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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 497: SUPPLIES, ETC.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

SUPPLIES, ETC.

After previous discussions on the navy and army estimates, on the 23rd of February Pitt submitted his annual statement on the supplies to the consideration of the house. The force required for the service of the year was 85,000 seamen, and 15,000 marines; 120,000 regulars for guards and garrisons; 56,000 militia; 40,000 regulars for Ireland, and the West Indies, and other colonies; besides fencibles and volunteers, foreign troops in British pay, and embodied French emigrants. The supplies demanded for the support of these forces were £16,027,000, to which sum was to be added £200,000, annual subsidy to the King of Sardinia. The whole expenditure amounted to £27,540.000, and the loan proposed was £18,000,000, the largest, up to this period, ever voted by parliament. In order to make up the remainder, new duties were imposed upon tea, coffee, raisins, foreign grocery and fruits, foreign timber, insurances, writs, and affidavits, hair-powder, licenses, &c.; and to increase the receipts of the post-office, the privilege of franking letters was somewhat abridged. As a counterpoise for these additional burdens, Pitt mentioned the extraordinary increase of commerce, which, in the preceding year, had exceeded that of the most flourishing period of peace. The ways and means were voted as Pitt desired; but some of his adherents were not very favourable to some of the new duties, and especially to the powder-tax.