First, this scheme detects their error, who in the calculation they frame contemplate nothing but the wealth and plenty they see in rich cities and great towns, and from thence make a judgment of the kingdom’s remaining part, and from this view conclude that taxes and payments to the public do mostly arise from the gentry and better sort, by which measures they neither contrive their imposition aright, nor are they able to give a true estimate what it shall produce; but when we have divided the inhabitants of England into their proper classes, it will appear that the nobility and gentry are but a small part of the whole body of the people.

Believing that taxes fell chiefly upon the better sort, they care not what they lay, as thinking they will not be felt; but when they come to be levied, they either fall short, and so run the public into an immense debt, or they light so heavily upon the poorer sort, as to occasion insufferable clamours; and they, whose proper business it was to contrive these matters better have been so unskilful, that the legislative power has been more than once compelled for the peoples’ ease to give new funds, instead of others that had been ill projected.

This may be generally said, that all duties whatsoever upon the consumption of a large produce, fall with the greatest weight upon the common sort, so that such as think in new duties that they chiefly tax the rich will find themselves quite mistaken; for either their fund must yield little, or it must arise from the whole body of the people, of which the richer sort are but a small proportion.

And though war, and national debts and engagements, might heretofore very rationally plead for excises upon our home consumption, yet now there is a peace, it is the concern of every man that loves his country to proceed warily in laying new ones, and to get off those which are already laid as fast as ever he can.  High customs and high excises both together are incompatible, either of them alone are to be endured, but to have them co-exist is suffered in no well-governed nation.  If materials of foreign growth were at an easy rate, a high price might be the better borne in things of our own product, but to have both dear at once (and by reason of the duties laid upon them) is ruinous to the inferior rank of men, and this ought to weigh more with us, when we consider that even of the common people a subdivision is to be made, of which one part subsist from their own havings, arts, labour, and industry; and the other part subsist a little from their own labour, but chiefly from the help and charity of the rank that is above them.  For according to Mr. King’s scheme —

The nobility and gentry, with their families and retainers, the persons in offices, merchants, persons in the law, the clergy, freeholders, farmers, persons in sciences and liberal arts, shopkeepers, and tradesmen, handicrafts, men, naval officers, with the families and dependants upon all these altogether, make up the number of 2,675,520 heads.