Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/214

 Irish growing into wealth and favour would reconcile to the English.'

The 'Treatise on Taxes' was immediately occasioned by the changes discussed after the Restoration in the laws relating to the revenue, both in the method of assessing the older taxes, and by the imposition of new burdens in lieu of the feudal duties on land then finally abolished: changes marking the transition from the system of direct to that of the indirect taxation which existed almost unimpaired till the days of Sir Robert Peel. A new 'Book of Rates,' or table of duties, with a revised code of customs law, was adopted under the name of 'the Great Statute;' an excise on wines and liquors was granted to the Crown, in lieu of the abolished feudal duties; and 'hearth money,' an unpopular tax copied from a French original, was imposed on all houses, except cottages, according to the number of stoves or grates. 'There is much clamour against the chimney money,' says Pepys in June, 1662. A few years later, in order to meet the expenses of the first Dutch war and the costs of the expected struggle with France, the poll tax, together with the old Tudor subsidies and the Commonwealth monthly assessments, were revived, to serve as a rude method of making all sources of property contribute to the revenue. At the same time the import and export of a long list of 'ennumerated' articles was absolutely prohibited, and the Act of Navigation, which practically limited trade with England to goods carried in English bottoms—an inheritance from the Cromwellian period—was renewed, with a few modifications. At a date slightly later than the appearance of the treatise, viz., in 1668, 1670 and 1676, the duties on brandies and wines were raised, in order to protect the home manufacturer, and to retaliate on France for the prohibition of the import into that country of many articles the produce of England. These statutes mark the beginning of the long