894 THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

that debt, six millions two hundred and fifty thousand poundscould very well be spared from this improved revenue. Thisgreat sinking fund too might be augmented every year by theinterest of the debt which had been discharged the year be-fore, and might in this manner increase so very rapidly, asto be sufficient in a few years to discharge the whole debt,and thus to restore completely the at present debilitated andlanguishing vigour of the empire. In the mean time thepeople might be relieved from some of the most burdensometaxes; from those which are imposed either upon the neces-saries of life, or upon the materials of manufacture. Thelabouring poor would thus be enabled to live better, to workcheaper, and to send their goods cheaper to market. Thecheapness of their goods would increase the demand for them,and consequently for the labour of those who produced them.This increase in the demand for labour, would both increasethe numbers and improve the circumstances of the labouringpoor. Their consumption would increase, and together withit the revenue arising from all those articles of their con-sumption upon which the taxes might be allowed to re-main.

The revenue arising from this system of taxation, how-ever, might not immediately increase in proportion to thenumber of people who were subjected to it. Great indul-gence would for some time be due to those provinces of theempire which were thus subjected to burdens to which theyhad not before been accustomed, and even when the sametaxes came to be levied everywhere as exactly as possible,they would not everywhere produce a revenue proportionedto the numbers of the people. In a poor country the con-sumption of the principal commodities subject to the dutiesof customs and excise is very small; and in a thinly inhabitedcountry the opportunities of smuggling are very great. Theconsumption of malt liquors among the inferior ranks of peoplein Scotland is very small, and the excise upon malt, beer,and ale, produces less there than in England, in proportion tothe numbers of the people and the rate of the duties, whichupon malt is different on account of a supposed difference ofquality. In these particular branches of the excise, there isnot, 1 apprehend, much more smuggling in the one countrythan in the other. The duties upon the distillery, and thegreater part of the dutios of customs, in proportion to thenumbers of people in the respective countries, produce less in