Introduction
William Cobbett castigated the Government for overtaxing employers, and then congratulating themselves on handing out a little welfare to the underpaid and unemployed while pocketing the difference. Better, Cobbett said, to stop the job-killing taxes, so the working man can have a fair crack at dignified independence.
NO more than a moderate profit can, from the effects of competition, and, indeed, from the very nature of things, remain upon an average to any description of employers in the ordinary callings of life.* All beyond this must, and ever will, be taken away by somebody. If the government, or the church,* or the pauper, does not take it away, the labourer will take it away.
But, if the former take the greater portion, the latter must take the less; and, in whatever degree the demands of the former rise, the portion of the latter must fall; till, at last, he has pared down even beyond what is barely necessary to sustain animal life, and, then, to prevent him from expiring, an addition is made him in the shape of parish relief, which as you well know, is the case in almost every parish in the kingdom.
What, then, becomes, Sir, of Burke’s eulogy on taxes, when he called them “the dews of superfluity, drawn up by the sun of government, to be sent back in showers to fertilise and bless the country”? Much more apt would his figure have been, if he, in drinking the wine bought with his pension, had said: “Come! here go the sweat and blood of the labourer.”*
That is to say, in a free market competition is so fierce that most ordinary employers cannot afford to keep the extra money they get from tax cuts. They have to plough it all back into machinery, expansion and hiring the best workers just to stay in business.
In Cobbett’s day, Church of England parishes collected parish taxes (the ‘poor rate’) which could be used as welfare. The system was absorbed into local council administration in the 1920s.
The income tax rate in 1816 was 2 shillings in the pound, or 10% (with 20s in £1); the net yield stood at £14.7m. See ‘The Routledge Companion to Britain in the Eighteenth Century’, by Jeremy Gregory and John Stevenson. Goods and other commodities had been taxed for centuries, but income was taxed for the first time in 1798, the year after Burke died, to fund Britain’s war chest. In 1816, the year that Cobbett wrote this, income tax was abolished, but Robert Peel reintroduced it in 1842, at 7d in the pound, or 3%, on incomes over £150 (about £10,000 today), in the belief that it was necessary to compensate for the fall in tax revenue as the country moved towards free trade and The Repeal of the Corn Laws.
Archive
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Spinners Find in Think and Speak
For each group of words, compose a sentence that uses all three. You can use any form of the word: for example, cat → cats, go → went, or quick → quickly, though neigh → neighbour is stretching it a bit.
This exercise uses words found in the accompanying passage.
1 Case. Fertilize. Last.
2 Country. Degree. Down.
3 Demand. Pauper. Superfluity.
Variations: 1. include direct and indirect speech 2. include one or more of these words: although, because, despite, either/or, if, unless, until, when, whether, which, who 3. use negatives (not, isn’t, neither/nor, never, nobody etc.)
Homophones Find in Think and Speak
In each group below, you will find words that sound the same, but differ in spelling and also in meaning. Compose your own sentences to bring out the differences between them.
This exercise uses words found in the accompanying passage.
High Tiles Find in Think and Speak
Make words (three letters or more) from the seven letters showing below, using any letter once only. Each letter carries a score. What is the highest-scoring word you can make?
Your Words ()
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