they compel the people to take a
certain quantity of it, and at a certain rate, both rate and quantity
fixed at the arbitrary pleasure of the imposer?[66] that they pay in
France the _Taille_, an arbitrary imposition on presumed property? that
a tax is laid in fact and name, on the same arbitrary standard, upon the
acquisitions of their _industry_? and that in France a heavy
_capitation-tax_ is also paid, from the highest to the very poorest sort
of people? Have we taxes of such weight, or anything at all of the
compulsion, in the article of _salt_? do we pay any _taillage_, any
_faculty-tax_, any _industry-tax?_ do we pay any _capitation-tax_
whatsoever? I believe the people of London would fall into an agony to
hear of such taxes proposed upon them as are paid at Paris. There is not
a single article of provision for man or beast which enters that great
city, and is not excised; corn, hay, meal, butcher's-meat, fish, fowls,
everything. I do not here mean to censure the policy of taxes laid on
the consumption of great luxurious cities. I only state the fact. We
should be with difficulty brought to hear of a tax of 50_s._ upon every
ox sold in Smithfield. Yet this tax is paid in Paris. Wine, the lower
sort of wine, little better than English small beer, pays 2_d._ a
bottle.

We, indeed, tax our beer; but the imposition on small beer is very far
from heavy. In no part of England are eatables of any kind the object of
taxation. In almost every other country in Europe they are excised, more
or less. I have by me the state of the revenues of many of the principal
nations on the Continent; and, on comparing them with ours, I think I am
fairly warranted to assert, that England is the most lightly taxed of
any of the great states of Europe. They, whose unnatural and sullen joy
arises from a contemplation of the distresses of their country, will
revolt at this position. But if I am called upon, I will prove it beyond
all possibility of dispute; even though this proof should deprive these
gentlemen of the singular satisfaction of considering their country as
undone; and though the best civil government, the best constituted, and
the best managed revenue that ever the world beheld, should be
thoroughly vindicated from their perpetual clamors and complaints. As to
our neighbor and rival France, in addition to what I have here
suggested, I say, and when the author chooses formally to deny, I shall
formally prove it, that her subjec