His financial systems lightened the burdens of taxation, distributed
the load more equally everywhere, and enabled the State to get the best
revenue possible at the lowest cost and with the least effort. It
might almost be said that Walpole anticipated free-trade. The Royal
speech from the Throne at the opening of Parliament, on October 19,
1721, declared it to be "very obvious that nothing would more conduce
to the obtaining so public a good"--the extension of our
commerce--"than to make the exportation of our own manufactures, and
the importation of the commodities used in the manufacturing of them,
as practicable and as easy as may be; by this means the balance {230}
of trade may be preserved in our favor, our navigation increased, and
greater numbers of our poor employed." "I must, therefore," the speech
went on, "recommend it to you, gentlemen of the House of Commons, to
consider how far the duties upon these branches may be taken off and
replaced, without any violation of public faith or laying any new
burden upon my people; and I promise myself that, by a due
consideration of this matter, the produce of those duties, compared
with the infinite advantages that will accrue to the kingdom by their
being taken off, will be found so inconsiderable as to leave little
room for any difficulties or objections." In furtherance of the policy
indicated in these passages of the Royal speech, more than one hundred
articles of British manufacture were allowed to be exported free of
duty, while some forty articles of raw material were allowed to be
imported in the same manner. Walpole was anxious to make a full use of
this system of indirect taxation. He desired to levy and collect taxes
in such a manner as to avoid the losses imposed upon the revenue by
smuggling and by various forms of fraud. His principle was that the
necessaries of life and the raw materials from which our manufactures
were to be made ought to remain, as far as possible, free of taxation.
The whole history of our financial systems since Walpole's time has
been a history of the gradual development of his economic principles.
There has been, of course, reaction now and then, and sometimes the
counsels of statesmen appear for a while to have been under the
absolute domination of the policy which he strove to supplant; but the
reaction has only been for seasons, while the progress of Walpole's
policy has been steady. We have now, in 1884, nearly accomplis