Low Taxes in the English Colonies

⁴² 3. The moderate taxes lets the English colonists keep more of their produce to themselves.

They may store up and employ their produce in mobilizing even more labour.

The English colonists have never yet contributed:

• to the defence of England
• to the support of England’s civil government.

On the contrary, they were defended almost entirely at England’s cost.

But the cost of fleets and armies is greater than the cost of civil government.

The cost of the civil government of the colonies has always been very moderate.

It was confined to what was necessary for:

• paying the salaries to the governor, judges, and police officers
• maintaining a few of the most useful public works

The cost of the civil establishment of Massachusett’s Bay before the start of the present disturbances, was about £18,000 a year.

• The cost of New Hampshire and Rhode Island was £3,500 a year each.
• The cost of Connecticut was £4,000 a year.
• The cost of New York and Pennsylvania was £4,500 a year each.
• The cost of New Jersey was £1,200 a year.
• The cost of Virginia and South Carolina was £8,000 each.

The civil establishments of Nova Scotia and Georgia are partly supported by an annual grant of parliament.

But Nova Scotia pays about £7,000 a year towards the colony’s public expences.

• Georgia pays about £2,500 a year.

Before the present disturbances, all the civil establishments in North America did not cost their people above £64,700 a year.

This excludes the cost of Maryland and North Carolina, of which no exact account has been got.

This is an ever-memorable example of how small an expence of 3 million people may not only be governed, but well governed.

The most important part of the expence of government is defence and protection.

• It has constantly fallen on the mother country.

The ceremonies of the civil government in the colonies are decent and inexpensive:

• the reception of a new governor
• the opening of a new assembly, etc.

Their ecclesiastical government is equally frugal.

• Tithes are unknown among them.
• Their clergy are few.
• They are maintained by moderate stipends or by the voluntary contributions of the people.

The power of Spain and Portugal, on the contrary, is supported by taxes on their colonies.

France has never drawn any big revenue from its colonies.

• The taxes it levies on them are generally spent among the colonies.

But the colony government of all these three nations is conducted with a much more expensive ceremonial.

For example, enormous sums were frequently spent on the reception of a new viceroy of Peru.

Such ceremonials are real taxes paid by the rich colonists on those occasions.

• They introduce the habit of vanity and expence on all other occasions.
• They are very grievous occasional taxes.
• They contribute to establish perpetual and ruinous taxes of private luxury and extravagance which are still more grievous.

In the colonies of all those three nations, the ecclesiastical government is extremely oppressive.

Tithes take place in all of them.

They are levied with the utmost rigour in Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

All of them are oppressed with many mendicant friars.

Their beggary is consecrated by religion.

It is a most grievous tax on the poor people.

They are taught that:

• it is their duty to give
• it is a very great sin to refuse charity to the friars

Over and above all this, the clergy are the greatest engrossers of land in all those colonies.