On Financial Reform

Praised by John Stuart Mill, this 1830 work advocating reduced taxation is reissued with the author's 1832 pamphlet attacking the Bank of England.

Henry Parnell (Author)

9781108068482, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 August 2014

470 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.7 cm, 0.59 kg

Prior to its publication in 1830, the draft of this work by Sir Henry Parnell, later Baron Congleton (1776–1842), was praised by John Stuart Mill, who said he could 'not see that it is possible to lay down the principles of political economy more broadly'. Chair of the select committee on public income and expenditure during the Duke of Wellington's first ministry, Parnell called for greater retrenchment and reduced taxation. He also argues here that 'the passage of merchandise from one state to another … ought to be as free as air and water', denouncing the supporters of protection as 'among the greatest enemies of mankind'. A later pamphlet by Parnell, A Plain Statement of the Power of the Bank of England (1832), highly critical of the Bank's monopoly, is included in this reissue. His Treatise on Roads (1833) is reissued separately in the Cambridge Library Collection.

Part I. On Financial Reform: 1. Taxation
2. Taxes on raw materials
3. Taxes on manufactures
4. Taxes on luxuries
5. Taxes for protecting agriculture
6. Taxes for protecting manufactures
7. Effect of repealing taxes in making others more productive
8. Retrenchment
9. Collection of the revenue
10. Bounties
11. Management of the public expenditure
12. Civil government
13. Military expenditure
14. Slave trade
15. Colonies
16. Ireland
17. Summary of retrenchment
18. New taxes
19. The national debt
20. Future war expenditure
21. Loans in nominal capital
22. Terminable annuities
23. Accumulation of capital
Appendix
Part II. A Plain Statement of the Power of the Bank of England, and of the Use it Has Made of it.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ]