, this sum of one million and a half, as an abundant
supply for all the expences of government under any form whatever,
there will remain a surplus of nearly six millions and a half out of
the present taxes, after paying the interest of the national debt; and
I have shewn in the Second Part of _Rights of Man_, what appears to me,
the best mode of applying the surplus money; for I am now speaking of
expences and savings, and not of systems of government.

1 A friend of Paine advised him against this pun, as too
personal an allusion to George the Third, to whom however
much has been forgiven on account of his mental infirmity.
Yorke, in his account of his visit to Paine, 1802, alludes
to his (Paine's) anecdotes "of humor and benevolence"
concerning George III.--_Editor_.

I have, in the first place, estimated the poor-rates at two millions
annually, and shewn that the first effectual step would be to abolish
the poor-rates entirely (which would be a saving of two millions to the
house-keepers,) and to remit four millions out of the surplus taxes to
the poor, to be paid to them in money, in proportion to the number of
children in each family, and the number of aged persons.

I have estimated the number of persons of both sexes in England, of
fifty years of age and upwards, at 420,000, and have taken one third of
this number, viz. 140,000, to be poor people.

To save long calculations, I have taken 70,000 of them to be upwards of
fifty years of age, and under sixty, and the others to be sixty years
and upwards; and to allow six pounds per annum to the former class, and
ten pounds per annum to the latter. The expence of which will be,

Seventy thousand persons at 6L. per annum..... 420,000L.
Seventy thousand persons at 10L. per annum.... 700,000
-----------
1,120,000L.

There will then remain of the four millions, 2,880,000L. I have stated
two different methods of appropriating this money. The one is to pay it
in proportion to the number of children in each family, at the rate of
three or four pounds per annum for each child; the other is to apportion
it according to the expence of living in different counties; but in
either of these cases it would, together with the allowance to be
made to the aged, completely take off taxes from one third of all the
families in England, besides relieving al