ities of London
and Westminster.

Second Enumeration

9. Abolition of the tax on houses and windows.

10. Allowance of three shillings per week for life to fifteen thousand
disbanded soldiers, and a proportionate allowance to the officers of the
disbanded corps.

11. Increase of pay to the remaining soldiers of L19,500 annually.

12. The same allowance to the disbanded navy, and the same increase of
pay, as to the army.

13. Abolition of the commutation tax.

14. Plan of a progressive tax, operating to extirpate the unjust
and unnatural law of primogeniture, and the vicious influence of the
aristocratical system.*[39]

There yet remains, as already stated, one million of surplus taxes. Some
part of this will be required for circumstances that do not immediately
present themselves, and such part as shall not be wanted, will admit of
a further reduction of taxes equal to that amount.

Among the claims that justice requires to be made, the condition of the
inferior revenue-officers will merit attention. It is a reproach to
any government to waste such an immensity of revenue in sinecures and
nominal and unnecessary places and officers, and not allow even a decent
livelihood to those on whom the labour falls. The salary of the inferior
officers of the revenue has stood at the petty pittance of less than
fifty pounds a year for upwards of one hundred years. It ought to be
seventy. About one hundred and twenty thousand pounds applied to this
purpose, will put all those salaries in a decent condition.

This was proposed to be done almost twenty years ago, but the
treasury-board then in being, startled at it, as it might lead to
similar expectations from the army and navy; and the event was, that the
King, or somebody for him, applied to parliament to have his own salary
raised an hundred thousand pounds a year, which being done, every thing
else was laid aside.

With respect to another class of men, the inferior clergy, I forbear to
enlarge on their condition; but all partialities and prejudices for,
or against, different modes and forms of religion aside, common justice
will determine, whether there ought to be an income of twenty or thirty
pounds a year to one man, and of ten thousand to another. I speak on
this subject with the more freedom, because I am known not to be a
Presbyterian; and therefore the cant cry of court sycophants, about
church and meeting, kept up to amuse and bewilder the nation, cannot be