The Writings Of Thomas Paine Volume III Part 3

I now come to state the expence of the two systems, as they now stand in each of the countries; but it may first be proper to observe, that government in America is what it ought to be, a matter of honour and trust, and not made a trade of for the purpose of lucre.

The whole amount of the nett(sic) taxes in England (exclusive of the expence of collection, of drawbacks, of seizures and condemnation, of fines and penalties, of fees of office, of litigations and informers, which are some of the blessed means of enforcing them) is seventeen millions. Of this sum, about nine millions go for the payment of the interest of the national debt, and the remainder, being about eight millions, is for the current annual expences. This much for one side of the case. I now come to the other.

The expence of the several departments of the general Representative Government of the United States of America, extending over a s.p.a.ce of country nearly ten times larger than England, is two hundred and ninety-four thousand, five hundred and fifty-eight dollars, which, at 4s. 6d. per dollar, is 66,305L. 11s. sterling, and is thus apportioned;

[Ill.u.s.tration: table046]

On account of the incursions of the Indians on the back settlements, Congress is at this time obliged to keep six thousand militia in pay, in addition to a regiment of foot, and a battalion of artillery, which it always keeps; and this increases the expence of the War Department to 390,000 dollars, which is 87,795L. sterling, but when peace shall be concluded with the Indians, the greatest part of this expence will cease, and the total amount of the expence of government, including that of the army, will not amount to 100,000L. sterling, which, as has been already stated, is but an eightieth part of the expences of the English government.

I request Mr. Adam and Mr. Dundas, and all those who are talking of Const.i.tutions, and blessings, and Kings, and Lords, and the Lord knows what, to look at this statement. Here is a form and system of government, that is better organized and better administered than any government in the world, and that for less than one hundred thousand pounds per annum, and yet every Member of Congress receives, as a compensation for his time and attendance on public business, one pound seven shillings per day, which is at the rate of nearly five hundred pounds a year.

This is a government that has nothing to fear. It needs no proclamations to deter people from writing and reading. It needs no political superst.i.tion to support it; it was by encouraging discussion and rendering the press free upon all subjects of government, that the principles of government became understood in America, and the people are now enjoying the present blessings under it. You hear of no riots, tumults, and disorders in that country; because there exists no cause to produce them. Those things are never the effect of Freedom, but of restraint, oppression, and excessive taxation.

In America, there is not that cla.s.s of poor and wretched people that are so numerously dispersed all over England, who are to be told by a proclamation, that they are happy; and this is in a great measure to be accounted for, not by the difference of proclamations, but by the difference of governments and the difference of taxes between that country and this. What the labouring people of that country earn, they apply to their own use, and to the education of their children, and do not pay it away in taxes as fast as they earn it, to support Court extravagance, and a long enormous list of place-men and pensioners; and besides this, they have learned the manly doctrine of reverencing themselves, and consequently of respecting each other; and they laugh at those imaginary beings called Kings and Lords, and all the fraudulent trumpery of Court.

When place-men and pensioners, or those who expect to be such, are lavish in praise of a government, it is not a sign of its being a good one. The pension list alone in England (see sir John Sinclair's History of the Revenue, p. 6, of the Appendix) is one hundred and seven thousand four hundred and four pounds, _which is more than the expences of the whole Government of America amount to_. And I am now more convinced than before, that the offer that was made to me of a thousand pounds for the copy-right of the second part of the Rights of Man, together with the remaining copyright of the first part, was to have effected, by a quick suppression, what is now attempted to be done by a prosecution. The connection which the person, who made the offer, has with the King's printing-office, may furnish part of the means of inquiring into this affair, when the ministry shall please to bring their prosecution to issue.(1) But to return to my subject.--

I have said in the second part of the _Rights of Man_, and I repeat it here, that the service of any man, whether called King, President, Senator, Legislator, or any thing else, cannot be worth more to any country, in the regular routine of office, than ten thousand pounds per annum. We have a better man in America, and more of a gentleman, than any King I ever knew of, who does not occasion half that ex-pence; for, though the salary is fixed at 5625 he does not accept it, and it is only the incidental expences that are paid out of it.(2) The name by which a man is called is of itself but an empty thing. It is worth and character alone which can render him valuable, for without these, Kings, and Lords, and Presidents, are but jingling names.

But without troubling myself about Const.i.tutions of Government, I have shewn in the Second Part of _Rights of Man_, that an alliance may be formed between England, France, and America, and that the expences of government in England may be put back to one million and a half, viz.:

Civil expence of Government...... 500,000L.

Army............................. 500,000 Navy............................. 500,000 ---------- 1,500,000L.

And even this sum is fifteen times greater than the expences of government are in America; and it is also greater than the whole peace establishment of England amounted to about an hundred years ago. So much has the weight and oppression of taxes increased since the Revolution, and especially since the year 1714.

1 At Paine's trial, Chapman, the printer, in answer to fa question of the Solicitor General, said: "I made him three separate offers in the different stages of the work; the first, I believe, was a hundred guineas, the second five hundred, and the last was a thousand."--_Editor_.

2 Error. See also ante, and in vol. ii., p. 435.

Washington had retracted his original announcement, and received his salary regularly.--_Editor_.

To shew that the sum of 500,000L. is sufficient to defray all civil expences of government, I have, in that work, annexed the following estimate for any country of the same extent as England.--

In the first place, three hundred Representatives, fairly elected, are sufficient for all the purposes to which Legislation can apply, and preferable to a larger number.

If, then, an allowance, at the rate of 500L. per annum be made to every Representative, deducting for non-attendance, the expence, if the whole number attended six months each year, would be.......75,000L.

The Official Departments could not possibly exceed the following number, with the salaries annexed, viz.:

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: Table]

Three offices at 10,000L.

each 30,000

Ten ditto at 5,000 u 50,000

Twenty ditto at 2,000 u 40,000

Forty ditto at 1,000 it 40,000

Two hundred ditto at 500 u 100,000

Three hundred ditto at 200 u 60,000

Five hundred ditto at 100 u 50,000

Seven hundred ditto at 75 it 52,500

497,500L.

If a nation chose, it might deduct four per cent, from all the offices, and make one of twenty thousand pounds per annum, and style the person who should fill it, King or Madjesty, (1) or give him any other t.i.tle.

Taking, however, this sum of one million and a half, as an abundant supply for all the expences of government under any form whatever, there will remain a surplus of nearly six millions and a half out of the present taxes, after paying the interest of the national debt; and I have shewn in the Second Part of _Rights of Man_, what appears to me, the best mode of applying the surplus money; for I am now speaking of expences and savings, and not of systems of government.

1 A friend of Paine advised him against this pun, as too personal an allusion to George the Third, to whom however much has been forgiven on account of his mental infirmity.

Yorke, in his account of his visit to Paine, 1802, alludes to his (Paine's) anecdotes "of humor and benevolence"

concerning George III.--_Editor_.

I have, in the first place, estimated the poor-rates at two millions annually, and shewn that the first effectual step would be to abolish the poor-rates entirely (which would be a saving of two millions to the house-keepers,) and to remit four millions out of the surplus taxes to the poor, to be paid to them in money, in proportion to the number of children in each family, and the number of aged persons.

I have estimated the number of persons of both s.e.xes in England, of fifty years of age and upwards, at 420,000, and have taken one third of this number, viz. 140,000, to be poor people.

To save long calculations, I have taken 70,000 of them to be upwards of fifty years of age, and under sixty, and the others to be sixty years and upwards; and to allow six pounds per annum to the former cla.s.s, and ten pounds per annum to the latter. The expence of which will be,

Seventy thousand persons at 6L. per annum..... 420,000L.

Seventy thousand persons at 10L. per annum.... 700,000 ----------- 1,120,000L.

There will then remain of the four millions, 2,880,000L. I have stated two different methods of appropriating this money. The one is to pay it in proportion to the number of children in each family, at the rate of three or four pounds per annum for each child; the other is to apportion it according to the expence of living in different counties; but in either of these cases it would, together with the allowance to be made to the aged, completely take off taxes from one third of all the families in England, besides relieving all the other families from the burthen of poor-rates.

The whole number of families in England, allotting five souls to each family, is one million four hundred thousand, of which I take one third, _viz_. 466,666 to be poor families who now pay four millions of taxes, and that the poorest pays at least four guineas a year; and that the other thirteen millions are paid by the other two-thirds. The plan, therefore, as stated in the work, is, first, to remit or repay, as is already stated, this sum of four millions to the poor, because it is impossible to separate them from the others in the present mode of collecting taxes on articles of consumption; and, secondly, to abolish the poor-rates, the house and window-light tax, and to change the commutation tax into a progressive tax on large estates, the particulars of all which are set forth in the work, to which I desire Mr. Adam to refer for particulars. I shall here content myself with saying, that to a town of the population of Manchester, it will make a difference in its favour, compared with the present state of things, of upwards of fifty thousand pounds annually, and so in proportion to all other places throughout the nation. This certainly is of more consequence than that the same sums should be collected to be afterwards spent by riotous and profligate courtiers, and in nightly revels at the Star and Garter tavern, Pall Mall.

I will conclude this part of my letter with an extract from the Second Part of the _Rights of Man_, which Mr. Dundas (a man rolling in luxury at the expence of the nation) has branded with the epithet of "wicked."

"By the operation of this plan, the poor laws, those instruments of civil torture, will be superseded, and the wasteful ex-pence of litigation prevented. The hearts of the humane will not be shocked by ragged and hungry children, and persons of seventy and eighty years of age begging for bread. The dying poor will not be dragged from place to place to breathe their last, as a reprisal of parish upon parish. Widows will have a maintenance for their children, and not be carted away, on the death of their husbands, like culprits and criminals; and children will no longer be considered as increasing the distresses of their parents. The haunts of the wretched will be known, because it will be to their advantage; and the number of petty crimes, the offspring of poverty and distress, will be lessened. The poor as well as the rich will then be interested in the support of Government, and the cause and apprehension of riots and tumults will cease. Ye who sit in ease, and solace yourselves in plenty, and such there are in Turkey and Russia, as well as in England, and who say to yourselves, _are we not well off_ have ye thought of these things? When ye do, ye will cease to speak and feel for yourselves alone."

After this remission of four millions be made, and the poor-rates and houses and window-light tax be abolished, and the commutation tax changed, there will still remain nearly one million and a half of surplus taxes; and as by an alliance between England, France and America, armies and navies will, in a great measure, be rendered unnecessary; and as men who have either been brought up in, or long habited to, those lines of life, are still citizens of a nation in common with the rest, and have a right to partic.i.p.ate in all plans of national benefit, it is stated in that work (_Rights of Man_, Part ii.) to apply annually 507,000L. out of the surplus taxes to this purpose, in the following manner:

[Ill.u.s.tration: table 053]

The limits to which it is proper to confine this letter, will not admit of my entering into further particulars. I address it to Mr. Dundas because he took the lead in the debate, and he wishes, I suppose, to appear conspicuous; but the purport of it is to justify myself from the charge which Mr. Adam has made.

This Gentleman, as has been observed in the beginning of this letter, considers the writings of Harrington, More and Hume, as justifiable and legal publications, because they reasoned by comparison, though in so doing they shewed plans and systems of government, not only different from, but preferable to, that of England; and he accuses me of endeavouring to confuse, instead of producing a system in the room of that which I had reasoned against; whereas, the fact is, that I have not only reasoned by comparison of the representative system against the hereditary system, but I have gone further; for I have produced an instance of a government established entirely on the representative system, under which greater happiness is enjoyed, much fewer taxes required, and much higher credit is established, than under the system of government in England. The funds in England have risen since the war only from 54L. to 97L. and they have been down since the proclamation, to 87L. whereas the funds in America rose in the mean time from 10L. to 120L.

His charge against me of "destroying every principle of subordination,"

is equally as groundless; which even a single paragraph from the work will prove, and which I shall here quote: