I have now done with all the minor, preparatory parts of the author’s scheme, the several articles of saving which he proposes.  At length comes the capital operation, his new resources.  Three hundred thousand pounds a year from America and Ireland.—­Alas! alas! if that too should fail us, what will become of this poor undone nation?  The author, in a tone of great humility, hopes they may be induced to pay it.  Well, if that be all, we may hope so too:  and for any light he is pleased to give us into the ground of this hope, and the ways and means of this inducement, here is a speedy end both of the question and the revenue.

It is the constant custom of this author, in all his writings, to take it for granted, that he has given you a revenue, whenever he can point out to you where you may have money, if you can contrive how to get at it; and this seems to be the masterpiece of his financial ability.  I think, however, in his way of proceeding, he has behaved rather like a harsh step-dame, than a kind nursing-mother to his country.  Why stop at 300,000_l._ If his state of things be at all founded, America and Ireland are much better able to pay 600,000_l._ than we are to satisfy ourselves with half that sum.  However, let us forgive him this one instance of tenderness towards Ireland and the colonies.

He spends a vast deal of time[82] in an endeavor to prove that Ireland is able to bear greater impositions.  He is of opinion, that the poverty of the lower class of people there is, in a great measure, owing to a want of judicious taxes; that a land-tax will enrich her tenants; that taxes are paid in England which are not paid there; that the colony trade is increased above 100,000_l._ since the peace; that she ought to have further indulgence in that trade; and ought to have further privileges in the woollen manufacture.  From these premises, of what she has, what she has not, and what she ought to have, he infers that Ireland will contribute 100,000_l._ towards the extraordinaries of the American establishment.

I shall make no objections whatsoever, logical or financial, to this reasoning:  many occur; but they would lead me from my purpose, from which I do not intend to be diverted, because it seems to me of no small importance.  It will be just enough to hint, what I dare say many readers have before observed, that when any man proposes new taxes in a country with which he is not personally conversant by residence or office, he ought to lay open its situation much more minutely and critically than this author has done, or than perhaps he is able to do.  He ought not to content himself with saying that a single article of her trade is increased 100,000_l._ a year; he ought, if he argues from the increase of trade to the increase of taxes, to state the whole trade, and not one branch of trade only; he ought to enter fully into the state of its remittances, and the course of its exchange; he ought likewise to examine whether all its establishments are increased or diminished; and whether it incurs or discharges debts annually.  But I pass over all this; and am content to ask a few plain questions.