Was there a 'taxation revolution' in late Eighteenth-Century Britain?

英国对法国的战争，有时被称为第二次百年战争，始于1689年的光荣革命，直到1815年滑铁卢战役才结束。使英国政府能够进行这种旷日持久的战争的国家资助政策得到了广泛的研究。历史学家和经济学家对1694年英格兰银行的创建以及财政从直接税向间接税的累积转变进行了密切的研究(布鲁尔，1988；奥布莱恩，1988)。反过来，不断上升的税收使交战国家能够提供日益沉重的国家贷款负担。人们普遍认为，英国在18世纪崛起为世界强国，主要得益于这些财政政策的成功，这些政策使英国成为一个“财政军事国家”。但学者们对这场“税收革命”的确切性质一无所知。虽然经济和社会历史学家和经济学家经常引用的1715-1815年间税收实际增长了250%(Harris，2008)，但实现这些增长的确切手段仍然是假设的，而不是被证明的。我们也不知道政策变化是如何以及为什么发生的，以及转移的税收负担实际上在哪里。因此，税收政策变化的社会结果也没有引起学者的注意，而大量当代社会和经济著作，从报纸文章到政治经济学家的论文，都没有得到应有的关注，有时甚至被误解，(Davies，1786；Forster，1767)。

Britain's wars against France, sometimes termed 'the second Hundred Years War', started after theGlorious Revolution of 1689 not ending until the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815. The policies of statefunding enabling the British state to undertake such prolonged warfare have been extensivelystudied. Historians and economists have closely investigated the 'financial revolution', manifested inthe creation of the Bank of England in 1694, and the cumulative fiscal shift from direct to indirecttaxation (Brewer, 1988; O'Brien, 1988). In turn, the rising tax yields enabled the warring state toservice an ever-increasing burden of state loans. It is widely accepted that Britain's ascent as aneighteenth-century world power was enabled primarily by the success of these fiscal policies, whichmade Britain into a 'fiscal military state'.But the exact nature of this 'taxation revolution' has eluded scholars. While tax collections grew by250% in real terms from 1715-1815, (Harris, 2008), as frequently cited by economic and socialhistorians and economists, the exact means by which these increases were achieved remainsassumed rather than proven. Nor do we know how and why policy changes took place and wherethe shifting burden of taxation actually lay. As a result, the social outcomes of changing taxationpolicies have also escaped scholars' attention, while a large body of contemporary social andeconomic writing, from newspaper articles to treatises by political economists have not receiveddue attention, and have sometimes been misunderstood, (Davies, 1786; Forster, 1767).