Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/220

 on the people by a poll tax of 6d. a head, and an 'excise of 19d., or one eighty-fourth of the value of consumptions.'

He insists in this tract, and at still greater length in the 'Treatise on Taxes' and the 'Political Arithmetick,' on the necessity of a reasonable basis for the 'subsidies' and 'assessments,' instead of leaving the matter to be scrambled over by the local authorities of each county. This had ever been the case with the 'subsidy' system, partially reformed though it had been under the Commonwealth 'assessments,' which the Restoration Government adopted with some modifications. The inequalities still, indeed, existed of the state of things, when without more ado 'he that had a cup of wine to his oysters, was hoisted into the Queen's subsidy book.' Sir William, as a remedy, propounded a regular survey and a real valuation of land, in order to get a basis for a land and house tax, which should be fixed at one-sixth of the total rent: 'about the proportion that the Adventurers and soldiers in Ireland retribute to the King in quit rents.'

A land tax—and the argument he points out applies to tithes also—can only exist as a consequence of the value of the land, and is not a cause of the price of land, and therefore does not raise prices; 'for hereby is collected a proportion of all the corn, cattle, fish, fowl, fruit, wool, honey, wax, oyl, hemp, and flour of the nation, as a result of the lands, art, labour, and stock which produced them....

Whosoever buys land in Ireland is not more concerned with the quit rents, wherewith they are charged, than if the acres were so much the fewer; or than men are who buy land out of which they know tythes are to be paid.' The burden of a new land tax would therefore fall on those who paid it in the first instance, after which it would remain an excisum or 'part cut out' of the land—the property of the State, laid aside for public uses.

He next passes to the discussion of customs and excise