Trusting Leviathan

Martin Daunton, FBA, is a fellow of Churchill College and professor of economic history at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1700–1850 (1995), and editor of Volume III of The Cambridge Urban History of Britain (2001).

• List of illustrations; List of figures; List of tables; Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. Trust, collective action and the state; 2. 'The great tax eater': the limits of the fiscal-military state, 1793–1842; 3. 'Philosophical administration and constitutional control': the emergence of the Gladstonian fiscal constitution; 4. 'A cheap purchase of future security': establishing the income tax, 1842–60; 5. 'Our real war chest': the national debt, war and empire; 6. 'The sublime rule of proportion': ability to pay and the social structure, 1842–1906; 7. 'The minimum of irritation': fiscal administration and civil society, 1842–1914; 8. 'The right of a dead hand': death and taxation; 9. 'Athenian democracy': the fiscal system and the local state, 1835–1914; 10. 'The end of our taxation tether': the limits of the Gladstonian fiscal constitution, 1894–1906; 11. 'The modern income tax': remaking the fiscal constitution, 1906–14; 12. Conclusion; Appendix: chancellors of the Exchequer, 1841–1914; Bibliography; Index.

'This account of revenue collection across more than a century is masterly in its lucidity … [it] will pose a challenge to political and cultural historians for many years to come.' Michael Bentley, The Times Literary Supplement