Page:Sir William Petty - A Study in English Economic Literature - 1894.djvu/74

445] of the Irish cattle trade. He saw in the prohibition a direct loss to England, for Irish trade was diverted into other channels. She was obliged to import from Spain and France the goods which otherwise she would have taken from England. That the theory of foreign trade was not unknown to him is evident from the following passage taken from the "Quantulumcunque". In it he gives his reasons for preferring copper to tin for fractional currency. The ordinary argument for using tin was, that that metal was a domestic commodity, while copper had to be procured from abroad. To buy copper would drain the kingdom of its store of money. This reasoning Petty meets in the following way: If a hundred weight of tin be exported to Turkey it will purchase there enough silk to buy about a hundred weight of copper in Sweden.

We now pass on to the poll-tax (ch. vii). The tax as imposed in England is unjust. It is a tax on position or title, and takes no account of the riches of the individual taxed. Single rich persons are taxed at the lowest rates, while poor knights are rated at £20. A real poll-tax taxes every individual alike. The objection to this form of tax is that it is only apparently equal, men who are of unequal abilities being rated at the same amount. The conveniences are, ease of collection, certainty of amount raised by it, incentive to setting children to work early. The plan of state lotteries (ch. viii) as a fiscal expedient he aptly describes. It is, he says, "a tax upon unfortunate self-conceited fools; men that have good opinion of their own luckiness." It should be under direct state control, and ought to beusedbe used [sic]