The eight volumes of The History of Taxation are designed to cover the literature of taxation from the late seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. Taxation has been of abiding interest to economists, but the intellectual problems concerning it, as well as its immediate impact have engaged a much wider public, and contributions from a very wide range of individuals and professionals have enriched the literature. The the set illustrates the richness and profusion of the literature. Beginning with Sir William Petty, the authors include not only the great and familiar names - Steuart, Hume, Smith, Ricardo, Say, Mill, McCulloch, Seligman, Edgeworth, Wicksell - but a host of other and much less well known figures. Some of these, like Hamilton, Beeke, Buchanan, Farr, Hubbard, and Cohen Stuart, are well known to specialists; but others are almost unknown to all but a very few scholars. The literature, itself the product of the historical experiences of the writers, focuses on a number of themes, reflecting in turn the problems which revenue raisers have encountered over two centuries. These include revenue shortage and the appropriate tax base; the national debt and the Sinking Fund; the introduction of income tax; the problems created by the abolition of the income tax in 1816 and the effects of its reintroduction from 1842, and the issues which subsequently arose, especially differentiation between the various sources of income, and progression. The literature of taxation is among the most significant of all economic literature, and these volumes are designed to bring out that significance and to illustrate the perennial problems around which the discussions have revolved. Overall, this edition constitutes a collection of the key texts in the evolution of an established body of literature on public finance topics, drawing chiefly on eighteenth and nineteenth-century sources.