That which gave rise to these commotions was a project of Sir Robert Walpole's to ease the land-tax of one shilling in the pound, by turning the duty on tobacco and wine, then payable on importation, into inland duties; that is, changing the Customs on those two commodities into Excises; by which scheme, joined to the continuation of the salt-duty, he proposed to improve the public revenue £500,000 per annum, in order to supply the abatement of one shilling in the pound on land, which raises about that sum.
The landed men had long complained that they had ever since the Revolution borne the heat and burden of the day for the support of the Revolution Government; and as the great pressure of the last war had chiefly lain on them (the land having for many years been taxed to four shillings in the pound), they now began to say, that since the public tranquility both at home and abroad was firmly and universally established, if ease was not at this time thought of for them, it was a declaration from the Government that they were never to expect any; and that two shillings in the pound on land was the least that they or their posterity, in the most profound peace and fullest tranquility, were ever to hope to pay.
This having been the cry of the country gentlemen and landowners for some time, Sir Robert Walpole thought he could not do a more popular thing than to form a scheme by which the land-tax should be reduced to one shilling in the pound, and yet no new tax be substituted in the lieu thereof, no new duty laid on any commodity whatsoever, and the public revenue improved £500,000 per annum, merely by this alteration in the method of management.
The salt-duty, which had been revised the year before, could raise only in three years what one shilling in the pound on land raised in one year; consequently, as that tax was an equivalent only to one-third of a shilling on land, if the remission of that shilling on land was further and annually continued, some other fund must be found to supply the other two-thirds.
This of Excising tobacco and wine was the equivalent projected by Sir Robert Walpole, but this scheme, instead of procuring him the popularity he thought it would, caused more clamour and made him even, whilst the project was only talked of and in embryo, more vilified and abused by the universal outcries of the people, than any one Act of his whole administration.