Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/69



last quarterly accounts show that the present revenue of the country greatly exceeds the expenditure; there is therefore reason to hope that a reduction of taxation may shortly take place.

In the reductions which have heretofore been made, the gain to the public and the loss to the revenue have varied greatly in relation to each other. Thus in the repeal of the house duty, the gain to the public and the loss to the revenue were practically equal; while the remission of one-half of the duties on soap and leather eventually diminished the productiveness of each tax by about one-third only; a reduction of about 28 per cent. in the malt tax has lessened the produce of that tax by only two or three per cent.; and in the instance of coffee, a reduction in the duty of 50 per cent. has actually been accompanied by an increase of more than 50 per cent. in its produce.