The British Parliament 117
APPROXIMATE ANNUAL TAX BURDEN PER HEAD IN ENGLISH
SHILLINGS (CONT.)About 1765 About 1785Spain 10Sweden 9Russia 6Prussia 6Poland 1
Note: The figures for 1785 are derived from E. A. W. Zimmermann, Political Survey of
the Present State of Europe in Sixteen Tables (Dublin, 1788), except that the figures for
France are from J. Necker, De l ’administration des finances, 1784, 1, 306, and that those
for Massachusetts and Virginia are computed from M. Jensen, The New Nation: a His-
tory of the United States during the Confederation, 1781–1789 (N.Y., 1950), 305 and 308.
For Great Britain P. Pebrer, Taxation, Revenue, Expenditure, Power, Statistics and Debt of
the Whole British Empire (London, 1833), 153, gives a revenue of £9,300,000 for 1765
and £14,870,000 for 1785; this has been divided by an estimated population of seven
millions in 1765 and nine millions in 1785 for England, Wales, and Scotland; the re-
sulting figure for 1785 corresponds to that given by Zimmermann. For Ireland about
1765 see G. O’Brien, Economic History of Ireland in the 18th Century (Dublin, 1918),- For the American provinces in the 1760’s, see L. Gipson, Coming of the Revolution,
134, 136, 146; the estimates of Adam Smith given by W. G. Sumner, The Financier and
Finances of the American Revolution (N.Y., 1892), 25, which are close to the estimates of
T. Pownall, Administration of the Colonies (ed. 1774), I, 162–64; see also C. J. Bullock,
Finances of the United States from 1775 to 1789 (Madison, 1895), 152. In the 1780’s the
federal government of the United States seems to have received somewhat less than one
shilling per head of the population; see Bullock, op. cit., 162–64. The British govern-
ment before the Revolution, according to an estimate of R. H. Lee in 1774, received
£80,000 from the American colonies in customs revenues, or about 8 d. per head of
population; Sumner, op. cit., 15. The increased tax burden within the American states
between 1765 and 1785 was due to the war and the debt.
the south, and in the governors’ councils and the colonial assemblies. The genera-
tion that carried out the Revolution and adopted the constitution of 1787 obviously
possessed great political skill. Yet it must be admitted that the Americans had much
to learn. In their habit of depending on Britain they were truly provincial. They had
little notion of providing for their own defense; they recognized no problems of
international relations with which it was incumbent on them to deal. In the matter
of taxes they were, indeed, in the state of nature; as late as 1778 the Continental
Congress wrote to Franklin, then in Paris, that since the Americans had never been
much taxed before the Revolution it would be madness to tax them now, so that the