An Essay on Projects | Page 7

of manufactures, especially so far as relates to the inland
trade, have never been taxed yet, and their wealth or number is not
easily calculated. Trade and land has been handled roughly enough, and
these are the men who now lie as a reserve to carry on the burden of the
war.
These are the men who, were the land tax collected as it should be,
ought to pay the king more than that whole Bill ever produced; and yet
these are the men who, I think I may venture to say, do not pay a
twentieth part in that Bill.
Should the king appoint a survey over the assessors, and indict all those
who were found faulty, allowing a reward to any discoverer of an
assessment made lower than the literal sense of the Act implies, what a
register of frauds and connivances would be found out!
In a general tax, if any should be excused, it should be the poor, who
are not able to pay, or at least are pinched in the necessary parts of life
by paying. And yet here a poor labourer, who works for twelve pence

or eighteen pence a day, does not drink a pot of beer but pays the king a
tenth part for excise; and really pays more to the king's taxes in a year
than a country shopkeeper, who is alderman of the town, worth perhaps
two or three thousand pounds, brews his own beer, pays no excise, and
in the land-tax is rated it may be at 100 pounds, and pays 1 pound 4s.
per annum, but ought, if the Act were put in due execution, to pay 36
pounds per annum to the king.
If I were to be asked how I would remedy this, I would answer, it
should be by some method in which every man may be taxed in the due
proportion to his estate, and the Act put in execution, according to the
true intent and meaning of it, in order to which a commission of
assessment should be granted to twelve men, such as his Majesty
should be well satisfied of, who should go through the whole kingdom,
three in a body, and should make a new assessment of personal estates,
not to meddle with land.
To these assessors should all the old rates, parish books, poor rates, and
highway rates, also be delivered; and upon due inquiry to be made into
the manner of living, and reputed wealth of the people, the stock or
personal estate of every man should be assessed, without connivance;
and he who is reputed to be worth a thousand pounds should be taxed at
a thousand pounds, and so on; and he who was an overgrown rich
tradesman of twenty or thirty thousand pounds estate should be taxed
so, and plain English and plain dealing be practised indifferently
throughout the kingdom; tradesmen and landed men should have
neighbours' fare, as we call it, and a rich man should not be passed by
when a poor man pays.
We read of the inhabitants of Constantinople, that they suffered their
city to be lost for want of contributing in time for its defence, and
pleaded poverty to their generous emperor when he went from house to
house to persuade them; and yet when the Turks took it, the prodigious
immense wealth they found in it, made them wonder at the sordid
temper of the citizens.
England (with due exceptions to the Parliament, and the freedom
wherewith they have given to the public charge) is much like
Constantinople; we are involved in a dangerous, a chargeable, but
withal a most just and necessary war, and the richest and moneyed men
in the kingdom plead poverty; and the French, or King James, or the

devil may come for them, if they can but conceal their estates from the
public notice, and get the assessors to tax them at an under rate.
These are the men this commission would discover; and here they
should find men taxed at 500 pounds stock who are worth 20,000
pounds. Here they should find a certain rich man near Hackney rated
to-day in the tax-book at 1,000 pounds stock, and to-morrow offering
27,000 pounds for an estate.
Here they should find Sir J- C- perhaps taxed to the king at 5,000
pounds stock, perhaps not so much, whose cash no man can guess at;
and multitudes of instances I could give by name without wrong to the
gentlemen.
And, not to run on in particulars, I affirm that in the land-tax ten certain
gentlemen in London put together did not pay for half so much
personal estate, called stock, as the poorest of them is reputed really to
possess.
I do not inquire at whose door this fraud