Our road was in the line that leads to the pretty village of Bonabat,

leaving the no less pretty village of Boujah on the right, but far away,

and hidden among the hills. These are two pleasant suburban retreats

that the merchants of Smyrna, have established as a _ricovero_ from the

toils of the city. Bonabat is more especially inhabited by the French,

and Boujah by the English. There is a third village somewhat farther off

in the direction of Ephesus called Sittagui. A few years ago, when the

Turkey trade was in its palmy days, the merchants used to do their

business in most agreeable style. It was during certain months only that

they went every day to their offices, the rest of the year being

permitted to enjoyment. At present, though perhaps somewhat less

magnificent in their style, they are eminently comfortable in their

ways. During the summer months, their families are removed to these

pretty country places; and at sundown each evening the ways are covered

with the returning fathers and brothers. For us Englishmen, Boujah was

naturally the accustomed haunt. Here is to be found the charming mixture

of nationalities, which is the feature of Smyrneot society. Their ways

are manly, without constraint, and in many respects patriarchal. The

young ladies never wear bonnets, and are generally to be seen of a fine

evening sitting in the open air before their own gates. The whole

community having been pretty well all brought up together from childhood

are on the happiest terms of intimacy: surnames are almost obsolete.

Ungrateful must the heart be that can remember without pleasure days

past in their society; where every house is open, and every face has a

smile for the guest. There is one particular spot here, called the Three

Wells, where my evening's walk has ever brought before me images fraught

with recollection of Rebecca's introduction to Isaac, or of Jacob wooing

Rachel. We now passed into the open country, where the road, leading

over a low ridge of hills, becomes of less definite track. And the last

village was passed, and thenceforward we were to meet stations only as

rare landmarks. Hereabouts sugar, as a general luxury, disappears; the

caffedgis supplying the mere coffee, unless some more luxurious stranger

demand the drug. It is then dealt out from a small private store, and

notified by a separate charge in the bill. The homely old Turks are

ignorant of the uses of sugar; and it would seem that their language

does not supply a descriptive term, as their "_shuk-kar_" is evidently a

mispronunciation of our word. One could not, without romancing, say much

of the beauty of the country through which we were passing at this early

stage of our journey. It is even flat, and tame; and appears to be so

more decidedly by contrast with most that lies in this region. Almost

every where else the prospect is bounded by beautiful hills, here and

there aspiring to the character of mountains, whose sides vary

constantly in tint as they rangingly receive the rays of the rising or

the setting sun. Or sometimes one has to pass through vast plains, where

neglect and desolation have, in the exuberance of nature, assumed the

appearance of luxuriant cultivation. Few artificial pastures could equal

the natural beds of oleander that are sometimes found here stretching

far away till lost behind the crags of a ravine; and which, in their

unconstrained vegetation, show colours that the hothouse might envy. And

particularly are the wildernesses of myrtle remarkable, which for miles

grow in thick jungle, through which it is difficult to preserve the

narrow track kept for passage. It is curious to pass through these

odorous thickets, where you can never see around you, and seldom many

feet before you, on account of the windings of the way. Long are heard

the tinklings of the camel's bells, and the heavy plod of their feet,

before the train comes into sight, and many are the manoeuvrings to

effect a passage in peace. The camels, however many, are all linked

together, and to the preceding donkey; and as they cannot be always

persuaded to observe due distance, so as to keep the line _taught_, nor

to follow each other on the same side of the road, it may be conceived

that to pass them is sometimes a work of difficulty. It is a comfort

that they never bite--at least never in ordinary cases; but still, till

one is used to their near contact, it does seem formidable to be

involved and hampered among these as one constantly must be. But this

particular road of ours was, for some way, diversified by neither beauty

nor incident; and, as things go, perhaps it is well that so it was; for

therefore have I the less scruple at passing over observations

topographical, and making haste to tell of what things befel us in the

city of the unbelievers. One single party of travellers we did meet,

whose journeying exercised considerable influence on our fortunes. It

was about mid-day that we saw approaching, from the opposite direction

to ourselves, a Frank gentleman, attended by a respectable looking

squire. We knew him to be coming from Magnesia, because there was no

other place from which he could be coming; and, by the same token, we

shrewdly guessed him to be the one Frank inhabitant, the pro-consul, on

whose good offices we had reckoned. The only alternative was, that he

might be some casual visiter like ourselves, whom business or curiosity

had led on a journey, whence he was returning. But, as he drew nearer,

we read in the incurious expression of his face, that he was certainly

at home; and the air of accustomed importance that beset him argued him

to be one in authority. No men, surely, can be so alive to the sense of

borrowed dignity as consular agents in out-of-the-way corners; at least

no men carry so pompous an exposition on their brow. By these tokens we

identified our stranger friend.

"Hail him," said K----.

"Bon giorno, signori!"

"Servo, signori. Andate in Magnesia?"

"I told you so," said K----.

And so it was. He, her Britannic Majesty's, and half-a-dozen other

majesty's agent, stood convicted by his speech. The man had not been out

of Magnesia, perhaps, any day for the last twelvemonths, and he had

chosen, for the prosecution of his foreign interests, that precise day,

when these three desolate Englishmen had come to throw themselves on his

cares.

However, our blood was up, and our souls superior to trifles.

"Here's a poser! shall we reveal?"

"Not a bit of it. We don't want him, nor any one else. Any mixture of

aid would have marred the spirit of our expedition: besides, remember

our friend the Seraph."

This Seraph was of no higher than terrestrial order, being no other than

the Armenian to whom we had the letter commendatory. What the word in

their application means, I cannot say exactly, but believe it to be

descriptive of the sordid occupation of a basqua; at any rate, it is a

common style and title [Greek: Armenikôs].

In the confidence of this our possession, we allowed the European to

pass on without giving him any hint of our forlorn condition, and

without craving any direction for our conduct. He evidently thought that

we had some bosom friend ready to receive us, or at any rate that we

were fully up to all the ways and means of the country--as well he

might, seeing us roam about in such _degagé_ style. We were far too

jealous of our dignity to betray any symptoms of indecision, or having

been taken aback; and our adieux were waved to him with a perfect air of

being at home and comfortable.

"Now then for an Armenian at home! How fortunate that fellow should be

out of the way, for now our friend the Seraph will be sure to insist on

our honouring his roof."

"Capital spreads, too, they give--judging by the samples one sees laid

out of an evening in their halls."

"Hospitable people; are they not, K----?"

"Oh, very. Not that ever I have been in one of their houses."

"Nor I--any farther than having a pipe with old John the Dragoman at his

porch."

"Nor I."

Here was a crown to our adventure! An untrodden city, an unvisited

people, a welcome to the mysterious bosom of Armenian hospitality!

* * * * *

DIRECT TAXATION.

"Free Trade," say the Americans "is another word for direct taxation,

and direct taxation is another word for repudiation of states' debts."

The Americans are right; it is so: and the strongest proof of these

propositions is to be found in the conduct of the Americans themselves.

The subject, however, is one not less interesting on this than the other

side of the Atlantic. It involves the fortune and the temporal

prosperity of every man in the united kingdom; and we do not hesitate to

say that, on the embracing of just and reasonable views on this

all-important subject by the constituencies of the united kingdom, the

maintenance of the public credit,--the upholding of the public

prosperity,--the ultimate existence of England as an independent nation,

must come to depend.

We hear much, in the popular phrase of the day, of "great facts." We

will assume "free trade" as a "great fact." We will not stop to inquire

how it was brought about, or whether, by any means, it could have been

avoided. These are the topics of history, and history, no one need fear,

will do them justice. As little shall we stop to ask, whether direct or

indirect taxation is the best, or whether a mixture of both is to be

recommended. We shall not ask whether it is better to pay taxes on the

price of the articles we purchase, when the amount is not perceived, or,

if perceived, seldom objected to, at least against government, and when

the disagreeable operation of paying money is compensated, at least in

some degree, by the pleasure derived from the article purchased,--or to

pay them at once to the tax-gatherer, when we get nothing for our ample

disbursements but a bit of paper from the collector to remind us of the

extent of our losses. As little shall we inquire, from history, how many

nations have been ruined by direct taxation, and whether there is one,

the decline of which can be traced to indirect; or from reason, whether

it is _possible_ that a _nation_ can be ruined by indirect taxes, when

the only effect of their becoming too high is, that they check the

consumption of the articles on which they are laid, and therefore cease

to be paid. We shall not remind our readers that, in the latter years of

the war £72,000,000, under the protective system, was levied in the

shape of taxes amidst general prosperity, on eighteen millions of people

in the British empire; and that now, under the free trade system,

fifty-two millions net revenue is felt as extremely oppressive by

twenty-eight millions. These topics, vast and important as they are, and

deeply as they bear on the past history and future prospects of the

British empire, have become the province of history, because the great

change on which they hinge has been made and cannot be unmade. We have

chosen to have free trade,--in other words, to abandon indirect

taxation; and free trade we must have, and indirect taxation will in

consequence be abandoned.

But it is particularly to be observed, in the outset of this system,

that free trade, once adopted and applied to certain great branches of

national industry, must necessarily be _progressive_, and embrace _all_,

if we would avoid the total ruin of many of the staple branches of our

production and main source of our _direct_ revenue. In a short time,

grain of all sorts will be left with the nominal protection of a

shilling a quarter; and many branches of manufactures already find

themselves with a protecting duty so small that, keeping in view the

difference of the value of money in England and the continental states,

it amounts to nothing. If the classes thus left without any protection,

or a merely nominal one, exposed to the effects of foreign competition,

are not indemnified for their losses by the diminished price of the

articles which they themselves purchase, they must grow poorer every

day. Amidst the general cheapening of the articles _sold_, which

constitute the income of the productive classes, if there is not a

proportional cheapening of the articles _bought_ which compose their

_expenditure_, they must inevitably be destroyed.

This truth is so obvious that it is adapted to the level of every

capacity, and accordingly we already see it producing agitation for the

farther repeal of indirect taxes, which it does not require the gift of

prophecy to foresee will, in the end, though perhaps after a severe

struggle, prove successful. It may not do so in this session of

Parliament or the next; but, in process of time, the effect is certain.

A squeezable ministry, a yielding premier, will ere long be found, who,

in a moment of difficulty, will be glad to buy off one set of

assailants, as we did the Danes of old, by giving up what they desire.

The separate agitations which must, in the end, produce this result, are

already manifesting themselves. The West India planters allege, with

reason, that, exposed as they are, when burdened with costly and

irregular free labourers, to the competition of slave labour in Cuba and

Brazil, without, in a few years, any protection, it is indispensable

that the market of the mother country should be thrown open to them for

all parts of their produce, especially in distilleries and breweries.

The farmers, exposed to this attack in flank, while the corn laws have

been repealed in their front, have no resource left but to clamour

incessantly for the repeal of the malt-tax. In this attempt it is

probable they will, in the end, prove successful, not because their

demands are either just or reasonable, for as power is now constituted

in this country that affords no guarantee whatever for being listened

to, but because their claims are likely to be supported by the

_beer-drinkers in towns_, a numerous and influential class of the

community. The tea-dealers, encouraged by the success of agitation in

other quarters, are already making a loud clamour for a reduction of the

duty on tea, and prepared to prove, to the entire satisfaction of the

Chancellor of the Exchequer, that nothing is so likely to increase a

branch of revenue now producing £4,800,000 a-year, as to lower the duty

from half-a-crown to a shilling on the pound. The tobacco dealers will

not be behind their brethren in agitation; and we may soon expect to see

all the venal talent of the nation enlisted in the great cause of free

trade in smoking and chewing. The spirit-dealers will, most assuredly,

not be the last to insist upon a reduction of the duties affecting them;

and they are sure to be supported by the whole publicans in the urban

constituencies; a class of men so numerous that it is certain their

united voice is not long likely to be treated without attention. Every

class, in short, will insist for a remission of the taxes affecting

themselves, without the slightest regard to the effect it is likely to

have on the revenue, the public credit, or the general security of the

empire; and when we reflect on the stupendous array of indirect taxes,

which, under the influence of similar partial but fierce agitations,

have been abandoned by successive conceding administrations to purchase

temporary popularity, we feel convinced that the time is not far distant

when the remaining customs and excise, producing, at present, about

thirty millions of revenue, will share the same fate.

It is useless to lament this tendency, because lamentations will not

stop it, and the reform bill has vested power in classes who, for good

or for evil, will work it out. Nearly _two-thirds_ of the Imperial

Parliament are, under its enactments, the representatives of burghs.[18]

In these burghs the great majority of the voters are shop-keepers, that

is, persons whose interest it is to buy cheap and sell dear. In making

the first use of their newly acquired power to force on free trade, and

a repeal of all duties affecting themselves, our burghs have exactly

followed in the footsteps of their predecessors, when parliamentary

writs were first addressed to them by the Earl of Leicester, in 1264.

"The burghers," says Guizot, "as much astonished as charmed at the

importance which Leicester gave them, took advantage of their influence

to procure _freedom to trade, and to get quit of all custom-house

duties_, instead of establishing, in conjunction with him, the

government on a durable foundation."[19] The influence of these urban

constituencies is not likely to decrease under the increasing

embarrassments of the landed producers, and the augmented stimulus to

certain branches of trade from foreign importations. And, in

consequence, as the revenue melts away under the effect of successive

repeals of the indirect taxes, the question will, ere long, force itself

on the government and the country, How is the interest of the debt to be

paid? How are the charges of the national establishments to be defrayed?

The extraordinary prosperity of the last two years, the result of the

three fine harvests which had preceded them, cannot be expected to

continue. A railway mania is not immortal;--like every other violent

passion it must soon wear itself out. Peace cannot much longer be relied

on;--the clouds are already gathering in more than one quarter. A

recurrence to general indirect taxes is not to be thought of in these

days of restricted currency and unrestricted importation. The only

alternative is, either a reduction of the interest of the national debt,

or a great increase of direct taxation.

[18]

County Members. Borough Members.

England, 162 336

Scotland, 30 23

Ireland, 66 39

---- ----

258 398

Or as 2 to 3 nearly.

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

It is not probable that a forcible reduction of the national debt will

be attempted, at least till the other alternative has been tried and

failed. The public funds are the great saving bank of the nation. Out of

192,970 persons who received the half-yearly dividend at the Bank of

England in the year 1841, no less than 158,735 drew dividends under £50

half-yearly, of whom 58,000 were under £5; while those above £50 and not

exceeding £200 were only 10,094, and those exceeding £2000 only 125![20]

This is the great security for the public funds in England--the extent

to which shares in them are held by persons composing that middle

commercial class, in whom, under the present constitution, supreme power

is practically vested.

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

Nor is it only the actual holders of the public funds who would be

immediately struck at by an invasion of the national debt. Stock of

every kind would at once fall _pari passu_ with the three per

cents.--credit of every kind would be violently shaken--the rate of

discount at the Bank of England would instantly rise--money would become

scarce over the country--every debtor would find his whole creditors on

his back at once, while his means of recovering payment from those

indebted to him would be proportionately abated. It is not going too far

to say that, within a year after a blow had been struck at the public

funds, one-half of the whole trading classes would find themselves

insolvent. None would be able to stand the shock but those possessed of

considerable capital. The majority who carried the measure would, for

the most part, be ruined by its effects. This consequence is not a

remote or secondary one, which large bodies of men can never be brought

to see; it is immediate and direct, and is practically known, by the

intercourse with banks, and the necessity of getting bills discounted,

to the whole commercial community in the country. It is not probable

that the burgher class, to whom the Reform Bill has given power, will

voluntarily advocate a measure so evidently and palpably destructive to

themselves. The public funds of Great Britain rest on the securest of

all bases in a popular community, the self-interest of the holders of

power. They would soon be swept away under universal suffrage, as they

have been in so many states of America, because the majority under such

a system have no funds to hold.

Two things, then, may be considered as certain as any thing depending on

the varying chances of human affairs can be. 1. That the indirect taxes

which at present constitute three-fifths of the net revenue of Great

Britain will, in great part, in process of time, be swept away. 2. That

to uphold the public credit and save from ruin the commercial classes,

a great addition must be made to direct taxation.

It has become, therefore, a matter of the very highest importance to

consider how an additional revenue can be raised without wide-spread

ruin in that way; and what are the _principles_ on which direct taxation

should be founded, in order to be at once equal, just, and productive.

It will be found, on consideration, that they are simple and of

universal application--so plain as to be obvious, when stated, to every

capacity, although a protracted struggle may doubtless be anticipated

from the various classes whose immunities or exemptions such a just and

equal system may abolish or abridge.

The first principles on the subject will naturally suggest themselves on

the principle of "_lucus a non lucendo_," upon considering the gross

inequalities, the enormous injustice of our present system of direct

taxation. Upon reviewing it, one can hardly discover under what

prevailing interest in the Legislature the regulations have been framed,

so strangely is occasional and unjust favour to the landed interest, in

some particulars, blended with frequent and equally unjust oppression of

them in others--so unequally is undue favour to the middle classes, in

some respects, combined with unjust and partial burdens upon them in

others.

To begin with one particular, in which the landed interest are greatly

and unjustly exempted, while the other classes are severely and unjustly

burdened. There is no duty on bequests or inheritance in land, while

there is such a duty, and a very heavy one, in movable succession. The

legacy duty on succession, from one unconnected with the legatee by

blood, is ten _per cent._; from relations six, and from parents one _per

cent._ By the aid of the probate duty, which must be paid by the

executors, and the expense of suing out letters of administration in

England, or an edict and confirmation as executor in Scotland, these

duties are practically nearly doubled. Succession in land, on the other

hand, costs nothing, at least nothing requires to be paid to government;

and though the expense of making up titles to landed estates is often

very heavy, that is a burden for the benefit of lawyers, not the good of

the state. A poor man who gets a legacy of £100, pays £10 direct to the

Exchequer, and the executor, in addition, pays the heavy stamp on

probate of the succession; but the great landholder succeeds to £100,000

a-year without paying a shilling to the state.

A creditor in Scotland, who succeeds to a bond for £100,000, heritably

secured, pays nothing; if it is on personal security, he pays the full

legacy duty of £10,000.

This glaring inequality, the remnant of the days of feudal oppression,

or the relic of a time when the landholders had no money, and taxes

could be extracted from movable property only, should forthwith be

abolished. Succession of all kinds, whether in land, bonds heritably

secured, or movable funds, should be taxed at the same rate. And by the

addition of the vast amount of the landed property to the produce of the

succession duty, it would be in the power of Government _to reduce the

general tax at least a half_ without any diminution, probably a large

increase, in the general result. This must be at once apparent, when it

is recollected that out of £5,303,000, which the income tax produced in

1845, from Britain, no less than £2,666,000, or nearly a half, came from

the land. When it is recollected that the remainder embraced, besides

income from realized money, no less than £1,541,000 for professional

income, which of course corresponds to a comparatively small amount of

realized capital, it is evident how great an increase to the taxable

amount of succession this most equitable change would produce. It need

hardly be said that the land should pay on so many years' purchase, say

thirty in Great Britain, and twenty in Ireland of the _clear rent_,

after deducting the interest of mortgages or heritable bonds or

jointures. _They_ would pay the tax on the succession of their holders

respectively. And the distinction as to the lesser amount of the tax to

be paid by children and relations, than strangers, now observed in the

succession to personal property, should be applied also to landed

succession.

This is one obvious burden, which should be applied equally to landed as

to any other class of proprietors. But there are several particulars in

which they are most unjustly subjected to burdens from which other

classes are relieved; and if they get justice done them in this respect,

they could well afford to pay the succession duty.

In the first place, the levying of the POOR'S RATE as a burden

exclusively laid on _real_ property in England, that is, lands and

houses, to the entire liberation of personal property or professional

incomes, is a most monstrous inequality--indefensible on every principle

of justice or expedience, and the long continuance of which can only be

explained by the well known and proverbial supineness of that class of

men, and their inability to rouse themselves to any combined or general

effort, even for matters in which their own vital interests are

concerned. The Poor's Rate, it is well known, is, especially in England,

a very heavy burden. It amounted, prior to the late change in the law in

England, to above £8,000,000 a-year: and although it was at first

considerably reduced in the years immediately succeeding the first

introduction of that Act in 1834, yet it has been steadily rising since,

and has now nearly attained its former level.[21] Under the most

favourable circumstances it cannot be estimated in round numbers at less

than £6,000,000 a-year; in seasons of distress it never fails to reach

£7,000,000. Scotland hitherto has paid less, because under the

administration of the old law, the support afforded to the poor was

miserably stinted, and quite inadequate to meet their necessities. This

was fully exposed by the efforts of Dr. Alison and other distinguished

philanthropists, and a parliamentary inquiry having demonstrated the

truth of their statements, the Act of 1846 introduced a more humane and

careful provision for the poor. Under the operation of this Act, the

Poor Rate in Scotland has in most places considerably, and in some

alarmingly, increased. The dreadful state of Ireland, suffering less

under the failure, total as it has been, of the potato crop, than the

general indigent condition of the poor, has at length forcibly aroused

the attention of all classes in the empire, and it may confidently be

predicted that the mockery of supposing the Irish paupers, 2,300,000 in

number, to be provided for because £240,000 a-year, or about _two

shillings_ a head a-year, is levied for their relief on a rental of

above £12,000,000 annually, cannot much longer be maintained. The Poor's

Rate, therefore, is a subject which already interests deeply, and is

likely to interest still more deeply, every part of the empire, and it

is of the highest importance to consider what are the principles on

which, in conformity with justice and expedience, it should be levied.

[21]

Poor's Rate and County Rate.

1832 £8,662,000

1833 8,279,217

1834 8,338,079

1842 6,552,800

1843 7,085,595

1844 6,848,717

Parl. Paper. Porter, xii. 247.

The monstrous injustice of the present system will be rendered apparent

by a single example. Manufactories, collieries, iron-works, and

commercial towns, are, it is well known, the great _producers_ of the

poor, because they bring together the labouring classes in vast numbers

from all quarters while trade is prosperous, and leave them in a state

of suffering or destitution a burden on the landholders the moment it

becomes depressed. The commercial classes, too, are immediately and

directly benefited by the labour of these manufacturing poor while they

retain their health; while the landholders in their vicinity are only so

indirectly and in a lesser degree. This is decisively demonstrated by

the colossal fortunes so frequently made in the commercial classes,

contrasted with the declining circumstances or actual insolvency of the

landholders by whom they are surrounded. Do these, the merchants and

manufacturers, pay the larger proportion of the poor tax, thus rendered

inevitable by the nature of their operations, which are in so high a

degree beneficial to themselves? Quite the reverse: they do not, in

proportion to their profits, pay a _tenth part_ of its amount. The

poor's rate, as at present levied, is on the rural proprietors an

_Income_, on burgh inhabitants a _House_ tax. The difference is

prodigious, and leads to results in practice of the grossest injustice.

A landowner has an estate of £2000 a-year in a parish of which the

poor's-rate is 1s. in the pound, or £100 a-year on his property. A

manufactory is established, or an iron-work set agoing, or a coal mine

opened upon it, from which the fortunate owner derives £50,000 a-year of

profit. The buildings on it, however, are only valued at £2000 a-year.

He pays for his _pauper creating_ work, yielding him £50,000 a-year,

£100 annually, the same as what the landowner in the same parish pays

for his _pauper-feeding_ estate of £2000 a-year. In other words, in

proportion to the respective incomes, the landholder, who had no hand in

bringing in the poor, and derives little or nothing from their labour,

pays just _five-and-twenty times_ as much as the manufacturer who

introduced them, and is daily making a colossal fortune by their

exertions! And this becomes the more unjust when it is recollected, that

under the present system of free trade in corn and easy communication

with distant quarters which railways and steam-boats afford, the little

benefit the neighbouring landholders formerly derived from the presence

of such manufacturing crowds, is fast disappearing. But further, the

manufacturer or mine-owner having got off thus easily during the time of

prosperous trade, when he was realising his fortune, stops his works,

and discharges his workmen when the adverse season arrives. The rateable

value of the manufactory or the mine has, for the present, almost or

wholly disappeared, and the poor starving workmen are handed over to be

supported by the land-owner.

Persons not practically acquainted with these matters may think this

statement is overcharged: on the contrary, it is _within_ the truth in

some instances. We know an instance of a great iron master, whose

profits average above £100,000 a-year, who pays less poor's rates for

the poor he has mainly created, than a landholder in the same parish, of

£2000 a-year, who never brought a pauper on its funds in his life. Such

is the consequences of the present barbarous system of levying the

poor's rate as an income tax on the landlords who are burdened with

paupers, and only a house tax on the manufacturers who create and profit

by them. The first thing to be done towards the introduction of a just

system of direct taxation is to lay the maintenance of the poor equally

on all classes; and above all to abolish the present most unjust system

of making it only a house tax on the producers of poor in towns, and an

income tax on their feeders in the country.

The LAND TAX is another burden, exclusively affecting real property,

which should either be abolished, altogether or levied equally on all

classes. Its amount is not so great as the poor's rate, nevertheless it

is considerable, as it produces about £1,172,000 a-year.[22]

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

The whole ASSESSED TAXES, though not avowedly and exclusively a tax on

the landed interest, are, practically speaking, and in reality, a burden

on them almost entirely; at least they are so much heavier on the

landowners than the inhabitants of towns, that the burden is nothing in

comparison on urban indwellers. Had they been practically felt as a

grievance by the urban population they would long since have shared the

fate of the house tax and been abolished. They have so long been kept up

only because, with a few exceptions, they press almost exclusively upon

that passive and supine class of landlords, the natural prey of

Chancellors of the Exchequer, whom it seems generally impossible by any

exertions, or the advent of any danger how urgent soever, to rouse to

any common measure of defence. It no doubt sounds well to say that the

assessed taxes are laid generally on luxuries, and therefore they are

paid equally by all classes which indulge in them. But a closer

examination will show that this view is entirely fallacious, and that

the subjects actually taxed, though really luxuries to urban, are

necessary aids to rural life. For example, a carriage, a riding horse, a

coachman, a groom, are really luxuries in town, and their use may be

considered as a fair test of affluent, or at least easy circumstances.

But in the country they are absolutely necessaries. They are

indispensable to business, to health, to mutual communication, to

society, to existence. What similarity is there between the situation of

a merchant with £1000 a-year, living in a comfortable town house, with

an omnibus driving past his door every five minutes, a stand of cabs

within call, and dining three days in the week at a club where he needs

no servants of his own; and a landholder enjoying the same income,

living in a country situation, with no neighbour within five miles, and

having six miles to ride or drive to the nearest town or railway station

where his business is to be transacted, or where a public conveyance can

be reached?

Gardeners, park-keepers, foresters and the like, are generally not

luxuries in the country, they are a necessary part of an establishment

which is to turn the land to a profitable use. You might as well tax

operatives in mills, or miners in collieries, or mechanics in

manufactories, as such servants. Yet they are all swept into the

assessed taxes, upon the rude and unfounded presumption that they are,

equally with a large establishment of men-servants in towns, an

indication of affluent circumstances. The window tax is incomparably,

more oppressive in country houses than in town ones, from their greater

size in general, and being for the most part constructed at a period

when no attention was paid to the number of windows, and they were

generally made very small from being formed before the window tax was

laid on. Taking all these circumstances into view, it is not going too

far to assert, that on equal fortunes the assessed taxes are _twice as

heavy_ in the country as in towns; and that of £3,312,000 which they

produce annually, after deducting the land tax, about £2,500,000, is

paid by _landowners either in town or country_. It is inconceivable--no

one _a priori_ could credit it--how few householders in town, and not

being landowners, pay any assessed taxes at all--or any of such amount

as to be really a burden. The total number of houses charged to the

window tax, in Great Britain, is 447,000, and the duty levied on them

is, £1,613,774, or, at an average, about £3, 10s. a-house, while the

number of inhabited houses was, in 1841, 3,164,000, or above seven times

the number. The total number charged with one man-servant, is only

49,320, and, _persons keeping men-servants at all_, 110,849,[23] facts

indicating how extremely partial is the operation of these taxes, and

how severely they fall on the class most heavily burdened in other

respects, and therefore least able to bear them.

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

The HIGHWAY RATES are another burden exclusively affecting land,

although the whole community derive benefit from their use. This burden,

exclusive of the sum levied at turnpike gates, in England amounted to

£1,169,891, a-year.[24] This charge, heavy as it is, is felt as the more

vexatious, that the rate-payers are not at liberty either to limit the

use of the road, for which they pay, to themselves, or to allow it to

fall into disrepair. An indictment of the road lies at common law, if it

becomes unfit for traffic, even at the instance of any party using the

road, though he does not pay any part of the rate. In other words, the

neighbouring landholders are compelled to keep up the roads for the

benefit of the public generally, who contribute nothing towards their

maintenance. This matter becomes the more serious that in consequence of

the general adoption and immense spread of railways, the traffic on the

principal lines of road in England, has either almost entirely

disappeared, or become inadequate to contributing any thing material to

the support even of the turnpikes hitherto entirely maintained by them.

It is not difficult to foresee, that the time is not far distant when

nearly the _whole roads of England will fall as a burden on the rate

payers_; for these roads cannot be abandoned, or the country off the

railway lines would have no communication at all. And the sums paid by

railway companies, how large soever, to landholders, afford no general

compensation; for they benefit a few in the close vicinity of the

railways only, while the highway rate affects all.

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

The CHURCH RATE is another burden exclusively affecting land, though all

classes obtain the benefit of it in the comfort and convenience of

churches. It amounted, in 1839, the last year for which a return was

made, to £506,512.[25] Nothing can be clearer than that this is a burden

truly affecting real estates. It is entirely different from tithes,

which are not, correctly speaking, a burden on land, but a separate

estate apart from that of the landlord, which never was his, for which

he has given no valuable consideration. But on what principle of justice

is the burden of upholding churches exclusively laid on the land, when

all classes sit in churches, and enjoy the benefit of their

accommodation. The thing is evidently and palpably unjust, and won't

bear an argument.

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

The POLICE, LUNATIC ASYLUM, and BRIDGE RATES, constitute another burden

on real property to which no other property is subject, which, though

not universally introduced, are very oppressive in those counties where

their establishment has been found necessary. Mr. Blamire, a very

competent witness, estimates these incidental and partial charges at 2s.

1d. an acre.[26] The land is still liable also to a heavy disbursement

on account of the Militia, if that national force should be again called

out. There has been no return yet laid before parliament of these

partial burdens on land, but they cannot be estimated at less than the

church rate, or £500,000 a-year.

[26] Ibid. p. 7.

The STAMP DUTIES, from deeds and instruments which produce annually

£1,646,000 a-year, fall for the most part as a burden on real property.

This must be evident to every person who considers that real estates in

land or houses are the great security on which money is advanced in

every part of the country, and the extremely heavy burdens, in the shape

of a direct payment in the requisite stamps for deeds to government, is

imposed on the transmission and burdening of such property. It is

particularly severe, in proportion to the value of the subjects

burdened, in the mortgaging or alienating of small freeholds or

heritable subjects. It is stated in the Lords' Report, on the burdens

affecting real property, "The stamp on a conveyance of a certain length,

on a sale of real subjects of the value of £50, would cost 12-1/2 per

cent, or £6, 10s.; on a £100 sale, to 5 per cent; on a £200 sale, to

2-1/2 per cent; on a £500 sale, to £1, 14s. 3d. per £100; and above that

sum, to one per cent." The weight on the establishment of mortgages,

especially on small sums, is not less remarkable. The same report adds,

"A mortgage for £50 costs, in stamps, and law expenses, thirty per

cent.; a mortgage for £100, twenty per cent.; one for £450 seven per

cent.; for £1500 three per cent.; for £12,500 one per cent.; for £25,000

fifteen shillings per cent, and for £100,000 twelve shillings per

cent."[27] These burdens on the sale or mortgaging of real property are

felt as the more oppressive, when it is recollected that movable

property to the greatest amount, as in the public funds, or the like,

may be alienated, or burdened in the most valid and effectual manner for

the cost of a power of attorney, which is a guinea and half-a-crown per

cent. to the broker who executes the transaction. Materials do not exist

for separating exactly the deed-stamps falling as a burden on land

transmissions and mortgages, from those affecting personal estates; but

it is certainly within the mark to say, that they are three-fourths of

the whole stamp-duties on deeds and instruments, or £1,200,000 a-year.

[27] Ibid. 1847, p. 8.

Thus, it appears that, setting aside the tithe, as not the land-owner's

property, and, therefore, a separate estate, and not, properly speaking,

a burden on land; and saying nothing of the malt-tax, which produces

annually £4,500,000 a-year, on the supposition that, at present at

least, that falls as a burden on the consumer; and saying nothing of the

income-tax, which, as will immediately appear, falls as a much severer

burden on land-rents than commercial incomes,--these distinct, clear,

and indisputable burdens laid on land, from which property of other

sorts in England are exempt, stand thus:--

I. Poor's Rate in 1845, a very prosperous year, £6,847,205

II. Land-tax, 1,164,042

III. Highway Rates, 1,169,891

IV. Church Rates, 506,812

V. Police, Lunatic, and Bridge-rates, estimated, 500,000

VI. Excess of assessed taxes falling on land above

personal estates, estimated, 1,500,000

VII. 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 of

_twenty-five_, on the last of EIGHTEEN per cent. annually. This is in

_addition_ to 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.

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

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, of

course, 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 as _a 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.

[29] Prices of wheat average, per Winchester quarter, in the years

after mentioned, viz.:--

_s._ _d._ _s._ _d._

1809 78 11 1834 46 2

1810 103 3 1835 39 4

1811 92 5 1836 28 6

1812 122 8 1837 56 10

1813 106 6 1838 64 7

1814 72 1 1839 70 8

1815 63 8 1840 66 4

1816 76 2 1841 64 4

1817 94 0 1842 64 6

1818 83 8 1843 54 4

1819 72 3 1844 51 3

------ ------

Average 87 3 Average 56 5

Tooke on Prices, ii. 389, and Lords' Report on Burdens on Real

Property, App. No. 26.

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 paid _clear_ to 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 at

_two-thirds_ of 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, at _three-fifths_ of 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 the _direct_ taxes paid by them, will stand thus--

Clear Income as above £34,000,000

Deduct direct taxes levied

exclusively on land, £12,900,000

Income tax paid

by land, 2,100,000

--------- 15,000,000

-----------

Remains, £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 nearly _a 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 46 _per cent._ on their clear income _deductis

debitis_ a 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 west

of 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 result

_as 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 of

_garden 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, to _throw 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 of _all sorts_, is

not _quite half_ of 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, or _considerably 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.

[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, Tenants 292,646 22,961 315,607.

-------- C, Annuities, funds, &c. 766,066 ------ 766,066.

-------- D, Trades and professions, 1,424,017 117,953 1,541,970.

-------- E, Offices, Pensions, &c., 305,401 8,500 313,901.

---------- -------- -----------

£4,900,202 £403,390 £5,303,502.

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 say _general_ ruin, because it will not be universal. The

_great_ landowners, 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 of _another 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 can _neither 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.

[31] Report, p. 9.

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 taxing _all 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, above _two or three_? Under the present most unjust

system, they all pay alike on their income, that is, some pay about

FIFTEEN TIMES as 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 the _dishonest_ who 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 than _a third_ of 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 cannot _they_ as

well pay the income tax as their brethren in London, Liverpool, or

Glasgow? The bondholders of Ireland _alone_, would, if they paid an

income tax, contribute more to the common necessities of the State than

_the 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 5,000,000 of 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, pays _income-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 the _quality_ of the

income as derived from capital or labour, but from its _absolute

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 would _interest 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 on _their own

account_. Many pay the income tax of _one_; 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. But can any thing be more unjust than to select in

this way a particular class, not more than a _two-hundredth_ part of the

community, and subject them and _them alone_ to 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 obliged _to bear_ not to _avoid_ the 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 the _partial_ burden of

direct, and the _general exemption_ under 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 the _interesting them in resisting_ its 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 whole

_one-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 undiminished _one-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 all direct taxes. But if it is

derived from annuity or professions, a lower rate should be adopted. If

the _property_ tax is 5 per cent. the _income_ tax should not exceed

2-1/2 _per cent._; whatever the one is the other should be _a-half_ of

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,

and _not 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 the _assessed taxes_ should 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 the _value of

the house_ inhabited 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 income

_at 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 the

_requiring 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 on _professional_ persons.

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. _Ireland_ should pay the income and all direct taxes, at least on

land, bonds, and other _realised 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 obvious justice. 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 the _income 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.

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_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._

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