Peter Kropotkin Archive
Written: 1898
Source: Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
The important question as to the amount of British capital invested in the colonies and in other countries has only quite lately received due attention. For the last ten years or so one could find in the "Reports of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue" a mention of the revenue derived from British capital invested in foreign loans to States and Municipalities and in railway companies; but these returns were still incomplete. Consequently, Mr. George Paish made in 1909 and 1911 an attempt at determining these figures with more accuracy in two papers which he read before the Statistical Society.1
Mr. Paish based his researches on the Income Tax, completing, these data by special researches about private investments, which do not appear in the Income Tax returns. He has not yet got to the end of his investigation; but, all taken, he estimates that the yearly income received by this country from abroad from different sources reaches £300,000,000 every year.
1 "Great Britain's Capital Investments in Other Lands " (Journal of the Statistical Society, September 1909, vol. lxxii., pp. 475-495), followed by a most interesting discussion; and " Great Britain's Capital Investments in India, Colonial and Foreign Countries," same journal, January 1911, vol. lxxiv., pp.167-200.