The Resources of Modern Countries: Essays Towards an Estimate of the Economic Position of Nations, and British Trade Prospects, Volume 1 |
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Popular passages
Page 9 - From the first appearance of this ground may be dated the origin of the modern pillow lace trade ; but it was not until the beginning of the present century that the...
Page 13 - The Tariff of the United Kingdom presents neither congruity nor unity of purpose ; no general principles seem to have been applied. The Schedule to the Act 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 56, for consolidating the Customs Duties, enumerates no fewer than 1,150 different rates of duty chargeable on imported articles, all other commodities paying duty as...
Page 98 - These tributary or feudatory states own over a third of the total area of India, and control nearly a sixth of the total population, yet contribute only 725,000?. to the Imperial revenue, although they enjoy some of the most important benefits of our rule, such as immunity from foreign attacks, freedom to trade, &c. That the Government of the empire can go on in the future as it has done in the past, is a sheer impossibility ; for the pressure of taxation upon the people is heavy enough to cause...
Page 65 - ... of their fields, had continued. A minute of the Government of Bombay records, about the same time, that ' the Government has read with much concern the opinion expressed by the Collector of Sholapore, as to the undue pressure of the revised rates, in consequence of which a large quantity of land has been put up for sale in default of revenue, much of which found no purchasers.
Page 181 - Powell (in a communication recently made to the National Academy), ' all the good public lands fit for settlement are sold. There is not left unsold in the whole United States, of land which a poor man could turn into a farm, enough to make one average county in Wisconsin. The exception to this statement, if it is open to any, may perhaps be found in Texas or the Indian Territory, elsewhere it is true.
Page 71 - No salt is used in agriculture, the cattle are stinted of this invaluable condiment, and the poor along the sea-coast use salt earth scraped from swamps washed by the sea, while in inland districts the scrapings of saltpetre pans are what thousands of families are reduced to consume. Much disease is said to be engendered by the scarcity of pure salt, and the trade in salt fish, which might supply a cheap and abundant article of food, is hampered by the high duty.
Page 167 - ... hindrance to trade. Of the three invoices, one is retained by the consul, another sent direct by him to the collector of customs at the port of destination, and the third returned to the shipper, authenticated by the consular certificate, who can then forward it to the consignee. If the consul is not satisfied that true values are...
Page 64 - ... the rose-water views and assertions of Lord George Hamilton, who has not yet mastered the first rudiments of either political economy or finance to all appearance, and speaks with all the more confidence that he has not. In the Bombay Presidency, the Revenue Commissioners' reports show that 10,880 acres of cultivated land in Surat, and 25,035 acres in Guzerat, were abandoned in 1872 and 1873 ; that, owing to a decrease in the cultivation, chiefly in the Kaira and Broach districts, there was a...
Page 71 - Madras, for example, where, according to the laborious official compilation already quoted,4 'the revenue has been increased by raising the price, but the increase of profit was considerably less than the degree in which the tax was augmented, and the sales have actually diminished.' In Bengal the same thing has, I believe, been going on. Mr. Dacosta says, ' A ton of Cheshire salt, which the people of England may buy for io*., pays 8?.
Page 76 - For the fiveyears 1869 to 1873 it averaged 1,551,000?. per annum, and was practically the same at the end of the period as at the beginning...