FOOTNOTES:

I.Poor's Rate in 1845, a very prosperous year,£6,847,205II.Land-tax,1,164,042III.Highway Rates,1,169,891IV.Church Rates,506,812V.Police, Lunatic, and Bridge-rates, estimated,500,000VI.Excess of assessed taxes falling on land above personal estates, estimated,1,500,000VII.Stamp-duties peculiar to land,1,200,000£12,887,950

The rental of real property in England, rated to the Poor's Rates, is £62,540,030;[28]but the real rental, as ascertained by the more rigid and accurate returns for the Income-tax, is £85,802,735. On the first of these sums, the taxes exclusively falling on land amount to a tax oftwenty-five, on the last ofEIGHTEENper cent. annually. This is inadditionto the Income-tax, and all the indirect taxes which the owners of land and houses pay in common with all the rest of the community, and which by it are complained of as so oppressive.

Enough, it is thought, has now been said to prove the extreme inequality and injustice with which direct public burdens are levied in this country, and the necessity for a thorough and searching revision of our system of taxation, in this respect, especially since, from the way in which the tide sets, it has become so evident that direct will progressively be more extensively substituted for indirect taxation. But, in addition to these, there are several other circumstances which aggravate fourfold the burdens thus exclusively laid on real property.

I. In the first place, the alterations in the monetary system of the country, by the resumption of cash payments in 1819, followed up in Scotland and Ireland, as well as England, by the stringent Bankers' Act of 1844, has added fully forty per cent. to the weight of all taxes and other burdens, public or private, affecting landed property, because it has altered, to that extent, the value of money, and diminished the price of the articles of rural produce from which the laud-holders' means of paying them are derived. If the prices of wheat and of all other kinds of agricultural produce, for ten years before 1819, and ten years before 1845, be compared, it will at once appear that the difference is even greater than has been here stated.[29]But that consideration is of vital importance in this question, for if the price of all kinds of rural produce has declined nearly as nine to six by the operation of these monetary changes, the weight of debts and taxes, ofcourse, must have been increased in the same proportion. We are not now to enter into any argument as to the expedience or necessity of that great change in our monetary system: we assume it asa fact, and refer to it only as rendering imperative a revision of the direct taxes bearing so heavily on the great interests whose means of paying them have been thus so seriously abridged.

II. In the second place, and this is a most important circumstance, the burdens which have been mentioned all fall as a burden on the landowner, how much soever his property may be charged with mortgages, jointures, or other real burdens. These must all be paid in full by himself alone, how small soever be the fraction of the nominal income of his estate which remains to him after discharging the annual amount of its real burdens. There is no right to deduct poor's rates, land tax, or other burdens affecting land, from mortgages, or even jointure holders, unless they are expressly declared liable to such, which is very seldom the case. These annual charges must all be paidclearto the creditor, without any deduction, except that of the income tax, which the debtor is allowed to retain by the Act imposing it. But this consideration is of vital importance to the landholders when the amount of their mortgages and other real burdens is taken into consideration. Their annual amount has been estimated by very competent judges attwo-thirdsof the income derived from land, although, as there is no general record in England for real burdens, their amount cannot at present be accurately ascertained. But take it, in order to be within the mark, atthree-fifthsof the real rental, as ascertained by the income tax returns, these show, as already stated, an income of £85,000,000 annually derived from land. Take three-fifths, or £51,000,000 of this sum as absorbed annually by mortgagers and annuitants holding real and preferable securities over land, and there will remain £34,000,000 annually to the holders of land and houses. Now on this £34,000,000 the real burdens above mentioned, amounting to £12,900,000 a-year, are fastened. If to these be added the income tax paid by the land, amounting, by the income tax returns, to £2,112,000, the clear income derived by landholders from the real property of England, with thedirecttaxes paid by them, will stand thus—

Clear Income as above£34,000,000Deduct direct taxes levied exclusively on land,£12,900,000Income tax paid by land,2,100,00015,000,000Remains,£19,000,000

Thus it appears that out of thirty-four millions of clear rental left to the owners of real property in England, no less than fifteen millions, or nearlya half, is taken from them annually in the shape of direct taxes which they cannot by any possibility avoid! How long would the commercial or city industry of England stand direct taxes to the amount of 46 per cent on their clear income? If that had been the state of their finances, we should have had no clamour in 1831 for enlarged representation, or in 1846 for the destruction, to their advantage, of all the protection to other branches of industry. We should have had no Anti-Corn Law League subscriptions of £100,000 to buy up all the venal talent in the form of itinerant orators and pamphleteers in the country. We should have had no conversions of conceding premiers by the weight of external agitation. In social, not less than military warfare, the longest purse carries the day; and the party which is the heaviest burdened is sure to be in the end overthrown.

III. The abolition of the Corn Laws, partially at present, entirely at the end of two years and a half, by the bill of 1846, not only has made this enormous burden of 46per cent.on their clear incomedeductis debitisa permanent load on the landowners, but it has rendered it a hopeless one, because it has destroyed every means which they previously might have possessed of indemnifying themselves for its weight, by sharing its oppression with other classes. This is a matter of the very highest importance, which will soon make itself felt, though, in consequence of the nearly total failure of the potato crop in the westof Great Britain and Ireland, it has not yet been so. The usual resource of persons, who are burdened with heavy payments to government, is to lay as much as they can of it on others, by enhancing as much as possible the price of their produce. It is in this way that indirect taxes fall in general on the consumer; and it is on this principle that, in estimating the burdens exclusively affecting land, we have not included the malt duty, because it is in great part at least paid by the consumers of beer or porter. But, of course, if it becomes from any cause impossible for the party burdened, in the first instance, to raise the price of his produce, or if, on the contrary, he is compelled to lower it,the whole tax will fall direct on himself, because he will be without the means of laying it on the purchaser from him.

Now, the abolition of the Corn Laws has done this. In two years and a half, the whole grain of Poland and America will be admitted into the English market at the nominal duty of a shilling a quarter. It will be impossible for the farmers and landowners after that to keep up the price of grain of any sort in the British market beyond the prices in Prussia, and with the addition of 5s. a quarter for the cost of transit, and perhaps half as much for the profit of the importer. Wheat, beyond all question, will fall on an average of years to forty shillings a quarter, barley and oats to twenty. This is just as certain as the parallel reduction of average prices of wheat from 87s. a quarter to 56s. has been by the money law of 1819. Accordingly, now that the stress is over, they have no longer an interest to conceal or pervert the truth; the anti-corn law journals are the first to proclaim this resultas certain, and they coolly recommend the English farmers to abandon altogether the cultivation of wheat, which can no longer be expected to pay, and to lay out their lands in pasture grass and the producing ofgarden stuffs. But amidst this general and now admitted decline in the price of grain, the 46 per cent. of direct burdens on land will continue unchanged; happy if it does not receive a large augmentation. The effect of this will be to augment the weight of the burdens to which they are already subjected on the landholders by at least twenty per cent., and, in addition, tothrow upon them the whole malt tax, now amounting to £4,500,000 a-year. The moment the British farmer is obliged to lower the price of his barley to the level of the continental nations, where labour is so much cheaper, and rents comparatively light, the whole malt tax falls, without deduction or limitation, on British agriculture.

IV. The income tax, though apparently a burden equally affecting all classes, in reality attaches with much more severity to the landed than to any other class. There is, indeed, an advantage unduly enjoyed by capitalists of all sorts, landed or moneyed, in comparison with annuitants or professional men, which, as will immediately appear, loudly calls for a remedy. But, as compared with the merchant or moneyed man, who derives his income from trade or realised capital in a movable form, the landholder is, in every direct taxation, exposed to a most serious disadvantage. His income cannot be concealed, and it is returned by others than himself. The farmer or tenant, who has no interest in the matter, returns his landlord's rent. The trader, shopkeeper, or merchant estimates and returns his own income. The possessions of the first, and their annual rental, are universally known, and concealment as to them is impossible or sure of detection; the gains of the last are entirely secret, and wrapped up, even to the owner, in books or accounts, generally unintelligible in all cases but those of considerable merchants—to all but the persons who prepared them. Whoever is practically acquainted with human nature will at once perceive the immense effect which this difference must have on the amount of the burden, in appearance the same, as it affects the different classes of society.

And the result of this difference appears in the most decisive manner, in the amount of the sums paid by the different classes of society, as shown by the income tax returns. From them, it appears that the contributions from commerce, trades, and professions ofall sorts, is notquite halfof that obtained from landed property. The first is, in round numbers, £2,700,000; the second, £1,500,000.[30]But let it be recollected that the £1,541,000 a-year, which, in 1845, was paid by professional men of all descriptions, in Great Britain, included, besides merchants and traders, the whole class of professional men not traders, as lawyers, attorneys, physicians, &c. At the very lowest computation their share of this must amount to £341,000 a-year. There remains then £1,200,000 as the contribution of trade and commerce, of all kinds, from Great Britain, while that from land is £2,670,000 a-year, orconsiderably more than double. Can it be believed that this is founded on a fair return of incomes by the commercial classes? Are they prepared to admit that their property and income, and consequent interest and title to sway in the state, is not half of that which is derived from land? Or do they shelter themselves under the comfortable assurance that their real income is incomparably greater, and that they quietly escape with a half or a third of the income tax which they ought to pay? We leave it to the trading class, and their abettors in the press, to settle this question with the commissioners of income tax throughout the country. We mention the fact, that trade and commerce do not pay half the income tax that land does, as a reason, among the many others which exist, for a thorough and radical reform of our financial system, so far as direct taxation is concerned.

Whoever considers seriously, and in an impartial spirit, the various particulars which have now been stated, will not only cease to wonder at the frequent, it may almost be said universal, embarrassment of the landed proprietors, but he will arrive at the conclusion, that if they continue much longer unchanged, they must terminate in their general ruin. We saygeneralruin, because it will not be universal. Thegreatlandowners, the magnates, whether moneyed or territorial, of the land will alone survive the general wreck. They will, by degrees, swallow up all the smaller estates in their neighbourhood; and it will come to be literally true in Britain what was said, by a Roman emperor, of Gaul, in the decline of the empire, "That the estates of the rich go on continually increasing and absorbing all lesser estates around them, till they come to the estate ofanother as rich as themselves." With direct taxes, amounting to 50 or 60 per cent. on the disposable income, which, under the change of prices, induced by the change in the corn laws, they will very soon be, even without any addition from farther taxes, it is wholly impossible that any landowner who does not possess enormous tracts of country, or vast funded or moneyed property in addition to his territorial possessions, can avoid insolvency. What the effect of the total destruction of the middle class of British landholders must be on the balance of the constitution, and the state of society in these islands, it is not our present purpose to inquire. Suffice it to say, that it is precisely the state of things which signalised the later stages of the Roman empire, and coincides with so many other circumstances in marking the striking analogy between our present condition and that which proved fatal to the ancient masters of the world.

Well may the Lords' Committee on the burdens affecting landed property have said, "Neither the law nor the spirit of the constitution originally contemplated so partial a system of taxation."[31]In truth, originally some of the heaviest present exclusive burdens on real property were born equally by personal estates. "The poor law of Elizabeth," says the report, "and the land tax of William and Mary,embraced every species of income; but in consequence of the comparative facility of rating visible property, and the small amount of income derived from other sources in the early period of their assessment, personalty seems to have escaped its legal share of contribution to the public service. The liability of stock in trade, however, was continued by law to a late period, and is, up to the present day, only suspended by an annual act of exemption." The Committee here point out, or rather hint at the real cause of the extraordinary exemption from their due share of the public burdens which has grown up insensibly in favour of movable property. Land has two admirable qualities in the estimation of Chancellors of the Exchequer. It canneither be concealed nor removed. Movable estates, stock in trade, are susceptible of both. The landholder has no secret invisible funds which he can bring forth when desired in the form of convenient loans to government to meet the state necessities. He has only a visible fixed estate, which can neither be concealed nor withdrawn from its annual burdens. Hence the influence and exemptions of the one, and the injustice experienced by and burdens of the other.

But in addition to this, there is another circumstance which has powerfully contributed to establish this extraordinary and iniquitous exemption of personal property from direct taxation. This is the difficulty which in practice amounts to an impossibility of getting by any means at the real amount of rateable personal property. The Commissioners of the Income Tax through the country will have no difficulty in understanding what is here meant. All the efforts of government and their official organs to ascertain the real amount of assessable movable property, have been insufficient to accomplish that end. Doubtless there are in the commercial and professional class many just and honourable men who give a true account to the last farthing of their gains. These are men, the honour and support of the country, whose word is their bond, and who may confidently be relied on to speak the truth under any circumstances. But, unhappily, experience has too clearly proved that the facility of concealing gains derived from stock in trade, and thus withdrawing it from its just liability for assessment, is too strong a temptation to be resisted. The proof of this is decisive. The returns of the income tax show £175,000,000 of annual income rated to that assessment, while only £1,541,000 was in 1845 paid by the whole professional persons in Great Britain. Of this £1,541,000, only £1200,000, at the very utmost can be estimated as coming from commercial or trade incomes, which, at sevenpence in the pound, corresponds to about £40,000,000 of annual income. Is it possible to believe that the whole commercial and trading classes in Great Britain, whose wealth is in every direction purchasing up the estates of the landed proprietors in the island, only enjoy forty out of one hundred and seventy-five millions of the rateable national income? Have they less than a fourth of the whole income rated to the income tax? If they have no more, they certainly make a good use of what they have, and must deem themselves singularly fortunate in that happy exemption from taxation which has enabled them, with less than a fourth of the general income, to get the command of the state, and buy up the properties of all the other classes.

There is one peculiarity in the income tax as at present established, which is productive of the greatest injustice, and loudly calls for immediate remedy. This consists in the taxingall incomes at the same rate, whether derived from professional income, annuity, land, or realized funds. This is just another instance of the careless and reckless way in which our system of direct taxation has at different times been framed, without any regard to principle, and alternately unjustly favouring or grossly oppressing every class in society,except the great capitalists. They have been always and unduly considered. What can be more unjust than to tax every man of the same income at the same rate, whether it is derived from land or funded property, worth thirty years' purchase, or railway or bank stock worth twenty, or an annuity worth five, or a precarious professional income, which would not bring, from the uncertainty of life and the public favour, or the winds or monetary changes, abovetwo or three? Under the present most unjust system, they all pay alike on their income, that is, some pay aboutFIFTEEN TIMESas much on what they are worth in the world in comparison with others! A man who derives £300 a-year from the three per cents. on land has a capital stock worth about £10,000. He pays as much, and no more, as a poor widow, just dropping into the grave, who has a jointure of £300 a-year, for which no insurance company in the kingdom would give her above £500, or a hard-working lawyer or country surgeon with the same income, whose chances of life and business are not worth three years' purchase. The gross injustice of this inequality requires no illustration.

Nor is it any answer to this to say, that if the professional and commercial classes are unduly oppressed by the income tax, they, are proportionally benefited by their general exemption from the heavy, direct taxation which in other respects weighs down the land; and that the one injustice may be set off against the other. We protest against the system of setting off one injustice against another: there is no compensation of evils in an equitable administration. In the present instance there can be no compensation, for the acts of injustice are committed against different classes. It is the trading classes which enjoy the means, from the occult nature of their gains, of evading by fallacious returns the income tax. The honest and honourable pay it to the last farthing: it is thedishonestwho escape. The persons upon whom the levying the income tax in its present form operates with the most cruel severity are the professional men and annuitants. They cannot evade it, as the trading classes can. Their gains are generally known: if they are at all eminent or prosperous, the kindness or envy of the public generally helps them to at least a half more than they really enjoy. Merchants or shopkeepers are less in the public eye; and even when most prominent, their transactions are so various and wide-spread, that no one but themselves can estimate their profits. Every one knows, or can easily guess, what Dr. Chambers or the Attorney-General make a-year; but it would puzzle the most experienced heads on 'Change to say what were the yearly profits of the great bankers, merchants and manufacturers.

There is another enormous injustice connected with the income tax, and indeed all the direct taxes to Government, which loudly calls for remedy—Ireland pays none of them. It is high time that England and Scotland should rouse themselves to a sense of this most unreasonable and unjust exemption, and unite their strength by the proper constitutional means to remove it. We are always told Ireland cannot afford to pay any direct taxes. What, then, comes of its £12,000,000 of rental? Scotland, with little more thana thirdof that land rent, pays it and the assessed taxes besides, without either complaint or difficulty. But it is said the landlords are so eat up with mortgages, that they have not a fourth part of their nominal incomes left to live upon. That is a good reason for only making them pay, as under the income tax they would, on the free balance,deductis debitis. But, in the name of Heaven, why should the bondholders pay nothing? If they sit at home at ease in Dublin, Cork, or Belfast, and quietly enjoy £9,000,000 out of the £12,000,000 of Irish rental, why cannottheyas well pay the income tax as their brethren in London, Liverpool, or Glasgow? The bondholders of Irelandalone, would, if they paid an income tax, contribute more to the common necessities of the State thanthe whole land and industry of Scotland put together. So vast are the natural resources which Providence has bestowed on that fickle and misguided people, and so few those enjoyed by the hardy and industrious Scotch mountaineers.

On what conceivable ground of justice or reason can this most monstrous and invidious exemption in favour of Ireland from income and assessed taxes be defended? Is it that Ireland with its 12,000,000 arable acres, and 5,000,000of mountain and waste, has fewer natural resources than Scotland with its 4,500,000 of arable acres, and 12,000,000 of mountain and waste? Is it that 8,500,000 persons now in Ireland, cannot pay even what 2,900,000 now pay in Scotland? Is it that Ireland is so singularly peaceable and loyal, and gives so little anxiety or disquiet to the rest of the empire, that it must be rewarded for its admirable and dutiful conduct by an absolute exemption from all direct taxation to government? Is it that the troops required to be kept in it are so few, and in Scotland so numerous, that the former country may be liberated from taxation, while the latter is subjected to it in full extent? Is it that industry in towns in Ireland is so great, and manufacturing skill so transcendant, that it is entitled to be liberated from direct taxation in consideration of the vast amount of its indirect custom-house duties, in comparison of which those of London, yielding £12,000,000; of Liverpool, yielding £4,500,000 a-year; or Glasgow and the Clyde harbours, yielding £1,200,000; and Leith, yielding £589,000, are as nothing? Or is it that this extraordinary exemption is the reward of tumult, disaffection, and treason; of turbulent demagogues and factious priests, and an indolent people; of active and incessant combination for the purposes of evil, and total inability to combine for the purposes of good? And is it the first fruits of the regeneration of government by the Reform Bill, that it can raise a revenue only from the loyal and pacific and industrious part of the empire, and must proclaim relief from all taxation as the reward of tumult, disorder, murder, monster meetings, and treason? We leave it to the advocates of the present system of government, or those who established it, to answer these questions. We did neither the one nor the other, but have constantly opposed both; and Great Britain, in the system of direct taxation we have now exposed, is reaping the fruits of the changes she has thought proper to introduce.

Lastly, there is another peculiarity of the income tax which requires revision, and that is this;—at present it descends only to £150 a-year income; and every one practically acquainted with these matters, knows that this, with the trading classes at least, whose gains can be concealed, amounts to a practical exemption, generally speaking, of all under at least £200 a-year. Nothing can be plainer than that, as matters stand at least, this exemption of all below such line is invidious, unjust, and, if persisted in, will lead to ruinous consequences. No reason can be assigned for it which will bear examination; for it is to be supposed the practical necessity of conciliating the ten pounders, the great majority of whom escape the tax altogether in this way, will not, in public at least, be assigned as a reason, how cogent soever it may be felt and candidly acknowledged in private. Why should a man, whose income, perhaps derived from land or funded property below £150, pay nothing, while a hard working clerk, attorney, or country surgeon, who makes £155, and is not worth a tenth part of the other's realised capital, paysincome-tax? It is in vain to say you must draw a line somewhere. So you must, but you must not draw it in a way to do gross and palpable injustice,—to exempt the comparatively affluent, and oppress the industrious poor. There is a vital distinction, which it would be well if the income tax recognised, between income, of any amount, derived from realised property and from professional exertions. By all means give the humble professional classes the benefit of this distinction. But to draw the line, not according to thequalityof the income as derived from capital or labour, but from itsabsolute amount, is arbitrary, invidious, and unjust.

The great advantage to be derived from making the income tax, modified as now suggested, descend lower in society is, that it wouldinterest a larger number in guarding against its abuse. At present, it is said, there are three hundred and twenty thousand persons rated to the income tax in Great Britain, but not half of them really pay ontheir own account. Many pay the income tax ofone; as a landlord's whole tenants for his rent, though not more than one or two, perhaps none, certainly not half the number, are separate persons whose incomes are really made liable. Butcan any thing be more unjust than to select in this way a particular class, not more than atwo-hundredthpart of the community, and subject them andthem aloneto the heaviest of the direct taxes? It is just the privileged class of old France over again, with this difference, that the privileged class in England is distinguished by being obligedto bearnot toavoidthe hated taille. Nevertheless, nothing is more certain than that, as long as this invidious and unjust accumulation of the whole direct tax is on one class of 150,000 persons, it will be highly popular with the remaining 29,000,000, and that the popular journals will never cease to resound with the propriety of extending still farther thepartialburden of direct, and thegeneral exemptionunder the name of Free Trade from the indirect taxes.

The increase of direct taxation, till it proved fatal to industry, population, national strength, and every thing save great capital, was the cause of the ruin of the Roman empire. Many circumstances, alas! concur in showing, and will ere long demonstrate to the most inconsiderate, that we are fast following in the same direction; and if so, we shall beyond all question share the same fate. The extension of the income tax, on a graduated scale, to persons as low even as £50 a-year, is the only way to arrest this great and growing evil. What is wanted is not the money to be drawn from these poorer but more numerous classes, but theinteresting them in resistingits undue extension. If 150,000 persons only pay the income tax, it is very likely ere long to be raised to 10 or 15 per cent.If a million pay it, no such extension need be dreaded.No matter though the additional 850,000 pay only 10s. a piece, or £425,000 in all: their doing so would probably save the state from ruin. What is wanted is not their money, but their breath; not their contributions, but their clamour. They have a majority of votes in the constituencies. In a serious conflict their voice would be decisive in favour of any side they espoused. Interested to prevent the confiscation of property, they will effectually do so. Exempted from direct taxation, they will promote its increase till it has swallowed up the state, and themselves in its ruin, as it did the Roman empire.

So much has been said on the inequalities and injustice of the present system of direct taxation established in Great Britain, that little room remains for the true principles on the subject; but fortunately, like a beacon, it shows what rock should be avoided in the course. A system of direct taxation would not be far from just, which in every respect was precisely the reverse of that which at present exists amongst us.

I. The first thing to be done is to equalise the succession tax, lay it equally on land and personal estate, and lower it to the wholeone-half. Five per cent. in succession to strangers; two-and-a-half to relations; and a half per cent. to parents or brothers, alike in land and money, would probably augment the produce of the tax, and certainly greatly relieve a most meritorious class of society, the representatives of small capitals.

II. All direct taxes should be levied equally on landed and personal estates, and, subject to the distinction after-mentioned, equally on professional income, as the fruit of realised capital. This rule should apply to all local or parochial, as well as public burdens. The effect of it would be to let in, as taxable income, in addition to the £2,666,000 now derived from land, a sum at least as large derived from personal estates or incomes. It would therefore lower this most oppressive tax, supposing its absolute amount undiminishedone-half. The same would be the case with land tax, highway rates, church rates, police rates, &c. They would all be lowered a-half to the persons at present burdened with them, and that simply by the adoption of the just principle, that all fortunes in the same situation should be taxed alike for the general service of the state, and that the commercial classes who create the poor, and are enriched by their labour, should contribute equally with the landed to their support.

III. In levying the income tax, a different rate should be imposed on income, according as it is derived or not derived from realised capital. If it is so it should be taxed alike for alldirect taxes. But if it is derived from annuity or professions, a lower rate should be adopted. If thepropertytax is 5 per cent. theincometax should not exceed 2-1/2per cent.; whatever the one is the other should bea-halfof it only. This modification of an impost now felt as so oppressive by all subjected to it, would go far towards reconciling the numerous class of small traders, the great majority in all urban constituencies, to the change—to its continuance, and also justify its extension to all incomes above £50 or £100 a-year. Without that extension it will inevitably degenerate into a confiscation of property above a certain level.

IV. Stamps or conveyances, or burdening of property, should be the same, andnot higher, on personalty or landed estates. For the additional security of the latter, the borrower pays amply in the greater expense of the law deeds requisite to constitute effectual securities over real estates than over stock or movable funds. Stamps on bills, &c., which are advances for a short period only, should be rated at a widely different scale from that adopted in permanent loans. But there is no reason why securities over real estates should require to be written on paper bearing a higher stamp than those over personal effects.

V. The present system of theassessed taxesshould be altered, so as to make it include all classes alike, and not, as at present, fall twice as heavily on the inhabitants of the country as those of towns. This may be done best by making these taxes a certain proportion of thevalue of the houseinhabited by the party, as rated for the property tax—perhaps a fourth or fifth part, abolishing all other assessed taxes. This would reach all classes alike in town and country: for whatever may be said as to doing without an establishment in town, no one can do even there without a house. And the rich misers who live in a poor lodging and spend nothing, would be effectually reached in the heavy property tax, on their funds, wherever invested.

VI. To obviate the innumerable frauds daily practised in the concealment of professional incomes, especially by small traders, a power should be given to the Commissioners in all cases where they were dissatisfied with the return of professional income, to assess the party for incomeat five times the value at which his house is rated. On this principle if a lawyer or physician lives in a house rated at £100 a-year, he would pay on £500 a-year as income: if he occupied one rated at £2000, he would be taxed on £10,000. If the tax on realised property was 5 per cent. which it will soon be, that would just subject the professional one to two and a half. Perhaps it would be better to adopt some such general principle for all cases of professional income, and avoid therequiring returns at all.

In some cases the above plan might be adopted as a substitute for the income tax, or rather as a mode of levying it onprofessionalpersons. Those whose income is derived from land, the funds, or other realised property, would be entitled to exemption or deduction, upon production of the proper evidence that they were rated for the property tax at the higher rate.

VII.Irelandshould pay the income and all direct taxes, at least on land, bonds, and otherrealised property, as well as the assessed and other direct taxes, just as Great Britain. Nothing can be advanced, founded either in reason or justice, in favour of the further continuance of their present most invidious and unjust exemption.

We have thus laid before our readers a just and reasonable system of direct taxation, from which the landed interest, now so unjustly oppressed, would derive great relief, simply by doing equal justice to them and the other classes in the state. The amount of injustice which such a system would remove, may be accurately measured by the amount of resistance which the system we have now advocated would doubtless experience, just as the injustice of the exemption from direct taxation enjoyed by the nobles and clergy of old France was measured by the obstinate resistance they made to an equalisation of the public burdens. Men cling to nothing with such a tenacity as unjust privileges and exemptions. But the changes we recommend have one lasting recommendation: they are founded on obviousjustice. They go only to levy all taxes alike on all classes, in proportion, as nearly as may be, to their ability to pay them. And we implore the Conservative body, with whom we have so long acted, to consider whether it would not be far wiser to unite their strength to convince the country of the justice and expedience of some, at least, of these changes, than to follow the example of the Free Traders in urging the repeal of the malt tax, which could only be followed, as no addition to the indirect taxes is to be thought of, by a vast increase of theincome tax, two-thirds of which would fall on the land itself.

And now a single word in conclusion on ourselves. We need not say how long and steadily we ranged ourselves on the side of the late Premier, or how widely the principles now contended for differ from those which he has carried into effect. We are actuated by no spirit of hostility either to the late or the present Government. Our course is that of freedom and independence. During Sir R. Peel's long and able contest with the movement party from 1838 to 1841, we stood faithfully by him, and that when many who have been most courtly during the subsequent days of his power, were not the least intemperate leaders on the other side. From respect for his talents and gratitude for his public services when in opposition, and a natural reluctance to believe that we had been mistaken in one whom we so long acknowledged as the leader of the Conservative party, we tempered our political discussion during the last twelvemonths with more forbearance than we should have done under other circumstances. But the die is now cast: it has been cast by himself. We can feel no dependence in a minister who introduces measures directly at variance with the whole principles of his public life: and we earnestly trust that by far the greater portion of the true-hearted and loyal men who, from over-confidence in their chief, have allowed themselves to be compromised in the late political transactions, will not again commit themselves to any leader in whose candour and integrity they cannot thoroughly rely.

Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.

FOOTNOTES:[1]This narrative was originally composed in the third person; but so much of it consists of my own personal intercourse with Mr. Smith, that the use of that circuitous form of expression became as irksome to the writer, as he thinks it would have proved tedious and irritating to the reader.[2]See an eloquent but brief sketch, of W. Smith, in theLaw Magazinefor February 1846, by Mr. Phillimore, of the Oxford Circuit, one of his most accomplished friends.[3]Lib. vi.proëm.[4]Pers. Sat. ii. 73, 74.[5]The leading Counsel for the plaintiffs was the present Vice-Chancellor Knight Bruce; for the defendants the present Vice-Chancellor Wigram.[6]In one vol. 8vo, pp. 386, Benning & Co. Fleet Street, accompanied by Notes by Jelinger C. Symons, Esq. Barrister-at-Law.[7]But not that of Scotland. Bell's Princip. Law of Scotland, p. 4, (4th Edition.)[8]Pp. 88-96.[9]To this gentleman he dedicated, in 1843, the third edition of his "Mercantile Law." Within a very few months of each other, both of them died—Mr. Richards himself having, as he once told me, ruined his health by his intense and laborious prosecution of his profession. He had found it necessary to retire a year or two before his death. His brother, also, Mr. Griffith Richards, Q.C., one of the ablest members of the Chancery Bar, recently died under similar circumstances.[10]"Law Magazine," N.S. Vol. lxx. p. 183.[11]His chambers were No. 2, Mitre Court Buildings, to which he had removed from No. 12, King's Bench Walk, about two years before.[12]Memoirs of General Pépé. Written by himself. London, 1846.[13]"The Theatres of Paris. By Charles Hervey." London and Paris, 1846.[14]Doubtless Gardoni was apprehensive of some such deterioration of his voice, for he has just left theAcadémie, after much opposition on the part of the manager, and has made a highly successful appearance at the Italian opera.[15]Innumerable jests and lampoons circulated at the time of Napoleon's separation from Josephine, and second marriage. Conscious of the unworthy part he acted, the Emperor was greatly galled by them. "The keenest and most remarkable of these," says a German author who was in Paris at the time, "is unquestionably aChanson Poissarde, of which hundreds of copies have been distributed, and which thousands have got by heart. Its author, in spite of Napoleon's fury, and of the zealous exertions of the police, has not been discovered. Several hundred persons have been arrested for copying or repeating it; but its original source remains unknown." It consists of nine verses, in the vulgar and mutilated French of the Parishalles. A couple of them will give a notion of the sly wit of the whole. They refer, of course, to the Emperor and to his future bride, Maria Louisa of Austria:—Pour ell' il s'est fait l'aut' jourPemd'en bel habit d'dimanche,Et des diamants tout autour,Près d' sa figur comm' ça tranche!La p'tite luronne, j'en somm' sûr,Aim' mieux l'présent que l'futur.Ah! comm' ell' va s'amuser,C' te princess' qui nous arrive!Nous, j'allons boir' et danser,N's enrouer á crier: Vive!Ell, s' ra l'idol' d' la nation,J' l'ons lu dans l'proclamation.[16]"Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second; by Horace Walpole." Edited by the late Lord Holland. 3 vols. Colburn: London.[17]"The good Abderites," writes Wieland in hisAbderiten, "once got the notion that such a town as Abdera ought no longer to be without its fountain. They would have one in their market place. Accordingly, they procured a celebrated sculptor from Athens to design and execute for them a group of figures representing the god of the ocean, in a car drawn by four sea-horses, surrounded by nymphs, and tritons, and dolphins. The sea-horses and the dolphins were to spout a quantity of water out of their nostrils. But when all was completed, it was found that there was hardly water enough to supply the nose of a single dolphin. So that when the fountain began to play it looked for all the world as if the sea-horses and the dolphins had all taken a miserable cold, and were put to great shame there in the public place by reason of this dropping rheum. As this was too ridiculous for even the Abderites to endure, they removed the whole group into the temple of Neptune; and now, as often as it is shown to a foreigner, the custodian, in the name of the worthy town of Abdera, bitterly laments that so glorious a work of art should have been rendered uselessby the parsimony of Nature."In like manner, our goodBrightonianslately got possessed of the notion that their sea-beaten town ought no longer to be without its fountain. They accordingly procured, not an artist from Athens, but a tall iron machine from Birmingham, tall as their houses, and much resembling in form one candlestick put upon another. This they placed in the choicest site their town afforded. Its ugliness was of no importance, as it was to be hidden underneath the graceful and ample flow of water. But when this water-spouting instrument was erected, it was found here too that no water was to be had—no natural and gratuitous supply. And now when the stranger wonders at this tall disfigurement, and inquires into its meaning, he is told how the spirited efforts of the Brightonians to adorn their town have been rendered fruitlessby the parsimony of water-companies. Once a week, however, his cicerone will advertise him—once every week and for two hours together—the fountain islet offto the sound of music, and the people are gathered together to see it play—or rather, he might add, toweep—for even at these moments it feels the effect of the same cruel spirit of parsimony.Our countrymen had better leave fountains alone. The introduction of them into London is nothing but a thoughtless imitation of what can only be a pleasing and natural ornament in a quite different climate. Who cares to see water spirting in the fog of London, in an atmosphere cold and damp, where there is rain enough to drown the fountain, and wind enough to scatter it in the air? Out of the whole twelve months there are scarce twelve days where this bubbling up of water in our city does not look a very discomfortable object.[18]County Members.Borough Members.England,162336Scotland,3023Ireland,6639258398Or as 2 to 3 nearly.[19]Guizot's Essais Sur l'Hist. de France, 475, 476.[20]Porter's Parliamentary Tables, xii. 6.[21]Poor's Rate and County Rate.1832£8,662,00018338,279,21718348,338,07918426,552,80018437,085,59518446,848,717Parl. Paper. Porter, xii. 247.[22]Porter's Parl. Tables, xii. 36.[23]Porter's Parl. Tables, xii. 37, 42; and xi. 275.[24]Lords' Report on Burdens on Real Property, 1846, p. vi.[25]Lords' Report on Burdens on Real Property, 1846, p. 6.[26]Ibid. p. 7.[27]Ibid. 1847, p. 8.[28]Lords' Report, 1847, p. 7.[29]Prices of wheat average, per Winchester quarter, in the years after mentioned, viz.:—s.d.s.d.180978111834462181010331835394181192518362861812122818375610181310661838647181472118397081815638184066418167621841644181794018426461818838184354418197231844513Average873Average565Tooke on Prices, ii. 389, and Lords' Report on Burdens on Real Property, App. No. 26.[30]Net amount of income tax for year ending 5th April, 1845:—England.Scotland.Total.Schedule A,Land rents,£2,112,072£253,976£2,366,048.——— B,Tenants292,64622,961315,607.——— C,Annuities, funds, &c.766,066———766,066.——— D,Trades and professions,1,424,017117,9531,541,970.——— E,Offices, Pensions, &c.,305,4018,500313,901.£4,900,202£403,390£5,303,502.[31]Report, p. 9.

[1]This narrative was originally composed in the third person; but so much of it consists of my own personal intercourse with Mr. Smith, that the use of that circuitous form of expression became as irksome to the writer, as he thinks it would have proved tedious and irritating to the reader.

[2]See an eloquent but brief sketch, of W. Smith, in theLaw Magazinefor February 1846, by Mr. Phillimore, of the Oxford Circuit, one of his most accomplished friends.

[3]Lib. vi.proëm.

[4]Pers. Sat. ii. 73, 74.

[5]The leading Counsel for the plaintiffs was the present Vice-Chancellor Knight Bruce; for the defendants the present Vice-Chancellor Wigram.

[6]In one vol. 8vo, pp. 386, Benning & Co. Fleet Street, accompanied by Notes by Jelinger C. Symons, Esq. Barrister-at-Law.

[7]But not that of Scotland. Bell's Princip. Law of Scotland, p. 4, (4th Edition.)

[8]Pp. 88-96.

[9]To this gentleman he dedicated, in 1843, the third edition of his "Mercantile Law." Within a very few months of each other, both of them died—Mr. Richards himself having, as he once told me, ruined his health by his intense and laborious prosecution of his profession. He had found it necessary to retire a year or two before his death. His brother, also, Mr. Griffith Richards, Q.C., one of the ablest members of the Chancery Bar, recently died under similar circumstances.

[10]"Law Magazine," N.S. Vol. lxx. p. 183.

[11]His chambers were No. 2, Mitre Court Buildings, to which he had removed from No. 12, King's Bench Walk, about two years before.

[12]Memoirs of General Pépé. Written by himself. London, 1846.

[13]"The Theatres of Paris. By Charles Hervey." London and Paris, 1846.

[14]Doubtless Gardoni was apprehensive of some such deterioration of his voice, for he has just left theAcadémie, after much opposition on the part of the manager, and has made a highly successful appearance at the Italian opera.

[15]Innumerable jests and lampoons circulated at the time of Napoleon's separation from Josephine, and second marriage. Conscious of the unworthy part he acted, the Emperor was greatly galled by them. "The keenest and most remarkable of these," says a German author who was in Paris at the time, "is unquestionably aChanson Poissarde, of which hundreds of copies have been distributed, and which thousands have got by heart. Its author, in spite of Napoleon's fury, and of the zealous exertions of the police, has not been discovered. Several hundred persons have been arrested for copying or repeating it; but its original source remains unknown." It consists of nine verses, in the vulgar and mutilated French of the Parishalles. A couple of them will give a notion of the sly wit of the whole. They refer, of course, to the Emperor and to his future bride, Maria Louisa of Austria:—Pour ell' il s'est fait l'aut' jourPemd'en bel habit d'dimanche,Et des diamants tout autour,Près d' sa figur comm' ça tranche!La p'tite luronne, j'en somm' sûr,Aim' mieux l'présent que l'futur.Ah! comm' ell' va s'amuser,C' te princess' qui nous arrive!Nous, j'allons boir' et danser,N's enrouer á crier: Vive!Ell, s' ra l'idol' d' la nation,J' l'ons lu dans l'proclamation.

Pour ell' il s'est fait l'aut' jourPemd'en bel habit d'dimanche,Et des diamants tout autour,Près d' sa figur comm' ça tranche!La p'tite luronne, j'en somm' sûr,Aim' mieux l'présent que l'futur.Ah! comm' ell' va s'amuser,C' te princess' qui nous arrive!Nous, j'allons boir' et danser,N's enrouer á crier: Vive!Ell, s' ra l'idol' d' la nation,J' l'ons lu dans l'proclamation.

Pour ell' il s'est fait l'aut' jourPemd'en bel habit d'dimanche,Et des diamants tout autour,Près d' sa figur comm' ça tranche!La p'tite luronne, j'en somm' sûr,Aim' mieux l'présent que l'futur.

Ah! comm' ell' va s'amuser,C' te princess' qui nous arrive!Nous, j'allons boir' et danser,N's enrouer á crier: Vive!Ell, s' ra l'idol' d' la nation,J' l'ons lu dans l'proclamation.

[16]"Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second; by Horace Walpole." Edited by the late Lord Holland. 3 vols. Colburn: London.

[17]"The good Abderites," writes Wieland in hisAbderiten, "once got the notion that such a town as Abdera ought no longer to be without its fountain. They would have one in their market place. Accordingly, they procured a celebrated sculptor from Athens to design and execute for them a group of figures representing the god of the ocean, in a car drawn by four sea-horses, surrounded by nymphs, and tritons, and dolphins. The sea-horses and the dolphins were to spout a quantity of water out of their nostrils. But when all was completed, it was found that there was hardly water enough to supply the nose of a single dolphin. So that when the fountain began to play it looked for all the world as if the sea-horses and the dolphins had all taken a miserable cold, and were put to great shame there in the public place by reason of this dropping rheum. As this was too ridiculous for even the Abderites to endure, they removed the whole group into the temple of Neptune; and now, as often as it is shown to a foreigner, the custodian, in the name of the worthy town of Abdera, bitterly laments that so glorious a work of art should have been rendered uselessby the parsimony of Nature."In like manner, our goodBrightonianslately got possessed of the notion that their sea-beaten town ought no longer to be without its fountain. They accordingly procured, not an artist from Athens, but a tall iron machine from Birmingham, tall as their houses, and much resembling in form one candlestick put upon another. This they placed in the choicest site their town afforded. Its ugliness was of no importance, as it was to be hidden underneath the graceful and ample flow of water. But when this water-spouting instrument was erected, it was found here too that no water was to be had—no natural and gratuitous supply. And now when the stranger wonders at this tall disfigurement, and inquires into its meaning, he is told how the spirited efforts of the Brightonians to adorn their town have been rendered fruitlessby the parsimony of water-companies. Once a week, however, his cicerone will advertise him—once every week and for two hours together—the fountain islet offto the sound of music, and the people are gathered together to see it play—or rather, he might add, toweep—for even at these moments it feels the effect of the same cruel spirit of parsimony.Our countrymen had better leave fountains alone. The introduction of them into London is nothing but a thoughtless imitation of what can only be a pleasing and natural ornament in a quite different climate. Who cares to see water spirting in the fog of London, in an atmosphere cold and damp, where there is rain enough to drown the fountain, and wind enough to scatter it in the air? Out of the whole twelve months there are scarce twelve days where this bubbling up of water in our city does not look a very discomfortable object.

In like manner, our goodBrightonianslately got possessed of the notion that their sea-beaten town ought no longer to be without its fountain. They accordingly procured, not an artist from Athens, but a tall iron machine from Birmingham, tall as their houses, and much resembling in form one candlestick put upon another. This they placed in the choicest site their town afforded. Its ugliness was of no importance, as it was to be hidden underneath the graceful and ample flow of water. But when this water-spouting instrument was erected, it was found here too that no water was to be had—no natural and gratuitous supply. And now when the stranger wonders at this tall disfigurement, and inquires into its meaning, he is told how the spirited efforts of the Brightonians to adorn their town have been rendered fruitlessby the parsimony of water-companies. Once a week, however, his cicerone will advertise him—once every week and for two hours together—the fountain islet offto the sound of music, and the people are gathered together to see it play—or rather, he might add, toweep—for even at these moments it feels the effect of the same cruel spirit of parsimony.

Our countrymen had better leave fountains alone. The introduction of them into London is nothing but a thoughtless imitation of what can only be a pleasing and natural ornament in a quite different climate. Who cares to see water spirting in the fog of London, in an atmosphere cold and damp, where there is rain enough to drown the fountain, and wind enough to scatter it in the air? Out of the whole twelve months there are scarce twelve days where this bubbling up of water in our city does not look a very discomfortable object.

[18]County Members.Borough Members.England,162336Scotland,3023Ireland,6639258398Or as 2 to 3 nearly.

[18]

County Members.Borough Members.England,162336Scotland,3023Ireland,6639258398

Or as 2 to 3 nearly.

[19]Guizot's Essais Sur l'Hist. de France, 475, 476.

[20]Porter's Parliamentary Tables, xii. 6.

[21]Poor's Rate and County Rate.1832£8,662,00018338,279,21718348,338,07918426,552,80018437,085,59518446,848,717Parl. Paper. Porter, xii. 247.

[21]

Poor's Rate and County Rate.1832£8,662,00018338,279,21718348,338,07918426,552,80018437,085,59518446,848,717

Parl. Paper. Porter, xii. 247.

[22]Porter's Parl. Tables, xii. 36.

[23]Porter's Parl. Tables, xii. 37, 42; and xi. 275.

[24]Lords' Report on Burdens on Real Property, 1846, p. vi.

[25]Lords' Report on Burdens on Real Property, 1846, p. 6.

[26]Ibid. p. 7.

[27]Ibid. 1847, p. 8.

[28]Lords' Report, 1847, p. 7.

[29]Prices of wheat average, per Winchester quarter, in the years after mentioned, viz.:—s.d.s.d.180978111834462181010331835394181192518362861812122818375610181310661838647181472118397081815638184066418167621841644181794018426461818838184354418197231844513Average873Average565Tooke on Prices, ii. 389, and Lords' Report on Burdens on Real Property, App. No. 26.

[29]Prices of wheat average, per Winchester quarter, in the years after mentioned, viz.:—

s.d.s.d.180978111834462181010331835394181192518362861812122818375610181310661838647181472118397081815638184066418167621841644181794018426461818838184354418197231844513Average873Average565

Tooke on Prices, ii. 389, and Lords' Report on Burdens on Real Property, App. No. 26.

[30]Net amount of income tax for year ending 5th April, 1845:—England.Scotland.Total.Schedule A,Land rents,£2,112,072£253,976£2,366,048.——— B,Tenants292,64622,961315,607.——— C,Annuities, funds, &c.766,066———766,066.——— D,Trades and professions,1,424,017117,9531,541,970.——— E,Offices, Pensions, &c.,305,4018,500313,901.£4,900,202£403,390£5,303,502.

[30]Net amount of income tax for year ending 5th April, 1845:—

England.Scotland.Total.Schedule A,Land rents,£2,112,072£253,976£2,366,048.——— B,Tenants292,64622,961315,607.——— C,Annuities, funds, &c.766,066———766,066.——— D,Trades and professions,1,424,017117,9531,541,970.——— E,Offices, Pensions, &c.,305,4018,500313,901.£4,900,202£403,390£5,303,502.

[31]Report, p. 9.

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