The retailers of manufactures, especially so far as relates to the
inland trade, have never been taxed yet, and their wealth or number
is not easily calculated. Trade and land has been handled roughly
enough, and these are the men who now lie as a reserve to carry on
the burden of the war.

These are the men who, were the land tax collected as it should be,
ought to pay the king more than that whole Bill ever produced; and
yet these are the men who, I think I may venture to say, do not pay
a twentieth part in that Bill.

Should the king appoint a survey over the assessors, and indict all
those who were found faulty, allowing a reward to any discoverer of
an assessment made lower than the literal sense of the Act implies,
what a register of frauds and connivances would be found out!

In a general tax, if any should be excused, it should be the poor,
who are not able to pay, or at least are pinched in the necessary
parts of life by paying. And yet here a poor labourer, who works
for twelve pence or eighteen pence a day, does not drink a pot of
beer but pays the king a tenth part for excise; and really pays more
to the king's taxes in a year than a country shopkeeper, who is
alderman of the town, worth perhaps two or three thousand pounds,
brews his own beer, pays no excise, and in the land-tax is rated it
may be at 100 pounds, and pays 1 pound 4s. per annum, but ought, if
the Act were put in due execution, to pay 36 pounds per annum to the
king.

If I were to be asked how I would remedy this, I would answer, it
should be by some method in which every man may be taxed in the due