Proposals for Erecting a Bridge Across the Cowgate, And for Establishing an Effectual Fund for the Support of the Poor of Edinburgh; Humbly Submitted to the Public by A Citizen.

Notes

A rare printed proposal to fund the building of South Bridge, an improvement recently proposed by James Hunter Blair, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, along with other desirable objectives including poverty support and comprehensive street lighting, by means of a reform of local taxes. The anonymous author suggests that the import tax on wine and spirits could be abolished, and replaced with a simplification of, and increase in, property taxes, to generate the funds necessary for the building as well as his other pet projects. The proposal was unsuccessful: Hunter Blair's scheme to compulsorily purchase surrounding land and then sell it for profit once the completed bridge had increased its value, thereby avoiding public spending, was the means by which the necessary act passed Parliament. Goldsmith's attributes the proposal to James Brown, an architect-contractor who did end up helping complete the building of the Bridge alongside Robert Kay, and ESTC locates copies in just three locations: NLS, BL, Harvard.