ABSTRACT
Governments were pragmatic in their approach to the economy; if intervention would satisfy some vociferous party and did not involve the spending of money, they were quite willing to intervene. The Navigation Acts, and the bounties given to grain exports in the first half of the eighteenth century, were other examples of intervention. The tax system was therefore highly regressive; that is, it bore most heavily on the poor. The British government could sell government debt reasonably easily in times of war because the government was seen to be stable and fiscally responsible. During the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic Wars, however, expenditure rose to over 20 per cent of national income, and in the last years of the Napoleonic Wars to over 30 per cent. Although recent research suggests that investment continued to increase during the Napoleonic wars, much of the increase went into agriculture, encouraged by the increase in grain prices.
