29 JUNE 1985, Page 19

Bacon slicers

TEXT for the Cabinet tax-cutters, as they wrestle with the consolidators: 'For their merchants, if they flourish not, a kingdom may have good limbs, but will have empty veins, and nourish little. Taxes and imposts on them do seldom good to the king's revenue; for that that he wins in the hundred he leeseth in the shire; the par- ticular rates being increased, but the total bulk of trading rather decreased.' I found it in Bacon's essay 'Of Empire', and since it is out of copyright, I offer it to Nigel Lawson's new speechwriter free of charge.