es have been laid on,
besides the produce of the lotteries; and as the taxes have in general
been more productive since than before, the amount may be taken, in
round numbers, at L17,000,000. (The expense of collection and the
drawbacks, which together amount to nearly two millions, are paid out of
the gross amount; and the above is the net sum paid into the exchequer).
This sum of seventeen millions is applied to two different purposes; the
one to pay the interest of the National Debt, the other to the current
expenses of each year. About nine millions are appropriated to the
former; and the remainder, being nearly eight millions, to the latter.
As to the million, said to be applied to the reduction of the debt, it
is so much like paying with one hand and taking out with the other, as
not to merit much notice. It happened, fortunately for France, that
she possessed national domains for paying off her debt, and thereby
lessening her taxes; but as this is not the case with England, her
reduction of taxes can only take place by reducing the current expenses,
which may now be done to the amount of four or five millions annually,
as will hereafter appear. When this is accomplished it will more than
counter-balance the enormous charge of the American war; and the saving
will be from the same source from whence the evil arose. As to the
national debt, however heavy the interest may be in taxes, yet, as it
serves to keep alive a capital useful to commerce, it balances by its
effects a considerable part of its own weight; and as the quantity
of gold and silver is, by some means or other, short of its proper
proportion, being not more than twenty millions, whereas it should be
sixty (foreign intrigue, foreign wars, foreign dominions, will in
a great measure account for the deficiency), it would, besides the
injustice, be bad policy to extinguish a capital that serves to supply
that defect. But with respect to the current expense, whatever is saved
therefrom is gain. The excess may serve to keep corruption alive, but it
has no re-action on credit and commerce, like the interest of the debt.

It is now very probable that the English Government (I do not mean
the nation) is unfriendly to the French Revolution. Whatever serves to
expose the intrigue and lessen the influence of courts, by lessening
taxation, will be unwelcome to those who feed upon the spoil. Whilst the
clamour of French intrigue, arbitrary power, popery, and wooden s