Note 831 — Chapter IV

It was a common saying at Amsterdam in the seventeenth century that every dish of fish was paid for once to the fisherman and six times to the State. As early as 1619 taxes on goods were nearly equal to their wholesale price (Howell, letter of May 1, 1619, in Epistolæ Ho-elianæ, Bennett's ed. 1891, vol. i, 27). See La Richesse de Hollande, 1778, ii, 21-42, for details of the extraordinary multiplication of Dutch taxes from the war-period onwards. In Temple's time a common fish-sauce paid thirty different duties (Observations, in Works, i, 187). And still taxes increased. Cp. Smith, Wealth of Nations, M'Culloch's ed. 1839, pp. 396, 397, 411.