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y poor-rates. About two millions are exempted: some as not being
house-keepers, others as not being able, and the poor themselves
who receive the relief. The average, therefore, of poor-rates on the
remaining number, is forty shillings for every family of five persons,
which make the whole average amount of taxes and rates L14 17s. 6d. For
six persons L17 17s. For seven persons L2O 16s. 6d.
The average of taxes in America, under the new or representative system
of government, including the interest of the debt contracted in the
war, and taking the population at four millions of souls, which it now
amounts to, and it is daily increasing, is five shillings per head,
men, women, and children. The difference, therefore, between the two
governments is as under:
England America
L s. d. L s. d.
For a family of five persons 14 17 6 1 5 0
For a family of six persons 17 17 0 1 10 0
For a family of seven persons 20 16 6 1 15 0
[Footnote 36: Public schools do not answer the general purpose of the poor.
They are chiefly in corporation towns from which the country towns and
villages are excluded, or, if admitted, the distance occasions a great
loss of time. Education, to be useful to the poor, should be on the
spot, and the best method, I believe, to accomplish this is to enable
the parents to pay the expenses themselves. There are always persons of
both sexes to be found in every village, especially when growing into
years, capable of such an undertaking. Twenty children at ten shillings
each (and that not more than six months each year) would be as much as
some livings amount to in the remotest parts of England, and there are
often distressed clergymen's widows to whom such an income would be
acceptable. Whatever is given on this account to children answers two
purposes. To them it is education--to those who educate them it is a
livelihood.]
[Footnote 37: The tax on beer brewed for sale, from which the aristocracy are
exempt, is almost one million more than the present commutation tax,
being by the returns of 1788, L1,666,152--and, consequently, they ought
to take on themselves the amount of the commutation tax, as they are
already exempted from one which is almost a million greater.]
[Footnote 38: See the Reports on the Corn Trade.]
[Footnote 39: When enquiries are made into t
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