporter must therefore correctly specify their quantity and kind. The author therefore is not warranted from the known error in some of the entries, to make a general defalcation from the whole balance in our favor. This error cannot affect more than half, if so much, of the export article. 2dly. In the account made up at the Inspector-General’s office, they estimate only the original cost of British products as they are here purchased; and on foreign goods, only the prices in the country from whence they are sent. This was the method established by Mr. Davenant; and as far as it goes, it certainly is a good one. But the profits of the merchant at home, and of our factories abroad, are not taken into the account; which profit on such an immense quantity of goods exported and re-exported cannot fail of being very great: five per cent, upon the whole, I should think, a very moderate allowance. 3dly. It does not comprehend the advantage arising from the employment of 600,000 tons of shipping, which must be paid by the foreign consumer, and which, in many bulky articl
es of commerce, is equal to the value of the commodity. This can scarcely be rated at less than a million annually. 4thly. The whole import from Ireland and America, and from the West Indies, is set against us in the ordinary way of striking a balance of imports and exports; whereas the import and export are both our own. This is just as ridiculous, as to put against the general balance of the nation, how much more goods Cheshire receives from London than London from Cheshire. The whole revolves and circulates through this kingdom, and is, so far as regards our profit, in the nature of home trade, as much as if the several countries of America and Ireland were all pieced to Cornwall. The course of exchange with all these places is fully sufficient to demonstrate that this kingdom has the whole advantage of their commerce. When the final profit upon a whole system of trade rests and centres in a certain place, a balance struck in that place merely on the mutual sale of commodities is quite fallacious. 5thly. The custom-house entries furnish a most defective, and, indeed, ridiculous idea of the most valuable branch of trade we have in the world, — that with Newfoundland. Observe what you export thither; a little spirits, provision, fishing-lines, and fishing-hooks. Is this export the true idea of the Newfoundland trade in the light of a beneficial branch of commerce? Nothing less. Examine our imports from thence; it seems upon this vulgar idea of exports and imports, to turn the balance against you. But your exports to Newfoundland are your own goods. Your import is your own food; as much your own, as that you raise with your ploughs out of your own soil; and not your loss, but your gain; your riches, not your poverty. But so fallacious is this way of judging, that neither the export nor import, nor both together, supply any idea approaching to adequate of that branch of business. The vessels in that trade go straight from Newfoundland to the foreign market; and the sale there, not the import here, is the measure of its value. That trade, which is one of your greatest and best, is hardly so much as seen in the custom-house entries; and it is not of less annual value to this nation than 400,000l. 6thly. The quality of your imports must be considered as well as the quantity. To state the whole of the foreign import as loss, is exceedingly absurd. All the iron, hemp, flax, cotton, Spanish wool, raw silk, woollen and linen-yarn, which we import, are by no means to be considered as the matter of a merely luxurious consumption; which is the idea too generally and loosely annexed to our import article. These above mentioned are materials of industry, not of luxury, which are wrought up here, in many instances, to ten times, and more, of their original value. Even where they are not subservient to our exports, they still add to our internal wealth, which consists in the stock of useful commodities, as much as in gold and silver. In looking over the specific articles of our export and import, I have often been astonished to see for how small a part of the supply of our consumption, either luxurious or convenient, we are indebted to nations properly foreign to us.
These considerations are entirely passed over by the author; they have been but too much neglected by most who have speculated on this subject. But they ought never to be omitted by those who mean to come to anything like the true state of the British trade. They compensate, and they more than compensate, everything which the author can cut off with any appearance of reason for the over-entry of British goods; and they restore to us that balance of four millions, which the author has thought proper on such a very poor and limited comprehension of the object to reduce to 2,500,000l.
In general this author is so circumstanced, that to support his theory he is obliged to assume his facts: and then, if you allow his facts, they will not support his conclusions. What if all he says of the state of this balance were true? did not the same objections always lie to custom-house entries? do they defalcate more from the entries of 1766 than from those of 1754? If they prove us ruined, we were always ruined. Some ravens have always indeed croaked out this kind of song. They have a malignant delight in presaging mischief, when they are not employed in doing it: they are miserable and disappointed at every instance of the public prosperity. They overlook us like the malevolent being of the poet: —
Tritonida conspicit arcem
Ingeniis, opibusque, et festa pace virentem;
Vixque tenet lacrymas quia nil lacrymabile cernit.
It is in this spirit that some have looked upon those accidents that cast an occasional damp upon trade. Their imaginations entail these accidents upon us in perpetuity. We have had some bad harvests. This must very disadvantageously affect the balance of trade, and the navigation of a people, so large a part of whose commerce is in grain. But, in knowing the cause, we are morally certain, that, according to the course of events, it cannot long subsist. In the three last years, we have exported scarcely any grain; in good years, that export hath been worth twelve hundred thousand pounds and more; in the two last years, far from exporting, we have been obliged to import to the amount perhaps of our former exportation. So that in this article the balance must be 2,000,000l. against us; that is, one million in the ceasing of gain, the other in the increase of expenditure. But none of the author’s promises or projects could have prevented this misfortune; and, thank God, we do not want him or them to relieve us from it; although, if his friends should now come into power, I doubt not but they will be ready to take credit for any increase of trade or excise, that may arise from the happy circumstance of a good harvest.
This connects with his loud laments and melancholy prognostications concerning the high price of the necessaries of life and the products of labor. With all his others, I deny this fact; and I again call upon him to prove it. Take average and not accident, the grand and first necessary of life is cheap in this country; and that too as weighed, not against labor, which is its true counterpoise, but against money. Does he call the price of wheat at this day, between 32 and 40 shillings per quarter in London dear? He must know that fuel (an object of the highest order in the necessaries of life, and of the first necessity in almost every kind of manufacture) is in many of our provinces cheaper than in any part of the globe. Meat is on the whole not excessively dear, whatever its price may be at particular times and from particular accidents. If it has had anything like an uniform rise, this enhancement may easily be proved not to be owing to the increase of taxes, but to uniform increase of consumption and of money. Diminish the latter, and meat in your markets will be sufficiently cheap in account, but much dearer in effect: because fewer will be in a condition to buy. Thus your apparent plenty will be real indigence. At present, even under temporary disadvantages, the use of flesh is greater here than anywhere else; it is continued without any interruption of Lents or meagre days; it is sustained and growing even with the increase of our taxes. But some have the art of converting even the signs of national prosperity into symptoms of decay and ruin. And our author, who so loudly disclaims popularity, never fails to lay hold of the most vulgar popular prejudices and humors, in hopes to captivate the crowd. Even those peevish dispositions which grow out of some transitory suffering, those passing clouds which float in our changeable atmosphere, are by him industriously figured into frightful shapes, in order first to terrify, and then to govern the populace.
It was not enough for the author’s purpose to give this false and discouraging picture of the state of his own country. It did not fully answer his end, to exaggerate her burdens, to depreciate her successes, and to vilify her character. Nothing had been done, unless the situation of France were exalted in proportion as that of England had been abased. The reader will excuse the citation I make at length from his book; he outdoes himself upon this occasion. His confidence is indeed unparalleled, and altogether of the heroic cast: —
“If our rival nations were in the same circumstances with ourselves, the augmentation of our taxes would produce no ill consequences: if we were obliged to raise our prices, they must, from the same causes, do the like, and could take no advantage by underselling and under-working us. But the alarming consideration to Great Britain is, that France is not in the same condition. Her distresses, during the war, were
great, but they were immediate; her want of credit, as has been said, compelled her to impoverish her people, by raising the greatest part of her supplies within the year; but the burdens she imposed on them were, in a great measure, temporary, and must be greatly diminished by a few years of peace. She could procure no considerable loans, therefore she has mortgaged no such oppressive taxes as those Great Britain has imposed in perpetuity for payment of interest. Peace must, therefore, soon re-establish her commerce and manufactures, especially as the comparative lightness of taxes, and the cheapness of living, in that country, must make France an asylum for British manufacturers and artificers.” On this the author rests the merit of his whole system. And on this point I will join issue with him. If France is not at least in the same condition, even in that very condition which the author falsely represents to be ours, — if the very reverse of his proposition be not true, then I will admit his state of the nation to be just; and all his inferences from that state to be logical and conclusive. It is not surprising, that the author should hazard our opinion of his veracity. That is a virtue on which great statesmen do not perhaps pique themselves so much; but it is somewhat extraordinary, that he should stake on a very poor calculation of chances, all credit for care, for accuracy, and for knowledge of the subject of which he treats. He is rash and inaccurate, because he thinks he writes to a public ignorant and inattentive. But he may find himself in that respect, as in many others, greatly mistaken. In order to contrast the light and vigorous condition of France with that of England, weak, and sinking under her burdens, he states, in his tenth page, that France had raised 50,314,378l. sterling by taxes within the several years from the year 1756 to 1762 both inclusive. All Englishman must stand aghast at such a representation: To find France able to raise within the year sums little inferior to all that we were able even to borrow on interest with all the resources of the greatest and most established credit in the world! Europe was filled with astonishment when they saw England borrow in one year twelve millions. It was thought, and very justly, no small proof of national strength and financial skill, to find a fund for the payment of the interest upon this sum. The interest of this, computed with the one per cent annuities, amounted only to 600,000l. a year. This, I say, was thought a surprising effort even of credit. But this author talks, as of a thing not worth proving, and but just worth observing, that France in one year raised sixteen times that sum without borrowing, and continued to raise sums not far from equal to it for several years together. Suppose some Jacob Henriques had proposed, in the year 1762, to prevent a perpetual charge on the nation by raising ten millions within the year: he would have been considered, not as a harsh financier, who laid a heavy hand on the public; but as a poor visionary, who had run mad on supplies and taxes. They who know that the whole land-tax of England, at 4s. in the pound, raises but two millions, will not easily apprehend that any such sums as the author has conjured up can be raised even in the most opulent nations. France owed a large debt, and was encumbered with heavy establishments, before that war. The author does not formally deny that she borrowed something in every year of its continuance; let him produce the funds for this astonishing annual addition to all her vast preceding taxes; an addition, equal to the whole excise, customs, land and malt-taxes of England taken together.