chap. IX.} 1763. Dec. |
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by a renewed grant of the land-tax, which, at four
shillings in the pound, produced a little more than two million pounds sterling.
Grenville promised that the tax should be continued at that rate for only two years after the peace; and then should be reduced to three shillings in the pound, an easement to the landed interest of five hundred thousand pounds. Huske, the new member for Malden, once subservient to Charles Townshend, a native of New-Hampshire, educated at Boston, the same who nearly nine years before had in 1755 foreshadowed the stamp-tax,1 and had publicly pledged himself to propose2 a plan for defraying all the expenses of the military service in America by a fund on the colonies, a man who was allowed to understand the colonies very well, seized an opportunity3 to renew his proposal, boasting that taxes might be laid on the colonies to yield £ 500,000, which would secure the promised relief to the country gentlemen.
This sum, he insisted, the Americans were well able to pay, and he was heard by the House with great joy and attention,4
1 Huske's Present State of North America, &c., 1755. Of this work there were two English editions in that year, and one in Boston, 82, 83.
2 ‘I shall humbly propose a plan in my last chapter,’ &c.: Huske, 83. His last chapter was not printed.
3 ‘What is most unlucky for us is, there is one Mr. Huske, who understands America very well, and has lately got a seat in the House of Commons; but, instead of standing an advocate for his injured country (for he is an American born, and educated in Boston), he has officiously proposed, in the House of Commons, to lay a tax on the colonies which will amount to £ 500,000 per annum, sterling; which he says they are well able to pay; and he was heard by the house with great joy and attention.’ Those who report Huske's speech do not specify the day on which it was pronounced. It seems to me it must have been spoken either on the vote of supply for maintaining the forces and garrisons in the plantations, in committee on the 5th Dec., in the house, on the 6th; or on the vote of the land tax, in committee on the 7th, in the house on the 8th of Dec. These are the only occasions on which, as it would appear, the speech would not have been out of orde: Journal of the House of Commons, XXIX. 695, 698. Annual Register, for 1764. Appendix to Chronicle, 157, 163. A reduction of a shilling in the pound on the land tax would have been a reduction of £ 508, 732.
4 For
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860.
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