Financial Contributions

What did Scotland contribute in terms of financial support for the war effort, and did the Scots pay their ‘fair share’ of taxes in the 1790s? This chapter addresses the question of Scotland’s relative financial contribution to the war effort, by first looking at attitudes to taxation, and then Scotland’s actual contribution to war time finances. The main arguments presented here is that attitudes to taxation in Scotland focused more on individual cases such as the Coal tax, than on the overall tax burden and Scotland’s relative contribution to war-time finances, and that the contemporary view that Scotland was lightly taxed when compared to England, is largely supported by the surviving evidence on tax revenues.