A pound of steel, when manufactured, may become of £10,000 value.
No hospitals in Holland have any land or settled revenue, and yet the poor better provided for than any where else in the world.
The Romans had two ways chiefly of levying their taxes,--by public lands, which were all dissipated by popular tribunes about the end of the republic; or by customs upon importation, which were different in different places; in some the fortieth part of the value; in Sicily the twentieth.
They had also a kind of excise, which began with the emperors, and was the two-hundredth or one-hundredth part of the value of all goods sold, the fiftieth of slaves.
Beside this, they had pretty early, even in the time of the republic, duties upon mines and salt; and in order to levy the former more easily, they forbid all mines in Italy. Their mines near Carthagena yielded them 25,000 drachms a-day. _Burman de Vict. Rom._
In the time of the monarchy, the kings had the sole power of imposing taxes. In the time of the republic, 'tis strange to see this power belonging sometimes to the magistrates, sometimes to the senate, or to the people. We learn from Livy, in the second Punic War, that the senate could contract debt alone. Polybius says, that all money matters belonged to the senate. The censors levied all the taxes, and farmed them out to the Roman knights. The Romans could be no great politicians; since the senate could not gain the sovereignty, nor the censors the supreme magistracy, notwithstanding these advantages.
All French projectors take it for granted that 'tis equally dangerous to make the people too easy as to oppress them too much. _Comte de Boulainvilliers._
The charter governments in America, almost entirely independent of England.
Those north of Virginia interfere most with us in manufactures, which proceeds from the resemblance of soil and climate.
Gustavus Vasa is perhaps the only instance of a prince who humbled the clergy while he aspired to arbitrary power.
From 1729 to 1730, imported of corn into Ireland to the value of £274,000,--ascribed to the want of a drawback by the Irish House of Commons.
The exchange to Holland always against us. _Craftsman._ Not true.
Our exports no rule to judge of our trade: masters enter more than they export, to persuade others that their ship is near full.