1791 ending 5th April 1792  L1,706,334
1792                  1793   1,585,991
1793                  1794   1,597,623
1794                  1795   1,608,196
1795                  1796   1,625,874

Here will be seen a gradual increase during the whole progress of the war; and if I am correctly informed, the rise in the last year, after every deduction that can be made, affords the most consoling and encouraging prospect.  It is enormously out of all proportion.

There are some other taxes which seem to have a reference to the same general head.  The present minister many years ago subjected bricks and tiles to a duty under the excise.  It is of little consequence to our present consideration, whether these materials have been employed in building more commodious, more elegant, and more magnificent habitations, or in enlarging, decorating, and remodelling those which sufficed for our plainer ancestors.  During the first two years of the war, they paid so largely to the public revenue, that in 1794 a new duty was laid upon them, which was equal to one half of the old, and which has produced upwards of 165,000_l._ in the last three years.  Yet, notwithstanding the pressure of this additional weight,[40] there has been an actual augmentation in the consumption.  The only two other articles which come under this description are the stamp-duty on gold and silver plate, and the customs on glass plates.  This latter is now, I believe, the single instance of costly furniture to be found in the catalogue of our imports.  If it were wholly to vanish, I should not think we were ruined.  Both the duties have risen, during the war, very considerably in proportion to the total of their produce.

We have no tax among us on the most necessary articles of food.  The receipts of our Custom-House, under the head of Groceries, afford us, however, some means of calculating our luxuries of the table.  The articles of tea, coffee, and cocoa-nuts I would propose to omit, and to take them instead from the excise, as best showing what is consumed at home.  Upon this principle, adding them all together, (with the exception of sugar, for a reason which I shall afterwards mention,) I find that they have produced, in one mode of comparison, upwards of 272,000_l._, and in the other mode upwards of 165,000_l._, more during the war than in peace.[41] An additional duty was also laid in 1795 on tea, another on coffee, and a third on raisins,—­an article, together with currants, of much more extensive use than would readily be imagined.  The balance in favor of our argument would have been much enhanced, if our coffee and fruit ships from the Mediterranean had arrived, last year, at their usual season.  They do not appear in these accounts.  This was one consequence arising (would to God that none more afflicting to Italy, to Europe, and the whole civilized world had arisen!) from our impolitic and precipitate desertion of that important maritime station.  As to sugar,[42] I have excluded it