Mid-Century

Abstract

Between the late seventeenth century and the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, the volume of taxation sometimes showed violent fluctuations from year to year; but the general trend was upwards. the annual taxation income of the State had been around £2 million in 1688; it peaked at a figure not much short of £80 million in 1815.¹ Expenditure fluctuated even more than taxation income. In the seventeenth century it had corresponded closely with revenue, but growing Government reliance on increases of the National Debt made the correspondence much less close, and UK state expenditure figures peaked at nearly £113 million. When all allowance is made for the fact that the population had increased about fourfold and there had been a slow currency inflation,² the average overall tax burden must have multiplied by a factor of at least five.