We are given to understand that Our subjects have questions respecting the new duties upon imported goods. We are pleased, though not obliged, to answer them.

The first and most persistent error We encounter is the notion that a duty laid upon goods arriving in a port is paid by the person who afterwards buys those goods. This is false. It is paid by the foreigner. We have enquired into the matter closely, of men appointed by Us for the purpose of enquiring into matters, and every one of them has confirmed it. Several confirmed it twice.

Consider the case plainly. A merchant of Holland loads a ship with cloth. The cloth arrives. A duty of one shilling in the pound is laid upon it. The Dutchman, upon learning of the duty, is seized with remorse and pays it himself out of affection for Our person. He then sells the cloth at the price he first intended, having absorbed the shilling as a gesture of goodwill toward a Crown he has never met.

We are told by certain persons in the counting-houses that this is not what occurs; that the shilling is added to the price; and that the buyer, being a subject of Ours and not a Dutchman at all, pays it in full at the counter. We have dismissed these persons. We have engaged others, who assure Us the Dutchman pays.

We come now to the happier portion of Our announcement. So abundant will the revenue from these duties prove that We intend to return a portion of it directly to Our people, as a bounty, in coin. Every subject shall have his share. We have not yet determined the amount, nor the day, nor the mechanism by which it shall reach him, nor whether the sum required exceeds the sum collected, these being matters for clerks. But the principle is settled, and the principle is generous, and We consider the announcement itself to be already a kind of payment.

Some will observe that a bounty returned to a man out of a duty he has himself paid is not a gift but a slow and expensive way of giving him back his own money. To these We say: it arrives in a bag with Our seal upon it, which the original shilling did not.

We are advised We should stop. We shall not. We are the King, and the cloth is cheaper than ever, and any subject who finds it dearer at the counter is measuring wrongly.