Bounty

Bounty. 1. A sum given by a government, either directly or in the form of a remission of taxation, to encourage some branch of manufacture or production among its inhabitants. Such bounties were common in Adam Smith's time, and the "sugar bounties" (which are a return of the tax paid on all such sugar as is exported) given by France, Germany, and other foreign nations for the manufacture of beetroot sugar, are a familiar modern instance. The main economic objection to them is that they draw part of the capital of the country into a business which is not naturally profitable enough to attract it, but which is made attractive at the expense of the tax-payer. Thus the aggregate national capital does not increase so fast as it would were it left alone; and the greater the national capital the more employment for labour. Thus the bounty eventually defeats its own object.

2. The sum of money paid to recruits on entering the service. In war time, in England and America, this has often been large. In the great French war it was sometimes upwards of £20. A bounty of £2 per annum is now given to each man in the militia reserve of the British army.

3. The Royal Bounty is (a) an annual grant of £2,000 to the Church of Scotland, (b) the sum given in England for encouraging the breed of horses, hitherto usually expended in Queen's Plates. The Queen's Bounty is the sum, usually of £1 per child, given by Her Majesty to poor women who have three or more children at a birth.