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2. Arthur Dobbs, Adam Smith and Walpole’s Excise Scheme

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

C. R. Fay
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Extract

The writer is Arthur Dobbs (1689–1765), M.P. for Carrickfergus, later Governor of North Carolina, and a lifelong believer in the North-West Passage. The letter is in the Walpole Papers. (Cambridge University Library by courtesy of the Marquis of Cholmondeley), but the Memorandum to which it relates is absent. However, the rough draft of the Memorandum, from which I quote at length, is in the Dobbs Papers from Castle Dobbs, Carrickfergus, now on deposit with the Public Record Office, Belfast, and there marked ‘82, undated’.

Type
Communications
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 1961 , pp. 203 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1961

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References

1 In 1732, at the instance of Walpole, Dodds became manager of the Conway estate in Ireland, the young heir, Francis Seymour Conway, being the nephew of Catherine Walpole. This Conway, the 1st Marquis of Hertford, was the grandfather of the 3rd Marquis(Thackeray';s Steyne and Disraeli's Monmouth).

2 Cf. Peveril of the Peak, ch. XI.

3 The law had thus made them the wholesalers of the island.

4 A lead to his future attack on the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company.

5 A significant anticipation of Adam Smith's canons of taxation margined by Cannan: ‘There are four maxims with regard to taxes in general, (1) equality (2) certainty (3) convenience of payment, and (4) economy of collection’. Wealth of Nations, Bk. v, ch. II, pt. II (ed. Cannan, n, 310–11).

6 See Oliver Twist, ch. 53, and last.