THE NATIONAL INCOME OF GREAT BRITAIN IN THE YEAR 1800.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In dealing with the Statistical Monographs which I am now issuing from the offices of the Liberty and Property Defence League, and which are also supplied by the Con- servative Central Office, you make one criticism which I had not only made myself, but which I had already acted on to the extent of rewriting a portion of the monograph to which that criticism refers, and which in a future issue will appear in a revised form. I allude to the estimate of the total income of Great Britain about the year 1800 as having been about £170,000,000. Subsequent study of contemporary examina- tions of Pitt's estimate of the aggregate of incomes in excess of £60 a year has led me to the conclusion that the true aggregate of all incomes was more nearly 2200,000,000 than £170,000,000. Dr. Beeke, in particular, writing in the year 1800, sought to show that by Pitt and others the then wealth of Great Britain was underestimated, and that the national income was appreciably in excess of £200,000,000. It would appear, however, from Macculloch's examination of Dr. Beeke's figures, that the estimates of the latter were exces sive, and that the actual total must have lain about midway between £170,000,000 and £220,000,000. The official income. tax records for the time in question were destroyed—a fact which Macculloch mentions with very appropriate indigna. tion—so the data at our disposal are fragmentary. It still, however, appears to me that we may make a substantial approximation to the truth.—I am, Sir, Ste.,
W. H. MALLocir.
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