Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/233

 things made at home,' only trade is not to be destroyed or seriously hampered; so that here again his opposition to 'customs' is to be traced more to the practical objections which his keen eye had noticed, than to an abstract opinion in favour of absolutely unrestricted intercourse and open ports.

As a greater profit he thought could be gained by manufacture than by husbandry, and by merchandise than by manufacture, he argued that the great object of English policy should be to promote shipping—which was the mother of trade, and therefore of manufactures and of inventions—and to raise revenue by taxing the manufactured article, and not the raw import. He therefore considered an excise to be the justest of all taxes for the purposes of revenue, as being light to those who 'please to be content with material necessaries, and being also self-adjusting;' only it should not be farmed, but properly collected by paid and responsible officers; also the articles taxed must as a rule be few, and not be raw material: to do the opposite, he says, 'is the same ill-husbandry as to make fall of young saplings instead of dotards and pollards.' He points out that excise may be what he calls 'accumulative,' i.e., that within one article you really may be taxing many things together, and, in order to avoid this, whatever articles are taxed should be so as near the point of consumption as possible. 'Some,' he goes on, 'proposed beer to be the only exciseable commodity, supposing that in the proportion that men drink, they make all other expences; which certainly will not hold, especially if strong beer pay quintuple unto, (as now) or any more excise than the small: for poor carpenters, smiths, felt-makers, etc., drinking twice as much strong beer as gentlemen do of small, must consequently pay ten times as much excise. Moreover, upon the artisans beer is accumulated, only a little bread and cheese, leathern clothes, neck beef, and inwards twice a week, stale fish, old pease without butter, etc. Whereas on the other, beside drink, is accumulated as many other things as nature and art can produce.'