V 
 
 ^c 
 
\ 
 
 University of California. 
 
 I-'ROM THIi LIBRARY OF 
 
 1M<. FRANCIS L1EBER, 
 
 Professor i.f History ami J,nv in Columbia College, New York. 
 
 THK <;II-T or 
 
 MICHAEL REESE, 
 
 Of S<IH Francisco. 
 i^r : i . 
 
 * 
 
THE 
 
 PEOPLE'S BLUE BOOK. 
 
THE 
 
 PEOPLE'S BLUE BOOK: 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS, 
 AND AS IT OUGHT TO BE: 
 
 REVISED, ENLARGED, AND BROUGHT DOWN TO 
 THE PRESENT TIME : 
 
 WITH 
 
 A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER ON IRELAND. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES TENNANT. 
 
 "The object of THE PEOPLE'S BLUE BOOK is that, every man and woman in the 
 kingdom may have in their own hands the means of knowing what they are paying to 
 Government for the protection of their persons and property, and what they ought 
 to pay." 
 
 "THE WELFAKE OF THE PEOPLE is THE HIGHEST LAW.' 
 
 lEuitton, lEnlar^W 
 
 Library* 
 
 LONDON : 
 LONGMANS, G-BEEN, AND CO.7 
 
 1872. 
 
 Price 7s. 6d. 
 
PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO., 
 LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO 
 
 THE FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 THE alterations in the duties of Customs and Ex- 
 cise, since the publication of the Third Edition of 
 this Book in 1862, have been so numerous as to re- 
 quire all the calculations and estimates to be re-made 
 and the first part of the book to be re-written to 
 bring down the facts and figures to the present time. 
 But the plan of the work is in no way altered. 
 
 The Government Accounts are taken as the basis of 
 the calculations and estimates relating to the Govern- 
 ment Receipts and Payments. 
 
 The calculations and estimates connected with Trade 
 depend, in a great measure, for accuracy, on the in- 
 formation received from the Heads of the Whole- 
 sale Houses in their respective branches of Trade. 
 To them I am indebted for many details. But in 
 making this public acknowledgment of their courtesy 
 
VI PREFACE TO 
 
 and general intelligence, I think it right to add that, 
 many of them take a narrow and mistaken view of 
 their own interests as Traders. They admit (privately) 
 that Custom House and Excise regulations are very 
 injurious to Trade, and very vexatious to Traders, but 
 that these operate to their protection as Traders, by 
 requiring large capital for meeting the current ex- 
 penses of their establishments, thereby limiting com- 
 petition by keeping the wholesale trade in fewer hands, 
 and tending to a monopoly. 
 
 This false reasoning, however, is rejected with con- 
 tempt by a few of the more enlightened, and is 
 the strongest possible condemnation of the system. 
 As such it is here presented to the Public. 
 
 This narrow-minded tradesman's view is taken by 
 many of the Wholesale Grocers and by all the large 
 Brewers, but is not confined to them, the same 
 operating in many other Trades, especially the Sugar 
 Eefiners, who hold a close monopoly in a very few 
 hands, with consequences most disastrous to their 
 dupes, the ignorant Public. 
 
 None of these Protectionists are ever heard to de- 
 claim against Protecting Duties, and their opinions on 
 these subjects are, of course, entirely confined to their 
 own mistaken view of their own personal interests as 
 traders. 
 
 But, of all Traders, the monopolist Sugar- Refiners 
 and the great Brewers are the most pertinacious pro- 
 tectionists and the most determined advocates of their 
 protecting duties. It is astonishing that, the Public 
 
THE FOUETH EDITION. Vll 
 
 should ever listen to them but to laugh at them. 
 They plunder the Public and support the Government 
 which supports them, and their colossal fortunes,, 
 wrung chiefly from the wages of labor, make them 
 powerful for maintaining their mischievous policy. 
 
 The greatest care has been taken to present the 
 results of all the Government Accounts with as much 
 accuracy as possible ; and, for the Estimates, no pains 
 have been spared for obtaining the statistical facts 
 from the most authentic sources. It is due to the 
 Government to add that, for these objects, every 
 assistance in their power has been most courteously 
 rendered by all the Government Departments. 
 
 But, with all the care, it is very probable that, in 
 such a work as this, there will be errors of the 
 Author and errors of the Press. 
 
 These will be easily distinguished, and will not in- 
 terfere with the principle in view. 
 
 The labor of getting up such a work as this is very 
 great, and is greatly aggravated by the complicated 
 system of Customs, Excise, and Stamps, on the 
 Returns of which, as the chief branches of the Revenue, 
 the Government Accounts are made up ; although 
 these Returns, in the details, do not always corre- 
 spond with the aggregates, and the Government 
 Accounts do not always correspond in details or 
 aggregates. 
 
 In many cases these difficulties are insurmountable, 
 and estimates can be made and conclusions formed 
 only as approximating to accuracy. 
 
V111 PEE FACE TO 
 
 The Supplementary Chapter on Ireland is a reprint, 
 with some omissions, of the 10th Edition, printed 
 (not published) for free distribution, and largely cir- 
 culated over Ireland, last year (1871), with a view to 
 ascertain the opinions of the Irish People on the ques- 
 tion of a Parliament in Ireland for Irish Local Affairs, 
 distinguished from Imperial affairs. 
 
 For this purpose I invited answers from the Land 
 Proprietors, Property -holders, Tenant-farmers, and the 
 Irish People in general. 
 
 My invitation was responded to by the Irish land- 
 lords, tenant-farmers, fellows of T. C. D. and fellows 
 of all sorts, gentle, simple, and rude, to an unexpected 
 extent, and, in some instances with an energy and 
 freedom of expression quite astonishing, but probably 
 from a mistaken impression of my object. The result, 
 however, to my mind, was conclusive that, land- 
 owners, property -holders, tenant-farmers, and well 
 established tradesmen in general throughout Ireland, 
 and the whole of the North of Ireland, are very 
 strongly opposed to ' Home Eule/ as it is now called, 
 and that, the Irish laboring classes, or non-property 
 holders, are as strongly in favor of it. 
 
 To this general classification there are, no doubt, 
 many exceptions, but that this is, on the whole, a cor- 
 rect conclusion, I am convinced by my own three 
 months' intercourse with the Irish People of all 
 classes in all parts of Ireland, and by, what is much 
 more to the purpose, the experience of the edu- 
 cated and most respected Irish Gentry, land-pro- 
 
THE FOURTH EDITION. IX 
 
 prietors and others, who have lived all their lives in 
 Ireland. 
 
 But a very strong opinion prevailed amongst them 
 that, the present system of government could not be 
 much longer maintained in Ireland without open re- 
 bellion. 
 
 I have thought this explanation necessary to 
 account for the omission of my original remarks on 
 'Home Rule' in the Supplementary Chapter on 
 Ireland here annexed, though my own opinion has 
 undergone no change on that question, understand- 
 ing, as I do and as I believe all loyal Irishmen do, 
 that, ' Home Rule ' is intended and believed to be 
 for strengthening and preserving, not for weakening 
 or destroying, the Union with Great Britain. 
 
 I believe, there is not, in any part of the kingdom, 
 more true and earnest loyalty than in Ireland. 
 
 This Supplementary Chapter is, in all other re- 
 spects, a reprint of the 10th Edition, printed for pri- 
 vate distribution and largely circulated over Ireland 
 last year. 
 
 It can hardly be necessary to say that, the proposed 
 new system of Taxation would secure far greater 
 benefits to Ireland than the proposers and promoters 
 of ' Home Rule ' ever thought of or dreamt of. 
 
 With this explanation the Book is left in the hands 
 of the Public to be dealt with as they think fit. 
 
 I have, in compliance with many requests, but 
 very reluctantly, affixed my name to this new 
 Edition ; not from any doubt or distrust of the prin- 
 
X PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 ciples here advocated, but from a fear that these will 
 be misunderstood and misrepresented by some who 
 read with a foregone conclusion, and by many more 
 who read without reflection, and presume to play the 
 p irt of critics, unconscious of their own profound 
 ignorance. 
 
 I shall be much obliged by the notice of any errors 
 and the suggestion of any improvements, but no criti- 
 cisms will ever draw me into public controversy. 
 
 CHAS. TENNANT. 
 2, EICHMOND TEEBACB, 
 
 WHITEHALL, 
 
 2lst March, 1872. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 INTRODUCTION AND PLAN OF THE WORK 
 
 PAET I. 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION 19 
 
 PART II. 
 TAXATION As IT Is 25 
 
 PART III. 
 
 TAXATION As IT OUGHT To BE ... 343 
 
 PART IY. 
 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED 421 
 
 PART V. 
 
 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 803 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER ON IRELAND . 881 
 
Library* 
 
 California 
 
 5j -C3BSS? 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 AND PLAN OF THE WORK. 
 
 ROGER BACON, the Monk of Ilchester, in the 13th 
 Century, opens his " Opus Magnum " thus : " There 
 are four impediments to knowledge ; first, too great de- 
 pendence upon authority ; second, allowing too great 
 weight to custom; third, the fear of offending the vulgar; 
 fourth, the affectation of concealing ignorance by the 
 display of a specious appearance of knowledge." 
 
 Lord Bacon, in the 16th Century, in his Opus Mag- 
 num classifies the obstacles which obstruct man in the 
 simple apprehension of truth, into four great divisions, 
 under the head of Idola Tribus, Specus, Fori, et Theatri ; 
 which may be rendered : Idola Tribus, the illusions com- 
 mon to the whole race of man, in virtue of the constitu- 
 tion of his mind : Idola Specus, the illusions of a man's 
 own den, bred out of his peculiar nature, habits, and 
 pursuits ; Idola Fori, the illusions derived from common 
 talk the inaccuracy of language, producing inaccurate 
 conceptions, and this inaccuracy being inseparable from 
 the talk of the vulgar : lastly, Idola Theatri, the illu- 
 sions derived from systems invented by the schools the 
 imaginary, or stage world occupying the place of the 
 actual world. 
 
 Lord Bacon utterly denies that we should submit to 
 
 B 
 
2 INTRODUCTION AND 
 
 the authority of men however great and good ; " For 
 disciples do owe unto their masters only a temporary 
 belief, or a suspension of their own judgment, until they 
 be fully instructed, and not an absolute resignation, or 
 perpetual captivity ." 
 
 Adam Smith, the illustrious Father of the Science, or 
 Art, (whichever it may be) of Political Economy, in the 
 Eighteenth Century, opens his Opus Magnum, "THE 
 WEALTH OF NATIONS," thus : 
 
 " The Annual labor of every nation is the fund which 
 originally supplies it with all the necessaries and con- 
 veniences of life which it annually consumes, and which 
 consist always either in the immediate produce of that 
 labor, or in what is purchased with that produce from 
 
 other nations." 
 
 ****** 
 
 " To explain in what has consisted the revenue of the 
 great body of the people, or what has been the nature 
 of those funds, which, in different ages and nations, 
 have supplied their annual consumption, is the object of 
 these Four first Books. The Fifth and last Book treats 
 of the revenue of the Sovereign, or Commonwealth. In 
 this Book I have endeavoured to show ; first, what are 
 the necessary expenses of the Sovereign, or Common- 
 wealth ; which of those expenses ought to be defrayed 
 by the general contribution of the whole Society ; and 
 which of them, by that of some particular part only, or 
 of some particular members of it ; Secondly, what are 
 the different methods in which the whole society may 
 be made to contribute towards defraying the expenses 
 incumbent on the whole Society, and what are the prin- 
 cipal advantages and inconveniences of each of these 
 methods : and, thirdly and lastly, what are the reasons 
 and causes which have induced almost all modern go- 
 vernments to mortgage some part of this revenue, or to 
 contract debts, aud what have been the effects of those 
 
PLAN OF THE WORK. O 
 
 debts upon the real wealth, the annual produce of the 
 land and labor of the Society." 
 
 Bastiat, the illustrious French Economist, in the 19th 
 Century, opens his Opus Maynum, " HARMONIES Eco- 
 NOMIQUES," thus : " I undertake in this Work to de- 
 monstrate the Harmony of those Laws of Providence 
 which govern human Society. WHat makes these Jaws 
 harmonious, and not discordant is, that all principles, 
 all motives, all springs of action, all interests, cooperate 
 towards a grand final result, which humanity will never 
 reach by reason of its native imperfection, but to which 
 it will always approximate more and more by reason of 
 its unlimited capability of improvement. And that re- 
 sult is, the indefinite approximation of all classes towards 
 a level, which is always rising; in other words, the 
 Equalisation of individuals in the general amelioration." 
 
 He proves convincingly that individual interests, taken 
 in the aggregate, far from being antagonistic, aid each 
 other mutually ; and that, so far is it from being true 
 that the gain of one is necessarily the loss of another, each 
 individual, each family, each country has an interest in all 
 others. He shows that, between agriculturist and manu- 
 facturer, capitalist and laborer, producer and consumer, 
 native and foreigner, there is in reality no antagonism, 
 but, on the contrary, a community of interest ; and that, 
 in order that the natural Economic Laws should act 
 constantly so as to produce this result, one thing alone 
 is necessary namely, respect for Liberty, and Property. 
 
 How truly this Harmony was felt, and how highly it 
 was appreciated by our late illustrious, and lamented, 
 Prince Albert, may be seen in the few following extracts, 
 taken accidentally, from his printed speeches : AT A 
 MEETING OF THE SOCIETY FOR IMPROVING THE CONDI- 
 TION OF THE LABORING CLASSES. MAY 18th, 1848. 
 
 " Depend upon it, the interests of classes, too often 
 contrasted, are identical, and it is only ignorance which 
 
 B 2 
 
4 INTRODUCTION AND 
 
 prevents them from uniting for each other's advantage. 
 To dispel that ignorance, to show how man can help 
 man, notwithstanding the complicated state of civilized 
 society, ought to be the aim of every philanthropic 
 person ; but it is more peculiarly the duty of those who, 
 under the blessing of Divine Providence, enjoy station, 
 wealth, and education." 
 
 AT THE LORD MAYOR'S BANQUET IN LONDON, MARCH 
 21ST, 1850, IN ANTICIPATION OF THE GREAT IN- 
 TERNATIONAL EXHIBITION. 
 
 " I conceive it to be the duty of every educated person 
 closely to watch and study the time in which he lives, 
 and, as far as in him lies, to add his humble mite of in- 
 dividual exertion to further the accomplishment of what 
 he believes Providence to have ordained. Nobody, how- 
 ever, who has paid any attention to the peculiar features 
 of our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are 
 living at a period of most wonderful transition, which 
 tends rapidly to accomplish that great end to which, 
 indeed, all history points, the realisation of the Unity of 
 Mankind ! Not a unity which breaks down the limits, 
 and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different 
 Nations of the Earth, but rather a unity, the result and 
 product of those very national varieties, and antagonistic 
 qualities. Let them be careful, however, to avoid any 
 dictatorial interference with labor and employment, 
 which frightens away capital, destroys that freedom of 
 thought and independence of action which must remain 
 to every one if he is to work out his own happiness, and 
 impairs that confidence under which alone engagements 
 for mutual benefit are possible. God has created man 
 imperfect, and left him with many wants, as it were, to 
 stimulate each to individual exertion, and to make all 
 feel that it is only by united exertions and combined 
 action that these imperfections can be supplied, and 
 
PI AX OF THE WORK. 5 
 
 these wants satisfied. This pre-supposes self-reliance 
 and confidence in each other." 
 
 Such were the sentiments expressed by our lamented 
 Prince Consort on these, and many other like occasions. 
 
 Such truths, expressed in words of such beauty and 
 simplicity, can hardly fail to be impressed on the minds 
 of the People; and, if remembered, will surely bring 
 blessings on the whole nation, down to the most distant 
 generations. 
 
 " THE REALISATION OF THE UNITY OF MANKIND ! " 
 Let these memorable words be fixed on the imperishable 
 page of the History of our Country, and our late Prince 
 Albert will have been an example more glorious for man- 
 kind than all the Crowned Heads which this world has 
 seen from David, the Shepherd King, to the present 
 time. 
 
 What is the end and object of Religion, and Philo- 
 sophy, but to bring about " the realisation of the Unity 
 of mankind ? " to bring all mankind into one holy 
 brotherhood of order, and universal love? For what 
 else have all great and good men labored ? For what 
 else have all good books been written? For what else 
 did St. Paul preach, and pray, and suffer? For what 
 else did Jesus Christ come to us in our human nature 
 on Earth, and die for us upon the Cross? For what 
 else has the Holy Bible been preserved, and handed 
 down to us, but to show, to prove to us, the end and 
 object of our creation one holy brotherhood, as Sons 
 of God on Earth, and joint heirs with Christ in Heaven ? 
 Arid what is this, but " the realisation of the Unity of 
 Mankind"? 
 
 How far we are from this we need not to be told. In 
 no civilised Government of the World can we trace even 
 an outline of the principle to this end. We see nothing 
 in the principles of any human Government tending 
 even to realise the Unity of Mankind. On the contrary, 
 
6 INTRODUCTION AND 
 
 we see the tendency of all Governments to divide Society 
 into separate classes, with separate and conflicting inter- 
 ests ; and we see all classes full of enmity and distrust, 
 the one against the other. 
 
 Hence we see Society distracted with wild and vi- 
 sionary theories ; all, or most of them, containing some 
 portion of truth, but truth so out of place, and so mis- 
 applied, as to be absolute falsehood and most ruinous 
 error. We see right so confounded with wrong that, 
 many well meaning, and sincere men are quite unable to 
 distinguish right from wrong. Hence have arisen the 
 infinite varieties of Sects in Religion, and Parties in 
 Politics which divide and rend Society throughout the 
 World. They see that there is no Unity of Mankind, 
 and they think to bring about that unity by their 
 own false theories. Hence have arisen the Communist 
 writers and agitators ; the Socialists in all their various 
 shades of folly, down to the miserable advocates of direct 
 spoliation. The leaders in these unfortunate delusions, 
 (except the last) have been, for the most part, well 
 meaning, and sincere men, and neither knaves nor fools, 
 in the common acceptation of these words. And inju- 
 rious as these have been to Society at large, it cannot 
 truly be said that they have been more injurious, or 
 even so injurious, as another class who have set them- 
 selves up as Protectionists. No one can doubt that 
 many of these have been well meaning, sincere, and, 
 what are commonly called, sensible men. But they 
 have been equally foolish with all the other visionaries, 
 and more injurious, because more numerous. Spoliation 
 has been at the bottom of it all. One class, with a view 
 to its own good, plundering another class. The Protec- 
 tionists have been the greatest plunderers, because they 
 have been practising by a better disguised deception than 
 the other plunderers. They have been more successful 
 than the more openly avowed. That is the only difference. 
 
PLAN OP THE WORK. 7 
 
 Louis Blanc, Cabet, Proudhon, and others of their 
 class, have done much less harm in the world than 
 Lord Castlereagh, Lord Liverpool, Lord Eldon, and some 
 others of our past rulers who might be named. These, 
 perhaps, were all sincere men, and Sir Robert Peel, late 
 in his life, proved his sincerity by renouncing his errors, 
 when he discovered them to be errors. The errors of 
 the one class were not greater than the errors of the 
 other ; but the Protectionist error has been much more 
 extensively injurious to mankind than the Socialist or 
 Communist error. 
 
 The professed object of all has been the Unity of 
 Mankind. No higher can be found in this world. But 
 that object can be attained only through Liberty, and 
 Justice. 
 
 Louis Blanc and his National Workshops, and all the 
 illusions of the Socialists and Communists ; all the 
 absurdities of the Advocates of Spoliation, in the grosser, 
 or in the wilder, form, have been exposed, and are now 
 comparatively harmless. But something of the old 
 leaven of protection still remains, still works ; and this 
 is nothing else than practical Communism, or spoliation. 
 Whilst this remains and works, Liberty and Justice 
 cannot work freely, and without these there can be no 
 Unity of Mankind. 
 
 Unfortunately for Mankind there is, and always has 
 been, a great and powerful class amongst the leaders of 
 men, Statesmen and Politicians, Economists and Reli- 
 gionists, who believe, or who act as if they believed, that 
 "the laws of nature, or the great providential laws, urge 
 on Society to evil." They all, therefore, in their various 
 ways, seek to find a remedy ; some by arbitrary inter- 
 vention, some by their own contrivances, and some by 
 renouncing worldly interests, and by taking refuge in 
 abnegation, self-sacrifice, and resignation. 
 
 But it is not true that the great providential laws urge 
 
8 INTRODUCTION AND 
 
 on Society to evil. These laws must ever work in per- 
 fect harmony with all the true interests of Society, it 
 left to work in perfect liberty. 
 
 The harmony of human interests with the great pro- 
 vidential laws, is the leading idea of Bastiat's greatest 
 work, before referred to, and this is, perhaps, one of the 
 greatest works ever given by man to man, for human 
 government, and welfare. 
 
 As Bastiat asks: "Have we liberty?" And the 
 question, as he says, is : " Do these laws act in their 
 plenitude, or is their action not profoundly troubled by 
 the countervailing action of human institutions ? " 
 
 Let every one ask this question, and answer it for 
 himself. 
 
 " Deny evil ! deny suffering ! Who can ? We must 
 forget that our subject is man. W T e must forget that 
 we are ourselves men. The laws of providence may be 
 regarded as harmonious without their necessarily exclu- 
 ding evil. Enough that evil has its explanation, and its 
 mission, that it checks and limits itself, that it destroys 
 itself by its own action, and that each suffering prevents 
 a greater suffering by repressing the cause of suffering. 
 Society has for its element man, who is a free agent ; 
 and since man is free, he may choose, since he may 
 choose, he may be mistaken, he may suffer, he must be 
 mistaken and suffer, for he begins his journey in igno- 
 rance, and for ignorance there are endless and unknown 
 roads, all of which, except one, lead to error. Now, 
 every Error engenders suffering : but either suffering 
 reacts upon the man who errs, and then it brings Re- 
 sponsibility into play, or, if it affects others who are 
 free from error, it sets in motion the marvellous reac- 
 tionary machinery of Solidarity. The action of these 
 laws, combined with the faculty which has been vouch- 
 safed to us of connecting effects with their causes, must 
 bring us back, by means of this very suffering, into the 
 
PLAN OF THE WORK. U 
 
 way of what is good and true. Thus, not only do we 
 not deny the existence of evil, but we acknowledge that 
 it has a mission in the social, as it has in the material 
 world. But, in order that it should fulfil this mission, 
 we must not stretch Solidarity artificially, so as to de- 
 stroy Responsibility, in other words, we must respect 
 Liberty. Should human institutions step in to oppose 
 in this respect the divine laws, evil would not the less 
 flow from error, only it would shift its position. It 
 would strike those whom it ought not to strike. It 
 would be no longer a warning and a monitor. It would 
 no longer have the tendency to diminish and die away by 
 its own proper action. Its action would be continued, 
 and increase, as would happen in the physiological world 
 if the imprudences and excesses of the men of one hemi- 
 sphere were felt in their unhappy effects only by the in- 
 habitants of the opposite hemisphere. 
 
 " Now, this is precisely the tendency not only of most 
 of our Governmental Institutions but likewise, and above 
 all, of those which we seek to establish as remedies for 
 the evils which we suffer. Under the philanthropical 
 pretext of developing among men a factitious Solidarity, 
 we render Responsibility more and more inert and in- 
 efficacious. By an improper application of the public 
 force we alter the relation of labor to its remuneration, 
 we disturb the laws of industry and of exchange, we offer 
 violence to the natural development of education, we give 
 a wrong direction to capital and labor, we twist and in- 
 vert men's ideas, we inflame absurd pretensions, we dazzle 
 with chimerical hopes, weoccasion a strange loss of human 
 power, we change the centres of population, we render ex- 
 perience itself useless, in a word, we give to all interests 
 artificial foundations, we set them by the ears, and then 
 we exclaim that Interests are antagonistic : Liberty has 
 done all the evil, let us denounce and stifle Liberty. 
 
 " And yet, as this sacred word has still power to stir 
 
10 INTRODUCTION AND 
 
 men's hearts and make them palpitate, we despoil 
 Liberty of its prestige by depriving it of its name ; and 
 it is under the title of Competition that the unhappy 
 victim is led to the sacrificial altar, amid the applause of 
 a mob stretching forth their hands to receive the shackles 
 of servitude." 
 
 These are the words of the illustrious Frenchman, 
 admirably rendered into English by Patrick James 
 Stirling, P.R.S.E. 
 
 Here is the foundation of Bastiat's great work of 
 " Economic Harmonies." 
 
 He appeals " with confidence to men of all schools, 
 who prefer truth, justice, and the public good to their 
 own systems." 
 
 He makes his appeal to Economists, Socialists, Ega- 
 litaires, Communists, Christians of all communions, 
 Proprietors, Proletaires, Capitalists and Laborers, Dis- 
 ciples of Malthus ! 
 
 But to Men of Spoliation ! he says, " To you, alone, 
 I make no appeal, for the design of this book is to 
 sacrifice you, or rather to sacrifice your unjust preten- 
 sions. In vain we cherish conciliation. There are two 
 principles which can never be reconciled, Liberty and 
 Constraint. If the laws of Providence are harmonious, it 
 is when they act with freedom, without which there is 
 no harmony. Whenever, then, we remark an absence 
 of harmony, we may be sure that it proceeds from an 
 absence of liberty, an absence of justice. Oppressors, 
 spoliators, contemners of justice, you can have no part 
 in the universal harmony, for it is you who disturb it." 
 
 All others he claims as his disciples, and he thus 
 addresses them : 
 
 " My aim is to demonstrate that society, as it exists, 
 has only to acquire freedom in order to realise and 
 surpass your wishes and your hopes. For all things are 
 common to all, on the single condition that each man 
 
PLAN OF THE WORK. 11 
 
 takes the trouble to gather what God has given, which 
 is very natural ; or remunerate freely those who take 
 that trouble for him, which is very just." 
 
 In these few and simple words is all his theory of 
 Economic Laws. To build on this simple foundation 
 was the design of his last and greatest work. He lived 
 to complete it only in part, and, so far as it goes, it is 
 complete, an enduring memorial of a good man, and a 
 great mind. 
 
 To that work this publication does not pretend to add 
 anything. 
 
 It pretends only to show how the plain and simple 
 principle there propounded, may be easily and safely 
 carried out in practice. 
 
 It pretends to give a Practical Scheme for human 
 Governments, and to show thereby the harmony of 
 human interests with the great providential laws. 
 
 It pretends to show, in detail, the practical applica- 
 tion of this principle ; to show Lord Bacon's sound 
 teaching, for the practical purposes of life, that " Man, 
 the servant and interpreter of nature, can only do and 
 understand what he has been guided to by observing the 
 order of nature : further he knows not, neither can he 
 do." 
 
 The more comprehensive the view that can be given 
 of what is thus able to be known, and of how far the 
 inquiry has to be extended in order to bring within reach 
 full knowledge, the more will the human mind be im- 
 pressed with the great truth of this teaching, and with 
 the necessity for it. And so, this teaching is a great 
 pretension, but it is not a new one. It was attempted 
 in " The People's Blue Book," first published in the 
 year 1857, before the Author had heard even the name 
 of Bastiat. 
 
 The Author has now the incalculable advantage of 
 that great authority, who only followed out, as far as he 
 
12 INTRODUCTION AND 
 
 went, the directions of Bacon, who only followed out, 
 as far as he went, the organisation of Nature. 
 
 There is another great name amongst men, and who 
 has only lately departed from us, to whom the Author 
 will shortly refer, but with a feeling of more than ordi- 
 nary satisfaction, for a concurrence of opinion with him- 
 self on these questions. 
 
 Personally unknown to the Author, he received from 
 Count Cavour, but a short time previously to his death, 
 a Letter acknowledging the satisfaction with which he 
 had perused the " People's Blue Book/' and his approval 
 of the principles therein propounded, which he hoped to 
 apply in practice to the new Kingdom of regenerated 
 and united Italy. 
 
 In one of the political pamphlets of this enlightened 
 Statesman, in reference to the too common errors of the 
 times, the following, in his own words, (literally trans- 
 lated) are so applicable to the present subject, as to 
 deserve the deepest reflection of every thoughtful mind : 
 " The remedies which should be opposed to these Socialist 
 ideas, at whose propagation Society is justly alarmed, 
 are, firstly, the diffusion of wholesome truths calculated 
 to enlighten the intelligence of mankind; and, secondly, 
 the promotion of feelings of mutual good-will between 
 
 all classes of society To every man, then, his 
 
 proper work ! The philosopher and the political eco- 
 nomist may easily refute in their studies the error of 
 Communism ; but their labor will be in vain unless all 
 honest men, putting into practice the great principle of 
 universal benevolence, act upon the hearts of mankind, 
 as science acts upon their minds." 
 
 He shows that, in order to dispel the Socialist de- 
 lusion, it is not enough for Writers to demonstrate its 
 unsoundness. They must also show that the opposite 
 principle is no longer tenable in practice. 
 
 He says: "It is, perhaps, necessary to proclaim in 
 
PLAN OF THE WORK. 13 
 
 our days, even more distinctly than in past times, that 
 the right of property, sacred and inviolable as it is, 
 within certain limits, is not an absolute and irreversible 
 principle." 
 
 There is no use in any longer blinking at the real 
 question, which all highly civilised Nations are, in these 
 times, forcing upon their Governments, and which must 
 be met, sooner or later, with a satisfactory answer, it 
 existing Governments are to stand. 
 
 All questions as to Communism, or Socialism, resolve 
 themselves, finally, into this simple one ; as Cavour 
 asks : " What is the rational principle to adopt in cases 
 of conflict between the right of property, on which the 
 whole Social order depends, and the right of self-pre- 
 servation, which cannot be refused to any living man ? 
 What ought one to do when there arises a positive col- 
 lision between the Social and the natural right? that is, 
 between the principle of property necessary for the pre- 
 servation and development of Society, and the principle 
 which imposes upon man an absolute respect for the lives 
 of his fellow-men." 
 
 Some recent writers have solved this problem by the 
 theorem that, in all cases of collision, the right of pro- 
 perty must ultimately give way to the right of self-pre- 
 servation. 
 
 This solution, Cavour grants, may be true theoreti- 
 cally, but is not capable of practical application. 
 
 The Writer of these pages does not maintain this 
 doctrine. He substitutes for the principle of the 
 " right of self-preservation," the principle of the " right 
 of labor." 
 
 But he does maintain that, " where a collision occurs 
 between this irresistible ' right of labor/ and the ' right 
 of property/ it is the latter, not the former, which must 
 be sacrificed. For as property itself is established for 
 the benefit and preservation of Society, it ceases to be 
 
14 INTRODUCTION AND 
 
 sacred when the respect which it inspires compromises 
 the very existence of society itself." 
 
 As Cavour admits, and as all Statesmen must admit, 
 the social power is obliged to reconcile itself to the 
 spectacle of certain evils which it is powerless to pre- 
 vent ; but, nevertheless, if one were obliged to choose 
 between the two solutions of the terrible problem, which 
 one always meets with at the root of all social ques- 
 tions, it would be better to follow out the principle of 
 the right of labor to its utmost consequences, for that 
 principle may be said to involve the right of self-pre- 
 servation, rather than to deny its existence absolutely, 
 as many have been tempted to do, in consequence of 
 the numerous obstacles one meets with, whenever one 
 tries to organise any system for the social recognition 
 of this important right. 
 
 But no one, as far as the Writer knows, has ever yet 
 proposed any practical plan for preserving the ( right 
 of labor/ without infringing on the 'right of property;' 
 no one has ever yet shown how both these rights 
 may be respected for their mutual good ; or, how in- 
 evitably the sacrifice of the one must be to the injury 
 of the other. 
 
 No Statesman, no Political Economist, no Philoso- 
 pher, no Man save that One who combined the Human 
 nature with the Divine, has ever shown how this is to 
 be done. He alone has given the rule by which alone 
 those mutual rights can be preserved intact. But that 
 rule has never yet been followed. 
 
 It is no presumption to point to that rule to pro- 
 pound a plan in accordance with it to express convic- 
 tion in its practical applicability in its sufficiency and 
 in its security. 
 
 But this is a great pretension to do what no one be- 
 fore him has ever done for the benefit of mankind. To 
 this the Writer of these pages does make pretension. 
 
PLAN OF THE WORK. 15 
 
 And what is this, but a humble and earnest attempt 
 to show how easily the GOLDEN RULE for individuals, 
 may be followed out by Governments and Nations? 
 This is the object of " THE PEOPLE'S BLUE BOOK." 
 It remains with THE PEOPLE themselves to accom- 
 plish this object. Let them not deceive themselves with 
 the delusive hope that, the PRACTICAL SCHEME OF TAXA- 
 TION here proposed, however perfect for its purpose, will 
 ever be carried out by any Government of its own accord. 
 It is for the People to turn it to good account, by re- 
 quiring their representatives in Parliament to take action 
 upon it and carry it out by all lawful means. 
 
PAET I. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 
 
THE 
 
 PEOPLE'S BLUE BOOK: 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS, AND AS IT OUGHT TO BE, 
 
 PART I. 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 
 
 IT has been said that, "Actual equality of taxation 
 would be a criterion of the highest civilisation " ; but 
 this is as great an error as if, in place of the word, ' tax- 
 ation,' the word, property, were substituted. The one 
 is as undesirable and impossible as the other. 
 
 It is a common opinion that, State Taxes, should be 
 raised by an equal rate on all descriptions of property. 
 That, the rate should be equal is, no doubt, a correct 
 principle ; but to apply that to all descriptions of pro- 
 perty is simply impossible, and, if possible, would be 
 undesirable. 
 
 Property is so various, and so variable in its nature 
 that, equality of rating, for all descriptions of property, 
 must be impracticable. 
 
 But the proposition assumes that, it is for the interest 
 of the State that, all Property should be taxed by an 
 equal rate. 
 
 It will be shown in these pages that, this assumption 
 is entkely wrong ; and that, if it were possible to carry 
 
 c2 
 
20 THE PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 
 
 out such a system of taxation, it would be most injurious 
 to the State. 
 
 Adam Smith said : " The Subjects of every State 
 ought to contribute towards the support of the Govern- 
 ment as nearly as possible in proportion to their re- 
 spective abilities ; that is, in proportion to the revenue 
 which they respectively enjoy under the protection of 
 the State." 
 
 It probably did not occur to Adam Smith when he 
 wrote these words, that of the revenue which one man 
 receives in the year another man often enjoys the greater 
 part, as in the case of that portion of a man's annual 
 receipts which includes the interest on borrowed money. 
 And, why should " the subject contribute to the support 
 of the Government/' out of a revenue derived from a 
 foreign Country ? 
 
 On no ground of policy or principle of justice ean 
 such a proposition be maintained. But on grounds 
 of policy, and justice, it may be shown that, this pro- 
 position requires to be modified. 
 
 If it be shown to be for the interest of the State that, 
 certain descriptions of property only should be taxed, it 
 must be sufficient if all property of those descriptions be 
 taxed equally. 
 
 That is proposed to be shown in these pages. 
 
 There can be no principle for taxing all persons equally 
 "in proportion to their respective abilities/' if it be 
 shown that such taxation is injurious to the State, as 
 well as to the individuals. 
 
 That is proposed to be shown in these pages. 
 
 No person, or class of persons, could justly complain 
 of injury because another person, or class of persons, 
 was untaxed, if all property of the same description were 
 equally taxed, and if to tax them in property of another 
 description would be injurious to the State and to all 
 persons individually. 
 
THE PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 21 
 
 That it would be so, is proposed to be shown in these 
 pages. 
 
 If it can be shown that, there are taxes on certain 
 descriptions of property which take out, and keep out, 
 of the pockets of the people, over and above what those 
 taxes bring into the public treasury of the State, such 
 taxes are expressly condemned by Adam Smith. 
 
 The Tax on Corn was such a tax. The Customs and 
 Excise duties are such taxes. 
 
 All our existing taxes, including the Income Tax, as 
 at presentj assessed, are such taxes, with the single 
 exception of the Land Tax, which is unequally and, 
 therefore, unjustly assessed. 
 
 Adam Smith said : " Every tax ought to be so con- 
 trived as both to take out, and keep out, of the pockets 
 of the people, as little as possible over and above what 
 it brings into the public treasury of the State." 
 
 This is an axiom which cannot be disputed, and this 
 is a condemnation of all Indirect Taxes. 
 
 But this destroys Adam Smith's former proposition, 
 as will be shown in these pages, in the perusal of which 
 this is especially to be remembered. It may then be 
 seen that no injury is done to the State or to indivi- 
 duals, if large classes of persons escape the payment of 
 any tax in respect of property. 
 
 It will be shown that it is for the benefit of the State, 
 as well as of the Subjects, that such persons should be 
 free from the payment of any tax in respect of property. 
 
PART II. 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
25 
 
 PAET II. 
 TAXATION AS IT IS, 
 
 PERHAPS, there is no better way of showing Taxation 
 "As IT OUGHT TO BE," than in first showing it "As 
 IT is," for then we have experience to help us to the 
 conclusion that, it ought not to be as it is. 
 
 What it is, and has been for the last five years, (to go 
 back no further) will be seen, at a glance, in the follow- 
 ing Statement, prepared by Mr. Henry Lloyd Morgan, 
 the well known Public Accountant, whose services, in a 
 methodical and intelligible arrangement and investiga- 
 tion of the Government Accounts, though very highly 
 appreciated, are yet unrequited by any public acknow- 
 ledgment. 
 
 Here at least, the arrangement is simple, and the 
 figures under the yearly columns are intelligible enough. 
 But whether or not the sums entered, as received and 
 paid, be correctly entered, there is no evidence. All 
 that can be said is, that these entries are taken from 
 the Government Accounts, and are here presented in a 
 simple and intelligible form : 
 
26 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 a 
 
 fip 
 
 P o 
 
 H tD 
 
 KS 
 
 w 
 
 F-i ((M'iOOOJ 
 
 ^o > ^ < >l l >t l ^eo - 
 . oo i o o" cT co" i~C cT o^ cT 
 
 i-H O ^ CO r-l 
 
 cOQOcoaioOeOOi i 
 
 (N C^ P-H 
 
 i i co *> c co 
 
 
 M 
 
 CO ! CO 
 
 3 i 
 
 CO I-H *}< i i O CO O Irf*ra O 
 
 <>f cT cT o" i-T of -^ of i cT 
 
 eoiftir5Oi i 
 
 JOiCOiOI>.^^t>.i ( . i 
 
 c^i>. cq o^i-^co^^ : 
 oj o o *n r-i <N ^ 
 
 o 
 
 8 : 
 
 <1 H 
 ^ g 
 
 : 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 27 
 
 CM I-H CO O O 
 O O !>. O O 
 t>. 00 O O O 
 
 . CO CO QO O 
 O3 in CM CM O 
 
 ^ m CM CM co 
 
 ' I >-" 00 CO CM O > 
 
 Tf CO CO OS CM ,-H F-H t^ Tf I-H 
 
 0000 O 
 
 to o os o o 
 in ^ CM o o 
 
 CM CO t- 
 
 os in co 
 co n *** 
 
 _^ co in c> o 
 
 ^ ,n <o in o 
 o in i>- co 
 
 O rH ,-H i-H 
 
 O CM CM -H 
 CM O CM CO 
 
 to o m o o 
 
 CM O Tf O O 
 
 co o in o o 
 
 ; co"o"<xT 
 
 l-H O O 
 
 o o co o. n I-H 
 
 s 
 
 O CM OS 
 
 in co ^ 
 *>. in os 
 
 Tl< CO i-l 
 
 os 10 <o 
 
 i co co o o 
 
 *>. i CO O CO 
 
 in^^i-^o^ o 
 to'in"r4'cM~ 
 
 oo co 
 
 OS GO 
 
 
 Sft oo t^ *- 
 
 o <o o 
 
 o * in 
 in o * 
 ^ c oo 
 
 CM in aM 
 
 <o ^"o" 
 
 CM -" I-H 
 
 O ?0 
 
 O OS 
 
 o * 
 
 S 2 
 
 
 *O O_ 5O Tfl CO O CM i 
 
 kCcC e^^p <p ctyoT - ei 
 
 OS i-H 
 
 ao.pl 
 
 Is'sS.ig.gF.SSaJ 3 
 I J I S J 1 1 ? o l-i J J t2 
 
 tLO .'3i^ri"-'2L9r, .n ^H 
 
 tlllmi|6li|lllj 
 
 O CL,V3 Q J O < VJ W 
 
 
 ! 
 
 i < CM co * in 
 
28 TAXATION AS IT IS, 
 
 In the statement here given of many of the Govern- 
 ment Finance Accounts I have received much assis- 
 tance from that remarkable compilation, called f The 
 Financial Reform Almanack/ published by the Liverpool 
 Financial Reform Association, and prepared by the 
 able and indefatigable Secretary, Mr. Charles Edward 
 Macqueen. 
 
 I think it right to take this opportunity of mention- 
 ing for the benefit of the Public at large that, this 
 Reform Almanack, published yearly in one large 
 sheet, price One Penny, or in a book, price Sixpence, 
 comprises a more comprehensive compilation of facts 
 (relating to Government Accounts and Statistics) than 
 is to be found in any single work of the kind ever 
 published. 
 
 I wish to make this more generally known that, one 
 of these Penny Sheet Almanacks may be seen on the 
 wall, at the commencement of every new year, in every 
 mansion-house, middle-class-house, cottage, counting- 
 house, office, and shop in the kingdom, and if every 
 person, who can afford it, when he applies to Mr. 
 Macqueen for the Penny Sheet Almanack, were to 
 remit One Penny more for his own benefit, this would 
 be only a due acknowledgment of his national service. 
 
 The following Tables, from the Government Finance 
 Accounts, Parliamentary Returns, and Official Statistics, 
 are given for convenient reference, as illustrating and 
 supporting in detail the principle here propounded for 
 reorganising the system of taxation. 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 pq 
 
 0* 
 
 I 1 III 
 
 flfilf*JS3JlfJ|Jf3p 
 
 O flnO PH 32 KlWOo2So5lM fa 
 
30 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 PUBLIC INCOME. 
 
 I. CUSTOMS. 
 
 Finance Accounts, pages 21 and 22. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1 Chicory 98,991 
 
 2 Coffee 347,755 
 
 3 Corn, Meal, and Flour 104,417 
 
 4 Currants 260,049 
 
 5 Eaisins 112,872 
 
 6 SPIRITS Colonial and Foreign 
 
 Eum 1,933,383 
 
 Brandy 1,710,335 
 
 Geneva 73,091 
 
 Other Sorts 474,591 
 
 4,191,400 
 
 7 SUGAE Unrefined ... 4,639,468 
 
 Eefined & Candy 653,869 
 
 Molasses 103,223 
 
 5,396,560 
 
 8 Tea 2,643,296 
 
 9 Tobacco and Snuff 6,608,716 
 
 10 Wine 1,476,44 
 
 11 Other Articles 98,801 o 
 
 21,339,261 
 
 12 Duties collected on behalf of the Inland 
 
 Eevenue ,. 17,988 
 
 13 Charges on deliveries from the Bonded 
 
 Warehouses 41,984 
 
 14 Eents of Legal Quays, Warehouse Eents, 
 
 etc 11,626 
 
 15 Proceeds of Goods sold for the Duties ... 7,725 
 
 16 Fees received under Merchant Shipping 
 
 Act, Part 2 450 
 
 17 Moneys received from the Board of Trade 
 
 in re-imbursement of Charges incurred 
 
 under the Merchants' Shipping Act ... 13,632 
 
 18 Proceeds of Sale of Premises, Old Stores, 
 
 etc 3,821 
 
 Carried forward 21,436,487 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 31 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Brought forward 21,436,487 
 
 19 Moneys received from the Merchants in 
 respect of the special attendance of 
 
 Officers given on their application 15,277 
 
 21,451,764 
 Less Eepayments on Over-Entries, etc., Isle 
 
 of Man... 1,921 
 
 21,449,843 
 
 II. EXCISE. 
 
 Finance Accounts, page 24. 
 
 1 Chicory 15,848 
 
 2 Hackney Carriages 74,612 
 
 3 Licences 3,697,354 
 
 4 Malt 6,483,612 
 
 5 RaceHorses 9,521 
 
 6 Railways 500,557 
 
 7 Spirits 10,969,188 b 
 
 8 Stage Carriages 33,926 
 
 9 Sugar 68,144 
 
 10 Fines, Forfeitures, and Costs recovered... 14,253 
 
 11 Contributions to the late Excise Corpora- 
 
 tionFund 421 
 
 12 Extra Receipts from Bankruptcy and 
 
 Chancery Stamps 608 
 
 13 Miscellaneous... 11,194 
 
 21,879,238 
 
 III. STAMPS. 
 Finance Accounts, page 25. 
 
 1 Admiralty Court Fee Stamps 8,682 
 
 2 Bankers' Notes 1,492 
 
 3 Bankruptcy Court Fee Stamps 27,353 
 
 4 Bills of Exchange 719,750 
 
 5 Cards . 12,110 
 
 Carried forward 769,387 
 
32 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Brought forward ...... 769,387 
 
 6 Chancery Court Fee Stamps ............... 63,729 
 
 7 Chancery Fund ................................. 4,465 
 
 8 Civil Bill Fund ................................. 13,670 
 
 9 Common Law Court Fee Stamps ......... 90, 120 
 
 10 Companies Eegistration Fee Stamps ...... 9,381 
 
 11 Compositions for Duties on Bills and 
 
 Notes .......................................... 131,959 
 
 12 Copyhold, Inclosure, and Tithe Commis- 
 
 sion Fee Stamps .............................. 8,879 
 
 13 Deeds and other Instruments ............... 1,686,942 
 
 14 Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Fee 
 
 Stamps .......................................... 3,198 
 
 15 Gold and Silver Plate ........................ 57,681 
 
 16 INSURANCE Fire ... 442,861 
 
 Marine. 83,923 
 
 -- -526,784 
 
 17 Judgments Registry Fund ..... ........... ..- 3,282 
 
 18 Land Registry Fee Stamps ......... . ...... . . 1,315 
 
 19 Law Fund ....... ................................ 9,442 
 
 20 Legacies and Successions .................... . 2,953,591 
 
 21 Licences and Certificates ................ ..... 133,097 
 
 22 Medicines ..... ............................ ...... 69,204 
 
 23 Newspapers and Supplements .............. . 108,851 
 
 24 Patents for Inventions ........................ 121,314 
 
 25 Penalties and Costs recovered.. ............. 11,882 
 
 26 Probates of Wills and Letters of Ad- 
 
 ministration..... ............................... 1,769,130 
 
 27 Probate Court Fee Stamps ......... . ..... ... 144,972 
 
 28 Public Record Fee Stamps .................. 710 
 
 29 Receipts, Drafts, and other Penny Stamps 583,568 
 
 30 Record of Title Fee Stamps .................. 39 
 
 31 Registration of Deeds Fee Stamps ...... 11,254 
 
 32 MisceUaneous .................................... 707 
 
 9,288,553 
 
 IV. LAND TAX. 
 
 Finance Accounts, page 26. 
 Tax on Land and Tenements .. ..1,627,883 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 V. ASSESSED TAXES. 
 
 Finance Accounts, page 26. 
 
 33 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1 Schedule B, Inhabited Houses 1,674,067 
 
 2 C, Servants 244,311 
 
 3 D, Carriages 430,043 
 
 4 E, Horses for Riding 285,109 
 
 5 F, Other Horses and Mules ... 168,467 
 
 6 H, Horse Dealers 17,083 
 
 7 I, Hair Powder 972 
 
 8 K, Armorial Bearings 71,143 
 
 9 Additional 10 per cent., per Act 3 Viet. 
 
 c.17 1,709 
 
 10 Penalties and Costs recovered 1,423 
 
 11 Duties on Offices and Pensions 237 
 
 12 Miscellaneous 559 
 
 2,895,123 
 
 VI. INCOME TAX. 
 
 Finance Accounts, page 26. 
 
 Income Tax 10,108,589 
 
 VII. POST OFFICE. 
 
 Finance Accounts, page 2$. 
 
 1 Postage Collected 191,681 
 
 2 Postage Stamps issued to Postmasters, etc. 3,577,043 
 
 3 Ditto Sold by Inland Eevenue Depart- 
 
 ment 703,000 
 
 4 Commission on Money Orders 178,451 
 
 5 Miscellaneous Receipts 21,055 
 
 4,671,230 
 
 VIII. TELEGRAPHS. 
 
 Finance Accounts, page 29. 
 
 Amount received for Transmission of Tele- 
 graphic Messages 100,761 
 
34 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 IX.-CROWN LANDS. 
 
 Finance Accounts, page 30. 
 
 d. 
 
 1 Amount collected in England and Wales, 
 
 Ireland, Scotland, Alderney, and the 
 
 Isle of Man, to 31st March, 1870 386,332 
 
 2 Rents and Casual Revenues not included 
 
 in Receivers' Accounts 4,610 
 
 3 Sale of Old Materials, etc 8,695 
 
 4 Sales of Bark, Timber, etc 48,086 
 
 447,723 
 
 X. MISCELLANEOUS. 
 Finance Accounts, page 32. 
 
 1 Bank of England, Profits of Issue 138,578 
 
 2 China Indemnity 11 
 
 3 Civil Contingencies 32 
 
 4 Conscience Money 3,933 
 
 5 Contributions from Revenues of India 
 
 for Military Charges 717,000 
 
 6 Ditto towards the expenses of the Persian 
 
 Mission 15,000 
 
 7 Ditto, Red Sea Telegraph Company's 
 
 Annuity 18,027 
 
 8 Ditto, towards the expenses of the Mail 
 
 Service 153,944 
 
 9 Extra Receipts, Civil Departments 350,482 
 
 10 Fees, etc., of Public Offices 594,331 
 
 11 Greek Loan 7,877 
 
 12 Greenwich Hospital 14,460 
 
 13 Income of London, Edinburgh, and Dub- 
 
 lin Gazettes 31,128 
 
 14 Isle of Man 11,924 
 
 15 Malta and Alexandria Telegraph 15,138 
 
 16 Old Stores, etc., Naval and Military De- 
 
 partments 1,034,510 
 
 17 Savings on Grants of Parliament and over 
 
 issues repaid 57.721 
 
 18 Small branches of Hereditary Revenue... 30,359 
 
 19 Treasury Chest 640 
 
 Carried forward 3,195,095 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 37 
 
 *. d. 
 
 Brought forward 13,565,400 
 
 Navy 9,757,290 
 
 Abyssinian Expedition 1,300,000 
 
 24,622,690 
 
 XIILREVENUE DEPARTMENTS. COLLECTION 
 AND MANAGEMENT. 
 
 Finance Accounts, pages 72, 75, 76, and 77. 
 
 1 CUSTOMS SALARIES 
 
 Supply 1868-69 276,026 
 
 1869-70 703,892 
 
 979,918 
 
 2 INLAND REVENUE SALARIES 
 
 Supply 1868-69 392,144 
 
 1869-70 1,185,741 
 
 1,577,885 
 
 3 POST OFFICE SALAEIES 
 
 Supply 1868-69 631,812 
 
 1869-70 1,684,187 
 
 2,315,999 
 
 4 TELEGRAPH SERVICE 
 
 Supply 1869-70 60,000 
 
 4,933,802 
 
 5 POST OFFICE PACKET SERVICE 
 
 Supply 1868-69 1,558 
 
 1869-70 1,219,995 
 
 1,221,553 
 
 6. CROWN LANDS Paid out 
 of Gross Revenue, 
 page 30. 
 
 Salaries and Allow- 
 ances to Deputy 
 
 Surveyors, etc 7,151 
 
 Percentages and Al- 
 lowances toReceivers 10,152 
 
 Ancient Pensions 7,156 
 
 Salaries, Wardens, 
 Rangers, etc 2,528 
 
 Carried forward 26,987 6,155,355 
 
36 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 s. d. s . d. 
 
 Brought forward 330,453 021,815,517 
 
 Ditto to Bank of Ireland ... 78,923 
 
 ... 409,376 
 
 Management of Funded Debt 
 
 in Great Britain 208,977 
 
 Ditto of Unfunded Debt... 891 
 
 209,868 
 
 TEBMINABLE ANNUITIES. 
 
 Life Annuities, Great Britain 933,219 
 
 Ditto Ireland 15,358 
 
 Exchequer Annuities 11,404 
 
 Annuities for various terms 
 
 ofyears 53,026 
 
 Ditto expiring 5th April, 1885 116,000 
 Ditto Fortifications do. 5th 
 
 April, 1885 385,431 
 
 Ditto Post Office Savings 
 
 Banks do. 5th April, 1885 . 9,983 
 Ditto Savings Banks, do. in 
 
 1885 2,805,427 
 
 Red Sea and India Telegraph 
 
 Co., do. 4th August, 1908 . 36,000 
 
 4,365,848 
 
 FLOATING DEBT. 
 
 Interest of Exchequer Bonds 89,750 
 
 Ditto on Exchequer Bills ... 149,099 
 Ditto of Amount advanced by 
 
 Bank of England in aid of 
 
 Ways and Means 5,227 
 
 Ditto Deficiency Bills 8,875 
 
 252,951 
 
 Total Interest and Management of Public 
 
 Debt. 
 
 ..27,053,560 
 
 Army 
 
 X1L ARMY AND NAVY. 
 Finance Accounts, page 78. 
 
 13,565,400 
 
 Carried forward 13,565,400 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 37 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Brought forward 13,565,400 
 
 Navy 9,757,290 
 
 Abyssinian Expedition 1,300,000 
 
 24,622,690 
 
 XIII. EEVENUE DEPARTMENTS. COLLECTION 
 AND MANAGEMENT. 
 
 Finance Accounts, pages 72, 75, 76, and 77. 
 
 1 CUSTOMS SALARIES 
 
 Supply 1868-69 276,026 
 
 1869-70 703,892 
 
 979,918 
 
 2 INLAND EEVENUE SALAEIES 
 
 Supply 1868-69 392,144 
 
 1869-70 1,185,741 
 
 1,577,885 
 
 3 POST OFFICE SALAEIES 
 
 Supply 1868-69 631,812 
 
 1869-70 1,684,187 
 
 2,315,999 
 
 4 TELEGRAPH SERVICE 
 
 Supply 1869-70 60,000 
 
 4,933,802 
 5 POST OFFICE PACKET SERVICE 
 
 Supply 1868-69 1,558 
 
 1869-70 1,219,995 
 
 1,221,553 
 
 6. CROWN LANDS Paid out 
 of Gross Revenue, 
 page 30. 
 
 Salaries and Allow- 
 ances to Deputy 
 
 Surveyors, etc 7,151 
 
 Percentages and Al- 
 lowances toEeceivers 10,152 
 
 Ancient Pensions 7,156 
 
 Salaries, Wardens, 
 Eangers, etc 2,528 
 
 Carried forward 26,987 6,155,355 
 
38 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 s. d. s. d. 
 
 Brought forward 26,987 6,155,355 
 
 Improvement and Re- 
 pair of Estates 21,630 
 
 DittoBuildings,Roads, 
 
 etc 38,973 
 
 87,590 
 
 6,242,945 
 
 XIV. PUBLIC WORKS AND BUILDINGS. 
 
 CLASS 1. 
 Finance Accounts, pages 71, 7.2, 73, and 76. 
 
 1 
 
 British Embassy Houses and Consular 
 
 
 
 
 
 Buildings,Constantinople, China, Japan, 
 
 
 
 
 
 and Tehran 
 
 71,961 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 British Embassy Houses, Paris and Madrid 
 
 2,208 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 Burlington House 
 
 28,359 
 
 
 
 p 
 
 4 
 
 Chapter House, Westminster 
 
 3,235 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 Furniture of Public Offices 
 
 13,763 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 Glasgow University 
 
 20,000 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 Harbours of Refuge 
 
 82,041 
 
 
 
 p 
 
 8 
 
 Inland Revenue and Post Office Buildings 
 
 75,200 
 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 Lighthouses abroad ... 
 
 5,000 
 
 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 London University Buildings 
 
 29,946 
 
 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 Metropolitan Fire Brigade 
 
 10,000 
 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 National Gallery, London, enlargement... 
 
 3,000 
 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 New Foreign Office (building) 
 
 5,000 
 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 New Home and Colonial Offices 
 
 10,000 
 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 New Houses of Parliament (buildings) . . . 
 
 41,550 
 
 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 New Palace of Westminster, acquisition 
 
 
 
 
 
 of lands 
 
 11,935 
 
 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 Portland Harbour 
 
 3,838 
 
 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 Probate Court and Registries 
 
 7,157 
 
 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 Public Buildings, Great Britain 
 
 119,660 
 
 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 Public Buildings, Ireland 
 
 127,092 
 
 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 Public Offices, site 
 
 42,759 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 22 
 
 Public Record Repository 
 
 18,888 
 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 Rates on Government Property 
 
 33,957 
 
 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 Royal Palaces 
 
 36,619 
 
 
 
 
 
 Carried forward 803,168 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 39 
 
 Brought forward 
 25 Royal Parks and Pleasure Gardens 
 26 Sheriffs' Court Houses, Scotland 
 
 s. d. 
 
 803,168 
 126,016 
 25,178 
 
 27 Ulster Canal 
 
 1,500 
 
 28 Wellington Monument 
 
 2,800 
 
 
 
 958,632 
 
 XV. SALARIES AND EXPENSES OF PUBLIC 
 DEPARTMENTS. 
 
 CLASS 2. 
 Finance Accounts, pages 71, 73, 74, and 76. 
 
 1 
 
 Board of Trade, etc 
 
 97,119 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 Boundary Survey, Ireland 
 
 484 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 Charitable Donations and Bequests Office, 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ireland 
 
 2,852 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 Chief Secretary, Ireland, Offices 
 
 23,476 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 Colonial Office 
 
 34,768 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 Commission, Charity 
 
 18,128 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 Ditto, Civil Service 
 
 9,605 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 Ditto, Copyhold, Tithe and Inclosure ... 
 
 19,221 
 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 Ditto, Copyhold, Inclosure, Drainage Acts, 
 
 
 
 
 
 Imprest Expenses 
 
 10,871 
 
 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 Ditto, Lunacy, England 
 
 10,016 
 
 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 Ditto ditto, Scotland 
 
 6,166 
 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 Ditto, Poor Law, England 
 
 216,950 
 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 Ditto ditto, Scotland 
 
 17,838 
 
 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 Ditto ditto, Ireland 
 
 96,577 
 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 Ditto Public Works Loan 
 
 4,132 
 
 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 Exchequer and Audit Department 
 
 36,340 
 
 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 Exchequer and other Offices in Scotland. 
 
 5,485 
 
 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 Fishery Board, Scotland 
 
 17,450 
 
 c 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 Foreign Office 
 
 60,973 
 
 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 General Register Offices, England 
 
 41,676 
 
 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 Ditto ditto Scotland 
 
 7.391 
 
 
 
 
 
 22 
 
 Ditto ditto Ireland .....* 
 
 17,522 
 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 Home Office 
 
 82,748 
 
 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 House of Commons Offices 
 
 48,014 
 
 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 House of Lords Offices 
 
 37,438 
 
 
 
 
 
 Carried forward 923,240 
 
40 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Brought forward 923,240 
 
 26 Household of Lord Lieutenant, Ireland... 6,164 
 
 27 Mint, including Coinage 38,293 
 
 28 National Debt Office 15,615 
 
 29 Patent Office 33,416 
 
 30 Pay master-General's Office 20,107 
 
 31 Printing and Stationery 392,429 
 
 32 Privy Council Office 39,940 
 
 33 Privy Seal Office 2,882 
 
 34 Public Eecords and State Paper Office... 22,438 
 '35 Ditto ditto, Ireland 4,692 
 
 36 Public Works, Ireland (Office of ) 27,025 
 
 37 Registrars of Friendly Societies 2,384 
 
 38 Secret Service 20,480 
 
 39 Treasury 60,124 
 
 40 Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues 
 
 (Office of) 23,605 
 
 41 Works and Public Buildings (Office of ). . 37,242 
 
 1,670,076 
 
 Paid out of Consolidated Fund, pages 45 and 46. 
 GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 42 Clergy, Scotch 17,100 
 
 43 Clergy, West Indies ... 19,787 
 
 44 Compensations under 
 
 Copyright Act 3,029 
 
 45 Exchequer and Audit 
 
 Department 3,500 
 
 46 House of Commons 6,200 
 
 47 Inspectors of Anatomy.. 888 
 
 48 Lunacy Commission 7,678 
 
 49 Miscellaneous 13,269 
 
 Total Great Britain, 71,451. 
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 50 Inspectors of Anatomy. . 470 
 
 51 Lord Lieutenant 20,000 
 
 Carried forward 20,470 1,670,076 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 41 
 
 s. d. s. d. 
 
 Brought forward 20,470 1,670,076 00 
 
 52 Maynooth College 25,915 
 
 53 Queen's Colleges 21,000 
 
 54 Miscellaneous 2,875 
 
 Total Ireland, 70,260. 141,711 
 
 1,811,787 
 
 XVI. LAW AND JUSTICE. 
 
 CLASS 3. 
 
 Finance Accounts, pages 71, 74, 76, and 77. 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 s. d. s. d. 
 
 1 Admiralty Court Registry 13,605 
 
 2 Bankruptcy Court 49,500 
 
 3 Chancery Courts 88,500 
 
 4 Common Law Courts ... 65,542 
 
 5 County Courts 439,768 
 
 6 Criminal Prosecutions . . . 197,227 
 
 7 Land Registry Office 4,886 
 
 8 Law Charges, etc., Eng- 
 
 land 41,568 
 
 9 Metropolitan Police 202,489 
 
 10 Police Courts, London 
 
 and Sheerness 29,394 
 
 11 Police, Counties and Bo- 
 
 roughs, Great Britain . 282,463 
 
 12 Probate Court, England, 
 
 Salaries 84,431 
 
 13 Miscellaneous 24,528 
 
 1,523,901 
 14 Paid out of Consolidated 
 
 Fund, page 56 424,253 
 
 1,948,154 
 
 Carried forward 1,948,154 
 
42 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 SCOTLAND. 
 
 Finance Accounts, pages 71, 74, 76, and 77. 
 
 s. d. s. d. 
 
 Brought forward 1,948,154 
 
 15 Courts of Law and Jus- 
 
 tice 55,459 
 
 16 Criminal Proceedings ... 77,715 
 
 17 Register House, Edin- 
 
 burgh, Salaries and Ex- 
 penses of Sundry De- 
 partments 25,577 
 
 158,751 
 18 Pa5d out of Consolidated 
 
 Fund, page 56 84,545 
 
 243,296 
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 Finance Accounts, pages 71, 74, 76, and 77. 
 
 19 Admiralty Court Registry 2,719 
 
 20 Bankruptcy Court 8,010 
 
 21 Chancery Court 42,586 
 
 22 Common Law Courts ... 27,404 
 
 23 Constabulary of Ireland . 859,933 
 
 24 Dublin Metropolitan Po- 
 
 lice 96,550 
 
 25 Four Courts Marshalsea 
 
 Prison . ; 2,380 
 
 26 Landed Estates Court ... 11,703 
 
 27 Law Charges and Crimi- 
 
 nal Prosecutions 45,790 
 
 28 Probate Court 10,080 
 
 29 Registry of Deeds 14,536 
 
 30 Registry of Judgments... 2,462 
 
 31 Miscellaneous 8,820 
 
 Carried forward 1,132,973 2,191,450 
 
TAXATION* AS IT IS. 43 
 
 s. d. s. d. 
 
 Brought forward 1,132,973 2,191,450 
 
 32 Paid out of Consolidated 
 
 Fund, page 58 136,600 
 
 1,269,573 
 
 PRISONS. 
 
 Finance Accounts, pages 71, 74, 76, and 77. 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 33 Broadmoor Criminal Lu- 
 
 natic Asylum 32,766 
 
 34 Convict Establishments 
 
 in the Colonies 166, 198 
 
 35 County Prisons, Refor- 
 
 matories, etc., Great 
 
 Britain 296,673 
 
 36 Government Prisons and 
 
 Transportation 306,460 
 
 802,097 
 
 SCOTLAND. 
 Finance Accounts, pages 71, 74, and 77. 
 
 37 Prisons 27,214 
 
 IRELAND. 
 Finance Accounts, pages 71, 74, and 77. 
 
 38 County Prisons 9,273 
 
 39 Dundrum Criminal Lu- 
 
 natic Asylum 5,571 
 
 40 Government Prisons and 
 
 Reformatories 59,934 Q 
 
 " 74,778 
 
 4,365,112 
 
44 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 XVII. EDUCATION, SCIENCE, AND AET. 
 
 CLASS 4. 
 
 Finance Accounts, pages 72, 74, 75, 76, and 77. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1 Belfast Theological Professors 2,350 
 
 2 Board of Manufactures, Scotland 3, 100 
 
 3 British Museum 106,913 
 
 4 Education, Great Britain 837,226 
 
 5 Education, Ireland 383,583 
 
 6 Ditto Commissioners Endowed Schools... 4,000 
 
 7 Ditto ditto Ireland 648 
 
 8 Learned Societies, Great Britain 12,300 
 
 9 National Gallery 15,984 
 
 10 National Gallery of Ireland 2,261 
 
 11 National Portrait Gallery 1,710 
 
 12 Paris Exhibition 8,342 
 
 13 Queen's Colleges, Ireland 4,573 
 
 14 Queen's University, Ireland 3,491 
 
 15 Eoyal Irish Academy 1,684 
 
 16 Science and Art Department 219,481 
 
 17 University of London 8,397 
 
 18 Universities, etc., in Scotland 19,169 
 
 1,635,212 
 
 XVIII.-COLONIAL AND CONSULAE. 
 
 CLASS 5. 
 Finance Accounts, pages 72, 75, 76, and 77. 
 
 1 Colonies, Grants in Aid of Expenditure... 47,293 
 
 2 Commissions for the Suppression of the 
 
 Slave Trade 7,055 
 
 3 Consular Services 276,886 
 
 4 Diplomatic Services 159,367 
 
 5 Emigration 11,862 
 
 6 Emigration of Coolies 529 
 
 Carried forward... 502,992 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 45 
 
 S. d. 
 
 Brought forward 502,992 
 
 7 Ministers at Foreign Courts, Extraordi- 
 
 nary Expenses 52 
 
 8 Orange Eiver Territory and St. Helena... 3,837 
 
 9 Pitcairn Islanders 25 
 
 10 Services in China, Japan, and Siam 63,012 
 
 11 Tonnage Bounties, etc. ..* 63,559 
 
 12 Treasury Chest 30,970 
 
 664,447 
 
 Paid out of Consolidated Fund, pages 
 47, 48, and 49. 
 
 13 Argentine Republic 1,012 
 
 14 Austria 2,799 
 
 15 Bavaria 1,188 
 
 16 Belgium 1,188 
 
 17 Brazil 1,394 
 
 18 Central American Re- 
 
 publics 500 
 
 19 Chili 451 
 
 20 Darmstadt , 175 
 
 21 Denmark 1,188 
 
 22 Dresden 237 
 
 23 Equator 350 
 
 24 France 3,225 
 
 25 Greece 1,075 
 
 26 Holland 1,188 
 
 27 Italy 1,788 
 
 28 Montevideo 382 
 
 29 Morocco 100 
 
 30 Peru 500 
 
 31 Portugal 1,350 
 
 32 Prussia 2,375 
 
 33 Rome 312 
 
 34 Russia 2,820 
 
 35 Saxe Coburg 212 
 
 36 Spain 1,638 
 
 37 Sweden 1,038 
 
 38 Switzerland . 799 
 
 Carried forward. 
 
 29,284 664,447 
 
46 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Brought forward 
 
 39 Turkey 
 
 40 United Provinces of 
 
 Columbia 
 
 41 United States 
 
 42 Venezuela 
 
 43 Wiirtemberg 
 
 s. d. 
 
 29,284 
 
 2,741 
 
 500 
 
 1,912 
 
 500 
 
 762 
 
 s. d. 
 664,447 
 
 35,699 
 44 Pensions, per Act 2 & 3 
 
 William IV., cap. 116 20,398 
 
 56,097 
 
 720,544 
 
 XIX. SUPEEANNUATIONS, EETIEED ALLOW- 
 ANCES, AND GRATUITIES FOE CHAEITABLE 
 AND OTHEE PUEPOSES. 
 
 CLASS 6. 
 Finance Accounts, pages 72, 75, 76, and 77. 
 
 1 Superannuations and Eetired Allowances 339,531 
 
 2 Hospitals and Infirmaries, Ireland 19,050 
 
 3 Merchant Seamen's Fund, Pensions 3,215 
 
 4 Non- Conforming Clergy 45,116 
 
 5 Eelief of Distressed British Seamen. 35,189 
 
 6 Miscellaneous Charitable and other Al- 
 
 lowances, Great Britain 6,166 
 
 7 Ditto ditto Ireland 6,834 . 
 
 455,101 
 
 XX. MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 CLASS 7. 
 Finance Accounts, pages 75, 76, and 77. 
 
 1 Flax Cultivation, Ireland 2,178 
 
 2 Local Dues on Shipping, under Treaties 
 
 of Eeciprocity 61,844 
 
 Carried forward... 64,022 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 47 
 
 Brought forward 64,022 
 
 3 Malta and Alexandria Telegraph, etc. . . . 3,269 
 
 4 Eegistration Acceleration 9,716 
 
 5 Temporary Commissions 65,383 
 
 6 Miscellaneous Expenses 57,412 
 
 199,802 
 
 XXI. CIVIL LIST. 
 Finance Accounts, page 40. 
 
 Sum appropriated out of Consolidated Fund, 
 
 on account of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th 
 
 Classes 385,000 
 
 Charge for Pensions, granted per Act 1 Yic., 
 
 cap. 2, (Class 5) 20,941 
 
 405,941 
 
 XXII.-ANNUITIES AND PENSIONS. 
 
 Finance Accounts, pages 41 to 44. 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 1 Annuities to the Royal Family 111,000 
 
 Pensions 
 
 2 Naval and Military Services 37,845 
 
 3 Civil Services 24,210 
 
 4 Judicial Services 50,540 
 
 5 Hereditary Pensions : 
 
 DukeofMarlborough 4,000 
 Heirs of the Duke of 
 
 Schomberg 2,160 
 
 Moiety of the Earl of 
 
 Bath's Pension 1,200 
 
 7,360 
 
 6 Servants of Queen Char- 
 
 lotte . 409 
 
 Carried forward 409 230,955 
 
48 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 . *. d. 
 
 Brought forward 409 
 
 7 Servants of George III. 216 
 
 8 Servants of Queen Caro- 
 
 line 97 
 
 9 Pensions formerly on the Civil List of 
 
 their late Majesties, George IV. and 
 William IV., the Hereditary He venues 
 of Scotland, and 4| per cent. Duties . . . 
 
 . s. d. 
 230,955 
 
 722 
 
 18,386 
 
 Total Great Britain 250,063 
 
 IRELAND : 
 
 10 Civil Services 3,254 
 
 11 Judicial Services 30,666 
 
 12 Pensions formerly on 
 
 Civil List 5,535 
 
 13 Trustees of Mrs. Hamil- 
 
 ton and Children, etc. 887 
 
 40,342 
 290,405 
 
 XXIII. INTEEEST ON LOANS, SECRET 
 SERVICE, ETC. 
 
 Finance Accounts, page 59. 
 
 1 Interest and Sinking Fund on Russian 
 
 DutchLoan 69,965 
 
 2 Ditto do. Greek Loan 47,357 
 
 3 Towards the support of Greenwich Hos- 
 
 pital 15,000 
 
 4 Secret Service, formerly charged on Civil 
 
 List 10,000 
 
 5 Receiver General, Duchy of Lancaster 
 
 Annuity in lieu of Prisage and But- 
 lerage on Wines imported into that 
 county 803 
 
 Carried forward... 143,125 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 49 
 
 s. d. 
 Brought forward 143, 125 
 
 6 Receiver General, Duchy of Cornwall 
 
 compensation for loss of duties on the 
 
 coinage of Tin 16,217 
 
 7 Compensation to sundry persons for loss 
 
 of offices on the abolition of duties on 
 
 the coinage of Tin 221 
 
 8 In aid of the Cash Balance of the Accoun- 
 
 tant in Bankruptcy 18,018 
 
 9 Moiety of the expense of the Annual Re- 
 
 vision of the Rateable Property in 
 
 Ireland 12,230 
 
 10 Piers and Harbours in Ireland . 830 
 
 190,581 
 
 XXIV. FORTIFICATIONS. 
 
 Finance Accounts, page 59. 
 
 Expense of Constructing certain Fortifications 
 
 as per Act 30 and 31 Vic., cap. 145 230,000 
 
 GENERAL SUMMARY. 
 
 XI. Interest and Management of the Na- 
 tional Debt 27,053,560 
 
 XII. Army, Navy, and Abyssinian Expedi- 
 tion 24,622,690 
 
 XIII. Collection and Management of the 
 Revenue Departments, including Packet 
 Service and Telegraphs 6,242,945 
 
 XIV. Public Works and Buildings 958,662 
 
 XV. Salaries and Expenses of Public De- 
 partments 1,811,787 
 
 XVI. Law and Justice 4,365,112 
 
 XVII. Education, Science and Art 1,635,212 
 
 XVIII. Colonial and Consular 720,544 
 
 Carried forward 67,410,512 
 
 E 
 
50 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Brought forward 
 XIX. Superannuations, etc. 
 
 
 67,410,512 
 455,101 
 
 *. d. 
 
 
 
 XX. Miscellaneous 
 
 199,802 
 
 
 
 XXI. Civil List 
 
 405,941 
 
 
 
 XXII. Annuities and Pensions 
 
 290,405 
 
 
 
 XXIII. Interest on Loans, Secret Service, 
 etc. 
 
 190,581 
 
 
 
 XXIV. Fortifications 
 
 200,000 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 69,152,342 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 51 
 
 RATES OP ALL TAXES AND IMPOSTS. 
 
 .-/BOM WHICH THE IMPERIAL B-EVENUE IS RAISED, AND THE TOTAL 
 GROSS PRODUCE OF EACH OF THEM IN THE FINANCIAL YEAR 
 ENDING MAECH 31, 1870. 
 
 (Compiled from Sir Thomas Bazley's Return, No. 456, ordered to le printed 
 August 10, 1870.) 
 
 Rates of Duty. Quantities Produce. 
 
 To June 1, From June 1, Taxed. . 
 
 1869. 1869. 
 
 Beer Mum Per bar. of Per bar. of 
 
 32 gal. 36 gal. 
 
 Spruce ... 
 
 and Ale of 
 other sorts 
 
 20*. 
 20*. 
 
 20*. 
 
 21*. 
 21*. and 24*. 
 according to 
 specific gravity 
 of the worts. 
 
 8*., 11*., and 16*. 
 
 33 gals. 
 64,509 
 
 101,150 
 
 1 
 2,13!' 
 
 1.558 
 
 according to do. 
 of the Isle of 
 
 Man 4*. 3d. per bar. of 36 gals. 2,436 22 
 
 according to do. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Cards, playing, per doz. packs 039 1,772 doz.pks. 332 
 
 Chicory, raw or kiln- dried, 
 
 per cwt. 166 74,678 cwt. 98,949 
 
 produce of Channel 
 
 Islands 1 4 3 1,041 1,2<>3 
 
 roasted or ground, 
 
 perlb. 004 4,478 Ibs. 75 
 
 Chocolate, per Ib 002 256,863 2,14' 
 
 Cocoa, perlb 001 6,579,776 27/116 
 
 husks and shells, per 
 
 cwt 020 10,878 cwt. 1,088 
 
 Coffee, raw, per Ib 3 28,133,939 Ibs. 35l' 5 G65 
 
 roasted, kiln- dried, or 
 
 ground, perlb 4 3,362 50 
 
 From April 1st to June 1st, 1869. 
 
 Carried forward 486,704 
 
 E 2 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Bates of Duty. 
 . s. d. 
 
 Brought 
 CO EN and Farinaceous substances 
 
 f Wheat, per cwt 003 
 
 Barley, per cwt 3 
 
 Oats, per cwt. 003 
 
 Eye, per cwt 003 
 
 Pease, per cwt. 003 
 
 Beans, per cwt 3 
 
 Indian Corn, per cwt. .003 
 Buck Wheat, per cwt. . 3 
 Bere or Bigg, per cwt. .003 
 Arrow Eoot, per cwt. .004^ 
 
 Quantities 
 
 Taxed, 
 forward 
 
 3,705,297 cwt. 
 
 857,678 
 
 741,216 
 
 14,826 
 
 119,102 
 
 217,971 
 
 2,130,781 
 
 2,562 
 
 2,409 
 5 
 
 Barley, Pearled, per cwt. 4| 
 Biscuit and Bread, per 
 
 cwt 4| 594 , 
 
 Cassava Powder, per cwt. 4| 676 
 
 Flour, Wheat, per cwt. 4 526,070 
 
 Mandioca, per cwt. 4| 
 
 Potato, per cwt. ... 4 15,061 
 
 Manna Croup, per cwt. 4| 3 
 
 Meal, Barley, per cwt. 4| 
 
 Oat, per cwt 4| 61 
 
 Eye, per cwt 004^ 25 
 
 Pea, per cwt 4| 
 
 Bean, per cwt 004^ 
 
 Indian Corn, p. cwt. 4| 1,459 
 Buck Wheat, per 
 
 cwt 4 18 
 
 Unenumer ate d, 
 
 per cwt. 4 896 
 Powder of all sorts, per 
 
 cwt 4 
 
 Eice dust and Meal, 
 
 per cwt. 4 2,031 
 
 Sago, per cwt 4 20,699 
 
 Semolina, per cwt 4 398 
 
 Starch,, per cwt 4| 2,759 
 
 Tapioca, per cwt 4 3,766 
 
 Vermicelli and Macca- 
 
 L roni, per cwt 4| 2,398 
 
 Carried forward... 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 53 
 
 Bates of Duty. Quantities Produce. 
 
 s. d. Taxed. . 
 
 Brought forward 594,935 
 
 FRUIT, Dried- 
 Currants, per cwt 070 744,992 cwt. 260,757 
 
 Figs, Plums, and Prunes, 
 
 per. cwt. 070 111,554 39,054 
 
 Eaisins, per cwt 7 324,759 4.13,671 
 
 Malt and its Products see Beer. 
 
 Pickles (in Vinegar), per gal. 001 1,850 gals. 8 
 
 Plate, Gold, per oz. troy 17 31 oz. 26 
 
 Silver, per oz. troy ... 1 6 61,353,, 4,591 
 
 SPIRITS and Alcoholic Articles- 
 Hum and Spirits, of and 
 from British Possessions 
 in America, Mauritius, 
 and the East Indies, per 
 
 proof gal 010 2 3,758,570 gals. 1,910,433 
 
 From Foreign Country of 
 
 Production 10 2 41,626 21,161 
 
 Not from ditto 010.5 4,208 2,193 
 
 Brandy 10 5 3,288,035 1,712,482 
 
 Geneva 10 5 140,856 73,366 
 
 Other Sorts 10 5 861,342 , 448,618 
 
 Sweetened or mixed 
 
 British and Colonial 10 2 889 452 
 
 Other Sorts 14 37,050 25,923 
 
 Chloroform, per Ib 030 1,061 Ibs, 159 
 
 Collodion, per gal 140 10 gala. 13 
 
 Ether, per gal 150 71 88 
 
 Naphtha, or Methylic Al- 
 cohol, purified 10 5 
 
 Varnish containing Alcohol 12 230 138 
 
 Spruce. Essence of, p. c.adval. 10 10 (value) 1 
 
 SUGAR and Saccharine Articles 
 
 Refined and Candy, per cwt. 12 1,095,266 cwt. 657,006 
 
 Unrefined 
 
 1st class, per cwt 11 
 
 2nd class, per cwt 10 
 
 3rd class, per cwt 9 
 
 4th class, per cwt 
 
 126,123 
 
 2,381,987 
 2,693,686 
 
 5,708,885 
 
 Carried forward... 
 
 70,946 
 1,250,954 
 1,290,941 
 2,283,091 
 
 10,761,007 
 
54 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Molasses 
 
 Rates of Duty. Quantities 
 s. d. Taxed. 
 Brought forward 
 036 656,644 cwt. 
 
 Produce. 
 & 
 10,761,007 
 105,064 
 
 Almond Paste, per Ib. 
 
 001 110 Ibs. 
 
 
 Cherries, dried per Ib. 
 
 001 2427 
 
 10 
 
 Comfits dry per Ib 
 
 001 31 
 
 
 Confectionery, per Ib 
 Ginger, preserved, per Ib. 
 
 ,.. 1 525,686 
 ...001 338,852 
 
 2,191 
 1,412 
 
 per Ib 
 
 001 528 Ibs. 
 
 2 
 
 rved, per Ib... 
 fib 
 
 .001 453 
 ,001 458,670 
 006 105,800,661 
 
 2 
 1,911 
 
 2,645,052 
 
 Glucose, or Vegetable Sy- 
 rup, charged according to 
 saccharine mat 
 
 Marmalade, per '. 
 
 Plums, preserved 
 
 Succades, per Ib. 
 TEA, per Ib. 
 TOBACCO, Unmanufactured 
 
 With 10 per cent, moisture 
 per 100 Ibs. or more 
 
 Less than ditto 
 
 Manufactured 
 
 Cigars 
 
 Cavendish or Negrohead 
 
 Home (in bond) 
 
 Foreign manufacture ... 
 
 Snuff, more than 13 Ibs. 
 moisture per 100 Ibs., 
 
 lr s o 
 
 | 41,044,770 Ibs. 6,459,797 
 
 5 788,903 Ibs. 
 
 15,847 
 17,622 
 
 197,219 
 
 3,170 
 3,966 
 
 per Ib 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 9 
 
 254 ,, 
 
 51 
 
 With less 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 22,911 
 
 Admitted 
 
 Other Manufactured To- 
 bacco 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 24,067 
 
 duty free. 
 
 4,815 
 
 Vinegar, per gal. 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 50,411 gals. 
 
 630 
 
 WINE, with less than 26 de- 
 grees of Proof Spirit, p. gal. 
 26 and less than 42 degrees 
 Additional beyond 41 de- 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 2 
 
 
 6 
 
 4,505,361 
 10,015,062 
 
 225,648 
 1,251,498 
 
 grees, per degree 3 
 
 11,037 
 
 1,716 
 
 Total Gross Produce of Customs Duties in 1869-70 
 Ditto ditto ditto 1868-9 
 
 21,676,425 
 22,585,529 
 
 Decrease 909,104 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 55 
 
 AGGREGATE AMOUNT, ETC., OF CUSTOMS REVENUE 
 FOR FIVE YEARS. 
 
 
 
 Repay- 
 
 
 
 Net Pro- 
 
 Years 
 
 
 ments for 
 
 
 Charges 
 
 duce after 
 
 ended 
 
 Total 
 
 Draw- 
 
 Net 
 
 of 
 
 deducting 
 
 March 
 
 Gross 
 
 backs and 
 
 Produce. 
 
 Collec- 
 
 Charges 
 
 31. 
 
 Receipts. 
 
 over 
 
 
 tion. 
 
 of Collec- 
 
 
 
 Entries. 
 
 
 
 tion. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1866 ... 
 
 21,356,723 
 
 216,606 
 
 21,140,117 
 
 757,654 
 
 20,382,463 
 
 1867 ... 
 
 22,355,859 
 
 257,630 
 
 22,098,229 
 
 767,832 
 
 21,330,397 
 
 1868 ... 
 
 22,808,140 
 
 247,739 
 
 22,560,401 
 
 775,674 
 
 21,784,727 
 
 1869 ... 
 
 22,585,529 
 
 293,884 
 
 22,291,645 
 
 786,435 
 
 21,505,210 
 
 1870 ... 
 
 21,676,425 
 
 337,164 
 
 21,339,261 
 
 782,168 
 
 20.557,093 
 
 Totals 
 in five 
 years 110,782,676 1,353,023 109,429,653 3,869,763 105,559,890 
 
 EXCISE. 
 Rates of Duty. Persons, etc., 
 
 *. d. 
 
 Taxed. 
 
 Armorial Bearings, Great 
 Britain, if painted on or 
 
 attached to any Carriage 2 
 
 If otherwise used or worn 1 
 
 Beer, returned drawback on 
 Carriages, Hackney, per week 
 
 duty* 
 
 Not used on Sunday* 
 
 Stage Duty, per mile* 
 
 Chicory, per cwt 1 
 
 Malt, Barley, per bushel (and 
 
 5 p. c.) 
 
 Bere or Bigg (and 5 p. c.) 
 Railway Passengers, 5 per 
 
 cent, on receipts from . . . 
 
 20,185 
 36,703 
 
 1,062 brls. 
 
 ] 6,440 No. 
 
 27,472,408 miles 
 3 12,525 cwt. 
 
 Produce 
 . 
 
 80,926 
 398 
 
 74,236 
 
 30.700 
 15,186 
 
 2 7 50,652,587 bsh. ^ 
 2 44,872 j 
 
 10,118,159 
 
 6,874,468 
 505,907 
 
 Carried forward 7,581,821 
 
 * Repealed from January 1, 1870. 
 
56 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Eates of Duty. Persons, etc., 
 
 Produce. 
 
 
 
 
 *. d. 
 
 Taxed. 
 
 . 
 
 Brought forward 
 
 7,581,821 
 
 Spirits (Home), per gal 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 22,855,229 gals. 
 
 11,427,614 
 
 Sugar, per cwt. ... from 8*. to 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 28,710 cwt. 
 
 11,883 
 
 Used by Brewers 
 
 
 
 3 6 
 
 295.865 
 
 51,776 
 
 LICENCES. 
 
 
 ALE and BEER, Dealers in 
 
 
 
 
 
 Strong, Wholesale 
 
 3 
 
 6 If 
 
 6,510 No. 
 
 21,530 
 
 Retail, not to be drunk on 
 
 
 
 
 
 the premises 
 
 1 
 
 2 0| 
 
 4,326 
 
 4,767 
 
 Publicans rated under 20, 
 
 
 
 
 
 in England and Ireland . 
 
 1 
 
 2 0| 
 
 41,935 
 
 46,215 
 
 Rated 20 and upwards ... 
 
 3 
 
 6 If 
 
 44,065 
 
 145,735 
 
 Retailers in England and 
 
 
 
 
 
 Wales, to be drunk on 
 
 
 
 
 
 the premises 
 
 3 
 
 6 If 
 
 44,501 
 
 147,177 
 
 Not to be so drunk 
 
 1 
 
 2 0^ 
 
 3,078 
 
 3,392 
 
 In Scotland, if rated under 
 
 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 287 
 
 717 
 
 At and above 10 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 289 
 
 1,213 
 
 Of Cider or Perry only 
 
 1 
 
 2 Oi 
 
 277 
 
 305 
 
 Of Table Beer only 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 2,605 
 
 651 
 
 Appraisers and House Agents 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 3,971 
 
 7,942 
 
 Auctioneers 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 5,499 
 
 54,990 
 
 Brewers of Black or Spruce 
 
 
 
 
 
 Beer, from 10*. 6d. to ... 
 
 78 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 Of other kinds, beginners... 
 
 
 
 12 6 
 
 
 
 Of not more than 20 barrels 
 
 
 
 12 6 
 
 
 
 Ditto ditto 50 
 
 1 
 
 7 6 
 
 
 
 Ditto ditto 100 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ditto ditto 1000 
 
 
 
 . 32,682 
 
 363,525 
 
 For every 50 additional / 
 
 
 1 K. f~\ 
 
 
 
 barrels over 100 f 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 Ditto ditto 1000 J 
 
 
 
 
 
 For every 50 over 1000 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 Exceeding 50,000, for every 
 
 
 
 
 
 50 barrels over 
 
 
 
 12 6. 
 
 
 
 Carried forward... 
 
 19,871,253 
 
TAXATION AS IT TS. 
 
 57 
 
 Kates of Duty 
 s. d. 
 Brc 
 Using Sugar, additional ... 1 
 Retail (under 5 Geo. IV. c. 54) 5 10 3 
 Cards, Playing, makers of ... 1 
 Sellers of 026 
 
 Persons, ftc., 
 Taxed, 
 mght forward.... 
 1,124 No. 
 34 
 16 
 9,158 
 
 2,614 
 24 
 
 132,331 -v 
 
 249,991 J 
 1,140,727 
 
 59,627 
 2,361 
 
 20,735 
 
 1,009 
 744,906 
 21 
 
 12 
 
 5,417 
 
 Produce. 
 & 
 ..19,871,253 
 1,124 
 187 
 16 
 1,144 
 
 2,614 
 
 72 
 
 1 
 465,388 
 
 i 
 
 285,181 
 
 165,286 
 4,722 
 
 52,323 
 
 12,612 
 391,075 
 420 
 120 
 
 15,549 
 
 CARRIAGES,* Hackney (in 
 London only) 1 
 
 Stage, to carry eight persons* 10 O'i 
 More than eight* 3 3 j 
 
 CARRIAGES! 
 
 In Great Britain, each having 
 4 or more wheels, and 
 weighing 4 cwt. and up- 
 wards 2 2 
 
 With fewer than 4 wheels, 
 or having 4 or more, 
 weighing less than 4 cwt. 15 
 Dogs, in Great Britain, each .050 
 Game, Licences to kill, for six 
 months 2 0") 
 
 Ditto for the year 3 > 
 
 Gamekeepers 2 OJ 
 
 To deal in 200 
 
 Hawkers and Pedlars, rates 
 increasing in Gt. Britain 
 upwards from 2 00") 
 
 In Ireland 2 2 j 
 
 Horse Dealers, Great Britain 12 10 
 Horses and Mules, each 10 6 
 Malt, Roasters of 20 
 
 Dealers in Roasted 10 
 
 MALSTERS : Beginners, 
 with surcharge according 
 to quantity 7 10^ > 
 Making not more than 5 qrs. 2 7^- J 
 Not exceeding 50 qrs 7 10| I 
 For every additional 50 qrs. 7 10^ 1 
 Exceeding 550 qrs 4 14 6 J 
 
 Repealed from January 1, 1870. 
 
 Carried forward 21,269,086 
 
 t The New Duties. 
 
58 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 \ 
 
 o.) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * Rates of Duty. Persons, etc., 
 
 s. d. Taxed. 
 
 Brought forward. . . . 
 MEDICINE Vendors, in 
 
 London and Edinburgh... 2 
 In other Cities and Boroughs 10 
 Elsewhere in Great Britain 5 
 
 Paper Makers 4 4 
 
 Passenger Vessels (for Sale of 
 
 Liquors, etc.) 1 1 
 
 Pawnbrokers, in London 15 
 
 Elsewhere 7 10 
 
 Plate, to sell 2 oz. Gold or 30 
 
 oz. Silver and upwards... 5 15 
 
 Under 2 6 
 
 Post-horses,* rates increasing 
 
 in Great Britain from ... 5 
 
 Inlreland 2 4 
 
 Racehorses in Great Britain, 
 
 per horse 3 17 
 
 Refreshment Houses, Keepers of 
 
 If rated under 30 010 6 
 
 At 30 and upwards 110 
 
 To sell Wine consumed on 
 Premises 
 
 If rated under 50 330 
 
 At 50 and upwards 550 
 
 Not consumed on Premises 
 
 If rated under 50 220 
 
 At 50 and upwards 330 
 
 Male Servants (in Great Britain 
 
 only), each 15 
 
 Soap Makers 4 4 
 
 SPIRIT DEALERS 
 
 Selling not less than 2 gals. 10 10 
 Not less than 1 quart bottle 330 
 Retailing of foreign liqueurs 220 
 
 12,339 No. 
 393 
 
 393 
 4,013 
 
 9,866 : 
 
 11,511 
 209 
 
 2,473 
 
 2,817 
 3,809 
 
 2,324 
 938 
 
 2,327 
 639 
 
 267,671 
 307 
 
 6,266 
 
 3,251 
 
 5 
 
 Produce. 
 
 . 
 .21,269,086 
 
 6,878 
 1,650 
 
 412 
 33,847 
 
 30,764 
 
 102,485 
 
 9,521 
 
 1,478 
 3,999 
 
 7,320 
 4,924 
 
 4,886 
 2,012 
 
 200,753 
 1,289 
 
 65,793 
 
 10,2 iJ 
 10 
 
 Carried forward 21,757,347 
 
 Repealed from January 1, 1870. 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 59 
 
 4 1 
 
 11 6 
 
 4 4 
 
 SPIRITS, Retailers of, 
 England and Ireland, if 
 
 rated under 10 2 
 
 Increasing by six stages to, 
 if rated at 50 and up- 
 wards 
 
 In Scotland only, if rated 
 
 under 10 
 
 Increasing by six stages to, 
 if rated at 50 and up- 
 wards 13 13 
 
 In Ireland only : Retailers 
 Licensed to sell Tea, 
 Coffee, etc. 
 
 If rated under 25 9 18 5 
 
 Increasing by four stages 
 to, if rated at 50 and 
 
 upwards 14 6 7 
 
 SPIRITS, Distillers of 1010 
 
 Rectifiers 10 10 
 
 Makers of Methylated 10 10 
 
 Retailers of Methylated ... 010 
 Stills, to make (in Scotland 
 
 and Ireland) 10 
 
 To use 10 
 
 Sweets, "Wholesale Makers 
 
 and Dealers in 5 5 
 
 Retailers of 1 2 
 
 TEA and Coffee Dealers,* if 
 
 rated under 8 2 
 
 At 8 and upwards 11 
 
 Tobacco and Snuff Manufacturers 
 Beginners, with surcharge 
 
 according to quantity ... 5 5 
 Not exceeding 20,000 Ibs. ... 5 5 
 Increasing by five stages, if 
 making 100,000 Ibs. and 
 upwards, to 31 
 
 Bates of Duty. Persons, etc., 
 s. d. Taxed. 
 
 Brought forward 
 
 in 
 
 10 
 
 84,529 No. 
 
 12,066 
 
 482 
 
 142 
 
 170 
 
 9 
 
 1,356 
 
 18 
 876 
 
 122 
 
 10,212 
 
 15 
 33 
 
 586 
 
 Produce. 
 
 . 
 21,757,347 
 
 545,898 
 
 86,479 
 
 5,166 
 
 1,491 
 
 1,785 
 
 94 
 
 678 
 
 438 
 
 640 
 11,254 
 
 20 
 
 7,392 
 
 Carried forward 22,418,691 
 
 * Repealed from July 5, 1869. 
 
60 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Kates of Duty. Persons, etc., Produce. 
 
 s. d. Taxed. . 
 
 Brought forward ...... 22,418,691 
 
 Dealers in ........................ 053 280,357 No. 74,381 
 
 Vinegar Makers .................. 550 62 , 325 
 
 Wine, Dealers in Foreign 
 Licensed to retail Beer and 
 
 Spirits ........................ 241 45,166 99,553 
 
 Ditto Beer only ............... 4 8 2| 71 313 
 
 Not licensed for Beer or 
 
 Spirits ........................ 10 10 3,956 41,538 
 
 Grocers (in Scotland) sell- 
 ing Wine not to be con- 
 sumed on the premises, 
 
 and licensed to retail Beer 4 8 2 22 97 
 
 Ditto to retail Beer and 
 
 Spirits ........................ 241 2,123 4,679 
 
 Year, Licences for less than a - - 42,022 
 
 Surcharges ........................ - - 48,412 
 
 Amount of shillings and pence 
 
 omitted ........................ - - 32 
 
 Total Gross Produce in 1869-70 ................................. 22,730,043 
 
 Ditto ditto 1868-9 ................................. 21,323,848 
 
 Increase... , 1,406,195 
 
 STAMPS. 
 Duties. 
 * d. 
 
 Admiralty Court Fee Stamps, 
 varying from 1*. to 
 
 Bankers' Notes, from 5d. to... 
 
 Bankruptcy Court Fee Stamps, 
 various rates,* from Id. ... 
 
 Bills of Exchange (Inland), 
 from Id. to 2 for sums un- 
 der 4000, with 10*. per 
 1000 above that amount... 
 
 Number, etc., 
 Taxed. 
 
 22,565 
 36,550 
 
 67,954 
 
 5,540,973 
 
 Produce. 
 . 
 
 8,807 
 1,492 
 
 27,553 
 
 384,692 
 
 Carried forward 422,544 
 
 * These Stamps became revenue from October 1, 1869. 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 61 
 
 Bills of Exchange (Foreign), 
 from Id. to 5s. under 500, 
 with l.v. per 100 additional ; 
 if drawn in sets, for every 
 bill of each set from Id. to 
 135. 4,d. under 4000, and 
 3s. 4<2. additional per 1000 
 above that sum 
 
 Bills and Notes, Composition 
 
 for Duties 
 
 Bank of England, p. million 
 Bank of Ireland, special . . . 
 Other Banks, per 100 half- 
 yearly 
 
 Cards, made for sale or use in 
 England, per pack 
 
 Chancery Court Fee Stamps,* 
 various, from Id 
 
 Chancery Fund (Ireland), 
 from 9^d. to 
 
 Civil Bill Fund (Ireland), 
 from Qd. to 
 
 Common Law Court Fee 
 Stamps, from Id. to 
 
 Companies Registration Fee 
 Stamps, from 6d. to 
 
 Copyhold, Enclosure, and 
 Tithe Commission Fee 
 Stamps, from 2s. Qd.to 
 
 ' Deeds and other Instruments 
 not otherwise enumerated. 
 Various rates of Duty." ... 
 
 Divorce and Matrimonial 
 Causes, England, from 6d. to 
 
 Insurances, Fire,f per cent. . . . 
 
 Rates of Duty. Number, etc., Produce 
 s. d. Taxed. . 
 
 Brought forward 422,544 
 
 3500 
 
 036- 
 
 3,040,169 346,316 
 
 131,958 
 
 12,303 
 64,602 
 
 4,519 
 13,678 
 91,433 
 
 9,496 
 
 500 6,054 9,011 
 
 1,698,813 
 
 100 16,304 3,244 
 
 016 465,020 
 
 Carried forward 3,272,937 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 984,240 
 
 
 
 
 229,479 
 
 4 
 
 11 
 
 
 
 18,368 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 518,296 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 590,010 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 
 
 15,076 
 
 * These Stamps became revenue from October 1, 1869. 
 f Repealed from June 25, 1869. 
 
62 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Marine, 100 on voyage . . . 
 
 For 6 months 3d., and not 
 
 exceeding 12 months 
 
 Judgments Registry Fund 
 
 (Ireland), from 4d. to 
 
 Land Registry Fee Stamps 
 
 (England), varying from4d. 
 
 to 
 
 Law Fund (Ireland), from 4d. 
 
 to 
 
 Legacies and Successions, from 
 
 1 to 10 per cent 
 
 Licences and Certificates, At- 
 torneys, etc., in London, 
 
 Dublin, and Edinburgh, per 
 
 annum 
 
 Elsewhere 
 
 (half only for first three years) 
 
 Bankers, yearly 
 
 Conveyancers, London and 
 Dublin 
 
 Elsewhere 
 
 (half only first three years) 
 
 Marriage from Registrars 
 
 Drivers of Public Carriages 
 
 in London 
 
 Medicines, from l$d. to 
 
 Newspapers (for post), Id., 
 
 Supplement, \d 
 
 Patents for Inventions, from 
 
 2d. to 
 
 Plate, Gold, per oz 
 
 Silver, per oz 
 
 Probate Court Fee Stamps, 
 
 from 3d. to 
 
 Public Record, Fee Stamps, 
 
 from 6d. to 
 
 Receipts, Drafts, and other 
 
 Documents .. 
 
 Rates of Duty. Number, etc., 
 s. d. Taxed. 
 
 Brought forward 
 
 003) No account 
 
 > kept of num- 
 6 J berof Stamps. 
 
 100 
 
 500 
 100 
 
 9 I 
 6 OJ 
 
 30 
 
 ol 
 Oj 
 
 10 
 
 050 
 100 
 
 100 
 17 
 016 
 
 10 
 100 
 
 17,970 
 
 3,660 
 
 95,017 
 
 124,905,638 
 
 13,597 
 
 1,147 
 66 
 
 8,333 
 
 12,413 
 9,543,140 
 
 26,357,718 
 108,190 
 
 403,413 
 3,267 
 
 Produce. 
 
 . 
 .3,272,937 
 
 86,93f) 
 3,324 
 
 1,335 
 9,549 
 
 2,970,769 
 
 90,679 
 
 34,410 
 474 
 
 4,166 
 
 3,103 
 72,353 
 
 113,254 
 
 121,329 
 
 66,039 
 
 001 146,049,640 
 Carried forward... 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 63 
 
 Eates of Duty. Number, etc., 
 . s. d. Taxed. 
 
 Brought forward 
 
 Eecord of Title Fee Stamps 
 
 (Ireland), from Is. to 100 
 
 Eegistration of Deeds (Ire- 
 land) Fee Stamps, from 3d. 
 to 10 
 
 Wills, Probates of, Letters of 
 Administration, and Testa- 
 mentary Inventories, Stamp 
 Duty, vary ing from 2 to... 13,500 
 between 100 & 1,000,000 ; 
 and for every 100,000 be- 
 yond, 1500 additional. 
 
 Letters of Administration 
 without wills, from 3 to... 20,250 
 between 100 & 1,000,000, 
 with 2250 additional per 
 additional 100,000. 
 
 Amount of Shillings and Pence 
 omitted , 
 
 Total Gross Produce of Stamps in 1869-70 
 
 1868-69 
 
 165 
 
 50,479 
 
 Produce. 
 
 . 
 7,605,999 
 
 38 
 11,355 
 
 35,564 1,915,470 
 
 16 
 
 9,532,878 
 9,505,238 
 
 Increase 27,640 
 
 The following appear to be some of the Duties lumped together 
 in the Parliamentary Returns : 
 
 ADMISSIONS. 
 
 Duties. 
 In England or Ireland : 
 
 Admission to act as Advocate or Barrister 50 
 
 Attorney or Proctor 25 
 
 Notary Public 30 
 
64 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Duties. 
 
 In Scotland : 
 
 Admission to act as Agent, Solicitor, or W.S. 25 
 Ditto, without indenture... 60 
 
 ,, Do. do. in Supreme Courts, 
 
 additional 30 
 
 Do. do. in inferior ditto, 
 
 additional 25 
 
 To Fellowship of College of Physicians 25 
 
 To Degree of M.D. in Scotland 10 
 
 To Corporation by privilege 1 
 
 Ditto, on any other ground 3 
 
 To Church benefice in England or Ireland... 700 
 
 Scotland 200 
 
 To hold Perpetual Curacy 3 10 
 
 To be Non-resident; 1 
 
 AGBEEMENTS for 20 and upwards, per 
 
 lOSOwords 020 
 
 If under hand only, ditto 6 
 
 Appraisements under 5 6 
 
 Increasing by 9 steps to 1 
 
 Apprentices' Indentures, if there be no premium 026 
 
 ..-;* If premium be under 30 100 
 
 Increasing by 9 steps to 60 
 
 Articles of Clerkship to Attorneys, &c. 
 
 In England and Ireland 80 
 
 In inferior Courts ditto 60 
 
 In superior Scotland 60 
 
 In inferior 30 
 
 Bonds, Mortgages, and Warrants of Attorney 
 
 if not above 50 013 
 
 Increasing with extra charges to 10 
 
 Conveyances, Leases, etc., with Fines 
 
 If sum paid be not above 5 6 
 
 Increasing by 15 steps to 1 10 6 
 
 With extra charges at 300 and upwards. 
 Grants under Letters patent 
 
 foraDuke 350 
 
 Marquis 300 
 
 ' Viscount 200 
 
 Baron 150 
 
 Baronet 100 
 
 Archbishop, in Ireland 150 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 65 
 
 Bishop 
 
 Secretary of State 
 
 Leases without Fine if Eent not above 5 
 
 Increasing to 
 
 With additions according to rent and length of term. 
 
 Marriage Licences, ordinary 
 
 special 
 
 Duties. 
 
 100 
 
 200 
 
 006 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 500 
 
 ASSESSED TAXES, ETC. 
 
 Kates of Duty. Quantities Produce. 
 
 
 
 
 y. 
 
 d. 
 
 Taxed. 
 
 ARMORIAL Bearings, if 
 
 
 
 } 
 
 
 assessed 3 10s., for any 
 
 
 
 
 
 carriage at the rate of 
 
 
 
 ( 
 
 71,227 
 
 3 10s 
 
 2 
 
 12 
 
 if 
 
 
 Other persons 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 2J 
 
 . 
 
 
 CARRIAGES with 4 wheels- 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 Drawn by 2 or more horses 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 or mules 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 33,076 
 
 
 Let for hire without horses 
 
 1 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 394 
 
 
 Drawn by one horse or mule 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 73,925 
 
 
 Let for hire without horses 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 516 
 
 
 With 4 wheels of less diameter than 
 
 30 
 
 inches 
 
 
 
 Drawn by 2 or more ponies 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 or mules 
 
 1 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 982 
 
 
 Let for hire without horses 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 6 
 
 9 
 
 430,331 
 
 Drawn by one pony or mule 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 14,115 
 
 
 Let for hire without horses 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 43 
 
 
 With less than 4 wheels 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Drawn by two or more horses 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 or mules 
 
 2 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 183 
 
 
 Let for hire without horses 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 Drawn by one horse or mule 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 158,459 
 
 
 Let for hire without horses 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 439J 
 
 
 
 
 Carried 
 
 forward 501,558 
 
 
 
 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Rates of Duty. 
 s. d. 
 
 Quantities 
 Taxed. 
 
 Produce. 
 
 
 
 Drawn by one pony or mule 
 
 not exceeding 13 hands... 
 
 Let for hire without horses 
 
 Used by common carriers 
 
 With 4 wheels 
 
 With less than 4 wheels ... 
 Hair powder for using or 
 
 wearing 
 
 Horse-dealers within bills of 
 
 mortality 
 
 . Other 
 
 HORSES and Mules, exceed- 
 ing 13 hands for riding, 
 or carriage, duty charged, 
 
 each 
 
 Kept by farmers v 
 
 By bailiff's, shepherds, or 
 
 herdsmen 
 
 Rectors, Vicars, or Curates 
 
 Roman Catholic Priests 
 
 and Dissenting Ministers 
 
 Physicians, Surgeons, or 
 
 Apothecaries 
 
 Used in Trade 
 
 By common carriers 
 
 Under 13 hands for riding, 
 or carriages, paying duty 
 
 Used in trade 
 
 House duty, inhabited Shops 
 and Warehouses in 
 
 the 
 
 Beershops 
 
 Farm Houses 
 
 Dwelling 
 
 SERVANTS Male 18 years 
 
 of age and upwards 
 
 Under 18 years 
 
 Under gardeners 
 
 Under Gamekeepers 
 
 10 
 
 5 
 
 2 6 
 
 1 6 
 
 1 3 
 
 27 10 
 13 15 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 1 
 10 
 10 
 10 
 
 Brought forward 501,558 
 
 35,815 
 12 
 
 2,528 
 4,352 
 
 827 
 
 I 58 ( 
 
 oJ 1,248-) 
 
 110 
 
 10 6 
 
 053 
 
 201,733 
 126,321 
 
 4,253 
 
 4,458 
 
 479 
 
 3,543 
 
 227,030 
 
 12,787 
 
 68,247 
 24,889 J 
 
 972 
 18,791 
 
 453,772 
 
 Annual value. 
 6 8,453,784-x 
 
 6 3,332,695 ( 
 
 6 645,919 C !> 674 > 521 
 
 9 24,732,991 >* 
 
 180,091 > 
 
 87,839 / 244,462 
 12,231 C 
 4,693 J 
 
 Carried forward 2,894,076 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 67 
 
 Brought forward 2,894,070 
 
 LAND TAX. 
 
 Produce. 
 
 
 Lands and Tenements : various,* not exceeding 4-s. in the-* 
 
 , to produce the quota payable by each parish under > 1,654,724 
 
 the provisions of Acts 38 Geo. III. c. 5. and c. 60 3 
 
 Offices and Pensions Is. Qd. in the 237 
 
 Carried forward ... . 4,549,03-7 
 
 * By the Act imposing this tax, (as some sort of compensation, it may be 
 supposed, for the payments and obligations of which the landholders in Parlia- 
 ment had freed themselves and their brethren out of doors, giving to the 
 Crown Excise Duties in lieu of them), it was obviously intended to be levied 
 on increasing or decreasing, and not on stationary value at the time. In 1692, 
 anew valuation was made, and certain payments were apportioned to each county 
 and hundred, or other division. That valuation was said to be much below 
 the mark. For upwards of a century the tax was m^cle payable by annual 
 Acts, and varied in amount from 1*. to 4s. in the pound, at which latter amount 
 it was made permanent by the Act above cited, but only on the valuation of 
 1692, and subject to redemption by landholders at easy rates ; a fraud on 
 posterity to which Pitt resorted when he stood graatly in need of more money 
 to waste on foreign wars. By the permanent arrangement in parts of the 
 country where land has not increased in value since 1692, the tax is now 
 actually four shillings in the pound, whilst in others, in and about Liverpool, 
 Manchester, and Birmingham, for example, years pass before the fractions 
 amount to sums collectable in copper coins. 
 
68 
 
 TAXATION AS IT is. 
 
 Brought forward 4,549,037 
 
 INCOME TAX. 
 
 Schedule. 
 r Lands, Tenements, 
 etc., in the ... 
 
 On Incomes 
 of 100 and 
 upwards with 
 deduction of 
 60 on in- 
 comes under 
 200. 
 
 005 
 
 Amount 
 of 
 Income 
 
 Assessed. 
 
 
 \ 
 
 133,478,032 
 
 Occupation of lands 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 In England 
 
 
 
 
 
 2| 
 
 30,256,227 
 
 
 In Scotland and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ireland 
 
 
 
 
 
 If 
 
 7,107,318 
 
 B. 
 
 Nurseries and Mar- 
 
 
 
 ** 
 
 
 
 ket Gardens 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 82,309 
 
 
 Composition for 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ Tithes 
 
 
 
 
 
 If 
 
 1,920 
 
 p ( Annuities,Dividends, 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 
 ( etc. .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 34,790,120 
 
 / Professions, Trades, \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 Employments, 
 Railways Mines, 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 161,594,118 
 
 \ Ironworks, etc. ... ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 E. 
 
 Public Offices 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 22,110,858 / 
 
 
 Amount of Shillings and Pence omitted.. 
 
 389,420,902 
 
 10,21-3,342 
 
 Total Land and Assessed Taxes in 1869-70 14,792,382 
 
 1868-69 12,242,101 
 
 Increase..... 2,550,281 
 
 AGGEEGATE INLAND EEVENUE FOE FIVE YEAES. 
 (1866-1870). 
 
 EXCISE. 
 s. 
 20,778,842 
 21,514,131 6 
 21,323,84S 12 
 21,084,365 8 
 22,730,043 2 
 
 d. 
 
 8 f 
 
 8i 
 
 STAMPS. 
 s. d. 
 9,847,196 1 1 
 9,601,104 10 8* 
 9,737,573 8 Hi 
 9,505,238 4 1J 
 9,532,878 2 7 
 
 TAXES. 
 
 s. d. 
 9,843,449 6 9* 
 9,238,214 5 2| 
 9,752,561 4 8 
 12,242,101 8 9f 
 14,792,382 3 21 
 
 TOTAL. 
 s. d. 
 40,469,487 8 9J 
 40,353,450 2 7 
 40,813,983 5 7f 
 42,831,705 1 7i 
 47,055,303 8 7* 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 69 
 
 II 
 
70 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 CO rH 
 O i I 
 rH CM 
 
 CQ 
 
 3 S coP 
 
 g - 
 
 t^ CO 1C 
 
 O O CM CM rH 
 
 *> CO CO O5 t> 
 
 PH 
 
 W 
 
 O 
 
 o 
 
 ^ 0) 
 
 l c s g. 
 
 Ill 
 
 PH O Q 
 
 
 
 cd 05 
 
 O ab 
 
 PH 
 
 S 2 
 
 Q S 
 
 S - 
 
 CO 
 
 O 
 
 CM O5 -Si 
 CM rH 
 
 O5 1C CO rH rH 
 CM CD CO O 00 
 1C CO G^ rH 1C 
 
 CM" r-T <35 (^T -^T 
 
 CM CM rH 
 
 <^D O5 CO rH CM 
 
 -S< ^ *> O O 
 
 r-^ C U^ ic^ 05^ 
 
 GO" co t^" CM" oo" 
 
 SJ ' ' 
 
 CO 
 
 ^ *"! *~1 ^ "^. 
 10" -^ I-H" oo" I-H" 
 
 1C rH O CO i I 
 
 CO *C CO CM O 
 
 rH r? 00 
 
 I CO GO t^ CO rH 
 
 1C t" ^? ^ ^O 
 
 g CO t^ 00_ 00_ CO 
 
 r ~ l CM CM 
 
 o 
 
 1 .1 1 s 2 
 
 M O g M w 
 
 6 H co H fS 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 71 
 
 FISCAL AND COMMERCIAL STATISTICS. 
 
 I. PUBLIC INCOME AND EXPENDITUEE FROM 1800-1 
 
 TO 1869-70. 
 
 At Decennial Periods. 
 
 INCOME. 
 
 From 
 Customs. 
 Year. 
 
 1800 6,788,206 
 
 1810 10,876,273 
 
 1820 9,837,279 
 
 1830 17,540,322 
 
 1840 21,784,499 
 
 1850 20,442,170 
 
 1860 23,305,776 
 
 1870 21,449,843 
 
 From 
 
 From all other 
 
 Total 
 
 Excise. 
 
 Sources. 
 
 Income. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 10,840,406 
 
 16,516,972 
 
 34,145.584 
 
 24,767,772 
 
 31,500,497 
 
 67,144.542 
 
 27,929,832 
 
 16,287,644 
 
 54,054,755 
 
 18,644,384 
 
 13,871,910 
 
 50,056,616 
 
 13,751,968 
 
 12,031,098 
 
 47,567,565 
 
 14,316,083 
 
 18,052,427 
 
 52,810,680 
 
 19,435,000 
 
 27,542,898 
 
 70,283,674 
 
 21,879,238 
 
 32,345,115 
 
 75,674,196 
 
 EXPENDITUEE. 
 
 Year. 
 1800 
 1810 
 1820 
 1830 
 1840 
 1850 
 1860 
 1870 
 
 National 
 Debt. 
 
 17,381,473 
 24,246,948 
 31,157,847 
 29,118,858 
 29,381,718 
 28,091,589 
 26,231,018 
 27,053,560 
 
 Army,* 
 Militia, &c. 
 
 21,410,209 
 27,847,222 
 10,037,106 
 8,605,071 
 8,521,907 
 8,955,060 
 18,013,896 
 15,065,400 
 
 Navy. 
 
 
 14,725,909 
 20,021,512 
 6,387,799 
 5,309,605 
 5,597,511 
 6,437,883 
 13,331,668 
 9,757,290 
 
 Civil f 
 Services. 
 
 2,938,421 
 4,682,661 
 4,416,507 
 4,109,409 
 5,660,400 
 6,747,342 
 15,265,477 
 17,276,092 
 
 Total 
 Expenditure. 
 
 56,456,012 
 76,798.343 
 51,999.259 
 47,142.943 
 49,161.536 
 50,231,874 
 72,842.<'59 
 69,152,342 
 
 * Including Fortifications and Abyssinia, 
 f Including Collection of Revenue. 
 
72 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 II. AGGREGATE FOE THE SEVENTY YEAES, TO 
 MAECH 31, 1870. 
 
 INCOME. 
 
 From Customs 
 
 Duties 1,132,748,210 
 
 From Excise Duties 1,275,595,758 
 
 Total Burden on 
 
 Trade, Industry, 
 
 and the Poor 2,408,343,968 
 
 From all other 
 
 Sources 1,397,229,538 
 
 Total Income. 3,805,573,506 
 
 EXPENDITTJBE. 
 
 Interest, &c., of Na- 
 
 tional Debt 1 ,904,305,989 
 
 OnArmy,Militia,&c. 1,001,031,316 
 On Navy 683,503,462 
 
 Total for War Debt 
 
 and War : 3,588,840,767 
 
 Civil Services . 560,500,867 
 
 Total Expenditure . 4,149,341,634 
 Total Income 3,805,573,506 
 
 Excess of Expendi- 
 ture .. 
 
 343,768,128 
 
 III GEOSS INCOME & EXPENDITUEE FOE EIGHTEEN 
 YEAES, FEOM 1851-2 TO 1869-70, INCLUSIVE. 
 
 INCOME. 
 
 Customs 
 
 
 439,154,342 
 
 EXPENDITURE. 
 Interest and Man- 
 
 Excise 355,083,934 agement of Debt 524,612,715 
 
 Army, Militia, &c. 301,642,768 
 
 Total Customs and 
 Excise .. . 794,238,276 
 
 j Navy 212,606,095 
 
 Income Tax 175,405,228 
 
 Fortifications * 
 
 Total for War and 
 
 5,755,000 
 
 Stamps 159,627,651 
 
 Land and Assessed 
 
 Taxes 64,282,025 Civil Services 
 
 Debt 1,044,616,578 
 
 Post Office 64,616,516 
 
 Crown Lands .. 
 Miscellaneous .. 
 
 5,965,549 
 38,532,382 
 
 508,429,351 
 
 1,302,667,627 
 
 186,625,256 
 
 86,359,497 
 Total Civil Services 272,984,753 
 
 Collection of Ee- 
 venue .. 
 
 Total Expenditure 1,317,601,331 
 Total Income... . 1,302,667,627 
 
 Excess of Expendi- 
 
 ture. 
 
 14,933,704 
 
 * Provided for by Annuities. 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 73 
 
 IV.-SOUECES OF INCOME DUEING EIGHTEEN YEAES. 
 
 TAXES. 
 
 CUSTOMS. 
 
 
 
 Tobacco and Snuff. 107,771,604 
 
 Sugar, Molasses, &c. . . . 104,570, 104 
 
 Tea 88,945,372 
 
 Spirits 58,099,124 
 
 Wine 30,018,406 
 
 Corn, Meal, and Flour* 11,682,185 
 
 Coffee 8,350,148 
 
 All other imported 
 
 Articles 27,327,345 
 
 Miscellaneous Eeceipts 2,722,467 
 
 Total Customs 439,486,755 
 
 EXCISE. 
 
 
 
 Spirits 174,318,439 
 
 Malt 114,555,283 
 
 Licences 34,428,466 
 
 Other Eeceipts 31,729.512 
 
 Total Excise 355,031,750 
 
 STAMPS.. 
 
 
 
 Deeds and other In- 
 struments 27,554,362 
 
 Probates and Letters 
 
 of Administration ... 25,721,013 
 
 Legacies and Succes- 
 sions .,. 40,852,145 
 
 Fire Insurances 24,311,727 
 
 Marine ,. 5,703,761 
 
 Bills of Exchange, 
 
 Composition, &c. ... 13,522,605 
 
 Penny Eeceipts, 
 
 Drafts, &c 7,558,864 
 
 Other Eeceipts 14,472,944 
 
 Total Stamps 159,697,421 
 
 Income Tax 175,340,639 
 
 Land and Assessed 
 
 Taxes 64,259,919 
 
 Total Taxes 239,600,558 
 
 POST OFFICE AND CBOWN LANDS. 
 
 
 
 Post Office 64,715,286 
 
 Crown Lands 5,892,826 
 
 70,608,112 
 
 RECAPITULATION OF TABLE III. 
 
 
 Customs 439,154,342 
 
 Excise 355,083,934 
 
 Income Tax 175,405,228 
 
 Stamps 159,627,651 
 
 Land and Assessed 
 
 Taxes 64,282,025 
 
 Post Office 64,616,516 
 
 Crown Lands 5,965,549 
 
 Miscellaneous . .. 38,532,382 
 
 Total Income ......... 1,302,667,627 
 
 * Duties repealed, and Bread Tax really abolished from June 1, 1869. 
 
74 
 
 TAXATION AS IT 18. 
 
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 63 
 
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 2 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 75 
 
 VII.-IMPERIAL AND LOCAL TAXATION. 
 
 The Amount levied for Expenditure connected with the Relief of 
 the Poor, County and Borough Police, Roads and Bridges, Drainage 
 and Lighting of Towns in the year 1870, is estimated as follows : 
 England and Wales, 20,500,000; Scotland, 2,000,000; Ireland, 
 2,500,000 ; total, 25,000,000 ; making, with the Imperial Taxation 
 about 100,500,000, or 3. 56-. per head for every man, woman, and, 
 child of the population. 
 
 VIII. THE NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 The fiscal monster, which, as will be seen from Table II., has swal- 
 lowed upwards of Nineteen Hundred Millions during the present 
 Century, owes its origin to Indirect Taxation, and " the Balance of 
 Power." From the Norman Conquest up to the Accession of Charles II., 
 the country contrived to fight and pay its way, because its revenue 
 was derived from lands reserved to the Crown, and lands allotted on 
 condition of feudal service, and feudal payments from the allottees 
 strictly in the nature of Rent ; and occasional direct levies on the 
 community generally, duties on commodities being almost entirely un- 
 known. As a condition of his Restoration, probably, Charles II. did 
 away with these feudal obligations and payments, and his Parliament 
 of Jj&ndkolders, converting themselves into landowners, gave his 
 Majesty and his successors excise duties on Beer, &c., payable by the 
 people, in compensation. Never was grosser fraud practised on any 
 nation, unless it were that which converted the Land Tax of four 
 shillings in the pound on the full annual value, enacted in a subsequent 
 reign, into one of that amount on the value as it stood in 1692, accord- 
 ing to which the Tax now realizes in some parts of the kingdom, 
 Liverpool, for instance, less than a farthing in the pound. The 
 " Merry Monarch " contrived to overrun his means to the extent of 
 upwards of Half a Million, but the debt was called " the King's," not 
 that of the nation. It was somewhat increased by his successor ; but 
 with William III. came the notion that it was the function of this 
 country to maintain "the Balance of Power in Europe," and hence 
 arose the Funding System which was a mortgaging of taxes ; a con- 
 version of "King's Debt" into the "National Debt;" and a very 
 rapid growth of the latter. The following is a historj^ of its progress : 
 
76 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Year. 
 
 1683 ...... The King's Debt at the Accession of William III 
 
 1702 ...... The National Debt 
 
 1714 ...... 
 
 1727 ...... 
 
 1760 ...... 5} 
 
 1820 ...... 
 
 1830 ...... 
 
 1837 ...... 
 
 , 870 
 
 
 661,263 
 
 Anne ............... 12,767,225 
 
 George 1 ............. 36,175,460 
 
 George II .......... 52,523,023 
 
 5} George III ......... 102,014,013 
 
 George IV .......... 834,900,960 
 
 William IV ....... 784,803,997 
 
 Victoria ............ 787,529,114 
 
 f Funded 740,789,548 Unfunded 6,761,500 1 
 
 I Estimated Capital of Annuities 53,130,380 J 
 
 IX. ANNUAL CHARGE FOE DEBT. 
 
 In 1792. In 1816. 
 
 } 7 ' 817 > 750 
 
 fFunda 
 
 In 1846. 
 
 23 - 739 ' 573 
 
 Ditto of Unfunded Debt 346,713 1,998,937 421,432 
 
 Terminable Annuities .................... 1,307,212 1,894,612 3,916,982 
 
 Total Charge ........................... 9,471,675 32,457,141 28,077,987 
 
 In 1856. 
 
 In 1870. 
 
 In 1866. 
 
 23 > 542 > 594 
 
 Ditto of Unfunded Debt 870,284 328,800 252,951 
 
 Terminable Annuities ..................... 3,863,907 2,361,894 4,365,848 
 
 Total Charge ........................... 28,112,825 26,233,288 27,046,653 
 
 X. TOTAL AMOUNT OF DEBT AT THE END OF EACH 
 FINANCIAL YEAE, 
 
 [Funded, Unfunded, and Capital of Annuities.'] 
 
 1855 ..................... 805,411,690 
 
 1856 ..................... 833,857,515 
 
 1857 ..................... 835,676,254 
 
 1858 ..................... 829,634,258 
 
 1859 ..................... 827,077,627 
 
 1860 ..................... 821,936,564 
 
 1861 ..................... 820,756,349 
 
 1862 ..................... 820,159,114 
 
 1863 ..................... 820,518,866 
 
 1864 ..................... 817,007,652 
 
 1865 ..................... 811,919,165 
 
 1866 ..................... 806,935,963 
 
 1867 ..................... 805,019,317 
 
 1868 ..................... 805,918,231 
 
 1869 ..................... 804,785,556 
 
 1870... ...800,681,428 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 77 
 
 XI. TAXES REPEALED OE REDUCED, AND IMPOSED 
 FROM 1840 TO 1869. 
 
 Repealed or 
 
 Reduced. 
 
 
 
 Customs 23,864,803 
 
 Excise 7,334,000 
 
 Income Tax 20,315,000 
 
 Stamps 3,502,381 
 
 Other Taxes ... 3,594,742 
 Postage 1,240,000 
 
 Imposed. 
 
 Raduction. 
 
 Increase. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4,516,558 
 
 19,348,245 
 
 
 8,687,804 
 
 
 1,353,804 
 
 22,764,000 
 
 
 2,449,000 
 
 2,616,687 
 
 885,694 
 
 
 911,447 
 
 2,683,295 
 
 
 118,567 
 
 1,121,433 
 
 
 59,85.0,926 39,615,063 24,038,667 3,802,804 
 Net Reduction... 20,235,863 
 
 XII. PROGRESS OF FOREIGN TRADE. 
 
 At the commencement of the period embraced in the foregoing 
 table, viz. : the year ending January 5, 1841, the gross produce of 
 Customs and Excise Duties was 38,127,406. The Customs Tariff 
 then comprised some 1,200 articles of import subject to duty : it now 
 consists of about a score. The Excise Tariff included many articles 
 now happily liberated, such as bricks, glass, candles, soap, paper, &c., 
 &c., &c. In the interim, Custom Duties have been repealed or re- 
 duced to the amount of 19,348,245 ; Excise Duties increased to that 
 of 1,353,804, leaving a net reduction of 17,994,411. The produce 
 of both in the year ended the 31st of March last was 43,292,000, an 
 increase of 5,164,594, compared with their yield in 1840, showing an 
 actual recovery of 24,512,839 from the partial liberation of Trade, 
 and affording the greatest possible encouragement to further progress 
 in the same direction, of which proofs may be gathered from the fol- 
 lowing tables : 
 
 Before and after Peel's Tariff Reforms. 
 Imports. Exports. Total. 
 
 
 
 1840 62,004,000 110,128,716 172,132,716 
 
 1850 152,389,053 115,821,092 268,210,145 
 
 Increase . . . 
 
 90,385,053 
 
 5,692,376 96,077,429 
 
78 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Before and after French Commercial Treaty. 
 
 Imports. Exports. Total. 
 
 
 
 1880 ...210,530,873 164,521,351 375,052,224 
 
 1869 295,428,967 237,106,325 532,535,292 
 
 Increase 84,898,094 
 
 72,584,974 157,483,068 
 
 The increase of imports was therefore 145 per cent. ; that of Ex- 
 ports 5 per cent., and that of Imports and Exports 55 per cent, in the 
 first 10 years ; of Imports 239 per cent. ; of Exports 49 per cent. ; and 
 of Imports and Exports 117 per cent, in 20 years ; and of Imports 376 
 per cent. ; of Exports 115 per cent. ; and of Imports and Exports 209 
 per cent, in 29 years. 
 
 XIII. FOOD IMPORTED IN 1840 AND IN 1869. 
 
 
 
 Quantity. 
 
 Yalue. 
 
 
 
 184 
 
 to. 
 
 Animals living, viz. : 
 
 
 
 
 
 Oxen, Bulls, Cows, and Calves .. 
 
 
 prohibited 
 
 
 Sheep and Lambs 
 
 
 prohibited 
 
 
 Bacon and Hams 
 
 . ...cwts. 
 
 6,180 
 
 14,657 
 
 Beef 
 
 
 prohibited 
 
 
 Butter 
 
 JJ 
 
 252,661 
 
 934,846 
 
 Cheese 
 
 JJ 
 
 226,492 
 
 424,616 
 
 Cocoa and Chocolate 
 
 ...Ibs. 
 
 3,499,746 
 
 73,168 
 
 Coffee 
 
 . . . . ,, 
 
 70,250,766 
 
 2,129,114 
 
 Corn: Wheat 
 
 . ...cwts. 
 
 8,637,993 
 
 5,880,480 
 
 Other kinds 
 
 . . . . ,, 
 
 6,416,258 
 
 2,171,691 
 
 Flour and Meal 
 
 5) 
 
 1,546,523 
 
 1,391,653 
 
 Currants 
 
 . . . . ,, 
 
 221,119 
 
 589,651 
 
 Eggs 
 
 .... No. 
 
 96,149,160 
 
 220,342 
 
 Fish 
 
 ....Ibs. 
 
 prohibited 
 
 
 
 Lard 
 
 ....cwts. 
 
 92 
 
 258 
 
 Oranges and Lemons 
 
 
 not specified 
 
 150,137 
 
 Pork : Fresh 
 
 ....cwts. 
 
 prohibited 
 
 
 Salted 
 
 M 
 
 29,532 
 
 58,818 
 
 Potatoes 
 
 JJ 
 
 2,293 
 
 516 
 
 Raisins , 
 
 JJ 
 
 224,781 
 
 298,772 
 
 Kice 
 
 . . . . ,, 
 
 443,918 
 
 277,449 
 
 S ugar : Raw 
 
 
 4,035,844 
 
 9,053,770 
 
 Refined and Candv 
 
 ?> 
 
 17,388 
 
 25,809 
 
 Molasses and Juice 
 
 , . . . ,, 
 
 458,631 
 
 600,949 
 
 Tea 
 
 .Ibs. 
 
 28,021,882 
 
 3,502,735 
 
 Total value 27,799,431 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 79 
 
 Animals living, viz. : 
 
 Oxen, Bulls, Cows, and Calves No. 
 
 Sheep and Lambs 
 
 Bacon and Hams cwts. 
 
 Beef 
 
 Butter 
 
 Cheese 
 
 Cocoa and Chocolate Ibs. 
 
 Coffee 
 
 Corn : Wheat cwts. 
 
 Other kinds 
 
 Flour and Meal 
 
 Currants ,, 
 
 Eggs No. 
 
 Fish cwts. 
 
 Lard 
 
 Oranges and Lemons bush. 
 
 Pork : Fresh cwts. 
 
 Salted ,, 
 
 Potatoes 
 
 Raisins ,, 
 
 Rice 
 
 Sugar: Raw 
 
 Refined and Candy ,, 
 
 Molasses and Juice 
 
 Tea . 
 
 96,196,361 
 Value in 1840 27,799,431 
 
 Quantity. 
 
 Yalue. 
 
 1869. 
 
 
 
 
 220,190 
 
 3,833,850 
 
 709,843 
 
 1,219,014 
 
 740,194 
 
 2,432,260 
 
 229,223 
 
 420,338 
 
 1,259,089 
 
 6,923,210 
 
 979,189 
 
 3,083,850 
 
 13,045,991 
 
 320,916 
 
 173,416,332 
 
 4,927,805 
 
 37,695,828 
 
 19,515,758 
 
 33,364,643 
 
 14,032,021 
 
 5,401,555 
 
 3,799,579 
 
 944,489 
 
 1,166,905 
 
 442,175,040 
 
 1,126,853 
 
 629,341 
 
 631,109 
 
 255,964 
 
 930,156 
 
 1,939,363 
 
 927,804 
 
 187,874 
 
 575,825 
 
 1,660,189 
 
 392,677 
 
 397,846 
 
 769,850 
 
 5,327,276 
 
 2,937,631 
 
 11,033,653 
 
 13,540,017 
 
 1,068,940 
 
 1,774,858 
 
 951,730 
 
 602,610 
 
 139,223,298 
 
 10,311,465 
 
 Increase in 1869 68,396,930 
 
 Sir Stafford Northcote's return, No. 469, of Session 1863, from which 
 the figures for 1840 are taken, includes Pigs amongst the things pro- 
 hibited in that year ; and they are not mentioned either in the Finance 
 Accounts or the Statistical Abstract for 1868. All the articles above 
 enumerated were duty frete in 1869, excepting Cocoa, Coffee, Corn, 
 Currants, Raisins, Sugar, and Tea ; and Corn, with its tail of 36 other 
 farinaceous substances, were happily enfranchised by Mr. Lowe, in the 
 Session of 1869. 
 
80 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 XIV. IMPOST DUTIES KEPEALED FEOM 1850 TO 1860 
 INCLUSIVE. 
 
 Compiled from return, No. 144, of last Session, " specifying the 
 Articles upon which Import Duties were repealed between the years 
 
 1850 and 1869, together with the amount of Duty received upon each 
 Article in the year preceding its repeal ;" furnished on the motion of 
 Lord John Manners, and ordered to be printed August 3rd, 1870. 
 1850) 
 
 1851 [ Nil. 
 
 1852 J 
 
 Amount of 
 duties received 
 in year pre- 
 ceding. 
 
 1853 Coir rope, twine and strands ; copper, ore, regulus, 
 &c. ; fish of all sorts; glass manufactures, ex- 
 cept window glass ; hams ; lead, pig and sheet ; 
 linen manufactures ; mats and matting ; metal 
 leaf, not gold ; oil of turpentine ; pictures ; 
 poultry and game ; seeds, clover, grass, trefoil, 
 &c. ; tin in blocks, ingots, bars, or slabs ; and 
 "other articles, on each of which the receipt of 
 
 duty was less than 1,000 " 83,971 
 
 1854) 
 
 1855 ( Nil. 
 
 1856 J 
 
 1857 Glass window (plain or stained of one colour only), 
 
 shades and cylinders, and liquorice root, 124 2,198 
 
 1858 1 m 
 
 1859) 
 
 1860 Almonds, sweet ; apples, &c., raw ; arms, swords, 
 cannons, &c. ; baskets ; bronze manufactures ; 
 butter ; caoutchouc manufactures ; cheese ; 
 china or porcelain ware ; clocks and watches ; 
 cloves ; cotton manufactures ; dates ; eggs ; em- 
 broidery and needle work ; feathers dressed ; 
 flowers, artificial; fruit, raw, unenumerated ; 
 ginger ; glass, flint, cut or ornamented ; iron, 
 wrought or manufactured ; lace ; leather, boots, 
 shoes, pants, and gloves ; liquorice, juice and 
 paste ; lucifers, of wood ; mace ; musical instru- 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 81 
 
 ments ; nutmegs ; nuts, small, and walnuts ; oils, 
 chemical, essential, and perfumed ; onions ; 
 opera glasses ; opium ; oranges and lemons ; 
 platting for hats or bonnets; rice, seeds, car- 
 away, &c. ; silk manufactures ; tallow ; toys ; 
 woollen and worsted yarn ; manufactured goods 
 unenumerated, and " other articles on each of 
 which the receipt of duty was less than 1,000." 981,250 
 1861 Hats or bonnets of straw, chip, bast, cane, or 
 
 horsehair; and paper, books and prints 34,169 
 
 1862 Hops 98,904 
 
 1863 Charges on Import Entries, and Bills of Lading ... 180,720 
 
 SSI ** 
 
 1866 Pepper; timber and wood; ships, foreign and 
 colonial, built of wood, on registration as British, 
 7,070 445,462 
 
 1867 1 Nil. 
 
 18683 
 
 1869 Corn, grain, meal, and flour; arrowroot, potatoe 
 flour, sago, and other farinaceous substances 
 charged with the same duty 8,855 864,436 
 
 Total... 2,691,110 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 83 
 
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 ft 
 
 
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 Wrf 
 
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 30 
 
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 H 
 
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 OQ 
 
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 77 i i i i i i i M ill 
 
84 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 CM 
 HO 
 
 CO 
 
 1> -^ CO t^ 
 
 POO CO J> to 
 coco 
 
 rq xO^rH^xo^ 
 CO iM OS N iH 
 
 jrco T? Tji xo to 
 
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 & 
 
 
 
 XO CD 00 CO *> 
 
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 O O O O r- PH r- 
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 CD CD t"^ 
 GO CO GO 
 rH rH rH 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 85 
 
 STATISTICAL ABSTRACT. 
 
 PUBLIC REVENUE, EXPENDITURE, &c. 
 
 The following Statistical Abstracts will bring the Revenue and 
 Expenditure, etc., of this Country to the present time, sufficiently be- 
 fore the reader for all the purposes of these pages. Nor is it unim- 
 portant for those who enter into the consideration of the changes here 
 proposed, that they should be previously well acquainted with these 
 figures, whicn are taken from the Government Accounts, and, at 
 least, represent so much money taken from the pockets of the people, 
 if nothing more which can be relied on. 
 
 No. I. Total Amount of the Estimated and Actual Public Revenue 
 and Expenditure of the United Kingdom, with the difference between 
 the Estimated and Actual Amounts, and the Surplus or Deficiency of 
 Income. 
 
 (In this table, in accordance with the system upon which the Budget 
 Estimates have been framed, the figures for the Revenue and Expen- 
 diture show the Net amounts up to the year ended 31st March, 1856, 
 and the Gross amounts after that period.) 
 
86 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 . 
 
 4- cfl 
 
 
 
 1 - 
 
 11 Illif 
 
 14 I'ss 
 
 I I 
 
 ef 
 
 ^ 00 IO t^O 
 
 SI 3 
 
 g S 
 
 N CM CO "5 "5 - CO rH CO 00 3 O CO U3 
 
 co" rH*e*rH"rH > eo > Vrc*V-r c<? T 
 
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 H3}<iaaOOOOOrHCNS<l'<#OOr-H> OO O> "* 
 
 ^ * oo o oo o a> oo CD us <? * > os TJH ; 
 
 lclo?Ci5i?Lo . rS 
 GinJC^C^i-'tid^C^tCofMOOCOOiO OO ^O 
 
 "? + + + 1 1 17 17 1 i ^ + 
 
 I i 
 
 6JD U 
 
 HI .T 
 
 ^r? i>.2 
 
 COOlOO^COiOl^ 
 
 c^c^co ect os oo t ! 
 
 * 
 
 ^ 
 co(>c<ro N 65 
 
 OOOSi iO 
 
 Lsssssassf i a 1 1 
 \&&6$i&&f& j || 
 
 ! -5 .ga, 
 
 ^ t- w 
 
 a S^c 
 
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 Cfi CM (M CO CM S<J (N (M <M CN CM CM (M CM CN 
 
 I 
 
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 .g-J- 
 
 ,_-,-<" rH"rH~ CMeo"rH"f" r4" i '^^ 
 
 + + + + i i + + + + + i I + i -39 
 
 ( i i (COO CS 
 
 o g 
 
 
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 i Illll 
 
 oiiH 
 
 |7K| 
 
 Isill 
 
 SSllilililSI 
 
TAXATION AS IT 18. 87 
 
 No. IA. LOCAL TAXATION. 
 
 The total amount annually raised by local taxation to provide for 
 expenditure connected with the relief of the Poor, County and Borough 
 Police, Roads and Bridges, Drainings and Lightings of Towns, &c., is 
 estimated 
 
 For England and Wales, in the year 1870, at 20,500,000 
 
 Scotland ditto. 2,000,000 
 
 Ireland ditto. 2,500,000 
 
 Making a total for the United Kingdom of 25,000,000 
 
 which is in the proportion of 16s. per head of the population of the 
 United Kingdom. 
 
 If the amounts raised for public and local purposes be added to- 
 gether, the total taxation of the United Kingdom in the year ended 
 31st March, 1870, would be about 100,500,000, or 3 5s. per head of 
 the population. 
 
88 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 89 
 
 a 1 
 
 l 
 
 o 
 
 
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 si i i i M i 11 
 
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 : 
 
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TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 ^ 
 eo* co" co~ co~ -^~ co~ co~ -^ co" <*T r-T of of of r- 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 91 
 
 i IXOlMOiCOi-HCOCOt^fN 
 
 ^ CO rH 00 CO rH ^3 
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 ^ 00^ 00^ O^ 00^ 00^ O^ 
 
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 lO CC Xr^ 00 O5 O rH W CO ^ 1O CD ^* 00 O5 O 
 
 xO lO XO lO xO CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD CD l>* 
 
92 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS* 
 
 Oi C7S XO !> CD rH 
 
 !> -t> -!> Xr^ l> 00 00 00 00 C 
 
 
 li 
 
 Xf5r llO'?X 
 i ICOCOr Ir- l 
 
 4^ J 
 
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 R 
 
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 !>^TlXOOCOCD5^XOCOOOO500^H^rHa5 
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 CDOOOOrHi (i l(NCO<NCOCDXOOOf>Ol 
 
 rf 
 
 ^dVcTcT 
 
 TfH 00 Tfl <* 
 
 
 <Nr-HCOaOCOGO<MCOa>C>rOCOrHOI> 
 (MtMCOCOCOCOCOCOCOXOtOCOCDCOXO 
 
 
 xO CD !> 00 O O t-H c?C| CO "^ xo CD J> 00 O^ O 
 
 XO XO XO XO XO CO CO CO CD CD CO CD CD CD CO !> 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 93 
 
 REVENUE, EXPENDITURE, ETC. 
 
 No. 5. AMOUNT of TAXES REPEALED. or REDUCED, and IMPOSED. 
 
 
 REPEALED OB REDUCE 
 
 D. 
 
 IMPOSED. 
 
 
 YBS. 
 
 Nature. 
 
 Estimated 
 Amount. , 
 
 Nature. 
 
 Estimated 
 Amount. 
 
 * 
 1846 -j 
 
 Butter and Cheese . 
 Silk Manufactures . 
 Spirits 
 Tallow 
 
 
 
 205,437 
 162,985 I 
 482,286 
 101,966 
 
 Customs : 
 Meal and Flour . 
 Excise : 
 Licences .... 
 
 
 2,000 
 120 
 
 
 Woollen Manufactures . 
 Seed, Clover .... 
 Other Customs Duties 
 
 Total . 
 
 27,970 
 36,077 
 135,069 
 
 1,151,790 
 
 Total . 
 
 aliio" 
 
 1847^ 
 
 Woods from Foreign Countries 
 Sugar and Molasses . 
 Bum .... 
 
 243^085 
 53,152 
 46,974 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 Other Articles .... 
 
 1,675 
 
 
 
 
 Total . 
 
 344,886 
 
 
 
 1848 ' 
 
 Copper Ore .... 
 Rum, British Possessions 
 Sugar and Molasses 
 Wood, Foreign 
 Other Articles .... 
 
 Total . 
 
 35,745 
 69,353 
 258,854 
 215,028 
 6,988 
 
 585,968 
 
 Excise : 
 Licences, Spirit dealers' 
 
 84 
 
 T( 
 
 Sugar and Molasses 
 Oil and Sperm .... 
 Other Articles .... 
 
 355,257 
 29,327 
 4,214 
 
 
 
 
 Total . 
 
 388,798 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 Sugar and Molasses 
 
 331,073 
 50 000 
 
 Stamps : 
 
 
 1850-j 
 
 Bricks Excise 
 Other Articles Customs 
 
 Total . 
 
 456,000 
 3,078 
 
 1,310,151 
 
 
 4,300 
 
 f 
 
 Window Duty .... 
 Coffee 
 
 1,878,800 
 149,161 
 
 Inhabited House Duty . 
 
 600,000 
 150 
 
 18514 
 
 Sugar and Molasses 
 
 359,804 
 
 
 18,000 
 
 1 
 
 Wood and Timber, Foreign . 
 
 292,099 
 
 
 
 
 Total . 
 
 2,679,864 
 
 Total . 
 
 618,150 
 
 1852 
 
 Sugar and Molasses 
 
 95,928 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * In 1846 the prohibitory duty on Foreign Sugar was also reduced, but as the expected result 
 was an increase of Revenue to the estimated amount of 416,562, and not an estimated loss of 
 Revenue, as is the case in the other reductions of Duty in this Return, it is not specified above. 
 
 t The Import duties upon Corn were reduced in 1849 to a uniform rate of 1*. per quarter, 
 but, owing to the fluctuating character of the former duties, no estimate could be made of 
 the effect upon the Revenue of this or previous alterations of the Corn duties. 
 
94 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 AMOUNT of TAXES REPEALED or REDUCED, and IMPOSED. Cont. 
 
 TBS. 
 
 REPEALED OR REDUCED. 
 
 IMPOSED. 
 
 Nature. Estimated 
 Amount. 
 
 Nature. 
 
 Estimated 
 Amount. 
 
 1853 
 
 1854 
 1855 ' 
 
 I 
 
 1856 
 
 1857 
 \ 
 
 Tea 
 
 
 968,877 
 106,535 
 78,793 
 65,659 
 279,610 
 
 
 
 
 16,383 
 590,000 
 2,000,000* 
 45,000 
 760,000 
 
 Butter and Cheese . 
 Sugar and Molasses 
 Raisins 
 Other Articles .... 
 
 Total Customs 
 Excise, Soap, etc. . 
 Stamps 
 
 Excise (Spirits) 
 Stamps (Succession Tax) 
 Stamps (Receipt) . 
 1 Property Tax .... 
 
 Total . 
 
 Customs t 
 Spirits (Colonial) 
 Sugar and Molasses . 
 Other Articles 
 
 Excise Malt .... 
 Spirits 
 Other duties 
 Stamps ..... 
 
 1,499,474 
 1,195,000 
 277,000 
 
 Total . 
 
 Customs : 
 Tea 
 
 3,971,474 
 
 3,401,383 
 
 980,568 
 2,539 
 
 16,694 
 420,298 
 3,651 
 
 Platting of Chip, and other 
 Articles .... 
 
 Stamps Bills of Exchange 
 Taxes, Assessed 
 
 Total . 
 
 Customs : 
 Window Glass and other) 
 Articles ) 
 Stamps : 
 Newspaper .... 
 Excise : 
 Stage Carriages reduced 
 
 Total . 
 
 Customs : 
 Beer, Spruce 
 Plums (reduced by Treasury) 
 Order of 9th December) ) 
 Other Articles 
 
 Excise : 
 Malt War Tax . 
 
 Total . 
 Customs 
 
 983,107 
 160,000 
 290,000 
 
 1,433,107 
 
 440,643 
 2,450,000 
 450,000 
 450 
 5,300 
 6.614,000 
 
 9,960,393 
 
 Income and Property Tax 
 Total . 
 
 Customs : 
 Sugar and Molasses 
 Tea 
 Coffee .... 
 
 2,960 
 
 250,000 
 60,000 
 
 1,267,566 
 774,413 
 155.6S9 
 25,546 
 
 2,753 
 
 Spirits, Colonial . 
 Other Articles 
 
 Excise, Spirits 
 Income Tax .... 
 
 Total . 
 
 Customs : 
 Rice Dust for Feeding Cattle 
 
 2,225,907 
 1,000,000 
 2,000,000 
 
 312,960 
 
 5,225,90? 
 
 1,428 
 1,886 
 161 
 
 
 3,475 
 2,200,000 
 
 2,203,475 
 
 2,053 
 6,004 
 145,816 
 418,988 
 1,054,637 
 1,084 
 
 Window Glass 
 Caoutchouc Manufactures 
 Coffee . 
 
 92 
 
 Sugar and Molasses 
 Tea .... 
 Other Articles . 
 
 Taxes : 
 Property and Income Tax . 
 
 Total . 
 
 1,628,582 
 9,125,000 
 
 10,753,582 
 
 92 
 
 Estimate when in full operation. The estimate for the first year was 500,000. 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 95 
 
 AMOUNT of TAXES REPEALED or REDUCED, and IMPOSED. Cont. 
 
 YBS. 
 / 
 
 1858 < 
 \ 
 
 1859 
 / 
 
 I860* 
 
 REPEALED OB KKDUCED. IMPOSED. 
 
 Nature. 
 
 Estimated , Estimated 
 Amount. Amount. 
 
 Taxes : 
 Property and Income Tax . 
 
 
 2,100,000 
 
 Customs : 
 Spirits, Colonial, consumed) 
 in Ireland ) 
 Excise : 
 
 
 9,080 
 
 280,000 
 
 113,000 
 53,000 
 
 1,700 
 
 456,760 
 
 Stamps : 
 Draft Stamps 
 Probate Court Stamps 
 Matrimonial Causes Court) 
 Stamps j 
 
 Total . 
 
 Property and Income Tax 
 
 Customs : 
 Spirits, British Colonial 
 General Rates and Charges, ) 
 under Acts 23 Viet. c. 22, V 
 and 23 & 24 Viet. c. 110 ) 
 Other Customs Duties 
 
 Total Customs 
 
 Excise: 
 Spirits 
 Chicory .... 
 Licences to Keepers of Re- "I 
 freshment Houses, to Re- | 
 tailers of Wine, to Dealers ! 
 in Sweets or made Wines, { 
 to Persons dealing in Wine | 
 and Spirits in Bond . 
 Licences to kill and to deal S 
 in Game transferred from t 
 Taxes with altered Rates J 
 
 Total Excise 
 Taxes : 
 
 
 4,840.000 
 
 Customs : 
 Repealed : 
 Butter .... 
 Cheese .... 
 Eggs 
 Leather, Boots and Shoes, 
 etc 
 Leather Gloves . 
 Oranges and Lemons 
 
 104,321 
 49,395 
 24,721 
 
 8,619 
 64,794 
 35,656 
 25,060 
 
 357,966 
 208,000 
 11,938 
 577,904 
 
 1,000,000 
 5,000 
 
 75,000 
 150,000 
 
 Silk Manufactures . 
 Tallow .... 
 Other Customs Duties 
 
 Total Repealed 
 Reduced : 
 Currants .... 
 'Raisins .... 
 Spirits, Foreign 
 Wine 
 
 307,244 
 74,942 
 286,498 
 
 981,250 
 
 210,580 
 45,353 
 313,745 
 831,694 
 429,436 
 28,873 
 
 Wood and Timber . 
 Other Customs Duties 
 
 Total Reduced 
 
 Total Customs 
 Excise : 
 Hops, reduced 
 Taxes : 
 Game Certificates transfer- 
 red to Excise . 
 
 Total . 
 
 1,230,000 
 
 163,000 
 1,060,000 
 
 1,859,681 
 
 2,840,931 
 105,000 
 
 140,000 
 
 Property and Income Tax . 
 Total . 
 
 3,085,931 
 
 3,030,904 
 
96 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 AMOUNT of TAXES REPEALED or REDUCED, and IMPOSED. Cont. 
 
 
 REPEALED OR REDUCED. IMPOSSD. 
 
 TBS. 
 
 Nature. 
 
 Estimated 
 Amount. Nature. 
 
 Estimated 
 Amount. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Customs : 
 
 
 Customs : 
 
 
 
 Repealed : 
 Hats or bonnets of straw,) 
 
 85 
 
 Chicory, raw or kiln-dried . 
 
 1-5,000 
 
 
 chip, etc. . . ) 
 
 Excise: 
 
 1861 
 
 Paper, books, and prints . 
 Reduced : 
 
 29,743 
 
 5,372 
 244,158 
 
 Duty on Chicory increased 1 
 from 5s. Gd. to 8s. 6d. per 
 cwt. ; Licences to retail 
 Spirits in bottles : to re- 
 
 5,000 
 
 Wine 
 
 
 Total Customs 
 Excise 
 
 tail Table Beer; and to 
 279,558 | retail Methylated Spirits 
 : Stamps : imposed . 
 
 60,000 
 
 
 Paper Duty repealed . 
 Income and Property Tax re-) 
 duced j 
 
 1,350,000 1' 
 1,060,000 ! 
 
 65,000 
 
 
 
 Total . 
 
 2,689,558 
 
 Total . 
 
 80,000 
 
 
 Customs : 
 
 
 Excise : 
 
 
 r 
 
 Hop Duty repealed 
 
 Excise : 
 
 98,671 
 
 Brewers' Licences : in-) 
 creased J 
 
 230,000 
 
 1862 1 
 
 Hop Duty repealed 
 Stamps ..... 
 
 250,000 
 5,000 
 
 Victuallers' occasional } 
 Licences Duty on > 
 Chicory : increased ) 
 Stamps: various, increased \ 
 or imposed . . j 
 
 2,000 
 20,500 
 
 
 I 
 
 Total . 
 
 353,671 
 
 Total . 
 
 252,500 
 
 
 Customs : 
 
 
 Customs : 
 
 
 
 Duties reduced : 
 Tea 
 
 1 641 541 
 
 Duty on Chicory : increased 
 
 6,811 
 
 
 Tobacco .... 
 
 74,055 
 
 Excise : 
 
 
 1863 < 
 
 Charges on Import En--) 
 tries and Bills of Lad- > 
 ing : repealed . ) 
 
 180,723 
 
 Chicory: increased . 
 Stage Carriages . 
 Beer Dealers : additional) 
 Licence j 
 
 1,000 
 11,000 
 
 2,000 
 
 
 Total Customs 
 
 1,896,319 
 
 Beer Retailers . 
 
 10,000 
 
 
 Income and Property Tax re-f 
 duced > 
 
 2,750,000 
 
 Total Excise 
 
 34,000 
 
 
 Total . 
 
 4,646,319 
 
 Total . 
 
 30,811 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 97 
 
 AMOUNT of TAXES REPEALED or SEDUCED, and IMPOSED. Cont. 
 
 ' YRS. 
 
 REPEALED OK REDUCED. 
 
 IMPOSED. 
 
 Nature. 
 
 Estimated 
 Amount. 
 
 Nature. 
 
 Estimated 
 Amount. 
 
 1864, 
 
 1865 ( 
 
 J 
 
 1866 
 
 ' Customs : Reduced : 
 Sugar and Molasses . 
 Succades, Confectionery, "\ 
 and other articles pre- > 
 served in sugar . J 
 
 Total Customs 
 Excise : 
 Tea Licences reduced . 
 Stamps : 
 Licences : various trade, ^ 
 transferred to the Excise) 
 Fire Insurances : Duty on \ 
 Stock in Trade reduced j 
 Property and Income Tax re- ~) 
 duced j 
 
 Total . 
 
 Customs : 
 Tea Duty reduced 
 Excise : 
 Malt made from Barley' 
 weighing less than 53 Ibs. 
 per bushel, charged with 
 duty at the rate of a 
 bushel for every 53 Ibs. of 
 such barley 
 Stamps : 
 Fire Insurances, duty re-\ 
 duced to an uniform rate J 
 Taxes : 
 Property and Income Tax) 
 reduced ) 
 
 Total . 
 
 Customs : Repealed : 
 Pepper .... 
 Timber and Wood . 
 Ships, Foreign and "1 
 Colonial, built of wood, 1 
 on registration as f 
 British ships . . J 
 Reduced: Wine imported 1 
 in Bottles, containing less 1 
 than 26 degrees of proof { 
 spirit. J 
 
 Total Customs 
 Excise 
 
 
 1,741,272 
 3,112 
 
 Excise : 
 Occasional Licences to Beer ") 
 and Wine Retailers and 
 Dealers in Tobacco . J 
 Sugar used in Brewing: \ 
 Duty increased . j 
 Licences : various trade, ") 
 transferred from Stamps/ 
 Chicory Duty increased 
 
 Customs : 
 Sugar Cane Juice Duty in- i 
 creased / 
 
 l 
 
 
 
 1,000 
 
 6,000 
 
 110,000 
 2,000 
 
 119,000 
 
 1,744,384 
 15,000 
 
 110,000 
 j 255,000 
 1,230,000 
 
 3,354,384 
 
 1,576 
 ~~ 1,576 
 
 2,214,981 
 10,000 
 
 520,000 
 2,600,000 
 
 5,344,981 
 
 124,171 
 314,221 
 
 7,070 
 71,000 
 
 
 516,462 
 
 Stage Carriages, Mileage ] 
 Duties reduced to an uni- I 
 form rate of one farthing j 
 per mile j 
 Post Horse Licences, ] 
 Licences for less than 8 ! 
 horses and 6 carriages, j 
 reduced and rates altered J 
 
 Total Excise 
 Total . 
 
 69,000 
 16,000 
 
 85,000 
 601.462 
 
98 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 AMOUNT of TAXES KEPEALED or REDUCED, and IMPOSED. Cont. 
 
 YRS. 
 
 REPEALED OR REDUCED. 
 
 IMPOSED. 
 
 Nature. 
 
 Estimated 
 Amount. 
 
 Nature. 
 
 Estimated 
 Amount. 
 
 1867 ( 
 
 1868 
 I 
 
 1869 < 
 
 Stamps : 
 Marine Insurances reduced ] 
 to an uniform rate of 3d. > 
 per cent. . . . J 
 Assessed Taxes : 
 Duties on Dogs reduced 
 
 Total . 
 Nil 
 
 
 
 210,000 
 105,000 
 
 Excise : 
 Dog Licences transferred") 
 from Assessed Taxes at > 
 reduced rate . . ) 
 Taxes : 
 Income Tax increased . 
 
 Total . 
 
 Taxes : 
 Income Tax increased . 
 
 Customs : 
 Beer, Spruce : increased . 
 
 Excise : 
 Licences imposed in lieu of 
 Assessed Taxes repealed 
 Armorial Bearings 
 Carriages 
 
 
 150,000 
 1,450,000 
 
 315,000 
 
 1,600,000 
 1,450,000 
 
 
 Customs : 
 Eepealed : 
 Corn, Grain, Meal, and) 
 Flour j 
 Other farinaceous sub-) 
 stances j" 
 Reduced : 
 Beer and Ale, except Spruce 
 
 Total Customs 
 
 Excise, Repealed : 
 Tea Dealer's Licences . 
 Post Horse ,, 
 Stage Carriage Duty and) 
 Licences j" 
 Hackney Carriage Duty and"^ 
 Licences > 
 
 Total Excise 
 
 Stamps, Repealed : 
 Fire Insurance Duty . 
 
 Assessed Taxes, Repealed, and 
 Licences substituted, except 
 for Hair Powder : 
 Hair Powder . 
 Armorial Bearings 
 
 855,581 
 8,855 
 
 1,251 
 
 114 
 
 76,000 
 435,000 
 381,000 
 205,000 
 16,000 
 
 865,687 
 
 73,000 
 135,000 
 
 47,000 
 111,000 
 
 Servants 
 Horse Dealers 
 
 Total Excise 
 Total . 
 
 366,000 
 
 1,113,000 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 995 
 68,430 
 407,474 
 438,122 
 234,596 
 17,366 
 
 Horses 
 Servants . 
 Horse Dealers . 
 
 Income Tax, Reduced . 
 Total . 
 
 1,166,983 
 1,450,000 
 
 4,848,670 
 
 1,113,114 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 O O CO O 
 
 11 
 
 c o ~ - 
 
 i i 7 i i 
 
 
 ^CO^IC^ 
 
 &8SSSS 
 
 GO CO 00 GO 00 00 
 
 H 2 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 00 GO GO GO GO 00 GO OO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO 
 
 OOOO 
 
 <N CM (N <M 
 
 ie si- 
 
 
 
 Q 
 
 * 
 
 -f- 
 
 coi 
 
 i lOGOCTi 
 
 j>GOccaocooor^J>.t^<OTj<^^ 
 
 0rtir5 
 GOOOQO 
 
 COGOCOGOGOQOGOCO 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 101 
 
 
 
 I T3 
 
 S 
 
 1 i -a SD 
 : S l*| 
 
 >.oo-HC<ie 
 s_ -^ tv. co_ 01 
 
 ^ * 
 
 Under Schedule B. 
 occupation of Land, Tene 
 Hereditaments. 
 
 Under Schedule A.* 
 s, Tenements, Railways, Canals, 
 Gasworks, Waterworks, etc. 
 
 Unite 
 Kingdo 
 
 Unite 
 Kingdo 
 
 >,*.< 
 
 OCOOOt 
 O *- -H t 
 
 00 O ~ CO (N <O t>.O CO >0 O CD CO -i 
 
 &So5oc>!O<o^HO)C<:5cooco 
 
 '151 11518^11111= 
 
 ludy q?S papua SWA 
 
102 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 nual Value of 
 Profits Assesse 
 
 Total 
 erty 
 
 > >- to co t- o * ir 
 
 ^HOi'-'iOSOWO-^ 
 irjinrv.O (NCOCO 
 
 Sched 
 or all 
 Office 
 nsions 
 of 
 ublic 
 
 it 
 
 Unjted 
 Kingdom. 
 
 6fj o a t OO<M -i c ootc oo" uf 
 
 l CO Cft Ot O t 
 OO^<t>( 
 0-OOt 
 
 ,1111111 
 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 
 o - 
 
 
 < 
 
 U 
 Kin 
 
 Un 
 King 
 
 judy q?s 
 papua swan 
 
 to* irT ^ 
 
 CO ^H *N.< 
 
 mi 
 
 co rs > 
 
 . 00 10 
 
 SRS ! 
 
 <??-^d> 
 
 s* 
 
 n >f> te> ' 
 
 o co oo 
 *t.l"l 
 
 TS " ' ' TjT co" o" ef oT esi 
 
 ||| ^^-"-"- 
 
 eowweowcococij 
 
 fO 
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 ;^i?s 
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 firf 
 
 S S S g S S 
 
 .?^5^S 
 
 i CO ^-" CS CO W5 C^ 
 
 .PH <N -< O> OO 
 
 18, = 
 
 ! 
 
 t^OD CT IN O -H -< 
 
 'tx.tv.oo ~i 53 <N 
 
 Si "3 
 t^-H 
 
 "5 C 
 
 inir5 
 
 fits were 
 parison. 
 
 arries, and other 
 r the purpose of 
 
 work 
 d 18 
 
 Railways, Canals, 
 this Table for 18 
 
 ? n /; i ines ' Ir n 
 but they are gi 
 
 A A 8Se? i 8 
 h April, 
 
104 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 -si 
 
 i 
 
 *s? 
 
 II 
 
 t^<O O>O (M 
 
 <* o o to * 
 
 " rivS"^ 
 
 SISst 
 
 2 of of c-f m of 
 
 ||1 
 
 -- 
 
 * The Assessments on Mines, Ironworks, Railways, Canals, Gasworks, Quarries, and Other Profits were transferred from Schedule A. to Schedule D. 
 from 5th April, 1866, but they are given in this Table for 1867 and 1868 for the purpose of comparison, 
 t " Other Profits " include Fisheries, Salt and Alum Works, Docks, Drains and Levels, and Tolls of various kinds. 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 H 
 
 ^ slli 
 
 Sis 
 
 * || 13ll 
 
 10 F4 rt 
 
 IO(O(O 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 *. K 
 
 , EC H 
 
 J| 1 
 
 |S. is|s 
 
 sss 
 
 ^ ^ j?xa % ss- J 
 
 CP o* m rtl 
 
 sife 
 
 -w rt "" " w " 
 
 c-r ' 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 W 
 
 * 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 III 
 
 " 
 
 United 
 Kingdom . 
 
 RAILWAYS.* 
 
 Oi iO 10 O O> 
 
 2ii 
 
 ^-00 00 ^ ^5 &S? 
 
 OO^OO^tN. 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 03 
 
 *"H .52 2 01 oo Tf c?i <S 
 
 '2o i 
 
 S S 00 
 
 I|I||IIII||I 
 
 11 
 
 England. 
 
 S^5?SSSSkS&iS 
 
 |S& 
 
 ^illlsEISiSil 
 
 vo"io"<cT 
 
 WCCOJOOO^NWSSCO.O 
 
 11 
 
 * 
 
 
 III 
 
 O>-<Ji O O 
 
 ^ ll Hill 
 
 -g| 8 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 I'll ill 
 
 *i | " 
 
 5 
 
 " 1 1 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 O 00 *O ?O CO < CO !>.<O CD CO CO 
 O P-I r^Tf <N W OiO Ol?O CO CO 
 
 3SS 
 
 "sS-JIiillilsi 
 
 tsS 
 
 England. 
 
 llRslltlllis 
 
 2g,& 
 
 ooooc 
 
 IS8?||SERg|| 
 
 ! 
 
 judy q*s papua s-rea^ 
 
 ilslllililll tit 
 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 105 
 
 r& 
 
 u 
 
 ft 
 
 53 
 
 II 
 
 o o 
 
 H3 rj 
 
 I'- 
 ll 
 
 If 
 
 % 
 
 * o 
 
 ms 
 
 VO (N <O 10 
 
 II 
 
 -3 v 
 
 H 
 
 .2 'gJ'S 
 
 II 
 
 
 r^^in't^c^'^crG^cT^ 
 
 <N -H t> o^e - o><o oo oo >. - 
 2 < SS?MS5S5 
 
 iriifl 
 
 i O 
 
 ot^^-^H^otow^i 
 
 1~>.<O if 1< O 
 
 5 2 11 5g S 
 
 " 
 
 C<lOiOOl?lt^'rtOW<NOO^HO 
 
 .^3 R2 ^^5 SS 
 
 M M MMM M W OT )t 
 
) TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 The following Table formed from a Return to an Order of 
 the House of Commons dated 19th March, 1862, furnishes a 
 short and convenient outline of every INCOME TAX ACT from 
 the year 1798, to 1862 ; distinguishing respectively the various 
 Bates, Exemptions, Annual Produce, and Dates of each. 
 
 INCOME TAX. 
 
 A EETTJEN " of every INCOME TAX ACT from the Year 1798 to the 
 present time ; distinguishing respectively the various Hates, Exemp- 
 tions, Annual Produce, and Dates of each." 
 
 Act and Date. 
 
 Various Rates. 
 
 Exemptions. 
 
 Amount of Duty 
 Assessed. 
 
 38 Geo. III. 
 c. 16, 12th 
 January, 1798. 
 
 Imposed additional rates upon every 
 person within either of the following 
 classes : 
 Here follows a description of the per- 
 sons, with the rate increasing with the 
 income on a graduated scale to 50 and 
 upwards, 5 rates in addition. 
 
 Any person occupy- 
 ing a farm of less rent 
 than 70 per annum, 
 and making a livelihood 
 solely thereby, exempt 
 from additional rate 
 in respect of horses 
 charged under 36 Geo. 
 III. c. 15, and 37 Geo. 
 III. c. 106. 
 
 Year. 
 1798 
 
 
 1,855,996 
 
 
 
 Persons keeping tax- 
 carts, carriages and 
 horses to let to hire, 
 waiters, carriages to be 
 let to hire, and public 
 stage carriages. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Persons whose assess- 
 ments were not equal 
 tol. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Occupiers of lodging- 
 houses and shops, whose 
 assessments were less 
 than 3. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Incomes under 60 
 per annum. 
 
 
 
 39 Geo. III. 
 c. 13, 9th 
 
 January, 1799. 
 
 In lieu of the former rates, this Act im- 
 posed duties on all incomes arising 
 from property, professions, trades, and 
 offices, according to the following scale, 
 viz. : 
 Here follows the graduated scale with 
 the duty increasing to one-tenth on 200 
 and upwards. 
 
 Incomes under 60 
 per annum. 
 
 The stock or funds of 
 any friendly societv es- 
 tablished under 32 "Geo. 
 III. c. 54. 
 
 1799 
 
 1800 
 1801 
 
 6,046,624 
 6,244,438 
 5,628,903 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Various Rates. 
 
 Amending Acts; not affecting rates or 
 exemptions. 
 
 Repealed duties granted by 39 Geo. 
 
 III.C. 13. 
 
 Granted duties on profits arising from 
 property, professions, trades, and 
 offices; charged such duties at their 
 source ; and classified them under the 
 several Schedules (A.), (B.), (C.), (D.), 
 and (E.). 
 
 Rates under Schedules (A.), (C.), (D.), 
 and (E.) Is. in the pound: 
 
 Under Schedule (B.) : 
 In England, gd. 
 In Scotland, 6d. 
 
 The rates were subject to abate- 
 ments in respect of incomes of 60 
 and upwards, and under 150 per 
 annum, viz. : 
 60 and under 70, 3d. in the pound. 
 
 Exemptions. 
 
 70 
 
 80 
 
 90 
 
 100 
 
 110 
 
 120 
 
 130 
 
 140 
 
 4d. 
 90, Sd. 
 100, 6d. 
 110, 7d. 
 120, 8d. 
 130, Qd. 
 140, lOe*. 
 150, lid. 
 
 Also, the understated allowances in re- 
 spect of children bond fide maintained 
 by the parent, viz. : 
 
 Where the income of the parent 
 amounted to 
 
 60 and was under 400, 4 per 
 
 cent, for every child above two. 
 400 and was under l, 000, 3 per 
 
 cent. 
 1,000 and was under 5,000, 2 
 
 per cent. 
 5,000 and upwards, l per cent. 
 
 Corporations, tc., for 
 [charitable purposes. 
 
 Annual officer presi- 
 ding over any corpora- 
 tion or Royal burgh, in 
 respect of his salary. 
 
 Incomes under 60. 
 
 Schedule (A.) 
 
 College or hall in any 
 university,and all offices, 
 gardens, walks, and 
 grounds for recreation, 
 maintained by the funds 
 of such college or hall. 
 
 Every hospital or pub- 
 lic school or almshouse, 
 and all offices, etc., 
 maintained by the funds 
 of such hospital, or, etc. 
 
 Rents and profits of 
 lands or hereditaments 
 belonging to any hospi- 
 tals or almshouse, so far 
 as the same were applied 
 to charitable purposes. 
 
 Schedule (C.) 
 
 Stock of friendly so- 
 cieties. 
 
 Stock of charitable 
 institutions, so far as 
 applied to charitable 
 purposes. 
 
 Stock belonging to 
 foreigners not residing 
 in Great Britain. 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Act and Date. 
 
 Various Rates. 
 
 Exemptions. 
 
 Amount of Duty 
 Assessed. 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 Year. 
 
 
 
 44 Geo. III. 
 
 
 
 
 
 c. 37, 3rd 
 
 
 
 
 
 May, 1804. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I Amending Acts ; not affecting rates Stock in names of 
 
 
 
 44 Geo. III. 
 C. 82 44 
 
 [ or exemptions. 
 
 Commissioners for Re- 
 duction of National 
 
 
 
 Geo. III! c. 83, 
 Oth July, 1804. 
 
 1 
 
 Debt. 
 Stock in the name of 
 the Treasury. 
 
 
 
 45 Geo. III. 
 
 Imposed an additional duty, after the 
 
 Rents and profits of 
 
 1805 
 
 6,429,599 
 
 c. 15, 10th 
 
 rate of 
 
 lands, tenements, or 
 
 
 
 March, 1805. 
 
 One-fourth part of the net amount 
 
 hereditaments, held in 
 
 
 
 
 of duty charged under 42 Geo. III. 
 
 trust for charitable pur- 
 
 
 
 
 c. 122. 
 
 poses, so far as applied 
 
 
 
 45 Geo. III. 
 c. 4Q, 5th 
 June, 1805. 
 
 Amended and consolidated provisions of 
 former Acts, without altering the rates 
 or exemptions. 
 
 to such purposes. 
 
 
 
 46 Geo. III. 
 
 Increased the rate of duty under Sche- 
 
 Incomes of 50 per 
 
 1806 
 
 12,822,056 
 
 c. 65, 13th 
 
 dules (A.), (C.), (D.), and (E.) to 2s. 
 
 annum. 
 
 
 
 June, 1806. 
 
 in the pound; and under Schedule 
 
 
 
 
 
 (B.) to Is. 6d. in England, and Is. in 
 
 
 1807 
 
 11,905,858 
 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Where profits chargeable arose 
 
 Artisans, labourers, 
 
 1808 
 
 13,482,294 
 
 
 1st. From properties belonging to any 
 ecclesiastical person in right of 
 
 handicraftsmen, me- 
 chanics, or manufac- 
 
 1809 
 
 13,631,922 
 
 
 his church or by endowment, 
 and stipends of licensed curates. 
 
 2nd. From the occupation of land. 
 
 turers. Wages not ex- 
 ceeding in any one week 
 the sum of 30*. 
 
 1810 
 
 14,453,320 
 
 
 3rd. From trade, profession, employ- 
 ment, or vocation chargeable 
 
 
 1811 
 
 14,462,776 
 
 
 under Schedule (D.) 
 
 
 
 
 
 4th, From any office or employment 
 chargeable under Schedule (E). 
 
 
 1812 
 
 15,488,546 
 
 
 5th. From any pension or stipend pay- 
 able out of the public revenue, 
 
 Granted by former 
 Acts, under Schedules 
 
 1813 
 
 15,795,691 
 
 
 and chargeable under Schedule 
 
 (A.) and(C.) continued. 
 
 
 
 
 (E.) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1814 
 
 14,188.037 
 
 
 6th. Annuities for life or for terms of 
 years. 
 
 
 
 
 
 And if such profits amounted to 50, 
 
 
 
 
 
 and were less than 150, the party 
 
 
 
 
 
 was entitled to an allowance, out of 
 
 
 
 
 
 the duties charged, at the rate of Is. 
 
 
 
 
 
 for every 20s., by which the income 
 
 
 
 
 
 was proved less than 150. 
 
 
 
 
 55 Geo. III. 
 c. 55, 12th 
 
 Rates, abatements, and exemptions 
 granted and allowed under 43 Geo. III. 
 
 
 1815 
 
 15,642,338 
 
 May, 1815. 
 
 c. 122, 45 Geo. III. c. 15, and 46 Geo. 
 
 
 
 
 5 & 6 Viet. 
 
 III. c. 65, continued for one year. 
 
 
 
 
 c. 35, 22nd 
 June, 1842. 
 
 Re-imposed the duties on profits arising 
 from property, professions, trades, and 
 offices, for three years from 5th April, 
 
 All incomes under 
 150 per annum. 
 
 1842 
 
 5,608,548 
 
 
 1842. 
 
 
 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 101 
 
 Act and Date. 
 
 Various Rates. 
 
 Exemptions. 
 
 Amount of Duti 
 Assessed. 
 
 
 
 
 Year 
 
 
 
 5 & 6 Viet. 
 
 Under Schedules (A.), (C.), (D.), 
 
 Under Schedule (A.) : 
 
 1843 
 
 5,504,15 
 
 c. 35, 22nd 
 June, 1842 
 continued. 
 
 and (E.), at the rate of 7d. in the 
 pound. 
 
 Under Schedule (B.) : 
 
 Any college or hall 
 in any of the universi- 
 ties, in respect of the 
 public buildings and 
 
 1844 
 
 5,476,49 
 
 
 In England, at the rate of 3%d, in 
 the pound. 
 
 offices not occupied by 
 any individual member, 
 
 
 
 
 In Scotland, at the rate of 2%d. in 
 the pound. 
 
 or by any person paring 
 rent ; and for repairs of 
 same, and maintenance 
 
 
 
 
 
 of gardens, walks, and 
 
 
 
 
 
 grounds. 
 
 
 
 
 The like, in favour of every hospital or public school or alms- 
 
 
 
 
 house. 
 
 
 
 
 Literary or scientific institution, building the property of and used 
 solely as, where no payment is made for any instruction. 
 Rents of land, tenements, and hereditaments belonging to any 
 
 
 
 
 hospital, public school, or almshouse, or vested in trustees for 
 
 
 
 
 charitable purposes, so far as the same are so applied. 
 
 
 
 
 Under Schedule (C.) : 
 
 
 
 
 Stock of friendly societies, savings' banks, charitable institutions, 
 in name of Treasury or Commissioners for National Debt belong- 
 
 
 
 
 ing to her Majesty, or to any accredited minister of any foreign 
 
 
 
 
 State resident in Great Britain. 
 
 
 
 
 Under Schedule (D.) : 
 
 
 
 
 Charitable institutions in respect of interest. 
 
 
 
 8 Viet. c. 4, 
 
 
 
 1845 
 
 5,711,22 
 
 5th April, 1845. 
 
 
 1846 
 
 5,791,06 
 
 1 1 Viet. c. 8, 
 
 
 1847 
 
 5,834,79 
 
 13th April, 1848. 
 
 Continued the duties until 5th April, 
 1853, at the rates and with the exemp- 
 
 1848 
 184Q 
 
 5,793,54 
 5,729,57 
 
 14 Viet. c. 12, 
 5th June, 1851. 
 
 tions provided by 5 & 6 Viet. c. 35. 
 
 1850 
 ! 1851 
 
 5,754,44 
 5,845,71 
 
 15 Viet. c. 20, 
 
 
 ' 1852 
 
 5,869,82 
 
 28th May, 1852. 
 
 
 
 
 
 16 & 17 Viet, 
 c. 34, 28th 
 June, 1853. 
 
 Under Schedules (A.), (C.), (D.), and 
 (E.): 
 For two years from 5th April, 1853, 
 ?d. in the pound. 
 For two years, from 5th April, 1855, 
 
 All incomes under 
 100, friendly societies, 
 in respect of interest or 
 other profits chargeable 
 under Schedule (D.). 
 
 1853 
 
 7,133,03 
 
 
 6d. in the pound. 
 
 
 
 
 
 For three years, from 5th April, 1857, 
 
 
 
 
 
 5d. in the pound. 
 
 
 
 
 
 In England. In Scotland. 
 
 
 
 
 
 and Ireland. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Under Sche- d. d. 
 
 
 
 
 
 dule (B.) : 
 
 
 
 
 
 For first-men- 
 
 
 
 
 
 tioned term . 3^ 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 second . 3 2j 
 
 
 
 
 
 ,, third . . 2 if 
 
 
 
 
 
 In respect of incomes of 100 or up- 
 wards and under 150, rates to be 
 
 Exemption granted 
 by 5 & 6 Viet. c. 35, 
 
 
 
 
 abated to 5tf. in the pound. 
 
 under Schedules (A.), 
 
 
 
 
 
 (C.), and (D.) con- 
 tinued. 
 
 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Various Rates. 
 
 Exemptions. 
 
 Amount of Duty 
 Assessed. 
 
 Additional rates for 1854, amounting to 
 one moiety of duties charged by 16 & 
 17 Viet. c. 34. 
 
 Granted in lieu of the rates payable for 
 the year 1854, under 16 & 17 Viet. c. 
 24, and 17 Viet. c. 10, a rate of Is. 2d. 
 in the pound. 
 
 All reliefs and abatements to be pro- 
 portionate to the increased rate of 
 duty. 
 
 Additional rate of 2rf. in the pound, 
 making together a rate of Is. 4d. in the 
 pound, to be raised annually during 
 the war, and until 6th April after the 
 expiration of one year from a ratifica- 
 tion of a treaty of peace. All relief, 
 etc., to be in proportion to increased 
 rate 
 
 Reduced to /d. in the pound for year 
 ended 5th April, 1858. 
 
 Granted for the year ended 5th April, 
 
 1860 : 
 
 Under Schedules (A.), (C.), (D.), 
 and (E.), 4d., in addition to rate 
 payable under 16 & 17 Yict. c. 34, 
 making a total of Qd. in the pound. 
 
 Under Schedule (B.) : 
 Id. in England .... total 4%d. 
 \\d. in Scotland and Ire- 
 land total 3d. 
 
 All reliefs and abatements to be pro- 
 portionate to the increased duty. 
 
 Granted for the year ended 5th April, 
 
 1861 :-r- 
 
 Under Schedules (A.), (C.), (D.), and 
 (E.), Wd. in the pound. 
 
 Under Schedule (B.) : 
 
 In England 5d. 
 
 In Scotland and Ireland respec- 
 tively 3id. 
 
 In respect of incomes of 100 and 
 under 150, rates to be abated to 
 7d. in the pound. 
 
 Granted for the year ended 5th April, 
 1862: 
 
 Under Schedules (A.), (C.), (D.), and 
 (E.), Qd. in the pound. 
 
 Under Schedule (B.) : 
 
 In England 4$d. 
 
 In Scotland and Ireland respec- 
 tively 3d. 
 
 In respect of incomes of 100, and 
 under 150, rates to be abated to 6d. 
 in the pound. 
 
 Year. 
 1854 
 
 As stated in the pre- 
 ceding page, under the 
 16 & 17 Viet c. 34. 
 
 1855 
 1856 
 
 1857 
 
 1858 
 
 1859 
 
 I860 
 
 1861 
 
 14,358,090 
 
 16,545,508 
 16,915,332 
 
 7,905,525 
 
 5,758,905 
 per Act 16 
 & 17 Viet, 
 c. 34. 
 
 10,424,887 
 
 per Acts 
 
 16 & 17 
 
 Viet. c. 34, 
 
 and 22 & 23 
 
 Viet. c. 18. 
 
 11,594,002 
 
 Cannot be 
 furnished 
 at present. 
 
 nland Revenue Office, 
 18th June, 1862. 
 
 T. SARGENT, 
 Secretary. 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 PEOPEETY AND INCOME TAX. 
 
 Yean 
 ended 
 5th 
 April. 
 
 Rates of 
 Duty on Incomes of 
 
 Act by 
 which imposed. 
 
 Date of Act. 
 
 100 a Year 
 and 
 under 150. 
 
 150 a Year 
 and 
 upwards. 
 
 1861 
 1862 
 1863 
 
 1864 
 1865 
 1866 
 1867 
 1868 
 
 s. d. 
 7 in the pound 
 6 
 6 
 
 . d. 
 10 in the pound 
 9 
 09 
 
 23 Viet. c. 14 . . 
 24 Viet. c. 20 . . 
 25 Viet. C. 22 . . 
 
 26 Viet. c. 22 . . 
 27 Viet. c. 18 . . 
 28 Viet. c. 30 . . 
 29 Viet. c. 36 . . 
 30 Viet. c. 23, and 
 31 Viet. c. 2 . . 
 
 3rd April, I860. 
 12th June, 1861. 
 3rd June, 1862. 
 
 8th June, 1863. 
 13th May, 1864. 
 26th May, 1865. 
 llth June, 1866. 
 31st May, 1867. 
 ~th Dec.,1867. 
 
 All Incomes of 100 a year and upwards 
 chargeable with like rates of duty, but 
 an abatement of the duty on 60 
 allowed on Incomes under 200. 
 
 7d. in the pound. 
 6d. 
 4d. 
 4*. .. 
 5*. 
 
TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
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 PQ 
 
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 f i !i 
 
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TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 113 
 
 POPULATION. 
 
 POPULATION ENUMERATED in ENGLAND and WALES on April 
 3rd, 1871. 
 
 otal Population 
 Enumerated. 
 
 Persons. 
 
 Males. 
 
 Females. 
 
 *22,7C4,108 
 
 11,040,403 
 
 11,663,705 
 
 * This number includes the part of the Army in England and Wales, 
 also the Navy, Merchant Seamen, and others en board ships in the 
 home trade from which returns were received as well as vessels in the 
 ports, etc., and fishing boats, on the 3rd April, but is exclusive of the 
 Army, Navy, and Merchant Seamen Abroad, 
 
114 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 
 
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TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 115 
 
 pi 
 
 
 
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116 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
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 ate of Increase 
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TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 117 
 
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118 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
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TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 119 
 
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 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 
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TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 121 
 
 
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122 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 
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TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
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TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 125 
 
 Table, showing Public Income and Expenditure since the 
 Union with Ireland, in quinquennial periods down to 1851, and 
 annually after that time. 
 
 Years ending 5th 
 January. 
 
 Total Gross 
 Income. 
 
 Total Expendi- 
 ture. 
 
 Surplus. 
 
 Deficiency. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 1802 to 1806 
 
 227,933,294 
 
 307,414,119 
 
 
 
 79,480,825 
 
 1807 to 1811 
 
 335.269,162 
 
 387,299,015 
 
 52,029,853 
 
 1812 to 1816 373,051,229 
 
 ! 505,603,353 132,552,1241 
 
 1817 to 1821 304,341,648 
 
 303,588,060! 753,588 
 
 1822 to 1826 297,670,785 
 
 ! 278,780,084 18,890,701 
 
 
 
 1827 to 1831 276,577,651 
 
 271,145,630 5,432,021 
 
 1832 to 1836 252,613,730 
 
 264,922,734 12,309,004 
 
 ! 1837 to 1841 257.947,013 
 
 263,413,980 5,466,967' 
 
 1842 to 1846 | 276,016,112 
 
 273,353,608 2,662,504 
 
 1847 to 1851 287,684,496 
 
 283,700,661 1 3,983,835 
 
 1852 
 
 56,772,530 
 
 54,046,134 2,726,396: 
 
 1853 
 
 57,726,990 
 
 55,309,328 2,417,662 
 
 1854 
 
 59,096,667 
 
 55,798,146 
 
 3,298,521 
 
 
 
 1854 1 
 Quarter to > 
 
 13,594,639 
 
 14,016,246 
 
 _ 
 
 421,607 
 
 5th April, J 
 
 
 
 
 
 Year ending 
 
 
 
 
 
 31st March. 
 
 
 
 
 
 1855 
 
 62,969,669 
 
 69,124,808 
 
 6,155,139 
 
 1856 
 
 70.344,141 
 
 93,065,888 
 
 22,721,747 
 
 1857 
 
 72,893,313 ! 76,147,202 ! 
 
 3,253,89 
 
 1858 
 
 68,001,654 
 
 68.240.0531 
 
 238,399 
 
 1859 
 
 65,623,180 
 
 64,802,872 820,308 
 
 1860 
 
 71,205,077 
 
 69,610,791 1,594,286 
 
 1861 
 
 70,388,084 
 
 72.939.247 
 
 2551,163 
 
 1882 
 
 69,865,057 
 
 72,267,656! 
 
 2,402,599 
 
 1863 
 
 70,604,562 
 
 70,345,101 259,461 
 
 
 
 1864 
 
 70,209.066 
 
 67,849,379 2,359,687 
 
 
 
 1865 
 
 70,313,787 
 
 67,075,300 3,238,487 
 
 
 
 1866 
 
 67,812,292 
 
 66,467,450 1.344,842 
 
 
 
 1867 
 
 69,434,568 ! 
 
 67,223,489 2,211,079 I 
 
 1868 
 
 69.600,218 
 
 71,759,335 
 
 2,159,117 
 
 1869 
 
 72,591,992 
 
 75,490,909 
 
 
 
 2,898,917 
 
 
 1,118,152,606 
 
 1,390,800,578 . 
 
 )1,993,378 324,641,350 
 
 All the Parliamentary returns previously issued on 
 this subject may henceforth he laid aside, as many of 
 them materially differ from the latest Blue-books, and 
 these latest figures have undergone very careful exami- 
 nation with a view to making them perfectly accurate 
 
126 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 for final reference. The heaviest expenditure was in 
 1814 and 1815, which included the battle of Waterloo. 
 The compensation for West India slaves was paid 
 in 1836, 1837, and 1838 the greater part, namely, 
 16,721,346, being charged in 1836; and the total 
 sum, which with interest amounted to 20,978,033, 
 was added to the National Debt. The total deficiency 
 during sixty-eight years is shown to be 324,641,350, 
 while the surplus was only 51,993,378, leaving a net 
 deficiency of 272,647,972, which has been added to the 
 National Debt ; but this is only a small portion of the 
 incumbrance of debt, which from 1793 to 1815 amounted 
 to 613,164,615. Therefore, it is evident that our 
 finance was formerly very imperfectly understood. 
 
127 
 
 SUMMARY REVIEW. 
 
 Now, taking all these figures as the facts to be dealt 
 with, it may be the most convenient course, for obtain- 
 ing a clear insight into the working of the present 
 system of taxation, to examine it under the two follow- 
 ing heads : 
 
 1. Actual Cost. 
 
 2. Indirect Loss. 
 
 1. ACTUAL COST. 
 
 According to the Government Accounts of Public 
 Income and Expenditure for the Financial Year ended 
 31st March, 1870, the nett Taxes paid into the Ex- 
 chequer (exclusive of Post Office, Crown Lands, and 
 Miscellaneous Receipts), were as follows: 
 
 TAXES. 
 
 Customs 21,449,843 
 
 Excise 21,879,238 
 
 Stamps 9,288,553 
 
 Land Tax 1,627,883 
 
 Assessed Taxes 2,895,123 
 
 Income Tax 10, 108,589 
 
 Total 67,249,229 
 
 From the manner in which the Government Accounts 
 are kept, or made out for the Public, it is not easy to 
 ascertain the Costs of Collection and Management of 
 the Revenue Departments ; neither is it easy to believe 
 that, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer, or any other Member of the Cabinet, or any- 
 body else, can do more than guess the actual amount of 
 these Costs, a circumstance which greatly aggravates the 
 difficulty of calculating the indirect Costs and Losses of 
 the present system. But the fault seems to be much 
 
128 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 more in the system than in the book-keeping, though 
 the form of the book-keeping might be much improved. 
 It is easy enough to see, under the present system, 
 especially when no Balance Sheet is given, how very 
 large sums of Public Money may be misappropriated 
 yearly without the smallest risk of detection. No effi- 
 cient check can be provided until the Revenue depart- 
 ments furnish an accurate account of Receipts and 
 Expenditure under each head, and a Balance Sheet be 
 given of the whole Income and Expenditure. This 
 would reveal much which the Public are entitled to 
 have, but cannot now obtain. Formerly the balances 
 and bills outstanding were brought forward in a Balance 
 Sheet; but in the Government Finance Account for 
 1871-2 the Balance Sheet seems to be omitted. This 
 requires explanation. 
 
 In the Finance Accounts for the year ended 31st 
 March, 1870 (pages 14 and 15), two statements were 
 given, showing the exact amount of Public Income and 
 Expenditure for the year ; but no Balance Sheet is now 
 given ; consequently, there can be no proper Audit, for 
 no audit can be effectual without a Balance Sheet, which 
 is, or ought to be, the first thing an Auditor asks for. 
 
 The Cash Account of the Exchequer is the same as 
 usual, but this is only a subsidiary account, and does 
 not show the total Public Income or the total Public 
 Expenditure. 
 
 This, if it really be so, must hasten the end of the 
 doomed system. 
 
 The Public have no means of ascertaining the actual 
 receipts from Stamps, Land-tax, Assessed Taxes, and 
 Income Tax; nor the actual expenditure of that 
 enormous establishment at Somerset House in its 
 numerous departments. The Legacy and Succession 
 Duties are muddled together, and the Income Tax, 
 under Schedule A. is lumped in one sum. 
 
ACTUAL COST. 129 
 
 These are a few instances only in what some may 
 consider small matters, and are given merely as illus- 
 trations; but when it is found that, the Government 
 Finance Accounts differ widely from all other statistics, 
 professing to give the Income and Expenditure for the 
 same periods, this encourages suspicion that some of the 
 accounts will not bear close inspection. This suspicion 
 will be greatly aggravated by the want of a Balance 
 Sheet, and can never be removed until the receipts and 
 expenditure of each separate service be fully and clearly 
 presented to the Public. 
 
 It is a striking fact that, the Cost of such an esta- 
 blishment as Somerset House, maintained at an enor- 
 mous annual expenditure, is nowhere to be found. 
 
 It is obviously impossible to prevent embezzlement of 
 Public Monies and other frauds, if the Books of 
 Account of all the Revenue departments be not balanced 
 periodically, and submitted to strict and impartial 
 Audit. 
 
 No good reason can be shown why the Financial 
 Year of the Government should not terminate on the 
 31st December. The Government Accounts would 
 then, so far, correspond with the accounts of almost 
 every public and private establishment in the kingdom. 
 
 If this simple and most natural mode of proceeding 
 had been adopted, none of those extensive defalcations 
 which have been discovered in the Collection of the 
 Income Tax could have occurred. But it is no part of 
 the present object to show how the Government Ac- 
 counts ought to be kept ; neither is this necessary, for 
 this has been already done, and in a manner which 
 leaves nothing more to be wished for, in the GENERAL 
 BALANCE SHEET of Mr. Henry Lloyd Morgan, already 
 set forth. But this is only subsidiary to the Govern- 
 ment Balance Sheet, without which the Account of 
 Receipts and Payments, however nicely balanced, is 
 
130 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 without any check, and is still open to an indefinite 
 amount of misapplication and embezzlement without a 
 proper Audit. 
 
 This is no imputation of fraud, but is a serious charge, 
 to say that Accounts are kept in such a form as to be 
 open to fraud without any means of detection. 
 
 The following Sums are taken from the Government 
 Estimates of the Revenue Departments for the Year 
 ended 31st March, 1870-71. 
 
 CUSTOMS. 
 
 SUMMARY OF CHARGES. 
 
 A. Superintending Establishment 94,100 
 
 B. Establishment Of The Port of London 265,803 
 
 C. Establishment Of The Port of Liverpool 114,198 
 
 D. Establishments Other Than London and Liverpool 326,919 
 
 E. Law Charges, Subsistence Of Prisoners, &c 8,300 
 
 F. Expenses Under The Merchant Shipping Act 5,000 
 
 II. Superannuations And Other Non - Effective 
 
 Charges 172,517 
 
 Total Charges & Expenses 986,837 
 
 INLAND REVENUE. 
 
 SUMMARY OF CHARGES. 
 
 A. Salaries, Wages, And Allowances In Addition To 
 
 Salaries 923,855 
 
 B. Travelling And Subsistence Allowances 46,000 
 
 C. Poundage And Allowances To Distributors And 
 
 Sub-Distributors Of Stamps, &c., And Allow- 
 ance To Postmaster General For Issue Of Dog 
 And Other Licences 64,000 
 
 D. Ditto To Clerks To The Local Commissioners Of 
 
 Taxes 67,000 
 
 E. Ditto To Collectors And Assessors 145,000 
 
 F. Salaries In Lieu of Poundage Of Distributors &c., 
 
 In Scotland 15,040 
 
 G-. Commission On Remittances 2,500 
 
 H. Bank Of England For Clerks' Attendance 950 
 
 I. Police .. 1,890 
 
SUMMARY OF CHARGES. 131 
 
 . Rent ...................................... ................... 18,500 
 
 L. Kates And Taxes ....................................... 500 
 
 M. Fuel And Light ......................................... 2,500 
 
 N. Furniture (Inclusive Of Office Fittings, &c.) ... 5,741 
 
 O. Gauging Instruments, Dies, And Revenue Locks 3,200 
 P. Gas Fitting, Repairs To Engine, And Purchase 
 
 Of Articles For Stamping Department ......... 2,500 
 
 Q. Maintenance And Repairs Of Buildings ......... 3,265 
 
 R. Postage And Carriage Of Books And Parcels ... 23,000 
 
 S. Advertisements .......................................... 4,500 
 
 T. Stationery, Printing, Bookbinding, And Gum- 
 
 ming ...................................................... 62,000 
 
 V. Stamps For Revenue Purposes And Declarations 1,000 
 W. Copies Of Poor Rates For Income Tax Purposes, 
 
 And Copies of Wills In Scotland .................. 12,000 
 
 X. Law Expenses .......................................... 12,500 
 
 Y. Rewards To Officers For Detections, &c ........ .*. 13,000 
 
 Z. Allowances To Crown Prisoners ..................... 500 
 
 A.I. Grants To Universities Of Oxford And Cam- 
 
 bridge ............. * .................................... 1,000 
 
 B.I. Incidental Expenses .................................... 1,500 
 
 C.I. Superannuations And Other Non-Effective 
 
 Charges ................................................ 189,310 
 
 Total Charges and Expenses ...... 1,622,751 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 Costs Of Customs ............................................. 986,837 
 
 Of Inland Revenue Stamps and Taxes ............ 1,622,751 
 
 Costs Of Customs And Inland Revenue, 7 xo ^nn KQO 
 
 j 2,609,58 
 
 Stamps & Taxes 
 
 Here is an expenditure of 2,609,588 for Costs of 
 Collection and Management of the Customs and Inland 
 Revenue Departments, as estimated, according to the 
 Government Accounts, for the year ending 31st March, 
 1870-71. 
 
 It is manifest on the face of these Accounts that, this 
 sum is very far short of the actual amount, but the 
 actual amount it is impossible to discover. 
 
 The chief authority at Somerset House, (to whom 
 
 K 2 
 
132 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 application was made on the occasion of the former 
 edition of this book in 1862) said in answer that, the 
 expenses of that enormous establishment, for the Col- 
 lection of Stamps and Taxes, were all included in the 
 Government Financial Accounts for the year, under the 
 head of Inland Revenue ; but in vain is that Account 
 searched for the particulars of these expenses. If in- 
 cluded, the mode of entry effectually baffles all investi- 
 gation. 
 
 Under the Statute 24th & 25th Viet. c. 103, sec. 19, 
 the whole expense of collecting the Inland Revenue, which 
 comprises Excise, Stamps, Land Tax, Assessed Taxes, 
 Licences, and Income Tax, is voted by Parliament in 
 One Vote. 
 
 The chief authority at Somerset House, in answer to 
 the special application made to him for more particular 
 information, wrote as follows : 
 
 " There is no separate Vote or Estimate for the diffe- 
 rent branches of Inland Revenue, nor can there be, the 
 same person being, in many cases, employed in the 
 collection of every branch. The expenditure is accounted 
 for in the Finance Accounts annually laid before Par- 
 liament/' 
 
 This is, no doubt, a correct though a very unsatisfac- 
 tory answer. It does not require much knowledge to 
 see that, the Revenue from Excise, Stamps, Land Tax, 
 Assessed Taxes, and Income Tax, amounting altogether 
 to 45,799,386, cannot be collected and paid into the 
 Exchequer at so small a cost as 1,622,751 or 3'543 
 per cent. But in the absence of fuller information, this 
 must be taken as the actual Cost of Collection of the 
 Inland Revenue. 
 
 The same reasoning applies to the Customs Duties 
 amounting to 21,449,843, and the Cost of Collection, 
 986,837, or 4'6 per cent. 
 
 No one acquainted with the working of the system of 
 
SUMMARY OF ACTUAL COST. 133 
 
 Customs and Excise can doubt that, the actual Cost very 
 much exceeds these sums. But taking these as the 
 actual Costs of Collection, as charged in the Govern- 
 ment Financial Account for the Financial Year, ended 
 31st March, 1870-71, the Account stands thus: 
 
 SUMMARY OF ACTUAL COST. 
 
 . . 
 
 Customs .... 986,837 or 4'6 per cent, on 21,449,843 
 Inland Revenue, 
 Stamps and Taxes 1,622,751 3'543 45,799,386 
 
 Total . . 2,609,588 or 3-88 per cent, on 67,249,229 
 
 To show how little reliance is to be placed on these 
 figures, taken from the Government Financial Account, 
 it will be sufficient to compare the foregoing figures, 
 purporting to show the Costs of Collection of Customs 
 and Excise Duties, Stamps and Taxes, with the follow- 
 ing taken from the Table No. 7. page 10, of the Govern- 
 ment Statistical Abstract for the same year, 1870-71. 
 
 For the present purpose it will be sufficient to extract 
 the figures for that year only. 
 
134 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 O 
 
 H r-J 
 
 fc*^ 
 
 gs 
 
 > O 
 
 B 
 g.s 
 
 
 II 
 
 SS 
 
 141 
 
 III 
 ail 
 
 gas 
 
 6SJ1 
 
 IS 
 
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THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 135 
 
 Comparing these figures from the Statistical Abstract, 
 with the figures from the Government Financial Account 
 (page 26), it will be seen that, none of these figures 
 agree ; in one account the amount being given in the 
 Gross, and in the other the amount being given Nett, 
 the Charges for Collection being not deducted in the 
 one, and being deducted in the other. But after adding 
 and deducting the Costs of Collection to and from the 
 sums total in these accounts there is still no agreement 
 in these figures, nor could there be any agreement, the 
 Costs of Collection differing in both these Accounts. 
 
 In this way, dealing with such large sums, hundreds 
 of thousands may slip through without the possibility of 
 detection. 
 
 These differences may be open to explanation and 
 may be accounted for to remove every imputation of 
 misappropriation or fraud; but an Account should be 
 so clear on the face of it as to require no explanation. 
 No imputation is here made or intended, but a distinct 
 charge is made of error to an unknown amount, and 
 that no Account can be free from this charge under the 
 present system of collecting the Revenue by Customs 
 and Excise Duties. 
 
 THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 
 
 Under this heading will be brought together some 
 of the more prominent inconsistencies and manifest 
 absurdities of the present system. To bring together 
 all these obstructions to Trade would be an impossible 
 labour, and the present undertaking is sufficiently 
 laborious. 
 
 But this will be labour lost without the reader's close 
 attention to these unavoidably tiresome details, and, 
 after all, much must be left for the reader's own con- 
 clusions. 
 
136 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 It is well known that, a majority of the small 
 country Custom Houses do not pay their expenses by 
 the revenue they collect, and it is difficult to regard the 
 coast-guard as other than an utterly useless force. The 
 detail work of the Customs is so needlessly complicated 
 that, it can hardly be with any other object than of 
 employing as large a staff as possible, for the vast 
 reductions of Customs duties of late years have not 
 led to anything like a corresponding reduction in the 
 number of hands employed. Several posts formerly 
 important, but now reduced to the merest sinecures, 
 are still paid at the old rate of remuneration. 
 
 No business man can be found who would not com- 
 plain of the obstructiveness of the Customs officials, 
 of the needless complication of the returns and papers 
 they require, and of the endless difficulties raised at 
 every step. For instance, it appears incredible that, 
 the trade of London should have to make out the whole 
 of its Customs' papers in duplicate or triplicate, and to 
 lodge them in different offices for the convenience of 
 different sets of books needlessly kept by the Customs, 
 instead of the one set really necessary. Ludicrously 
 intricate details are required on each of these, and 
 everybody that knows anything about it must know 
 that half of the subordinate Clerks in Thames Street 
 might be saved by a proper simplification of the books, 
 while the labour involved to merchants in clearing their 
 goods would be halved. A large staff is also employed 
 in keeping up statistical returns, which, owing to the 
 long delay in their issue, were, until quite recently, 
 useless for practical purposes, and which might, with- 
 out expense, be obtained, without any lengthy delay, 
 from the wharfingers, while these returns, to cause a 
 further needless multiplication of work, are checked by 
 the officials of the Board of Trade. Custom Houses, 
 in any shape, must always be most vexatious to traders, 
 
THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 137 
 
 and greatly increase the cost to consumers, but the 
 Thames Street establishment seems designed to do the 
 least work, at the greatest possible cost, and, at the 
 same time, to inconvenience the public to the utmost 
 limit of their endurance. If any one wishes to see the 
 " How not to do it" system in full force, he had better 
 visit the establishment of Her Majesty's Customs. 
 
 The clearance of goods through the Custom House 
 is so generally done by junior clerks that, few principals 
 of firms are aware of the astounding imbecility of the 
 rules of the Board under which goods are imported, 
 exported, or delivered for home consumption. By these 
 rules the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Customs 
 convert that which should be a very simple operation, 
 into a most complicated piece of business, requiring a 
 life-time to understand, and employing the time of 
 thousands of mercantile clerks in London alone, while 
 the swarms of officials which the system enables the 
 Commissioners to keep elaborately employed in useless 
 labour, may be gathered by any one who will visit the 
 Custom House with a determination not to be diverted 
 by misrepresentation and deceit from finding out the 
 truth for himself. 
 
 Now, to take the instance of a small shipment to 
 Australia : if the goods were relieved from a senseless 
 supervision on the part of the Customs on Export, all 
 that would be required would be one or two delivery 
 orders, with half a dozen words written upon them, for 
 delivery of the goods to the railway or other carriers. 
 But whether the goods be duty free or not, the Customs 
 oil Export keep up a senseless supervision, for in no 
 case can the Customs possibly lose on Exports. 
 
 Suppose the case of goods exported by Thomas 
 Brown, of Eastcheap, to Melbourne. However incre- 
 dible it may appear, the collective length of the papers 
 required is twenty-five feet nine-and-a-half inches, and 
 
138 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 their breadth twenty-eight feet two inches, to he filled 
 up by Thomas Brown's clerks before the goods can be 
 put on board ship. The whole of these papers, thirty- 
 eight in number are, with one or two exceptions, 
 printed at the cost of the nation and presented free to 
 the shipper, but that unfortunate person has to keep 
 the clerks who waste their time and his money in fill- 
 ing in these papers to the minutest details. By the 
 average of forms, the length of a single Customs form 
 (including the duplicates and triplicates made out for 
 the convenience of the Custom House) may be taken 
 at 9 inches, and its breadth at 8J inches. 
 
 By Return, 393, the number of entries and despatches, 
 used by the Public alone and required for the Import 
 and Delivery of goods only during the year 1868, was 
 2,350,000 in the United Kingdom. There are, at a 
 moderate calculation, at least three forms required to 
 any entry; multiplying 2,350^000 by 3, we arrive at 
 7,050,000, as the number of Customs forms used by 
 the public solely for the entry and delivery of goods ; 
 excluding from this calculation all the forms made out 
 by the Customs for themselves, and all the other mul- 
 titudinous forms which have to be filled in by the 
 public. The collective length of the Entry and 
 Despatch forms would be 1,760,000 yards, or a col- 
 lective length and breadth of SOOO miles. A clerical 
 error, however slight and obvious, in any of the forms, 
 insures the stoppage of the entry and the return of the 
 papers, as the Customs never correct an error, even 
 when papers are made out in triplicate, and when a 
 discrepancy is a manifest mis-copy, caused by weariness 
 of the flesh, induced by copying meaningless details 
 over and over again. 
 
 In the twenty-five feet nine and a half inches by 
 twenty-eight feet of papers necessary to ship the goods 
 mentioned above, to the satisfaction of the Customs, the 
 
THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 139 
 
 following particulars have to be repeated some dozens of 
 time. 1. The persons by whom the goods were 
 originally warehoused. 2. The Ship by which the 
 goods were imported. 3. Her Captain's name. 4. 
 Where she came from. 5. The Shipper's name. 6. 
 Where the goods are going. 7. By what ship. 8. 
 Her Captain's name. 9. Where the goods lie. 10. 
 Where they are to be shipped. 11. The import mark 
 and numbers. 12. The export mark and numbers. 
 13. The carman's name. 14. The tonnage and country 
 of the exporting ship. 
 
 Such are the ridiculous and complicated formalities 
 attending the very simple matter of shipping a few bar- 
 rels of Currants, a few cases of Figs, a few chests of Tea, 
 and a few Bags of Rough Rice for Australia. 
 
 But suppose the present order of things overthrown, 
 and Mr. Brown's Currants were shipped to Australia 
 without the twenty-eight feet of Customs papers or any 
 papers, and suppose any case, could any loss occur to 
 the Customs ? It is well known at the Custom House 
 that, the Revenue could not possibly lose one farthing. 
 What will the Public say and do when they know this ? 
 
 If Brown were foolish enough to pay the duty before 
 exporting his currants he would be the loser and the 
 Revenue the gainer. If he did not pay the duty but 
 exported the goods, the gross Revenue would be in the 
 same position as it now is, but the Nett Revenue would 
 gain by saving the cost of twenty-eight feet of paper, 
 endless clerks labor at the Customs, the attendance of 
 a Searcher, the cost of gimlets and boring holes in Mr. 
 Brown's barrels of currants. In short, no honest 
 person of common sense can doubt that, the Customs 
 supervision of the Exports of dutiable goods is a clear 
 loss to the Revenue, and that the sole object is to 
 employ unnecessary hands and to fetter trade. If this 
 be true of dutiable goods what possible justification can 
 
140 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 there be for a supervision of duty-free goods on Export ? 
 None whatever. It is a disgrace to the Government 
 that permits such a profligate and cruel waste of the 
 hard-earned wages of the People, and should not be 
 allowed to continue for a single day. 
 
 I pass over the appalling forms required for exporting 
 British Refined Sugar under Drawback. To make the 
 explanation of this monstrous mass of mischievous 
 imbecility intelligible to the uninitiated would require, 
 at least, a hundred of these printed pages, and more 
 brains and patience than the Public are supposed to 
 possess. 
 
 What a system that must be which requires, for work- 
 ing it, such an inconceivable mass of rubbish as this ! 
 
 I had intended to give fac-simile copies of the Custom 
 House printed forms of Entry, Warrants, Landing 
 Orders, and innumerable other documents required to 
 be filled up for the import and export of Goods, and for 
 this purpose, with much trouble to myself and to others 
 in the Trade, I brought together a collection pronounced 
 by the initiated to be complete. But when I contem- 
 plated this mass of rubbish (to display which would 
 have required a Supplementary Volume of unusual size 
 with leaves inconveniently doubled up like a book of 
 maps), to spare myself and readers I abandoned the 
 notion, though the sight of this mass of rubbish would 
 have been worth more than any description. The 
 variety of Ledgers and Account Books, with very special 
 and complicated ruling, thus imposed on the wholesale 
 merchant, to meet these forms, is far beyond description, 
 and the additional number of Clerks thus required in 
 every great Mercantile House must be left to the 
 imagination ! 
 
 The only effectual reform can be by sweeping away at 
 once the whole system of Customs and Excise. The 
 Government Establishment in Thames Street might 
 
THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 141 
 
 then, with great profit to the country, be sold to the 
 Trustees of Billingsgate Market. 
 
 After these public exposures, now for the fourth time 
 repeated in this 4th Edition of "The People's Blue 
 Book," ignorance will be no excuse for the much longer 
 continuance of this shameful system, which is robbing 
 the working classes of two- thirds of their wages of labor, 
 and leaving the Country open to internal dangers, which 
 threaten the very existence of the British Monarchy and 
 'State. 
 
 The amount of money and time the present system of 
 Customs and Excise costs the Country is incalculable. 
 But, in addition to these vexatious hindrances to Trade, 
 there are the Costs of the Coast Guard and the expenses 
 unappropriated in detail, in the Estimates, to each Port. 
 At many of the Ports the Custom House expenses 
 exceed the Revenue collected ! 
 
 This scandalous fact is not generally known to the 
 Public, but will presently be shown from Official docu- 
 ments, where the details cannot be witheld, though the 
 full consequences are attempted to be disguised by 
 information witheld and facts misrepresented, not by 
 the Government, but by the Custom House authorities. 
 
 The evidence of the evils of this system is to be found 
 in scattered details far too numerous to be collected 
 together in the limits of these pages, but the following 
 may be sufficient to show the little reliance to be placed 
 in the Official Returns of Customs Duties. The gross 
 produce of the Customs, deducting drawbacks, as given 
 on page 81 of the Customs' Report for 1868, was 
 24,099,617. The total grants to the Customs, of ail 
 kinds and including pensions, &c., for 18689, was 
 1,024,664, and to the Coast Guard, 728,000 (esti- 
 mated from page 21 of Navy Estimates, 1869-70). 
 
 The total cost of Collection was thus : 1,752,664, 
 or 7 : 5s. per cent. 
 
142 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 The Customs' department in Appendix G. calls the 
 rate of Collection 3:5:10 per cent. 
 
 This is manifestly erroneous. 
 
 The rate of 7 : 5s. per cent, is the gross cost of 
 the Government alone, and for collecting the nett Cus- 
 toms Revenue is 7 : 16s. Deducting the 1,400,000 
 of British Spirits, formerly collected by the Excise, but 
 now collected by the Customs in order to make their 
 doomed department appear more important, 8:7 : 
 per cent, is the cost of collecting the nett revenue on 
 goods properly belonging to the Customs' department. 
 
 Nearly the whole of the Customs' expenses are 
 salaries, which form only a small per centage of ordinary 
 mercantile charges. The Customs do not allow any- 
 thing for the Nation's capital locked up in their ex- 
 pensive premises all over the kingdom. The site of the 
 Thames Street House alone is, probably, worth half a 
 million of money. 
 
 I state, on the authority of one of the largest whole- 
 sale houses in the City of London, that, their total per 
 centage of expenses of all kinds to turn over is 2 per 
 cent., including 5 per cent, interest charged on capital, 
 bad debts, rent, postage, inland revenue stamps, taxes, 
 dock-charges, salaries, etc. (from all of which, except 
 salaries, the Customs is exempt). This business though 
 very large is one of details entirely. 
 
 A merchant's expenses, who deals in very large quan- 
 tities only, would be an interesting comparison with 
 Customs' expenses. As it is, we find the expense of a 
 business of infinitely greater detail than the Customs to 
 be only 2 per cent, of the turn over, while the Customs 
 manage to expend 8 : 7 : per cent. 
 
 Here is a difference so monstrous, showing such a 
 shameful loss to the Nation that, any one may be 
 excused for expressing astonishment and indignation, 
 even at this alone ! 
 
THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 143 
 
 What can be said for a system so conducted, and who 
 can calculate the aggregate cost and loss to the Nation 
 of such a system, even admitting the management to be 
 perfect ? 
 
 What will the People say when they understand these 
 facts and figures, which no one dares dispute, for this 
 statement is intentionally understated, lest it should 
 appear on the face of it incredible to the inexperienced 
 in these matters ? 
 
 Particular attention should be given to the details of 
 the cost and nett revenue, for it is only by close exami- 
 nation that, the immense sums left unappropriated in 
 detail can be discovered, and any notion formed of the 
 fearful amount of loss to the Nation caused by this 
 system. 
 
 To gather up all the Losses is impossible. 
 
 As the public income and expenditure are now 
 attracting much attention, the following reference to the 
 Report of the Commissioners of Customs may be in- 
 teresting to many. 
 
 The nett receipt of Customs' duties in the United 
 Kingdom in the year 1868-9 is stated in Appendix E, 
 to be 22,411,783. 
 
 The gross receipt of Customs' duties in the same year 
 is stated in Appendix G, to be 24,389,963, and the 
 Cost of Collection is there stated to be 793,413. 
 
 But the Cost of Collection in that year was 1,725,550, 
 including Coast Guard and Pensions, &c., showing an 
 error of 932,137 ! 
 
 These figures are not from an Official Return, but are 
 from a laborious investigation of many Official Returns, 
 far too lengthy to be transferred to these pages, but a 
 Summary of these figures will be here given. The Com- 
 missioners of Customs cannot be ignorant of this inac- 
 curacy. They affect to regard the Coast Guard as 
 belonging to the Navy and not to the Customs; but 
 
144 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 they must know that, the Coast Guard is part of the 
 system for the prevention of Smuggling. 
 
 According to the Official Return for 1868-9 there 
 are 34 separate Custom House Establishments where 
 the Expenses of Collection exceed the amount collected. 
 These Expenses show a very large yearly dead loss to 
 the country, the only benefit being to the Custom 
 House Officers and their families, who are thus comfort- 
 ably provided for in idleness by the Country. 
 
 In the Official Return of Custom House Establish- 
 ments for 1862, given in full in the 3rd Edition of " The 
 People's Blue Book," amongst the long list of Ports 
 at which the expenses exceed the receipts, are Guernsey, 
 where the Salaries and Charges entered were 1,169 
 Gross Amount Collected 49 Rate per cent, of Cost 
 of Collection 2,385 : 14 : 3. Jersey, Salaries and 
 Charges 1,741, Gross Amount Collected 154 Rate 
 per cent, of cost of Collection 1,130 : 10 : 4. 
 
 In the Table of the Return for 1868 are enumerated 
 the Ports and Towns in the United Kingdom where 
 Custom Houses are placed, the number of Custom 
 Houses being 132. These are divided into 9 classes. 
 Class I. contains 34 Custom Houses, the Costs of which 
 exceed the amount of revenue collected by them. This 
 excess of cost is charged as " Loss to the Country." 
 The other eight classes, showing an excess of revenue 
 over the Cost of Collection, are entered as " Gain to the 
 Country." But the whole of this revenue is indirectly 
 a Loss to the Country, as shown in these pages. 
 
 It must have been well known to the Commissioners 
 of Customs, though ignored by them, that, the Imports 
 of dutiable goods occurred only at 10 out of the 132 
 Custom Houses and that, the remaining 122 would 
 have collected no Revenue at all but for the system of 
 allowing Removals Coastwise under Bond, a system 
 which, when duties were much larger and ten times 
 
THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 145 
 
 more numerous than they are now, had some show 
 of justification, but is now worse than useless, as it 
 simply maintains swarms of obstructive Custom House 
 Officers where they are not wanted. 
 
 Tea may be taken as an example, being a case where 
 almost all the Imports are at one Port, that of 
 London. 
 
 Suppose the case of a Country Buyer, who keeps his 
 Tea stock in London. All that he has to do, when he 
 requires any portion of his stock, is to send an order by 
 Post, or by Telegraph to London. The duty is then 
 paid on the quantity he requires, and the Tea is sent to 
 his order. He certainly loses a day's interest of money 
 on the duty paid, but this is an infinitesimal loss. If 
 all the Tea revenue were collected in London, very 
 many of the small Custom Houses would lose their 
 raison d'etre. A system, therefore, no longer of any 
 practical use to the Public, is kept up, and removals of 
 Teas in Bond are allowed from London, after many 
 strange documents have been filled up by the Buyer or 
 his Agent. The goods on arrival at a Minor Port are 
 re-warehoused, with all the ridiculous formalities, pre- 
 tended to be necessary, but, in fact, necessary only for 
 the employment of useless hands. A staff is kept up 
 to watch the Teas and to interpose difficulties in getting 
 them out of Bond. Finally these difficulties are over- 
 come, and delivery is taken in detail on the duty being 
 paid. The practice is no longer any real convenience to 
 trade, but it gratifies local vanity to have one's name in 
 the paper as paying duty on so much Tea imported from 
 China. Many Grocers remove their Tea under Bond 
 with no other object than to 'support' their local 
 Custom-House and to swell its returns. Of course, it 
 gratifies Her Majesty's Commissioners to promote such 
 feelings. No revenue at all would be collected at 122 
 out of 132 Custom Houses, unless an artificial system 
 
 L 
 
146 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 of supplying them with fictitious Imports were kept up. 
 So obliging, indeed, are the Commissioners that, they 
 have lately started Inland Custom Houses at Man- 
 chester and elsewhere, which they imagine cost nothing, 
 because the people of the towns in which they are esta- 
 blished pay the expenses, instead of charging them on 
 the country at large ! 
 
 According to the Government Return for the year, 
 ended 31st March, 1870, there were 129 Custom 
 Houses at Minor Ports : three Inland Custom Houses : 
 and Liverpool and London. Out of these 129 Minor 
 Custom Houses, 71 showed a loss to the Revenue. 
 This loss, amounting to 352,719, was just balanced 
 by the receipts at 33 other Minor Custom Houses. 
 Therefore, out of the 129 Custom Houses at Minor 
 Ports, only 25 showed a nett gain to the Revenue ! 
 
 It is very important to know in detail how the public 
 money is spent by the Commissioners of Customs, but 
 all the returns are drawn up in a manner so confused 
 and contradictory that, this is impossible. 
 
 No Balance Sheet is given, showing the cost and 
 revenue of each Custom House establishment, though 
 this is the first and most essential document for a 
 correct understanding of the account, as well as for an 
 economical administration of the money. The astound- 
 ing facts disclosed in the returns show enormous losses 
 to the revenue, and at the public expense, though, in 
 such confusion and contradiction, the exact amount of 
 these losses may escape detection. 
 
 This astounding fact, however, is clear enough, that, 
 out of 129 ports no less than 71, costing 519,867 
 a-year, not only do not collect their expenses, but show 
 a loss to the Revenue of 352,719. It is evident that, 
 the expenses paid by the public to keep up these useless 
 establishments must be added to show the whole loss, 
 and we thus find that 71 Custom-houses are a loss of 
 
THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 147 
 
 872,586. Following up these 71 houses, the next 
 class of 33 only balances the loss shown by Class 1 ; so 
 that it is evident that, out of 129 houses, no less than 
 104, costing 792,433, do not yield a farthing to the 
 revenue. Surely, this is a monstrous state of things, 
 and requires to be dealt with by a strong hand. 
 
 Incredible as these facts must appear to many, this 
 is simply one example of Her Majesty's Commissioners 
 of Customs. But every detail of their business shows 
 facts quite as damaging. The hindrance to trade and 
 the fearful increase of expense to those engaged in the 
 trade can be conceived only by those who have to do 
 the work required to keep the standing army of 12,646 
 officials apparently occupied. 
 
 The outworks by which the Commissioners of Customs 
 defend the revenue are no less complicated and vexatious 
 than the duties, and the manner in which the duties are 
 levied. It is not found necessary by the Excise to esta- 
 blish a cordon of officers round every town and village 
 in the kingdom, and as illicit distillery can be carried 
 on in any house it must be more difficult of detection 
 than smuggling. Goods brought by sea cannot easily 
 escape notice, for the entry of the ship, or even of the 
 boat, into harbour, is almost certain to be watched by 
 many curious eyes. Notwithstanding this, the Customs 
 think fit to employ the coast-guard, at an expense, in 
 1869-70, of 739,000 per annum. Not content with 
 this expense and with having the whole coast, however 
 inaccessible, continually patrolled by night and by day, 
 the Customs go further still. By the Customs Con- 
 solidation Act of 1859, the Commissioners have the 
 power of declaring what shall and what shall not be 
 ports. In consequence of this extraordinary regulation, 
 the Customs have divided the coast into three classes. 
 1. Those places at which no importation or exportation 
 of goods, dutyable or free, is permitted. 2. Places 
 
 L 2 
 
148 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 which, though free to import and export goods in 
 general, are under special restrictions or disabilities 
 as, for example, with respect to the importation of wine 
 or tobacco, the bonding of dutyable goods, or the test- 
 ing of wine for duty. 3. Places which, under the most 
 vexatious restrictions, are authorised to import goods of 
 all kinds, and also as warehousing and testing ports. 
 
 It is possible to understand the idea of limiting the 
 import of dutyable goods to certain ports, though this 
 power seems a monstrous one to be placed in the hands 
 of any Government department.. But it is difficult to 
 see any reason why, with a coast guardsman for every 
 mile of the coast it should be thought desirable to 
 prohibit the import of free goods, or the export of duty- 
 able or free goods, by neither of which the revenue could 
 lose a farthing. The owners of sea-side or river-side 
 property are deeply interested in the alteration of 
 arrangements, which must depreciate the value of their 
 land. An unnatural distribution of trade, both internal 
 and foreign, must be the consequence of Government 
 Officials ordaining that, here and there only shall mari- 
 time commerce be carried on, commanding that rivers 
 should flow to the sea in vain, and saying to the sea 
 " Hither shalt thou. come, but no further." 
 
 Among other senseless restrictions, tea, on importa- 
 tion, is required to be placed in a warehouse or floor 
 specially set apart for its reception. In the Imperial 
 tariff, the list of ports at which goods may be ware- 
 housed, may be found at pages 57 to 61, and it will be 
 seen that, in nearly every case there is some senseless 
 restriction of trade. 
 
 The value of dutyable goods retained for home con- 
 sumption in the United Kingdom, in 1870, is estimated 
 at 35,000,000. 
 
 The total value of imports and exports of all produce 
 into the United Kingdom was no less than 443,775,721. 
 
THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 149 
 
 Thus, less than one-twelfth in value of the goods 
 imported and exported yield any Customs' duty, but the 
 mischievous and costly interference with every detail 
 connected with the import and export of the remaining 
 portion is still permitted. 
 
 For entering free goods, which can be done only at 
 ports arbitrarily named by the Department, two Cus- 
 toms' forms with full particulars are still required, and 
 these cause a delay in obtaining delivery of several 
 hours, besides the costly system which has to be kept 
 up by the importers. 
 
 For exporting free goods a further form is required, 
 and, as before said, free goods can be exported only from 
 ports fixed by the Board of Customs. For the ware- 
 housing of dutyable goods, the importer has again to fill 
 up forms which are quite unnecessary, as the destination 
 of the goods could always be reported by the official on 
 board the ship, and much greater use might be made of 
 the Captain's manifest, both in importing and exporting 
 goods. The wharfinger could also be utilised to a much 
 greater extent than at present. 
 
 The system of removing goods coastwise, under bond, 
 is no longer required by traders to the same extent as 
 when Customs' duties were very much heavier and more 
 numerous, before the days of steam and telegraph, when 
 great delays often took place before goods could be 
 obtained. Now, goods can be sent from one end of the 
 railway system to the other in two days, and generally 
 in one day. It always takes a clear day to obtain 
 delivery from the clutches of the Customs. It may be 
 said, however, that, the delay in obtaining goods from 
 the port of import, if removals coastwise under bond, 
 for home consumption, were forbidden, would, on the 
 average, not exceed one day. One day's interest on 
 20,000,000 the amount collected by Customs' du- 
 ties, is 2,739. Taking the wholesale value of dutyable 
 
150 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 goods at J33,000,000, there would be a further loss ot 
 one day's interest on the bonded value of 4,518. It 
 is, therefore, within bound to say that, the loss of 
 interest of money in delivering dutyable goods from any 
 one place to another in the Kingdom does not exceed 
 10,000. Out of 133 Customs ports in the United 
 Kingdom, probably 10 would collect the entire Customs' 
 revenue, if removals coastwise under bond for home 
 consumption were prohibited. 
 
 The system may, therefore, be said to maintain 123 
 Custom-houses, costing something like a million and a 
 quarter per annum ; so that, the gain to the Country 
 would be enormous, simply by making it necessary to 
 pay duties in the port of import. If the Customs were 
 amalgamated with the Excise, there would then be no 
 great difficulty in allowing any and every port in the 
 kingdom to import and warehouse dutyable goods in 
 bond, nor would it be necessary to prohibit removals 
 coastwise under bond, of goods designed for export. 
 
 In this way, as thorough a system of free trade as is 
 possible during the existence of Custom-houses would 
 be established. Apart from the question of allowing 
 removals coastwise under bond at all, the present system 
 is unnecessarily complicated. As an example, take the 
 method of sending spirits in bond from one port to 
 another. Three forms of a most portentous character 
 are required, on which the greater part of the particulars 
 have to be repeated by the consigner no less than four 
 times. The number of gallons of spirit in the cask on 
 landing, together with their alcoholic strength has first 
 to be ascertained, and the form upon which this is done, 
 contains seventeen closely ruled columns, which have all 
 to be filled in. After the consigner has filled in the 
 landing measure, he has to take the form to the Custom 
 House in Thames Street, to be signed by an official 
 technically called a controller ; the consigner has then 
 
THE B0ARD OF CUSTOMS. 151 
 
 to take the form to the wharf where the goods lie, which 
 is, probably, a mile from the Custom House. The 
 Spirits are then re- gauged by the Ganger, who signs 
 the document and hands it back to the consigner. The 
 latter takes it back to the controller with another form 
 attached, technically called the locker's Order, though 
 it is headed " Legal Quays No. 9." The controller 
 signs the locker's order, which the consigner finally 
 takes to the wharf, having had to walk six miles in the 
 different operations, and to spend the whole of a busi- 
 ness day in fulfilling these absurd formalities. It may 
 be added that, should the Spirits evaporate in bond 
 before removal, the owner has first to pay the duty on 
 the number of gallons lost. 
 
 The forms for removing other goods under bond are 
 almost equally ridiculous, and should any loss take 
 place in transit, the owner has to pay the difference. 
 The goods on arrival at the outport have to go through 
 numberless operations, and to be formally taken in 
 charge by the Customs a second time; then all the 
 forms have to be filled in, for paying duty before the 
 owner can obtain the goods. The Customs thus manage 
 to do the work four times over in such cases. When 
 goods are moved under bond to an outport for the 
 purpose of being exported, seven forms are called for, 
 with particulars of a most appalling character. Ordi- 
 nary legal proof of the actual export of the goods is not 
 sufficient, and should the bonded carman by any acci- 
 dent omit to comply with the regulations, the consigner 
 is called upon to pay the duty on goods which have 
 actually left the country. 
 
 When it is desired, instead of warehousing any por- 
 tions of a cargo, to transfer them from one vessel to 
 another, a Customs' officer accompanies the goods in 
 their journey by lighter; notwithstanding this, the 
 owner has to fill in three forms, to enter into a bond, 
 
152 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 and to fulfil numerous other technicalities. Page 62 of 
 the Imperial Tariff deals with ships' stores, and it will 
 be found that, they can only be used in bond in ships of 
 a certain size, while more than a quantity laid down by 
 the omniscient Board of Customs as the proper con- 
 sumption of a ship's crew cannot be taken on board any 
 vessel. Again, no warehoused goods can be exported 
 from the United Kingdom to foreign ports, in ships of 
 less than 50 tons burden. It is difficult to see how the 
 maintenance of any of these restrictions can have the 
 slightest effect in guarding the revenue. As the revenue 
 cannot suffer by the transhipment of goods from one 
 ship to another, nor by the export of ships' stores, nor 
 of dutiable goods in vessels of less than a certain size, it 
 is difficult to understand why any Customs' formalities 
 should be required for such operations. 
 
 In exporting goods liable to duty, the revenue is the 
 gainer, if the owner have first paid the duty in error, 
 and if he have not paid the duty the revenue cannot 
 possibly lose. Yet the Customs' officers find artificial 
 work for their men, and throw a vast expense upon 
 merchants, by requiring no less than eight forms to be 
 filled in before such goods can be exported. 
 
 Of the operations required for shipping goods, enough 
 has been already inflicted on the reader. 
 
 The amount of detail into which even this short 
 description has led will give some idea of the complica- 
 tion of the system. Needless complications and absurd 
 rules have been disclosed at every stage in these pro- 
 ceedings. The manner of paying the duty and the 
 manner in which the duty is levied have been shown to 
 be not only ridiculous, but mischievous and costly in 
 the highest degree. The outworks thought necessary to 
 protect the revenue could hardly be more senseless, and 
 whether in removals coastwise, in transhipments in the 
 imports and exports of free goods, and the export of 
 
THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 153 
 
 dutiable goods, the aim appears to be to make every- 
 thing as intricate and confused as possible. After such 
 a narrative of imbecility, to use the mildest term, the 
 enormous cost of the Customs ceases to surprise, and it 
 is no longer a wonder that two-thirds of their work is a 
 loss to the country ; nor can there be any doubt that, 
 the remaining third, necessary only till the revenue is 
 raised by direct taxation, could be done at one-fourth of 
 the present cost. 
 
 To attempt to cope with such an organised waste of 
 the public money by the proposed consolidation of the 
 warehousing establishments into three branches, is 
 simply absurd, and if this be all that is to be done, the 
 present Government will give as little satisfaction to the 
 Public in this as in most other attempts at administra- 
 tive reform . There can be no satisfactory reform of the 
 Custom House but by its abolition. 
 
 Much more might be added on Customs' reform, and 
 on the proposal for amalgamating the Customs' depart- 
 ment and the Board of Inland Revenue, but that is no 
 part of the present purpose, the object being, the total 
 abolition of Customs and Excise duties. 
 
 It will be seen from the foregoing account that, to 
 give a full and clear description of Customs' routine, 
 (if that were possible) would very far exceed the limits 
 of this volume, and that, such a description, if readable, 
 would be unintelligible to most readers. The following 
 is, therefore, given only as a slight sketch of a few of 
 the impedimenta in what are called, " over-entries," 
 that is, of amounts over-paid to the Customs, either 
 through their error, or that of the firm which made the 
 payment. 
 
 For the convenience of a name, the payer of the duty 
 shall be Mr. Smith. 
 
 If an over-payment be made by Mr. Smith's Clerks, 
 he must write to the Customs and request them to send 
 
154 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 him an Official notice that, he has made a mistake. On 
 receiving this he must sign the paper and petition that 
 an over-entry-certificate may be made out in his name. 
 When an over-payment is discovered by the Customs 
 themselves, the formal notice is sent to Mr. Smith by 
 them. He signs this as before, returns it and petitions 
 the Board for a certificate of over-entry. After waiting 
 two or three months, he goes in person or sends a 
 specially authorised clerk to the over-entry Department 
 of the Custom House. The first job is to search 
 through the over-entry ledger under the initial S, all 
 the firms whose names begin with the same letter being 
 jumbled together. Having discovered in this long list 
 of names all the over-entries that belong to him, this 
 particular Mr. Smith, he makes a list of them and 
 hands them in to the clerk. 
 
 After some delay, he receives the certificates of over- 
 entry, which enable him to recover the sums due. Mr. 
 Smith then has to sign these certificates, and to wait 
 until a slip of their amount is made out, which he has 
 then to take to another office, wait again, and finally 
 to go on his way rejoicing, perhaps only 2s. 6d. richer 
 for his trouble, and to get which, at last, the unfortu- 
 nate Mr. Smith has to spend a forenoon in Thames 
 Street. This 2s. 6d. may have been due by Govern- 
 ment to Mr. Smith five or six years. 
 
 If Mr. Smith's clerks, by an error, not necessarily 
 their own and very possibly the Customs, pay in too 
 little, the case is very different. The entry is stopped 
 and the goods are kept waiting till the amount is paid. 
 
 It is well known in the Trade that, unless the 
 Customs themselves were in error no over-payment 
 could possibly be made, for the Customs ought to 
 refuse to accept too much money, as they already refuse 
 to accept too little money. 
 
 Having examined thirty over- entry certificates, each 
 
THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 155 
 
 measuring about 18 inches by 11 inches, these cover no 4 
 less than 45 square feet, and contain, or will contain 
 before they are done with, 324 signatures of various 
 Custom House clerks. The total amount of the over- 
 entries is j64, or 19^. 3d. each ; thus there are, 
 
 it may be assumed, five different signatures, in different 
 departments for each 1 returned. 
 
 To take one more case of inconceivable absurdity : 
 When goods are exported, the Searcher, before the goods 
 are put on board ship, solemnly bores a gimlet hole in 
 each case. If it be, as it often is, tin-lined, injury to 
 the gimlet prevents this proceeding, and the Searcher 
 only gazes earnestly at the case, as if by contemplating 
 the outside he could see into the inside. As a further 
 protection the Searcher should take a photograph of the 
 exporter and his package, also of the ship's Captain, his 
 Mate and Boatswain ; but this further precaution is 
 omitted by the Customs. The best of the joke is in the 
 well-known fact that, the Revenue cannot possibly suffer 
 by the Export either of dutyable or duty free goods ! 
 
 In pointing out the inconsistencies and absurdities of 
 our system of Customs and Excise it is difficult to con- 
 fine the comments within reasonable limits, or, in the 
 multitude of instances destructive of all confidence in 
 the system and in those employed to carry it out, to 
 know what instances to select for more particular notice. 
 These remarks, however, shall be brought to a conclusion 
 with an instance of something more than inconsistency 
 and absurdity in the Accounts rendered by the Customs' 
 department to Parliament and the Country, as appears 
 in the Official documents here referred to. 
 
 The following is part of the Table in Appendix Gr. in 
 the 15th Report of the Commissioners of Her Majesty's 
 Customs on the Customs ; presented to both Houses of 
 Parliament, by command of Her Majesty. 
 
156 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 CUSTOMS KEVENUE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 
 
 Years ended 3lst March. 
 
 Gross Receipts.' 
 
 Charges of Collection. 
 
 1861 
 
 
 23 516,821 
 
 
 769 663 
 
 1862 
 
 23,937,772 
 
 733 208 
 
 1863 
 
 24 339 083 
 
 726 517 
 
 1864 
 
 23 569 101 
 
 741 791 
 
 1865 
 
 23 004 762 
 
 759 207 
 
 1866 
 
 22 494 920 
 
 772 888 
 
 1867 
 
 23,670,593 
 
 784,453 
 
 1868 
 
 24 389 963 
 
 793 413 
 
 1869 
 
 24 248 417 
 
 802 967 
 
 1870 
 
 23 566 893 
 
 799 351 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 236,538,325 
 
 7,683,458 
 
 The following is part of the Table No. 7, from the 
 18th No. of The Statistical Abstract for the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by com- 
 mand of Her Majesty. 
 
 CUSTOMS. 
 
 Years ended 31st March. 
 
 Gross Revenue. 
 
 Charges of Collection 
 issued out of the 
 Exchequer. 
 
 1861 
 
 
 23 305,776 
 
 
 
 1,025,848 
 
 1862 
 
 23 674,000 
 
 1,006,527 
 
 1863 
 
 24,034,000 
 
 990,927 
 
 1864 
 
 23 232 000 
 
 976 601 
 
 1865 . 
 
 22 572 000 
 
 986 364 
 
 1866 
 
 21 276 000 
 
 988,265 
 
 1867 
 
 22 303,000 
 
 1,000 465 
 
 . 1868 
 
 22 650 000 
 
 989,925 
 
 1869 
 
 22 424 000 
 
 994,369 
 
 1870 
 
 21 529 000 
 
 979 918 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 226,999,776 
 
 9,939,209 
 
 These two Returns purport to show the Revenue from 
 Customs Duties, and the Cost of Collection, for the Ten 
 Years from the 31st March, 1861, to the 31st March, 
 1870, and were presented by the Government to both 
 
THE BOARD OF CUSTOMS. 157 
 
 Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. 
 It might naturally be assumed that, these two Returns 
 by the same Department, though made at different 
 times, for the same duties and for the same years, would 
 correspond in figures and amounts, but those who will 
 take the trouble to compare them will find that, they 
 correspond neither in figures nor amounts. 
 
 This is easily seen by the following amounts, thus : 
 
 The Commissioners of Customs in the Table of 
 Appendix G. to their 15th Report, give the 
 Gross Receipts for the ten years 236,538,325 
 
 In the Table No. 7 from the 18th No. of the 
 Statistical Report, they give the Gross Re- 
 ceipts for the same years 226,999,776 
 
 Difference 9,538,549 
 
 Charges of Collection according to the Statis- 
 tical Abstract 9,939,209 
 
 Charges of Collection according to the Commis- 
 sioners' Report 7,683,458 
 
 Difference 2,255,751 
 
 Here is a difference in the amount Received of 
 .9,538,549; and a difference in the amount Paid of 
 2,255,751. 
 
 Who is to learn from these Accounts what have been 
 the actual Receipts and Payments during these Ten 
 Years? 
 
 And what is the use of presenting such Accounts as 
 these to Parliament and the Public ? 
 
 And who can check such Accounts as these, from 
 which millions may be misapplied or abstracted without 
 the possibility of detection ? 
 
 No doubt, explanations can be given. But what are 
 explanations worth without proofs, and who can follow 
 proofs through such details as these, requiring Custom- 
 house official papers which, spread out, would cover 
 some square miles of space ? 
 
158 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 This may suffice to show how hopeless must be any 
 attempt to give the Cost of Customs' duties. 
 
 2. INDIRECT LOSS. 
 
 As there can be no certain data for Estimates under 
 this head, it is needless to say that, the following Esti- 
 mates must be uncertain. 
 
 But long experience of the effects upon Trade and 
 Industry by the repeal or reduction from time to time 
 of the duties of Customs and Excise on staple commo- 
 dities and necessaries of life furnishes very fair ground 
 for calculating the probable effects upon Trade and 
 Industry if this most obnoxious and unjust system were 
 abandoned, and all these duties were abolished. 
 
 It is not so much the present object to show the exact 
 amount of loss from indirect taxation, as to show that, 
 there must be a very great loss, which might be saved 
 by direct taxation. To pay a direct tax costs nothing 
 more than the tax itself, and the cost of collecting it. 
 With Customs and Excise the case is very different, as 
 will be seen, if all the costs, charges, and expenses 
 together with the losses from frauds, delays, and other 
 impediments to trade be taken into the account. To 
 take this account in full is scarcely possible. For the 
 present purpose it may be sufficient to add up the 
 Salaries of Clerks (in Liverpool alone amounting to 
 many hundreds), and Customs' Brokers, Demurrage of 
 Ships (many of them worth to the owners 20 a day 
 and upwards), detained for Landing Waiters, and all 
 the crowd of paid loiterers : also loss of markets for 
 cargoes delayed, often to the very serious damage and 
 inconvenience of the merchant and owner : also dock- 
 room provided at vast expense by mercantile commu- 
 nities, that dock-room prevented, by Customs' regula- 
 
INDIRECT LOSS. 159 
 
 tions and interference, from doing much more than half 
 the service it might, and otherwise would do : also waste 
 of labor in weighing, unpacking, boring holes with gim- 
 lets and in other-ways examining or pretending to 
 examine goods for the satisfaction of the Revenue 
 Officers, without benefit to anybody but themselves, but 
 with certain great trouble, loss of time, and often with 
 great injury to the commodities and to the owners ; and 
 in connection with this, about a third of all the wages 
 paid to porters on board ships, or attending at the dis- 
 charging of ships, or at bonded warehouses, where 
 seldom more than six or seven hours' work is done in a 
 day and the men are paid for ten and a half hours a day : 
 also the further delay, vexation, and expense of the petty 
 stamp labels, lately required for every package and 
 parcel and for every invoice and bill of lading: also 
 losses from Allowances, Drawbacks, Fraud, and Negli- 
 gence : also the great additional number of Clerks 
 required for all these vexatious forms. 
 
 It is difficult to ascertain accurately all these items of 
 unnecessary expense and annoyance, but it is not diffi- 
 cult to see that, collectively these must amount to a 
 heavy tax and must be serious impediments to trade. 
 It is, probably, no exaggeration to reckon all these 
 Costs and Losses at 10 per cent, on J43,329,081, the 
 amount of Customs and Excise duties paid into the 
 Exchequer for the year ending 31st March, 1870, or 
 4,332,908. 
 
 These charges are in addition to the taxes. 
 
 But this is not all. 
 
 The dealers' profits on the duties are, at least, 25 per 
 cent, and when it is considered that, two, three, and in 
 many cases four cumulative profits (with all the inter- 
 vening risks and charges for bad debts, insurances, etc. 
 on the paid duty and cumulative profits in process) are 
 paid by the consumer, and when the percentage of 
 
160 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 profit necessary to the existence of the last retailer 
 (whether in price or quality matters not) is taken into 
 account, the candid inquirer will, probably, not think 
 these profits unreasonable. 
 
 This 25 per cent, on 43,329,081, the amount of 
 Customs and Excise duties is, 10,832,270. 
 
 The Cost of Prosecutions for Smuggling and other 
 breaches of the Revenue Laws, and the Cost of trans- 
 portation, and maintenance in prison of those convicted, 
 cannot be ascertained with accuracy. 
 
 The Government Return for the Year, 1870, gives the 
 number of Criminal Offenders convicted, as follows : 
 
 England and Wales 12,953 
 
 Scotland 2,400 
 
 Ireland 3,048 
 
 Total 18,401 
 
 The following Charges connected with the prosecution 
 of criminals, police, and prisons, taken from the Govern- 
 ment Returns, seem to be in great part chargeable to 
 Customs and Excise, these being the fruitful sources of 
 poverty and crime, and may, therefore, in some propor- 
 tion, properly be included in the list of Indirect Loss. 
 
 EXPENSES connected with the ADMINISTRATION of the LAWS 
 in ENGLAND and WALES, for the PROSECUTION of CRIMINALS, 
 POLICE, PRISONS, etc., for the Year, 1870-71. 
 
 ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 . 
 
 Criminal Prosecutions 200,633 
 
 Police Courts (London and Sheerness) 24,899 
 
 Metropolitan Police 217,803 
 
 County and Borough Police (Great Britain) 305,000 
 
 Government Prisons, England, and Transportation and 
 
 Convict Establishments in the Colonies 475,627 
 
 County Prisons and Reformatories, Great Britain 303,880 
 
 Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum 38,943 
 
 Miscellaneous Charges t 20,350 
 
 Total . .. 1,587,135 
 
INDIRECT LOSS. 161 
 
 SCOTLAND. 
 
 Criminal Proceedings ....................................... 72,533 
 
 Prisons ......................................................... 25,075 
 
 Total 97,608 
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 Criminal Prosecutions ....................................... 88,903 
 
 Dublin Metropolitan Police .............................. 99,400 
 
 Constabulary ............................................... 913,007 
 
 Government Prisons and Reformatories ............... 48,960 
 
 County Prisons .............................................. 43,211 
 
 Dundrum Criminal Lunatic Asylum .................... 5,610 
 
 Four Courts Marshalsea Prison ........................... 2,530 
 
 Miscellaneous Charges ....................................... 8,820 
 
 Total ..................... 
 
 SUMMARY OF COSTS OF CRIMINAL PROSECU- 
 TIONS, POLICE, PRISONS, ETC. 
 
 England and Wales ....................................... 1,587,135 
 
 Scotland ................................................... 97,608 
 
 Ireland ...................................................... 1,210,441 
 
 Total ............ 2395,184 
 
 Here is a sum total of 2,895,184, taken from the 
 Government Returns of the Costs of Criminal Prose- 
 cutions, Police, Prisons, etc., in the United Kingdom, 
 in the year, 1870-71, in addition to 8,300 the Costs 
 charged for Law Expenses, Subsistence of Prisoners, etc., 
 under the head of Customs and Excise, for breaches of 
 the Revenue Laws. 
 
 How much of these Charges and Expenses would be 
 saved to the Country if Customs and Excise were swept 
 away, is a question to be answered only by experience. 
 
 For the present purpose, the saving to the Country 
 from these fruitful sources of Expense shall be taken 
 only at one-half of the whole of these Charges and Ex- 
 penses, in addition to the 8,300 already charged for 
 Costs under the head of Customs and Excise, thus : 
 
 M 
 
162 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Cost of Criminal Prosecutions, Police, Prisons etc. 2,895,184 
 
 Deduct 50 per cent 1,447,592 
 
 Total 1,447,592 
 
 Here we have another Indirect Loss to the Country 
 of 1,447,592. 
 
 But Indirect Taxation leads to a heavy augmentation 
 of another burden : 
 
 THE RATE FOR THE RELIEF OF THE POOR. 
 
 What proportion of this enormous burden is fairly 
 chargeable to Excise and Customs duties and other 
 indirect taxes which, by hindering trade and enhancing 
 the prices of the necessaries and conveniences of civi- 
 lised life, thereby compelling thousands of skilful and 
 willing workmen " to sit enchanted in workhouses," 
 where there is no work, is impossible to be told. 
 
 But if two-thirds of the whole sum raised yearly for 
 relief of the poor be attributed to these causes it would 
 not be an unreasonable estimate. Indeed, the loss to the 
 country by the paralysis of industry is, probably, much 
 more than the whole sum raised for the relief of the 
 Poor. But taking only two- thirds of the whole amount 
 raised as chargeable to the evil influence of indirect 
 taxation, the total loss to the country by this charge 
 alone for the last 40 years must have exceeded 
 200,000,000 ! 
 
 Until the passing of the Irish Poor Law Act (1 and 
 2 Viet. c. 56), Ireland was without any system of Poor 
 Law, and legal relief for the Poor in Scotland is, com- 
 paratively, of recent date. 
 
 The amount returned by the Poor Law Commis- 
 sioners connected with the relief and maintenance of 
 the Poor in England, Wales, and Ireland in the year 
 
RATE FOR THE RELIEF OF THE POOR. 163 
 
 ended 25th March, 1848, and in Scotland in the year 
 ended 14th May, 1848, was 7,941,778. 
 
 The Official Returns of the amounts received and ex- 
 pended for the Relief of the Poor in England and 
 Wales, Scotland and Ireland for the year 1870 were 
 as follows : 
 
 England and Wales 7,644,307 
 
 Scotland 905,046 
 
 Ireland 814,445 
 
 Total 9,363,798 
 
 Two-thirds of this amount, or 6,242,532, is a small 
 proportion due to the operation of the Revenue Laws, 
 which prohibit commercial enterprise, hinder manufac- 
 tures, repress industry, and force productive lands to be 
 non-productive. This sum of 6,242,532 (14-407 per 
 cent, on 43,329,081, Customs and Excise duties) may, 
 therefore, be added to the previously accumulated items 
 of Loss to the Country. 
 
 So much for the Poor Laws, intended for the relief 
 of the Poor, but spreading pauperism over the country, 
 and demoralising the People. But injurious as are the 
 Poor Laws, the effects of the Revenue Laws on the 
 Manufactures and Commerce of the Country, are so 
 great and so extensive as to be hardly calculable. 
 
 It is not possible for the human mind to follow out the 
 consequences through all the ramifications of this evil 
 system, and a full exposure of these evils is restrained 
 only by the fear of worse consequences from the exposure. 
 It will be impossible to maintain this system when the 
 People are better educated. To take only the single 
 instance of our trade with China, which is conducted on 
 the system of exchange. We take their Tea and Silk in 
 exchange for our manufactures, and the effect of our heavy 
 duties, in comparison with the light duties of the Chinese, 
 operate most injuriously on our trade with China. 
 
 M2 
 
104 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 In 1847 a Select Committee of the House of Commons 
 was appointed to inquire into the state of our Trade 
 with China. The Committee sat sixteen days, and 
 examined 46 witnesses, comprising 17 merchants engaged 
 extensively in the trade with China. 
 
 The substance of the laborious report of that Com- 
 mittee having been given in the former Editions of this 
 book will not be here repeated. It is sufficient to refer 
 to that Report and to the conclusion that, the exorbitance 
 of our Duty on Tea is so limiting our Exports as to 
 endanger our trade with China, and thereby seriously 
 interfering with the employment of labour. As affecting 
 the social condition of the People and our relation with 
 China, the Report says : " That it is also desirable in 
 itself, as presenting the increased consumption of a 
 beverage wholesome and agreeable to every class of our 
 population, and one which is increasingly desired as a 
 substitute for intoxicating liquors ; and that it would be 
 no more than is due to the Chinese who tax our products 
 so lightly, while we burden theirs so heavily, and with 
 such inconvenience to their trade. " 
 
 Respecting the effect of such reduction on the revenue, 
 the Committee remark : " In fact, the whole difficulty 
 exists in the effect which any material reduction, and 
 no other would be of much value, may be expected to 
 have upon the resources of the Exchequer." 
 
 The Evidence of all the Witnesses examined on the 
 question, as to the effect on our trade, was most forcible 
 to this conclusion. 
 
 Medical and Chemical Witnesses were examined and 
 all proved the sanitary effects of tea, and the great 
 extent to which adulteration was carried, in consequence 
 of the enormous duty levied on tea, and that many of 
 these adulterations were of a poisonous nature, and all 
 highly injurious. All the Evidence proved that, the 
 present trade with China furnished no criterion for 
 
THE TEA TRADE. 1G5 
 
 estimating what might be our trade with China if, on 
 our part only, that trade were free. 
 
 That the Evidence of these 46 Witnesses, and the 
 Report of this Committee comprising 17 merchants 
 largely engaged in the China Trade, should have been 
 allowed to drop without notice is a disgrace to the 
 Government, nor can the Representatives of the People 
 be acquitted of blame for neglect of duty. 
 
 Who can pretend to say what might be our trade 
 with China if the duty on Tea were abolished, and our 
 merchants were free to import Tea into this country at 
 the prime cost in China, with the addition only of the 
 cost of freight, which, in the rate per pound, would be 
 an inappreciable and imperceptible sum ? 
 
 Who can pretend to say to what extent China might 
 receive British manufactures in exchange for Tea and 
 Silk, if all impediments to the mutual interchange of 
 natural productions were removed ? 
 
 Who, therefore, can pretend to calculate, with any- 
 thing like accuracy, the loss to this country directly and 
 indirectly from the Tax on Tea alone ? 
 
 These remarks, which apply more or less to all the 
 articles subject to Customs and Excise duties, are left to 
 be applied by every one for himself. 
 
 On such a question as this, it is to be expected that, 
 different minds will take different views and arrive at 
 different conclusions from the same facts. But it is 
 also to be expected that, there are many, whose daily 
 avocations ought to assist them in forming a correct 
 judgment, who will come to the conclusion that, these 
 estimates of Costs and Losses are very much under the 
 mark, and that, the time has arrived when the system, 
 which works out such results, ought to be changed. 
 
 How to estimate the indirect loss to our trade and 
 manufactures, through the inevitable operation of 
 Customs and Excise, is a question not easily answered. 
 
166 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 It is not only the estimate of an actual loss, but also 
 of the loss of a certain gain. For the estimate of a loss 
 actually incurred, there must be some certain data; but 
 for the estimate of the loss of a gain never made, there 
 can be no certain data, nor, indeed, any data at all. 
 And yet, that the loss of the gain is certain and very 
 great there can be no doubt. 
 
 The computed Eeal Value of the Imports into the 
 United Kingdom for the year, ended 31st De- 
 cember, 1870, is 303,296,082 
 
 The competed Real Value of the Exports from 
 
 the United Kingdom for the same year is 199,640,983 
 
 Exports Foreign and Colonial 44,493,755 
 
 Total Imports and Exports 547,430,820 
 
 Can any one acquainted with Trade and Manufactures 
 doubt that, our Imports and Exports will show 100 per 
 cent, increase in the third year after the abolition of 
 Customs, Excise, and Stamps? 
 
 Can any one experienced in the trade and commerce 
 of this country doubt that, the increase will be 200 per 
 cent, within the first five years after these duties and all 
 other hindrances to trade have been removed ? 
 
 Is not this expectation justified by the results from 
 only the reduction of these duties within the last twenty- 
 five years ? 
 
 In this view, is it an unreasonable estimate to com- 
 pute the indirect loss to the Nation from these causes at 
 150 per cent, on 67,249,229, the nett amount of last 
 year's revenue (1870) from Customs and Excise, Stamps 
 and Taxes, or 100,873,843 ? 
 
 If such be the loss to trade and manufactures, what 
 must be the loss to the Land and Houses of the 
 Kingdom ? 
 
 It is impossible to make this estimate with any pre- 
 tension to accuracy, but it is manifest that, a loss of 
 
THE EFFECTS OF INDIRECT TAXES. 167 
 
 such magnitude to the Trade of the Country must very 
 greatly deteriorate the value of aN Land and House 
 property in the Kingdom. If it be regarded only a> 
 the loss of a gain, the effect is the same if it prevent an 
 increase in the value of Land and Houses in the same 
 proportion, 
 
 It can hardly be necessary to waste many words in 
 showing that, the value of Land and Houses is, in a 
 great measure, dependent on the prosperity of Trade. 
 Experience has sufficiently proved this theory to esta- 
 blish it beyond all doubt, and we know from experience 
 that, depression of Trade and Manufactures has always 
 been attended with corresponding depression in the 
 value of Land and Houses. 
 
 We have no experience to guide us in an estimate of 
 the probable increase in the value of Land and Houses 
 after the abolition of Customs and Excise, Stamps and 
 Taxes, but if the increase in trade and manufactures 
 be equal to 150 per cent, in the third year, it can 
 hardly be an exaggerated estimate to assume the in- 
 crease in the value of Land and Houses in the fifth year 
 to be equal to 75 per cent, or 50,436,921. 
 
 It is admitted that, the expected effects on Land and 
 Houses, coming through the effects on Trade and Manu- 
 factures, cannot be fully realised until several years 
 after the first effects have come into operation, but 
 there can be no reason to doubt that, the full effects on 
 Land and Houses will ultimately be equal to those on 
 Trade and Manufactures. How many years will be 
 required for the full effects on either or both is, of 
 course, beyond calculation, being in a great measure 
 dependent on circumstances beyond human foresight. 
 
 The Estimate is, therefore, made at 75 per cent, for 
 Land and Houses, within the first five years after the 
 change. In a few years afterwards (if no disturbing 
 causes arise in the meantime), it may be reasonably 
 
168 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 expected that, the Estimate at 100 per cent, will be 
 nearer the actual fact. 
 
 The following may be taken as the principal heads of 
 Indirect Loss to the Nation through the present system 
 of Indirect Taxation by Customs and Excise Stamps 
 and Taxes. 
 
 SUMMARY OF INDIRECT LOSS. 
 
 Demurrages, Allowances, Drawbacks, Frauds, and 
 Negligences. 
 
 Estimated at 10 per cent, on the Customs 
 and Excise Duties for the year ended 31st 
 
 March, 1870 4,332,908 
 
 Extra Profits to Traders for Advance of Customs 
 and Excise Duties. 
 
 Estimated at 25 per cent, on these duties ... 10,832,270 
 Additional Costs of Prosecutions for Smuggling and 
 other breaches of the Revenue Laws, and ex- 
 penses of transporting and maintaining persons 
 convicted. 
 
 Estimated for the same year 1,447,592 
 
 Augmentation of Poor Rates. 
 
 Estimated at two-thirds of the amount raised 
 by Poor Rates in the United Kingdom for 
 
 the year 1870 7,097,848 
 
 Loss and Injury to the Trade and Manufactures of 
 the Kingdom. 
 
 Estimated at 150 per cent, on the Customs 
 and Excise, Stamps and Taxes, for the 
 
 year ended 31st March, 1870 100,873,843 
 
 Loss and Injury to the Land and Houses of the 
 IDngdom. 
 
 Estimated at 75 per cent, on Customs and 
 Excise Stamps and Taxes for the same 
 year 50,436,921 
 
 Total Indirect Loss 175,021,382 
 
SUMMARY OF INDIRECT LOSS. 169 
 
 SUMMARY OF ACTUAL COST AND INDIRECT 
 
 LOSS. 
 
 Actual Cost of Collection of Customs and Excise, 
 Stamps and Taxes, as charged in the Government 
 Accounts for the Financial Year, ended 31st 
 March, 1870 2,609,588 
 
 Indirect Loss through Customs, Excise, Stamps, 
 and Taxes, for the same year. 
 
 Estimated at , 175,021,382 
 
 Total Cost and Loss 177,630,970 
 
 SUMMARY OF CHARGES. 
 
 Nett Amount, of Customs, Excise, Stamps, and 
 Taxes paid into the Exchequer according to the 
 Government Account for the Financial Year, 
 ended 31st March, 1870 
 
 Actual Cost and Indirect Loss in raising the above 
 
 Revenue 177,630,970 
 
 Total Charge 244,880,199 
 
 GENERAL SUMMARY. 
 
 Actual Cost 2,609,588= 3'88\ 
 
 Indirect Loss 175,021,382 = 260'25 I P^ cent, on 
 
 f 67,249,229 
 
 Total Cost and Loss . . . 177,630,970 = 264'13j 
 Nett Amount of Customs, x 
 
 Excise, Stamps, and I 6 , 
 
 Taxes, for the year [ 
 
 ended 31st March, 1870 ) 
 
 Total Charge 244,880,199 
 
 Thus, it appears that, the Cost and Loss to the 
 Nation of raising the Nett Revenue of 67,249,229 for 
 the Financial Year ended 31st March, 1870, under the 
 present system of Customs and Excise, Stamps and 
 Taxes, was 177,630,970, making the total charge to 
 
170 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 the Nation for the year (including the year's revenue) 
 244,880,199, or 364-136 per cent, on the whole 
 amount raised for the year by these taxes, or, in other 
 words, only ^jths of the whole amount raised are paid 
 into the Exchequer, ^4-ths being lost ! 
 
 According to the Census Returns for the United 
 Kingdom,in 1871, the total Population was, 31,465,480. 
 
 Assuming the number to be 32,000,000, and assuming 
 the tax-payers to be 7,000,000, this is equal to a tax of 
 34 : 19 : 7| a head. 
 
 Of this sum, 9 : 12 : 1J, and no more, finds its way 
 into the Exchequer. 
 
 This is as Is. to 3s. 7 %d. 
 
 Therefore, for every shilling paid into the Exchequer 
 for Taxes, three shillings and seven pence farthing are 
 taken out of the pockets of the tax-payers, and this 
 difference is not only their loss without any benefit to 
 the nation, but is also to the great injury of the trade, 
 manufactures, and Agriculture of the country, and, con- 
 sequently, of the whole property of the kingdom, and 
 not only of this kingdom, but of the People of all 
 Nations of the world ! And be it remembered, this 
 calculation is made on the Nett Revenue. 
 
 On the ethical part of the question, or the loss and 
 injury to the Nation from the demoralising tendency 
 and inevitable effects of our Revenue Laws, every one 
 must form his own estimate, for we can never fully 
 estimate our loss under this head until we can compare 
 the results of a happier state of things with our expe- 
 rience of the past. 
 
 It is often used as an argument against direct taxation 
 that, taxes so levied press with unequal, and, therefore, 
 unjust severity on Real Property, and that, the Real 
 Property of the Country is already suffering under this 
 unequal and unjust pressure. 
 
 That the ground on which this argument rests is 
 
COMPARATIVE STATEMENT. 
 
 171 
 
 inconsistent with the facts, and that, the facts are all 
 the other way, will be shown in the following Statement 
 of Taxes, in a Tabular form for the Financial year, 
 ended 31st March, 1870. 
 
 COMPARATIVE STATEMENT, showing the Charges on Trade and 
 Industry, and on Seal Estate, under the present System of 
 Taxation. 
 
 Taxes. 
 
 Nett Revenue. 
 
 Taxes on Trade 
 and industry. 
 
 Taxes on 
 Real Estate. 
 
 1. Customs ...... 
 2. Excise 
 
 . 
 21,449,843 
 21 879 238 
 
 . 
 
 21,449,843 
 21 879 38 
 
 . 
 
 3. Stamps, viz. : 
 Deeds and other In- 
 struments . 
 
 9,288,553 
 
 566 274 
 
 1 1^2 ^Q 
 
 Legacies and Succes- 
 
 
 1 485 384 
 
 1 485 384 
 
 Insurance, Marine . 
 Other Stamps . . . 
 
 .... 
 
 86,936 
 4 532 036 
 
 
 4. Land Tax .... 
 5. Assessed Taxes, viz.: 
 Inhabited Houses . 
 Other Duties . . . 
 6. Income Tax .... 
 
 1,627,883 
 
 1,674,521 
 1,220,602 
 10,108,5S 
 
 'l,2*20,*602 
 5,054,294 
 
 1,627,883 
 1,674,521 
 5,054,295 
 
 Taxes . . , 67,249,229 j 56,274,607 I 10,974,622 
 
 COSTS AND LOSSES. 
 
 Costs of Collection of 
 Customs and Excise, 
 including Coast Guard 
 Service, Superannuation 
 and Compensation Al- 
 lowances and Pensions 
 of Customs and Excise, 
 as charged .... 2,609,588 
 
 Demurrages. Allowances, 
 Frauds, and Negligen- 
 ces 4,332,908 
 
 Extra Profits to Traders 
 for Advance of Cus- 
 toms and Excise Duties- 10,8-32,270 
 
 Additional Costs of Prose- 
 cutions for Smuggling 
 and other breaches of 
 the Revenue Laws, and 
 Expenses of transport- 
 ing and maintaining | 
 persons convicted . . 1,447,592 
 
172 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 COMPARATIVE STATEMENT continued. 
 
 Taxes. 
 
 Nett Revenue. 
 
 Taxes onTrade 1 Taxes on 
 and Industry, f Real Estate. 
 
 Augmentation of Poor 
 Rates . . . 
 
 . 
 7,097,848 
 100,873,843 
 
 50,436,921 
 
 <. 
 
 . 
 
 Loss and Injury to Trade 
 and Manufactures . . 
 Loss and Injury to Land 
 and Houses on Customs 
 and Excise, Stamps and 
 Taxes 
 
 Cost and Loss .... 
 Charge on Trade and In- 
 dustry 
 
 177,630,970 
 
 56,274,607 
 10,974,622 
 
 56,274,607 
 10,974,622 
 
 10,974,622 
 
 Charge on Real Estate . 
 Total Charge . . . 
 Deduct Charge on Real Es 
 Excess on Trade and Indus 
 
 244,880,199 
 
 tate . . . 
 try . . . 
 
 45,299,585 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 Taxes on Trade and Industry . . . 56,274,607 = 83'68 per cent. 
 Taxes on Real Estate , 10,974,622 = 16-319 
 
 Excess of Taxes on Trade arid Industry 45,299,585 = 61-411 
 
 Cost and Loss . . . 177,630,970 = 264-153 
 
 Charge on Trade and Industry . . . 56,274,607= 83'68 
 Charge on Real Estate 10,974,622 = 16-319 
 
 Total Charge 01 Trade and Industry, 
 
 and on Real Estate 244,880,199 = 364-136 
 
 Thus it appears that, of the actual nett Taxes, 
 56,274,607, or 83'68 per cent., bear directly on trade 
 and Industry; and that, 10,974,622, or 16'319 per 
 cent., bear directly on the Real Estate; showing an 
 excess of burden on Trade and Industry, of 45,299,585, 
 or 61*411 per cent, over Real Estate, and that these 
 taxes, including the Actual Cost, and the Estimated 
 Indirect Loss, incident to the Collection, are equal to 
 a total Charge on Trade and Industry and Real Estate, 
 
INCOME TAX. 173 
 
 for the Year, of 244,880,199, or 364'136 per cent., 
 though of these Indirect Losses it will be seen that, 
 nearly the whole presses as a burden on Trade and 
 Industry, and only a comparatively small portion, 
 and that reflected, on Real Estate. 
 
 In this Estimate two-thirds of the whole amount of 
 Stamps for Deeds and other Instruments, are assumed 
 to be Charges on Real Estate, and one-third only on 
 Trade and Industry ; and the whole amount of Stamps 
 for Probates, Letters of Administrations and Succes- 
 sions are charged in moieties on the same Accounts. 
 
 The returns of Income Tax are not sufficiently di- 
 vided under heads of assessment to distinguish the 
 charges on Trade and Industry and Real Estate. The 
 whole amount of the Income Tax is, therefore, charged 
 in moieties under these two heads. 
 
 The astounding results brought out by this mode of 
 investigation will, probably, make many doubt the 
 accuracy of these calculations, but on reflection they 
 will see that, these calculations are made on the figures 
 in the Government Accounts, and that, these figures, 
 on the average of the last thirty years, fully support the 
 Estimates of the Trade and Industry of this Country 
 when the Wages of Labor and the Profits of Trade are 
 no longer taxed. 
 
 INCOME TAX. 
 
 The Gross produce of the Income Tax for the year 
 ended 31st March, 1870, was 10,243,342 and Nett, 
 10,108,589. 
 
 The objections to this tax are manifold and manifest, 
 
 1. Its unequal bearing on Incomes. 
 
 2. Its unequal collection. 
 
 3. Its unequivocal tendency to evasion by lying and 
 perjury. 
 
174 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 These are three grave objections, too well known to 
 require much comment. 
 
 Most incomes are precarious, and many are of longer 
 or shorter duration, but all incomes are charged at the 
 same rate, except that, under Schedule B. in respect of 
 occupation of Lands in England and Wales the tax is 2^d. 
 in the . and in Scotland and Ireland Ifd. in the . 
 
 This tax, therefore, is unequal in its operation, and 
 this is an irremediable defect. 
 
 That this tax is unequally paid everybody knows, and 
 everybody who can evade it does. 
 
 Nobody pays the full amount of this tax that can 
 help it. Householders, Fundholders, and a few others 
 pay in full, because they cannot help it. 
 
 As to lying and perjury, most persons who cheat, 
 will support their fraud by lying and perjury. But 
 without carrying the inquiry to that unpleasant length, 
 it is well known that, a vast number of persons who 
 pay income tax, really do not know what their income 
 is ; and many who deduct the tax forget to allow for it. 
 Lord Alvanley used to say (perhaps jocosely), in the 
 days of Ten per cent. Property Tax, that, the Property 
 Tax was his only source of income. 
 
 But, what an absurdity, to ask the taxpayer how 
 much he is to be taxed ! 
 
 And what a scandalous law that is, which compels 
 the taxpayer, if so required, to produce his Bankers' 
 Book and all his Account Books, to prove, to the satis- 
 faction of the person appointed by the Government to 
 make this indecorous inquiry, the actual amount of 
 income, as if the actual amount could be so dis- 
 covered ! Then look at those little paragraphs in the 
 newspapers, almost daily, announcing the pounds, shil- 
 lings, and pence remittances by conscience-smitten 
 wretches to the demon of the Exchequer ! What a 
 system ! What Statesmen ! 
 
INCOME TAX. 175 
 
 The call, so generally made, for the equitable adjust- 
 ment of this tax can never be answered, for the simple 
 reason that, an equitable adjustment is impossible. As 
 long as fluctuating and uncertain incomes are taxed, 
 inequality and injustice must be inseparable. Incomes, 
 derived from skill and industry, or from professions and 
 trades, must be fluctuating and uncertain, and more or 
 less precarious, and to tax these at the same rate as 
 fixed and permanent incomes must be injustice. Any 
 attempt to proportion the tax to the value of such in- 
 comes, if it can diminish the amount of injustice, can 
 never remove it. The principle is radically wrong. 
 Income can be fairly taxed only as the annual produce 
 of realised property or capital. Income furnishes only 
 the means for making a fair valuation, equal in effect, 
 and fair and just for all. This is, truly, a tax on pro- 
 perty, not on income, resting on a clearly defined prin- 
 ciple, and fixed on a firm basis. But a tax on income is 
 indefinite, and never can have a fixed basis. The one 
 is always the same or calculable in value ; the other is 
 variable and never calculable in value. No certain data 
 can ever be obtained, so long as the possession of life 
 and strength and faculties, and the other numberless 
 chances on which income from other than realised 
 property or capital depends, remains uncertain. 
 
 Why should a tax be imposed on incomes arising out 
 of and dependent solely on life and strength and faculties? 
 
 Why should professional incomes, profits of trade, 
 and wages of labor be taxed, until invested in taxable 
 property ? 
 
 Why should those be taxed whose only property is 
 the produce of their own industry and skill ? 
 
 If it be said that, they ought to pay for the benefits and 
 protection which the State extends equally to all, that may 
 be a good reason why all should contribute to the State 
 for such benefits and protection, but can be no reason 
 
 \ 
 
176 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 for taxing them in property which they do not possess. 
 A tax for the protection of the person is one thing, but 
 a tax for the protection of property is another and 
 different thing. Both may be very proper subjects for 
 taxation, but a tax for the protection of property where 
 ( there is no property is as absurd as would be a tax for 
 
 the protection of life which has ceased to exist. 
 / But it is as bad in policy as it is wrong in principle 
 [ to tax the income of the productive laborers. The 
 V tendency of such a tax is to prevent, pro tanto, the 
 increase of wealth and capital, or realised property ; for 
 capital is nothing more than accumulated savings, all 
 being originally the produce of labour. In the form of 
 capital, or realised property, it becomes the wealth of 
 the nation, and then may properly contribute a fair 
 share to the necessities of the State. But to make 
 income contribute before it has assumed the form of 
 capital, or realised property, is to destroy the source of 
 the wealth of the nation, and is as absurd as would be 
 the conduct of the person who keeps bees for the sake 
 of their honey, if he were to cut down and destroy all 
 the flowers in his garden and neighbourhood before the 
 honey was made. Equally absurd it is to say that, the 
 honey- makers would go free. They are the industrious, 
 wealth-producing laborers, and when the labor is 
 completed and the honey made it will be taken as 
 required for use; and, if wisely, so much only will be 
 taken as is absolutely and fairly required, and enough 
 will be left to enable the workers to continue to pro- 
 duce, nor of the abundance will any be taken for feed- 
 ing the wasps and the drones. 
 
 Thus the productive industry of the country produces 
 income, which, accumulating, forms capital, the only 
 real wealth of nations, and whilst that process of forma- 
 tion is going on, like the honeycomb in the bee-hive, 
 all are equally interested in preserving the means from 
 
ABSURDITIES OF CUSTOMS, ETC. 177 
 
 diminution, because all derive the benefit when the pro- 
 cess is completed. 
 
 If this be the true view, it follows that, direct taxa- 
 tion is the -only true system ; but as this will be more 
 fully shown when "Taxation As It Ought To Be" 
 comes to be considered, it is not necessary here to 
 pursue this inquiry further, and it is useless to waste 
 more words on this tax, which picks the pockets of the 
 People of more than 10,000,000 a year, favoring 
 Scotland and Ireland at the expense of England and 
 Wales. 
 
 THE ABSURDITIES OF CUSTOMS AND 
 EXCISE, STAMPS, AND ASSESSED TAXES. 
 
 Injustice is the proper term to apply to all duties of 
 Customs and Excise, Stamps, (except Postage Stamps) 
 and Assessed Taxes. 
 
 This has been already sufficiently shown with regard 
 to Customs' duties, and whatever is unjust must be 
 injudicious. But to cover the whole system with 
 ridicule and contempt, and with the avowed purpose of 
 reflecting the same on the Government which supports 
 such a system, a few striking examples will be selected 
 under the above heads. 
 
 TOBACCO. 
 
 The first and foremost in this List of Absurdities, 
 because, perhaps, of all Customs' duties the most absurd 
 and cruel, shall be the duty on Tobacco, this being 
 about 500 per cent, on the cost of growing and pre- 
 paring that common and easily cultivated weed for 
 man's use. 
 
 The total Gross sum produced by this tax in the year 
 ended 31st March, 1870, was 6,669,018. 
 
 N 
 
178 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 It was given in evidence before the Select Committee 
 of the House of Commons on the Tobacco Trade, in 
 1844, that, "nine-tenths of the tobacco is consumed 
 by the working classes." 
 
 Assuming that to be the present proportion, the 
 working classes paid out of their Wages of Labor for 
 Tobacco, in the year, 1869-70, 6,002,0 19, being 
 about 500 times more than they would have paid if 
 Tobacco had not been taxed. This, in one point of 
 view, is simply ridiculous, in another point of view, 
 contemptible and disgraceful. A sanitary or moral 
 motive not being pretended, does not arise for con- 
 sideration. A tax on tobacco is admitted to be a tax 
 on the working classes, and of this tax they pay nine- 
 tenths. 
 
 There is no tax like this on the non- working classes. 
 
 Tobacco is said to be a luxury, and so it is, to the 
 working classes, but no luxury to the rich is taxed 500 
 per cent, or anything like it. This tax, therefore, 
 presses most heavily on. the working classes, and, being 
 unequal, is unjust. The beneficial or injurious effects 
 of the use of this article is a matter of opinion ; but so 
 long as an entire class of our population uses it to the 
 extent of nine-tenths of the whole consumption, yield- 
 ing a yearly revenue of upwards of 6,000,000, 
 independently of the quantity consumed by them which 
 is never charged with duty, it is .reasonable to con- 
 clude that, to them tobacco is an article of indispensable 
 necessity, or a greatly coveted luxury, in either of which 
 cases the duty, some years ago upwards of 900 per 
 cent, on the average, is beyond all defence, being 
 unequal and unjust, cruel and disgraceful. 
 
 But when this enormous duty is proved to be the 
 cause of enormous smuggling, with all its sad conse- 
 quences, as any one may be convinced by consulting 
 the evidence given before the above-mentioned Parlia- 
 
TOBACCO. 179 
 
 raentary Committee, this tax is not only placed beyond 
 all defence, but becomes in itself absolutely criminal, as 
 conducive to crime, and affords a melancholy illustra- 
 tion of the evil effects of our present system of taxation 
 on the social condition of the people. 
 
 The whole evidence given before the Committee 
 proves that, the prevention of smuggling under the 
 existing high duty is an impossibility ; and referring to 
 the opinion of the Commissioners of Excise Inquiry, in 
 1833-4, they add : "The nature of this temptation is 
 at once apparent from the fact that, 100 expended 
 at Flushing in buying tobacco, may be followed by the 
 receipt of 1000, if the tobacco can be landed safely in 
 this country, at Hull or elsewhere." 
 
 Mr. Ayre, Clerk to the Magistrates of Hull, was 
 examined by the Committee of 1848, and stated, " with 
 confidence from his own observation that, fifteen cases 
 of smuggling escape where one case is detected." He 
 supports his opinion by eight years' experience. He 
 added: "There were 85 detections in 1843: and, I 
 believe, for every one of those 85 cases, 15 escaped." 
 He also stated that, there are a class of merchant 
 smugglers who smuggle more than the seamen and 
 officers of ships, although they all smuggle." He 
 further adds : " I find that, all the ports opposite our 
 coast that is, from Flushing up to Hamburgh, and in 
 the Baltic also, they pack tobacco for the sole purpose 
 of smuggling. That is the case in every one of those 
 ports ; they are all alike. They are compressed into 
 small packages, whereby they can be most easily 
 secreted. Tobacco is also smuggled, packed in goods 
 imported, to a considerable extent, and there are vessels 
 employed expressly to smuggle tobacco." 
 
 In four years, to 1798, when the duty was only 8d. 
 per Ib. the quantity of tobacco entered for home con- 
 sumption in Ireland was 32,000,000 Ibs., making an 
 
 N 2 
 
180 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 annual average of 8,000,000 Ibs. ; but in four years to 
 1829, the quantity imported, for home consumption, in 
 Ireland was only about 16,000,000 Ibs.; making an 
 annual average of 4,000,000 Ibs. that is, half what 
 it was thirty years previously, when the population was 
 only half as numerous. If the individual consump- 
 tion of tobacco that paid duty had increased only ac- 
 cording to the increase of the population of Ireland, 
 the annual consumption in 1829 should have been 
 16,000,000 Ibs. instead of 4,000,000 Ibs. This may be 
 taken as a pretty accurate statement of the effect of 
 the high duty at the present time ; and as, no doubt, 
 the individual consumption of tobacco has increased in 
 this ratio, the conclusion is that, full three-fourths of 
 the whole consumption are supplied by smuggling, and 
 that more than one-fourth is supplied by adulterations. 
 
 It appears by the evidence given before the Committee 
 on Irish Tobacco, in the Session 1831, that, there would 
 be a considerable exportation of manufactured tobacco 
 to foreign countries, but for the restrictions by the high 
 duty. The drawback allowed is accompanied with so 
 many vexatious conditions that, it is not a sufficient 
 compensation to the manufacturer for the original duty 
 paid, and he is, in consequence, obliged to require so 
 high a price as to be unable to meet foreign competi- 
 tion. By 3 & 4 Will. iv. c. 52, a scale is adopted for 
 supplying the navy with tobacco and wine free of duty, 
 according to rank in the ship. 
 
 It seems that numerous Committees and Commis- 
 sioners of Inquiry have, from time to time, over many 
 years, recommended a reduction of duties to prevent 
 smuggling, and no Chancellor of the Exchequer, nor 
 other Statesman, has controverted the Committees and 
 Commissioners on principle, but all have demanded to 
 know whence they were to draw a sufficient revenue, if 
 such reductions as would stop smuggling were effected. 
 
TOBACCO. 181 
 
 The only true answer is, the abolition of all Cus- 
 toms and Excise, and the substitution of direct taxation. 
 
 The following statement of prices of tobacco, and a 
 statement of the rates of duty charged, and the per- 
 centage of these duties to the prime cost of the article, 
 sufficiently explains the temptation to smuggle. 
 
 PEICES OF VIBGINIA AND KENTUCKY TOBACCO, IST JUNE, 
 1844 LONDON : THE DUTY CHARGED, AND THE KATE 
 PEE CENT. ON PBIME COST. 
 
 Kinds of Tobacco. Average Price in Bond. Duty 3s. Id. |gths, equal to 
 
 Virginia Leaf %\d. per Ib 1,100 per cent. 
 
 Do Strips bd. 700 
 
 Kentucky Leaf 3%d. 1,200 
 
 Do. Strips 4fd. .800 
 
 These calculations are made on the average prices in 
 bond in June, 1844, but the average prices in bond 
 have since increased, about two-thirds more, and the 
 per centage of duties is consequently diminished in pro- 
 portion. 
 
 There is a variety of other tobacco, varying in price 
 from Is. to 5s. per Ib. in bond, principally used for 
 cigars ; therefore, taking the average price at 3s. per 
 Ib., the duty of 3s. Id. 4-J-ths on tobacco used for cigars 
 is only about 100 per cent, on the prime cost. 
 
 The duty on all the foreign manufactured tobacco, 
 whether Cigars, Cavendish, or Negro-head, was 9s. and 
 the addition of 5s. per Ib. 
 
 Average Price in Bond. Duty Qs. and 5 per cent. 
 Equal to 
 
 Havannah Cigars 8*. per Ib. 112 per cent. 
 
 Manilla Cheroots 6s. 150 
 
 East India Cheroots Is. 900 
 
 Negro-head and Cavendish ... Qd. 1,800 
 
 Tobacco Stalks, produced from duty-paid leaf, were 
 sold generally by the tobacco- cutters to the snuff- makers 
 at 3s. to 3s. 2d. per pound. The importation of tobacco 
 
182 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 stalks is prohibited : but as they can be purchased in 
 Holland at a penny per pound the temptation to smuggle 
 them into this country is the gain of 3,800 per cent, 
 profit. 
 
 The present duties are as follows : 
 
 *. d. 
 
 Tobacco, Unmanufactured with 10 per cent, moisture, 
 
 per 100 Ibs. or more 3 1-& 
 
 Less than ditto 3 6 
 
 Manufactured 
 
 Cigars 5 
 
 Cavendish, or Negro-head 
 
 Home (in bond) 4 
 
 Foreign Manufacture , 4 6 
 
 Snuff, more than 13 Ibs. moisture per 100 Ibs per Ib. 3 9 
 
 With Less 4 6 
 
 Other Manufactured Tobacco 4 
 
 It is, therefore, apparent that a correct estimate of 
 the public loss by the tobacco duty is unattainable; 
 but, allowing only 50 per cent, for the cost of collection, 
 and all indirect costs, charges, and losses, the result is 
 tbat, the public paid, in the year ending 31st March, 
 1870, directly and indirectly, for the tax on tobacco, 
 10,003,378, or 3,334,459 more than the produce of 
 the tax paid into the Exchequer. 
 
 The quantity of Tobacco imported in the year, 1870, 
 for Home Consumption, was 41,909,414 Ibs. This is 
 a little more than 1^ Ib. per head per annum on the 
 population of the United Kingdom. It thus apoears 
 that, not less than 10,000,000 annually is paid in 
 retail for tobacco in the United Kingdom, and that, of 
 this immense sum, for such an article, three-fourths are 
 paid in the form of duty. 
 
 The quantity of Unmanufactured Tobacco imported 
 from the United States into the United Kingdom in 
 1870 was 29,816,078 Ibs. This was just five-sevenths 
 of the whole quantity imported for Home Consumption. 
 
TOBACCO. 183 
 
 In the year, 1869, the quantity imported from 
 the United States into the United Kingdom was 
 37,046,032 Ibs. ; a ratio of dependence. 
 
 As an illustration of the small quantity of coffee con- 
 sumed in Ireland a few years ago it was stated that, 
 the Irish got rid of four times as much tobacco as coffee. 
 
 We, nevertheless, occupy a very humble position as 
 smokers. Mr. Crawford, in an Essay in the Statistical 
 Society's Journal, states that, the United Kingdom 
 consumes less than most other European nations per 
 head ; that Europe takes less than the other quarters of 
 the globe ; that France consumes 18 ounces ; Denmark 
 70 ounces ; and Belgium 73 ounces per head annually ; 
 that this last is far above the European average, but far 
 below the Asiatic average, and may, possibly, be a fair 
 average for the whole world. In short, that, 1,000 
 millions of people may take 70 oz. each per annum, 
 making a total annual consumption of tobacco amount- 
 ing to two millions of tons ! He further supposes that, 
 the average price all over the world may not exceed 
 2d. per lb., which would give a total retail expenditure 
 for tobacco of thirty-six millions sterling per annum, 
 mostly driven off in smoke. The average wholesale 
 price of tobacco in England is about 4je?. per lb. 
 
 Of the extent to which adulteration is carried, in 
 consequence of the enormous duty imposed on tobacco 
 in the United Kingdom, it is impossible to form any 
 estimate; but it is supposed that, the quantities of 
 adulterated and smuggled tobacco together exceed annu- 
 ally the whole amount on which duty is paid. 
 
 As the payment of this enormous duty is strictly 
 enforced on all tobacco brought into the Custom 
 House, whether damaged or not, and as almost every 
 hogshead becomes more or less injured by the voyage 
 to England, and as the importer takes care not to 
 pay the duty on any but saleable portions, and as 
 
184 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 the absolute destruction of that which escapes the 
 duty is the imperative condition on which the importer 
 is so far absolved from his liability, the consequence is, 
 an enormous destruction of damaged tobacco in the 
 " kiln" or, as it is familiarly called, " the Queen's 
 tobacco pipe," erected for the purpose near the vast 
 tobacco warehouses at the London Docks. Such is the 
 operation of our Customs duties on tobacco. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine a tax more absurd for its 
 inequality, injustice, and impolicy, than this tax on the 
 working man's chief luxury, the free gift of nature, 
 given equally to all, but taxed 500 per cent, and up- 
 wards, and nine-tenths of the tax paid out of the wages 
 of Labor ! 
 
 Is it to be wondered at that men should take every 
 opportunity of evading a law which cheats them of a 
 natural right, or that men should yield to the tempta- 
 tion, even at the risk, of turning 100 into 1,000 ? 
 
 It is not generally considered immoral or dishonor- 
 able to run the risk of contraband of war. Why, then, is 
 it immoral or dishonorable to smuggle tobacco? Is it 
 worse to break the letter of the law than to evade its 
 spirit ? How would the head of the present Govern- 
 ment answer that question ? We know how the Lord 
 Chief Justice of England would answer it. 
 
 If it be right to evade a foolish law, can it be wrong 
 to break a cruel and unjust law, and take the chance of 
 the consequence ? 
 
 The time may come when all will look back on the 
 poor despised smugglers as the brave and hardy men to 
 whom we are mainly indebted for our relief from all 
 these foolish and cruel laws, which are not less foolish, 
 but much more cruel, than those old laws which regu- 
 lated, under heavy penalties, the cut and fashion of 
 men's clothes. 
 
 It would take up too much space to set out in detail 
 
MALT. 185 
 
 all the absurdities of these Customs and Excise laws, hut 
 a few of the most prominent examples shall be selected, 
 and the next in turn shall be 
 
 MALT. 
 
 The number of bushels of Barley Malt, charged with 
 the duty of 2s. Id. per bushel, and 5 per cent, addi- 
 tional, in 1870, was 50,697,459, and the number of 
 bushels of Bere or Bigg, charged with the duty of 2s. 
 per bushel, and 5 per cent, additional, was 44,872, and 
 the amount of duty for the whole, paid into the Ex- 
 chequer was 6,483,612. 
 
 This tax presses with peculiar hardship on the work- 
 ing laborers and on the poor, and is attended with the 
 incalculable mischief of encouraging them to resort to 
 the use of ardent spirits, by greatly increasing the 
 price of Beer, and thereby depriving many of that more 
 wholesome beverage, which, to the working laborer, 
 may be, and ought to be, regarded as a necessary of life. 
 
 The Commissioners of Excise Inquiry, in their Report, 
 say, in reference to this tax : " The repeal of it would 
 produce scarcely any other effect than that of raising 
 the price of barley, and affording to farmers the means 
 of paying higher rent for barley land." 
 
 If the farmer, out of his increased price of barley, 
 could afford to pay a higher price for land, that is a legi- 
 timate benefit which the landlord has a right to expect ; 
 but, as the barley would not be raised in price beyond 
 what the public could afford and were willing to give, 
 and who, it cannot be supposed would give up to the 
 farmer the whole benefit of the repeal, any more than 
 they would expect to keep all the benefit to themselves, 
 its repeal would benefit all parties, the consumers of 
 beer, the producers of Malt, and the owners of land. 
 
 That this tax is ultimately paid by the consumers is 
 
186 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 a fact which cannot be controverted, though it has been 
 frequently denied. The consumers, therefore, would 
 have the full benefit of the repeal of this tax. The 
 greatest objection, however, is the manner in which it 
 interferes with and restricts an important branch of 
 home manufacture, not only preventing any improve- 
 ment in the making of Malt, but actually creating im- 
 pediments, at times and seasons of the year, to making 
 it at all. Moreover, it throws this branch of manufac- 
 ture most injuriously into the hands of comparatively 
 a very few persons ; and lessens, to an incalculable 
 extent, the employment of the people in agricultural 
 districts, especially in Ireland, producing deprivation 
 and misery to an extent also incalculable. If malt 
 were duty free, every laborer and mechanic would be 
 at liberty to malt his own barley and brew his own 
 beer unadulterated, and then we should hear no more 
 of " the Brewers Monopoly." 
 
 One of the noticeable effects of these fiscal regula- 
 tions is, the falling off in the consumption of Malt. 
 Between the years 1730 and 1831, the falling off was 
 one half. The population of England and Wales in 
 1730 was, 5,687,993, and the consumption of Malt was, 
 28,410,421 bushels; in 1831, with a population of 
 13,894,574, the consumption of Malt did not exceed 
 32,963,470 bushels; showing a consumption of about 
 5 bushels a head in 1730, and only 2 bushels a century 
 later; the duty in 1730 being only one-fifth of the duty 
 in 1831. 
 
 The process of malting is in itself perfectly simple, 
 and not more mysterious than the making of tea in a 
 tea-pot. It consists in wetting the grain (barley is 
 chiefly used) till it begins to sprout, and then checking 
 the vegetating process suddenly by heat. This produces 
 a saccharine substance in the grain, which is the essence 
 of malt. Pale malt is made by a low heat, and brown 
 
MALT. 187 
 
 malt by a strong heat. The pale should be used for 
 Ale, and the brown should be used for Porter. But 
 the use is not now as it should be. The high duties 
 directed the brewers to the study of their malt ; how to 
 make the most of the least possible quantity. 
 
 The brown malt, more wholesome as a tonic, and 
 agreeable to the taste, had become the general favourite 
 of the public, when the brewers found that a greater 
 quantity of wort, of a certain strength, could be pro- 
 duced from pale, than from brown, malt. Brown was, 
 therefore, disused in the brewing of porter, or strong 
 beer. The wort was now pale, and the agreeable bitter 
 taste and flavor had to be supplied from the laboratory 
 or druggist's store-house, instead of the malt-kiln. 
 Quassia, coculus indicus, opium, etc., were then used. 
 
 Since the repeal of the beer duties, the restrictions 
 on brewers are simplified. They now consist of a 
 licence to brew, entering the premises at the Excise 
 Office, and being forbidden the use of any article other 
 than malt, hops, and water. 
 
 A brewer, using any place, or mash- tun, for the pur- 
 pose of brewing, without having made an entry thereof 
 at the nearest Excise Office, forfeits, for every such 
 offence, 200 ; and all the worts, beer, and materials 
 for making the same, together with the mash-tun, are 
 forfeited and may be seised by any officer. 
 
 Every druggist, vendor, dealer, chemist, or other 
 person, selling molasses, opium, vitriol, etc., or any 
 coloring matter, to any licensed brewer, or licensed 
 retailer of beer, is liable to have his stock of goods 
 seised and forfeited, and to be fined 500. 
 
 This clause of the law is powerless by its absurdity. 
 Its attempted protection of the malt tax is a licence to 
 evade it, arid for the brewer and retailer to adulterate 
 beer without hindrance. Who is to hinder the chemist 
 or druggist, or dry-salter, or "other person/' the 
 
188 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 grocer, for instance, from selling " molasses/' or 
 " other coloring matter/ 5 to anyone that asks to have 
 that article? The Excise officers see this law broken 
 every day ; but though an offender may occasionally be 
 convicted, they can, in general, only turn their backs 
 on the poisoned beer, and the poison dealers, and walk 
 away. If anything can fulfil the object of this enact- 
 ment, it must be by freedom to use malt at its natural 
 price, free of duty. 
 
 The brewer is also prohibited from having in his 
 brewery, or on any part of his premises, or in any mill 
 connected with such brewery, any raw or unmalted corn 
 or grain (horse provender included !) ; and all unmalted 
 corn or grain, which shall be found in such brewing 
 premises or mill, and all malted corn or grain with 
 which such unmalted corn or grain may have been 
 mixed shall be forfeited, and may be seized by any 
 officer, together with all vessels or packages in which 
 such raw or unmalted corn or grain, with which the 
 same may have been mixed, shall be contained; and 
 every brewer shall, for every such offence, forfeit 200. 
 
 The merchants or dealers and their clerks or agents, 
 engaged in the export of beer, are required to make 
 oath (before the " proper Excise officers ") that, to the 
 best of their belief, such ale or beer has been made 
 wholly from malt, which has been charged with and 
 paid the duty of 2s. Id. a bushel (though it be notorious 
 that such liquors have not been made wholly from malt). 
 They must also testify, in such oath, that the quantity of 
 malt used was not less than two bushels, imperial measure, 
 for every barrel (thirty -six gallons) of such beer or ale. 
 
 The oaths must also include a statement of the place 
 where, and the person or persons by whom the liquor 
 was brewed ; whether the brewer was licensed and had 
 his premises entered by the Excise; also that none of 
 the ale or beer is entered for the use of the ship's crew 
 
MALT. 189 
 
 or passengers. This unholy swearing completed,, the de- 
 benture entitling the exporter to a drawback of 55. per 
 barrel, or 7s. 6d. } according to its strength, may be given. 
 
 The intention of this enactment is to make a repay- 
 ment, out of the public treasury, to the persons inte- 
 rested in the produce and the rent of barley-growing 
 land. It is a question w r hether this encourages the 
 growth of barley at all, but it is beyond question that, 
 it encourages the practice of doubtful swearing, and this 
 alone is disgraceful to the Government. 
 
 The enactments regulating this simplest of manufac- 
 tures, the making of malt, are about forty in num- 
 ber, and are exceedingly complex. These are embodied 
 in the general Act of 7 & 8 Geo. IV., but this is also 
 exceedingly complex. It contains eighty-three clauses, 
 with a hundred and six penalties, amounting in the 
 whole to 13,000 ! 
 
 To read through these Acts of Parliament is a dread- 
 ful duty. 
 
 How much of these penalties has been received would 
 be a curious fact, if it could be discovered. But the 
 money received for these penalties is known to be very 
 trifling, and this is a sufficient commentary on. the 
 absurdity of such penalties, it being well known that, 
 they are incurred daily to an immense amount, the 
 oaths notwithstanding. 
 
 Almost every thing offensive to common sense in the 
 forty Acts was retained in this Consolidated Act. For 
 working it was soon found to be impracticable, and to 
 mend it another unintelligible Act was passed. Some 
 of the silly and vexatious regulations are repealed, with 
 several of the absurd penalties, still enough are left and 
 severe enough to be a satire upon the Government of a 
 Nation called, and in some respects entitled to be 
 called, the freest on the face of the earth. 
 
 The maltster must first be licensed to make malt, 
 
190 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 and must enter his premises at the Excise office, and he 
 must use no other premises for any part of his work, no 
 matter what sudden demand for his products may arise. 
 The licence must be renewed annually ; but the pos- 
 session of a licence does not entitle him to take a single 
 step in the way of his business. Before beginning to 
 construct, use, or alter, his cisterns, couches, frames, 
 kilns or utensils of any sort, he must give a written 
 notice to the Exciseman. Nor is it enough that, the 
 Excise officer is duly informed of all his plans; the 
 form and size of the implements and utensils are fixed 
 by law ! Though he were to discover that, he might 
 either expedite his business or improve the quality of 
 his malt by making an alteration in his machinery, he 
 is prohibited from doing so ! However ill-contrived the 
 implements to be used may be, the maltster may neither 
 change nor amend them ! Nor, when the cisterns and 
 utensils are constructed according to law, can he use 
 them when and as he thinks proper ! Before beginning 
 work he must give twenty-four hours notice to the 
 Excise officer; and though the Excise officer be duly 
 informed of an intention to make malt, and he be 
 requested to be present, no grain may be put into the 
 cistern to be wetted, except during certain hours of the 
 day, not judged by the requirements of each case, but 
 fixed by Act of Parliament ! Nor may the grain remain 
 in the cistern over fifty-five hours, else the maltster is 
 liable to a penalty of jlOO, unless he intimate to the 
 officer before wetting it, that he intends it to be steeped 
 sixty-five hours instead of fifty-five hours ! Should the 
 unlucky maltster give this notice and observe during the 
 period that the grain is being steeped too long, he may 
 neither take it out nor draw oft' part of the water ! 
 Having given notice of fifty-five or sixty-five hours, the 
 grain must, at all hazards, remain immersed that exact 
 period of time, or he must choose to incur heavy penal- 
 
MALT. 191 
 
 ties, or the alternative, to bribe the Excise officer to 
 break his oath, arid at the same time to break his own. 
 AVhat a fearful mingling of the solemn and ridiculous ! 
 
 Though the miserable maltster cannot withdraw his 
 grain from the cistern until it has lain the exact number 
 of hours notified to the Exciseman before it was wetted, 
 under a penalty of 100, he may change the water in 
 which the grain is immersed ; but he must previously 
 intimate his intention of so doing to the officer, speci- 
 fying the hour when he intends to draw off the water, 
 taking care that it shall be between 8 A.M. and 2 P.M., 
 on condition, however, that the grain be again com- 
 pletely covered with water within an hour from the 
 period when the previous water was begun to be drawn 
 off! Any one reading this must wonder that, there is 
 such a creature in existence as a maltster, who is pro- 
 hibited by Act of Parliamenf from drawing off his water 
 but in the presence of an Excise officer, and then only 
 between certain fixed hours in the day ! 
 
 If the Excise officer think the grain is more dense in 
 the cistern than the density enacted by the Legislature, 
 he may measure it, and if it exceed one- twentieth part 
 the density allowed by law, the wretched maltster shall, 
 for every such offence, or accident (unless he palter with 
 his solemn oath) pay the penalty of j100 ! 
 
 If the maltster shall use more than one cistern, it is 
 enacted that, " he shall empty or take all such corn or 
 grain from and out of all such cisterns at one and the 
 same time." If he should empty one cistern before he 
 begins to empty another, by mistake of negligent work- 
 men or otherwise, he will (provided the Exciseman's 
 oath stand good) be visited by a heavy fine. When one 
 cistern has been emptied, or a number of them have 
 been emptied, no more cisterns can be emptied in the 
 same place until four days have elapsed. A heavy 
 penalty also enforces this rule ! 
 
192 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 The grain being, at length, got out of the cistern, 
 must be deposited in couch-frames, in a particular way, 
 and must remain in them for a certain fixed time, 
 neither more nor less, at the peril of penalty ; and it is 
 enacted that, if the malt, when laid out in the couch- 
 frames, shall be in any way more than thirty inches 
 deep, a penalty of 100 shall be inflicted ! Expensive 
 lawsuits, occasioned by unsuccessful appeals, against 
 Excise informations and magisterial convictions, were a 
 few years ago tried in the West of England. The 
 appeals were unsuccessful. Some of the maltsters were 
 ruined, though proof was given that accidents might have 
 caused the variations in the depth of malt in the couch- 
 frames. The officers of the districts, Oxfordshire, Wilts, 
 Dorset, and other parts not named, were supposed to 
 have long connived at fraudulent practices. New officers 
 were sent to supersede them, and, like new brooms, 
 they swept clean, while they were new. 
 
 If the malt require sprinkling, as nearly all made in 
 England does, according to the quality of the soil in 
 which the barley is grown, and the kind of barley, it 
 must not be sprinkled, under heavy penalties, until it has 
 lain a fixed number of days. Yet, in that time, the 
 malt may have become mouldy for the want of sprink- 
 ling, according to the quality of the barley, and be less 
 or more deteriorated. The various regulations as to 
 sprinkling, and the penalties attached, are too complex 
 to be related here, and a further abstract would be 
 unintelligible. 
 
 The maltster must keep a " Barley-book," at all times 
 accessible to the Excise Officer, or incur a heavy penalty, 
 in which must be entered all the barley he buys, the 
 names, surnames, and residences of those from whom 
 he bought it ; and containing also a detailed account of 
 all the malt he makes, the names and addresses of the 
 individuals to whom it has been sold, the quantities dis- 
 
MALT. 193 
 
 posed of to each, with a notification *of the hour, as well 
 as the day, when each transaction took place. The 
 Excise officers may enter the maltster's premises by 
 night and by day, according as they may suspect fraud, 
 or be disposed to cause annoyance. 
 
 Notwithstanding all these and numberless other in- 
 conveniences, penalties, and absurdities, causing many 
 respectable persons and much capital to be driven from 
 the trade, causing fraud and corruption to pervade all 
 the departments, until the business of malting is infected 
 with all those abuses which inevitably beset every 
 business conducted on fictitious and contradictory prin- 
 ciples, notwithstanding all these vexatious absurdities 
 and this accumulation of penalties, the maltsters are, 
 for the most part, the earnest advocates of the Malt 
 Tax ! They would willingly be relieved from the 
 stringent regulations and penalties ; but they fear, with 
 good reason, that if the malting trade were free, the 
 simplicity of the manufacture would attract numerous 
 small capitalists, such as farmers, who would malt their 
 own barley, and thus destroy the strict monopoly which 
 the Excise laws now give to the maltsters. Like all 
 other monopolies, the cost of this falls upon the Public. 
 As a necessary consequence of this complicated system, 
 the importation of malt is prohibited. 
 
 It is impossible to suppose that, if these details were 
 fully known to the People as essential to the system., 
 such a system could be maintained. The Government, 
 and this applies to all Governments, relying on the 
 ignorance of the People, and their Representatives in 
 Parliament, for the most part, little less ignorant, and 
 much less honest, go on maintaining this pernicious 
 system, for its power and patronage ; in face of all the 
 danger signals. 
 
 What confidence can be placed in any Government so 
 acting, so influenced, and so supported ? 
 
194 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 There is great responsibility in making known these 
 measures of injustice to the common interests of the 
 common People ; but if the exposure be dangerous, the 
 danger is greater of leaving the People in ignorance of 
 these real causes of their distress and discontent. What 
 is it to the struggling laborer and his starving family, 
 the form of government or who governs, if by his labor 
 he can barely keep himself, his Wife, and Children from 
 starvation? How are men, whose lives are spent in 
 daily toil for bare subsistence, to learn these causes of 
 their misery ? It is easy to say, they are ignorant, 
 improvident, and, for the most part, drunkards. But 
 what, if they be made so by their over-worked, ill- 
 housed, and miserable lives, without a gleam of hope of 
 anything better before them in this world ? 
 
 How can they read Acts of Parliament ? 
 
 How many have undergone the labor of reading even 
 the Acts of Parliament here referred to about malt? 
 
 Who, that has not tried, can tell the cost of time in 
 reading these Acts of Parliament only for this short 
 abstract ? 
 
 And how many will take the trouble even to read 
 this? 
 
 How can the laboring man, for whom this is chiefly 
 written, find time to read it ? 
 
 And how many of those who read it will understand 
 it ? But, when they do understand it, then, what will 
 follow ? 
 
 This is worth considering before it be too late. 
 
 The following is reserved as the last remark, being well 
 calculated to leave an indelible impression on the mind of 
 every reader of the audacious absurdity of this system. 
 
 The Malt duty entails an Excise duty on Sugar used 
 in Brewing of 7s. 6d. per cwt., over and above the 
 Customs' duty. The details of the arrangements con- 
 sidered necessary to protect the Revenue against the 
 
MALT. 195 
 
 improper use of Sugar are of an utterly absurd character, 
 and would fill volumes. 
 
 It would be ridiculous, if not so grievous, that a 
 Brewer should have to pay three farthings per pound 
 more for sugar than any one else. 
 
 The Brewers like these 3 farthings per Ib. additional 
 tax, because it helps their monopoly. 
 
 The demon of the Exchequer likes these 3 additional 
 farthings, because he claws them in every year, and in 
 the year ended 31st March, 1870, he clawed in 
 33,136,880 of these additional 3 farthings, equal to 
 103,552: 15:0. 
 
 But will the People like it when they understand it ? 
 
 The People are already aware that, a better order of 
 things once existed. 
 
 In 1745, the farm laborer bought his barley at 2s. 3d. 
 per bushel, turned it into malt, paid no tax, (the cot- 
 tagers were not then taxed) and made excellent ale for 
 his own use at %d. the quart. 
 
 Beer, best adapted to support out-door labor, is now 
 kept from the people, being made, by legislation, too 
 dear for them. 
 
 An infusion of a plant brought from China is made 
 cheaper to the working man than an infusion of a plant 
 grown by the cottage door. The Home barley-grower 
 is injured for the benefit of the Chinese tea-grower, and 
 all our working men are injured morally and physically 
 to an extent beyond human calculation. 
 
 This is British Legislation ! 
 
 Tea is very good for quenching thirst, but, when 
 exclusively used, requires a full diet, and, when that 
 cannot be obtained, there is the desire for some more 
 potent stimulant. Hence the Chinese find the necessity 
 for Opium, and English, Scotch, and Irish laborers, 
 who drink tea and are too poor to buy sufficient food, 
 resort to gin and whiskey. 
 
 o2 
 
196 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 The love of strong drinks is not natural to the 
 English, but is created by the English Law. William 
 III. and Queen Anne taxed malt, and made the beer 
 too dear for the people, and encouraged the extraction 
 of spirits from barley for the sake of revenue. In 
 the reign of George I. and II., gin-drinking became a 
 prevailing vice. In 1703, the dear and fiery wines of 
 Portugal were admitted at a third less duty than the 
 light cheap wines of France. Thus, the British Legis- 
 lature created artificially the taste for strong drinks. 
 This has gone down from father to son, from genera- 
 tion to generation, and has produced more moral guilt, 
 more destruction to human life than all the battles 
 fought by England since the Conquest. 
 
 Gin-drinking has been sanctioned and encouraged in 
 this country for the sake of Revenue, just as gambling 
 has been encouraged at Homburg, Baden, and other 
 towns on the Continent, to the everlasting disgrace of 
 the British Legislature. 
 
 It is well known that, those who drink beer with 
 their dinner require, and ought to take, less solid food. 
 Our agricultural population are notoriously ill fed, and 
 their terrible diseases arise chiefly from this cause and 
 its consequence, gin-drinking. 
 
 If good wholesome beer were allowed to be brewed in 
 the cottage, or to be bought at a price at which the 
 laborer and his family could obtain it, this would 
 supply food and diminish drunkenness. The rich man, 
 with abundance of wine and spirits in his cellar is sel- 
 dom tipsy. He has no reason for drinking to excess. 
 He can always have it, and learns from experience the 
 value of moderation. The labouring man, in the like 
 position, would act in the same way. It is the forced 
 abstinence in the previous days of the week that causes 
 the abuse on Saturday. 
 
 But beer, free from adulteration, can now scarcely be 
 
WINE. 197 
 
 had for money. The exhausted laborer drinks, and by 
 drinking salt, and worse ingredients, becomes more 
 thirsty. He is doubly robbed robbed in character, 
 because he drinks too much, robbed in pocket, be- 
 cause he is cheated. He is then driven to gin, and 
 dies a drunkard, or is hanged as a murderer. 
 
 For all this the British Legislature is responsible. 
 May it be held answerable here and hereafter ! 
 
 WINE. 
 
 The Gross Produce of the Tax on Wine in 1870, on 
 14,531,460 Gallons, was 1,478,862, levied at the fol- 
 lowing rates : 
 
 s. d. 
 On Wine containing less than, 
 
 26 degrees of Proof Spirit 1 per gallon. 
 
 ,, ,, less than 42 degrees 26 
 
 containing 42 or more de- 
 grees of Proof Spirit 26 
 
 and 3d. additional for 
 each degree of strength 
 beyond 41. 
 
 
 This is a very uncertain and, therefore, very unsatis- 
 factory mode of estimating the duty. 
 
 In 1703, the ruin of the Wine Trade was effected by 
 making permanent the treaty with Portugal, named, 
 from the British Minister who accomplished this simple 
 absurdity, the Methuen treaty. 
 
 By this treaty England bound herself to charge a 
 duty on French Wines 50 per cent, higher than on the 
 Wines of Portugal, the Portuguese, by way of compen- 
 sation, binding themselves to admit our woollens into 
 their markets in preference to those of other countries, 
 at a fixed and invariable rate of duty. 
 
 By binding ourselves to receive Portuguese Wines 
 for two-thirds of the duty payable on those of France 
 
198 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 we, in effect, gave the Portuguese growers a monopoly 
 of the British Market, by which they became careless 
 of the quality of their Wines. They, acting on the 
 same absurdity, gave a monopoly to the Oporto Wine 
 Company, which fixed the price at which all wines 
 should be sold. 
 
 Thus we not only excluded one of the principal 
 equivalents the French had to offer for our commo- 
 dities, and proclaimed to the world that we considered 
 it better to deal with two millions of poor customers 
 than with thirty millions of rich customers, but we also 
 provoked the retaliation of the French, who forthwith 
 excluded most of our articles from their markets. 
 
 This is, perhaps, the most striking instance in the 
 history of commerce, of Customs' duties diverting trade 
 into new channels, and altering the taste of a people, all 
 but the wealthiest classes having been compelled, for a 
 long series of years, either to renounce wine or to drink 
 Port. 
 
 The substitution of Port for Claret in Scotland was a 
 dreadful blow to the Scotch Lairds, as pathetically de- 
 scribed by a Scotch Poet (whose name is just now for- 
 gotten), in the following lines : 
 
 " Firm and erect the Caledonian stood, 
 Tender his mutton and his claret good : 
 ' Let him drink Port,' the English Statesmen cried, 
 He drank the poison and his Spirit died." 
 
 Another consequence has been that, about a third of 
 ail the Portuguese and Spanish Wine, sold in London 
 as genuine, is a liquor manufactured in this country or 
 in the Channel Islands, and a large proportion of all the 
 rest is more or less adulterated with substances more or 
 less deleterious. As no abatement of duty is made on 
 account of damage, all damaged wine is used for adul- 
 teration. 
 
 The French tariff, which admitted French Wines into 
 
WIXE. 399 
 
 this country at more moderate duties, greatly mitigated 
 the Methuen mischief, though how the consent of 
 Portugal was obtained, if obtained, to this change, seems 
 not to be generally known, arid cannot be here ex- 
 plained, unless by regarding treaties as binding on 
 either party only so long as convenient to both parties. 
 
 Of the extent of adulteration practised on wine in 
 this country, the public can have but a very faint con- 
 ception. 
 
 From an official return in 1835, 210 pipes of port 
 wine had been imported into the Channel Islands, 
 (where no duty is payable), from Portugal, in the eight 
 years ending, 1833 ; while, in the same period, 2,072 
 pipes of port wine had been imported from the Channel 
 Islands into London. 
 
 For the deleterious, and in many cases poisonous, 
 quality of the ingredients used, the numerous books 
 treating on this part of the subject must be referred to. 
 
 These fraudulent practices have been so long in ope- 
 ration and in such general use that, probably, they 
 would not cease with the abolition of the wine duties. 
 But, as they are in a great part the result of the duties, 
 it may be expected that, a more genuine article, ob- 
 tained at the same or a lower price than the fraudulent 
 and poisonous, would be preferred, and this would be 
 found in the market in the absence of Customs* duties. 
 
 It is well known that, in prolific vintages in France, 
 innumerable tons of grapes have been left to rot on the 
 ground for want of gathering, the owners not having 
 casks for storing the wine. No doubt, casks would 
 have been provided, and this waste would have been 
 avoided, if England, by high duties, had not prevented 
 the cheap wines of France from being introduced into 
 this market, and the English people would have been 
 refreshed with these cheap, wholesome, and pleasant 
 wines, instead of the expensive and deleterious com- 
 
200 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 pounds ; and, what is more important, our workmen in 
 the manufacturing districts would have been employed 
 in making goods to send in return for the large import 
 of wine from France; and the unprofitable retinue of 
 public and private servants, now engaged in working 
 out the present system of Customs' duties, would have 
 been employed in profitable production. 
 
 There is a great deal of excellent wine, made in Pro- 
 vence and Languedoc, well adapted to the English taste 
 generally, which, if free of duty, could be sold, with 
 good profit to the importer, for less than sixpence a 
 bottle. 
 
 Old Sherry, as well as old wine of any other kind, is 
 better than that more recently made ; and, therefore, at 
 Xeres, the head quarters of the Sherry trade, the birth- 
 days of the respective vintages are well recorded. The 
 vast cellars contain wine of all ages, from one year to 
 fifty. The casks of very old wine are never emptied ; 
 only a small quantity is drawn out to mix with a larger 
 bulk of newer wine ; and the deficiency is immediately 
 made up from casks of the next succeeding year's 
 vintage. A cask of good Sherry, brought to England, 
 may contain portions of twenty or thirty vintages; but 
 under no circumstances is the very old Sherry sold 
 without admixture with vintages of later date. 
 
 Port wine, as it is called, is not Port wine, but a 
 mixture of many things with a wine which may, or 
 may not, have come from Portugal. At Oporto the 
 wine merchants, or manufacturers, mix elder juice, 
 apple juice, sloe juice, logwood decoction, and many 
 other liquids with port wine, to accommodate it to the 
 purses of their customers. The real wine of the Douro 
 scarcely reaches England at all, and foreigners are 
 astonished that we still continue to purchase an adulte- 
 rated substitute. Nor do the Spaniards tamper less 
 with our Sherry, than the Portuguese with our Port. 
 
WINE. 201 
 
 Both nations consider the English taste for wine viti- 
 ated, and that we are easily victimised. It was stated 
 before the Committee on the Wine Duties in 1852, by 
 W. Forrester, an extensive wine-grower in Portugal, 
 that no port-wine is brought to England with less 
 brandy in it than three gallons to a pipe of 115 gallons; 
 that the ratio varies from this minimum of three up to 
 a maximum of seventeen gallons, and that, if it con- 
 tained no brandy, or less than three gallons to a pipe, 
 the English would not purchase it. In so far as con- 
 cerns brandy, the wine-growers of Oporto and Xeres 
 may be excusable in yielding to vitiated English taste, 
 but when elder juice, sloe juice, and logwood decoction 
 are introduced into the wine to dye it, and other ingre- 
 dients as substitutes for the wine itself, the temptation 
 to dishonesty becomes great. 
 
 A pipe of Port wine rises remarkably in price during 
 its successive stages, varying from 5 to 17 when 
 in the grower's hands; this 17 becomes '27 at 
 Oporto ; after which are added the English charges and 
 duties. 
 
 Of all the Wine made in Europe, the quantity of 
 which can hardly be estimated, there is supposed to be 
 about sixty millions of gallons exported annually from 
 wine-producing countries to other countries. We, in 
 England, obtain a very humble portion of this. The 
 Committee gave a table of the quantity of wine im- 
 ported into the United Kingdom for a period of about 
 ninety years, from 1697 to 1785, a table remarkable 
 as exhibiting the almost stationary nature of the wine- 
 trade during a period when most other departments of 
 commerce advanced rapidly ; the quantity never vary- 
 ing far from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 gallons annually. 
 Another table exhibited the imports from 1786 to 1851, 
 a period of sixty-six years, both inclusive ; the quantity 
 varying from 4,000,000 to 11,000,000 gallons. 
 
202 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 The Portuguese wines maintained an ascendancy 
 over Spanish until about the year 1830, since which 
 time the balance has been rather the other way. Dur- 
 ing the last quarter of a century, the quantity entered 
 for Home Consumption, as distinguished from the quan- 
 tity imported, has never varied far from the average of 
 the whole, to the year 1860, being about six and a 
 quarter millions of gallons. 
 
 Cape wines, almost the only wine brought from our 
 Colonies, began to figure in the Customs' books about 
 the commencement of the present century. For some 
 years, Marsala, a Sicilian wine has been growing in 
 favor in England : it is better than Cape wine, and 
 cheaper than Sherry or Madeira, but is very inferior to 
 both, and being much cheaper is much used for adulte- 
 ration by the London Wine Merchants. 
 
 The average quantities of the different kinds of Wine 
 brought to England annually between 1830 and 1854, 
 were about as follows : 
 
 * Gallons. 
 
 Spanish , 3,300,000 
 
 Portuguese < 3,000,000 
 
 French 500,000 
 
 Cape 400,000 
 
 Madeira 230,000 
 
 Canary 220,000 
 
 Rhenish 70,000 
 
 All Other 480,000 
 
 Total Gallons 8,200,000 
 
 These were the total quantities imported, the propor- 
 tion retained for Home Consumption being about three- 
 fourths. 
 
 The quantities of Wine imported in 1868, 1869, 
 1870, according to the Customs' returns, were as fol- 
 lows : 
 
SPIRITS. 
 
 203 
 
 Wine Gallons 
 
 Imported. 
 
 Home Consumption. 
 
 1868. 
 
 1869. 
 
 1870. ! 
 
 1868. 
 
 1869. 
 
 1870. 
 
 16,953,429 
 
 17,181,330 
 
 17,774,781 i 
 
 15,064,575 
 
 14,731,173 
 
 15,079,854 
 
 The ' Home Consumption ' appears to be nearly equal 
 in these three years, being about fifteen millions of 
 gallons annually. 
 
 The ' Home Consumption' in the three years, 1854, 
 1855, 1856, was nearly equal, being about seven mil- 
 lions of gallons annually, showing an increase in 1868, 
 1869, 1870, of upwards of 100 per cent. 
 
 The consumption of Light Wines in 1859, the year 
 before the old Port Monopoly was stopped, was 885,000 
 gallons, or 13 per cent, of the whole consumption. In 
 1869, it was 4,572,798, or 30'8 per cent, of the whole 
 consumption ! 
 
 So much for the alteration of the French Tariff ! 
 
 SPIRITS. 
 
 There are three scales of duties on spirits ; one levied 
 by the Customs on Colonial Spirits, one on Foreign 
 Spirits, imported for Home Consumption, another by 
 the Excise on Spirits distilled in the United Kingdom, 
 for Home Consumption. 
 
 No abatement of duty is made on account of damage. 
 
 . 
 
 The amount of Customs' duties on Spirits in 1870 was 4,191,400 
 of Excise duties 10,969,188 
 
 ^15,160,588 
 
 This is a large amount of revenue from Spirits. 
 Some think there is less evil in taxing Spirits than in 
 taxing any other article of commerce. It is said by 
 many that the removal of the duties would so reduce 
 the price of Spirits as greatly to increase intemperance. 
 But this is fallacious. 
 
204 TAXATION AS IT is. 
 
 If cheapness of intoxicating drinks promoted drunken- 
 ness, as a rule, those classes of society which have the 
 highest purchasing power should, as a rule, be the most 
 drunken. The converse is the fact. Drunkenness, must 
 therefore, be looked for in some other cause than cheap- 
 ness. In the United States there is no Excise Duty. 
 Spirits, equal to "proof" strength may be had in the 
 United States at one shilling a gallon. All testimony 
 proves that, America is supplied with its intemperate 
 classes from " the old country." 
 
 In the Parliamentary Evidence on Drunkenness, taken 
 in 1834; it is proved that, in times of depressed trade 
 and general distress more drinking prevails, than in times 
 of full employment and general prosperity. This has, 
 subsequently, been ascertained to be true in Manchester, 
 Liverpool, and other great manufacturing towns. The 
 pecuniary ability to procure intoxicating liquors is not, 
 therefore, the disposing cause of intoxication. 
 
 It is not the present object to inquire into the causes 
 or the cures of drunkenness. It is enough to show that, 
 neither in this country nor in America, nor in any 
 other country, does intemperance increase with the 
 ability to purchase strong liquors. If it were other- 
 wise, in Wine producing countries drunkenness would 
 prevail, instead of being unknown. But the evidence is 
 abundant to prove that, the duties in this country are 
 productive of serious evils, moral and commercial. 
 
 One of the most remarkable attempts to make people 
 moral by Act of Parliament was planned by Sir Robert 
 Walpole, and not less remarkable is the manner in 
 which that attempt was frustrated. A Gin Law was 
 passed to put down intemperance, by rendering Gin too 
 dear for the poorer classes to purchase ; the duty was 
 raised to 50 per annum. How this was met, Sir 
 Eobert Walpole himself explains, in a Letter to Horace 
 Walpole : " The scheme that was laid was, for all Dis- 
 
SPIRITS. 205 
 
 tillers that were able to give away gratis to all that 
 should ask for it, as much gin and strong waters as 
 they should desire ; and the great Distillers were to 
 supply all the retailers and small shops with as much as 
 they should want, to be distributed and given away in 
 like manner. The shops were to begin to be opened 
 on Tuesday Evening, the eve of Michaelmas Day, and 
 to be continued and repeated on Wednesday night, that 
 the mob, being thus made drunk, might be prepared 
 and ready to commit any sort of mischief; and in 
 order to this, anonymous letters were sent to the dis- 
 tillers and town retailers in all parts of the town, to 
 instruct and incite them to rise and join their friends, 
 and do as their neighbours did." 
 
 For six years, from 1736 to 1742, the metropolis was 
 the scene of an almost uninterrupted conflict between 
 the Government and the People, in respect to this Gin 
 Act. The riot, described in the letter of Sir Robert 
 Walpole, was put down by the strong arm of the law, 
 aided by military power ; but the opposition continued 
 to show itself in milder, though not less pertinacious 
 forms, frequently quite ludicrous in character. The 
 Apothecaries were permitted to sell Spirits as a medi- 
 cine, and advantage was taken of this permission to 
 drive a trade under false colors. Almost immediately 
 after the Act came into operation, the Apothecaries had 
 a prodigious demand for ' gripe water/ ' cholic water,' 
 and so forth, the spirituous nature of which may be 
 readily surmised. One Apothecary sold drams colored 
 red to appear medicinal, and around the bottle was 
 wrapped a paper with these directions : " Take two or 
 three spoonfuls of this four or five times a day, or as 
 often as the fit takes you." Every Apothecary had his 
 own form to the same effect. The gin-shops and low 
 taverns, not allowed to sell gin openly, exhibited nume- 
 rous liquors which, though disguised in name and 
 
206 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 appearance, contained gin as the principal ingredient. 
 The list of such drinks was quite formidable : " San- 
 garee/' " tow-row," " cuckold's comfort/' " parliament 
 gin/' " makeshift," " the last shift/' "the ladies delight," 
 "the balk," "King Theodore," " cholic water/' "gripe 
 water," &c. Even the modern Americans have not a 
 greater number of odd names for beverages than had 
 the London tavern-keepers of Walpole's time. More 
 than two thousand persons were, in various ways, pro- 
 secuted for offences against the Gin Act during the 
 short period of six years : but the attempt was all in 
 vain ; the drinkers vanquished the Government, and 
 the Legislature repealed the Act in 1742. It was to 
 those days that Hogarth's e Gin Lane' belongs, that 
 wonderful representation, in which the very houses 
 seem reeling with drunkenness. 
 
 It is impossible to make people moral by Act of 
 Parliament, but even to those who think otherwise it 
 must appear questionable morality to derive so large a 
 revenue from a source of so much immorality. The 
 history of these duties proves that, taxation is not the 
 means for combating with habits of intemperance. Such 
 habits are not the effects of cheap Spirits, but of a low 
 tone of morality, with bodily and mental depression ; 
 and it must be Education, not Excise, uplifting the 
 physical as well as moral condition, and raising the 
 standard of comfort, that will put a stop to such evils. 
 
 A much more effectual mode of counteracting intem- 
 perate habits would be to untax such articles as Beer, 
 Tea, Coffee and Sugar. Mr. Porter, in his " Progress of 
 the Nation/' page 562, says : " If, by reason of the 
 cheapness of provisions, the wages of the laborer afford 
 means for indulgence, tea, coffee, and sugar, are the 
 articles to which he earliest has recourse, and his family 
 partake in the sober gratification. On the other hand, 
 it will often happen that, when the power of buying 
 
SPIRITS. 207 
 
 these is not enjoyed, the small sum that can still be 
 paid after the purchase of his loaf is bestowed in pro- 
 curing that stimulating draught, which is then more 
 than ever desired, and the man is driven from his 
 cottage to the public-house. We may thus reconcile 
 the apparent anomaly, so often remarked, that the 
 Excise Revenue maintains its level during even length- 
 ened periods of distress," 
 
 This Excise tax, however, interferes with a very 
 important home manufacture, and, as such, is a direct 
 tax on native industry, limiting the employment of the 
 people, and, to this extent, the tax is responsible for all 
 the evils which follow therefrom. 
 
 To the Customs' duties on colonial and foreign 
 spirits, however, must be attributed the greatest evils, 
 in demoralising the lower classes of the people. It is 
 this which created and has sustained the trade of the 
 smuggler, ruining the honest trader ; filling the gaols 
 with criminals (often guilty of the deepest crime) ; in- 
 creasing Borough and County Rates; adding to the 
 expenses of collection by rendering necessary the pre- 
 ventive service, and proving itself a prolific source of 
 social evils of the darkest dye. 
 
 Another of the serious evils is, the practice of adul- 
 teration, which is carried on to a most alarming extent ; 
 destructive not only of health, but also of life, to an in- 
 calculable amount. Of these villainous compounds and 
 the most extensively used is, oil of vitriol. Those who 
 wish to know more of the deplorable effects of these 
 noxious ingredients, must refer to the collected evidence 
 in Reports of the Committees of the House of Commons 
 and in various other forms before the public. From the 
 abundant evidence here are two extracts : 
 
 "It is, no doubt, to the unprincipled adulterations of 
 food, spirits, malt liquors, &c., that a great number of 
 deaths, in and about the metropolis, is assignable. The 
 
208 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 adulterations are not sufficient to cause instant death, 
 but operate slowly, silently, and imperceptibly, so as not 
 to excite suspicion and inquiry respecting the cause. 
 This is a remark founded on much observation and very 
 probable grounds. It is hoped that, it will awaken 
 public attention and inquiry into these nefarious trans- 
 actions." Oracle of Health. 
 
 " We have reason to believe that the drugs with which 
 the ordinary kinds of gin, as well as malt liquor, are 
 universally adulterated, have greatly tended to this 
 melancholy result, the recent increase of insanity." 
 Report of the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, Middlesex. 
 
 The loss by the duty on British Spirits it is hardly pos- 
 sible to compute with accuracy, owing. to the absence of 
 any reliable information as to the quantity of malt used 
 in distillation, the difficulty of ascertaining the distiller's 
 expenses, and the manner in which the whole subject 
 is perplexed by rectifying, mixing, and adulterating the 
 spirit. Enough, however, is known to show that, the 
 loss to the public on British Spirits is more than on 
 Beer. 
 
 That the Irish drink more Spirits per head than the 
 English, and the Scotch more than the Irish, is known 
 from popular observation, confirmed by the Excise Re- 
 turns, while it is unquestionable that, the English drink 
 more Beer than the Irish or Scotch. There is scarcely 
 a true Scot, whatever his rank of life, who does not take 
 his tumbler of Hot Whwsky Toddy at some cosy hour 
 of the day or night, and the true Irishman does the 
 same whenever he can, but which is not quite so often. 
 
 The following are the quantities of Spirits charged 
 with Excise duty in England, Scotland, and Ireland in 
 the year ended 31st March, 1870 : 
 
SPIRITS. 209 
 
 England Galls. 9,359.946 
 
 Scotland 7,457,599 
 
 Ireland 6,037,684 
 
 Gallons 22,855,229 
 
 The following are the quantities of Spirits charged 
 with Customs' duties in the year 1870. 
 
 Brandy Galls. 7,925,517 
 
 Bum ... 6,904,435 
 
 Geneva 308,983 
 
 Other Sorts, not sweetened, or mixed 2,022,029 
 
 Gallons 17,160,964 
 
 The following are the Nett Receipts of Duties of 
 Excise on Spirits in 1870. 
 
 England 4,479,685 
 
 Scotland 3,473,017 
 
 Ireland 3,016,486 
 
 Total 10,969,188 
 
 The following are the Nett Receipts of duties of 
 Customs on Colonial and Foreign Spirits in 1 870. 
 
 Eum 1,933,383 
 
 Brandy 1,710,335 
 
 Geneva 73,091 
 
 Other Sorts 474,591 
 
 Total... ..4,191,400 
 
 By Act 33 & 34 Viet. c. 32, 1st August, 1870, the 
 rate of Customs' duty on Spirits and Strong Waters, 
 viz. Perfumed Spirits and Cologne Water was altered, 
 per gallon, from 145. to 16s. 
 
 The quantities of British, Colonial and Foreign Spirits 
 divided amongst the Population of the United Kingdom, 
 according to the Census of 1871, 31,465,480, gives 
 
 p 
 
210 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 about 1^- gallon of Spirits per head. The smuggled, and 
 illicitly distilled, Spirits contribute two additional items, 
 concerning which the public are in the dark. 
 
 The discrepancies in the returns of the quantities of 
 goods imported and the amounts of duty charged, as 
 made out at different times by the Commissioners of 
 Customs and the Commissioners of Excise, and the im- 
 possibility of reconciling some of these returns with the 
 entries in the Government Finance Accounts, after dis- 
 tinguishing between Nett and Gross, are extremely per- 
 plexing, and must account for any discrepancies in these 
 statements. 
 
 The number of " Detections " in Illicit Distillation in 
 the United Kingdom, according to the Government Re- 
 turn for the year, ended 31st March, 1870, is as follows : 
 
 Year ended 31st March. 
 
 England. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 1870. 
 
 40. 
 
 5. 
 
 2,215. 
 
 This is bad luck for poor Paddy ! 
 
 SUGAR. 
 
 This is a subject so important, involving so many 
 complicated details difficult to follow out, that it must 
 be dealt with at considerable length and tedious minute- 
 ness to make it intelligible to those unconnected with 
 the Sugar Trade. 
 
 The time and attention which has been required for 
 writing this short account of the Sugar Duties can 
 hardly be conceived, and is adverted to only to account 
 for the ignorance of the Public on this subject, which 
 so much concerns them. 
 
 It is difficult to believe that the Government is aware 
 of all the evil effects of these duties ; but it is impossible 
 
SUGAR. 211 
 
 to suppose that the Public, if fully acquainted with the 
 enormity of these evils, would have permitted them to 
 be continued to this time. Nothing can present in 
 such crimson colors the iniquitous impolicy of Customs 
 duties, as the actual case of the Sugar duties, and 
 nothing less than ignorance can excuse the Government, 
 if an excuse so pitiful and contemptible can be admitted 
 for continuing, after long experience, this monstrous 
 folly and injustice. 
 
 To deprive the Government of even this miserable 
 excuse, the subject will be here laid bare, that the 
 People, when they know the wrong, may, with one 
 united voice, demand the prompt and only decisive 
 remedy. 
 
 It is difficult to present this subject fully and intelli- 
 gibly within reasonable limits. The comparatively 
 small space into which the subject is here compressed is 
 the result of many years' careful attention, with the 
 assistance of those who, from great experience in the 
 Trade, are most to be depended upon. 
 
 I now submit this result to the Public, and I invite 
 their attention to it, the Sugar duties being scarcely less 
 important in their consequences than were the duties 
 formerly levied on Corn. 
 
 Sugar, being a necessary of life, is most improperly 
 made to yield a large revenue to the State, the revenue 
 from these duties being, in the year ending 31st March, 
 1870, 5,674,794. This includes Sugar, refined and 
 Unrefined, and Molasses, and the following Articles 
 of which Sugar is an ingredient, namely, Glucose, 
 (Liquid) or Vegetable Syrup : Almond Paste : Cherries, 
 dried : Comfits, dried : Confectionery : Ginger, pre- 
 served : Marmalade : Plums, preserved in Sugar : Sue- 
 cades : and this ends the list of these absurdities. 
 
 This is no more to be justified than a tax on Corn or 
 Salt or any other necessary of life. 
 
 p 2 
 
 
213 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 The following statistical facts may suffice to show 
 how the bounty of Nature is counteracted by human 
 devices in the single article of Sugar. 
 
 The annual Sugar production of the world is about 
 3,500,000 tons, of which 900,000 tons are produced on 
 the Continent of Europe from Beetroot : 2,500,000 tons 
 from the Sugar Cane in the Tropics : the remaining 
 100,000 being made up by Palm Sugar about 70,000 
 tons, and Maple Sugar about 30,000 or 40,000 tons. 
 
 The average free on board price of Sugar may be taken 
 as 18s. per cwt., or for 3,500,000 tons, 63,000,000. 
 But the production is capable of an almost fabulous 
 increase, even from the area now under cultivation, 
 because in the Cane producing countries, with the 
 exception of Cuba, Porto Rico, Mauritius, Demerara, 
 and a few other places where Sugar is properly made, 
 the system of growth and manufacture is almost 
 incredibly wasteful. Out of the 2,500,000 tons of Cane 
 Sugar, only 1,000,000 tons are even approximately 
 economically and properly prepared, and the remaining 
 1,500,000 tons represent a waste of 3,000,000 tons in 
 the extraction : that is, two-thirds of the Sugar con- 
 tained in the Cane is actually wasted, while the remain- 
 ing third is exported in such a state as to be quite unfit 
 for modern requirements, until it has been refined, and, 
 owing to imperfect manufacture, it loses in weight quite 
 10 per cent, on the voyage to Europe or North America. 
 The price obtained by the Planters is 18s. per cwt. for 
 their 1,500,000 tons, less 150,000 tons lost on the 
 voyage, or he gets say 18 per ton for 1,350,000 tons, 
 or equal to 24,300,000, while the Sugar wasted in 
 production or on the voyage would, at the same rate, 
 be worth 56,700,000. Advanced Planters say that, it 
 does not cost any more to make sugar well than to make 
 it ill, but suppose it costs 10 per cent, more, or 
 8,000,000 on the value of the Sugar in the cane, that 
 
SUGAR. 213 
 
 will reduce the loss to only 48,700,000, or more than 
 double what the Planter gets, 
 
 In these calculations the production is taken at 18 
 per cent., the per centage contained in the Cane, but in 
 the present state of science 15 per cent, would be a safer 
 figure. This would represent a deduction of 14,000,000 
 from the waste shown above, or of 22,000,000, adding 
 the 8,000,000, assumed as the extra cost of produc- 
 tion, thus reducing the loss on producing 1,500,000 tons 
 of Cane Sugar, worth 24,300,000 to only 35,000,000. 
 Certainly, therefore, it is within bounds to say that, 
 three-fifths of the Cane Sugar produced costs more than 
 double what it ought to cost. If 1,500,000 tons can be 
 sold for 24,000,000 (after wasting 3,000,000 tons) a 
 yield from the Canes (at 15 per cent, from the same 
 area and at an extra cost of production of 10 per cent.) 
 would be 3,375,000 tons, which, at 10*. per ton would 
 yield the Planter 33,750,000, or considerably more 
 than enough to pay an extra cost of production of 
 8,000,000. 
 
 It must be remembered that, this Sugar would be of 
 the finest possible quality, nearly white, and with more 
 sweetening power than Loaf Sugar, now retailed at 5d. 
 to 6d. per Ib. while this superior Raw Sugar could be 
 retailed, with a good profit to all concerned, at l|o?. or 
 2d. per Ib. The present retail price of Refiners' Refuse, 
 or Bastards, the commonest consumable Sugar is 3ic?. 
 per Ib. 
 
 These vast losses are, therefore, attributable to the 
 Sugar Duties, and the method of levying these duties is 
 a subject of continual controversy. There is no article 
 the method of taxing which has led and still leads to 
 such constant discussion as Sugar. Since 1840 there 
 have been no less than twenty -six changes in the Sugar 
 duties, generally involving questions of principle, as 
 well as of detail, and a settlement is as remote as ever, 
 
214 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 every change only leads to increased controversy among 
 those concerned in the trade, and the Public, who are 
 the most interested and know the least about it, take 
 little part in these discussions. 
 
 Since 1864 there have been four or five conferences 
 between England, France, Belgium, and Holland. The 
 Sugar Refiners, finding that, the home protection was 
 no longer of use to them because of the reduction of the 
 protective margin of duty on Loaf Sugar from 6s. per 
 cwt. in 1860, to 4s. in 1864, and 2s. in 1870, sought 
 and are still seeking, under the Drawback Convention, 
 to establish a league among the four powers for the 
 mutual protection of their Refiners, and one of their 
 objects is to raise prices in this country by inducing 
 foreign Governments to reduce their bounties on the 
 export of refined sugar to the same point as our boun- 
 ties, so that the British Sugar Refiners may again 
 export Loaf Sugars, at the cost of the Public, as they 
 already export Pieces. 
 
 But though the Public, with little knowledge, take 
 little interest in this subject, the Government must be 
 supposed to know all about it, and, therefore, there is 
 no ,tax which reflects so much discredit on the Govern- 
 ment as these Sugar duties, especially on the Govern- 
 ment which professes to govern on Free Trade principles, 
 and no member is theoretically more in favour of com- 
 plete commercial liberty than the present Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer. He is, however, at this moment en- 
 gaged in one of the most retrograde steps of modern 
 times, namely, that of forcing the French Government 
 to adopt our system of graduated duties, against the 
 unanimous protests of the French Sugar Makers, and 
 this is simply to please our Refiners at the expense of 
 the Public. No doubt, we have a right to our pound of 
 flesh under the Drawback Convention, but that Mr. 
 Lowe should be the protectionist Shylock who demands 
 
SUGAR. 215 
 
 the sacrifice is strangely at variance with the professions 
 of such an ardent Free Trader, who even opposes Com- 
 mercial Treaties as making a matter of bargain what 
 ought to be done only on principle. To be opposed to 
 the Commercial Treaty and yet to force an antiquated 
 protective system of Sugar duties upon France at the 
 same time are two incongruous courses difficult to 
 reconcile. 
 
 Before the Budget of 1870, the highest duty was 12s., 
 the lowest 8s. The highest duty now is 6s. the lowest 
 4s., therefore, the protection which was 4s. is reduced to 
 2s., the duty on Loaf Sugar being reduced 6s. per cwt., 
 whilst that on Raw Sugar is reduced only 4s. per cwt., 
 and still, no less than five distinctive rates are main- 
 tained upon Sugar, necessitating the drawing of nearly 
 five millions of samples yearly by the Assessors, in order 
 to charge 6d. per cwt. more or less duty. The result is 
 that, the graduated scale yielded gross in the first year 
 of the present duties 55,000 less than an uniform duty 
 of 4s. 8d. per cwt. would have yielded on the same 
 quantities of Sugar and Molasses. 
 
 To maintain this system numerous Clerks and 
 Assessors are kept throughout the kingdom, and it 
 often occurs that, the very same sugars are assessed at 
 different duties at different ports. With West India 
 Sugars the bottom layer in the cask is almost invariably 
 deep brown, whilst the upper layer is the brightest 
 yellow; so that, the former is subject to 4s. duty, and 
 the latter to 5s. As the cask lies on its side in the 
 ship, the " bottom" layer is not the bottom of the cask, 
 but the lower part of the whole length of the cask. 
 The consequence of this is, the expense of sampling and 
 mixing the two, and the duty is assessed according to 
 the pleasure of the officer or sampler, who, as his interest 
 or fancy dictates, fixes the rate of duty at Qd. more or 
 less. 
 
216 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Every alteration of the Sugar duties has tended 
 towards equalisation ; but for the interests of the Sugar 
 Kefiners and the Custom House Officials the system of 
 ad valorem duties is still maintained. 
 
 One complaint against this so called ad valorem 
 system is that, the duties cannot possibly, from the 
 nature of the article, be ad valorem : another that, ad 
 valorem duties are very unjust to the producer of the 
 finer sugar, as the buyer pays only the intrinsic differ- 
 ence in value, plus the lowest rate of duty. Thus, the 
 commonest sugar may now be worth to the buyer, duty 
 paid, 20s. per cwt. while the finest is worth 37s. - 
 difference in instrinsic value 17s. The duty paid on the 
 lowest is 4.9. : on the highest 6s. The producer thus 
 gets 16s. for the low sugar and 31s. for the highest: 
 difference 15s. instead of 17s., the difference that the 
 buyer actually pays. Thus, the Planter abroad pays the 
 extra 2s. duty imposed by our Government as a fine for 
 having been at the trouble and expense of making a 
 whiter sugar than his neighbor. 
 
 Every one connected with the subject and opposed to 
 this system is weary of the question, and very few others 
 know anything about it. The Custom House Officials 
 have it all their own way, and from them the members 
 of the Government derive all their information. The 
 assessment of Sugar for the duties is one of the principal 
 main-stays of the Custom House, by giving employment 
 to a vast number of Clerks and great influence to the 
 higher officials. 
 
 As long as the scale of duties continues these evils 
 must exist, as the necessary consequences of this ex- 
 pensive and injurious system. 
 
 Although the scale of duties is reduced, the slovenly 
 process of manufacture in the West Indies continues, 
 and still more in the East Indies, where the "poor 
 ryot," whom Mr. Cave is so very anxious to protect 
 
SUGAK. 217 
 
 against the "grasping capitalist/' conducts the manu- 
 facture of Sugar by boiling the juice in an earthen pot 
 over a fire on the ground, round which the family squat 
 in a circle, stirring the mixture with a stick in turn. 
 Sugar so made is called " Jaggery," and contains only 
 66 per cent, of extractible crystallisable saccharine : it is 
 black, full of caramel, and useful only for beer making 
 and cattle-feeding. 
 
 The result of such a system is to be seen in the fact 
 that, the exports of sugar from India, the native home 
 of the Cane, fell from 80,000 tons in 1850-1 to 
 16,000 tons in 1869-70, and that India actually now 
 imports sugar to the value of ,800,000 per annum. 
 
 The discouragement to the manufacturers of Sugar 
 has been so great, and the changes seriously affecting 
 the trade have been so numerous that, there is now, in 
 most instances, want of capital, of energy, and of cheap 
 labor. 
 
 In many cases, and mostly from the Tropics, only 
 30 to 35 per cent, of the Sugar contained in the Cane 
 reaches England. It is lost in drainage, in the form of 
 molasses or is imperfectly extracted, and on arrival in 
 England four-fifths of the whole quantity imported is 
 re-made, at a cost of 4s. per cwt., a useless expense, 
 which inflicts a charge of 2,000,000 a year on the 
 British consumer, or two-thirds of the yield of the 
 Sugar duties. 
 
 With good machinery and less labor the purest white 
 Sugar can be made direct from the juice, and good 
 Sugar may be shipped to pay a profit to the Planter at 
 10s. per cwt. Added to this 5s. to cover all charges, 
 exclusive of duty, the cost of good grocery moist sugar, 
 which cannot now be bought under 34s. would be 15s. 
 per cwt., and White and Loaf Sugar cannot now be 
 bought under 40s. to 42s. per cwt. 
 
 Such is the effect of our Customs duties on this 
 
218 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 necessary of life, and England is the largest trading and 
 consuming country in the world for Sugar, England and 
 the United States being now the only great markets 
 for Cane Sugar, since the rapid rise of the Beet-root 
 cultivation, due entirely to the fact that, Germany, by 
 levying an uniform duty on Raw Beet-roots, made it 
 essential to get as rich roots as possible. 
 
 The yield of the Mangold Wurzel in Sugar was 4 per 
 cent. : the variety of Beet now raised by careful selection 
 and cultivation actually yields 7 to 8 per cent. The 
 Cane, which contains 18 per cent, of Sugar, yields only 
 5 to 6 per cent, of Sugar and 2| to 3 per cent, of 
 molasses in our West India Colonies. 
 
 The effect of the ad valorem principle is to make it 
 more profitable to produce bad sugar than good sugar. 
 The inferior quality is, therefore, imported into this 
 country under the lower duty for the benefit of the 
 Refiners, and the pure crystallised juice of the Cane is 
 actually mixed with inferior qualities, to be imported 
 into England under the lowest duty. In other words, 
 the pure cry stalised juice, which is always white, is pur- 
 posely spoilt either by careless manufacture, which pro- 
 duces "caramel," or by direct adulteration, mixing 
 or coloring the pure crystalised juice with a stream 
 of caramel, with which, at a trifling cost, the finest 
 crystalised sugar can be made to come in at the lowest 
 duty, to the great benefit of the Refiner, who profits by 
 the fraud on the Revenue. " Caramel" is burnt sugar, 
 the most delicate coloring substance known, and thus 
 puts a dark coat on the crystal. This dark coat can 
 easily be removed from crystalised Sugar by dabbing it 
 with damp blotting paper. 
 
 If the shameful principle of a tax on such a necessary 
 of life as sugar is to be admitted, it must be manifest 
 that, one low uniform duty would be more productive 
 and much less expensive than the ad valorem system. 
 
SUGAR. 219 
 
 There is no more intrinsic difference between Sugars 
 than there is between Teas, and why the ad valorem 
 principle should be applied to Sugar and not to Tea is 
 unintelligible, for any honest purpose. The conclusion 
 can only be that, the principle is unjust, and the purpose 
 dishonest. 
 
 But the Refiners say that, there is a great difference, 
 because Tea is a manufactured article; whereas, they 
 divide Sugar into raw or manufactured, according to its 
 being raw or refined. This is altogether a mistake, for 
 all Sugar is more or less manufactured, the raw material 
 being the Cane. The difference between raw and refined 
 Sugar is simply a more or less complete manufacture. 
 Haw Sugar is naturally white. Loaf Sugar is largely 
 made on the Continent direct from the Root, and is 
 thus Raw, in the Refiners' sense, as it requires no 
 second process. 
 
 It is impossible to apply graduated duties fairly, and 
 a uniform duty places all parties in the relative position 
 they would occupy to each other if there were no duty. 
 But under no circumstances can it be justifiable, or even 
 excusable, to impose a duty on such a necessary of life 
 as Sugar. 
 
 The advocates of graduated duties hold that, the duty 
 on Sugar should be levied on the ad valorem principle 
 for the following reasons : 
 
 1. That, this alone can enable the home refiners to 
 compete with the foreign maker. 
 
 2. That, a uniform duty would be a discouragement 
 to the producers of common sugars, and would throw the 
 production into the hands of the capitalist, and would 
 destroy the industry of thousands of native manufac- 
 turers. 
 
 3. That, a uniform duty would raise the price of 
 Sugar, by excluding from the market the vast quantities 
 of cheap dark Sugars which now come here, and which, 
 
220 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 at a trifling expense, are turned into palatable moist 
 sugar by the refiners. 
 
 This is their argument quite correctly stated. But, 
 why is it that, their lowest sugar> which no one tolerably 
 well off would allow in his house, cannot be sold under 
 3^d., when, as before shown, the finest Raw Sugar 
 could be retailed in a few years at 2d. per lb., if there 
 were no duties ? 
 
 This view is supported by the British Refiners and by 
 those who think it desirable to protect home industries ; 
 also by those Planters who have little capital and who 
 are, consequently, unable to buy the machinery required 
 to make fine Sugar, or whose estates are too small to 
 pay the expense. 
 
 1. To maintain these duties for the benefit of the 
 British Refiners is an argument that does not deserve 
 an answer. 
 
 2. A uniform low duty, instead of being a discourage- 
 ment to the producers of common Sugars, would increase 
 the demand for common purposes, for fattening cattle, 
 - for manure, and for many agricultural and other 
 purposes, for which the common sugars are now not 
 used, as the prices would be lowered by the increased 
 demand and supply. 
 
 3. A uniform duty would lower the prices of all 
 sugars by increasing the demand and supply, and the 
 best sugars would come over in pure crystals, thereby 
 avoiding the expense of refining, and thus reducing the 
 prices of the finest sugars below the present prices of 
 the most inferior sugars. 
 
 But the view under present consideration is not the 
 reduction to a uniform rate, but the abolition of these 
 duties, and in this view these answers admit of no reply. 
 
 The principle of ad valorem duties is altogether 
 erroneous, as it taxes the best producers most highly, 
 and as the consumer buys only by the difference in 
 
SUGAR. 221 
 
 intrinsic value, the best producer has to pay out of his 
 profits the difference in taxation between his and an 
 inferior article, and this must act as a discouragement 
 to improvements. 
 
 This is simply a question between the Free Traders 
 and the Protectionists, and it would be a waste of time 
 now to enter into more detailed statements in support 
 of the Free Trade views on the Sugar duties. 
 
 Unfortunately no Government has ever consulted the 
 Sugar Trade on the subject. Governments have con- 
 sulted only the official heads of the Custom House and 
 have chosen to assume that, the refiners, instead of 
 having interests directly opposed to those of the con- 
 sumers, are the proper persons to be consulted, and 
 that, the authorities on the subject are the Sugar Asses- 
 sors at the Customs who live by the graduated scale, and 
 Chancellors of the Exchequer are easily reconciled to 
 a tax which returns between 5 and 6 millions a year 
 without much complaint from the enlightened Public ! 
 
 The cost of the present system must be enormous. 
 Five millions of samples of Sugar have to be annually 
 drawn and separately assessed. These samples are 
 mixed for assessment at the caprice of the officers. The 
 number of samples assessed for duty in 1869 was 
 1,261,212, out of nearly 5,000,000 samples drawn. It 
 must be evident to every one that such a system admits 
 any amount of fraud. 
 
 This will give some idea of the costliness of the 
 operations to assess the duties only. The facilities for 
 fraud are endless, and from the varying quality of the 
 Sugar in a package and the absence of any supervision 
 the frauds are impossible of detection. Some Pieces- 
 makers make gigantic fortunes, others make nothing., 
 and we have the strange fact that, half the London 
 Refiners have been ruined during the last few years, 
 while the Clyde Pieces-makers have made great fortunes. 
 
222 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 This is accounted for by the assertion that, till lately, 
 Sugars were very generally assessed at the Clyde at a 
 degree of the scale under what the same Sugars paid in 
 London, this being a bounty to the Clyde Refiners of 
 double the usual trade profit. It may be impossible to 
 prove this fact, though it is well known in the Trade. 
 
 But, what a system, to be open to this abuse ! And 
 what must be thought of it by those who know that this 
 abuse is extensively practised, but that to prove it is 
 impossible ! 
 
 It is only necessary to repeat that, the controversy is 
 one of Protection versus Free Trade ; the Protectionists 
 represented by the British Refiners and the West 
 Indians ; the Free Traders by the real Sugar Trade, the 
 East India and Mauritius Planters, and by all the con- 
 sumers who have taken the trouble to understand the 
 subject. 
 
 With regard to the abolition of the Sugar duties, it 
 is impossible to foresee the result ; but it is not impro- 
 bable that, it would double the Sugar consumption 
 within five years. Even then, our consumption would 
 not nearly equal that of the Australian Shepherd whose 
 ration allowance is 2 Ibs. of Sugar per week. A greater 
 consumption of sugar means a greater consumption of 
 Tea, Coffee, Cocoa, Flour Dry 'and Green Fruit, and, 
 in short, an immeasurable increase in the comforts of 
 all classes, but especially of the poor. It is known to 
 those practically concerned in the trade that, a rise of 
 one halfpenny per Ib. in the retail price deprives vast 
 classes of the population of sugar, arid that, the drop of 
 a half- penny makes a wonderful increase in the con- 
 sumption. But without duties fine moist sugar would 
 drop from 5d. or 5|c?. per Ib. to 2d. and perhaps \\d. 
 A double consumption of Sugar, beyond the increased 
 comfort of the people, involves double the present 
 freights and ships engaged in the trade ; double dock 
 
SUGAR. 
 
 223 
 
 accommodation ; double the present wholesale dis- 
 tributors or a reduction of their profits to one-half; 
 it also means double Railway carriage ; increased retail 
 premises, and more increase of prosperity to trade in 
 general, and of the comforts and enjoyments of life 
 than space can here be found for the enumeration. 
 
 At present the use of Sugar in brewing is almost 
 prohibited by the endless, vexatious, and ridiculous 
 regulations intended to protect the Malt duty and the 
 Home Barley growers. The use of Molasses is alto- 
 gether prohibited, for no possible reason that the Trade 
 can understand, as it seems senseless to admit Sugar 
 and to refuse the weaker Molasses. In addition to 
 countless restrictions and annoyances, a Brewer has to 
 pay 7s. 6d. per cwt. (or over \d. per Ib.) more for his 
 sugar than any one else. But, notwithstanding this, 
 considerable quantities of Sugar are used in Brewing, 
 and excellent Beer is made from Sugar only. The 
 Excise fixes a kind of stigma on the use of Sugar in 
 brewing, and when used by Brewers they have a false 
 shame in confessing to its use. 
 
 But the quantity of Sugar used in Brewing in the 
 United Kingdom, in the year, ended 31st March, 1870, 
 was as follows: 
 
 Year ended 
 31 st March. 
 
 Quantity charged with Duty. 
 
 England. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 1870 
 
 Ibs. 
 30,191,392 
 
 Ibs. 
 600,032 
 
 Ibs. 
 2,339,456 
 
 Ibs. 
 
 33,136,880 
 
 Here the difference between Scotland and Ireland is 
 remarkable. 
 
 There is no Bass or Guinness in Scotland, and no 
 Brewery Beer fit to drink in Scotland. Whiskey Toddy 
 has driven good Beer out of Scotland. 
 
 If the Sugar duties, either for common consumption 
 
224 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 or brewing were abolished, it is no exaggeration to say 
 that, hundreds of thousands of tons might be annually 
 used for the purpose of making cheap beer. Distilling 
 from Sugar is nominally free, but Refiners' treacle, ad- 
 mirably suited for the purpose, is at present refused a 
 Drawback on delivery to Distillers. This stops its use, 
 and greatly decreases its value, and increases the cost of 
 Refined Sugar to the Public. The abolition of the 
 Sugar duties would set this right. 
 
 Sugar and Molasses have been increasingly used for 
 feeding Cattle of late years, and the great obstacle to a 
 greatly extended use of both is the duty. The manu- 
 facture of jams, preserves, and sweetmeats is capable of 
 indefinite expansion if the duties were abolished. Sugar 
 is used among other things in blacking making, and if 
 the trade were free, it would, no doubt, find a con- 
 stantly enlarging market for use in manufacture. Beet 
 Sugar cultivation has transformed those parts of France 
 where this new industry has been set up. The yield of 
 Corn has doubled, the number of Cattle has mul- 
 tiplied by ten ; factories employing numbers of hands 
 have sprung up throughout the country ; work for 
 horses carts and laborers is given in winter, the agri- 
 cultural dead season ; 300,000 tons of Sugar, worth 
 7,500,000, are produced from 1,400,000 tons of Root, 
 worth 1,400,000. The refuse pulp is returned to the 
 farmer for Cattle-feeding, and gets back to the Beet 
 fields in manure : the mineral constituents are thus 
 returned to the soil, and as Sugar is drawn from the 
 atmosphere, Beet or Cane can be grown on the same 
 fields ad infinitum, without exhaustion of the soil. 
 
 About twenty-two million acres out of the soil of 
 Great Britain is in permanent pasture. Mr. Mechi 
 estimates that, the Beet Sugar manufacture would raise 
 its produce from 2 ; 10 : an acre to 16 per acre in 
 addition to the advantages before mentioned. In fact, 
 
SUGAR. 225 
 
 farming would be rendered one of the most lucrative 
 employments in the kingdom, and the value of land 
 would rise in proportion. Beet Sugar can be grown 
 over the whole of the kingdom, and the chief obstacle 
 to the introduction of this invaluable crop is the duty 
 on Sugar, on Malt, and on Spirit. It is dear Spirits 
 which cause drunkenness. If every body could get 
 drunk for a farthing or a half- penny, in a few years 
 nobody would get drunk. (See Bates ' Amazon's/ on 
 the use of a kind of Hum in Brazil). 
 
 When the People understand this question, they will 
 no longer submit to any duty on Sugar. A low fixed 
 duty might now deceive them into submission for a 
 short time. But it will be better for them if even this 
 small concession to common sense be withheld a little 
 longer. In a few more years the Sugar Duties will be 
 referred to as a marvellous instance of the ignorance of 
 past Governments. 
 
 It is only a question of time. Nature must prevail 
 over the weak and sinister artifices of narrow-minded 
 men to restrain her marvellous bounty and loving-kind- 
 ness to all mankind. Sugar, now unknown in this 
 country for richness, sweetness, purity, and fine flavour, 
 will then be sold for lets than 2d. per pound, and so 
 abundant will then be the supply that, farmers will fatten 
 their cattle with better sugar than is now sold to the 
 poor at a much higher price, and, moreover, will then 
 manure their land with sugar, nothing inferior to much 
 now brought to the English market for consumption. 
 
 It requires no great foresight to see that, the inex- 
 haustible richness of the earth under a tropical sun was 
 intended to fertilise and sweeten the comparatively 
 sterile and sour soils in less favored climes, and he must 
 have a bold imagination who can believe that, human 
 selfishness and meanness will for ever thwart and coun- 
 teract the bountiful designs of abundant Nature. 
 
 Q 
 
226 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Who supposed twenty years ago that, he would live 
 to see ship-loads of pine-apples sold in the streets of 
 London for 2d. and 3d. apiece ? 
 
 Would it be more wonderful if the purest arid sweetest 
 white sugar were sold in London at or under 2d. per 
 pound ? What is now known as Lump Sugar, would 
 then be unknown or remembered only as a curiosity. 
 The expressed juice of the Cane would then be imported 
 into this country in the natural state, as perfectly pure 
 crystalised white Sugar. To prove that this is the 
 natural state of Sugar all that is required is, to expose 
 the pure juice in shallow pans to the process of evapo- 
 rating the water by the action of the tropical sun. 
 This produces a pure white crystalised Sugar, without 
 any of the filthy artificial processes of the Sugar Re- 
 finers, and all the loss and expense of their processes 
 are unnecessary. Those nasty products, known in the 
 Trade by the names of " Pieces " and " Bastards." now 
 sold in vast quantities as Sugar, chiefly to the poor, but 
 quite unfit for human consumption, would be known 
 and sold only for fattening Cattle or for Manure. 
 These are the remains to the Refiner, after he has made 
 his Lump Sugar, and can be better distinguished by 
 the nose than by the eye, the Pieces being the least 
 and the Bastards the most nasty ; the former having 
 lost their virtue, and the latter having the smallest 
 possible quantity of goodness remaining. 
 
 It appears, from all the evidence given by the Trade 
 that, these corrupt remains are brought up by the 
 present scale of differential duties, and that, if there 
 were no duties, or if there were a fixed very low duty 
 only, there would be no consumers of this offal. 
 
 There could be no bastards if there were no pieces. 
 
 Pieces have, of late years, been made from Raw Sugar, 
 without first extracting Loaf Sugar, and pieces so manu- 
 factured are somewhat less offensive than when made 
 
SUGAR. 227 
 
 from the refiners' refuse; but this is all that can be 
 said in their favor, if this be anything in their favor. 
 
 To the uninitiated in the mysteries of sugar-making 
 and refining, this evidence must seem to be founded on 
 plain common sense. 
 
 The pure raw sugars being prohibited by high duties 
 from entering into our market, the Refiners are com- 
 pelled to use the articles of low and impure quality, 
 which the differential duties alone permit to enter, and 
 they would not manufacture these into Sugar if they 
 could work with better materials. 
 
 But, as before said, if there were no duty there would 
 be no need for any refining ; as the finest pure crystal- 
 ised white sugar would come direct to our market from 
 the first producer, who would also be the manufacturer. 
 
 Can anything exceed the human folly of the artificial 
 system which prevents this simple process of Nature 
 from coming into operation ? 
 
 It is impossible to imagine what can be said for per- 
 sistence in folly such as this ! 
 
 There is the insane folly of ignorance, and there is the 
 wilful folly of wickedness. 
 
 In this case it cannot be of the first, and no one likes 
 to say it is of the last. But, either way, it is inex- 
 cusable. 
 
 This is a subject thoroughly understood in all its 
 bearings by the London wholesale dealers, men of great 
 intelligence as well as great wealth. For many years 
 past, they have spared no pains in bringing before 
 Government by Memorials and Deputations, and before 
 Parliament by Petitions, the whole question of the Sugar 
 Duties, -showing the monstrous evils and the glaring 
 inconsistencies. But still all these continue ! The 
 People, who are the sufferers, do not trouble themselves 
 and, therefore, their Representatives in Parliament do 
 not trouble themselves. Amongst them all, probably, 
 
 Q2 
 
228 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 there are very few who know anything about the Sugar 
 Duties. 
 
 Here, in a comparatively few pages, is a summary of 
 all the numerous Memorials, Petitions and Pamphlets 
 against the Sugar Duties, and the Public for their satis- 
 faction are informed that, the proof sheets of these pages 
 on the subject have been submitted to thoroughly prac- 
 tical people largely concerned in the trade, and that 
 every statement here made on the Sugar duties has been, 
 not only confirmed by them but, strengthened by many 
 forcible additions made by them from their own practi- 
 cal knowledge and experience in the trade. 
 
 The subject, however, is so vast, so involved and so 
 obscure that, few, even of those practically engaged in 
 the Trade, are fully aware of the fearful losses imposed 
 upon them by the Sugar Duties. Many are afraid of 
 quarrelling with the Refiners, who give them credit, and 
 the majority of Traders are too much ingrossed in the 
 affairs of the moment to take a broad view of questions 
 of financial policy, or to collect the statistics and facts 
 necessary for a thorough understanding the Sugar Trade 
 under the intricate complications of these Duties. Many 
 established Traders have also an underlying fear of the 
 Free Trade, which the abolition of the Sugar Duties 
 would bring about, their fear being of increased compe- 
 tition from the abolition of these duties. 
 
 For all these and other reasons doubts and differences 
 of opinion exist among the Traders ; but it is no exagge- 
 ration to say that, throughout the kingdom there is not 
 a wholesale or retail Grocer who does not believe that, 
 there is something very wrong about the Sugar Duties, 
 and who would not be thankful to see them abolished. 
 
 This is a subject of the deepest importance to the 
 welfare of the People, especially of the poorer classes, 
 Sugar being one of the principal necessaries of life, and, 
 as well known to Mothers and Medical men, essential 
 
THE SUGAR DRAWBACK CONVENTION. 229 
 
 for the healthy nurture of children in the early years of 
 infancy. 
 
 The People ought to unite in demanding the abolition 
 of the Sugar Duties, and to withold their confidence 
 from any Government that refuses to comply with this 
 appeal to common sense, common prudence, and com- 
 mon justice. 
 
 If it be asked how the loss to the revenue of these five 
 or six millions is to be made -up, the answer is given in 
 these pages. 
 
 THE SUGAR DRAWBACK CONVENTION. 
 
 One of the most remarkable chapters in the recent 
 history of Customs' Duties is the Sugar Drawback Con- 
 vention, by which our Customs' sought to extend the 
 blessings of its graduated scale to France, Belgium, and 
 Holland : not content with ruling the Home Trade with 
 a rod of iron, the Customs have now international aims, 
 and seek to direct the affairs of the chief mercantile 
 countries of the continent. The false pretext for inter- 
 ference with other nations in this case was that, when 
 the Sugar duties were reduced in 1863, the protection 
 to the British Refiner was then materially diminished. 
 The British Refiner is a great favorite in Thames 
 Street, and it is through his powerful influence that the 
 graduated scale of duties is kept up, at an enormous 
 extra cost of collection, pleasant enough to those who 
 have the handling of more than 100,000 a year thereby, 
 though at an indirect cost which may be said, broadly, 
 to treble the cost of Sugar to the consumer. It suits 
 the Refiner to be protected, and the Customs to protect 
 him, and when he complained of the diminished bonus 
 given to him by the State, the Customs flew to his aid. 
 It is true, the Refiner really suffered, but that was in 
 consequence of his ignorance of his business, which, 
 
230 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 being protected, did not move with the times. But a 
 British Manufacturer never knows when he is beaten, 
 and in this case he invented the idea, in which there 
 was a small grain of truth, that, his defeat was owing to 
 export bounties given by foreign Governments to their 
 Refiners. 
 
 Suppose the Refiners' own account to be correct, what 
 could it amount to but simply this, that, the French, 
 Belgians, and Dutch, chose, at the expence of their own 
 treasuries, to supply us with cheap Loaf Sugar? 
 
 To this the English consumer could have no objection. 
 But our Customs had the greatest possible objection, 
 for, with the fall of the British Refiners, the Sugar 
 Trade would be free, the graduated duties would have 
 no defenders, and the Customs would lose their most 
 powerful preserve for jobbery. The Sugar Assessment 
 Department faced the difficulty boldly, and essayed to 
 establish an uniform system of charging duties and 
 allowing drawbacks on Sugar in England, France, Bel- 
 gium, and Holland. To carry this into effect, the 
 Drawback Convention between the Four Powers was 
 signed at Paris in November, 1864, and since that time 
 there have been negociations, conferences and delibera- 
 tions on the subject, the dismal details of which fill an 
 unusually large Blue Book and cannot, therefore, be 
 repeated in this. 
 
 The supposed principles underlying the Drawback 
 Convention, and our graduated scale of duties, are 
 that, the color of a sample of Raw Sugar shows the 
 quantity of crystalised Loaf Sugar capable of being 
 extracted by the process of refining ; and that, there is 
 an absolute loss of weight, in the re- manufacture of the 
 quantity, which cannot be converted into Loaf Sugar. 
 Both these principles are utterly and entirely erroneous, 
 and are well known to be so by every person of practical 
 experience. 
 
THE SUGAR DRAWBACK CONVENTION. 231 
 
 But, notwithstanding this, France, Belgium, and 
 Holland, were cajoled into accepting our plan, being 
 fascinated by the reputation of Mr. Gladstone on the 
 Continent, for a thorough knowledge of financial ques- 
 tions. 
 
 Eminent Refiners asserted before the Sugar Duties 
 Committee, in 1862, that, the weight of sugar lost in 
 refining was, 4 to 6 Ibs. per cwt. say 5 per cent. 
 
 The Four Governments, disregarding these statements, 
 adopted the following scale, divided by "the Dutch 
 numbers/-' or recognised commercial scales of colors : 
 
 100 Ibs. 4th Class Raw Sugar, yields, on refining, 
 67 Ibs. of Loaf Sugar : 
 
 supposed loss : 33 per cent. 
 3rd Class 80 Ibs. of Loaf Sugar, 
 
 supposed loss : 20 per cent. 
 2nd Class 88 Ibs. of Loaf Sugar, 
 
 supposed loss: 12 per cent. 
 1st Class 94 Ibs. of Loaf Sugar, 
 
 supposed loss : 6 per cent. 
 
 Thus, to compensate the Refiner, or to protect him 
 against his loss, it was agreed that, although the average 
 loss of weight on refining from raw sugar did not exceed 
 5 per cent., he should have a protection of 50 per cent, 
 in the margin between the duty charged on the darkest 
 raw sugar and white refined sugar. It was also agreed 
 that, if the refiner wished to export sugar he should 
 have a drawback based on the same principle. 
 
 Thus, our British Refiners, working from 4th class 
 sugar which pays the 4th duty, receive on export a 
 drawback of 6s. per cwt., or a bounty of 45 per cent, 
 above the duty paid, deducting 5 per cent, for loss of 
 weight in manufacture. 
 
 As it was agreed that, all the other Powers were to 
 give the same bounties, it seemed as if a Refiners' Inter- 
 national Protective League had been established. 
 
232 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 If the Convention had been carried out as its inventors 
 intended it to be, the strange result would have been 
 each country working for the supply of its neighbors 
 consumers ; for, if the bounties on export were as heavy 
 as here shown to be, it would have paid the English 
 Refiners to work for the supply of the French consumers, 
 while the French Refiners were supplying the English 
 consumers; and so on. 
 
 But, one thing was forgotten, and that prevented the 
 happy result. 
 
 It was not sufficient to have duties and drawbacks 
 bearing the same proportions to the duty charged on 
 the lowest sugar, as long as the duties and drawbacks 
 in the four kingdoms, on the lowest sugar, were not 
 identical. No provision was made for this, and the 
 four countries fixed the amount of their duties as they 
 thought fit. 
 
 Thus, the difference between 6s. per cwt. the highest, 
 and 4s. per cwt. the lowest English duty, is 2s. per cwt., 
 or 50 per cent, on the lowest duty. The per centage of 
 difference between the highest and lowest Dutch duty is 
 also 50 per cent. ; but as the Dutch scale ranges from 
 125. per cwt. to 18s. per cwt., the Dutch Refiners get a 
 bounty of 6s. per cwt. from their Government, while 
 English Refiners get only 2s. per cwt. from their Go- 
 vernment. Thus, the Dutch Refiners get a bounty of 
 4s. per cwt. over and above what the British Refiners 
 get, and as the ordinary trade profit is only 6d. per cwt., 
 the British Refiners are beaten off the field, and find 
 their own market inundated with Dutch Loaves. 
 
 The result has been most curious. The price of Loaf 
 Sugar has gradually fallen, while the price of Raw Sugar 
 has risen. The British Refiner, having only 2s. per 
 cwt. margin in the bounty, cannot contend with the 
 Dutchman, who has 6s., and the extraordinary fact is 
 discovered of Raw Sugar becoming nearly as dear as 
 
THL SUGAR DRAWBACK CONVENTION. 233 
 
 Loaf Sugar; the foreign refiner making his profit out 
 of the Government subsidy. 
 
 Our refiners, being handicapped in the race, struggle 
 in vain against their fate. Every detail of the Conven- 
 tion was submitted to them for their approval before it 
 \vas signed ; but the opinion of the Sugar Trade was 
 never asked at all. 
 
 The number of Loaf Sugar Refiners in London, in 
 1863, was 23; the number at the present moment 
 is 7. 
 
 Though seven years have elapsed since the Convention 
 was signed, the treaty has never been carried out by 
 France. 
 
 Our pretended Free Trade Government has been, 
 during the last few months, actively engaged in pressing 
 the French to carry out their engagements. 
 
 The French Government, against the unanimous pro- 
 tests of the French Home (Beet) Sugar maker, and 
 Colonial (Cane) Sugar makers, is at last preparing to 
 carry out the Convention. Owing to the necessities of 
 the French Treasury, the lowest duty is fixed at 20s. 
 per cwt., and the highest, at the agreed difference of 50 
 per cent., is 305. per cwt. The French Refiner will thus 
 enjoy a bounty on export at the rate of 10s. per cwt., 
 while the English Refiner gets only 2s. per cwt., so that 
 the British Loaf Sugar trade must inevitably be ruined. 
 
 Thus, our Free Trade Government has forced France 
 to adopt our intricate protective system, the result of 
 which action on our part must destroy an important 
 British industry at an expense to the French Treasury 
 of about 1,000,000, sterling, per annum 1 
 
 Apart from the strange approach to equalisation 
 between the market price of Raw and Refined Sugar, 
 our Colonies have been seriously injured by the course 
 pursued, which has doubled the Continental Beet Sugar 
 crop, and caused the Colonial production to remain 
 
234 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 almost stationary. It must be sufficient here to state 
 this fact without entering into details. 
 
 The French and other Continental Refiners do not 
 make pieces, and the bounty given on their export by 
 the Convention is thus useless to them. But it is of 
 great use to our Pieces-makers, who are gradually de- 
 veloping a large artificial export trade at the cost of the 
 country. 
 
 In fact, when once trade is interfered with, the con- 
 sequences become almost too numerous to trace, and 
 the present condition of the Sugar market is utterly in- 
 comprehensible to those who have not followed the 
 Sugar Duty question since 1862, when Mr. Gladstone 
 and his Committee so fatally meddled with matters they 
 did not understand, continuing and extending the so- 
 called ad valorem duties, now so universally denounced; 
 for, however well the rates of duty may be accommo- 
 dated to the value of the Sugar, the differences in 
 market price must, of course, be considered. 
 
 It is now known that, the Committee of the French 
 National Assembly has made up its mind to protest 
 against the principle of the Convention and of gra- 
 duated duties, as strongly as the French Raw Sugar 
 Makers have done. 
 
 That protest is too long to be here transcribed, but 
 nothing could be more striking or more true than that 
 declaration of the Central Committee of Sugar Makers, 
 and it is not surprising that, the Committee of the 
 Mutual Assembly should have been convinced by such 
 an irresistible summary of the evil of the present 
 system. 
 
 Here, then, are the French Sugar Makers, the French 
 National Assembly, and the British Refiners, all agree- 
 ing that, the execution of the Convention of France 
 would be most disastrous. Why, then, should an ar- 
 rangement, to which every one concerned is opposed, be 
 
THE SUGAR DRAWBACK CONVENTION. 235 
 
 carried into effect ? It is almost inconceivable that, 
 our own Free Trade Government, and that vehement 
 Free-Trader, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 should be the secret instigators of this false and 
 treacherous policy. He is so- ardent in favor of entire 
 commercial liberty that, he objects in the strongest 
 terms to any treaty of commerce. He is of opinion 
 that, all such arrangements are injurious, as making 
 concessions a matter of bargain, which ought to be 
 made as a matter of principle. He professes to be one 
 of those pure and simple free-traders who would as soon 
 barter away matters of conscience, as barter away com- 
 mercial liberty. 
 
 Yet, wonderful, this same man, in concert with the 
 British Cabinet, has been engaged, since June last, 
 (1871) in forcing upon France the performance of her 
 part in this vicious Convention ! 
 
 But after the constant assurances which have been 
 made by the Prime Minister of the permanence of the 
 duties in their present form, there is now a reasonable 
 ground for hope that, the Sugar Duties will soon be re- 
 moved. The very complications in which he has in- 
 volved this question, and which he and his Cabinet are 
 quite unable to follow, must very soon bring about this 
 happy conclusion to his and their unutterable relief. 
 
 A more curious Comedy of Errors has rarely been 
 seen, than that played out since 1864 by our Customs, 
 in the desire to become International, and to form a 
 Sugar Zollverein. 
 
 These facts shuw that, the differential Sugar duties 
 are contrary to the principle of Free Trade ; that they 
 form a protection to old-established interests by holding 
 out a bonus to inferior products in the British market, 
 to the great hindrance of progress and serious injury to 
 trade. 
 
 It is impossible to suppose, if these facts and con- 
 
236 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 sequences were more generally known and understood, 
 that a British Government would be permitted to con- 
 tinue this system so fraudulent and so injurious in its 
 operation. 
 
 In an admirable pamphlet, of a very few pages, 
 " On the Influence of the Differential Duties upon the 
 progress of Modern Improvements in Sugar Manu- 
 facture/ 5 by Mr. Ferdinand Kohn, the exasperating 
 absurdity of this system is summed up in a few words, 
 which it is impossible to read without the strongest 
 feeling of indignation against the Government : " For 
 passing the Custom-Houses of the United -Kingdom 
 with the greatest commercial advantage, the natural 
 clean crystal of Cane Sugar must be altered artificially 
 by a process of contamination, which may be applied to 
 it either before or after crystalisation in any one of the 
 different stages of the process of Sugar extraction. If 
 the spoiling process take place before crystalisation, it 
 is done by the destruction of a relatively very large 
 proportion of the Sugar originally extracted from the 
 cane, and it is considered " honest " by the Custom 
 House. If, on the other hand, the process of artificial 
 colouring be effected after crystalising the white Raw 
 Sugar, the effect can be produced at a very trifling ex- 
 pense, and with a comparatively small waste of Sugar, 
 and this method of producing brown raw Sugar would, 
 undoubtedly, be termed " dishonest " by the authorities 
 of the British Custom-House." (Page 5.) 
 
 " It will be clear that, dark brown Sugars are pro- 
 duced tf honestly " on the condition only that, their equal 
 weight of Cane Sugar has been turned into molasses in 
 the process of manufacture. The bonus is then used 
 for compensating for actual waste : it benefits nobody, 
 and its value is completely destroyed in the course of 
 this transaction." (Page 9.) 
 
 11 It can hardly be taken as an indication of a healthy 
 
THE SUGAR DRAWBACK CONVENTION. 237 
 
 and natural state of an industry when manufacturers 
 avoid the production of higher qualities, and purposely 
 spoil the quality of their products for the purpose of 
 competing in the British Market ; and the question 
 whether the principles of Free Trade have been and 
 are violated by the differential duties on Sugar requires 
 no other answer, beyond a description of the precise 
 condition of, and of the present practice existing in, 
 the different Sugar producing localities, which supply 
 the British Market with raw Sugar. The general 
 symptoms which, in the long run, characterise every 
 protected industry, are not missing anywhere. 
 
 " West Indian Sugar cultivation has been steadily de- 
 clining, and has actually become a losing trade within 
 the last few years. India has been reduced to a Sugar 
 importing country, while the imports of raw and refined 
 beet-root Sugar into the United Kingdom are increasing 
 at a marvellously rapid rate, and the exports of British 
 refined Sugar, are far smaller than formerly in propor- 
 tion to the general increase in the consumption of 
 Sugar." (Page 11.) 
 
 " Under this system a vast artificial manufacturing 
 interest has been created in this country, in violation of 
 the principles of Free Trade, and contrary to the laws 
 of nature. The pieces-makers' monopoly is always 
 defended on the ground that, there is an actual loss of 
 weight in re-manufacture on which the refiners ought 
 not to pay duty. It has been before shown that, there is 
 no necessity for this re-manufacture, and for the con- 
 sequent waste, if any. What the maker does, is to 
 separate Sugar into its component parts without alter- 
 ing them ; and his protection consists in the fact that, 
 Raw Sugar of similar quality to his pieces has to pay 
 a higher duty by 40 per cent., than he has paid on a 
 virtually equal quantity of saccharine matter in the 
 Raw Sugar from which he works. 
 
238 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 "The higher rate of duty charged on Refined Sugar is 
 defended on the ground that, our legislation recognises 
 a difference between the raw and the manufactured 
 article, charging the higher duty on the latter if there 
 be a legitimate waste in its preparation. 
 
 " This principle might be applied to Sugar if the 
 raw plants were introduced ; but as pure white crystals 
 equal to refines are made direct from the cane and 
 beet juice, the intrinsic difference disappears, and it is 
 impossible to make any just fiscal distinction between 
 Raw and Refined Sugar." (Page 13.) 
 
 " It will be seen that, the present system, by render- 
 ing it desirable to produce bad sugar instead of good, 
 makes all progress in the Colonies extremely difficult. 
 The scale of duties is the chief difficulty in the way 
 of those who desire to introduce modern improve- 
 ments into the Cane Sugar manufacture of the British 
 Colonies. It forms a stumbling-block at every step, as 
 the chief aim of the Sugar planters is to get their 
 produce in, at as low a rate as possible, and it is thus 
 difficult to persuade them of the desirability of progress. 
 The result of such a wilful neglect of modern science 
 may be seen in the condition of the British Colonies as 
 contrasted with that of the Beet-root Sugar districts of 
 the Continent, of which the yield has trebled during the 
 last ten years. It is fast becoming a question whether 
 it will be possible to continue an unequal strife in which 
 one side eagerly accepts every scientific improvement, 
 while the other stolidly rejects every suggestion of 
 change, encouraged by the protection given by this 
 country to the manufacture of bad Sugar." (Page 14.) 
 
 These large extracts from Mr. Kohn's few pages are 
 the best acknowledgment of his valuable service to the 
 country. 
 
 Whilst these sheets were passing through the Press, 
 the Author was favoured with a pamphlet by Mr. John 
 
THE SUGAR DRAWBACK CONVENTION. 239 
 
 Benjamin Smith, M.P. for Stockport, dedicated to the 
 Cobden Club and entitled " Free Trade in Sugar/' 
 The title is a misnomer, as Mr. Smith does not here 
 advocate free trade in sugar, but the substitution of one 
 uniform rate of duty for the present classifications of 
 duty. The pamphlet, however, in other respects, is so 
 confirmatory of the view here taken that a few extracts 
 from it will be here added. 
 
 Mr. Smith commences by remarking that, "pre- 
 viously to 1845, there was only one rate of duty on 
 Sugar. In that year Sir Robert Peel brought in a Bill 
 to abolish the uniform rate, and to substitute classified 
 rates of duty on different qualities. . . . The object of 
 that measure was to protect the West India Planters;" 
 and Mr. Smith shows how that measure has worked 
 their ruin : how India, the great and natural source of 
 supply, has been reduced to a Sugar importing country. 
 
 Mr. Smith confirms the opinion, hereinbefore ex- 
 pressed, as some apology for our Finance Ministers 
 that, " having themselves no practical knowledge of 
 the working of the classified Sugar duties, they have 
 relied too much upon the intelligence and practical 
 experience of the appointed guardians of the Customs' 
 Revenue, and depending solely upon the opinions and 
 statements of the Board of Customs, as exhibited in 
 their Annual Reports, they have been misled." . . . 
 
 The Reports of the Board of Customs on the working 
 of the Classified Sugar duties from time to time have 
 been uniformly favourable, and their 13th Report, 
 published in 1869, " On the subject of the Classified 
 Sugar Duties, and the Arrangements entered into at 
 the Conferences with Holland and Belgium," represents 
 them as " eminently satisfactory," while it appears 
 from their own Returns, moved for by Mr. Smith, 
 28th March, 1871, that they have allowed the Revenue 
 to be defrauded of millions of the public money, by the 
 
240 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 system of classified Sugar duties, of the operation of 
 which they appear, from their own Reports,, to have 
 been wholly unconscious. 
 
 " These Returns show that, the loss to the Revenue, 
 by levying classified rates of Sugar duties, instead of an 
 uniform rate of duty, in the years 1868 and 1869, on 
 the supposition that, the present duties had then pre- 
 vailed, is stated at 77,30.2 for 1868, and 145,885 for 
 1869. As, however, the rates of duty during those 
 years were double what they are now, the real loss was, 
 therefore, double, being for 1868 154,604, arid for 
 1869, 291,770; total 446,374. So that, the pieces- 
 makers were allowed, by the bounty granted to them by 
 classified duties, to rob the Exchequer in those two 
 years of the enormous sum of 446,374, in addition to 
 the costly expenditure of collecting the duties by this 
 system ; the Board of Customs all the while reporting 
 to the Treasury that, the classified duties were eminently 
 satisfactory ! " 
 
 " One is struck with astonishment that, it has been 
 possible for a small body (numbering only about 100), 
 calling themselves Sugar Refiners, but more properly 
 Sugar Spoilers, who are the creatures of a classified 
 scale of duties, to have been permitted for so many 
 years, for their own sole benefit, to deprive the People 
 of this country of wholesome sugar, and to force, by 
 prohibitive duties on good sugar and a bounty on their 
 own re-made sugar, the almost exclusive use of sugar 
 deprived by their process of its natural sweetness. 
 Such rubbish do the pieces- makers turn out that, in 
 some cases, it has to be scented and flavoured with 
 vanilla, lemon-oil, and other substances before it can 
 pass into consumption. At the best, pieces are simply 
 decolourised brown sugar, more or less injured by 
 the process to which it is subjected to effect the 
 change." 
 
THE SUGAR DRAWBACK CONVENTION. 241 
 
 " It is clear that, classified Sugar duties have failed 
 to accomplish one single object for which they were im* 
 posed, from first to last. The West India Planters, 
 with the exception of such as have applied capital and 
 science to the manufacture of sugar, are in a hopeless 
 state of ruin. The sugar-refiners proper, the loaf-sugar 
 makers, numbers of whom have been ruined notwith- 
 standing the advantages they have enjoyed, are unable 
 to compete with foreign rivals in foreign markets, and 
 bid fair, if they continue to slumber on the protection 
 of ' Drawback Conventions ' instead of keeping pace 
 with scientific improvements, to be driven out of the 
 home market also, the Customs' Returns showing that, 
 while in 1870 there were only 28,271 tons of British 
 Refined Sugar exported, 81, 708 tons of Foreign Refined 
 Sugar were imported into Great Britain and delivered 
 for home consumption." 
 
 "The results of the ' Drawback Convention' are 
 not less striking, as falsifying the expectations of its 
 English promoters. The imports of Refined Sugar 
 from the Continent to Great Britain, in the seven years 
 previous to the Convention, viz. from 1857 to 1863, 
 were 99,633 tons, while the imports in the seven years 
 after the Convention, viz. from 1864 to 1870, are 
 327,513 tons." 
 
 Mr. Ferdinand Kohn well observes : 
 
 " It can hardly be taken as an indication of a healthy 
 and natural state of an industry, when manufacturers 
 avoid the production of higher qualities and purposely 
 spoil the quality of their products (as Sugar Planters do 
 by purposely colouring their sugar to avoid the high 
 rate of duty on white sugar), for the purpose of com- 
 peting in the British market; and the question whether 
 the principles of Free Trade have been and are violated 
 by the differential duties upon sugar requires no other 
 answer, beyond a description of the precise condition of, 
 
 R 
 
242 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 and of the present practice existing in. the sugar-pro- 
 ducing localities which supply the British market with 
 raw sugar. The general symptoms which, in the long 
 run, characterise every protected industry are not miss- 
 ing anywhere. West Indian Sugar cultivation has 
 been steadily declining, and has actually become a 
 losing trade within the last few years. India has been 
 reduced to a sugar-importing country, while the imports 
 of raw and refined beet-root sugar into the United 
 Kingdom are increasing at a marvellously rapid rate, 
 and the exports of British Refined Sugar are far smaller 
 than formerly, in proportion to the general increase in 
 the consumption of sugar." 
 
 "The reduction of the Sugar duties by one-half in 
 1870 struck a blow at the pieces- makers' monopoly, on 
 the one hand by reducing the penalty imposed on the 
 production of fine plantation Sugar, and on the other 
 hand by diminishing the bounty given to the pieces- 
 makers. Already the public are beginning to expe- 
 rience the benefits of the reduced duties, in the increase 
 of the imports and consumption of natural sugar. It is 
 almost incredible that, no sooner is white clayed sugar, 
 which has been banished from consumption for 25 
 years, admitted at a duty of Is. Sd. per cwt. above the 
 lowest quality of brown sugar, than the consumption 
 increased upwards of fourfold, namely, from 5,322 tons 
 in 1869, to 22,000 tons in 1871." 
 
 " Of all ' entangling alliances/ none exhibit more 
 folly than the attempt to administer and regulate by 
 treaties between different nations classified rates of 
 duties on commodities. We have seen, as regards the 
 Sugar Duties, the difficulty of guarding against frauds 
 even in our own country ; how then can we control 
 frauds on the part of foreign contracting parties ?" 
 
 " The Drawback Treaty, like some other treaties, 
 being opposed to the interests of some of the contract- 
 
THE SUGAR DRAWBACK CONVENTION. 243 
 
 ing parties, has never been carried oat. Although not 
 a year passes without lengthy and expensive negotia- 
 tions, France has for seven years (the treaty expires in 
 three years more) ignored the treaty compelling her to 
 adopt classified duties on imports of Sugar, to the great 
 advantage of her Sugar Refiners, and to the great loss 
 of the other contracting powers who have been faithful 
 to their engagements. Happily there remains no just 
 or reasonable pretence for continuing a treaty, which 
 ought never to have been made, but from which all parties 
 are now absolved by its violation on the part of France." 
 
 "No excuse, therefore, now remaining for the reten- 
 tion of classified Sugar duties, the question arises ; 
 What course ought to be pursued ? 
 
 First; then, the " Drawback Convention " being void, 
 no more foreign treaties for the regulation of duties on 
 Sugar, or any other commodities, ought to be entered 
 into. Second : Abolish the classified duties on sugar, 
 and in their place simply admit all sugars and molasses 
 at one uniform duty of 4s. Sd. per cwt., and allow a 
 drawback of 4s. %d. per cwt. on the export of all sugars 
 and molasses which have paid duty." 
 
 Here Mr. Smith advocates one uniform duty, and 
 here we part company, but in the following concluding 
 remarks we entirely agree with him. 
 
 "The abandonment of classified duties, and the esta- 
 blishment of the same Free Trade in Sugar that exists 
 in everything else, would give a new impetus to the 
 best qualities of natural sugar by improved scientific 
 processes, while this wholesome competition would en- 
 able consumers to obtain the best article at the cheapest 
 rate it can be afforded, and would be the means of enor- 
 mously increasing the consumption of a luxury, which 
 has now become a necessity in every household from 
 the highest to the lowest." 
 
 Mr, Smith, in conclusion, adds: "it is rumoured 
 
 R 2 
 
244 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 that, the English Government is about to condone the 
 breach of faith on the part of France, and to renew the 
 Treaty !" 
 
 It is to be hoped that, if such an attempt be made, 
 the British Nation will know how to meet such a wrong 
 and insult to common sense. 
 
 The country is much indebted to Mr. Smith for his 
 very able pamphlet, and no one can read these extracts 
 from it without feeling sure that, he would much prefer 
 no duty to one uniform duty, and that, he was scared from 
 the proposal of no duty by the demon of the Exchequer. 
 
 So much for the Sugar Duties. 
 
 Now for Tea, Coffee, Chicory, and Cocoa, to com- 
 plete the " Free Breakfast Table." 
 
 TEA, COFFEE, CHICORY, AND COCOA. 
 
 The total Gross Sums produced by the taxes on these 
 Articles in the year ending 31st March, 1870, were as 
 follows : 
 
 4. 
 
 Tea, at (yd. per Ib 2,645,052 
 
 Coffee : 
 
 Raw 3d. 351,665 
 
 Kiln-dried, roasted, or 
 
 ground ,, &d. ,, 56 
 
 Chicory: . s. d. 
 
 Raw or kiln-dried ,,16 6 per cwt ... 98,949 
 
 Ditto, \ 
 
 Produce of the Chan- L ,,1 4 3 1,263 
 
 nel Islands j 
 
 Roasted or ground ... 4d. per Ib. ... 75 
 
 Cocoa Id. perlb. ... 27,416 
 
 - Husks and Shells ... "2s. per cwt 1,088 
 
 Paste or Chocolate... 2d. per Ib 2,140 
 
 ^3,127,704 
 
 By the surrender of these duties, amounting to 
 J3,l 27,704 a year, we might all have a "Free Break- 
 fast Table/' without Sugar. 
 
TEA. 245 
 
 The following is the remark of Mr. Porter, in his 
 work on " Public Ptevenue and Expenditure," page 476: 
 " It has always excited dissatisfaction on the part of 
 the Public, to be called on for the payment of any Tax 
 from which they have not the power to protect them- 
 selves, by abstaining from the use of the taxed commo- 
 dity. It is this consideration which has always made 
 our Finance Ministers prefer indirect to direct taxation, 
 and which led, during the progress of a long and expen- 
 sive war, to the imposition of duties that weighed with 
 destructive force upon the springs of industry." 
 
 To make this text complete, the following should be 
 added : ' All articles which constitute a large and neces- 
 sary portion of the food of the community, or minister 
 to the profitable employment of the People, are unfit 
 objects of taxation in any way or degree/ 
 
 TEA. 
 
 Without any minute inquiry into the question, what 
 is, or what is not, a necessary of life, it is sufficient to 
 say that, the article Tea, is now become one of the 
 necessaries of life to a very large majority of the work- 
 ing population in this country, and that, the population 
 of this country is increasing at the rate of about a 
 thousand a day. 
 
 This tax was raised in 1811 to 96 per cent, as a War 
 Tax, and now, owing to the great decrease in the price 
 of bonded Tea, notwithstanding the reduction of the 
 duty to 6d. a lb., this tax averages 40 per cent., after 
 upwards of fifty years of peace. 
 
 The average cost of tea in bond may be stated to be, 
 at present, about Is. 3^. per pound. 
 
 The lowest price of the lowest tea now in the market 
 is from 8d. to IQd. per pound, in bond. Of this kind 
 but little goes into consumption by itself, and, when it 
 does, it is sold at a low price, as a " leading article" 
 
246 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 that is, to attract custom for other more remunerative 
 goods. As such, this tea is now selling retail at Is. 6d. 
 to 2s. per pound, and this is sold without much profit to 
 the retailer, as the duty on the worst and the best tea 
 is the same. But very large profit is made by those 
 retailers who buy the bad to mix with the better arid 
 sell as the best. 
 
 The price paid for tea in bond, say, for the 3s. 8rf. or 
 3s. 6d., varies according to the amount of profit which 
 the retailer may decide upon securing to himself. This 
 is, to some extent, effected by mixing together teas of 
 various prices and qualities, the duties being the same on 
 all, and no allowance being made on damaged Tea. 
 
 The following statement of costs and charges would 
 apply, with as much accuracy as can be obtained, to 
 first-class retailers, of whom there are a great number in 
 London and in the large provincial towns, viz. : 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Cost of mixed Teas per pound, in Bond 2 
 
 Wholesale Dealers' Charges to cover bad Debts, Interest 
 
 or advance of Duty, and Profits 2 
 
 Duty 6 
 
 Retailers' Profit, and to cover bad Debts 1 
 
 Selling Price, per Pound 3 8 
 
 The smaller retailers, by whom, nevertheless, the 
 greater portion of duty-paid tea is sold, obtain a larger 
 profit to cover their risk of bad debts, but do not, in 
 general, buy on such advantageous terms. 
 
 The wholesale dealers' profits of 2d. per pound are 
 calculated to cover all his expenses, the risk of bad 
 debts, and interest of money for his advance of the duty, 
 and thus the duty, to the large wholesale dealers who 
 can afford to advance it, becomes a profit. This fact, 
 however, appears not to be generally admitted in the 
 trade, but it is evident that the profits are calculated to 
 cover this advance, whether admitted or not. 
 
TEA. 
 
 A Wholesale Dealer in the City of London, to whom 
 this statement was sent, returned it with the following 
 answer : " It is not exactly a profit but a source of 
 expense which prevents the Wholesale Dealer from 
 selling as cheaply as he otherwise would. I have 
 calculated that the duties cost us 2000 a year (what a 
 Millionaire pays in Inctune Tax on 80,000 a year) . If 
 there were no duties, we should be relieved of this 
 source of expense ; but competition would not allow us 
 to retain an extra profit of 2,000. The duties force 
 us to obtain an extra profit on the articles we sell in 
 order to pay the expense of the collection of the duties 
 &c. Although this adds to the price of what we sell, it 
 is not a profit to us, but simply recoups us for our ex- 
 penditure/' 
 
 It is difficult, or impossible, to name a per-centage 
 rate of profit for the wholesale dealer, under different 
 heads, to which the trade will agree. The wholesale 
 dealer himself cannot state these precisely. But he 
 must have so much to cover expenses, so much for 
 interest of monies, and for profits, and so much for the 
 advance of the duty. He lumps all these together, and 
 gets what he can ; and this depends entirely on the 
 nature of his business. Some, who turn their capital 
 very quickly round and give very short credit, are 
 content with much smaller per-centage than others who 
 give longer credit. Different parts of the country differ 
 in practice ; moreover, a large portion of the tea sold, 
 is sold in bond : and though the wholesale dealer takes 
 the trouble of clearing the goods, most of the large 
 retailers remit the cash to the wholesale dealer for 
 this purpose, taking credit only on the short price. 
 Practically, the retail grocer takes 14 days' credit on his 
 duties. 
 
 The course of the retail trade may be stated as 
 follows : On a 3s. 6d. or 3s. #d. tea the retail dealer 
 
248 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 gets Is. per pound profit. On lower price teas he gets 
 less. Of this cost 60?. is for duty advanced to Govern- 
 ment by tke dealer, at a great ccst and risk. If there 
 were no duty, this tea, instead of costing the retail 
 dealer 2s. 8d. would cost him only 2s. 2d. And then, if 
 the dealer charged a profit of Qd. per Ib. instead of Is., 
 he would do almost as well for himself as he does now, 
 considering the saving in the advance of the duty and 
 the risk. Thus, the reduction of 6d. duty would make 
 a deduction of Is. to the consumer, who would thus pay 
 2s. Sd. for what he now pays 3s. 8J. 
 
 Taking the quantity of Tea (paying Import Duty in 
 1870) Retained for Home Consumption in the United 
 Kingdom, at 117,622,575 Ibs., this would save the 
 country the use of 5,881,128 : 15 : yearly. 
 
 These may be taken, as they are admitted by the 
 Trade to be, in effect, fair statements of the course of 
 the Tea Trade, and of the legitimate profits of the re- 
 spectable wholesale and retail dealers. 
 
 The practice of mixing teas of inferior quality and 
 lower price, with better qualities and higher price, 
 appears to be universal in the trade, and is represented 
 to be for the benefit of the public, by the improvement 
 of the quality of the tea for the price paid. But, under 
 any circumstances, selling tea of a lower quality at the 
 price of a higher quality, is fraudulent, and this is one 
 of the consequences of the duty. 
 
 To this imputation the answer of the honorable and 
 intelligent wholesale dealer in the City of London, 
 before referred to, ought to be generally known, and is 
 given in his own words, as follows : " The true defence 
 of this undesirable practice is that, the Public abso- 
 lutely refuses to buy Tea with any distinctive flavor. 
 The grocer, besides, cannot keep up one quality of 
 unmixed Tea, as an insufficient quantity of any one 
 description reaches England. He cannot change one 
 
TEA. 249 
 
 flavor for another, as the public grumbles whenever he 
 attempts to do so. He is, therefore, forced to maintain 
 absolute neutrality in flavor. The public demands its 
 Port, its Sherry, and its Champagne separate : but it 
 refuses its Kaisow, its Honing, its Oolong, and its 
 Assam, unless the distinctive character of each is 
 destroyed. A Tea connoiseur, like a Wine connoiseur, 
 delights in changing his Tea, in which the differences 
 are quite as great as between Port and Champagne. 
 But the Public will not let the grocer change the flavor 
 of his Tea, as he would like to do, if he could. The 
 grocer has thus to get pungency and strength from 
 Indian Tea, body from a mixture of two kinds of 
 Congou, and flavor from Oolong, or from scented Tea. 
 You cannot call such a practice fraudulent. It is 
 simply, compliance with a vitiated taste." 
 
 This seems to be a fair answer ; at least, it is the 
 answer of a most honorable and intelligent Man, of 
 great experience, and practically conversant with the 
 Tea Trade. 
 
 With respect to the question, how much the duty 
 enhances the price to the consumer, he writes : " My 
 idea is that, the duty of 6d. per Ib. enhances the price 
 to the public 9d. per Ib. or 50 per cent, over the duty 
 paid : and that, the =40,000,000 of Customs and Excise 
 cost the public .60,000,000." 
 
 Of the dishonest dealer, who cheats his customers 
 with a damaged, adulterated, or spurious article, it is 
 unnecessary to say anything. 
 
 It is admitted by the trade that, the working classes 
 and the poor are by far the best customers of the tea- 
 dealer, and that their purchases are, generally, of the 
 higher price tea. Thus, every poor laboring man, or 
 washerwoman, or " distressed needlewoman" who spends 
 3d. in tea, pays about one-third in the shape of tax and 
 its attendant consequences. 
 
250 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 It is difficult to estimate very accurately those con- 
 sequences, for no one can say exactly how much the 
 duty enhances the price to the consumer, beyond the 
 amount actually paid for duty. There is no concurrence 
 of opinion in the trade on this question. But it may be 
 safely assumed that, the repeal of the duty would have 
 the effect of very greatly lowering the import price. 
 
 It cannot be stated positively as a fact known, but it 
 is believed that, teas of the best qualities are brought 
 down from the tea-growing districts in China, to Canton 
 and other ports, and there sold for, from }d. to 2d. per 
 pound, at a good profit, even in the present barbarous 
 manner of transporting it many hundreds of miles from 
 the interior on men's backs, and that the supply, so 
 brought down, would be sufficient to supply the markets 
 of the world. 
 
 This is the cost of the raw leaves in the fields. Indian 
 Tea, with the transit to Calcutta, costs Is. 5d. per Ib. 
 Good China Tea (without profits to a swarm of Middle- 
 men caused by the folly of our Merchants in not learn- 
 ing the Chinese language and buying the raw leaves 
 direct from the farmers), probably costs Id. to 8c?. 
 per Ib. including the export duty. The freight and 
 charges are about 2d. per Ib. 
 
 This is the information carefully collected from the 
 most experienced in the Trade, and is a flat contra- 
 diction of the former statement. It is, certainly, more 
 correct to say that, the price would be 7d. to 8d. per Ib. 
 at Hongkong &c. 
 
 The export duty on Tea in China is understood to be 
 about \^d. per pound. 
 
 What the Tea Trade will be when the import duty is 
 removed, and the Tea is brought down by railway from 
 the tea-growing districts to the shipping ports in China, 
 who can say? All that can be said is that, it will 
 be so. 
 
TEA. 251 
 
 It is only a question of time, and the time will be 
 short, when the people of this country are determined 
 that, it shall be so. 
 
 It seems as if Providence had mercifully pointed out 
 the way by trade for Christianising, enlightening, and 
 ameliorating the condition of mankind. We may, 
 therefore, hope and believe that, those who work law- 
 fully for this object, work with the Almighty will. 
 
 But, at present, we have to do with things as they are, 
 and bad as they are, by excluding from suffering multi- 
 tudes of human beings one of the precious gifts of 
 Providence, evidently intended for the comfort of all, as 
 shown by the inexhaustible abundance of the gift, all is 
 not yet told. There is to be added to this tax, the cost 
 of collecting it. 
 
 This, as already shown, is an impossible calculation, 
 for to the cost of collection are to be added many other 
 costs and losses, direct and indirect, some incalculable, 
 but all falling upon the people, and most heavily upon 
 those suffering under the complicated and oppressive 
 system of Customs and Excise duties, with no other 
 means of subsistence than their hard-earned wages of 
 labor. 
 
 The rate of duty which, for many years prior to 1853, 
 was 2s. 2^d. per pound, was reduced from 1st June, 
 1853, to Is. IQd. per pound; and from 5th April, 1854, 
 to Is. 6d. per pound; and from 21st April, 1855, to 
 Is. 9d. per pound; and from 5th April, 1857, to Is. 5d. 
 per pound; and in 1863 to Is. l T ^d. per pound ; in 1864 
 to Is. per pound; in 1865 to 7\d. per pound; in 1866 
 to 6d. per pound, the present rate. 
 
 According to the Custom House Return, the quantity 
 of Tea imported into the United Kingdom, in the year 
 1869-70, was, 141,020,767 Ibs., of which we retained 
 for Home consumption, 117,622,575 Ibs., and exported 
 to Europe and elsewhere 23,398,192 Ibs. The quantity 
 
252 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 retained for Home consumption allows 3 Ibs. per head 
 on the entire population of the United Kingdom. In 
 some of our Colonies the consumption reaches to 15 Ibs. 
 per head, and in Australia to 20 Ibs. per head per 
 annum. 
 
 It is well known that, our trade with China is less 
 beneficial to this country, in proportion to the value of 
 our imports, than the trade carried on with many other 
 countries, and that this arises from the inability of our 
 merchants to find a corresponding market in China for 
 our manufactured goods. 
 
 If our merchants were able to make their payments 
 for Tea with manufactured goods, back freights would be 
 lower, and the profits realised by the out-cargo would 
 enable the merchant to part with his home- cargo, tea, 
 at lower rates. 
 
 Previously to the rebellion in China, and to the late 
 failure of the silk crops, the Chinese were receiving our 
 manufactured goods in full payment for their products. 
 But, from the official returns of exports and imports, 
 this does not appear to be the case at present. For a 
 considerable portion of their staple commodities, tea and 
 silk, they now receive payment in silver. The reason of 
 this change in the course of our trade with China can 
 be found only in the great desire evinced by the Chinese, 
 since their civil war, to get hold of bullion, combined 
 with greater competition among our merchants to get 
 hold of their silks, and this induces our merchants to 
 accede more readily to the demands of the Chinese for 
 silver. But these are, probably, only temporary causes, 
 and when these are removed, there is every reason to 
 expect that, our trade with China will again be carried 
 on as formerly, by barter, or exchange of goods; the 
 Chinese, for reasons best known to themselves, object- 
 ing to part with their precious metals; and that they 
 will again be ready to barter, to any extent, their 
 
TEA. 253 
 
 staple commodities in exchange for our manufactured 
 goods. 
 
 If, therefore, our consumption of Tea were raised only 
 to 10 Ibs. or 12 Ibs. per head per annum, there would 
 be every reason to expect that, our trade with China 
 would then be increased four or five fold ; and while our 
 Manchester manufacturers were deriving the benefit of 
 this improved market for their goods and giving profit- 
 able employment to many thousands of now unemployed 
 hands, every poor laboring man and washerwoman and 
 needlewoman in the kingdom might have a quarter 
 of a pound of tea for what they are now paying for an 
 ounce. 
 
 It is impossible to say, beforehand, what would be the 
 effect of such a change on the Poor-Rates throughout 
 the kingdom ; but it is easy to see and quite safe to say 
 that, a very material diminution of Poor-Rates must be 
 the consequence of such a change, and that, the welfare 
 of the people and the wealth of the nation must be 
 thereby very greatly increased. 
 
 In short, it is quite evident that, our present trade 
 with China furnishes no criterion for the trade as it 
 would be under such a change, and that, the trade, so 
 conducted, would open an inexhaustible market to 
 British manufacturers. 
 
 All these statistical facts, relative to Tea, are taken 
 from the Reports of the Commissioners of Customs, the 
 Government Finance Accounts and other Official docu- 
 ments, and must, therefore, be received as substantially 
 correct. Assuming these facts, it must be evident that, 
 the indirect loss to the Country from the Sixpenny tax 
 on Tea, through our trade with China alone, must be 
 some millions of pounds sterling more every year than 
 the whole amount of the revenue raised by this tax, and 
 that this loss is in addition to the cruel deprivation to 
 the People, by enhancing the price of Tea, and prohibit- 
 
254 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 ing its use by a very large class of the working people, 
 thereby driving them into the Gin shops and making 
 them habitual drunkards, to raise the revenue by the tax 
 on Spirits. 
 
 For this political crime the Government is answerable, 
 and for the consequences the Government will some day 
 be held accountable. 
 
 Some years ago, the writer was assured by the very in- 
 telligent head of the oldest and largest Wholesale House in 
 the City of London, that, if the Custom House and all its 
 duties were abolished, he was confident that, he could 
 sell 4s. tea for Is. and get a better profit out of it than 
 he now gets ; and that, if the Sugar Duties were abo- 
 lished, he could sell the finest and purest crystalised 
 Sugar, such as now rarely comes into the market, for 
 three-half-pence per pound. 
 
 There may be danger in telling these facts to the 
 People ; but there is more danger now in keeping them 
 in ignorance. 
 
 This is the fourth time, in the last fourteen years, that 
 these facts have been brought before the Government 
 and the Public in the several editions of the " People's 
 Blue Book." 
 
 If these be not facts, why are they not contradicted ? 
 If facts, what a disgrace to the Government ! 
 
 COFFEE. 
 
 This tax was formerly Qd. per Ib. on foreign Coffee, 
 and 4d. per Ib. on Colonial, but, by the alteration of 
 duties in 1851, was reduced to 3d. per Ib. on all Coffee; 
 no abatement of duty to be made on account of damage. 
 
 Coffee, being an important article of food, affording a 
 cheap, wholesome, and agreeable beverage for all classes, 
 especially for the poor, ought not to be taxed. Most of 
 the objections to the tax on Tea apply to the tax on 
 
COFFEE. 255 
 
 Coffee,, and the great facilities for evading or reducing 
 the duty by adulteration is another strong objection to 
 it. The extensive robberies of Coffee, which are con- 
 tinually being committed in the bonded warehouses, is 
 another objection. But the strongest of all is to be 
 found in the civilising agency of Coffee in the competi- 
 tion against intoxicating liquors. How much more 
 powerful would be the civilising agency if tea, coffee, and 
 sugar were consumable at their natural prices, the 
 prices of free trade ! The domestic comforts of the poor 
 man's house, how they would be multiplied, but for that 
 evil spirit, the demon of the Exchequer ! 
 
 The quantities of Coffee imported, according to the 
 Customs' returns, in 1869, were 173,416,332 Ibs.; in 
 1870, 179,841,747 Ibs., showing an increase of 6,425,415 
 3'7 per cent., and the quantities taxed for Home con- 
 sumption in 1870, were 28,137,301 Ibs. 
 
 From this it appears that, of the whole quantity im- 
 ported only one sixth and a quarter was retained for 
 Home Consumption, which allows about 1J Ib. per head 
 per annum on the population of the United Kingdom. 
 
 When George the Third ascended the throne, the 
 Coffee consumed in the United Kingdom did not amount 
 to an ounce per head per annum on the whole popu- 
 lation. 
 
 About ten years ago, the annual consumption of 
 Coffee per head in other countries was estimated as 
 follows : 
 
 Prussia 3 Ib.s. 
 
 Zolvereiu. 3 
 
 Denmark 5^ 
 
 Belgium 9 
 
 America 8 ,, 
 
 The consumption of Coffee in the United States in 1870 
 was no less than 280,911,672 Ibs. or, taking the popu- 
 lation at 35,000,000 about 8 Ibs. per head. As the 
 
256 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 domestic tastes of the American people are almost iden- 
 tical with our own, and as they take hot beverages just 
 as we do, it is evident that there must be some extra- 
 neous cause to make our home Coffee trade so small. 
 Is not this cause to be sought for in our fiscal arrange- 
 ments? 
 
 CHICORY. 
 
 The origin of the duty on this article, manufactured 
 from Taraxacum, or Dandelion Root, or any other 
 vegetable applicable to the uses of Chicory, or Coffee, 
 was to prevent the use of it for the adulteration of 
 Coffee, prohibiting the mixture being found to be useless. 
 
 It is now raised to the dignity of a place in the Cus- 
 tom House Books and in the Government Financial 
 Account, next to Coffee, which is improved by the 
 mixture in a very small quantity, and produces to the 
 revenue something under 100,000 a year. 
 
 Here is another, but more innocent, absurdity, and 
 this is all that need be said about it. 
 
 COCOA AND CHOCOLATE. 
 
 These wholesome and nutritious articles, peculiarly 
 suited to the poor and working classes, are amongst the 
 last that should be taxed for the purpose of revenue. 
 
 But for the tax of Id. per pound, these might be 
 supplied, to any required amount, at a price little more 
 than the amount of the tax. 
 
 The quantity retained for Home Consumption, in 
 1868, was 5,115,766 Ibs. ; in 1869, 5,701,880 Ibs.; in 
 1870,6,153,981 Ibs., and the Gross Produce of this Tax, 
 in 1870, Husks and Shells, and Paste, called Chocolate, 
 all included, was 31,510, and no more ! 
 
257 
 FRUIT, DRIED. 
 
 
 
 Currants -\ 260,757 
 
 Figs, Plums, Prunes C 7 8 . pe r cwt... 39,054 
 Eaisins . ...J .. . 113,671 
 
 Gross Produce in 1870 . 413,482 
 
 These are articles of wholesome food, and the tax 
 operates as a prohibition to the consumption by a very 
 large portion of the poor and working classes of this 
 country. 
 
 The fiscal treatment of the Currant trade by the 
 British Government is illustrative of the injustice and 
 impolicy of our Customs' duties. It may or may not 
 be a question, whether an article in universal demand 
 shall be maintained at a fictitious price and above the 
 means of the mass of the community by State exactions ; 
 but it is beyond question that, the duty levied on such 
 an article ought to be reduced whenever, by such reduc- 
 tion, a better supply, at a lower price, may be attainable 
 in the conjoint interest of the British consumer and of 
 the national exchequer. 
 
 This view of the question will be fully borne out by a 
 candid review of the Currant trade, under the vary ing- 
 tariffs of the last sixty years. 
 
 The world derives its supplies of dried Currants from 
 the Morea, the islands of Zante and Cephalonia, the 
 former being a peninsula at the southern extremity 
 of the kingdom of Greece, and the two latter being 
 formerly under the government of the Ionian Islands, 
 then Anglo-Colonial, and now forming part of the king- 
 dom of Greece. About three-fifths of the total supply 
 is the grodWi of the Morea, the remaining two-fifths 
 being the produce of the Islands. 
 
 The quantity exported from the Currant-producing 
 
 s 
 
258 
 
 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 countries in 1856 was 27,000 tons, of which 21,707 
 tons were shipped to the United Kingdom. 
 
 The quantity now exported is about 50,000 Tons. 
 The present crop, it is said, will, certainly, exceed 
 75,000 Tons! Our consumption in 1871 was over 
 43,000 Tons. The poor public, that is, the working 
 classes, can buy Currants freely only at 3d. per Ib. The 
 price is rarely got down so low as this, owing to the 
 duty of three farthings per Ib. If this duty were 
 removed, there would be a fabulous increase in the 
 consumption of Currants in this country, 'and still more 
 in Raisins, the sources of supply for Raisins being 
 infinitely larger than for Currants. 
 
 This country might then be considered the Currant 
 market of the world : 
 
 1. Because it was the general entrepot whence other 
 countries drew their supplies : 
 
 2. Because the consumption of the article by our 
 population far surpassed that of any other people, ex- 
 ceeding, on an average of years, the consumption of all 
 other nations. 
 
 In 1813 (from 1809) the duty upon Currants being 
 37 : 6 : 8 per ton, was raised to 44 : 6 : 8 per ton ; 
 reduced in 1834 to 22 : 3 : 4 ; in 1844 to 15 : 15 : 
 and now to 7s. per cwt. or 7. per ton. 
 
 The following were the effects of these reductions : 
 
 Periods. 
 
 Duty 
 per Ton. 
 
 Average Annual 
 
 Consump- 
 tion. 
 
 Price 
 per 
 Ton. 
 
 For the 20 years from 1814 to 1833 inclus. 
 10 years 1834 to 1843 
 13 years ,, 1844 to 1856 
 
 . *. d. 
 44 6 8 
 22 3 4 
 15 15 
 
 Tons. 
 5,593 
 9,296 
 14,912 
 
 . 
 
 97 
 
 67 
 50 
 
 The consumption between the former periods increased 
 60 per cent., and the price fell 30 per cent. 
 
CURRANTS. 
 
 259 
 
 The consumption between the latter periods increased 
 60 per cent., and the price fell 25 per cent. 
 
 The following are the Pecuniary Results of the Lower 
 Duty from 1844 to 1856, inclusive, and these deserve 
 particular .attention. 
 
 Gain to the Exchequer in the 13 years , . . . 
 
 Saving to the British Consumer in reduction of 
 Duty ; viz. 14,912 Tons annually at 6 : 8 : 4 . 
 
 Saving to the British Consumer in reduction of 
 Price beyond the reduction of Duty : viz. 14,912 
 Tons annually at 17 
 
 Total 
 
 Annual 
 Average. 
 
 Aggregate. 
 
 43,393 564,109 
 95,685 ' 1,243,907 
 
 253,540 3,295,552 
 
 392,618 5,103,568 
 
 More conclusive evidence, than this, of the sound 
 policy of low tariffs could scarcely be adduced in the 
 whole range of Customs' duties, especially as the 
 average of the existing tariff had been most prejudicially 
 affected by a blight of four years' duration, reducing the 
 consumption by two-thirds for that period, and trebling 
 the price of the article. 
 
 In the year preceding that visitation (1851), the 
 import (36,055 tons) and the consumption (22,738 
 tons), were the largest ever known; its produce far 
 exceeding the aggregate yield of the three years, 1853, 
 1854, 1855. 
 
 Now, it is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding so 
 serious an interruption of the trade for four consecutive 
 years, and the concurrent diminution of supply, and of 
 the proceeds of the duty for the entire period of thirteen 
 years from the last reduction (1844-1856), the returns 
 of the Exchequer exceeded the average returns of the 
 preceding ten years (1834-1843), under the higher 
 duty, by 21 per cent. 
 
 s 2 
 
260 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 . 
 
 The consumption under the duty of 15 : 15 : pro- 
 duced an annual average revenue for the whole 
 term, including the four years of blight, of 249,579 
 
 The consumption under the duty of 22 : 3 : 4, for the 
 whole period of ten years, yielded an average 
 revenue of only 206,186 
 
 Giving an Annual increased revenue for the lower 
 duty of 43,393 
 
 In the ability of every family in the United Kingdom 
 to consume 1 Ib. weekly of this wholesome article of 
 domestic use, we have a ten-fold power of consumption, 
 and the capacity of the Currant fields of the Mediter- 
 ranean to increase their supply is equal to any demand. 
 A few years ago, the cultivators of the Morea increased 
 their Currant plantations by upwards of 7,000 acres. 
 But it is now by no means certain that the increased 
 production will be sent to the British market. 
 
 Hence, it will be clearly to our fiscal regulations and 
 excess of price that, a short supply will be attributable ; 
 for with good Currants, at a low price, the present 
 demand would be speedily quadrupled, and that again 
 would be soon doubled. But for fiscal intervention, the 
 notorious popularity of this fruit, and its well-known 
 palatable and wholesome qualities, would secure for it a 
 universal consumption. 
 
 How, otherwise, is it to be explained that, the popu- 
 lation of the United Kingdom, man, woman, and 
 child, consume more per head of the tobacco weed, 
 than of this nutritious and agreeable fruit ? 
 
 The quantity of Currants imported into the United 
 Kingdom in 1870 was, 920,923 cwts. or 46,046 tons, 
 3 cwt., and the quantity retained for Home Consumption 
 was, 773,773 cwts. or 38,686 tons, 13 cwt. 
 
 The foregoing remarks on the injustice and impolicy 
 
WOOD AND TIMBER. 261 
 
 of these duties apply to the duties on Figs, Plums and 
 Prunes, and Raisins, all of which, but for the duty, 
 would be a wholesome and agreeable addition to the 
 daily food of the People, at such low prices as to make 
 these luxuries accessible to the poorest classes, instead 
 of being, as they now are, confined to the better- off 
 classes. 
 
 The quantity of Raisins imported into the United 
 Kingdom in 1870 was 365,418 cwts., and the quantity 
 retained for Home Consumption was 335,592 cwts. 
 
 WOOD AND TIMBER. 
 
 It was agreed by the Treaty of Commerce between 
 this Country and Austria, signed in Vienna, December, 
 1865, that, Parliament should be recommended to 
 abolish the import duties on Wood and Timber, and 
 they were abolished accordingly the next year; from 
 26th March, 1866. 
 
 The removal of this very obnoxious and foolish tax is 
 here noticed because it seems to be not generally known 
 out of the Trade. 
 
 EXCISE LICENCES. 
 
 The following is a List of the Articles in the Bundle 
 of Absurdities, called Excise Licences, in the year ended 
 31st March, 1870. 
 
 Amount of Duty charged. 
 
 . 
 
 Auctioneers, Appraisers, House Agents ........ 62,932 
 
 Brewers 364,836 
 
 Dealers in Beer 21,530 
 
 Additional Licences to retail 10,251 
 
 Spirits 65,793 
 
 Additional Licences to retail 10,251 
 
 Wine 41,538 
 
 Carried forward . . . . 577,131 
 
262 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Amount of Duty cliarzed. 
 
 . 
 
 Brought forward .... 577,131 
 
 Retailers of Beer (Publicans) [and Sinners] 193,883 
 
 Spirits 632,378 
 
 Wine 99,866 
 
 Beer and Cider (not Publicans) 151,527 
 
 Wine (to be consumed off the premises) . . . . 11,676 
 
 Beer etc. on board Packet Boats 413 
 
 Spirits (Grocers) Ireland 5,166 
 
 Distillers and Rectifiers 3,276 
 
 Dog . 285,182 
 
 Establishment, viz : 
 
 Male Servants 200,753 
 
 Carriages, with 4 wheels, weighing 4 cwt 277,895 
 
 with less than 4 wheels, and less than .... 187,493 
 
 Horses and Mules 391,076 
 
 Horse Dealers 12,613 
 
 Armorial Bearings, painted on Carriage 42,389 
 
 otherwise worn or used 38,538 
 
 Game, to kill 165,286 
 
 to deal in 4,722 
 
 Hackney Carriages (London) 2,614 
 
 Hawkers and Pedlars 52,323 
 
 Maltsters 15,549 
 
 Malt Roasters and Dealers in Roasted Malt 540 
 
 Methylated Spirits, Makers 95 
 
 Retailers 678 
 
 Paper Makers 1,651 
 
 Patent Medicines (Vendors) 6,879 
 
 Pawnbrokers 33,848 
 
 Plate, to sell 2 oz. of Gold, or 30 oz. of Silver, and upwards . 13,455 
 
 less than the above 17,310 
 
 Playing Cards (Makers) 16 
 
 (Sellers) 1,145 
 
 Postmasters 102,485 
 
 Refreshment Houses 5,478 
 
 Selling Wine 12,245 
 
 Soap Makers 1,289 
 
 Stage Carriages 73 
 
 Stills, Makers of 9 
 
 ,, Chemists etc. using 438 
 
 Sweets, Makers and Dealers 641 
 
 Retailers 11,254 
 
 Carried forward 3,561,278 
 
EXCISE LICENCES. 263 
 
 Amount of Doty charged. 
 
 . 
 Brought forward . . . .3,561,278 
 
 Tea Dealers 19 
 
 (in houses rated at less than 8 per annum) . . 2 
 
 Tobacco Manufacturers 7,392 
 
 Dealers 74,381 
 
 Vinegar Makers 325 
 
 3,643,397 
 Licences for fractional parts of a year, surcharges, and occasional 
 
 licences 90,435 
 
 Total ,3733,832 
 
 All these taxes may be taken collectively, as arbitrary, 
 inconsistent, and vexations ; many of them preventing 
 the healthy enjoyment of the People, and all being 
 unnecessary and impolitic obstructions to the trade and 
 industry of the country, unworthy of the Statesman 
 entrusted with the direction of the affairs of this greatest 
 commercial country in the world. 
 
 Now, to point out the absurdity of the law which 
 imposed these taxes, a few instances will be selected 
 from this long list. The first in alphabetical order will 
 serve as well as any other. 
 
 Armorial Bearings, painted on or affixed to a carnage, 
 ,2:2:0; otherwise worn or used, 1:1: 0. According 
 to the letter of the law, any person affixing Armorial 
 Bearings (whether his own or not) on his own dung 
 cart, must pay 2 : 2 : a year for this privilege, or u 
 penalty of 20, in addition to the tax. While this was 
 being written, in the first week of January, 1872, the 
 following case of Excise prosecution was reported in the 
 London Newspapers. It appeared that, a Mr. Jarvis, 
 a perfumer at Walthamstow, having occasion to write 
 to a Surveyor of Taxes, disputing his assessment, dis- 
 covered that he was out of envelopes, and went over to 
 the office of a Solicitor opposite and borrowed two. He 
 
264 TAXATION AS IT is. 
 
 addressed the envelopes without observing the crest 
 upon them. A clerk in the employ of the Solicitor was 
 called to prove that, he gave the defendant the two 
 envelopes, with his employer's crest upon them, and that 
 his employer had a licence to use the same. The enve- 
 lopes had been handed over by the person who received 
 them to the Solicitor to the Inland Revenue, and there- 
 upon these proceedings were commenced. The bench 
 of Magistrates at the Ilford petty sessions held that, 
 they were bound to convict, but decided to inflict the 
 lowest penalty in their power, a fine of <5. 
 
 It is difficult to believe that, this can constitute a 
 " using " of armorial bearings within the meaning of 
 the Act of Parliament, more especially when the terms 
 in which this duty is composed are compared with the 
 other provisions in the same section. That section 
 enacts that, "every person who shall employ any male 
 servant, or keep any carriage horse or mule, or wear or 
 use any armorial bearings," etc. without licence shall be 
 liable to the penalty therein specified. If these other 
 provisions are to be as literally interpreted, a person 
 who has incurred one fine by using his friend's crested 
 note paper may incur another fine by sending out his 
 friend's footman to post the letter. 
 
 If these cases of Excise Prosecutions were of more 
 frequent occurrence the remedy would very soon be 
 provided. The Excise Solicitor must know that, these 
 cases of unintentional breaches of the law are daily very 
 numerous, but he wisely exercises a prudent diffidence 
 in bringing them before the Public. 
 
 Next in Alphabetical order come Brewers, already 
 heavily taxed in the prime article, Malt, and taxed, on a 
 sliding scale, according to the quantity and quality of 
 the beer brewed, for liberty to brew at all ! 
 
 Retail Brewers pay for their Licence to Brew 5 : 10 : 3 
 yearly, under Act 5. Geo. IV. c. 54, of blessed memory ! 
 
EXCISE LICENCES. 265 
 
 "Retailers of Beer, not Brewers, but Publicans, are all 
 treated as sinners, and taxed as such on special sliding 
 scales, regulated by the rate of the premises ; whether 
 to be drunk on or off the premises ; whether in England 
 and Wales, in Scotland, or Ireland ; whether retailers 
 of cyder or perry only, or with beer; whether strong 
 beer or small beer ; with many other puzzling limita- 
 tions and conditions too distracting to be further fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 Distillers and Rectifiers, and their Retailers are 
 treated much in the same way. 
 
 After Distillers come Dogs, also treated much in the 
 same way, like dogs, but at the fixed per capita rate of 
 5s. without regard to quality. The total gross sum pro- 
 duced by the Dog Tax in 1869-70 was 285,181 : 15 : 0, 
 about 80,000 more than the tax on Male Servants. 
 There would not be any good ground of objection if this 
 tax (on Dogs, not Male Servants,) were raised from 55. 
 to 20s. 
 
 The Public are indebted for this tax to an old friend 
 of the Writer, known to former generations by the 
 name of ' Dog Dent/ 
 
 Passing over the tax on Male Servants as simply 
 stupid and disrespectful to Female Servants, Carriages 
 come next. This tax is according to the weight and 
 the wheels, 4 cwt. or more with 4 wheels or more pay- 
 ing 2:2:0; less than 4 cwt. and less than 4 wheels, 
 15s. A carriage with no wheels may, therefore, run 
 free, if it can run. But for this silly tax how many 
 more Carriages of all sorts would be made, how many 
 more workmen would be profitably employed, how 
 many more would enjoy their holyday drive out into the 
 country ? 
 
 Horses and Mules come next, paying 10s. Qd. each. 
 This is stupidly inconsistent. A Mule being only half 
 a horse ought to pay only 5s. 3d. 
 
266 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Hackney Carriages were taxed in London only : 
 Stage Carriages according to the number of persons 
 they were made to carry. These foolish taxes being 
 paid chiefly by those who could not keep their own Car- 
 riages, were repealed from 1st January, 1870. By Act 
 32 & 33 Viet. c. 14. 
 
 Hawkers and Pedlars, with a few other miserable 
 victims, were let off in 1870-71, by Act 33 & 34 Viet, 
 c. 32. The reason for this relief is stated by the Com- 
 missioners of Inland Revenue in their 14th Report, and 
 this is such an excellent commentary on all these 
 Licence Taxes that, it will be given in the Commis- 
 sioners' own words, as follows : 
 
 " In this year a number of small Licence Duties were 
 repealed, the principal one being the duty of 2 paid by 
 a hawker on foot. This was a heavy tax on the poor 
 traders who came within its scope, their stock in trade 
 being frequently of less value than the amount of the 
 duty, it was also very difficult to collect, and the 
 prosecutions which we were compelled to order generally 
 resulted in the imprisonment of the offenders who were 
 quite unable to pay the penalties." 
 
 This was a very good reason, and would apply to all 
 other trades. 
 
 This reason was given many years ago in a former 
 Edition of this Book, and almost in these very words. 
 How many poor pedlars have been imprisoned since, 
 under this pedling law ? But the duty has since been 
 fixed at 85. 
 
 It would be tedious to notice separately all the victims 
 in this long list of fanciful absurdities; but Playing 
 Cards Makers, and Playing Cards Sellers are worth 
 noticing for some small singularities. 
 
 The tax on Playing Cards Makers is 1. ; on Playing 
 Cards Sellers 2s. 6d. 
 
 The number of Playing Cards Makers in the United 
 
EXCISE LICENCES. 267 
 
 Kingdom in 1869-70 was 16 ; the number of Sellers, 
 9,158; and the Gross Amount of Duty paid was, 
 1,160 : 15 : 0. Of the 16 Makers, 15 were in England, 
 none in Scotland, and 1 in Ireland. Of the 9,158 
 Sellers, 7,451 were in England, 952 in Scotland, and 
 755 in Ireland. 
 
 Any one reading over this list would naturally"ask, 
 ( Why are some trades taxed and not others ' ? or 
 ' Why are any trades taxed ' ? Trade is supposed to be 
 one of the great sources of wealth to every country, and 
 to this country especially ; therefore, deserving of every 
 encouragement. A personal tax on a trader for a 
 Licence to enter into the risks of trade cannot in any 
 way operate as an encouragement, but quite the contrary. 
 Take the case of Appraisers and House Agents, who pay 
 2 a year for their Licence, and Auctioneers, who pay 
 10 a year. The men who enter into this useful calling 
 in large towns, may be able to pay this tax, but in the 
 country this tax may be more than the whole year's 
 profit. So it is found to be in practice, and many re- 
 spectable Auctioneers and Appraisers in the country, 
 and in towns too, are driven by this unjust tax to seek 
 other employment. 
 
 But why should they be personally taxed in their 
 callings and others not ? 
 
 Why should Publicans and Paper Makers, Patent 
 Medicine Vendors and Pawnbrokers, Playing Cards 
 Makers and Postmasters be taxed, and Butchers and 
 Bakers and Candlestick Makers go free? How are 
 these inconsistencies to be reconciled to common sense 
 or common justice ? How exasperating must be these 
 absurdities to those on whom such things are done ! 
 
 What weakness in a Government to defer doing that 
 which they will be compelled to do, to sweep away all 
 these absurdities, or be themselves swept away ! 
 
268 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 RAILWAY DUTY. 
 
 This is another mischievous tax under the head of 
 Excise, being 5 per cent, on suras received for convey- 
 ance of passengers, and, so far, acting in direct opposi- 
 tion to the purpose of Railways, which is to remove 
 obstacles to the transport of persons and things from one 
 place to another, this tax being an additional and 
 unnecessary obstacle, by increasing the necessary and 
 unavoidable expense. 
 
 The Gross sum produced by this tax in the year 
 ended 31st March, 1870, was 505,907 : 13 : 4J, and the 
 Nett sum paid into the Exchequer was 500,557. 
 
 ASSESSED TAXES. 
 
 All these taxes may be taken collectively, as arbitrary, 
 inconsistent, and vexatious; many of them being 
 obstructions to the healthy enjoyment of the People, 
 others being obstructions to the trade and industry of 
 the country, and all being unnecessary and impolitic, 
 whimsical and absurd. 
 
 Can anything be more whimsical and absurd than to 
 make a man pay 1:3:6 a year for the privilege of 
 powdering his hair, a privilege now confined chiefly to 
 coachmen. In the year 1870, the number of these 
 privileged persons was 827, producing the gross sum of 
 972 : 9 : 6, and the nett sum to the Revenue of, 972. 
 
 Inhabited Houses, being Shops and Warehouses, 
 Beer Shops and Farm Houses, are charged 6d. in 
 the . per annum (another income tax). Dwelling 
 Houses, 9d. in the . per annum. 
 
 Male Servants, 18 years and upwards, 1:1:0 per 
 annum ; under 18 years, 10s. 6d. per annum. 
 
 Carriage Horses, and Mules are subject to so many 
 absurd conditions, as not to be worth the space for such 
 
ASSESSED TAXES. 269 
 
 particulars, but producing nett to the Revenue, in 1 870, 
 the large sum of 883,619. 
 
 Horse Dealers, producing the nett revenue, in 1870, 
 of 1 7,083. 
 
 Armorial Bearings, producing, in 1870, the astonish- 
 ing Nett Revenue of, 71,143. 
 
 The total of Assessed Taxes, in 1870, produced the 
 Nett Revenue of 2,895,123. 
 
 Such was the Bill of Costs charged on the nation, 
 under the head of Assessed Taxes, in the year 1870. 
 
 The additional tax of 10 per cent. put on many 
 years ago, as a temporary aid, still remains to be taken 
 off. 
 
 STAMPS. 
 
 The absurdities and inconsistencies of the Stamp 
 Duties are far too numerous to be noticed separately, 
 and a few only of the principal instances are taken col- 
 lectively, to show the impolicy and injustice of collecting 
 Revenue by Stamps, the only Stamp admissible being 
 the Postage Stamp, and that not for the purpose of 
 Revenue. 
 
 With respect to the Stamp duties generally, and espe- 
 cially the Stamp Duties on Probates, Legacies, and 
 Successions, there are such remarkable instances of 
 unjust and oppressive taxation that, the wonder is that, 
 such taxes were ever suffered, and still greater wonder 
 that, they have been suffered so long. 
 
 With respect to the Successions duty, now fixed on 
 the whole landed property of the kingdom, this is one 
 of the most marvellous instances of confiscation, under 
 .the name of taxation, ever permitted in this country, 
 so marvellous that, it is impossible to suppose the land- 
 owners were aware of the effect of this law when they 
 allowed it to pass. 
 
270 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 It is the nearest approach to confiscation which has 
 ever been made in this country by authority of the Law, 
 being a seisure of capital, and operating, in the course 
 of a few generations, to confiscate a large portion of the 
 unentailed property of the country. If this law should 
 continue for half a century more, it must make a large 
 portion of the land of this country change hands. 
 
 When this law is felt in its full effect, it will be 
 found to change the ownership of many of the oldest 
 family estates in the kingdom ; and if, by the conserva- 
 tive power of entails, many of these estates be still pre- 
 served in the old ancestral line, some of the possessors 
 will find themselves with incomes so reduced as to be 
 quite unequal to their apparent position as lords of the 
 soil, and quite inadequate to maintain what are now 
 considered to be the necessary honor and hospitalities 
 of the ancient House. 
 
 No law was ever passed so fatal to the Landed Aristo- 
 cracy of Great Britain, as the law which imposed the 
 Succession duty on landed estates. By a slow but sure 
 process, this addition to the inevitable burdens on land 
 will work the downfall of a large portion of the present 
 families which constitute the landed aristocracy of the 
 kingdom. Estates will change hands, and time-honored 
 names will be obliterated from rent-rolls, and be remem- 
 bered lio more. These will be absorbed by the great 
 capitals accumulated in trade. The merchant -princes 
 will be the lords of the land, and future generations of 
 the present landlords will become the laborers, until the 
 same process has worked round, in still further genera- 
 tions to like results. 
 
 But, in the meantime, the sources of national prospe- 
 rity will have been impaired. Land will have depre- 
 ciated in price, and trade will have diminished in pro- 
 portion. Trade must ever be, in a great measure, de- 
 pendent for its prosperity on the prosperity of land, 
 
STAMPS. 271 
 
 which is, and ever must be, the basis of the nation's 
 wealth. As land deteriorates in price, so must capital 
 and trade diminish in quantity. 
 
 A flourishing state of trade and a depressed state of 
 agriculture is a state of things never yet known, and 
 never can occur. It may be taken as an axiom in poli- 
 tical economy that, the interests of land and trade are 
 identical and inseparable : that, taxation injurious to 
 one is injurious to both : therefore, it is the interest of 
 both that, land should not be over-burdened with taxa- 
 tion. The desirable equilibrium has been more seriously 
 disturbed by the imposition of the Succession duty on 
 land, than by any former Act of the Legislature, and it 
 is not easy to retrace such a false step once taken. 
 
 It is only left to sweep away, at once, the whole of 
 this injurious system with all its appendages. 
 
 It is no answer to say that, the Succession duty was 
 imposed for preserving a better equilibrium between Real 
 and Personal Estate. This is no more an answer to the 
 question of the propriety or policy of the measure, than 
 would be the justification of one act of violence and in- 
 justice by the perpetration of another. The Probate 
 and Legacy duties, imposed many years ago on personal 
 property, were unjust and impolitic measures, and the 
 injustice and impolicy are only enlarged and perpetuated 
 by extending the same principle to land. 
 
 Hear what the most eminent lawyer now living says 
 of this fatal measure to the fair fields of England. 
 
 The following are the words of Lord St. Leonards, in 
 his " Handy Book." 
 
 " I must conclude by reminding you of the Succession 
 Duty Act (16 & 17 Viet. c. 51), which has deprived pro- 
 perty of half its charms : it is as if a blight had fallen 
 on the fair fields of England. Every man had the right 
 to keep his parchments his sheep-skins in his own box, 
 
272 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 in his own house : no one had a right to pry into the 
 contents of his settlements. Now, every man's settle- 
 ment must be open to the tax office and to the Govern- 
 ment of the day, ever on the watch for a new succession, 
 in order to levy a new duty. If, for example, a stipend 
 is provided for an old servant, who dies, as even annui- 
 tants sometimes must, that creates a succession, and the 
 person entitled to the property has to pay duty for his 
 new enjoyment. You cannot, when liable to duty, cut 
 trees on your estate beyond the value of 10 a year, 
 without giving notice to the tax-officer and paying duty. 
 Mr. Pitt, in the plenitude of his power, was foiled in his 
 attempt to introduce a much milder impost on succes- 
 sions than is fixed upon them by the law to which I 
 have referred you. The net is large and widespread, 
 and the tax, for its nature, is the most vexatious burden 
 ever laid upon property in England." 
 
 But what will Englishmen think when they are told 
 that, this tax was first suggested by St. Simon, the 
 Founder of French Socialism ! 
 
 They will, perhaps, ask for some evidence of this fact, 
 and here it is. 
 
 Without entering into the doctrines of this modern 
 school of infidelity and anarchy, it may be sufficient to 
 give the principles of this archimpostor as publicly an- 
 nounced in Paris, six years after his death, by his suc- 
 cessor, M. Enfantin, the acknowledged chief of this 
 infamous sect. It was thought advisable that, this ne\v 
 Church, as it was impiously called, should have a Journal 
 of its own, and the e Globe ' having been offered, was 
 bought on the 31st January, 1831, after which date it 
 appeared with the addition of the words, " Journal of 
 the Doctrine of St. Simon/' 
 
 And with the following heading : 
 
STAMPS. 273 
 
 "Religion." 
 
 " Science." "Industry." 
 
 " UNIVERSAL ASSOCIATION." 
 
 " All Social institutions ought to aim at the amelio- 
 ration, moral, intellectual, and physical, of the greatest 
 and poorest class. 
 
 "All the privileges of birth, without exception, are 
 abolished. 
 
 " To every man according to his capacity to every 
 capacity according to its works." 
 
 In Paris the Globe newspaper was much read. It 
 was not conducted exclusively as an organ of the sect, 
 bat treated of the questions of the day, and M. Enfantin 
 particularly, in Essays on political economy, conde- 
 scended to propose certain reforms in the actual organi- 
 sation of society. 
 
 He laid down this principle : 
 
 " Society is composed of idlers and laborers : a policy 
 ought to aim at the amelioration, moral, physical, and 
 intellectual, of the laborers, and at the gradual extinc- 
 tion of the idlers. The means of accomplishing these 
 ends are, as to the idlers, the abolition of all the privi- 
 leges of birth ; and, as to the laborers, their classification 
 according to their capacities, and their remuneration ac- 
 cording to their works." 
 
 This was the formula of the sect, but M. Enfantin 
 consented to modify the application of it for a time. 
 
 Among other things, instead of demanding the im- 
 mediate abolition of inheritance, he proposed that col- 
 lateral succession should be abolished : that the sons 
 and daughters should divide the possessions of their 
 deceased parent, but that, in default of such direct 
 heirs, the property should devolve to the State. He 
 pointed out the evils of collateral successions, and 
 especially those of remote degrees; their multiplied 
 partitions of land, their vexatious lawsuits; and he 
 
 T 
 
274 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 suggested that such properties might be advantageously 
 employed in the reduction of taxation, contending that 
 the interest of the many should be preferred to that of a 
 few distant relatives, unknown, perhaps, to the deceased, 
 objects of entire indifference to him, or, possibly, even 
 his enemies. Such successions too often add to the 
 excessive fortunes of a few idlers, and would be far 
 better employed in lightening the burdens of the indus- 
 trious masses. Besides this, M. Enfantin was in favor 
 of a heavy tax on direct successions, as a means of fur- 
 nishing part of the revenue of the State. This tax 
 should become still heavier as the heirs were further of 
 kin from the deceased : and this mode might, by many 
 persons, be preferred to the actual seisure of an estate 
 in default of direct heirs, as removing the necessity of 
 intrusting the management of the property to the 
 hands of incapable public servants. This tax, even on 
 direct successions, was defended on the ground that, 
 it was taken at the time the property changed hands, 
 and when, in many oases, it was about to devolve on 
 those who would, unfortunately, be perverted by it from 
 industrials into idlers. 
 
 It was contended by M. Enfantin that, at the time 
 when property changes hands, a diminution of it is 
 little felt, and that a seisure of a portion of it thus 
 differs entirely from the confiscation of part of an estate 
 of a living man. 
 
 The answer to all this sort of reasoning is obvious. 
 Most of the estates are small, and descend to the Widow 
 and Children of the deceased. In such cases it cannot 
 be alleged that, the heirs are turned from the pursuits 
 of industry to live in idleness ; for it more often hap- 
 pens that, they are reduced from comparative affluence 
 to poverty ; the death of the head of the house anni- 
 hilating the income derived from his exertions. The 
 funeral expenses and the necessary legal charges are 
 
STAMPS. 275 
 
 considerable ; and it is generally felt to be a great hard- 
 ship that Government should step in at such a season of 
 distress to seise, by Probate and Legacy duties, a share 
 of the slender income of the Widow and Orphan, thus 
 acting like wreckers on the coast, who prey 011 the 
 destitution of the afflicted. 
 
 There is, however, another objection which, on con- 
 siderations of political economy, ought to be conclusive. 
 This tax falls on capital, whereas, all taxes should be 
 taken from the yearly produce of capital. 
 
 Capital is the foundation of social wealth, and is, 
 therefore, necessary to national progress and prosperity. 
 The increase of capital, therefore, should be the aim of 
 every Statesman, and the fear of excess is, practically, 
 groundless. Governments may safely leave the pro- 
 pensity to accumulate to take care of itself, but to 
 prevent or discourage accumulation, or savings, is as 
 unwise for the interest of the State as it is unjust to 
 all classes. 
 
 It would not be correct, however, to attribute such 
 an intention to the St. Simonians. 
 
 Their object was to protect property, but to abolish 
 inheritance : to allow the wife and family to share the 
 possessions of the husband and father during his life- 
 time, but to filch those possessions at his decease, as 
 the property of the State, leaving the widow and hei 1 
 children to work or starve. 
 
 The French Government wisely rejected these theo- 
 ries, and, whether wisely or not, prosecuted the pro- 
 pounder, M. Enfantin, and condemned him to imprison- 
 ment. 
 
 Instead of the Succession duty acting as an equi- 
 librium to the Probate and Legacy duties, instead of 
 preserving the balance between Real and Personal 
 property, the direct operation is, to impose an addi- 
 tional and heavier burden on both. 
 
 T2 
 
276 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 It is the first duty of a Christian Legislature to act on 
 the principle of equal justice, and not to seek by com- 
 pensation to make wrong more tolerable. 
 
 Every such attempt must fail, because it can only 
 aggravate the original evil, by making the first wrong 
 the greater and more lasting. 
 
 Especially applicable is this moral truth to the poli- 
 tical interests of this great Commercial Country. We 
 are, as Mr. Tooke remarks, "Competitors in a race 
 in which the smallest inequalities of pressure may give 
 an advantage or a victory to rivals who, with greater 
 skill, or greater prudence, have provided for a more 
 unfettered command of their natural aptitude for the 
 contest." And, as he wisely adds : " No Free Trade 
 Financier will imperil the public credit by rash and 
 weak experiments ; but, while he regards caution as his 
 first duty, he will also regard improvement as his first 
 maxim." 
 
 In imposing taxes, he will be the most skilful finan- 
 cier who can imagine himself in the position of the per- 
 sons liable to pay any particular tax. It is impossible 
 to suppose that, many of the vexatious and profitless 
 imposts which have been laid upon the People of this 
 Country would ever have been proposed, if Statesmen 
 had attained to an adequate notion of the personal in- 
 convenience caused by these imposts. And what is 
 public good but an aggregation of personal convenience ? 
 
 The greatest happiness of the greatest number can 
 never be incompatible with the welfare of the Na- 
 tion. 
 
 In the First Edition of this Book, in 1857, the his- 
 tory of the Stamp Duties was traced from the first to 
 the last of these nefarious Acts. That history is too 
 long to be here inserted, but some of the small and 
 vexatious stamps since introduced, and which are 
 serious obstructions to trade, must be shortly noticed. 
 
STAMPS. 277 
 
 Stamps are generally regarded as direct charges, and 
 so they are when directly paid for by the purchaser, or 
 consumer, or person to whom they are given. But 
 when charged upon producers, or distributors connected 
 with trade, stamps have precisely the same effects as 
 Customs' duties. 
 
 The producer, or the wholesale or retail distributor, 
 cannot sell so cheaply as he otherwise would, and profits 
 have to be piled upon profits before the pocket of the 
 public is reached. Objectionable charges of this kind 
 on trade are receipt stamps, Inland Revenue stamps on 
 delivery orders, and on bills and drafts. A single 
 Wholesale House in the City of London, with which the 
 Author is acquainted, spends no less than 500 a year 
 on these stamps, of which money not a penny can be 
 recovered directly from the customers. This is equal 
 to an income tax of Qd. in the . on a realised income 
 of 20,000 a year ; and the trader's income is in the 
 highest degree uncertain. 
 
 The idea of these taxes was that, the retail distri- 
 butor would finally recover them from the consumers, 
 and so he does, but with an addition of, probably, 
 50 per cent, for profit, loss of interest of money, &c., of 
 the different traders through whose hands the taxes 
 have passed. 
 
 This is a serious additional cost to the public, besides 
 the loss to the Wholesale dealer, and the serious impe- 
 diment to trade. 
 
 The wholesale House referred to pays on the average 
 One Pound a day, throughout the year, for Receipt 
 Stamps alone, and these charges cannot be thrown on 
 the customers or consumers. 
 
 The duty of One Penny on Cheques and Bills is 
 another mean and contemptible tax, open to the same 
 objection, and which, when tried on the lucifer match 
 box, drew down public indignation. 
 
278 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 The notorious and disgraceful Stamp Act, 55 Geo. III. 
 c. 184, still, for the most part, in force, is intitled, 
 "An Act for repealing the Stamp Duties on Deeds, 
 Law Proceedings, and other written or printed Instru- 
 ments, and the Duties on Fire Insurances, and on 
 Legacies, and Successions to Personal Estate, upon 
 Intestacies now payable in Great Britain, and for grant- 
 ing other duties in lieu thereof." 
 
 This is a most scandalous and disgraceful Act, and 
 can be properly designated only as a fraud upon the 
 People, being passed when the People were not repre- 
 sented in Parliament, in the time of rotten boroughs, 
 when counties and boroughs were bought and sold in open 
 market by the rich, and all was rotten in the State 
 practically, though the Constitution was glorious in theory. 
 
 This infamous Stamp Act, still the law of the land, 
 did repeal some of the Stamp Duties, but only to re- 
 impose them with more dreadful severity than ever on 
 the miserable People, who had no voice in the matter, 
 and, of course, knew nothing about it. 
 
 Passing over the first six sections, relating principally 
 to particulars of the management of the Stamp Duties, 
 we come to the seventh, which makes the yielding to 
 the temptation of evading the operation of this most 
 disgraceful law by forging stamps, using them twice, or 
 transposing them, felony, punishable with death ! and 
 punishable with death these offences remained, until the 
 year 1830, when capital punishment was abolished in 
 cases of forgery; and until the year 1833, when the 
 other modes of evasion of the duties were made liable 
 to imprisonment or transportation for various terms of 
 years, or for life, at the discretion of the Court ! 
 
 Think of hanging men and women, and many men 
 and women were hanged, for imitating the impress on 
 a bit of paper, or even for using the real stamp twice, 
 or for transposing it from one bit of paper to another ! 
 
STAMPS. 279 
 
 Think of the punishment of death for breaking the 
 letter, or even for evading the spirit of such an Act, or 
 any Act, of Parliament ! 
 
 Think of that Act still disgracing the Statute Book 
 of this enlightened kingdom ! 
 
 Is it surprising that, in the great State cauldron we 
 see the dirty scum bubbling up to the surface? 
 
 Is it surprising that, tinkers and tailors should try to 
 set themselves up as law reformers ; or ' would it sur- 
 prise you' to see this class led by a parvenu Baronet 
 and legislator, seeking popularity even from the lowest 
 of the low ? 
 
 The 37th section of this Act provides that, if any 
 person shall administer any part of the effects of any 
 deceased person, without obtaining probate of the Will 
 of such deceased, or Letters of Administration to his 
 effects, within six calendar months after the death, 
 every person so offending shall forfeit 100 and 10 
 per cent, on the amount of Stamp Duty payable on the 
 probate ! 
 
 When the sliding scale of this probate duty is consi- 
 dered, the severity of this penalty will be more apparent. 
 It was so apparent that, it has lately been made a little 
 less so. But the penalty still stands the same. 
 
 The 43rd section imposes a penalty of similar amount 
 on any executor who, on discovering that he has, by 
 mistake, paid too little duty, shall riot pay the proper 
 amount in addition, within six calendar months after 
 discovering his error. 
 
 The 54th section contains the following strangely 
 considerate provision : " That nothing in this, or any 
 other Act, shall extend, or be construed to extend, to 
 charge with any Stamp duties, ginger and peppermint 
 lozenges, or any other kitid of confectionery, unless the 
 person vending the same shall vend the same as medi- 
 cines, or as beneficial for the prevention, cure, or relief 
 
280 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 of any distemper, malady, ailment, or disorder, incident 
 to, or in anywise affecting, the human body " then a 
 Stamp tax is to be paid ! 
 
 Such was the wisdom of Parliament in the Reign of 
 George the Third ! 
 
 The partial and unjust working of this Act is manifest 
 on a careful inspection of the Schedule to the Act, but, 
 by the manner of imposing these duties, the immense 
 loss and inconvenience to the public is hidden, not only 
 from ordinary observation, but from all observation 
 whatsoever, except that of persons much experienced 
 in the matter, and is a loss and inconvenience falling 
 with greater severity as people are less able to bear it. 
 
 The only principle kept in view by the framers of the 
 Schedule to this Stamp Act was, to load small transac- 
 tions with a heavy amount of duty, and to keep large 
 transactions, comparatively, exempt. In other words, 
 the wealthy legislators shield themselves from the pay- 
 ment of their fair proportion of this tax, at the expense 
 of the middle and lower classes, in a manner most open 
 and notorious, and when less open and notorious not 
 less flagitious. 
 
 Fortunately for the country, many of these cases have 
 been mitigated in severity, and inequality, by Acts 
 passed in the present reign, but particularly by the Act 
 13 & 14 Viet. c. 97, which materially alters, by reduc- 
 ing, the duties on agreements, bonds, conveyances, 
 leases, memorials, mortgages, settlements, and warrants 
 of attorney, and abolishes the duty on the lease for a 
 year. But this Act, absurdly enough, increases the 
 penalty on stamping deeds after execution, to Ten 
 Pounds, and, in some cases, 5 per cent, interest on the 
 amount of duty, in addition to such penalty. 
 
 The 16 & 17 Viet. c. 59, reduces the duties on 
 indentures of apprenticeship, where no premium is paid ; 
 or debentures for procuring drawbacks of customs, &c., 
 
STAMPS. 281 
 
 drafts, policies on lives, and receipts ; and enacts that, 
 counterparts of leases signed by the lessee only, do not 
 require the denoting stamp applicable to duplicates. 
 C. 63, repeals the advertisement duty, and reduces the 
 duty on Articles of Clerkship, and Attorneys' Cer- 
 tificates. 
 
 The 17 & 18 Viet. c. 83, reduces the duties on bills 
 of exchange and promissory notes ; leases for terms ex- 
 ceeding 35 years ; conveyances in consideration of per- 
 petual rent-charges, and licences to demise copyholds. 
 
 Of all subsisting Stamp duties, in addition to those 
 imposed by Customs and Excise to the great impedi- 
 ment on Trade, already noticed, the most obnoxious, 
 oppressive and impolitic, are the following : 
 
 1. On Probates and Letters of Administration. 
 
 2. Legacies and Successions. 
 
 3. Marine Insurances. 
 
 4. Deeds and other Instruments. 
 
 5. Licences and Certificates. 
 
 6. Medicines. 
 
 Probate duty is an ad valorem duty, paid, by the per- 
 sonal representatives of deceased persons, on the gross 
 amount of the personal property left to their descen- 
 dants. 
 
 Legacy duty is graduated according to the relation- 
 ship of the legatee to the deceased. 
 
 Legacy and Succession duties are taxes over and above 
 the Probate duty, paid by the persons who succeed to 
 the property of the deceased, with the exceptions of 
 husband and wife, who pay no legacy duty. 
 
 Probate duty must always be paid. 
 
 By a strange and double anomaly, probate duty is 
 not payable upon freehold or copyhold estates, though, 
 when they are devised to be sold, the legacy duty is 
 payable, but the probate duty is not, though, to be con- 
 sistent, it ought to be payable. 
 
282 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Administration duty is similar to the probate duty, 
 though the scale of duty is higher, by way of penalty 
 on the property of the deceased for dying without 
 making a Will ! 
 
 The whole arrangement is insulting to common sense, 
 grossly prejudicial to the poorer classes, and odiously 
 partial in its operation. 
 
 It is impossible here to point out the innumerable 
 instances of injustice and oppression in the operation of 
 this tax. It comes into operation, generally, in the time 
 of affliction, and too often falls upon the bereaved, at a 
 time when they are least able to meet the demand, 
 having just lost their chief means of support. It is a 
 tax which takes away from the family and friends of the 
 deceased a large part of the property, in consequence of 
 and immediately after death, and by means the most 
 peremptory, exacting, and oppressive; demanding an 
 inventory and valuation of all the personal property and 
 effects of the deceased, and the consequent exposure of 
 all his private affairs ; the balance at his bankers ; the 
 loose cash in his house; his rooms and store closets are 
 rifled for an account of his books, plate, linen, china, 
 and even his wardrobe for his wearing apparel; his 
 cellars for his beer and wine ; his coach-house and his 
 stables for his carriages and horses ; and all these pain- 
 ful inquisitions are imposed, under severe penalties, at a 
 time when most severely felt. Nor is this the worst. 
 To comply with all the complex requisitions of this in- 
 famous law, the assistance of an attorney is necessary in 
 most cases, and to him, consequently, all the private 
 affairs of the deceased, even to the minutest particulars, 
 must be exposed. Another unavoidable consequence is 
 the payment of his Bill of Costs, seldom less, and 
 often much more, iu amount than 10 per cent, upon 
 the tax paid ; and fortunate is the case, if the account 
 of the executor with the Stamp Office be, at last, finally 
 
STAMPS. 283 
 
 closed without question, or some monstrous exaction or 
 Exchequer Suit. 
 
 The only justification for these taxes is, the plea of 
 necessity. That plea might be good if it were true. 
 But it is notoriously untrue. Nor is the injustice and 
 oppression of these taxes the worst that can be urged 
 against them. The unforeseen and demoralising conse- 
 quences are worse than the open and direct injury. 
 This law, like every other unjust and oppressive law, 
 is evaded to an extent of which the public can have no 
 conception. 
 
 It was an admission once made to the writer by a 
 Gentleman, then holding a high and confidential posi- 
 tion in the Legacy Duty department of the Stamp 
 Office, as a fact well known to the Commissioners, that, 
 if the duties payable by law on probates, legacies, and 
 residues, were duly paid, the National Debt of this 
 country might long ago have been paid off ! 
 
 Through the long series of years during which these 
 unjust and oppressive duties have been imposed upon 
 the people, it may be safely said that, not one executor- 
 ship account has ever been justly rendered and paid in 
 strict accordance with the provisions of these Acts of 
 Parliament. 
 
 And yet every one of these Accounts has been made 
 out, delivered, and paid, on the faith of a solemn oath. 
 
 What further comment need be made on such a sys- 
 tem of legislation as this, of unjust and oppressive 
 laws, mitigated in their severity only by the evasions 
 of perjury ! 
 
 Succession to real estate being now subject to a like 
 scale of duty as personal estate, the absurd anomaly of 
 the unjust distinction between real and personal estate, 
 for the purpose of taxation, is removed. But when 
 Land-owners come to feel the full force of this tax, they 
 will, in the course of time, find it to be, in many cases, 
 
284 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 practically, confiscation. They submitted to this tax in 
 ignorance of its effect,, as a kind of compromise for Sir 
 Robert PeePs tariff and income tax. But the principle 
 on which that compromise was made was radically 
 wrong; and, sooner or later the error will be more 
 plainly seen and more generally acknowledged, and then 
 all these unjust and obnoxious taxes will be swept away 
 To hasten that happy advent is the present object. 
 
 The Gross Sum produced by Stamps in the year, 
 ended 31st March, 1870, was J9,532,878 : 2 : 7i and 
 the Nett sum received was, 9,288,553. In this long 
 list will be seen the two following items : 
 
 
 
 Bankruptcy Court Fee Stamps 27,353 
 
 Chancery Court Fee Stamps 63,729 
 
 .691,082 
 
 These became Revenue from 1st October, 1869. 
 
 A strange source of Revenue, the Administration 
 of justice in England ! not applying to Scotland or 
 Ireland ! 
 
 THE LAND TAX. 
 
 Upon the accession of William and Mary, the cir- 
 cumstances of the country were such that no tax could 
 be depended upon as sufficiently productive that was 
 not imposed upon land, in the produce of which the 
 wealth and income of England at that time principally 
 consisted. That it might be rendered as efficient as 
 possible, new assessments were taken of the property 
 and income that each individual possessed. 
 
 But the rate was far from being equal. Those who 
 were attached to the principles established at the Revo- 
 lution were forward to show their zeal in favour of the 
 new Government, and gave in a fair statement of their 
 
THE LAND TAX. 285 
 
 real situation, whilst the secret friends of the exiled 
 family, with the sordid and avaricious, gave in a very 
 different account, estimating their property at the lowest 
 rate at which it could be calculated. Hence the 
 Assessments, since known under the name of the Land 
 Tax, were not in any respect so productive as they 
 might have been. 
 
 The valuation here referred to was made in pursuance 
 of the Act 4 William and Mary, c. 1., which directed 
 an assessment of 4s. in the pound upon all real Estate 
 assessed on the bond-fide rack-rent, and on offices (ex- 
 cept naval and military) ; and on personal estate 24s. 
 per 100., or 4s. in the pound on 6, the then legal 
 rate of interest, stock on land and household property 
 being exempt. The King's Remembrancer in the Ex- 
 chequer was required by the Act (s. 9) to ingross in a 
 book, made of parchment, the several sums returned to 
 him as assessed upon every county, riding, city and 
 town, and every hundred, wapentake, parish, division, 
 town, and place therein, which returns, the Commis- 
 sioners, appointed for putting the Act into execution, 
 were therein directed to make. The sum realised by 
 the assessment amounted to 1,922,712. Five Acts 
 followed, imposing a certain pound rate upon the same 
 description of property; but in the subsequent year, 
 owing to the sum raised by this mode of assessment 
 showing an annual decrease, it was deemed expedient 
 that a specified sum should be henceforth levied, which 
 sum was fixed at 1,484,015 : 1 : llf, by the 9th and 
 10th Wm. III. c. 10. 
 
 By reason of some difficulties which thereupon arose 
 in apportioning the quotas to be paid by certain 
 districts, the Act of the following year, 10th and 
 llth Wm. III. c. 9, which granted a like sum of 
 1,484,015 : 1 : llf, directed that the proportion of 
 tax which each district was found to have borne under 
 
286 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 the assessment made pursuant to the Act 4 William and 
 Mary, c. 1, should determine the ratio in which it was 
 to contribute towards making up the quotas the Act 
 imposed upon the several counties, cities, and hundreds, 
 as therein expressed. 
 
 From the passing of this Act, to the year 1798, the 
 Land Tax was voted annually, and the Act under which 
 the grant was thus yearly levied, fixed the amount to be 
 raised for the particular year, and named the pound 
 rate at which the same should be assessed. The rates, 
 during this period, ranged from 4s. in the pound, which 
 was the highest rate named, to Is. in the pound, the 
 lowest rate named. In the year 1798, the usual Act 
 was passed for granting the Land Tax for the service of 
 that year. This Act, 38 Geo. III. c. 5, directed the 
 sum of 1,989,673 to be raised in England and Wales, 
 and fixed the contingent for Scotland at 47,954, which 
 sum has been the amount paid by that country since 
 the Union. 
 
 In accordance with the established practice, the Act 
 mentioned the quotas to be set upon counties and cer- 
 tain divisions, towards raising the amount to be paid in 
 England and Wales, and required that such quotas 
 should be still levied within the several divisions and 
 sub-divisions, in proportion to the sums respectively 
 assessed thereon by the Act 4 William and Mary. The 
 quota for Scotland was also to be raised according to 
 the proportions specially named in the Act. 
 
 Before this time, however, the principle of assess- 
 ment observed under the first Land Tax Acts had been 
 widely departed from. Personal Estate, which it was 
 evidently intended should contribute the larger share 
 of the annual quota granted, had been gradually re- 
 lieved from assessment, and to such an extent that, 
 in 1798 the proportion of the quota borne by pen- 
 sions, offices and personal estate together amounted 
 
THE LAND TAX. 287 
 
 only to 150,000, whilst lands, tenements, and other 
 property contributed the remainder. 
 
 In the month of June, 1798, Mr. Pitt produced his 
 scheme for the redemption of the Land Tax, which was 
 brought into operation by the Act 38 Geo. III. c. 60. 
 The object of this measure was to diminish the pressure 
 of the Public Debt in the market, by causing the 
 absorption of a large amount of stock. 
 
 In order to carry out the plan, the Land Tax, which, 
 by the assessment of the current year was charged upon 
 the several counties, ridings, etc., was made perpetual, 
 subject to redemption ; and the quotas, thus rendered a 
 fixed charge, have been therein levied (minus the re- 
 deemed portion thereof) from the passing of such Act, 
 to the present time. 
 
 From the 4 William and Mary (1692), the duties 
 raised in England under the head of Land Tax, were 
 levied at rates varying from Is- to 4s. in the pound, 
 according to the exigences of the times, by Acts 
 annually passed for such purpose, down to the year, 
 1798, when so much of the quota of land tax granted 
 by the Act of that year, 38 Geo. III. c. 5., as was 
 assessed upon lands, tenements, and hereditaments, was 
 made perpetual by the 38 Geo. III. c. 60, subject to 
 redemption, which latter Act continued the powers and 
 provisions of 38 Geo. III. c. 5., for assessing and levy- 
 ing the unredeemed portion of the tax. These powers 
 and provisions were also continued by the 42 Geo. III. 
 c. 116, which repealed the 38 Geo. III. c.' 60, and were 
 confirmed by the 53 Geo. III. c. 142 ; but they have 
 since been modified in some respects and extended in 
 others, by subsequent Acts passed for the more effec- 
 tual assessment and collection of the tax. 
 
 The substance of the existing enactments, in the 
 order in which they are brought into operation for the 
 due raising tff the duties, may be more conveniently 
 considered under the following general heads : 
 
288 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 1. The persons and nature of property chargeable, 
 and the persons and subjects exempt. 
 
 2. Mode of Assessment and collection, and rights and 
 remedies of persons assessed. 
 
 First, as to the property assessable, 
 
 The following are declared liable to assessment : All 
 and every manors, lands, tenements, mines, iron-mills, 
 furnaces, and other ironworks, salt springs, and works, 
 all parks, chases, warrens, woods, underwoods, coppices, 
 and all fishings, tithes, tolls, annuities, and all other 
 yearly profits, and all hereditaments, fee farm rents, and 
 all other rents, payments, and sums of money issuing 
 out of any lands. (38 Geo. III. c. 5. s. 4 and 24.) 
 
 These are to be charged with as much equality and 
 indifference as possible, by a yearly assessment, to be 
 made at an equal pound rate, not exceeding four shil- 
 lings in the pound, upon the real value thereof, towards 
 raising the quotas made perpetual by the 38 Geo. III. 
 c. 60, upon the several cities, boroughs, towns, parishes 
 and places in England and Wales, and Berwick-upon- 
 Tweed. (42 Geo. III. c. 116, s. 180.) 
 
 Where these different descriptions of property are 
 assessed to the poor rate, such rate is very generally 
 adopted as the basis for assessment to the land tax, and 
 may, in most cases, be regarded as a sufficiently con- 
 venient and equitable mode of valuation for the pur- 
 pose. It should, however, be borne in mind that, such 
 mode of adjusting the rate of land tax can be resorted 
 to only when it is found to accord fully with the direc- 
 tions set forth in the Act. 
 
 All lands/ &c. are to be rated and assessed in the 
 places where such lands lie, and not elsewhere. (38 
 Geo. III. c. 5. s. 53.) 
 
 Tenants are to pay the tax and deduct it out of their 
 rents ; and if any difference arise between them and 
 their landlords, concerning the rate, the Commissioners 
 
THE LAND TAX. 289 
 
 for putting the Act into execution have power to settle 
 the same as they may think fit (s. 17 & 18). 
 
 Contracts or Agreements, however, between landlord 
 and tenant, touching the payment of taxes and assess- 
 ments, are not to be affected (s. 35). 
 
 Assessments upon the house of foreign Ministers are 
 to be paid by the landlord or owner (s. 46) . 
 
 Every assessment to the land tax should be made 
 upon the several occupiers of the property chargeable. 
 
 The 5th section of 38 Geo. III. c. 5, after reciting 
 that many of the manors, messuages,, lands, tenements, 
 tithes, hereditaments and premises liable to assessment 
 to the land tax are subject to the payment of several 
 rent-charges or annuities, arid other annual payments 
 issuing out of the same, or to the payment of divers fee 
 farm rents, rents service, or other rents thereupon re- 
 ceived or charged, and that, consequently, the owners of 
 the lands so encumbered, do not receive the true yearly 
 value of the same, authorises such landlords and owners 
 to abate and deduct out of every fee farm rent or other 
 annual payment, so much of the pound rate assessed 
 upon the said manors, lands, &c. as a like rate for every 
 such fee farm rent or annual payment respectively shall, 
 by a just proportion, amount to, so as such fee farm rent 
 or other annual rent do amount unto twenty shillings per 
 annum or more. 
 
 In the case, however, of fee farm rents, or other chief 
 rents, payable to the Crown, or to any person deriving 
 title from the Crown by purchase, under the Acts, 
 22 & 23 Charles II. c. 6. & 24, it is enacted (38 Geo. 
 III. c. 5. s. 30 & 31), that the receivers thereof are to 
 allow to the parties paying the same, four shillings in 
 the pound on such rents, arid a proportionate rate for 
 any greater sum than ten shillings, excepting such fee 
 farm rents as were payable before the 25th March, 
 1693, to any college, hospital, or any person exempted 
 
 u 
 
290 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 by the Act ; and provided such deduction does not 
 exceed the sum assessed upon the whole estate, out of 
 which such fee farm rents, &c., may issue. 
 
 Secondly, as to persons and subjects exempt. 
 
 The Sovereign, by virtue of Royal prerogative, is 
 exempted from the operation of all statutes imposing 
 duties on the subjects. 
 
 The 25th section of 38 Geo. III., c. 5, declares exempt, 
 colleges and halls in either of the two Universities of 
 Oxford and Cambridge; and the Colleges of Windsor, 
 Eton, Winton, and Westminster; the corporation of 
 the governors of the charity for the relief of poor 
 widows and children of clergymen, and the College of 
 Bromley ; and all hospitals in England and Wales, or 
 Berwick-upon-Tweed, for, or in respect of, the sites of 
 the colleges, halls or hospitals. It also exempts all 
 masters, fellows, readers, officers &c. of any college or 
 hall, and all masters and ushers of schools from assess- 
 ment for any profits or exhibitions, &c. arising or grow- 
 ing due to them in respect of their places or employ- 
 ments in such universities, colleges or schools. The 
 same section further exempts any houses or lands which, 
 on or before the 25th March, 1693, belonged to the sites 
 of any colleges or halls in England, Wales, or Berwick- 
 upon-Tweed, or to Christ's Hospital, St. Bartholomew's, 
 Bridewell, St. Thomas' and Bethlehem Hospitals in the 
 City of London or Borough of Southwark, or any of 
 them, or to the said corporation of the governors of the 
 charity for the relief of the poor widows and children of 
 clergymen, or to the College of Bromley, and any other 
 hospital or almshouse, for or in respect of any rents or 
 revenues which, on or before the 25th March, 1693, 
 were payable to the said hospitals or almshouses, to be 
 disbursed for the immediate use and relief of the poor of 
 the said hospitals, &c., only. 
 
 But all houses and lands held by lease or grant from 
 
THE LAND TAX. 291 
 
 the said Corporation, or of any of the said hospitals or 
 almshouses, are liable to be assessed for so much as they 
 are yearly worth, over and above the rents reserved and 
 payable to such Corporation, &c., to be disbursed for the 
 immediate relief of the poor of such Corporation, &c. 
 (s.26). 
 
 The district commissioners of land tax are to deter- 
 mine how far lands, &c., belonging to hospitals, &c., not 
 exempted by name, are liable to assessment (s. 28) . 
 
 All lands, &c., belonging to any hospital, or settled to 
 any charitable or pious use, which were assessed in the 
 fourth year of William and Mary, are likewise charge- 
 able ; all other lands, &c., then belonging to such 
 hospitals, &c., not then assessed, being exempt (s. 29) . 
 
 The tenants of any houses and lands belonging to the 
 said Colleges, Halls, Hospitals, &c., who, by their leases 
 or agreements are bound to pay rates and taxes, are also 
 liable to assessment (s. 27). 
 
 No poor person shall be chargeable where lands, tene- 
 ments, or hereditaments, are not of the full yearly value 
 of 205. in the whole (s. 80). 
 
 Tolls, or duties on turnpikes, are not chargeable (s. 22) . 
 
 In addition to the above exemptions, thus distinctly 
 provided for, there are the following, arising both 
 incidentally and directly out of the Redemption Acts : 
 
 Allotments made under Inclosure Acts, in respect of 
 messuages, lands, &c., upon which the land has been re- 
 deemed, and in respect of rights of common appurtenant 
 thereto, are not assessable. Such allotments likewise 
 are not chargeable when made in respect of lands or 
 
 )mmon rights, &c., belonging to hospital lands, &c., 
 Doming within the exemptions contemplated by the 25th 
 section of 38 Geo. III. c. 5. 
 
 Upon the partition of any lands, &c., held by co- 
 parceners or joint-tenants, &c., the allotments made to 
 such of the co-parceners, &c., who have redeemed their 
 
 u 2 
 
292 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 proportion of land tax, are exonerated from assessment 
 (42 Geo. III. c. 116. s. 39). 
 
 By the Act, 53 Geo. III. c. 123. s. 38, tithes and 
 other hereditaments belonging to any livings, the land 
 tax whereof had been redeemed previously to the passing 
 of that Act, are discharged from liability to assessment, 
 although not rated to the land tax at the time of re- 
 demption ; and all tithes and hereditaments sold or con- 
 veyed 'to any body politic, or corporate, or company, or 
 any feoffee, or trustees, for charitable or other public 
 purposes, for redeeming land tax or other hereditaments, 
 are likewise declared free from assessment, though not 
 rated to the land tax at the time of such sale or convey- 
 ance thereof. 
 
 By the Acts 46 Geo. III. c. 133, 49 Geo. III. c. 67, 
 50 Geo. III. c. 58, and 53 Geo. III. c. 123, powers were 
 given to the Commissioners appointed under the Great 
 Seal, to direct the exoneration and discharge of land 
 tax charged upon the lands, tenements, and other here- 
 ditaments belonging to any livings or other ecclesiastical 
 benefices and charitable institutions, the whole annual 
 income whereof did not exceed j150, without payment 
 of any consideration. 
 
 It was enacted by 53 Geo. III. c. 123. s. 38, that all 
 messuages, lands, tithes, and other hereditaments 
 belonging to the several livings, &c., which had been, or 
 were intended to be, exonerated from land tax from the 
 periods of their exoneration under either of these Acts, 
 and from all future assessments to the land tax, not- 
 withstanding certain portions or parts of the tithes or 
 other hereditaments belonging to such livings were not, 
 at the respective periods of exoneration, rated to the 
 land tax. 
 
 These powers of exonerating small livings, &c., were 
 renewed and enlarged by 54 Geo. III. c. 173, and 57 
 Geo. III. c. 100, and the commissioners for executing 
 such Acts might exonerate the hereditaments belonging 
 
THE LAND TAX. 293 
 
 to such livings, &c., not rated to the land tax from 
 liability to assessment; and all the hereditaments 
 belonging to any living, so exonerated, are thereby 
 declared free from any future assessment, although any 
 of them or any parts thereof were omitted to be rated to 
 the land tax at the time of the exoneration (s. 4). 
 Allotments made under the Inclosure Acts, in respect 
 of lands, &c., belonging to livings exonerated under the 
 powers of the above recited Acts, are also not assessable 
 to land tax. 
 
 The duties or personal estates having been repealed in 
 1833, by 3 William IV. c. 12. the only duties remaining 
 to be considered are these chargeable in respect of 
 public offices of profit. The 38 Geo. III. c. 5, directed 
 that, these offices should be rated at 4s. in the pound, 
 towards the aid by such Act granted. The 38 Geo. III. 
 c. 60, which made perpetual, subject to redemption, the 
 sums charged on lands, &c. provided that, the sums 
 charged on public offices should be raised under any Act 
 or Acts to be passed for that purpose. These duties 
 were consequently raised under annual Acts, down to 
 the year, 1836, when they were made perpetual by the 
 6 & 7 William IV. c. 97, and for ascertaining, assessing, 
 and regulating such duties, the provisions of one of the 
 annual Acts, (6 Geo. IV. c. 9.) were continued. This 
 Act (sec. 3.) directs that every person having, using, or 
 exercising any public office or employment of profit, 
 which is or shall be rated by virtue of the 38 Geo. III. 
 c. 5, shall be charged a sum not exceeding the amount 
 at which such office was assessed in the year 1798. 
 Every person assessed for his office or employment is to 
 be rated in the place where the same is exercised, 
 although the profits arising therefrom are paid elsewhere 
 (s. 16). Where any office is executed by deputy, the 
 deputy is to pay the assessment thereon, and deduct the 
 same out of the profits of such office (s. 17). 
 
294 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 No officer, however, is chargeable in respect of any 
 salary, stipend, or other annual payment, which has been 
 specially exempted from the payment of aids or taxes by 
 any Act of Parliament, order in Council, warrant under 
 royal sign manual, order of the Commissioners of the 
 treasury, or in any case where the sum assessed on such 
 salary has been directed to be repaid out of the public 
 revenue, provided that the authority for the payment of 
 such salary, nett, or without deduction, or the repay- 
 ment of the duty assessed thereon, be certified by some 
 principal officer in the department to which such officer 
 belongs (s. 21). 
 
 In those instances of the rents and revenues of the 
 residentiaries of the cathedral churches in England and 
 Wales being chargeable to the land tax, where the over- 
 plus of such rents, above the tax and other charges, goes 
 in shares to them, such residentiaries shall not be farther 
 chargeable in respect thereof, as enjoying offices of profit 
 (s. 19). 
 
 In the Act 5 & 6 Anne c. 8. intituled " An Act for an 
 Union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland," 
 it is provided (Article IX.), "That whenever the sum of 
 1,997,763 : 8 : 4J shall be enacted by the Parliament of 
 Great Britain to be raised in that part of the kingdom 
 called England, on land and other things usually charged 
 in Acts of Parliament there for granting an aid to the 
 Crown by a land tax, that part of the United Kingdom, 
 now called Scotland, shall be charged by the same Act 
 with a further sum of 48,000, free of all charges, as the 
 quota of Scotland to such tax, and so proportionately 
 for any greater or lesser sum raised in England by any 
 tax on land and other things usually charged together 
 with the land ; and that such quota for Scotland, in the 
 cases aforesaid, be raised and collected in the same 
 manner as the cess now is in Scotland, but subject to 
 
THE LAND TAX. 295 
 
 such regulations in the mariner of collecting as shall be 
 made by the Parliament of Great Britain." 
 
 In accordance with the above Statute, the quota for 
 Scotland varied proportionately with that of England, 
 down to the year 1798, when the sum granted for 
 England in that year, by 38 Geo. III. c. 5. was 
 1,989,673: 7: 10i; and the quota for Scotland fixed 
 at <s847,954 : 1 : 2, to be levied by an eight months' cess 
 of 5,994 : 5 : If per month ; the said cess to be raised 
 out of the land rent, according to the monthly propor- 
 tions within the respective shires, stewartries, cities, and 
 boroughs set forth in the Act (s. 128) ; the proportion 
 of the boroughs was to be rated and paid according to 
 the then existing tax roll, or was to be settled by them- 
 selves (s. 129) . 
 
 The amount of the quota is to be raised free of all 
 charges, and to be paid at Edinburgh (s. 136) . 
 
 The sums so assessed upon the counties, stewartries, 
 cities, boroughs, &c., were made perpetual, subject to 
 redemption, by 38 Geo. III. c. 60, and they have from 
 such time been assessed under the provisions of the 38 
 Geo. III. c. 5, continued for the purpose by the 42 Geo. 
 III. c. 116, which Act provides (s. 180) that all lands, 
 tenements, and hereditaments, situated in Scotland, shall 
 continue subject to a new assessment yearly, and from 
 year to year, according to the rates and in the manner 
 established by law or custom in that country. 
 
 Thus, it appears that, the Land Tax is now assessed 
 on a valuation made in the year 1692, when certain 
 payments or quotas were apportioned to each county, or 
 hundred, or other division ; and that, for upwards of a 
 century the tax was payable under annual Acts, and 
 varied in amount from 1 shilling in the pound, to 4s. in 
 the pound, at which latter sum it was made perpetual by 
 the 38 Geo. III. c. 60, subject, however, to redemption 
 by the landowners on certain conditions. But no new 
 
296 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 valuation of the land has been made, and the proportion 
 chargeable to each district has continued the same as it 
 was in the time of William III., as regulated by the Act 
 of 1692. That assessment is said not to have been accu- 
 rate even at that time, and, of course, improved cultiva- 
 tion and extended markets for agricultural products, 
 raised up by the application of industry, inventions, and 
 capital during the last 180 years, have completely 
 changed the relative value of different portions of the soil. 
 
 The difference is caused by the accumulation of pro- 
 ductive capital and fixed property in one district over 
 another ; partly also by the discovery and application of 
 minerals, unknown in 1692. The chief increase, how- 
 ever, is caused by the difference between the order of 
 persons who live on rent and eat up the wealth it repre- 
 sents without residue, leaving the smallest possible profit 
 to the producers of rent ; and the order of persons en- 
 gaged in manufactures and commerce, who live more 
 moderately in relation to income, and add what their 
 moderation spares to productive capital, again doing the 
 same, and again and again, to be succeeded by others, 
 augmenting the productive capital in like manner. At 
 last, the increase elevates the rent per acre of their 
 county, until the land tax valuation of 1693 stands at 
 \d. per pound for manufacturing Lancashire, and one- 
 ninth of a farthing for commercial Liverpool. 
 
 In the discussion which took place in 1798, when Mr. 
 Pitt introduced his Bill, which passed into a law, for the 
 redemption of the land tax at twenty years' purchase, 
 two leading facts, with which the Public have now to 
 deal, were prominently put forward. 
 
 The first was that, the valuation of property for land 
 tax was the same in 1798 as it had been in 1695. 
 
 The second was that, the Act for the redemption of the 
 land tax (4$. in the pound on the valuation of 1695) did 
 not preclude that or any future Parliament from imposing 
 

 
 THE LAND TAX. 297 
 
 another land tax, or augmentation, or a re- assessment of 
 the present ; so that the redemption of the land tax, 
 under the provisions of 1798, does not preclude, by any 
 compact avowed or implied, the Legislature of the pre- 
 sent day or any future time from re- assessing the rental 
 of land at 4s. in the pound of present value (or at any 
 other rate), if it be the will of the nation that such 
 should be done ; at the same time Mr. Pitt comforted the 
 House of Commons of that day with the assurance that, 
 Parliament was not likely to propose a re-assessment. 
 
 He said that, he proposed by this measure to reduce 
 so much of the Public Debt as should leave an income 
 of 2,400,000, applicable to the public service. The 
 pecuniary advantages arising from this measure must 
 be obvious from this statement, because the public 
 would dispose of 2,000,000, for which they would 
 clear off the public debt to such an amount that, the 
 interest would produce a sum of 2,400,000, leaving upon 
 the whole, a clear gain to the public of 400,000. He 
 proposed to sell the Land Tax at twenty years' purchase ! 
 
 By a return to the House of Commons, dated 12th 
 July, 1844, the Total Land Tax in England and 
 Wales was shown to be 1,858,924 : 6 : 1J, of which 
 724,463 : 19 : 2| was redeemed, and 1,134,460 : 6:104 
 was unredeemed. 
 
 The impropriety and impolicy, if not dishonesty, of 
 selling the Land Tax for a given sum, at any time, must 
 be a fraud upon posterity. Suppose it to be redeemed 
 by the land-owner by purchase of twenty years, the price 
 of redemption is either at once spent by the Govern- 
 ment, or t it is not. If spent, it is a financial fraud, as 
 the amount of the tax for the future is levied on some- 
 thing else, most probably on some process of industry 
 or operation of commerce, to its obstruction, and dimi- 
 nution of its capital. 
 
 If the redemption money be not at once dissipated, 
 
298 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 the sale of the Land Tax is not less a financial blunder, 
 if not a fraud. If land worth 100 a year be sold by 
 its private owner at twenty years' purchase, he receives 
 2000. If he dissipate this sum in the first year or in 
 any number of years, he must supply his wants else- 
 where or starve. Nobody will grant him and the 
 generations of his family after him, through all poste- 
 rity, 100 a year, or 2000 every twenty years. But if 
 the State self 100 a year of Land Tax for 2000, and 
 dissipate that sum in one year, or in any number of 
 years, its future wants must be supplied elsewhere, no 
 matter where the burden falls. But, even were the 
 land tax exchanged for what is an equivalent at the 
 time of exchange, say, 100 a year of land tax to pay 
 off 2000 principal of national debt (which was never 
 due), the financial blunder is the same in principle, 
 though it might be less in degree. The weight of the 
 public debt diminishes, first, positively, by alteration in 
 the value of money ; and second, relatively, by increase 
 of population and tax-bearing property. Whereas rent, 
 or tithe (land tax being analogous to rent and tithe 
 except in the improper adherence to the fixed valuation 
 of 1695), increases not only as other property and 
 population increase, but in a ratio considerably greater. 
 Let it be affected by the same influences as rent and 
 tithe, as, doubtless, the public will soon insist on its 
 being, to the influence of competition for space to 
 cultivate, to build, to the influence of expanding capi- 
 tal, population and industry, in manufactures and 
 commerce, and it also will expand. To sell the right to 
 this source of revenue for the improvident mess of 
 potage, called, Redemption of the Land Tax, is a folly 
 which finds no adequate expression in political phraseo- 
 logy ; it is a breach of trust and very like embezzle- 
 ment j breach of public trust for the benefit of private 
 interests; embezzlement of public funds to serve im- 
 
THE LAND TAX. 
 
 299 
 
 mediate political ends ; fraud upon the public finances 
 by the legislative and governing order of men, to ag- 
 grandise their own private property. 
 
 For showing the absurd inequality of the Land Tax, 
 and how small a portion of the burdens of the State is 
 borne by real property, and by land in particular, it is 
 only necessary to refer to the Tables, published in 
 detail, of which the following is a specimen, framed 
 from the returns of land tax valuation in the Parliamen- 
 tary Paper, 316, Session 1844, and the property tax 
 returns, 5th April, 1843, in the same Paper, and in the 
 official returns given in evidence before the Lords' Com- 
 mittee on Burdens on Land. 
 
 The examples here given will be sufficient for the 
 present purpose, without entering into these details in 
 other parts of the kingdom, the present object being to 
 show that, the object of the Legislature in these Acts 
 has been defeated. 
 
 LAND TAX PAID UPON THE GROUND RENTS AND OTHER REAL 
 PROPERTY OF CERTAIN TOWNS. 
 
 
 >H Q. 
 
 Amount of Land Tax 
 on Lands and Tene- 
 ments, according to 
 Assessments of 1695 
 and 1798 still adhered 
 to. 
 
 Rate of Land Tax 
 per pound on value 
 of Real Property as- 
 sessed to Property 
 Tax, 1842. 
 
 London, City . . 
 St. Pancras . . 
 Mary le bone . . 
 Paddington . . 
 Bath 
 
 
 1,686,266 
 1,247,479 
 1,087,783 
 584,152 
 314,541 
 
 
 87,056 
 1,399 
 564 
 354 
 657 
 
 *. d. 
 
 About 1 04 
 00* 
 half a Oi 
 About Oi 
 OA 
 
 Cheltenham 
 Leeds and Suburbs 
 Sheffield. . . . 
 
 216,108 
 544,908 
 215,596 
 1,568,347 
 
 491 
 1,057 
 212 
 168 
 
 Oi 
 Oi 
 Under 
 one 9th of OJ 
 
 Ditto, Everton, 
 Toxteth, West 
 Derby .... 
 Manchester .... 
 Preston 
 
 342,481 
 1,573,405 
 177,196 
 
 341 
 1,106 
 98 
 
 under . . 
 
 . . o o^ 
 . . o oi 
 
300 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 The same calculations made on all the counties and 
 divisions in England and Wales show an average rate 
 per pound of 4f c?. on the annual value of real property 
 assessed to property tax in 1842-3. 
 
 That this mode of assessing the Land Tax is quite 
 contrary to the meaning of the Legislature, is beyond 
 doubt, for all the Acts expressly provide that the tax on 
 "all hereditaments of what nature and kind soever," 
 shall be "the sum of 4s. for every 20s. by the year, 
 which the said messuages, etc., are now worth to be 
 leased, if the same were truly and bond fide leased or 
 demised at rack-rent, and according to the full true 
 yearly value thereof; " and all enact that Commissioners 
 shall be appointed, and that such Commissioners shall 
 appoint two assessors for each parish, whose duties are 
 thus defined in the Act of 1798: "To ascertain and 
 inform themselves, by all lawful ways and means they 
 can, of the true and full yearly value of all manors, 
 etc.; " and having so done, <( to assess all and every 
 the said manors, etc., after the rate of 4s. for every 20s. 
 of the full yearly value as the same are let or are worth 
 to be let at the time of assessing thereof as aforesaid." 
 If the valuation of 1692 were to be the fixed and un- 
 varying assessment, what occasion was there for any 
 Assessors at all after that had been made ? Why should 
 they have been required annually to perform what 
 would then have been a mere unmeaning process? 
 Such, however, is the construction under which land- 
 owners have profited, and the revenue has suffered ever 
 since 1692. 
 
 Of the effect of this interpretation Liverpool affords a 
 striking example. The now populous district of Ever- 
 ton contributes, or lately contributed, about 12,000 
 to the income and property tax, exclusive of sums 
 paid by wealthy residents at their places of business in 
 town. But its contribution to the land tax is just four- 
 
THE LAND TAX. 301 
 
 teen pounds and a few odd shillings per annum ! This 
 is 4s. in the pound on land unredeemed, according to 
 its valuation in the reign of William III ; on the pre- 
 sent actual value it is some inappreciable fraction of a 
 farthing. 
 
 The same inequality, and in most cases the same 
 nominal amount of charges is found in the assessment 
 to land tax in Scotland. 
 
 The county of Ayr has the largest amount of real 
 property assessed to the land tax ; but the rate per cent, 
 is only 1 : 7 : 2. The county of Peebles, which is 
 valued at 432 : 2 : 9; is assessed at the rate of 16 per 
 cent. But the value of real property assessed to the 
 Income Tax in 1843 is 531,318 : 18 : 4J, while 
 Peebles is assessed at 74,810 : 7 : 3J. The county of 
 Lanark is assessed to the Income Tax in 1843 at 
 1,834,998 : 13 : 4, or more than three times the 
 amount of the county of Ayr, yet it pays to the land 
 tax only 1 : 5:5 per cent. Edinburgh pays 
 13 : 7 : per cent, on a valuation of 15,921 : 14 : 3, 
 but the rapid increase of manufacturing industry has 
 added immensely to the wealth of this city, the estimate 
 being 609,483 : 14 : 4; but even this has been out- 
 stripped by the City of Glasgow, which twenty years 
 ago was estimated at 629,340 : 8 : 10. But the 
 amount of Land Tax charged on Edinburgh by the Act 
 of 1797 is 2,660 : 10 : 6, while on Glasgow it is only 
 958. 
 
 The trouble of getting the figures for these estimates 
 at the present time is so great that, these figures are 
 taken from the 2nd Edition of this book, published in 
 1857. 
 
 What a case would be presented if the assessments to 
 Income Tax were taken in 1870 instead of 1843 ! 
 
 This is pretty good evidence that the landed interest 
 has been, for a very long time, the predominant power 
 
302 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 in Parliament, and it is pretty certain, from the signs of 
 the times that, if the landed interest continue so to exer- 
 cise its power, the day of retribution is not far distant. 
 
 These instances are sufficient to show the absurd 
 inequality and gross injustice of the present system, and 
 that it is quite impossible to establish a sound principle 
 on any such unsound basis. 
 
 The Custom of " Aids " has ceased to exist in our 
 modern system of taxation, and of its injustice no 
 stronger proof can be required than in the Land Tax, 
 nor can there be any good reason why it should not now 
 be repealed, to make way for another Act more suit- 
 able to the present time, founded on the sound basis of 
 equal taxation of all real property, and all other de- 
 scriptions of realised property, the annual produce of 
 which can be ascertained and taxed, without resorting 
 to the unholy and demoralising test of an oath. 
 
 If it be admitted, and it is universally admitted, 
 that a tax on land and houses is a legitimate tax, it 
 must be admitted that, the tax ought to be levied in 
 proportion to the annual value or produce of the pro- 
 perty, and then the present Land Tax, added to the 
 Income Tax, is a double charge on this description of 
 property. 
 
 It is often heard as an argument for the continuance 
 of the existing state of things that, all purchases of pro- 
 perty have been made with the full knowledge of the 
 present Land Tax ; but this is no argument against an 
 equitable adjustment of taxation ; but with a land tax 
 on land and houses, and also an income tax, an equi- 
 table adjustment is impossible. The only way of pro- 
 ceeding for this object is, to repeal all these Acts and 
 begin again on a new system. But this course of pro- 
 ceeding involves the necessity of some equitable arrange- 
 ment with regard to that portion of the Land Tax whicli 
 has been redeemed under THI LAND TAX REDEMPTION 
 ACT. 
 
THE LAND TAX. 303 
 
 The Land Tax already redeemed amounts (or lately 
 did amount), to something more than a million of 
 money. But, whatever the amount, it must be regarded 
 as part of the National Debt, and be dealt with accord- 
 ingly. It is, therefore, proposed that, a new Stock be 
 created, to be called The Land Tax Redemption Stock, 
 by which all sums of money paid for redemption of 
 Land Tax shall be discharged in the form of Annuities. 
 
 By these simple and just means all difficulty on this 
 ground would be removed for establishing one uniform 
 valuation of real property throughout the kingdom, 
 which shall form the basis for all taxes levied upon it, 
 whether for imperial or local purposes. 
 
 The process of redemption of Land Tax is nothing 
 more than a transfer of annuities to the Crown, either 
 by transferring so much Stock as will produce an 
 annual amount of interest equal to the sum of Land 
 Tax charged, and one-tenth more ; or by payment of a 
 sum of money which shall purchase such an amount of 
 Stock in the 3 per Cent. Consols, or in the 3 per Cent. 
 Reduced Annuities, at the price of such Stock the 
 second week after the date of the contract. That is to 
 say, that if the yearly sum of Land Tax to be redeemed 
 shall amount to 100, then so much Stock must be 
 transferred as will produce 110 interest. 
 
 Here, then, is no difficulty in re- adjusting this tax, 
 and doing justice to all parties. It is simply a money 
 transaction, and one easily carried out, the sum re- 
 deemed being 1,000,000, or thereabouts. Thus, by 
 repealing all the existing Land Tax, and Land Tax Re- 
 demption Acts, and imposing a tax on land and houses 
 and other realised property of the kingdom, by an 
 equal rate to be levied on the present yearly value, as 
 proposed, all the accumulated and accruing capital of the 
 kingdom, would then contribute a fair share of taxation 
 to the State, and a principle would be at once established, 
 
304 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 which would form an immoveable basis for the security 
 of the public revenue, and the honor and prosperity of 
 the nation. 
 
 The adoption of this tax would then enable the Legis- 
 lature to repeal every Statute relating to Customs and 
 Excise duties, and at once sweep away a heap of tangled 
 rubbish which, like a filthy and fermenting mass is spread- 
 ing noxious exhalations over every part of the country, 
 poisoning the people, paralysing their natural powers, 
 and producing altogether an amount of degradation and 
 misery incalculable, and otherwise incurable. And not 
 only this, but also much other obnoxious rubbish, in all 
 those Acts of Parliament under which the unequal and 
 unjust Income Tax, the mean and contemptible 
 Assessed Taxes, and the cruel and vexatious Stamp 
 Duties, are now levied. 
 
 Let these intolerable and offensive burdens be re- 
 moved, and who can say what might then be the pro- 
 sperity and power of this People ? 
 
 With such a Country and such a People, rich in 
 Nature's gifts, who can say what might be their great- 
 ness and their happiness, if once delivered from these 
 oppressive and debasing influences, which are like an 
 over-hanging all-pervading blight, desolating the fair 
 face of the country, paralysing the natural powers of 
 the people, and, through the innumerable crooked ways 
 of evil, demoralising the whole nation ? 
 
 These are the prospective benefits, not to be calcu- 
 lated in figures, but to be thought of, to be hoped for, 
 to be looked for, to be aimed at. The People must be 
 made free before they can be made happy, and happy 
 before they can be made good. 
 
 The laborer is not free as long as he is deprived of the 
 fruits of his own honest labor, or curtailed in the en- 
 joyment of any of those rights and privileges, which he 
 mainly contributes to support that others may enjoy. 
 

 THE LAND TAX. 305 
 
 A vast majority of the People are now taxed by the 
 State beyond all proportion to the benefits conferred 
 upon them by the State. To them it matters very 
 little who is the Ruler, if such is to be the rule. 
 
 That the sum of Forty Millions and upwards should 
 be raised yearly from the People by Customs and Excise 
 duties is a shame and disgrace to this enlightened nation. 
 It is a violation of justice between man and man, and 
 sets at defiance common sense. 
 
 When will it be remembered that, men with their 
 millions are but stewards, or trustees, or what you will, 
 and that, the time must come when they will be held 
 accountable for their stewardship or trust ? 
 
 When will Rulers of Nations and Law-makers learn 
 that, they will be held accountable for laws which grind 
 down and oppress the poor? Such are the laws which 
 impose the greater part of the taxes on the daily neces- 
 saries, comforts, and conveniences of life, thereby im- 
 posing the greatest burden on the greatest number, who, 
 being the poorest, are least able to bear it, and limiting 
 the few luxuries and comforts within the reach of those 
 by whose labor the nation's wealth is made, and private 
 riches are accumulated. 
 
 When will the rich learn that, colossal fortunes and 
 wide-spread misery, are sure signs of something wrong, 
 that there is something rotten in the State which 
 brings forth such monster evils and anomalies, found 
 mostly in rude and barbarous nations ? 
 
 Not that colossal fortunes or their possessors are com- 
 plained of, but the system which fosters and encourages 
 these monstrous growths at the expense and suffering of 
 those by whose labor they are produced. As Coleridge 
 said : 
 
 ( ' There are errors which no wise man will treat with 
 derision, lest they should be the reflection of some great 
 truth yet below the horison." 
 
 x 
 
306 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Well may \ve be reminded of Lord Bacon's maxim 
 from Scripture, to " make a stand upon the ancient 
 way, and look about us to discover what is the best 
 way ;" for, " if time of course alters things for the 
 worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to 
 the better, what shall be the end ?" 
 
 No human system, however faultless, can be so 
 framed as to keep itself in good order, and adapt itself 
 to the changes which time must bring to the generations 
 of mankind. 
 
 The instances here given show the inequality and in- 
 justice of the present system, and that it is impossible 
 to establish a sound system oil such an unsound 
 principle. 
 
 Why the equal and just law in the Act of William 
 and Mary was not carried out in its true spirit and 
 meaning, it is now needless to inquire, but to carry out 
 that law now, by adapting it, in its spirit and intention, 
 to the present time, can be no innovation. 
 
 It is proposed that, similar directions should now be 
 given and like arrangements made, as by that Act, for 
 an assessment of 2s. (instead of 4s.) in the Pound, upon 
 all real property assessed on the bond fide rack-rent ; 
 and on personal property, as denned, at the same rate. 
 
 To obtain such a Valuation of the Real Property, 
 would be neither difficult nor expensive, nor would much 
 time be required for this, with the Ordnance Surveys 
 and the Surveys and Valuations for the Tithe Commu- 
 tation, already made. 
 
 It appears, therefore, to be for those who object to the 
 proposed scheme for direct taxation, to state the ground 
 of their objection. If it he one of principle, there can 
 be no fhflftculty in stating it, and if the principle cannot 
 be maintained in theory, it ought not to be carried out 
 in practice. 
 
 But it is no just ground of objection to show that, by 
 
THE LAND TAX. 307 
 
 this scheme all will not be equally taxed in proportion 
 to their means, that not being the principle on which 
 this scheme is founded. It must be first shown that, to 
 tax all in proportion to their means is a just and wise 
 principle, which has hitherto been assumed, but never 
 proved, and is here denied. It must be shown that, it 
 is unjust to those taxed, and injurious to the State, if 
 all be not equally taxed. It is impossible, by any 
 scheme, to tax all equally in proportion to their means, 
 and if it were possible so to tax them it would be both 
 unjust and unwise for themselves and for the State. 
 
 This is the question, and it is not to be answered by 
 an opinion resting on the prejudice of long usage, by 
 the idle and groundless charge of innovation, or by the 
 idle and groundless fear of consequences from so great a 
 change, such as, throwing vast masses of the people 
 out of their accustomed employments, and such as 
 depriving the Government of so much Patronage. It 
 must be shown that, these consequences are necessarily 
 evil and irremediable, that other and more profitable 
 employments are not to be found, that such patronage 
 is necessary for good government, that it is any part 
 of the duty of a Government to find employment for the 
 people. If they do not show all this, they impute great 
 wrong to the Legislature for sanctioning the innovation 
 of Railways, without providing compensation for the 
 vast numbers thrown out of their accustomed employ- 
 ments by that great change in social life. 
 
 If the objection be one of detail only, the principle is 
 admitted, and there can be no difficulty in adapting the 
 details to the principle. It is not pretended here to 
 define all the details necessary for carrying out the 
 principle in practice. The details may well be left to 
 the Government and the Legislature, but the principle 
 
 ust be settled by the People, if it be ever settled at all. 
 The more carefully the proposed scheme is examined 
 
 x 2 
 
308 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 in all its details, the more clearly it will be seen that, it 
 is founded on the just and sound principle of making 
 everybody contribute to the necessities of the State in 
 proportion to the benefits received from the State ; and 
 that, of the burden to be borne no undue portion will be 
 imposed on any particular class of persons or descrip- 
 tion of property, but that, the whole burden will be 
 distributed equally over all in proportion to their means 
 for bearing it. 
 
 It will be seen from this short review of the Land 
 Tax Acts that, the proposed change in the taxation of 
 the country is no innovation, but only a partial restora- 
 tion of the Land and Property Tax Acts, passed in the 
 reign of William and Mary, and in the subsequent part 
 of the reign of King William, " of glorious memory." 
 
 No attempt was then made to tax Incomes, otherwise 
 than as derived from Land and Houses, and from 
 certain specified descriptions of Personal Property, 
 according to the Annual Value thereof, as ascertained 
 by valuation. There was no inquisitorial inquiry into 
 incomes, no demand of returns under Schedules A. B. 
 C. D. E. no false returns, no premium on perjury. 
 There was no tax on Stock in Trade, no tax on the 
 Profits of Trade, or Professions, no tax on the Wages 
 of Labor. 
 
 Wherein is the difference between that state of things, 
 and the change now proposed ? 
 
 The only real difference is this : that, the enormous 
 increase in the value of the real and personal property of 
 the kingdom since the tax was first imposed, would 
 enable the State to raise the required revenue by 
 imposing only half the amount of that tax, and to 
 dispense with all other taxes on property. That is the 
 only difference between the state of things which then 
 was and is now proposed to be. 
 
 It was, manifestly, no part of the purport or intent 
 
POOR LAWS. 309 
 
 of those Acts to tax, directly or indirectly, incomes, 
 profits, or wages, as such. 
 
 It is no part of the proposed Scheme to tax any of 
 these, as such. 
 
 The Gross sum produced by the Land Tax in the 
 year ended 31st March, 1870, was as follows : 
 
 . 
 
 On Lands and Tenements 1,654,724 : 9 : 5f 
 
 On Offices and Pensions ...... 237 ; 6 : 0_ 
 
 Total.. .. l,654,961:15:5f 
 
 POOR LAWS. 
 
 The principle of Poor Laws is that, persons incapable 
 of maintaining themselves ought to be maintained by 
 the State, by means of a compulsory tax. 
 
 This principle is false, unless it can be shown that, 
 the persons have been rendered incapable of maintaining 
 themselves by acts of the State. If the Government, 
 both general and local, be of the best form, and in the 
 roost efficient order, such persons can have only a moral 
 claim for individual support by charity. In the con- 
 verse proposition only can they have any legitimate 
 claim on the State. 
 
 The main objections to the principle of Poor Laws 
 are, the impossibility of distinguishing between deserv- 
 ing and undeserving objects for relief, the moral degra- 
 dation of those so relieved, and the injury to those who 
 are compelled to provide the relief. 
 
 If Poor Laws be in the nature of an expedient to 
 bolster up defects of Government, which are capable of 
 remedy, then the principle is most vicious. Until 
 Government, both general and local, be put into the 
 most perfect order and every encouragement be given to 
 prudence, and until charity be excited by all prudent 
 means, it is too much to say that, any other resources 
 
310 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 would be necessary ; arid recurring to any other re- 
 sources prematurely, would be to retard improvement in 
 the right direction. Expedients are easy modes of sup- 
 plying defects, and for a time often produce apparent 
 benefit, but it is on the slow operation of sound prin- 
 ciples only that reliance can be safely placed. 
 
 Those who maintain the principle of Poor Laws, 
 maintain it as a permanent principle, to be kept in 
 operation under all circumstances ; because they say all 
 property in civilised countries being appropriated, they 
 who are born into the world and have not the means of 
 providing for themselves, have a right to a maintenance 
 from the property of others. This position is main- 
 tained chiefly on the assumption that, anyone born into 
 the world, where all property is appropriated, has greater 
 difficulty in providing for himself than in a savage state ; 
 but the direct contrary is the fact. In any given 
 country, a man capable of labor can more easily com- 
 mand the necessaries of life, when it is civilised, than he 
 could have done when it was in a savage state ; but it 
 will be objected that, he cannot, under all circumstances, 
 obtain employment. This objection will be considered 
 presently. 
 
 This is the view taken by that clear observer and 
 close reasoner, Mr. Thomas Walker, one of the Police 
 Magistrates of the Metropolis, who, upwards of thirty 
 years ago, wrote and published some admirable articles 
 on this and other subjects in a weekly Paper, called the 
 " Original." As these Papers are not now easily pro- 
 cured, some free Extracts will here be given in his own 
 words. 
 
 With respect to persons incapable of labor, whether 
 from infancy, or age, or from inability, physical or 
 mental, he says, " their natural rights cannot be 
 greater in a civilised than in an uncivilised state, though 
 in the former their chances of provision, independently 
 
POOR LAWS. 311 
 
 of any compulsory maintenance, are much better than in 
 the latter. The advocates for the principle of Poor 
 Laws assert that, children whose parents are unable to 
 maintain them have a natural right to a maintenance 
 from the property of others. If from a natural right is 
 meant the right they would have had in a state of 
 nature, of what value is it, or how is it to be enforced ? 
 Being destitute, how are they in a worse condition 
 where property is appropriated, than where it is not ? 
 And in the latter case parents are exposed to ina- 
 bility to maintain their children. If then those chil- 
 dren are not in a worse condition, they are not entitled 
 to any new right by way of compensation. They could 
 have had no advantages in a state of nature, which give 
 them a right to compulsory provision in a state of 
 civilisation. The truth is, their claims are of a higher 
 nature than any that laws can enforce, and in a well- 
 ordered society are sure to be attended to without com- 
 pulsion. The same reason applies to the destitute aged 
 and impotent. In a state of nature, where property is 
 not appropriated, there can be no compulsory provision 
 for them, and their chances of voluntary provision are 
 much less than in a state of civilisation. Now as to 
 those who are capable of labor, and who, it is said, are 
 entitled to have employment found them, if they cannot 
 get it themselves, or to subsistence, because all property 
 is appropriated, I answer that, in a civilised state there 
 could be no such class, unless created or permitted by 
 defective government. Where political regulations are 
 such as to give all men fair play, and not to place any 
 unnecessary temptations to improvidence in their way, 
 the same exertion and the same prudence that would 
 enable the savage to exist, would enable the civilised 
 laborer to live well, and to find employment for himself 
 under all circumstances ; whereas, the savage, with only 
 the pauper standard of shifting for himself, would be 
 
312 TAXATION AS IT TS. 
 
 starved to death. Whatever quantity of destitution 
 there may be in this country or in Ireland, for want of 
 employment, it may be traced to removeable causes; but 
 to provide for that destitution by the adoption of a per- 
 manent principle, is the surest way to prevent the causes 
 from being removed." 
 
 No words can better enforce the principle that, 
 " whatever is morally wrong cannot be politically right." 
 The standard of morals, individually, will soon be raised 
 too high to admit of anything like a class of paupers, 
 and there will be no destitution, for the relief of which 
 the funds of private charity will not be far more than 
 sufficient. The conclusion is that, Poor Laws are not 
 founded on any natural right, but that they involve only 
 a question of expediency ; and that, no system of ma- 
 nagement will be ultimately productive of benefit, unless 
 it has for its object the abolition of the principle.. As 
 an expedient, nothing can be more fatal to the object 
 than compulsory relief by the Poor Laws, for it not only 
 prevents the causes from being removed, but it multi- 
 plies the causes and makes their removal impossible by 
 its demoralising effects. Moreover, there is another 
 point of view in which the principle of Poor Laws is 
 false and injurious, and that is, they can be an expedient 
 only to supply the deficiencies of wages, or the waste of 
 improvidence. 
 
 If wages be high enough to support the whole class of 
 laborers, Poor Laws only encourage improvidence: if 
 wages be not high enough, Poor Laws operate to pre- 
 vent their becoming so. Temporary want of employ- 
 merit can be no good argument for the adoption of a 
 permanent principle, and permanent want of employ- 
 ment is a sign of over-population, which can only be 
 the result of improvidence, for which the Poor Laws are 
 not the remedy. 
 
 Pauperism is a state of dependence on parochial 
 
POOR LAWS. 313 
 
 relief, and operates as a bounty to improvidence, at the 
 expense of the provident and industrious. It may be 
 said that, the effect of the Poor Laws is to establish a 
 Benefit Society in every parish. But in Benefit Socie- 
 ties the tax is voluntary and equal, or fairly propor- 
 tioned, and is managed by the contributors themselves ; 
 though with all their precautions there is this acknow- 
 ledged objection that, the worst members generally 
 receive the most advantage. But where wages are 
 taxed by the parish, the tax is neither voluntary nor 
 equal, but most unfairly proportioned ; nor have the 
 contributors any control over the distribution, but are 
 made to apply for their own as if they were depending 
 upon others. The attempt to keep down the price of 
 labor, by reserving a fund for those who have the 
 greatest calls, appears practicable at first sight; but, in 
 reality, has invariably the effect of increasing those calls 
 beyond the capability of the fund to answer, and, there- 
 fore, the price of labor is raised instead of being reduced. 
 To tax unmarried laborers for the benefit of the married 
 soon increases marriages, so as to make the tax insuffi- 
 cient; and the more it is raised, the greater is the 
 insufficiency, and consequently greater the demand 
 upon some other fund. The Poor Laws say to the 
 laborer; You need take no thought for yourselves or 
 your children. But what does Christianity say ? St. 
 Paul, speaking not for the rich, but of the poor, says ; 
 " If any provide not for his own, and especially for 
 those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is 
 worse than an infidel/' Immediately after, he states to 
 whom the voluntary contributions of the charitable 
 ought to be distributed. 
 
 Enormous as is the annual amount of the expenses of 
 pauperism, directly and indirectly, nearly the whole of 
 which might be saved, to say nothing of the demo- 
 ralising consequences, which cannot be estimated in 
 
314 TAXATION AS IT is. 
 
 money, it is not nearly equal to the amount to be ex- 
 pected from the improvement of property that would 
 soon take place, if the habits of the laboring classes 
 were raised as they would be by the abolition of Poor 
 Laws and consequent self-dependence. By reducing 
 working hours and extending education, by rendering 
 the various offices of labor as little irksome as may be, 
 and bringing as nearly as may be the direct wages of 
 labor to the cost of labor, the standard of comfort of 
 the working classes would be raised, and pauperism 
 and crime would be very greatly reduced. 
 
 In a very interesting work, lately published, called 
 " Recess Studies," edited by Sir Alexander Grant, 
 there are some remarks in an Essay on " The Laws of 
 Supply and Demand," by Professor Fleming Jenkin, 
 so applicable to this view of the evil effects of the Poor 
 Laws that, I give them here in the author's own words, 
 extracted from different parts of the Essay : " Every 
 action which tends to make the laborer put up with 
 less comfort or less security, tends to lower his wages. 
 Teach him nothing, so that he wants no books nor 
 other pleasures of the mind ; abolish bodily amusement, 
 so that he expects no pleasures of the body ; accustom 
 him to live like a beast in a hovel; remove all fear of 
 absolute starvation by a Poor Law; use the same 
 machinery to persuade him that he may, with a good 
 conscience, desert helpless children or old parents ; give 
 him little doles at every pinch lest he be tempted to 
 rebel ; do all this and your dull aimless wretch will 
 plod from day to day, expecting nothing more, and 
 spawning swarms of wretched beings to succeed him in 
 his hopeless contentment with a pittance." . . . " Dis- 
 content with that which is vile is the mainspring by 
 which the world is to be moved to good. Contentment 
 with degradation is a vice a vice only too difficult to 
 eradicate." (Page 181-2). 
 

 POOR LAWS. 315 
 
 Again : " Strange, therefore, as the doctrine may 
 sound, it is the wants of men which regulate their 
 wages ; and this is a simple deduction from the prin- 
 ciple that, the cost of production ultimately determines 
 prices. Where wants are few and simple, there wages 
 are low ; where wants are numerous, wages are high ; 
 and it is the wants which raise the wages, not the wages 
 which have created the wants ; pay a savage more than 
 he is accustomed to, and he simply squanders the 
 money. But while the wants of men determine their 
 pay, it is the demand for men of that class which deter- 
 mines how many shall be employed at that pay. This 
 is the corrective to discontent. If their wants are 
 great, few or no men of the given class may get any 
 pay at all. It is the seller of labor who determines the 
 price, but it is the buyer who determines the number of 
 the transactions. Capital settles how many men are 
 wanted at given wages, but labor settles what wages the 
 man shall have." (Page 183-4). 
 
 Again : " Convince these paupers of their own 
 misery. Teach them what comfort is, and a rational 
 self-interest will lead them to independence, which the 
 more wealthy have reached by the same path. Rational 
 self-interest has done most things in this world, the 
 great duty of the teacher being to distinguish rational 
 from irrational self-interest. Whatever school of re- 
 ligion or philosophy we belong to, we cannot deny that, 
 each man, acting rationally for his own advantage, will 
 conduce to the good of all ; and if the motive be not of 
 the highest, it is one which at least can always be 
 counted on. It were a poor world if higher motives 
 were banished ; but in looking to the improvement of 
 the pauper it is well that we may count on a motive 
 which is at least effectual. We need only teach men 
 what they should desire, and excite in their minds a 
 real disgust at their miserable condition, in order, by 
 
316 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 the very laws of price,, to create the Utopia of labor, 
 where all men shall get a fair day's wages for a fair 
 day's work, by which vague phrase the workman means 
 that the pay for his labor shall buy him enjoyment as 
 well as bread." 
 
 Every sentence in these extracts is so true, every 
 w r ord is so well chosen, and the whole is so conclusive 
 that, it would be well for mankind if the Essay from 
 which these extracts are taken were printed in every 
 language of the earth. I entreat the attention of every 
 reader of the " People's Blue Book " to these extracts, 
 for they establish the truth of every principle here laid 
 down, with a distinctness, conciseness, and force rarely 
 to be met with in modern writings. More particularly 
 I invite attention to these extracts as applicable to the 
 present condition of the working classes in Ireland, 
 whose standard of comfort generally, and especially 
 amongst the small farmers and agricultural laborers, is, 
 for personal comfort, below the standard of savages. I 
 will not carry the comparison further, but the effects 
 of this low standard are seen in the present condition 
 of that most miserable country. Let the worst be 
 imagined, and it will not be beyond the truth. 
 
 Though the sum annually raised on account of pau- 
 perism is so large, yet real pauperism is much less than is 
 generally supposed ; and of that a large proportion is di- 
 rectly produced by the certain anticipation of a provision 
 from the parish. All the money raised by the poor rate, 
 except the money laid out for the actual maintenance 
 of paupers, is wasted, as expenses of the system, and if 
 the system ceased, of course, these expenses would cease. 
 
 From the number of real paupers are to be excepted, 
 1st., The few who have property but conceal it: 2nd., 
 The more numerous class, with competent friends, who 
 could assist them, but do not choose to save the parish : 
 3rd., The large class who feign inability to perform or 
 
POOR LAWS. 317 
 
 procure labor : 4th. , All those who by any other spe- 
 cies of imposition or abuse wrongfully participate in the 
 parish fund : and lastly, the immense number who re- 
 ceive part of their maintenance from the poor's rates. 
 So far as these classes are concerned, no inconvenience 
 would result from the immediate abolition of the Poor 
 Laws. With respect to those who are really paupers, 
 but have become so from the certain anticipation of a 
 provision from the parish, these may be reckoned ; 1st., 
 Those to whom property has at some period of their 
 lives come, but who have wilfully run through it, their 
 habits having been previously formed according to the 
 low standard of the Poor Laws : 2nd., The numerous 
 class who have had opportunities of accumulating, but 
 who have wasted their means with a fixed determination 
 eventually to have recourse to the parish : 3rd., Those 
 whose determined pauper habits have disgusted their 
 friends : 4th., Those who have incapacitated themselves 
 from labor by dissolute habits, contracted from a re- 
 liance on parochial assistance : 5th., Those (a very 
 numerous class) who, from perverseuess of temper, have 
 wilfully brought themselves upon the parish : 6th., 
 Those who married from a reliance on the rates : 7th., 
 Hereditary paupers ; those who have been in the habit 
 of depending upon the poor's rates from the remotest 
 periods, and think they have acquired as good a title to 
 the parish fund as the land-owners have to their estates : 
 8th., Those who have been persuaded by other paupers 
 to become paupers : 9th., Those who have been made 
 paupers by their compulsory payments to the poor's rates. 
 
 These different classes are not enumerated from theo- 
 retical inference, but from the practical observation, and 
 it is obvious that, so far as they are concerned, the Poor 
 Laws might be made to cease with the next generation 
 without inconvenience. 
 
 It is a great mistake to suppose that, there is any 
 
318 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 humanity in the Poor Laws. The result is the very 
 reverse of humanity. If wages be not sufficient, the Poor 
 Laws are only paying what is due in a degrading and 
 cruel manner. If wages be sufficient, the Poor Laws 
 hold out a provision to improvidence and all its deso- 
 lating evils. Any improvement in means would be 
 wasted, or worse than wasted, unless the standard of 
 comfort be raised and accompanied by a corresponding 
 improvement of habits. It is lamentable, but true, that, 
 to the improvident population of large towns, and to 
 the pauperised laborers of most of the agricultural dis- 
 tricts, any facilities for maintaining themselves, beyond 
 drudgery for the bare necessaries of life, only make 
 them work the less and multiply the faster. Of pro- 
 viding any resources for casualties or for old age, they 
 have no notion. It is this state of things which makes 
 it so generally believed that, the system of Poor Law can- 
 not be dispensed with. Those who hold this opinion 
 do not look to a sufficiently high standard : they see 
 that, improvidence is the present characteristic of the 
 laboring classes, and that the improvident, as a body, 
 will not labor unless compelled by necessity : therefore, 
 it is concluded that, the bulk of mankind must be kept 
 on the verge of necessity, or that the requisite labor 
 will not be performed. This is a most erroneous con- 
 clusion, and to expose this most serious error, and to 
 show the remedy, is the present object. The most effi- 
 ciently industrious are those who, having fixed their 
 minds upon securing comfort and independence, are 
 constantly intent on the means. There is no reason 
 in the nature of things, why the requisite habits should 
 not be made as prevalent as the opposite ones now are. 
 If there were no poor's rates, but more prudence, and 
 wages were sufficiently high to enable the laborer to 
 provide for old age and to bring up decejntly the average 
 number of children, allowing for the ordinary casual- 
 ties, then where there were more than the average num- 
 
POOR LAWS. 319 
 
 ber of children, or extraordinary casualties, the re- 
 sources would be a certain degree of privation, and, 
 beyond that, the voluntary assistance of those around. 
 
 Where there is general comfort, a few cases of poverty, 
 (not pauperism) so far from being considered burden- 
 some, are not only cheerfully but eagerly relieved. 
 These are the legitimate objects of charity, and as they 
 excite the kindly affections, and repay them with grati- 
 tude, they tend to increase the general stock of virtue 
 and happiness. But the Poor Laws, by serving to de- 
 base the one class, and to make the other believe such 
 debasement inevitable, greatly retard any material im- 
 provement. They keep up a race of paupers even under 
 the most favorable circumstances. It is the nature of 
 pauperism to infect, and it is the study of paupers to 
 make converts. Experience teaches them that, it is the 
 tendency of numbers to increase their pay and decrease 
 their degradation. By numbers they over-awe and tire 
 out those whose interest it is to control them : by num- 
 bers they diminish the examples of independent exertion. 
 They are consequently assiduous in every act of recruit- 
 ing their ranks and preventing desertion. It is little 
 known by what persuasion, threats, derision, and 
 intrigue, many healthy spirits are corrupted, arid how 
 many by the same means are prevented from emanci- 
 pating themselves. 
 
 As long as there is a permanent fund it will continue 
 to be so. The greater part of the population is kept 
 too near the verge of pauperism, with unsettled habits 
 and downward looks. They are so habituated to what 
 is low, that any partial scheme for their improvement 
 advances slowly, is eyed with suspicion, and generally 
 ends in decay ; and it may be laid down as a maxim 
 that, in every political institution, the tendency of 
 which is to induce other than self-dependence, abuse is 
 unavoidable, and that, if it were not, still the results 
 could never be beneficial. 
 
320 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 There is a dread, with some persons, that the labor- 
 ing classes may be made so prudent as to become inde- 
 pendent of work, or so refined as to be above it, or that 
 their habits may be so raised as to require exorbitant 
 wages. That individuals may become independent of 
 work is very true and very desirable ; but that very 
 circumstance will always hold out sufficient temptation 
 to ensure a supply of laborers. With respect to an 
 increase of refinement, the error arises from taking the 
 effect of transition for permanent effect. Where partial 
 improvement is going on, the few who are the first to 
 partake of it are very likely, as the phrase is, to give 
 themselves airs and to appear above their work ; but 
 it is not the nature of their acquirement, but the new- 
 ness of it and the distinction, which produce the evil. 
 The individuals are not above their work, but above 
 their fellow-workmen. As soon as the improvement 
 becomes general the inconvenience ceases. 
 
 It is a common complaint, on extension of education, 
 that female servants become difficult to be met with 
 and difficult to be managed ; but in those parts of the 
 country where the same extension has long existed, no 
 such complaint is ever heard of. 
 
 With respect to refinement, it should be remembered 
 that, the offices of labor are almost universally capable 
 of being rendered much more agreeable and respectable 
 than they have been or are. The first step to this 
 should be in the improvement of the homes of the 
 laboring classes. Their habits are not likely to reach 
 refinement in their present homes. 
 
 If raising the habits of the laboring classes lead to 
 the raising of their wages, so much the better, provided 
 habits be raised in proportion to wages. The wages of 
 labor may be augmented without increasing the cost of 
 labor. The millions of money now spent yearly on the 
 idle and vicious poor, and on prisons, penitentiaries, 
 
POOR LAWS. 321 
 
 and reformatories, may be better spent in removing the 
 drawbacks upon the enjoyments of this beautiful world, 
 arising from the ignorance, grossness and dishonesty of 
 the laboring classes. For this purpose scarcely any 
 expense can be too great. 
 
 By improving the wretched homes of the poor labor- 
 ing: classes and raising their standard of comfort they 
 would be lifted out of their disorderly habits of igno- 
 rance and vice, whence spring and spread unceasingly 
 infection and death in its most appalling form over town 
 and country. We might then hope that, these terrible 
 evils, by which the natural law works out the intended 
 good, would disappear under the blessed light and pure 
 air from heaven. 
 
 Can any expense be too great for such a purpose, by 
 which so much misery might be spared, and the average 
 length of human life might be prolonged to the blessing 
 and enjoyment of all classes ? 
 
 To those who have carefully considered the subject 
 from these points of view, it must be apparent that, the 
 Poor laws have inflicted and are inflicting incalculable 
 injury not only upon the poor, but also upon all classes 
 of the people, from the highest to the lowest, and upon 
 the whole Country, by increasing pauperism and retard- 
 ing the desired end. 
 
 These evils have also been greatly increased by public 
 charities, which create the necessity they relieve, but do 
 not relieve all the necessity they create. This is now 
 being exemplified in the London Districts, particularly 
 in the western districts of London, where Committees, 
 appointed by a Charity Organisation Society, meet for 
 organising Charitable Relief and repressing Mendicity 
 in the Metropolis. The honorable and well meaning 
 Gentlemen, who have responded to the invitation of the 
 Poor Law Board to come forward to the relief of the 
 Poor Rates generally, and who are urgent to have 
 
322 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 handed over to them the money of others, to be distri- 
 buted in charity for them, have taken upon themselves 
 an astonishing amount of labor and expense for very 
 mischievous consequences. They have collected con- 
 siderable contributions, and with the funds so collected 
 they have established offices in their respective districts,, 
 with unpaid Gentlemen- Clerks, paid messengers,, and 
 enormous Books. 
 
 In these books are entered the names of all applicants 
 for relief. The applicants are brought to the Office by 
 printed tickets, freely issued by the District Board, and 
 freely distributed in the streets to all the poor. 
 
 These boards hold their weekly meetings and ex- 
 amine the entries in their Books of the names and par- 
 ticulars of the applicants, and direct inquiries to be 
 made into the truth of the statement of each applicant, 
 by Messengers in the town, or by letter in the country. 
 When the answers are received to these inquiries, relief 
 is given or refused, as the applicants may be deserving 
 or undeserving objects. 
 
 At the commencement of these self-elected Boards of 
 Assistant Poor Law Commissioners, the Writer was 
 invited to join the Board in whose district he resided. 
 In answer to their invitation he attended the Board 
 personally and explained his objections to their pro- 
 ceedings. He then foretold the inevitable consequence, 
 and, being inevitable, it followed. Intelligence of these 
 freely distributed relief tickets spread quickly, and 
 vagrant tramps from all parts of the country soon after- 
 wards reached London in crowds. Amongst these crowds 
 were agricultural laborers who had thrown up their 
 poor employments and hard work to better themselves 
 without work, dismissed servants, small shop-keepers 
 broken down by taxes and poor-rates, the drunken 
 vagabonds, the improvident and dissolute, the old and 
 the young, the lame and the blind, the helpless 
 
POOR LAWS. 323 
 
 beggars and wanderers in all the varieties of destitu- 
 tion and misery, all came pouring in to increase the 
 chronic state of destitution and misery in London. In 
 the very first following winter, the increased number of 
 destitute beggars and objects of disgusting misery in 
 the streets of London was the general remark. How 
 could it be otherwise, where relief was to be had for 
 the asking ? 
 
 Poorly paid laborers in the country came with these 
 crowds to London, in the hope of obtaining the means 
 of subsistence on easier terms. 
 
 Such was the experiment made on the suggestion of 
 the late President of the Poor Law Board, and such was 
 the result. 
 
 Works of Charity by Societies, however well intended 
 and however well administered, can never effect the 
 real good of well administered private charity. The 
 real and well deserving objects of charity are not to be 
 found out by Poor Law Boards, or Charity Organisa- 
 tion Societies. The real and deserving objects are to 
 be found only by personal knowledge or private enquiry, 
 and to be relieved only by private charity. The relief 
 is then satisfactory to both parties, and the benefit is 
 conferred without the injury. But when relief is con- 
 ferred by the invisible hand of the Law or by the un- 
 known hand of an association, there is no gratitude 
 and comparatively little satisfaction to either party ; but 
 there is great injury done to others. 
 
 Now for the conclusion to be drawn from all these 
 remarks. What other conclusion can be come to than 
 that, the Rates and Taxes are depriving the working 
 classes of a large portion of their wages of labor, and 
 that, the Poor Laws are degrading and demoralising the 
 people for whose relief these Laws are made, and, more- 
 over, are spreading pauperism, over the whole king- 
 dom ? 
 
 Y2 
 
324 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Who can contemplate, without the most serious ap- 
 prehensions for the consequences, the continuance of the 
 system which works such evils ? 
 
 There is a limit to the loyalty and forbearance of an 
 ignorant and suffering people. 
 
 If the owners of taxable property would take upon 
 themselves the whole burden of taxation, the burden 
 they would have to bear would be less than their pre- 
 sent share, and they would hold their possessions on a 
 safer title than they now hold them, by removing the 
 indefensible evils of our present system. 
 
 This would cut away the ground from under the 
 " Land Tenure Association/' the " International Asso- 
 ciation," and all other Associations of the false philo- 
 sophers and political cobblers of these days, who, by 
 their thievish theories and plausible principles are now 
 entrapping the ignorant and unwary into their schemes 
 for undermining the rights of property and the very 
 foundation of civilised society. 
 
 To expose these evils and to show the remedy is the 
 present object. 
 
 In the Pall Mall Gazette of llth January, 1872, is an 
 article on this subject, so applicable, from another point 
 of view, to these remarks that, it is given in the follow- 
 ing extract : 
 
 " The contrast of principle that exists between the 
 system of poor relief in Holland and in England is very 
 remarkable. Dutch legislation recognises no claim on 
 the part of the poor for the means of supporting life. 
 The State in Holland regards the care of the poor as the 
 duty of the Church or of the municipality, and only in 
 exceptional cases interferes in the matter. Every 
 religious body through its special officers relieves its 
 poorer members, and in every city, town, and village 
 there are relieving agents who dispense, without regard 
 to denomination, the moneys of the communal fund. 
 
POOR LAWS. 325 
 
 Vagrancy and pauperism are nominally offences against 
 law, but the law is seldom put in force. In fact, the 
 greatest leniency is extended towards the pauper, and 
 every encouragement is given to churches and to in- 
 dividuals to expend their wealth on his support. 
 
 " The result is at first sight very pleasing, and the ear 
 is not shocked with those tales of misery and starvation 
 with which we are tolerably familiar in England. But 
 when we come to examine the effect of the system upon 
 the population generally, our favorable impressions are 
 quickly dispelled. In Holland, as in England, bene- 
 volence is often blind, and is the more injurious because 
 it is the primary source from which the maintenance of 
 the poor is derived, instead of being, as with us, a 
 merely supplementary source. Pauperism, therefore, 
 has been for many years steadily increasing, and the 
 latest writer upon the subject asserts that, ' nearly one- 
 iourth of the total population of the country is depen- 
 dent/ In 1868 the cost of the maintenance and relief 
 of the poor in Holland amounted to about one million 
 sterling, not quite one-half of which sum was spent by 
 religious bodies on their own poor, and by associations 
 formed for special objects. In the same year the 
 number of persons in receipt of out-door relief was 
 675,000, besides about '60,000 who were assisted in 
 some way or other by charitable institutions. It should 
 be borne in mind that the entire population of Holland 
 does not exceed one-sixth of that of England and 
 Wales." 
 
 This opposite, but not less injurious, Dutch system is 
 a striking illustration of the impolicy of the English 
 system of dealing with the poor ; both weakening those 
 feelings of independence in the human mind so essential 
 or sustaining self-respect, and for discouraging impro- 
 vident habits. But the Dutch system is more injurious 
 than the English system, by making Charity the primary 
 
326 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 instead of the secondary source of relief, and making the 
 law against pauperism of no effect. 
 
 As long as the State makes paupers by taxing the 
 necessaries of life, thereby taxing the laborer in his own 
 labor, the poor have an unquestionable right to legal 
 relief, but when this ground is removed, the poor will 
 have no claim to legal relief, and the precariousness of 
 individual charity will then be their best protection 
 against needing it. But the State now has, and always 
 will have just ground for taking possession of all 
 neglected and deserted Children, and making them 
 " CHILDREN OF THE STATE," to be maintained and 
 brought up as such at the expense of the State, and to 
 be trained as soldiers and sailors, or otherwise employed 
 in the service of the State. 
 
 This suggestion was thrown out, for the consideration, 
 of the Government, in the first Edition of this Book, 
 fifteen years ago, and has been since partially adopted, 
 in the training ship at Portsmouth, and in the ship, 
 appointed for the like purpose, in the River Thames, 
 open to the voluntary contributions of those so disposed. 
 In France, where there is no statutable provision for 
 the destitute, but relief is left to private benevolence, 
 exercised under State superintendence, the system is no 
 better, but worse. 
 
 Any attempt to provide compulsory relief to the poor 
 is an error, because it must lead to far greater evils than 
 it can prevent. 
 
 Charity, without discrimination, encourages idleness 
 and improvidence, and by no human ingenuity can a law 
 be framed to enforce that degree of discrimination which 
 is essential for charitable distribution without injury. 
 
 Society can no more prevent wilful starvation than it 
 can any other form of suicide. 
 
 Any attempt to secure the working-man against want, 
 is an interference with the jurisdiction of Providence. 
 
POOR LAWS. 327 
 
 Society undertakes to give him what his Maker has 
 denied him, i.e., subsistence without labor. 
 
 The effect of charity in depressing the condition and 
 character of the independent laborer is very clearly seen 
 in those places which have been cursed with large 
 charitable endowments. When, as in these cases, the 
 charitable income is fixed and ascertained, the evil is 
 limited to the exact number of indolent and improvident 
 persons who get their living out of that income. But 
 when the stream flows, not from the misguided old mer- 
 chants trust fund, but from the vast reservoir of the whole 
 rateable property of the metropolis or great city, supple- 
 mented by the numerous rills of voluntary contribution, 
 then pauperism enlarges her mouth and all the idle thirsty 
 flock up from the country to drink of these flowing waters, 
 which flow for them without money and without price. 
 
 The ignorant poor of the provinces see in this resource 
 a pretty safe guarantee against the evil possibilities which 
 might otherwise deter them from leaving their own 
 neighbourhood and their daily tasks to see if " Lurmon 
 be really paved with gold." 
 
 There is no limit to the numbers which might thus be 
 attracted to London, but for the impossibility of lodging 
 them; and even this protecting obstacle we are doing 
 our best to remove by the construction of Casual Wards 
 in every Union, in which hundreds of the houseless can 
 be sure of obtaining a night's rest and two meals. 
 
 Of these so called houseless, not one in a thousand is 
 really houseless, and of those who are really so, if a 
 searching inquiry could be made, all would be found to 
 have made themselves so, by their idleness, improvidence, 
 and habit of drunkenness. 
 
 These are the Suicides whom we are encouraging by 
 the Poor Rates, in open opposition to the manifest law 
 of Providence, who has made self-preservation the very 
 mainspring of His creatures life and conduct. 
 
328 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 If we must have a Poor Law, it should be, in the 
 meaning and spirit of the original Statute of Queen 
 Elizabeth, confined to the aged, infirm, and helpless 
 children, and under no circumstances should relief be 
 extended to any others, and to them only in the Poor 
 House. 
 
 Every beggar and idle vagrant should be taken up as 
 a " rogue and vagabond," and imprisoned for, at least, 
 48 hours, in the House of Correction, and be set to 
 work at forced labor, receiving, at the end of his 
 imprisonment, half the amount of his wages. For the 
 second and third like offence the term of imprisonment 
 should be doubled and trebled, and so on in such pro- 
 portion. 
 
 Under this treatment mendicancy and vagrancy would 
 soon disappear. 
 
 But before this experiment can be fairly tried, the 
 laborer must be in possession of the full wages of his 
 labor, without any deduction by indirect taxation. 
 
 The Charity Organisation Societies may then occupy 
 themselves harmlessly with their work, and Charitable 
 Ladies may then go on making cheap Soup and 
 Australian Meat Puddings for the Poor, without any of 
 the present mischievous consequences. 
 
 The Metropolis teems with ignorance and pauperism ; 
 its paupers reach 150,000; its totally untrained and 
 uneducated children no statistics have yet accurately 
 numbered ; yet the sums annually distributed or avail- 
 able for charitable purposes would suffice to extinguish 
 destitution, and to instruct the whole poor population of 
 London. 
 
 These funds amount to the enormous figure of seven 
 millions and a half; enough, (as Dr. Hawksley has 
 shown in " The Charities of London ); ) assuming that, 
 one-eighth of the population, or four hundred thousand 
 persons, are wholly destitute, to allow eighty-five 
 
POOR LAWS. 329 
 
 pounds per annum to every such family for sustenance 
 and education. Yet the evils, against which all these 
 vast resources are provided or can be directed, go on in- 
 creasing from year to year. 
 
 Whilst these pages were in the Printer's hands, the 
 Author stopped the Press to add the following extract 
 from the Quarterly Review, January, 1872, page 252. 
 
 " None of us are more perpetually or more obviously 
 on a false scent than the working-classes and their 
 leaders ; and in no case is error so mischievous or so 
 formidable. 
 
 . . . <e They are wrong only in the causes they assign, 
 and the remedies they would apply. We sympathise with 
 them in every fibre of our frame. We are ready to 
 paint their wretchedly unsatisfactory state and prospects 
 in language as strong as any of themselves could use. 
 We agree with them that their condition is an oppro- 
 brium to half the countries in Europe, and more espe- 
 cially to our own. Millions of them lead a life which 
 intelligent beings should not consent to live, and exist 
 in a condition of struggle and wretchedness which 
 makes existence a burden and not a boon. They have a 
 right to be discontented. They do well to be angry. 
 
 . . ." The rectification, speedy and thorough, of the evils 
 of their condition, is the first duty of every statesman, and 
 the most urgent necessity of every State ; and all legis- 
 lation which does not address itself, mediately or imme- 
 diately, to this supreme purpose, is of secondary moment, 
 and involves a postponement of higher to lower claims. 
 The improvement, the rescue, the comfort, the well 
 being (in every sense) of the classes of which we speak, 
 constitute the primary obligation of all who influence 
 opinion or rule the country ; first, because these classes 
 are the most numerous ; secondly, because they are the 
 most helpless ; thirdly, because they are the most unfor- 
 tunate and suffering ; and we share to the full in the 
 
330 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 burning indignation they express when questions vital 
 to their interests are pushed into the back-ground to let 
 party conflicts have a fair field to fight in. So far we 
 go along with the loudest and most violent of their 
 leaders. But there we part company as widely as may 
 be. Our indictment against these leaders is, that they 
 systematically and persistently, and ignoraritly even if 
 honestly, divert the people's attention from their real 
 grievances and the true causes of their sufferings, and 
 urge them to measures and objects either wholly irrele- 
 vant or certain to aggravate what they seek to cure. 
 They are for ever hounding the people on a false scent, 
 guiding them away from the right track, misinforming 
 them or blinding them as to facts, misteachirig them as 
 to principles, and confounding their perceptions as to 
 friends and foes." 
 
 These are the opinions and feelings of the Author, 
 often before expressed in these pages, but never so well 
 expressed as in this Extract. 
 
 Nothing further need be said. 
 
 OPINIONS OF SIR EGBERT PEEL. 
 
 Whatever may have been the real opinion of Sir Ro- 
 bert Peel on the Free Trade Question in the earlier part 
 of his political career, that his views underwent a great 
 change in the latter part, will be seen in the following 
 communication to the inhabitants of Elbing, in Prussia, 
 in answer to their address to him, approving of his great 
 measure of financial and commercial reform. This do- 
 cument, dated 6th August, 1846, is so highly creditable 
 to the memory of Sir Robert Peel, and may now be read 
 with so much satisfaction by his admirers, and with so 
 much instruction by all parties, of all opinions, that the 
 whole is here given in his own words : 
 
 " Your address, in which you express your approba- 
 
OPINIONS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL. 331 
 
 tion of the great measure of financial and commercial 
 reform which I have considered it my duty to lay before 
 Parliament, 1 have received with great pleasure. The 
 object of the Income Tax was, not only to make good a 
 deficit, but also to lay the foundation of a more just sys- 
 tem of taxation, by putting an end to duties before levied 
 on raw materials, as well as those vexatious regulations 
 of the Excise, and the duties on many kinds of produce 
 necessary to the comfort of the working classes. 
 
 "The Bill, having for its object the limitation of the 
 paper currency, has in no way affected public or indivi- 
 dual interest, nor has the country thereby been deprived 
 of the advantages of paper circulation ; but, in placing 
 the issue of this medium of exchange under certain rea- 
 sonable restraints, the Bill has been the means of check- 
 ing abuses in times of great critical importance to the 
 commercial interests of the country, as well as of un- 
 usual speculation. This Bill has given to paper money 
 a settled value, in making it always exchangeable with 
 specie. I learn with pleasure that the interest and effect 
 of these measures have been properly appreciated by 
 distinguished politicians of other countries. That part 
 of your address wherein you admitted the principle of 
 commercial legislation, which, by order of Parliament, 
 is now in force, has afforded me, above all this, the most 
 lively satisfaction. The measures proposed, for the 
 diminution of Custom-house duties, have been brought 
 forward without any similar concessions having been 
 offered by foreign countries ; they have been proposed 
 because the general interests of the country demanded 
 it. Their effects are sufficiently advantageous to fully 
 justify the step we have taken ; for it is contrary to the 
 principles of political economy to purchase, at a dear 
 rate, articles of inferior value ; and the authors of this 
 measure have thought, without entering into negociation 
 and minute detail, that the principles of their commer- 
 
332 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 cial legislation would be adopted by other nations. 
 Difficulties and obstacles may arise, and financial embar- 
 rassment, which appears to be the strongest argument iu 
 support of the protective system will, in certain coun- 
 tries, be advanced as a reason for continuing it. Indi- 
 viduals who profit by high duties are favorably listened 
 to by Government ; in other cases they form the most 
 numerous part of the population, or, at least, a powerful 
 party in the legislative assemblies. 
 
 "Interests are thus represented en masse; but this 
 isolated interest cannot long offer resistance to the argu- 
 ments and manifest interest of the great social body. 
 The public financiers labor under a double disadvantage; 
 first, by the prejudice with which they are regarded, and 
 the consequent support offered to smuggling ; and, se- 
 condly, by the great expenses incurred in its suppression ; 
 so that, eventually, it will be seen by those who are re- 
 sponsible for the financial condition of their respective 
 countries, that it is prudent and politic to replace, by 
 such moderate duties as will permit the commerce and 
 revenue of the country to increase, those high duties 
 which either diminish, or altogether prohibit, the impor- 
 tation of foreign produce, and sustain certain branches 
 of trade at the expense of the public finances. 
 
 " The social condition of that country which main- 
 tains with the greatest rigor the protective system, will 
 be opposed to the state of another which has adopted 
 liberal principles, and the conviction of the value of such 
 principles will not obtain, unless by the encouragement 
 of the freedom of exchange amongst all the nations of 
 the world; the well-being of each individual will be 
 increased, and the will of Providence will be fulfilled 
 that Providence which has given to every country a 
 sun, a climate, and a soil, each differing one from the 
 other ; but, on the contrary, in order that they may feel 
 their reciprocal dependence by the exchange of their 
 
OPINIONS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL. 333 
 
 respective produce, thus causing them to enjoy in com- 
 mon the blessings of Providence. It is thus that we 
 find, in commerce, the means of advancing civilisation, 
 of appeasing jealousy and national prejudice, and of 
 bringing about a universal peace, either from national 
 interest, or from Christian duty." 
 
 It may be interesting to some, at this time, to take a 
 further retrospect of the altered views of Sir Robert 
 Peel on these questions, as first declared by himself in 
 Parliament, and to try these by the results of subsequent 
 experience. The following is an extract from his speech 
 in the House of Commons, on introducing his change of 
 policy in his Customs Acts Bill, 10th May, 1842 : 
 
 " Speaking generally, we have sought to remove all 
 prohibitions all absolute prohibitions upon the import 
 of foreign articles, and we have endeavoured to reduce 
 duties, which are so high as to be prohibitory, to such a 
 scale as may admit of fair competition with domestic 
 produce. 
 
 " In cases where that principle has been departed 
 from, and prohibitory duties maintained, then we justify 
 our departure from the rule by special circumstances of 
 the case ; but the general rule has been to abolish pro- 
 hibitions, and to reduce prohibitory duties within the 
 range of fair competition. With respect to raw materials, 
 which constitute the elements of our manufactures, our 
 object, speaking generally, has been to reduce the duties 
 on them to almost a nominal amount. On half-manu- 
 factured articles, which enter almost as much as the raw 
 material into our domestic manufactures, we have re- 
 duced the duty to a moderate amount ; and, with regard 
 to completely manufactured articles, our design has been 
 to remove prohibition, and to reduce prohibitory duties 
 so that the manufacturers of foreign countries may enter 
 into a fair competition with our own. I still entertain 
 that confident belief and expectation which I expressed 
 
334 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 on first intimating the intention of Government as to 
 the -tariff, that the general result of it will be, if adopted 
 by the House, materially to diminish the charge of living 
 in this country. If you say to me that, we do not make 
 sufficient reductions on particular commodities which 
 are material items in the expenditure of a private family, 
 I am quite ready to admit it, as far as relates to indivi- 
 dual articles ; but I speak of the general effect of the 
 tariff as proposed by Her Majesty's Government. If 
 there be any truth in the principle either of trade, or of 
 arithmetic, I contend that its inevitable effect must be, 
 to give great advantages to all classes of consumers, and 
 to make considerable reduction in the cost of living. 
 Taking the reductions on raw materials, or half manu- 
 factured goods, I am persuaded that the general result 
 will be, to make a considerable saving in the expenses 
 of every family in the kingdom." 
 
 On the same occasion, to show the delusive characters 
 of high duties, Sir Robert Peel said : 
 
 " There is another and an exclusive ground, on which 
 1 vindicate a reduction of the high duties on articles of 
 manufacture. I say that, these high duties are a mere 
 delusion, that they do not constitute a protection to the 
 British manufacturer, and that, in looking to these 
 duties for protection, he rests entirely upon a fragile and 
 faithless support. The check to their operation is, the 
 smuggler. It is a mere delusion to tell the home manu- 
 facturer that you levy a duty of 35 or 40 per cent, upon 
 the importation of foreign manufactured articles, if he 
 be robbed of that apparent protection by the importation 
 of the same articles in an illicit way, consequently, I 
 think I can conclusively show that, there is no reduction 
 proposed, with respect to foreign manufactures, which I 
 cannot vindicate on this single and exclusive ground 
 that, the duty remains at last as high as you can pos- 
 sibly levy it, without calling in the interference of the 
 smuggler." 
 
OPINIONS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL. 335 
 
 Again, to show the effect of prohibition in checking 
 improvement, in a debate on a petition presented by Mr. 
 Baring, against the removal of the prohibitions on 
 foreign silks, so far back as 5th March, 1824, Sir Kobert 
 Peel said : " The honourable member has said that, in 
 the silk manufacture, Great Britain is inferior to France, 
 in point of taste and machinery. Now, does not this 
 fact lead to the suspicion that, on account of our 
 prohibitions, the same improvements have not been 
 made in all others ? Let those prohibitions be re- 
 moved, and our taste and our machinery will speedily 
 improve." 
 
 Again, the opinion of Sir Robert Peel on the timber 
 duties will now be read with interest. In the debate on 
 Ways and Means, 23rd March, 1842, he said : " I am 
 prepared to contend, if the country can make any re- 
 mission of taxation, that there is not a single article in 
 the tariff upon which a reduction of duty would tell with 
 greater effect, in encouraging the industry of the country, 
 than the article of timber. . . . The ancient policy of 
 this country was, to encourage the importation of timber 
 at a nominal, or a very small, duty, as was recommended 
 by Mr. Deacon Hume. Up to 1795, in the midst of 
 war, the whole duty on foreign timber was only 6s. Sri. 
 the load, of cubic feet, the governments of that day 
 considering wood in the light of a raw material, entering 
 into almost every species of manufactures, and, conse- 
 quently, deeming it expedient that a low duty should be 
 imposed. It was not, therefore, until the hottest of the 
 war, that wood was subjected to increased taxation. 
 Why, then, Sir, is not my proposal in accordance with 
 the ancient principles of onr taxation, at the same time 
 that it is calculated to benefit the consumer, and confer 
 a greater benefit on him than he could obtain from the 
 proposition of the right honourable gentleman ? I again, 
 then, repeat my conviction that, if I can secure a tax on 
 
336 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 the property of the country, and reduce the timber duty, 
 I shall do more to restore activity to our trade and com- 
 merce, and to benefit the population of the country 
 generally, than by any single measure that I could pro- 
 pose to Parliament. And before honorable gentlemen 
 decide on this point, I wish they would read the evidence, 
 given before a Committee of this House, with respect to 
 fisheries. They will find, by reference to the Reports of 
 the Committees on Import Duties in 1805, and in ]840, 
 that our fisheries are represented to be subject to very 
 great disadvantages in consequence of the existence of 
 this timber duty. I would refer gentlemen particularly 
 to the evidence given by Mr. John Mitchell. Let them 
 attentively consider what he says, as to the superiority 
 of the humbler classes of Norway, to those of our own 
 country, arising solely from the cheapness of wood. 
 Then again, I would ask gentlemen to read the evidence 
 as to ship-building. They will find it stated under that 
 head, that the timber duties are acting most injudiciously 
 to the interests of our ship-builders, and that even the 
 trade of the country in ship-building is leaving us on 
 account of the existence of these duties. Therefore, I 
 say, that my proposition is one of the best measures 
 for the consumer, the ship-builder, and the country 
 generally that it would almost be possible for me to 
 propose." 
 
 And again, on the same subject, in the debate on the 
 Report on the Income Tax, 8th April, 1842, he said : 
 " If there be any article which enters more into the 
 common consumption of the people than another, and 
 which ought, if possible, to be exempted from taxation, 
 it is this very article of timber. The proofs, which 
 I have before me, of the effects which the cheapening of 
 timber would produce in the encouragement of local 
 improvements, and in the promotion of the building of 
 bridges, and of piers, are so convincing and over- 
 
OPINIONS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL. 337 
 
 whelming that it is almost impossible to resist the 
 necessity of reducing the duties on timber. What 
 increased sources of employment will not the measure 
 open to the working classes ! We hear of the distress 
 of the shipping interests of the immense importance, 
 commercially and politically, of reviving the prosperity 
 of that interest : how can we do so more effectually 
 than by facilitating the purchase of timber? If we 
 enable the ship-builder here, to compete with the ship- 
 builder abroad, to how many men shall we not give 
 employment? What vast sources of maritime strength 
 may we not expect to accrue to us ! Has not the high 
 price of timber been a great impediment to the con- 
 struction of houses ? Has it not affected the very mode 
 of building? What has been its influence upon the 
 construction of cottages? .... I take the cottages of 
 the poor in Ireland, and I ask, can any honourable 
 member, who has read the evidence laid before the 
 House on that subject, say that, that evidence does not 
 contain the strongest possible proof that, no want is 
 more severely felt in Ireland, than the want of timber ? 
 The high duty also operates most injuriously upon 
 British fishermen. Owing to the better construction 
 of their boats the foreign fishermen enjoy a monopoly 
 of fishing in deep seas. Reduce the price of timber, 
 and you at once enable our fishermen to compete with 
 them, and thus give the means of employment to a 
 large number of men. ... By adopting my propo- 
 sition with regard to timber, we shall increase the de- 
 mand for productive industry, whilst, at the same time, 
 we shall indirectly increase the revenue." 
 
 And again, on the subject of tallow, in the debate on 
 the Soap and Tallow duties, 15th March, 1836, Sir 
 Robert Peel said : " I will not consent to increase the 
 duty on tallow, in the present condition of this country^ 
 for many reasons. How can we expect that the portion 
 
338 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 of our manufactures which depends for success on a 
 foreign market can thrive, if we do not permit a reci- 
 procity of commerce : and if, on the contrary, we in- 
 crease the duty on the raw material in which foreigners 
 are able to pay us ? I am not able to perceive any 
 sufficient cause which operates to warrant an exception 
 in the case of Russian tallow, to the general rule. 
 The relative position in which Russia stands to this 
 country ought to receive particular attention. She 
 comes very little into competition with our commerce. 
 She does not interfere with our manufactures in foreign 
 markets. She sends us raw material, and takes our 
 manufactured article in return. And were we to raise 
 the duty on tallow, where would be the advantage to 
 ourselves ? Unless the proposition extended to foreign 
 oil, as well as to tallow, the expected advantages would 
 not result to the agricultural interest ; and if the for- 
 mer article were also saddled with a protecting duty, it 
 would have a serious effect on a branch of our manu- 
 factures that could hardly endure it. Candles would 
 inevitably rise in price ; and, were we to consider how 
 much this would interfere with the means, the comfort, 
 and the remuneration, of the hand -loom weavers who 
 work so many hours by candle-light, we should pause 
 before we created such an additional embarrassment to 
 the extensive branch of manufactures carried on by its 
 assistance. By acceding to such a measure, it is clear 
 that we should interrupt the course of commerce which 
 now happily exists between this country and Russia 
 should interfere with the market it affords to our present 
 manufactured produce, as well as with the raw material 
 which supplies an important article for our manufacture 
 and should also increase the expense of candle-light, 
 so necessary for our manufacturing purposes, conse- 
 quences that would not at all repay us for any possible 
 benefit that might immediately result to the agricul- 
 tural interest." 
 
OPINIONS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL. 339 
 
 On the subject of the Silk duty, in Committee on the 
 Customs Acts, ]3th June, 1842, Sir Robert Peel said : 
 " I cannot deny that the proposed duty upon manufac- 
 tured silk is high, and I admit that great advantages 
 would result from a reciprocal commercial intercourse 
 between this country and France. I trust, however, that, 
 looking to the state of the negotiations between France 
 and England, the House will not press the Govern- 
 ment too hastily on this point It would not be 
 
 well to make concessions to France, until an equivalent 
 can be obtained from her." 
 
 On the subject of the inequality of taxation generally, 
 in the debate on the Income Tax, 23rd March, 1842, 
 Sir Robert Peel said : " Let me ask the House, what 
 tax was ever imposed that was not objected to on account 
 of its inequality? What was the beer tax ? the house 
 tax? the window tax ? What were the Assessed Taxes 
 when first imposed ? Are all these taxes just in every 
 one's eyes? Must not all taxes, direct, or indirect, 
 bear unequally on those who pay them ? Take the case 
 of the professional man. I think the professional man 
 may urge good arguments against the justice of the 
 assessed taxes. The owner of what you call, permanent 
 capital, has the greatest facilities for evading the tax ; 
 he can remove to the Continent, and draw his income as 
 he requires it ; but the professional man the lawyer, for 
 instance, or the medical man, is compelled to remain 
 in this country, and to submit to the indirect taxation 
 which prevails." 
 
 Such were the declared opinions of Sir Robert Peel 
 on these questions, and in reviewing these opinions 
 now, the only wonder is, how a man so clear-sighted, 
 could have spent the greater part of his political life 
 in counteracting the views which he so ably maintained 
 towards the conclusion of his career. 
 
 But the time now cannot be far distant when all 
 
 z2 
 
340 TAXATION AS IT IS. 
 
 Customs and Excise duties 'must be abolished. The 
 arguments so well directed by Sir Robert Peel against 
 these duties which he repealed, apply with equal force to 
 all which he left unrepealed. The difference is only 
 in the degree of importance of the duties repealed and 
 uurepealed : the same argument applies equally to all. 
 
PAET III. 
 
 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
343 
 
 PAET III. 
 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 THE source of wealth is the Earth; or, if we speak of 
 them separately, the sources of wealth are, the Earth 
 and its Waters. These produce all the objects appro- 
 priated, or fashioned, by the labors of men. Human 
 labor itself is not, strictly speaking, an original source 
 of wealth, although without such labour no wealth 
 comes into man's possession. 
 
 It has been laid down by Adam Smith that, every 
 Nation derives its supplies of the necessaries of life from 
 its labor, either in the immediate produce of that labor, 
 or from other nations purchased with that produce. 
 Also that, there is one sort of labor which may be 
 called, productive ; and another which may be called, 
 unproductive. 
 
 It must not, however, be supposed that, that portion 
 of the community which is not employed in producing 
 material wealth is unproductive of anything useful, or 
 that, the epithet, " unproductive" as applied to them, is 
 disparaging or degrading. 
 
 The annual labor and skill of the people may be taken 
 to be the fund which supplies it with the necessaries 
 and conveniences of life, either in the immediate pro- 
 duce of that labour and skill ; or in what is purchased 
 with that produce from other nations. 
 
314 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 The protection arid encouragement, therefore, of that 
 productive labor and skill, by every means, is one of the 
 first duties of every nation, on the ground of policy as 
 well as justice. 
 
 The expense of defending the society, and that of 
 supporting the dignity of the chief magistrate, are both 
 laid out for the general benefit of the whole society. 
 It is reasonable, therefore, that the expenses should be 
 defrayed by the general contribution of the whole so- 
 ciety, all the different members contributing, as nearly 
 as possible, in proportion to their respective means. 
 
 The revenue which must defray, not only the expense 
 of defending the society, and of supporting the dignity 
 of the Chief Magistrate, but also all the other necessary 
 expenses of Government, for which the Constitution of 
 the State has not provided an\ particular revenue, may 
 be drawn either from some property which peculiarly 
 belongs to the Sovereign or Commonwealth, and which 
 is independent of the People ; or from the property of 
 the People. If from the People, the contribution should 
 be for the protection which the State affords to their 
 persons and property. 
 
 From these i?ules or maxims, it follows that, in every 
 civilised State/ all persons should contribute equally for 
 the protection of their persons ; and, for the protection 
 of their property, in proportion to the amount of their 
 property under the special protection of the Stat^. 
 
 Without entering into any philosophical definition of 
 property, it is sufficient to say that, the property here 
 referred to is that which has been realised and has be- 
 come ascertained, or defined, and permanent ; and which 
 then requires special protection, as contra-distinguished 
 from income and the wages of labor and skill which are 
 uncertain and precarious, and which, being spent as 
 received, do not require that special protection from the 
 State which is extended to realised property or capital. 
 
TAXATION AS TT OUGHT TO BE. 345 
 
 If, then, it be one of the primary rules, in fixing and 
 regulating taxation, to give the utmost possible protec- 
 tion and encouragement to productive labor and skill, 
 it seems to follow that, it is the first duty of every State 
 to leave all persons, as much as possible, in quiet, 
 possession and free enjoyment of the fruits of their own 
 labor and skill. This seems to be dictated as well by 
 policy as justice. 
 
 Of the justice there can be no question ; for, if a tax 
 be paid to the State for the protection of the person, it 
 is only common justice that, the person who has paid 
 the tax should be left in the quiet possession and free 
 enjoyment of the fruits of his own labor and skill ; and 
 if it be true that, " the annual labor and skill of every 
 nation is the fund which supplies it with all the neces- 
 saries and conveniences of life," it seems to be equally 
 true that, it is the policy of every State to leave the 
 fruits of that labor and skill, which is the origin or 
 source of every nation's wealth, undiminished by taxa- 
 tion. 
 
 By the continuance of the people's labor and skill the 
 nation's wealth increases, and out of this increase the 
 people save whatever they may acquire beyond their 
 daily wants, real or imaginary, for the necessaries and 
 conveniences of life. These savings accumulated, as- 
 sume the form of realised property or capital, distin- 
 guished from income, and this constitutes the strength 
 and power or wealth of the Nation. 
 
 It is, therefore, very fit and proper that, the State 
 should take from the strength and power or wealth of 
 the Nation, that which is absolutely required for the 
 maintenance, support, and extension of that strength 
 and power or wealth. But to take anything more from 
 that strength and power or wealth, or by any other 
 means to check production or growth, is not only pre- 
 venting the extension^ oTTKat strength and power or 
 
346 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 wealth, but is undermining or weakening the founda- 
 tion of the whole. 
 
 This is the true distinction between Income and 
 Capital ; or, at least, this is the distinction here as- 
 sumed, and this is taken as an axiom, which governs 
 the whole of the views here set forth. 
 
 It is as unphilosophical and unwise as it is improvi- 
 dent and unjust to impose a tax on income becaus^ pro- 
 perty must be taxed. It is, therefore, as unwise as it 
 is unjust, on the part of owners of realised property^jta 
 complajn^thaj^they are unfairly taxed"" becauseuncer- 
 tam and precarious incomes are untaxedT The unf air- 
 ness ^nm~Ta^in^^s^re7SSpr^perty or capital that 
 which is uncertain and precarious income, and the folly 
 of such a complaint will be shown in the fact that, what- 
 ever is inexpedient for the public good, is inexpedient for 
 the good of every individual. 
 
 It is manifestly an impossibility ever to impose a tax 
 on incomes, necessarily uncertain in amount and pre- 
 carious in tenure, which will not be unequal and unjust, 
 and in direct violation of every rule and maxim which 
 should govern taxation. Of this nature are all incomes 
 derived otherwise than from realised property or capital. 
 
 As it is assumed to be not the policy of the State to 
 tax professional or trade incomes on the wages of labor, 
 and as this principle will be established by the details 
 here given, it is unnecessary to pursue this part of the 
 question further. The hopelessness of any attempt to 
 remove the inequality and injustice incident to a tax on 
 income has been shown by the evidence given before 
 the Special Committee of the House of Commons on 
 the Income Tax. No further evidence can be required 
 to show that, the defects of inequality and injustice, 
 which all feel and acknowledge, are inherent in a tax 
 on income, and must ever be incurable. 
 
 It is the first duty of the State, in imposing taxes, so 
 
THE PROPOSED PROPERTY TAX. 347 
 
 to impose them that, they shall be most equally and 
 most easily borne by those who pay them : the ultimate 
 end and object of all taxation being, protection and 
 benefit to person and property. 
 
 The property requiring special protection is that 
 which has become realised and permanent, or Capital 
 distinguished from Income, which is uncertain and pre- 
 carious. Realised property, thejgfore, js the^only pro- 
 perty ^which can, consistently^with justice and__so_und 
 policy, be subject~to taxation. 
 
 The first tax to be imposed, therefore, consistently 
 
 A PROPERTY TAX. 
 
 The Scheme for carrying out the principle here main- 
 tained is comprised in the three following propositions : 
 
 1. A Tax on Property of a certain defined descrip- 
 tion. 
 
 2. A Tax on Persons of a certain defined class. 
 
 3. All other State Taxes to be abolished. 
 
 The Post Office, not being considered a legitimate 
 source of revenue, is excluded from this scheme. 
 
 THE PROPOSED PROPERTY TAX. 
 
 This will be considered under the three following 
 heads : 
 
 1. The description of property chargeable. 
 
 2. The rate of charge. 
 
 3. The mode of assessment and collection. 
 
 1. AS TO THE PROPERTY CHARGEABLE. 
 
 REAL ESTATE : 
 
 All Manors, Messuages, Lands, Tenements, Houses, 
 and other Buildings, Parks, Chases, Warrens, Under- 
 woods, Coppices, Fisheries, Tithe Rents Charge, Other 
 Rents Charge, Fee Farm and Quit Rents, to be charged 
 
TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 yearly in respect thereof, for every Twenty Shillings of 
 the annual value thereof, the sum of Two Shillings. 
 
 Exemptions. All Lands and Houses of poor per- 
 sons, under the full yearly value of twenty shillings in 
 the whole; all Churches and other Buildings for 
 Public Worship : all Public Charities : all Parks and 
 Play Grounds for the People. 
 
 The Land-owner being taxed on the rack-rent or 
 annual value of his land, no Occupation tax is to be 
 charged. 
 
 The Landlord will adjust that, as he thinks fit, with 
 his Tenant, in fixing his rent. 
 
 The Land being once taxed on the annual value can- 
 not properly be taxed again. 
 
 By getting rid of the Occupation tax much vexation 
 will be avoided, and a great saving of labor and ex- 
 pense of collection will be effected. 
 
 This will be regarded as a great concession to the 
 Agricultural interest, but it will be a great benefit to 
 the Nation. 
 
 The Crops, live and dead stock, however, as well as 
 the property, must be held liable for payment of the tax, 
 and if the Lessee or Tenant pay the tax he would have 
 a claim upon his Landlord for repayment. 
 
 No property out of the United Kingdom to be sub- 
 ject to this tax. 
 
 PERSONAL ESTATE : 
 
 All Annuities, Dividends, and Shares of Annuities 
 payable to any person, body politic or corporate, com- 
 pany or society, whether corporate or not corporate, out 
 of any Public Revenue, to be charged yearly for every 
 Twenty Shillings of the annual amount thereof, the 
 sum of Two Shillings. 
 
 Exemptions. All Annuities and Dividends under 
 the yearly value of Twenty Shillings. Every fractional 
 
THE PROPOSED PROPERTY TAX. 349 
 
 part of Twenty Shillings of the Annual value aforesaid 
 to be charged at the rate aforesaid, provided that no 
 rate or duty be charged of a lower denomination than 
 One Penny. 
 
 The Pay of all Private Soldiers, Common Seamen, 
 and Petty Officers of both services, to be exempted 
 from this tax. 
 
 No property out of the United Kingdom to be sub- 
 ject to this tax. 
 
 2. THE RATE OF CHAEGE. 
 
 This can be fixed only by the Government, confirmed 
 by Parliament. 
 
 For the present purpose, it is proposed to be fixed for 
 the term of five years, at 10 per cent, of the annual 
 value of the property assessed, or 2s. in the Pound. 
 
 3. THE MODE OF ASSESSMENT AND COLLECTION. 
 
 The charge on Real Estate to be made with as much 
 equality and indifference as is possible upon the present 
 yearly value thereof, without any deduction, and a new 
 valuation thereof to be made every fifth year or other- 
 wise, as fixed by Parliament. 
 
 Every Assessment to the Property Tax to be made 
 upon the several Occupiers of the property chargeable 
 (except Assessments upon an House or Tenement occu- 
 pied by any accredited Minister from any Foreign 
 Prince or State), which is to be paid by the Landlord or 
 person immediately entitled to the Kent of the said 
 House or Tenement. 
 
 The duty to be charged in respect of any House, 
 Tenement, or Apartment, belonging to Her Majesty, in 
 the occupation of any Officer of Her Majesty, in right 
 of his office or otherwise (except apartments in Her 
 Majesty 's Royal Palaces) shall be charged on and paid 
 by the Occupier of such House, Tenement or Apart- 
 ment upon the annual value thereof. 
 
350 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 Tenants and Occupiers to pay the tax and deduct it 
 out of the rent ; and if any difference arise between 
 them and their Landlords, concerning the rate, Com- 
 missioners to have power to settle the same as they may 
 think right and proper. 
 
 Owners of lands, tenements, and hereditaments sub- 
 ject to the payment of rent charges, Annuities, Fee 
 Farm Rents, Rent Service or other Rents or Annual 
 Payments, issuing out of the same, to be at liberty to 
 deduct out of every Fee-Farm Rent, or other Annual 
 Payment, so much of the pound-rate assessed upon the 
 said lands, tenements and hereditaments as a like rate 
 for every such Fee-Farm Rent or Annual payment re- 
 spectively shall, by a just proportion, amount to. 
 
 Mortgagors are to be at liberty to deduct from the 
 interest payable by them on all Mortgages of lands, 
 tenements, and hereditaments, or monies, so much of 
 the pound-rate assessed thereon, as a like rate for every 
 such annual payment respectively shall, by a just pro- 
 portion, amount to. 
 
 All existing Exemptions for lands, tenements and 
 hereditaments, extra-parochial or otherwise, to be abo- 
 lished. 
 
 The Sovereign, by virtue of the Royal Prerogative, is 
 exempted from the operation of all Statutes imposing 
 duties on the Subject. 
 
 The Valuations to be made by Surveyors to be ap- 
 pointed by the Government; and an equal number to 
 be appointed by the Parish or District. 
 
 The Assessment to be made by Assessors to be ap- 
 pointed by the Government, and an equal number to 
 be appointed by the Parish or District. 
 
 Appeals from the Valuation or Assessment, as fixed 
 by the Assessors, to be made to the Board of Commis- 
 sioners. 
 
 The Board of Commissioners to consist of Public and 
 
THE PERSONAL TAX. 351 
 
 Local Commissioners. The Public Commissioners to 
 be appointed by the Government, and the same number 
 of Local Commissioners to be appointed by the Parish 
 or District. 
 
 The Appeal from the Board of Commissioners to be 
 to the Lords of the Treasury. 
 
 The decision of the Lords of the Treasury to be final. 
 
 The Collectors to be appointed by the Government 
 and to collect the Tax quarterly, and their receipt for 
 the same to be a final discharge. 
 
 THE PERSONAL TAX. 
 
 This is called a Personal Tax to distinguish it from 
 the Property Tax, and is charged on Inhabited Houses 
 for the convenience of Collection. 
 
 It is proposed to make all Householders, above the 
 yearly value of Twenty shillings, chargeable according 
 to a scale. 
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE PROPERTY TAX. 
 
 The Statistics are insufficient for making this Esti- 
 mate with accuracy, but are sufficient for approaching 
 sufficiently near to accuracy for the present purpose. 
 
 The Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, 
 for the years 1856 to 1859 inclusive, Volume 2, is a 
 most valuable compendium of facts and figures relating 
 to the Revenue, evidently arranged with great care. 
 The 3rd Volume will be before Parliament and the 
 Public, in the next Session. In the mean time the 
 Report in the 2nd Volume will be taken as a basis for 
 forming some of the present estimates. 
 
 The following are the Estimates obtained from the 
 Government Departments, and a comparison between 
 these and the Author's own Estimates, which follow, 
 give the best information which he is able to offer. 
 
352 
 
 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 GOVERNMENT ESTIMATES. 
 
 1. Annual Value of Lands in 
 Great Britain and Ireland 
 in the year 1870 ... 
 2. Ditto of Houses .... 
 3. Ditto of Tithe Rent Charge 
 (Included in the Annual 
 Value of Lands). 
 4. Ditto, of Manors .... 
 5. Ditto, of Fines 
 
 Gross Amount Assessed to Income Ta 
 
 Year ended oth April, 1870. 
 
 Great Bri- 
 tain. 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 United 
 Kingdorr 
 
 . 
 
 54,997,570 
 
 77,879,548 
 
 150,595 
 242,520 
 
 140,622 
 21,718,080 
 
 724,827 
 19,839,237 
 
 28,849,092 
 
 . 
 
 9,135,619 
 3,639,605 
 
 500 
 
 27,867 
 
 
 
 32,988 
 1,137,648 
 
 21,764 
 879,184 
 
 766,099 
 
 . 
 
 64,133,1 
 81,519,1 
 
 151,0 
 270,3 
 
 173,6 
 22,855,7 
 
 746,5 
 20,718,4 
 
 29,608,1 
 
 6. Ditto, of Fee Farm and Quit 
 Rents (Included in the 
 Annual Value of Lands). 
 7. Ditto, of Woods, Under- 
 woods and Coppices (In- 
 cluded in the Annual 
 value of Lands). 
 8. Ditto, of Fisheries .... 
 9. Ditto, of Dividends on Pub- 
 lic Debt 
 
 (Great Britain and Ire- 
 land). 
 10. Ditto, of Canals .... 
 11. Ditto, of Railways . . . 
 12. Ditto, of Interest and Divi- 
 dends in Joint Stock Com- 
 panies and other rateable 
 property in the United 
 Kingdom 
 (For particulars of these 
 amounts see separate 
 statement). 
 
 220,176.3 
 
 
ESTIMATES. 
 
 353 
 
 GROSS AMOUNT OF PROFITS OF PUBLIC COMPANIES AND OTHER 
 CONCERNS (EXCLUSIVE OF FISHERIES, CANALS AND RAILWAYS) 
 ASSESSED TO INCOME TAX, IN THE YEAR ENDED 5TH APRIL, 
 
 1870. 
 
 Profits of 
 
 Great Bri- 
 tain. 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 
 . 
 
 16,148967 
 
 . 
 470,910 
 
 . 
 16,619.877 
 
 
 683,979 
 
 12638 
 
 696,617 
 
 
 5,465,786 
 
 78,313 
 
 5 544,099 
 
 
 2,018.564 
 
 
 2,018,564 
 
 Gas Works . . 
 
 2 066 361 
 
 90 913 
 
 2 157 274 
 
 Other Concerns, such as Salt 
 Springs, or Works, Alum 
 Mines or Works, Rights of 
 Market, Fairs, Tolls, bridges, 
 Ferries &c 
 
 2 458 435 
 
 113 325 
 
 2 571.760 
 
 
 
 
 
 Total . . 
 
 28,842,092 
 
 766.099 
 
 29,608,191 
 
 REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING GOVERNMENT 
 ESTIMATES. 
 
 These Estimates are made on the Gross Amount 
 assessed to the Income Tax. 
 
 It is well known to the Government and to the 
 Public in general that, the property is assessed to the 
 Income Tax at less than two-thirds of the marketable 
 value. But, if the property were valued by competent 
 persons, the value would be little if anything short 
 of double the amount now assessed to the Income Tax. 
 
 The same remark applies to Houses, and there must 
 be some great error in the Estimates of the Govern- 
 ment Departments, which makes the Annual Value of 
 the Houses above two millions and a half more than 
 the Annual Value of the Lands. 
 
 The Tithes, not commuted, are not included in the 
 annual value of the Lands, as stated in this Estimate. 
 
 The Fisheries, as valued in this Estimate, are much 
 below the annual value, according to the Reports of the 
 Commissioners of Fisheries. 
 
 2 A 
 
354 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 The annual value, or nett yearly profits of Canals is 
 also here understated. 
 
 The Annual Profits of Joint Stock Companies and 
 other rateable property of the kingdom are under- 
 valued, at least, 50 per cent. 
 
 Property not coming within the definition of realised 
 property is not subject to this Tax. 
 
 No reliable estimate of realised property can be made 
 until that property has been valued by competent persons. 
 
 In the mean time, the following Estimate is given as 
 a nearer approach to accuracy ; but this is given more 
 as an example than for reliable accuracy, though suffi- 
 ciently accurate for the present purpose, which is to 
 show how the proposed New System of Taxation may 
 be surely and safely carried out. 
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE PROPERTY TAX. 
 
 1. Annual Value of Lands in Great Britain and . 
 
 Ireland 138,266,378 
 
 2. ofHouses 122,278,729 
 
 3. ,, of Tithes (not commuted) 55,511 
 
 4. of Manors 163,721 
 
 5. of Fines 270,387 
 
 6. of Fee Farm and Quit Rents ... 350,000 
 
 7. ,, of Woods, Underwoods and Cop- 
 
 pices 3,150,000 
 
 8. of Fisheries 760,000 
 
 9. of Dividends on Public Debt 22,855,788 
 
 10. of Canals 1,746,590 
 
 11. of Railways 20,718,421 
 
 12. ,, ,, of Interest and Dividends on 
 Joint Stock and other Companies and all 
 other rateable property in the United King- 
 dom 50,000,000 
 
 .360,615,525 
 
 Here is a yearly and improving Rent from Realised 
 Property or Capital, estimated at 360,615,525. 
 
 A Rate of 2s. in the Pound, or 10 per cent, on this 
 amount, would produce a yearly revenue of 36,061,552. 
 
ESTIMATES. 355 
 
 This Rate is given only as an example, as it would be 
 fixed from year to year by the Government, with the 
 sanction of Parliament, according to the requirements 
 of the State. 
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE PERSONAL TAX. 
 
 INHABITED HOUSES. 
 
 Houses. . 
 200,000 Exceeding in Annual Value 1. and not 
 
 exceeding 5. at 1. a year 200,000 
 
 300,000 5. 10. at -2. a year 600,000 
 
 400,000 10. 20. at 3. 1,200,000 
 
 500,000 20. 40. at 4. 2,000,000 
 
 1,000,000 40. 60. at 5. 5,000,000. 
 
 1,300,000 60. 80. at 6. 7,800,000 
 
 1,200,000 80. 100. at 7. 8,400,000 
 
 700,000 100. 200. at 8. 5,600,000 
 
 300,000 200. 300. at 9. 2,700,000 
 
 100,000 300. and upwards at 10. 1,000,000 
 
 6,000,000 34,500,000 
 
 The data for this estimate are very imperfect, and the 
 divisions in the scale here given have no pretensions to 
 accuracy, there being no sufficient, data for any such 
 nicety of calculation. 
 
 The Government Estimate of the Gross Rentals in 
 Boroughs, in 1866, was follows : 
 
 
 
 Under 4 130,256 
 
 At 4 and under 5 .... 108,465 
 
 5 6 .... 131,710 
 
 6 7 .... 130,232 
 
 7 8 .... 93,706 
 
 8 9 .... 68,690 
 
 9 10 .... 42,737 
 10 and over ...... 634,082 
 
 1,339,878 
 2 A 2 
 
336 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 The above Occupations include other properties 
 besides Houses, but Houses constitute the great bulk. 
 
 The above Statistics are limited to Parliamentary 
 Boroughs. 
 
 There are no returns for Counties or Towns other 
 than Boroughs (Parliamentary). 
 
 These are poor materials for the present Estimate, but 
 are better than nothing, and, with a few other unreliable 
 sources of information, are some guide to a rough out- 
 line of facts, sufficient for the present purpose. 
 
 According to the Census of 1871, the number of 
 persons in the United Kingdom was, 31,465,480. 
 
 According to the Census of 1861, the number of 
 persons in the United Kingdom was, 28,927,485. 
 
 Increase in 10 years, 2,537,995. 
 
 According to the Census of 1871, the number of 
 Houses Inhabited, Uninhabited, and Building in the 
 United Kingdom was, 5,993,823. 
 
 According to the Census of 1861, the number of the 
 same was, 5,404,780. 
 
 Increase in 10 years, 589,043. 
 
 According to the Census of 1871, the number of 
 Inhabited Houses in the United Kingdom was, 
 5,638,749. 
 
 According to the Census of 1861, the number of the 
 same was, 5,127,881. 
 
 Increase in 10 years, 510,868. 
 
 The population of the Kingdom, never stationary, 
 is now increasing, as the returns show, at the rate of 
 about ] 000 persons daily. 
 
 The average number of persons to a house, between 
 1861 and 1871, was 5'3. 
 
 These results from experience throw doubts on the 
 accuracy of the returns, after making all proper allow- 
 ances, and the returns from Ireland are known to be 
 very imperfect. 
 
 The number of Inhabited Houses in the United 
 
SUMMARY OF REVENUE. 357 
 
 Kingdom on the 1st January, 1872, cannot be less than 
 6,500,000, but the number will be assumed to be 
 6,000,000 for the present purpose of the tax. 
 
 The divisions in the scale here given can only approxi- 
 mate to accuracy, but great care has been given to 
 these divisions, which have been made from the best 
 information that could be obtained from the Reports of 
 the Poor Law Board, the Reports of the Commissioners 
 of Inland Revenue, and many other official documents, 
 with the assistance obtained through the Board of Trade 
 and other Government Departments. 
 
 But it is obvious that, slight inaccuracies in the 
 divisions will only remove the numbers into the higher or 
 lower scale of charge, and cannot very materially affect 
 the aggregate amount, at least, for the present purpose. 
 
 Mr. Locke King's Return (384): Sess: 1867, of 
 the Number of Houses assessed to Inhabited House 
 Duty (year ended 5th April, 1866), is so manifestly 
 erroneous, as to be undeserving of further notice. 
 
 It may be taken as an admitted fact that, in all the 
 Government Departments collectively, the materials for 
 making this Estimate with any pretension to accuracy 
 do not exist, and that, the information furnished to the 
 Author by the Government departments, being mislead- 
 ing, has been rejected by him. 
 
 SUMMARY OF REVENUE. . 
 
 1. Property Tax 36,061,525 
 
 2. Personal, or Householder's Tax 34,500,000 
 
 3. Post Office 4,671,230 
 
 4. Telegraph Service 100,761 
 
 5. Crown Lands 447,723 
 
 6. Miscellaneous 3,205,253 
 
 78,986,492 
 
 Deduct Post Office 4,671,230 
 
 Telegraph Service 100,761 
 
 4,771,991 
 
 74,214,501 
 
358 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 Here is a year's Revenue, with Post Office and Tele- 
 graph Service, of 78,986,492, or without these two 
 illegitimate branches of revenue, of 74,214,501. 
 
 If exception be taken to these Estimates on the 
 ground that, they are too high ; or if a larger Revenue 
 must be raised for the requirements of the State, this in- 
 volves only the simple question of the rate per cent, to 
 be levied on the realised property of the kingdom. 
 
 The Post Office and Telegraph are not within the 
 principle of this Scheme of Taxation, but if Public 
 Opinion be for retaining these as sources of revenue 
 there is no use in saying anything more about it. It is 
 evident, however, that, instead of using these as sources of 
 revenue, it would be the better administration to apply 
 the surplus nett produce to a uniform charge for Letters 
 and Messages over the world on the lowest scale which 
 the surplus produce would admit of. 
 
 The advantages of such a change would be manifold, 
 and to Trade incalculably great ; and another, not in- 
 considerable, advantage would be, the conciliatory effect 
 upon all classes, particularly upon the owners of realised 
 property, who will be the class most difficult to deal 
 with, though essentially the most benefitted. But it is 
 not to be expected that a change so great as here 
 proposed in the whole fiscal arrangements of the 
 Kingdom should be seen and fully understood without 
 careful, temperate, and unprejudiced consideration, nor 
 would it be prudent for any Government to make the 
 attempt until that consideration has been given, and 
 Public Opinion has been clearly pronounced in favor of 
 the attempt. 
 
 To meet the common error of those who admit the 
 principle, but advocate the bit-by-bit reform, or who 
 approve of the change, but recommend it to be made by 
 degrees, they should be told at once that, in this case 
 
HOW THE ESTIMATES ARE MADE. 359 
 
 such a proceeding would be impossible without incurring 
 far greater danger than they are seeking to avoid. 
 
 If Customs, Excise, Stamps, and Taxes are to be re- 
 moved by degrees, whence are the substitutes to be 
 obtained in the meantime ? Simultaneously with the 
 destruction of the old system must be the establishment 
 of the new system in complete action. There must be 
 no interval between the two fiats. 
 
 The good sense and honesty of the British mind 
 should be brought to bear on this great question with a 
 single regard to the common good of all, and what is 
 best for the good of all must be best for the good of 
 each. 
 
 But, further dry details have yet to be shown for 
 careful consideration. 
 
 HOW THESE ESTIMATES ARE MADE. 
 
 As no Estimates are entitled to confidence if the 
 grounds on which they are made be witheld, the follow- 
 ing are the grounds of the Estimates here given. 
 
 1. THE ESTIMATE OF LANDS. 
 
 The basis of this Estimate is the Assessment for the 
 Income Tax ; a very imperfect basis, but the best that 
 can be found at present. How much this Assessment 
 is below the fair annual value can never be known until 
 an impartial survey and valuation shall have been made. 
 
 Those who are acquainted with the mode of arriving 
 at this Assessment know that, it does not represent so 
 much as one-half of the Actual Annual Value. This 
 Estimate takes the Assessment as made with the 
 addition of 50 per cent., which is still much under the 
 full Annual Value. 
 
360 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 2. HOUSES. 
 
 The same basis has been taken for Houses, and 50 
 per cent, has been added to the Assessment for Income 
 Tax. 
 
 This Estimate is much under the full Annual Value. 
 
 3. TITHES. (NoT COMMUTED.) 
 
 This Estimate (for England) is taken from the Table 
 in the Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, 
 Vol. 2. page 198, for the year, 1868, being the latest 
 return. 
 
 4. MANGES. 
 
 This Estimate is taken on the same authority 
 Vol. 2. page 198, for the same year, 1868, being the 
 latest return. 
 
 5. FINES. 
 
 This Estimate has been taken on the same authority, 
 Vol. 2. page 199, for the year 1868, (194,328) being 
 the latest return, with a small addition, as estimated, 
 for the year 1870. 
 
 6. FEE FARM AND QUIT EENTS. 
 
 This Estimate has been made on facts collected from 
 a great variety of sources, but of no reliable authority, 
 and must, therefore, be regarded as very uncertain. 
 
 7. WOODS, UNDEEWOODS, AND COPPICES. 
 
 The observation on the last Estimate applies equally 
 to this. There are no authenticated facts for a reliable 
 Estimate under this head. 
 
HOW THE ESTIMATES ARE MADE. 361 
 
 8. FISHEKIES. 
 
 This Estimate is taken on the authority of the Com- 
 missioners of Fisheries in England and Wales, Scotland 
 and Ireland, in their Eeports of the produce of these 
 Fisheries in the year, 1870, confirmed by their private 
 Letters. 
 
 In the before mentioned Report of the Commissioners 
 of Inland Revenue, Vol. 2. page 207, the Assessment 
 for Income Tax on the Gross Amount of Profits from 
 Fisheries for the year, ended 5th April 1870, was only 
 138,482. 
 
 9. THE PUBLIC DEBT. 
 
 The Amount of Dividends on the Public Debt is 
 taken from the Government Finance Accounts. 
 
 10. CANALS. 
 
 This estimate has been made from various uncertain 
 sources of no reliable authority, but is believed to be 
 much below the actual produce for the year, 1870. 
 
 In the before mentioned Report of the Commissioners 
 of Inland Revenue, Vol. 2. page 207, the assessment to 
 Income Tax on the Gross Amount of Profits from Canals 
 for the year ended 5th April, 1868, was 743,339. 
 
 11. RAILWAYS. 
 
 This estimate is taken on the authority of the 
 Government Finance Accounts. 
 
 12. JOINT STOCK AND OTHER PUBLIC 
 COMPANIES. 
 
 This is a rough estimate made from the Declared 
 
362 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 Statements of the Interest and Dividends paid by all 
 the Joint Stock and other Public Companies in the 
 United Kingdom, for the year, 1870 (exclusive of 
 Railways and Canals) and of the annual value of all 
 other realised property of the Kingdom, rateable to the 
 Property Tax, for the same year. 
 
 The Return of Joint Stock Companies, under Order 
 of the House of Commons, dated 24th July, 1871, is 
 useless for this Estimate, and the Government possesses 
 no authentic information on the subject. 
 
 The Estimate here made, therefore, has no preten- 
 sion to accuracy ; but, although it considerably exceeds 
 the Government Estimate, is supposed to be under the 
 actual amount in the year, 1870. 
 
 BALANCE OF ACCOUNT BETWEEN THE 
 OLD AND THE NEW SYSTEM. 
 
 UNDER THE OLD SYSTEM. 
 
 Nett Amount of Taxes paid into the Exchequer, 
 according to the Government Financial Account 
 for the Year ended 31st March, 1870 67,249,229 
 
 Actual Cost and Estimated Loss in raising the 
 
 above Revenue .., . 177,630,970 
 
 Total Charge 244,880,199 
 
 UNDER THE NEW SYSTEM. 
 
 .. 
 
 Nett Amount of Taxes paid into the Exchequer 67,249,229 
 
 Cost of Collection at 1| per cent 1,008,738 
 
 Total Charge 68,257,967 
 
 Total Charge under the Old System 244,880,199 
 
 New System 68,257,967 
 
 Difference ... ,. 176,622,23* 
 
EXPLANATORY OBSERVATIONS. 363 
 
 Here is a difference in favor of the New over the Old 
 System of 359*577 per cent, or more than three and a 
 half times the whole amount raised by Taxes for the 
 year ; and all Taxes are removed from Trade and 
 Industry ! 
 
 EXPLANATORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Thus, it appears that, to raise the Revenue of 
 67,249,229, under the present system, costs the 
 Country 176,622,232, or 260*638 per cent, on the 
 amount raised ; and that, to raise the same amount 
 under the new system would cost the Country only 
 1,008,738, or H per cent, on the same amount raised, 
 being the cost of collection, showing an actual saving 
 to the Country, in money alone, of 175,613,494 
 a year ! 
 
 To superficial observers this will appear to be a very 
 exaggerated statement, but when examined carefully, in 
 all its details and bearings, it will be found to be under, 
 rather than over, the result to be expected. 
 
 But this is only the financial result. 
 
 What may be expected for the moral results ? 
 
 The moral results, far greater, though beyond human 
 calculation, deserve the deepest reflection. 
 
 The strong desire for equalisation of taxes arises from 
 every man thinking himself more burdened, in propor- 
 tion to his means of bearing his burden, than his 
 neighbor. 
 
 This is a very narrow view for forming an equitable 
 system of taxation. 
 
 The Land of every country ought to be regarded as 
 the basis of its wealth and strength as a nation ; and 
 the market price of the Land ought to form the ground- 
 work for taxation. 
 
364 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 It is a narrow and very erroneous view, too com- 
 monly taken by Land Proprietors, that, by throwing 
 the burden of taxation upon the industry of the country, 
 they are thereby relieving the land from their portion 
 of the burden. 
 
 That this is a superficial and short-sighted view of 
 the question will be seen, if the true causes of the 
 increased market price of Land be looked into a little 
 more deeply. 
 
 Look back, only thirty years ago, to the unpeopled 
 lands of Australia. 
 
 What was then the market price of land there, 
 without population or trade ? 
 
 As little worth as the deserts of Arabia ! 
 
 What has raised those lands to the present high 
 prices ? 
 
 What but the great and rapid increase of population 
 and trade? 
 
 Now, if such have been the effects in so short a 
 time in that remote country, with an almost boundless 
 extent of still unoccupied land, how incalculably greater 
 must be the same causes in operation in this country to 
 produce the same effects, with the population and trade 
 already existing, and so much more rapidly increasing, 
 and where the extent of land is and ever must be so 
 limited in proportion to population ? 
 
 In this point of view it must be seen how certainly 
 the price of land in this country must go on rising with 
 the increase of population and the prosperity of trade 
 and manufactures, and how much it is for the interest 
 of the land-proprietors to bear such a proportion of the 
 necessary taxation as may continue to encourage and 
 still further extend all that they ever can extend, the 
 trade and manufactures of the country. 
 
 What must be the increased price of land in this 
 country twenty years hence, even at the present rate 
 
EXPLANATORY OBSERVATIONS. 365 
 
 of increase ? And what must be the increased price of 
 land then, if the pressure upon the means of subsistence 
 be now removed by the removal of all taxes on the 
 laborer's own labor, and on all stock-in-trade, and all 
 machinery, and all works of industry, and by the adop- 
 tion of a system of internal and international free 
 trade ? 
 
 What a world of misconception and malignant passion 
 would be saved, if taxes were laid ostensibly as well as 
 virtually upon the owners of realised property ! 
 
 What a practical reconciliation would be effected 
 between the wealthier and the poorer classes, if only 
 taxes were universally removed from the necessaries and 
 luxuries of life, and these were left open to the equal 
 and fair competition of all as the rewards of their own 
 successful labor and skill ! 
 
 As the late Rev. Dr. Chalmers said: "What a 
 death-blow would be thus inflicted on the vocation of 
 demagogues ! What a sweetening influence it would 
 have on British Society, after the false medium was 
 dissipated through which the high and the low now 
 look on each other as natural enemies ! " 
 
 It was the opinion of the same good and right- 
 minded man that, " if the whole of our public revenue 
 were raised by means of a territorial impost, it would 
 ultimately add nothing to the burden which now lies 
 on the proprietors of the land; for they, when fighting 
 against such a commutation, are fighting in defence of 
 an imaginary interest/' And so they were proved to 
 be, not many years after those words were written 
 when they resisted the Abolition of the Corn Laws. 
 Such a political economy as this, had it preceded, would 
 have superseded all those tempestuous politics of that 
 time. 
 
 This is the enlarged view which should be taken by 
 Statesmen in directing the legislature of this country, 
 
366 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 and if this principle were firmly relied upon and fully 
 carried out, the results would soon dispel all fears for 
 the consequences, and then all classes would soon find 
 out that, their true interests were identically the same, 
 and inseparable. 
 
 If the landed aristocracy, instead of their blind 
 resistance to all change, or, as they call it, innova- 
 tion, and their tenacious adherence to what they 
 imagined, but falsely imagined, to be their own indis- 
 pensable interest, had paid all taxes and left all trades 
 unfettered, so far as human actions can be calculated 
 upon by human motives, it may be confidently said 
 that, no political sacrifice would have been required of 
 them, and they would have remained in the undisturbed 
 possession of their natural and rightful inheritance, as 
 lords of the Commonwealth. 
 
 But the democracy of England, fired by a sense of 
 injury, made head against them and wrested from them 
 by force what ought to have been freely and willingly 
 conceded in the spirit of an enlightened policy. 
 
 May the landed aristocracy take warning from the 
 past, for the protection of their lawful rights for the 
 future ! There lies yet before them a noble field of 
 improvement in rightly shifting the burden of taxes, 
 in emancipating trade,, and that without reserve or 
 limitation; above all, in providing amply and libe- 
 rally providing both for the Christian and literary 
 Education of the People. 
 
 LOCAL TAXATION ON LAND AND HOUSES. 
 
 In considering the direct burdens upon Land under 
 the present System of Taxation, it is impossible to 
 estimate the losses indirectly inflicted on land through 
 the manifold injuries which this complicated and ex- 
 pensive system directly inflicts on trade. But it is 
 
LOCAL TAXATION. 367 
 
 clearly to be seen that, if these injuries to trade were 
 removed, the relief to land would be greater than the 
 whole amount of taxation which land now bears. 
 
 The local taxation on land is another question, under 
 different circumstances, and remains the same, or goes 
 on increasing, according to these different circumstances, 
 though the Poor Rate, at present the chief burden on 
 land and houses, might well be removed within five 
 years from the establishment of this new system of 
 taxation. 
 
 The Total Amount annually raised by direct and indi- 
 rect Local Taxes for the purposes of Local Expenditure, 
 may be estimated 
 
 For England and Wales at 20,550,000 
 
 Scotland 2,000,000 
 
 Ireland 2,567,000 
 
 For United Kingdom 25,117,000 
 
 This is in the proportion of 16s. a head of the popu- 
 lation of the United Kingdom. 
 
 If the amounts raised for Public and Local purposes 
 be added together, the Total Taxation of the United 
 Kingdom in the year ended 31st March, 1871, would 
 be about 95,062,000, or 3:1:0 per head of the 
 population. 
 
 The following is compiled from the very elaborate 
 Report of Mr. Goschen, M.P., showing The Amount 
 of the various Branches of Local Expenditure in each 
 Division of the United Kingdom, in the year 1868. 
 
368 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 BRANCHES OF LOCAL EXPENDITURE. 
 
 ENGLAND AND WALES. 
 
 
 In the Metropolis : 
 
 Poor Relief, including Workhouse Loans repaid. 1,316,75!) 
 
 All other Parochial Expenditure payable out of Poor 
 
 Rates 135,663 
 
 Extraordinary Expenditure for construction and re- 
 pairing of Workhouses and Pauper Asylums 526,614 
 
 1,979,036 
 
 Local Management by Vestries, &c. (exclusively of 
 Metropolitan Board of Works), Maintenance of 
 Roads, &c., Watering, Lighting, Sewerage, &c 1,469,223 
 
 Metropolitan Board of Works : 
 
 Local Public Works, Sewerage, &c 1,935,495 
 
 Corporation and Commissioners of Sewers of City of 
 London, Local Public Works, Sewerage, &c 1,771,096 
 
 Metropolitan Police 832,835 
 
 By Burial Boards for Public Cemeteries (estimated) 30,000 
 
 Total Local Expenditure in Metropolis 8,017,685 
 
 In Country Districts : 
 
 Poor Relief, including Workhouse Loans repaid 6,181,300 
 
 All other Parochial Expenditure payable out of Poor 
 
 Rates 523,324 
 
 Extraordinary Expenditure for construction and re- 
 pairing of Workhouses and Pauper Asylums 293,844 
 
 6,998,468 
 
 For County purposes : Police, Prisons, Lunatic Asy- 
 lums, &c 2,319,348 
 
 In Municipal Boroughs for Local Public Works, 
 
 Police, &c 2,976,691 
 
 By Improvement Commissioners and Local Boards, 
 
 for Local Public Works, Lighting, Sewerage, &c.... 4,040,292 
 
 For Maintenance of Public Roads by Highway Boards 1,399,918 
 
 Turnpike Trusts 1,059,073 
 
 By Burial Boards for Public Cemeteries 179,365 
 
 Other purposes 483,778 
 
 Total Local Expenditure in Country Districts... 19,456,933 
 
LOCAL EXPENDITURE. 369 
 
 Coast Districts : 
 
 For Erection, Maintenance and Repairs of Commer- 
 cial Harbors 2,071,796 
 
 of Lighthouses, &c., Pilotage, and saving Life 
 at Sea .. 691,191 
 
 Total Local Expenditure for England and Wales 30,237,605 
 
 SCOTLAND. 
 
 By Parochial Boards for Relief of the Poor 1,002,803 
 
 County Assessments : Police, Prisons, Roads, &c 210,000 
 
 Turnpike Trusts 217,094 
 
 Edinburgh Police, &c 138,511 
 
 Glasgow Police, &c 130,473 
 
 Other purposes 813,786 
 
 Total Local Expenditure for Scotland 2,512,667 
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 By Town Authorities 539,102 
 
 Grand Jury Cess: Roads, Bridges, Prisons, &c 1,122,084 
 
 ,Poor Rates 920,837 
 
 Harbors 360,000 
 
 Other purposes 112.977 
 
 3,055,000 
 
 Total Local Expenditure in United Kingdom.... 36,292,605 
 
 If the amounts raised for Public and Local purposes 
 be added together, with the Actual Cost and Indirect 
 Loss, the Total Taxation of the United Kingdom, in the 
 year ended 31st March, 1870, would be 281,172,804, 
 or 8 : 15 : 7\ per head of the population, reckoned at 
 32,000,000 for the United Kingdom. 
 
 The purposes to which the local taxes are lawfully 
 applicable are so numerous and various (exceeding 200) 
 that a detailed catalogue would be tedious and a general 
 description almost useless. The names of the rates 
 usually indicate with sufficient distinctness the primary 
 purpose of each, but this primary purpose is not always 
 the only one to which the tax is, even by law, devoted . 
 
 2 B 
 
370 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 The Poor Rate, by far the heaviest item in the list, is 
 also the most multifarious in its objects ; comprising, 
 besides the relief of the poor, such general measures as 
 the registration of the births and deaths, the vaccination 
 of all classes of the community, the prosecution of cer- 
 tain kinds of criminals, the preparation of the lists of 
 Jurymen and Parliamentary Voters, County and Police 
 rates, and other purposes. The County Rate, again, 
 provides for the repair of bridges, the maintenance of 
 jails, the relief of prisoners, the payment of Coroners, 
 the prosecution of felons, and a long list of other pur- 
 poses. The several rates are designed to deal with 
 exigencies of a most important public character, and it 
 is, therefore, highly desirable that, they should not only 
 be levied with fairness, but also be expended with 
 fidelity. 
 
 This statement of Local Taxation is very discreditable 
 to past Governments, and is now a subject of serious 
 importance, but much too large to be here further 
 entered into. But the point of paramount importance 
 in the reform of local taxation is, the selection of a 
 proper and invariable basis on which to raise the Assess- 
 ment for all real property and all local and national pro- 
 perty throughout the kingdom. At present the assess- 
 ment falls much heavier on houses than on any other 
 description of property. This is extremely unfair and 
 injurious. But when the Poor Laws are abolished the 
 great difficulty in the way of a satisfactory arrangement 
 of Local Taxation will be removed. 
 
 REVISION OF NATIONAL ASSESSMENTS. 
 
 From the foregoing remarks it must be evident that, 
 the first step towards a just system of taxation will be 
 in a thorough revision of the National Assessments. 
 This can be done only on a new Valuation of all the 
 
REVISION OF NATIONAL ASSESSMENTS. 371 
 
 Land and Houses, founded on the average price of 
 Wheat. 
 
 A Valuation so made every five or seven years would 
 form a sound basis for all local and national taxation 
 throughout the kingdom, and would remove the absurd 
 discrepancies exhibited under the present system of diffe- 
 rent assessments. 
 
 These are some of the weighty considerations which 
 must soon force themselves upon public opinion, with 
 regard to Taxation. It is evident that, the rentals of 
 landed property produce half the sum raised for the 
 relief of the poor, without taking into consideration 
 other charges of a local and public nature raised from 
 the same source. 
 
 . What would be the effect upon the rental of lands 
 if the price of agricultural produce should fall 25 per 
 cent., even assuming that Landlords reduce their rents 
 accordingly ? 
 
 The claims of the poor would not diminish in the 
 same proportion, nor would the reduction of rent be 
 accompanied by an increase of labor amongst the poor. 
 These objects can be accomplished only by the intro- 
 duction of foreign produce and the increase of trade and 
 manufactures; otherwise the burden of taxation must 
 increase in weight every year. 
 
 From this consequence there is no escape. 
 
 The rental of a country is the amount and market 
 price of its annual produce. Reduce that, and you 
 diminish the main source of all public and private reve- 
 nues, while you cannot abate one farthing of your taxa- 
 tion. 
 
 In this state of things the landlord and the tax- 
 collector will be contending with each other for the 
 produce of the soil, and the tenant will struggle in vain 
 for the means of subsistence, while the wages of labor 
 will fall to a scale too low to allow the laborer to pur- 
 
372 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 chase the highly taxed necessaries of daily life. Thus 
 the country will drift into one common gulf of misery 
 and ruin. 
 
 These effects will be first seen in Ireland. 
 
 The people of England are too apt to consider them- 
 selves safe against this wholesale ruin. They pride 
 themselves on being a more industrious and provident 
 race than the inhabitants of "The Emerald Isle," and 
 so they are. But the people of England make this 
 boast without full consideration of their position. It is 
 the centralisation of Capital in England from every part 
 of the world that has hitherto sustained and prevented 
 Great Britain from falling into the depth of misery into 
 which Ireland has so long fallen. But the reduction of 
 wages, employment, and profits are signs that Great 
 Britain is slowly drifting towards that gulph of misery, 
 though the danger is seen now but faintly shadowed 
 forth, or, as "the little cloud arising out of the sea, like 
 a man's hand." But this, however, is certain, that the 
 causes, whatever they may be, which reduce the amount 
 of " profitable wages" paid for British labor, must 
 diminish British Capital and Industry, and must increase 
 the amount of British Pauperism. 
 
 The fact is, we are making British labor pay for every 
 change introduced into our commercial and agricultural 
 legislation. If this system be continued we must, in 
 the end, pay the penalty due for sacrificing the comforts 
 of the poor working classes at the shrine of Mammon, 
 and that penalty will be terrible. 
 
 Pauperism in this country is becoming an organic 
 and progressive evil, and in the purely agricultural parts 
 of the country especially has increased and is increasing 
 under all changes. This is one of the most lamentable 
 effects of our system of taxation, which increases the 
 cost ot living, and with these victims and the scarcely 
 less pauperised tradesmen of small means in Country 
 
REVISION OF NATIONAL ASSESSMENTS. 373 
 
 Towns and Villages our prisons and our poor-houses are 
 chiefly filled. 
 
 So long as this system continues, these consequences 
 must follow, and must go on increasing, and very small 
 and slow must be the effects of any expenditure on the 
 education of a people who are not receiving fair wages 
 for their labor, and who are deprived of those comforts 
 and enjoyments which they are entitled to expect, and, 
 indeed, to demand, in return for their industry and 
 skill. 
 
 The effect of Education can be only to produce a 
 change of system or a revolution. 
 
 It was a sound remark of Sir Robert Peel, in his 
 speech on the Income Tax, 23rd March, 1842, that, 
 
 " If you make a great reduction, not, I would say, in 
 the amount of poor rates, but in the cost of living, on 
 account of which those poor rates have been kept high, 
 those who pay the poor rates will derive considerable 
 advantage from that reduction. I may observe here 
 that there has been a tendency of late years to increase 
 the poor rates on account of the high prices of pro- 
 visions." 
 
 It is impossible, under the present mixed system of 
 direct and indirect taxation, to preserve anything like 
 an approximation to equalisation, for it is impossible to 
 obtain even the first figures for such a calculation. No 
 one in this kingdom can say how much he is taxed, for 
 no one can at any time say, with precision, what is the 
 actual amount of the national burdens. Clearly, it is 
 not the nominal amount given in the Official Accounts, 
 because a great part of that is owing to the State for 
 taxes. It is, therefore, necessary for ascertaining 
 whether taxes be equally distributed or not to ascertain 
 in the first instance, what is the actual amount of taxa- 
 tion. Now, as the late Mr. Macculloch remarked, for 
 this it is indispensable to deduct from the apparent 
 
374 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 amount all that portion of the taxes which is paid by 
 public functionaries and by those subsisting on the 
 dividends or interest of the money lent to the State. 
 The balance of taxation remaining, after this sum is 
 deducted, forms the burden really borne by the public. 
 
 If A. owe B. on one account 100, and B. owe A. on 
 another 20, it is plain that, the sum really due by A. 
 to B. amounts to only 80. Such is precisely the case 
 with the public. The State owes certain sums to cer- 
 tain parties ; but these parties have, by means of taxes, 
 to pay certain sums to the State, so that the sum really 
 paid by the latter amounts only to the balance, or diffe- 
 rence between the two. 
 
 It would, however, be exceedingly difficult, as Mr. 
 McCulloch also observes, or rather impracticable, to 
 make anything like a fair estimate of what the balance 
 in question may amount to in this or any other country. 
 Much obviously depends on the nature of the taxation. 
 In this country, where by far the largest portion of the 
 revenue is derived from taxes on articles of consumption, 
 the sums received from the public functionaries, credi- 
 tors, and dependents on Government, will, of course, be 
 very much larger than in countries where the public 
 revenue is mainly derived from direct and fixed taxes, 
 such as land and property taxes and the like. But, 
 from the impossibility of ever ascertaining with accuracy 
 the quantity of taxed articles consumed by individuals 
 or by classes of people, the difficulty of making anything 
 like a fair estimate is so increased as to become almost 
 impracticable for any useful purpose. 
 
 For the same reasons it is equally impracticable to 
 form a correct estimate of the aggregate incomes of any 
 two or more countries; and if this difficulty were got 
 over, and the income, population, and taxation of any two 
 countries were known, it would be all but impossible to 
 say which was most, and which was least heavily taxed. 
 
EFFECT OF TAXATION ON PROFITS AND WAGES. 375 
 
 The same amount of income yields a very different 
 supply of the necessaries and conveniences of life in 
 different countries; and, supposing other things to be 
 equal, the well-being of individuals obviously depends, 
 not on the amount of their money incomes, but on the 
 amount of necessaries and conveniences for which those 
 incomes will exchange. 
 
 Hence, as Mr. McCulloch says, supposing the ave- 
 rage incomes of the people of two countries amount, 
 before their taxes are paid, to 20 a head, and that the 
 taxes payable in the one amount to <4, and in the other 
 to 5, a head, we should not be able to say, without 
 further examination, whether taxation were really 
 heavier in the latter than in the former ; for its pressure 
 is to be measured not so much by what it takes, as by 
 what it leaves; and if the 15 of income remaining to 
 the inhabitants of the one give them a larger command 
 over necessaries and conveniences, than the 16 re- 
 maining of the other, it would be correct to say that, 
 they were the least heavily taxed. 
 
 EFFECT OF TAXATION ON PROFITS AND 
 WAGES. 
 
 Taxes being the transfer of a portion of the property 
 of individuals to the State, the tendency of compara- 
 tively high rates of taxation must be to produce a lower 
 rate of profit with inadequate wages, and to drive 
 capital from the country. 
 
 Local and exceptional circumstances may, for a time, 
 countervail the influence of a low rate of profit and pre- 
 vent capital from going abroad, but that effect is sure 
 to follow at the first fitting opportunity. There is no 
 instance of a country burdened with high rates of taxa- 
 tion in which this effect has not been experienced, or 
 
376 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 from which there has not been an efflux of people and 
 wealth. 
 
 It is true that, an increase of taxation, if not very 
 sudden and oppressive, is most commonly defrayed 
 wholly or in part by a proportionally increased eco- 
 nomy, industry, and invention. But the tendency to 
 reduce profits and wages is still the same. However 
 great the produce of industry, a high rate of taxation 
 necessarily abstracts a large portion of that produce, 
 and though the condition of those engaged in indus- 
 trious undertakings in a highly taxed country may not 
 be worse than when it was less heavily taxed, and may 
 even be very materially improved, every one sees that, 
 it would be still better were taxation reduced. The 
 increased ability to bear the burden is forgotten, and 
 the attention is exclusively fixed on the burden itself. 
 Its influence, and the inconveniences thence arising, are 
 often exaggerated, but all classes become desirous to 
 escape its pressure or to throw it upon others. 
 
 It is also true that, the increased industry and inven- 
 tion which an increase of taxation encourages, may, for 
 a time, more than neutralise these effects. But those 
 improved processes and more economical methods of 
 carrying on industrious undertakings, so occasioned, 
 gradually make their way into other countries, where 
 the burdens falling on the industrious classes are less 
 heavy ; and while they improve the condition of those 
 among whom they are thus introduced, they enable 
 them to become more formidable antagonists of the 
 more highly taxed producers in the markets common 
 to both. The temptation to convey away capital and 
 skilled labor from highly taxed countries, is thus also 
 progressively augmented ; so that, the fair inference 
 seems to be that, a heavy rate of taxation, though, if 
 judiciously imposed, may, for a lengthened period, act 
 as a powerful stimulus to industry and invention in the 
 
EFFECT OF TAXATION ON PROFITS AND WAGES. 377 
 
 country subject to its influence, may not improbably, 
 in the end occasion its decline and fall. 
 
 The discovery of new processes and new inventions 
 in the arts, changes in the channels of commerce and 
 in the price of money, the overthrow of old and the 
 establishment of new forms of government, the occur- 
 rence of wars, and a thousand other events which it is 
 impossible to conjecture, may vastly increase or pro- 
 portionally diminish the power of countries to bear 
 taxes, at the same time that they may add to or lessen 
 their magnitude. 
 
 But, it seems impossible to doubt that, a high 
 rate of taxation operates as a clog to the progress of a 
 country, and is a source of impoverishment and weak- 
 ness, and always must so work, with more or less per- 
 ceptible effect in the course of time. 
 
 This may be sufficient to show the expediency of adopt- 
 ing every just and practicable means for lessening the 
 weight of taxation and relieving the pressure on the na- 
 tional resources. It is hopeless to expect that this can be 
 done by means of reductions in the public expenditure. 
 
 Much may be and ought to be done in this way, but 
 it is a delusion to look for any sensible and permanent 
 relief by any such means in the present political state 
 of affairs in Europe. The only effectual relief, under 
 the pressure of taxation in this country, must be by 
 making the People better able to bear it, and that can 
 be only by increasing the capital of the country, by 
 relieving trade and manufactures from all restrictions, 
 thereby extending and enlarging industry and raising 
 the general rate of profits and wages. As a first step to 
 this result, the improvement of the condition of the 
 working classes by the removal of all taxes from articles 
 of consumption is essential. In comparison with this, 
 any savings which could be effected by reductions in 
 the public expenditure sink into insignificance. 
 
378 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 It is no part of the present scheme to propose a 
 reduction in the salaries or payments to public officers, 
 servants, or others employed and paid by the State. 
 But it is obvious that, if the revenue of the State be 
 raised by direct taxes on realised property, these salaries 
 or payments might be very considerably reduced with- 
 out reducing in effect the money worth or purchaseable 
 power of such payments. 
 
 For example, if a public functionary receive a salary 
 of .1000 a year, and one fourth part of this sum be 
 drawn back by a tax on income and articles of con- 
 sumption, his real salary is only 750 a year, and that 
 is the only cost of his salary to the country. It follows 
 that, if 1000 a year be a sufficient remuneration under 
 the present system, 750 would be an equal remune- 
 ration under the proposed system, and the difference, 
 250, would be the yearly saving to the State. 
 
 If this were to be carried out as a rule applicable to 
 the salaries of all public functionaries above a certain 
 amount, say, for example, 300 a year, this would 
 include all the Ministers of State, with other High 
 Officers of State, their deputies, secretaries, assistants 
 and clerks, and all the Judges, with many of their sub- 
 ordinates and attendants, besides a host of other paid 
 officers and place-holders under Government, and in 
 the Royal Household, far too numerous to be here 
 mentioned. These altogether would effect a yearly 
 saving to the State of no inconsiderable amount, and 
 much greater, perhaps, than it would be prudent to 
 make known beforehand. 
 
 This yearly saving might form a fund for pensioning 
 off those numerous Government officers whose services 
 would be no longer required in the Collection of 
 Customs, Excise, and Stamp duties, &c. 
 
 It may be observed in further illustration that, the 
 cost of maintaining our Army and Navy establishments 
 
EFFECT OF TAXATION ON PROFITS AND WAGES. 379 
 
 is to be measured chiefly by the cost of the various 
 articles required for the supply of the officers and men. 
 If these articles be subject to duties, the cost and the 
 pay of the officers and men is increased in proportion 
 to the duties on the quantity of taxed articles. It is 
 obvious that, this increase is not at first, whatever it 
 may be in the end, wholly a loss to the State ; for, 
 being intercepted by the duties, it finds its way back 
 to the State, and is again re-issued, to be again 
 restored. 
 
 But this involves the necessity of keeping up all the 
 cumbrous and expensive machinery of our present 
 system of Customs and Excise Establishments, with 
 the Coast Guard service, and all their terrible attend- 
 ants; and after a few re-issues and restorations these 
 intercepted duties are either altogether swallowed up, 
 or so far diminished by the enormous expenses and 
 frauds of these establishments, as to have vanished from 
 human sight or power of calculation. But, if these 
 articles were exempt from duty, it is obvious that, the 
 cost of supplying them would be so much less as the 
 amount of the duty, and that, the pay of the officers 
 and men might, without injury to them, be propor- 
 tionally reduced, though any such reduction in their 
 pay is a question on which no opinion is here offered. 
 
 It is on this calculation of drawback by taxes on 
 articles of consumption that, Mr. McCulloch esti- 
 mated the real magnitude of the national burdens at 
 about 25 per cent, under their nominal amount, given 
 in the Official Accounts. Supposing these to average 
 64,000,000, on this hypothesis the real burden will 
 be 48,000,000. 
 
 This is exclusive of Local Rates, amounting, as 
 already shown, to 36,292,605. 
 
380 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 BENEFITS OF DIRECT TAXATION. 
 
 If the present mixed and complicated system were 
 at once swept away, and replaced by a system of direct 
 taxation, we should be perplexed no more by draw- 
 backs, allowances, and repayments ; and the Govern- 
 ment Account might then be a simple and plain state- 
 ment of receipts and payments, open and intelligible to 
 every inquirer. We should then be taxed no more in 
 Customs and Excise, those costly creations for cruelty 
 and crime, tormented and persecuted no more by Cus- 
 toms and Excise Officers, impeded and injured no more 
 by sufferance wharfs and bonded warehouses, but free 
 to come and go, to buy and sell, when, where, and how 
 we like, without being overhauled, insulted, and cheated 
 by a set of, for the most part, ignorant, low, mercenary, 
 and vicious hirelings, made vicious by the vicious sys- 
 tem of which they are a necessary part ; in short, we 
 should then be free agents, free to choose, free to 
 think, free to act, and free to take the consequences, 
 the inherent right of every rational human being, 
 the natural prerogative of reason, the first step to 
 rational improvement, to religious and moral culture 
 and mental refinement, the safest and only safe found- 
 ation for true patriotism and loyalty, for peace and 
 prosperity to every nation of the earth. 
 
 Smuggling, that fruitful source of guilt and wretched- 
 ness, would then be a word which might be expunged 
 from our dictionaries. 
 
 Drunkenness, that fatal folly of the lower orders, 
 fostered by misery and ignorance, would diminish as 
 their comforts and enjoyments and intelligence in- 
 creased. 
 
 Trade, expanding with unimpeded growth in the 
 inexhaustibly fertile soil and genial climate of the 
 British Isles, would spread over all the other nations 
 
ORIGIN OF INDIRECT TAXATION. 381 
 
 of the world, dropping the beneficent influences on 
 other soils, for the benefit of other people, and, under 
 the blessing of the All-directing Power, this Nation and 
 this People might be permitted to be as a bright beacon 
 to lead other nations and people, now wandering in the 
 darkness of ignorance under'the yoke of despotism, into 
 the light and pleasant paths of peace and plenty, by a 
 free interchange of the special gifts of Providence to 
 each, for the common good of the great and precious 
 universal whole. 
 
 We might then pray, with some hope of our prayer 
 being heard : " Give us peace in our time, O Lord ! ;J 
 We might then hope to avoid the necessity of em- 
 ploying physical instead of moral agencies, as the only 
 effective means of controlling hostile tendencies, based 
 on ignorance and prejudice. 
 
 ORIGIN OF INDIRECT TAXATION. 
 
 The plan of raising a portion of the national revenue 
 by a tax on the importation of foreign articles of mer- 
 chandise, offers, at first sight, to superficial observers, so 
 many apparent advantages that, delusive as all these are, 
 it is no wonder it should have presented itself at a very 
 early period to the minds of those charged with the duty 
 pf providing the pecuniary resources of the State. 
 
 The idea of favoring the home producer, the belief, 
 long prevalent, that the duty would fall upon the 
 foreigner, the hope that the importing merchant, know- 
 ing that he would ultimately recover it from the consu- 
 mer, would regard it only in the light of an advance, and, 
 therefore, would not object to pay it ; the expectation 
 that, the purchaser, to whom it would come only in the 
 form of an undistinguishable element of the total price, 
 would not detect it or be inconvenienced by it, and the 
 obvious consideration that, as in the great majority of 
 the articles thus burdened, the purchase was entirely 
 
382 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 optional, and the payment of the tax, therefore, in a 
 manner voluntary, may all have combined to recom- 
 mend the adoption of those indirect imposts now known 
 by the name of Customs' duties, and to have encouraged 
 the increase and development of the system till it has 
 reached its present unexampled magnitude. 
 
 There is, however, evidence of the existence of these 
 imposts anterior to the times in which such considera- 
 tions as the foregoing can be supposed to have had 
 much influence; and, notwithstanding the weight of 
 Sir Edward Coke's opinion to the contrary, it seems 
 probable that, they were originally of a Common Law 
 character, and that their name of " Customs/' or 
 "Customary" levies, points to their exaction by tra- 
 ditional prerogative. However this may be, their legis- 
 lative origin cannot be traced back beyond the reign of 
 Edward I., A.D. 1297. In the year 1400 they pro- 
 duced, (or rather were let for) the trifling sum of 
 8000. In the middle of the 1 7th century, they had 
 reached a yearly average of about 500,000. At 
 the accession of George III., they already yielded 
 2,000,000 : forty years afterwards, in 1800, the 
 amount levied was about 11,000,000 ; and in the year 
 1860-61, this sum had increased to 23,516,821, being 
 an augmentation in the last century of nearly twelve 
 fold. 
 
 From the date of our earliest records there has been 
 a progressive tendency towards rendering the tariff lists 
 less and less voluminous. The principal reductions 
 were made, as is well known, by the celebrated tariffs of 
 1842, and 1845, the latter of which alone removed up- 
 wards of 450 articles from the list of duty-paying goods ; 
 but since that year, and under every Government, con- 
 tinuous and decided progress has been made in the 
 same direction. 
 
 At present, no articles exported to foreign countries 
 are subject to duty. 
 
383 
 
 NAVIGATION LAWS. 
 
 By repeal of the Navigation Laws (1st January, 
 1850) many most vexatious and injurious restrictions 
 on the trade of this country were, at last, happily 
 abolished. 
 
 Any goods may now be imported in any vessels from 
 any country; and ships may now be registered and 
 entered in Great Britain, wherever built and purchased, 
 and however manned. 
 
 It is impossible to say to what extent the expansion 
 of trade and the interests of ship-owners have been pro- 
 moted by this change alone. But of this some notion 
 may be formed from the following Table, taken from 
 the 18th No. of the Government Statistical Abstract, 
 page 102. 
 
 No. 41. TOTAL NUMBER AND TONNAGE OF VESSELS 
 REGISTERED AS BELONGING TO THE UNITED KING- 
 DOM, INCLUDING JERSEY, GUERNSEY, AND THE ISLE 
 OF MAN, AT THE END OF EACH YEAR. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Sailing Vessels. 
 
 Steam Vessels. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Vessels. 
 
 Tons. 
 
 Vessels. 
 
 Tons. 
 
 Vessels. 
 
 Tons. 
 
 1856 
 
 24,480 
 
 3,980,494 
 
 1,697 
 
 386,462 
 
 26,177 
 
 4,366,956 
 
 1857 
 
 25,273 
 
 4,141,274 
 
 1,824 
 
 417,466 
 
 27,097 
 
 4,558,740 
 
 1858 
 
 25,615 
 
 4,205,270 
 
 1,926 
 
 452,468 
 
 27,541 
 
 4,657,738 
 
 1859 
 
 25,784 
 
 4,226,355 
 
 1,918 
 
 436,836 
 
 27,702 
 
 4,663,191 
 
 1860 
 
 25,663 
 
 4,204,360 
 
 2,000 
 
 454,327 
 
 27.663 
 
 4,658,687 
 
 1861 
 
 25,905 
 
 4,300,518 
 
 2,133 
 
 506,308 
 
 28,038 
 
 4,806,826 
 
 1862 
 
 26,212 
 
 4,396,509 
 
 2,228 
 
 537,891 
 
 28,440 
 
 4,934,400 
 
 1863 
 
 26,339 
 
 4,731,217 
 
 2,298 
 
 596,856 
 
 28,637 
 
 5,328,073 
 
 1864 
 
 26,142 
 
 4,930,219 
 
 2,490 
 
 697,281 
 
 28,632 
 
 5,627.500 
 
 1865 
 
 26,069 
 
 4,936,776 
 
 2,718 
 
 823,533 
 
 28,787 
 
 5,760,309 
 
 1866 
 
 26,140 
 
 4,903,652 
 
 2,831 
 
 875,685 
 
 28,971 
 
 5,779,337 
 
 1867 
 
 25,842 
 
 4,852,911 
 
 2,931 
 
 901,062 
 
 28,773 
 
 5,753,973 
 
 1868 
 
 25,500 
 
 4,878,233 
 
 2,944 
 
 902,297 
 
 28,444 
 
 5,780,530 
 
 1869 
 
 24,187 
 
 4,765,304 
 
 2,972 
 
 948,367 
 
 27,159 
 
 5,713,671 
 
 1870 
 
 23,189 
 
 4,577,855 
 
 3,178 
 
 1,112,934 
 
 26,367 
 
 5,690,789 
 
TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 THE BONDING SYSTEM. 
 
 Under the existing system of the revenue laws, the 
 commerce of this country could never have attained its 
 actual enormous magnitude unless, to the great enter- 
 prise on the part of merchants had been added a liberal 
 disposition on the part of the State to give every possible 
 facility, consistently with such a system, for the rapid 
 despatch of business. 
 
 Even the large reductions of duty, which have been 
 made, would have been rendered comparatively inope- 
 rative if tedious formalities and needless restrictions on 
 the part of the revenue officers had not been, at the 
 same time greatly mitigated. 
 
 It soon became apparent that, the exaction, imme- 
 diately on landing, of duties payable on goods which yet 
 might be many months on hand before they were dis- 
 posed of, was a heavy tax upon the importer, and re- 
 quired considerable additional capital to meet it. 
 
 The first relief afforded was by the Act 12 Charles II. 
 c. 13, A.D. 1660, which permitted the merchant to give 
 bond for payment of the duty within nine months, 
 instead of paying at once, and receiving the usual miti- 
 gation. In other words it offered him the choice be- 
 tween nine months' credit, or 10 per cent, discount. 
 The obvious inequity and impolicy of levying revenue 
 alike upon articles re-exported to foreign lands also 
 soon presented itself to the minds of our legislators, and 
 in the same year, (by 12 Charles II. c. 4) the export- 
 ing merchant was permitted to claim, or "drawback," 
 the whole amount of duty which he had paid into the 
 Exchequer, in the case of silk, linen, and tobacco, and 
 half the amount in the case of all other articles, a 
 distinction which subsequent tariffs largely modified, 
 and at length wholly swept away. 
 
THE BONDING SYSTEM. 385 
 
 The " Warehousing (or Bonding) Sytem/' however, 
 with its various branches, has afforded the greatest 
 facility, and has been the greatest practical improve- 
 ment yet introduced. It allows imported goods to be 
 " warehoused " under due precautions, and for a renew- 
 able period of five years ; leaving to the merchant the 
 privilege of paying duty only when the goods are re- 
 moved for actual consumption, or of escaping the pay- 
 ment of duty altogether, by removing them for expor- 
 tation. 
 
 The first approach to this improvement is traceable in 
 the year 1700, when the wrought silks of India and 
 Persia (the use of which was prohibited at home) were 
 permitted to be placed in fit warehouses for exportation, 
 on due security being given by the merchant for carry- 
 ing out such destination. In 1709, pepper was allowed 
 to be deposited in " approved " warehouses, on payment 
 of half " subsidy/' the other half being demanded when 
 the article went into consumption, or, in case of its re- 
 exportation, not being claimed at all. In 1742, rum 
 was allowed to be warehoused under Crown locks, and 
 on bond being given for the payment of duty when 
 taken out for home consumption ; and shortly after- 
 wards tea, rice, and tobacco, were admitted into the 
 same privilege. 
 
 A general " Warehousing Act " was passed in 1803, 
 extending the system with a niggard hand, both as re- 
 gards localities and articles. Various subsequent enact- 
 ments greatly enlarged the privileges and facilities then 
 granted ; and in the year. 1825, when the Customs 
 Laws were consolidated by Mr. Hume's Eleven Acts, 
 the system had nearly attained its present form and 
 extension. Now, nearly every Port, of any size, in the 
 kingdom, contains licensed warehouses for bonding ; 
 and every year new warehouses are thus licensed by the 
 Board, after due examination with reference to the 
 
 2 c 
 
386 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 security they offer against fraud,, and after taking a 
 bond from the proprietor of the warehouse, in a sum 
 large enough to cover the risks of the Crown on the 
 goods to be deposited therein. 
 
 These valuable privileges were certain to be largely 
 employed, and to give rise, with the expansion of trade, 
 to a demand for a largely increased warehousing accom- 
 modation. This has been especially the case in the 
 Port of London. In 1850 it was found that, the provi- 
 sion afforded by the various docks (to which the Victoria 
 Docks have been since added), extensive as it was, was 
 still quite inadequate to the requirements of commerce ; 
 and in February, 1851, privileges analogous to those 
 enjoyed by the old bonded warehouses, but subject to 
 varying and special limitations, were granted to certain 
 sufferance wharfs on the south side of the river, which 
 were already in possession of some, though compara- 
 tively limited rights of bonding. Similar privileges 
 were granted in favour of specified localities on the 
 north bank, and, at present, besides the docks and 
 " legal quays," landing privileges are exercised by no 
 less than eighty-seven "sufferance wharfs," of which 
 thirty-five have been bonding warehouses, and fifteen 
 have, or may obtain, the privilege of receiving all goods, 
 except silks, tobacco, and goods warehoused for expor- 
 tation only. Besides these, bonding privileges have 
 been extended, for wine and spirits, to private vaults, 
 situated within 500 yards from any part of the river, 
 between London Bridge and Brewers Quay, a conces- 
 sion which the trade has not been slow to avail itself of. 
 These privileges have, probably, been still further ex- 
 tended, since this was written. 
 
 It has long been desired, both by the Merchant and 
 the Government, to render this country the great com- 
 mercial emporium of the world the central rendezvous 
 where goods of all sorts should come, not only for con- 
 sumption, but for distribution likewise. To effect this 
 
THE BONDING SYSTEM. 387 
 
 object, a large relaxation of Custom-house regulations 
 has been introduced, so as to facilitate transhipment in 
 our Ports, and transit through the country by land, 
 from port to port. In the ordinary course it was the 
 practice for such goods to come hither duly entered for 
 exportation only, and, after undergoing the examina- 
 tion necessary to satisfy the officer of the integrity of 
 the transaction and the nature of the article, to be 
 warehoused to wait a convenient opportunity, on the 
 occurrence of which they were cleared, bond being given 
 for their actual exportation. Under this system a very 
 large transit trade had arisen, which, however it was 
 thought desirable, and found practicable, to extend. 
 Accordingly, in 1850, regulations were established 
 under which goods may be simply transhipped from the 
 import to the export vessel in the same port, and, per- 
 haps, lying alongside. In this case, provided the mer- 
 chandise in question be reported "in transit," the 
 importer is allowed to take out both his inward and 
 outward documents at once, and the goods may be 
 removed direct, as required, subject unless fraud be 
 suspected only to such a trivial examination as may 
 suffice to verify the correctness of the entry for statis- 
 tical purposes. The few years that have elapsed since 
 this system was established have been enough to show 
 how great a boon it must have been to trade. 
 
 The increase in the real or computed value of goods 
 and merchandise thus dealt with, since the year, 1851, 
 has been gradual, from 150 per cent, to 300 per cent., 
 400 per cent, and upwards. 
 
 The attention of the Commissioners of Customs has 
 also been directed to the removal of many troublesome 
 and unnecessary forms in the documentary routine re- 
 quired from masters of vessels and importers, and to 
 simplifying, facilitating, and expediting such as, in their 
 judgment, could not be dispensed with. 
 
 2 c2 
 
388 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 The examination of the baggage of travellers, arriving 
 from foreign parts, has constantly been, and as long 
 as this system is persisted in must continue to be, a 
 subject of loud complaint. The Commissioners have, 
 however, shown a laudable desire to mitigate the incon- 
 veniences, perhaps, as far as in their power. In many 
 cases, baggage is now examined on board the steamers, 
 but this experiment has been attended with very ques- 
 tionable success, inasmuch as the baggage when so 
 examined and passed is no longer under the protection 
 of the Custom-house officers, but is wholly unprotected 
 from the crowd of thieves and costermongers who, on 
 these occasions, are ever waiting and watching their 
 opportunities for carrying off their booty, for the pre- 
 vention of which the utmost care on the part of the 
 owners, bewildered and helpless in the general confusion 
 of landing, is too often insufficient. Some mitigation, 
 however, has been effected for travellers merely passing 
 through this country to foreign countries, by paying the 
 duty as a deposit at their port of arrival, and receiving 
 an order for its repayment at the port of embarkation. 
 
 This, however, is but a clumsy contrivance, involving 
 much trouble and delay, and often much vexation and 
 loss. These are the evils inseparable from the system. 
 
 Many minor facilities, afforded year by year, both to 
 the mercantile and general public, might be enumerated, 
 but these touched upon are the principal, with one ex- 
 ception, and that a most important one, the abolition 
 of all gratuities or fees. 
 
 The merchant is now subject to no tax of any sort, 
 beyond the actual Customs duty levied by Act of Par- 
 liament ; whereas, in former days, this constituted only 
 a portion of the various payments he was called upon to 
 make, before he could obtain possession of his goods, and 
 this, it is easy to see, was an extensive opening to bribes. 
 
 Under the influence of the various circumstances, here 
 
THE BONDING SYSTEM, 389 
 
 shortly noticed, the simplification of the tariff, the .re- 
 duction of duties, and the improved facilities to mer* 
 chants and shippers, the commerce of Great Britain 
 has shown a marvellous increase, and the revenue a still 
 more marvellous elasticity. 
 
 Between the years 1831 and 1834, the very first ex- 
 tensive steps were taken in the removal of prohibitions, 
 and the reduction and remission of Customs Duties. 
 
 These were followed in 1842 and 1844 by still bolder 
 advances in the same direction, and every successive 
 year has seen further progress, culminating in the vastly 
 reduced and simplified tariff of 1853. The nett aggre- 
 gate of these reductions from 1840 to 1869 is 
 20,235,863. 
 
 To produce such a result, it is obvious that, both the 
 industry and the consuming power of the nation must 
 have augmented in an extraordinary ratio. From the 
 peace of 1815, to the year 1826, the increase of our 
 commerce had been very trifling. The entire imports, 
 as measured by official value, showed no great 
 augmentation, but fluctuated about a medium of 
 52,000,000. They were 58,000,000 in 1815, and 
 51,000,000 in 1826. From that date, however, both 
 branches of commerce took a new start and have never 
 since looked back. 
 
 In 1854 and 1855, it became necessary to increase 
 the Customs Duties on four of the principal articles of 
 consumption, with a view of providing means towards 
 defraying the expenses of the war. The taxes on tea, 
 coffee, sugar, and rum, imported into Scotland and Ire- 
 land, were severally augmented accordingly. The duty 
 on coffee was raised 33 per cent. ; the utmost diminu- 
 tion of consumption was only 6 per cent. The duty on 
 tea was raised 17 per cent.; the falling off in con- 
 sumption was not a quarter per cent. The duty on 
 sugar was raised, on the average, about 25 per cent., 
 
390 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 and the price of the article in bond rose also upwards of 
 30 per cent, between 1854 and 1856: yet the entire 
 difference of consumption in these two years was short 
 of 10 per cent. When it is considered that, in all 
 three articles the duty forms a very large proportion of 
 the entire cost to the consumer, and in how trifling a 
 degree this augmentation of the tax affected the use of 
 these articles, this must be admitted to be a striking 
 illustration of the continued prosperity and vast con- 
 suming power of the country. 
 
 The Report of the Commissioners of Customs, for the 
 year, 1870, in their remarks upon the greatly increased 
 values of the importations from the United States and 
 France, remarks as follows : " The values of the 
 imports from France show an increase of 4,080,663. 
 
 Assuming, on the authority of the Government, that, 
 these repeated instances of the astonishing increase of 
 the revenue are fairly attributable, and of this there is 
 no doubt, to the reduction of the duties and the 
 removal of some of the obstacles to trade in the ordinary 
 routine of Custom-house documents, what might be 
 expected to be the increase of the revenue if all the 
 duties, and all the other obstacles were removed, and 
 the operations of Trade were free ? Is it too much to 
 assume, as is here assumed, that, within 5 years, the 
 increase would be trebled, and that, the actual cost and 
 indirect loss to the nation, under the present system of 
 Customs and Excise duties, is upwards of 250 per cent, 
 on the revenue so raised ? 
 
 Here is no exaggeration, for the facts here stated, in 
 figures given by the Government, prove the case to be 
 under-stated. 
 
 The question now is, whether this state of things 
 ought to be permitted to continue. 
 
 This is the question ; and the Government had bet- 
 ter meet it fairly, before it is answered by the People. 
 
391 
 
 THE RESULTS OP FREE-TRADE REFORMS. 
 
 Thus, it appears that, the application of free trade 
 reforms has not only been perfectly successful when 
 tried by the higher and larger tests of their effect upon 
 the trade and general condition of the country, but they 
 have been strikingly successful as measures of finance. 
 
 The plea of the necessities of the State is never likely 
 to be disregarded in this country, where all are sensible 
 that, the reasonable calls upon the Exchequer must be 
 fully provided for. But between a financial policy, 
 which confines itself within the hard and narrow limits 
 of a restrictive system, and a line of procedure formed 
 on a broader but not less carefully considered view, not 
 only for the means of maintaining a sufficiency of 
 revenue in a manner the least burdensome to the 
 country, and the least oppressive to the people, there is a 
 great difference. 
 
 Important as were the relaxations which occurred at the 
 various dates between 1820 and 1840, still the fact 
 remains that, prior to ]842 the Customs and Excise 
 continued almost stationary, notwithstanding the in- 
 crease of population and the capabilities for larger 
 trade. 
 
 Then came the change of policy. 
 
 The narrow lines of our restrictive system, so rigidly 
 and so long adhered to, were then widened and shortened. 
 The attempt was then made to adjust the mode of raising 
 taxes with some regard to the industrial classes, upon 
 which those taxes chiefly fell. The result has been as 
 instructive as salutary. Nothing can be more plainly 
 shown than the success of the free-trade reforms, if only 
 as a policy of finance. 
 
 We find, for example, in 1853, that, in spite of large 
 and continuous remissions of duties, the gross produce 
 
392 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 of Customs and Excise combined, was, 700,000 more 
 than in 1840. 
 
 We see also that, the reduction of duties on articles 
 previously over-taxed, was much more than compensated 
 by an increase of revenue on articles upon which no re- 
 duction was made. 
 
 Upon this ground we can understand (as Mr. Tooke 
 says in his last valuable work ' On Prices') how it hap- 
 pened that, tea and tobacco, in 1853, yielded (even at 
 undiminished high rates) 3^ millions more revenue than 
 in 1840; and that spirits and malt exhibited a similar 
 increase of 2 millions. 
 
 The problem, therefore, has become (to use Mr. 
 Tooke's language, with the alteration of only a few 
 words) not merely to raise from year to year a sufficient 
 revenue, but to raise it and at the same time to relieve 
 the pressure of taxes on those parts of the system where 
 they act as pernicious burdens. 
 
 It may be true, (Mr. Tooke says, "it is quite true ") 
 that, the magnitude of the debt renders it incumbent 
 upon us to provide, at least, some annual surplus towards 
 its reduction ; but, if any result be clear, in the financial 
 experience of the last fifteen years, it is this : that, the 
 most efficacious sinking fund that can be established is, 
 the release of the industry and skill of the country, 
 as rapidly as possible, from the pressure of every fiscal 
 burden which operates as a positive hindrance and 
 oppression. 
 
 But it is quite true, as Mr. Tooke adds, and as here 
 given in his own words : 
 
 "Our strength and progress consist far more in 
 augmenting the ability of the country to bear the 
 burden of the debt, than in attempting to diminish its 
 magnitude by retaining taxes which prevent accessions 
 to our ability ; and the more rapidly we arrive at an 
 adjustment of taxation so perfect and so equitable that, 
 
THE RESULTS OF FREE TRADE REFORMS. 393 
 
 for all practical purposes it may be regarded (consider- 
 ing its necessary magnitude) as imposing no oppressive 
 burdens on the development of skill and enterprise, the 
 more rapidly we shall arrive at that point where we may, 
 with most advantage and safety, make the reduction of 
 the debt our first and greatest concern ; but, till then, 
 few inferences from experience seem to be plainer than 
 this, namely, that, constantly observing the line of pru- 
 dence, as regards a full provision for all our engage- 
 ments, our first duty and our best policy is, to remove 
 fiscal oppressions and inequalities." 
 
 The result of all this experience clearly shows that, 
 every relaxation of restrictive duties has been imme- 
 diately followed by an expansion and increase of trade, 
 much more than sufficient to compensate for the loss of 
 the abandoned duties ; and that, so sensitive is trade to 
 any restraints upon perfect freedom of action, the 
 removal of any impediments, even in the minutest 
 arrangements of official routine, is attended with imme- 
 diate and sensible effects to the same end, the exten- 
 sion and enlargement of trade, with all the necessary 
 consequences of increase in the rate of profits and 
 wages, and of employment and comforts, to the working 
 classes. 
 
 With such experience of relaxing only the rigid rules 
 of the present system, what may not be expected from 
 the total abolition of all restrictive duties and other im- 
 pediments to perfect freedom of trade in this country ? 
 
 Even the most sanguine advocate of free-trade could 
 hardly have foreseen such vast results in so short a time 
 from such small beginnings. 
 
 It is, therefore, impossible to calculate beforehand 
 what would be the state of trade in a very few years 
 from the date of its perfect freedom and independence. 
 But this is certain, that, in the absence of any 
 national calamity from other causes, this country would 
 
394 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 then be in a state of prosperity unexampled in any 
 period of its past history ; and that, the example of this 
 nation would be like a beacon of light to guide other 
 nations of the world into the same track, that all may be 
 as one nation, with one and the same interest, mutually 
 interchanging, for their mutual benefit, the varied and 
 peculiar gifts of climate, soil and produce, bestowed on 
 each by a bounteous Providence, whose gifts are limited 
 by no measure, and who would have all Mankind as one 
 People, looking to one and the same God, the Giver of 
 all, and for the equal good of all. 
 
 This is the first step to the establishment of peace on 
 the firm foundation of one common and equal interest. 
 Nations, like individuals, must learn from experience. 
 They will then learn that, in the establishment of peace 
 on earth they are all equally interested. The bounda- 
 ries of kingdoms will then be of, comparatively, very 
 little consequence, and when the people are duly im- 
 pressed with all this, as proved to their own conviction, 
 war will be no longer possible. Year by year they will 
 be learning this through consequences which must con- 
 vince them. They will feel in the freedom of trade 
 their own freedom and worldly welfare, and they will 
 learn to regard the rights and interests of others for the 
 sake of their own, if for no other higher and better 
 motives. In this way savage and barbarous people will 
 be first taught to appreciate the comforts of civilisation, 
 and they, in their turn, will become the promoters of 
 civilisation by the same means. Year by year, under 
 this teaching, the shackles of slavery and serfdom must 
 be loosened, and in the end drop off. Slaves and serfs . 
 must be set free because it will be seen to be for the 
 interests of all that they should be free. Freedom of 
 trade will then be valued and guarded with no less 
 jealous care in all countries than personal freedom now 
 is in this country. To the freedom of the Press we 
 
THE RESULTS OF FREE TRADE REFORMS. 395 
 
 shall owe freedom of Trade, and we shall know how to 
 value both. We shall claim arid exercise the right to 
 buy and sell as freely as we now speak and write. We 
 shall learn to respect the grand simplicity of the Divine 
 Commandments, written on tablets of stone by the first 
 Lawgiver, and to submit ourselves more faithfully than 
 we have ever done before to the Divine Spirit of those 
 ancient and eternal Laws, given for all people, for all 
 times, under all circumstances, and so plain as to 
 require no Commentators. We shall learn through 
 these to see the unwise severity, the feeble folly, and 
 often the wicked injustice of human laws; and, in the 
 enjoyment of our own natural and lawful rights, we shall 
 learn to respect the natural and lawful rights of others. 
 W"e shall learn that, what is commonly called "accommo- 
 dating oneself to the prejudices of individuals, or show- 
 ing a prudent respect" for strange customs and peculiar 
 habits of thought, or for moral characteristics of nations, 
 is nothing but a just appreciation of the intellectual and 
 moral development of the individuals or nations, and 
 the right employment, in each case, of precisely those 
 agencies of civilisation which are fitted to be most 
 effective. The work of legislation will then be compara- 
 tively simple, and the line of duty plain. The necessity 
 of making 'just laws and enforcing them will then be 
 universally acknowledged and supported, and there will 
 be always a vast majority ready to enforce them. The 
 complicated interests of society will then be no longer 
 the miserable excuse for unjust and oppressive laws. 
 Sovereigns and Governments will then find their own 
 duties much more easy, and their own positions much 
 more secure : they will find their best security in the 
 well-being and contentment of the People, and the 
 People will find their greatest happiness in the preserva- 
 tion of peace and good order, which left them free to 
 think and to act in all that concerned themselves alone; 
 
396 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 to manage their own affairs in their own ways, and to 
 enjoy the fruits of their own industry. 
 
 The People will then be encouraged to place confi- 
 dence in sound principles, and they will regulate their 
 own conduct more in accordance with reason and jus- 
 tice, more consistent with . humanity and prudence. 
 They will learn to respect and apply, in the moral 
 affairs of this w 7 orld, those truths discovered through 
 reason, which, in the physical world, are revealed to us 
 through the laws of nature, and they will proceed to act 
 with the same confidence in the one as in the other. 
 Thus, they will derive incalculable advantages, far 
 beyond the present reach of human foresight. Irre- 
 concileable difficulties in the present complicated state 
 of human affairs will then be simplified, and by degrees 
 all will become reconciled with reason and truth. 
 Freedom of trade, being seen to work for the equal 
 benefit of all, will be recognised and established all over 
 the world with universal consent, and freedom of thought 
 and action must follow by the same universal assent. 
 
 Thus, a mutually beneficial intercourse would be 
 encouraged with all civilised nations : all would contri- 
 bute and receive : the bond of union would be always 
 strengthening, and would be held fast by one common 
 interest. Thus it might be, thus it surely will be. It 
 is only a question of time. But the sooner the better, 
 for time must always be a question of life and death. 
 We might then hope to see the world full of free 
 nations : mankind a great family and household consti- 
 tuted of self-governing members, related to each other 
 principally by voluntary ties, of affection and honor 
 and mutual service. We might then hope to see na- 
 tional selfishness perish, and the whole world become a 
 commonwealth of independent nations, with England 
 foremost in the good work of promoting the spirit of 
 human brotherhood. 
 
THE RESULTS OP FREE TRADE REFORMS. 397 
 
 Such was the view of Dr. Chalmers, as may be seen 
 in the concluding part of his last work on Political Eco- 
 nomy, sent by Dr. Chalmers, with a much valued letter 
 from himself to the present writer. As the opinion of 
 such a man on such a subject will be received by men 
 of all parties with the most respectful consideration, the 
 following is given in his own words : 
 
 " We cannot bid adieu to our argument without 
 making the strenuous avowal that, all our wishes and 
 all our partialities are on the side of the common people. 
 We should rejoice in a larger secondary, and a smaller 
 disposable population ; or, which is tantamount to this, 
 in higher wages to the laborers, and lower rents to the 
 landlords. But this cannot be effected, save by the 
 people themselves ; and that not by violence on their 
 part, or by any assertion, however successful, of a poli- 
 tical equality with the other orders of the State. There 
 is no way of achieving for them a better economical 
 condition, than by means of a more advantageous pro- 
 portion between the food of the country and the num- 
 ber of its inhabitants ; and no other way of securing 
 the proportion than by the growth of prudence and 
 principle among themselves. It will be the aggregate 
 effect of a higher taste, a higher intelligence, and, above 
 all, a vvide-spread Christianity throughout the mass of 
 the population ; and thus the most efficient ministers of 
 that gospel which opens to them the door of Heaven, 
 will be also the most efficient ministers of their temporal 
 comfort and prosperity upon Earth. Next to the salva- 
 tion of their souls, one of our fondest aspirations on 
 behalf of the general peasantry is, that they shall be 
 admitted to a larger share of the world's abundance 
 than now falls to their lot. But we feel assured that 
 there is no method by which this can be wrested from 
 the hands of the wealthier class. It can only be won 
 from them by the insensible growth of their own 
 virtue." 
 
398 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 This opinion will be shared by most readers. It is 
 not desirable, nor is it believed to be desired by many 
 in this country, that anything should be wrested from 
 the wealthier classes ; but only that there should be a 
 more equal distribution among all classes of the abun- 
 dant gifts of nature in the necessaries of life, and that 
 this should be won by the virtue of the people, on the 
 one side, from the just concessions of the wealthier 
 classes, on the other side, for the increase of wealth and 
 its only true enjoyment to all. But higher wages to 
 the laborers does not involve lower rents to the land- 
 lords. 
 
 That this great and most desirable object can be 
 accomplished only by the wealthier classes taking upon 
 themselves the burden of taxation, for the relief of the 
 lower classes ; thereby bringing the necessaries and 
 healthful conveniences of life within the reach of the 
 poorest, and thereby lifting up the lowest to better hopes 
 and higher self-respect, was the opinion of Dr. Chalmers, 
 and this was the unceasing aim of his ministry and 
 labor of love on earth. 
 
 It is a truth which cannot be denied that, life, to the 
 many, is made too hard, too wearisome : that this 
 world's abundance is not fairly distributed is not dis- 
 tributed according to the original intention and design. 
 There is a great and general mistake about the objects 
 and duties of this life. 
 
 As Dr. Johnson said : 
 
 " Life consists not in a series of illustrious actions; 
 the greater part of our time passes in compliance with 
 necessities in the performance of daily duties in the 
 removal of small inconveniences in the procurement of 
 petty pleasures ; and we are well or ill at ease as the 
 main stream of life glides smoothly or is ruffled by 
 small and frequent interruption." 
 
 It is an ill part in a Government which requires the 
 
GENERAL REVIEW. 399 
 
 whole of our time to be passed in compliance with ne- 
 cessities in the performance of daily duties ; which 
 increases the small inconveniences, diminishes the petty 
 pleasures, and prevents the main stream of life from 
 gliding smoothly, by many and not small interruptions. 
 What Government on the face of the earth is free 
 from this reproach ? 
 
 GENERAL REVIEW. 
 
 In reviewing the taxation of this Country, it is im- 
 possible to come to any other conclusion than that, it 
 has grown up with the Country, and has been imposed 
 from time to time under pressing emergencies, without 
 any system, and by selfish and interested classes, who 
 consulted only what they believed to be their own in- 
 terests, regardless of consequences to others. 
 
 Thus was imposed the great burden of taxation on 
 corn and wine and all other intermediate necessaries 
 and comforts of life, under the notion that the taxes, so 
 disguised, would be spread over the great mass of the 
 people, who would know little or nothing about it, and 
 who, in fact, had little or nothing to do with the making 
 of the laws. Nor is this any fanciful imputation. Mr. 
 M'Culloch, before quoted, describes a tax " to be direct 
 when it is immediately taken from property or labor; 
 and indirect when it is taken from them by making their 
 owners pay for liberty to use certain articles or to exer- 
 cise certain privileges." Assuming this definition, mark 
 his reasons for his preference. He says : 
 
 " Indirect taxes have, with few exceptions, been the 
 greatest favorites both of princes and subjects, and there 
 are very sufficient reasons for the preference of which 
 they have so generally been the objects. The burden of 
 direct taxation is palpable and obvious. It admits of 
 no disguise or concealment, but makes every one fully 
 
400 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 sensible of the exact amount of his income taken by 
 Government. We are all, however, extremely averse 
 from parting with property, except we obtain some more 
 acceptable equivalent in its stead. And the benefits 
 derived from the institution of government, though of 
 the highest importance, being neither so very obvious 
 nor striking as to be readily felt and appreciated by the 
 bulk of the people, there is, in the great majority of 
 cases, a strong disinclination to the payment of direct 
 taxes. 
 
 "For this reason, Governments have generally had re- 
 course to those that are indirect. Instead of exciting 
 the prejudices of their subjects by openly demanding a 
 portion of their incomes, they have taxed the articles on 
 which these incomes are usually expended. This inge- 
 nious plan conceals the amount of taxation, and makes its 
 payment appear in some measure voluntary. The tax 
 being generally paid, in the first instance, by the pro- 
 ducers, the purchasers confound it with the actual price 
 of the commodity. No separate demand being made 
 upon them for the tax, it escapes their recollection, and 
 the article which they receive seems the fair equivalent 
 of the sacrifice made in acquiring it. Such taxes have 
 also the advantage of being paid by degrees, in small 
 portions, and at the time when the commodities are 
 wanted for consumption, or, when it is most convenient 
 for the consumers to pay them." 
 
 A more conclusive argument than this against in- 
 direct taxation it is impossible to imagine. This is very 
 like the reasoning of a set of thieves, or swindlers, and 
 the meaning of it all, in a few words, is that, the Go- 
 vernment intentionally deceives the people, who, being 
 ignorant, or confounded and confused, are unconscious 
 that they are swindled, the fact " escapes their recol- 
 lection/' and they are deceived and defrauded. The 
 question whether or not this deception be for the benefit 
 
GENERAL REVIEW. 401 
 
 of the People remains the same. If this " ingenious 
 plan" be really for their benefit, by lightening the 
 burden, nothing can be said against it ; but if, on the 
 contrary, the burden be increased, and the evil greatly 
 aggravated by placing the greater part of the burden on 
 the wrong shoulders, then this " ingenious plan" is a 
 disgraceful fraud. And such, indeed, was the origin of 
 this " ingenious plan " of indirect taxation. Until the 
 reign of Charles the First, no considerable attempt had 
 been made to substitute indirect for direct taxation; 
 and that attempt, when made, gave rise to much poli- 
 tical agitation. That unfortunate King's object was, to 
 obtain money, but to obtain it by this means was then 
 held by many to be swindling. 
 
 It is much to be regretted when a person of admitted 
 abilities and great industry lends himself to a Govern- 
 ment for the support of views which it is difficult to 
 believe that he can seriously entertain, and if he should 
 be influenced by the emoluments of a place under the 
 Government, (which in this case no one has any right 
 to assume) the fewer places at the disposal of the Go- 
 vernment the better, and very few would be at their 
 disposal if all indirect taxes were at once swept away. 
 
 The real question, therefore, is in no degree advanced 
 by this view. But when the chief argument in favor of 
 any measure rests on Concealment, that alone affords a 
 strong ground for suspicion that something unfavorable 
 to a fair conclusion is concealed. The pretended " ad- 
 vantage of being paid by degrees, in small portions," is 
 very like a recommendation of slow poison, because it 
 may be administered " by degrees, in small portions." 
 
 What if our revenue laws do depress and diminish the 
 trade and manufactures of the country, do deprive the 
 laborer of a fair reward of his labor, do sink all the 
 laboring classes more or less in poverty, and often in 
 guilt and wretchedness, what, then, is this " ingenious 
 
 2 D 
 
402 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 plan of concealment," but a disgraceful trick and shame- 
 ful fraud upon the People, too ignorant, or too helpless 
 to prevent it ? 
 
 Not on such ground as this, however ingenious the 
 plan, can it be much longer maintained. When the 
 eyes of the working classes are opened, and when they 
 see the large amount of taxation which they are paying 
 out of their own labor, and the large amount of unne- 
 cessary suffering thereby inflicted upon them, they will 
 no longer consent ; and then the Government will find 
 out that, the most ingenious plan is, to consult the real 
 welfare of the people. 
 
 To open the eyes of the People that they may clearly 
 distinguish between good and evil, may see their own 
 good, and wisely seek it, is the present object. To 
 show them their true position, and that the true inte- 
 rests of all Governments and People are identical and 
 inseparable; that no mixture of evil is ever necessary 
 for any really good purpose ; and those who act as if it 
 were, are really doing evil that good may come, or, in 
 other words, serving the devil, that God may serve 
 them. 
 
 What folly for a man to do that now which he must 
 certainly undo again by repentance, or be undone for 
 ever ! That is a dangerous cant, as Archbishop Whately 
 says, now-a-days heard so often : "There is some truth 
 in so and so." Some truth ! yes : the serpent had 
 some truth in what he said : the forbidden tree was a 
 tree of knowledge : and there was some truth in Eve's 
 reflections. It was " pleasant to the eye," and desirable 
 " to make one wise." Here was the love of the beauti- 
 ful, and of knowledge, in the very first sin that was 
 committed. 
 
 The first step to show the people their true position 
 is, the simplification of the public accounts, that the 
 people may understand them. Instead of mystifying, 
 
GENERAL REVIEW. 403 
 
 to confuse and deceive, it is the duty, as well as the 
 policy, of every Government to simplify, for the purpose 
 of making clear and intelligible to all. 
 
 Against the authority, before quoted, for mystifica- 
 tion and deception, the following opinion of the late Sir 
 Robert Peel may be quoted for those who are disposed 
 to look back to his opinion as an authority on this 
 subject. 
 
 In his speech, on moving the appointment of a Fi- 
 nance Committee, loth February, 1828, he said: 
 "There is one point on which I have always had a 
 strong feeling. I allude to the advantage and necessity 
 of a simplification of the public accounts. No man is 
 more desirous than I am to see the public accounts pre- 
 sented in the simplest possible form. I see no reason 
 why we should not in this respect follow the example 
 set us by France and the United States of America. I 
 am quite certain that we should do well to profit by 
 such examples, and I can see no disadvantage attend- 
 ing if 
 
 And again : " I am convinced that nothing can be 
 more fruitless or impolitic than to introduce anything 
 like mystification or suppression into a view of the pub- 
 lic finances of the empire. These matters are, I take it, 
 much more simple than they appear to be on the face of 
 ordinary official statements of them. There is, in fact, 
 not the slightest difference between the calculations 
 formed upon many millions and upon a few pounds, or 
 between the expenditure of a humble individual and 
 that of a rich and powerful country. They depend 
 upon the same principles and must be governed by the 
 same laws, and one might as well contend that, the 
 rules of arithmetic applying to the sums with which we 
 ordinarily deal in the course of domestic occurrences do 
 not apply to the division or sub-division of many mil- 
 lions of money, as to suppose that the finances of a 
 
 2 i) 2 
 
404 TAXATION AS TT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 country, however great or important they may be, must 
 not, after all, rest on the same principles and be go- 
 verned by the same rule as the finances of an indivi- 
 dual." 
 
 It is quite true that the speeches in Parliament of the 
 late Sir Robert Peel may be referred to in support of 
 almost any view of almost any question of State policy 
 which ever came before him as a Statesman, and that 
 his imperfect perception or acknowledgment of any 
 fixed principle renders him but an uncertain authority 
 on any great question of State policy. This is true, and 
 will, undoubtedly, be more apparent when a greater dis- 
 tance of time shall have intervened. In the mean time 
 he may be assumed to be, on the question of taxation, 
 at least, an equal authority to the authority before 
 quoted; and, to those who think so, the following 
 opinion expressed by Sir Robert Peel, in his place in 
 the House of Commons, in his speech on the Income 
 Tax, on the 23rd March, 1842, may appear worthy of 
 notice. Speaking of all taxes, direct or indirect, as 
 bearing more or less unequally on those who pay them, 
 he said : " All indirect taxation has a natural tendency 
 to produce injustice, and I have ever thought that the 
 chief argument relied on in opposition to the taxation of 
 articles of consumption was, that if beer, or any such 
 article were exposed to it ; the tax always operated un- 
 justly." 
 
 And, in a former debate on taxation, on the 30th 
 April, 1833, he said : " Indirect taxation may be car- 
 ried too far. It has limits beyond which it gives rise 
 to smuggling, arid defeats the object in view." 
 
 And, in this view, he seems to have been strengthened 
 by experience, for, in making his financial statement to 
 the House of Commons on the llth March, 1842, he 
 spoke as follows : " If, then, it is necessary for me to 
 have fresh taxation, shall I lay it upon articles of sub- 
 
GENERAL REVIEW. 405 
 
 sistence upon those articles which may appear to some 
 superfluities, but which are now become almost the ne- 
 cessaries of life ? I cannot consent to increase the 
 taxation upon articles of subsistence consumed by the 
 great body of the laboring portion of the community. 
 I do think that you have had conclusive proof that you 
 have arrived at the limits of profitable taxation on 
 articles of subsistence. I advise you not to increase 
 taxation in this respect, for, if you do, most assuredly 
 you will be defeated in your object." 
 
 If, then, this be a true and safe view, and who can 
 doubt it, why should not the government and the 
 people cordially co-operate for that which most concerns 
 the common interests of all, for the establishment of 
 the wisest and best system of taxation which human 
 ingenuity can devise, not by stealthy and indirect, 
 but, by open and direct means? 
 
 And what is there in the Scheme proposed, which 
 any party or class of the people can fairly complain of? 
 
 Here is no change proposed to the injury of any party, 
 no interference with vested rights, no partial legisla- 
 tion for class interests, and no innovation on the prin- 
 ciples of the British Constitution ; but simply a return 
 to a law 180 years old, (then only an ancient law re- 
 stored) passed in the reign of one of the greatest and 
 wisest of our Kings, who, though a Foreigner, was the 
 most patriotic Sovereign who ever guided the destinies 
 of this nation, and to whom we are mainly indebted, 
 under Providence, for all the most precious privileges 
 which, as a Protestant People, we now possess. 
 
 What, then, is the change here proposed, and what is 
 there, in principle or in detail, in this change, which any 
 class of the people can reasonably fear, or fairly complain 
 of? 
 
 The land, as already shown, is the foundation-stone of 
 the State, on the security of which the safety and pro- 
 
406 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 sperity of all depends. As such, it is respected and pre- 
 served. All its just rights and privileges are proposed 
 to be maintained on the sound basis of equal protection 
 to all descriptions of property. But this supposes a dis- 
 tribution of States Taxes equally over all realised pro- 
 perty. One and the same tax, and one only, is proposed 
 to be levied on all realised property within the defined 
 description, and this being a direct tax, easily levied, 
 and collected at a comparatively trifling cost, will pass di- 
 rectly from the pockets of the People, into the Exchequer 
 of the State, without any of those fearful diminutions 
 from hosts of revenue officers, and those inseparable con- 
 sequences, fraud and negligence ; and, still more impor- 
 tant, without any of those injurious impediments to the 
 trade and manufactures of the country which must 
 attend upon the present system of Customs and Excise 
 Duties. As already shown, the land would then bear 
 only a just proportion of the State taxation, and that 
 would be, in effect, less than it bears now. The local 
 liabilities, which must necessarily fall on land, would 
 remain the same, unless, as may be reasonably expected 
 from the increased prosperity of the country, the present 
 dead weight of the poor rate be greatly diminished, which 
 would be so much relief in favour of the land. 
 
 In addition to all these great but appreciable gains, 
 would be those still greater but inappreciable gains to 
 the whole nation, in the escape from all the confusion 
 and demoralising effects of the present system, to one 
 of simplicity and clearness, which would " admit of no 
 disguise or concealment, but would make every one fully 
 sensible of the exact amount of his income taken by 
 Government," and would thereby admit of those whole- 
 some checks, which are the best securities for good 
 government for the real welfare and happiness of the 
 people, and for the greatness and prosperity of the 
 nation. 
 
GENERAL REVIEW. 407 
 
 The produce of one Property tax and one Personal 
 tax, with the revenue from the Crown Lands, would 
 then constitute the whole Income of the Nation. 
 
 The expenditure of this Income by the Government, 
 which is now, in theory, but not in practice, under the 
 control of the people, would then be, both theoretically 
 and practically, under their control ; or, if not, it would 
 then be their own fault. 
 
 It is in vain for the People to talk of Administrative 
 Reform, until they have obtained this control, and the 
 first step towards this is, a full and correct understanding 
 of the actual state of the Public Accounts. This can 
 be obtained only by Accounts of Receipts and Payments, 
 in an intelligible form, duly vouched and audited. 
 
 This is only common prudence in the conduct of 
 every private family, and, as Adam Smith said : 
 "What is prudence in the conduct of every private 
 family, can scarce be folly in that of a great Kingdom." 
 An exact knowledge of the revenue and expenditure of 
 the nation cannot be less desirable to an honest and 
 well-meaning Government, than to the People; and the 
 greater the revenue and expenditure, the more important 
 is this knowledge for guarding against unnecessary ex- 
 penses. 
 
 As shrewdly remarked by Archbishop Whately, it is 
 a curious circumstance and the reverse of what many 
 would expect, that the expenses called for by a real, or 
 imagined, necessity of those who have large incomes, are 
 greater in proportion than those of persons with slen- 
 derer means; and that, consequently, a larger propor- 
 tion of what are called the rich are in embarrassed 
 circumstances than of the poorer. This is often over- 
 looked, because the absolute number of those with large 
 incomes is so much less that, of course, the absolute 
 number of persons under pecuniary difficulties, in the 
 poorer classes, must form a very great majority. 
 
408 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 But if you look to the proportions it is quite the 
 reverse. Take the number of persons of each amount 
 of income, divided into classes, from 100 per annum, 
 up to 100,000 per annum, and you will find the per- 
 centage of those who are under pecuniary difficulties 
 continually augmenting as you go upwards. And when 
 you come to Sovereign States, whose revenues are 
 reckoned by millions, you will hardly find one that 
 is not deeply involved in debt ! So that it would 
 appear that, the larger the income, the harder it is to 
 live within it. 
 
 When men of great revenues live in splendour and 
 sensuality they are apt to plead that this is expected of 
 them, which may be, perhaps, sometimes true, in the 
 sense that such conduct is anticipated as probable ; not 
 true, as implying that it is required, or approved. A 
 person may fairly expect that another who has received 
 kindnesses from him should protect him in distress ; 
 yet, he may have reason to expect that he will not. 
 "England expects every man to do his duty;" but it 
 would be chimerical to expect a universal performance 
 of duty. 
 
 What may be reasonably expected (in one sense of the 
 word) must be precisely the practice of the majority; 
 since it is the majority of instances that constitutes 
 probability. What may be reasonably expected (in the 
 other sense) is something much beyond the practice of 
 the generality ; as long, at least, as it shall be true that, 
 " Narrow is the way that leadeth to life, and few there 
 be that find it." 
 
 What, then, may be expected from Governments 
 it is needless to say; but, as sure as the majority of 
 instances constitutes probability, so surely may the 
 people expect that, it they do not themselves under- 
 stand and look after their own interests, they will be 
 mismanaged, and the expenditure of public monies 
 
GENERAL REVIEW. 409 
 
 will not be always regulated by a clue regard to public 
 interests. 
 
 The argument of Coleridge, and others, often used, 
 as to the produce of those taxes the expenditure of which 
 is amongst our own fellow-subjects, may, and does, mis- 
 lead not a few. Powder and guns, and ships of war, 
 cost a great deal, but this cost is a gain to the manu- 
 facturers of powder, guns, etc. 
 
 And thus, some people bring themselves to fancy that 
 the country altogether does not sustain any loss at all. 
 Of course, if a heavy expenditure be incurred in arma- 
 ments, when necessary for the defence of our just rights, 
 this is not to be accounted a waste, any more than the 
 cost of bolts and locks to keep out thieves. But the 
 argument, as often used, does not at all look to any such 
 necessity, but would equally hold good if the money had 
 been expended in gunpowder to be expended in fire- 
 works, or in paying soldiers for amusing us with sham- 
 fights. For, in that case, also, the expenditure would 
 have gone to our own people equally. 
 
 The fallacy consists in not perceiving that, though the 
 labor of the gunpowder makers, soldiers, etc. is not 
 unproductive to them, inasmuch as they are paid for it, 
 it is unproductive to us, as it leaves no valuable results. 
 If gunpowder be employed in blasting rocks, so as to 
 open a rich vein of ore, or coal, or to make a useful 
 road, the manufacturer gets his payment for it just the 
 same as if it had been made into fireworks ; but, then, 
 the mine, or the road, will remain as an article of wealth 
 to him who has so employed it. After having paid for 
 the powder, he will be still richer than he was before ; 
 whereas, if he had employed it for fireworks he would 
 have been so much the poorer, since it would have left 
 no results. 
 
 When, however, war expenditure does result in the 
 conquest of some territory, and this territory brings in 
 
410 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 some tribute or other profit beyond the cost of con- 
 quering it and keeping it in subjection, which is not 
 often the case, then, it must be admitted, waiving all 
 considerations of justice and humanity, that something 
 has been gained. But the revenue thus wrested from a 
 subjugated country, must evidently impoverish the one 
 party, as much, at least, as it enriches the other. 
 
 On the other hand, the revenue derived from other 
 lands by Commerce enriches both parties; since the ex- 
 change of a cargo of hardware, for instance, for a cargo 
 of silks, implies that the one who parts with the silk for 
 the hardware finds the latter the more valuable to him, 
 and vice versa. And thus, both advance in prosperity. 
 
 And thus, as Archbishop Whately observes, it may 
 be regarded as a general rule, that States are not exempt 
 from the influences of the same causes which, in the 
 affairs of individuals, produce good or bad success. 
 That the general tendency of each particular virtue and 
 vice in individuals is to produce corresponding worldly 
 advantages and disadvantages, is a doctrine which, in a 
 speculative point of view, at least, few would be disposed 
 to controvert. And though this general rule admits of 
 such numerous exceptions that, a right-miuded and con- 
 siderate man would not venture, in the case of any 
 individual, to infer that his success in life had precisely 
 corresponded with his deserts or, decidedly to promise, 
 for example, prosperity to the honest, frugal, and in- 
 dustrious ; and denounce certain ruin to the profligate ; 
 yet, he would not feel less convinced of the certainty of 
 the general rule, that such conduct will, for the most 
 part, be attended with such consequences. 
 
 " Thus, though we are not to believe that regular 
 temporal rewards and punishments are dispensed under 
 the moral government of God to nations, yet, the general 
 rale by which temperance and integrity and industry 
 tend, in private life, to promote each man's health and 
 
GENERAL REVIEW. 411 
 
 reputation, and prosperity, is applicable to Nations also. 
 Unprincipled aggression will, usually, provoke, sooner 
 or later, a formidable retaliation; and, on the other 
 hand, moderation and good faith have manifestly a 
 general tendency to promote peace and internal pro- 
 sperity." 
 
 The moral rule to be drawn from these remarks is, 
 that it is one of the first duties of every people, to look 
 to their ways, and to mind their own affairs. 
 
 Now, the first step to minding one's own affairs, is to 
 understand them ; and this should be the first object of 
 a free and intelligent people. By far the greatest part 
 of the evils, in this and every other country, may be 
 traced to bad legislation; a cause which never could have 
 existed, or, at least, never would have been permitted to 
 continue, if the people had better understood their own 
 affairs. It is impossible to suppose that the sacrifice of 
 vast wealth, on the part of a whole people, for the gain 
 and that, comparatively, a trifling gain of a handful 
 of monopolists, would have been submitted to patiently, 
 so often, and so long, as it has been, as a necessary effect 
 of the system pursued, if that system had been better 
 understood, and the effect seen. But the fact is, the 
 gain has been concentrated and the loss diffused. This 
 would not have occurred so often as it has were it not 
 that this diffusion of the loss causes its existence that 
 is, its existence as a loss so increased to be unperceived. 
 If thirty millions of persons are each virtually taxed 
 half-a-crown a year in the increased price of some article, 
 through the prohibition of free trade, perhaps, not above 
 a shilling of this goes to those who profit by the mono- 
 poly. But this thirty millions of shillings, amounting 
 to ^1, 500,000 per annum, is divided, perhaps, among a 
 few hundred persons, who clearly perceive whence their 
 revenue is derived; and who, when such an income is at 
 stake, will combine together, and use every effort and 
 
412 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 artifice to keep up the monopoly. The losers, on the 
 other hand, the people, not only have, each, much less 
 at stake, but are, usually, ignorant that they do lose by 
 this monopoly, else they would not readily submit to pay 
 half-a-crown, or even one shilling, as a direct pension to 
 a few hundred men who had no claim on them. 
 
 Such was the effect, but in a much more aggravated 
 degree, of our system of Corn-laws, and other prohi- 
 bitory or restrictive laws on articles of fcod or other 
 daily necessaries ; some of the worst of which are now 
 repealed, but too many of which still remain. 
 
 Of these last are the Customs and Excise Laws, the 
 effect of which is, as already shown, to take three shil- 
 lings and sevenpence farthing out of the pocket of every 
 house-keeper in this kingdom, for the purpose of putting 
 one Shilling into the Exchequer of the State ; to say 
 nothing of the loss of a much larger sum thereby pre- 
 vented from coming fairly into the pocket of every house- 
 keeper so wronged. 
 
 All these and a multitude of other cases come under 
 the general formula before stated; the tendency to 
 over- rate the amount of whatever is seen and known, as 
 compared with what is unknown, or less known, unseen, 
 and indefinite. 
 
 It is inconceivable that, if the people understood this, 
 they would so patiently submit to it. The people feel 
 sorely, but do not see, the heavy burden which they are 
 bearing. This is the effect of the " indirect taxes, which 
 have been the greatest favorites both of princes and 
 subjects," and " for this reason, governments have gene- 
 rally had recourse to those that are indirect," because 
 " this ingenious plan conceals the amount of taxation, 
 and makes its. payment appear in some measure volun- 
 tary" (!) 
 
 Governments must, indeed, have been at their wits' 
 end when they resorted to taxes on the necessaries of 
 
GENERAL REVIEW. 413 
 
 life, in food and clothing, on knowledge, in paper 
 (now happily abolished) and on discoveries for the be- 
 nefit of mankind, in Patents for inventions when they 
 stooped to pick the pockets of pedlars and pawnbrokers, 
 attornies and auctioneers, special- pleaders and appraisers, 
 conveyancers and cab- drivers, bankers and bagsmen, and 
 some other helpless victims, of a few pounds a year in 
 the form of fees for licences to trade, and to practise 
 their callings ! That these miserable shifty contrivances 
 should ever have been resorted to is strange, but that 
 these, and many more like them, should be continued in 
 these days of intellectual advancement is marvellous, 
 and not a little discreditable to the present state of 
 national intelligence. 
 
 But all these great and small impediments to pro- 
 gress may now be at once swept away, and the whole 
 revenue of the State may be drawn directly from the 
 simple source of all national wealth, and in a manner 
 open and intelligible to all classes. 
 
 Suppose Free Trade in full operation. What then 
 would be the wealth of Great Britain, the undisputed 
 market of the World ? What then might be, and most 
 probably, would be, the prosperity of the People, and 
 the greatness of the Nation ? 
 
 It is for the People to answer these questions. It is 
 for the People to accomplish these objects for them- 
 selves ; and for this we may be sure, for we shall then 
 he acting in conformity with providential laws, that all 
 that is needful is, " steadfastness within, and imraove- 
 able resolve;" a united will, with united action. 
 
 This has been the secret of success with all the 
 mighty hunters of mankind from Nimrod to Napoleon ; 
 and if often applied with success to the objects of per- 
 sonal ambition, it is, surely, therefore not the less appli- 
 cable when the objects are, the wealth of the Nation 
 and the prosperity of the People. 
 
414 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 In reviewing the evidence, here brought together, of 
 the results of our present advance to Free Trade, the 
 following appear to be fair and just conclusions : 
 
 1. That, every step towards Free Trade has been 
 immediately followed by a large increase of revenue to 
 the State, and rise in the rate of profits and wages, 
 with corresponding increase of employment and com- 
 forts to all the working classes. 
 
 2. That to the removal of impediments is to be attri- 
 buted the great and rapid growth of the foreign trade, 
 and the present flourishing condition of the agriculture 
 of the country. 
 
 3. That, but for the relief thus afforded, the burden 
 of taxation, aggravated by the evils of Customs and 
 Excise duties, which diminished the real value of wages, 
 by rendering a large class of imported articles, more or 
 less necessaries of daily life, scarce and dear, and still 
 further aggravated by complicated and vexatious law r s, 
 which kept back industry and capital from profitable 
 employment, must have reduced trade and agriculture, 
 and consequently all classes of people in this country, 
 to a state of unexampled depression and misery. 
 
 4. That, in a Country like Great Britain, of circum- 
 scribed area, with a manufacturing population and large 
 external trade, political liberty alone is not sufficient 
 to preserve society from danger of retrogression ; but 
 that quite as vital to the general interests is a perfect 
 freedom of trade and industry, and an equal adjustment 
 of taxation. 
 
 5. That, all experience has proved that, by repealing 
 Customs and Excise duties, and so framing legislation 
 as to make available the immense resources at com- 
 mand, and to bring within reach of the great body of 
 the population, not only the necessaries of daily life, 
 but also other articles of comparative luxury and com- 
 fort, by reducing these to the lowest market price, the 
 
GENERAL REVIEW. 415 
 
 revenue will be placed upon a more firm and safe basis, 
 and the number and amount of the taxes may be greatly 
 diminished. 
 
 6. That, all experience has -proved that, extension of 
 markets, and a vast increase of demand, take place con- 
 currently with a gradual diminution in the cost of 
 imported commodities, with a range of prices so free 
 from extreme and artificial fluctuations as to tend 
 rapidly to a level, interrupted only by such varia- 
 tions as arise wholly from mercantile or natural 
 causes. 
 
 7. That, the events which have taken place since 
 1845, justify the confident expectation that, the adop- 
 tion of Free Trade, by foreign countries, is a simple 
 question of time, the fact being that, every year which 
 is suffered by foreign countries to elapse, before they 
 adopt the same commercial level as Great Britain, will 
 be so many years of a balance of trade in favor of this 
 country. 
 
 8. That, the principle is invariably true and safe to 
 be relied on, that every reduction of duties which admits 
 a larger quantity of the produce of foreign countries 
 must, at least, be paid for by commodities which it is 
 profitable to this country to export, whatever may be 
 the degree of folly or wisdom displayed in the tariffs of 
 the foreign countries to which they are sent. 
 
 It is, therefore, certain that the country with low 
 duties obtains the benefit of a larger trade, and it is 
 equally certain that, hostile high duties injure chiefly 
 the revenue and subjects of the State which imposes 
 them. It follows, as a necessary consequence, that the 
 country which imposes no duties gains the benefit of a 
 still larger trade. 
 
 These principles were comprised in that celebrated 
 Petition from the Merchants of London, prepared by 
 Mr. Thomas Tooke, and presented by Mr. Alexander 
 
416 TAXATION AS IT OUGHT TO BE. 
 
 Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, on the 8th May, 
 1820, to the House of Commons. 
 
 In that Petition it was stated : 
 
 " That the prevailing prejudices, in favor of the pro- 
 tective or restrictive system, may be traced to the erro- 
 neous supposition that every importation of foreign 
 commodities occasions a diminution, or discouragement, 
 to our own productions to the same extent : whereas, it 
 may be clearly shown that, although the particular de- 
 scription of production which could not stand against 
 unrestrained foreign competition would be discouraged, 
 yet, as no importation could be continued for any length 
 of time without a corresponding exportation direct, or 
 indirect, there would be an encouragement, for the pur- 
 pose of that exportation, of some other production to 
 which our situation might be better suited ; thus afford- 
 ing, at least, an equal, and, probably, a greater, and, 
 certainly, a more beneficial employment to our own 
 capital and labor. 
 
 "That, of the numerous protective and prohibitory 
 duties of our commercial code, it may be proved that 
 while all operate as a very heavy tax on the community 
 at large, very few are of any ultimate benefit to the 
 classes in whose favor they were originally instituted, 
 and none to the extent of the loss occasioned by them 
 to other classes." 
 
 And, with regard to the Customs Duties, the Peti- 
 tioners made the following important admission : 
 
 " As long as the necessity for the present amount of 
 revenue subsists, your Petitioners cannot expect so im- 
 portant a branch of it as the Customs to be given up, 
 nor to be materially diminished, unless some substitute, 
 less objectionable, be suggested." 
 
 If the time and state of public opinion be considered, 
 when this remarkable document was produced, now 
 more than fifty years ago, the close and accurate rea- 
 
GENERAL REVIEW. 417 
 
 soning and the forcible expression of the whole of this 
 petition will be the more striking ; and it will, certainly, 
 be recorded in history as the foundation stone on which 
 Free Trade has been established, and on it will be found 
 inscribed, in imperishable letters, the honored name of 
 THOMAS TOOKE. 
 
 2 E 
 
PART IV. 
 
 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
421 
 
 PAET IV. 
 OBJECTIONS ANSWEBED. 
 
 INNOVATION. 
 
 To follow in the footsteps of our Ancestors is, with 
 many, associated with a sort of religious feeling of duty ; 
 and any one who suggests that these are only leading 
 us round in a circle, and thereby preventing any pro- 
 gress, is too often looked upon as an evil-disposed 
 person, on whom some hard name is fixed, to desig- 
 nate him as belonging to a class dangerous to good 
 order and decorum in society, and, therefore, to be 
 avoided. 
 
 It is this self- wisdom of self- deceivers which has ever 
 retarded the instinct of man's nature for progress and 
 improvement ; which sees innovation in change, and 
 does not see that Time is the greatest innovator. 
 
 Lord Bacon wisely wrote in his day : 
 
 " If time, of course, alters things for the worse, and 
 wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, 
 what shall be the end ? It is true, that what is settled 
 by custom, though it be not good, yet, at least, it is fit ; 
 and those things which have long gone together are, 
 as it were, confederate with themselves ; whereas, new 
 things piece not so well : but though they help by their 
 utility, yet they trouble by their unconformity ; besides, 
 
422 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 they are like strangers, more admired, and less favored. 
 All this is true, if time stood still ; which, contrariwise, 
 moveth so round, that a forward retention of custom is 
 as turbulent a thing as an innovation ; and they that 
 reverence too much old times are but a scorn to the 
 new. 
 
 It were good, therefore, that men in their innovations 
 would follow the example of time itself which, indeed, 
 innovateth greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarcely 
 to be perceived." 
 
 The truth is, as observed by Archbishop Whately, 
 in his comments on the text of Lord Bacon, that, in 
 all the serious and important affairs of life, men are at- 
 tached to what they have been used to, and this holds 
 good in all departments of life. New medicines, for 
 instance, come into vogue, from time to time, with or 
 without good reason ; but a fundamentally new system 
 of medicine, whether right or wrong, is sure to have the 
 strongest prejudices enlisted against it. If, when the 
 celebrated Harvey discovered the circulation of the 
 blood, he had, on the ground that people often readily 
 introduced some new medicine, calculated on a favor- 
 able reception, or even a fair hearing for his doctrine, 
 which went to establish a fundamental revolution, he 
 would soon have been undeceived by the vehement and 
 general opposition with which he was encountered. 
 And it was the physicians of the highest standing that 
 most opposed Harvey. It was the experienced navi- 
 gators that most opposed Columbus. It was those 
 most conversant with the management of the Post 
 Office that were the last to approve of the uniform 
 penny-postage. 
 
 For, the greater any one's experience and skill in his 
 own department, and the more he is entitled to the 
 deference which is proverbially due to each man in his 
 own province, the more likely, indeed, he will be to be 
 
INNOVATION. 423 
 
 a good judge of improvements in details, or even to 
 introduce them himself, but the more unlikely to give 
 a fair hearing to any radical change. An experienced 
 stage-coachman is likely to be a good judge of all that 
 relates to turnpike-roads, and coach-horses ; but you 
 should not consult him about rail-roads, and steam- 
 carriages. Again, every one knows how slowly and 
 with what difficulty farmers are prevailed on to adopt 
 any new system of husbandry, even where the faults of 
 an old-established usage, and the advantage of a change 
 can be made evident to the senses. 
 
 An anecdote is told, by Archbishop Whately, of a 
 gentleman who, in riding through the deep and shady 
 Devonshire Lanes, became entangled in the intricacies 
 of their numberless windings, and not being able to ob- 
 tain a sufficiently wide view of the country to know 
 whereabouts he was, trotted briskly on in the confident 
 hope that he should at length come to some house whose 
 inhabitant would direct him, or to some more open spot 
 from which he could take a survey of the different roads, 
 and observe whither they led. After proceeding a long 
 time in this manner, he was surprised to find a perfect 
 uniformity in the country through which he passed, and 
 to meet with no human being, or come in sight of any 
 habitation. He was, however, encouraged by observing, 
 as he advanced, the prints of horses' feet, which indicated 
 that he was in no unfrequented track; these became, 
 continually, more and more numerous the further he 
 went, so as to afford him a still increasing assurance of 
 his being in the immediate neighbourhood of some great 
 road, or populous village ; and he accordingly paid less 
 anxious attention to the bearings of the country, from 
 being confident that he was in the right way. But still 
 he saw neither house, nor human creature, and, at length, 
 the recurrence of the same objects by the road-side 
 opened his eyes to the fact, that, all this time, misled by 
 
424 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 the multitude of turnings, he had been riding in a circle, 
 and that the foot-marks, the sight of which had so 
 cheered him, were those of his own horse, their number, 
 of course, increasing with every circuit he took. Had 
 he not fortunately made this discovery, perhaps he might 
 have been riding there now. 
 
 The truth of this tale does not make it the less useful 
 by way of apologue; and the moral we would deduce 
 from it is, that in many parts of the conduct of life, and, 
 not least in government and legislation, men are liable 
 to folloiv the track of their own footsteps to set them- 
 selves an example and to flatter themselves that they 
 are going right, from their conformity to their own pre- 
 cedent. 
 
 It is commonly and truly said, when any new and un- 
 tried measure is proposed, that we cannot fully estimate 
 the inconveniences it may lead to in practice; but we 
 are convinced this is even still more the case with any 
 system which has long been in operation. The evils to 
 which it may contribute, and the obstacles it may pre- 
 sent to the attainment of any good, are partly overlooked, 
 or lightly regarded, on account of their familiarity, partly 
 attributed to such other causes as perhaps really do co- 
 operate in producing the same effects, and ranked along 
 with the unavoidable alloys of human happiness, the 
 inconveniences from which no human policy can entirely 
 exempt us. 
 
 In some remote and unimproved districts, if you com- 
 plain of the streets of a town being dirty and dark, as 
 those of London were for many ages, the inhabitants tell 
 you that the nights are cloudy and the weather rainy ; 
 as for their streets, they are j ust such as they have long 
 been ;-and the expedient of paving and lighting has oc- 
 curred to nobody. The ancient Romans had, probably, 
 no idea that a civilised community could exist without 
 slaves. That the same work can be done much better 
 
INNOVATION. 425 
 
 and cheaper by freemen, and that their odious system 
 contained the seeds of the destruction of their empire, 
 were truths which, familiarised as they were to the then 
 existing state of society, they were not likely to suspect. 
 "If you allow of no plundering," said an astonished 
 Mahratta chief to some English officers, " how is it pos- 
 sible for you to maintain such fine armies as you bring 
 into the field ? " He and his ancestors, time out of 
 mind, had, doubtless, been following their own footsteps 
 in the established routine; and had accordingly never 
 dreamed that pillage is inexpedient as a source of re- 
 venue, or even one that can possibly be dispensed with. 
 Recent experiment, indeed, may bring to light, and often 
 exaggerate, the defects of a new system, but long f ami- 
 liarity blinds us to those very defects. 
 
 The practical consequence of this attachment of men 
 to what they have long been used to is, that it is a good 
 point gained, when there does exist need for a change, 
 even though little or nothing of improvement, because 
 we may look forward with cheering hope to a remedy of 
 the remedy a removal of the newly introduced evils, as 
 a change far more easily to be brought about, than the 
 first change. Alterations in any building are easily made 
 while the mortar is wet. So it is in legislation, and in 
 all human affairs. While the most inconvenient and 
 absurd laws are suffered to remain unchanged for suc- 
 cessive generations, hardly an Act is passed that any 
 defects in it are not met by " Acts to amend " it in the 
 next and succeeding Sessions. 
 
 To avoid the two opposite evils noticed by Lord Bacon, 
 the liability to sudden and violent changes, and the 
 adherence to established usage, when inconvenient or 
 mischievous, to give the requisite stability to govern- 
 ments and other institutions, without shutting the door 
 against improvement, this is a problem which both 
 ancient and modern legislators have not well succeeded 
 
426 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 in solving. Some, like the ancient Medes and Persians, 
 and like Lycurgus, have attempted to prohibit all change; 
 but those who constantly appeal to the wisdom of their 
 ancestors, as a sufficient reason for perpetuating any- 
 thing these have established, forget two things : first, 
 that they cannot hope for ever to persuade all successive 
 generations of men that there was once one generation 
 of such infallible wisdom as to be entitled to control all 
 their descendants for ever : which is to make the earth, 
 in fact, the possession not of the living, but of the dead : 
 and, secondly, that even supposing our ancestors gifted 
 with such infallibility, many cases must arise in which 
 it may be reasonably doubted whether they themselves 
 would not have advocated, if living, changes called for 
 by altered circumstances. 
 
 An antiquated form, however perverted from, its ori- 
 ginal purpose, gratifies the lazy in their love of ease; it 
 averts the mortification of confessing error, which is 
 always so abhorrent to the self-satisfied stupidity of those 
 who grow old without gaining experience. 
 
 It is to be observed,' however, that in almost every 
 department of life, the evil that has very long existed 
 will often be less clearly perceived, and less complained 
 of, than in proportion to the actual extent of the 
 evil. 
 
 If you look to any department of government, or to 
 any parish or diocese that has long been left to the ma- 
 nagement of apathetic or inefficient persons, you will 
 find that there are few or no complaints. Because com- 
 plaints which have long since been found vain, will have 
 long since ceased to be made ; there will be no great ar- 
 rears of business undone, and of applications unanswered, 
 because business will not have been brought before those 
 who, it is known, will not transact it ; nor applications 
 made, to which no answer can be hoped for ; abuses aud 
 detects and evils of various kinds, which ought to have 
 
INNOVATION. 427 
 
 been remedied, men will have learned to submit to, as 
 to visitations of Providence, having been left without 
 redress till, at length, they have forgotten that any 
 redress is due, or is possible. And this stagnation will 
 come to be regarded as the natural state of things. 
 
 But it is far from being sufficient, as seems to be the 
 notion of some persons, to show that the present is not 
 the fittest conceivable occasion for taking a certain 
 step. 
 
 Besides this, it is requisite to show, not merely that a 
 better occasion may be imagined, or that a better occasion 
 is past, but that a more suitable occasion is likely to arise 
 hereafter, and how soon ; and also that the mischief, 
 which may be going on during the interval, will be more 
 than compensated by the superior suitableness of that 
 future occasion ; in short, that it will have been worth 
 waiting for. 
 
 And, in addition to all this, it is requisite to show 
 also the probability that, when this golden opportunity 
 shall arise, men will be more disposed to take advantage 
 of it, than they have heretofore appeared to be ; that 
 they will not again fall into apathetic security, and 
 fondness for indefinite procrastination. 
 
 This last point is as needful to be established as any ; for 
 it is remarkable that, those who deprecate taking any 
 step just now, in these times of extraordinary excite- 
 ment, did not, on those former occasions, come for- 
 ward to propose taking any advantage of a comparatively 
 calmer state of things. They neither made any call, 
 nor responded to the call made by others. 
 
 And, indeed, all experience seems to show, com- 
 paring the apathy on the subject which was so general 
 at those periods, with the altered state of feeling now 
 existing, that a great and pressing emergency and 
 nothing else, will induce men to take any decided step ; 
 and that a period of discussion and perplexing difficulty 
 
428 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 is, though not in itself, the most suitable occasion for 
 such a step, yet, constituted as human nature is, the 
 best, because the only, occasion on which one can hope 
 that it will be taken. 
 
 Still, however, we must expect to be told by many 
 that, sooner or later matters will come right, sponta- 
 neously, if left untouched ; that, in time, though we 
 cannot tell how soon, a period of extraordinary excite- 
 ment is sure to be succeeded by one of comparative 
 calm. 
 
 In the meantime, it is forgotten at what cost such 
 spontaneous restoration of tranquillity is usually pur- 
 chased how much the fire will have consumed before 
 it shall have burnt out of itself. 
 
 The case is very similar to what takes place in the 
 natural body ; the anguish of acute inflammation, when 
 left to itself, is succeeded by the calm of a mortification ; 
 a limb is amputated, or drops off, and the body, but no 
 longer the whole body, is restored to a temporary ease, 
 at the expense of a mutilation. 
 
 It is true that, whatever is established, and already 
 existing, has a presumption on its side, that is the bur- 
 den of proof lies on those who propose a change. 
 
 No one is called on to bring reasons against any 
 alteration, till some reasons have been offered for it. 
 But the deference which is thus claimed for old laws 
 and institutions is sometimes extended to what are 
 called, " the good old times," as if the world had for- 
 merly been older, instead of younger, than it is now. 
 But it is manifest that, the advantage possessed by old 
 men, that of long experience, must belong to the pre- 
 sent age more than to any preceding. 
 
 Is there not then some reason for the ridicule which 
 Lord Bacon speaks of, as attaching to those " who too 
 much reverence old times " ? To say that no changes 
 shall take place, is to talk idly. We might as well pre- 
 
INNOVATION. 429 
 
 tend to control the motion of the earth. To resolve 
 that none shall take place except what are undesigned 
 and accidental, is to resolve that, though a clock may 
 gain or lose indefinitely, at least we will take care that 
 it shall never be regulated. " If time " (to use again 
 Bacon's warning words) " alters things to the worse, 
 and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the 
 better, what shall be the end ? " 
 
 It is to be observed that hurtful changes are often 
 attributed to harmless ones ; and apprehensions are en- 
 tertained that a change, however small, is necessarily a 
 dangerous thing, as tending to produce extensive and 
 hurtful innovations. Many instances may be found of 
 small alterations being followed by great and mischie- 
 vous ones ; but it is doubtful whether all history can 
 furnish an instance of the greater innovation having 
 been, properly speaking, caused by the lesser. Of 
 course, the first change will always precede the second, 
 and many mischievous innovations have taken place ; 
 but these may often be explained by the too long post- 
 ponement of the requisite changes, by the neglect of the 
 homely old proverb " A tile in time saves nine." A 
 house may stand for ages, if some very small repairs 
 and alterations are promptly made from time to time 
 as they are needed ; whereas, if decay be suffered to go 
 on unheeded, it may become necessary to pull down 
 and rebuild the whole house. The longer any needful 
 reform is delayed, the greater and the more difficult, 
 and the more sudden and the more dangerous, and un- 
 settling, it will be. And then, perhaps, those who had 
 caused this delay, by their pertinacious resistance to any 
 change at all, will point to these evils evils brought on 
 by themselves in justification of their conduct. If 
 they would have allowed a few broken slates on the 
 roof to be at once replaced by new ones, the timbers 
 would not have rotted, nor the walls in consequence 
 
430 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 leaned, nor would the house have needed to be demo- 
 lished and rebuilt. 
 
 Most wise, therefore, is the admonition of Lord 
 Bacon, to copy the great innovator, Time, by vigilantly 
 watching for, and promptly counteracting, the first 
 small insidious approaches o decay, and introducing 
 gradually, from time to time, such small improvements 
 (individually small, but collectively great) as there may 
 be room for, and which will prevent the necessity of 
 violent and sweeping reformations. 
 
 As that excellent, learned, and far-sighted man, Dr. 
 Arnold, said : " There is nothing so revolutionary, be- 
 cause there is nothing so unnatural, and so convulsive 
 to society, as the strain to keep things fixed, when all 
 the world is, by the very law of its creation, in eternal 
 progress ; and the cause of all the evils in the world 
 may be traced to that natural, but most deadly, error 
 of human indolence and corruption, that our business is 
 to preserve, and not to improve. It is the ruin of us 
 , all alike, individuals, schools, and nations. . . . One 
 would think that people who talk against change were 
 literally, as well as metaphorically, blind, and did not 
 see that everything in themselves, and around them, is 
 changing every hour by the necessary laws of its 
 being." 
 
 There are some remarks of an admirable writer of the 
 present day, Sir Francis B. Head, in one of his " De- 
 scriptive Essays," so applicable to this subject, that the 
 following is given in his own impressive words : 
 
 " There is, we humbly think, something impressively 
 appalling in the reflection that everything in creation 
 has been immutably fixed, by a strict entail, save and 
 except the march, progressive, or retrograde, of human 
 reason. 
 
 " The velocity of lightning, the sound of thunder, the 
 power of the wind, which still goeth where it listeth, do 
 
INNOVATION. 431 
 
 not increase. The heat of the sun, the blueness of the 
 sky, the freshness of the mountain air, the solemn 
 grandeur of the trackless ocean, remain unaltered. 
 The nest of the bird improves no more than its plumage, 
 the habitation of the beaver no more than its fur, 
 the industry of the bee no more than its honey, and, 
 lovely as is the melody of the English lark, yet the 
 unchanged accents of its morning hymn daily proclaim 
 to us from the firmament of heaven that, in the conju- 
 gation of the Works of Nature, there are no distinc- 
 tions of tenses, for that what is, what was, and what 
 will be, are the same. 
 
 " But it is not so with human reason. Man alone has 
 the power to amass and bequeath to his posterity, what- 
 ever knowledge he acquires, and thus our condition on 
 earth may be improved ad infinitum by the labor, in- 
 telligence, and discoveries of those who have preceded 
 us." 
 
 Nature, therefore, points out to us, by this exception, 
 that man is intended for change, and for improvement 
 by change. 
 
 It is a common answer to any proposed change for the 
 moral or physical improvement of the condition of a 
 people, that they are not yet sufficiently prepared for it ; 
 as if any preparation were required for improving the 
 spiritual or temporal welfare of a people. 
 
 If there be any one truth which the deductions of 
 reason alone, independently of history, would lead us to 
 anticipate, and which again history alone would establish, 
 independently of antecedent reasoning, it is this : that a 
 whole class of men, placed permanently under the as- 
 cendancy of another as subjects, without the rights and 
 privileges of citizens, must be a source, at the best, of 
 weakness, and generally of danger to the State. They 
 cannot well be expected, and have rarely been found, to 
 evince much hearty patriotic feeling towards a commu- 
 
432 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 nity in which their neighbours look down on them as 
 an inferior, and permanently degraded species. AVhile 
 kept in brutish ignorance, poverty, and weakness they 
 are likely to feel like the ass in the fable indifferent 
 whose pannier they bear. If they increase in power, 
 wealth, and mental development, they are likely to be 
 ever on the watch for an opportunity of shaking off a 
 degrading yoke. Even a complete general despotism, 
 weighing down all classes without exception, is, in gene- 
 ral, far more readily borne than invidious distinctions, 
 drawn between a favored, and a depressed race of sub- 
 jects; for men feel an insult more than a mischief Aoue 
 to them, and feel no insult so much as one daily and 
 hourly inflicted by their immediate neighbours. 
 
 But, besides the other causes which have always ope- 
 rated to perpetuate, in spite of experience, an unjust 
 and impolitic system, the difficulty of changing it, when 
 once established, is one of the greatest. The false step 
 is one which it is peculiarly difficult to retrace. Men 
 long debarred from civil rights, almost always become 
 ill fitted to enjoy them. The brutalizing effects of 
 oppression, which cannot immediately be done away by 
 its removal, at once furnish a pretext for justifying it 
 and make relief hazardous. Kind and liberal treatment, 
 if cautiously and judiciously bestowed, will gradually 
 and slowly advance men towards the condition of being 
 j worthy of such treatment ; but treat men as aliens, or 
 
 i enemies, as slaves, as children, or as brutes, arid they 
 will speedily and completely justify your conduct. 
 
 The undiscriminating advocates of delay, who are 
 always saying that, " The People are not yet ripe for 
 such a change," usually forget to inquire, " Are they 
 ripening ? When, and how, are they likely to become 
 ripe ? " or, <( Are men's minds to ripen like winter 
 pears, merely by laying them by, and letting them 
 alone ? " 
 
INNOVATION. 433 
 
 Time, as Bishop Copleston has remarked, "is no 
 agent." When we speak of such and such changes be- 
 ing brought about by time, we mean in time, by the 
 gradual and imperceptible operation of some gentle 
 agency. We should observe, therefore, whether there 
 be any such agency at work, and in what direction, 
 whether to render a certain change more difficult, or 
 easier. If you be surrounded by the waters, and want 
 to escape, you should observe whether the tide be flow- 
 ing, or ebbing. In the one case, you should at once at- 
 tempt the ford at all hazards ; in the other you have to 
 wait patiently. And if the waters be still, and neither 
 rising nor falling, then you should consider that though 
 there be no danger of drowning, you must remain insu- 
 lated for ever, unless you cross the ford, and that, if 
 this be to be done at all, it may be as well done at once. 
 
 The case of Slavery in the United States was one of 
 a rising tide. The rapid multiplication of Slaves, which 
 had already rendered their emancipation a difficult and 
 hazardous step, made it more so every year, and in- 
 creased the danger of a servile war, such as that of 
 Saint Domingo. 
 
 The Serfdom of the Russians, (or what still remains 
 of it), is, perhaps, rather a case of still water. There 
 seems no great reason to expect that the state of things 
 will grow either worse or better spontaneously. 
 
 In each of these cases, the slaves, and the serfs, are 
 not ripe for freedom. No enslaved people ever are ; and 
 to wait, before you bestow liberty or political rights, till 
 the recipients are fit to employ them aright, is to resolve 
 not to go into the water till you can swim. You must 
 make up your mind to encounter many very considerable 
 evils at first, and for some time, while men are learning 
 to use the advantages conferred on them. 
 
 The truth is, in all these cases, in the selfish wisdom 
 of persons entrusted with power, sacrificing the interests 
 
 2F 
 
434 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 of others to their own. But, probably, the greatest 
 amount of evils of this class, that is, the sacrifice of 
 public good to individual profit, has arisen from the 
 favor claimed by and shown to certain classes of men, 
 in no official situation, who have persuaded the nation 
 (and, doubtless, sometimes themselves also) that their 
 own interest was that of the State. Both the Spaniards, 
 and the English, prohibited their Colonies from trading 
 with any but the Mother Country, and also from manu- 
 facturing for themselves, though the Colonists were fel- 
 low-citizens, and were virtually taxed for the profit, not 
 of the State, but of certain manufacturers and mer- 
 chants. For, if they had found the goods produced in 
 the Mother Country to be cheaper and better than they 
 could make them for themselves, or buy elsewhere, they 
 would have supplied themselves with these of their own 
 accord, without need of prohibitory laws ; but whenever 
 this was not the case, that is, whenever there was any 
 occasion for such a law, it is plain they were paying an 
 extra price, or buying inferior articles for the profit of 
 the manufacturer at home. Yet this never seemed to 
 strike even the Americans themselves, or their advocates, 
 at the time when the revolt broke out. It was only 
 avowed taxation for the benefit of the Government at 
 home (which had laid out something for them), that they 
 complained of. 
 
 And this did not arise from comparative indifference 
 to the welfare of our Colonial fellow-subjects, for the 
 like sort of policy has been long pursued at home. We 
 imported timber of inferior quality from Canada, when 
 better timber was to be had at a tenth part of the dis- 
 tance, lest saw mills in Canada, and timber-ships en- 
 gaged in that trade, should suffer a diminution of profit, 
 though the total value of them all put together did 
 not, probably, equal the annual loss sustained by the 
 public. 
 
INNOVATION. 435 
 
 And we prohibited the refining of sugar, in the sugar 
 colonies, and chose to import it in the most bulky and 
 most perishable form, for the benefit of a few English 
 sugar- bakers, whose total profits did not, probably, 
 amount to as many shillings as the nation lost pounds. 
 
 And the land-owners maintained, till lately, a mono- 
 poly against the bread-consumers which amounted, vir- 
 tually, to a tax on every loaf, for the sake of keeping up 
 rents. Other selfishness may be as intense, but none is 
 so unblushing, because none so much tolerated, as that 
 of a monopolist claiming a vested interest in a public 
 injury. 
 
 But, doubtless, many of these claimants persuaded 
 themselves, as well as the nation, that they were pro- 
 moting the public good. 
 
 All these evils have been got rid of only by change. 
 But most men have no desire for change, as change, in 
 what concerns the serious business of life. True it is 
 that, great and sudden and violent changes do take place, 
 that ancient institutions have been recklessly over- 
 thrown, that sanguinary revolutions have taken place 
 in quick succession, and that new schemes, often the 
 most wild and extravagant, both in civil and religious 
 matters, have been again and again introduced. We 
 need not seek far to find countries that have had, within 
 the memory of persons now living, not less than nine or 
 ten perfectly distinct systems of government. But no 
 changes of this kind ever originate in the mere love of 
 change, for its own sake. Never do men adopt a new 
 form of government, or a new system of religion, merely 
 from that delight in variety which leads them to seek new 
 amusements, or to alter the fashion of their dress. They 
 seek changes in what relates to serious matters of funda- 
 mental importance, only through the pressure of severe 
 suffering, or of some vehement want, or, at least, from 
 the perception of some groat evil, or deficiency. Widely 
 
 2 *2 
 
433 OBJECTION'S ANSWERED. 
 
 as the vulgar are often mistaken as to the causes of any 
 distress, or as to the remedies to be sough t, the distress 
 itself is real when they aim at'any great revolution. If 
 an infant beat its nurse, although its acts be as irrational 
 as those of a mad dog, you may be assured that the in- 
 fant is really in pain. And when men are willing to 
 work, but starving for want of it, though it be absurd 
 for them to seek to obtain relief by establishing a new 
 kind of Senate, or Parliament, or by setting up a dictator, 
 or by slaughtering all people of property, still the evil 
 itself is real, and is keenly felt ; arid it is that, and not 
 a mere love of change, for change sake, that drives them 
 to take the most irrational steps. And when evils are 
 really occasioned by absurd and oppressive laws, it is 
 right and rational to aim at a change, though the 
 changes, which an infuriated populace does bring about, 
 will usually be both irrational and wrong, will over- 
 throw the good along with the evil, and will be preg- 
 nant with worse evils than they seek to remedy. 
 
 The ancient despotism of France, detestable as it was, 
 perhaps, did not cause more misery in a century, than 
 the Reign of Terror did in a year. And, universally, 
 the longer and the more grievously any people have been 
 oppressed, the more violent and extravagant will be the 
 reaction. 
 
 Hence, though it be true that, innovations in import- 
 ant matters are never sought through mere love of 
 change, for its own sake, but for relief from some evil, 
 the danger is not less of rash and ill-advised innovations, 
 because evils, greater or less, and more or less of imper- 
 fection, always do exist in all human institutions 
 administered by fallible men. 
 
 But it should be remembered that, though pure Con- 
 servatism is a folly, and though it be true that, men do 
 not covet innovation, as such, with equal blindness, still 
 there is as much folly, and as much danger, in a blindly 
 
INNOVATION. 437 
 
 reformatory principle. For, though men do not seek a 
 change, except when they perceive some evil, inconveni- 
 ence, or imperfection, the thorough-going reformer 
 always will find some not unreal ground of complaint 
 in the working of every institution. If the house is to 
 be pulled down, and rebuilt, till we have got one that is 
 perfect, and, moreover, that everyone will think such, we 
 shall be as constantly in brick and mortar as if we did 
 delight in pulling down for its own sake. 
 
 And we should remember also that, custom will often 
 blind one to the good, as well as to the evil, effects of 
 any long- established system. The preventive effects, 
 indeed, whether good, or evil, of any long established 
 system, are hardly ever duly appreciated. But though 
 no law, or system, whether actually existing, or pro- 
 posed, can be expected to be unexceptionable, or should 
 have its defects pointed out without any notice of corre- 
 sponding advantages, it is most important to examine 
 every measure, whether new or old, and to try it on its 
 intrinsic merits, always guarding against the tendency 
 to acquiesce, without inquiry, in the necessity of any 
 existing practice. In short, we should, on the one 
 hand, not venture rashly on untrodden paths, without a 
 careful survey of the country ; and, on the other hand, 
 be on our guard, against following, in confident security, 
 the track of our own footsteps. 
 
 Lord Bacon's maxim, therefore, is most wise, to 
 " make a stand upon the ancient way, and look about us 
 to discover what is the best way /' or, in the language 
 of Scripture, from which this is taken ; " Stand ye in 
 the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is 
 the good way, and walk therein ;" neither changing at 
 once anything that is established, merely because of 
 some evils actually existing, without considering whether 
 we can substitute something that is on the whole better : 
 nor, again, steadily rejecting every plan, or system, that 
 
438 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 can be proposed, till one can be found that is open to no 
 objection at all. For nothing framed or devised by the 
 wit of man ever was, or can be, perfect ; and, therefore, 
 to condemn and reject everything that is imperfect, and 
 has some evil attending on it, is a folly which may lead 
 equally and, indeed, often has led to each of two 
 opposite absurdities, either an obstinate adherence to 
 what is established, however bad, because nothing abso- 
 lutely unexceptionable can be substituted ; or, again, a 
 perpetual succession of revolutions till we can establish 
 which is totally impossible some system completely 
 faultless, or so framed as to keep itself in good order. 
 To conceive such a system, whether actually existing, or 
 ideal, is to be beset by the same chimerical hope in 
 human affairs that has misled so many speculators in 
 mechanics, the vain expectation of attaining the per- 
 petual motion. 
 
 Many of the foregoing are the admirable remarks of 
 Archbishop Whately on the wise text of that great phi- 
 losopher, Lord Bacon, and, to such teachers as these, 
 who combine the wisdom of past ages with the learning 
 and experience of the present age, the people of these 
 days may well look for instruction, and safely follow in 
 the way to which they point. 
 
 And, now, to apply the wisdom of the past ages, to 
 our own experience in the present age, to " make a 
 stand upon the ancient way, and look about us to dis- 
 cover what is the best way" to effect such a change in a 
 long-established usage as shall secure an improved state 
 and condition, without pulling down and overthrowing 
 or endangering, the foundation of that structure which 
 has been so long building, and which, though yet far 
 from perfect, has so long stood and flourished, in short, 
 to show how the productive laborers may enjoy a 
 greater and fairer share in the fruits of their labor than 
 they have hitherto enjoyed, and how this act of justice 
 
CONFISCATION. 439 
 
 is consistent with the welfare of all people, and the 
 only sure basis for the prosperity and greatness of all 
 nations. 
 
 Let us now examine into the ground of the objection 
 that the proposed Property Tax would be an inno- 
 vation. 
 
 It is easy to show that it would be no innovation, but 
 a restoration : the restoration of the Land Tax Act, 
 passed in the 4th year of the reign of William and Mary, 
 (1692), 180 years ago, confirmed and made perpetual 
 by the Act 38 George the Third, c. 60, subject to re- 
 demption, and by several subsequent Acts, in the same 
 reign, again and again recognised and confirmed. 
 
 CONFISCATION. 
 
 1 To impose the chief burden of taxation on Land, 
 Houses, and other realised property, is to tax wealth; 
 or, to confiscate the property of the wealthy/ 
 
 This is not a profound objection, but it is so common 
 that, it seems to require an answer. Let us, therefore, 
 examine it fairly, and, if possible, without prejudice. 
 
 No doubt, every tax implies confiscation, or the 
 seisure of private property for purposes of the State. 
 
 Assuming that the tax is levied by an equal rate on 
 every description of property taxed, it remains only for 
 inquiry, why such descriptions of property should be 
 taxed at all. The question whether other descriptions of 
 property should or should not be taxed in like manner, 
 is another question. 
 
 It will be convenient to commence the consideration 
 of the present question by beginning with Land, which 
 is the beginning of all property. 
 
 \Vhat, then, is the origin of all existing titles to Land 
 in this kingdom ? 
 
440 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 History shows that, both in ancient and modern times, 
 the Land belonged to the State, and to no private per- 
 son. Town lands, as the name shows, belonged to the 
 Public. The Crown Lands were not the private pro- 
 perty of the Sovereign, nor could he lawfully alienate 
 them. The Church lands were equally the public pro- 
 perty, and the Clergy owed public religious duty for 
 them. Bishops and Abbots, equally with Barons, were 
 bound to maintain, on their estates, soldiers for the 
 King's need. The Barons' domains descended to their 
 sons, or representatives, and might not be sold for the 
 advantage of the immediate holder, who had only a life 
 interest in them. All these great functionaries had to 
 do solemn homage to the King for their Land, in token 
 that it was Public Property ; besides which, they were 
 liable to other burdens. 
 
 The principle has always been recognised, that 
 landed possessions are a TRUST bestowed by the State ; 
 and that the person accepting the trust becomes, in 
 some sense, a public functionary, pledged to definite 
 duties. 
 
 In India the same principle is recognised. The sys- 
 tem of sustaining the expenses of the State by the rents 
 of Public Lands, has almost vanished in modern Europe. 
 It is appropriate to feudal monarchy, but, without some 
 modification, it is ill-suited to our own times. 
 
 A feudal Monarch was, in principle, sustained like his 
 Barons on the rents of lands, and some other customary 
 payments. He was little more than a Baron on a great 
 scale. If the Crown Estates had been duly preserved 
 and faithfully improved, no further revenue would be 
 needed for ordinary government. The expenses of wars, 
 however, would always have to be defrayed by some 
 special taxation. But, in fact, wars were so constant 
 t hat, war taxes were perpetual, and the Public Lands 
 were hired for a trifle by individuals of the Aristocracy 
 
CONFISCATION. 441 
 
 through mutual connivance : thus the legitimate revenues 
 were diminished, and ultimately dissipated. 
 
 This is so uniform a story in every country that, in 
 modern times, nobody seems to think of the possibility 
 of managing Government Estates honestly. Public 
 Opinion among ourselves regards the function of a land- 
 lord as too similar to that of a merchant, or trader, to 
 be efficiently exercised by a government. All old and 
 noble families are apt to know better how to spend, than 
 how to amass revenues : still more eminently is this true 
 of Princes, and also of Ministers, who, having generally 
 a short tenure of office, do not feel disposed to undergo 
 the odium of raising the Crown Rents, if no immediate 
 result of great importance to the treasury be attainable. 
 To tax the Nation is easier. 
 
 When the Public Revenue depends solely on the Rent 
 of Crown Lands, all goes on well enough. But, after 
 the Monarch finds himself able to get supplies in hard 
 money from another source, as by gifts from trading 
 cities, and votes of his Parliament, the temptation be- 
 comes irresistible to gratify some favorite by putting him 
 in office over some of the Crown Estates, and not exact- 
 ing of him the full rent. The legitimate revenue is 
 squandered, because the King can replenish the loss 
 conveniently in another way, and he prefers the ready 
 cash to the produce which needs to be sold. 
 
 Perhaps, in no country of Europe have the Crown 
 Estates been honourably used, even where they have not 
 been alienated. For instance, in Hungary, the Austrian 
 Emperors have preserved the Crown Estates ; but they 
 have not succeeded in making any use of them propor- 
 tionate to the industry and knowledge of our times. A 
 King cannot hold auctions of his farms or mines in per- 
 son, so as duly to raise the proceeds ; and his officers 
 generally manage to divert to their own uses any increase 
 of rents which, from time to time, ought to arise. 
 
442 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 We cannot wonder at this when we know that some 
 of the most valuable Estates, still remaining to the 
 English Crown, are no source of public revenue. The 
 illegal alienation of the Crown Estates, partly by sale, 
 and partly by gift, is a scandalous chapter in English 
 History. Against it the Parliaments again and again 
 protested, and often effected a resumption of the Estates. 
 Hichard I., after selling some of them, and using the 
 purchase money, took back the lands himself, alleging 
 that the sale had been essentially beyond his power. 
 However, after the Abbey Lands had been distributed 
 among the Aristocracy by Henry VIII., Parliament 
 was dumb, so many having eaten the sop ; and the 
 alienation of Crown Lands went on, until at last the 
 whole taxation of the country, which ought now, as 
 originally, to have been defrayed by rent of land, was 
 shifted from land to trade and industry. The Land- 
 holders passed laws to exempt themselves from feudal 
 service, so as to hold their lands for nothing, and pre- 
 sented the King with a tax on beer instead ! 
 
 It is strange to add that the Commercial Com- 
 munity was so far from resisting, or resenting, this 
 great financial revolution, which was really a gi- 
 gantic fraud on the nation, and peculiarly on the 
 towns, that they practically aided it, owing to their 
 great desire to see land converted into a purely com- 
 mercial article. 
 
 No sooner has a man become wealthy in trade, than 
 he desires to become master of a landed estate by pur- 
 chase. But the old laws did not allow a nobleman, or 
 baronet, to sell his estate, for it was a fraud on his suc- 
 cessors to take in ready money the value of the land for 
 ever. Yet, from an early period, the Crusades urged 
 so many to desire to sell their lands that the law was 
 often evaded ; and, from the necessity of these evasions, 
 came those fictions which have since been such an unin- 
 
CONFISCATION. 443 
 
 telligible mystery to the many in the Law of England, 
 on the transfer of land for money. 
 
 This conspiracy against the Law went on for two or 
 three centuries, between impoverished land-owners, 
 wealthy merchants, and cunning lawyers, whose com- 
 bined force, aided by the decisions of judges, gradually 
 overturned the old feudal theory, and worked into the 
 English mind the idea of Land, as something to be 
 bought and sold freely in the market. Commercial no- 
 tions of land prevailed, and in process of time land- 
 holders claimed a right to their estates, as if no one else 
 had a right in them. Subsequently, we have seen this 
 right exercised in ejecting masses of population from the 
 land occupied by their forefathers for generations. 
 
 But this is a very modern enormity. Nor is it con- 
 fined to Ireland, that much injured and oppressed por- 
 tion of the United Kingdom. We have seen it carried 
 out ruthlessly in Scotland. We have seen many thou- 
 sands driven off the lands occupied time out of mind by 
 their forefathers. W T e have seen their villages pulled 
 down, or burnt, and their fields turned into pasturage. 
 The human inhabitants were thus ejected that sheep 
 might take their place, because sheep would pay better 
 than human beings ! Or, that the wild animals of the 
 chase might have a wider undisturbed range for the 
 amusement of the lordly land-holder ! 
 
 To this shocking end has all this jugglery come ; and 
 the destitute poor must now seek their right in the 
 parish work-house, or accept it as doled out by the 
 Guardians of the Country Unions. 
 
 A Baron in the plenitude of his power has rather less 
 right over the soil than the King, from whom the Baron 
 derived his right; and a King of England might as well 
 claim to drive all his Subjects into the Sea, as a Baron 
 to clear his Estates. We read how William the Con- 
 queror burnt villages, and ejected the People by him- 
 
444 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 dreds, in order to make a hunting ground for himself in 
 the New Forest. That deed, which has been execrated 
 by all who relate it, seemed an extreme of tyranny : yet 
 our Courts of Law, and our Parliament, allow the same 
 thing to be done by smaller tyrants; and the Public sits 
 by and mourns to think that people deal so unkindly 
 with that which is their own. 
 
 Here is the fundamental error, the crude and mon- 
 strous assumption, that the Land, which God has given 
 to our Nation, is, or can be, the private property of any 
 one to do with as he likes. It is a usurpation similar to 
 that of Slavery.. The slave-master calls himself owner, 
 and pleads that he has purchased the slave, and that the 
 Law has pronounced slaves to be chattels. 
 
 But that law is immoral, and unjust, for no one could 
 sell what was not his own; and no number of immoral 
 sales can destroy the rights of man. All this equally 
 applies to Laud. The land was not regarded as private 
 property by our old law : it is not to this day treated by 
 law on the same footing as moveables; and there are 
 many other persons who have rights in a piece of land 
 besides him who gets rent from it. The Lord of the 
 Manor has his dues, but this does not annihilate the 
 claims of others. For land is not only a surface that 
 pays rent, but a surface to live upon, and the Law ought 
 to have cared, and ought still to care, for those who need 
 the land for life, as much as for those who have inherited 
 it, or bought a title to certain fruits from it. 
 
 Political Economy, in a country which sanctions 
 Slavery, will talk of Slaves as of cattle ; and rightly as 
 regards Commercial Calculations. So, too, among our- 
 selves, Economists have accepted as fact, the commercial 
 doctrine of Land. Their science is not to blame for it ; 
 but some of them, as individuals, are to blame for having 
 so much sympathy with the rich, and so little with the 
 poor, as not to see the iniquity of such a state of things ; 
 
CONFISCATION. 445 
 
 but rather to panegyrize English industry as living 
 under glorious advantages, where the laborer on the soil 
 has no tenure in it, no direct and visible interest in its 
 profitable culture, no security that he may not be 
 driven oft' from it, in order to swell the rental of one 
 who calls himself its owner. 
 
 These are the sentiments of Professor Newman, and 
 many of the foregoing remarks, on this part of the sub- 
 ject, are given in his own words. He supports this view 
 by arguments and illustrations, from facts in history, 
 which must carry conviction of the truth to every im- 
 partial and reflecting mind. But this view has so long 
 been lost sight of that it is scarcely possible now to bring 
 it back for impartial consideration, and quite impossible 
 for any practical purpose. Nor, if possible, would it 
 now be desirable to re-establish it in practice. It is here 
 referred to only as a necessary part of the inquiry into 
 the origin of titles to landed possessions in this country, 
 and to establish the principle that, Land is the primary 
 fund to be resorted to for supplying the necessities of 
 the State, in answer to the objection on the ground of 
 Confiscation. 
 
 How those vast estates, now held by individuals in the 
 United Kingdom, and particularly in those parts called 
 Scotland and Ireland were first acquired, is well known 
 to those who have any knowledge of English History. 
 Ireland, especially, is an instance. Ireland was treated 
 as a conquered country, and nearly the whole of it was 
 portioned out in large tracts, by grants to favorites. 
 The ancient nobility, or landowners, became serfs, and 
 the new nobility became their lords, and masters, and 
 called themselves land-owners, instead of land-holders. 
 
 For some centuries afterwards the original Irish land- 
 owners were treated little better than cattle, and often 
 not quite so well. But that was against the natural law 
 of reason and humanity, and also against the law of 
 
446 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 civilised nations. The natural rights of mankind must 
 ever remain the same. These cannot be destroyed by 
 human wrongs. 
 
 Wrongful and fraudulent as were most of those titles 
 in their origin, no one proposes to disturb them now ; 
 but they may be fairly considered in an inquiry into the 
 claims of the State, and the rights of the poor. 
 
 That the right of private possessors of land is only 
 limited, is a principle daily acted on by our Legislature. 
 Individuals are forced to yield up their land, and to 
 accept compensation from a neutral party, on much 
 slighter grounds than necessity for the maintenance of 
 human life. It is thought convenient to the Public to 
 have a road, a canal, or a rail-road station, and the land- 
 owner is unceremoniously forced to give up his land for 
 the public convenience. The compensation may be 
 liberal or not. That is no part of the present question. 
 The matter of principle is, that the State, at pleasure, 
 resumes possession, and does not allow the holder of the 
 land to have his own way, or to fix his own price. Thus, 
 practical law, and moral reasoning, agree with the con- 
 stitutional history in this result, that an individual can 
 never acquire absolute or sole right in land, but that, 
 there is always some limitation of his right, and a power 
 of resumption reserved to the State. Now, if that 
 power be recognised for the benefit of the community 
 in the case of a rail-road, it is impossible to deny the 
 same power, for the same purpose, in the case of a 
 starving population. 
 
 This seems to establish the principle, that the aged 
 and helpless poor, and destitute children, have a natural 
 and legal and indefeasible right to be maintained out of 
 the produce of land; and that this is a prior right to any 
 rights of the land-owner, who is not a land- owner, in the 
 strict sense of the word, but only a land-holder, subject 
 to the rights of the State, which are indefeasible. We 
 
CONFISCATION. 447 
 
 may hope that every evil has its good, and that such may 
 have been the case with the pecuniary prodigality of our 
 Monarchs. If William the Conqueror and his succes- 
 sors, or, even if Henry the Eighth and his successors, 
 had wisely husbanded the Crown Estates, the Monarchy 
 must have become despotic. 
 
 The State may easily be too rich; and that is our only 
 comfort under the burden of our Present Public Debt. 
 
 From these remarks it will be evident that, as a general 
 principle, where a system of landed rent is introduced, 
 no tax is more simple, or more just, than to take a per 
 centage of the rent for the service of the State. This 
 ought to have been done from the first, but there can be 
 no good objection to the adoption of this principle in 
 practice now, if other burdens pressing directly, or in- 
 directly, on land be removed. 
 
 If a tax, even of 50 per cent., had been laid on land 
 in England many centuries ago, that would be now quite 
 unexceptionable, and by far the best of taxes ; far better 
 than the possession of the Land by the State, as Land- 
 lord. A tax on rent is, of all taxes, the most equitable, 
 and the easiest to levy, and is the one that becomes more 
 and more productive in the later periods of industrial 
 development, when government becomes most compli- 
 cated. It, therefore, seems an unthrifty and reckless 
 proceeding not to take measures prospectively in all new 
 States for ultimately levying this tax; and if this were 
 made applicable to all estates alike, there would be no- 
 thing oppressive, and it would tend to prevent oppressive 
 enactments in a free State. 
 
 Colonial Land is avowedly a State possession. To 
 grant it away to individuals from favour is now, after long 
 experience, repudiated as a public profligacy ; but to sell 
 it is thought to be the part of prudent statesmanship. 
 The land is, at first, necessarily sold at a price so trifling 
 that, the Colonies never pay their own expenses. It is 
 
448 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 impossible to forestal the value of land, although we 
 know that it will increase hereafter with the growth of 
 population. But our practice of selling it, alienates it 
 to individuals for ever, and thus, for an insignificant sum 
 paid down, the permanent heritage of great nations, in 
 future, is parted with for ever ; and Colonies, instead of 
 being independent supports, are dependent incumbrarices 
 to the Mother Country. 
 
 Individuals are wiser in providing for their great- 
 grandchildren, by granting building leases for 99 years, 
 after which, not only the land, but all the houses and 
 fixtures become the property of the heirs. And even to 
 this, not very reasonable demand, builders are readily 
 found to agree. Yet, the State, called the Mother 
 Country, exercises no such foresight for the welfare of 
 Colonies, when it might have done so easily. If, instead 
 of selling the land for ever, and for a price which must 
 be little more than nominal, the State had sold it for 
 100 years only, securing to the occupant an exclusive 
 right to all houses and fixtures, and the land on which 
 they stand, with free rights of way, but reserving the re- 
 mainder of the land to the State ; no one entering into 
 that arrangement could complain of it, and the property 
 of the State would then be protected for the benefit of 
 the people. 
 
 The prejudice of long-established custom might pre- 
 vent this from being carried out in practice in old coun- 
 tries ; but in new countries there seems to be no diffi- 
 culty, and no objection. 
 
 People in general have little notion how much more 
 what they call their opinions, (and on subjects which 
 most nearly concern them), are formed from the preju- 
 dice of long habit, than from reflection. 
 
 The foregoing observations in answer to the objection 
 to the proposed Property Tax, as regards Land, apply, in 
 a great measure, to the proposed Tax, as regards Houses. 
 
COMPENSATION. 449 
 
 The House is fixed to the freehold, and cannot be 
 separated therefrom ; arid, as soon as completed, is in- 
 come (or may be) ascertainable, or calculable. 
 
 The House represents the Capital invested in it, and 
 comes within the definition of realised property, under 
 the special protection of the State. 
 
 The tax being an equal fixed rate on the rack-rent, 
 or annual worth if let, is levied equally on all houses in 
 proportion to the worth, so ascertained. 
 
 The tax being levied equally on all houses, therefore 
 cannot diminish the worth of the property to the Owner ; 
 because, whatever the amount of the tax, he will add it 
 to the rent to be paid by the Lessee, or Occupier. It 
 is obvious, therefore, that the objection on the ground 
 that, many houses in counties are worth less, if let, than 
 the same description of houses in a borough, if let, is no 
 objection at all. 
 
 The objection, that it is unfair to tax Houses, and not 
 to tax ships, and other machines, is equally groundless, 
 as will be shown hereafter, though the charge of unfair- 
 ness can never apply to a tax on Houses, under any cir- 
 cumstances, if all houses be taxed equally. 
 
 COMPENSATION. 
 
 This is another objection to the proposed Property 
 Tax, very commonly made, especially by Landlords. 
 
 It is said that, Land and Houses are already subject 
 to heavy burdens, such as County and Borough Rates, 
 and other local charges ; as also, the unavoidable expenses 
 of repairs. 
 
 With respect to the first, these are natural and essen- 
 tial incidents to the property, and for all such outlay it 
 must be assumed that value is received. 
 
 With respect to the second, the same answer applies 
 
 2 G 
 
450 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 to some extent, but inasmuch as this description of pro- 
 perty is subject to rapid deterioration, without continual 
 outlay for necessary repairs, it is not unreasonable, in 
 assessing the tax on the rack-rent, or annual worth to 
 let, to make some allowance for these expenses. 
 
 The case supposes the abolition of duty on Fire Insu- 
 rances, and all other impositions by the State. The 
 Fire Insurance absurdity is, at last, abolished. 
 
 It has been already shown what are the burdens on 
 Land and Houses under the existing system of direct 
 and indirect taxation, and what would be the burden of 
 the single and direct tax under the new system. 
 
 The claim of further compensation is, therefore, 
 groundless. 
 
 It is not an easy task to bring under one view all the 
 incidental local charges to which Land and Houses are 
 now subject ; but, whatever these are, under the existing 
 system, it is easy to see that, under the proposed new 
 system, these charges must be much less. 
 
 These Local Charges have already been shortly noticed. 
 
 ORGANISATION. 
 
 There is a large class of objectors (happily not so nu- 
 merous in this country as in some other countries) who 
 are so much opposed to the existing state of things that 
 they have proposed to organise society upon a new plan, 
 in which injustice and suffering shall have no place. 
 
 They are reduced to the melancholy necessity of dis- 
 owning the good which society develops, of denying irs 
 progress, of imputing to it all sufferings, and exaggera- 
 ting them beyond measure. 
 
 They are led to condemn the very mainspring of hu- 
 man action, personal interest, because it has brought 
 about such a state of things. 
 
ORGANISATION. 451 
 
 From this source,, it may be, that all social evils take 
 their rise war, slavery, monopoly, privilege ; but, from 
 the same source springs all that is good, since the satis- 
 faction of wants and repugnance to suffering are the mo- 
 tives of human action. The business then is to discover 
 whether this incitement to action, by its universality, 
 from individual becoming social is not in itself a prin- 
 ciple of progress. 
 
 The inventors of new organisations do not perceive 
 that this principle, inherent in the very nature of man, 
 will follow them into their systems, and that there it will 
 make greater havoc than in our natural organisation, in 
 which the interest and unjust pretensions of one are, at 
 least, restrained by the resistance of all. 
 
 These visionaries assume two inadmissible suppositions 
 the first is, that society, such as they conceive it, will 
 be directed by infallible men devoid of this motive of 
 self-interest ; and, secondly, that the masses will allow 
 themselves to be directed by these men. 
 
 These system-makers appear to give themselves no 
 trouble about the means of execution ; or, how they are 
 to establish their system; although, as Rousseau has said, 
 it would be necessary to change the moral and physical 
 constitution of man. 
 
 The founder of the new system must have at his dis- 
 posal a force capable of overcoming all resistance, so that 
 humanity shall be in his hands only as so much melting 
 wax to be moulded and fashioned at his pleasure ; or, he 
 must obtain by persuasion an assent so complete, so ex- 
 clusive, so blind even, as to render unnecessary the em- 
 ployment of force. 
 
 Such is the substance, given almost in his own 
 words, of the opening chapter of Bastiat's, "Harmonies 
 of Political Economy/' in refutation of all the wild 
 theories of the Socialists and Communists of France. 
 
 It is objected by some, though, probably, the 
 
 2 G 2* 
 
452 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 number is very few, that tlie views, advocated in these 
 pages, aim at the re-organisation of Society on the So- 
 cialistic and Communistic principle. But no such views 
 are entertained by the Writer. His only object is, the 
 attainment of more liberty for all People, and more of 
 that equality which liberty can alone give, and that is, 
 equality of justice, to effect a more intimate associa- 
 tion between labor, capital, and skill, thereby insuring 
 to the members of the human family a greater amount 
 of material enjoyment enjoyment more equally distri- 
 buted. 
 
 This is the Liberty and Equality here advocated, and 
 this is the tendency of the Scheme here put forth no- 
 thing more. The organisation of Nature, which Man 
 can never change never improve will do all that re- 
 mains to be done, which is all that is to be desired. 
 
 What, but this, ought to be the end of every system 
 of legislation? 
 
 As long as human organisation conflicts with the or- 
 ganisation of Nature, so long will social order be dis- 
 turbed by that disquiet in men's minds which must ever 
 proceed from unsatisfied desire. 
 
 And if that desire be implanted in the human mind, 
 as essential for his present existence as one in the social 
 order of human beings, and to prepare and qualify him 
 for a higher and future state of existence (and who 
 can doubt it ?) we may be sure that no human efforts 
 will prevail to destroy that desire, however terrible the 
 sufferings which that conflict may introduce. Nature 
 will ultimately prevail over all the artificial restraints of 
 human selfishness, love of power, ambition, and pride, 
 and thus out of evil and much suffering great good and 
 higher happiness will spring. . And who could wish it to 
 be otherwise ? 
 
 If the law of our nature, established by this inherent 
 and universal desire, be violated and denied, who could 
 
ORGANISATION. 4c3 
 
 wish that this law, at whatever cost, should not be jus- 
 tified ? 
 
 " But whatever hopes we may entertain as to the fu- 
 ture, whatever ideas we may conceive as to the measures 
 that men may adopt for their mutual relations, and the 
 diffusion of happiness, knowledge, and morality, we must 
 never forget that society is an organisation which has for 
 its element a moral and intelligent agent, endued with 
 free will, and susceptible of improvement. If you take 
 away Liberty from man, he becomes nothing else than 
 a rude and wretched machine." 
 
 These are the words of Bastiat, and it will be well for 
 all Governments and People if they will keep these 
 words for ever in remembrance ; and the following, by 
 the same enlightened Writer, are too memorable to be 
 here omitted, being also explanatory of all that is here 
 written. 
 
 " If the tendencies of human nature be essentially per- 
 verse, where are the organisers of new social systems to 
 place the fulcrum of that lever by which they hope 
 to effect their changes ? It must be somewhat beyond 
 the limits of the present domain of humanity. Do they 
 search for it in themselves in their own minds and 
 hearts? They are not gods yet; they are men, arid 
 tending, consequently, along with the whole human race, 
 towards the fatal abyss. Shall they invoke the interven- 
 tion of the State ? The State also is composed of men. 
 They must, therefore, prove that they form a distinct 
 class, for whom the general laws of society are not in- 
 tended, since it is their province to make these laws. 
 Unless this be proved, the difficulty is not removed, it is 
 not even diminished. 
 
 " Let us not thus condemn human nature before study- 
 ing its laws, its forces, its energies, its tendencies. 
 Newton, after he discovered attraction, never pronounced 
 the name of God without uncovering his head. Yet the 
 
454 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 celestial mechanism is subject to laws of which it has no 
 consciousness ; and the social world is as much superior 
 to that which called forth the admiration of Newton as 
 mind is superior to matter. How much more reason, 
 then, have we to bow before Omniscience when we be- 
 hold the social mechanism, which universal intelligence 
 no less pervades; and which presents, moreover, this ex- 
 traordinary phenomenon, that every atom of which it is 
 composed is an animated thinking being, endued with 
 marvellous energy, and with that principle of all mora- 
 lity, all dignity, all progress, the exclusive attribute of 
 man LIBERTY/' 
 
 This long extract is given because it expresses the mo- 
 tive and object of the Writer of these pages far better 
 than any words which he could have used ; and this is 
 his answer to all objections on the ground of the evil 
 tendency of his views. He does not deny that his views, 
 carried out in practice, would effect a great change in 
 the physical and moral state of society, but he maintains 
 that the tendency of the change would be to effect a 
 great improvement in the physical and moral condition 
 of the social state, by extending liberty, and with free- 
 dom of action, individual responsibility, and social hap- 
 piness, over the whole world. 
 
 If the rights of labor were more justly regarded, the 
 laborers might hope to save out of their wages sufficient 
 to keep them out of the Poor House in the time of old 
 age, infirmity, or accident. But now, few of the com- 
 mon laborers can by industry, skill, and prudence, bring 
 themselves within reach of that hope, and, without hope, 
 the manly spirit of independence can never thrive. 
 
 To large masses of the working classes there is now 
 no hope for old age and infirmity, but in the Union, or 
 Parish Work-house. 
 
 This must ever be the end for them, under our present 
 system of Taxation, and Poor Laws. 
 
COMPETITION. 455 
 
 The wretched victims of this unwise and cruel system 
 crowd together in our towns, into which the misery of 
 the country drains ! 
 
 Here they congregate in masses too great to be 
 known, too great to be relieved, by the richer 
 classes ; and this dead weight, crushed together in our 
 great towns, if, by a wiser and more humane system, 
 spread over the country, might be so much addition to 
 its living strength and capital. 
 
 All attempts to direct the channels of employment on 
 moral grounds, seem to proceed in forgetfulness of the 
 narrow limits of a ruler's power. We talk of the omni- 
 potence of Parliament. What Parliament but abhors 
 Gin-Palaces ? And yet, what is done to abolish them ? 
 All know that, to prohibit Spirits would lead to their 
 secret sale. All that can be wisely attempted is, to im- 
 part moral character, sanction moral relations, and 
 claim the performance of relative duties, in all the 
 existing and tolerated forms of social life. In this con- 
 sists the ORGANISATION OF STATES. This is the true 
 SOCIALISM. 
 
 This is the great duty of the State, and to show how 
 this may be effected is the present object. 
 
 COMPETITION. 
 
 Without liberty there is no Competition. Take away 
 freedom, and there remains slavery. 
 
 What is Competition, but the absence of constraint ? 
 In what concerns my own interest, I desire to choose 
 for myself that another should not choose for me, or. 
 in spite of me that is all. If any one claim the right 
 to substitute his judgment for mine in what concerns 
 me, why should I not substitute mine for his in what 
 concerns him ? To take away the liberty of acting is 
 to destroy the possibility, and, consequently, the power 
 
456 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 of choosing, of judging, of comparing; it is to annihi- 
 late intelligence, to annihilate thought, to annihilate 
 the highest privilege of man. 
 
 Those who would ameliorate society by annihilating 
 liberty, begin by annihilating the individual as a rational 
 being, under the pretext that all evils come from this 
 source, as if all good did not come from it too. 
 
 Such always has been, and always must be, the object 
 and effect of all human laws. To a certain extent, such 
 is essential for the protection of life and property, and 
 social order. But anything beyond this is arbitrary 
 despotism, and injustice, and, by destroying, or dimi- 
 nishing, individual liberty, annihilates, or restricts, that 
 right to make comparison, or choice, which is essential 
 for competition. It directly tends to prevent that 
 mutual interchange of services for services, for which 
 every one is born into the world, and, therefore, to 
 arrest the progress of mankind, by restraining and limit- 
 ing human efforts. It breaks, or weakens, the main- 
 spring of human actions, and thereby conflicts with the 
 law of nature. In this conflict human beings suffer, 
 and must suffer as long as the conflict continues, and 
 that is, as long as the human law is permitted to operate 
 in opposition to the higher natural law, which must 
 prevail. 
 
 And how does it prevail ? 
 
 It prevails by force of the penalty which inevitably 
 follows the breach of the higher law. 
 
 Reason sometimes, but rarely, intervenes to save the 
 penalty. Most frequently Reason prevails long after 
 the penalty has been suffered, and is no longer endur- 
 able. Then some man begins to think such a man, for 
 instance, as Richard Cobden, and he sets other men 
 a-thinking such men, for instance, as Bright, Wilson, 
 Thompson, etc., then they meet together in a little 
 back parlor, and reason together ; then they go out and 
 
COMPETITION, 457 
 
 talk to the People, and they set the People a-thinking, 
 and they print and circulate sound reasoning amongst 
 the People, until the People are able to reason for them- 
 selves; and then the voice of the People begins to be 
 heard, and heeded, though the cry of the People was 
 heard before, but unheeded. At last, the voice reaches 
 the rulers, and strikes terror into their hearts, not for 
 the People, but for themselves, and for the State, now 
 in danger. They repeal the obnoxious law, and the 
 conflict instantly ceases. Harmony is restored. The 
 natural law has prevailed over the human. 
 
 But how? By much human suffering. By the star- 
 vation of thousands of human beings, and the despera- 
 tion, from distress, of millions. 
 
 And what was the cause of all this human suffering ? 
 
 The annihilation of liberty and intelligence the loss 
 of liberty of acting, the loss of the power of choosing, 
 of judging, of comparing, the loss of competition. 
 
 And what was the penalty ? 
 
 Starvation, misery, death. 
 
 And yet, to make a passing observation on the per- 
 versity of the human mind, how strange, that the man 
 to whom, more than any other, all this human suffering 
 may be attributed the man who, more than any other, 
 governed the councils of the State through that long 
 gloomy period the man who, more than any other, 
 helped to shut out the light of Reason, and who per- 
 sisted in his own wilful course as long as he dared, in 
 defiance of all reason, and of all the suffering around 
 him, who was deaf to the wailing cry of misery, and 
 yielded at last only to the loud voice of demand, that 
 dead man is honored as the great Statesman who re- 
 pealed the obnoxious and wicked Corn-Law, and the 
 bronze statue is erected to his memory ; whilst to the 
 living man, who originated this great measure of relief, 
 and more than any other man helped to tear down Pro- 
 
458 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 tection and Monopoly, and to set up Liberty and Free 
 Trade, no Statue to his honor is yet raised, no reward 
 yet given, but in the tribute of a grateful people no 
 State acknowledgment for the greatest service, perhaps, 
 ever rendered by a subject to a State ! But the award 
 of posterity will more wisely determine which of these 
 two men was the real Statesman, and though there 
 should be no Statue to the memory of the true States- 
 man, his name will be imperishably written in the his- 
 tory of his country. 
 
 After all, what is Competition but the free exercise of 
 the right of choice ? As Bastiat asks : " Is it not 
 quite natural that in every case wants should be judged 
 of by those who experience them, satisfactions by those 
 who seek them, efforts by those who exchange them ? 
 And is it seriously proposed to substitute for this uni- 
 versal vigilance of the parties interested, a social autho- 
 rity, charged with determining in all parts of the world 
 the delicate conditions of these countless acts of inter- 
 change ? Do you not see that this would be to set up 
 the most fallible, the most universal, the most arbitrary, 
 the most inquisitorial, the most insupportable, the most 
 impossible of all despotisms ?" 
 
 And here is his answer : " It is Competition which, 
 by its incessant but unperceived action, restores an 
 equilibrium which is sanctioned by justice, and which 
 is more exact than any that the fallible sagacity of a 
 human magistracy could by possibility establish. Far 
 from Competition leading to inequality, as has been 
 erroneously alleged, we may assert that all factitious 
 inequality is imputable to its absence. The Socialists 
 see in Competition the source of all that is evil, whilst 
 we trace to the attacks which have been made upon it 
 the disturbance of all that is good. Although this great 
 law has been misunderstood by the Socialists and their 
 adepts ; although it is frequently harsh in its operation, 
 
COMPETITION. 459 
 
 no law is more fertile in social harmonies, more bene- 
 ficent in general results ; no law attests more brilliantly 
 the measureless superiority of the designs of God over 
 the vain and powerless combinations of men." 
 
 It is the unquestionable result of social order' that, 
 " the sum total of satisfactions which falls to each mem- 
 ber of society is much superior to those which he could 
 procure for himself by his own efforts. 3 ' It is this result 
 which Bastiat is continually urging in his great work 
 from which this is quoted. 
 
 But the additional element which resolves the problem 
 is, the co-operation of natural agents constantly becom- 
 ing more and more effective in the work of production ; 
 it is the gratuitous utility continually co-operating with 
 Community ; it is the labor of heat and of cold, of light, 
 of gravitation, of affinity, of elasticity, coming progres- 
 sively to be added to the labor of man, diminishing the 
 value of services by rendering them more easy. 
 
 But it is not that value diminishes immediately, and 
 of necessity, by the simple fact of the co-operation of 
 natural forces, and the relief thereby afforded to human 
 labor. It is not, as the English Economists say, that 
 value is proportional to labor. The man who is aided 
 by a natural and gratuitous force renders his services 
 more easily ; but he does not on that account renounce 
 voluntarily any portion whatever of his accustomed re- 
 muneration. To induce him to do that, external coer- 
 cion pressure from without severe but not unjust 
 pressure is necessary. It is Competition which exerts 
 this pressure. 
 
 But for this, each man would continue to be paid not 
 only for his labor, but for the natural forces which he 
 had once succeeded in setting to work, and thus, Society 
 would be constituted on the principle of universal Mono- 
 poly, instead of being, as it is, on the principle of pro- 
 gressive Community. 
 
460 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 To prevent such a state of things, God, who has be- 
 stowed on all Hi's creatures heat, light, gravitation, air, 
 water, the soil, vegetable life, electricity, and countless 
 other benefits beyond human power to enumerate, 
 Who has placed in the human breast the feeling of per- 
 sonal interest, which, like a magnet, attracts everything 
 to itself, has placed also in the bosom of society an- 
 other spring of action, which He has charged with 
 the care of preserving to His benefits their original 
 destination, which was, that they should be gratuitous 
 and common. This spring of action is Competition. 
 " Thus," as Bastiat says, " Personal Interest is that 
 irrepressible force belonging to the individual which 
 urges on to progress and discovery, which spurs us ori 
 to exertion, but leads also to monopoly. Competition 
 is that force belonging to the species which is not less 
 irrepressible, and which snatches progress, as it is 
 realised, from individual hands, and makes it the com- 
 mon inheritance of the great family of mankind. These 
 two forces, in each of which, considered individually, we 
 might find something to blame, thus constitute Social 
 Harmony, by the play of their combinations, when 
 regarded in conjunction." 
 
 But, as Bastiat goes on to observe : " As regards re- 
 muneration, there is a third circumstance which favors 
 a man, or a class of men, namely, the possession of 
 Capital. The man who has in his hands the tools 
 necessary for labor, the materials to work upon, and 
 the provisions for his subsistence during the operation, 
 is in a situation to determine his own remuneration. 
 The principle of this is equitable, for capital is only 
 anterior labor which has riot yet been remunerated. 
 The Capitalist is in a good position to impose terms ; 
 but, even when free from Competition, there is a limit 
 which his demands can never exceed this limit is the 
 point at which his remuneration would absorb all the 
 
COMPETITION. 461 
 
 advantages of the service which he renders. In these 
 circumstances it is unreasonable to talk, as is often done, 
 of the tyranny of capital, seeing that, even in the most 
 extreme cases neither its presence nor its absence can 
 injure the condition of the laborer. All that the Capi- 
 talist can say is : " Would you profit by my labor I 
 set such a price upon it ; if you find it too high, do as 
 you have done hitherto do without it." 
 
 Competition, therefore, takes place among capitalists; 
 and, like tools and other materials, capital is useful only 
 when employed. There is an emulation among Capi- 
 talists to find employment for their capital, as there is 
 among Workmen to find employment for their labor 
 with the aid of tools and other materials. All that this 
 emulation, or competition, forces them to abate from 
 the extreme demand which they might otherwise make, 
 is so much clear profit, or gain, for the consumer, that 
 is to say, mankind. 
 
 It is clear, however, that this gain can never be abso- 
 lutely gratuitous ; for, since the capital represents labor, 
 capital must always possess in itself the principle of 
 remuneration. 
 
 And, therefore, it is clear that, it is as unwise and 
 impolitic to tax the capitalist in his own capital, as to 
 tax the laborer in his own labor ; or, to tax capital and 
 labor, as such. 
 
 Now, as all capital is only the accumulated savings of 
 labor, or efforts, or services, which have not yet been 
 remunerated, and as value exists only in efforts, or 
 services, and becomes ascertained and realised only by 
 interchange, it is manifest that, to diminish that value, 
 before it is realised, by taxation or otherwise, is to 
 destroy value at its very source, and thereby to diminish 
 the productive power, or source of all wealth, as well 
 as to derange that equilibrium which is preserved by 
 Competition; already shown to be essential for the 
 
462 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 prevention of excessive remuneration ; for, in the ab- 
 sence of Competition, there must be Monopoly, and the 
 more Competition is limited, the nearer must be the 
 approach to Monopoly. Thus, if the profits from the 
 employment of capital be reduced so low as to leave 
 nothing for remunerating the labor or effort, the capital, 
 if not lost in the attempt to gain remuneration, must be 
 withdrawn, and the further attempt be discontinued; 
 and the same effect must follow if, by taxation or other 
 means, the remuneration be inadequate to the labor or 
 effort required. Hence it is obvious that, to tax capital 
 and labor employed in production, before the remunera- 
 tion, in the profit is realised, must tend to drive away 
 capital, and to throw out of such employment so much 
 capital and labor. The small capitalists must withdraw, 
 and leave in possession the larger capitalists, and the 
 demand for labor being thereby diminished, the wages 
 of labor must fall. Here Competition is reduced, and 
 the larger capitalists, availing themselves of the unequal 
 balance which Competition alone preserves, remain and 
 take advantage of the nearer approach to monopoly, by 
 lowering the rate of wages, and raising their own profits. 
 
 This state of things could never happen, or could 
 never long endure, if the natural law were allowed free 
 exercise, for Competition would always come in to pre- 
 serve the just equilibrium, and capital and labor, with 
 equal industry and skill, would meet with their just and 
 proportionate reward. The gratuitous services of nature 
 being given equally to all, the just equilibrium can be 
 disturbed only by artificial impediments which are not 
 thrown equally in the way of all, and never can be. 
 
 Under free Competition, men cannot long receive an 
 exceptional remuneration for the co-operation of natural 
 forces. This proves that efforts have a tendency to be 
 exchanged on a footing of equality, or, in other words, 
 that value tends to become proportionate to labor ; and 
 
COMPETITION. m 463 
 
 as all classes are consumers, it is the community which 
 reaps ultimately the benefits of Competition. So, there- 
 fore, everybody, or the community, suffers when the 
 equilibrium of Competition is annihilated, or disturbed, 
 arid in proportion to the disturbance. 
 
 To this disturbance by unjust and impolitic taxation 
 is owing all the outcry which is heard against Capitalists, 
 who are thus made, by this artificial means, more or less 
 monopolists ; and hence arises all the conflicts between 
 laborers and their employers, in which it is very obvious 
 that the employers must prevail, as long as the laws 
 restrict and limit free Competition, by taxing the laborer 
 in his own labor, and making him pay the tax in an 
 increased price for all the necessaries and comforts of 
 life. As long as this system is continued, it is impos- 
 sible that Competition should be free. It is impossible 
 that small Capitalists should successfully compete with 
 large Capitalists. The smaller must be forced into asso- 
 ciated bodies, in order to compete successfully with the 
 larger. The more numerous, but, individually, weaker 
 classes, must be forced into combinations for their own 
 self-defence. This is an evil state of things, but it is the 
 necessary consequence of those unjust laws which tax 
 the wages of labor, and the profits of trade, or, in other 
 words, which disturb the equilibrium of free Competi- 
 tion, by giving undue favor to Capital, at the cost of that 
 labor and skill by which all capital is created. 
 
 Now, it is objected that, the taxation of realised pro- 
 perty, as here proposed, favors Capital invested in trade, 
 to the prejudice of Capital invested in land, and tends 
 to destroy that equilibrium of Competition which is so 
 essential for the protection of all property and the inter- 
 ests of society. But it will be seen, from the foregoing 
 observations that, there is no ground for this objection, 
 and that the contrary effect must be a necessary conse- 
 quence. 
 
464 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 By imposing a tax on Capital invested in trade, 
 whether that tax be an Income Tax, or a Customs or 
 Excise Duty, it must diminish profits to, at least, the 
 amount so taken, and must also, to that extent, diminish 
 Competition, and depress trade, and every depression of 
 Trade must react on land, to the depression of Agricul- 
 ture. 
 
 The home market, which must always be the best 
 market, must be the first to suffer, and must suffer most 
 from that depression. 
 
 If trade be carried on without profit, the Capital em- 
 ployed in that trade is lost, or, at least, is rendered com- 
 paratively useless whilst so employed, and is ultimately 
 taken out to be otherwise, and profitably employed. 
 
 By this operation the trade is left in fewer hands, and 
 Competition is diminished. Increased prices may then 
 bring profits, and increased profits may then bring more 
 Capital into the trade, but this will be the Capital of 
 larger Capitalists, and the trade will then be in fewer 
 hands, the smaller Capitalists being excluded, or driven 
 out. Thus, the inevitable consequence of taxing trade, 
 in whatever form, is to impede the action of that natural 
 law before referred to, by an artificial impediment, 
 and the salutary protecting power of Competition is 
 weakened. 
 
 The truth of this reasoning is strikingly illustrated in 
 the trade of Copper smelting which, in this country, is 
 very nearly a monopoly, being in the hands of about 
 half-a-dozen great Capitalists. 
 
 The Brewers furnish another apt illustration, for no 
 one can doubt that, if every person were free to brew 
 Beer, without any tax on the articles used, the Compe- 
 tition in this trade would be much greater than it is. 
 
 It is not denied that, the tendency of large Capital is 
 to create monopoly, but this would be no evil if trade 
 were left open to free Competition, and if trade were 
 
COMPETITION. 465 
 
 free from every tax and other artificial impediment, mo- 
 nopoly could never exist. The natural law would pre- 
 vent that, and the profits of the trade would regulate the 
 quantity of Capital invested in the trade. 
 
 So intimately connected are the interests of trade and 
 agriculture that they may be taken to be concurrent; 
 for all experience shows that a state of prosperity or 
 depression in the one, is the same in the other. 
 
 It, therefore, can need no words to prove that, by 
 relieving trade from all taxes, or other impositions or 
 impediments, no injury can thereby be inflicted on land. 
 
 As far as experience goes, it is conclusive of this truth, 
 and no further examples can be wanting than have been ' 
 already afforded in the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in 
 those Customs and Excise duties which have been re- 
 mitted. 
 
 It is now a fact, too notorious to be any longer open 
 to question, that since the removal of these impediments 
 to trade, agriculture has improved in proportion to the 
 improvement in trade, and the price of land has risen 
 greatly throughout the kingdom. 
 
 The removal of the artificial obstructions to trade has 
 increased profits, and brought in more capital, more 
 Competition. The improvement in trade has increased 
 the demand for labor, and this increased demand has 
 raised the wages of labor. The improved condition of 
 the laboring classes has increased the demand for the 
 produce of land. This increased demand has improved 
 the home market for all the produce of land, and Com- 
 petition with Foreign markets has preserved the just 
 equilibrium by retaining the local advantages of the 
 home market over the Foreign, and still protecting the 
 Consumers from exorbitant demands of the producers ; 
 whilst the pressure of Competition, of the foreign pro- 
 ducer, has forced the home producer to bring to his aid 
 more capital, higher skill, and greater industry. 
 
 2 H 
 
466 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 But there has been another consequence. The Mer- 
 chant, the Manufacturer, the Tradesman, has sought 
 other investment than trade for his surplus capital : he 
 has purchased land, and become a lord of the soil ; he 
 has relieved the spendthrift land -lord of his debts and 
 his land, or he has bribed the owner, by a high price, to 
 deliver over the old Family Estate, and has taken his 
 place. The merchant-prince, the successful tradesman, 
 or the cotton lord, has become the lord of the land, and 
 the new landlord, with more capital, has renewed the 
 vigor of the land. The capital of the country has 
 increased, and the price of land throughout the country 
 has risen. 
 
 If such have been the results of the partial removal of 
 obstacles, what may be expected from the absolute and 
 immediate removal of all impediments and obstructions 
 as here proposed ? 
 
 That no additional burden is thereby thrown on land 
 has been already shown, and will be further shown in 
 these pages. But this is another question. In answer 
 to the objection now under consideration, it is sufficient 
 to show that, the tendency of the proposed scheme of 
 taxation must be, to increase, and not to diminish, Com- 
 petition ; and the same principle being applied to land, 
 and to all other realised property, the same effects must 
 follow, equally to all. But this will be further shown 
 in considering and answering other objections. 
 
 EQUALISATION. 
 
 The close observer of the great laws of nature when 
 he regards them as they are in themselves when they 
 act without impediment, and frees from any disturbance 
 of their action by human error and violence, must be 
 struck with this as the definite result of the arrange- 
 ments of Providence " The constant approximation of 
 all men towards a level which is always rising." 
 
EQUALISATION. 467 
 
 This we call ' Progress/ or f Improvement.' This 
 we will now call ' EQUALISATION ; J and like the Astro- 
 nomer who regards the planetary movements, or the 
 Physiologist who contemplates the structure and ar- 
 rangements of the human organs, we may say 
 " Digitus Dei est hie !" 
 
 The gratuitous services of Nature,, we know, are given 
 equally to all, and when all make equally good use of 
 them, we may suppose, all will then equally enjoy them, 
 but never before. 
 
 This is the Equalisation of Nature, impeded and, to a 
 great extent, counteracted by human intervention. 
 
 Nature' s gratuitous services are given equally to all ; 
 but, being gratuitous, nothing is, or ever can be, given 
 in exchange for them ; and as value arises only from 
 exchange of services, Nature's gratuitous services are of 
 no value, and never can be of any. 
 
 These services are utilities, but only when made useful 
 by appropriation. 
 
 Air, light, water, gravitation, electricity, etc., are 
 utilities when used, but, though essential for our exist- 
 ence, we give nothing in exchange for them, and they 
 have no value. The water, if we can never obtain it, is 
 even of no utility to us. The service is rendered by 
 bringing the water to us, and in this service, if received 
 in exchange for another, is the value. The service is 
 rendered by human efforts, and may be rendered gra- 
 tuitously, in which case, however great the service, 
 there is no value; for, without exchange of services 
 there can be no value. Our own efforts may bring the 
 water to us, and in that case we avail ourselves of the 
 gratuitous service of Nature, for which nothing can be 
 given in return, and there can be no value; or another's 
 efforts may bring the water to us in exchange for some- 
 thing else, and that exchange of services creates value. 
 In the one case, there is no exchange of services, and no 
 
 2 H 2 
 
468 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 value, but simply one's own efforts, in taking the gra- 
 tuitous service of Nature, for the gratification of one's 
 own want ; in the other case, there is another's efforts 
 in exchange for something else, and there is value 
 acknowledged and remunerated ; in both cases the gra- 
 tuitous utility of Nature is appropriated without anything 
 given in return, and when the service is rendered in 
 exchange for another, it becomes a service of value. 
 
 Therefore, as Bastiat says : " Every man enjoys GRA- 
 TUITOUSLY all the utilities furnished or created by Nature, 
 on condition of taking the trouble to appropriate them, 
 or of returning an equivalent service to those who render 
 him the service of taking that trouble for him." 
 
 Even the air we breathe ceases to be of service to us 
 when we cease to respire it. In the midst of the most 
 fertile soil, with every advantage of climate, without 
 human efforts acting in concurrence with the gratuitous 
 utilities of nature, we should derive no service, and star- 
 vation must ensue. In common language, it would be 
 said by metonymy Such a quantity of land is worth 
 such a quantity of gold, as if the value had passed phy- 
 sically into these bodies. But it is easy to see that, if 
 the common form of expression enable us to state the 
 results, the scientific expression alone reveals to us the 
 true causes. 
 
 Thus, we may see, Nature gives freely and equally to 
 all. But here equality begins and ends. The gifts of 
 Nature, though equal to all, are of no value to any. 
 As the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong, 
 so is the value of services. Nature has given no equality 
 here. Why, then, should man look for equality where 
 Nature has never given it, and, clearly, never intended 
 it? Why should man seek to obtain by force more 
 than Nature has given ? What right have men to im- 
 pose upon each other anything, by force, but Justice ? 
 The right to force a man to be just is the right of legiti- 
 
EQUALISATION. 469 
 
 mate defence. Now, individuals in the aggregate can 
 possess no right which did not pre-exist in individuals as 
 such. If, then, the employment of individual force be 
 justified only by legitimate defence, the fact that, the 
 action of government is always manifested by force, 
 should lead us to conclude that, it is essentially limited 
 to the maintenance of order, security, and justice. 
 
 As said by Bastiat : " All action of governments be- 
 yond this limit is a usurpation upon conscience, upon 
 intelligence, upon industry; in a word, upon human 
 Liberty." 
 
 The liberty of labor to each and every man, implies 
 the liberty to enjoy the fruits of his own labor. To de- 
 prive him of any part of the fruits of his own labor, is to 
 deprive him of the liberty of labor, or to make him a slave. 
 If it be right to deprive him of part, it may be right to 
 deprive him of all. But it must be shown to be just, 
 before it can be proved to be right, to deprive him of any. 
 
 Now, all Governments exercise this right by force, 
 but no Government has ever shown that it is just, or 
 even necessary, or expedient. The present object is to 
 show that, this is unjust, unnecessary, and inexpedient. 
 
 It has been already shown to be contrary to, and 
 quite inconsistent with, the great providential laws 
 quite incompatible with those gratuitous services of 
 Nature which are given equally to all, and without 
 which human beings could not exist. 
 
 If it be right to deprive the laborer of the fruits of his 
 labor, or, in any manner to diminish his remuneration, 
 the natural law is reversed. The race is to the slow, 
 and the battle is to the weak, if one man is to work that 
 another may sit idle ; or, if a deficiency in the exertions 
 of the one is to be made up by the efforts of the other. 
 
 This is reversing the law of Nature, but this is what 
 all human Governments are doing; and through this 
 arbitrary, unjust, and despotic interference with natural 
 
470 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 rights, has arisen all the outcry for Liberty and Equa- 
 lity, Equal division of Property, and the Rights of Man ; 
 which, if carried out in practice, must restore man to his 
 original state of nature, as still seen in the savage tribes, 
 where all property is in common, except that which is 
 taken by superior brute force. 
 
 The Socialists and other advocates of Communism are, 
 therefore, advocates (quite unintentionally) of a return 
 to the savage state of nature ; but this is hardly a greater 
 absurdity than the false principle of Governments which 
 has instigated such absurdity. 
 
 The miserable visionaries and the unjust rulers are 
 equally in the wrong ; but the former may be simply 
 weak, and the latter wilfully wicked, as is, probably, the 
 case with most of them. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to imagine that the Government 
 of any civilised country, in these days, can be ignorant 
 of the wrong in imposing the great burden of taxation 
 on the working classes, by taxing the laborer in his own 
 labor ; the very argument by which this is attempted to 
 be supported admits the wrong, and confesses the fraud ; 
 it is avowedly done to cheat the laborer, for the benefit 
 of the capitalist, and this is continued to be done, al- 
 though it has been shown over and over again by unan- 
 swerable argument and conclusive evidence, that, to cheat 
 the laborer does not benefit the capitalist, but, on the 
 contrary, injures both, and inflicts the deepest injury on 
 society at large ; still this wrong-doing is persisted in, 
 and millions, raised by compulsory laws and appeals to 
 benevolence, are wasted every year in vain endeavours 
 to mitigate the misery thus created. 
 
 Here we have the Equalisation of Nature counteracted 
 by the folly and selfish wickedness of men, and those gra- 
 tuitous services of Nature, which were intended equally 
 for all, are made the means for enslaving, and embitter- 
 ing the existence of the greatest portion and most de- 
 
EQUALISATION. 471 
 
 serving of mankind ; for, it is, undoubtedly, the misery 
 of man which makes the greatest portion of his guilt ; 
 and this must ever be so, as long as human laws conflict 
 with those of Nature. 
 
 It is the abundance of the world, in the midst of so 
 much human destitution, it is the sight of this fright- 
 ful inequality of distribution, which drives men mad. 
 No wonder that they cvy out for a more equal distribu- 
 tion no wonder that we hear the cry, " La propriete 
 Jest le vol." 
 
 The wonder is that men submit to see the fruits of 
 their own labor snatched away from them by the tax- 
 gatherer, when they see their own children half- starved, 
 and are themselves driven to drunken desperation by the 
 wretchedness which surrounds them, and the absence of 
 all hope before them. 
 
 There will never be any want of fools and knaves to 
 aggravate this frenzy of despair with their visionary 
 schemes and traitorous designs ; but not by these meana 
 will the remedy for evil legislation be provided, nor by 
 Education and Religious instruction, nor by public boun- 
 ties and private charities, and, least of all, by coercive 
 legislation. Justice alone will be the remedy, and that 
 will be in leaving the laborer free to enjoy the fruits of 
 his own labor. 
 
 That is the object of the Scheme of Taxation here 
 proposed. 
 
 Now, how does this disturb, or conflict with, that Equal- 
 isation which we see in the gratuitous services of Nature? 
 
 And why should not human laws be so made as to act 
 in unison with the great laws of Nature, and thus far, 
 at least, satisfy the natural and necessary wants of the 
 human race ? 
 
 Why should not those who, by their own efforts, ap- 
 propriate the gratuitous services of Nature, enjoy the 
 benefits ? 
 
472 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 Why should they be forced to surrender to the State,, 
 or to individuals, any portion of the benefits so derived, 
 without receiving an equivalent service in return ? 
 
 Why should they be taxed in their own labor, for the 
 benefit of the State, beyond any benefit conferred on 
 them by the State ? 
 
 Why should they be taxed in their own labour, to re~ 
 lieve the Capital which is created by their labor ? 
 
 It is for those who advocate taxing the laborer in his 
 own labor, to answer these questions. 
 
 But what if this be shown to be injurious to the State, 
 and to the Capitalist ? 
 
 What if it be shown to be for the true interests of the 
 State, and the Owners of Property, to leave the laborer un- 
 taxed in his own labor, and to leave untaxed all property 
 until it has realised the profits produced by the labor ? 
 All this is shown in these pages. 
 What then is to be said in favour of the present sys- 
 tem of Taxation ? 
 
 What is to be said in favor of those human laws 
 shown to be unequal and unjust, acting in direct anta- 
 gonism with the beneficent laws of nature, known to be 
 equal and just ? 
 
 If necessity and expediency be the answer, then the 
 laws of nature must be unsuitable and unwise ! 
 
 But let us inquire into the necessity and expediency 
 of disturbing the natural law of Equalisation. 
 
 It is a common saying that, principles, correct in 
 theory, are inapplicable in practice, to the artificial 
 state of Governments and Society as existing ; and that 
 a change, from a bad system to a better, may create so 
 much disturbance as to be attended with inconveniences, 
 which no benefits to be expected can compensate. 
 
 This is an allegation without proof, and incapable of 
 proof. A certain amount of inconvenience may, and 
 generally does, attend upon every great change ; but, if 
 
EQUALISATION. 473 
 
 the benefits do not exceed the inconvenience of the 
 change, that is conclusive evidence that there is some- 
 thing wrong in the principle, or in the manner of carry- 
 ing it out in the change. 
 
 If the principle, and the manner of carrying it out be 
 correct, the change must be as certain of benefit, as, in 
 the formation of a railway, the removal of natural ob- 
 stacles must repay the labor required for their removal. 
 If not, there must have been something incorrect in the 
 principle, or some error in the calculation of profit and 
 loss. 
 
 In the case of a railway these are questions only of 
 engineering skill, and calculation in figures. Those who 
 have to determine these questions are guided by the 
 known laws of nature, aided by experience. If skilful, 
 they calculate on the result with confidence. They are 
 not deterred by the magnitude of the undertaking, nor 
 by the quantity of labor, or the amount of temporary in- 
 convenience to be endured. They regard the prospec- 
 tive gain, and they look to the question, ' Will it pay ? ' 
 
 If they see that it will pay, they do it. They do it 
 all, and they do it all at once. They see that it will 
 pay when so done, but not otherwise. 
 
 To make it pay, all must be done, and all at the same 
 time. The inconvenience of doing it being only tem- 
 porary, does not count for much. They avail themselves 
 of the gratuitous services of nature, and they appropriate 
 them. They remove obstacles, and thereby equalise the 
 way for all. They confer services from a new source, 
 and they exchange these services for other services ; they 
 create value where no value was before ; they increase 
 the capital of the country. 
 
 This we will suppose to be the calculation, and the re- 
 sult of every railway in the kingdom. 
 
 Now, let the same sort of calculation be made for the 
 proposed change in our system of Taxation. 
 
474 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 In this case, the calculation is of a more abstract, and, 
 perhaps, of a more complex, nature. But the object is 
 a much higher one higher in its nature, and greater in 
 its consequences. 
 
 Those who have to determine this question may also 
 be guided by the known laws of nature, aided by expe- 
 rience. If Statesmen, they also may calculate on the 
 result with confidence. They will not be deterred by 
 the magnitude of the change ; they will count the cost, 
 and take into account the temporary inconvenience to 
 be endured ; they will regard the prospective gain, and 
 look to the question, ' Will it pay ? ' 
 
 If they be Statesmen, they will see that it must pay, 
 and they will do it. But they will see that, to make it 
 pay, they must do it all at once. 
 
 They will see that the benefit will then be great to all, 
 and that the inconvenience, which will be only tempo- 
 rary, will be confined to a comparatively few. They will 
 avail themselves of the gratuitous services of nature, and 
 cause them to be appropriated more largely than they 
 have ever been before. They will remove obstacles, and 
 thereby equalise the way for all. They will set labor 
 free, and thereby enlarge the source of all services, and 
 all property. They will create value where no value was 
 before. They will increase the Capital of the country, and 
 distribute it more equally throughout the country. They 
 will increase industry, prosperity, and happiness, -and 
 they will diminish pauperism, guilt, and wretchedness. 
 
 This is the Equalisation to which Nature points. Di- 
 gitus Dei est hie. 
 
 How all this is to be brought about is shown in detail 
 in these pages. 
 
 TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 
 We will now come to the more practical objections, 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 475 
 
 by examining the comparative advantages and disadvan- 
 tages of Direct and Indirect Taxation. 
 
 As the principal advocate for Indirect against Direct 
 Taxation, and the one most worthy of being answered, 
 is the Writer of the Article, entitled " British Tax- 
 ation," which appeared in the ' Edinburgh Review ; of 
 January 1860, the following observations in answer to 
 that Writer the late Sir G. Cornewall Lewis are 
 from "The Reviewer Reviewed," published by the 
 Author shortly afterwards. 
 
 The advocate of the " ingenious plan of concealment," 
 before quoted, describes a tax " to be direct when it is 
 immediately taken from property, or labor ; and indirect 
 when it is taken from them by making their owners pay 
 for liberty to use certain articles, or to exercise certain 
 privileges." 
 
 Accepting this definition, let us now follow it through- 
 out. 
 
 Passing over some less practical remarks, which the 
 Writer of these pages has already answered elsewhere, 
 the Edinburgh Reviewer next proceeds to the inquiry of 
 the Cost of Collection, and he gives a Table, " as ob- 
 tained from official returns of the cost of levying the 
 direct and indirect taxes of America, France, and Eng- 
 land." 
 
 The lowest factor for the cost of collection of taxes in 
 that Table is, 2'87 for Direct Taxes in England, in 
 1859. 
 
 And yet he says that, others can be collected more 
 cheaply ! He says this immediately afterwards in the 
 following sentence : ' ' The Customs revenue of this 
 country is, or may be, collected at a cheaper rate per 
 cent, than the same twenty-three millions could be ob- 
 tained by any other equitable, or endurable, process of 
 direct taxation." 
 
 The reviewer then goes into a great deal of explana- 
 
476 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 tion, and a great many figures,, to prove that the Pre- 
 ventive Service, or Coast Guard, which, in 1856 cost 
 428,000, " might, it is believed by those best qualified 
 to form an opinion, be carried out at a maximum ex- 
 pense of 150,000 per annum; and, therefore, it is the 
 smaller sum only that can equitably be added to the 
 charges for Collecting the Customs." 
 
 How far this is an equitably drawn conclusion we 
 leave the reader to judge for himself, having only to say 
 that, if taxes might be diminished, Financial Reformers 
 would not object to their diminution. 
 
 The reviewer then proceeds to strike out from the 
 " Cost of collecting the Customs Revenue," various large 
 sums of money, actually paid, "yet in no way neces- 
 sarily connected with, or belonging to the collection of 
 the revenue ; " and more properly coming under the 
 head of ' ' extraneous and miscellaneous functions, con- 
 nected with statistics, light-dues, and the working of the 
 Merchant Shipping Act ; and the whole cost of the bond- 
 ing or warehousing department." 
 
 With deference to this high authority, we should hold 
 these charges as part of the " Cost of collecting the 
 Customs revenue," as long as the Customs revenue can- 
 not be, in fact, collected without them. If no Customs 
 duties were collected, there would be no need of the 
 bonding or warehousing department. 
 
 Again the reviewer says : " We must throw out 
 such duties as are collected at an expense out of all pro- 
 portion to their produce all such as yield little, and 
 cost much. In a word, we must reduce the tariff to it& 
 most purely profitable dimensions ; and ascertaining, as 
 far as possible, what would be the actual cost of collec- 
 tion, if no articles were placed in the tariff, except in the 
 interest of the revenue alone, and if none but fiscal con- 
 siderations were allowed to intervene." 
 
 This only shows that the cost of collecting the Cus- 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 477 
 
 toms duties would be less, if they were diminished by a 
 freeing of goods from the tariff. We all know that. If 
 the reviewer think it would be a good to lessen the traffic 
 taxes, he is of the same mind as the Financial Reformers 
 whom he is abusing for saying so, and who would abo- 
 lish all of them for a Property Tax. 
 
 The reviewer next invites his readers to "devote a few 
 minutes to a consideration of the probable cost of levy- 
 ing an equal amount of revenue in an equitable form lay 
 direct taxation. . . . First it is obvious that, cateris 
 paribus, the cost of levying any direct impost will vary 
 inversely according to the number of persons on- whom 
 it is levied, and the largeness of the sums in which it is 
 levied. In other words, it will be much cheaper to levy 
 twenty millions from one million of tax-payers, than 
 from thirty millions if it can be done at all." 
 
 We accept this admission of a very obvious fact, and 
 as no insignificant admission in favor of direct taxation. 
 
 The reviewer then says : " If we confine our atten- 
 tion to the income tax alone, we find that the rate per 
 cent, at which it was collected during the Napoleonic 
 -wars varied from two to three per cent., averaging two 
 and a half. Since its re-imposition by Sir Robert Peel, 
 the rate has ranged from 1. 16s. lid. up to 3. 3s. 5d. 
 per cent. If, on the other hand, we inquire into the 
 cost of collecting the direct taxes before the income tax 
 was imposed, we shall find that from 1839 to 1841 in- 
 clusive, it averaged 4. lls. 10^., or about 4s. 6d. per 
 cent. These results certainly would not encourage us to 
 hope that a system of direct taxation levied equitably on 
 the entire population, whatever form it might take, would 
 be a very cheap fiscal device/' 
 
 In answer, we will only say : Look back to your own 
 Table before given, and you will see that, in ,1859, the 
 factor of cost, for collecting the direct taxes, was the 
 lowest. 
 
478 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 We do not know what is the real factor for the col- 
 lection of the Income Tax ; but if it be less than that 
 for the collection of indirect taxes (of which there can 
 be, or ought to be, no doubt,) it is so far a witness for 
 the cheapness of the collection of a Property Tax. 
 
 In connexion with the reviewer 's last sentence, his 
 very next is too remarkable to be passed over unnoticed. 
 He says : " Observe, we do not for a moment mean to 
 deny that a revenue derived solely from a tax on the in- 
 come of real and personal property, might not be col- 
 lected at a comparatively low rate (say two per cent.) if 
 Statesmen could be found dishonest and impolitic enough 
 to propose, and a Legislature self-denying, and short- 
 sighted, enough to sanction such a fiscal system." 
 
 Then the reviewer does not deny what the Financial 
 Reformers affirm. 
 
 The reviewer sums up thus : 
 
 "That a judicious system of direct taxation costs 
 more in charges of collection, than an equitable system 
 of direct taxation, we hold, then, to be entirely dis- 
 proved." 
 
 "A judicious system!" We would ask Is the 
 judicious system of your thought the present one, or 
 some other to which you think a greater off-leaving 
 of indirect taxation may lead us ? 
 
 Financial Reformers do not think, any indirect taxation 
 judicious. 
 
 Again : " That no objections can be brought against 
 Customs and Excise duties which in some degree must 
 be admitted as a set-off against their obvious and mani- 
 fold advantages, we are by no means prepared to assert. 
 
 ' ' Fiscal imports are always burdensome, always vexa- 
 tious, and almost always mischievous; in their best 
 estate they are only necessary evils; and a choice among 
 objectionable expedients is all that fate leaves to the 
 wisest and blandest Chancellor of the Exchequer." 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 479 
 
 This is another concession to Financial Reformers. 
 
 Again : " The time was, no doubt, when restrictions 
 on trade, and on the production of excisable articles, 
 were so numerous and so unwise as materially to cramp 
 enterprise, and interfere with ingenuity; but since 1842, 
 the Government has been on its guard against this 
 danger, and it will shortly, we hope, cease to be true in 
 any degree whatever." 
 
 Here we would ask What danger ? Is it the danger 
 of some kinds of indirect taxes ? 
 
 The reviewer so often yields half his ground to the 
 Financial Reformers that, he seems to feel himself to be 
 half beaten. 
 
 And thus he concludes on this head : 
 
 " The marvellous expansion of our commerce, both 
 inwards and outwards, during the last fifteen years, 
 shows conclusively, at least, that no fiscal impediments 
 can have operated to prevent that expansion. Nor, we 
 are certain, used they ever do so, where the duties are 
 moderate, and the collection of them is hampered by 
 no needless or cumbersome formalities." 
 
 The expansion of a trade against hindrances is no 
 measure of its expansion as freed from them. The 
 making of glass expanded under the duty on glass, but 
 its expansion then was very little to its sudden burst of 
 expansion when it was freed from the Excise Officer. 
 
 " Our argument," says the reviewer, ' ' is 'that, while 
 the drawbacks on indirect taxes are enormously over- 
 stated by the ' Financial Reformers/ their counter- 
 balancing recommendations are entirely overlooked, or 
 audaciously denied." 
 
 In the next sentence, we have this not unimportant, 
 though qualified, admission : 
 
 " That indirect imposts act injuriously in hampering 
 commerce and manufactures is true only where these 
 imposts are injudiciously chosen, or clumsily levied. At 
 
480 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 least, we may safely make this assertion as far as impost 
 duties are concerned." 
 
 We accept this admission, and shall show that these 
 imports are always injudiciously chosen, and clumsily 
 levied. 
 
 The next admission is still more important : 
 
 " That indirect imposts and Customs duties among 
 them are in one respect more costly than direct ones, 
 we freely admit. They involve to the ultimate consumer 
 not only an enhancement of price equivalent to the duty, 
 but to the duty augmented by the profit chargeable on 
 that part of the merchant's and tradesman's capital 
 which is employed in advancing the duty. That is to 
 say, if an article is worth 100, and is charged with a 
 duty of 10 per cent., the merchant, who in the first 
 instance pays that duty, must recover his profit out of 
 the consumer, not on the 100, but on 110; and all 
 tradesmen, through whose hands the article subsequently 
 passes, must do the same. The extent of the indirect 
 burden thus laid upon the capital of the country is 
 variously estimated by different writers, and in our 
 opinion is erroneously overstated by most. Sismondi 
 puts a case in which this burden might reach 70 per 
 cent. ! Eicardo appears to have estimated it at 10 per 
 cent. Mr. Greg, in his " Essay on the Principles of 
 Taxation," calculates it to vary from 1J to 5 per cent. 
 One of the tracts issued by the Liverpool Financial 
 Reformers, calls it roundly 25 per cent.; while the 
 "People's Blue Book" puts it down at the sum of 
 10,211,483 a year." 
 
 Any one reading this would suppose that there was 
 ome great difference between the Liverpool Financial 
 Reformers, and the Author of the " People's Blue Book." 
 And yet, there is no difference at all ! The figures given 
 from the " People's Blue Book " are precisely 25 per 
 <cent. on 40,835,945, the net amount of the Customs 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 481 
 
 and Excise duties for the year ending 31st March, 
 1856. 
 
 What was the reviewer's motive why he did not, as 
 in the other instances, give the percentage, instead of 
 these alarming eight figures in a row, mounting into the 
 tens of millions, the reader may judge for himself, but 
 this does look rather " audacious/ ' 
 
 He then goes on to say : " These widely divergent 
 estimates sufiice to show how little reliance can be placed 
 on any which claim to be precise." 
 
 Now, it is evident that these estimates are not widely 
 divergent, or at all divergent. 
 
 If the three first of the before-mentioned authorities 
 be confined to the Customs' duties alone, in exclusion of 
 the duties of Excise, which is the natural interpretation 
 of the text, it is not unreasonable to suppose that their 
 calculations are confined to the cost of the Customs' 
 duties. Now, in this view, seeing that the Customs were 
 in the proportion of 23*2 to the Excise 17'6, and seeing 
 that the reviewer admits the cost of Excise to be by 
 much the most ugly question of the two, (so much so, 
 indeed, that he declines to undertake its defence,) it may 
 not be unreasonable to suppose that these three first- 
 named authorities would have estimated the cost of Ex- 
 cise as, at least, equal to that of Customs. How, then, 
 would the case stand, on the reviewer's own showing, 
 for the cost of Customs and Excise together ? 
 
 As this is a question of amount ihi simple numerals, 
 the reviewer, who seems to be but a poor hand at 
 figures, will, perhaps, have no difficulty in following it. 
 
 The calculation would stand thus : 
 
 Sismondi 140 per cent. 
 
 Ricardo 20 
 
 Greg 2^ to 10 
 
 And for the two last, now beyond dispute : 
 
 The Liverpool Financial Reformers 25 per cent. 
 
 The Author of " The People's Blue Book " 25 
 
 2 i 
 
482 OBJECTIONS ANSWEKED. 
 
 Such appears to be the true state of the case. If 
 so, the preponderance of authority without presumption 
 may be said to be in favour of the higher estimate. 
 But, be this as it may, the question is still substantially, 
 the same : Is 25 per cent, too high an estimate for the 
 " Extra Profit to Traders for advance of Customs and 
 Excise duties?" Or, is "the extent of the indirect 
 burden thus laid upon the capital of the country enor- 
 mously overstated " or, at all overstated? 
 
 Let us examine a little further into this question. 
 Rather more than one-half of the whole of the Cus- 
 toms duties is advanced by the Grocers; pretty good 
 evidence this, that these duties cannot be, as said to be, 
 an equal tax on all classes. 
 
 The net revenue of the Customs to 31st March, 1859, 
 was .23,923,015. Of this sum the Grocers advanced 
 12,364,349. For the advance of this capital, loss of 
 interest, and risk of collection, is it too much to set 
 down 10 per cent. ? Is it a fact, as asserted by the re- 
 viewer, that " importers now scarcely ever pay duty till 
 they have secured a customer for their goods ?" Is this 
 " especially the case with high-duty goods, such as tea, 
 which often pays duty on one chest at a time, as the 
 grocer happens to want it >5 ? Is this the way that 
 Messrs. Joseph Travers and Sons, and other great 
 wholesale dealers, distribute the vast supplies amongst 
 the retail dealers of this country ? Does the reviewer, 
 who makes this assertion, himself believe it ? 
 
 However, the fact is notoriously otherwise. A few 
 private individuals, or small retail dealers, may occasion- 
 ally take out their single chest of tea, but not in this 
 way do the great wholesale dealers carry on their trade, 
 and through them do most, and nearly all, of the retail 
 dealers in Town and Country derive their supplies for 
 the service of their customers. And who are the chief 
 customers of the retail dealers ? Who but the millions 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 483 
 
 of the working classes, and the poor, down to the poorest 
 of the poor? If 10 per cent, be not too much for the 
 wholesale dealer's first advance of capital to cover loss 
 of interest, cost of collection, and bad debts, is this too 
 much for the retail dealer's second advance of capital to 
 cover the same incurred by him ? 
 
 Is it enough for this second advance ? Is the cost of 
 collection, and the risk of bad debts the same in the 
 second case, as in the first ? Is not this cost and risk 
 more than twice as great in the second case ? Do not 
 the retail dealers provide for this by an additional charge 
 of 15, or 20 per cent., and to their poorer customers, 25 
 or 30 per cent., and by mixing teas of different qualities 
 sometimes making worse mixtures than that, and 
 sometimes giving short weight ? 
 
 Does the reviewer who has so confidently denied this 
 charge of 10 per cent, for Extra Costs on Customs Du- 
 ties, and who has presumed to call those audacious who 
 maintain it does he himself believe that they have 
 overstated it ? 
 
 As the reviewer prudently avoids the additional direct 
 and indirect cost of Customs arid Excise, under the 
 various heads of Superannuation, and Compensation Al- 
 lowances, and Pensions, Allowances, Drawbacks, Frauds, 
 and Negligences, Prosecutions for Smuggling, Adultera- 
 tions, and other breaches of the Revenue Laws, and Ex- 
 penses of Maintaining Persons convicted, Augmentation 
 of Poor-Rates, Loss and Injury to the Trade and Manu- 
 factures of the Country, and Loss and Injury to the 
 Landed Property and Houses of the Kingdom as he 
 has touched but very slightly on some of these, and not 
 at all on others, although these constitute the chief cost 
 of, and, in the reviewer's summing up, the chief charges 
 against, this system, we shall not here pursue the inquiry 
 into all these ramifications, a work of research and 
 labor already done in the veiy useful Tracts published 
 
 2 i 2 
 
484 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 by the Liverpool Reform Association, and in the former 
 Editions of the " People's Blue Book." 
 
 From these will be seen the correctness of "the asser- 
 tion that Customs and Excise Duties cost more to col- 
 lect than equal amounts equitably levied by direct taxa- 
 tion ;" and " that the pecuniary burden of these duties 
 is materially enhanced by the extra profit charged by 
 the importing merchant, or the original manufacturer, 
 and by all subsequent distributors." 
 
 " But/' says the reviewer, " these gentlemen, (the Fi- 
 nancial Reformers) appear to us, in all their arguments, 
 to fall into one capital and fatal error. They fix their 
 exclusive attention on one attribute of taxation, and neg- 
 lect other and more important attributes. In their es- 
 timates the cheapest impost is the best : Cteteris pari- 
 bus, that is, the pressure on the various classes of the 
 community being equal, that form of taxation which 
 takes least out of the pocket of the tax-payer in propor- 
 tion to the amount paid into the Exchequer, carries its 
 own paramount recommendation with it, and is to be 
 preferred to all others. Now, this we hold to be an un- 
 questionable fallacy." 
 
 The Financial Reformers hold this to be an unques- 
 tionable truth. They say, the tax with all these attri- 
 butes, and under the condition given, must be the best. 
 
 Now, let us examine this position, for, on this much 
 depends. 
 
 The reviewer says : " A costly tax is an objection- 
 able one, because it robs the tax-payer needlessly, and 
 therefore does him an injury, and an injustice." 
 
 And then he adds : " But a man may be injured 
 otherwise than in his purse, and may be injured much 
 more seriously than by any mere pecuniary mulct. He 
 may be injured in his convenience ; he may be injured 
 in his feelings; he may be injured in his temper." 
 The State wants 20 from him. 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 485 
 
 " This," says the Financial Reformers, " it can obtain 
 under a direct levy, by taking from him 20. os. ; 
 whereas, if you get it by indirect taxation you must take 
 from him 21, or 22 clearly, therefore, the former 
 is the only right mode." 
 
 " But what if he be called upon to pay the 20. 5s. at 
 a very inconvenient time, in a very peremptory manner, 
 in a large sum, in an undisguised and offensively osten- 
 sible form, while the 21 or 22 he pays just when 
 he pleases, in as small sums as he pleases, and, what 
 is still more to the purpose, without being aware that 
 he is paying a tax at all ? What if, instead of being 
 irritated beyond endurance by the quarterly visits of the 
 tax-gatherer, always sure to be as ill-timed as possible, 
 or to appear so he never sees the face of that obnoxious 
 functionary from the cradle to the grave ?" 
 
 No bad bit of prudent humanity. Men who would 
 take the tax-payer's 21, or 22, while he is under the 
 narcotic effect of beer, or tobacco, and not aware that 
 he is paying a tax at all, no sooner hear reformers talk 
 of asking him openly for his money, than they are fear- 
 ful he may be " injured in his feelings, or temper," and 
 " irritated beyond endurance." 
 
 We think, however, that the man who has not been 
 irritated by the call for income-tax, a tax on the 
 strokes of his weary arm, and the throbs of his hard- 
 worked brain, will not be irritated by a tax on his 
 property, which yields him income without toil. 
 
 We agree that, " a costly tax is an objectionable one, 
 because it robs the tax-payer needlessly, arid therefore 
 does him an injury and injustice." 
 
 We agree that " a man may be injured otherwise than 
 in his purse, and may be injured much more seriously 
 than by any pecuniary mulct. He may be injured in 
 his convenience; he may be injured in his feelings; he 
 may be injured in his temper." 
 
486 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 But we do not see why his payments of a direct and 
 certain fixed tax, on four certain fixed days in the year, 
 should any more interfere with his convenience, his 
 feelings, or his temper, than his quarterly payments of 
 Rent in the year. 
 
 We cannot believe of the most ignorant person that, 
 if the choice were offered to him of paying 5 or 10 per 
 cent, addition to his rent, for the liberty of making each 
 quarterly payment at his convenience within the year, 
 he would accept the accommodation on such terms. 
 
 It is found from experience, that persons, even the 
 poorest, who have their rent to pay on a certain day, 
 and know that it must be paid, or that they must take 
 the consequence, generally manage to pay it, and for 
 that purpose, if necessary, make preparations long 
 before. 
 
 And so it would be with a direct tax. The day of 
 payment would be to them like their rent-day. The^ 
 would prepare for it, and they would be much better 
 prepared for it than they now are, It would be neither 
 "torn" from him in the one way, nor stolen from him 
 in the other; but would be cheerfully paid by the 
 working-man when he wag enjoying the full wages of 
 his labor, and the necessaries and comforts of life at 
 prices from 100 to 500 per cent, less than he is now 
 paying for them. 
 
 What, if the working men and women of this country 
 should prefer having their wages free from deductions 
 for any taxes on property? W^hat, if they should prefer 
 being able to buy all that their wages will purchase, at 
 the market price, free from enhancement by Customs 
 and Excise duties ? " as every man of common sense 
 unquestionably will." 
 
 " Clearly, money is valuable only inasmuch as it can 
 purchase the good things of life ;" and, clearly, there- 
 fore, it is a fraud on the working-man to prevent him 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 487 
 
 from purchasing with the wages of his own labor, tf the 
 good things of life " at the fair market price. 
 
 " Clearly, freedom from periodical irritation is one of 
 the best of these good things ; and, clearly, therefore, 
 it is worth while" for every man to pay something 
 every "year to the State for protection, security, and 
 justice." That will go far to bring peace. There will 
 still be people who will always find something to quarrel 
 about; but for "a calm temper and unblaspheming 
 tongue," there would be nothing like the immediate 
 abolition of all Customs and Excise duties. If any 
 should feel a doubt about the quantity of blasphemy to 
 be removed by this simple means, let them make them- 
 selves familiar with the process of passing persons and 
 goods through the Custom House ; and, for the Excise, 
 let them only visit the Hop Grounds at the picking 
 season, and the Malting Houses at the malting times ; 
 and, if they have the courage, let them witness the run 
 of a cargo some dark night on the solitary sea-shore. 
 They will then be better able to form a conception of 
 what is now going on in blasphemy day and night 
 throughout this Christian Land, especially under inter- 
 ruptions. [When this was written the obnoxious Hop 
 Duty was in force.] 
 
 They will also then be able to form a more correct 
 conception of what is going on in the way of perjury. 
 It is, indeed, as the reviewer says " worth while to pay 
 20s. more for peace a calm temper, and an unblas- 
 pheming tongue." Whilst writing this, the blasphemy 
 and perjury in the Hop Grounds is being removed to the 
 public and private breweries. The exciseman, it seems, 
 is now to be admitted into private dwelling houses, as 
 well as into the Brewers' yards ! It would have been 
 better to have confined them to the Malting Houses, 
 where they have been long established, if a diminution 
 in the sum-total of blasphemy and perjury were desired. 
 
488 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 We now come to another objection, in which the re- 
 viewer evidently seeks shelter under the broad shadow 
 of his own admission. There is so much truth in what 
 he says here, that in justice to him we must give the 
 whole in his own words, and here they are : 
 
 " Strong objections are urged against these Customs 
 and Excise duties on another ground the irresistible 
 temptations and opportunities which, it is alleged, they 
 offer to fraud and evasion. The impeachment must be 
 admitted : as long as these duties exist there will be 
 attempts, and successful attempts, at smuggling, and 
 illicit distillation. But the objection applies and pro- 
 bably with equal force to all species of taxation. Pay- 
 ments to the revenue, however levied, will always be 
 evaded when evasion is possible; and fraud, lying, and 
 concealment, with all their demoralising consequences, 
 will result. Even now, the dishonest practices, stimu- 
 lated by Schedule D, arid the legacy and probate duties 
 are formidable items of comparison to st against the 
 violations of Excise ancj Customs laws ; and the fearful 
 extent to which the former would be multiplied, were 
 direct taxation levied on the masses, instead of, as now, 
 only on the few, no man can foresee. Moreover, there 
 is one fertile source of temptation and fraud appertain- 
 ing to direct taxation, from which indirect is wholly 
 free, namely, Exemptions. Every magistrate is more 
 or less cognisant of the deplorable amount of equivoca- 
 tion and false swearing, employed to prove, for example, 
 that a house is worth only 19. 19*.., and is, therefore, 
 exempt from the house tax ; that the effects of a de- 
 ceased person were under 2Q in value, and that, there- 
 fore, Letters of Administration need not be taken out ; 
 that the income of the appellant is less than .100, 
 and that, therefore, he is exempt from the income-tax ; 
 that his carriage, or his horse, or his dog, or his gun, or 
 his under-gardener, is exempt from duty on this or that 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 489 
 
 assignable plea. When all things are taken into consi- 
 deration, it becomes impossible to decide between the 
 relative degrees of demoralising temptation assignable 
 to the two fiscal systems ; and we shall, therefore, leave 
 this class of considerations out of the question on both 
 sides." 
 
 Now, all this is only too true. But what admissions 
 these are ! What better arguments against the existing 
 system, than are to be drawn from these admitted facts ! 
 Of all the taxes now imposed and levied, there is not 
 one single tax which does not come, more or less, under 
 this sweeping condemnation ! Yes there is one single 
 exception, if that is to be called a tax which ought never 
 to be so treated or regarded, and that is, the Postage 
 Stamp. That is not properly a tax, but a payment for 
 value received, and is the only good bargain ever made 
 for the People with a Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 made by the almost unanimous voice of the People. 
 
 With that single exception, there is not one tax now 
 collected which does not stand condemned by the re- 
 viewer under this extract, though written with a very 
 different purpose. Like many an over-zealous advocate, 
 he has admitted himself ' out of Court/ " The objec- 
 tion applies and probably with equal force to all 
 species of taxation " now in use. 
 
 "Payments to the revenue, however levied, will al- 
 ways be evaded when evasion is possible; and fraud, 
 lying, and concealment, with all their demoralising con- 
 sequences, will result." Yes it will always be so, and 
 knowing that, why persist in a system which not only 
 permits, but encourages all these evils ? Evasion of the 
 Law may be an evil, but cannot be a crime. The means 
 may be both, but is not necessarily either. Evasion is 
 only avoidance, and open resistance is only one form of 
 avoidance. Hampden's evasion, by open resistance, of 
 the ' S hip-Money Tax/ was neither an evil, nor a crime, 
 
490 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 and nobody now supposes that it was either, though 
 many weak persons, including learned judges, as they 
 were called, thought it both, or said it was both, in 
 those days. Many persons, even learned judges, are no 
 wiser now, than in those days. 
 
 It was not a great many years ago it was in the year 
 1814 that one Edward Polio was executed at the new 
 gaol, Chelmsford, for cutting down a cherry tree, in an 
 orchard, or rather plantation, at Kelvedon, in Essex, 
 the property of a Mr. Brewer. The Judge hanged him 
 by the law of inference, remarking, " That a man who 
 would wilfully cut down a young cherry-tree, would take 
 away a man's life." That Judge, whom the writer 
 well remembers, was Mr. Justice Heath. The man 
 who confirmed that atrocious judgment, and ordered it 
 to be carried out in execution, was our Prince Regent, 
 afterwards King George the Fourth ! His Prime 
 Minister was then Robert Earl of Liverpool ; and the 
 Keeper of the Royal Conscience was John Earl of Eldon. 
 St. Paul said of Alexander, the Coppersmith ; " The 
 Lord reward him according to his works !" 
 
 Perhaps, in the history of the world, no greater cri* 
 minality can be shown than in our penal laws. But, 
 can any one put a case to show that evasion of the Law 
 is necessarily criminal ? The means may be so, and the 
 end may be so; but the evasion itself may be most laud- 
 able. In many cases it is highly criminal, in some less 
 criminal, in some not high-minded ; but not to be high- 
 minded, is not to be criminal. It is not high-minded in 
 a poor man to smuggle a keg of brandy, or a few pounds 
 of tobacco ; nor is it high-minded in a high officer of 
 State to shirk the stamp-duty on his appointment to 
 his high office, but it is not criminal. Both frequently 
 happen, and the object of both is the same to cheat 
 the Government but no one looks on either as cri- 
 minal. No doubt, the act of the poor man is looked 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 491 
 
 upon by many as very venial, and by others as very venal, 
 and he is treated according to Law ; but the act of the 
 rich man, which is really much more venal, is gene- 
 rally regarded as venial, and, when discovered, is simply 
 rectified, as one rectifies "a mistake, when discovered to 
 be a mistake. 
 
 What a folly to make laws for human beings, against 
 human feelings ! 
 
 It is the natural feeling against a bad law which 
 prompts evasion. 
 
 In this view*, if an ' Association for the Encourage- 
 ment of Smuggling' could be established, without 
 coming under the penalties of the Law, it would be a 
 valuable institution deserving the support of all good 
 subjects. If a man coming from abroad into this 
 country a foreigner, for instance, unacquainted with 
 our law be found with more than a pound of tobacco 
 in his possession, which has not paid duty, more than 
 five hundred times its prime cost, he is liable to be put 
 into prison, and to pay 100 to the Queen ! 
 
 Is it more criminal to evade, than to make such a law 
 as this? 
 
 It is by evasion that all these absurd and wicked laws 
 are ultimately repealed. 
 
 It is the cry of universal indignation which stopped, 
 at last, the burnings of our Bloody Queen Mary which 
 has swept away so many of our murderous criminal Laws 
 which has repealed our infamous Corn Laws and 
 which will abolish our wicked and contemptible Customs 
 and Excise Duties. 
 
 In the meantime we shall continue to sympathize 
 with the Smuggler who is helping to unfasten the iron 
 rivets of our chains; and we shall soon have to thank 
 him for much more. 
 
 Then, look at the poor Malster what a fearful trade ! 
 to this, the Samphire-gatherer from Dover Cliff is 
 
492 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 nothing ! Or, think of the poor Hop-grower, with an 
 Exciseman at one elbow, and the tempter at the other ! 
 How the devil must have langhed at the poor hop- 
 grower, who was ruined by a bountiful season ! And 
 what a devil's deputy must the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer have been, who had to send the poor hop-grower 
 to prison for Nature's freak ! This particular folly, how- 
 ever, has at last come to an end, by the repeal of the 
 Hop tax : but only to let in a new tax, which is 
 obnoxious and offensive, in the highest degree, to both 
 principle and decency ; namely, a tax on brewing beer, 
 for private use, in private houses. Truly, as the 
 Editor of " The Parliamentary Remembrancer" says : 
 " A tax on the roasting of beef, or the use of the Coffee- 
 biggin, would stand on exactly the same footing, and be 
 exactly as sound and reasonable. The retrograde de- 
 vices of taxation which Mr. Gladstone is thus attempt- 
 ing to force again upon the country, were solemnly 
 condemned nearly two hundred years ago, when Parlia- 
 ment pronounced an analogous tax, the Hearth tax, to 
 be ' a Badge of Slavery upon the whole People, exposing 
 every man's House to be entered into and searched at 
 pleasure by persons unknown to him/ '' 
 
 But to look into all the wonders of our legislation 
 would be an endless job. Some notable examples of 
 these wonders are given in the three former editions of 
 the ' People's Blue Book/ and will not be here repeated. 
 We have no room for repetitions. But let us have 
 another look at the Income Tax, which all our wise phi- 
 losophers and legislators are racking their brains in vain 
 attempts to adapt to common sense and justice. 
 
 Everybody knows who knows anything about the 
 matter " the dishonest practices stimulated by Sche- 
 dule D." 
 
 Yes everybody knows it or, if they don't let them 
 look into the returns of the principal shop-keepers in 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 493 
 
 Regent Street, Pall Mall, the Strand, Fleet Street, and 
 Oxford Street, and in all the other great thoroughfares 
 of the Metropolis. Then let them look into the returns 
 of the principal Bankers and Merchants in the City and 
 West End. Let them go into the Inns of Court for the 
 Lawyers, and into the Squares and the Rows for the 
 Physicians and the Surgeons, and let examination be 
 made into the Returns for the Income Tax by all these 
 excellent and high-minded men. 
 
 What a state of bankruptcy, or perjury, is here be- 
 trayed ! Or, what a lot of criminals, if evasion of the 
 law be a crime ! A clear income of 2000 a year is 
 hardly to be found ! 
 
 Can anything equal the absurdity of asking a person 
 to value his own property for the purpose of taxing 
 him ! 
 
 It is almost as absurd as a Member of the House of 
 Commons asking a Member of the Government to ac- 
 count for the application of a particular sum of money 
 voted on an Army or Navy Estimate ! 
 
 Is anyone so foolish as to suppose that there can be 
 the smallest difficulty in appropriating any moderate 
 number of thousands, to any of the variety of headings 
 most convenient ? 
 
 What is this but evasion ? 
 
 Evasion without risk of detection. 
 
 This is an evil state of things, but the evil works its 
 own remedy in the end. 
 
 At present, the tax-gatherer asks for a lie, and he 
 gets it. 
 
 Everybody evades that is, lies. A noble Lord, for- 
 merly well known about Town, used to say that, he 
 derived his whole income from the Property Tax Allow- 
 ances ! 
 
 The Law makes all liars, more or less. The sooner 
 this system of legislation is changed; and all its costly 
 
494 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 and cruel machinery is swept away, the better for all 
 parties concerned the Government, and the People. 
 
 The instances of confusion of mind and argument in 
 the Edinburgh Reviewer are so numerous that, to point 
 them all out would be attempting too much. 
 
 But there is one instance which must be specially 
 noticed. 
 
 In the extract already given (p. 261), it is said: 
 " There is one fertile source of temptation and of fraud 
 appertaining to direct taxation, from which indirect is 
 wholly free, namely, Exemptions" 
 
 Now, it so happens that, in the very next page 
 (p. 262), we come to the following : " At the outset we 
 must remind our readers that the taxation of the poor 
 man is entirely voluntary. He assesses himself, and he 
 need not contribute one farthing to the revenue unless 
 he pleases. No actual necessary of life is taxed. Bread 
 and meat pay no Customs duties, and no Excise. Tea, 
 coffee, sugar, tobacco, and beer though now by habit 
 become almost indispensable are in no fair and intelli- 
 gible sense necessaries ; a man may live, as all men used 
 to do, and as numbers do even now, in perfect health 
 and strength and comfort without touching one of them ; 
 nay, he will improve his health by abstaining from, at 
 least, two out of the number." . . . " Theyare all luxuries 
 and superfluities : it is very right the working man 
 should have them, if he chooses ; but why any more 
 than the rich man he should have them without paying 
 for them, it is impossible to see. If he can purchase 
 them it is because he has money to spend on superflui- 
 ties, and the portion of his income that he can set aside 
 for superfluities is surely a fair subject for taxation. If 
 he pays any tax at all, it is because he has stepped 
 voluntarily into the tax-paying classes." 
 
 This proves too much. If the poor man can shun in- 
 direct taxation by doing without taxed life-gear, so can 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 495 
 
 a rich man shun direct taxation by doing without his 
 property. John Toiler, it is true, may free himself from 
 taxation on tea, coffee, sugar, spirits, tobacco, and beer, 
 by giving them up ; but so may Mr. Fullpurse shun 
 taxes on his house arid stocks by giving them to his 
 neighbours ; or, If an Englishman will live, as our Go- 
 vernment ought not to deem that he will live, in wealthy 
 England, he may escape much taxation. If he would 
 live on his own tree like a monkey, and eat berries, and 
 insects, he would not be taxed for life-gear, which is 
 afforded by the labor of his race : we allow this, but we 
 want to know, if indirect taxation ought to drive him to 
 the alternative of monkey-life, or savage-life. 
 
 But, can a poor man escape taxation by refraining 
 from tea, coffee, sugar, spirits, tobacco, and beer ? Can 
 he, without any taxation, have a tallow candle in his 
 house ; or, a little rice, instead of diseased potatoes ? or, 
 medicine to take, or, an orange to suck, when he is sick ? 
 or, spices in his holiday dinner? or, timber in his floor, 
 or stairs, or door ? or, receive a legacy from a kinsman, 
 or a friend ? or, try to get his bread by dealing in horses, 
 or selling goods by auction ? 
 
 It was just before stated that, "there is one fertile 
 source of temptation and of fraud appertaining to direct 
 taxation, from which indirect is wholly free namely, 
 exemptions." 
 
 It is now said that " the taxation of the poor man is 
 entirely voluntary " : that " he assesses himself, and he 
 need not contribute one farthing to the revenue unless 
 he pleases." 
 
 If so, the poor man may, without fraud, bring all 
 articles, subject to indirect taxation, within the class of 
 Exemptions ! Abstinence alone is now necessary for 
 making all non- necessaries exemptions ! Though man 
 cannot live on bread alone, yet it appears that he can 
 live on bread and meat alone, which are not taxed ; and, 
 
496 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 therefore other articles, which are taxed, " are all luxu- 
 ries and superfluities/' 
 
 It is asked " why should the poor man, any more 
 than the rich man, have these luxuries and superflui- 
 ties without paying for them ?" 
 
 There is no good reason why he should. But who 
 ever proposed that he should ? Who ever proposed 
 anything more than that the rich and poor should be 
 able to buy at the same price ? 
 
 Some will answer " They can do so now." But 
 they cannot. The poor man does not buy his tea in 
 little packets of ounces and half ounces at the same rate 
 as the rich man buys his parcels of pounds, and 
 hundredweight, and chest. But this is not the worst of 
 it. The duty to the poor man is, in all cases nearly, 
 and in many cases entirely, prohibitory. To the poor 
 man, in all cases it stints, and in many cases prevents, 
 consumption. In no case is this the operation of the 
 duty to the rich man. To him the duty makes no sen- 
 sible difference as regards his supply. Therefore, it is 
 not true that " rich and poor are able to buy at the 
 same price." The same might as well be said if the 
 duty were raised 1,000 per cent. Rich and poor would 
 then be able to buy at the same price, but the poor 
 would buy very little. Some tea is now sold to the rich 
 at 20s. a pound, and the poor are able to buy that, but 
 they never do. 
 
 If the tax be equal at 100 per cent, it is equal at 
 1,000 per cent., or at 10,000 per cent. ; but the pressure 
 of the tax is not equal in these cases, any more than it 
 was in the bread tax. 
 
 It is, therefore, not enough to prove that a tax is equal 
 to all. It is essential to show that the tax presses 
 equally on all. That the amount of the tax is the same 
 to all, is admitted. That the pressure is the same on 
 all, is denied. 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 497 
 
 If tea and sugar be not necessaries, neither are boots 
 and breeches. Taking the population of the whole 
 world, more human beings live without the two latter, 
 than without the two former articles ; indeed, the most 
 eminent medical authorities assert that, human life can- 
 not be sustained without sugar in some form ; and it is 
 well known that, on bread or meat alone, human life 
 perishes from the want of sufficient sugar. 
 
 So much for this criterion. And who is to determine 
 what are, and what are not necessaries ? 
 
 Voltaire in his satire, ' LE MONDAIN/ said : 
 
 " Le Superflu, chose tres-necessaire, 
 A reuni 1'un et 1'autre hemisphere." 
 
 It was said by Domat, the friend of Pascal " Le 
 superflu des riches devrait servir pour le necessaire des 
 pauvres, mais tout au contraire, le necessaire des pauvres 
 sert pour le superflu des riches/' 
 
 And so it appears to be, for by far the largest portion 
 of the tea and sugar imported into this country, is con- 
 sumed by the working classes ; and, whether they buy 
 it for themselves, or it is bought for them by their em- 
 ployers, the working classes equally pay for these articles 
 out of their wages. 
 
 But those who know how the majority of Infants are 
 brought up (especially amongst the poor and working 
 classes), know that their existence depends on sugar, for 
 without it they cannot be reared. 
 
 In towns, the poor and working mothers being 
 obliged to leave their homes in the day to earn their 
 bread, very few of them can nurse their infants without 
 artificial means, of which sugar is an essential ingre- 
 dient, and, therefore, must be bought, though bread be 
 unbought. 
 
 This fact, too notorious to be matter of doubt, goes 
 
 2K 
 
498 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 far to prove that sugar is a necessary, notwithstanding 
 the Edinburgh Reviewer classes it amongst luxuries. 
 
 In this view of the case we get rid of the Tables of 
 distribution of tea and sugar, between the three orders 
 of society, which those Gentlemen, called ' Commis- 
 sioners of the Inland Revenue Department/ have lately 
 been amusing themselves with framing, and over which 
 there has been so much squabbling. We are not going 
 to take any part in that squabble. It suits us well 
 enough to take the facts on their own showing, absurd 
 as the statement is on the face of it. It is sufficient for 
 us that more than half the Customs duties is admitted 
 to be paid by the Grocers, and that their best customers 
 by far are the working class. 
 
 This proves that by far the largest portion of the 
 duties on tea and sugar is paid by the poorest part of 
 the population, and, consequently, that the pressure of 
 the tax is not in equal proportion on the rich and poor. 
 
 This was fairly admitted by Mr. Gladstone, Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, in his Speech on the Budget, 
 1859. 
 
 He said : " In dealing with the question of direct 
 and indirect taxation, there is one argument which, per- 
 haps, though imperfectly expressed, is substantially this 
 the distinction between them involves the question 
 between rich and poor. All classes pay indirect taxation ; 
 the middle and wealthy classes pay direct ; but indirect 
 taxes press always much more seriously on the laboring 
 population." 
 
 This is a great admission from a Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, for it is an admission of the whole case. 
 
 Indirect taxation must always be paid, more or less, 
 out of the wages of labor, taking wages in its largest 
 sense, as the reward for industry and skill. 
 
 Now, it is an axiom, that it never can be just, and 
 never can be true policy, for any Nation to tax directly, 
 or indirectly, the wages of labor, as such. The prin- 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 499 
 
 ciple is precisely the same whether the wages be 50 
 a year, or 50,000 a year. The amount in no way 
 alters the principle, or affects the question. It is unjust 
 and unwise, and as unwise as unjust, to diminish the 
 wages of labor by any tax. In this view, the wages for 
 the labor of the hand, and the labor of the head, are 
 precisely the same. The wages of the common hand- 
 laborer, the fees of the Lawyer, and the Physician, the 
 profits of the Banker, Merchant, Manufacturer, Shop- 
 keeper, or other Trader, are in no way distinguishable. 
 As such, none ought to be " touchable" by any tax. 
 To dimmish these as such is unjust, and must be 
 unwise, must be as unwise as unjust. Wages and 
 Profits when left untouched by the tax-gatherer must 
 soon change their character, and appear in some form 
 of realised property. 
 
 In that new character they come more immediately 
 under the protection of the State, and then they come 
 more properly within the power of the State, and 
 become liable to contribute to the necessities of the 
 State. But as the wages of labor, or the profits of 
 industry or skill, the State can have no just right to the 
 smallest fraction no right on the ground of justice 
 no right' on the ground of policy, or expediency. To 
 some it may appear unreasonable that the Lawyer, or 
 the Physician, who is making 10,000. or 20,000 a 
 year by his profession, should contribute nothing to the 
 exigencies of the State, and that the poor Widow, who 
 is receiving 10 a year from the Funds, should con- 
 tribute 1. But there is no injustice in that, and 
 equality of taxation is preserved, both in amount and 
 in distribution, however great the pressure, when such 
 a deduction is made from so small a sum. 
 
 But the pressure is not greater on the Widow, because 
 the Lawyer and the Physician go free. Quite the con- 
 trary. By that freedom the Widow is set free from 
 
 2 K 2 
 
500 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 every other tax upon her property during her life, and 
 after her death. By that freedom " all the luxuries 
 and superfluities" are free to her at prices which will 
 make her remaining 9 equal to, at least, twice that 
 amount in purchasing power. For her comfort and 
 enjoyment her 10 becomes equal to .20. 
 
 The reviewer, among other critical remarks, cannot 
 understand " why joint-stock Companies should be 
 mulcted, and private mercantile Companies escape." 
 
 This objection has been made by others, and it 
 deserves an answer. 
 
 It is said to be unreasonable and unfair to tax realised 
 property when invested in a Joint-Stock Concern, and 
 to leave it untaxed when invested in a Private Concern. 
 
 On a superficial view, this would appear to be an 
 arbitrary, and not very reasonable, measure. But the 
 same objection applies to taxing the Government Funds. 
 In all human schemes requiring distinctions, there must 
 be approximations so close that the line of distinction 
 is scarcely discernible. 
 
 The principle of the proposed tax is, however, clearly 
 marked, and is applicable to this, and to every other 
 case, without exception. The proposed tax is to be 
 levied equally on all realised property, (not engaged in 
 Agriculture, Trades, Manufactures, or Professions,) the 
 value of which can be ascertained by the actual, or 
 estimated, annual produce, without application to the 
 owner. That is the definition of the description of pro- 
 perty proposed to be taxed, contra-distinguished from 
 capital, or floating property ; the assumption being that 
 capital which employs productive industry and skill, is 
 usefully employed in the production of fresh capital ; 
 and, being necessarily subject to fluctuations in value, 
 partakes more of the character of floating, than of 
 realised, property. 
 
 It is assumed to be inexpedient to tax such property. 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 501 
 
 Whether right, or wrong, this is assumed as an axiom. 
 If wrong, the whole theory is upset, and all that is here 
 built upon it falls to the ground. 
 
 If the property be so invested that the owner can live 
 in idleness on the yearly produce, and the value of the 
 property can be ascertained by the yearly produce, or 
 can be otherwise estimated, without application to the 
 owner, then such property is assumed to be realised, 
 and is made subject to the tax accordingly. 
 
 That is the assumption, and that is assumed as an 
 axiom, which can never be overthrown. 
 
 Cases may be put to show that the line of distinction 
 is very fine between floating, and realised property ; and 
 it may appear in many cases quite unreasonable, that 
 public investments should be taxed, and private invest- 
 ments left untaxed. The rule is arbitrary, but it applies 
 equally to all, and the principle is clear. It may affect, 
 but it cannot control, the judgment, or discretion, of 
 the owner of the property. He is free to exercise his 
 own will ; and, as he may determine, he is subject, or 
 not, to the visitation of the tax-gatherer. 
 
 Whilst he is engaged in the uncertain results of agri- 
 culture, in the risks of trade, or the labors of a profes- 
 sion, he knows that his profits will be undiminished by 
 taxation. 
 
 So it ought to be for his own interest for the 
 interest of the State and for the interest of everybody. 
 It is not wise to rob the hive, until the honey is made. 
 
 When he wants to enjoy in idleness, he can do so ; 
 but then he knows that he must pay for it ; and then 
 he ought to pay ; not " according to his means," but in 
 the same proportion as others pay under like circum- 
 stances. 
 
 If he invest his Capital in a Joint- Stock Concern, he 
 has the benefit of a special law for his protection, and 
 his liability (if limited) is less than in a private partner- 
 
502 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 ship. It is not unreasonable that he should pay for 
 that advantage, and other advantages, although his 
 money be employed in works of productive industry, 
 and all private partnerships be exempt from taxation. 
 Here is no hardship, because no compulsion. The 
 choice is free. The condition is prefixed. The prin- 
 ciple is preserved, and the line of distinction, though 
 some may think it fine, is still clear; moreover, it is 
 fixed and certain, known to all equal to all. 
 
 The principle respects the undoubted right of every 
 individual to invest his money as he likes, and without 
 question or interference on the part of the State, 
 unless the investment be made in Land, or Houses, or 
 in the Public Funds, or in any Public Company ; and 
 then the State asks no question, and interferes so far 
 only as is necessary for obtaining that contribution 
 which the State requires, and is justly entitled to 
 take : in the case of Land, in right of the original and 
 prior title in the State ; in the case of the Public 
 Funds, in right of the privilege given to the public for 
 the free transfer of such portions of the Public Debt ; 
 in the case of Public Companies, in right of the protec- 
 tion extended by the State to such Companies ; and in 
 all these cases, in right of the Constitutional power of 
 Parliament to take these contributions for the Public 
 good. 
 
 But it is not a rightful exercise of this power to 
 require a person to declare the amount or value of his 
 property ; or, in any manner to touch it whilst it 
 remains in his own private possession, or under his own 
 private control. If a person choose to lock up his 
 money in a box, or to expend it for his own amuse- 
 ment, or to lend it to a friend on his personal security, 
 it is not a rightful exercise of the power of the State 
 to interfere in any manner with that person's money so 
 employed. But it becomes a different question, when a 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 503 
 
 person employs his money for his own profit, through 
 the intervention of the State. In that case it is not 
 unreasonable to say that, the State then acquires a 
 right to touch the money so invested, and then, but not 
 till then, that becomes realised property, and fairly 
 subject to the tax. But then no question is asked of 
 the owner; no question of conscience is raised; no 
 premium for perjury is held out; there is no inter- 
 ference with agriculture, manufactures, trade, or pro- 
 fessions ; the rights of property are respected, and the 
 political rights of the State are supported. 
 
 Such is the answer to this class of objections. To 
 many the answer will not be satisfactory, but those who 
 still complain of the injustice of charging their realised 
 capital in the Government Funds, or in a Joint Stock 
 Company, with a tax of 10 per cent., whilst others who 
 invest their Capital in private Concerns are untaxed, 
 must bear the injustice, or remove their money from 
 the reach of it. They have the choice, and if they 
 choose the injustice, they may as well take it with its 
 benefits, and be silent. 
 
 The foregoing remarks of the Edinburgh Reviewer 
 are little more than preliminary to ascertaining " in 
 what proportion the existing taxes are divided among 
 the upper and middle classes, and the proletaries." 
 
 We shall not follow him in his divisions and calcula- 
 tions. He says for himself : " Our figures as we 
 have already taken occasion to warn our readers can 
 only be approximations." We take this to mean that, 
 his figures will not bear close examination, a truth 
 which we admit, and will give him the benefit of. 
 
 We will take him on his own figures, with all his 
 faults ; but as the present inquiry is into the distribu- 
 tion of taxes, and not of local rates, and more particu- 
 larly of Customs and Excise Duties, we shall take the 
 liberty of omitting everything else from this account, 
 
504 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 although he has, more wisely for his own views than 
 fairly for ours, included all in the same account ; 
 charging fourteen-fifteenths of the local rates, and the 
 whole of the ' Income Tax, Assessed Taxes, etc., Pro- 
 bate, Legacy Duties, and Stamps, to the Propertied 
 Classes/ 
 
 There is no occasion for over-charging either side. 
 We shall, therefore, omit all these rates and taxes on 
 both sides, and, for simplicity and fairness, confine the 
 account to Customs and Excise Duties, in the first in- 
 stance, reserving the other charges for separate notice, 
 our object being to expose the truth which the reviewer 
 seems desirous of hiding. 
 
 We accordingly take the account of Customs and 
 Excise duties as distributed by him, although he has, 
 with manifest unfairness, charged all the Railway Pas- 
 senger Tax, and all the Customs Duties on Brandy and 
 Wine, to the ' Propertied Classes/ assuming that under 
 these heads nothing is contributed by the 'working 
 classes/ 
 
 But with these allowances, and many other singulari- 
 ties, the Case, according to this authority, and on his 
 own showing, stands thus : 
 
 Customs and Excise duties paid by the ' working 
 
 classes' ....;...... 23,348,612 
 
 Propertied Classes ' 19,287,812 
 
 ,64,060,800 
 
 Thus, it appears that, of the Customs and Excise 
 duties, the Working Classes pay upwards of four mil- 
 lions a year more than the Propertied Classes, even 
 with the manifest error of charging to the latter the 
 whole of the Excise for Railway Passengers' tax, and 
 the whole of the Customs for Brandy and Wine 
 duties, amounting together to 2,997,177 ! Or, upon 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 505 
 
 the aggregate of Customs and Excise duties, viz. : 
 42,636,424, the Working Classes pay, 54*762 per 
 cent., which is 54. 155. 2f d. and the Propertied 
 Classes pay 45 '238 per cent., which is 45. 4s. 9%d. ! 
 
 The reviewer then proceeds to estimate the propor- 
 tion of the working classes to the whole population, and 
 he comes to the conclusion that, the working classes of 
 the United Kingdom form, at least, three-fourths of the 
 total population, or 22,500,000, leaving one fourth, 
 7,500,000 for the middle and upper classes, including 
 among these all who do not live by wages. 
 
 The number of the working classes he reduces to 
 4,700,000 working-class families in Great Britain and 
 Ireland ; and for their aggregate income he arrives at a 
 total of 225,000,000. 
 
 By another process, which we will call the hocus 
 pocus process, the reviewer says (page 267), "this 
 would give the entire revenue of the upper and middle 
 ranks as 320,000,000. The comparison will then 
 stand as follows : 
 
 " The working classes, 22,500,000 in number, and 
 with an aggregate income of 225,000,000 a year, pay 
 24,500,000 of taxes, that is 22s. a head, or not 
 quite 11 per cent. [Correctly, 10. 17s. 9d. per cent.] 
 The upper and middle classes, 7,500,000 in number, 
 and with an aggregate income of 320,000,000, pay 
 51,500,000, that is, 6. 17s. 4d. per head, or 16 
 per cent." [Correctly, 16. Is. lOid. per cent.] 
 
 The reviewer says (page 244), that, the real pressure 
 of taxation depends entirely on the wealth of the people 
 pressed upon, and unless the wealth of working men 
 bears a greater ratio to that of the rich than ^L- to -/^ 
 (and we say it does not), they are more oppressively 
 taxed than the wealthier classes; and that is what the 
 Financial Reformers maintain. 
 
 Such is the result of the comparison between the 
 
506 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 classes, made by the reviewer himself, on his own terms, 
 as regards Customs and Excise Duties. 
 
 We will now make the same comparison with the 
 Income Tax, Assessed Taxes, etc., and the Probate and 
 Legacy duties, and Stamps. 
 
 According to the Income Tax Return, made up to 
 the 5th April, 1858, the total amount of property 
 assessed in the United Kingdom was 327,146,845, 
 and the amount of tax imposed was 7,905,525. 
 
 The total imposed under Schedule C. was <860,865 
 
 D. was 2,392,243 
 
 3,253,108 
 
 The reviewer, in commenting on Mr. Bright's sug- 
 gestion for abolishing the Customs and Excise duties, 
 and other taxes, and for substituting " a tax upon pro- 
 perty, in order to cover the enormous deficiency thus 
 created," says (p. 269) : " We have to remark that, 
 the general effect of this plan is not to substitute direct 
 for indirect taxation, inasmuch as it repeals direct taxes 
 producing nearly 11,500,000 a year. The Income 
 Tax, and the Assessed Taxes are direct in their inci- 
 dence, and Schedules B., D., and E., of the Income 
 Tax the Schedules of Farmers, Trades, and Pro- 
 fessions, and Public Officers, which this Scheme 
 repeals without a substitute, are just as much direct 
 taxes, and possess as much of the advantages ascribed 
 to that class of imposts, as Schedules A. and C., the 
 Schedules of Land and the Funds. Neither can it be 
 said that it is a substitution of taxes levied on the rich 
 for taxes levied on the poor. Many of the taxes pro- 
 posed to be repealed, are taxes whose incidence is not 
 upon the poor : such are the Income Tax, the Assessed 
 Taxes, the duties on Fire and Marine Insurances, the 
 Duties on Paper [since repealed], Books, Raisins, 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 507 
 
 Foreign Wines, Silks, Timber. The true object of the 
 plan, as has been already stated, is to transfer fiscal 
 burdens from the trading and professional classes, to 
 the classes possessed of fixed or realised property." 
 
 The reviewer seems to consider that, since the Income 
 Tax is a direct one, the promoters of a Property Tax 
 (which is also a direct one) should object to a tax on 
 earnings. There is the widest difference between a tax 
 on labor, and a tax on property. 
 
 In the next page (p. 270), he says : 
 
 " This heavy tax would fall, not exclusively on the 
 rich, but upon all persons deriving an income, however 
 small, from realised property, provided that property 
 amounted to 100. For example, a merchant, a banker, 
 a manufacturer, a railway contractor, a barrister, a phy- 
 sician, an engineer, or even a Minister of State, receiving 
 a clear income of 5000 a year, would escape untaxed ; 
 but every person who had invested 100 in the Funds, 
 or in a Savings Bank, would receive his dividend with a 
 deduction of 13 per cent." 
 
 Let it be granted that a physician receives a yearly 
 income of 5000 untaxed, while another may be taxed 
 upon 100 a year, as property. What then ? We say 
 that the physician would store much of his 5000 a 
 year, as property, and, in that form, it would be fairly 
 taxed. 
 
 It may be answered that, he may be a spendthrift, and 
 may not make property of any of it. Be it so. Then 
 we hold that it would pass on till it came into the hands 
 of thrifty men, and would be taxed as property with 
 them. 
 
 The fruits of labor are not annihilated on leaving a 
 spendthrift. They will be made into property some- 
 where, unless destroyed by fire or water, or by war, or 
 other State evil, and it is indifferent to the State whether 
 they be taxed with A, B, or C. If a spendthrift epi- 
 
508 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 cure, with 1000 a year, were to give 600 a year to 
 a thrifty truffle- hunter for truffles, he might make a 
 new house, or other property, out of this income, and 
 the State would lose nothing by taxing him, instead of 
 the other. 
 
 Let a man who has 100 from the funds, and another 
 who earns 100 a year by the whole toil of his limbs, 
 and the whole time of his weeks, be taxed each by 
 10. What then? Why some may say that, if the 
 working man be pinched for a livelihood on his 90, so 
 must be the fund-holder. 
 
 No such thing. The 10 taken from the fund- 
 holder, leaves him with his mind, his limbs, and his 
 time, free for work to make up his livelihood ; but the 
 man who is taxed of his earnings has no other set of 
 limbs to undertake any more labor no other brain to 
 take the work which racks his throbbing head no other 
 days in the week to spend in new toil. He is taxed in 
 his last resource of income. One has been taxed upon 
 100. The other upon nothing but the strokes of his 
 limbs, or the throbbings of his brain. 
 
 This is the wickedness of a tax upon labor, and we 
 hold that men should not be taxed in their last resource 
 of income, till England is in her last peril with the foe 
 on her shores. 
 
 But the taxers of labor will not allow earnings to 
 become capital. Their' s is the wisdom that might cry 
 ' Give me the leveret, I will not wait for the hare' ' I 
 will have the gosling, it shall not become a goose ' ' I 
 will have the salmon fry, not the salmon/ Again, it is 
 said :< " Why if you tax property, you tax labor past 
 labor." Well the answer is this : ' Let it be granted 
 that a man has labor stored in the form of 2000 capi- 
 tal, which yields him an income of 100 a year, on 
 which he pays a tax of 5 ; then he pays a four hun- 
 dredth part of his labor. But if a poor wretch pay 5 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 509 
 
 on 100 the fruits of his year's toil, he pays one twentieth 
 part of his labor." 
 
 Why should a poor man be taxed of twenty times as 
 much of his labor as a rich one? 
 
 ' But/ it may be said, ' it is unfair to take the taxation 
 of the owner of the 2000 for only one year, as he may 
 be taxed on it for many successive years/ 
 
 Very well if he pay 5 per cent, on the yearly 
 income of 100 which his capital of 2000 affords him, 
 and if n be the number of years he is taxed, he pays in 
 tax 5 x n y or 5 n, and retains 95 n, with his 2000 
 capital; and the working earner of 100 a year, by toil, 
 is also taxed 5 n, and retains from the tax-gatherer 95 n, 
 and so the difference between 
 2000 + 95 n, and 
 
 95 n subtracted from it, 
 
 is .2000 0, which shows that the rich 
 
 man's 2000 is never taxed at all, but is left to him 
 intact. 
 
 It is a very likely objection to a Property Tax of one- 
 tenth, or 10 per cent., that so heavy a tax would 
 diminish, to a man of property, his yearly income, and 
 his means of affording to the working classes, the good 
 of his wealth, either in the form of wages for work, or 
 deeds of beneficence, or poor-rates. 
 
 The answers to this objection are : 
 
 1. His income would not be diminished by the amount 
 of the tax, since the now taxed commodities of life 
 would be tax-free, and, therefore, would come cheaper to 
 his household. 
 
 2. If the off-taking of indirect taxes improve trade, 
 and better the case of the working man, he will be under 
 less need of the unearned good of the richer man's 
 wealth. 
 
 3. If the bettering of the state of working men would 
 
510 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 lessen, as we believe it would lessen, one cause of crimes 
 against property, then we hold that the transference of 
 taxation from labour to property, would lessen, to the 
 owner of property, the tax of crime in the cost of need- 
 ful though barren vindication of the law against crimi- 
 nals. It is as cheap to pay a man a trifle more of money 
 for his loaf-earning labor, as it is to spend that trifle, or 
 more, for the vindication of the law on his stealing his 
 loaf; and any land may as well be taxed for the working 
 man's self-sustenance, as be equally taxed for his food in 
 the Union-house. 
 
 On these grounds we believe that the richer man's 
 yearly income would be little, or not at all, diminished 
 by a tax on property, rather than on labor, or on the 
 laboring classes. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, proved by the Income Tax 
 Returns, as far as such unreliable evidence goes, that 
 out of the whole population of the United Kingdom, 
 only 284,205 persons are in possession of incomes above 
 100 a year ! 
 
 It appears from a statement in an Official Report on 
 Friendly Societies that, the number of persons entitled 
 to receive dividends on the Public Debt payable at the 
 Bank of England, in the year ending July, 1859, was 
 269,330; and that there were 1,383,358 depositors 
 in Savings-Banks on the 20th November, 1858 ; so that 
 the latter class was more than five times as great as the 
 former. 
 
 In the Savings-Banks, 658,506 depositors invested 
 sums under 10, and 200,525 averaged only 66 each ; 
 and the number whose investments exceeded 200 
 was 1,499. 
 
 The number of persons entitled to dividends on the 
 Public Debt at the Bank of England, in July 1859, are 
 thus classified in this Report : 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 511 
 
 Persons. 
 
 Not exceeding 10 per annum 94,301 
 
 More than 10 not exceeding 20 44,917 
 
 20 100 86,948 
 
 100 
 
 200 
 
 400 
 
 600 
 
 1000 
 
 ...2000 
 
 200 22,663 
 
 400 12,712 
 
 600 3,663 
 
 1000 2,378 
 
 2000 1,174 
 
 4000 .. 376 
 
 Exceeding 4000 per annum 203 
 
 Total 269,330 
 
 Thus it appears that the total amount of the Public 
 Debt is held by less than one-hundredth part of the en- 
 tire population of the United Kingdom ! And that the 
 Capital of the Public Debt, enormous as it is, is repre- 
 sented by a comparatively insignificant proportion of the 
 whole population. 
 
 Now, taking all the facts together, thus arrived at, 
 from the best statistical data which the country affords, 
 is it reasonable to charge the whole of the Income Tax 
 as paid by the Propertied Classes ? But this is what the 
 reviewer has done, in his estimate before given ! It is 
 very difficult to say what proportion should be charged 
 as paid by the Working Classes, but it is very easy to 
 say that the whole ought not to be charged as paid by 
 the Propertied Classes. We shall, however, charge only 
 10 per cent, on Schedules C. and D, as paid by the 
 Working Classes, and that will be, together, 325,310. 
 
 And in consideration of allowing the whole of the 
 Assessed Taxes, etc., and the Probate and Legacy duties 
 to stand, as charged, to the Propertied Classes, we shall 
 charge 10 per cent, on the Stamps, as paid by the Work- 
 ing Classes, and that will be 825,580. 
 
 With respect to the Local Rates charged, to the 
 amount of 14,000,000, as payments by the Propertied 
 
512 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 Classes, we take the liberty of striking out the whole of 
 this, as not properly chargeable in this Account. 
 The corrected Account will then stand thus : 
 
 Propertied Working 
 
 Classes. Classes. 
 
 Customs and Excise Duties 19,287,812 23,348,612 
 
 Income Tax, Assessed Taxes, etc.... 9,649,984 325,310 
 
 Probate, Legacy Duties, and Stamps 7,421,762 825,580 
 
 36,359,558 24,499,502 
 
 Thus it appears that, the Propertied Classes, or those 
 who do not receive their incomes as the wages of labor, 
 pay 59-743, or 59. 14s. lOJd. per cent, of the Govern- 
 ment Taxes; and that the ' proletaires, 3 the working 
 classes, or those who derive their incomes from the 
 wages of labor, pay 4O256, or 40. 5s. \\d. per cent, of 
 the Government Taxes. 
 
 This comparative statement needs no comment. It 
 answers the Edinburgh Reviewer, and confirms the 
 comparative statement already given between the Taxes 
 on Trade and Industry, and the Taxes on Property. 
 
 It is not our intention here to enter further into this 
 part of the inquiry. We shall only observe that we see 
 nothing in the facts and figures, or arguments, of the 
 Edinburgh Reviewer, to shake our confidence in this 
 Comparative Statement, and we think our readers will 
 do well to consider it carefully. 
 
 We shall now advert shortly to the Local Rates, in- 
 cluding the Poor Rates, which the reviewer introduced, 
 and which we omitted, in his account. 
 
 Taking the whole amount of the Local Rates, as stated 
 by the Reviewer, at 15,000,000 a year, we say that no 
 part of this sum belongs properly to this account. 
 
 We are accustomed to hear it said that Land is made 
 to bear an unfairly large proportion of the public bur- 
 
TAXATION; DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 513 
 
 dens. That unfounded allegation \ve have already 
 answered, and we deem that answer to be a complete 
 refutation. 
 
 But we are prepared to maintain that, the local 
 charges are incident to lands, tenements, and heredita- 
 ments, and to no other description of property, and, 
 therefore, cannot properly be brought into account with 
 charges imposed on other descriptions of property to 
 meet the burdens of the State. 
 
 This we have already shown in considering the origin 
 of titles to Land, in answer to the objection on the 
 ground of ' Confiscation/ 
 
 We shall not again go over that ground. Sufficient 
 may have been said to lead our readers to see for them- 
 selves our reasons for rejecting from the reviewer's com- 
 parative account, the charge of 15,000,000 for Poor 
 Rates, County Rates, etc. ; to show that these are na- 
 tural incidents to lands, tenements, and hereditaments, 
 and are recognised as such by the English Constitution, 
 and even by English Laws made by English Land- 
 owners ; nor does it seem unreasonable that they who 
 have been mainly instrumental in making the destitute 
 poor, should maintain them. 
 
 Such are the principal objections of the Edinburgh 
 Reviewer to the ' People's Blue Book/ in his remarks on 
 ' British Taxation/ and such are the answers. How far 
 these are satisfactory answers, our readers will judge for 
 themselves. 
 
 It may be proper to notice that these answers to the 
 reviewer, are, for the most part, reprinted from a Pam- 
 phlet, by the Author of the ' People's Blue Book, 
 entitled "The Reviewer Reviewed: In Answer to the 
 Edinburgh Review on ' British Taxation/ " 2nd Edi- 
 tion, published in 1860, a few weeks after the Review in 
 question ; and that this Answer still remains without a 
 word in reply. 
 
 2 L 
 
514 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 We would, however, before we come to a conclusion 
 under this head, invite attention to the great error per- 
 vading our present system of taxation, by a few general 
 remarks. 
 
 The increase of Indirect Taxation may be said to 
 mark the increase of national wealth ; for, in the early 
 stages of society, taxation is necessarily direct ; other- 
 wise, it is evident, the increase of national wealth would 
 be less in proportion to the diminished means, after pro- 
 viding for subsistence. 
 
 As Capital is something saved from revenue, and em- 
 ployed for the purpose of producing wealth, or with a 
 view to profit, and as the earliest contributions to Capital 
 must be from Wages, it is evident that any tax, direct 
 or indirect, which diminishes wages, or revenue, dimi- 
 nishes, in the same proportion, the means of saving for 
 the purpose of producing wealth, and, consequently, 
 diminishes Capital. 
 
 It is equally evident that a tax which enhances the 
 necessaries of life 50 per cent., has the effect of reducing 
 indirectly the value of wages one-half, and of diminish- 
 ing, to the same extent, the means of saving for the 
 purpose of producing wealth, or capital. Thus, the true 
 test of a people's prosperity is not their wages, but their 
 consumption ; and a People's prosperity is the true test 
 of a Nation's prosperity. To lower the consumption of 
 a people is, therefore, to lower the prosperity of a 
 nation ; and as the effect of Indirect Taxation is to 
 lower the consumption of the people, it follows, as a 
 necessary consequence, that the effect of indirect taxa- 
 tion is to lower the prosperity of a nation. 
 
 It, therefore, remains to be shown on what ground 
 direct taxation is more suitable, or less injurious, to a 
 nation in an advanced stage of civilisation, than in an 
 early stage : or why, if taxation be necessarily direct in 
 the one case, it is not equally so in the other case. 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 515 
 
 If it be said and no other reason is ever heard that 
 the people would not so easily submit to direct taxation, 
 that is only an assertion which is contradicted by 
 history. 
 
 Until the reign of Charles the First, no systematic 
 attempt was made in England to substitute Indirect for 
 Direct taxation ; and when made by that monarch it 
 gave rise to great political agitation. 
 
 The mass of Englishmen are better off than the mass 
 of any other people, because they alone, of all the 
 people of the earth, are fed with wheaten bread, meat, 
 and beer. It is, therefore, mainly, that the efficiency of 
 labor in England is so greatly superior to that of any 
 other nation of the earth, and that her wealth is in pro- 
 portion to that superiority. 
 
 How much more efficient that labor would be if left 
 perfectly free from all restrictions and drawbacks, is a 
 question not to be answered by any human calculation. 
 All that can be said is, that the result would be to add 
 greatly to the wealth and strength of the nation, and to 
 the prosperity of the people. 
 
 Therefore it is that, the power of taxation depends on 
 the well-being of the people, and that the well-being 
 of the people depends more on the manner of raising, 
 than on the amount raised, by taxes up to a certain 
 amount. 
 
 As only one-hundredth part of the whole population 
 has any claim on the nation's debt, it cannot be true to 
 say that the interest on that debt is overwhelming, in 
 regard to the means of providing for it. 
 
 It is only overwhelming when placed, as it now is, as 
 a burden on the productive industry of the country. 
 
 If placed, as it ought be, on realised property, it might, 
 not inappropriately, as a term of comparison, be called, 
 "a flea-bite;" but so to describe it when placed, as it 
 is, chiefly on the productive industry of the country, is 
 
 2L2 
 
516 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 nothing less than an insult to common sense, and a 
 mockery to the people. 
 
 To make ninety-nine hundredths of the people bear 
 part in the burden of providing the interest on a debt in 
 which they have no part or claim, is a strong measure ; 
 but it may be just if, as owners of other property, they 
 thereby derive any indirect benefit. 
 
 But to make people contribute who have no property 
 beyond the wages of their daily labor, whether by the 
 labor of their muscles, or their brains, to make these, 
 -by far the largest portion of the people, the largest 
 contributors, and to tax the stock-in-trade of the country 
 with this burden, is no less than a violation of justice 
 and an outrage on common sense, for, as already shown, 
 this not only puts the burden on the wrong shoulders, 
 but diminishes their power to bear it, by diminishing 
 the productive powers of the nation ; and, by reducing 
 the savings of labor, confines within narrower limits the 
 accumulation of capital. 
 
 It is demonstrable, if not already demonstrated by 
 experience, that this system is no less injurious to the 
 owners of property, than it is unjust to those who have 
 no property ; in short, that it is a gigantic error, inju- 
 rious to all, and contrary to the duty, as well as to the 
 interests of the State. 
 
 Could the Irish Peasantry be raised even to the pre- 
 sent condition of the English, their contribution to the 
 coffers of the United Kingdom would be trebled. But 
 if the condition of the peasantry, and all the artisans 
 and working classes, were raised to what it ought to be, 
 the revenue of the United Kingdom might be expected 
 to be increased fourfold. 
 
 This is the picture which the " People's Blue Book " 
 would present. It is worthy of observation, though it 
 startle many prejudices of long-established habit. It is 
 a radical change, but it is a conservative measure. It is 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 517 
 
 a change more or less distant, but it is certain to be 
 brought about in time, as a necessary consequence of 
 inevitable events. 
 
 It is no change to the injury of any party of the 
 people ; no interference with vested rights ; no partial 
 legislation for class interests ; no innovation on the 
 principles of the British Constitution. 
 
 It is simply a return to an old law, renewed in the 
 reign of one of our wisest and greatest kings, who, 
 though a foreigner, was the most patriotic Sovereign 
 who ever guided the destinies of this Nation, and to 
 whom we are, to this day, mainly indebted for all the 
 most precious privileges which, as a Protestant People 
 we now possess. 
 
 What, then, is there in this scheme to fear or to com- 
 plain of ; and, of all the People, what class is it that 
 fears or complains ? 
 
 Let us anticipate the time, and contemplate the end, in 
 all customs arid Excise Duties abolished \ all Income 
 Tax, Land Tax, and Assessed Taxes abolished : all 
 Succession Duties, Legacy and Probate Duties, and all 
 other Stamp Duties (except Postage) abolished ; and, in 
 the place of these, one tax of 10 per cent, on the an- 
 nual value of all Lands, Tenements, and Hereditaments, 
 Money in the Funds, Shares in Public Companies, and 
 all other realised property, as denned. 
 
 Assume the required revenue to be 70 millions, 
 sterling, or upwards. 
 
 Assume the Population of the United Kingdom to be 
 30 millions, consisting of 7,500,000 families, and that, 
 under this new state of things, each head of a family is 
 able to save, and lay aside, for investment, on an average 
 of the whole number, only 5 a year. This gives, in 
 the aggregate, an annual saving of 37,500,000, which, 
 in ten years,, without adding the annual increase, swells 
 to the sum of 375,000,000. 
 
518 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 Imagine this large portion of our circulating medium 
 directed into channels of profitable industry, by the 
 abolition of Customs and Excise, and other duties. 
 
 Who that can picture to himself this new state of 
 things, will then regard our present National Debt, or 
 the 70 millions of annual taxation, as an overwhelming 
 evil ? 
 
 Who will fail to see that he is then enjoying his fair 
 share in the prosperity of the Country that he is pay- 
 ing then, in the one tax of 10 per cent, on his property, 
 much less than he is paying now, and enjoying much 
 more of all that property can procure ? 
 
 Who can doubt that the working man will freely pay 
 his yearly personal contribution to the State, for the 
 protection afforded to himself and family, when he finds 
 himself relieved of all the taxes now hidden in his food 
 and clothing ? 
 
 But to guard the People against the fallacies of the 
 Edinburgh Reviewer, and all such reasoners, we will 
 pursue this part of the subject a little further. 
 
 Let us, for the sake of the argument and conclusion, 
 roughly classify the population as follows : 
 
 Agriculture 18,000,000 
 
 Manufactures 3,000,000 
 
 Mechanics and Artisans 3,500,000 
 
 Other Classes , 5,500,000 
 
 Total Population 30,000,000 
 
 Assuming the whole population to consist of 7,500,000 
 families, and the average saving of each family, under 
 the new system, to be only 5 a year, this, as before 
 mentioned, gives an accumulated saving of 37,500,000 
 a year, and, as such, is an addition to the Capital of the 
 Country. This, in ten years, without reckoning the 
 annual increase, amounts to 375,000,000 ; and this i s 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 519 
 
 in addition to the many millions, sterling, a year, set free 
 by the abolition of Customs and Excise, to flow into 
 more productive channels ! 
 
 Some will deny that here is an increase of Capital. 
 But, as before remarked, Capital is something saved 
 from revenue, and employed for the purpose of producing 
 wealth, or with a view to profit. 
 
 An increase of Capital is, in the first instance, the 
 effect, and not the cause of social improvement. After- 
 wards they move in a circle, mutually producing, and 
 produced. Hence it is that Capital imported from abroad 
 into a country, can never augment the efficiency of labor 
 so extensively, or so permanently, as Capital generated 
 and accumulated upon the soil itself. 
 
 This well deserves the attention of all Land-owners. 
 What a length of time it would take to transfer such a 
 mass of Capital as 375,000,000 from the Continents of 
 Europe and America, and to circulate it through the 
 kingdom ! 
 
 Taking, of the 7,500,000 families, 5,000,000 of families 
 engaged in Agriculture, and, of these last, assuming the 
 average saving of each family to be only 2 a year, this 
 gives a yearly increase of Capital of 10,000,000, and in 
 ten years, 100,000,000 of increased Capital from the 
 Agricultural Population alone ! 
 
 Who that reflects on this can be indifferent to the 
 Agricultural interest of the country ? Who can wish to 
 see the Agriculture of the Country sacrificed for any 
 prospective benefits of Trade ? 
 
 Benjamin Franklin said that, f Agriculture was the 
 only virtuous industry/ He, probably, did not mean 
 this literally; but the following, from his ' Observations 
 on Population, Commerce, etc/ shows how highly he 
 valued this industry, and is characteristic of his style : 
 " There seem to be but three ways for a Nation to 
 acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans 
 
520 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is 
 robbery. The second by commerce, which is, generally, 
 cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest 
 way ; wherein a man receives a real increase of seed 
 thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle 
 wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward 
 for his innocent life, and his virtuous industry." 
 
 The Agriculture of every Country should be its first 
 care, by improving the condition of the Agricultural 
 laborers. In this way the miserable state of Ireland, 
 (especially of our own purely Agricultural districts), 
 should be amended ; not, as some imagine, by the im- 
 portation of English capital, but by an improvement to 
 be wrought in the moral and physical condition of the 
 Irish Peasantry, by a more just and lenient rule than 
 they have hitherto experienced, and by relieving them 
 from the burden of unjust taxation. 
 
 It is only when the growing wants and consumption 
 of a People are supplied by self-accumulated Capital, 
 that we may expect to see non- agricultural wealth ac- 
 companying a redundancy of agricultural produce. 
 
 The wants of a people may be divided into two classes. 
 First, The want of those commodities which are neces- 
 sary to procure a healthful existence, and which may be 
 called primary wants. Secondly, The wish to become 
 possessed of those commodities which are subsidiary to 
 the satisfaction of other desires, and which may be called 
 secondary wants. 
 
 The foresight which warns mankind of the danger of 
 their not being able to satisfy their primary wants has 
 a limited influence, because the wants themselves are 
 limited ; and the influence of prudence ceases when the 
 means are found of satisfying them. It is, fortunately, 
 far different with secondary wants. They are indefinite ; 
 at least, we can see no limit to the comforts and luxuries 
 which human beings may consider essential to their 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 521 
 
 well-being and happiness, and which they will avoid 
 sacrificing by imprudent marriages. 
 
 If in the progress of the laboring cultivators of the 
 land, habits of respectability and comfort, and a high 
 rate of maintenance, fail to be established and main- 
 tained, the time will come when the unchecked powers 
 of population will trench on their resources, and they 
 will be found as degraded and miserable as communities 
 which started in their career under much less favourable 
 circumstances. 
 
 We have before us the wide scene of the nations of 
 the earth earning, by the decree of Heaven, their daily 
 bread by labour, and man is connected with man by 
 ties which grow, and are formed, by their fellowship 
 in the task. Those ties and relations extend from 
 the monarch on the throne, through all the varied di- 
 visions of the population of nations, to the laborer at 
 his work. 
 
 Out of these physical conditions and moral ties spring 
 the most exalted virtues, public and private, which can 
 adorn or protect society. We must not despise those 
 ties, nor let the physical wants of men, and these, their 
 first social consequences, seem alien to the loftier parts 
 of our nature. As well might we despise the precious 
 brilliant, because it is elaborated in the mine from the 
 lowest earthly elements. England is the only great 
 country which has taken what we have seen to be the 
 first step in advance towards perfection as a producing 
 power ; the only country in which the population, agri- 
 cultural as well as non-agricultural, is ranged under the 
 direction of capitalists, and where the effects of their 
 means, and of the peculiar functions they alone can per- 
 form, are extensively felt, not only in the enormous 
 growth of her wealth, but also in all the economical re- 
 lations and positions of her population. 
 
 But England is not, therefore, to be taken as a safe 
 
522 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 specimen of the career of a people so developing their 
 productive forces. England has not done her good 
 work through good laws, or wise counsels, but in 
 spite of bad laws, and unwise counsels. Untoward 
 events have dogged the progress of the nation; some 
 connected with faults of legislation and administra- 
 tion ; some arising out of circumstances which, perhaps, 
 neither legislators nor administrators could control, 
 and which, perhaps, escaped any timely effort to con- 
 trol them, because the world gave no warning of them, 
 and had afforded no opportunity of learning from ex- 
 perience. 
 
 If this suggest many regrets for the past, it still gives 
 better hopes for the future. The errors, and their evils, 
 which have mingled with our institutions, or our habits, 
 may be weeded out the tares from the wheat ; the good 
 influences we have missed may yet be won to purify and 
 protect us; and other nations, if they assume our eco- 
 nomical organisation and power, may escape many of 
 the evils which have retarded our progress, and afflicted 
 us, and from which we are suffering now. 
 
 If a reasonable and quite attainable development of 
 the moral and intellectual qualities of the body of the 
 people go hand in hand with the changes which accom- 
 pany the advance of the productive power, there is no 
 reason to look gloomily at the social and political pro- 
 spects of advancing nations, because it will then be found 
 that a weaHhy people, though greater perils and more 
 dangerous responsibilities surround their course, may, if 
 they do justice to their greater opportunities, make ad- 
 vances, in improving the intellect, virtue, and happiness, 
 of the mass of their population, even greater than any 
 which have yet been seen elsewhere. 
 
 The foregoing are some general remarks in answer to 
 the Edinburgh Reviewer. 
 
 He assumes the equal protection of person and pro- 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 523 
 
 perty to be a sufficient ground for the equal taxation of 
 person and property '. 
 
 This is a great fallacy but a very common one. 
 
 The way all these illogical minds reason is this they 
 say : 
 
 " Is not just taxation a debt due to the State for the 
 protection of person and property?" 
 
 As nobody denies that, they next ask : 
 
 "Is not person, which includes life and industry, at 
 least equal in value to property ; or, if you were afloat 
 with your property in gold, would you not drop your 
 gold, to keep your mouth above water ? " 
 
 Now, here is a fallacy of composition. The question 
 of the relative value of life, is not the same as the ques- 
 tion whether a man would, or would not, drop his gold 
 into the water to keep his life by swimming. Some men 
 may blow out their brains, or otherwise kill themselves, 
 on a loss of wealth, as if life were of no worth without 
 wealth ; and an act of casting away gold to preserve life 
 on the water, may be an instinctive, rather than a 
 rational act. A mother's life is of as much value as a 
 babe's, and yet, from the strength of the motherly 
 feeling, a mother may sink, rather than cast away 
 her child. Therefore, this question contains two 
 sundry questions ; and to the first, any one might pro- 
 perly answer 'Yes : life and limb are equal in value 
 to property/ 
 
 To the other : ' I do not know/ 
 
 Now, mark the progress of the error in the mode of 
 reasoning. 
 
 The next question generally is something in this form: 
 ' Is not, therefore, the taxation due by persons at least 
 equal to that due by property ?' 
 
 The answer to this is : Certainly not, for several 
 reasons. 
 
 A man's person is more needful to his being as a 
 
524 ' OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 man, than is his property ; since he can hold on his 
 worldly being better with a person, and no property, than 
 he can with property, and no person ; and on the ground 
 that, what is more needful ought to be less taxed, than 
 what is less needful ; so the person should be less taxed 
 than property. On this principle the Shepherd's most 
 needful dog, and the Farmer's most needful dung-put, 
 and horse, have been less taxed than a dog, or carriage 
 and horse, kept for pleasure. 
 
 Again : the greater the risk of loss of a good, the 
 higher should be the rate of the insurance of it. 
 
 That there is greater risk of the loss by thieves, or 
 robbers, of dead wealth, than there is of the loss of life 
 or limb, is shown by fact, and reason. It is shown by 
 the manifold more of such losses of dead wealth, than 
 of life and limb; and it is shown by the commonly re- 
 ceived opinion that, it is a man's property, and not his 
 breath, or soul, or limbs, that the thief, or rogue 
 wants. 
 
 With both thieves and conquerors, it is wealth which 
 brings the lives of men into peril. A naked Indian 
 Jogee, with no property off or on his body, is in little 
 risk with a robber. " Cantabit vacuus cor am latrone 
 viator." 
 
 Then again : A man's dead property cannot withhold 
 itself from the hands of the Son of Evil, but his life and 
 limbs have some chance of preserving themselves ; and 
 no comparison can be made between ^the taxation of a 
 man's life and limbs, and his property, since they can- 
 not be taxed in the same way, in kind. 
 
 If the law protect a man's wealth, it can pay itself in 
 kind, by a share of his wealth ; but if it protect his life, 
 and limb, it cannot pay itself in kind, by a share of his 
 life ; or, like Shylock, by a pound of flesh, or a tooth, 
 or an eye; and so, one may fairly object to any com- 
 parison at all between the taxation of man's life, and his 
 
TAXATION, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 525 
 
 property. Thus persons proceed, asking questions, and 
 hearing only their own answers. 
 
 " If Indirect taxation be, as you say, wholly levied ou 
 persons, i. e. industry, ought it not, in justice, at least, 
 to equal the Direct taxation on property ?" 
 
 Now, in this question is slipped in the abstract, in- 
 dustry, for the concrete, persons : " persons, i.e. in- 
 dustry." 
 
 This is the sort of fallacy into which the questioner 
 generally falls, and to which the questioned generally 
 yields in silence. Why, a man's industry is no more 
 his person, than his fiddling, or his dancing, is his 
 person ! 
 
 In this way many persons reason on this subject, aud 
 the same error, in disguise, may be discovered in the 
 reasoning of our critical cousin of the ' Edinburgh/ 
 
 WAGES. 
 
 It is a common objection that, the abolition of all 
 Customs and Excise Duties, by cheapening the price of 
 the necessaries of life, would lower the wages of labor. 
 
 This objection assumes that the rate of wages depends 
 on the price of provisions, a common, but very great 
 error. 
 
 We know, from experience, that the rate of wages 
 does not fluctuate with the price of provisions, and that 
 the variations in the price of labor not only do not cor- 
 respond, either in place or time, with those in the price 
 of provisions, but are frequently quite opposite. 
 
 In times and places where the price of provisions is 
 the highest, the rate of wages is generally the lowest. 
 This is a matter of fact, which cannot be disputed. The 
 proof of it is, if possible, still more decisive with regard 
 to Scotland and Ireland, than to England. 
 
 But, though the variations in the price of labor not 
 
526 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 only do not always correspond with those in the price of 
 provisions, and are frequently quite opposite, we must 
 not, therefore, imagine that the price of provisions has 
 no influence npon that of labor. 
 
 The wages for labor are necessarily regulated by two 
 circumstances : the demand of labor ; and the price of 
 the necessaries and conveniences of life. 
 
 The mere workman, who depends only on his hands 
 and industry, has nothing but such part of his labor as 
 he is able to dispose of to others. He sells it at a 
 cheaper or dearer price ; but this high or low price does 
 not depend on himself alone ; it results from the agree- 
 ment he has made with the person who employs him. 
 The latter pays him as little as he can help, and as he 
 has the choice from among a great number of workmen, 
 he prefers the person who works cheapest. The work- 
 men are, therefore, obliged to lower their price in oppo- 
 sition to each other. In every species of labor it must, 
 and, in effect, it does happen, that the wages of the 
 workman is confined merely to what is necessary to 
 procure him a subsistence. 
 
 But the situation of the agricultural laborer is mate- 
 rially different from that of all other laborers. The soil, 
 independent of any man, or of any agreement, pays 
 him immediately the price of his toil. Nature does not 
 bargain with him, or compel him to content himself with 
 what is absolutely necessary. What she grants is neither 
 limited to his wants, nor to a conditional valuation of 
 the price of his day's work. It is a physical consequence 
 of the fertility of the soil, and of justice, rather than of 
 the difficulty of the means, which he has employed to 
 render the soil fruitful. It is " the gratuitous service of 
 nature." 
 
 As soon as the labor of the husbandman produces 
 more than sufficient for his necessities, he can, with the 
 excess which nature affords him by the gratuitous ser- 
 
WAGES. 527 
 
 vice beyond the wages of his toil, purchase the labor 
 of others. They, in selling to him, procure only a live- 
 lihood ; but the original laborer, or husbandman, be- 
 sides his subsistence, collects an independent wealth at 
 his disposal, called capital, which he has not purchased, 
 but which he can sell. He is, therefore, the only source 
 of all those riches which, by their circulation, animate 
 the labors of society ; because he is the only one whose 
 labor produces more than the wages of his toil. 
 
 Here, then, is the whole society divided, by a neces- 
 sity founded on the nature of things into two classes, 
 both industrious, one of which, by its labor, produces, 
 or rather draws from the earth, riches continually re- 
 newing, which supply the whole society with subsistence, 
 and with materials for all its wants; while the other, 
 employed in giving to those materials such preparations 
 and forms as render them proper for the use of man, 
 sells his labor to the first, and receives in return a sub- 
 sistence. The first may be called the productive, the 
 latter the stipendiary class. 
 
 But here we have not distinguished the husbandman 
 from the proprietor of the land ; and in the first origin 
 they were not, in fact, so distinguished. It is by the 
 labor of those who first cultivated the fields, and inclosed 
 them to secure their harvest, that all land has ceased to. 
 be common, and that a property in the soil has been 
 established. Until societies had been formed, and until 
 the public strength, or the laws, becoming superior to 
 the force of individuals, had been able to guarantee to 
 every one the tranquil possession of his property, against 
 all invasion from without, the property in a field could 
 only be secured as it had been acquired, by continuing 
 to cultivate it ; the proprietor could not be assured of 
 having his field cultivated by the help of another; and 
 that person taking all the trouble, could not easily have 
 comprehended that the whole harvest did not belong to 
 
528 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 him. Oil the other hand, in the early age, when every 
 industrious man could find as much land as he wanted, 
 he would not be tempted to labour for another. It neces- 
 sarily follows, that every proprietor must cultivate his 
 own field, or abandon it entirely. 
 
 But the land began to be peopled, and to be cleared 
 more and more. The best lands in process of time be- 
 came fully occupied. There remained only for those 
 who came last, nothing but barren land, rejected by the 
 first occupants. But at last, every spot found a master, 
 and those who could not gain a property therein, had no 
 other resource than to exchange the labor of their hands 
 in some of the employments of the stipendiary class, for 
 the excess of commodities possessed by the cultivating 
 proprietor. 
 
 Meantime, the earth produces to the proprietor who 
 cultivates it, not a subsistence only, not only wherewith 
 to procure himself by way of exchange, what he other- 
 wise wants, but also a considerable superfluity, to pay 
 other men to cultivate his land. For amongst those who 
 live by wages, as many are content to labor in. this 
 employment, as in any other. The proprietor, there- 
 fore, might then be eased of the labor of culture, and 
 he soon was so. 
 
 Then came the demand for labor, first in the pro- 
 ductive class, and when that was supplied, then in the 
 stipendiary class, but in both classes alike for the 
 means of subsistence. 
 
 Some of these latter remarks are partly translated 
 from the French, entitled, " Reflections on the For- 
 mation and Distribution of Wealth," by M. Turgot, then 
 Comptroller General of the Finances of France ; and, as 
 said by Condorcet, in his life of Turgot ; " This Essay 
 may be considered as the germ of the treatise on c The 
 AYealth of Nations, written by the celebrated Smith." 
 
 Thus arose the demand for labor, and thus, we may 
 
WAGES. 529 
 
 see, the demand for labor, according as it happens 
 to be increasing, stationary, or declining, or to require 
 an increasing, stationary, or declining, population, 
 determines the quantity of the necessaries and conve- 
 niences of life which must be given to the laborer ; and 
 the money price of labor is determined by what is re- 
 quisite for purchasing that quantity. Though the money 
 price of labor, therefore, is sometimes high, where the 
 price of provisions is low, it would be still higher, 
 the demand continuing the same if the price of pro- 
 visions were high, It is because the demand for labor 
 increases in years of sudden and extraordinary plenty, 
 and diminishes in those of sudden and extraordinary 
 scarcity, that the money price of labour sometimes rises 
 in the one, and sinks in the other. In a year of sudden 
 and extraordinary plenty, there are funds in the hands 
 of many of the employers of industry, sufficient to 
 maintain and employ a greater number of industrious 
 people, than had been employed the year before, and 
 this extraordinary number cannot always be had. Those 
 masters, therefore, who want more workmen, bid against 
 one another, in order to get them, which sometimes 
 raises both the real and the money price of labor. The 
 contrary of this happens in a year of sudden and ex- 
 traordinary scarcity. The funds destined for employ- 
 ing industry are less than they had been the year be- 
 fore. A considerable number of people are thrown out 
 of employment, who bid one against another in order 
 to get it, which sometimes lowers both the real and 
 the money price of labor. The scarcity of a dear year, 
 by diminishing the demand for labor, tends to lower 
 its price, as the high price of provisions tends to raise 
 it. The plenty of a cheap year, on the contrary, by 
 increasing the demand, tends to raise the price of labor, 
 as the cheapness of provisions tends to lower it. In the 
 ordinary variations of the price of provisions, these two 
 
 2 M 
 
530 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 opposite causes seem to counterbalance one another, 
 which is, probably, in part the reason why the wages 
 of labor are everywhere so much more steady and per- 
 manent than the price of provisions. 
 
 Lord Chief Justice Hales, who wrote in the time of 
 Charles the Second, and who appears to have inquired 
 very carefully into the subject, computes the necessary 
 expense of a laborer's family, consisting of six per- 
 sons, the father and mother, two children able to do 
 something, and two children not able, at ten shillings 
 a week, or twenty-six pounds a year. If they cannot 
 earn this by their labor, they must make it up, he sup- 
 poses, either by begging or stealing. 
 
 The price of labor, perhaps, cannot be ascertained 
 very accurately anywhere, different prices being often 
 paid at the same place, and for the same sort of labor, 
 not only according to the different abilities of the work- 
 men, but according to the easiness or hardness of the 
 masters. But it is very doubtful whether the money 
 price of labour, in the purely agricultural districts, has 
 increased since Lord Chief Justice Hales so wrote, in 
 the time of Charles the Second. 
 
 In many of the purely Agricultural Counties at the 
 present day, such as Dorsetshire, and many parts of 
 Somersetshire, for instance, laborers' wages do not ex- 
 ceed, and are often below, ten shillings a week. But 
 the real recompence of labor the real quantity of the 
 necessaries arid conveniences of life has, perhaps, in- 
 creased from the latter end of the last, and in the pre- 
 sent, century. 
 
 The necessaries and conveniences of life have been 
 produced in greater quantities, and have become cheaper ; 
 and the great improvements in the manufactures of linen, 
 cotton, and woollen, cloth, furnish the laborer with 
 cheaper and better clothing; and, in the manufactures 
 of the coarser metals, with cheaper and better instru- 
 
WAGES. 531 
 
 ments of trade, as well as with many agreeable and con- 
 venient pieces of household furniture. 
 
 These, however, have met with a heavy counter- 
 balance in the increased taxes which have been laid upon 
 them ; and many of these articles which were formerly 
 luxuries confined to the rich, have now extended so 
 much, even to the lowest ranks of the people, as to have 
 become to them by habit, part of the necessaries and 
 conveniences of life. Taking these into consideration, 
 and the fact that the price of almost every article of 
 food and clothing is now greatly increased by taxation, 
 and, in many cases, so greatly increased as to be almost 
 prohibitory to the poor, it becomes doubtful whether, 
 on the whole, the actual condition of the laborer has 
 been improved within the last 200 years. Mr. Hallam, 
 whose accuracy as an historian is generally admitted, 
 has said : " I should find it difficult to resist the con- 
 clusion that, however the laborer has derived benefit 
 from the cheapness of manufactured commodities, and 
 from many inventions of common utility, he is much 
 inferior in ability to support a family, to his ancestors 
 three or four centuries ago." 
 
 Now, as servants, laborers, and workmen of different 
 kinds, make up the far greater part of every political 
 society, what improves the condition of the greater part, 
 can never be a matter of indifference to the whole. 
 
 No society can be really flourishing and happy, of 
 which the far greater part of the members are poor and 
 miserable. Besides, it is but common justice that they 
 who feed, clothe, and lodge, the whole body of the 
 people, should have such a share of the produce of their 
 own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, 
 and lodged. 
 
 Every species of animal naturally multiplies in pro- 
 portion to the means of its subsistence, and no species 
 can ever multiply beyond it. But, in civilised society, 
 
 2 M2 
 
532 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 it is only among the inferior ranks of the people that 
 the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further 
 multiplication of the human species ; and it can do so 
 in no other way than by destroying a great part of their 
 children ; for poverty, though it does not prevent the 
 generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of 
 children. The liberal reward of labor, by enabling them 
 to provide better for their children, and consequently, 
 to bring up a greater number, naturally tends to widen 
 and extend the limits, and it necessarily does this as 
 nearly as possible in the proportion which the demand 
 for labor requires. If this demand be continually in- 
 creasing, the reward of labor must necessarily encourage 
 in such a manner, the marriage and multiplication of la- 
 borers, as may enable them to supply that continually in- 
 creasing demand, by a continually increasing population. 
 If the reward should be, at any time, less than what 
 is requisite for this purpose, the deficiency of hands 
 would soon raise it ; and if it should be, at any time, 
 more, their excessive multiplication would soon lower it 
 to this necessary rate. The market would be so much 
 under-stocked with labor in the one case, and so much 
 over-stocked in the other, as would soon force back its 
 price to that proper rate which the circumstances of the 
 society required. It is in this manner that the demand 
 for men, like that for any commodity, necessarily regu- 
 lates the production of men, quickens it when it goes on 
 too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast. It 
 is this demand which regulates and determines the state 
 of propagation in all the different countries of the world ; 
 which renders it rapidly progressive in the first ; slow 
 and gradual in the second ; and altogether stationary in 
 the last. The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it 
 is the effect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of 
 increasing population. To complain of it is to lament 
 over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest 
 public prosperity. 
 
WAGES. 533 
 
 It is, perhaps, in the progressive state, while the so- 
 ciety is advancing to the further acquisition, rather than 
 when it has acquired its full complement, of riches, that 
 the condition of the laboring poor, of the great body of 
 the people, seems to be the happiest and the most com- 
 fortable. It is hard in the stationary, and miserable in 
 the declining state. The progressive state is, in reality, 
 the cheerful and the hearty state to all the different 
 orders of the society. The stationary is dull ; the de- 
 clining melancholy. This observation seems equally ap- 
 plicable to individuals. The man who is progressively 
 improving his means is cheerful ; he who is stationary 
 in his income is generally dull ; he whose income is 
 declining melancholy. 
 
 The liberal reward of labor, as it encourages the pro- 
 pagation, so it increases the industry of the common 
 people. The wages of labor are the encouragement of 
 industry, which, like every other human quality, im- 
 proves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. 
 A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of 
 the laborer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his 
 condition and of ending his days, perhaps, in ease and 
 plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the 
 utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall 
 always find the workmen more active, diligent, and 
 expeditious, than where they are low ; in England for 
 example, than in Scotland and Ireland ; in the neigh- 
 borhood of great towns, than in remote country places. 
 
 It will, therefore, be seen that, the rate of wages depends 
 on the supply and demand ; or on the proportion between 
 population and employment) in other words, CAPITAL. 
 
 If there be a quantity of capital for the employment 
 of 100 labourers, and there be 150 seeking employment, 
 there will be 50 in danger of being left out of employ- 
 ment. To prevent this they must endeavour to supplant 
 those who have forestaled the employment; that is, 
 
534 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 they must offer to work for a smaller reward. Wages, 
 therefore, decline. If, on the other hand, the quantity 
 of capital has increased, while the number of laborers 
 remains the same, the effect will be reversed. The 
 capitalists have a greater quantity, than before, of the 
 means of employment, of capital from which they wish 
 to derive advantage. To derive this advantage they 
 must have more laborers than before. These laborers 
 are all employed with other masters; to obtain them 
 they also have but one resource to offer higher wages. 
 But the masters, by whom the laborers are now employed, 
 are in the same predicament, and will, of course, offer 
 higher still to induce them to remain. This competition 
 is unavoidable, and the necessary effect is, a rise of wages. 
 
 It thus appears that, if population increase, without 
 increase of capital, wages fall ; and that, if capital in- 
 crease, without increase of population, wages rise. 
 
 It is evident also that, if both increase, but one faster 
 than the other, the effect will be the same as if the one 
 had not increased at all, and the other had made no in- 
 crease equal to the difference. 
 
 Suppose, for example, that population had increased 
 one-eighth, and capital one-eighth ; this is the same 
 thing as if they had stood still with regard to the effect 
 upon labor. But suppose that, in addition to the 
 above-mentioned one-eighth, population had increased 
 another eighth ; the effect in that case upon wages would 
 be the same as if capital had not increased at all, and 
 population had increased one-eighth. 
 
 Universally, then, it may be affirmed, other things 
 remaining the same, that if the ratio which capital and 
 population bear to one another remain the same, wages 
 will remain the same ; if the ratio which capital bears 
 to population increase, wages will rise ; if the ratio which 
 population bears to capital increase, wages will fall. 
 From this law, clearly understood, it is easy to trace 
 
WAGES. 535 
 
 the circumstances which, in any country, determine the 
 condition of the great body of the people. If that con- 
 dition he easy and comfortable, all that is necessary to 
 keep it so is, to make capital increase as fast as popula- 
 tion ; or, on the other hand, to prevent population from 
 increasing faster than capital. If that condition be not 
 easy and comfortable, it can only be made so by one of two 
 methods ; either by quickening the rate at which capital 
 increases ; or, retarding the rate at which population in- 
 creases; augmenting, in short, the ratio which the means 
 of employing the people bear to the number of people. 
 
 If it were the natural tendency of capital to increase 
 faster than population, there would be no difficulty in 
 preserving a prosperous condition of the people. 
 
 If, on the other hand, it were the natural tendency of 
 population to increase faster than capital, the difficulty 
 would be very great. There would be a perpetual ten- 
 dency in wages to fall. The fall of wages would produce 
 a greater and a greater degree of poverty among the 
 people, attended with its inevitable consequences, misery 
 and vice. As poverty and its consequent misery in- 
 creased, mortality would also increase. Of a numerous 
 family born, a certain number only would, from want of 
 the means of well-being, be reared. By whatever propor- 
 tion the population tended to increase faster than capital, 
 such a proportion of those who were born would die ; the 
 ratio of increase in capital and population would thence 
 remain the same, and wages would cease to fall. 
 
 That population has a tendency to increase faster than 
 capital has in most places actually increased, is proved 
 incontestably by the condition of the population in 
 almost all parts of the globe. In almost all countries, 
 the condition of the great body of the people is poor and 
 miserable. This would be an impossibility, if capital 
 had increased faster than population. In that case, 
 wages of necessity would have risen, and would have 
 
536 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 placed the labourer in a state of affluence, far above the 
 miseries of want. This general misery of mankind is a 
 fact which can be accounted for upon one only of two 
 suppositions : either that there is a natural tendency in 
 population to increase faster than capital ; or, that 
 capital has by some means been prevented from increas- 
 ing so fast as it has a tendency to increase. 
 
 That population has such a tendency to increase as 
 would enable it to double itself in a small number of 
 years, is a proposition resting on the strongest evidence, 
 which nothing that deserves the name of evidence has 
 been brought to oppose. With respect to the tendency 
 which capital may have to increase, if that should in- 
 crease as fast as population, for every laborer produced, 
 the means of employment and subsistence would also be 
 produced, and no degradation of the great body of the 
 people would ensue. 
 
 As soon as it is understood from what source all 
 increase of capital has been derived, the opinion of its 
 rapid increase can no longer be retained. All increase 
 of capital is derived from savings. This is a proposition 
 which excludes all exception. The evidence, too, is so 
 clear as hardly to require a statement. All capital is, of 
 course, the result of production. Capital is a part of the 
 annual produce of the land and labor of the country 
 gradually accumulated. But if any part of the anuual 
 produce be set apart to be employed as capital, the 
 owner must abstain from consuming it. What is de- 
 stroyed cannot be capital. All capital, therefore, is made 
 out of that part of the annual produce which, instead of 
 being devoted to consumption and enjoyment, is saved. 
 
 Now, though it be found that, where property is 
 secure, there is a considerable disposition in mankind to 
 save, sufficient where vast sources of consumption are 
 not opened by the government, and where the difficul- 
 ties of production are not very great, to make capital 
 
WAGES. 537 
 
 progressive, this disposition is still so weak in almost 
 all the situations in which human beings have ever been 
 placed, as to make the progression slow. That the 
 same will continue to be the case, appears to be secured 
 by the strongest principles of human nature. 
 
 It thus appears that there is a tendency in population 
 to increase faster than capital, or the means of subsis- 
 tence. If this be established it is of no consequence to 
 the present purpose to inquire about the rapidity of the 
 increase. How slow soever the increase of population, 
 provided that of capital be still slower, wages will be 
 reduced so low that, a portion of the population will 
 regularly die from the consequences of want. Neither 
 can this dreadful consequence be otherwise averted, than 
 by finding means to prevent the increase of capital from 
 falling short of that of population. 
 
 Such are the views of Adam Smith, and of that 
 sound political economist, the late James Mill, in whose 
 works these views and opinions will be found more fully 
 entered into. 
 
 From this it will be seen, that if legislation, by ill- 
 directed measures of taxation, or otherwise, reduce the 
 available amount of capital, or restrict its profitable 
 employment, the effect must be to lower the rate of 
 wages, and to increase pauperism throughout the coun- 
 try. On the other hand, it is clear that, if the legis- 
 lature take, for the necessities of the State, equally 
 from the produce of all the realised property of the 
 country, the capital remains untouched, and available 
 for the profitable employment of more laborers. Thus 
 capital goes on increasing, and employs more labor, 
 the effect of which must be, to increase the demand for 
 labor, and thereby the rate of wages, and the general 
 prosperity of all classes in the country. The increase in 
 the number of laborers, and in the rate of wages, must 
 cause increased demand for, and consumption of, all 
 
538 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 commodities, and the home trade, always the most pro- 
 fitable, must go on increasing in the same proportion. 
 
 Thus, it will be seen, by leaving the laborers in pos- 
 session of their wages undiminished by deductions for 
 taxes on any of the necessaries or conveniences of life, 
 they become not only greater producers, but also better 
 customers: and that, just as they are prosperous, or 
 otherwise, in the same proportion are the agriculture, 
 trade, and manufactures, of the country in a state of 
 prosperity, or depression. 
 
 It is thus apparent that the price of the necessaries 
 and conveniences of life can never regulate the rate of 
 wages ; and that the tendency of a low price of provi- 
 sions is to raise the rate of wages, by increasing the 
 demand for labor. It is, therefore, evident that, the 
 demand for those who live by wages, can increase only 
 in proportion to the increase of the funds which are 
 destined to the payment of wages. 
 
 These funds are of two kinds : first, the revenue which 
 is over and above what is necessary for maintenance; 
 and, secondly, the stock, or capital, which is over and 
 above what is necessary for the employment of the 
 masters. Increase this surplus, and you increase the 
 fund for the employment of labor. 
 
 Out of this fund, the landlord, annuitant, or moneyed 
 man, maintains one or more menial servants. Out of 
 this fund the independent workman employs one or more 
 journeymen, in order to make a further profit by their 
 work. The demand for those who live by wages, there- 
 fore, necessarily increases with the increase of the reve- 
 nue and stock, or capital, of every country, and cannot 
 possibly increase without it. The increase of revenue 
 and capital is the increase of national wealth. The de- 
 mand for those who live by wages, therefore, naturally 
 increases with the increase of national wealth, and can- 
 not possibly increase without it. 
 
WAGES. 539 
 
 It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but 
 its continued increase, which occasions a rise in the 
 wages of labor, by keeping up a continued and increas- 
 ing demand. It is not, accordingly in the richest coun- 
 tries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are 
 growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are 
 the highest. England is, certainly, at present, a much 
 richer country than any part of the United States, or 
 Canada, or Australia. 
 
 The wages of labor, however, are much higher in those 
 countries than in any part of England, though, in Eng- 
 land, the prices of provisions, and other necessaries of 
 life, are higher. If the money price of labor, therefore, 
 be higher in those countries than it is anywhere in the 
 mother country, the real price, the real command of 
 the necessaries of life which it conveys to the laborer, 
 must be higher in a still greater proportion. But 
 though those countries are not yet so rich as England, 
 they are much more thriving, and are advancing with 
 much greater rapidity to the further acquisition of riches. 
 The evidence of this is in the rapid increase of popu- 
 lation ; for, the most decisive mark of the prosperity 
 of any country is, the increase of the number of its in- 
 habitants. 
 
 Though the wealth of a country should be very great, 
 yet, if it had been long stationary, we must not expect 
 to find the wages of labor very high in it. The funds 
 destined for the payment of wages may be very great, 
 but if they have continued for a century the same, or 
 very nearly the same, the number of laborers employed 
 every year could easily supply, and even more than 
 supply, the number wanted the following year. There 
 could seldom be any scarcity of hands, nor could the 
 masters be obliged to bid against one another in order 
 to get them. The hands on the contrary would, in 
 this case, naturally multiply beyond their employment. 
 
540 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 There would be a constant scarcity of employment, and 
 the laborers would be obliged to bid against one an- 
 other. Such has long been the case in the United 
 Kingdom. Now, the only possible remedy for this 
 evil, and the evil is very great in its consequences, is 
 either by increasing the fund for the employment of 
 laborers, or removing the excess. As the producers of 
 wealth, it is clearly better to keep them, than to part 
 with them, if they can be profitably employed. 
 
 The first question should, therefore, be how to keep 
 them, by finding profitable employment for them. This 
 can only be by continually increasing the surplus fund 
 out of which alone they can be paid, and thereby con- 
 tinually increasing the capital of the country. The 
 liberal reward of labor, as it is the necessary effect, so 
 it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. 
 The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the 
 other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a 
 stand ; and their starving condition, that they are going 
 fast backwards. 
 
 If the wages of labor were sufficient to supply the 
 laborers with all the necessaries of life, and with a 
 reasonable share of its conveniences, they would be 
 better able than they now are to provide for the educa- 
 tion of their children, and to conduct themselves, and 
 bring up their families, with more regard than they 
 can now show to the decencies of life ; and thus we 
 might hope, by an improved race, to cut off the conti- 
 nual supply to our Unions, Reformatories, and Gaols, 
 from that ever-flowing source, Pauperism. All this 
 might be effected by simply leaving the laborers in the 
 full and free possession and enjoyment of the wages of 
 their labor, undiminished by taxation; and their in- 
 creased and constantly increasing consumption of all 
 the staple commodities, would make them the largest, 
 the safest, and most profitable customers of the manu- 
 
WAGES. 541 
 
 facturers and traders, as well as the provision-growers, 
 of the country ; thus showing that the well-being of all 
 classes is most conducive to the wealth and prosperity 
 of every country ; and that the degradation of the work- 
 ing-classes is the surest sign of a declining country, and 
 is, moreover, its greatest disgrace. 
 
 It seems to be a waste of words to prove that, cheap- 
 ening the necessaries and conveniences of life gives em- 
 ployment to additional capital and labor. And, yet, this 
 is the question in dispute ! 
 
 If additional capital be employed, additional labor 
 must be required to make that capital productive. Nor 
 is this less true in those employments where machinery 
 is substituted for human labor, for the cheapness of 
 the articles so produced enlarges and extends the gene- 
 ral market, and, consequently, enlarges and extends the 
 demand for human labour in an infinite variety of other 
 channels. 
 
 If profits on manufacturers' capital be necessary for 
 production, no less necessary are mercantile profits for 
 the distribution of what is produced. This desired end 
 is effected by the competition in the market. 
 
 It is this competition which is our best security 
 against scarcity and famine. High prices check con- 
 sumption, and thus enable the stock of food to last 
 longer than it otherwise would. Nor is this all. The 
 high price also stimulates merchants to use every exer- 
 tion to obtain supplies from abroad, by which the want 
 will be alleviated. This enables the food to be brought 
 from greater distances than the ordinary price would 
 remunerate, and allows unusual expenses to be incurred 
 by the importers in many other ways. 
 
 Thus, Free Trade, or competition, is our best pro- 
 tection against famine, or scarcity; but nobody pre- 
 tends that Free Trade, or competition, will remove all 
 human evils, or those evils which arise from personal 
 
542 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 vice or imprudence, or from unjust political institu- 
 tions, or from the various calamities of life, nearly all of 
 which, if not all, arise from human negligence. To pre- 
 vent misery, all parts of the social system must be in 
 perfection, and not the market only. 
 
 But with Free Trade, and competition, it may be 
 safely assumed that, there will be such a distribution of 
 all productions, natural and artificial (not being perish- 
 able), that the prices will be pretty nearly equalised 
 throughout the markets of the world, with the addition 
 only of the cost of transport ; and if the cost of produc- 
 tion be dependent, (as it always must be in a great 
 measure) on the price of labor, it may also be safely 
 assumed that those nations which possess the greatest 
 local advantages, will have the best chance in the 
 struggle of competition, as long as they retain those 
 natural advantages unimpaired by unjust political insti- 
 tutions, or by personal vices, or imprudence. 
 
 But if, by unjust restrictive laws, or by taxes on the 
 necessaries and conveniences of life, or by personal vice, 
 or imprudence, that natural equalisation of prices be 
 disturbed, then the natural advantages are impaired ; 
 and the injustice and improvidence of the nation impede 
 and counteract the natural or providential law, to the 
 injury of itself chiefly, but not altogether without injury 
 to other nations, so intimately are all allied for their 
 mutual interests. 
 
 If by taxes on articles of general consumption, or 
 convenience, the condition of the laborer be so de- 
 pressed that he is driven to seek better means of subsist- 
 ence in another country, the country, which so loses its 
 laborers, loses so much of its strength, and chief 
 source of wealth; and with all its natural and local 
 advantages, may still be unable to compete with other 
 countries, even in those productions over which its 
 natural and local advantages peculiarly extend. To 
 
WAGES. 543 
 
 diminish those natural advantages must be the effect of 
 all taxes on food ; because, in proportion to that artifi- 
 cial increase in the price of the necessaries and conveni- 
 ences of life, is diminished the power of successful com- 
 petition. 
 
 Trade and manufactures, instead of increasing with 
 the price of food, diminish, and may be entirely stopped 
 by the high price of food. Wages then fall, and may 
 cease altogether. It is, therefore, self-evident that, the 
 lower the price of food (and it can never long continue 
 at a price lower than is remunerative to the producer) 
 the greater is the power for successful competition in 
 the general market, and the greater is the individual 
 and national prosperity of that country. 
 
 The converse may also be taken as an axiom : That 
 in a country where the prices of the necessaries and con- 
 veniences of life are so high as to be obtained with diffi- 
 culty by the working classes, agriculture, trade, and manu- 
 factures, are always languishing, wages are low in pro- 
 portion, and the people are sinking into misery and vice. 
 
 In that state of things, capital is hoarded, or trans- 
 ferred to another country, where the outlay, or invest- 
 ment, is more encouraged, and then, an increasing 
 population, instead of being a blessing, is the greatest 
 affliction : so great that it becomes, at last, unbearable, 
 as in Scotland, and Ireland, and finds relief only in 
 periodical emigration, or famine. 
 
 But, on the contrary, where the necessaries and con- 
 veniences of life are abundant, and the profits on capital 
 are remunerative, then capital is expended arid increased, 
 and, the demand for labor increasing in proportion, the 
 rate of wages rises, and the nation thrives apace with 
 the increase of population. This is a truth which 
 admits of no exception. 
 
 Thus, it may be seen that, although the Malthusian 
 doctrine of the tendency of population to increase be- 
 
544 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 yond the means of subsistence, is quite true in the 
 abstract, yet, taken practically, and applied to a moral 
 and industrious people, under good laws well adminis- 
 tered, it is quite false ; and, were it otherwise, it would 
 be impossible to reconcile the natural law with any 
 notions of wisdom and justice, which our reason enables 
 us to form. But though the admission of this doctrine 
 in the abstract, as taken and applied by Malthus, 
 impugns the Divine wisdom and justice, yet, taken and 
 applied with this qualification, it may be seen to be 
 another manifestation of the Divine wisdom, and justice, 
 and mercy, and a means of enforcing the Divine com- 
 mand, that men shall live by labor. 
 
 Now, as labor, in a civilised state of society, can 
 only be employed by capital, or accumulated savings, 
 and as that employment can only be continued by pro- 
 fits, it is obvious that, as long as profits continue to be 
 derived, capital must continue to increase in proportion, 
 equal, or greater, to the increase of population ; and 
 whilst that continues, population can never increase 
 beyond the means of subsistence. 
 
 If this be true, it must follow that, when large masses 
 of people remove themselves from their native country 
 for the purpose of seeking elsewhere the means of sub- 
 sistence, this is the result of the natural sterility of their 
 native soil ; or, of their own personal vice, or improvi- 
 dence ; or, want of industry, and skill, with economy ^ 
 or, it is the result of cruel and unjust laws, to escape 
 from which is the last effort, and the only effectual 
 remedy. Therefore, Emigration is the open door for 
 escape from tyranny, and oppression. The magnitude 
 of the evil is shown by the necessity for escape ; and so 
 great is the sacrifice that, Emigration is always the last 
 sacrifice made to save life, or to obtain the comforts of 
 life, or something even dearer. 
 
 Love of adventure, and ardent hope, no doubt, often 
 
WAGES. 545 
 
 lead the youthful and strong to seek their fortunes in 
 new countries ; but emigrant families generally quit 
 their native land in a state of misery bordering on 
 despair. To them it is the only door left open for their 
 escape from the wickedness and cruelty of their fellow- 
 men. It is the door kept open by Divine Mercy, against 
 all the efforts of grasping and oppressive Governments 
 to close it. They have done all they dared to close 
 even that door, against the misery which their own 
 wicked and cruel laws have made, and have desisted at 
 last, only from the fear of losing, not the people whom 
 they have driven away, but the distant Colony to which 
 the people are driven. 
 
 What hope is there from such Governments, deaf to 
 the claims of justice and policy, and accessible only to 
 the dictates of fear ? When will the People learn the 
 true principles, and acquire the rightful privilege of 
 self-government ? It is truly surprising that men, called 
 Statesmen, to whom is entrusted the solemn responsi- 
 bility of watching over the temporal welfare of the mil- 
 lions of human beings which compose this great nation, 
 should be capable of advocating, in the deliberative 
 assembly of the people, such absurdities as are uttered 
 in their speeches ! 
 
 If property were made directly chargeable with the 
 burdens of the State, so that the people might know 
 precisely in what proportion they were contributing, 
 and so that their contributions went directly to the pur- 
 poses for which they were avowedly, and intentionally 
 made, capital would be driven out of the country ! 
 Surprising, and incredible, as it may seem, yet this is 
 what these men, called Statesmen, really say. But the 
 arguments they use to support this assertion, create the 
 strongest doubt that they really believe what they say ; 
 and, indeed, it is difficult to imagine that they can be so 
 stupid. And what is their chief reason for continuing 
 
 2 N 
 
516 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 the present oppressive and injurious system of taxation ? 
 Simply this and, simply enough, they avow this ! 
 that the working classes, if they knew how unequally 
 large is the portion of the burden they are bearing, 
 Avould no longer bear it ! 
 
 It is impossible, in the existing state of things, that 
 profits should be otherwise than low, or that the average 
 and ordinary rate of wages should be such as to afford 
 the laboring classes the means of commanding a fair 
 supply of the necessaries and conveniences of life. The 
 increase of taxation may have been unavoidable, but 
 however urgent the necessity for its increase, and how- 
 ever much it may have stimulated industry and skill, it 
 has become a heavy burden on the productive capacities 
 of the nation, and must, in the end, occasion the most 
 serious results, if unattended with corresponding in- 
 crease in the profits from agriculture, trade and manu- 
 factures ; nor is it possible to foresee the extent of 
 misery and vice which must ensue from their decline. 
 These tremendous evils can be averted only by reducing 
 the weight of taxation, and relieving the pressure on 
 the national resources. It is hopeless to expect that 
 this can be done by means of reductions in the public 
 expenditure. Some savings may, and ought to be, 
 effected in all the departments of the State ; but, so 
 long as adequate provision is made for the security and 
 good government of all the different departments in this 
 extensive empire, there is no reasonable ground for sup- 
 posing that the public expenditure can be very sensibly 
 reduced by any such retrenchments. The utmost saving 
 from such retrenchments would be quite insignificant, 
 as already shown, in comparison with the saving which 
 would be effected by the abandonment of the present 
 system of taxation, with all its cumbrous and expensive 
 machinery, and the adoption of the simple and inex- 
 pensive system of direct taxation here proposed. And 
 
WAGES. 547 
 
 this is the more necessary, because, under the existing 
 system, the expenditure must increase with the increase 
 of population. At all events, it is nothing but self- 
 delusion, to look to saving alone, as any resource 
 against the internal evils with which this country is 
 threatened. 
 
 But if the great, and yet scarcely known, resources 
 of this country be set free, and if the people be freely 
 permitted to make them available to their fullest extent, 
 though Government may not be able directly to reduce 
 the amount of the burden, yet the effect will be to in- 
 crease the people's ability to bear it. 
 
 It is impossible to doubt that the productive powers 
 of this country would be immensely augmented, and the 
 pressure upon the industrious classes most materially 
 diminished, by allowing them to purchase and bring 
 home the necessaries and comforts of life at the lowest 
 cost, and more abundantly, from all the markets of the 
 world, by removing all duties, and leaving the laborer 
 iii full possession of the fruits of his own labor. 
 
 It is impossible to doubt that, in such a state of things 
 as this, the rate of wages generally throughout the 
 country would be raised, and that the purchasing power 
 of the wages would be still more raised. 
 
 That improvement in the temporal and moral condi- 
 tion of the laboring part of the population has not kept 
 pace with the progress of this nation in greatness of 
 power, and wealth of capital, but, on the contrary, has 
 deteriorated, and is deteriorating, is a fact which many 
 may not like to admit, but which, nevertheless, cannot 
 be denied, being too clearly proved. 
 
 That for the last thirty years misery and vice have 
 gone on together visibly increasing in proportion with 
 the increase of population, especially among the labor- 
 ing classes, and are still increasing, even far beyond the 
 proportion, is a fact equally clear, and proved, if any 
 
 2 N2 
 
548 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 faith is to be placed in parliamentary and statistical 
 documents ; and it is but too certain that their com- 
 forts and enjoyments have not increased in anything 
 like the same proportion as those of the classes above 
 them, but, on the contrary, have diminished very far 
 below them. 
 
 Now, inasmuch as the laboring classes constitute 
 the great majority of the whole population, their moral 
 and temporal condition is of the utmost importance, not 
 only in regard to their own well-being, but also in re- 
 gard to that of the other classes which altogether con- 
 stitute the nation. The poverty and depressed con- 
 dition of any very large class, especially if it be 
 contrasted with vast wealth, extravagance, and luxury, 
 on the part of others, is a most undesirable state of 
 things, and can hardly fail to produce discontent, 
 sedition, and disturbances of all kinds. Lord Bacon 
 has said that, " of all rebellions, those of the belly are 
 the worst," and he has added : " The first remedy, 
 or prevention, is to remove, by all means possible, that 
 material cause of sedition of which we speak, which is 
 want, or poverty in the Estate." 
 
 All history proves that men, long debarred from civil 
 rights, almost always become ill-fitted to enjoy them. 
 The brutalising effects of oppression, which cannot im- 
 mediately be done away by its removal, at once furnish 
 a pretext for justifying it, and make relief hasardous. 
 Kind and liberal treatment, if cautiously and judiciously 
 bestowed, will gradually and slowly advance men 
 towards the condition of being worthy of such treat- 
 ment ; but treat men as aliens, or enemies, as slaves, 
 as children, or as brutes, and they will speedily and 
 completely justify your conduct. 
 
 But though the same disastrous consequences may be 
 expected to follow from neglect of the temporal and 
 spiritual wants of the people, yet the neglect of both 
 
WAGES. 549 
 
 these wants does not work in the same way. The more 
 that is done to provide for the spiritual wants of the 
 people, the more likely they will be to make such pro- 
 vision for themselves ; and the more they are neglected, 
 the less likely are they to do it. It is, as remarked by 
 Archbishop Whately, the peculiar nature of the inesti- 
 mable treasure of Christian truth, and religious know- 
 ledge, that the more it is withheld from people, the less 
 they wish for it ; and the more it is bestowed upon 
 them, the more they hunger and thirst after it. If 
 people be kept upon a short allowance of food, they are 
 eager to obtain it ; if you keep a man thirsty, he will 
 become more and more thirsty ; if he be poor, he is 
 exceedingly anxious to become rich ; but if he be left 
 in a state of spiritual destitution, after a time he will, 
 and still more his children, cease to feel it, and cease to 
 care about it. It is the last want men can be trusted 
 (in the first instance) to supply for themselves. But it 
 is one which admits of no substitute, and unless this be 
 provided for, all other wants supplied will be inefficient 
 for securing temporal welfare, for individuals, or a 
 nation. 
 
 No one can doubt that it is the bounden duty of the 
 legislature to adopt every safe and practicable measure 
 for eradicating, or counteracting, as far as possible, the 
 causes of poverty and vice from among the mass of the 
 people, and for increasing, as far as possible, their com- 
 forts and enjoyments. 
 
 Now, of these causes, none seem to he so prolific of 
 guilt and wretchedness, as the present system of taxa- 
 tion, which practically deprives the laborer of more 
 than half the wages of his labor, in purchasing power, 
 besides lowering the general rate of wages, by dimi- 
 nishing the profits of the employer, and thereby 
 diminishing the demand for labor. 
 
 To improve the condition of the laboring classes must 
 
550 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 be the most effectual means of strengthening and perpe- 
 tuating the institutions of a country. 
 
 In this country of excessive population in propor- 
 tion to its fixed and narrow limits of land, the laboring 
 classes must look mainly to trade for employment ; and 
 though trade does not produce capital, yet trade pro- 
 duces the means of profitable employment for labor, 
 and the accumulated savings from the produce of that 
 labor increase the capital. 
 
 But as all labor is a continued effort, opposed to the 
 natural disposition for ease, never pursued for pleasure, 
 and always more or less attended with pain, to make 
 the reward for labor an adequate compensation for the 
 pain, and to secure to the laborers the full produce of 
 their own labor, is no less the sound policy, than the 
 first duty of every government. 
 
 Unfortunately for the progress of improvement in the 
 moral and physical condition of mankind, the few who 
 think, are apt to think more for themselves than for 
 others, and many of the most serious affairs of life, like 
 the light and trivial pursuits of pleasure, are left to the 
 chance guidance of fancies, rather than directed by prin- 
 ciples derived from experience, or careful deductions 
 from sound reasoning. The hard penalty of such pro- 
 ceedings must be paid, and wise and merciful is that 
 appointment, for without it nations and people would 
 never mend their ways. Their ways never can be 
 mended but by raising their social position, and for that 
 little or nothing is done, or even attempted. The re- 
 medy the only remedy is moral, not legislative. 
 Good laws, which administer equal justice to all, are 
 essential for good social position ; but intellectual im- 
 provement comes through good teaching, and training. 
 A prosperous and happy state is conducive to that end, 
 but a good social position is completed by moral and 
 intellectual improvement. 
 
WAGES. 551 
 
 As Dr. Charming has said: "The true school of 
 human nature is the sphere opened to its faculties and 
 affections in our conditions in daily life. A state of 
 society furnishing to all its members a field of action 
 for the mind and heart, gives the only true education ; 
 and is this to be looked for anywhere in outward insti- 
 tutions ? Is it not to be found chiefly in the spirit of 
 Christianity, spread through a community, leading its 
 members to a love and reverence of human nature, and 
 to a regard to human excellence in their arrangements 
 for property, etc. ? A spirit of self-sacrifice for common 
 good must be made powerful in the most intelligent and 
 influential. To improve men must be a chief considera- 
 tion in employing them ; and the good of the laborer 
 must be regarded as well as the profit to be drawn from 
 his toil. So long as this is thought romantic, society 
 can have no bright prospect of permanent progress. A 
 society is advanced in proportion as human nature is 
 respected. It is the misery of the present state that 
 man, as man, is counted of so little worth. It is man 
 clothed in purple, dressed in a little brief authority, 
 high-born, rich, etc., who is now considered as deserving 
 power. A just estimate of human nature, of its pur- 
 poses, powers, destiny, leading to general, courtesy, re- 
 spect, and effort for the advancement of this nature, in 
 each, and all this is the measure of the progress of 
 society. The existence of a large class, cut off from the 
 rest of the community, trained up to ignorance and vice, 
 gross in manners, and in no other degree acted upon by 
 other classes, and respected only by brute force, is a sad 
 feature of civilized society. The true organisation of 
 society is that in which all improvements of the higher, 
 are communicated to the lower classes, and in which in- 
 tellect and virtue descend, and are diffused. And will 
 any thing but Christianity, moulding anew the whole 
 spirit of the higher classes, bring about this end? 
 
552 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 There must be a body of enlightened, studious men. 
 Let not these form a party, a faction, but consider their 
 light as a good given to be diffused, and a means to 
 maintain an improving intercourse among all orders. 
 So there will be rich men ; but the rich, instead of 
 herding together, and linking themselves to one another 
 by common pleasures, privileges, refinements, ought to 
 regard prosperity as a trust for the good of those who 
 are in want. Let there be no literary class, no class of 
 rich. The learned when forming a distinct class, 
 become jealous, exacting, domineering, and seek to 
 maintain their sway, even at the expense of truth. 
 Scholars already begin to find the benefit of quitting 
 their pedantic cells, and mingling with general society ; 
 but still they associate too much with the rich and 
 refined, still they seek honor and power. Their high 
 honor of being lights to society is overlooked. How the 
 rich injure themselves by a clannish spirit, corrupting 
 one another by rivalry in show and expense ! Chris- 
 tianity breaks down all these walls of division between 
 man and man." 
 
 Such were the opinions of Dr. Channing, whom Cole- 
 ridge described as " a philosopher who had the love of 
 wisdom, and the wisdom of love." 
 
 How little has ever been done to uplift the physical, 
 or to improve the moral, condition of the laboring 
 classes in this, or any other, country ! Who can read 
 the reports on the state of the poor in our great cities 
 and towns, or in the rural districts, and believe that 
 " the rich regard prosperity as a trust for the good of 
 those who are in want ?" 
 
 Here is the absence of all that organisation of society 
 in which the improvements of the higher are communi- 
 cated to the lower classes, and in which intellect and 
 virtue descend and are diffused. The rich link them- 
 selves to one another by common pleasures, privileges, 
 
WAGES. 553 
 
 refinements,, and, regardless of their trust, they leave 
 the despised arid neglected class to herd together like 
 brutes, in brutal ignorance and filth ; often destitute 
 not only of the necessaries of life, but also of the means 
 of observing the ordinary decencies of civilisation. 
 
 Such is the condition of our poor, the working of 
 our Poor Laws, and the effect of our present system 
 of Taxation. 
 
 Thus, through another course of deduction, we come 
 to the same conclusion, which, in a few words, may be 
 thus stated : 
 
 As Capital is something saved from revenue, and em- 
 ployed for the purpose of producing wealth, or, with a 
 vie\y to profit, and as the earliest contributions to 
 Capital must be from wages, any tax, direct or indirect, 
 which diminishes wages, or revenue, must diminish, in 
 the same proportion, the means of saving, for the 
 purpose of producing wealth, and consequently must 
 prevent, in the same proportion, the increase of capital. 
 
 So a tax which enhances the cost of the necessaries of 
 life 50 per cent., must have the effect of reducing the 
 value of wages one-half, and of diminishing, to the 
 same extent, the means of saving, for the purpose of 
 producing wealth, or capital. 
 
 Thus, the true test of a people's prosperity is not 
 their wages, but their consumption ; and a people's 
 prosperity is the best test of a nation's prosperity. 
 
 Malthus has shown, that it is not merely the gross 
 amount of land produce in a State, in proportion to the 
 extent of territory, which is the cause of domestic pro- 
 sperity, but the relative amount of that produce, in pro- 
 portion to the numbers of the people. Thus, if two 
 nations possess an equal extent of territory, and raise 
 an equal produce, and one contain ten millions of inha- 
 bitants, and the other twelve millions; in the former 
 the food being divided in larger shares among the 
 
554 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 people than in the latter, the former people will enjoy 
 greater comfort and happiness than the latter, in 
 common and average years. 
 
 But although the gross amount of produce, in pro- 
 portion to territory, and its relative amount in propor- 
 tion to population, be different things, yet, in general, 
 large gross produce and relative abundance uniformly 
 go together,' where no impolitic laws or usages en- 
 courage a superfluous population, or interrupt the 
 commerce and agriculture of the country. Wherever 
 these are left free to the operation of nature, or, are 
 least interrupted, a large gross produce is uniformly 
 attended with a relative abundance among the people. 
 
 To the freedom from intermeddling was the rapid 
 progress of the United States of America to prosperity 
 mainly attributable. There a large gross produce was 
 in proportion to the large extent of territory, and was 
 attended with a relative abundance among the people. 
 
 To lower the consumption of a people is, therefore, to 
 lower the prosperity of a nation; and as the effect of 
 Indirect taxation is to lower the consumption of the 
 people, it follows, that the effect of Indirect taxation is 
 to lower the prosperity of the nation. 
 . These remarks are for exposing and refuting the 
 common and very injurious fallacy, that the effect of 
 abolishing all taxes on the necessaries and conveniences 
 of life, would be, to lower the money rate of wages ; 
 and of showing that a contrary effect must be the 
 necessary consequence, by a continually increasing 
 demand, both at home and abroad, for our natural 
 productions, and manufactures. It is also evident that, 
 the same consequence must ensue from the same cause 
 in every civilised country of the world ; all showing 
 that : " The welfare of the People is the highest law." 
 
 That these views of the governing principle of the 
 Wages of Labor are not new, and that the same views 
 
WAGES. 555 
 
 were entertained by that grea.t Statesman and enlight- 
 ened Politician, Burke, may be seen in his pamphlet on 
 " Scarcity/' perhaps, one of the best pamphlets of its 
 class in the language. He has there said : " It is not 
 true that the rate of wages has not increased with the 
 nominal price of provisions. I allow it has not fluc- 
 tuated with that price, nor ought it ; and the squires of 
 Norfolk had dined, when they gave it as their opinion, 
 that it might or ought to rise and fall with the market 
 price of provisions. 
 
 " The rate of wages in truth has no direct relation to 
 that price. Labor is a commodity like every other, and 
 rises or falls according to the demand. This is the 
 nature of things ; however, the nature of things has 
 provided for their necessities. Wages have been twice 
 raised in my time, and they bear a full proportion, or 
 even a greater than formerly, to the medium of pro- 
 vision during the last bad cycle of twenty years. They 
 bear a full proportion to the result of their labor. If 
 we were wildly to attempt to force them beyond it, the 
 stone which we had forced up the hill, would only fall 
 back upon them in a diminished demand, or, what 
 indeed is the far lesser evil, an aggravated price of all 
 provisions, which are the result of their manual toil. 
 There is an implied contract, much stronger than any 
 instrument, or article of agreement, between the laborer 
 in any occupation and his employer that the labor, so 
 far as that labor is concerned, shall be sufficient to pay to 
 the employer a profit on his capital, and a compensation 
 for his risk; in a word, that the labor shall produce an 
 advantage equal to the payment. Whatever is above that, 
 is a direct tax ; and if the amount of that tax be left to 
 the will and pleasure of another, it is an arbitrary tax." 
 
 On the question of the expediency of any legislative 
 interference or intermeddling with the Wages of Labor, 
 the following remarks of Burke are so profound and so 
 
556 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 true, as well to deserve the reflection of Statesmen, 
 Legislators, and Politicians, in these days : " The 
 questions arising on this scheme of arbitrary taxation 
 are these Whether it is better to leave all dealing, in 
 which there is no force or fraud, collusion or combina- 
 tion, entirely to the persons eventually concerned in the 
 matter contracted for ; or to put the contract into the 
 hands of those, who can have none, or a very remote 
 interest in it, and little or no knowledge of the subject. 
 
 " It might be imagined that there would be very 
 little difficulty in solving this question ; for what man, 
 of any degree of reflection, can think, that a want of 
 interest in any subject closely connected with a want 
 of skill in it, qualifies a person to intermeddle in any 
 the least affair ; much less in affairs that vitally con- 
 cern the agriculture of the kingdom, the first of all its 
 concerns, and the foundation of all its prosperity in 
 every other matter, by which that prosperity is pro- 
 duced ? The vulgar error on this subject arises from 
 a total confusion in the very idea of things widely 
 different in themselves ; those of convention, and those 
 of judicature. When "a contract is making, it is a 
 matter of discretion and of interest between the parties. 
 In that intercourse, and in what is to arise from it, the 
 parties are the masters. If they are not completely so, 
 they are not free, and therefore their contracts are void. 
 But this freedom has no further extent, when the con- 
 tract is made ; then their discretionary powers expire, 
 and a new order of things takes its origin. Then, and 
 not till then, and on a difference between the parties, 
 the office of the judge commences. He cannot dictate 
 the contract. It is his business to see that it be 
 enforced ; provided that it be not contrary to pre- 
 existing laws, or obtained by force or fraud. If he be 
 in any way a maker or regulator of the contract, inso- 
 much he is disqualified from being a judge. But this 
 
WAGES. 557 
 
 sort of confused distribution of administrative and judi- 
 cial characters, (of which we have already as much as is 
 sufficient, and a little more) is not the only perplexity of 
 notion and passions which trouble us in the present hour." 
 # * -x- * * * 
 
 # * * * * 
 
 " In the case of the farmer and the laborer, their in- 
 terests are always the same, and it is absolutely impos- 
 sible that their free contracts can be onerous to either 
 party. It is the interest of the farmer, that his work 
 should be done with effect and celerity ; and that can- 
 not be, unless the laborer be well fed, and otherwise 
 found with such necessaries of animal life, according to 
 its habitudes, as may keep the body in full force, and 
 the mind gay and cheerful. For of all the instruments 
 of his trade, the labor of man (what the ancient writers 
 have called the instrumentum vocale) is that on which 
 he is most to rely for the re-payment of his capital. 
 The other two, the semi-vocale in the ancient classifica- 
 tion, that is, the working stock of cattle, and the 
 instrumentum mutum. such as carts, ploughs, spades, and 
 so forth, though not all inconsiderable in themselves, 
 are very much inferior in utility or in expence-, and 
 without a given portion of the first, are nothing at all. 
 For in all things whatever, the mind is the most 
 valuable and the most important ; and in this scale the 
 whole of agriculture is in a natural and just order; the 
 beast is as an informing principle to the plough and 
 cart ; the laborer is as reason to the beast ; and the 
 farmer is as a thinking and presiding principle to the 
 laborer. An attempt to break this chain of subordina- 
 tion in any part is equally absurd ; but the absurdity 
 is the most mischievous in practical operation, where it 
 is the most easy, that is, where it is the most subject to 
 an erroneous judgment. 
 
 ".It is plainly more the farmer's interest that his men 
 
558 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 should thrive, than that his horses should be well fed, 
 sleek, plump, and fit for use, or than that his waggon 
 and ploughs should be strong, in good repair, and fit for 
 service. On the other hand, if the farmer ceases to 
 profit of the laborer, and that his capital is not con- 
 tinually manured and fructified, it is impossible that he 
 should continue that abundant nutriment, and cloth- 
 ing, and lodging, proper for the protection of the instru- 
 ments he employs. 
 
 " It is therefore the first and fundamental interest of 
 the laborer, that the farmer should have a full incoming 
 profit on the product of his labor. The proposition is 
 self-evident, and nothing but the malignity, perverse- 
 ness, and ill-governed passions of mankind, and particu- 
 larly the envy they bear to each other's prosperity, 
 could prevent their seeing and acknowledging it, with 
 thankfulness to the benign and wise disposer of all 
 things, who obliges men, whether they will or not, in 
 pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the 
 general good with their own individual success. 
 
 " But who are to judge what that profit and advan- 
 tage ought to be? certainly no authority on earth. 
 It is -a matter of convention dictated by the reciprocal 
 conveniences of the parties, and indeed by their reci- 
 procal necessities." 
 
 * * # * 
 
 " Labor is a commodity, and as such, an article of 
 trade. If I am right in this notion, then labour must 
 be subject to all the laws and principles of trade, and 
 not to regulations foreign to them, and that may be 
 totally inconsistent with those principles and those laws. 
 When any commodity is carried to market, it is not the 
 necessity of the vender, but the necessity of the pur- 
 chaser that raises the price. The extreme want of the 
 seller has rather (by the nature of things with which we 
 shall in vain contend) the direct contrary operation. If 
 the goods at market are beyond the demand, they fall 
 
WAGES. 559 
 
 in their value ; if below it, they rise. The impossi- 
 bility of the subsistence of a man who carries his labor 
 to a market, is totally beside the question in this way of 
 viewing it. The only question is, what is it worth to 
 the buyer ? 
 
 " But if authority comes in and forces the buyer to a 
 price, what is this in the case (say) of a farmer, who 
 buys the labor of ten or twelve laboring men, and three 
 or four handycrafts, what is it, but to make an arbitrary 
 division of his property among them ? 
 
 "The whole of his gains never do amount anything 
 like in value to what he pays to his laborers and arti- 
 ficers ; so that a very small advance upon what one man 
 pays to many, may absorb the whole of what he pos- 
 sesses, and amount to an actual partition of all his sub- 
 stance among them. A perfect equality will indeed be 
 produced ; that is to say, equal want, equal wretched- 
 ness, equal beggary, and on the part of the partitioners, 
 a woeful,, helpless, and desperate disappointment. Such 
 is the event of all compulsory equalisations. They pull 
 down what is above. They never raise what is below ; 
 and they depress high and low together beneath the 
 level of what was originally the lowest. 
 
 " If a commodity be raised by authority above what 
 it will yield with a profit to the buyer, that commodity 
 will be less dealt in. If a second blundering interposi- 
 tion be used to correct the blunder of the first, and an 
 attempt be made to force the purchase of the commo- 
 dity (of labour for instance), the one of these two things 
 must happen, either that the forced buyer is ruined, or 
 the price of the product of the labor, in that proportion, 
 is raised. Then the wheel turns round, and the evil 
 complained of falls with aggravated weight on the com- 
 plainant. The price of corn, which is the result of the 
 expence of all the operations of husbandry, taken to- 
 gether, and for some time continued, will rise on the 
 laborer, considered as a consumer. The very best will 
 
560 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 be that he remains where he was. But if the price of 
 corn should not compensate the price of labor, which is 
 far more to be feared, the most serious evil, the very 
 destruction of agriculture itself, is to be apprehended. 
 
 " Nothing is such an enemy to accuracy of judgment 
 as a coarse discrimination ; a want of such classification 
 and distribution as the subject admits of. Increase the 
 rate of wages to the laborer, say the regulators as if 
 labor was but one thing and of one value." 
 
 " But what if the rate of hire to the laborer come far 
 short of his necessary subsistence, and the calamity at 
 the time is so great as to threaten actual famine ? Is 
 the poor laborer to be abandoned to the flinty heart and 
 griping hand of base self-interest, supported by the 
 sword of law, especially when there is reason to suppose 
 that the very avarice of farmers themselves has con- 
 curred with the errors of Government to bring famine 
 
 on the land." 
 
 .# * * * # 
 
 " A greater and more ruinous mistake cannot be fallen 
 into, than that the trades of agriculture and grazing can 
 be conducted upon any other than the common prin- 
 ciples of commerce ; namely, that the producer should 
 be permitted, and even expected, to look to all possible 
 profit which, without fraud or violence, he can make; 
 to turn plenty or scarcity to the best advantage he can ; 
 to keep back or bring forward his commodities at his 
 pleasure ; to account to no one for his stock or for his 
 gain. [Mark these words, here printed in italics.'] 
 On any other terms he is the slave of the consumer ; 
 and that he should be so is no benefit to the consumer. 
 No slave was ever so beneficial to the master as a free- 
 man that deals with him on an equal footing by con- 
 vention, formed on the rules and principles of contend- 
 ing interests and compromised advantages. The con- 
 sumer, if he were suffered, would in the end always l^e 
 the dupe of his own tyranny and injustice. The landed 
 
WAGES. 561 
 
 gentleman is never to forget that the farmer is his 
 representative. 
 
 "It is a perilous thing to try experiments on the 
 farmer. The farmer's capital (except in a few persons 
 and in a very few places) is far more feeble than com- 
 monly is imagined. The trade is a very poor trade ; it is 
 subject to great risks and losses. The capital, such as it 
 is, is turned but once in the year ; in some branches it 
 requires three years before the money is paid." .... 
 
 It is very rare that the most prosperous farmer, 
 counting the value of his quick and dead stock, the 
 interest of the money he turns, together with his own 
 wages as a bailiff or overseer, ever does make twelve or 
 fifteen per centum by the year on his capital. I speak 
 of the prosperous." .... 
 
 " Observe I speak of the generality of farmers who 
 have not more than from one hundred and fifty to three 
 or four hundred acres." 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 " What is true of the farmer is equally true of the 
 middle man; whether the middle man act as factor, 
 jobber, salesman, or speculator, in the markets of grain. 
 These traders are to be left to their free course ; and 
 the more they make, and the richer they are, and the 
 more largely they deal, the better for the farmer and 
 consumer, between whom they form a natural and most 
 useful link of connection : though by the machinations 
 of the old evil counsellor, Envy, they are hated and 
 maligned by both parties." 
 
 # * * * * 
 "The balance between consumption and production 
 
 makes price. The market settles, and alone can settle, 
 that price. Market is the meeting and conference of 
 the consumer and producer, when they naturally dis- 
 cover each other's wants. Nobody, I believe, has 
 observed with any reflection what market is, without 
 
 2o 
 
562 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 being astonished at the truth, the correctness, the cele- 
 rity, the general equity, with which the balance of wants 
 is settled. They who wish the destruction of that 
 balance, would fain by arbitrary regulation decree, that 
 defective production should not be compensated by 
 increased price, directly lay their axe to the root of 
 production itself." 
 
 # * # # # 
 
 " We, the people, ought to be made sensible, that it 
 is not in breaking the laws of commerce, which are the 
 laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God, that 
 we are to place our hope of softening the divine dis- 
 pleasure to remove any calamity under which we suffer, 
 or which hangs over us. 
 
 " It is one of the finest problems in legislation, and 
 what has often engaged my thoughts whilst I followed 
 that profession, " What the State ought to take upon 
 itself to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought 
 to leave, with as little interference as possible, to indi- 
 vidual discretion/' Nothing, certainly, can be laid down 
 on the subject that will not admit of exceptions, many 
 permanent, some occasional. But the clearest line of 
 distinction which I could draw, whilst I had any chalk 
 to draw my line, was this : That the State ought to con- 
 fine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of 
 the State, namely, the exterior establishment of its reli- 
 gion ; its magistracy ; its revenue ; its military force by 
 sea and land ; the corporations that owe their existence 
 to its fiat ; in a word to everything that is truly and 
 properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, 
 to the public order, to the public prosperity. In its pre- 
 ventive police it ought to be sparing of its efforts, and to 
 employ means rather few, unfrequent, and strong, than 
 many, and frequent, and, of course, as they multiply their 
 puny politic race, and dwindle, small and feeble. States- 
 men who know themselves will, with the dignity which 
 belongs to wisdom, proceed only in this the superior 
 
WAGES. 563 
 
 orb and first mover of their duty, steadily, vigilantly, 
 severely, courageously; whatever remains will, in a 
 manner, provide for itself. But as they descend from 
 the State to a province, from a province to a parish, and 
 from a parish to a private house, they go on accelerated in 
 their fall. They cannot do the lower duty ; and in pro- 
 portion as they try it, they will certainly fail in the 
 higher. They ought to know the different departments 
 of things; what belongs to laws, and what manners 
 alone can regulate. To these, great politicians may 
 give a leaning, but they cannot give a law." 
 
 The foregoing extracts contain, pretty nearly, the sub- 
 stance of the whole of this remarkable pamphlet. But 
 here is the final paragraph, word for word : 
 
 " Tyranny and cruelty may make men justly wish the 
 downfal of abused powers, but, I believe that, no Govern- 
 ment ever yet perished from any other direct cause than 
 its own weakness. My opinion is against an over-doing 
 of any sort of administration, and more especially against 
 the momentous meddling on the part of authority ; the 
 meddling with the substance of the people." 
 
 The Author is indebted to Lord Overstone for this 
 valuable pamphlet, reprinted in the volume of ' Miscel- 
 laneous Economical Tracts/ printed by his Lordship for 
 private distribution. 
 
 These are long extracts from a pamphlet f On Scarcity/ 
 published upwards of sixty years ago ! What have 
 we to do with this now ? There is nothing new in all 
 this ! Everybody knows it ! Everybody admits it ! 
 
 Exactly so ! It was written in a time of scarcity, and 
 there is no scarcity now. There is nothing new in all 
 this now, though there was a great deal that was new 
 then. All this is quite true everybody knows it, and 
 admits it. But no Government has ever practised it ! 
 This is remarkable. It was written in very dark times, 
 by Edmund Burke, in the light of his own enlightened 
 
 2 o2 
 
564 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 mind. The truth which he saw very clear ly, was then 
 seen only by a very few. Therefore, very few then be- 
 lieved in it. Therefore, no Government acted upon it. 
 Now everybody sees it everybody believes it and yet, 
 no Government acts upon it ! Ever since Burke wrote, 
 Governments have been working against Nature to 
 make a Scarcity ! They carried on that warfare against 
 Nature as long as they could, that is, as long as the 
 people would let them. They now carry on the same 
 system as far as they can. They make as much scarcity 
 as they can by duties, more or less prohibitory, on the 
 necessaries and conveniences of life, and thus mulct the 
 working people in, at least, one-third of their wages, 
 thereby making them the chief sufferers in the artificial 
 scarcity thus created ! 
 
 All this was very clearly exposed in the pamphlet 
 from which these extracts are taken. The name of 
 Burke may still carry some weight as an authority on 
 these subjects, though his opinions, as well as his words, 
 may be well nigh forgotten, and that is the reason why 
 these long Extracts have been given here. 
 
 It seems no presumption to say that Edmund Burke, 
 had he been now living, must have approved of and 
 supported this Scheme of Taxation, it being so entirely 
 in conformity with the principle which he has so ably 
 advocated, in maintaining THE FREEDOM OF LABOR. 
 
 PROPERTY, NOT LABOR, THE SUBJECT 
 OF TAXATION. 
 
 This is the main principle here advocated, but, in fol- 
 lowing it out in detail, many questions have arisen, in 
 the nature of objections, involving, as alleged, paradoxes, 
 contradictions, and inconsistencies. But these, when 
 carefully examined, have been found to be only apparent, 
 
PROPERTY THE SUBJECT OF TAXATION. 565 
 
 not substantial, and in no instance has one exception 
 to this principle been established. Of all the objectors 
 on this ground, the one most deserving of attention 
 was, that of Mr. Duncan Maclaren, now M.P. for Edin- 
 burgh, who, at the meeting of "The Social Science 
 Association," at Glasgow, in the year 1860, read an able 
 Paper in favour of DIRECT against INDIRECT Taxation. 
 
 But, unfortunately, in the same Paper, Mr. Maclaren' s 
 advocacy proceeded on grounds so directly at variance 
 with this principle, that his advocacy could not be ac- 
 cepted on such terms, by those who followed the views 
 of the Author of 'The People's Blue Book/ 
 
 Accordingly he addressed a Letter to Mr. Maclaren, 
 in answer, through the f Financial Reformer/ and as that 
 Letter was considered by many to be a complete refuta- 
 tion of Mr. Maclaren's errors, the substance will be here 
 given, in answer to all this class of objections. 
 
 The following is from Mr. Maclaren's Paper redde 
 before the Meeting at Glasgow : 
 
 " By a just Property Tax, I mean that property of 
 every kind, real and personal, whether realised, or em- 
 barked in trade, commerce, agriculture, shipping, profes- 
 sional pursuits, or in any other way, should be included, 
 and pay its fair proportion, whether yielding income, or 
 not, which could be converted into money by sale, such 
 as vacant building land, household furniture, pictures, 
 statuary, plate, carriages, horses, cattle, machinery, 
 stock in trade, capital employed in farming, money m 
 hand, lent, or invested, after deducting all just and 
 lawful debts, exempting all property and funds under 
 50 (as in America), and deducting 50 from the pro- 
 perty and effects of all classes chargeable." 
 
 Taking STOCK IN TRADE as a convenient illustration 
 of the argument against the whole, the reader will be 
 able to apply the answer for himself to the other articles 
 here enumerated. 
 
566 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 The question, then, is : 
 
 WHY NOT TAX STOCK IN TRADE ? 
 
 Financial Reformers say : Though we advocate a 
 Property Tax, we cannot agree with you that your's 
 would be a just Property Tax, because it would be partly, 
 if not quite, a tax on labor. We believe you hold with 
 us, that labor should not be taxed until it is realised ; 
 and we understand that labor is not realised, antequam 
 in rem, vel res, conversus est. 
 
 If you adopt this definition, you must show that 
 goods, or stock-in-trade, come within it. 
 
 If you object to this definition, you must give some 
 other. 
 
 Now, we will proceed to show that goods, or stock- 
 in-trade, do not come within this definition, but are 
 excluded by it; and you will be bound to show that 
 res, in a concrete sense, or property, includes goods, 
 or stock-in-trade, as truly property within this defi- 
 nition. 
 
 We would also ask you, how you would word the 
 Act of Parliament, for the assessment of trade stock, so 
 as not to tax pure labor. 
 
 Let us take, as happening under your tax, what has 
 happened without it. 
 
 A man has, in store, a lot of child's carriages, of the 
 old traction form. These are suddenly superseded by the 
 fore-driven perambulators. You would, probably, assess 
 the lot of old carriages (fairly) on the decreased worth 
 they would now bear in the market, and not on the price 
 that brought them to the owner's hands. So far, so 
 good. Then you would always assess stock on the price 
 it would fetch by sale. If so there is a poor cabinet- 
 maker, who, having taken a little shop, with hardly any 
 capital, has worked day and night to make above the 
 goods he has made to order a little table, some chairs, 
 and a few other goods to show in his shop : but he has 
 
PROPERTY THE SUBJECT OF TAXATION. 567 
 
 not been lucky enough to sell them. Is he to be taxed 
 on these goods as res ? 
 
 We hold, they are to him, as yet, merely labor, and 
 not res ; and ought not to be taxed. 
 
 It is bad enough that labor should be taxed after it 
 has brought a man money. It would be far worse if it 
 should be taxed before it should be remunerative. 
 
 Again : a man has made a discovery in photography. 
 His secret is worth money, for, after a year, he thinks 
 fit to sell it for 50. Is he, in the mean time, to be 
 taxed for this knowledge in his mind, since it is worth 
 money in the market ? To tax that knowledge, is to 
 tax not res (in the concrete) but an abstraction. 
 
 A man has made a discovery, and, to work it, has 
 taken a patent. Is he to be taxed for his patent as it is 
 of money's worth before it has brought him a farthing? 
 Or, an Author has a work in MS., and is recommended 
 by his publisher not to print it till the next season. 
 Is he to be taxed for it as res ? since it may ultimately 
 be sold for money, as it is worth some. 
 
 We hold, and believe you hold, that the foregoing 
 forms of labor and abstractions are not res, and that any 
 law which would tax them as being convertible into res, 
 would tax pure labor. 
 
 What, then, is property according to your definition, 
 and how will you assess it ? 
 
 We think that the tools of a workman's hands, or the 
 implements of his craft, ought not to be taxed; and that, 
 as books are the implements of a Lawyer's, a Doctor's, 
 and a Clergyman's, calling ; and pictures and statuary 
 are implements of that of the Painter, Sculptor, etc., 
 these should be scot free. 
 
 You refer to the practice in America. But we want 
 to know, with deference to the experience of Brother 
 Jonathan, what would be the effect on Art, and espe- 
 cially on High Art, of a tax on Pictures. 
 
568 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 If a poor painter were to send to a sale-gallery the 
 hopes, in paintings, of a year's toil, and were not so for- 
 tunate as to have them taken off his hands, it would be 
 a trying hardship to him that they should be sent back 
 to him burdened with a tax on the price that he had 
 unfortunately placed on them. The maxim, ' Ex nihilo 
 nihil fit" must now become, " Ex nihilo tributumfit" 
 The chance of selling a thousand pound work may be 
 much lessened by the fact that it would carry to the 
 buyer a heavy and endless taxation. And so with your 
 tax on personal ornaments,, it would not be so much a 
 question with a man, whether he could afford his wife 
 diamonds, pearls, and precious stones, as whether he 
 could afford to marry her encumbered with them. And 
 so, the winning by skill, or well-doing, of silver cups, 
 or tea-kettles, might become an intolerable honor. 
 
 The Shareholders of the ' Great Eastern ' are but ill- 
 qualified by their present losses to pay a tax on the value 
 at which an Assessor may choose to quote the Ship. If 
 all property, whether yielding income, or not, is to be 
 taxed, who is to pay the property tax on Town Clocks, 
 Town Pumps, and Street Lamps, or on County Bridges, 
 and Guide-Posts ? 
 
 You talk of taxing "vacant building land." By 
 building land, do you mean land which the owner may 
 have marked off, and offered for building? Or, land 
 which would be likely to be bought for building, if the 
 owner would sell it ? 
 
 If the latter is to be taxed as building land, we are 
 uneasy for the children's playground in the Village- 
 greens ; and if we were the owner of lands near the rim 
 of an increasing population, we should be uneasy with 
 the thought that some Ahab of a builder, who may be- 
 grudge our Naboth's acre, may greatly annoy us on our 
 refusal to sell it to him, by declaring to the Assessor 
 that it was building land, and ought to be taxed o n 
 
PROPERTY THE SUBJECT OF TAXATION. 569 
 
 imaginary house-rents, while it yields me only grass ; 
 and I may sing the doleful ditty of VirgiFs Shepherd : 
 " Dulcia linquimus arva" 
 
 It may be said that common sense would settle such 
 cases of property ; but, perhaps, no better common sense 
 would be applied to them than the understanding that, 
 what the law declares to be right, should be taken for 
 right. 
 
 May we be delivered from perplexing assessments, 
 while we have no better than our present most un-Eng- 
 lish form of hearing appeals against over-charges ! What 
 is it ? Why, I am over-charged in Income-tax by the 
 Assessor, and I appeal against his wrong to the Commis- 
 sioners, and when I come before their bench, I find they 
 have called him up among them as their adviser (as- 
 sessor, i.e. bysitter), in their judgment on his own act ! 
 This has often happened >it is the common practice. 
 What would be thought of a judgment by a judge, if I 
 took my seat against my wrong-doer before him, and 
 he were to call my adversary on the bench that he might 
 be instructed by his opinion of the alleged wrong ? Risum 
 teneatis amid ? 
 
 In the case of crime, Government will, sometimes, 
 give a man counsel. In the case of taxes, they take 
 counsel against him. 
 
 A tax-collector is a great, though necessary evil ; but 
 a tax assessor is an intolerable, and unnecessary inflic- 
 tion. The judgment of the Assessor, in every case, when 
 objected to by the party assessed, ought to be the sub- 
 ject of investigation by a Jury ; but that would be prac- 
 ticably impossible, with your long schedule of Assess- 
 ments on Stock in Trade, Furniture, and other house- 
 hold goods, chattels, and personal effects. 
 
 With respect to strong drinks, it would be well, for 
 the sake even of the people's morals, to see malt drinks 
 free of malt-tax and licences perfectly open so that 
 
570 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 many of our new houses, like many of our old ones in 
 the country, may have if their occupiers would drink 
 beer a tiny malt-kiln, so that any Village ' Willie ' 
 might brew, if he would, his ' peck o' maut/ and have 
 his pure cup with his wife and children, without the 
 brewer, who has now become a great monopolist. We 
 do not at all fear that Free trade in Ale would make 
 drunkards. They are neither made nor reformed by 
 any taxation of drink. 
 
 A Railway and its plant are as much Stock in Trade 
 as are the goods in a shop ; and a Railway Shareholder 
 is more a holder of property, than is a sleeping partner 
 in a business. 
 
 If you come to try the wording of your Act of Par- 
 liament which shall include goods, or Stock in Trade, you 
 will soon be lost in contradictions, inconsistencies, and 
 anomalies, in which it will be vain to look for any 
 guiding principle ; and you will thus, yourself, not only 
 fail in maintaining what you are desirous of establishing, 
 but will furnish your opponents with an argument which 
 they will use with fatal effect against you in short, you 
 will ruin your cause by your own advocacy. 
 
 To exempt from taxation labor of every kind, until 
 the laborer have received his wages in full, or the 
 market price of his labor, is the very essence of the 
 principle in question ; and this is the only real point in 
 the question. 
 
 It is easy to put cases in which the shade of distinc- 
 tion is so faint as to be scarcely discernible ; but this in 
 no degree affects the principle. If the principle be sound, 
 it must be good in every case. To shake it, you must 
 produce a case of inconsistency, or injustice. You must 
 show it to be unjust in itself, and inconsistent with other 
 known, and universally admitted, rules. We admit that, 
 one such case would be fatal to the principle which we 
 maintain. But that you have not shown. You have shown 
 
STOCK IN TRADE NOT TAXABLE. 571 
 
 sincerity, and disinterested candor, but you have not 
 shown sound judgment. You have expressed an opinion, 
 but you have supported it by no argument you have 
 attached it to no principle ; but you have set it up in 
 opposition to the principle which you have professed to 
 maintain. 
 
 We may both of us claim credit for disinterestedness, 
 but we cannot both be right. You are largely engaged 
 in trade, and nearly all your worldly property consists of 
 goods, or Stock in Trade. 
 
 I am a large land-owner, not engaged in Trade, and 
 nearly all my worldly property consists of land and 
 houses. 
 
 You would tax Stock in Trade, to relieve land. 
 
 I would tax land and houses, and exempt goods, or 
 Stock in Trade. 
 
 You would tax land, houses, hereditaments, and all 
 personal property and labor. 
 
 I would tax land, houses, hereditaments, and all rea- 
 lised property, excluding all other property, and labor. 
 
 You profess to advocate Direct Taxation, and the abo- 
 lition of Indirect Taxes, and yet you would continue the 
 most obnoxious of all Indirect Taxes, the tax on labor, or 
 on goods which have not yet realised the profits of labor! 
 
 You advocate Free Trade, and yet you strike at the 
 very root of all freedom ! 
 
 You would let in the tax-gatherer to every shop, and 
 warehouse into every private house and cottage, to 
 make an inventory and valuation of all goods. Stock in 
 Trade, chattels, and personal effects; or, you would take 
 the estimate of these for the tax on the owner's own 
 valuation, and thus set in antagonism self-interest and 
 self-respect. Thus, you would demoralise the public 
 mind, discourage the Fine Arts and Literature throughout 
 the kingdom, diminish the Profits of Trade, and de- 
 preciate the Wages of Labor ! You would maintain a 
 
572 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 large body of hirelings, at the disposal of the Govern- 
 ment, to extract money from the pockets of the people, 
 under the name of a Property Tax, but irreconcileable 
 with every principle of common justice and common 
 sense irreconcileable with common justice because the 
 merchant has not yet received fair profit for his capital, 
 nor the laborer fair wages for his labor ; irreconcileable 
 with common sense, because the Government, if it would 
 only wait until the merchant has received his fair pro- 
 fits, and the laborer his fair wages, would receive much 
 more by the tax on the property which those profits, and 
 those wages, if untouched by the tax-gatherer, would 
 help to realise. 
 
 Can anything equal the folly of imposing an ob- 
 stacle, impediment, or draw-back, to the creation of 
 new capital? 
 
 Why do we expend millions on Railways, but to over- 
 come the impediments of mountains and mud-ruts ? 
 And what are all Indirect Taxes, especially taxes on pro- 
 fits and labor, but impediments like to mountains and 
 mud -ruts in effect ? We expend our millions in remov- 
 ing these obstacles, and we set up worse obstacles 
 worse in their consequences under the name of Customs 
 and Excise Duties ! 
 
 Can any folly surpass this? If we must keep the 
 obstacles, why not save the millions ? But as the millions 
 are spent, why keep the obstacles? Nature has inter- 
 posed one set of obstacles, but these stimulated the skill 
 and industry which has removed them. We, ourselves, 
 have interposed the other set of obstacles, and the ten- 
 dency of them is to paralyse skill and industry. 
 
 If it be shown that more money is lost than gained by 
 such a tax, no argument in its favor, on the ground of 
 justice, or necessity, can be maintained. And this, we 
 think, we have shown. 
 
 We have shown that it is against the true interests of 
 
WAGES AND PROFITS NOT TAXABLE. 57& 
 
 a State to tax labor and trade, in wages and profits ; 
 and that exempting these can never make inequality of 
 taxation. If the effect of exempting wages and profits 
 from taxation be to cause an increase of capital, there 
 can be no injustice to any one in the exemption; and to 
 justify a contrary course, on the ground of necessity, 
 can only be under very extraordinary circumstances. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances, no State can have a 
 claim, in justice or expediency, to any portion of an 
 income derived otherwise than from property realised ; 
 for, as already shown, that would be to tax, not the 
 property, but the labor, not the res, but an abstraction. 
 
 As for instance, all incomes derived from Agricul- 
 ture, Trade, Manufactures. To tax these incomes would 
 be to tax labor. Then, again : all incomes derived 
 from professions, or the arts, or sciences, to tax these 
 incomes would be to tax abstractions. 
 
 Instead of injuring any one by exempting these, all 
 are equally interested in maintaining these exemptions ; 
 because it is for the interest of the State that all these 
 incomes should be free from taxation. 
 
 This is perfectly consistent with justice and common 
 sense. Equally so is it to tax property when realised ; 
 that is, when it has paid the wages of labor, and the 
 profits of trade, and is invested in Government or other 
 securities, which brings it immediately under the special 
 protection of the Law; for, if it do not come under 
 the special protection of the Law, that is, under Statute 
 Law, it does not come under the definition of realised 
 property, and is not liable, as such, to be taxed. As for 
 instance, if the owner of such money choose to invest it 
 again in trade, or in any private speculation, or to give 
 it to a friend, or to spend it on works of art, science, or 
 literature, or to lock it up in a box, on what ground of 
 justice, or expediency, can the Government claim the 
 right to tax that money ? 
 
574 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 It is not brought under the special protection, or even 
 under the cognisance, of the State. What right then 
 in justice or expediency, in reason, or common sense, 
 to question the owner about his private affairs, which in 
 no way come before the State, which claim no special 
 protection of the Law, and which can be known 
 only from extorted confessions, or bribed communica- 
 tions ? 
 
 Such money, however applied, may be doing better 
 service to the State than it could do if subject to tax- 
 ation ; and, sooner or later, that money, and probably 
 much more, must become liable to taxation in the form 
 of realised property. 
 
 In the mean time, who is injured? 
 The miser hoards for the spendthrift to spend, or the 
 prudent speculator to invest. The capital increases, or 
 it circulates. 
 
 In any case, the State ultimately gets its dues. But, 
 then, the manufacturer, the merchant, and the trader, 
 each gets his full profits, and the skilled artisan and 
 common laborer get their full wages. All are served in 
 their turn, all are benefited. The principle is just, 
 and, therefore, it works equal justice to all. 
 
 If this principle were carried out by all Nations, it is 
 easy to see that the increase of commercial prosperity 
 and human happiness, throughout the world, must be 
 very great, though we have no experience to guide 
 us. Where will the people then be found ready to go to 
 war ? Where will the demagogue then find an audience ? 
 Where will the worthless idler, and the drunkard then 
 find an asylum ? 
 
 They will then find the door of mistaken pity closed 
 upon them, because the prison-door will then be thrown 
 open, the fetters will be struck off, and they may, if 
 they will, go forth to freedom and honorable indepen- 
 dence, for full wages, and full profits. 
 
MR. DUNCAN MACLAREN^S OBJECTIONS. 575 
 
 The necessaries and the comforts of life will then be 
 open to all who are able and willing to win them. The 
 only objects of charity will then be the unable, and they 
 will be comparatively few chiefly the aged and infirm, 
 and destitute children. 
 
 The annual seven or eight millions for compulsory 
 charity, and the unknown sums for private benevolence, 
 may then be cut down more than three-fourths ; and then 
 true charity, founded on human sympathy, the source 
 of which must be in Divine love, will revive in the 
 land. The battle of life will then be fought on fairer 
 ground, and all classes will then see JUSTICE which is 
 " TRUTH at work." 
 
 Such was the substance of the author's answer to Mr. 
 Duncan Maclaren, through the ' Financial Reformer/ 
 
 The answer was favorably received by many, and was 
 said to have made a favorable impression on the minds 
 of a majority of the Members of Council of the Liver- 
 pool Financial Reform Association. 
 
 But if the impression were favourable to the exemption 
 of Stock-iri-Trade from all taxation, that impression did 
 not appear to be extended to some other descriptions of 
 property comprised in Mr. Maclaren's tariff. 
 
 Why many other descriptions of property should be 
 exempted was a puzzle and perplexity, and so it always 
 will be, without a clear perception of the principle, as 
 here laid down, to govern all these questions. 
 
 What description of property should be subject to 
 taxation, has always been a question. 
 
 We say that realised property alone should be subject 
 to taxation; i.e. after wages and profits have been 
 realised. 
 
 We do not say that labor should not be taxed, for that 
 would exempt all property; but only that the laborer 
 should not be taxed in his own labor. 
 
576 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 In further answer to all this class of objections, we 
 took the case of ships to illustrate the principle. 
 
 It was said, if you tax Houses, why not tax Ships ? 
 
 To tax Houses, and to exempt Ships, seemed to many 
 a paradox. 
 
 The answer to this was accordingly given through the 
 columns of the Financial Reformer, and by many the 
 answer was considered to be satisfactory and sufficient. 
 
 The substance of that answer was as follows : 
 
 WHY NOT TAX SHIPS? 
 
 The principle propounded is this : 
 
 That the profits of trade, and the wages of labor, as 
 such, or industry and skill, should not be taxed. 
 
 That realised property only should be taxed. 
 
 The definition of realised property has already been 
 given. 
 
 That may be an arbitrary definition, but, whether so 
 or not, is immaterial, if it be strictly adhered to. 
 
 That taxes must be raised on some property nobody 
 denies. 
 
 What is property ? 
 
 Generally, " Omnia qua propria sunt" all that are 
 a man's own. 
 
 No one proposes this as the definition of property for 
 taxation. There must, then, be exceptions for exemption. 
 
 What is property in a political sense? 
 
 All that is a man's own, of all that has been at any 
 time won, made, or brought to hand, by man's labor. 
 
 No one proposes this as the definition of property for 
 taxation. 
 
 What, then, is taxable property ? 
 
 This has already been defined. 
 
 The summary of taxable property stands thus: 
 
 All lands, Tenements, Hereditaments, including Man- 
 ors, and all Manoral and Seignoral Rights, and Fisheries, 
 producing Income, and standing timber. All Govern- 
 
WHY NOT TAX SHIPS, ETC? 577 
 
 ment Funds, Shares of Railways, Canals, and all other 
 Joint Stock, and Chartered Companies, and all money 
 out on loan. 
 
 The Exceptions of Exemptions are : 
 All Mines and Minerals, worked or unworked, but not 
 the land under which they lie. 
 
 All Buildings for Manufactories, Warehouses, and 
 Works of every description : but not the Land on which 
 the buildings stand. 
 
 All Railways and Canals ; but not the Land held 
 therewith. 
 
 All Lands and Buildings exclusively devoted to Public 
 Worship, Public Education, and Public Charity. 
 
 All Folk-land, such as road-land, village-greens, parks, 
 and play-grounds for the People. 
 
 All Property of the Crown, and of Foreign Ambassa- 
 dors. 
 
 All yearly crops. 
 All machinery and tools. 
 
 All carriages, carts, and every other description of 
 vehicle. 
 
 All horses, cattle, and every other living creature 
 (except the human) that walks, swims, or flies. 
 
 All Pictures, Statuary, Books, Jewellery, and all 
 other Works of Art, Science, Literature, and Skill, and 
 every other description of personal Estate and Effects, 
 not comprised in the definition of realised property. 
 
 Now, if it be asked : Why tax the property here 
 taxable, and not tax the exceptions of exemption ? 
 
 The answer is : The property here taxable is realised, 
 producing income to the owner by other men's labor, 
 without the owner's own. 
 
 If it be said : So do various other descriptions of 
 property : the reply is : but none of those come under 
 the definition of realised property. 
 Why not tax yearly crops? 
 
 2 P 
 
578 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 The answer is : To tax yearly crops would be to 
 tax the profits of trade not realised, and the wages of 
 labor. 
 
 Why tax realised property, and not tax tools ? 
 
 The answer is : The income of realised property is 
 not from the owner's own labor; that from tools wielded 
 by a man's own hand is so. 
 
 Now, here is a principle which will govern every case 
 that can arise. Let us try it in a few particulars by way 
 of example : 
 
 Why not tax food in store ? 
 
 A tax between the food in store, and the hunger that 
 craves it, is bad. 
 
 Why not tax house-gear ? 
 
 A tax between the land and the utensil is bad. 
 
 W^hy not tax ~uusold goods made or bought for sale ? 
 
 A tax on what is only a loss, as long as it is unsold, 
 is bad. 
 
 Why not tax Ships? 
 
 Ships are only machines for carrying, and a tax on 
 machinery, which saves labor, is bad. 
 
 Why not tax horses ? 
 
 Horses are used as machines to save labor, for pleasure 
 or profit. In either case the tax is bad. 
 
 Why not tax Pictures, Statuary, Books, and Jewels ? 
 
 Works of Art and Science are only for the mind or 
 soul, which is spirit. They are not for the service of 
 the body, and as tax-money is a bodily thing, and the 
 mind a spiritual one, a tax ought not to be demanded of 
 it. A spiritu nihil corporeum exigas. 
 Why are all these bad taxes ? 
 
 Let us answer this by a few examples. 
 Why is a tax on machinery a bad tax ? 
 
 Machinery must always be an expense, and, of itself, 
 never can be a profit. By combination with capital, 
 skill, and labor, it may produce profit, or loss. 
 
WHY NOT TAX SHIPS, ETC. ? 579 
 
 If profit, and if that profit be invested in realised pro- 
 perty, then, as such, it becomes taxable. 
 
 If loss, then there is nothing to pay the tax. 
 
 If the profit be again employed in trade, or not em- 
 ployed at all, or not invested, for the same reason (as 
 already elsewhere shown), it ought not to be taxed. It 
 is accumulating realised property, or new capital, for 
 future taxation, and, in the meantime is distributing 
 profits for the employment of more labor. 
 
 Why is a House realised property, and a Ship not ? 
 
 Because a Ship may be lost ? 
 
 So may a life-hold House : so may money on loan. 
 
 Because it is earning money in trade ? 
 
 Yes, but as property, not as the owner's work, not 
 as his hand- tool. 
 
 Because it is needful to the owner's business ? 
 
 So is the merchant's warehouse, and office, and busi- 
 ness buildings. 
 
 What can be said of the Ship to save it ? 
 
 Of itself it is of no value can produce nothing with- 
 out hands to work it, and skill to guide it. 
 
 In taxing the Ship, you are taxing the capital before 
 the service is performed, and the profits are realised, 
 and you are taxing labor and skill. 
 
 The Ship, or machine, is no more taxable property 
 than is Stock in Trade, or unsold goods. Instead of in- 
 come, it is a positive loss, until the profit be realised. 
 
 Not so of the House, which is fixed to the freehold, 
 and cannot be separated therefrom; and, as soon as 
 completed, is income, (or may be) ascertained, or calcu- 
 lable. 
 
 But the Ship is fixed nowhere, and to nothing, and 
 may be anywhere on the ocean, or at the bottom. 
 
 The Ship without hands to work it, and skill to guide 
 it, as such, is of no value, being incapable of rendering 
 any service. 
 
 2 P 2 
 
580 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 So is Land without the labor of Man. 
 
 But the Ship is the work of man's labor, which Land 
 is not. 
 
 The Ship, as such, is not only of no service unused, 
 but is an actual loss. 
 
 Not so of Land. 
 
 Besides, practically, every tax on the British Ship 
 must be a premium to that amount on the Foreign Ship. 
 
 Such a tax, therefore, is as injurious in practice, as 
 wrong in theory. 
 
 The House is a fixed and immoveable property, of 
 ascertained, or ascertainable, worth, or service. It is 
 realised property. 
 
 This may be said to be an arbitrary definition. Be it 
 so. Taxation is an arbitrary measure. We have to do 
 only with the justice and policy of the tax. We show it 
 to be just and politic. 
 
 The Ship is a moveable and uncertain property, of 
 unascertained, and unascertainable worth, or service. 
 
 It is not realised property, but, like machinery, is 
 used for making realised property for accumulating 
 capital. 
 
 Machinery is only for making more available for man's 
 use the gratuitous powers of nature. 
 
 So is a Ship. 
 
 By imposing a tax, you interpose an obstacle, an ob- 
 struction, a mountain, a mud-rut, and thereby, to that 
 extent, prevent mankind from availing themselves, to 
 the extent they might otherwise have done, of the gra- 
 tuitous powers of nature for the benefit of mankind ; 
 thereby preventing the increase of realised property for 
 future taxation; and thereby diminishing, pro tanto, 
 the wages of labor, and the welfare of the people; the 
 profits of trade, and the wealth of the Nation. 
 
 To tax Ships and exempt Stock in Trade cannot be 
 consistent. 
 
WHY NOT TAX SHIPS, ETC.? 581 
 
 It is quite consistent to exempt both. 
 
 To tax the profits of Ships, and Stock in Trade, when 
 realised (according to the definition) is quite fair, and 
 consistent. In both cases the tax would then be payable. 
 
 In the case of Stock in Trade the property of an 
 individual the profit realised could not be ascertained, 
 or touched, for taxation, until invested in some realised 
 property, as defined ; arbitrarily defined, but still de- 
 fined, and consistently adhered to. 
 
 : The property taxable would then be under the special 
 protection of Statute Law, and the money worth would 
 then be ascertained, or easily ascertainable -, as in the 
 case of investment in Land, or Houses, Government 
 Funds, Joint Stock, or Chartered Companies, all under 
 special protection by Statute Law. The rent, dividend, 
 or income, would represent the money worth, and on 
 that the property would be taxed. 
 
 So in the case of the Ship. 
 
 The profit could not be ascertained, or touched, for 
 taxation until invested in some realised property, as de- 
 fined. 
 
 When brought within that definition the profit would 
 be realised and tangible. Then the profit, or income, 
 would be ascertained, or ascertainable, and on that the 
 tax would be assessed. 
 
 Thus in the case of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam 
 Packet Company, under the protection of a special law, 
 the law would lay hold of the dividends, as realised 
 profits, and would hold back 10 per cent. 
 
 But, on the same under a private holding, or partner- 
 ship, the law would have no hold, no right to ask a 
 question, or to interfere, and would, therefore, take 
 nothing, until it came within the law's specially protect- 
 ing power, and then the law would take for the State's 
 service, the 10 per cent., or other rate, applicable to all 
 descriptions of realised property. 
 
582 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 The same of Railways, and Canals, if in Public Com- 
 panies. But not so if in the hands of private indivi- 
 duals, or private partnerships. 
 
 Here is no tax on the Stock in Trade, on the Ship, 
 on the Machinery, on the Railway, or on the Canal, as 
 such ; but on the realised, ascertained, and tangible in- 
 come, or profit, of the realised property. 
 
 Here is no obstruction to trade, no interference with 
 labor, no artificial obstacle, no mountain, no mud-rut, 
 no premium for perjury, no question, no dispute; or, if 
 any, it can be only a question of amount, to be deter- 
 mined by a Jury. 
 
 The necessary demands of the State are made equally 
 upon all, on whom any such demands can be justly or 
 wisely made, and are answered equally and fairly by all, 
 without fraud, without hardship, without question, with- 
 out dispute. 
 
 Now, let us take another example. 
 
 Why tax a Fishery, and exempt a Coal-mine, or other 
 mine? Both are comprised in the comprehensive ' here- 
 ditament.' 
 
 The one, no more than the other, is property produc- 
 ing Income, without human labor and skill. 
 
 Both may be profitable with labor aud skill, not the 
 owner's own. 
 
 The fish are in the river, which runs through my land. 
 
 The Coal lies under my land. 
 
 The Fishery is let for the net rent of 1000 a year. 
 
 The Colliery is let for a royalty, or fixed rent, which 
 produces the same net income. 
 
 This sum, in each case, is equally the produce of the 
 Estate. 
 
 Why, then, tax the Fishery, and not the Coal-mine ? 
 
 It is difficult to say why. 
 
 The distinction is a nice one. 
 
 But there is a difference. 
 
WHY NOT TAX FISHERIES, ETC. ? 583 
 
 A Fishery is a property, a privilege, a right of fishing. 
 
 That is the property sold, not the fish. 
 
 Fish in a river, until caught, are feres natures, no 
 man's property, therefore, not saleable. 
 
 They, or some of them, may be in the river to-day, 
 and in the sea to-morrow. 
 
 I sell the exclusive right to catch them within certain 
 boundaries. 
 
 It is not the fish which is taxed, for fish is food, and 
 " a tax between the food and the hunger which craves it 
 is bad." 
 
 It is the exclusive right, or privilege, which is taxed : 
 The realised property. 
 
 The money worth of the right, or privilege, or service 
 rendered in exchange for the money payment, or other 
 service, is ascertained by the payment, or worth of the 
 other service, and is free from question. 
 
 The income so produced is as fairly taxable as the in- 
 come of the freehold land. 
 
 The tax is not on the fish, nor on the man who rents 
 the Fishery. 
 
 For that he pays no tax. 
 
 The tax is on the realised property. 
 
 Now, for the Coal-owner who sells his Coal for the rent 
 of ^1000 a year, or for a royalty producing that amount. 
 
 The Coal-owner sells not only the right, or privilege, 
 of getting the coal, but the Coal also, which is his own 
 property. He sells it as he might sell the timber cut 
 from his estate. 
 
 Timber growing is fixed to the freehold, is property 
 realised, of ascertainable value has an exchangeable 
 service, and, as such, is taxable. 
 
 The same cut is severed from the freehold, and is for 
 sale, or the owner's own use. It has paid the tax 
 already as standing timber, and is no more taxable. It 
 then becomes subject to labor and skill. 
 
584 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 To tax the cut timber would, therefore, be to tax the 
 same thing twice, and also to tax the labor and skill 
 employed to make the cut timber of any value as an 
 exchangeable service. 
 
 A tax on labor and skill is bad. 
 
 The Coal-owner who has sold his Coal for a certain 
 rent, or royalty, has thereby fixed the value of the 
 exchangeable service, not the value of the coal, for that 
 is of no value, and never can be of any. He did not 
 plant it, or sow it, or produce it. He simply became 
 possessed of it. It is a natural production, a gratui- 
 tous service of nature, for which nothing has been, or 
 ever can be, given in exchange. It, therefore, has not, 
 and never can have, any value ; for value supposes an 
 exchange of services. 
 
 But, by human industry and skill, this gratuitous 
 service of nature may be made useful, a means of ex- 
 changing service for service. This interchange of ser- 
 vices may be of value. 
 
 But it is the delivery of the Coal which is the service 
 of value, not the Coal, as will be seen if the Coal be sup- 
 posed still underground. The utility is in the Coal, but 
 the value is in the service which brings the utility into 
 action. That can be only by labor and skill. Whilst 
 the Coal remains underground, the gratuitous service, in 
 the utility, has never been realised. The Coal has never 
 been used : the utility in the Coal has never been made 
 use of. 
 
 The Coal has never been worked, has never produced 
 any profit, or income, has never rendered any service. 
 It is not only of no value, but it never has been, and 
 never can be of any. 
 
 It can only be useful, and* that is the gratuitous ser- 
 vice which never has been, and never can be, remune- 
 rated. 
 
 The owner now transfers his right to another, in 
 
WHY NOT TAX COLLIERIES, ETC.? 585 
 
 return for an equivalent service rendered. The gra- 
 tuitous service of nature, which he has become possessed 
 of, he transfers to another, for money. 
 
 He permits the Coal to be worked to be brought 
 into use for the benefit of himself and others to be 
 made useful and profitable to man by his labor and skill. 
 
 He is not to be taxed for that. 
 
 He is not to be taxed for the Coal. 
 
 The Coal is not his. He has sold it. Or, if not, 
 if he work it himself he has not realised his profit. 
 
 The profits of trade, and the wages of labor, must not 
 be taxed. 
 
 If he have received money in exchange for his Coal, 
 money, as such, is not taxable. 
 
 Money is valueless, and useful only as a measure of 
 value of services. 
 
 Coal is valueless, and useful only as a means of 
 service. 
 
 Value can exist only in reference to services ex- 
 changed, which implies services given, and received. 
 
 But Utility, if not a measure of value, is an impor- 
 tant ingredient in the question. 
 
 To a man dying of thirst, with a sack of gold by his 
 side, the sack of gold would be a good exchange for a 
 glass of pure water. 
 
 The gold would not be the measure of value for the 
 water, but for the service. 
 
 The water is of no value. 
 
 The water is useful. 
 
 That is the gratuitous service of nature, which is un- 
 remunerated, no service being rendered in exchange. 
 
 To the man dying of thirst, the water is of no service, 
 unless brought to him. 
 
 In the well it is iiseless to him. 
 
 Brought to him, it saves his life. 
 
 It is brought by an effort. 
 
586 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 In that effort the service is rendered. 
 
 That is the service rendered. 
 
 The sack of gold, given in exchange, is the measure 
 of value of the value of the service rendered. 
 
 Here is the utility of the water, and the value of the 
 service. 
 
 Just so of the diamond. 
 
 A man, walking along the sea- shore, happens to pick 
 up what he supposes to be a small pebble, but which 
 turns out to be a diamond. 
 
 Another man desires to possess it, for its rare size and 
 brilliancy. 
 
 The lucky finder says : " You may have it for 
 10,000." '"Oh," says the other " that is mon- 
 strous for merely taking a walk on the sea-shore !" 
 
 " Well " says the finder " go you and do the same 
 and I will keep my diamond." But the other, con- 
 sidering sees that he may walk for ten years, or his 
 whole life, without the same luck, and so he pays 
 down the 10,000 and takes the diamond. 
 
 Is the diamond, therefore, of value ? 
 
 It is of no more value than any other pebble, and it is 
 of no more use; except as the means of rendering a 
 service, or supposed service, which is the same thing. 
 
 Here is no labor or skill rendered. 
 
 But here is labor and time saved ; ten years, or a 
 life of wandering along the sea-shore in search of such a 
 diamond, with little chance of finding it. 
 
 For that service 10,000 is paid. 
 
 In that point of view it is no bad bargain. 
 
 Here is the exchange of services. 
 
 The diamond and the money are the instruments of 
 the services mutually rendered in exchange. 
 
 If the diamond were given for nothing for no service 
 in exchange there would be no value, no more value 
 than in a common pebble. 
 
WHY NOT TAX MANUFACTURES? 587 
 
 The services to be exchanged are as infinite in number 
 and variety, as in quantity and quality ; nor are these 
 necessarily dependent on material substances. 
 
 Coal while underground is, in quantity and quality, 
 more or less uncertain. 
 
 In this respect, Coal underground is unlike growing 
 Timber. 
 
 Growing Timber can be measured, and its worth 
 can always be ascertained. Whilst growing, the worth 
 may generally be considered as increasing with the 
 growth, and the larger the girth, the greater the annual 
 increase. 
 
 Coal, though part of, or belonging to, the freehold, 
 is, of itself, invested with no freehold right, and, until 
 separated from the freehold, produces nothing to pay a 
 tax. 
 
 It is, therefore, not taxable. 
 
 The distinction, if slight, cannot be said to be a dis- 
 tinction without a difference. 
 
 But is it not something to find a distinction which 
 fairly exempts from taxation the greatest source of 
 wealth to the kingdom ? 
 
 Can it be wise to tax the Collieries, the Mines and 
 Minerals, the Furnaces, the Manufactories, the Work- 
 shops of this greatest manufacturing and commercial 
 kingdom ? 
 
 Can it be sound policy to bring down this country to 
 an equality with other and less highly gifted countries, 
 by raising artificial impediments and obstructions to 
 the realising of our pre-eminently great natural re- 
 sources ? 
 
 Does he not do good service who shows that it can 
 never be sound in theory, or wise in practice, to impose 
 such a system of taxation as unavoidably tends to such 
 a result ? 
 
 Who is injured by any of these exemptions ? 
 
588 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 If any one can show the smallest injury, or injustice, 
 then he may prove the theory wrong, for nothing that 
 is practically wrong, can be theoretically right. 
 
 Let him try. 
 
 It is needless to carry the reasoning further. 
 
 It is needless, for any one who has followed thus far, 
 to show that Railways and Canals should not be taxed, 
 as such. 
 
 That has been already shown by arguments, illustrated 
 by facts, and confirmed by figures. 
 
 It has been shown that all such taxes defeat their 
 object, make the mud and ruts, to remove, or over- 
 come, which so vast a capital has been expended. 
 
 The land occupied by the Railway, or Canal, is the 
 only thing to be touched by the tax. 
 
 The property realised by the Railway, or Canal, (if 
 belonging to a Joint Stock, or Chartered Company,) is 
 another thing. That, (coming within the definition) 
 is fairly taxable, a deduction of 10 per cent, from the 
 dividends, before payment to the shareholders. 
 
 As already shown, there is no hardship in that, no 
 inequality, no injustice. 
 
 Now, what is the aim and object of all this, but to 
 bring into more complete operation that ' Economic 
 Harmony' so admirably stated by ' Bastiat/ whose im- 
 mortal Works, when more known, and better under- 
 stood, will render his name illustrious for his services to 
 mankind ? 
 
 It will then be seen, as he has said : that, " By labor 
 the action of man is combined with the action of nature. 
 Utility results from that co-operation. Each man re- 
 ceives a share of the general utility, proportioned to the 
 value he has created ; that is to say, to the services 
 he has rendered ; in other words, to the utility he has 
 himself produced." 
 
 The ' Practical Scheme' here propounded proceeds on 
 
WHY NOT TAX MANUFACTURES? 589 
 
 this principle : to bring into more complete harmony 
 and combination the labor of man, with the action of 
 nature to make the free labor of man to co-operate 
 with the gratuitous services of nature to make the labor 
 of man free, by giving him the wages of labor free of 
 taxation to make this co-operation more complete, by 
 setting free of taxation those gratuitous services of nature 
 which were intended to be free gifts to all mankind, 
 such as air, light, water, gravitation, elasticity, caloric, 
 electricity to make all these mingle and co-operate 
 more and more with our industry. 
 
 As Bastiat says : " These are substituted for human 
 labor. They do for us gratuitously, what labor does 
 only for an onerous consideration. They annihilate 
 value without diminishing our enjoyment. To speak in 
 common language, what cost us a hundred francs, costs 
 us only ten what required ten days' labor, now demands 
 only one. The whole value, thus annihilated, has passed 
 from the domain of property, to that of community. A 
 considerable proportion of human efforts has been set 
 free, and placed at our disposal for other enterprises, so 
 that with equal labor, equal services, equal value, man- 
 kind have enlarged prodigiously the circle of their enjoy- 
 ments." 
 
 When will Governments and People understand the 
 important truth contained in these few words ? 
 
 When the People understand it, but not before, 
 they will make Governments not only understand it, 
 but also set to work in earnest to realise it, for the 
 blessing of all Nations and People. 
 
 But misery will still remain, though goods become 
 cheap. 
 
 Vice and folly, unrestrained, will still do their work 
 if not in the same way, perhaps, even more hide- 
 ously. 
 
590 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 WHAT IS VALUE? 
 
 _ The foregoing views and reasoning, so opposed to 
 long established habits,- have been treated, by some, as 
 whimsical, and paradoxical ; and the distinctions have 
 been set down as merely fanciful. 
 
 But we believe the principle to be so sound, and the 
 deductions so truly drawn, and the question to be of 
 such high importance, as to deserve some further consi- 
 deration. Indeed, it may be admitted, without reserve, 
 that this principle is the basis of the whole Scheme 
 here presented, and that it is essential for a correct 
 understanding of it, that the distinction between 
 UTILITY and VALUE should be clearly seen and acknow- 
 ledged. 
 
 Without a clear perception of the true meaning of 
 ' VALUE/ the distinction between a right to work coal, 
 and a right to catch fish, must appear to be a distinction 
 without a difference, for the purpose of subjecting the 
 one to taxation, and of exempting the other, must be 
 open to ridicule as a whimsical paradox. But to intro- 
 duce paradoxes, or ' ingenious contrivances/ into these 
 pages, is very far from the intention. 
 
 To many it will appear nothing less than a word- 
 quibble, nothing short of absurdity, to say that, 
 Gold is of no value. 
 
 But when their misapprehension on that ground is 
 removed, with it also may be removed many other mis- 
 apprehensions, and what may now appear to be a 
 gross absurdity, may then be seen to be a very simple 
 truth. 
 
 The great fundamental error of all our Economists, 
 and which has involved them in endless and bewildering 
 contradictions, has been so clearly exposed by Bastiat, 
 that it will be sufficient only to allude to it here, for the 
 
WHAT IS VALUE ? 591 
 
 purpose of showing how it applies to the subject of 
 Taxation. 
 
 The error arises from confounding VALUE with UTI- 
 LITY. 
 
 There is not, and never can be, any value (in the true 
 meaning of the word) in anything, the production of 
 nature. There is only utility. 
 
 Value supposes something rendered, and something 
 received in exchange, as an accepted equivalent; or, a 
 service performed in exchange for another service - 
 an interchange of services, or supposed services, for 
 whether real services, or not, is immaterial, if accepted 
 as such. 
 
 The service is of value, arid the value is represented 
 in many ways. Sometimes by a piece of gold, or silver, 
 or copper, or some other substance, sometimes by 
 labor, or skill. 
 
 - Nothing but service can constitute value, and value 
 implies, services exchanged. 
 
 There is no value in gold, as would be more clearly 
 seen, if there were no one to receive it in exchange for 
 services. 
 
 Now, all the services rendered by Nature are 
 gratuitous, and must, therefore, be put out of the 
 question. 
 
 We cannot interchange services with the Almighty. 
 We have nothing to give in exchange. When we break 
 bread we give thanks, nothing more. This is no service 
 in return, but only an humble acknowledgment. 
 
 " The Earth, and the fulness thereof" all the Ele- 
 ments all creation are the gratuitous services to man- 
 kind, and, therefore, cannot constitute value, because it 
 is essential for value that services should be exchanged. 
 Here can be no exchange. 
 
 Value, then, can exist only between man and man ; 
 and can be only the measure of services exchanged. 
 
592 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 These services must all be comprised in, and expressed 
 by, one word, efforts. This is a better word than 
 labor, because efforts comprise all, which labor does 
 not. 
 
 This distinction between VALUE and UTILITY must 
 be ever preserved in the mind. This is not a play upon 
 words, which would be contemptible. It is the essence 
 of the whole question under consideration. 
 
 Now, let us apply this distinction to the present 
 question. 
 
 Property is what belongs to a man. 
 
 If he hold, as his own, a thing (a ship) brought to 
 hand by the efforts of man, it is property of value. 
 
 Now, the aim of Government should be to throw the 
 burden of taxation, as much as possible, on that descrip- 
 tion of property which least interferes with efforts, or 
 services. That description of property is, all such pro- 
 perty as produces income to the owner without any 
 effort of his own : as a thousand pounds with which a 
 lawyer may have bought a share in a Steam Packet 
 Company. 
 
 What is realised Property ? 
 
 What may have been collected together by the 
 owner's own efforts. 
 
 He may think it hard that any part of it should be 
 taken away from him. 
 
 But if he be now enjoying the income from it, with- 
 out any further effort of his own, he must submit. He 
 is rendering a service to the State, in return for the ser- 
 vice rendered by the State to him. There can be no 
 hardship in this, if more be not taken than is fairly 
 wanted and applied : at any rate, the hardship if any 
 is the same to all. 
 
 But all Governments seem to have in view an object 
 directly the opposite to this. 
 
 They throw the burden of taxation on that descrip- 
 
WHAT IS VALUE? 593 
 
 tion of property which interferes, in the utmost possible 
 degree, with the interchange of services. 
 
 In so doing, they cause great loss and misery to indi- 
 viduals, and great loss to the State. 
 
 They impose the taxes, or by far the greater part of 
 them, so as to fall upon, and thereby greatly to dimi- 
 nish, the efforts which are the foundation of value, and 
 the wealth of nations. 
 
 They thereby raise obstacles to the accumulation 
 of property, and, by impeding, diminish the very 
 sources of wealth ; thereby causing an amount of 
 human misery and guilt, beyond human calculation, or 
 remedy. 
 
 They step in between the Creator, and His helpless 
 creatures, and deprive them of those gratuitous services 
 which He has rendered and intended for the enjoyment 
 equally of all. 
 
 They impose the burdens of the State on His gifts, 
 and thereby prevent that complete co-operation which 
 was intended between human beings, for their mutual 
 benefit. 
 
 They disturb the Economic Harmony of Nature. 
 
 By mistaking Utility for Value, and Value for Utility, 
 they confound and diminish both. 
 
 By embarrassing and impeding the co-operation of 
 the gratuitous services of Nature with human efforts, 
 they restrict and diminish both. 
 
 " Value can never exist as an attribute of matter/' 
 So truly said Bastiat. 
 
 It cannot be denied that matter and value are often 
 found separated. But, if value reside in matter, then, 
 where there is no matter, there can be no value. 
 
 If in the production of wealth, the action of nature be 
 combined with the action of man, the first gratuitous 
 and common in its own nature remains gratuitous and 
 common in all our transactions ; the second alone re- 
 
 2Q 
 
594 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 presents services, value ; the action of man alone is re- 
 munerated. 
 
 That alone is the foundation, explanation, and justifi- 
 cation, of Property. 
 
 Whatever is of the action of man, is Property. 
 
 A Ship, as such, is of the action of man. 
 
 Therefore, a Ship, as such, is of value. 
 
 Therefore, relatively to each other, men are proprietors 
 only of the value of things. 
 
 In transferring products from hand to hand, what 
 they stipulate for exclusively is, value ; that is to say, 
 reciprocal services ; all the qualities, properties, and 
 articles which these products derive from nature, being 
 obtained by them into the bargain. 
 
 This is the true meaning of Community, the admirable 
 phenomenon, the most touching dispensation of Provi- 
 dence to the creature the phenomenon of progressive 
 community. 
 
 Wealth, taking the word in its general acceptation, 
 results from the combination of two agencies the ac- 
 tion of nature, and the action of man. 
 
 The first is gratuitous, and common, by the destination 
 of Providence, and never loses that character. 
 
 The second alone is provided with value, and con- 
 sequently, appropriated. 
 
 With the development of intelligence, and the pro- 
 gress of civilisation, the one takes a greater and greater 
 part, the other a less and less part, in the realisation of 
 such given utility. 
 
 Hence it follows that, the domain of the GRATUITOUS, 
 and the COMMON, is continually expanding among men, 
 relatively to the domain of VALUE and PROPERTY. 
 
 This is a consoling and suggestive view of the subject, 
 entirely hidden from the eye of science, so long as we 
 continue to attribute value to the co-operation of Nature. 
 
 Men of all religions thank God for His benefits. The 
 
WHAT IS VALUE ? 595 
 
 father of a family blesses the bread which he breaks 
 and distributes to his children; a touching custom that 
 reason would not justify, were the liberality of Provi- 
 dence other than gratuitous. 
 
 For the discovery of these first principles we are in- 
 debted to Bastiat. 
 
 How little we have understood them, or do now 
 understand or appreciate them, is lamentably evident in 
 our present system of Taxation. 
 
 We seek by every means in our power, to make ' the 
 liberality of Providence other than gratuitous.' 
 
 We have been, at one time or another, taxing all the 
 gratuitous services which He has rendered to us in the 
 various and bountiful productions of Nature, except 
 air many of these we still continue to tax. 
 
 We select for heaviest taxation those which are most 
 needful for the poor, thereby making the tax most op- 
 pressive on those who are least able to bear it. 
 
 We justify this on the ground of necessity ; a good 
 ground, if true. 
 
 But, Is it true? 
 
 As already shown, It is not true. 
 
 There never can be a necessity for us to baffle the 
 designs of Providence. 
 
 And Can the creature ever baffle the designs of the 
 Creator ? 
 
 We can make the attempt, and that we do in many 
 ways, but never without bringing down misery remedi- 
 less misery and suffering upon ourselves and others. 
 
 When we see clearly, in the laws of nature, the pro- 
 visions of a merciful Providence for our welfare and 
 comfort, we, as rational human beings, shall cease to 
 frame our laws with a view to counteract those beneficent 
 designs. 
 
 We shall think it wiser and better to make our laws, 
 as far as we can, in concurrence with the Divine 
 
596 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 to declare that the gratuitous services of nature shall be 
 free to all. 
 
 We shall see that the rights of property will thereby 
 be in no way infringed. 
 
 We shall see the folly of attempting to benefit the 
 few, by inflicting injury on the many. 
 
 We shall distinguish between Utility, and Value. 
 
 We shall take from Value when realised, and ascer"- 
 tained, and leave Utility free and undiminished. 
 
 Thus, for example : 
 
 Why tax the Ship? the Utility, and Value the utility 
 (the Ship) an abstract, and the value (the Ship) a con- 
 crete of man's efforts, or services, and, therefore of value. 
 
 Why tax the utility ? 
 
 Why tax the efforts, or services, before the value has 
 been ascertained ? 
 
 Why not tax the value, when ascertained, by the 
 yearly profits when realised ? 
 
 Why tax machinery, coals, crops, etc. ? 
 
 Why not tax the value, when ascertained, by the 
 yearly profits, when realised? 
 
 W T hy tax utility, or the gratuitous services of nature ? 
 
 Why tax man's efforts, or services ? 
 
 Why not wait, and tax the value, when ascertained, 
 by the profits, when realised ? 
 
 Then the value is ascertained without question or dis- 
 pute, without fraud or perjury. 
 
 All the utilities, and services, are producing value. 
 
 Diminish these, or any of them, by limitation or ob- 
 struction, by impositions or restrictions, and you an- 
 nihilate, or prevent, or diminish,^value. 
 
 Tax the Ship, and you so far limit labor, diminish 
 trade, and annihilate commerce. 
 
 Tax machinery, coal, crops, etc., and the tendency is, 
 to starve the laborer, the artisan, the manufacturer, the 
 merchant, the agriculturist to undermine all the pro- 
 
WHAT IS VALUE f 
 
 097 
 
 perty to stop, or impede, all the sources of wealth, 
 in the kingdom. You have only to lay on the tax 
 heavily enough. The amount of the tax cannot affect 
 the principle. 
 
 It is through such injustice as this that such writers 
 as Proudhon have found favor when, in their folly, they 
 have exclaimed : " La propriete c'est le vol ! " veri- 
 fying the old proverb: " One fool makes many." 
 
 But the worst folly is that which makes the greatest 
 number of fools ; and that is the gigantic folly of all 
 civilised Governments of the world ! 
 
 As Adam Smith made value reside in matter, he 
 could not conceive capital as existing otherwise than in 
 an accumulation of material objects. 
 
 How, then, as Bastiat asks, can we attribute value 
 to services not susceptible of being accumulated, or 
 converted into capital ? 
 
 Among the different descriptions of capital, we give 
 the first place to tools, machines, instruments of labor. 
 
 They serve to make material forces co-operate in the 
 work of production ; and, attributing to these forces 
 the faculty of creating value, people were led to imagine 
 that instruments of labor, as such, were endowed with 
 the same faculty, independently of any human services. 
 
 Thus, the spade, the plough, the steam-engine, were 
 supposed to co-operate simultaneously with natural 
 agents, and human forces, in creating not only utility 
 but value also. Who, then, is to receive that portion of 
 value which is independent of all human services ? 
 
 The error of Proudhon, viewed scientifically, has its 
 root in the prior error of Adam Smith. Capital, like 
 natural agents, considered in itself, with reference to its 
 own proper action, creates utility, but never creates 
 value. The latter is essentially the fruit of a legitimate 
 service. In the social order, capital is not an accumu- 
 lation of material objects, depending on material dura- 
 
598 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 bility, but an accumulation of values, that is to say, 
 of services, and, in the business of exchange, there is 
 nothing but a mutuality of services. 
 
 So Adam Smith and his disciples have assigned the 
 principal value to labor under the condition of mate- 
 riality. 
 
 Value must have reference to effort, a word more 
 comprehensive, and therefore, preferable to labor. 
 
 But value can spring only from efforts exchanged 
 from reciprocal services ; because value is not a thing 
 having independent existence, but a relation. 
 
 The word, service, implies necessarily, the idea of 
 transmission, for no service can be rendered which is 
 not received. It implies also the idea of effort, without 
 taking for granted that the value is proportionate. 
 
 To say that, value resides in labor, induces us to 
 suppose that value and labor are proportional, and 
 services are reciprocal measures of each other. 
 
 This is contrary to fact, and a definition, which is 
 contrary to fact, must be defective. 
 
 The value may be estimated as much by the labor 
 saved, as by the labor performed. 
 
 Ships, carriages, steam-engines, and other machines, 
 the instruments of labor, are, like the soil, producers 
 of utility. If that utility have value, it is paid for. The 
 word, value, implies right to payment. But to whom is 
 the payment made? To the proprietor of the machine, 
 without doubt. Is it for a personal service? Then, say 
 at once, that the value is in the service. But, if you say 
 that it is necessary to make a payment first for the ser- 
 vice, and a second payment for the utility produced by 
 the machine, independently of the human action which 
 has been already recompensed, then, as Bastiat asks, 
 to whom does this second payment go, and how has 
 the man, who has already been remunerated for all his 
 services, a right to demand anything more ? 
 
WHAT IS VALUE ? 599 
 
 The truth is, that the utility , which is produced by 
 nature, is gratuitous, and, therefore, common, like that 
 produced by the instruments of labor. 
 
 It is gratuitous, and common, on the condition that we 
 take the trouble that we render the service of appro- 
 priating it ; or, if we give that trouble to, or, demand 
 that service from, another, that we cede to him in re- 
 turn an equivalent service. 
 
 Thus, it will be seen, as Bastiat says, utility is com- 
 plex, one part we owe to the action of nature, another 
 to the action of man. With reference to a given result, 
 the more nature has done, the less remains for human 
 action to do. 
 
 The co-operation of nature is essentially gratuitous 
 the co-operation of man, whether intellectual, or mus- 
 cular, exchanged or not, collective or solitary, is 
 essentially onerous, as the word, effort, implies. 
 
 As what is gratuitous cannot possess value, since the 
 idea of value implies onerous acquisition, it follows that 
 the notion of value would be erroneously conceived, if 
 we were to extend it, in whole, or in part, to the gifts or 
 to the co-operation of nature, instead of restricting it 
 exclusively to human co-operation. 
 
 We are told that utility is the foundation of value, 
 and as utility is inherent in the air, we are led to think 
 that it is the same in regard to value. Here is an evi- 
 dent confusion of ideas. The value springs exclusively 
 from the service rendered. 
 
 If, in laying down the principle, that utility is the 
 foundation of value, the meaning be that, the service has 
 value because it is useful to him who receives it, and 
 pays for it, this is only a truism implied in the word, 
 service. 
 
 But we must not confound the utility of the air, with 
 the utility of the service. These are two utilities dis- 
 tinct from each other, different in nature, different in 
 
COO OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 kind, which bear no proportion to one another, and 
 have no necessary relation. 
 
 There are circumstances in which, with very slight 
 exertion, by rendering a very small service, or saving 
 very little trouble, I may bring within reach of another 
 an article of very great intrinsic utility. As in the case 
 before mentioned, of the glass of water brought to the 
 man dying of thirst. Or, in the case of the diving-bell, 
 which furnishes air to the diver. 
 
 We must have a point of comparison, and that can 
 only be in the service rendered in return. The reciprocal 
 demands will depend on the relative situations, on the 
 intensity of the desires, on the greater or less need, and 
 on a multitude of circumstances which demonstrate that 
 the value is in the service, since it increases with the 
 service. 
 
 It is in the services thus compared, that value resides, 
 and not at all in natural utility. The exertion may be 
 more or less great ; that makes a difference in the 
 value, not in the utility. 
 
 All this is so admirably summed up by Bastiat, that 
 it is here given in his own words : 
 
 " Let us accustom ourselves to distinguish utility from 
 value. Without this there can be no Economic Science. 
 I give utterance to no paradox when I affirm that utility 
 and value, so far from being identical, or even similar, 
 are ideas opposed to one another. 
 
 " Want, effort, satisfaction : here we have man re- 
 garded in an Economic point of view. The relation of 
 utility is with want, and satisfaction. The relation of 
 value is with effort. 
 
 " Utility is the good, which puts an end to the want 
 by the satisfaction. 
 
 "Value is the evil, for it springs from the obstacle 
 which is interposed between the want and the satisfac- 
 tion. But for these obstacles, there would have been no 
 
WHAT IS VALUE ? 601 
 
 effort either to make, or to exchange ; utility would be 
 infinite, gratuitous and common, without condition, 
 and the notion of value would never have entered into 
 the world. 
 
 " In consequence of these obstacles, utility is gratui- 
 tous only on condition of efforts exchanged, which, when 
 compared with each other, give rise to value. The more 
 these obstacles give way before the liberality of nature, 
 and the progress of science, the more does utility ap- 
 proximate to the state of being absolutely common and 
 gratuitous, for the onerous condition, and consequently 
 the value, diminish as the obstacles diminish. 
 
 "All that serves us is useful; and, in this respect, it 
 is extremely doubtful whether there be anything in the 
 universe (whether in the shape of forces or materials,) 
 which is not useful to man." 
 
 It would exceed the intended limits of this Work to 
 apply these great truths in detail to the subject imme- 
 diately under consideration. Our readers must, there- 
 fore, make the application for themselves. They will 
 easily see how these truths confirm the views here set 
 forth on the subject of Taxation. 
 
 These views were formed and made public by the 
 "Writer of these pages, many years before he had ever 
 heard the name of Bastiat ; but the value of the service 
 which he has conferred upon mankind, or, to express it 
 more correctly, the utility of his gratuitous service to 
 mankind, will render his name illustrious to all 
 posterity. 
 
 We have here referred to his discoveries in Economic 
 Science not because we consider them necessary for 
 elucidating our views, for these are so simple as to 
 require only to be plainly stated. We have referred 
 to the truths so ably advanced by Bastiat, because these 
 are in perfect accordance with, and confirm our views 
 because we would not ask any one to take and adopt 
 
602 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 them on our authority alone because we would have 
 them taken and adopted on the highest authority and 
 because we would have those who are not yet acquaint ed, 
 make themselves acquainted, with the writings of Bas- 
 tiat, that they may see for themselves that the views 
 which we have advocated are founded on the truths 
 which he has so clearly brought into the pure light, 
 and also see that, the acknowledgment of the one, is the 
 admission of the other. 
 
 Many Financial Reformers think this a good answer 
 to the question : 
 
 " What Is Value ? 
 
 And to those who still ask : 
 
 " Why Not Tax Ships ?" 
 
 We can only answer " We cannot tell." 
 
 But many Financial Reformers, who think these are 
 good answers, say that it is premature, and useless to 
 advocate these views, until we have obtained Reform in 
 Parliament. 
 
 We do not agree with that opinion, and we will meet 
 that question under its own proper head. 
 
 REFORM. 
 
 However much it is to be desired that the representa- 
 tion of the People in Parliament should be established 
 on a broader basis, and that the purity of Elections 
 should be preserved by means more efficient than the 
 present ; still, it must, in truth, be admitted that, the 
 popular cry for this reform is neither so loud, nor so 
 well sustained, by the People at large, as might have 
 been expected, considering the importance of the sub- 
 ject, and the necessity of the case. 
 
 This may be accounted for in two very different 
 ways : Either the People may be so well contented 
 
REFORM. 603 
 
 with their present position as to desire no change ; or, 
 they may be so dissatisfied, and so hopeless of any 
 change for the better, as to be indifferent to all attempts 
 at change. 
 
 In the former case, there can be no very urgent 
 necessity for any change ; in the latter, the necessity 
 for some change is most urgent. 
 
 If the People cannot see any certain improvement in 
 their condition from Reform in Parliament, it is not 
 much to be wondered at if they trouble themselves very 
 little about it. 
 
 If those who are so eager for Reform in Parliament 
 would have the concurrence of the People, and their 
 active support, it is only reasonable that the People 
 should know beforehand what share they are to have in 
 the benefits from the change. 
 
 To expect the People, who are struggling for their 
 subsistence, to take a very active part in another hard 
 struggle, without telling them what they are to get by 
 it if they succeed, is not quite reasonable. 
 
 If they be told that they are to get the purchasing 
 power of their wages raised 50 per cent. that for the 
 same money they will have more than double the 
 quantity of all the necessaries and comforts of life ; 
 and further, that the money rate of wages will be 
 raised throughout the country; that they will get 2| 
 pounds of Tea where they now get one pound 3J 
 pounds of Sugar, where they now get one pound 
 6 pounds of tobacco, where they now get one pound 
 a quart of good home-brewed Beer, where they now 
 get half a pint of bad brewer's beer a bottle of light 
 wholesome Wine, where they now get a wine- glass of a 
 heady and unwholesome mixture called Wine pure 
 Spirituous liquors, instead of spirits of wine diluted 
 with poisonous compounds that they will get all the 
 necessaries, many of the comforts, and some of the 
 
6Q4 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 luxuries of life, in exchange for their labour and skill 
 if they be told all this, and if they believe it possible, 
 can any one doubt the spirit and determination with 
 which they would enter into such a struggle ? 
 
 The fact is, as well summed up by Mr. Bright, in 
 the few but expressive words of his Letter of the 10th 
 October, 1859, addressed to an Association of small 
 householders in Birmingham : " There is something 
 essentially mean, and singularly cruel, in the manner in 
 which the taxation of this country has been, and is still, 
 levied. Our rich class is the richest in Europe ; the 
 administration of the country is in its hands, and a 
 greater proportion of the heaviest taxation in the world 
 is thrown upon the class possessing no property but its 
 labor and its wages, than is the case in any other 
 country." 
 
 This is the true state of the case, and, unless it be for 
 the removal of this evil, it is difficult to convince the 
 People that they have any immediate interest in the 
 question of a Reform in. Parliament. It must be a 
 matter of the utmost indifference to them which political 
 party is in power, if both parties be seeking power only 
 for their own party purposes. 
 
 It is all very well to talk of extension of the franchise, 
 and purity of election, and these are very good aims ; 
 but these are only means to an end ; and, what is the 
 end ? The real question is in the Taxation of the 
 Country. This is a question affording the broadest base 
 for a great public movement, involving a great public 
 revolution, for a great public good. For this, when 
 understood, a favorable expression of public opinion 
 may be expected. Here is nothing to set class against 
 class, but quite the contrary. The object is, to unite 
 all classes in one common interest, for their common 
 good. Their interests are now opposed, being brought 
 into opposition by unjust and impolitic measures, which 
 
REFORM. 605 
 
 lay the heaviest share of the burden of taxation on those 
 who are least able to bear it. It is proposed to place 
 the burden equally on all. 
 
 If the question be kept on this broad and distinct 
 basis, there is every reason to expect that, in the end, 
 reason and justice will prevail. 
 
 When the People understand the actual position of 
 things the evils, and the remedy they will make the 
 case their own. 
 
 They will take the remedy, which is, and always must 
 be, in their power. 
 
 They will proclaim free labor, and free trade, and 
 they will act up to that principle, by insisting that, it 
 be carried out in practice. They will declare all labor, 
 all trades, all professions, to be part of the stock in 
 trade of the country, and, as such, free from all taxes. 
 
 They will abolish all indirect taxes, and substitute 
 one sufficient direct tax on all properly taxable property, 
 that is, when realised. 
 
 This is all that need be done, and when this is done, 
 very few will concern themselves about Reform in Par- 
 liament, which, in truth, is but a means to this end. 
 Whether this end will ever be accomplished without 
 this means, is another and very doubtful question. 
 
 The necessary revenue of the State being taken 
 directly and wholly from the realised property of the 
 country, all other descriptions of property, and all labor 
 and skill, would be free from any Government tax, or 
 interference. 
 
 The freedom of labor and trade would then be a rea- 
 lised fact, instead of being, as it now is, a pernicious 
 deception. 
 
 Our labor and trade being free, the demand for our 
 manufactures, both for home and foreign consumption, 
 would then increase so far beyond all past experience as 
 to be beyond all present calculation. 
 
606 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 The demand for labor would then be in proportion to 
 that increase, and the rate of wages would increase in 
 proportion to the demand. 
 
 The money value, or purchasing power, of wages 
 would be raised to three times the present amount 
 i.e. the common laborer, with his half-crown a day, 
 and the skilled workman, with his five shillings a day, 
 would then be able to purchase three times more of the 
 necessaries, the comforts, and the luxuries, of life, than 
 they can now. 
 
 Nor could the rate of wages be thereby reduced, be- 
 cause (as already shown,) the rate of wages is not regulated 
 by the price of provisions, but by the demand for labor. 
 
 The heaviest of the Local Rates the Poor Rate as 
 before shown would be diminished in proportion to 
 the diminution of Pauperism throughout the country. 
 The claimants on the Poor Rate would then be, the aged 
 and infirm Poor, and the deserted and orphan children. 
 
 The heaviest of the County Rates would then be 
 diminished in proportion to the diminution of misery 
 and crime in town and country. 
 
 The moral consequences of this improvement (which 
 would far outweigh the pecuniary) would be carried 
 into every house and cottage in the kingdom, to the 
 improvement it is to be hoped of every inmate. 
 
 Concurrent with the worldly prosperity of all classes 
 we may hope would be the moral improvement in all 
 classes. 
 
 The tendency must be, and the effect we may 
 hope would be, to bring all classes more closely 
 together, and to hold them together by the common 
 bond of mutual interest. 
 
 The poor will always be with us, but they need not 
 always be a great burden upon us. 
 
 The prosperity of a Nation consists in the united 
 power of its People. 
 
REFORM. 607 
 
 Union constitutes strength. 
 
 In this strength is safety. 
 
 The rights of the People acknowledged and respected, 
 the People would thea honor and respect the Aristo- 
 cracy, as the Golden Pillar of the State, and the 
 Monarchy would be upheld with honor by a united 
 and devoted People, the best and only safe defence. 
 
 With a suffering and discontented People, there can 
 be no safety for the Monarch or the State. 
 
 There can be no security for the Ship which depends 
 on its anchor, if the cable, which holds it in the storm, 
 has a flaw in one link. 
 
 The weakest part of the chain is the strength of the 
 whole. 
 
 The doctrine of peace has been proclaimed, but has 
 never yet been practised. 
 
 No Peace Congress will ever avail, until mankind 
 recognise in their hearts, and acknowledge in their 
 dealings, the bond of mutual interest. 
 
 To deal freely, kindly, and honestly, with one 
 another, would be a great step towards fulfilment of 
 the Divine command, " Love one another." 
 
 It may well be doubted whether glass beads, knives, 
 and hatchets, have not done more to introduce this 
 Christian doctrine among the savage heathen, than all 
 the labors of the missionaries. 
 
 The ground must be prepared before the seed can be 
 well sown. 
 
 The plough must first turn up the soil to fertilise it, 
 and prepare it for the seed. 
 
 Like unto this is the preparation of the human mind, 
 for its cultivation. 
 
 The arts of civilisation cannot be planted to grow, 
 without preparation. 
 
 If you would have Peace, you must prepare with 
 Free Labor, and Free Trade. 
 
G08 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 We have seen what Free Labor means. 
 
 Now, What does Free Trade mean ? 
 
 This shall be shown under its own head. 
 
 [This is reprinted from the former Edition, before the 
 last Reform, and would have been omitted here, but for 
 Mr. Bright's Letter referred to, which is too good to be 
 left out.] 
 
 WHAT IS FREE TRADE? 
 
 A radical antagonism exists between buyer and seller. 
 The one desires that the article on sale should be rare 
 and at a high price ; the other desires abundance and a 
 low price. 
 
 The law, which ought, at least, to be neuter, takes 
 part with the seller against the buyer with the pro- 
 ducer against the consumer or, for the dear against 
 the cheap market for scarcity against abundance. 
 
 The law, if not intentionally, at least logically, pro- 
 ceeds on this assumption : A nation is rich when it 
 wants everything. For, they say ; It is the producer 
 that must be favored, in securing for him a good 
 market for his produce. For that the price must be 
 raised : to raise the price the supply must be restricted : 
 to restrict the supply is to create the want. 
 
 Now, suppose that, at the present time, an exact 
 inventory were taken, not in value, but in weight, 
 measure, volume, quantity, of all the articles existing in 
 the several nations of civilised Europe and America, 
 necessary to satisfy the wants and the taste of the 
 inhabitants, such as corn, wine, viands, fabrics, linen, 
 wool, silk, iron, coal, and other minerals, native and 
 colonial, productions, manufactures, etc. 
 
 Suppose all obstacles to the introduction of foreign 
 products into these countries suddenly removed. And, 
 to appreciate the result of this change, suppose another 
 inventory to be taken at the end of six months afterwards. 
 
WHAT IS FREE TRADE ? 609 
 
 Is it not true that, in all these countries there would 
 be found to be a great increase of many of these neces- 
 sary articles in the second inventory? So true it is 
 that all protection tariffs have no other end or object 
 than to hinder the mutual exchange between nations of 
 these necessary articles, to limit the supply of them 
 to prevent cheapness and plenty. 
 
 Now, are the people better fed under the dominion of 
 these laws because there is less bread, less food, less tea 
 and sugar, and less of other necessaries of life in the 
 country? Are they better clothed because there is 
 less cloth, less linen, woollen, and silken fabrics? Are 
 they better warmed because there is less coal ? Are 
 they better helped in their labours because there is less 
 iron, tin, copper ? because there is less supply of tools 
 and machinery ? 
 
 But, says the Protectionist ; the foreigner if he in- 
 undate us with his products, will carry away our money. 
 
 What if he do ? 
 
 Man is not fed with money ; he is not clothed with 
 gold, nor warmed with silver. What matter, whether 
 there be more or less of money in the country, if there 
 be more bread in the cupboard, more meat in the larder, 
 more linen in the press, and more coal and wood in the 
 cellar ? 
 
 Thus, the advocate of restrictive laws is reduced to 
 this dilemma : Either he admits that he causes a want 
 of the most necessary things of life ; or, he does not 
 admit it. If he admit it, that is an avowal that he com- 
 mits the greatest evil which it is possible for him to 
 commit against the people. If he do not admit it, then 
 he denies that he has limited the supply, raised the price, 
 aad, consequently, he denies that he has favored the 
 home producer. He is, therefore, unfortunate or ineffi- 
 cient. He cannot be useful. 
 
 Now, what was the state of the British Parliament 
 
 2 R 
 
610 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 when the restrictive, or protective, system was in full- 
 force in this country ? One branch was entirely composed, 
 as it still is, of agriculturists. The other principally of 
 agriculturists, and their nominees; as well as great manu- 
 facturers, great merchants, great ship-owners, and great 
 producers of all sorts. It was entirely a Parliament of 
 Sellers, a vast, close, and corrupt combination. The 
 great body of the people, i.e. the consumers, had scarcely 
 any influence whatever in the House of Commons. The 
 sellers had a complete monopoly of law-making, and 
 their legislation was exactly what might have been ex- 
 pected. All the producers in turn were permitted, for 
 their own benefit, to plunder the public. It was nothing 
 less than a gigantic conspiracy of all the sellers, against 
 all the buyers. 
 
 Happily, this state of things was, in a great measure 
 abolished at last in this country. But not until the 
 buyers had become so powerful and clamorous that their 
 just demands could be no longer safely disregarded ; 
 and then, the change of system, originated and forced 
 into the public conviction by Richard Cobden, was 
 partially carried into effect by Sir Robert Peel, who, 
 through his long previous political career, had been the 
 prime mover and supporter of the old iniquitous system. 
 But, with the other nations of Europe, where the liberty 
 to misgovern is the principal liberty permitted, this old 
 iniquitous system still prevails. 
 
 As Bastiat, in his " Sophismes Economiques" has 
 said : 
 
 Mankind have an immoderate love of the enjoyments, 
 the influence, the consideration, the power in a word, 
 of riches. At the same time they are impelled by an 
 immense inclination to procure these at the expense of 
 others. But those others, which are the public, have 
 no less great inclination to guard what they have ac- 
 quired, provided they can do it, and they know it. 
 
WHAT IS FREE TRADE ? 61 1 
 
 Spoliation, which has played so great a part in the 
 affairs of the world, has only two agents, force and 
 guile ; and two limits courage and skill. 
 
 Force, applied to spoliation, makes the foundation of 
 the annals of mankind. To retrace it in history, is to 
 reproduce almost the whole history of all people : As- 
 syrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, 
 Romans, Goths, Franks, Huns, Turks, Arabs, Mongols, 
 Tartars, without counting that of the Spaniards in 
 America, the English in India, the French in Africa, 
 the Russians in Asia, etc. But, at least, among the 
 civilised nations, the people who produce the riches are 
 become sufficiently numerous, and sufficiently strong, to 
 defend them. Does that mean that they are not de- 
 spoiled? By no means. They are still despoiled as 
 much as ever ; and what is more, they despoil each other. 
 
 Only the agent is changed ; it is no more by force : 
 it is by guile they seise the public wealth. To rob the 
 public, it is necessary to deceive them. To deceive them 
 it is necessary to persuade them that the robbery is for 
 their advantage ; it is to make them accept, in exchange 
 for their goods, fictitious services, and often worse. 
 Thence, sophistry, sophistry theocratical, sophistry 
 economical, sophistry political, sophistry financial. Then, 
 since force is held in check, sophistry is not only an evil, 
 but it is the genius' of evil. It is necessary to hold it in 
 check in its turn. " Et, pour cela," to use the words 
 of Bastiat, " ilfautrendre le public plus FIN que les fins, 
 comme il est devenu plus FORT que Its forts" 
 
 On the subject of commercial policy, nations seem 
 determined to exhaust every modification of folly and 
 absurdity, before they finally arrive at the simple and 
 cardinal rule which the French merchants announced to 
 Colbert, more than a century and a half ago, when he 
 asked their advice and opinion, how he could best pro- 
 mote commerce, " Laissez-nous faire : " " LET us 
 
 2 R 2 
 
612 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 ALONE ; " before they have faith in the simple truism 
 that, men have generally the intelligence to discover 
 and act for their own interests, far better than any 
 government can do it for them. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, when enforcing the maxim ' Pas 
 trop gouverner,' quotes this well-known answer of the 
 merchants to Colbert, and adds : " It were to be 
 wished that commerce was as free between all the 
 nations of the world, as it is between the several counties 
 of England : so would all, by mutual communication, 
 obtain more enjoyments. Those counties do not ruin 
 one another by trade ; neither would the nations. No 
 nation was ever ruined by trade; even seeming the 
 most disadvantageous. Wherever desirable superfluities 
 are imported, industry is excited ; and therefore plenty 
 is produced. Were only necessaries permitted to be 
 purchased, men would work no more than was necessary 
 for that purpose." 
 
 What can exceed in folly and absurdity the present 
 system ? At a time when all the genius and science of 
 the world are occupied in seeking to economise the 
 means of transport, at a time when, to realise these 
 economics, the mountains are removed, the valleys are 
 filled up, and the roads are levelled ; when the steam- 
 boats are brought to perfection; when, from all the 
 great cities and towns, the iron roads radiate in every 
 direction ; at the very time when it might be supposed 
 that all are seeking with ardor and sincerity the solution 
 of this problem : " How to make the price of things at 
 the place of consumption approach as nearly as possible 
 to the price of the same at the place of production " 
 is it not wonderful that the same people unite to 
 defeat this object, by raising up other and artificial 
 barriers ? 
 
 Now, for an example, and to avoid the prejudice of 
 local interests, take the case of our neighbors on the 
 
WHAT IS FREE TRADE ? 613 
 
 Continent, in France and Belgium. This is the case 
 given by Bastiat, in his "Economic Sophisms/' 
 
 Why is the cost of an article manufactured at Brussels, 
 for example, dearer when it arrives at Paris ? 
 
 It is not difficult to see that this arises from obstacles 
 of different kinds which exist between Paris and Brussels ; 
 that these cannot be overcome without loss of labor, and 
 loss of time ; and that they must submit to these losses, 
 or pay others for submitting to them. Rivers, marshes, 
 mountains, rocks, earth, and mud, are some of the diffi- 
 culties to be surmounted. This is accomplished by con- 
 structing roads, building bridges, piercing tunnels, and 
 diminishing resistance by iron lines, etc. But all this 
 costs money, and the article transported must pay its 
 share of the cost. There are thieves by the way, and 
 this requires a gendarmerie, a police, etc. 
 
 Now, among these obstacles, there is one which our 
 neighbors themselves have raised at a great expense, 
 between Brussels and Paris. There are men in ambus- 
 cade along the frontier, armed to the teeth, and charged 
 to oppose difficulties to the transport of goods from one 
 country to the other. These are called, ' DouaniersJ 
 They act exactly in the same way as mud and ruts. 
 They retard and shackle. They contribute to the differ- 
 ence before noticed, between the price of production, and 
 the price of consumption a difference which it is our 
 problem to reduce to the utmost possible. 
 
 And here is the problem solved : Remove the tariff, 
 or, at least, diminish it. You will then have made the 
 Railway of the North without its having cost you any- 
 thing. Moreover, you will save the heavy expenses, 
 and you will begin from the first day to draw your 
 capital into your pocket. 
 
 Truly, it is wonderful that it should enter into the heads 
 of our neighbors to spend so many millions to remove 
 natural obstacles which interpose between Prance and 
 
614 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 the foreigner, and at the same time to pay so many 
 other millions to substitute artificial obstacles which 
 have exactly the same effects, so that the obstacle 
 created, and the obstacle destroyed, neutralise them- 
 selves : the things go as before, and the result of the 
 operation is, a double expense. 
 
 A Belgian product is worth at Brussels 20 francs, 
 and, delivered at Paris, 30 francs, because of the expenses 
 of transport. The same product of Parisian industry is 
 worth 40 francs. 
 
 What do they do ? 
 
 First, they put a duty of, at least, 10 francs upon the 
 Belgian product, in order to lift up the price at Paris to 
 40 francs ; and they pay a number of servants to take 
 care that it does not escape the duty ; so that, in its 
 course, it is charged 10 francs for the transport, and 10 
 francs for the tax. That done, they reason thus : This 
 transport, from Brussels to Paris, which costs 10 francs, 
 is very dear. Let us spend two or three hundred millions 
 of francs on a railway, and we shall reduce it half. Evi- 
 dently, all that they would have gained would be that, 
 the Belgian product would be sold at Paris for 35 francs, 
 that is to say : 
 
 Price at Brussels 20 francs. 
 
 Duty 10 
 
 Carriage, reduced by the raihyay 5 
 
 Total, or Price of Deposit at Paris 35 francs. 
 
 Now, would they not have attained the same result 
 by lowering the tariff to 5 francs ? The account would 
 then stand thus : 
 
 Price at Brussels 20 francs. 
 
 Duty reduced 5 
 
 Carriage by the ordinary road 10 
 
 Total, or Price of Deposit at Paris 35 francs. 
 
WHAT IS FREE TRADE? 615 
 
 And this last proceeding would have spared 200 mil- 
 lions of francs, the cost of the Railway, over and above 
 the expenses of the Custom-house Officers, for these 
 ought to diminish in proportion to the removal of temp- 
 tations to smuggling. 
 
 But, say our neighbors, the duty is necessary for the 
 protection of Parisian industry. Be it so. But, then, 
 do not destroy the effect of your own railway. For, if 
 you persist in wishing the Belgian product should mount, 
 like that of Paris, to 40 francs, you should raise your 
 duty to 15 francs, and the account would then stand 
 thus : 
 
 Price at Brussels 20 francs. 
 
 Protection Duty 15 ,, 
 
 Carnage by the Railway 5 
 
 Total Price, equalised 40 francs. 
 
 But, then, what is the use of the Railway ? 
 
 Now, suppose the Railway made, and all other ob- 
 stacles removed ; and, then, suppose the same question 
 asked : What is the use of the Railway ? 
 
 Is it not something humiliating for the 19th century 
 to be preparing for future ages such practical puerilities 
 as these, with imperturbable gravity ? 
 
 To be the dupe of another is far from pleasant, but to 
 employ the vast machinery of representation to dupe 
 oneself, and to dupe oneself doubly, and in an affair of 
 simple numeration, here is something to beat down a 
 little the pride of this enlightened age ! 
 
 And this is what all the civilised nations of the world 
 are doing to themselves and to others ! Doing to others 
 as they do to themselves but not intending it. All 
 dupes and victims ! What a picture of civilisation ! 
 How hopeful ! How encouraging ! 
 
 But we are beginning to see that, in the carriage of 
 
616 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 goods, that which renders the transport onerous, acts in 
 the sense of protection ; or, to turn the sentence, if pre- 
 ferred, that protection acts in the sense of all that 
 which renders the transport onerous. 
 
 It is, then, true to say that, a tariff is a marsh, a mud- 
 rut, a rough declivity ; in a word, an obstacle, the effect 
 of which is, to augment the difference of price of con- 
 sumption, to the price of production. It is even incon- 
 trovertible that a marsh, a quagmire, etc., are true pro- 
 tection tariffs. 
 
 There are some persons (a small number, it is true, 
 but there are some) who begin to comprehend that 
 obstacles, though artificial, are not less obstacles; and 
 that our well-being has more to gain from liberty than 
 from protection, precisely for the same reason which 
 makes a canal, or a railway, more favorable than a deep 
 sandy road. "But" say they "it is essential that 
 this liberty should be reciprocal." 
 
 They say " If we lower our barriers before France, 
 without France lowering before us, evidently we shall be 
 the dupes. Let us, therefore, make treaties of commerce 
 upon the basis of just reciprocity let us concede, that 
 they may concede to us let us make the sacrifice of 
 buying, to gain the advantage of selling." 
 
 The persons who reason thus, whether they know it, 
 or not, advocate the principle of protection, only they 
 are a little more inconsequential than the pure protec- 
 tionists, as these are more inconsequential than the 
 absolute prohibitionists. 
 
 But the truth is that, all the selfish passions, which 
 other controversies call forth, are at work here. All the 
 devices and stratagems of party warfare are in requisi- 
 tion in the 19th century, as in the 9th, and may serve 
 to show to all men how little love they have for one 
 another. 
 
 Most men see evils in change, especially if it seem. 
 
WHAT IS FREE TRADE ? 617 
 
 likely to affect themselves prejudicially, and they do not 
 see the good to others. They do not see that there 
 must be a compensation for every evil in God's uni- 
 verse : that all things must work together for good to 
 them that love Him. That which affects a society for 
 good or for evil, must affect every member of it for 
 good or for evil. 
 
 The very test of the difference between one member 
 of it and another, is the use which he makes of this 
 great law of Nature, the interpretation which he puts 
 upon it, the earnestness with which he lays it to his 
 heart as a message and a law to himself. 
 
 Assuredly it is no contradiction of the Great Teacher, 
 it does not jar with any conception which we receive 
 from Him, to say that, though on earth we may fancy 
 ourselves under a law of selfishness though here we 
 may act as if we had no ties and relationships to those 
 who surround us, when we close our eyes on the things 
 with which they have been familiar, we pass into a region 
 where it will be impossible any longer to think that we 
 can escape from that Divine Law of Love which binds 
 man to man which binds earth and heaven together. 
 
 Free Trade has been reproachfully termed a theory. 
 But the truth is that, there is much more theory about 
 the doctrine of Protection, than about Free Trade. 
 Free Trade is the state of Nature. Protection is an 
 attempt to make things better than Nature made 
 them. 
 
 Free Trade existed before Protection, and will, pro- 
 bably, exist after it. The burden of proof lies not on 
 those who advocate letting people alone to manage their 
 own affairs, but on those who advocate an interference 
 with them by the State. The arguments by which 
 men attempt to do this constitute the theory of 
 Protection. 
 
618 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 THE OBJECTIONS OF MR. NEWMARCH 
 ANSWERED. 
 
 Financial Reformers regret to find an opponent, in- 
 stead of an advocate, in one whose name is so honorably 
 associated with that of the late Mr. Tooke. 
 
 Mr. Newmarch, who presided over the Economic 
 Science and Statistics Section of the British Association 
 at Manchester, 9th September 1861, condemned the 
 principle of DIRECT Taxation as unsound, and inappli- 
 cable to this country. 
 
 He appeared to preside over that meeting not so much 
 for receiving the opinions of others, as for expounding 
 his own views ; not so much for promoting inquiry, as 
 for suppressing it. 
 
 Mr. Newmarch, in the early part of his speech, as 
 reported in the ' Times 3 newspaper, said : " There 
 was a great difference, for instance, between a country 
 like our own, where the great mass of the population 
 were dependent upon wages earned from trades of the 
 most varied kind, and a country like France, where the 
 great mass of the population were dependent upon the 
 occupation of the land, that land, to a great extent, being 
 their own property. 
 
 " There was a very broad and marked distinction 
 between the two cases ; for a system of taxation which 
 might be wise and prudent as regarded ourselves, would 
 not be a good system as regarded France, and vice 
 versa." 
 
 Why not ? or, in what cases not ? 
 
 The land of France is taxed, as property, to the 
 many holders of it in small quantities ; why should not 
 the land of England be as heavily taxed per square mile, 
 to the fewer holders of it in large quantities ? 
 
 The mass of the people in France are landowners. 
 
OBJECTIONS OF MR. NEWMARCH ANSWERED. 619 
 
 The mass of the people in England are dependent on 
 Wages. 
 
 Why, then, are the mass of the people in England to 
 be taxed upon their pairs of hands, that those who hold 
 the land may hold it lightly taxed ? 
 
 Mr. Newmarch then went on to comment on what he 
 called the three leading theories, which had been put 
 forth at different times, by men of various degrees of 
 eminence. tf But he was bound to tell them (his audi- 
 ence) that none of those opinions would carry them very 
 far in solving the difficulties they had to encounter. As 
 to paying in proportion to the protection received, they 
 would very soon find themselves arrested by a class of 
 cases with which they could not deal. The protection 
 must be measured either on the basis of what a man 
 saved ; or, what he spent." 
 
 Why must it? 
 
 We say, a man should be taxed on the basis of the 
 property of which he is an owner. 
 
 If John's Uncle leave him property worth iBlOOQ, and 
 John be taxed on it, he is not taxed on what he spends, 
 nor on what he saves ; unless Mr. Newmarch means, by 
 what he saves, what he in any way owns, which his 
 illustrations do not seem to show. 
 
 Then, again : What does Mr. Newmarch mean by 
 the word, to spend? 
 
 His illustration would show that it means with him, 
 to waste, or annihilate income, to give it for that which 
 cannot remain with one as capital. As if a man were to 
 give his income for fire- works, and explode them. Who 
 in the world could want State protection for such a non- 
 entity as wilfully lost wealth, after it is lost ? If a man 
 spend his income in the form of money for permanent 
 goods, he remains, as regards property, in statu quo. 
 
 Thus, Mr. Newmarch proceeds, and he gives this 
 illustration : 
 
620 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 " Taking it on what was spent, three cases, not un- 
 common, started up : A, having 1000 a year for ten 
 years, spent the whole of it. B, having the same income, 
 spent 100 a year, and saved 900. C, having the same 
 income, spent in ten years 1000 out of his capital, as 
 well as his income. Now, if these men were taxed 
 according to what they spent in the first year, B. would 
 pay one-tenth as much as A, and would receive twenty 
 times as much protection. On the other hand, C. would 
 pay each year ten times as much as B, and in ten year& 
 would be a beggar; whilst B. would have amassed a 
 fortune." 
 
 Such is Mr. Newmarch's reasoning, and here is his 
 illustration again : 
 
 " Measuring the protection according to what a man 
 saved, they had these difficulties : A. would have a 
 house and premises ten times larger than B, and pay no 
 tax whatever, because he saved nothing : B. would pay 
 ten times more than A, because he had nine times more 
 capital accumulated; and C. would be worse off than A, 
 as in the ten years his income would wholly cease, and 
 whilst A. paid no tax, C. would have been mulcted of a 
 large part of his temporary and expiring revenue. So 
 much for basing taxation on the measure of protection 
 afforded." 
 
 The answer to this may be given shortly in another 
 illustration : If A. had a large house of his own, he 
 should be taxed for it, B. would be taxed more and more 
 on his increasing property ; and C. less and less on his 
 decreasing property. B. would be taxed highly as rich, 
 and C. lowly as poor. Would there be a greater wrong 
 to B, in this case, than there is to the industrious man 
 from the Income Tax, against which Mr. Newmarch 
 makes no objection ? 
 
 If A. and B. are men of the same business, in which 
 each has won an income of 1000 a year; and then,. 
 
OBJECTIONS OF MR. NEWMARCH ANSWERED. 621 
 
 for three years, while A. continues a good careful man, 
 B. becomes a worthless rake, and earns nothing, the 
 Income Tax is remitted to B. as a bad citizen, and 
 claimed from A. as a good one ! 
 
 If a Property Tax be bad, how is an Income Tax 
 good? 
 
 Mr. Newmarch thinks that a Property Tax, increas- 
 ing in ratio with increased amounts of wealth, is the 
 most objectionable and hazardous, inasmuch as it dis- 
 courages the man who is industrious and frugal, etc. 
 
 But here are his own words : 
 
 " The second plan, that of taxing a man progressively 
 according to the amount of his income or property, 
 seemed to him (Mr. Newmarch) the most objectionable 
 and hasardous of all the schemes suggested as the basis 
 of fiscal legislation, insomuch as it discouraged the 
 man who was virtuous and frugal, and conferring the 
 greatest possible benefit by adding year by year to the 
 accumulated wealth of the country." 
 
 Does not a tax on labor equally discourage the la- 
 borer ? 
 
 Still, if the working man win only 40 a year, his 
 income tax is zero. 
 
 If he win 100 a year, his tax is something call it x. 
 
 Does this known fact hinder men from trying to make 
 100 a year, or from taking an office of a high, and, 
 therefore, a taxed salary ? And if a man be not wholly 
 discouraged from winning a higher income by the fact 
 that he will thereby raise his taxation from o to x, why 
 should he be more discouraged from making capital by 
 the fact that he may thereby increase his taxation from 
 x to x + n ? 
 
 A tax on earnings, or on property, may be discourag- 
 ing to the laborer for wealth, but we should feel it a 
 greater hardship to have taken from us by the tax- 
 gatherer, a tenth of our half-year's earnings, than of our 
 half-year's rent. 
 
622 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 Mr. Newmarch then proceeds to say : 
 
 " It was no part of the business of the legislature to 
 interfere with varieties of personal fortune. Whether a 
 man was rich, or poor whether he was eminent, or 
 lived in obscurity these circumstances were regulated 
 by a higher power, and were circumstances which a wise 
 legislature would not do more than recognise, but would 
 not interfere with." 
 
 Indeed ! Why, then, does the assessor now compel 
 a man to tell him what income he has from Schedule A. 
 and B. and every other source? 
 
 Mr. Newmarch then went on to declare that, the 
 plan of placing the whole taxation of the country on 
 realised property, seemed to him subversive of some 
 of the most fundamental rules which applied to men 
 in society." 
 
 And then, by way of reasoning in support of his 
 opinion, he adds : 
 
 "In a great mass of cases, the property people pos- 
 sessed had been fairly earned, and he confessed that, so 
 far, he had not heard, and should be very much surprised 
 if he did hear, any valid reason why the expense of con- 
 ducting the affairs of the community should be borne by 
 a class of that sort." 
 
 So have wages been fairly earned. 
 
 Who ever proposed that " the whole expense should be 
 borne by a class of that sort" ? 
 
 Mr. Newmarch then proceeded to take an off-hand 
 sort of review of the existing taxes, which he classified in 
 his own way, taking " something like nine millions, 
 under the head of Customs," as taxes on extravagance, 
 viz. " spirits, tobacco, and wine, which, by the general 
 admission of financial writers, were regarded as the fairest 
 subjects of taxation ; some of them being matters of 
 superfluity and extravagance, and some objects of con- 
 sumption which it was not desirable to extend. None 
 
OBJECTIONS OF MR. NEWMARCH ANSWERED. 623 
 
 of them would like to see the revenue from spirits di- 
 minished." 
 
 Yes ! some of them would. 
 
 ' ; There were first, moderate duties on tea, coffee and 
 sugar, 13 millions. He called these taxes moderate, as 
 contra-distinguished from excessive." 
 
 Let Mr. Newmarch define moderate and excessive. 
 
 " When the duty on sugar was 40*. per cvvt. that was 
 a tax of the worst possible description, because it inter- 
 fered with the wholesale and retail trades ; but a duty 
 of 10s. per cwt., could not be called excessive." 
 
 If 40s. be an evil, we should think 10s. an evil of at 
 least one-fourth of its measure. It would be a curious 
 proportion that If 40 = something, then 10 = no- 
 thing ! 
 
 Mr. Newmarch wants to see the tax on licences 
 repealed, and the duty on malt and Fire Insurances 
 reduced. 
 
 How would he make up the deficiency arising from 
 their abolition ? 
 
 By a tax on men's labor, or their property ? 
 
 In conclusion, Mr. Newmarch said that, "in the 
 matter of taxation there was no room for sentiment. 
 The first condition was, justice to all classes alike, with- 
 out distinction of rank or condition, rich or poor." 
 
 " Justice to all classes." Just so. 
 
 What is justice to all classes ? 
 
 " No room for sentiment." Justice. 
 
 What is a sense of justice, but a sentiment? 
 
 It is as much a sentiment to feel that a rich man's 
 property should not be heavily taxed, as that a poor 
 woman's tea should not be heavily taxed. 
 
 Mr. Newmarch gives few definitions, or rather, none; 
 and more opinion than reasoning. 
 
 He talks of taxes on extravagance without defining, 
 extravagance. 
 
624 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 In goods, strong drinks are extravagant to teeto- 
 tallers j animal food to vegetarians ; fine black cloth to 
 wearers of wadmel; and silk to women content with 
 cotton. 
 
 Mr. Newmarch seems to have taken advantage of his 
 position as President of the Section, to dogmatise with- 
 out reasoning, nay, against both reason and fact ; in 
 short, to have dealt unfairly with his subject, as he did 
 with his opponents. 
 
 INCOME AND PROPERTY TAX. 
 DUNCAN MACLAEEN, ESQ. M.P. 
 
 This intelligent Gentleman, an eminent merchant at 
 and M.P. for Edinburgh, whose opinion has been before 
 referred to, has expressed his views on this subject in a 
 Report to The Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, pro- 
 posing " A Just and Simple Mode of Laying On The 
 Income and Property Tax ;" and this was adopted 
 by the Chamber as their Report, on 5th February, 
 1862. 
 
 Mr. Maclaren speaks well of the injustice of the In- 
 come Tax as it now stands. 
 
 He says that, it is not, as it is called, a tax on pro- 
 perty, and that, it is unfair as taxing alike two kinds of 
 income, which, as taxable property, are very unlike, 
 income from real property, and income from labor. 
 
 But the same form of syllogism which would show 
 the present Income Tax to be unfair, would show that 
 Mr. Maclaren's scheme of taxation would perpetuate in 
 some form, the injustice he seeks to cast out. 
 
 For instance : Taxable property of unlike kinds, as 
 such, should not be taxed alike. 
 
 But income from real property, and income from 
 labor, are of unlike kinds. 
 
OBJECTIONS OF MR. MACLAEEN ANSWERED. 625 
 
 Therefore, they should not be taxed alike. 
 
 Now, for a syllogism of the same form against Mr. 
 Maclaren's taxation. 
 
 Taxable property of unlike kinds should not be taxed 
 alike. 
 
 But Property which yields Income, and the Income 
 which it yields, are of unlike kinds. 
 
 Therefore, they should not be taxed alike. 
 
 The injustice of the equal 'taxation of income from 
 property, and property itself, will show itself in a case 
 such as that 
 
 A. has a real property of 1000, which yields him an 
 income of .50 a year, from the labor of others, as in 
 Rent. 
 
 Then, let t represent the taxation of a pound under 
 Mr. Maclaren's scheme, and A. will pay, as his tax, 
 1050 t. 
 
 Now, let B. have a property of 1000, as a capital, or 
 stock in trade, and by working his property himself, let 
 him make a yearly income of 150. 
 
 Then he will pay, as his tax, 1150 t, or 100 more 
 than A. 
 
 For what ? 
 
 For his labor only. 
 
 Here, then, is still the unfair taxation of labor. 
 
 If this show Mr. Maclaren's scheme to be bad, there 
 is no need of taking up for refutation the details of it. 
 
 A friend of the Author, and there is no reason why 
 he should not here mention his name The Rev. 
 William Barnes, Rector of Came, ' The Dorsetshire 
 Poet,' par excellence has so ably illustrated the 
 Author's own views on this part of the subject, in a 
 private Letter to him, that he has asked and obtained 
 leave of his reverend and learned friend to give it in his 
 own words, as the best answer which can be given, in a 
 few words, to Mr. Maclaren, and many others. 
 
 2s 
 
626 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 " I should divide property, (quod proprium sit) into 
 two triads, of three kinds each, and, therefore, into six 
 kinds, each taxed in its income (or fructus) one ratio 
 lower than the former one. 
 
 " To afford a one-sight glimpse of my meaning, I will 
 write out six formulae for the six kinds of property, and 
 afterwards unfold the meaning of them. 
 
 FIRST TRIAD. 
 
 1. Property yielding income from (B.). 
 
 2. Property yielding income from (B.-f-A.). 
 
 3. Property yielding income from (A.). 
 
 SECOND TRIAD. 
 
 1. Ownership yielding income from (B.). 
 
 2. Ownership yielding income from (B. + A.). 
 
 3. Ownership yielding income from (A.). 
 
 " Now, ' Property,' in the first Triad means alienable 
 property that outlasts the life of the owner. 
 
 " And c Ownership / in the other Triad means pro- 
 perty which is not alienable property, but some source 
 of income that ends with the owner's life. 
 
 " (B.) means the hired labor of others than the 
 owner. 
 
 " (A.) means the labor of the owner. 
 
 Then, FIRST TRIAD. 
 
 (1.) Property yielding income from B., is property 
 yielding income by the labor of others; as land, or 
 railway shares. 
 
 (2.) Property yielding income from B. + A., is pro- 
 perty yielding income by the labor of the owner and 
 others ; as Farm-stock, yielding income by the labor 
 of the owner and hired workmen. 
 
OBJECTIONS OF MR. MACLAREN ANSWERED. 627 
 
 (3.) Property yielding income from A., is property 
 yielding income by the labor only of the owner ; as the 
 horse and cart, or waggon, of a carrier, or the machine 
 of a razor-grinder. 
 
 Then, SECOND TRIAD. 
 
 (1.) Ownership yielding income from B., unalienable 
 and life-long property, yielding income by the labor of 
 others than the owner ; as the grant of a pension from 
 Government. 
 
 (2.) Ownership yielding income from B.+A., un- 
 alienable and life-long property, yielding income by the 
 labor of the owner, and of others; as a Church- 
 living. 
 
 (3.) Ownership yielding income from A v unalien- 
 able property yielding income only from the labor of 
 the owner; as a life-right to fish with one's own hands 
 in a certain water, or to kill rabbits in a certain 
 warren. 
 
 " It may seem that the 2nd case is the same as this 
 third. But, no. A Clergyman's tithes must be paid to 
 the Clergyman from the labor of the Parish, whether he 
 work like St. Paul, or work only on the Sunday. 
 
 "The reason why property yielding income by the 
 labor of others should be more highly taxed than that 
 which yields income only by the labor of the owner is, 
 that it leaves him his whole time to win other income ; 
 whereas, the 3rd kind of property takes up its owner's 
 time in the winning ofitsfructus. 
 
 " I should, therefore, tax these 6 kinds of property 
 by 6 ratios of taxation, such as : 
 
 1. T. 
 
 2. T. n 
 
 3. T. 2n 
 
 2s2 
 
628 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 4. T. Sn 
 
 5. T. 4ra 
 
 6. T. 5n." 
 
 The Author agrees with his friend in his premises, 
 and his reasoning thereon; but not in his conclusion. 
 
 The Author, however, cannot dismiss his reverend 
 and learned friend, without claiming some credit for his 
 own candor, in thus setting forth the most specious 
 argument he has ever seen against his own views ; 
 though some malicious readers may think that he has 
 been less influenced by candor, than by a secret satis- 
 faction at the coup de grace here given to Mr. Duncan 
 Maclaren. 
 
 But the Author understands his reverend friend's 
 <f 6 ratios of taxation/' to mean that, he would tax in- 
 comes by a sliding, or graduated, scale ; i.e. a small tax 
 for incomes earned by the taxpayer's own labor, a 
 larger tax for incomes won only partly by the tax- 
 payer's labor, and the largest tax for incomes won for 
 him by the labor of others. 
 
 It is much to be feared that taxation, so regulated, 
 would practically destroy relative proportion, and that 
 would be a fatal error. 
 
 These few last words are all that need be said in 
 answer to a large class of objectors. 
 
 JOHN GELLIBRAND HUBBARD, ESQ., M.P. 
 
 Mr. Hubbard was another, and one of the most 
 famous of the dissentients to the Income Tax. He 
 was then a Member of Parliament, and Chairman of the 
 Select Committee of the House of Commons on Income 
 and Property Tax, obtained on his Motion, in 1861. 
 Moved by a laudable desire to remove some of the 
 defects of the existing Income Tax Act, he obtained 
 what he asked for an Inquiry. That inquiry showed 
 
OBJECTIONS OF MR. HUBBARD ANSWERED. 629 
 
 very plainly, what everybody knew before, the mon- 
 strous inconsistencies, and other defects, of this Act; 
 but he totally failed in his object of showing the remedy, 
 or, even anything in mitigation of the real evil, and he 
 established, what many knew before, that the great 
 evil and defects are incident to, and inseparable from, a 
 Tax on Income. 
 
 Mr. Hubbard says : " It is important to keep in 
 view that, substituted in 1842 for taxes levied on 
 articles of general consumption, the Income Tax has 
 thus far assumed the character of a tax of compen- 
 sation." 
 
 Why should this be kept in view, in the seeking of a 
 just and equal form of taxation? 
 
 Taxes on food, for instance, might have been so far 
 abolished, as being bad because unequal, and unjust as 
 exacted from the wrong persons. It does not follow 
 that a tax instead of it must fall directly on the same 
 persons. 
 
 Again, Mr. Hubbard says : 
 
 11 Adam Smith's axiom, ' The subjects of every 
 State ought to contribute towards the support of the 
 government as nearly as possible in proportion to their 
 respective abilities ; that is, in proportion to the revenue 
 which they respectively enjoy under the protection of 
 the State/ must be taken as the test of the true policy 
 of taxation." 
 
 In proportion to abilities, that is, in proportion to 
 revenue; says Adam Smith; and so says Mr. Hub- 
 bard. 
 
 But these are two different positions. 
 
 What does Mr. Hubbard mean by revenue ? 
 
 " Ce qui revient a un horn me ;" but whence ? From 
 property, or labor ? 
 
 If from property only, Mr. Hubbard advocates a 
 Property Tax. 
 
630 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 If from labor, whence did Mr. Hubbard get his mean- 
 ing of revenue ? 
 
 From Adam Smith ? 
 
 The word ' revenue* does not usually mean Wages, or 
 profits of trade, though Mr. Hubbard seems to apply it 
 to these forms of income. 
 
 Mr. Hubbard speaks well of definitions when he says : 
 " In this, as in many other questions, the controversy 
 would be soon concluded if the disputants were agreed 
 in their definitions. The subject of our consideration is 
 an " INCOME" Tax. What is " Income" for the pur- 
 pose of taxation ? Not, assuredly, all that comes in to 
 a man's possession in the course of a year. The income 
 for which men may be taxed is, as Adam Smith says, 
 <( the revenue which they enjoy," or, in other words, the 
 net income available for expenditure." 
 
 Most men understand this distinction between gross 
 and net income. 
 
 But does Mr. Hubbard mean to say that, " the net 
 income available for expenditure is properly subject to 
 taxation ?" 
 
 Again : Mr Hubbard says : " The existing tax is 
 " called the Property and Income Tax." Why it is so 
 called is not apparent. It does truly, in many in- 
 stances, tax both property and the income arising from 
 that property, but it is not probable that to declare the 
 special vice of the tax was the intention of its double 
 name. Obviously, however, the same tax should not be a 
 Property and Income Tax; and while a tax on the transfer 
 of property may rightly be a Property Tax, occurring as 
 it would at intervals of many years, so an annual tax ne- 
 cessarily payable out of income should be an IncomeTax." 
 
 Certainly, it does not seem very apparent that, while 
 it taxes a working man with no property, as heavily as 
 it taxes his neighbour with 2000 worth of property, it 
 can be called a Property Tax, 
 
OBJECTIONS OF MR. HUBBARD ANSWERED. 631 
 
 Again ; " The fact that the Income Tax, as a tax of 
 compensation substituted (that is) for taxes which, at- 
 taching to articles of general consumption, affected alike 
 (to the extent of their expenditure) the owners of pro- 
 perty incomes and the owners of industrial incomes is 
 conclusive in establishing the liability of the latter to 
 taxation within the specified limits." 
 
 We deny that it is at all conclusive. What ! because 
 a laborer is, or was, taxed, by indirect taxation, in food 
 and clothing, therefore, he must be taxed also by an 
 income or property tax ! 
 
 An amended form of taxation, forsooth, must 
 reach the same classes and men, as a vicious form of it 
 reached ! 
 
 Ergo, any tax which Richard II. might have imposed, 
 instead of the Poll tax, must have fallen on every wight 
 above 15 years old ! 
 
 And, on the other hand, the tax which now bears the 
 burden which was borne by the old ship-money, the cost 
 of the navy, should be confined to inhabitants of sea- 
 ports ! 
 
 Again ; Mr. Hubbard says : " I am far from hoping 
 that an Income Tax can ever be free from objections; 
 the necessity of relying upon the co-operation of the tax- 
 payers in the assessment of industrial incomes is a very 
 grievous one, for the temptation to dishonesty must 
 work evil, and the revision is proposed not so much with 
 a view to the perpetuity of the tax, as to qualify it for its 
 office when it is indispensable, by a very decided mitiga- 
 tion both of its corrupting influence and its unjust and 
 unequal incidence. If this object be a desirable one, we 
 must be content, for the sake of the great majority of 
 cases which will obtain substantial justice, to tolerate 
 some unimportant anomalies, and apparent inconsis- 
 tencies." 
 
 Very Good. But cease to tax industrial incomes, and 
 
632 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 then you get rid of "the necessity of relying upon the 
 co-operation of the tax-payers," and you also get rid of 
 " the very grievous temptation to dishonesty." 
 
 Again ; Mr. Hubbard says : " Tithe rent-charge, 
 with cure of souls, I have treated as an income contin- 
 gent on a duty performed, and as the remuneration for 
 that duty, I propose a specific allowance of ,100." 
 
 This is property, acquired partly through the owner's 
 own labor, and partly through the labor of others, and, 
 as such, is taxable. As our reverend friend would say : 
 Property yielding income from the labor of ^the 
 owner and others; property of his second kind. So, 
 Mr. Hubbard finds himself driven to a Property 
 Tax. 
 
 Again, he says : 
 
 " Tithes, or commuted tithes, legally assessable in the 
 hands of the payers, may, for convenience sake, be taxed 
 in the possession of the receiver. The characteristic of 
 all these incomes is that, consequent on the possession of 
 the property from which they arise, they accrue sponta- 
 neously, and require no exercise of labor on the part of 
 the owners." 
 
 Good grounds for a Property Tax, as our reverend 
 friend would say ; Property yielding income from the 
 labor of others ; property of his first kind. 
 
 Again; Mr. Hubbard says : "In the second class 
 I place incomes derived from the profits accruing from 
 trades and professions, and for the purpose of assess- 
 ment it is necessary to ascertain what proportion of 
 such profits passes into the character of income, avail- 
 able for expenditure, and so far taxable." 
 
 We say that, there is no such necessity, and that it is 
 impossible, and, if possible, inexpedient. 
 
 We say that,. the whole "of such profits passes into 
 the character of income, available for expenditure," and 
 that no part is " taxable." 
 
OBJECTIONS OP MR. HUBBARD ANSWERED. 633 
 
 Again : " Whether these profits are the receipts of 
 the professional man, whose capital is in his cultivated 
 knowledge those of the trader whose capital is in his 
 goods or those of the manufacturer whose capital is in 
 his machinery the same essential feature characterises 
 them. The labor of these men is an indispensable ele- 
 ment in the production of their profits ; ability to labor 
 is dependent upon life and health ; their profits are, con- 
 sequently, precarious; and in obedience to the sugges- 
 tions of prudence, the owners of industrial and precarious 
 profits apply a portion only of those profits as income to 
 the purpose of expenditure. The residue of those profits 
 passes into the character of capital, and, as capital, 
 yields in the following year products for taxation/' 
 
 These are good reasons for not taxing income, as 
 such. 
 
 The suggestions of prudence often oblige the owners 
 of industrial and precarious profits to apply the whole of 
 those profits as income to the purpose of expenditure. 
 
 How does Mr. Hubbard know that, " the residue 
 of those profits passes into the character of capital, 
 and, as capital, yields in the following year products for 
 taxation " ? 
 
 The suggestions of prudence more often oblige the 
 owners of industrial and precarious profits to apply the 
 residue of one year to make up the deficiency of another 
 year. 
 
 Mr. Hubbard's reasoning seems fallacious for his 
 object, but he is on a right scent to a Property Tax. 
 
 Mr. Hubbard then goes into facts, and after per- 
 plexing himself, and every one else, with his reasoning 
 thereon, he comes to the following conclusion : 
 
 " Undoubtedly, the elements of the trading and pro- 
 fessional profits are not identical ; but I am not pre- 
 pared to indicate either a separate principle of treatment, 
 or to affirm that it would be practicable always to dis- 
 
634 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 tinguish professions from trades, or to obtain from 
 traders the amounts of their capital in trade which 
 would be requisite for the separate assessment of the 
 annual value of their capital, and of the gains created 
 by labor apart from capital." 
 
 Hie opus est. Here are the plaguy difficulties of the 
 Income tax. But none of these difficulties would arise 
 in the proposed Property tax. 
 
 Mr. Hubbard advocates an Income tax on the fruits 
 of labor as well as of property ; and while his scheme is 
 fairer than that under which we are now taxed, it is 
 fairer only as it approaches the grounds of a Property 
 tax, and falls less heavily on labor. 
 
 But is it advisable to make it fairer, and to leave it 
 still so unfair ? 
 
 Mr. Hubbard in conclusion says : " Occupying the 
 debateable ground at which skilled labor commences, 
 Industrial Incomes, varying from 100 to 150, may 
 in that view be allowed to retain the concession awarded 
 to them by the present Act, of being charged more 
 lightly than Incomes exceeding 150. At what amount 
 the assessment of First Class Incomes should commence, 
 and whether those of small amount should receive any 
 concession, are questions of which the decision of the 
 Committee may be guided by the evidence to be heard, 
 and upon which I therefore forbear an opinion." 
 
 This does not seem to agree fully with Mr. Hubbard' s 
 remark at the commencement, where he says : " It is 
 important to keep in view that, substituted in 1842 for 
 taxes levied on articles of general consumption, the In- 
 come Tax has thus far assumed the character of a tax of 
 compensation," 
 
 Such are the few remarks which it seems necessary to 
 make on the " MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED BY THE 
 CHAIRMAN," Mr. Hubbard, to the " Select Committee 
 on the Property and Income Tax." 
 
635 
 
 WILLIAM FARR, ESQ., F.R.S. 
 
 Mr. Farr is a great authority, and his opinions are 
 entitled to very respectful attention. 
 
 He was examined as a witness before Mr. Hume's 
 " Select Committee of the House of Commons on the 
 Income and Property Tax/' in 1852; and before Mr. 
 Hubbard's " Select Committee of the House of Com- 
 mons on Property and Inco^ne Tax," in 1861. 
 
 Mr. Farr seems to hold that taxes are due to Govern- 
 ment for Protection only. 
 
 Mr. John Stuart Mill, at least an equal authority, 
 says [No. 5423 of Mr. Hume's Committee] : 
 
 " I do not think protection the proper test by which 
 to determine the proportional amount of taxation to be 
 paid by different persons. 
 
 " It seems to me to have nothing definite in it. It is 
 not possible to say that one person derives more benefit 
 than another from the protection of the Government ; 
 it is necessary for all." 
 
 Mr. Mill expressed the same opinion before Mr. Hub- 
 bard's Committee, but Mr. Mill, throughout his examin- 
 ation, shifted his ground so frequently that he seemed 
 almost to admit that he had not yet arrived at any prin- 
 ciple satisfactory to himself. 
 
 He, however, arrived at the conclusion that, in taxing 
 incomes, that portion only of an income should be taxed 
 which the owner could properly afford to spend ; though 
 immediately afterwards he explained that, not the por- 
 tion of an income which a man ought to save, but the 
 portion he did save, should be exempt from taxation. 
 
 Again ; Mr. Mill, before Mr. Hume's Committee 
 says, in answer, [No. 54:47] " For example, the esta- 
 blishment of schools and universities ; that cannot be 
 called the protection of person or property ; it is not in 
 all cases a thing which I think the Government should 
 
636 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 do; but in m^ny cases it is. It seems to me a matter 
 of judicious discrimination in each case, what the 
 Government can do for the benefit of the community. 
 Whatever it can do usefully, which will be different in 
 different circumstances, it ought to do." 
 
 Many a grant is wisely made from the public revenue, 
 not for the protection of Englishmen, though it may be 
 for their good. 
 
 A grant to the Royal Observatory is a commercial 
 good in Nautical Astronomy, but is not a protection 
 from foes abroad or at home. 
 
 But Mr. Farr is in favour of a Property Tax, not an 
 Income Tax, [No. 4895-6.] "The correct principle 
 with regard to taxation is, that each member of the 
 community should contribute every year to the common 
 yearly expenditure of the country, in a fixed proportion 
 to the amount of property in his possession during that 
 year ; by property I understand value, or the power of 
 producing value at the present or in future times. The 
 tax should be on property, and not on income." 
 
 What Mr. Farr means by property he explains imme- 
 diately afterwards. [No. 4897.] " A man who has skill 
 and industry alone which enable him to earn an annual 
 rent for his services, possesses property in the strictest 
 and most essential sense of the word ; it is a sort of in- 
 dwelling property, and is the source of nearly all other 
 property; for nearly all the external property of the 
 country derives its value from some of the qualities 
 fixed in it by the skill and industry of the present or of 
 
 past generations There can be no doubt that 
 
 every person who is in, or has property in, the country, 
 should contribute to the national revenue ; and no more 
 just rule can be laid down than that each person should 
 contribute every year in the proportion of the property 
 possessed by him during the year." 
 
 If it be true as it clearly is that, " nearly all the 
 
637 
 
 external property of the country derives its value from 
 some of the qualities fixed in it by the skill and industry 
 of the present or of past generations," it seems a great 
 mistake to diminish, by taxation, that creative power 
 before the property is realised. 
 
 Mr. Farr would tax property not income. But he 
 would capitalise incomes, and then tax them as property. 
 
 This is very like a distinction without a difference. 
 
 He would capitalise incomes according to Life Tables, 
 in which the chances of life are taken into the account. 
 [No. 4854-5.] 
 
 It seems to be another great mistake to measure the 
 value of a professional income by the Life tables, with 
 which one would measure the value of an annuity. 
 
 To leave out one acting element, in the measuring 
 prospectively the result of that element with others, 
 must make the calculation false. 
 
 Now, in the question of the value of a professional 
 business, as capitalised property, there is an important 
 element that does not meet one in that of the value of 
 an annuity : The will the whim of man. 
 
 The value of a life has been tabulated from registra- 
 tion of deaths; and the law protects, to a man, an 
 annuity against the will of others. But a surgeon may, 
 through a mistaken treatment of a patient, or other 
 incident, lose any share of his practice, at the will of 
 any of his friends ; or, he may lose it from the free will 
 of a competitor planting himself beside him; and through 
 the free will of the friends of that competitor, hereto- 
 fore his patients ; and though Financiers, like Mr. Farr, 
 may say they have made allowance in their minds 
 for those chances, still, the answer isj those chances 
 have not yet been tabulated by Statistics ; and the ele- 
 ment of man's will ought to come into the formula of 
 the value of a business in as trustworthy a form as life 
 itself. 
 
638 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 This omission of the element of man's will seems 
 a capital mistake in modern political economy. [No. 
 4882.] Question by Mr. Hume the Chairman : " Take 
 the case of a merchant who had a large income in one 
 year, and incurred a loss in another year, it would 
 not be fair to tax him on his entire income in the first 
 year, but you should tax him on the amount of property 
 that his average income represented?" 
 
 Mr. Farr's answer : " You should bring the pro- 
 perty to its actual value, which will vary, but will not 
 exceed 33J years' purchase on the average net return." 
 
 Then, Mr. Farr's scheme would not, in its effect, 
 differ much from the present income tax. 
 
 The Income Tax is levied on the ratio of the average 
 income. 
 
 Mr. Farr would rate a man's property on the ratio of 
 his average income, and tax him in the ratio of his pro- 
 perty. 
 
 Therefore, the present tax is in proportion to income,, 
 and income (Teste, Mr. Farr) is in proportion to pro- 
 perty ; and Mr. Farr's tax is in proportion to property, 
 and, therefore, in proportion to income. (Euclid 11. 
 5.) 
 
 So, what Mr. Farr says, as before quoted, [No. 
 4896] "the tax should be on property, and not on 
 income " is a distinction without a difference to the 
 rate-payer. 
 
 And, so, as before quoted, [No. 4897] the body 
 and mind are to be taxed if they work and win money ; 
 and the rich idler is to enjoy his manship tax free [See 
 No. 4899.] Question, by the Chairman, Mr. Hume : 
 "What interpretation do you put upon the word "abi- 
 lity," in the answer which you gave before?" 
 
 Mr. Farr's Answer : ' f The ability is most strictly 
 expressed by the amount of property possessed by each 
 individual in the State. It cannot mean talent, or any 
 
MR. FARR'S OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 other quality than the power to produce or to dispose of 
 property ; for you cannot pay people by one measure 
 and tax them by another ; pay them the market value 
 of their labor, and tax them in the proportion of their 
 wisdom , goodness, science, or activity. If the commu- 
 nity pays Milton 20 for ' Paradise Lost/ it must not 
 tax him on the amplitude of his great, priceless, ines- 
 timable genius. All in a man's life which can be justly 
 taxed is represented by the value of his income." 
 
 This is, indeed, a tax on labor. 
 
 Again; [No. 4913] Question by Mr. Newdegate: 
 " You understand the term " ability " to mean the capa- 
 bility to acquire property, and to enjoy it?" 
 
 Mr. Farr's Answer : " Yes ; the capability to pro- 
 duce value." 
 
 Here, capability to produce value is property. So 
 that a man of skill cannot retire from business, cannot 
 retire from labor, but that he must be taxed on his 
 capability to earn income, though he may not earn any ! 
 
 Again; [No. 4914-5.] Questions by Mr. Newde- 
 gate ; " Then you do not exactly confine your attention 
 to taxing a man according to his property, if I under- 
 stand you rightly ; because it is perfectly clear that, 
 although the property in fee-simple is more valuable 
 owing to there being a reversion attached to it, the 
 reversion is not a source of present enjoyment to the 
 holder?" 
 
 Mr. Farr's Answer : " He might immediately, if he 
 chose, convert it into a source of enjoyment by selling 
 the property for 33,333, and getting double the life 
 annuity which he now enjoys," 
 
 Question. " That would involve the principle of tax- 
 ing property not as it is, but as something into which it 
 might be converted?" 
 
 Answer. " No. I conceive that it is strictly taxing 
 the property; because a person who has an estate of 
 
640 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 1000 a year in perpetuity, is worth 33,333 ; deprive 
 him of his property and he is deprived of 33,333." 
 
 Very good. Keep to that position. 
 
 But what is the market price of a man's body, or 
 strength, or skill, which cannot be sold ? 
 
 See [No. 4897.] before quoted. 
 
 Again; [No. 4928.] Question by Mr. Hume the 
 Chairman. "Do you think that all incomes in the 
 same manner should be taxed ? " 
 
 Mr. Farr's Answer : " Yes ; because the sources of 
 incomes derived from professions are property ; a 
 prima donna is as much property as the theatre in which 
 she sings." 
 
 No. A theatre may be sold, but a prima donna can- 
 not be sold in England. 
 
 This savors of the Slave- market ! 
 
 These are a few of the Questions and Answers in 
 Mr. Farr's very long examination, before Mr. Hume's 
 Committee. 
 
 Mr. Farr's examination before Mr. Hubbard's Com- 
 mittee, also very long, is to the same effect. 
 
 It would be a wearisome task to pursue this further. 
 At any rate, this is not a dish to be set before every- 
 body, though some may like it ; as the Scotchman, 
 enjoying his singed sheep's head, said to the sneering 
 Englishman: "There's a deal o' fine confused feedin 
 aboot it, let me tell you." 
 
 There is, indeed, " a deal o' fine confused talkin aboot 
 it, let me tell you," in all these examinations, and little 
 but the taste of singed wool left in the mouth after all. 
 But Englishmen are too fond of plain dishes to put up 
 with Mr. Farr's confused cookery. 
 
 One example must suffice for Mr. Farr's evidence 
 before Mr. Hubbard's Committee. 
 
 Referring to Question and Answer [5023] in Mr. 
 Farr's evidence before Mr. Hume's Committee, as 
 
641 
 
 follows : " If a man of business did not choose to 
 return the amount of capital you would take his profits 
 at 16| years' purchase, which would make his tax 75, 
 instead of 51, and if he chose to state his age, and the 
 amount invested in the business, a further reduction 
 would be made. You think that would be applicable to 
 all kinds of business ? 
 
 Answer. " Yes. I should not take the life into ac- 
 count in large concerns, such as the great breweries, any 
 more than I would with the Bank of England, because 
 I should regard the businesses with a large good- will as 
 nearly equivalent to houses or perpetuities." 
 
 Mr. Lowe, on Mr. Hubbard's Committee, put the 
 following Question to Mr. Farr : [No. 2926.] 
 " Then again referring you to Question 5023, you were 
 asked, " You think that would be applicable to all 
 kinds of business ? Your reply is " Yes ; etc." do 
 you adhere to that ? " 
 
 Answer. " That is one way of viewing it ; these are 
 doubtful cases, as I said before. The incomes derived 
 from trades in which a large capital is embarked vary, of 
 course, in their nature excessively ; if it be thought 
 right, even under a new modification of the income tax, 
 they might be classified, but on the plan that I pro- 
 posed I should still think that this would be a reason- 
 able way of treating the subject." 
 
 What would be the meaning of the word " large " in 
 an Act of Parliament imposing an Income Tax ? 
 
 At what point of increase does a business become 
 large ? 
 
 It is as indefinite as were the words of the Witness 
 who said that, something was " as big as a knob of 
 chalk." 
 
 In making these few remarks on Mr. Fair's Evi- 
 dence, the Writer is desirous of expressing his high 
 respect for the great learning and labour therein dis- 
 
 2T 
 
642 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 played, though this feeling is not unaccompanied with 
 a certain regret that so powerful an advocate in favour 
 of Direct Taxation, should have so qualified his advo- 
 cacy ; as, (in the Writer's opinion), greatly to have re- 
 duced its value. 
 
 JAMES REDDECLIFF JEFFERY 
 
 Is thus introduced by Mr. Hume, the Chairman: 
 [No. 5679.] " You have been deputed to appear before 
 us by the Committee of the Financial Reform Associa- 
 tion at Liverpool, who are anxious, through you, to 
 place their opinions on record as regards the income 
 
 tax?" 
 
 To which Mr. Jeffery answered : " That is so." 
 [No. 5700.] Question by Mr. Hume, the Chairman : 
 " Passing from the principle on which the income tax 
 should be assessed, are you aware that there are objec- 
 tions to the mode which has been adopted under the 
 recent law in the process of levy, and the manner in 
 which the tax is collected?" 
 
 Mr. Jeffery'* Answer : ft Yes, I am ; and I attribute 
 it in a considerable measure to those objections in the 
 process of levy, that the income tax is complained of by 
 persons engaged in commerce and trade. I believe it is 
 universally admitted that an income tax is the justest of 
 all taxes, because, if levied on just principles, the load is 
 proportioned to the power to bear, and because it re- 
 cognises the sound principle that industry should be 
 entirely unfettered in its creative operations, that the 
 two great purposes of a sound fiscal policy being thereby 
 fully recognised and acted on, the wealth of individuals, 
 and of consequence the national wealth, being thereby 
 increased in a much larger ratio annually than it now 
 is, from the freedom of action given by absence of re- 
 striction ; and the power to contribute being therefore 
 
MR. J-EFFERY'S OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 643 
 
 correspondingly increased, as well by given individuals, 
 as by the masses of the nation." 
 
 All this seems to mean that, Mr. Jeffery is very 
 favorable to an Income Tax. He stipulates only that, 
 it must be a just Income Tax, which, he thinks, the 
 present is not. 
 
 Now, let us see how he would make a just Income 
 Tax. 
 
 [No. 5690-1-2.] Questions by Mr. Hume, the Chair- 
 man : " In your reply to the first question you referred 
 to the cases of deferred annuities, reversions, and vacant 
 lands; upon what principle would you have them to 
 contribute to the State, seeing that they are not imme- 
 diately productive to their possessors ? " 
 
 Mr. Jeffery's Answer : " Such estates are as much 
 the objects of legislative protection as those that are im- 
 mediately productive ; and with respect to reversions 
 and vacant lands, they partake also, in the meantime, of 
 the increase which the activity of the producing masses 
 create. Each would be made to contribute in propor- 
 tion to its present value. " 
 
 Question. "But as these estates do not at present 
 yield income to the possessors, and as, therefore, it is 
 supposed they have no income out of which to pay the 
 current tax, by what means could the demand for such 
 tax be enforced ? ;j> 
 
 Answer. "The Government should have authority 
 from the Legislature to look to each estate as it may 
 stand in individual hands, and to charge tax on such 
 estate according to its market value. A deferred An- 
 nuity has its value, and so has a reversion ; and vacant 
 lauds stand in precisely the same position, and the one 
 and the other receive the protection of the State to the 
 extent of such value." 
 
 Question. " But supposing the possessors have no 
 immediate income from those estates, how is the claim 
 
 2x2 
 
644 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 for the tax, if you levy it in that proportion which you 
 have stated, to be made available ?" 
 
 Answer. " It may be readily supposed that the pos- 
 sessors of such estates would prefer paying the tax, 
 from whatever source they might derive it, to allowing 
 the Government to sell the estates to realise the same, 
 a power which the Legislature would naturally give 
 them to enable the tax to be collected. 
 
 . . . Or, it may be in the wisdom of the Legislature 
 to allow a mortgage to exist ; the amount being compa- 
 ratively small, the Legislature may choose that the 
 mortgage may continue to exist, and it may be reco- 
 vered then under a mortgage deed. It occurs to me 
 that, should the direct system be introduced, any little 
 difficulty of that sort would be obviated by private 
 capitalists coming to render assistance to those who 
 might not have sufficient income to pay the demands of 
 the Government upon it, but the Government demands 
 certainly should be satisfied." 
 
 Mr. Jeffery would have an Income Tax, but a just 
 one, and he would have it of a reversioner, with no 
 income corning in ! 
 
 Mr. Jeffery thinks this just ! 
 
 The f{ little difficulty " of getting something out of no- 
 thing, " any little difficulty of that sort would be obvi- 
 ated by private capitalists coming to render assistance" 
 such assistance as vultures lend to lambs; or, Govern- 
 ment " might sell the reversion, to realise the tax ;" or, 
 " the Legislature in its wisdom might allow a mortgage 
 to exist " for the tax. 
 
 Who knows what the Legislature might not do? 
 But who, but Mr. Jeffery, ever supposed that the 
 Legislature would ever do that ? 
 
 Certainly, "Government demands should be satis- 
 fied ;" but the Government must first establish its right 
 to make such a demand, and that " little difficulty," 
 
MR. JEFFERY'S OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 645 
 
 added to the other " little difficulty," would, certainly, 
 make such a very great difficulty that, it will, probably, 
 never arise. 
 
 The next Question [No. 5693] of the sagacious Chair- 
 man, Mr. Hume, would have been a puzzler to most 
 persons : " Have you taken into consideration the pos- 
 sible contingency of the reversioners or deferred annui- 
 tants not surviving to realise their prospects or enjoy 
 their reversions ?" 
 
 Mark the tender tone of this question, and the hard- 
 hearted answer. 
 
 " I have ; but so long as they are in existence certain 
 interests vest in them, and therefore certain liabilities 
 should be made to attach ; if the reversioner do not sur- 
 vive, his heirs will, and they will derive the benefits of 
 the estate which has been protected ; and if the deferred 
 annuitant do not survive, his interest having been pro- 
 tected during his existence, no injustice has been done 
 him, as he has only paid for protection received." 
 
 No he hasn't. He received nothing, and he paid 
 nothing. 
 
 His heir pays for him. 
 
 And what for ? 
 
 Mr. Jeffery would tax his man, because, if he lived, 
 he might have wherewithal to pay it ! Some may think 
 this hard-hearted. 
 
 But, whether hard-hearted or not, he was one of the 
 most zealous and active members of Council of the 
 Liverpool Financial Reform Association. 
 
 It seems that Mr. Jeffery's answer to this last ques- 
 tion was not quite satisfactory to the Committee, seeing 
 the following question shortly afterwards put to him by 
 Mr. Sot her on : 
 
 [No. 5696.] " How would you make sure of your 
 money from the reversioner during the lifetime of the 
 tenant for life ?" 
 
646 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 Mr. Jeffery's Answer : "The Legislature would give 
 power either to allow it to remain on Mortgage, taking 
 the estate as its security, or, I have no doubt, as I stated 
 before, that private enterprise would step in. For ex- 
 ample, the Government does not attempt to insure pro- 
 perty against fire ; but private enterprise steps in and 
 does it now ; private enterprise will also step in and 
 lend money upon good security. Though the day 
 may be very distant when it may be received back 
 again, still I have no doubt it would be so if the 
 great principle of direct taxation were to be established 
 in perpetuity, and this were to be made a permanent 
 tax." 
 
 Thus, if Mr. Jeffery could have his way, a needy 
 reversiorier should pay the cost of the mortgage and be 
 taxed with two exactions, because he would be too 
 needy to pay one of them. 
 
 Again : Question, by Mr. Hume, the Chairman. [No. 
 574*5.] Have you not stated that waste land, and 
 other matters producing no income, should nevertheless 
 be taxed?" 
 
 Mr. Jeffery's Answer : " That is only no immediate 
 income ; it is producing income by the accumulation of 
 the inhabitants, and the industry of those around it ; it 
 is increasing, otherwise the party would not .allow it to 
 lie. Every owner of vacant land assumes that it is 
 paying him fully the interest that the money would 
 do*?" 
 
 [No. 5746.] " How would you ascertain the value of 
 it, there being no income ?" 
 
 Answer. "The value of any estate, or any property, 
 is ascertain able ; it will fetch its price in the market 
 whatever it may be." 
 
 [No. 5747 Mr. Sotheron.] "Would not the same 
 argument apply to a mine which has not been explored, 
 or to a mine which has not yet been fully brought into 
 
MR. JEFFERY'S OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 647 
 
 work, or to any other source of wealth which requires 
 only to be dealt with by man's industry, in order to 
 turn it to account ?" 
 
 Answer. " It is quite clear that if the mineral wealth 
 be known to exist beneath the surface, the estate on the 
 surface is worth more money than if it did not exist 
 there." 
 
 [No. 5748.] "Therefore, my question is, at what 
 rate would you tax the owner of an estate in which 
 there is mineral below the surface, which has not yet 
 been explored, and from which therefore he has no 
 benefit. 
 
 Answer. " I heard it stated here yesterday, that 100 
 a year royalty being paid for the raising of minerals was 
 considered as income, which the Witness then under 
 examination said it ought not to be ; that it ought to be 
 considered as part of the purchase money, because it 
 was exhausting the estate. Now, I conceive such a 
 revenue to be similar to a long annuity, returning to its 
 receiver both income and capital at the same time." 
 
 [No. 5749.] " In what way would you propose to 
 deal with such a case as is assumed in the former ques- 
 tion; would you tax a man for a mine which has not 
 yet been explored under the surface, or would you tax 
 him for the soil on the surface which produces a profit 
 to him ?" 
 
 Answer. " I would tax him for that which produces 
 a profit." 
 
 [No. 5750.] " How, then, do you distinguish be- 
 tween the case of that mine not yet explored, and the 
 case which I understood you to propose to tax, namely, 
 building ground, or vacant land ?" 
 
 Answer. " There may be a disputed question as to 
 the enhanced value of that building land, but when it 
 changes hands there can be no dispute about it. Sup- 
 posing, for example, the owner of land, unbuilt upon, 
 
648 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 gives 5000 for that land, and at the expiry of a period 
 of five years he sells it for 5500, I would tax him then 
 upon the 100 a year, for five years which it had accu- 
 mulated in value ; I would consider that to be the 
 annual income drawn from it." 
 
 Mr. Jeifery is not true to himself here. The waste 
 land yields no income, and yet its owner is to be taxed 
 on the income that it might yield as building ground. 
 The minerals yield nothing, and their owner is not to 
 be taxed for more than the profit of the land. Why 
 not? 
 
 There is something horrid in this scheme of compel- 
 ling a man either to sell what he would keep, or to be 
 severely taxed for the keeping of it. 
 
 What, if a man have a charming lawn, with good 
 brick-clay under it? 
 
 He must turn it into a brick-yard, or be taxed for 
 one ! 
 
 Would this be English freedom ? 
 
 Oh ! you heartless Political Economists. The soul 
 and heart, with their most divine sentiments, are ig- 
 nored by you. You have an earthly God ; money : 
 and an earthly heaven ; material civilisation, without 
 love or mercy. 
 
 Who is likely to be made a convert to DIRECT Taxa- 
 tion by the perusal of Mr. Jeffery's evidence before Mr. 
 Hume's Committee ? 
 
 This was the late Mr. Jeflfery, of Compton House, 
 Liverpool. 
 
 So much for the evidence of these Witnesses on the 
 principles of Taxation. 
 
 So much difference of opinion between Financial 
 Reformers themselves on this subject is to be regretted. 
 
THE FINANCIAL REFORMERS. 649 
 
 Not only they cannot agree among themselves what 
 is the best form of Taxation ; but even those who do 
 agree that all Taxation should be DIRECT, canno't agree 
 among themselves in recommending any Scheme of Tax- 
 ation, even if they should find one which they all do 
 approve of. 
 
 They would all have something different from what 
 they have, but what they would have, they do not 
 exactly know none are agreed as to what they should 
 have, though all are agreed as to what they should 
 not have. 
 
 Then, again : They all agree in asking all people to 
 support them in forcing the Government to make a 
 change, though they are not agreed in what that change 
 should be, and if they were agreed in that, they would 
 not agree to say that they were agreed in that. 
 
 They agree only to complain of what they have got, 
 as bad ; and will not agree to recommend what they 
 wish to get, as better. 
 
 They set themselves up as leaders of the Financial 
 Reformers, but are not agreed on any principle ; and, 
 if they were, are not agreed to declare it. 
 
 This is very like men in a boat, drifting about in the 
 open sea, without a compass. 
 
 Is it wonderful that they have been drifting about so 
 long, and are not yet within sight of land ? 
 
 As one of our great living Writers has said, in his 
 ' History of the French Revolution/ " In moments of 
 great peril, use and wont will no longer direct any 
 man ; each man, with what originality he has, must 
 begin thinking ; or, following those that think." 
 
 We have now fairly stated and answered such objec- 
 tions to our views as we deem worthy of notice. 
 
 These comprise the leading principles in difference. 
 The shades of difference are innumerable, and to follow 
 these would be as unprofitable as wearisome. 
 
650 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 The Writer's object has been to anticipate and 
 answer all the objections to his Scheme of Taxation 
 which he has thought calculated to mislead his readers. 
 
 He must, no doubt, have left many unanswered, 
 which deserved answering. But on this subject it is 
 not easy to secure the attention of general readers. 
 
 Theoretical views on such a subject as this are not 
 inviting, especially when the prospect of realising them 
 in practice appears to be remote. 
 
 Important as the subject undoubtedly is, the public 
 interest in it can be expected to be only in proportion 
 to the public intelligence about it. 
 
 Now, the public intelligence on this subject is at an 
 exceedingly low degree, and will probably continue to 
 be so, as long as it continues to be a subject of bewilder- 
 ing controversy, with no fixed and admitted principles 
 to bring it to a practical and satisfactory conclusion. 
 
 It seems hopeless to expect the Public in general, 
 who are engaged in more practical and pressing duties, 
 to take any active part in this controversy, or to express 
 any decided opinion, when they are conscious of their 
 own incompetency to form any. 
 
 All they know is, that they are very badly off, and 
 that they should like any change for the better. 
 
 But when they see so much difference of opinion 
 among those whom they must suppose to be much 
 better qualified than themselves for forming a correct 
 opinion, it is natural enough that they should look on 
 rather as indifferent spectators, than as interested inter- 
 meddlers. 
 
 It seems, therefore, to be of the first importance for 
 enlisting the Public for their support, that they should 
 clearly understand what they are called upon to sup- 
 port, by showing them what their actual position is 
 under the existing system, and what it would be under 
 the proposed new system. 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 651 
 
 This has been the endeavour of the Author of ' The 
 People's Blue Book/ though he can truly say : 
 
 " My endeavours 
 Have ever come too short of my desire." 
 
 GENERAL REMARKS IN ANSWER TO 
 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 The history of Taxation is a remarkable one ; but 
 remarkable only for the absence of all system, and of 
 everything deserving the name of principle. 
 
 From time immemorial there has been a war of 
 opinions on the question : ' What are the subjects 
 most proper for taxation ? ' 
 
 Into that history no inquiry will here be made. 
 
 As Milton said of the wars of the Anglo-Saxons : 
 " Such bickerings to recount what more worth is it 
 than to chronicle the wars of kites and crows flocking 
 and fighting in the air?" 
 
 It is sufficient to say that, the question seems now 
 to be, ' How far should direct take place of indirect 
 taxation?' And, 'On what ought men fairly to be 
 taxed?' ' Whether on the income of their property; 
 or, on the income of their labor, or on both ?' 
 ' W 7 hether on their property yielding income, or not 
 yielding income, or on both ; or on their property 
 and persons, as under the protection of the State?* 
 Thinkers on Taxation are not of one mind, not only 
 as to what is taxable property, but even as to what is 
 property itself. 
 
 One definition of property is, omne quod proprium 
 est } everything that is a man's own. Therefore, his 
 life, his limbs, and his name. 
 
 But this can hardly be a good definition of taxable 
 property, which would rather seem to be, quod 
 
652 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 acquisitum est, the labor- won goods of the world ; 
 and as it seems that taxable property is that which is 
 labor-won won by the labor of man, albeit not of the 
 owner so it may be a hindrance from a clear under- 
 standing of the taxation of property to take it asunder 
 from labor. 
 
 Now, it does seem important, no less for policy 
 than justice, that it should be established, as a prin- 
 ciple, that an ownership yielding income from the 
 labor of the owner alone, is not taxable property. 
 And that property yielding income from others' labor, 
 or, property from which income accrues spontaneously, 
 and requires no exercise of labor on the part of the 
 owner, or, realised property, is taxable. And that 
 property yielding income from other's labor, with the 
 owner's own, being realised property, is also taxable. 
 
 Property of this last description, such as farm 
 stock, stock in trade, and such like, is that on 
 which the minds of financial reformers are most un- 
 settled, some holding it as taxable property, and others 
 as not. 
 
 But although the elements of the two sundry labors 
 may not have been formally stated in their reasonings, 
 yet it is found to have come into the deliberation of 
 some of them, and some would deduct, from income 
 from such a source, the wages of the master ; whilst 
 others have admitted the elements of property and labor 
 into the rating of incomes, as such, as they would make 
 a distinction between the profession of a barrister, and 
 a calling in which capital is involved. 
 
 As men are not of one mind as to property, so 
 neither are they as to whether the tax should be laid 
 on property, or, on the income it yields ; or, on both 
 caput and fructus, or, on property yielding no income, 
 with that which affords it. 
 
 An argument for ranging the income of property 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 653 
 
 yielding income from the labor of others with the 
 owner's, as that of true property, rather than of labor, 
 is, that all allow property yielding income from others' 
 labor to be a true property, though many hold that 
 goods yielding income only from the owner's labor, is 
 none. Thence, the element of others' labor is stronger 
 for taxation than the owner's own labor, and, there- 
 fore, in a case with both of the elements, the stronger 
 takes it off to the side of property, and property, yield- 
 ing income from the labor of the owner and others, is 
 true property. 
 
 Mr. Hubbard's scheme makes two classes of income; 
 one class of incomes from the labor of others, and 
 another of incomes yielded by the labor of the owner, 
 either with or without that of others ; and he would 
 tax the latter at two-thirds of the ratio upon which the 
 former is rated. 
 
 But, instead of grounding a lower taxation on income 
 from the trade of a private firm, than from shares in a 
 railway company, on the elements of the two labors, 
 the true grounds Mr. Hubbard's scheme would base 
 it on the registration of the company. 
 
 One financier would not take the life into account in 
 large concerns, such as the great breweries, because 
 he would regard the business with a large good-will, as 
 nearly equivalent to houses or perpetuities. 
 
 The word, large, would be too loose to mark a busi- 
 ness for taxation in an Act of Parliament, unless it 
 should define the largeness of large in its own sense, 
 though many may think, the property of a brewing firm 
 belongs to that description of property which yields 
 income from the labor of the owner with others. 
 
 The difference between the two cases of will-holden 
 and alienable property, and life-holden and unalienable 
 property, has been allowed by some, and one financier 
 would tax the income of the latter, at half the ratio of 
 
654 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 the former; and another thinks that the chief defect of 
 the present tax is, that it does not make any distinction 
 between permanent and temporary incomes, and that 
 the latter should be taxed upon a lower scale than the 
 former. 
 
 The fairness of a higher taxation on permanent pro- 
 perty, than on life-long ownership, seems to be allowed 
 by most financiers, as is shown by the Blue Books, in 
 the manifold questions and answers on timed and un- 
 timed annuities, with the scheme of the capitalization of 
 such incomes. 
 
 One plan of taxation is to tax property of the first 
 kind, that yielding income from others' labor, at a 
 fixed rate of the income it yields : And by another 
 plan, the tax would be set by some ratio, such as 
 three farthings, or a penny in the pound, on the sum 
 of the property, and its yearly profit. 
 
 This form of tax, however, would be fair or tolerable 
 only with property yielding a good income. For, let a 
 man have a property of 10,000, and, from bad luck, 
 let it yield him some year only 40, then, at a penny 
 in the pound, his tax on 10,040 would be nearly 
 42, that is, mote than his whole year's income. 
 
 Others hold that the practice or good-will of a pro- 
 fession is property, and that its worth, as property, is 
 what it would fetch in the market. But one financier 
 thinks a surgeon's practice worth from three to five 
 years' purchase, and says, elsewhere, that, he would 
 tax it on seven years' purchase, taking three and a half 
 years' purchase for the property of his professional 
 learning and skill, though 
 
 " The real worth of any thing, 
 Is just as much as it will bring," 
 
 and if the successive labor-won yearly incomes of a 
 surgeon will sell for only three and a half of them, why 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 655 
 
 should the owner be deemed worth a property of seven 
 of them ? 
 
 Even the three-to-five years' purchase, of a medical 
 practice, seems, however, a very uncertain value of it, as 
 Mr. Hubbard had been told that, it would sell for only 
 one year's purchase, and we have heard that it usually 
 changes hands at twice its yearly income. 
 
 It has been proposed again, in the taxing of incomes 
 from labor, to take those of clerks, in commercial or 
 Government offices, at three and a half years' purchase, 
 and also to tax sources of income by the measure of 
 their price in the market ; but if the practice of a 
 surgeon, standing as it stands, upon the good-will of 
 scores, if not hundreds, of patients, can be bought for 
 two years' purchase, or even one year's income, how 
 can one rate at three and a half years' purchase an 
 employment which is holden at the will, and even at 
 the caprice of one man, and which, as the employer 
 would not be likely to sell it, has no market worth ? 
 
 Some have proposed taxing Artists, making large 
 incomes from their labours ; as if their income were 
 that of absolute property ! 
 
 Now, what is it that is protected for the Artist ? 
 
 Is it the source of his income, his skill, won by 
 long and pinching years of study ? 
 
 Or, is it the fruit of that source, the income 
 itself? 
 
 Or, is it the free enjoyment of that income ? 
 
 The Government cannot insure the source of his 
 income, otherwise than by the common protection of 
 his living man-ship; for that would be to insure him 
 against a stroke of hand- paralysis, or madness ; and 
 one financier says, he would not tax the intellectual 
 power of a barrister, but the profits of the barrister. 
 
 The Government could not insure the Artist income, 
 for that would be to insure the sale of his pictures; 
 
656 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 and, therefore, it could insure only the free enjoyment 
 of his income. 
 
 But, according to the opinion of those who hold that, 
 protection should be the measure of taxation ; a man to 
 whom the State insures his income, and something 
 more than his income, such as property, the source 
 of income, should pay higher tax than he whose 
 income, as wages only, is protected, and, therefore, it 
 seems to follow, from their own view, that, wealth 
 incomes should be taxed higher than work incomes. 
 
 One writer reckons 10 per cent, as a fair average 
 assumption of the profits in trade ; though Railway 
 Companies while carrying on a fair and steady trade, 
 do not seem to clear such a gain ; and yet, again, some 
 co-operative societies pay a bonus of as much as 20 per 
 cent. 
 
 Hence, we can understand how hard it is to find a 
 fair ratio for commercial profit. 
 
 The unfairness of taxing alike the earnings of labor, 
 and the income of property, will always be shown by 
 their stubborn unlikeness. 
 
 If a hardly taxed but idle man, with an income of 
 100 a year from property, were to say, with truth to 
 the tax-master, your heavy tax does not leave me 
 enough of my income to feed, clothe, and house, my 
 wife and children, he might answer : " Very well. 
 Give some of your spare time to some kind of work, 
 and so increase your income." 
 
 But, if a poor toiler for bread, who might spend all 
 his days and strength in the winning of 100 a year, 
 were to utter to the tax-master the same complaint, he 
 could not give him the same answer. His taxed 100 
 take up all the work hours of his work days, and the 
 tax-master could only say to him : " What is that to 
 me? Starve": for, he would not say: "Cheat or 
 steal; or kill your wife or children off your hands." 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 657 
 
 A Witness was asked, whether the savings of the 
 poor man were not just as good as those of the rich, so 
 far as they go in adding to the capital of the country ; 
 which seemed to imply that men increased the capital 
 of the country in the ratio of their savings. Whereas, 
 men increase the capital by their earnings, rather than 
 by their savings. 
 
 In some cases, the savings of a working man may be 
 an addition to the capital of the country, while those of 
 a rich man may not. 
 
 But what is capital ? 
 
 At one place it seems to be understood that capital 
 is nothing more, or little more, than money. 
 
 But if money only be capital, it is increased by no 
 hands but those who work at the Mint ; for the money 
 of the country is not increased in the paying, or taking, 
 or keeping of it ; and, therefore, it is idle to talk of the 
 increase of it by poor, or rich. 
 
 Capital, as before shown, is composed of materials, 
 provisions, and instruments, representing Utility and 
 Value. 
 
 Capital, therefore, consists of commodities or products. 
 
 It assumes the name of Capital only by reason of its 
 ulterior destination. 
 
 It is a great mistake to suppose that capital, as such, 
 is a thing having an independent existence. 
 
 A sack of corn is still a sack of corn, although one 
 man sells it for revenue, and another buys it for capital. 
 Exchange takes place on the invariable principle of 
 value for value, service for service ; and the portion of 
 gratuitous utility which enters into the commodity is so 
 much into the bargain. At the same time, the portion 
 which is gratuitous has no value, and value is the only 
 thing regarded in bargains. In this respect transac- 
 tions which have reference to capital are in no respect 
 different from others. 
 
 2 u 
 
658 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 Whoever has rendered a service, and has not yet 
 received the corresponding satisfaction) is the bearer of 
 a warrant, either possessed of value, as money, or 
 fiduciary, like bank-notes, which warrant gives him the 
 power of receiving back from society, when he will, 
 where he will, and in what form he will, an equivalent 
 service. 
 
 Every service then is, or may become, a capital. 
 
 Thus, capital is an instrument of labor, and it follows 
 that, the progress of mankind coincides with the increase 
 of capital. 
 
 This being so, the paramount interest of all (in an 
 economical point of view, and this is Bastiat's view) 
 is to favor the rapid creation of capital ; and capital (if 
 we may say so) increases of its own accord under the 
 triple influence of activity, frugality, and security. 
 
 The vires acquirit eundo may be applied with rigor- 
 ous exactitude to capital, and its beneficent influence. 
 Capital, when formed, necessarily leaves disposable both 
 labor and the remuneration of that labor. It carries 
 in itself, then, a power of progression. 
 
 " This progression/' as Bastiat observes, " economical 
 science has omitted hitherto to oppose to the other 
 progression which Malthus has remarked." 
 
 With this explanation, we may take capital to be, 
 labor-won goods, or goods brought to hand in any 
 form by the labor of man, and that the capital of the 
 country is not increased by the still or idle hands, 
 though they may keep what may come into them ; and 
 that it may be increased by working hands, though 
 they may spend what they win. 
 
 But the good or happiness of the country may or 
 may not be increased by men who do not increase its 
 capital. 
 
 Let a hundred people settle with 100 among them, 
 in a small island, and let one of them save, in ten 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 659 
 
 years, 10. How have they added to their capital 
 while it has not increased ? 
 
 After ten years, let this man expend his savings of 
 10 in getting help to build a boat and make a fishing- 
 net. Then the 10, and moreover the boat and the 
 fishing-net, will be among the community, and the 
 man will have indirectly increased the capital of the 
 island by the spending, not the keeping, of the 10, 
 and the men who helped to make the boat and the net, 
 will have increased the capital in the earning, not in 
 the keeping of their earnings. 
 
 Thence we can see that still or idle hands do not 
 increase capital in the keeping of money, though they 
 may increase it indirectly by spending of money in 
 useful labor, as working hands may increase it in the 
 earning of money. 
 
 But how is it with the working man, who, out of the 
 fruits of his labor, saves a livelihood for his workless old 
 age ? Does he, or does he not, increase the capital of 
 the country ? 
 
 At his death he may, or may not, have done so. 
 
 It seems an ordinance of the Allwise that man should 
 have strength to win more life-gear, or capital, than his 
 life needfully consumes ; for, otherwise, he could not 
 bring up his little children, nor keep his kindred in 
 sickness. So, let a man, out of fifty years of labor, 
 save life-gear for ten more years of life. If he were 
 then to die he would have increased the capital of the 
 country by that ten years' share of capital, but if he 
 were then to be paralysed for the next ten years, and to 
 die, as he might have consumed his last bit of life-gear, 
 it is not clearly to be seen how his whole life could have 
 increased the capital of the country. 
 
 AY hen capital passes through still hands, it loses a 
 tare or tret equal to the share of it which is wholly con- 
 
 2 u 2 
 
G60 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 sumed in those hands out of all form of capital ; as in 
 food, or the wear of clothes, etc. 
 
 But here, let it be borne in mind that, men who 
 consume capital, and make none, may be affording to 
 the world some form of good which may be worth their 
 share. 
 
 The boy who was hired by Philip of Macedon to keep 
 him in mind of his mortality, consumed capital with 
 still hands ; but, yet, if he made Philip a better king to 
 his subjects, they might well afford a loss of capital for 
 a gain of happiness. 
 
 Some would tax property even yielding no income, 
 on the ground that it would yield a price, and, there- 
 fore, income, by sale ; and they think that the owner 
 should be taxed not on the income it may yield him, 
 but on the income he may, if he would, win by it. 
 
 A tax carried out on such grounds, without qualifica- 
 tion may become, as already shown, dreadfully tyranni- 
 cal, making the most prudent and the most christianly 
 course of action, a subject of ruinous exaction. 
 
 A Songstress has married, and wishes to give her 
 mind and time to her husband, her children, and her 
 home, and the tax-master may say to her : " Madam, 
 you have a voice and skill which has brought you, and 
 would now yield you, a thousand a year. On that in- 
 come I shall tax you." 
 
 Mademoiselle Jenny Lind, or Patti, would complain 
 of this as oppressive and unjust. 
 
 A girl may have a fine head of hair, which would sell 
 for false curls, and, therefore, the Assessor may tax her 
 for it. 
 
 Or, if a man of small income should form, in his 
 spare hours, a collection of fossils, or insects, or plants, 
 he might be so taxed on the price they would fetch in 
 the market, that he could not afford to keep them. 
 
 The gift of some most precious work of Art would 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 661 
 
 become the gift of a dreadful plague ; and even the 
 Universities (unless exempted) could hardly afford to 
 keep their rare collections of books and precious manu- 
 scripts. 
 
 If a good landowner were to give, rent free, a piece 
 of ground for the campus martins of a village, or town, 
 a builder might declare that it would sell for a higher 
 price, as building ground ; whereupon the owner would 
 be taxed on its deemed market value, unless he might 
 sell it to the builder. 
 
 If property should be taxed as it might yield, rather 
 than as it does yield, income ; the game of an estate, 
 even where none of it might go to the poulterer, must 
 be taxed on its estimated value. 
 
 If a picture, coming free of tax out of the hands of 
 the painter, were worth 1000, then, since the worth of 
 a piece of property on becoming burthened with a per- 
 petual charge would become lessened by the value of 
 the charge, so the price of the picture would become 
 lessened by the value of the perpetual tax, of which the 
 painter would virtually pay the whole. 
 
 It has been proposed to tax reversions, even to needy 
 men, who might be starving on their phantom of chance ; 
 and as it is clear that some reversioners might not have 
 wherewithal to pay the tax, it has been suggested that 
 their tax might remain on Mortgage of their reversion ; 
 whence it would happen, if they should pay the cost of 
 the Mortgage, that they would be taxed, as needy men, 
 far beyond a rich reversioner, who might pay the tax in 
 ready money. 
 
 Such a tax has been marked as an income tax, albeit 
 it would be raised on nothing coming in ; or on some- 
 thing which never could come in to the reversioner, if 
 he die before it comes in ; and if before it comes in the 
 income tax should cease, he will have paid for protection 
 which he has not enjoyed. He would, in reality, be 
 
662 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 paying a tax in consideration of an income received 
 after the tax bad expired. 
 
 The law of Christian contribution seems to be that, a 
 man should give as God hath prospered him according 
 as to that he hath, and not to that which he hath not; 
 and though we can hardly hope that a worldly law should 
 be the divine one of love, yet that law seems a good 
 pattern for men's payments to the wants of a Christian 
 State. 
 
 If men who pay tax both on income from property, 
 and from their labor, were polled for their opinion of 
 the fairness of taxing both alike, it is most probable 
 that, although they might be found to have paid the 
 true property tax freely, they will have paid the tax on 
 their earnings begrudgingly. 
 
 Some hold, again, that the body itself, a man's very 
 manship, with its powers, whatever they may be, is 
 property. 
 
 One Witness says : A man who has skill and indus- 
 try alone, which enable him to earn an annual rent for 
 his services, possesses property in the strictest and most 
 essential sense of the word, a sort of in-dwelling pro- 
 perty. A prima donna is as much property as the 
 theatre in which she sings. 
 
 This would imply that she is property in the same 
 respects as the theatre. But, as we have before shown, 
 she is not, since the theatre may be sold, and the woman 
 cannot. And if it be answered that it is the singer's 
 voice, or skill, that is as much property as the theatre, 
 the statement can be refuted by the same form of 
 answer. 
 
 Now, if one's manship should be taxed, as property, 
 only on the income it yields, the taxation of it would be 
 a great hardship, as it would be a tax on labor and 
 goodness, since the needy man would be taxed in and 
 for his working and useful life, while his unworking and 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 663 
 
 richer neighbor would be tax free; though it is true 
 the working man might have the pride of being rated as 
 of worth, while the person of his idle neighbor would 
 not be worth a farthing ; and, then, why should the 
 law protect it ? 
 
 If the earnings of a needy person are to be the mea- 
 sure of his worth, as property, then the person that 
 earns nothing must have only zero for the measure of 
 his worth; unless we hold, as some do hold, that 
 unproductive property should be taxed, in which case, 
 holding the body to be property, we should have a Poll 
 Tax. 
 
 Then the question of a poll tax would rouse in dispute 
 those who hold, on one side, that the person is to be 
 taxed as under the protection of the State; and, on the 
 other hand, as a property, that a man should be taxed 
 as being his own deed-master, or not taxed as under the 
 wardenship of others. 
 
 The subject of wardenship is perplexing, from the ano- 
 malies of our law, as to the age at which a boy becomes 
 his own deed-master. Among the Welsh Britons, a 
 boy was formerly received into his tribe, as his own deed- 
 master, at the age of fourteen, and with the Saxon 
 English, a boy was under his father's mund, or warden- 
 ship, who answered for his deeds, till the age of twelve. 
 But with us, a child seems to be taken as his own 
 deed-master, in crime, at a fewer years old, though the 
 law does not tell us how many, as we see by children 
 punished for crimes : whereas, if a tall young man buy 
 needless wares on trust, his father is told that his son 
 is under 21, and is not his own deed-master, or money- 
 master, and that he, the father, must answer for his 
 son's deeds. 
 
 And yet, again, a young girl may go into service 
 and take and spend her money as if she were her own 
 mistress. 
 
664 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 The Poll Tax, withstood by Wat Tyler, was sought of 
 all persons under fifteen years. This would impose the 
 tax on the father, for all his children, as long as they 
 were under his mund, while the length of the father's 
 wardenship is so ill defined. 
 
 If those on whom falls the duty of imposing taxes 
 were to imagine themselves in the position of those on 
 whom falls the duty of paying any particular tax, it is 
 inconceivable that many of our taxes should ever have 
 been imposed, and especially those taxes which are taken 
 indirectly from the wages of the laborer's own hard 
 labor. 
 
 It is one question, what description of property should 
 be taxed, and whether the tax should be imposed on the 
 property, or on the income. But it is quite another 
 question, whether labor, which is the source of all pro- 
 perty, should be regarded and treated as property. 
 
 If this latter question were quite out of the question, 
 as it ought to be, the former question would be very 
 much simplified. 
 
 If it be admitted, as an axiom, as it ought to be, that 
 the laborer's own labor must not be taxed, the great 
 difficulty in the question of Taxation is at once removed. 
 
 It would then seem to follow, as a consequence, that 
 the profits of trade must not be taxed until realised. 
 
 The description of property to be taxed would then be 
 a much less important question, and would be a ques- 
 tion within much narrower limits, than at present. 
 
 If manufactures, trades, agriculture, and professions 
 were thus withdrawn from the question, .it would be of 
 comparatively insignificant importance, what description 
 of property should be taxed, or whether any and what 
 distinction should be made between terminable and in- 
 terminable interests. All the ingenious reasoning and 
 devices for equalising these alleged inequalit:3s might 
 then be very safely left for the amusement of the ac- 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 665 
 
 tuaries and others curious in such speculations. To 
 the public at large they must be without any interest, 
 because they must be without any practically useful 
 result. 
 
 Such inequalities must ever remain in individual cases, 
 whatever the ingenuity brought to bear, inasmuch as no 
 general tax can be equalised in its effect on all indivi- 
 duals. 
 
 As that eminent authority, (the late) Mr. Babbage, 
 said, in his Examination before Mr. Hume's Com- 
 mittee on Income and Property Tax, " It is indis- 
 pensable to deal with classes, and not with individuals." 
 
 This Witness, by closely adhering to the principle 
 which he had laid down with great clearness, avoided 
 the snares which were laid for him by his Examiners. 
 
 They could nowhere catch him. 
 
 His powerful and penetrating mind saw the necessity 
 of confining his evidence to classes, and not allowing 
 himself to be drawn into individual cases, in the applica- 
 tion of a general rule for the good of the community. 
 
 Of all the Witnesses, this eminent Witness was the 
 most conclusive, in answering the charges of inequality 
 and injustice, in regard to terminable and interminable 
 annuities, and in exposing the injustice and absurdity of 
 fixing an income tax on a reversioner. 
 
 He well said that ; if the tax be permanent it will 
 eventually tax the reversioner as well as the present pos- 
 sessor ; and if the tax be only for the year, as it is, the 
 protection is alike to all paying the tax. 
 
 It would have given infinite satisfaction to the Writer 
 if all his views on this important question had been 
 supported by the high authority of this distinguished 
 Witness. The whole of Mr. Babbage's Evidence, before 
 Mr. Hume's Committee, deserves careful perusal. 
 
 To follow this evidence throughout, would lead beyond 
 the proposed limits of this volume. 
 
666 ' OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 But there is one question and answer of such great 
 importance that it must be here given. 
 
 Mr. Babbage was asked by Mr. Hume, the Chairman, 
 [No. 5655.] " Do you think it fair not to tax the rich 
 man more than the poor man?" Answer. " I do not 
 think you should do so." 
 
 It will be a woful day for this country, if it should 
 ever give any other answer to this question. 
 
 This answer the countrv has now given to Mr. Hub- 
 bard, and this ought to be final and conclusive. 
 
 Even under the present imperfect and unsatisfactory 
 law, and every tax on income must be imperfect and 
 unsatisfactory, all parties receive protection during one 
 year for the property which they have. 
 
 The produce, which is protected, is taxed equally in 
 all cases. 
 
 To distribute the burden of an Income Tax equally on 
 all, in proportion to their means, is, manifestly, an im- 
 possibility. 
 
 Income can be derived only from present or past 
 efforts or services ; or, from a combination of present 
 and past. 
 
 The efforts or services are infinite, and, therefore, 
 indefinable. They may be of a nature physical or 
 mental, subject to an infinite number of conditions, all 
 more or less uncertain. 
 
 Therefore, an Income Tax is bad in principle, because 
 unequal and unjust in its assessment, and incapable of 
 being made equal and just. 
 
 Take the case of terminable and interminable Annui- 
 ties which Mr. Farr, Mr. Hubbard, Mr. Jeffery, and 
 many others, so much rely on. 
 
 In considering this question, which is one of prin- 
 ciple, it is quite immaterial whether the Income Tax 
 be assumed to be permanent ; or, as it is, from year to 
 year. 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 667 
 
 If it be for one year only, and if it be assumed that the 
 tax is paid for the protection received, whatever other ob- 
 jection may exist, the question of inequality cannot arise. 
 
 If permanent, in this point of view, the Tax is co- 
 extensive with incomes of every duration and tenure. 
 It is an equal burden upon all, that is to say : 5 per 
 cent, for ever is as great a deduction from a perpetual 
 inheritable income, as 5 per cent, for twenty years is 
 upon an income limited by that period ; and if we were 
 to take the capitalised value of each income, and of the 
 tax upon each, we should find that the latter bore in 
 each case the same proportion to the former. 
 
 Thus,, let the income in each case be 100 a year, 
 and the tax 5, the perpetual income at thirty years' 
 purchase is worth, 3,000, the perpetual tax, at the 
 same rate, 150; the income of twenty years, at fifteen 
 years 5 purchase, would be worth 1,500, the tax, at 
 the same rate would be 75 ; each, therefore, is taxed 
 at the same rate. 
 
 But there is a fallacy in this reasoning, which shows 
 the greater propriety of fixing the tax on the property, 
 or the value of the property, and not on the income, or 
 the value of the income. 
 
 This fallacy is well exposed by Mr. Neate, but he falls 
 into a still greater fallacy in his principle, that the 
 capitalised value of each income is the true basis of 
 assessment. 
 
 The fallacy lies in comparing together, by the same 
 measure, two incommensurable quantities ; that is to 
 say, that it compares the consumable revenue of capital 
 with that which is in part a creation of fresh capital. 
 
 If, in order to ascertain the taxable quantity, we must 
 resort to the capitalised income, the proportion of tax to 
 it should be the same. 
 
 But, if we compare the capitalised value of each 
 income with the tax paid upon it, we find that one man 
 
668 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 is paying one-third per cent. the other one-sixth per 
 cent. upon his property. 
 
 This fact, which any one may see for himself who 
 chooses, is fatal to the view of Mr. Farr, Mr. Hubbard, 
 Mr. Jeffery, and all such reasoners. 
 
 The inequality and injustice of the Income Tax are 
 still more apparent if we compare incomes from capital, 
 with incomes from labor. But it is unnecessary to go 
 over that ground again. 
 
 To deprive a man of the requisites of healthful exist- 
 ence, or even of every common comfort, is to entail on 
 him privations incommensurable with any deduction 
 from the means of wealthier persons, which leaves them 
 still comforts, and, perhaps, luxuries in abundance. 
 
 But to force a man to labor for his means of subsist- 
 ence, and then to force him to give up part of his means, 
 so acquired, and such a part as often leaves him with 
 insufficient means for the subsistence of himself and 
 family, and to take this in the form of an Income Tax, 
 under the false pretence of protecting him in the enjoy- 
 ment of his property, is nothing less than a mockery 
 and a snare, a monstrous and wicked fraud on the 
 poor and the ignorant, who do not know how they are 
 cheated, or, if they do know it, do not know how to 
 help themselves : it is an outrage against common 
 sense, being a violation of justice, of honesty, and sound 
 policy ; for, great as are the evils thereby inflicted on 
 the working classes directly, the evils therefrom to all 
 the other classes are still greater indirectly. 
 
 An equal or just Income Tax, as before said, is an 
 impossibility, a visionary chimera, but those who 
 will indulge in this vision must admit it to be a condi- 
 tion of a just Income Tax, that it should be bond fide a 
 tax on income, that is to say, that it should be assessed 
 on incomes in proportion to their real, not their nominal, 
 amount. 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 669 
 
 If the land were divided among all the inhabitants of 
 a country, so that each of them possessed precisely the 
 quantity necessary for his support, and nothing more, an 
 equal income tax might be imposed. 
 
 But how long would it remain equal ? It is evident 
 that all of them being equal, no one would work for 
 another. Neither would any of them possess wherewith 
 to pay another for his labor, for each person having only 
 such a quantity of land as was necessary to produce a 
 subsistence, would consume all he should gather, and 
 would not have anything to give in exchange for the 
 labor of others. 
 
 Unless all of them were of the same mind, and of the 
 same capacity and power, equality would very soon cease 
 among them, and then it would cease to be an equal 
 income tax. And the course of nature alone, if nothing 
 else, must very soon produce this state of things. 
 
 But if the tax were imposed on the land, instead of 
 the income, the tax must always be equal, however un- 
 equal may become the division of the land. The mistake 
 consists in looking for fixity in that which must always 
 be changeable. 
 
 But the case supposed never can have existed, because 
 the land has been cultivated before it has been divided ; 
 the cultivation itself having been the only motive for a 
 division, and for that law which secures to every one his 
 property. 
 
 If the state supposed could have existed, it could not 
 possibly be durable ; each one gathering from his own 
 land only a subsistence, and not having wherewith to 
 pay others for their labor, would not be enabled to sup- 
 ply his other wants of lodging, clothing, etc., except by 
 the labor of his hands, which would be nearly impossible, 
 as every soil does not produce every material. 
 
 The productions which the earth supplies to satisfy 
 the different wants of man, will not, for the most part, 
 
670 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 administer to these wants, in the state nature affords 
 them ; it is necessary they should undergo different 
 operations,, and be prepared by human labour and art ; 
 thus showing the necessity, not only of the division of 
 labour, but also of the exchange of commodities for 
 labor. 
 
 This shows, in endless ways, the varying nature of 
 income, and how impossible it is to impose a tax, with 
 anything like equality or fairness, on net revenue, as 
 income. 
 
 Such a tax must always be unequal and unfair, be- 
 cause it must always encroach more or less on what is, 
 or might become, capital. 
 
 Income and capital, for the purpose of taxation, must 
 always be vague and indefinite terms, dependent in a 
 great measure on the will and pleasure of the owner, 
 though, as contradistinguished from each other, for 
 other purposes, they may be sufficiently defined. 
 
 Adam Smith has said : " The net revenue [meaning 
 income] of the inhabitants of a country is what, without 
 encroaching on their capital, they can place in the stock 
 reserved for immediate consumption, or spend upon their 
 subsistence, convenience and amusements. Their real 
 wealth is in proportion not to their gross, but to their 
 net revenue" [income]. 
 
 Now, apply this to the laborer's daily income, varying 
 between eighteenpence and five shillings a day. Call it 
 income or call it property, it is still the day's wages 
 for the day's labor. Is this the net revenue which can 
 be taxed consistently with the condition of a just Income 
 Tax, before mentioned ? 
 
 But a laborer's daily income is not equivalent to a 
 day's wages, since he must earn in six days his income, 
 or " daily bread," for seven at the least. The tax, there- 
 fore, to an ordinary laborer ought not to be on seven 
 days of his week's earnings. It ought not to be on six 
 
GENERAL REMARKS. 671 
 
 days. All laborers are liable to sickness, accidents, loss 
 of work. They mnst make up, while employed, their 
 livelihood for the days on which they earn nothing. 
 But they do not buy their tea and sugar, or other taxed 
 necessaries of life, cheaper on one day than another. 
 
 Is this consistent with the condition, as laid down, for 
 a just Income Tax ? And is it any more consistent, if 
 called a Property Tax? 
 
 Can anything show more plainly than this, the injustice 
 and impolicy of taxing the wages of labor, and the 
 profits of trade, or the produce of industry and skill, 
 bodily or mental, of the common laborer, or skilled 
 artizan, the manufacturer, or merchant, the agriculturist, 
 the shop-keeper, or the professional man, until the pro- 
 ducts of his labor, or the profits of his industry and skill, 
 have been realised ? 
 
 Who can say, what is the net income of a common 
 laborer, dependent on his daily labor for his daily sub- 
 sistence? Or, even of a professional man, in like man- 
 ner dependent ? 
 
 How is the condition to be observed by a careful dis- 
 tinction between the gross receipts within the periods of 
 computation, and the net amount reserved " to spend 
 upon subsistence, conveniences and amusements"? 
 
 This is one of the impossibilities ; for, it is admitted 
 that, for the purpose of the income tax, a man's real 
 income for a year, is not all the money which may 
 come into his hands in that time, but what comes into 
 his own pocket, or what he can spend in the twelve 
 months. 
 
 The less the advocates of the present Income Tax say 
 about "graduating" the tax, the better. The yeoman 
 with 50 a year, does not pay income tax at all, being 
 under the mark. 
 
 The professional man, the Country Surgeon, for 
 instance, has not 300 a year, like the fundholder, 
 
 ti 
 
I 
 
 672 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 and is taxed above his income. But if oncp the gra- 
 duated scale be let into our system of taxation, we shall 
 have Socialism in its worst form, in a disproportionate 
 exaction from the gains of genius and successful enter- 
 prise. 
 
 And who would really bear the cost of these abate- 
 ments ? Would it fall on the estates of the nobility, 
 and landed gentry ? Must they make up the deficit ? 
 
 No. Not the old wealth of the country, but the new 
 not the ancient revenues of the soil, but the growing 
 produce of the human arm and mind would be required 
 to make up the deficit. 
 
 But the philanthropists and philosophers, the finan- 
 ciers and actuaries, would graduate the Income Tax 
 only to equalise it. 
 
 Let them beware of worse inequalities ! 
 
 A graduated Income Tax could never help to fill the 
 cupboards of the laboring poor. On the contrary, 
 the tendency of such a measure must be, to diminish 
 the store of contents in their cupboards, by diminishing 
 the fund for the employment of their labor, conse- 
 quently, diminishing the demand for their labor, and 
 reducing their wages. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, in his view of the case, was not alto- 
 gether wrong when he said : " If you take away a penny 
 to relieve somebody under Schedule D, you must put it 
 on somebody else." This he terms an application of 
 " this grand true doctrine ' the abatement of one man 
 is the taxation of another/ ' 
 
 This is true if applied to a tax on property, or on 
 income derived from property ; but it is not true if 
 applied to a tax on the wages of labor, or the profits of 
 trade before they are realised. It is quite true if 
 applied, as Mr. Gladstone applied it, to a graduated 
 scale of Income Tax for Schedule D, whether under the 
 delusive notion of equalising it, or any other notion. 
 
TRADES UNIONS. 673 
 
 " The abatement of one man is the taxation of an- 
 other;" and further, it is loss and injury to both. 
 
 But a properly framed tax on property, and the aboli- 
 tion of all other taxes on property or income, would 
 amply compensate the burden of the tax upon the 
 smallest incomes. No property, on which the tax would 
 be worth the expense of collecting, would be exempted. 
 Thus the tax would be equalised bj< the same per-centage 
 to all, and in this way only can it ever be equalised. 
 
 It is not by ' ' taking away the tax," that a Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer can " build himself an everlasting 
 name ;" though Mr. Gladstone said, in making his Fi- 
 nancial Statement, in 1853 ; I think that some better 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, in some happier times, 
 may achieve that great accomplishment, and that some 
 future Poet may be able to sing of him ; 
 
 " He took the tax away, 
 And built himself an everlasting name." 
 
 It is not by " taking the tax away," but by adapting 
 it for perpetuity, and connecting his name with those 
 reforms, which would make it a lasting monument of 
 his political skill and fearless justice. 
 
 TRADES UNIONS. 
 
 A few words on this subject will be in their proper 
 place here, and may be useful to those most concerned, 
 if they will only bring to the consideration of the subject 
 a little common sense. There is, perhaps, nothing new 
 to be said about it, but this is quite clear, that a great 
 many of the working class, whom it most concerns, un- 
 derstand very little about it. 
 
 It will surprise those who are seeking to interfere, by 
 Trades Unions, with the wages of Labor, to be told that 
 they are trying to bring themselves down to the condi- 
 
 2 x 
 
674 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 tion of slaves. But this is the truth. It is equally true 
 that they have no more chance of equalising the rates of 
 wages, than of equalising the divisions of property. 
 
 No honest man was ever so ignorant as to suppose it 
 possible to bring about an equal division of property. 
 
 It would be a harsh thing to say that, every leader of 
 a Trade Union must be either a knave or a fool, yet it 
 is difficult to decide how otherwise to class him on his 
 own showing. If he know that he is acting wrong, he 
 is a knave. If he believe that he is acting for his own 
 interest, as a working-man, and for that of his fellow- 
 workers, he is a fool. In the former case, he is trying 
 to make others believe what he does not believe himself, 
 that he may the more easily cheat them. He is trying 
 to make himself a slave-master, that he may have slaves 
 under his command, always ready to work for him. The 
 poor slaves look up to him, because he promises and 
 threatens, and because they are slaves, very ignorant, 
 and very cowardly. The black overseer is always the 
 most cruel. He has been a slave himself, and he knows 
 what slaves are. 
 
 This is a true practice, and no caricature. The only 
 difference is that, instead of the brutal savage negro with 
 his cow-hide lash, we have the cunning white slave- 
 master with his scale of fines and secret intimidation, 
 the last to be used only on the refractory and cowardly 
 slaves. In either case they are slaves, deprived of their 
 own free will; in the one case, working under a master 
 who controls them with the lash, in the other with the 
 money-fine, and intimidation. 
 
 Now, this is a great mistake on the part of the white 
 slaves. But the mistake is their own, and they must 
 suffer for it. In the case of the black slaves, the mistake 
 is their master's, and they are suffering for it. The law 
 is with the white slaves, and could protect them ; but 
 they break the law and will not have the protection. 
 
TRADES UNIONS. 675 
 
 The law was against the black slaves, and declared them 
 to be personal chattels and stock-in-trade. 
 
 In both cases, it is the mistake of interfering with the 
 wages of labor. This never did, and never can, succeed. 
 The market price of labor is regulated by the same 
 natural laws as is the price of every other marketable 
 commodity. Every attempt to force up the market 
 price has a contrary effect in the end. 
 
 No laws can tamper with the market price with im- 
 punity. Neither can combinations. They can depress 
 or lower, never force up or raise. But they can destroy. 
 
 Now, let us see, by this axiom, what the Trades 
 Unions are trying to do. 
 
 The leaders of most of these Trades Unions are now 
 binding their members by solemn engagement, and en- 
 forcing its observance by money fines and intimidation, 
 to demand, in one form or another, more than the 
 market-price for the only commodity which they can 
 bring to market their labor. 
 
 It is obviously the same thing in effect, whether they 
 insist on having a higher price, or on giving a smaller 
 quantity. 
 
 If the market price, for any particular description of 
 labor, be 5s. for a day of ten hours, a reduction to nine 
 hours raises the wages to 5s. 6d. a day. 
 
 To the master who employs 100 laborers, even this 
 small difference is equal to 10 a month, or 120 
 a year. 
 
 If he employ 1000 laborers, this is equal to jBlOO a 
 month, or 1200 a year. But if this should become 
 the market-price throughout the kingdom for the same 
 description of labor, as it soon would, this small difference 
 would be equal to many millions a year. But this would 
 not be all. 
 
 The higher wage brings more workmen. 
 
 All the employers of labor, who would keep their 
 
 2x2 
 
676 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 laborers, must make a corresponding advance in their 
 wages ; or, in some other way bribe them to remain, 
 otherwise they would go and turn their hands to the 
 more profitable work. 
 
 It would be no answer to say that, they would be less 
 skilled in the new work. Of course they would be. But 
 the leaders of the Trades Unions are much too cunning 
 to trouble themselves with that little difficulty. They 
 do not venture to say that, one workman shall receive 
 more than another in the same class. The steady and 
 the skilled, the strong and the weak, the stupid sot and 
 the idle vagabond, who have paid and pledged, are all 
 equal in their respective classes, and must all be equally 
 cared for, must all be brought to the same dead level. 
 
 Suppose this state of things brought about by Trades 
 Unions throughout the kingdom : What must be the 
 consequence ? The masters who employ the labor must 
 raise their prices, not only to meet the increased wages, 
 but also to meet the interest on the increased capital 
 which they would then require to carry on their trade. 
 They who could not obtain the capital must retire from 
 the trade, or become bankrupts. Many would retire, 
 and many would become bankrupts. 
 
 But if this were the state of things, existing in every 
 branch of trade employing labor throughout the kingdom, 
 the increased capital required for the labor-market would 
 be some hundred millions sterling a year. 
 
 Now, this is the case supposed, but supposed only, or 
 pretended to be, by the leaders of these Trades Unions, 
 and, perhaps, believed by many of their poor ignorant 
 dupes. We are supposing this state of things to exist 
 for the sake only of following out the consequence. 
 
 But now we are coming to the real difficulty, into 
 the broad sunlight of stern reality. This is a difficulty 
 beyond the trickery of all the Trades Unions, however 
 powerful their combination. 
 
TRADES UNIONS. 677 
 
 How is the interest on this additional capital in trade 
 to be paid ? 
 
 Out of profits, to be sure. 
 
 But what,, if the profits of trade be inverse to the rise 
 in the wages ? 
 
 The markets of the world are beyond the reach of any 
 combinations. 
 
 We find it hard work now to compete with our foreign 
 neighbors in those markets. What chance should we 
 have when our laborers are dictating the rate of wages 
 to their masters or employers ? How long should we 
 hold our own Home market when we had lost the 
 foreign ? What would become of our laborers when all 
 our little traders, and half of our great ones, were 
 retired or ruined ? The laborers must be content then 
 with what wages they could get. Many would get none 
 at all, and they must starve unless they could get away, 
 which would then be a much more difficult matter than 
 it is now. What would then become of the leaders of 
 the Trades Unions, the owners of these white slaves, 
 then their miserable dupes ? 
 
 They must escape out of the country, or they would 
 be torn to pieces by the starving mobs. ' Of all rebel- 
 lions, the rebellion of the belly is the worst.' The law 
 can do but little to quiet that. The law does sometimes 
 restore order, but never did restore trade, unless by 
 repealing bad laws. Trade, in all countries, is regulated 
 by a universal law. But a disregard of that universal 
 law involves the disruption of social order, and that lets 
 in Civil War, and its attendant, Famine, with many 
 other vicious consequences, which the strongest only 
 would survive. The weak must perish then, just as 
 certainly as those who tumble into deep water must sink 
 and be drowned, if they cannot swim, and there be no 
 one near able and willing to save them. They may be 
 innocent, but if ignorant, their innocence will not save 
 
678 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 them ; for, in this world, suffering is a consequence of 
 ignorance. 
 
 We do not find it to be the order of things in this 
 world, that everything should be reduced to a dead level. 
 
 Nature does not work under any such PoTTER-ing 
 law. Instead of uniformity and equality, Nature de- 
 lights in variety and inequality. 
 
 If all the land and other property of the country 
 were equally divided, how long would that equality con- 
 tinue ? Imagine that state of things for one week only, 
 and then what would become of us all ? There can be 
 no equality. The nearest approach that we can ever hope 
 to make to it is, in Justice. 
 
 In that way we may approximate to it, but must ever 
 be at an immeasurable distance from it, and our approach 
 to it will never be through Trades Unions. But towards 
 it we have not yet taken the first step. To say that the 
 strong shall be brought down to the level of the weak, 
 is as great an absurdity as to say that the weak shall be 
 lifted up to the level of the strong. It is very like 
 finding fault with the Creator's work, and' pretending to 
 correct it. And, yet, it is this that our Trades Unions 
 are trying to do. Unhappily for us all, this ignorant 
 mistake has arisen out of a no less ignorant mistake of 
 our Imperial Legislature. 
 
 If the Trades Unions knew how to state their case 
 properly, they would be invincible. They complain of 
 injustice. In that they are quite right. But they are 
 very ignorant, and in their ignorance they commit a 
 much greater injustice against themselves and others, 
 than that of which they complain. 
 
 The only real injustice which they have to complain 
 of is, that they are not allowed to enjoy the full reward 
 of their labor. Being born with a constitution and 
 physical and mental powers of some sort, and having no 
 other property, they are obliged to work for wages, that 
 
TRADES UNIONS. 679 
 
 is, to let themselves out for hire. But the laws (in 
 the making of which they have had no voice) take away 
 from them, at least, one third of their wages ; or, what is 
 the same thing, make them pay in that proportion 
 an increased price for all that is necessary for their 
 existence, in eating, drinking, clothing, and housing. 
 The laws, therefore, to that extent make them forced 
 laborers, or slaves, for the benefit of those who, having 
 property, are not obliged to work for wages. This is as 
 manifest an injustice in principle and in practice, in 
 fact and in effect, as to demand ten hours' pay for nine 
 hours' labor. Those who are deluded into this folly are 
 to be pitied; but their ignorance will not save them. 
 By a law of Nature they must suffer. 
 
 But what is to be said for those who make laws 
 to defraud the workmen of their wages? The law- 
 makers are ignorant. They too must suffer through 
 the natural law, which they have broken. But for 
 the suffering, as a necessary consequence, we should 
 never have a chance of improving. All experience 
 shows that mankind must suffer for the wrongs which 
 they commit, before they will set about repairing them. 
 Wrong can never be made right by reprisals ; 
 
 " That wretched interchange of wrong for wrong." 
 We look in vain for a sense of justice in a people until 
 they be governed by just laws, and that state of things 
 we have never seen. 
 
 As regards the law in the present question of Trades 
 Unions, there is nothing illegal in their constitution, as 
 long as there is no interference with the free-will of the 
 members. 
 
 Combinations of workmen, for protecting and regu- 
 lating their rights, may be lawful and wise. But it 
 can never be lawful to exact obedience to self-imposed 
 rules, against the free-will of the party coerced. And 
 it can never be wise to attempt what it is impossible to 
 
680 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 accomplish. Attempts of this kind were often made, in 
 former times, by laws to fix the wages of labor. It was 
 forbidden, under a penalty, that higher or lower wages 
 should be asked or offered for each kind of labor, than 
 what the law fixed. But laws of this kind were found 
 never to do any good. When the rate fixed by law for 
 farm laborers, for instance, happened to be higher than 
 it was worth a farmer's while to give for ordinary la- 
 borers, he turned off all his workmen, except a few of 
 the best hands, and employed them on the best land 
 only ; so that less corn was raised, and many persons 
 were out of work, who would have been glad to have it 
 at a lower rate, rather than earn nothing. Then, again, 
 when the fixed rate was lower than it would answer for 
 a farmer to give to the best workmen, some farmers 
 would actually try to get these into their service, by 
 paying them privately at a higher rate. And this they 
 could easily do (so as to escape the law), by agreeing to 
 supply them with corn at a reduced price, or in some 
 such way, and then the other farmers were driven to do 
 the same thing, that they might not lose all their best 
 workmen. So that laws of this kind came to nothing. 
 
 The best way is to leave all laborers and employers, as 
 well as all other sellers and buyers, free to ask and offer 
 what they think fit, and to make their own bargain to- 
 gether, if they can agree, or to break it off if they cannot. 
 
 Some persons suppose that the rising and falling of 
 wages depend on the price of provisions : they imagine 
 that wages must be higher when bread is dear, and that, 
 when bread falls wages will fall in the same proportion ; 
 so that it makes no real difference to the laborer whether 
 the price of his food be high or low. But any one who 
 will observe and make inquiries will find that this is 
 contrary to the fact. Wages are not found to rise and 
 fall according to the price of provisions; and, indeed, 
 there seems to be no reason to expect any such thing. 
 
TRADES UNIONS. 681 
 
 The reason why a skilful mechanic earns high wages, 
 compared with those of common laborers, is, that his 
 services cannot be had cheaper. For the same reason, 
 when laborers of any kind are scarce, (as, for instance, 
 in a newly settled Colony,) wages will be high because 
 employers will then be looking out for laborers, and will 
 bid against each other to obtain them; and however 
 cheap subsistence may be, no one will work for low wages 
 when he can get high. 
 
 On the other hand, when there are many laborers 
 ooking out for work, they will submit to labor for a bare 
 ubsistence, rather than remain idle and starve. The 
 dearness of bread does not make it worth while to an 
 employer to pay high wages, when he can get workmen 
 for less ; nor does it necessarily make their work worth 
 the more to him. A clothier, for instance, or a cutler, 
 may find the price of cloth or of knives remaining the 
 same when the price of bread is raised. The labor, 
 therefore, of his workmen will be worth no more to him 
 than it was before. 
 
 In hard times, it sometimes happens that a farmer or 
 tradesman is forced to part with some of his laborers, 
 because the highest wages he can afford to pay them 
 would not be enough for their support ; so that they are 
 obliged to go and seek for work elsewhere. 
 
 In prosperous times again, however cheap food may 
 be, an employer may find it answer to pay his workmen 
 high wages, far beyond what is sufficient for their bare 
 support, if the demand for laborers be so great that he 
 cannot get them for less. 
 
 The high or low rate of wages, in short, depends not 
 on the price of provisions, but on the demand and supply 
 of labor. When many laborers are looking out for 
 work, wages will fall; and they will rise when many 
 employers are looking out for laborers. 
 
 Laborers often suffer great hardships from which they 
 
682 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 might save themselves by looking forward beyond the 
 present day. They are apt to complain of others, when 
 they ought rather to blame their own imprudence. They 
 are, in general, very ignorant of their own interests, and 
 very improvident because they are very thoughtless. If 
 they would only take a little trouble to think, they would 
 easily understand the few simple propositions on which 
 their interests, as laborers, mainly depend. They would 
 see the impossibility of paying all the laborers the same 
 wages ; and they would then distrust those whom they 
 now follow. They would see that the rate of wages does 
 not depend on the hardness of the labor, but on the 
 value of the work done. They would see that the value 
 of each kind of work is like the value of anything else ; 
 that it is greater or less according to the limitation of 
 its supply, that is, the difficulty of procuring it. If 
 there were no more expense, time, and trouble, in ob- 
 taining a pound of gold than a pound of copper, then 
 the price of a pound of gold would be no more than of a 
 pound of copper. This may show the great difference, 
 so important to be remembered, between price and value, 
 which, when understood, have an entirely different 
 meaning. 
 
 The price of a pound of gold is, we may say, 40 ; but 
 the value of a pound of gold is, nothing. The 40 is 
 paid, not for the value of the gold, which is valueless, 
 but for the service rendered in obtaining it. The same 
 reasoning must equally apply to every other natural pro- 
 duction. All natural productions are more or less use- 
 ful, but to be useful they must be used. Most of them 
 are obtained by efforts, more or less arduous. By those 
 efforts the service is rendered, and the value is in pro- 
 portion to the service, or is supposed to be so. In the 
 utility, which is the free gift of Nature, there can be no 
 value, for nothing has been, or ever can be, given in re- 
 turn. Therefore, nothing is paid for the gold, which is 
 
TRADES UNIONS. 683 
 
 the gratuitous service of Nature ; but the payment is for 
 the service of man, by whose efforts the gold was ob- 
 tained, and the price is the measure of the value of that 
 service. This has been before explained, and is here 
 repeated that it may be remembered. 
 
 If the workmen understood these things better, there 
 would be no strikes. 
 
 They would see that, if all attempts of Governments 
 to regulate by law the rate of wages are useless and 
 mischievous, still more hurtful is the interference from 
 another quarter ; that is, when men, who are not lawful 
 governors, and have no legal authority, combine together 
 to control their neighbors, and to dictate to each man 
 what wages he shall pay and receive, and how he shall 
 dispose of himself and his property. 
 
 They would see that, an unsuccessful strike must 
 reduce them to a worse state than even the poor negro- 
 slave, for the most hard-hearted slave-master finds it 
 for his own interest to allow his slaves enough of 
 food and other necessaries to keep them in health and 
 strength. 
 
 But they would also see that, a successful strike is still 
 more mischievous, because its mischief is more lasting. 
 The ignorant and violent men who have acquired domi- 
 nion over their fellow-workmen, and over the masters, 
 exercise the power to the injury of both. They do in- 
 jury to the workmen by reducing all to the same level ; 
 preventing any one from being a gainer by good con- 
 duct, or from being discharged for bad conduct. Thus 
 they take away all motives for exertion, and destroy the 
 energy, the industry, and the character of the workman ; 
 and by thus spoiling the workman, and forcing the mas- 
 ters to pay higher wages than they can afford, and in- 
 terfering with the arrangement of their business, they 
 make their trade unprofitable. Some of the masters are 
 ruined. Other? turn all their rapital into money, and 
 
684 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 either give up business, or go to America, or to some 
 other part of the world where such folly and wickedness 
 are not pursued. 
 
 But the work-people remain. Some of them try to 
 learn new trades ; but those who seek to maintain them- 
 selves in this way, generally find themselves prevented 
 by other Trades Unions ; the workmen combining to 
 keep out all new- coiners. Some live on the charity of 
 their friends, and some subsist by begging, or go into the 
 work-house. 
 
 In England, all those who are not wanted to till the 
 land find employment in manufactures and commerce. 
 
 In Ireland, combinations have driven away most of 
 the manufactures and commerce, so that all the people 
 are forced to seek employment on the land. As there 
 is not land enough for all, there is a continual struggle 
 to obtain land and to keep it, which often leads to out- 
 rages and murders. It is a common practice, in many 
 parts of Ireland, to let small plots of land, an acre or 
 less, to the poor Tenantry, at the rate of 5 and 6 
 per acre, and even up to 10 per acre, per annum. These 
 holdings, though continued from year to year, unsecured 
 by any Lease, are universally regarded by the holders as 
 indefeasible estates of inheritance, and are continually 
 being sold by them to their own class for 20 and even 
 up to 30 years' purchase. Sometimes the real land- 
 owner interferes, but then, if a resident, sometimes he is 
 shot; or, if an absentee, sometimes his agent is shot. 
 Such is the state of things over the greatest part of 
 Ireland, as regards the Land-proprietors. 
 
 Formerly, Dublin was a great place for Ship-build- 
 ing. Now, no Ships are built, and scarcely any even re- 
 paired, there ; because the Shipwrights' Union has driven 
 elsewhere all the master ship-builders whom it has not 
 ruined. The ship-building trade of Liverpool has greatly 
 declined from the same cause, the folly and tyranny of 
 
TRADES UNIONS. 685 
 
 the Unions. Dublin, also, was formerly a great place 
 for the manufacture of furniture : now, most of the fur- 
 niture used there is imported from London. At Shef- 
 field, Trades Unions are all but omnipotent, for their 
 laws have been ruthlessly enforced by murder, incendi- 
 arism, and infernal machines. The results are these ; 
 the most skilful workmen have emigrated to the Conti- 
 nent, or America; Sheffield has lost several branches of 
 its trade, and Sheffield would have been thrice as large, 
 and thrice as flourishing, if such a thing as a Trade 
 Union had never existed there. 
 
 Thus it is that, a whole country may be made poor 
 and miserable, in comparison of what it might have 
 been, through the effects of these combinations ; for they 
 injure not merely those engaged in them, but every one 
 else also, by preventing the employment of capital in 
 setting laborers to work, by which they might support 
 their families. 
 
 Most of the people of this kingdom reckon themselves 
 free men, and boast of their liberty. They profess them- 
 selves to be ready to fight and to die, rather than submit 
 to slavery. Yet many of these people choose to subject 
 themselves to a tyranny more arbitrary and more cruel 
 than that of the worst Government in the world. They 
 submit to be ruled by tyrants, who do not allow them 
 to choose how they shall employ their time, or their skill, 
 or their strength. Their tyrants dictate to them what 
 masters they shall work for, what work they shall do, 
 what machines they shall use, and what wages they shall 
 earn. Sometimes these tyrants order them not to earn 
 more than a certain amount; sometimes not to earn 
 less ; and sometimes to refuse all work, and see their 
 families starve. They are heavily taxed for the support 
 of their tyrants, and if they disobey, they are punished 
 without trial, by cruel beatings, by having their limbs 
 broken, or their eyes put out with vitriol, and by death. 
 
686 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 These unhappy persons are those who have anything 
 to do with Trades Unions and Combinations. 
 
 But, as Archbishop Whateley says : " It is some com- 
 fort to reflect that the people have it in their own power 
 to remedy the worst evils which they are liable to. 
 Whenever they come to understand their own true in- 
 terests, they will agree to resist all illegal combinations. 
 They will resolve to act together firmly, not in resisting 
 the law, or in seeking for alterations in it, but in sup- 
 porting the law, and resisting all who try to encroach on 
 any other man's rights. They will do their utmost to 
 secure for themselves and all their countrymen true 
 liberty ; that is, that every man should be left free to 
 dispose of his own property, his own time, and strength, 
 and skill, in whatever way he himself may think fit, 
 provided he does no wrong to his neighbors." 
 
 If working men in general could come to an agree- 
 ment among themselves to reduce their day's labor 
 from ten to nine hours, that would be a reasonable and 
 wise agreement, provided they agreed at the same time 
 to a reduction of one- tenth from their wages, calculated 
 at ten hours' labor; and if the working-people under- 
 stood their own interests they would see that, these 
 would be better terms for themselves than if they re- 
 ceived ten hours' pay for nine hours' work. 
 
 This is as capable of demonstration as the simplest 
 sum in figures ; but this demonstration has been worked 
 out so often and so conclusively that, it will not be 
 repeated here. All attempts to raise the wages of labor 
 by combinations of working-men must fail, and re-act 
 with fearful loss to themselves. But there is no use in 
 attempting to prove this to ignorant men who cannot 
 follow the reasoning. The leaders, who are mis-leading 
 them, are, for the most part, as ignorant as those whom 
 they are misleading, and the few who know better are 
 mere panderers and spungers, maintaining themselves 
 
TRADES UNIONS. 687 
 
 out of the wages of their dupes. These last are the 
 miscreants, with whom to reason is to waste words. 
 
 The working people, formerly neglected, are now 
 made too much of, too much talked of, and too much 
 temporised with. 
 
 The only remedy is, to educate them, and to enforce 
 the law with severity against unlawful combinations, 
 i. e. against all associations which use compulsory means, 
 directly or indirectly, for enforcing their illegal regula- 
 tions. The law ought to be made to reach those who 
 even advocate in public such means, as enemies of social 
 order, as if they were advocating incendiarism, or 
 assassination. It is trifling to talk of the liberty of the 
 subject, when the very existence of order in society is 
 threatened by the public avowals of a few ignorant re- 
 volutionary ruffians. All these political Philosophers 
 should be brought to open trial before a Jury, and if 
 convicted of disseminating principles for the destruction 
 of property and order in Society, they should be brought 
 under prison discipline. Honest intentions are no 
 better excuse for such fatal follies, than is madness for 
 murder. Society looks to the law for preventing the 
 repetition of such enormities. 
 
 The working man must be taught to know and to 
 understand that, if the hours of labor be reduced the 
 cost of production and the price of the article produced 
 will be enhanced, and that, his wages must be reduced 
 in like proportion. 
 
 The question is really with the men, not with the 
 masters. Can the working man afford to reduce the 
 hours of labour ? No doubt, they can and ought. But, 
 then, they must reduce their expenditure in intoxicating 
 liquors and tobacco. 
 
 The annual expenditure of the population of the 
 United Kingdom in fermented liquors and tobacco ex- 
 ceeds 100,000,000 ; that in beer and spirits only 
 
688 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 reaches 75,000,000. In England alone the consump- 
 tion of intoxicating liquors would allow an expenditure 
 of 10 : 15 : 6 to each adult male. It may be fairly 
 estimated that, the expenditure of the working classes 
 alone in drinking and smoking is not less than 
 60,000,000 a year, of which 40,000,000 is mere 
 extravagance and excess. 
 
 Here are ample means for reducing the hours of 
 labor, and also accumulating capital by savings. 
 
 A reasonable amount of leisure may be, and ought to 
 be, a blessing ; but if ill used it is not a blessing but a 
 curse ; and if a blessing, like all other blessings must be 
 " bought with a price." No one acquainted with the 
 average mental and moral condition of the mass of our 
 laboring population will contend that, at present the 
 .gift of three or four hours of added leisure per diem 
 would be in any sense a blessing to themselves or others. 
 Education and civilisation must be much further ad- 
 vanced than they are yet, before anything but unmixed 
 -evil would be the result. 
 
 A reduction of the hours of labor in any trade can be 
 maintained only on condition that, the cost of production 
 shall not thereby be enhanced. This is the sine qua non 
 which must always be borne in mind. 
 
 The same must be the effect on all trades, and the 
 certain effect of a general limitation of the hours of 
 labor, if now made, must be a general advance in the 
 price of everything which labor produces, and which the 
 laboring man buys : therefore, his wages, if the same, 
 will not buy nearly as much. But if the laboring 
 classes were better educated and better understood their 
 own interests, the reduction of two or three hours in 
 their day's labor would be an inestimable blessing to 
 them and to their families, for they would then better 
 understand the real meaning and rights of capital, and 
 by more provident habits they would learn to accumulate 
 
TRADES UNIONS. 689 
 
 it out of savings, and by co-operation would thus become 
 themselves the employers and the employed, drawing 
 their daily wages from their share of profits. This co- 
 operative principle is a legitimate principle, capable, 
 practically, of unlimited extension, and to this the 
 attention of the working classes should be directed, that 
 their ambition may be excited to the attainment of this 
 most desirable end. Nothing could so much tend to 
 elevate the character of the working man, as to be him- 
 self in the position of master and workman, himself 
 employing himself, and himself reaping the full profits 
 of his own labor, and bringing up his sons to increase 
 his invested capital by savings out of their labor to share 
 with himself ultimately in the profits. 
 
 In this way an immense capital might be profitably 
 employed throughout the whole kingdom, and the work- 
 ing classes would then appreciate the rights of capital, 
 as ' bought with a price ' out of the savings of labor. 
 
 Those idle miscreants who are now living on the 
 wages of the poor ignorant working people, and those 
 1 profound thinkers ' who are now deceiving them, all 
 such political philanthropists would soon find their voca- 
 tion at an end, for they would then lecture in public at 
 the peril of their lives. The low and ignorant democrats 
 would resume their work as cobblers, tailors, and tinkers, 
 and would soon be forgotten ; and the pretended philo- 
 sophers, political economists and what not, with their 
 false and abominable theories, like those insane enthu- 
 siasts, St. Simon, Enfantin, and other visionaries of the 
 past, would be remembered only with pity and con- 
 tempt. 
 
 But, ignorant and foolish as are all these associations 
 no Trade Union ever came up in ignorance and folly to 
 the Land Tenure Reform Association, for a more equal 
 division of the land of the kingdom. 
 
 To reason with such men as these, who express an 
 
 2 Y 
 
690 INTOXICATING DRINKS. 
 
 eager desire for the possession of land on the easiest 
 terms, would be like reasoning with the high way- man 
 who expresses an eager desire for the possession of one's 
 purse. 
 
 The best way of dealing with this new sect of political 
 economists, is simply to make public their names, as 
 fraudulent adulterators ought to be dealt with, and 
 thus expose them to the ridicule and contempt of man- 
 kind, as common cheats. 
 
 INTOXICATING DRINKS. 
 
 Although it may not fall directly within the scope of 
 our subject, yet it will, certainly, be introduced by many 
 indirectly, and will be used by them as an argument 
 against the removal of all Duties from Beer, Wine, and 
 Spirits, on the ground that this will be injurious to the 
 physical and" moral state of the People, by tending to 
 the increase of drunkenness. 
 
 Without entering deeply into this question, on which 
 so much has been said and written on both sides, a few 
 remarks, though merely superficial, may be here usefully 
 introduced, if only to place the question in its true posi- 
 tion, that those who are under the impression that, the 
 taxation of intoxicating drinks will prevent the abuse of 
 them, may disabuse their minds of any such simple de- 
 lusion. Strange and incredible as it may seem to many, 
 yet it is true that this impression so strongly pervades a 
 large party in this country that, it is actually urged by 
 them as their strongest objection to any Scheme of Tax- 
 ation which proposes the abolition of these Duties ! 
 
 This must, therefore, be treated as one of the Objec- 
 tions proper to be answered, notwithstanding it will 
 appear to many to be too absurd to deserve a serious 
 answer. 
 
INTOXICATING DRINKS. 691 
 
 However, the answer shall be as serious as the nature 
 of the objection will admit of. 
 
 It is impossible to deny that, the removal of all duties 
 from beer, wine, and spirits, will have an immediate and 
 direct tendency to increase the consumption. But this 
 is quite as true when applied to tea, coffee, tobacco, and 
 sugar ; and, perhaps, the increase in the consumption 
 of these will be in a much greater proportion. The 
 cheapening of necessaries and luxuries has an imme- 
 diate and direct tendency to increase the consumption. 
 This is a necessary consequence, but is not necessarily 
 an evil, as the Temperance Advocates seem to imagine. 
 That that which is good in moderation becomes evil in 
 excess, is a truth applicable to many other good things 
 besides beer, wine, and spirits. But as it requires a 
 power beyond the human to eradicate evil, the best way 
 of proceeding is, to make the good as abundant as pos- 
 sible, that it may prevail over the evil. It seems as if 
 this life were meant to be a trial between good and evil. 
 A hard struggle we know it to' be, and it appears to 
 have been ordained from the first, that it should be so. 
 The Temperance Advocates seem to think that this is 
 wrong, and they would have it, and think that they can 
 make it, otherwise. They admit that, the human being 
 is created a free agent, but they think that he should not 
 be permitted to remain so on this particular occasion. 
 They remember the words of Him who said that, all 
 who believed in Him, and lived according to His words, 
 should be strong enough to resist all evil, should be 
 strong enough to stand in their own strength, that is, in 
 the strength which He would give them, for, as He also 
 said : " Without me ye can do nothing." They say 
 that, they believe in all this ; but, at the same time they 
 say ' Do not trust yourself take an oath that you will 
 not trust yourself call God to witness that you do not 
 trust His Word that you have greater faith in your 
 
 2 Y2 
 
692 INTOXICATING DRINKS, 
 
 own pledge to men, (for that is the real meaning of the 
 pledge) than in His pledge to you ;' and so, in token of 
 their faith in their own pledge, they hang around the 
 neck of their proselyte, a little silver medal, suspended 
 to a little blue ribbon ! 
 
 They would make the poor simpleton believe that, he 
 may thus deprive himself of that free agency, which, in 
 this particular, was so improperly given to him, and that 
 he may thus avoid the sin which, otherwise he is too 
 weak to resist ! 
 
 Now, what has been the result of these little schemes 
 for fettering man's free will? 
 
 This question has been answered by Mr. George 
 Lucas, one of the ruling members of the " United King- 
 dom Alliance for the Suppression of the Traffic in all 
 Intoxicating Liquors as Beverages." 
 
 Here is his answer in his own words : " I have here 
 an Abstract of the working of the Leeds Temperance 
 Society, from its origin in 1851. I find, in 1857, there 
 were in connection with it 14 branches, 29 weekly 
 meeting-places, 118 speakers on the plan, a Temperance 
 periodical issued, and a regular system of visiting esta- 
 blished. Now, 13 of these branch societies have died 
 out at one time or another, and I think now only 4 of 
 them have an existence, while only one of them has 
 made vital progress. The 29 meetings have been re- 
 duced to 3. No speakers' plan exists, no system of 
 visiting, no publication is issued. During the whole of 
 the existence of this society, there has been a zealous 
 and able committee, near 4000 expended, the best ad- 
 vocates in the world commanded; but, in spite of all, 
 these reverses have been endured ; and none so much 
 deplore it as those noble men who have labored to pro- 
 mote the cause. Take now a few facts respecting Wood- 
 house Society, the one with whose history I am most 
 familiar. It was established 19 years ago, had an active 
 
INTOXICATING DRINKS. 693 
 
 committee, every means that ingenuity could devise to 
 promote its success was employed during a space of ten 
 years, when the committee took a solemn review, and 
 were entirely dismayed. They had got the people with 
 them, but they had gone back again, and could scarcely 
 tell from whence their committee could be sustained. 
 This was their condition after ten years of earnest and 
 sacrificial industry had been devoted to the cause ; and 
 I am satisfied, so far as I have ascertained the facts 
 relating to Gateshead, and the Temperance Societies in 
 general, that this is a summary of their history in the 
 kingdom." 
 
 Such is the testimony of an unexceptionable witness 
 respecting the modern scheme for the regeneration of 
 society ! 
 
 Truly, as said by Dr. John Barclay, of Leicester, in 
 his admirable pamphlet on " Ale, Wine, Spirits, and 
 Tobacco," "The first and only real Temperance So- 
 ciety was established a little more than 1800 years ago, 
 and by that Society of Christianity we are bound to be 
 temperate, not only in drink, but in everything." 
 
 The cost of the liquors consumed in the United King- 
 dom yearly, is estimated at 60,000,000. Accepting 
 this estimate as not extravagant, and assuming that one- 
 third of that sum represents the amount paid for the 
 quantity worse than wasted in excess, in that drinking 
 which does perceptible harm to the tippler, this gives 
 20,000,000 as the sum lost to the nation by excessive 
 drinking ; and of this sum so wasted, the Exchequer is 
 supposed to gain, and does, in fact, receive from duties, 
 about 5,000,000, leaving the yearly sum of 15,000,000 
 worse than thrown away by the working class of this 
 country; the whole revenue derived from spirit duties 
 being about 11,000,000 annually. These estimates 
 are sufficiently near the exact truth for the present 
 purpose. 
 
694 INTOXICATING DRINKS. 
 
 Now, what are the conclusions to be fairly drawn 
 from these facts without reference to any party feeling 
 in the Temperance Question ? 
 
 The conclusions are these : 
 1. That 40,000,000 sterling represents the cost of 
 
 the liquors annually, and not improperly, consumed 
 
 in the kingdom. 
 2. That 20,000,000 sterling represents the cost of 
 
 the liquors annually, and improperly, consumed in 
 
 the kingdom. 
 3. That 5,000,000 sterling represents the revenue 
 
 derived annually from the liquors so improperly 
 
 consumed. 
 
 Can it be fair or wise to stop or impede the supply 
 represented by 40,000,000, to those who do not im- 
 properly consume, for the purpose of stopping or im- 
 peding the supply represented by only 20,000,000, to 
 those who do improperly consume ? 
 
 Can it be just or wise in a Government to draw a 
 yearly revenue of 5,000,000 from that which is known 
 and admitted to be so improperly used? 
 
 There can be but one rational answer to these two 
 questions. It cannot be fair or wise to commit an injury 
 to the larger number, for the sake of doing a service to 
 the smaller number. It cannot be just or wise to make a 
 profit of that which is an admitted wrong. But would the 
 sacrifice of the majority in this case save the minority ? 
 Would it even serve them? All experience has esta- 
 blished, what reason without experience might have shown, 
 that it could neither save, nor serve. It is so notorious 
 as to be universally admitted that, notwithstanding all 
 the enthusiasm and energy of the numerous Temperance 
 Societies and Alliances, drunkenness among the working 
 class greatly prevails. And yet, among the upper class, 
 it is equally notorious and as universally admitted that, 
 drunkenness is so greatly diminished that, to see a 
 
INTOXICATING DRINKS. 695 
 
 drunken gentleman or lady, (the last especially) is 
 quite a remarkable occurrence. 
 
 Why this distinction? if it be a question only of 
 human appetite, as the Temperance Advocates treat it. 
 Ladies and gentlemen are human beings, with human 
 appetites quite as keen for sensual pleasures as their in- 
 feriors ; and, certainly, are not restrained from gratifying 
 the habit for drink by want of means or opportunity. 
 And in what does the inferiority consist, but in the in- 
 ferior power of restraining the appetite by the reason ? 
 The evidence of this is in the fact, and is admitted in the 
 very argument of the Temperance Advocates. 
 
 They say ; " tax spirits." 
 
 Well, spirits are taxed, but still, the poor, who can 
 ill afford, buy them, and get drunk. Therefore, the ob- 
 jection lies in the excess. The Advocates say; "tax 
 higher, and you will prevent this excess." But, how so ? 
 The rich, who can afford, do not get drunk. This shows 
 that it is not in the facility of getting drunk, but the 
 desire to get drunk, that makes the drunkard ; and this 
 is further shown in other countries, where the facilities 
 are much greater than in this, and yet drunkenness is 
 much less common. 
 
 But, suppose the tax prohibitory. Would that stop 
 or materially diminish the vice? Those who think so 
 must have but little knowledge of human nature. It 
 would neither stop drunkenness, nor materially diminish 
 it. But it would increase smuggling and illicit distil- 
 lation, and would very materially increase other evils, 
 which would lead to other crimes. 
 
 But assume the tax prohibitory, and the smuggling 
 kept down by a sufficient armed force, which must be at 
 a cost nearly as great as the whole of the present revenue 
 derived from the spirit duties. Would intoxication then 
 be put down, or materially diminished ? Who can sup- 
 pose that ? Would the desire be less, when the people 
 
696 INTOXICATING DRINKS. 
 
 were made frantic by the loss of that which they desired ? 
 To suppose that, is to suppose human nature different 
 from what it is. The evil desire remaining would seek 
 its gratification in some other way, and would obtain it. 
 We might expect to see it very soon in the new character 
 of the Opium Eater, as yet, fortunately, almost unknown 
 in this country. We have not yet experienced that sort 
 of intoxication ; but we have heard of it, and of its effects. 
 We should soon hear of more murders, robberies, and 
 personal injuries much more of all the evils of listless 
 idleness, and reckless debauchery, than we had ever 
 before heard or dreamt of in " merrie England." We 
 should soon lose our prestige as a Nation, for we should 
 lose our National Character as a People. We should 
 be referred to as a Nation and People once great and 
 powerful, because good and true. Drunkenness is a great 
 vice, and leads to many other vices, and to many crimes. 
 But the British People have always been great drunk- 
 ards ; and, yet, they have always been considered to be, 
 and they have always proved themselves to be, a great 
 People. They can never be made sober by legislation 
 either " permissive " or prohibitory. 
 
 So much for the Temperance Party. 
 
 Now for the Temporising, or Timid, Party, more 
 moderate in their views and language, but little better 
 reasoners, who fear the increase of drunkenness from 
 the abolition of all duties on beer, wine and spirits, and 
 who would rather see these duties raised than removed 
 or reduced. 
 
 These Gentlemen think it too dangerous an experi- 
 ment to remove all duties. They consider high duties 
 on these articles desirable for discouraging drinking, and 
 they entertain some vague notions that, in the march of 
 improvement, particularly by education, intemperance 
 will be cured in the working class, as it has been in the 
 upper class ; and, therefore, they are for temporising. 
 
INTOXICATING DRINKS. 697 
 
 But the root of the evil lies deeper than they see, or 
 choose to acknowledge. It is not in the facility of ob- 
 taining supplies, for it is not a real want. It is not even 
 in the drink itself. It is in the want of something 
 better. It is the gross sensuality which makes inebria- 
 ting drink, to some, the sweetest pleasure. It brings to 
 them that temporary relief which, in their position, they 
 feel the want of, arid which defective education cannot 
 furnish. As Dr. Johnson, in answer to Boswell, said : 
 " Sir, who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the 
 pain of being a man/' Madmen are all sensual, in the 
 lower stages of the distemper. They are eager for gra- 
 tification to soothe their minds, and divert their atten- 
 tion from the misery they suffer. To a fatigued body, 
 and an uninformed and unoccupied mind; degradation 
 soon becomes tolerable, and self-denial all but impossible. 
 Higher tastes being uncultivated, habits are formed by 
 circumstances. If the circumstances be depressing, the 
 habits will be low. It is in the persons, not in the beer 
 or gin; in their habits and circumstances, not in their 
 drink ; in the unfurnished mind, in the cheerless home, 
 not in the flaring gin-palace, or in the comfortable par- 
 lour of the country ale-house. What avails it to close 
 the gin-palace, and the public-house, if the mind be still 
 unfurnished, and the home still cheerless? What avails 
 it, if that were possible, which is not, if the prohibi- 
 tion were complete? The first effect would be a sudden 
 increase in the consumption of opium, and that prohi- 
 bited, what next? and what next? That would be 
 to guess, but, certainly, it would not be temperance. 
 By an army of spies and informers and by tyrannical 
 laws, the People may be made prisoners, and the King- 
 dom one huge gaol, but they will not have been made 
 temperate. 
 
 The most fatal cause of intemperance is the want of 
 something better. This cause applies more to the work- 
 
698 INTOXICATING DRINKS. 
 
 ing classes than to others, and, therefore, intemperance 
 is more common among them. Like all uneducated, or 
 ill-educated, persons that have no intellectual tastes, 
 sensual gratifications are almost the only pleasures they 
 can appreciate. In the midst of a high civilisation they 
 retain many of the characteristics of savages ; with one 
 predisposition more to intemperance, in that they lead a 
 much less healthy life. When they have warmed and 
 fed them.selves, how can they employ what remains to 
 them of time and money more agreeably to themselves, 
 than in the buying of spirits, or beer and tobacco? 
 When they have time to get drunk, they get drunk. 
 That is their way of spending their money and leisure to 
 procure the highest pleasure they know. In higher life, 
 balls, operas, and dress, produce to some the highest 
 pleasure, and that is their way of spending their money 
 and leisure. What cards, clubs, operas, dances, dinner 
 parties, are to men in one sphere of life, the public-house 
 is to those of another. It is the place where they find 
 that enjoyment which they most value, and which they 
 can find only there. 
 
 If this be the state of the case and who can doubt 
 it? does not this suggest other and wiser means of 
 dealing with drunkenness, than by taxing, or prohibiting 
 beer and spirits, and suppressing public-houses ? 
 
 As well remarked in "The National Review," Ja- 
 nuary 1860, "The workman, as a rule, reads but little, 
 even where he reads at all. The penny newspaper is 
 with him the chief literary rival of the beer-can. And 
 if it were so with us, we doubt whether the literature 
 would carry the day. The Workman's home offers to 
 his senses none of those gratifications which the middle 
 class man finds in his. Its rooms are inevitably small, 
 because, especially in towns, little space can be given 
 for the rent he can or will pay. They are ill-furnished, 
 because he had little money saved for furnishing when 
 
INTOXICATING DRINKS. 699 
 
 he married at two-and-twenty, and because he had not 
 that educated intelligence which would enable men of a 
 higher class to extract much substantial comfort out of 
 small means. They are imtidy, often unclean ; for his 
 wife is a bad manager, and his family is numerous. His 
 supper is ill cooked, and, of course, therefore unwhole- 
 some. In a word, he is thoroughly uncomfortable in 
 body, and his mind vacant. What wonder, if he seeks 
 comfort and amusement where only he can find 
 them ?" 
 
 One of the chief causes of intemperance, indicated by 
 its prevalence among workmen in well-paid trades is, 
 the low standard of living adopted by the working class. 
 The more that can be done to induce the workman to 
 increase his home comforts and requirements, the more 
 that can be done to improve his dwelling-place, to en- 
 courage his dormant taste for decent accommodation, 
 for good furniture, for cottage ornaments, for wardrobes, 
 with good and suitable clothes for himself and boys, with 
 good and suitable dresses for his wife and daughters, 
 the more interest he can be induced to take in these 
 things the better man will he be, and the less drunken. 
 Men in all classes will make great exertions, and great 
 sacrifices, in order not to fall below their usual style of 
 living, " to keep up appearances," and avoid loss of 
 caste ; and workmen in these respects are not less proud 
 than their employers. Once raise their standard to the 
 average level of their earnings, once induce the forma- 
 tion of a higher standard in the ranks of the working 
 class, and a death-blow is struck at national intempe- 
 rance. Teach the workman (if he will be proud,) to be 
 proud of his home, and of the appearance of his family ; 
 and the best part of the work of education, for him, is 
 then done, his steps are then diverted from the public- 
 house, to his home. 
 
 But now, the public-house is the working-man's club, 
 
700 INTOXICATING DRINKS. 
 
 and a club of which he has more need than his betters 
 have of theirs, inasmuch as he has less enjoyment at 
 home. Give him a better one, and, may be, he will leave 
 this; but, a club he must have. He needs society, 
 he needs a comfortable room to sit and smoke and 
 hear the news in, to keep his mind from sheer va- 
 cancy, and he needs it the more because his work is 
 generally the same dull routine of labor, and he reads so 
 little. 
 
 As a working-man himself has expressed it : " The 
 working-man after his day's work, wants a little com- 
 pany, and news. Mostly he can get that only at the 
 public-house. He does not care much for the drink, 
 but as he cannot have the company without the drink, 
 of course, he takes it. The habit, in some cases, grows 
 upon him, and he becomes a drunkard." 
 
 Why wonder at this which is all so natural ? Where 
 is he to go for necessary change and recreation ? Where 
 but to the public-house ? Can he go and enjoy his pipe 
 and his company at home, in his one small room, his 
 wife working there, and rocking the cradle with her foot? 
 She would scarcely thank him for that. 
 
 " The Country Parson " must have given the follow- 
 ing description from living scenes : 
 
 " How well one can understand the state of mind of a 
 poor man quite crushed and spirit-broken : poisoned by 
 ceaseless anxiety : with no heart to do anything : many a 
 time wishing that he might but creep into a quiet grave; 
 and, meanwhile trying to shrink out of sight, and slip 
 by unnoticed ! Despair nerves for a little while, but 
 constant care saps, and poisons, and palsies. It has 
 shattered many a nervous system, unstrung many a 
 once vigorous mind, crushed down many a once hopeful 
 spirit, and aged many a man who should have been 
 young by his years." 
 
 Dr. Southwood Smith, whose long and loving labors 
 
INTOXICATING DRINKS. 701 
 
 to improve the moral and sanitary condition of the 
 working classes, and whose great experience and me- 
 dical skill, added to great abilities and untiring zeal, 
 have placed him highest in the list of authorities on this 
 subject, has, on this particular part of it, thus expressed 
 himself: 
 
 " A clean, fresh, well-ordered house exercises over its 
 inmates a moral, no less than a physical, influence, and 
 has a direct tendency to make the members of the family 
 sober, peaceable, and considerate of the feelings and 
 happiness of each other; nor is it difficult to trace a 
 connection between habitual feelings of this sort, and 
 the formation of habits of respect for property, for the 
 laws in general, and even for those higher duties and 
 obligations the observance of which no laws can enforce. 
 Whereas, a filthy, squalid, unwholesome, dwelling, in 
 which none of the decencies common to society even in 
 the lowest stages of civilisation are or can be observed, 
 tends to make every dweller in such a hovel regardless 
 of the feelings and happiness of each other, selfish, and 
 sensual. And the connexion is obvious between the 
 constant indulgence of appetites, and passions of this 
 class, and the formation of habits of idleness, debauchery, 
 and violence." 
 
 Then, again : look at the Trades Unions, the Benefit 
 Clubs, and Friendly Societies, (as these are miscalled) so 
 thickly spread over the kingdom, and, among their 
 many other abuses see how fruitful they generally are 
 of encouragement to drunkenness. 
 
 No terms of denunciation can be too severe against 
 the practices of these most injurious Associations. No 
 language can express too strongly the dangerous influ- 
 ence which they exercise for leading into the worst sort 
 of temptation those whom they get into their power ; 
 nor too strongly reprobate the means by which they ob- 
 tain and hold their power. For a full understanding of 
 
702 INTOXICATING DRINKS. 
 
 these means, and of this power, and of all the injurious 
 consequences, the facts must be sought for in numerous 
 printed Reports of the proceedings of these Trades 
 Unions, and Benefit and Friendly Societies, and espe- 
 cially in the various Reports of Select Committees of 
 the House of Commons, the main results of which can 
 here be only very slightly glanced at. 
 
 Few, perhaps, have bestowed, or ever will bestow, the 
 time and pains necessary for bringing from darkness into 
 light the numerous and important facts bearing on this 
 question, and buried in those repositories for dead truths. 
 But there are to be found the true causes of intempe- 
 rance, and it must here suffice to say that, those causes 
 are not in the facilities for getting drunk, but in the 
 little encouragement given for keeping sober. 
 
 That this was Burke' s view, is evident from the fol- 
 lowing extract from his political writings : " As to what 
 is said, in a physical and moral view, against the home 
 consumption of spirits, experience has long since taught 
 me very little to respect the declamations on that sub- 
 ject whether the thunder of the laws, or the thunder 
 of eloquence " is hurled on gin" always I am thunder- 
 proof. The alembic, in my mind, has furnished to the 
 world a far greater benefit and blessing, than if the opus 
 maximum had been really found by chemistry, and, like 
 Midas, we could turn every thing into gold. 
 
 " Undoubtedly there may be a dangerous abuse in the 
 excess of spirits ; and at one time, I am ready to believe, 
 the abuse was great. When spirits are cheap, the busi- 
 ness of drunkenness is achieved with little time or labor ; 
 but that evil I consider to be wholly done away. Ob- 
 servation for the last forty years, and very particularly 
 for the last thirty, has furnished me with ten instances 
 of drunkenness from other causes, for one from this. 
 
 "Ardent spirit is a great medicine, often to remove dis- 
 tempers much more frequently to prevent them, or to 
 
INTOXICATING DRINKS. 703 
 
 chase them away in their beginnings. It is not nutri- 
 tive in any great degree. But, if not food, it greatly 
 alleviates the want of it. It invigorates the stomach for 
 the digestion of poor meagre diet, not easily alliable to 
 the human constitution. Wine the poor cannot touch. 
 Beer, as applied to many occasions, (as among seamen 
 and fishermen for instance) will by no means do the bu- 
 siness. Let me add, what wits inspired with champagne 
 and claret, will turn into ridicule it is a medicine for 
 the mind. Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows 
 of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and 
 in all countries, called in some physical aid to their 
 moral consolations, wine, beer, opium, brandy, or 
 tobacco." 
 
 Some may think "Burke, even on this question, no 
 common authority : at any rate, this reads very like 
 common sense. 
 
 From all this, we may learn a useful lesson, which is, 
 that if we would make the People better, we must first 
 make them happier. 
 
 The miseries of human life are made up of large 
 masses, each separated from the other by certain in- 
 tervals. 
 
 But the happiness of life, on the contrary, is made up 
 of minute fractions as Coleridge said : " the little 
 soon forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a 
 heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery, 
 and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable 
 thought and genial feeling." 
 
 But it is a happy world after all, and was, surely, 
 intended to be so for all, as we may see in a spring 
 noon, or summer's evening, when myriads of happy 
 creatures crowd our view, whichever way we turn our 
 eyes. As Paley said : " their sportive motions, their 
 wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual 
 change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, 
 
704 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 and the exaltation they feel in their liberty, and lately 
 discovered faculties." 
 
 Can any one contemplate this lowest insect life, and 
 for a moment doubt that this world was intended to be a 
 happy one for the highest human life ? And if it be not a 
 happy world, why is it not ? 
 
 Perhaps, the answer is to be found in man's wicked- 
 ness and, mainly, in the cruelty and injustice of man 
 to man. 
 
 As Miss Martineau has well said : We must look to 
 sound knowledge and the cultivation of the higher parts 
 of man's nature to cast out the grosser vices. Vows 
 and mechanical associations will not do it. Sumptuary 
 and inhibitive laws will not do it. As far as the law can 
 go, there is nothing for it but perfect freedom for buy- 
 ing and selling all that concerns the necessaries, com- 
 forts, conveniences and decencies of life, all the free 
 gifts of Nature, without any of the artificial restrictions 
 in the form of imposts. If our Customs and Excise 
 duties were removed, and our licensing system abolished, 
 we should find that, men cannot be made virtuous by 
 Act of Parliament. We must give them knowledge, 
 and intellectual and moral freedom, by means of Christian 
 Education, arming them against not only the demon of 
 drink, but the whole legion of devils, by giving every 
 man the entire possession of himself, in all his faculties. 
 
 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS 
 HARMLESS. 
 
 We have already said that 'the causes of intem- 
 perance are not in the facilities for getting drunk, but in 
 the little encouragement given for keeping sober.' 
 
 We will now show how more encouragement may be 
 given, and how effectual that may be made. 
 
 To make out even a plausible case for prohibition, it 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 705 
 
 must be proved that this would be an effectual remedy, 
 and that no other can be found. Both these propositions 
 are asserted by the prohibitionists ; but neither of these 
 has been, or ever can be, proved. 
 
 It is said to be easier to make a nation of abstainers, 
 than to cure a nation of drunkenness. But what has 
 ever been done to prove this, or to lead any one of com- 
 mon sense ever to expect this ? 
 
 But this is not the question. The choice is not be- 
 tween abstinence and drunkenness, but between modera- 
 tion and excess. 
 
 It has yet to be shown that moderation cannot be ob- 
 tained without the aid of prohibition ; or, that tempe- 
 rance is impossible. It has yet to be shown that a Maine 
 Law will accomplish its object. If it stop drinking, will 
 it cure intemperance ? It does not reach the root of the 
 evil. The root lies much deeper. It is not in the facili- 
 ties for drinking. It is not even in the drink itself. It 
 is in the want of something better. Raise the working 
 man's standard of comfort. Give him new wants, and 
 thereby raise his standard of intelligence. But first, it 
 is essential that all his domestic comforts should be in- 
 creased. These will create the new wants, and will also 
 go far to provide for them. The want will not be pro- 
 vided for until it be felt ; and, if all things be right, the 
 want will find means to provide for itself. For this no 
 law but the law of Nature is required. Any interference 
 with that law is a manifest injury. It is not within the 
 province of human law to interfere with the freedom of 
 individual will in that which concerns the individual 
 alone. It is no justification of such interference to say 
 that, the exercise of that will reflects injury or pain to 
 others. Reflected injury or pain, which is transferred 
 through the feelings, is not properly cognisable by human 
 law, though it may be open to social reprobation. 
 
 It may be said that, no individual member of society 
 
 2 z 
 
706 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 can inflict an injury on himself alone. That, in the ex- 
 tended sense, may be true. But that is not the sense in 
 which the expression is here used. The rights of indi- 
 vidual freedom of will are sufficiently denned in this 
 country to make the expression, in the sense here in- 
 tended, easily understood. 
 
 The object is, to show that any attempt to limit or 
 control, by human law, the free exercise of individual 
 will, so defined, is unwise, and, in the end, must always 
 fail. Human beings were created free agents, and they 
 cannot, by human laws, be altogether deprived of free 
 agency, even though it may often be exercised to the 
 injury of themselves and others connected with them. 
 But we may be sure that, there is a remedy for every 
 human evil, and, certainly, for this; never by human 
 means alone, but always, nevertheless, through human 
 means. The remedy can be only through human laws 
 and practices, in conformity with the Divine Law of 
 Love, which combines Justice with Mercy. 
 
 The man who has learned self-respect may be held to 
 be emancipated from the thraldom of intemperance. 
 The spread of institutions which is now taking place in 
 the manufacturing districts for providing society and 
 comfortable accommodation, seems likely to have in this, 
 as in many other respects, a most healthy influence on 
 the character and habits of the working classes. But to 
 improve the working man's home should be among the 
 first objects as it certainly would be among the most 
 powerful means of those who desire to improve his 
 habits. At present, the laboring classes have a keen 
 appreciation of luxury in the gross form of plenty of good 
 food, and strong drink ; but little appreciation of what 
 is understood, among the more refined classes, by com- 
 fort, because little used to it. Now, nothing is so likely 
 to diminish both their desire for, and their willingness 
 to pay for, luxuries, as an increasing love of comfort. 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 707 
 
 How these first objects are to be attained, is the ques- 
 tion now to be answered. 
 
 This question has been already answered, and the 
 answer is simply this : by setting Trade and Labor free 
 from all imposts, duties, and restrictions; establishing 
 Free Trade, and relieving the Wages of labor and the 
 Profits of Trade, as such, from all taxes. The working- 
 classes would then receive in full, and enjoy unrestrained, 
 their wages of labor. 
 
 The unprecedented extension of trade would occasion 
 such an unexampled demand for labor that, an increase 
 in the general rate of wages would be a necessary con- 
 sequence. Not only would the money value of wages 
 be increased by the reduced price of all the necessaries 
 and luxuries of life, but also the actual amount of the 
 wages would be increased in proportion to the increased 
 demand for labor. Nor would the reduction of prices 
 be only in the amount of duties abolished. Trade, and 
 the profits of Trade, would be so increased by the 
 removal of all restrictions and impediments, that com- 
 petition would bring down prices much below the amount 
 of duties taken off. The increased trade would cause a 
 great increase in the number of ships, and this increase 
 would lower freights. The increased demand would 
 cause a corresponding increase in supplies, and competi- 
 tion would lower the cost of production. Thus, the 
 price to the purchaser would be much lower than the 
 reduction by the amount of duty taken off, though all 
 these operating causes would emanate directly from the 
 duties removed. 
 
 All these are so clearly necessary consequences as 
 scarcely to need being pointed out. 
 
 It has, already, been shown that ninety-nine hun- 
 dredths of the whole population hold no part or share 
 in the Nation's Debt, and yet that, nine-tenths of the 
 yearly charge for the Interest and Management of this 
 
 2 z 2 
 
708 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 Debt is paid by the working classes, and one-tenth, or 
 thereabouts, by the property class. 
 
 Under the new state of things proposed, all Savings' 
 Banks, Benefit and Friendly Societies would give place 
 to more simple and sensible proceedings. Public and 
 private improvements would then keep pace with public 
 and private prosperity, and poverty would then be the 
 exception, instead of being, as now, the prevailing rule, 
 among what are now called the lower classes. 
 
 The wages of labor for the working class would then 
 be, in purchasing power, at least, one-third more than 
 the present amount, and would be ample for providing 
 them with decent and comfortable dwelling-places, fitted 
 up, furnished and provided with all that should be in 
 every working man's home, with all that should be in 
 every Christian home for decency and social comfort. 
 
 With good order and homely taste so cultivated and 
 encouraged, education would exercise more influence on 
 the working classes, and they would then begin to ap- 
 preciate good education, and moral training, in a man- 
 ner never yet known amongst them. They would then 
 find themselves, more than ever, dependent on them- 
 selves ; and they would then learn to value independence 
 for the innumerable comforts and blessings which it 
 would bring with it. They would then find their weekly 
 earnings more than sufficient for their weekly wants, 
 and they would find a surplus to be disposed of, which 
 they would be free to invest in their own way. They 
 would then find many ways for investing it to their own 
 advantage, and still to keep it in their own control. 
 Many would invest it in their own little freeholds; 
 many in little building, and other trade speculations. 
 Great numbers would set up little shops, and start in 
 various handicrafts, on their own account. But still 
 greater numbers would advance their savings to their 
 masters, on a certain share of, or per-centage on, the 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 709 
 
 profits of their manufactories, trades, or callings. What 
 these accumulated savings might be, in the aggregate, 
 some notion may be formed from the actual amounts 
 now invested in Savings' Banks, Benefit Clubs, and 
 Friendly Societies. That these savings would very far 
 exceed in amount the aggregate of all such investments, 
 can hardly be a matter of doubt ; neither can it be 
 doubtful that the savings, when brought into active 
 operation as new and productive capital, would be at- 
 tended with more beneficial effects to the country at 
 large than any imaginable amount under the manage- 
 ment of the classes who now hold and direct it. 
 
 Assuming that the present system of Savings' Banks, 
 Benefit Clubs, and Friendly Societies, is productive of 
 more benefit than injury to the country; assuming 
 that, notwithstanding the private jobbing with the con- 
 tributions to the Benefit Clubs and Friendly Societies, 
 and all the despotism and dishonesty of the ignorant 
 managers ; notwithstanding the present practice of 
 public jobbing with the large sums of money collected 
 in the Savings' Banks, which adds to the permanent 
 Debt of the Country no inconsiderable sum every year ; 
 assuming the very questionable fact that there remains 
 a balance of benefit, still, who can doubt that, these 
 vast sums of money added directly to the productive 
 capital of the country would be attended with far greater 
 benefits to all classes ? 
 
 With such additional bonds of union, between all 
 classes, as the new system would introduce, which time 
 would strengthen, and which mutual interests would 
 make permanent, what would become of the Trades 
 Unions, the Benefit Clubs, the Friendly Societies, and 
 other combinations, which the industrial classes, to their 
 own great injury, are compelled to join, but which no 
 compulsory law ever can, or ever ought, to suppress? 
 All these would die a natural death, and the occasion of 
 
710 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 their birth no longer continuing, there would, very soon, 
 be no survivor. 
 
 But other Associations would arise, in many in- 
 stances with similar objects, though conducted on very 
 different principles, and held together by very different 
 means. 
 
 These would be simply and purely for investing the 
 savings of labor, under rules and regulations compara- 
 tively few and simple, and easily carried out, under the 
 sanction and protection of Parliament. 
 
 What would then be the state and condition of the 
 People ? 
 
 Trade and manufactures increasing and extending, the 
 demand for labor, and the rate of wages, must increase 
 in proportion. 
 
 Population rapidly increasing with the prosperity of 
 the People, the increased and ever increasing demand 
 for the necessaries, and comforts, and luxuries of life, 
 must maintain improved markets, not only for foreign 
 productions, but also for our own produce, for which 
 the Home Market must always be the best in the world. 
 Thus, Rents must rise for the benefit of the Land-owner, 
 Land and its produce, as well as stock, being in greater 
 demand ; and wages must rise for the benefit of the 
 land -laborer, agricultural, as well as all other labor, 
 being in greater demand. Thus, the landlord and the 
 land-laborer, the farmer and the grazier, the stock 
 grower and the salesman, with all their various and in- 
 finitely numerous subordinates and dependents, would 
 all take their own appropriated shares in the universal 
 prosperity. 
 
 Customs and Excise Duties all abolished, the neces- 
 saries and comforts, and many of the luxuries of life, 
 would be accessible to all, at the nearest possible ap- 
 proach to the cost of production, and the observance 
 of the decencies of life being within the power of all, 
 

 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 711 
 
 social reprobation for non-observance would be in stronger 
 .operation. 
 
 The Assessed Taxes being all abolished, would bring 
 within the easy reach, of nearly all, much healthful re- 
 creation for mind and body, from which they are now 
 cut off, to their own great injury, and no one's benefit. 
 
 The Stamps all abolished (except postage stamps), 
 would relieve an immense class of Shop-keepers, and 
 little traders, from an injurious, and, in many cases, op- 
 pressive, and in all cases, vexatious and foolish impost. 
 
 The Income Tax abolished, would relieve all classes, 
 (and a very large class most especially requiring this 
 relief), from an obnoxious impost, because unequal and 
 unjust, and because directly encouraging fraud and per- 
 jury, with many other iniquities, all evils against social 
 order, tending to demoralise society, and otherwise to 
 cripple the resources of the country. 
 
 The Probate, Legacy, and Succession, Duties, all abo- 
 lished, would relieve the whole class of property-holders 
 of the kingdom from injurious, oppressive, and vexa- 
 tious, imposts, which are sapping the very vitals of the 
 Nation, and supporting a system of official fraud, which 
 no watchfulness and skill can detect or counteract, and 
 supporting a system of Government patronage which no 
 supervision can control or direct. 
 
 The Land Tax abolished, and that farce ended, with 
 all these abolitions, with this army of official retainers 
 in Customs and Excise Departments, Stamps and Taxes 
 Departments, and the other innumerable Public Offices, 
 all disbanded, and their Commissioners, Clerks, Collec- 
 tors, and other Confederates, all swept away ; with all 
 these reliefs to the People, what a death-blow would be 
 struck at DRUNKENNESS ! What an increase and exten- 
 sion of social and domestic comfort throughout the 
 Land ! What an elevation of the standard of the work- 
 ing-man ! What a brightening of his present prospects, 
 
712 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DllINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 and future hopes ! What an encouragement to provi- 
 dent care for his present, and for his future ! for him- 
 self, his Wife, and Children ! for present enjoyment in 
 the young life of health and strength, and for future 
 provision in the days of sickness and old age ! 
 
 Would the working-man drink away such a prospect 
 as this ? 
 
 Would he turn away from this, for the Work-house 
 and prison fare before him ? and which then ought to 
 be his only alternative, his only resource, the only re- 
 source for all, but the helpless children, the sick and 
 the afflicted, the old and the infirm. 
 
 Would he then despise or neglect the blessings of 
 good education and moral training, the force of good 
 example, and the scorn of social reprobation ? 
 
 This has never yet been tried. 
 
 Who will dare to say it must fail ? 
 
 It may fail. But who can tell? It has never yet 
 been tried. 
 
 Why not try it ? 
 
 It may be true, and truth is always true. 
 
 But this we may know, that human nature would 
 then be working with us, instead of against us, for Jus- 
 tice would then be at work for us, and this ought to be 
 sufficient, at least, to justify the trial. 
 
 It is said that, education fails to diminish intemper- 
 ance, that the most educated districts are the most 
 noted for drunkenness. This may be so, or may not. 
 
 But it is likely enough to be true, and if it be, what 
 is there in this to surprise any one ? 
 
 Is Education morality, wisdom, or prudence? No- 
 thing of the kind. Education is no more virtue, or the 
 sign of virtue, than it is riches, or the sign of riches. 
 It often accompanies virtue, but, at least, quite as often 
 accompanies vice. So also it accompanies riches, but 
 quite as often poverty. But virtue is often unaccompa- 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 713 
 
 nied by education ; and often so are riches. What King 
 David said, some thousands of years ago, is much more 
 to the purpose : " I have been young, and now am old, 
 and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed 
 begging their bread." 
 
 That we must look to education as a means of cor- 
 recting intemperance, as well as many other evil habits, 
 is quite true. But it is a miserable mistake to look to 
 this as the chief means, since it can never be anything 
 more than one of the smallest, and then only in combi- 
 nation with other, and far more powerful, means. 
 
 The most powerful, and, it might be said, the only 
 powerful means is, moral training from early infancy. 
 This, under Divine Grace, we all believe to be all-suffi- 
 cient. We are directed to " train up a child in the way 
 he should go." We have no direction about Education. 
 
 Amongst human means, the first and most effective 
 undoubtedly are, the forces of moral example, and of 
 social reprobation. But, in the distress of destitution, 
 and in the misery of social and domestic discomfort, even 
 these forces, as experience so painfully teaches, do not 
 avail to reform evil habits, and establish good. As long 
 as human nature is as we find it, all the education 
 which this world can give, will avail nothing to extricate 
 human beings from intemperance, and other evil habits. 
 They must be made to know and to respect their own 
 position in the great social state by participation in its 
 responsibilities, and also in its pleasures and enjoyments, 
 and there must be throughout a well-sustained hope of 
 something better, both here and hereafter. But espe- 
 cially there must be a sufficient supply of the wholesome 
 necessaries, the decent comforts, and the healthful enjoy- 
 ments of civilised life open to all honest, able, willing, 
 and industrious applicants. 
 
 To furnish these to all such applicants is the first 
 duty of every civilised state. 
 
714 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 It might even be said, and with much truth, that all 
 such applicants, especially Agricultural laborers, have 
 a strong claim to be first served. Something like this 
 was said by that firm friend of the People, Cobbett, who, 
 when dying, even when his senses had become dim, still 
 muttered : " I have ever been their friend. They make 
 all things to come. It is right they should have their 
 full share first." 
 
 In this way, those who come into the world without, 
 what are called, worldly advantages, will learn that they 
 have an important position to fill in the social state, with 
 valuable rights and privileges, which are to them as 
 much their property, as hereditary possessions are to 
 others. Education will then help them to appreciate 
 the advantages of their position, and to respect it. But 
 as long as they have none of these advantages, it is too 
 much to expect that Education should teach them to 
 appreciate what has no existence, or to respect what is 
 never treated with respect. 
 
 These are serious words, and are here used as a serious 
 warning. 
 
 When the temperate and industrious man, able and 
 willing to work, hears the cry of his bewailing wife, and 
 the moans of his famished children, the chances are, if 
 he be a very uneducated man, that he will rush out of 
 his cold and cheerless dwelling-place, to the warm and 
 comfortable room, and more agreeable society of the 
 public-house, and that he will become a drunkard. 
 
 If he be a better educated man, the chances are that 
 he will supply his pressing wants by breaking into his 
 richer neighbor's house, and removing thence some su- 
 perfluities. 
 
 In Ireland, where the human temperament seems to 
 be warmer, and where education is more generally ex- 
 tended among the laboring class, than among the same 
 class in England, the Father of the family, or his grown 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 715 
 
 tip Son, rushes out of his wretched cabin with his 
 loaded gun, and lurks behind a hedge for his expected 
 Landlord. 
 
 Will the teacher, or the preacher, ever stop any of 
 these men? 
 
 Never whilst human nature is as it is, and is treated 
 as it is. 
 
 Who is most to blame for this state of things ? 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF THIS COUNTRY. 
 
 Who will be held responsible for these acts, when hu- 
 man motives are made clear, and human actions come 
 to be weighed by the mighty arm, and the outstretched 
 hand of unerring Justice ? 
 
 Who can tell ? 
 
 But what and if the rulers reject the remedy which 
 has been brought before them ! 
 
 This is no fancy picture which is here referred to, 
 though not here drawn. It is not necessary to draw it 
 here. It may be seen in this our much favored land, in 
 every quarter, in every district, in every city, town, and 
 village, in every street and alley, in every road and bye- 
 way, in every nook and corner. There the picture may 
 be seen in all its hard reality. The People see it, all 
 know it. Much is done to relieve it, but nothing to 
 prevent it. 
 
 Will the People now think of the remedy here offered? 
 
 Will they inquire into it, for their own sakes ? 
 
 If they think it worth the trial, will they, through 
 their representatives in Parliament, demand that the 
 trial be forthwith made ? 
 
 All that is wanted for the trial is, the will of a united 
 People. 
 
 Without that the trial never will be made. 
 
 The strong will and firm resolve of a united People, 
 bound together by their common interests, and acting 
 in the exercise of their lawful privileges, is all that is 
 
716 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 now required for restoring their ancient constitutional 
 rights, and redressing their grievous wrongs. 
 
 Then will be seen, for the first time, a free nation, 
 a free People acknowledging freedom in its true sense, in 
 laws and institutions ; and then will be seen a nation 
 reaping the results in prosperity and greatness unex- 
 ampled in the history of the world. A free people and 
 free trade will work together, and, as they work, so will 
 they increase in numbers, wealth, and greatness. The 
 many millions sterling set free by the abolition of Cus- 
 toms and Excise, Stamps and other Duties, and diverted 
 into other channels, will be as so much new capital to 
 be applied in productive industry, in agriculture, trades, 
 and manufactures ; in higher cultivation, and reclaim- 
 ing waste lands ; in extending our trade, and spreading 
 our manufactures more abundantly over the whole world ; 
 thereby increasing the nation's wealth and power, 
 strengthening its bonds of union with other nations, 
 advancing the civilisation of all nations, and promoting 
 the welfare of all People. 
 
 What would then be the picture of the interior of the 
 cottages of the working classes throughout this king- 
 dom? We may hope then to see, what now we only 
 read of, " merrie England," and, " a bold peasantry, 
 Britain's pride." 
 
 The author of " Philip Van Artevelde," in " The Eve 
 of the Conquest " has well described our present state 
 of high physical civilisation and refinement, in which 
 knowledge is mistaken for wisdom, and the Nation's 
 greatness for the People's happiness, in the following 
 exquisite lines : 
 
 " Oh, England ! ' merry England,' styled of yore ! 
 
 Where is thy mirth ? Thy jocund laughter where ? 
 The sweat of labor on the brow of care 
 Makes a mute answer : driven from every door. 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 717 
 
 The May-pole cheers the village-green no more, 
 Nor harvest-home, nor Christmas mummers rare, 
 The tired mechanic at his lecture sighs, 
 
 And of the learned, which, with all his lore, 
 Has leisure to be wise ? " 
 
 But though we may hope to see the time when ( merry 
 England ' will better deserve that name than it does 
 now, yet the evils of life will still continue. They will 
 trouble us then, but they will trouble us less and less. 
 We see pain and death everywhere. All animated 
 Nature suffers and dies. Life begins and ends in pain. 
 Then pain has a great work to do. Then there is a vast 
 good before us, to outweigh and annihilate it. We do 
 not ask to be exempted from the common lot. In this, 
 as in all things, we wish to go with our race. We pre- 
 tend not to explain events, but we do see glorious issues 
 of suffering, and these are enough. But, not by Educa- 
 tion alone not by attempting to make the people philo- 
 sophers will the glorious issues be brought about. 
 
 " Knowledge is power. " This is a truth glorious, 
 but, at the same time, terrible. Knowledge is power 
 power for good, and evil. It is a power that may ele- 
 vate man to the highest good. It is a power which may 
 bring him down to the level of satanic evil. 
 
 As said by Plato, in the unaided light of his own great 
 mind : " Knowledge without justice ought to be called 
 Cunning, rather than wisdom : " a wonderful saying of 
 that wonderful Pagan Philosopher ! 
 
 Amongst the private papers of the late Sir Humphry 
 Davy were found, after his death, the following thoughts, 
 in his own handwriting, on the subject of popular edu- 
 cation. 
 
 " I become every day more sceptical as to the use of 
 making, or endeavoring to make, the people philoso- 
 phers. Happiness is the great object of existence, and 
 knowledge is good only so far as it promotes happiness. 
 
718 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 Few persons ever attain the Socratic degree of know- 
 ledge to know their own entire ignorance, and scepticism 
 and discontent are the usual unripe fruits of this tree 
 the only fruits which the people can gather/' 
 
 But all ought to be able to say that, they find life a 
 gift increasing in value. Not a cup foaming and spark- 
 ling at the top, and growing vapid as we have drunk. 
 Life is not a little cup dipped from the stream of time. 
 It is itself a stream ; and though at its birth it may 
 dance and send forth cheerful murmurs, as it does not 
 afterwards, still it is intended to flow, as it advances, 
 through more beautiful regions, and to adorn its shores 
 with richer verdure, and more abundant harvests. Do 
 not say that this end is frustrated, or if it appear to be 
 so, do not say that it is so by the Divine Will. 
 
 There are multitudes who have not found infancy 
 and youth as happy as later years. Where it has been 
 otherwise, it was never so intended. 
 
 Our cup runneth over. Life is truly a blessing to us. 
 
 Could we but see others as happy, what a world this 
 would be ! So it might be. So it ought to be. So it 
 will be. 
 
 But it is a good world notwithstanding the dark- 
 ness hanging over it. The longer we live, the more we 
 see the light breaking through the clouds. We are 
 sure the sun is above them. 
 
 Man, as a free moral being, must be tried, must be 
 exposed to temptation, must have a wide range of 
 action, must be liable to much sin, and much suffering. 
 From the essential laws of a free being, he can have no 
 happiness but what he wins amidst temptation. A 
 brute may be made as happy as it can be at first. Man, 
 God's free moral child, cannot know happiness, till, by 
 his own striving, he has risen to goodness and sanctity. 
 We do not see how sin and suffering can be removed, 
 but by striking out from our nature its chief glories. 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 719 
 
 But, one of the great excellencies of moral good is, 
 that it aids us to enjoy all other good. The most per- 
 fect man is not he who confines himself to purely moral 
 gratifications, but he who has a moral energy, through 
 which all things are received and enjoyed by him in a 
 wise order, and in just proportions. Other gratifica- 
 tions, thus controlled, become moral. 
 
 It was well said by Dr. Johnson: "That all who 
 are happy are equally happy, is not true. A peasant 
 and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not 
 equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity 
 of agreeable consciousness. A peasant has not capacity 
 for having equal happiness with a philosopher. A small 
 drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but 
 a large one holds more than the small." 
 
 These few reflections are addressed particularly to 
 the leaders of ' Temperance Societies ' with great re- 
 spect for their motives, but with great distrust of their 
 means. 
 
 That the subject is one of very great importance to 
 social order, and the well-being of the people, all parties 
 admit ; but on this pouit only do they all agree. They 
 differ as much in their mode of reasoning, as in their 
 conclusion. Some think this a fair subject for ridicule, 
 and amongst these are not wanting the names of emi- 
 nent Divines. 
 
 It may be interesting to some readers to be reminded 
 of what the Rev. Sydney Smith thought on this sub- 
 ject, and here are his own words from the Edinburgh 
 Review of 1819: "There has been in all governments 
 a great deal of absurd canting about the consumption of 
 spirits. We believe that the best plan is to let the 
 People drink what they like, and wear what they like; 
 to make no sumptuary laws either for the belly or the 
 back. In the first place laws against rum, and rum arid 
 water, are made by men who can change a wet coat for 
 
720 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 a dry one whenever they choose, and who do not often 
 work up to their knees in mud and water ; and, in the 
 next place, if this stimulus did all the mischief it is 
 thought to do by the wise men of claret, its cheapness 
 and plenty would rather lessen than increase the avidity 
 with which it is at present sought for." 
 
 Such was the opinion, on this vexed question, of one 
 of the most eminent men of his day, for practical piety, 
 sound reasoning, combined with unrivalled wit and wis- 
 dom. And this opinion was expressed upwards of fifty 
 years ago, before so much nonsense had been talked 
 and written on the subject. 
 
 He shot the fiery darts of wit and ridicule where he 
 knew that sound argument and sober truth would be 
 unavailing. 
 
 But he preached from the pulpit the words of truth 
 and soberness; and his whole life was an example of 
 unaffected piety, and Christian Charity. 
 
 He shot his fiery darts chiefly against the wickedness 
 and folly of our Legislators. 
 
 He was right in doing so then, and he did great 
 good. 
 
 It is right to do so now. 
 
 "With many shame prevails, when argument fails. 
 
 " Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks 
 Invisible, except to God alone," 
 
 still walks, and ever will ; but he does good service who 
 helps to expose it. 
 
 There is much canting hypocrisy about the poor, 
 which is best met by ridicule. Burke said : " Nothing 
 can be so base and so wicked as the political canting 
 language, "The laboring poor." Let compassion be 
 shown in action, the more the better, according to every 
 man's ability, but let there be no lamentation of their 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 721 
 
 condition. It is no relief to their miserable circum- 
 stances ; it is only an insult to their miserable under- 
 standings. It arises from a total want of charity, or a 
 total want of thought. Want of one kind was never 
 relieved by want of another kind. Patience, labor, so- 
 briety, frugality, and religion, should be recommended 
 to them ; all the rest is downright fraud. It is horrible 
 to call them " The once happy laborers." Whether what 
 may be called moral or philosophical happiness of the 
 laborious classes be increased or not, I cannot say. The 
 seat of that species of happiness is in the mind ; and 
 there are few data to ascertain the comparative state of 
 the mind at any two periods. Philosophical happiness 
 is to want little. Civil or vulgar happiness is to want 
 much, and to enjoy much. If the happiness of the 
 animal man (which certainly goes somewhere towards 
 the happiness of the rational man) be the object of our 
 estimate, then I assert, without the least hesitation, 
 that the condition of those who labor (in all descriptions 
 of labor, and in all gradations of labor, from the highest 
 to the lowest inclusively) is on the whole extremely 
 meliorated, if more and better food be any standard of 
 melioration." 
 
 We can speak of self-interest, of love of country, of 
 attachment to friends and relations, of the closer ties of 
 family, and love between man and woman, of the 
 charms of knowledge, of the influences of art, of the 
 sympathies inspired by generous actions ; but we can- 
 not say that these feelings are fostered, and encouraged, 
 by our Laws. We can speak too of a personal Being of 
 infinite love, purity, and power, to whom we are respon- 
 sible, and who, we are taught to believe, watches our 
 course with a tender interest, for which no names are 
 sufficiently expressive, but those which denote the dear- 
 est earthly relationships ; but we cannot say that our 
 Laws are consistent with those sentiments. We can 
 
 3A 
 
722 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 speak too of a life hereafter, and are taught to believe 
 that the formation of character is of infinite importance 
 compared with all other issues of conduct, because cha- 
 racter is eternal, and what is done, and thought here, 
 bears fruit of weal or wo, beyond the limits of time ; 
 but we cannot say that our Laws are made in accord- 
 ance with these truths. We know that even these 
 mighty moral forces are continually found insufficient 
 to keep us up to our imperfect sense of duty, to make us 
 ever regard that highest social law which says " Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;" we know that no 
 mightier forces are possible for maintaining that highest 
 social law ; and yet we make our Laws in open defiance 
 of that just and holy principle. And what do we sub- 
 stitute for these mighty moral forces as a corrective to 
 selfish passions, and short-sighted lust of present grati- 
 fication ? Deprivation, and neglect ; cruelty, and in- 
 justice, in every form ; and murderous revenge. We 
 assume that the mighty moral forces will flourish with 
 the same vigor, when man's faith in them is destroyed, 
 and so we make our Laws in defiance of them, and 
 totally disregard them. We speak of these as our 
 strongest purifying influences strongest to refine, 
 strongest to free from selfishness ; we admit these moral 
 forces to be the mightiest to keep men steady ; we 
 admit the necessity of a constantly counteracting power 
 to the notorious selfishness and sensuality against which 
 we have to be ever on our guard ; and yet we so frame 
 our Laws as to encourage selfishness, and sensuality, 
 and to instigate the worst instincts of our nature. 
 We profess to elevate human life to heights of felicity 
 and knowledge ; and yet, we leave it in ignorance and 
 misery, and bring it down to the depths of wretchedness, 
 and despair. Undoubtedly, the lovelier, and the richer, 
 life grows under this system the higher in power and 
 dignity, the firmer in purpose, the fuller of grand results 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 723 
 
 the fiercer will rise the human passions, and the 
 weaker will become the moral forces ; and then, in the 
 time of the greatest power and dignity, raised on the 
 guilt, and wretchedness, of the People, will come the 
 overthrow. Then will disappear the riches, and the 
 loveliness of life, and then will the men and women of 
 the favored race shrink back appalled with horror. 
 
 Therefore, let the Government of this country take 
 warning, and not neglect the present opportunity, lest 
 the warning, unheeded now, be remembered only when 
 the opportunity is lost. 
 
 You may say ; Other questions lead to some re- 
 sult ; but this is vague and interminable. Others we 
 can refer to practical tests ; but this belongs to a region 
 of metaphysical abstractions, of ideal perfection. And 
 yet, all the pettiest passions which other controversies 
 call forth are at work here." All the devices and stra- 
 tagems of party warfare are in requisition in the nine- 
 teenth century, as in the ninth. Christians here show 
 how little love they really have for one another. 
 
 There can be no doubt that these thoughts have arisen 
 in many hearts. It would be sad, indeed, if no others 
 had been suggested to any of us. There must be a 
 compensation for every evil in God's Universe. All 
 things must work together for good to them that love 
 Him. 
 
 Oftentimes it must have happened to us all to meet 
 with two subjects, in each of which it is very important 
 for us to see our way, beset with nearly equal hindrances. 
 After making various ineffectual attempts to remove 
 them, we are inclined to adopt the conclusion that, each 
 is a hopeless labyrinth, that it is a mere waste of time 
 to look for an exit out of either. Then we discover 
 that there is a passage between them, and that the one 
 is a clue to the other. And so it is with respect to 
 these two great topics of human life : How to deal 
 
 3 A2 
 
724 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 fairly with the rich, and how to deal fairly with the 
 poor. 
 
 This is the great problem, but it was solved for us by 
 the Great Teacher, when He said : " Thou shalt love 
 thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 We hear in our Churches, and we talk out of our 
 Churches, of a coming of Christ to reign over the earth, 
 or to judge the earth, at some distant day; but how can 
 this be held forth to generations of men as an event for 
 which they are to be ready, which may come suddenly 
 upon each man, when we know that no preparations are 
 making, that nothing is being done to get ready ? 
 
 No doubt this may be explained to the satisfaction of 
 divines, and commentators, legislators, and others, who 
 have their own technical way of interpreting the phrase- 
 ology of the Bible. But, surely, that which is addressed 
 to the consciences of ordinary men, must commend 
 itself to those consciences. That which calls on them 
 to cast away the works of darkness, cannot be itself a 
 dark oracle. That which comes as a message from the 
 true God, cannot require any tricks, or subterfuges to 
 explain it. If this language be not strict, what lan- 
 guage can be ? What is it sent for, but to lay bare the 
 falsehoods, and treacheries of our hearts? Is it not 
 urging us to put on an armor of light, in which 
 we may appear before the Judge, and Searcher of 
 hearts ? 
 
 To parry these questions is impossible. There is a 
 bond between the visible, and invisible world, and, 
 sooner or later, we must all acknowledge it. 
 
 For the truth of this remark, it is only necessary to 
 refer to history for the origin, and progress, of nearly all 
 human laws, and institutions ; and for this purpose our 
 laws and institutions, relating to the poor, may serve as 
 well as any other example. 
 
 Vagrancy, and begging, were formerly made punish- 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 725 
 
 able by whipping, the stocks, the pillory, imprisonment, 
 and death. The execution of " sturdy beggars," as they 
 were termed, increased year by year, until, in the last 
 year of Henry the Eighth's reign, [if history is to be re- 
 lied on for a fact so incredible] no fewer than 38,000 
 persons were put to death for this species of offence ! 
 
 The same repressive system followed under the subse- 
 quent sovereigns, until the power of Queen Elizabeth 
 having been firmly established towards the latter end of 
 her reign, the foundation of a new and more humane 
 system was laid. This was done by an Act passed in 
 the 43rd year of that Queen. The operation of that 
 Statute was found beneficial ; and the lawlessness, and 
 violence, which had not been suppressed by barbarous 
 enactments, disappeared by degress. Gradually an en- 
 tirely new code of legislation arose, as experience deve- 
 loped the benefits, and disadvantages of the system ; and 
 its ramifications embraced as well the support of the 
 indigent, as the adjustment of the liabilities of the con- 
 tributors. 
 
 The present system is a great improvement, but still 
 far from perfect, nor can it ever be made perfect, until 
 the great political evil and chief cause of pauperism is 
 removed. 
 
 Here, what a vast amount of human misery, past and 
 present, may be traced to the sole cause, human error ! 
 the error of neglecting that " bond between the visible 
 and invisible world which, sooner or later, we must ail 
 acknowledge !" 
 
 Previously to the dissolution of the monasteries by 
 Henry VIII. the maintenance, and relief, of the poor 
 were secured by the religious houses : their endowments 
 being required, in most cases, by the charters of founda- 
 tion, and in all by the Stat. of Carlisle, (Ed. I. A.D. 
 1306), to be expended to the honor of God, and in sup- 
 port of His poor. When those institutions were sup- 
 
726 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS^ 
 
 pressed, and their property distributed among the cour- 
 tiers of that wicked monarch, Henry the Eighth, the 
 helpless, and indigent, the aged, and the young, were at 
 once deprived of all provision. All that the authorities 
 of that time devised were severe and stringent measures 
 directed against the numerous mendicants by whom the 
 country then began to be infested. Thus, from the 
 great error of that time came the incalculable amount 
 of human misery and suffering which followed and so 
 long continued ; until, at last, from the necessity of re- 
 moving the great pressure of the evil, the wrong was 
 righted or alleviated by better laws, and regulations. 
 
 But, though the relief of pauperism is now an acknow- 
 ledged duty of our Government, it must be admitted 
 that, the prevention is much more so. 
 
 Towards this end much further progress will never be 
 made, until the laborers be left in the full and free pos- 
 session of the wages of their labor, without any deduc- 
 tion therefrom by direct or indirect taxation on their 
 labor or on the necessaries and comforts of life which 
 that labor ought to procure for them. 
 
 By this means, to a great extent, pauperism and its 
 innumerable attendant evils may be prevented ; but, by 
 any other means this end will never be attained. As 
 long as it is intended that the greatest part of mankind 
 should live by their own labor, it will be essential for the 
 peace and comfort and happiness of all that this prin- 
 ciple should be fully acknowledged, and carried out. 
 All other attempts must end in disappointment, if not in 
 aggravation of the evils. 
 
 All attempts to keep off the evils by Education, or 
 Moral Training, through Schools, or Reformatories, are 
 only vain delusions, and idle mockeries. 
 
 Notwithstanding all these, the Work-houses of the 
 Parish Unions, and the public Prisons, will be continu- 
 ally enlarging and extending, and will always be tilled. 
 
HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 727 
 
 They will always help to fill each other, for the cause 
 which fills them both will always be in operation, and 
 always enlarging, and extending, and that cause is 
 pauperism. 
 
 And it is thus that those who are answerable for the 
 wrong which they have not righted, will be made to 
 suffer with their victims. 
 
 And this they are beginning to see. 
 
 There is now, in the higher classes, a sort of mania 
 about the education of the poor. 
 
 But what is the benefit of education where the first 
 principles inculcated by nature are neglected ? 
 
 It is here that " Social Science " so much paraded in 
 our day, should commence. To make Christians and 
 Moralists we must first give them the means of decent 
 subsistence. Without this all philosophy is but an im- 
 practicable theory, a vain delusion. 
 
 It is in vain that we boast of our wealth, unless we 
 place some barrier to the extent of our pauperism. 
 
 It is in vain that we parade our moral theories of 
 education and improvement of the people, unless we ac- 
 knowledge, by our acts, the first principles of truth and 
 justice. 
 
 It is in vain to attempt to lift the lower classes out of 
 their degradation, unless their wrongs be righted. 
 
 The poorer classes, notwithstanding they are the most 
 degraded, pay the highest amount of rent for their 
 wretched accommodation, and also the highest prices 
 for all their miserable means of subsistence. 
 
 It is this notorious and disgraceful fact which is so 
 disreputable to the wealthy classes, and which stamps 
 the national stigma upon the British name, of injustice 
 and cruel wrong to all the working classes of the 
 British People ; and it does seem as if modern Socialism 
 has spread because of the silence of all but Socialists 
 concerning the remedy. 
 
728 HOW TO MAKE INTOXICATING DRINKS HARMLESS. 
 
 It was mainly this notorious, and disgraceful, fact 
 which, 200 years ago, drove the Representatives of the 
 People to carry their "Grand Remonstrance" to the 
 foot of the Throne; and, ultimately, involved this 
 country in the horrors of a civil war, and brought the 
 head of our traitor King to the block. No one was more 
 eager against that Remonstrance, or fought every stage 
 of it with more impassioned resistance, than Sir John 
 Culpeper; yet it was he who, at the meeting of the 
 Long Parliament had spoken that memorable speech 
 against monopolies, and projectors, which now, 200 
 years later, is no less applicable to the universality of 
 British Taxation. 
 
 Here are the words, copied from the record of those 
 days : 
 
 " It is a nest of wasps, or swarm of vermin, which 
 have overrun the land I mean the monopolers, and 
 polers of the people. Like the frogs of Egypt, they 
 have gotten the possession of our dwellings, and we have 
 scarce a room free from them. They sup in our cup, 
 they dip in our dish, they sit by our fire. We find them 
 in the dye-fat, the wash-bowl, and the powdering tub. 
 They share with the butler in his box. They have 
 marked, and sealed us, from head to foot. Mr. Speaker, 
 they will not bate us a pin. We may not buy our own 
 clothes without their brokage." 
 
 To illustrate the operation of some of these monopolies, 
 a striking passage may also be taken from a speech of 
 the Patriot Pym, in which he undertook to show that 
 the gain of the King was wonderfully disproportioned to 
 the loss of the subject. And here it is : 
 
 " In France, not long since, upon a survey of the 
 King's revenue, it was found that two parts in three never 
 came to the King's purse, but were diverted to the profit 
 of the officers, and ministers, of the Crown ; and it was 
 thought a very good service, and reformation, to reduce 
 
SAVINGS BANKS AND FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. 729 
 
 two parts to the King, leaving still a third part to the 
 instruments that were employed about getting it in. It 
 may well be doubted if the King have the like, or worse 
 success in England. For instance, he hath reserved 
 upon the monopoly of wines thirty thousand pounds' 
 rent a year ; the vintner pays 40s. a tun, which comes 
 to ninety thousand pounds ; the price upon the subject 
 by retail, is increased two pence a quart, which comes to 
 eight pounds a tun, and for forty-five thousand tuns 
 brought in yearly, amounts to three hundred and sixty 
 thousands pounds; which is three hundred arid thirty 
 thousand pounds loss to the kingdom, above the king's 
 rent ! " 
 
 This was the commentary of the Patriot Pym on in- 
 direct taxation 200 years ago : what a commentary it is 
 on our system of the present day ! 
 
 SAVINGS BANKS, BENEFIT CLUBS, 
 FRIENDLY, AND LOAN, SOCIETIES. 
 
 As some remarks, in the foregoing pages, may be 
 thought, by many, to be too disparaging of Savings 
 Banks, Benefit Clubs, and Friendly Societies, these 
 few further remarks, on the same subject, are made to 
 correct any such impression. 
 
 In a Blue Book Report, by Mr. Tidd Pratt, on 
 Friendly Societies, published about ten years ago, are 
 to be found some very significant facts. 
 
 It appears that the total number of these Societies 
 enrolled and certified since the passing of the first 
 Friendly Society Act, in 1793, to the 31st December 
 1858, is 28,550, of which 6,850 have ceased to exist 
 that, in the year 1858, Notices of Dissolution have beeti 
 received from 58 Societies, and from many more since 
 that date. The causes of this extensive decay are de- 
 serving of notice, and are thus described in the Report : 
 
730 SAVINGS BANKS AND FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. 
 
 " The causes of Dissolution arise generally from the 
 claims made on the funds by pensioners the insuf- 
 ficiency of contributions to meet the payments, particu- 
 larly those relating to superannuation, there being no 
 principle of regulating the contributions according to 
 the ages of the members, the same amount being paid 
 in most instances for each member irrespective of age 
 the granting sick pay during life that no account 
 of the fund kept for each benefit is distinctly kept, that 
 the funds are not invested pursuant to the provisions of 
 the Friendly Society Act, but are deposited at interest 
 in the hands of Bankers, Brewers, Publicans, Loan 
 Societies, Benefit Building Societies, and upon secu- 
 rities by which considerable loss is very often sustained 
 if the money is attempted to be called in, not to men- 
 tion, in many instances, the insolvency of the party to 
 whom the money has been lent and that no regular 
 audit or examination of the assets and liabilities of the 
 society is made." 
 
 Taking the number of the Societies, then existing, 
 to be 20,000, and, probably, now double that number, 
 it may be assumed that, with these causes of decay, they 
 will rapidly diminish in number. 
 
 All of these Societies, without a single exception, rest 
 upon a false foundation, and most of them are fraudu- 
 lently conducted. 
 
 This statement is not made without regret; nor would 
 it have been made at all, but with a view to point out 
 something much better, for the benefit of the classes 
 by whom these mis-called " Friendly Societies " are sup- 
 ported. 
 
 But, to proceed with some of the remarkable facts 
 which this Report brings to light, some of which have 
 been hereinbefore adverted to. 
 
 It appears, from a statement in this Report, that the 
 number of persons entitled to Dividends on the Public 
 
SAVINGS BANKS AND FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. 731 
 
 Debt, payable at the Bank of England, in the year end- 
 ing July, 1859, was 269,328; and that there were 
 1,383,358 depositors in Savings Banks, on the 20th 
 November, 1858; so that the latter class was more 
 than five times as great as the former. 
 
 In the Savings Banks, 658,506 depositors invested 
 sums under 10; and 200,525 averaged only 66 
 each ; and the number whose investments exceeded 
 200, was 1,499. 
 
 The number of persons entitled to dividends on the 
 Public Debt at the Bank of England, in July, 1859, as 
 classified in this Report, was 269,330; as before given. 
 
 If the mean average of such amounts of Dividends be 
 taken for each class, and the average rate of interest at 
 3 per cent, per annum, the Capital represented by each 
 class will be as under : 
 
 of each. represented. each person. 
 
 
 
 94,301 ......... 10 ......... 28,573,202 ......... 333 
 
 44,917 ......... 15 ......... 22,458,500 ......... 500 
 
 86,943 ......... 60 ......... 173,816,000 ......... 2,000 
 
 22,663 ......... 150 ......... 113,315,000 ......... 5,000 
 
 12,712 ......... 300 ......... 127,120,000 ......... 10,000 
 
 3,663 ......... 500 ......... 61,047,558 .......... 16,666 
 
 2,378 ......... 800 ......... 63,411,748 ......... 26,666 
 
 1,774 ......... 1,300 ......... 58,700,000 ......... 50,000 
 
 376 ......... 3,000 ......... 37,600,000 ....... .>. 100,000 
 
 269,127 i'686,112,009 2,549 
 
 Now, as the whole of the Funded Debt of Great 
 Britain in 1858-9 (exclusive of 43,114,876 for Ire- 
 land,) is given at 43,686,278, and 686,112,009 was 
 represented by 269,127 persons, the sum of 57,574,269 
 was represented by 201 persons; being an average of 
 about 286,439 each, while the average capital repre- 
 sented by 269,127 persons was about 2,549 each. 
 
 Thus, it appears that the total amount of the Debt of 
 
732 SAVINGS BANKS AND FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. 
 
 Great Britain was then held by less than one hundredth 
 part of the entire population of the United Kingdom, 
 taking it at that time, at 28,000,000. It may now he 
 taken at 32,000,000. 
 
 These calculations can be accepted only as an approx- 
 imation to the actual proportions of each class; but, 
 nevertheless, they show that, the Capital of the Public 
 Debt of this Country, enormous as it is, yet is repre- 
 sented by a comparatively insignificant proportion of 
 the whole population. 
 
 Now, to apply these figures, and calculations to the 
 present object, which is, to show the friendless con- 
 dition of those who are driven for protection to these 
 " Friendly Societies." 
 
 Take the number of persons entitled to Dividends on 
 the Public Debt at the Bank of England, in July, 1859, 
 not exceeding 10 per annum, 94,301 persons; the 
 number of depositors in the Savings Banks, under 10, 
 558,506. These are taken as being the lowest deno- 
 mination given. 
 
 By the annual returns made to the Commissioners 
 for the Reduction of the National Debt, by the Trustees 
 of Savings Banks, it appears that the sums deposited, 
 including interest, up to 20th November, 1858, 
 
 Amounted to 33,921,881 
 
 Charitable Institutions 729,457 
 
 Friendly Societies 1,562,784 
 
 36,214,122 
 
 Besides these, there were 571 Friendly Societies 
 whose funds were deposited direct with the Commis- 
 sioners, amounting to 1,980,682, making the total 
 deposits, 38,194,804. 
 
 The number of depositors in these Savings Banks, in 
 sums not exceeding 1, was 200,485; and not exceed- 
 ing 5, was 276,345 persons. 
 
SAVINGS BANKS AND FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. 733 
 
 It appears from the official returns of that time that 
 79,311,563 had been received from the Trustees of 
 Savings Banks and Friendly Societies, since they were 
 first established ; that 49,939,473 had been repaid 
 to the Trustees, in the shape of principal and interest, 
 during that period; and that 38,372,090 remained 
 due from the Government, on account of those Insti- 
 tutions, to the Trustees, besides an uninvested balance 
 of 629,463. 3s. 6d. belonging to Savings Banks, and 
 24,121. 15s. lOd. belonging to Friendly Societies, 
 making an uninvested balance of 653,584. 19s. 4>d. 
 
 The amount thus due to the Trustees of Savings 
 Banks, and Friendly Societies, is invested, from time to 
 time, by the Commissioners for the Reduction of the 
 National Debt, in various Government Securities, the 
 value of which is estimated at the market price, on the 
 20th November in each year. 
 
 The funds belonging to these Institutions form the 
 means for speculation, as well as investment, to the 
 Government of the day, a practice which it is not the 
 present purpose to comment on. 
 
 In comparing the market value of the Securities held 
 by the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National 
 Debt, with their liabilities to the Trustees of Savings 
 Banks, it appears that, they were deficient by the sum 
 of 3,099,714. Os. 5d., on the 20th November, 1858, 
 while, on the same date, in 1857, they were deficient 
 5,186,113. 2s. %d. These deficiencies may be accounted 
 for by the practice of valuing the securities on a given 
 date, which may be higher or lower according to circum- 
 stances. 
 
 It also appears that the interest and dividends due to 
 the Commissioners on Securities held by them on the 
 20th November, 1858, were less by 2,845,967. 14s. 8d., 
 than the aggregate interest paid to Trustees of Savings 
 Banks, and 440,557. 13s. 4c?. less than the interest paid 
 
734 
 
 to Friendly Societies, making the total interest due to 
 the Commissioners, 3,286,525. 8s. Od. less than the 
 amount paid to these Institutions ; but there was due 
 on 7,600,000 Exchequer Bills, funded in 1859, interest 
 amounting to 76,112. 9s. 2d. 
 
 The speculative part of this department of Govern- 
 ment, and the practice of funding Exchequer Bills 
 bought by the deposits of the Savings Banks, appear to 
 be proper subjects for the consideration of the House 
 of Commons ; and if the House should be able to satisfy 
 itself and the country, that funding these Bills does not 
 increase the National Debt, then, there is nothing fur- 
 ther to be said against this practice. 
 
 Whilst on the subject of these " Friendly" and " Bene- 
 fit " Societies, it may be well shortly to notice another 
 sort, also sanctioned by the Legislature, for the benefit 
 of the people, called et Loan Societies." 
 
 The benefits conferred by some of these Societies are 
 so peculiar, and have been so vividly presented by Mr. 
 Kerr, the Judge of the Sheriffs' Court, that the follow- 
 ing, from the Observer of 12th June, 1859, may be worth 
 transcribing. 
 
 "LOAN SOCIETIES AND THEIR PEE-CENTAGES." 
 
 "Yesterday, at the City Sheriffs' Court, the newly 
 elected Judge, Mr. Kerr, was engaged nearly the whole 
 sitting in adjudicating on actions on promissory notes 
 held by the Loan Societies. In each case the Judge 
 created much sensation amongst the suitors by a calcu- 
 lation of the per-centage which these Loan Societies 
 charged, irrespective of their inquiry fees, fines, etc. 
 In the first case, on a balance of a promissory note 
 payable in fourteen days, the Judge said the interest 
 charged was 400 per cent. In another case he calcu- 
 lated it to be 500 per cent. In a third, he said the 
 
735 
 
 interest charged was 3,650 per cent. ; and in a fourth, 
 to the astonishment of all the Court, the Plaintiff' in- 
 cluded, that 7,300 per cent, was the very moderate rate 
 of interest charged. In some of the cases he dismissed 
 the summonses, and in others, although making orders 
 for payment, he would allow no costs, remarking that it 
 was high time for the Legislature, or some authority, to 
 step in, and put a stop to these shameful exactions from 
 the poorer classes. In all such cases he should refuse 
 to commit, as he considered the enormous interest 
 charged as a kind of insurance against loss. 
 
 Assuming Judge Kerr's calculations to be correctly 
 made,, and taking the promissory notes for 10, the per- 
 centages would stand thus : 
 
 Sum Per-centage Sum 
 
 Borrowed. Paid. Payable. 
 
 
 
 10 400 40 
 
 10 500 50 
 
 10 3,650 365 
 
 10 7,300 730 
 
 Well might the Court be ( ' astonished " at these ex- 
 orbitant exactions, and well might the Judge say, " it 
 was high time for the Legislature, or some authority, to 
 step in, and put a stop to these shameful exactions from 
 the poorer classes." 
 
 The Legislature gave to these Societies a kind of Im- 
 perial sanction, under the 3 4 Viet. cap. 110, and 
 Mr. Tidd Pratt was appointed to " certify " to their 
 rules. 
 
 But what of this ? with this result ! 
 
 The latest published returns do not furnish the aggre- 
 gate number of these Loan Societies, but they exist in 
 twenty-five counties in England and Wales, and many 
 of them are distinguished by very philanthropic titles, 
 such as the " Poor Man's Refuge " " Brotherly Love " 
 " Poor Man's Friendly " " Good Intent Friendly " 
 
with a variety of other titles equally fascinating, attrac- 
 tive, and delusive. 
 
 There are no means of knowing how many of these 
 Societies are held at Public-houses, but out of 35 regis- 
 tered in Middlesex, 22 are held at Public-houses. 
 
 The Parliamentary returns are to 31st December, 
 1857, under seventeen different heads, which give a good 
 deal of curious information. For instance, the number 
 of applications in 1857, was 154,606; but loans were 
 granted to only 121,810, so that the refusals were 
 32,796. 
 
 Many of these Societies, according to their papers, 
 profess to lend various sums of money "free jrom all 
 deductions ; " yet the sum of two-pence is charged for 
 each paper containing instructions, in which, as a matter 
 of course, " all communications are strictly confidential." 
 In the official return, the amount paid for forms of ap- 
 plication and inquiry is given at 8,301 ; so that the 
 sale of these papers is no insignificant feature in the 
 trading of these Societies. 
 
 The amount paid as interest by the borrowers, or 
 their sureties, in 1857, was 29,047. 14s. Id. upon 
 144,359. 19^., or, about 20 per cent, on the share- 
 holders' capital. But the gross profits are given at 
 36,415. 11 s. 8d. } or, at the rate of 25 per cent, per 
 annum. The actual interest, however, paid to the 
 depositors, in 1857, was 19,516, or, about 14 per 
 cent. 
 
 The item for management appears to be a very for- 
 midable one, for it amounts to about half the interest 
 paid to depositors, or, 15,095. 
 
 And, now, for the results of these Societies upon the 
 borrowers. 
 
 These are sufficiently shown in the 13,467 Summonses, 
 and 725 Distress Warrants, issued in 1857. 
 
 If this be the best protection which the Legislature 
 
PRACTICAL REMARKS, 737 
 
 can extend to this class of the People, the sooner they 
 are left alone the better for them. 
 
 PRACTICAL REMARKS. 
 
 In all these Trades Unions, Friendly Societies, and 
 other Associations for the benefit of the Working- 
 Classes, there is something more significant than even 
 the dark facts here disclosed ; something which tells 
 strongly against the existing state of things which tells 
 of the fears of all these classes for their future ; which 
 tells that, with all their industry, and care, and pru- 
 dence, their savings will be quite insufficient for them- 
 selves and families in the days of sickness, slack - 
 work, no- work, or other misfortune, and that possible 
 misfortune of living to old age and helplessness, 
 with the choice of a prison, or a workhouse, for their 
 refuge ! 
 
 Who can say that these fears for the future are 
 groundless ? Who can say that there is, for the respect- 
 able married couple, who have brought up a respectable 
 family of four or five children, any better prospect than 
 this before them for their old age ? 
 
 But they came into the world poor. 
 
 Why complain that they leave it poor ? 
 
 They do not complain that they are poor, but that 
 they are unfairly treated. 
 
 They were born to work for their bread, and they 
 have done so. They have done more. They have en- 
 riched their country by their labor, and they have been 
 inadequately and unfairly remunerated. Their country 
 has taken away from them, in taxes, above one-third of 
 the wages of their labor, without any remuneration. 
 
 This is what they complain of. 
 
 It is true, their country provides for them when they 
 are worked-out, provides for them prison -fare, but 
 
 SB 
 
738 PRACTICAL REMARKS. 
 
 they complain that this provision is on terms which 
 makes long life (so great a prize to others,) not to be 
 desired by them. 
 
 What can they do with all their betters against 
 them but form themselves into close brotherhoods for 
 their mutual benefit ? 
 
 The Legislature sanctions these imperfect attempts 
 for their self-protection, but lends them no effectual 
 help. 
 
 Here is a specimen of Legislative Protection to the 
 Poor! 
 
 Legalised Associations of Wolves, for the Protection 
 of Sheep ! 
 
 The Legislature gives itself a great deal of unneces- 
 sary trouble, all of which might be saved by less inter- 
 meddling, with more honesty and common sense. 
 
 If the People were left more alone, and were allowed 
 to have their own, there would be a better chance of 
 their learning how to hold their own, and how to 
 manage their own more to the advantage of themselves 
 and others. 
 
 If the Legislature would leave the Laborers in full 
 possession of their wages, they would want no help 
 from others, but would be well able to help themselves. 
 They want no more than their fair share in the common 
 lot. The common interest would be their interest. 
 
 On what ground of policy, or common sense, (to say 
 nothing of honesty), does the Legislature diminish the 
 Laborers' wages by taxation ? 
 
 It was well said by Mr. Erskine Clarke, in his paper 
 read at the Social Science Meeting at Bradford in 1857, 
 that ' the great problem of social economy is, how to 
 help the working people to keep themselves with their 
 own money, in other words, to teach them provident 
 habits/ 
 
 With all deference to Mr. Erskine Clarke, the first 
 
PRACTICAL REMARKS. 739 
 
 great problem is, how to help the working people to 
 keep their own money for themselves. There is every 
 reason to hope that they will then be able to keep them- 
 selves with their own money, seeing how many of them 
 manage now to keep themselves and their families, and 
 even to bring them up respectably, on 10$. or 12s. a 
 week. Let those who would be teachers of provident 
 habits first try to do this for themselves. 
 
 Where the Legislature might have helped the People, 
 what has it ever done for them ? 
 
 The condition of the lower classes in this country 
 has, by long neglect of mental improvement, by the 
 natural pressure of population on the means of subsist- 
 ence, by the consequent decrease in the rate of wages, 
 and by the heavy taxes on all the necessaries and 
 comforts of life, sunk so low that, to large masses of 
 the people in cities, towns, and country, the term 
 1 social condition/ can hardly be applied with more 
 propriety than to brute animals. But the education 
 of the poor is still talked of ; the improvement of their 
 condition is talked of but nothing is done. And what 
 should be done for a people already degraded and desti- 
 tute ? What can be expected from teaching, or preach- 
 ing to people destitute of necessary food and clothing, 
 who are congregated in masses of human misery and 
 vice, breathing an atmosphere of the foulest impurity, 
 or dotted about like isolated human beings, separated 
 by their very misery and destitution from their more 
 fortunate fellow-creatures, who avoid them as outcasts, 
 or like heaven-stricken lepers of old, whose near 
 approach was contamination ? 
 
 It is not by ragged schools, or penny tracts, that 
 the poor are to be lifted up into anything like a social 
 position ! These are good aids to a good system ; but 
 a good working system can' never be established whilst 
 two-thirds of the revenue are raised by taxes on the 
 
 3 B 2 
 
740 PRACTICAL REMARKS. 
 
 necessaries and comforts of life, which must always 
 press with the greatest severity upon the poor and 
 working classes. Religious tracts and moral tales, 
 however plentifully distributed among the poor, will 
 avail little or nothing for their improvement morally 
 or intellectually, as long as there is no fire to make the 
 pot boil, and nothing to put into the pot when it does 
 boil. 
 
 As Sydney Smith said, many years ago, in his own 
 incomparable style of banter : " The moral story for 
 the poor generally is, that a laborer with six children 
 has nothing to live upon but mouldy bread and dirty 
 water; yet nothing can exceed his cheerfulness and 
 content no murmurs, no discontent ; of mutton he 
 has scarcely heard of bacon he never dreams : farina- 
 ceous bread, and the water of the pool, constitute his 
 food, establish his felicity, and excite his warmest grati- 
 tude : the Squire, or Parson of the parish, always 
 happens to be walking by, and overhears him praying 
 for the King, and the members of the County, and for 
 all in authority ; and it generally ends with their offer- 
 ing him a shilling, which this excellent man declares he 
 does not want, and will not accept. These are the 
 tracts which Goodies and Noodles are dispersing with 
 unwearied diligence. It would be a great blessing if 
 some genius would arise who had a talent of writing 
 for the poor." 
 
 The whole of Nature is the revelation of an Infinite 
 Rational Will, and if man were guided by it, as an 
 eternal guiding star, his chief task would be to make 
 laws for human government in perfect harmony there- 
 with. The rights of the poor would then be seen to be 
 precisely the same as those of the rich, and would be so 
 regarded accordingly, for it would then be clearly seen 
 that neglect or injury of the one, would be equally 
 neglect or injury of the other. 
 
PRACTICAL REMARKS. 741 
 
 It would then be seen that, all were born into this 
 world with the same inherent natural rights, and that 
 it is equally for the well-being of all that these rights 
 should be respected, until forfeited by being exercised 
 in a manner inconsistent with social order, that is, 
 contrary to the revelation of an Infinite Rational 
 Will. 
 
 It would then be seen that the best way of protect- 
 ing the rights of property, which are artificial, or con- 
 ventional, would be by extending the same protection 
 to the inherent or natural rights of every human 
 being. 
 
 It would then be seen with more Christian feeling 
 that, in humility is the truest evidence of strength, and 
 in obedience the great source of command. 
 
 It is the same of Governments, as of Individuals. 
 Governments would see that, their best security was in 
 the well-being of the governed ; that if Property had 
 its rights, so also it had its duties; and that they 
 would best preserve the one, by enforcing the due per- 
 formance of the other. They would see that it is as 
 essential for social order, and the well-being of the 
 People, to protect the poor in the enjoyment of their 
 inherent or natural rights, as it is to protect the rich 
 in the enjoyment of their artificial or acquired rights 
 of property. They would see that it is a violation of 
 the first principle of justice and policy, to impose taxes 
 on food and raiment, or any other product of indus- 
 try; that justice and policy equally require that the 
 necessities of the State should be provided for out of 
 acquired property, and not out of the daily toil which 
 is producing that property. They would see that, by 
 reversing this just and moral rule, by taxing the daily 
 laborer in his food and raiment, they are committing 
 the grossest injustice that they are introducing ele- 
 ments of discord and disruption, the tendency of which 
 
742 PRACTICAL REMARKS. 
 
 must be, to disturb and break up social order, by letting 
 in fraud and violence, in all their various forms of per- 
 jury and theft, adulterations and poisonings, smug- 
 gling and murder ; all tending to demoralisation and 
 disturbance, to the guilt and wretchedness of many, and 
 the certain injury of all. 
 
 They would learn that the power of kings and rulers 
 can no more be misused with impunity, than could 
 these powers be resisted with impunity when lawfully 
 and righteously exercised ; and they would learn this 
 solemn truth, that right must prevail in the end, 
 though thrones be overthrown, and governments be 
 broken up, and nations be destroyed, and people be 
 scattered. 
 
 They would learn that the strength of a nation is in 
 the People ; that the strength of the government is in 
 the well-being of the whole People ; and that the 
 strength of the People is in their subjection to the 
 Divine Will ; in short that, " The welfare of the People 
 is the highest law ;" and that, to promote this is the 
 best and greatest work that man can do, the highest 
 to which he can attain and that, "Nothing is truly 
 sublime but moral greatness." 
 
 Everything which has a tendency to produce indif- 
 ference to or contempt for this great maxim, tends to 
 lower the general tone of the public mind, or to pervert 
 the moral sense of society ; nor can limits be assigned 
 to the social deterioration which may be the conse- 
 quence of a continued disregard of those elements of 
 our nature, by which alone it can claim any kindred 
 with the Divine. If kings and governments had more 
 fully recognised and acknowledged the Divine Spirit, 
 how much greater and more powerful would have been 
 their rule on earth ! how much happier, wiser, and 
 better, would have been the whole human race ! If 
 only Justice and Humanity had been more regarded, 
 
PRACTICAL REMARKS. 743 
 
 by more attention to the comforts and welfare of the 
 People, how much greater would have been the portion 
 of happiness to all, even in this present life of toil and 
 trial ! If instead of such costly preparations for their 
 improvement and benefit, in building gaols, reforma- 
 tories, and work-houses, they had been left to enjoy the 
 fruits of their own labor, and to participate a little more 
 in the mental acquirements of those whose lot had been 
 cast in more easy circumstances, how much misery and 
 guilt might have been spared ! how many suffering 
 and lost lives, perhaps souls, might have been 
 saved ! 
 
 To bring these principles to a practical test, take a 
 survey of the human governments throughout the 
 world, and then examine the actual results. 
 
 In what part of the world have these principles ever 
 yet been carried out in practice ? 
 
 Where are the results, and what are they ? 
 
 Mankind are literally suffering and groaning under 
 the laws and inventions substituted by human despo- 
 tism. 
 
 In the place of Justice and Mercy, we see every^ 
 where Injustice and Cruelty. In this country, perhaps, 
 more than in any other, may be seen some approach to 
 good principles, which all acknowledge, but none 
 follow, because none have any reliance on them. 
 
 Human selfishness and injustice is the rule. 
 
 Human misery and vice are the result. 
 
 Wherever freedom and justice have been even par- 
 tially tried, the result has always been, comparative 
 prosperity and happiness ; prosperity to the country, 
 and happiness to the people. 
 
 Take the instance given by the Liverpool Financial 
 Reformers, in one of their early Tracts, of that remote 
 and barbarous village, which, less than 60 years ago, 
 consisted of a few scattered huts on the water-side, 
 
744 PRACTICAL REMARKS. 
 
 inhabited by half- fisher men and whole pirates, and is 
 now the flourishing free Port of Singapore, enjoying a 
 trade of upwards of ten millions sterling annually, and 
 contributing largely to the Indian revenue. 
 
 Such was the description given many years ago 
 of this Settlement, founded in 1819, by Sir Stamford 
 Kaffles. 
 
 Here is the latest description, given by Dr. Karl 
 Scherzer, in his "Narrative of the Circumnavigation 
 of the Globe, by the Austrian Frigate, Novara, in the 
 years 1857, 1858, and 1859." Vol. II: 
 
 " Singapore, from its singularly favorable geographi- 
 cal position and the liberality of its political institutions, 
 has made such a stride as is entirely without parallel 
 in the history of the world's trade. From a desolate 
 haunt of piratical foes the island has been converted 
 into a flourishing emporium. 
 
 " About 1,000 foreign vessels, and fully 3,000 Malay 
 prahas and Chinese junks flit backwards and forwards 
 annually with all sorts of merchandise and produce, 
 while the value of the other goods annually exchanged 
 here amounts to about 11,000,000. Such is the 
 change that has come over the old unhealthy, ill-omened 
 Malay pirate abode, thanks to a clearly-defined policy. 
 If a doubt should still obtrude itself as to these 
 brilliant results of the utmost freedom and absence of 
 restriction upon trade, it must give way before the 
 spectacle presented to the view of the astonished 
 beholder in the harbor of Singapore, the Alexandria of 
 the nineteenth century." 
 
 Such a description as this, from an Austrian Govern- 
 ment official, has some claim to credit, and comes with 
 additional force. 
 
 As the Liverpool Reformers ask : " What is the 
 secret of this wonderful metamorphosis ? Simply the 
 fact, that at Singapore there are no import or export 
 
PRACTICAL REMARKS. 745 
 
 duties, no taxes upon shipping. Who can calculate 
 the immense development of the national resources 
 which would certainly be produced, if the same sound 
 principles were extended to British industry, commerce, 
 and manufactures ? Nobody can make such a calcula- 
 tion beforehand; but everybody, who thinks, must see 
 that the demonstration can be brought about only by 
 means of Direct Taxation." 
 
 Then, again, take the instances given in the ' Edin- 
 burgh Review' for April, 1859, in the Article " The 
 West Indies as they were and are ; " instances all the 
 mere forcible, being, as such, altogether unintentional. 
 
 " MONTSERRAT." After referring to "the improved 
 and improving state of the community, as allowed on 
 all hands/' and giving various details, the Governor 
 says, (in 1853,) "so much for the increase of confidence, 
 enterprise, and industry, in Montserrat." 
 
 " No island in these seas exhibits more decisive ten- 
 dency to social and moral regeneration and improve- 
 ment. The rural population are quiet, contented, and 
 orderly. Their condition one of great comfort. .... 
 
 " A new system of taxation, (as we understand throw- 
 ing it off imports upon real property,) came into opera- 
 tion in June, 1856, and with such striking and powerful 
 effect, that the imports more than doubled in value in 
 the course of the year ! " 
 
 " NEVIS." . . . . " The case of this island is pecu- 
 liarly interesting, because in it an experiment has been 
 e d in taxation, which may, perhaps, some day become 
 
 generally adopted throughout the world 
 
 Things in Nevis had got to such a desperate state 
 they were, in fact, past all bearing, that at last, Mr. 
 President Seymour, a gentleman of remarkable boldness 
 and vigor, induced the legislators to consent to a radical 
 change in the fiscal system. The import duties were 
 totally abolished, and a tax of 20 per cent, placed on 
 
746 PRACTICAL REMARKS. 
 
 rentals Small as the field was in which this 
 
 experiment was tried, its astonishing results are worth 
 noticing by Statesmen. 
 
 "The new system came into play March, 1856. In 
 that year the imports rose from 19,728 to 34,449. 
 New shops were speedily opened, house rent rose 
 threefold. The sound of the hammer was heard, and 
 the smell of fresh paint experienced, where all had been 
 crumbling decay. The roads appear as if the greater 
 part of the population had new clothed themselves, and 
 in the harbour, so often deserted, I now count ten ships 
 of considerable burden." 
 
 These are remarkable instances, and the more remark- 
 able for the " undesigned coincidence" with the expe- 
 riment recommended in "The People's Blue Book," 
 first published in the year 1857. 
 
 If the British Isles be not less favorably situated than 
 the West India Islands are, or than the Island of Singa- 
 pore is, for industry, commerce, and manufactures, 
 these experiments are worth repeating. 
 
 It is not easy, perhaps, not possible, to foresee all 
 the results of such an experiment if fully and fairly 
 carried out in this country. 
 
 But why should the result be less satisfactory in the 
 British Isles, than in those remote Isles ? If the prin- 
 ciple be sound, why should it be less applicable to this 
 great and highly civilised country, than to those small, 
 remote, and less civilised countries in the far East and 
 West. 
 
 That great changes would be a necessary consequence 
 of the adoption of the principle in such a country as 
 this, in the overthrow of ancient institutions, and the 
 diversion of long-established habits into other channels, 
 is quite certain; and that many unforeseen changes 
 would ensue, is more than probable. 
 
 It may be admitted that it would be a great Political- 
 
PRACTICAL REMARKS. 747 
 
 and Social revolution in this country, which would be 
 gradually extended over the whole civilised world. 
 
 But if the principle be sound in truth and justice, 
 how can the results be other than beneficial to the 
 whole human race ? 
 
 And what is this principle, but that the laborer 
 shall not be taxed in his own labor ? That the work- 
 ing classes, who are without property, shall be free from 
 all taxes on property ; and that property, whilst directly 
 employed in the production of property, shall go un- 
 taxed. That property shall pay equally, and that 
 persons shall pay equally, for the protection derived 
 from the Laws of the Land. 
 
 The laborers of all classes would then be in the full 
 and free possession of the wages of their labor, bodily 
 and mental. 
 
 The Wages of labor and the profits of trade would 
 be free from all taxation. 
 
 Why not ? 
 
 Who would be injured by the common laborer and 
 the skilled laborer (which includes the artist and the 
 professional laborer), being set free from all taxes on his 
 property? 
 
 Is he not serving the State far more untaxed, than 
 taxed? 
 
 Is the property of the rich man taxed because he is 
 rich ? No. 
 
 The property of the poor man is taxed precisely at 
 the same rate. 
 
 Is the rich man's life valued higher than the poor 
 man's ? No. 
 
 The rich man's life, and the poor man's life are valued 
 at the same, and are taxed at the same. 
 
 The only difference would be that, the rich man, if he 
 please, may bid higher for, and have a little more of 
 one State privilege, than the poor man would have. 
 
748 PRACTICAL REMARKS. 
 
 The Wealth of the Nation would have its full weight 
 in the Council of the State. 
 
 And so it ought to do. 
 
 But what would then be the power of a united 
 People ? 
 
 The power of the greatest number, still representing 
 the greatest wealth, would preponderate in the Council 
 of the State. 
 
 And so it ought to do. 
 
 Assuming, as before, the Agricultural population to 
 consist of 5,000,000 families, and the annual saving of 
 each family to be only 2 this would give an aggregate 
 annual saving, by the Agricultural population alone, of 
 J10,000,000. And as before, taking the Population to 
 consist of 7,500,000 families, and the annual saving of 
 each family, on an aggregate of the whole, to be only 
 5, this would give an aggregate annual saving of 
 37,500,000. 
 
 How would this immense annual sum, in addition to 
 the many millions sterling set free by the abolition of 
 Customs and Excise Duties, be invested ? 
 
 Certainly not in Trades Unions, Benefit Clubs, Loan 
 and other such Friendly Societies, and, probably, but a 
 very small portion of it would find its way into the 
 Public Debt. It would most probably find better Invest- 
 ment in Land and Houses and in Trade Concerns. The 
 foolish laws formerly affecting Partnerships, involving 
 liability with participation in profits, have been since 
 repealed, and the savings from the wages of the artisans 
 and other skilled workmen, may now be entrusted by 
 them to their masters, or others engaged in trade, on a 
 certain share in the profits ; and the workmen them- 
 selves may set up their own Establishments, and conduct 
 them in their own way, for their own benefit. 
 
 These accumulated Savings would form an immense 
 addition to the active capital of the Country, and it is 
 
PRACTICAL REMARKS. 749 
 
 impossible to imagine anything better calculated than 
 this would be, for binding and holding together master 
 and servant in one common interest, for their mutual 
 benefit, and the Nation's good. 
 
 The workmen would have an immediate and direct 
 interest in their master's prosperity, their own being 
 intimately connected with it, and this would be the best 
 worldly security for their industrious and provident 
 habits. 
 
 The masters would be held in wholesome check by 
 the liability of being called upon, at any time, to refund 
 the capital of their workmen ; for which the law should 
 give a sure and speedy remedy. 
 
 With this mutuality of interest between employers 
 and employed, and all the pre-existent and ever con- 
 tinuous claims of labor in full operation, and in fuller 
 force than ever, it is difficult to imagine the recurrence 
 of those weak and foolish collisions between masters 
 and workmen, called " STRIKES." The bond of mutual 
 interest which ought to hold them together would be 
 strengthened, and the increased stake of the working 
 classes in the country would, at least, be calculated to 
 give them an increased interest in its security and 
 welfare. 
 
 On no other ground than this can it be pretended 
 that, the Government and the Legislature are justified 
 in the course which has been pursued for so many years 
 with regard to Savings Banks. Not that Savings Banks 
 have not been productive of benefit to the People, but 
 that these are founded on a false principle, and grafted 
 on a false system. 
 
 The case of the Savings Banks has been selected for 
 special notice, because it may be likened to one of the 
 least unhealthy of all the branches from the old and 
 cankered tree. 
 
 In nature, under these circumstances, we often see 
 
750 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 vigorous efforts ; but these are only the signs of rapid 
 decay, and that the canker is at the heart. To tempo- 
 rise under these circumstances is a fatal mistake. It is 
 the part of prudent foresight to plant the new tree, 
 whilst yet the old one lives. 
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 A treatise on taxation may very properly terminate 
 with a few remarks on our National Debt, as it is now 
 called, in courtesy to Royalty, being formerly called, 
 1 The King's Debt/ 
 
 There is a great deal of misunderstanding about our 
 National Debt. 
 
 The capital of the National Debt, although nominally 
 large, has no real existence. It is, in fact, except as a 
 measure of annuities, a mere fiction ; and, if it were 
 more correctly viewed, it would cease to create the 
 uneasiness which is so frequently expressed about its 
 amount. 
 
 It is a great mistake to suppose that the National 
 Debt is a great burden on the resources of this country. 
 
 It is another common error to attribute the depriva- 
 tion and suffering in this country to the great weight of 
 taxation under which it labors. That the Public Debt 
 and Taxation are great evils cannot be denied ; and 
 that these are the consequences of the extravagance and 
 mismanagement of former Governments must be ad- 
 mitted. 
 
 But though it be impossible to doubt that, a high 
 rate of taxation has operated as a clog on the progress of 
 this country, yet it is demonstrable that, taxes, the pro- 
 duct of which is circulated in the country from which 
 they are raised, can never seriously injure a country 
 directly from the mere amount, but either from the 
 time or circumstances under which they are raised, or 
 
THE NATIONAL DEBT. 751 
 
 from the injudicious manner in which they are levied, 
 or from the improper objects to which they are applied. 
 
 If the sum received in dividends on the National 
 Debt were paid in taxes, and if these two sums precisely 
 coincided in amount, and if there were no expenses of 
 collection, and if the taxes did not interfere with the 
 production of wealth, the National Debt would not 
 diminish the National Wealth, though it could not 
 augment it. 
 
 It would be a mere matter of distribution. 
 
 But the expense of collecting the national revenue, 
 and the interference of taxation with production, are so 
 much pure loss, and by the removal of these two sources 
 of expense and loss, we should be richer if we were 
 relieved of the National Debt. 
 
 To relieve ourselves of the National Debt may not be 
 conveniently within our power, but to relieve ourselves 
 of the worst consequences of it is easily within our 
 power. 
 
 But, still the fact remains that, the National Debt, 
 now, in round numbers, about 800 millions, is a mort- 
 gage laid upon Taxes ; and this is a great evil, as also a 
 great breach of the much boasted, but much violated, 
 English Constitution ; for it is the great privilege of 
 each House of Commons in turn to exact taxes at plea- 
 sure, and no existing House has any right to engage that 
 taxes shall be voted by its successor. 
 
 Our National Debt is, therefore, a National Evil, and 
 has been fixed on us and posterity by unconstitutional 
 means ; but this evil, great as it is, is often exaggerated 
 in its evil effects, and made to appear to be a greater evil 
 than it really is. 
 
 The following illustration by the Poet and Philosopher, 
 Coleridge, has some truth in it, though it is more poeti- 
 cally beautiful, than philosophically correct : " The sun 
 may draw up the moisture from the river, the morass, 
 
752 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 the ocean, to be given back in genial showers to the 
 garden, the pasture, and the corn-field; but it may, 
 likewise, force upwards the moisture from the fields of 
 industry, to drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated 
 swamp, or the unprofitable sand-waste." And, he 
 adds, the corruptions of a system can be duly appre- 
 ciated by those only who have contemplated the system 
 in that ideal state of perfection exhibited by the reason,. 
 the nearest possible approximation to which, under 
 existing circumstances, it is the business of prudential 
 understandings to realise. 
 
 In "the merrie days" (whenever those were) there 
 was no National Debt to be provided for. No Customs 
 and Excise duties were filched out of the people's food 
 and clothing. No war taxes were wrung from the 
 people's wages. There was plenty of tyranny then, but 
 there was not the tyranny of taxation. There were wars 
 then, but the King of England, who waged the war, paid 
 for it out of his own pocket, with the aid of voluntary 
 contributions from such of his subjects as possessed the 
 means as well as the will. 
 
 The present practice of making the people pay for the 
 wars appears to have come in with King William the 
 Third, and then England began to be more frequently 
 engaged in wars, and in wars of longer continuance than 
 before. To that change in the practice, the British 
 Nation owes its present Debt. But few, perhaps, have 
 any definite notion of the extent to which this country 
 stands indebted to her wars. 
 
 The following Tables, No. 1 and No. 2, have been 
 prepared from the most authentic documents for the 
 purpose of showing this : 
 
THE NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 753 
 
 TABLE No. 1. SHOWING THE INCREASE OF THE NATIONAL 
 DEBT FROM WARS. 
 
 Years. 
 
 War and Peace. 
 
 National Debt. 
 
 Interest. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1691 
 
 War with France 
 
 3,130,000 
 
 232,000 
 
 1697 
 
 Peace of Ryswick 
 
 14,522,925 
 
 1,322,519 
 
 1702 
 
 War of the Spanish Succession . 
 
 12,522,480 
 
 1.215,324 
 
 1713 
 
 Peace of Utrecht 
 
 34,699,847 
 
 3,004,287 
 
 1718 
 
 War with Spain 
 
 40,379,684 
 
 2,965,889 
 
 1721 
 
 Peace 
 
 54,405,108 
 
 2,855,380 
 
 1739 
 
 War of Right of Search with 
 
 
 
 
 Spain ..... 
 
 46,613,883 
 
 2,030,884 
 
 1742 
 
 War of the Austrian Succession . 
 
 51,847,323 
 
 2,157,13a 
 
 1748 
 
 Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle . 
 
 75,812,132 
 
 3,165,76i 
 
 1756 
 
 War. The Seven Years' War . 
 
 74,575,025 
 
 2,753,566 
 
 1763 
 
 Peace 
 
 132,716,049 
 
 5,032,733 
 
 1775 
 
 War with America . 
 
 126,842,811 
 
 4,763,519 
 
 1783 
 
 Peace 
 
 231,843,631 
 
 9,065,585 
 
 1793 
 
 War with France. First Revo- 
 
 
 
 
 lutionary War 
 
 247,874,434 
 
 9,711,238 
 
 1802 
 
 Peace of Amiens 
 
 537,653,008 
 
 20,268,551 
 
 1803 
 
 War with France. Second Revo- 
 
 
 
 
 lutionary War 
 
 547,732,796 
 
 20,812,962 
 
 1815 
 
 Peace . . . . 
 
 861,039,049 
 
 32,645,618 
 
 1854 
 
 War with Russia 
 
 775,215,519 
 
 27,363,889 
 
 1856 
 
 Peace 
 
 808,108.722 
 
 28,550,039 
 
 1859 
 
 Peace 
 
 805,078,554 
 
 28,204,299 
 
 The column of Debt shows the increase at the end of 
 each war, but as this does not include the extra expen- 
 diture, preparatory and subsequently to the war, it is 
 obvious that this does not show the actual direct ex- 
 penses of each war. If the whole of the direct expendi- 
 ture consequent upon these wars could be ascertained, 
 including the annual interest paid in respect of the debt 
 so created, the aggregate would extend to many thousand 
 millions sterling. But if, in addition to this, the indi- 
 rect cost and loss to the nation could be ascertained, 
 (which is impossible,) the aggregate would be extended 
 to an amount quite inconceivable. It is, therefore, 
 unnecessary to carry the calculation further, and this 
 
 3 c 
 
754 
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 may be sufficient to show how unprofitable to a nation 
 is war, unless for defence. 
 
 Tri looking back to the history of past wars in this 
 list, it is impossible to say, even on the ground of 
 national policy, that the English Nation has gained any 
 advantage which might not have been acquired without 
 any interference with the policy of other nations. 
 
 If this view be correct, it follows that the many 
 thousand millions, sterling, expended by the British 
 Nation in these wars, and all the human misery conse- 
 quent thereon, might have been saved. 
 
 TABLE No. 2. SHOWING THE COST OF WAR. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Wars. 
 
 Cost. 
 
 
 
 
 
 1691 
 
 War with France 6 years to the Peace of Rys- 
 
 
 
 wick in 1697 
 
 11,392,925 
 
 1702 
 
 War of the Spanish Success ; on 11 years to the 
 
 
 
 Peace of Utrecht in 1713 . 
 
 22,147,367 
 
 1718 
 
 War with Spam 3 years to 1721 . 
 
 14,025,424 
 
 1739 
 
 War of Right of Search with Spain 3 years to 
 
 
 
 1742 . . . . . . 
 
 5,233,440 
 
 1742 
 
 War of the Austrian Succession 6 years to the 
 
 
 
 Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 . 
 
 23,964,809 
 
 1756 
 
 War. The Seven Years' War, to the Peace in 
 
 
 
 1763 
 
 58.141,024 
 
 1775 
 
 War with America 8 years to the Peace in 1783 
 
 105,001,820 
 
 1793 
 
 War with France 9 years to the Peace of Amiens 
 
 
 
 in 1802 
 
 289,778,574 
 
 1803 
 
 War with France Second Revolutionary War 
 
 
 
 12 years to the Peace in 1815 
 
 313,306,253 
 
 1854 
 
 War with Russia 2 years to the Peace in 1856 
 
 32,893,203 
 
 
 Do. further Cost of ditto .... 
 
 29,863,035 
 
 
 Cost of Wars from 1691 to 1856 165 years . 
 
 905,747,874 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 War 67 years. 
 
 Peace .. ..98 
 
 165 years. 
 
THE NATIONAL DEBT. 755 
 
 As these figures do not include the expenses prepara- 
 tory to, and consequential upon, these wars, it is obvious 
 that the cost must very much exceed the total amount 
 in the column above. 
 
 But taking the whole cost to be, as here stated, 
 905,747,874, this gives, for the last 165 years, a 
 yearly expenditure in War, of 5,489,381, exclusive of 
 interest. 
 
 These, as far as can be ascertained, are the actual 
 direct expenses of past wars for the last 165 years, and, 
 probably, are not half the direct expenses actually 
 incurred. 
 
 If to these could be added the indirect costs and losses 
 of Wars to the British Nation, for the same time, there 
 can be little doubt that the amount would exceed the 
 present estimated value of all the Real and Personal 
 Property of the Kingdom ! 
 
 It will be seen that, by far the greater part of this 
 expenditure has been incurred within the last 80 years, 
 that is, from the commencement of the American War, 
 in 1775; and, therefore, that the chief responsibility in 
 all this criminal folly has fallen upon the last and pre- 
 sent generation, and remains to be borne or got rid of 
 by generations yet to come. 
 
 Such is the succinct historical account of our present 
 National Debt ; all created in 165 years, of which 67 
 were years of war, leaving 98 years for peaceful medi- 
 tation on its miseries. 
 
 In round numbers, ONE THOUSAND MILLIONS, ster- 
 ling, gone in WAR, in 67 years ! And for this devil- 
 play of the past, TWENTY-EIGHT MILLIONS, sterling, to 
 be paid every year for ever ! 
 
 The following Table will show the fluctuations in 
 the debt during the several reigns since its commence- 
 ment : 
 
 3 c 2 
 
756 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 Amount of 
 
 Years. Debt. 
 
 
 
 1688. National Debt at the Revolution 664,263 
 
 Increase during the reign of William 3d 12,102,962 
 
 1702. At Accession of Anne 12,767,225 
 
 Increase during her reign 22,408,235 
 
 1714. At Accession of George 1st 36,175,460 
 
 Increase during his reign 16,348,463 
 
 1727. At Accession of George 2nd 52,523,923 
 
 Increase during his reign 49,490,095 
 
 1760. At Accession of George 3d 102,014,018 
 
 Increase during his reign 732,886,942 
 
 1820. At Accession of George 4th 834,900,960 
 
 Decrease during his reign \ 50,096,963 
 
 1830. At Accession of William 4th 784,803.997 
 
 Increase during his reign 2,725,117 
 
 1837. At Accession of Victoria.:.. ... 787,529,114 
 
 Increase during 22 years 17,549,440 
 
 1859. Last date in Lord Goderich's Returns, No. 
 
 443, Session 1859 ^805,078,554 
 
 But there is a far more startling fact than even the 
 debt itself, and it is difficult to comprehend such an 
 overwhelming sum as upwards of two thousand millions, 
 sterling, paid in hard cash for interest only. 
 
 To make this more comprehensible, the totals of the 
 several decades are given from the commencement, in 
 the following remarkable Table : 
 
THE NATIONAL DEBT. 757 
 
 Years. 
 
 1691 to 1700 Ten Years 9,228,211 
 
 1701 to 1710 ' 14,779,968 
 
 1711 to 1720 29,437,104 
 
 1721 to 1780 25,762,251 
 
 1731 to 1740 21,114.741) 
 
 1741 to 1750 25,85:3,04(5 
 
 1751 to 1760 28,664,024 
 
 1761 to 1770 47,092,783 
 
 1771 to 1780- 52,093,419 
 
 1781 to 1790 92,135,484 
 
 1791 to 1800 135,123,780 
 
 1801 to 1810 224,138,726 
 
 1811 to 1820 303,639,929 
 
 1821 to 1830 294,437,684 
 
 1831 to 1840 290,254,007 
 
 1841 to 1850 285,099,761 
 
 1851 to 1859 Nine Years 252,026,653 
 
 2,130,882,179 
 
 This is for simple interest only; yet even this gigantic 
 sum represents only a comparatively small portion of 
 the actual costs of war; moreover, it must be remem- 
 bered that all this has been abstracted from the working 
 capital of the country, therefore, in reality, " compound 
 interest " should be charged to represent even the outlay 
 for payment of the simple interest; to which must be 
 added a much larger sum for extra taxation levied to 
 carry on war. 
 
 The long reign of George III. ought to be for ever 
 memorable, if only for the stupendous addition then 
 made to the National Debt. It may almost be said that 
 the Debt was created during that reign. 
 
 It is also remarkable that, the only reign in which 
 the Public Debt was diminished, was the reign of 
 George IV. 
 
758 
 
 M. TURGOT AND TAXATION. 
 
 M. Turgot, in his "Fragmentary Tracts, and Essays 
 on Direct and Indirect Taxation, begins by enume- 
 rating three different forms of Taxation, viz.: 
 
 Direct Taxes on Property. 
 
 Direct Taxes on Persons. 
 
 Indirect Taxes on Articles of Consumption. 
 
 After some observations about the latter, he under- 
 takes to show that, in whatever form they may be levied, 
 they fall, eventually, on the land-owners. 
 
 He further arrives at the opinion that, between aug- 
 mented expense of collection, and diminution of the 
 value of property, the owner of the soil is, in reality, 
 mulcted much more severely by indirect taxation, than 
 he would be if the \?hole of the net revenue, thus raised, 
 were taken directly from his property. 
 
 He then gives the following reasons for preferring 
 direct to indirect taxation : 
 
 1. Because the owners of property alone are holders 
 for the service of the State. 
 
 2. Because Direct Taxation, being levied at the least 
 expense, the owner of the soil, who, under any system, 
 eventually pays all, saves thereby the amount of the 
 expense of collection, and the gains of surveyors of 
 inland revenue, managers, and farmers of taxes. 
 
 3. Because Indirect Taxation imposes a multitude of 
 restrictions on commerce, because it causes legal pro- 
 cesses, frauds, and confiscations, the loss of a great 
 number of men, a war of government against its sub- 
 jects, a disproportionate penalty attached to certain 
 acts, a continual and almost irresistible temptation to 
 fraud, which is, nevertheless, subjected to the most cruel 
 penalties. 
 
 4. Because Indirect Taxation is, in many respects, an 
 attack upon liberty. 
 
M. TURGOT AND TAXATION. 759 
 
 5. Because it has a great tendency to prevent con- 
 sumption, and so ruins itself. 
 
 6. Because it augments State expenses, inasmuch as 
 the State pays both on its own account, and that of its 
 agents. 
 
 7. Because it gives to foreign merchants an advantage 
 in commercial competition. 
 
 8. Finally, because its effects cannot always be calcu- 
 lated exactly, whereas the owner of property knows the 
 proportion which the sum he pays in taxes bears to his 
 revenue. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 In every indirect tax it is almost impossible to avoid 
 prevarications. To prove cases of fraud it is necessary 
 to give to the Commissioners the right of being believed 
 on their verbal declarations, which is an irremediable 
 source of vexation. 
 
 The complications of the tariff, and of the laws which 
 are designed to prevent the evasion of the tax, render it 
 impossible for people to resist the concomitant annoy- 
 ances ; for in the face of so many obscure arid doubtful 
 points, what private person would dare to risk an action 
 against the authorised agents of government ? 
 
 But although the whole weight of the taxation, in 
 whatever form it may be levied, falls, eventually, on the 
 owners of the property, it by no means follows that the 
 mode in which it is raised makes no difference, either to 
 the proprietor, or to the Government. As regards the 
 former, we have already seen that, it is his interest to 
 pay that which the State needs, and nothing more. The 
 tax levied on him absorbs only a portion of his income, 
 the allocation of which may vary without making any 
 difference in the order and proportion of the moving 
 force of society. Everything keeps its place; all the 
 relative commercial values remain the same ; no species 
 of labor, no article of merchandise, is subject to those 
 
760 M. TURGOT AND TAXATION. 
 
 artificial enhancements of value, the effects of which, as 
 they are spread far and wide, and cannot be foreseen, or 
 appreciated, derange the course of industry. Further- 
 more, under a system of direct taxation, the desire of 
 evading a custom-house, or any local or transitory duty, 
 does not act so as to turn aside trade from its natural 
 path, and cause expenses to be incurred which, though 
 useless in themselves, are less than those which it is 
 sought to avoid. 
 
 Neither the journeyman, who is entirely dependent on 
 the labor of his hands, nor the pauper, who is unable to 
 find work, nor the sufferer from old age or infirmity, 
 can live without paying the indirect taxes. Though the 
 owners of property may reimburse themselves for the 
 payments thus made, they are, nevertheless, an advance 
 from the poor man to the rich ; and the former is, in 
 the meantime, subjected to all the languors of misery. 
 The State demands the tax from the man who has 
 nothing, and it is against him that it directs all those 
 harsh proceedings which are necessary to enforce its due 
 payment. All this comes upon the man to whom his 
 labor procures nought but the necessaries of life, who is, 
 consequently, under the greatest temptation to have 
 recourse to fraudulent evasions, and is thereby exposed 
 to the severest penalties which are requisite for the pro- 
 tection of the revenue. These penalties frequently entail 
 the total ruin of the poor man and his family, and occa- 
 sionally bring him to the gaol or to the galleys. 
 
 The Government knows not, when it imposes a duty 
 on any merchandise, how much it exacts from the 
 different classes. The necessarily vague estimates which 
 it is able to procure of the quantity of any one article 
 that is consumed, cannot enlighten it as to the possible 
 variations of its consumption, or the diminution caused 
 therein by the very imposition of the tax, or the increase 
 of Iraud for the purpose of evasion. It knows not if 
 
M. TURGOT AND TAXATION. 761 
 
 the rupture of the equilibrium of the value of the divers 
 wares in the market may not be felt even in the trade of 
 those articles which it did not intend to tax. It knows 
 not how far such a tax may diminish, or even totally 
 annihilate, the business of such and such an establish- 
 ment, or injure any one branch of national industry so 
 as to drive it away to another country. 
 
 * # * * * 
 Taxes on exchanges and on the transactions of society 
 
 are of a not less odious nature. 
 
 It would seem as if such a financial system, like a 
 monster of prey, made it its business to look out for the 
 riches of the citizens in their passage to and fro. This 
 is a very clumsy mistake. For to what purpose is all 
 this disguised lying in wait for riches, when all real 
 wealth is, as it were, in the light of the sun ? 
 
 THE SMALLEST TEIFLE SO PAID IS A SUBTRACTION FROM 
 ACTUAL PEOPERTY. 
 
 TAXES OUGHT TO BE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF PEO- 
 PERTY, NOT TO PREVENT ITS FORMATION. 
 
 [As these words cannot here be printed in gold letters, 
 they are printed in capitals.] 
 
 * * * * * 
 The State has the greatest interest in preserving the 
 
 masses of capital. 
 
 It is from these masses that all advances necessary for 
 commercial and agricultural enterprises, and for the im- 
 provement of realised property, are derived. They are 
 formed by the slow processes of economy. For the State 
 to claim as revenue a part of the capital accumulated to 
 make the advances required for the payment of labor, is, 
 in part, to destroy the sources of its own revenue. 
 
 Indirect Taxes will destroy Capital so much the quicker 
 as their injurious incidence is at first less felt, and causes 
 less alarm. 
 
762 M. TURGOT AND TAXATION. 
 
 As each citizen, in buying the article which he wishes 
 to consume, appears to pay the tax to which it is subject 
 entirely of his own accord, many people, including some 
 writers of distinction, have been so far deceived by this 
 apparent freedom of the tax-payer, as unhesitatingly to 
 declare their preference of the duties which are levied on 
 articles of consumption, and on the exportation and im- 
 portation of articles of merchandise, to any other system 
 of taxation. 
 
 But those who have thoroughly mastered the subject 
 have come to a very different conclusion. Their reflec- 
 tions, which are confirmed by experience, have shown 
 them clearly that, the whole burden of taxation, in what- 
 ever form it is first raised, when traced through all its 
 ramifications, falls eventually upon the owners of the soil. 
 It sometimes falls upon them directly by the application 
 of part of their revenue to the necessities of the State 
 sometimes indirectly, by the diminution of the incomes 
 and augmentation of their expenditure. 
 
 It is evident that every tax which increases the ex- 
 penses of cultivation, diminishes the rent of land. 
 
 The incomes of the various other members of society, 
 whether they be cultivators of the soil, workmen, traders, 
 or capitalists, is composed of the wages of labor, the re- 
 muneration of industry, and the interest of advances. 
 They are reduced by competition to the lowest possible 
 amount, and are never more than what is required for 
 the maintenance of agriculture, arts, commerce, and cir- 
 culation. That portion of the annual wealth which is 
 devoted to the support of motion and life in the body 
 politic, cannot be turned to other purposes without in- 
 juring the public prosperity, and drying up the fountain 
 head of riches, to the great detriment both of the pro- 
 prietors of the soil, and of the entire State. 
 
 The worrying inquiries which the very nature of in- 
 direct taxation necessitates, and which follow a man in 
 
M. TURGOT AND TAXATION. 763 
 
 every business transaction, intruding often into the most 
 secret recesses of his house ; the frequent interferences 
 with liberty which they sometimes require; the silent 
 warfare which they establish between the bulk, of the 
 nation and the surveyors of taxes whom the Government 
 deem themselves to support ; all these necessary conse- 
 quences of taxes on articles of consumption tend inces- 
 santly to relax the ties which attach a man to his coun- 
 try, and to transform into an odious charge that which 
 ought to be an act of patriotism on the part of a good 
 citizen, namely, an annual contribution to the common 
 expense of society, a sacrifice of each to his own indivi- 
 dual security, as well as that of the State. 
 
 To this may be added that, if the indirect tax be 
 limited to the valuable articles consumed merely by the 
 rich, it will bring in next to nothing, because the num- 
 ber of such rich consumers must necessarily be very 
 small. If, on the contrary, it is imposed on articles of 
 common consumption, its weight becomes very dispro- 
 portionate to the incomes of the consumers ; being next 
 to nothing on the very rich, but making an over- 
 whelming demand on the poor laborers who perform 
 the most toilsome and the most useful tasks. Among 
 these are comprised all those directly employed in agri- 
 culture. This very circumstance cannot but increase the 
 expenses of cultivation, and casts the tax, in the most 
 onerous manner, on the owners of land, and is most 
 ruinous to the farmers' capital. It must end by causing 
 the abandonment of the cultivation of lands of inferior 
 quality, and so diminish the subsistence of the population, 
 and rapidly precipitate the whole nation into poverty. 
 * # * * * 
 
 Such was the opinion of this eminent French States- 
 man, Turgot, who was born at Paris in 1727, and made 
 Comptroller General of the Finances of France in 1774. 
 He did much to free commerce from its general fetters, 
 
764 M. VAUBAN AND TAXATION. 
 
 and to encourage industry; but his benevolent views 
 were thwarted by the intrigues of those unhappy times, 
 and he was removed in 1776. He died in 1781, and the 
 tract from which the foregoing extracts are taken was 
 never completed. 
 
 It is impossible for any one, capable of appreciating 
 these extracts, to read them without feelings of surprise 
 and admiration; surprise that any one living in such 
 times, and in such a country, should have formed such 
 opinions; and admiration at the clearness, simplicity, 
 and exactitude of expression. 
 
 It seems as if every one, following the reasoning of 
 these extracts, must be led to the conclusion of these 
 pages. 
 
 But the Author only very recently became acquainted 
 with these details of M. Turgot's views on Taxation. 
 The exact agreement between these views, and the 
 reasoning in support of them, as set forth by M. Turgot 
 and by the Author of "The People's Blue-Book," is 
 remarkable and satisfactory. 
 
 MARSHAL VAUBAN AND TAXATION. 
 
 It is not generally known that, this great General, and 
 Military Engineer, of Louis XIV. was also a Political 
 Economist, and that, for his political opinions, he died 
 the death of a martyr. 
 
 It is not because his opinions are, at this day, of so 
 much value, that they are here brought specially under 
 notice, but because his opinions were so much in ad- 
 vance of the times in which he lived, and because the 
 expression of those opinions in those times was received 
 in a manner so like the reception of similar opinions in 
 the present day, that this notice may be useful as a 
 warning, and a lesson of experience. 
 
M. VAUBAN AND TAXATION. 765 
 
 The fuller particulars of this short history will be 
 found in the Memoirs of the Duke de St. Simon. 
 
 'Vauban, who though he had served his country all 
 his life in a military career, in which he had attained to 
 the highest distinctions, had all his life been touched 
 with the misery of the People, and the vexations under 
 which they lived, of which his position gave him ample 
 experience. The knowledge that his offices gave him of 
 the necessity for expense, the little hope he had that the 
 King would retrench in matters of splendor, and amuse- 
 ment, made him groan to see no remedy to an oppres- 
 sion which increased in weight from day to day. Feel- 
 ing this, he made no journey that he did not collect in- 
 formation upon the value and produce of the land, upon 
 the trade and industry of the towns and provinces, on 
 the nature of the imposts, and the manner of collecting 
 them. Not content with this, he secretly sent to such 
 places as he could not visit himself, or even to those 
 he had visited, to instruct him in everything, and com- 
 pare the reports he received with those he had himself 
 made. The last 20 years of his life were spent in these 
 researches, and at considerable cost to himself. In the 
 end, he convinced himself, that the land was the only 
 real wealth, and he set himself to work to form a new 
 system. 
 
 He had already made much progress, when several 
 little books appeared by Boisguilbert, Lieut. -General at 
 Rouen, who long had had the same views as Vauban, and 
 had wanted to make them known. From this labor had 
 resulted a learned and profound book, in which a system 
 was explained, by which the people could be relieved of 
 all the expenses they supported, and from every tax, arid 
 by which the revenue collected would go at once into the 
 treasury of the King, instead of enriching, first the trait- 
 ants, the intendants, and the finance ministers. These 
 latter, therefore, were opposed to the system, and their 
 
766 M. VAUBAN AND TAXATION. 
 
 opposition, as will be seen, was of no slight conse- 
 quence. 
 
 Vauban read this book with much attention. He dif- 
 fered on some points with the author, but agreed with 
 hirn in the main. 
 
 Boisguilbert wished to preserve some imposts upon 
 foreign commerce, and upon provisions. Vauban wished 
 to abolish all imposts, and to substitute for them two 
 taxes, one upon the Land, the other upon Trade and 
 Industry. Jlis book, in which he put forth these ideas, 
 was full of information and figures, all arranged with 
 the utmost clearness, simplicity, arid exactitude. 
 
 But it had a great fault. It described a course which, 
 if followed, would have ruined an army of financiers, of 
 clerks, of functionaries, of all kinds; it would have 
 forced them to live at their own expense, instead of at 
 the expense of the people ; and it would have sapped the 
 foundations of those immense fortunes that are seen to 
 grow up in such a short time. This was enough to cause 
 its failure. 
 
 All the people interested in opposing the work set up 
 a cry. They saw place, power, everything, about to fly 
 from their grasp, if the counsels of Vauban were acted 
 upon. What wonder, then, that the King, who was sur- 
 rounded by these people, listened to their reasons, and 
 received with a very ill grace Marshal Vauban when he 
 presented his book to him. The ministers, it may well 
 be believed, did not give him a better welcome. From 
 that moment his services, his military capacity (unique 
 of its kind), his virtues, the affection the King had had 
 for him, all was forgotten. The King saw only in Mar- 
 shal \ 7 auban a man led astray by love for the people, a 
 criminal who attacked the authority of the ministers, 
 arid consequently that of the King. He explained him- 
 self to this effect without scruple. 
 
 The unhappy Marshal could not survive the loss of 
 
M. VAUBAN AND TAXATION. 767 
 
 his royal master's favor, or stand up against the enmity 
 the King's explanations had created against him : be 
 died a few months after, consumed with grief, and with 
 an affliction nothing could soften, and to which the 
 King was insensible to such a point that, he made sem- 
 blance of not perceiving that he had lost a servitor so 
 useful, and so illustrious. Vauban, justly celebrated 
 over all Europe, was regretted in France by all who 
 were not financiers, or their supporters. 
 
 Boisguilbert, whom this event ought to have rendered 
 wise, could not contain himself. One of the objections 
 which had been urged against his theories, was the diffi- 
 culty of carrying out changes in the midst of a great 
 war. He now published a book refuting this point, and 
 describing such a number of abuses then existing, to 
 abolish which, he asked, was it necessary to wait for 
 peace, that the ministers were outraged. Boisguilbert 
 was exiled to Auvergne. 
 
 I did all in my power to revoke this sentence, having 
 known Boisguilbert at Rouen, but did not succeed until 
 the end of two months. He was then allowed to return 
 to Rouen, but was severely reprimanded, and stripped 
 of his functions for some little time. He was amply 
 indemnified, however, for this by the crowd of people, 
 and the acclamations with which he was received. 
 , It is due to Chamillart to say, that he was the only 
 minister who had listened with any attention to these 
 new systems of Vauban, and Boisguilbert. Pie, indeed, 
 made trial of the plans suggested by the former, but 
 the circumstances were not favorable to his success, and 
 they, of course, failed. Some time after, instead of fol- 
 lowing the system of Vauban, and reducing the imposts, 
 fresh ones were added. Who would have said to 
 Vauban that all his labors for the relief of the People of 
 France would lead to new imposts, more harsh, more 
 permanent, and more heavy than he protested against ? 
 
768 M. VAUBAN AND TAXATION. 
 
 It is a terrible lesson against all improvements in mat- 
 ters of taxation, and finance. 
 
 * * # * * 
 
 Desmarets, in whom the King had been forced to put 
 all his confidence in finance matters, conceived the idea 
 of establishing in addition to so many taxes, that Royal 
 Tithe upon all the property of each community, and of 
 each private person, of the realm, that Vauban, on the 
 one hand, and Boisguilbert on the other, had formerly 
 proposed ; but as a simple, and sole, tax which would 
 suffice for all, which would all enter the coffers of the 
 King, and by means of which every other impost would 
 be abolished. 
 
 We have seen what success this proposition met with ; 
 how the financiers trembled at it; how the ministers 
 blushed at it; with what anathemas it was rejected, and 
 to what extent those two excellent, and skilful, citizens 
 were disgraced. All this must be recollected here, since 
 Desmarets, who had lost sight of this system (not as 
 relief and remedy unpardonable crimes in the financial 
 doctrine), now had recourse to it. 
 
 He imparted his project to three friends, Councillors 
 of State, who examined it well, and worked hard to see 
 how to overcome the obstacles which arose in the way 
 of its execution. In the first place it was necessary in 
 order to collect this tax, to draw from each person a 
 clear statement of his wealth, of his debts, and so on. 
 It was necessary to demand sure proofs on these points, 
 so as not to be deceived. Here was all the difficulty. 
 Nothing was thought of the desolation this extra impost 
 must cause to a prodigious number of men, or of their 
 despair upon finding themselves obliged to disclose their 
 family secrets ; to have a lamp thrown, as it were, upon 
 their most delicate parts; all these things, I say, went 
 for nothing. Less than a month sufficed these humane 
 commissioners to render an account of this gentle pro- 
 
M. VAUBAN AND TAXATION. 769 
 
 ject to the Cyclop who had charged them with it. 
 Desmarets thereupon proposed it to the King, who ac- 
 customed as he was to the most ruinous imposts, could 
 not avoid being terrified at this. For a long while 
 he had heard nothing talked of but the most extreme 
 misery ; this increase saddened him in a manner so evi- 
 dent, that his valets perceived it several days running, 
 and were so disturbed at it, that Marechal (who related 
 all this curious anecdote to me) made bold to speak to 
 the King upon this sadness, fearing for his health. 
 
 The King avowed to him that he felt infinite trouble, 
 and threw himself vaguely on the state of affairs. Eight 
 or ten days after (during which he continued to feel the 
 same melancholy), the King regained his usual calm- 
 ness, and called Marechal to explain the cause of his 
 trouble. 
 
 The King related to Marechal that the extremity of 
 his affairs had forced him to put on furious imposts ; 
 that setting aside compassion, scruples had much tor- 
 mented him for taking thus the wealth of his subjects; 
 that at last he had unbosomed himself to the Pere Tel- 
 lier, who had asked for a few days to think upon the 
 matter, and that he had returned after having had a 
 consultation with some of the most skilful Doctors of 
 the Sorbonne, who had decided that, all the wealth of 
 li is subjects was his, and that, when he took it, he only 
 took what belonged to him ! The King added, that this 
 decision had taken away all his scruples, and had re- 
 stored to him, the calm and tranquillity he had lost. 
 Marechal was so astonished, so bewildered to hear this 
 recital that he could not offer one word. Happily for 
 him, the King quitted him almost immediately, and 
 Marechal remained some time in the same place, scarcely 
 knowing where he was. 
 
 After the King had been thus satisfied by his con- 
 fessor, no time was lost in establishing the tax. On 
 
 3 D. 
 
770 M. VAUBAN -AND TAXATION. 
 
 Tuesday, the 30th of September, Desmarets entered the 
 Finance Council with the necessary edict in his bag. 
 
 For some days everybody had known of this bomb- 
 shell in the air, and had trembled with that remnant of 
 hope which is founded only upon desire; all the Court, 
 as well as all Paris waited in a dejected sadness to see 
 what would happen. People whispered to each other, 
 and when the project was rendered public, no one dared 
 to talk of it aloud. 
 
 On the day above-named, the King brought forward 
 this measure in the Council, by saying, that the impossi- 
 bility of obtaining peace, and the extreme difficulty of 
 sustaining the war, had caused Desmarets to look about 
 in order to discover some means, which should appear 
 good, of raising money; that he had pitched upon this 
 tax ; that he (the King), although sorry to adopt such a 
 resource, approved it, and had no doubt the Council 
 would do so likewise, when it was explained to them. 
 
 Desmarets, in a pathetic discourse, then dwelt upon 
 the reasons which had induced him to propose this tax, 
 and afterwards read the edict through from beginning 
 to end, without interruption. 
 
 No one spoke when it was over, until the King 
 asked D'Aguesseau his opinion, D'Aguesseau replied, 
 that it would be necessary for him to take home the 
 edict, and read it through very carefully before express- 
 ing an opinion. The King said that D'Aguesseau was 
 right it would take a long time to examine the edict 
 but, after all, examination was unnecessary, and would 
 only be loss of time. All remained silent again, except 
 the Due de Beauvilliers, who, seduced by the nephew of 
 Colbert, whom he thought an oracle in finances, said 
 a few words in favor of the project. Thus was settled 
 this bloody business, and immediately after signed, 
 sealed, and registered, among stifled sobs, and pub- 
 lished amidst the most gentle, but most piteous com- 
 plaints. 
 
M. VAUBAN AND TAXATION. 771 
 
 The product of this tax was nothing like so much as 
 had been imagined in this bureau of cannibals ; and the 
 King did not pay a single farthing more to anyone than 
 he had previously done. Thus, all the fine relief ex- 
 pected by this tax ended in smoke. 
 
 The Marshal de Vauban had died of grief, at the ill 
 success of his task, and his zeal, as I have related in its 
 place. Poor Boisguilbert, in the exile his zeal had 
 brought him, was terribly afflicted, to find he had inno- 
 cently given advice which he intended for the relief of 
 the State, but which had been made use of in this 
 frightful manner. Every man, without exception, saw 
 himself a prey to the tax-gatherers ; reduced to calculate 
 and discuss with them his own patrimony, to receive 
 their signature, and their protection under the most 
 terrible pains ; to show in public all the secrets of his 
 family ; to bring into the broad open day-light domestic 
 turpitudes enveloped until then in the folds of precau- 
 tions the wisest, and the most multiplied. Many had 
 to convince the tax- agents, but vainly, that although 
 proprietors, they did not enjoy the tenth part of their 
 property. All Languedoc offered to give up its entire 
 wealth, if allowed to enjoy, free from every impost, the 
 tenth part of it. The proposition not only was not 
 listened to, but was reputed an insult, and severely 
 blamed. 
 
 Monseigneur le Due de Bourgogne spoke openly 
 against this tax, and against the finance people, who 
 lived upon the very marrow of the people ; spoke with a 
 just and holy anger that recalled the memory of St. 
 Louis, of Louis XII., Father of the People, and of Louis 
 the Just. Monseigneur, too, moved by this indigna- 
 tion, so unusual, of his son, sided with him, and showed 
 anger at so many exactions as injurious, as barbarous, 
 and at so many insignificant men so monstrously en- 
 riched with the nation's blood. Both father and son 
 
 3 D 2 
 
772 M. VAUBAN AND TAXATION, 
 
 infinitely surprised those who heard them, and made 
 themselves looked upon in some sort, as resources from 
 which something might hereafter be hoped for. But 
 the edict was issued, and though there might be some 
 hope in the future, there was none in the present. And 
 no one knew who was to be the real successor of 
 Louis XIV., and how under the next Government, we 
 were to be still more overwhelmed than under this one. 
 
 One result of this tax was, that it enabled the King 
 to augment all his infantry with five men per company. 
 
 A tax was also levied upon the usurers, who had 
 much gained by trafficking in the paper of the King, 
 that is to say, had taken advantage of the need of those 
 to whom the King gave this paper in payment. These 
 usurers are called agioteurs. Their mode was, ordi- 
 narily, to give, for example, according as the holder 
 of paper was more or less pressed, 300, or 400 francs 
 (the greater part often in provisions), for a bill of a 
 thousand francs ! This game was called agio. It was 
 said that thirty millions were obtained from this tax. 
 Many people gained much by it ; I know not if the 
 King were the better treated. 
 
 Soon after this the coin was re-coined, by which great 
 profit was made for the King, and much wrong done to 
 private people, and to trade. In all times it has been 
 regarded as a very great misfortune to meddle with coin, 
 and money. Desmarets has accustomed us to tricks 
 with the money ; M. le Due and Cardinal Fleury to in- 
 terfere with corn, and to fictitious famine. 
 
 At the commencement of December, the King de- 
 clared that he wished there should be, contrary to cus- 
 tom, plays, and " apartments " at Versailles, even when 
 Monseigneur should be at Meudon. He thought, ap- 
 parently, he must keep his Court full of amusements, to 
 hide, if it were possible, abroad and at home, the disorder, 
 and the extremity of affairs. For the same reason, the 
 
M. VAUBAN AND TAXATION. 773 
 
 carnival was opened early this season, and all through the 
 winter there were many balls of all kinds at the Court, 
 where the wives of the ministers gave very magnificent 
 displays, like fetes, to Madame la Duchesse de Bour- 
 gogne and to all the Court. 
 
 But Paris did not remain less wretched, or the pro- 
 vinces less desolated. 
 
 And thus I have arrived at the end of 1710.' 
 
 The foregoing is abridged from the French, of the 
 Duke de St. Simon, by Bayle St. John. 
 
 Here we may see the origin of the French Revolution, 
 and of its horrors. 
 
 France for a thousand years had been subject to 
 tyrants, and the country, when not desolated by oppres- 
 sion and taxation, was brutalized by bigotry and licen- 
 tiousness. 
 
 If we compare the six thousand persons supposed to 
 have perished under the hands of executioners during the 
 French Revolution, with the multitudes which perished 
 by fictitious famine, brought on by the tyrant kings and 
 their miscreant ministers, with the connivance of the in- 
 famous nobility, all astonishment ceases, but at the cle- 
 mency shown by the brutalized and infuriated People in 
 the hour of their vengeance and triumph. 
 
 Who can doubt that the horrors of the French Revo- 
 lution would have been unknown, if the just and wise 
 views of Vauban had been carried out in his time ? And 
 who can doubt, after this experience, that accumulated 
 wrongs work out, slowly but surely, their own redress, 
 even in this world, with fearful retribution ? 
 
 The only value of history is in its lessons of experience, 
 and if it do not teach to be wise in time, all its teaching 
 is good for nothing more than the historic ballad of 
 " Chevy Chase." 
 
774 
 
 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 The few Extracts which will be here given from the 
 Writings of our great Master " On the Nature and 
 Causes of the Wealth of Nations," are for the purpose 
 of showing the perfect coincidence of his views with 
 those of Turgot and Vauban, as also with the Scheme 
 of Taxation here presented, on all the most essential 
 points. 
 
 Adam Smith shows that, the private revenue of indi- 
 viduals arises ultimately from three different sources ; 
 Rent, Profit, and Wages. 
 
 Every tax must finally be paid from one cr other of 
 these three different sorts of revenue, or from all of them 
 indifferently. 
 
 1. The subjects of every State ought to contribute 
 towards the support of the Government, as nearly as 
 possible, in proportion to their respective abilities ; that 
 is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively 
 enjoy under the protection of the State. 
 
 2. The tax which each individual is bound to pay 
 ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of 
 payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be 
 paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, 
 and to every other person. 
 
 3. Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the 
 manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for 
 the contributor to pay it. 
 
 4. Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take 
 out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little 
 as possible, over and above what it brings into the public 
 treasury of the State. 
 
 [Let the reader mark what follows, bearing in mind our 
 Excise and Customs duties, and our assessed and other 
 taxes.] 
 A tax may either take out or keep out of the pockets 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 775 
 
 of the people a great deal more than it brings into the 
 public treasury, in the four following ways. First, the 
 levying of it may require a great number of officers,, 
 whose salaries may eat up the greater part of the pro- 
 duce of the tax, and whose perquisites may impose an- 
 other additional tax upon the people. Secondly, it may 
 obstruct the industry of the people, and discourage them 
 from applying to certain branches of business which 
 might give maintenance and employment to great mul- 
 titudes. While it obliges people to pay, it may thus 
 diminish, or perhaps destroy, some of the funds which 
 might enable them more easily to do so. Thirdly, by 
 the forfeitures and other penalties which those unfortu- 
 nate individuals incur who attempt unsuccessfully to 
 evade the tax, it may frequently ruin them, and thereby 
 put an end to the benefit which the community might 
 have received from the employment of their capitals. An 
 injudicious tax offers a great temptation to smuggling. 
 But the penalties of smuggling must rise in proportion 
 to the temptation. The law, contrary to all the ordi- 
 nary principles of justice, first creates the temptation, 
 and then punishes those who yield to it and it commonly 
 enhances the punishment too in proportion to the very 
 circumstance which ought certainly to alleviate it, the 
 temptation to commit the crime. Fourthly, by subject- 
 ing the people to the frequent visits of the odious ex- 
 amination of the tax-gatherers, it may expose them to 
 much unnecessary trouble, vexation, and oppression ; 
 and though vexation is not, strictly speaking, expense, it 
 is certainly equivalent to the expense at which every 
 man would be willing to redeem himself from it. 
 
 It is in some one or other of these four different ways 
 that taxes are frequently so much more burdensome to 
 the people than they are beneficial to the Sovereign. 
 
 He takes a short review of some of the principal taxes 
 which have taken place in different ages and countries, 
 
776 ADAM SMITH ANB TAXATION. 
 
 to show that all nations have not been equally successful 
 in their endeavours to render their taxes as equal as they 
 could contrive ; as certain, as convenient to the contri- 
 butor, both in the time and mode of payment, and in 
 proportion to the revenue which they brought to the 
 State, as little burdensome to the people. 
 
 A tax upon the rent of land may either be imposed 
 according to a certain canon, every district being valued 
 at a certain rent, which valuation is not afterwards to be 
 altered ; or it may be imposed in such a manner as to 
 vary with every variation in the real rent of the land, 
 and to rise or fall with the improvement or declension of 
 its cultivation. 
 
 A Land-Tax which, like that of Great Britain, is as- 
 sessed upon each district according to a certain invari- 
 able canon, though it should be equal at the time of its 
 first establishment, necessarily becomes unequal in pro- 
 cess of time, according to the unequal degrees of im- 
 provement or neglect in the cultivation of the different 
 parts of the country. In England, the valuation ac- 
 cording to which the different counties and parishes were 
 assessed to the land-tax by the 4th of William and Mary, 
 was very unequal even at its first establishment. 
 
 This tax, therefore, so far offends against the first of 
 the four maxims above mentioned. It is perfectly agree- 
 able to the other three. It is perfectly certain. The 
 time of payment for the tax, being the same as that for 
 the rent, is as convenient as it can be to the contributor. 
 Though the landlord is in all cases the real contributor, 
 the tax is commonly advanced by the tenant, to whom the 
 landlord is obliged to allow it in the payment of the rent. 
 This tax is levied by a much smaller number ofo fficers 
 than any other which affords nearly the same revenue. 
 
 As the tax of each district does not rise with the 
 rent, the sovereign does not share in the profits of the 
 landlord's improvements. 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 777 
 
 Those improvements sometimes contribute, indeed, to 
 the discharge of the other landlords of the district. But 
 the aggravation of the tax, which this may sometimes 
 occasion upon a particular estate, is always so very 
 small, that it never can discourage those improvements, 
 nor keep down the produce of the land below what it 
 would otherwise rise to. As it has no tendency to di- 
 minish the quantity, it can have none to raise the price 
 of that produce. It does not obstruct the industry of 
 the people. It subjects the landlord to no other incon- 
 veniency besides the unavoidable one of paying the tax. 
 
 The advantage, however, which the landlord has de- 
 rived from the invariable constancy of the valuation by 
 which all the lands of Great Britain are rated to the 
 land-tax, has been principally owing to some circum- 
 stances altogether extraneous to the nature of the tax. 
 
 It has been owing in part to the great prosperity of 
 almost every part of the country, the rents of almost all 
 the estates of Great Britain have since the time when 
 this valuation was first established, been continually 
 rising, and scarce any of them have fallen. The land- 
 lords, therefore, have almost all gained the difference 
 between the tax which they would have paid, according 
 to the present rent of their estates, and that which they 
 actually pay according to the ancient valuation. 
 
 Taxes which are proportioned, not to the Rent, but to the 
 produce of Land. 
 
 Taxes upon the produce of land are in reality taxes 
 upon the rent; and though they may be originally ad- 
 vanced by the farmer, are finally paid by the landlord. 
 When a certain portion of the produce is to be paid 
 away for a tax, the farmer computes, as well as he can, 
 what the value of this portion is, one year with another, 
 likely to amount to, and he makes a proportionable 
 abatement in the rent which he agrees to pay to the land- 
 
778 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 lord. There is no farmer who does not compute before- 
 hand what the Church tythe, which is a land tax of 
 this kind, is, one year with another, likely to amount to. 
 
 A tax upon the produce of land which is levied in 
 money, may be levied either according to a valuation 
 which varies with all the variations of the market price ; 
 or according to a fixed valuation, a bushel of wheat, for 
 example, being always valued at one and the same 
 money price, whatever may be the state of the market. 
 
 The produce of the tax levied in the former way, will 
 vary only according to the variations in the real produce 
 of the land, according to the improvement or neglect of 
 cultivation. The produce of a tax levied in the latter 
 way, will vary not only according to the variations in 
 the produce of the land, but according both to those in 
 the value of the precious metals, and those in the quan- 
 tity of those metals which is at different times contained 
 in coin of the same denomination. The produce of the 
 former will always bear the same proportion to the value 
 of the real produce of the land. The produce of the 
 latter may, at different times, bear very different propor- 
 tions to that value. 
 
 Taxes upon the Rent of Houses. 
 
 The Rent of a house may be distinguished into two 
 parts, of which the one may very properly be called the 
 Building Rent ; the other is commonly called the Ground 
 Rent. 
 
 The building rent is the interest or profit of the capi- 
 tal expended in building the house. In order to put the 
 trade of a builder upon a level with other trades, it is 
 necessary that this rent should be sufficient, first, to pay 
 him the same interest which he would have got for his ca- 
 pital if he had lent it upon good security ; and, secondly, 
 to keep the house in constant repair, or, what comes to 
 the same thing, to replace within a certain term of years, 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 779 
 
 the capital which had been employed in building it. 
 The building rent, or the ordinary profit of building, is, 
 therefore, everywhere regulated by the ordinary interest 
 of money. Where the market rate of interest is four 
 per cent, the rent of a house which, over and above 
 paying the ground-rent, affords six or six and a half per 
 cent, upon the whole expense of building, may perhaps 
 afford a sufficient profit to the builder. Where the 
 market rate of interest is five per cent., it may perhaps 
 require seven or seven and a half per cent. 
 
 If in proportion to the interest of money, the trade of 
 the builder afford at any time a much greater profit 
 than this, it will soon draw so much capital from other 
 trades as will reduce the profit to its proper level. If it 
 afford at any time much less than this, other trades will 
 soon draw so much capital from it as will again raise 
 that profit. 
 
 Whatever part of the whole rent of a house is over 
 and above what is sufficient for affording this reasonable 
 profit, naturally goes to the ground-rent ; and where the 
 owner of the ground and the owner of the building are 
 two different persons, is, in most cases, completely paid 
 to the former. The surplus rent is the price which the 
 inhabitant of the house pays for some real or supposed 
 advantage of the situation. 
 
 A tax upon house-rent, payable by the tenant and 
 proportioned to the whole rent of each house, could not, 
 for any considerable time at least, affect the building 
 rent. If the builder did not get his reasonable profit, he 
 would be obliged to quit the trade; which by raising 
 the demand for building, would in a short time bring 
 back his profit to its proper level with that of other 
 trades. Neither would such a tax fall altogether upon 
 the ground-rent; but it would divide itself in such a 
 manner as to fall partly upon the inhabitant of the house 
 and partly upon the owner of the ground. 
 
780 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 The inequality with which a tax of this kind might 
 fall upon the owners of different ground-rents, would 
 arise altogether from the accidental inequality of this 
 division. But the inequality with which it might fall 
 upon the inhabitants of different houses, would arise, 
 not only from this, but from another cause. The pro- 
 portion of the expense of house-rent to the whole ex- 
 pense of living, is different in the different degrees of 
 fortune. It is perhaps highest in the highest degree, 
 and it diminishes gradually through the inferior degrees, 
 so as in general to be lowest in the lowest degree. The 
 necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. 
 They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of 
 their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries 
 and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the 
 rich ; and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off 
 to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities 
 which they possess. A tax upon house- rents, therefore, 
 would in general fall heaviest upon the rich ; and in this 
 sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything 
 very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the 
 rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in 
 proportion to their revenue, but something more than in 
 that proportion. 
 
 The rent of houses, though it in some respects re- 
 sembles the rent of land, is in one respect essentially 
 different from it. 
 
 The rent of land is paid for the use of a productive 
 subject. The land which pays it produces it. The rent 
 of houses is paid for the use of an unproductive subject. 
 Neither the house nor the ground which it stands upon 
 produces anything. The person who pays the rent, 
 therefore, must draw it from some other source of re- 
 venue, distinct from and independent of this subject. A 
 tax upon the rent of houses, so far as it falls upon the 
 inhabitants, must be drawn from the same source as the 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 781 
 
 rent itself, and must be paid from their revenue, whether 
 derived from the wages of labor, the profits of stock, or 
 the rent of land. 
 
 So far as it falls upon the inhabitants, it is one of 
 those taxes which fall, not upon one only, but indiffer- 
 ently upon all the three different sources of revenue; 
 and is in every respect of the same nature as a tax upon 
 any other sort of consumable commodities. In general 
 there is not, perhaps, any one article of expense or con- 
 sumption by which the liberality or narrowness of a 
 man's whole expense can be judged of, than by his house- 
 rent. A proportional tax upon this particular article of 
 expense might, perhaps, produce a more considerable re- 
 venue than any which has hitherto been drawn from it 
 in any part of Europe. If the tax indeed was very high, 
 the greater part of people would endeavor to evade it, 
 as much as they could, by contenting themselves with 
 smaller houses, and by turning the greater part of their 
 expense into some other channel. 
 
 The rent of houses might easily be ascertained with 
 sufficient accuracy, by a policy of the same kind with 
 that which would be necessary for ascertaining the ordi- 
 nary rent of land. Houses not inhabited ought to pay 
 no tax. A tax upon them would fall altogether upon 
 the proprietor, who would thus be taxed for a subject 
 which afforded him neither conveniency nor revenue. 
 Houses inhabited by the proprietor ought to be rated, 
 not according to the expense which they might have cost 
 in building, but according to the rent which an equitable 
 arbitration might judge them likely to bring, if leased to 
 a tenant. If rated according to the expense which they 
 might have cost in building, a tax of three or four shil- 
 lings in the pound, joined with other taxes, would ruin 
 almost all the rich and great families of this, and, I be- 
 lieve, of every other civilized country. 
 
 Ground-Rents are a still more proper subject of taxa- 
 
782 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 tion than the rent of houses. A tax upon ground-rents 
 would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall alto- 
 gether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts 
 always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent 
 which can be got for the use of his ground. More or 
 less can be got for it according as the competitors happen 
 to be richer or poorer, or can afford to gratify their fancy 
 for a particular spot of ground at a greater or smaller 
 expense. In every country the greatest number of rich 
 competitors is in the capital, and it is there accordingly 
 that the highest ground-rents are always to be found. 
 As the wealth of those competitors would in no respect 
 be increased by a tax upon ground-rents, they would 
 not probably be disposed to pay more for the use of the 
 ground. Whether the tax was to be advanced by the 
 inhabitant, or by the owner of the ground, would be of 
 little importance. The more the inhabitant was obliged 
 to pay for the tax, the less he would incline to pay for 
 the ground ; so that the final payment of the tax would 
 fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent. The 
 ground-rents of uninhabited houses ought to pay no 
 tax. 
 
 Both ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are 
 a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, 
 enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Though 
 a part of this revenue should be taken from him in order 
 to defray the expenses of the State, no discouragement 
 will thereby be given to any sort of industry. 
 
 The annual produce of the land and labor of the so- 
 ciety, the real wealth and revenue of the great body of 
 the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. 
 Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land, are, there- 
 fore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear 
 to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them. 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 783 
 
 Taxes upon Profit, or upon the Revenue arising from 
 Stock. 
 
 The revenue or profit arising from Stock naturally di- 
 vides itself into two parts ; that which pays the interest, 
 and which belongs to the owner of the Stock; and that 
 surplus part which is over and above what is necessary 
 for paying the interest. 
 
 This latter part of profit is evidently a subject not 
 taxable directly. It is the compensation, and in most 
 cases it is no more than a very moderate compensation, 
 for the risk and trouble of employing the stock. The 
 employer must have this compensation, otherwise he 
 cannot, consistently with his own interest, continue the 
 employment. If he was taxed directly, therefore, in pro- 
 portion to the whole profit, he would be obliged either 
 to raise the rate of his profit, or to charge the tax upon 
 the interest of money, that is, to pay less interest. If 
 he raised the rate of his profit in proportion to the tax, 
 the whole tax, though it might be advanced by him, 
 would be finally paid by one or other of two different 
 sets of people, according to the different ways in which 
 he might employ the stock of which he had the manage- 
 ment. If he employed it as a farming stock in the cul- 
 tivation of land, he could raise the rate of his profit only 
 by retaining a greater portion, or, what comes to the 
 same thing, the price of a greater portion of the produce 
 of the land ; and as this could be done only by a reduc- 
 tion of rent, the final payment of the tax would fall upon 
 the landlord. If he employed it as a mercantile or 
 manufacturing stock, he could raise the rate of his profit 
 only by raising the price of his goods; in which case 
 the final payment of the tax would fall altogether upon 
 the consumers of those goods. If he did not raise the 
 rate of his profit, he would be obliged to charge the 
 whole tax upon that part of it which was allotted for the 
 
784 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 interest of money. Pie could afford less interest for 
 whatever stock he borrowed, and the whole weight of 
 the tax would in this case fall ultimately upon the in- 
 terest of money. So far as he could not relieve himself 
 from the tax in the one way, he would be obliged to 
 relieve himself in the other. 
 
 The interest of money seems at first sight a subject 
 equally capable of being taxed directly as the rent of 
 land. Like the rent of land, it is a neat produce which 
 remains after completely compensating the whole risk 
 and trouble of employing the stock. As a tax upon the 
 rent of land cannot raise rents; because the neat pro- 
 duce which remains after replacing the stock of the 
 farmer, together with his reasonable profit, cannot be 
 greater after the tax than before it : so, for the same 
 reason, a tax upon the interest of money in the country, 
 like the quantity of land, being supposed to remain the 
 same after the tax as before it. The ordinary rate of 
 profit is everywhere regulated by the quantity of stock 
 to be employed in proportion to the quantity of the em- 
 ployment, or of the business which must be done by it. 
 But the quantity of the employment, or of the business 
 to be done by stock, could neither be increased nor 
 diminished by any tax upon the interest of money. If 
 the quantity of the stock to be employed therefore, was 
 neither increased nor diminished by it, the ordinary rate 
 of profit would necessarily remain the same. But the 
 portion of this profit necessary for compensating the risk 
 and trouble of the employer, would likewise remain the 
 same, that risk and trouble being in no respect altered. 
 The residue, therefore, that portion which belongs to the 
 owner of the stock, and which pays the interest of money, 
 would necessarily remain the same too. At first sight, 
 therefore, the interest of money seems to be a subject as 
 fit to be taxed directly as the rent of land. 
 
 There are, however, two different circumstances which 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 785 
 
 render the interest of money a much less proper subject 
 of direct taxation than the rent of land. 
 
 FIRST, the quantity and value of the land can never 
 be a secret, and can always be ascertained with great 
 exactness. It is liable, besides, to almost continual 
 variations. A year seldom passes away, frequently not 
 a month, sometimes scarce a single day, in which it does 
 not rise or fall more or less. An inquisition into every 
 man's private circumstances, and an inquisition which, 
 in order to accommodate the tax to them, watched over 
 all the fluctuations of his fortune, would be a source of 
 such continual and endless vexation as no people could 
 support. 
 
 SECONDLY, land is a subject which cannot be removed, 
 whereas stock easily may. The proprietor of land is 
 necessarily a citizen of the particular country in which 
 his estate lies. 
 
 The proprietor of stock is properly a citizen of the 
 world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular 
 country. He would be apt to abandon the country in 
 which he was exposed to a vexatious inquisition, in order 
 to be assessed to a burdensome tax, and would remove 
 his stock to some other country where he could either 
 carry on his business, or enjoy his fortune more at his 
 ease. By removing his stock he would put an end to all 
 the industry which it had maintained in the country 
 which he left. Stock cultivates land; stock employs 
 labor. A tax which tended to drive away stock from 
 any particular country, would so far tend to dry up 
 every source of revenue both to the Sovereign and to the 
 society. Not only the profits of stock, but the rent of 
 land and the wages of labor, would necessarily be more 
 or less diminished by its removal. 
 
 
 Taxes upon the Profit of particular Employments. 
 In some countries extraordinary taxes are imposed 
 
 SE 
 
786 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 upoii the profits of stock ; sometimes when employed in 
 particular branches of trade, and sometimes when em- 
 ployed in agriculture. 
 
 Of the former kind are in England the tax upon 
 hawkers and pedlars, that upon hackney coaches and 
 chairs, and that which the keepers of ale-houses pay for 
 a licence to retail ale and spirituous liquors. During 
 the late war, another tax of the same kind was proposed 
 upon shops. The war having been undertaken, it was 
 said, in defence of the trade of the country, the mer- 
 chants, who were to profit by it, ought to contribute 
 towards the support of it. 
 
 A tax, however, upon the profits of stock employed in 
 any particular branch of trade, can never fall finally 
 upon the dealers (who must in all ordinary cases have 
 their reasonable profit, and, where the competition is 
 free, can seldom have more than that profit) but always 
 upon the consumers, who must be obliged to pay in the 
 price of the goods the tax which the dealer advances ; 
 and generally with some overcharge. 
 
 A tax of this kind when it is proportioned to the 
 trade of the dealer, is finally paid by the consumer, and 
 occasions no oppression to the dealer. When it is not 
 so proportioned, but is the same upon all dealers, though 
 in this case too it is finally paid by the consumer, yet it 
 favors the great, and occasions some oppression to the 
 small dealer. 
 
 Taxes upon the Capital Value of Land, Houses, and 
 Stock. 
 
 While property remains in the possession of the same 
 person, whatever permanent taxes may have been im- 
 posed upon it, they have never been intended to dimi- 
 nish, or take away any part of its capital value, but only 
 some part of the revenue arising from it. But when 
 property changes hands, when it is transmitted either 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 787 
 
 from the dead to the living, or from the living to the 
 living, such taxes have frequently been imposed upon it 
 as necessarily take away some part of its capital value. 
 
 Those modes of taxation, by stamp duties and by 
 duties upon registration, are of very modern invention. 
 In the course of little more than a century, however, 
 stamp duties have, in Europe, become almost universal, 
 and duties upon registration extremely common. There 
 is no art which one government sooner learns of an- 
 other, than that of draining money from the pockets of 
 the people. 
 
 Taxes upon the transference of property from the 
 dead to the living, fall finally as well as immediately 
 upon the persons to whom the property is transferred. 
 Taxes upon the sale of land fall altogether upon the 
 seller. The seller is almost always under the necessity 
 of selling, and must, therefore, take such a price as he 
 can get. The buyer is scarce ever under the necessity 
 of buying, and will, therefore, only give such a price as 
 he likes. He considers what the land will cost him in 
 tax and price together. 
 
 The more he is obliged to pay in the way of tax, the 
 less he will be disposed to give in the way of price. 
 Such taxes, therefore, fall almost always upon a neces- 
 sitous person, and must, therefore, be frequently very 
 cruel and oppressive. Stamp duties, and duties upon 
 the registration of bonds and contracts for borrowed 
 money, fall altogether upon the borrower, and, in fact, 
 are always paid by him. Duties of the same kind upon 
 law proceedings fall upon the suitors. They reduce 
 to both the capital value of the subject in dispute. The 
 more it costs to acquire property, the less must be the 
 neat value of it when acquired. 
 
 All taxes upon the transference of property of every 
 kind, so far as they diminish the capital value of that 
 property, tend to diminish the funds destined for the 
 
 3 E 2 
 
788 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 maintenance of productive labor. They are all more 
 or less unthrifty taxes that increase the revenue of the 
 Sovereign, which seldom maintains any but unproduc- 
 tive laborers; at the expense of the capital of the 
 people, which maintains none but productive. 
 
 Such taxes, even when they are proportioned to the 
 value of the property transferred, are still unequal ; the 
 frequency of transference not being always equal in pro- 
 perty of equal value. 
 
 When they are not proportioned to this value, which 
 is the case with the greater part of the stamp duties, 
 and duties of registration, they are still more so. 
 
 [This inequality has since been much reduced.] 
 
 The registration of the greater part of deeds is fre- 
 quently inconvenient and even dangerous to individuals, 
 without any advantage to the public. 
 
 All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be 
 kept secret, ought certainly never to exist. The credit 
 of individuals ought certainly never to depend upon 
 so very slender a security as the probity and religion of 
 the inferior officers of revenue. But where the fees of 
 registration have been made a source of revenue to the 
 Sovereign, register offices have commonly been multi- 
 plied without end. 
 
 Such stamp duties as those upon licences to retail 
 ale, wine, and spirituous liquors, though intended, per- 
 haps, to fall upon the profits of retailers, are finally paid 
 by the consumers of those liquors. 
 
 Such taxes, though called by the same name, and 
 levied by the same officers and in the same manner with 
 the stamp duties above mentioned upon the transference 
 of property, are however of a quite different nature, and 
 fall upon different funds. 
 
 Taxes upon the Wages of Labor. 
 The annual labor of every nation is the fund which 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 789 
 
 originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conve- 
 niences of life which it annually consumes; and which 
 consist always either in the immediate produce of that 
 labor, or in what is purchased with that produce from 
 other nations. 
 
 A man must always live by his work, and his wages 
 must, at least, be sufficient to maintain him. They 
 must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; 
 otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a 
 family ; and the race of such workmen could not last 
 beyond the first generation. 
 
 The demand for those who live by wages, it is evi- 
 dent, cannot increase but in proportion to the increase 
 of the funds which are destined to the payment of 
 wages. These funds are of two kinds : first, the revenue 
 which is over and above what is necessary for the main- 
 tenance ; and, secondly, the stock which is over and 
 above what is necessary for the employment of their 
 masters. 
 
 The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, 
 necessarily increases with the increase of the revenue 
 and stock of every country, and cannot possibly increase 
 without it. The increase of revenue and stock is the 
 increase of national wealth. The demand for those who 
 live by wages, therefore, naturally increases with the in- 
 crease of national wealth, and cannot possibly increase 
 without it. The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it 
 is the natural effect, so it is the natural symptom of 
 increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of 
 the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural 
 symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving 
 condition that they are going backwards. 
 
 Servants, laborers, and workmen of different kinds, 
 make up the far greater ; part of every great political 
 society. But what improves the circumstances of the 
 greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency 
 
790 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and 
 happy of which the far greater part of the members are 
 poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they 
 who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the 
 people, should have such a share of the produce of their 
 own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, 
 and lodged. 
 
 The wages of the inferior classes of workmen are 
 everywhere necessarily regulated by two different cir- 
 cumstances ; the demand for labor and the ordinary or 
 average price of provisions. 
 
 The demand for labor regulates the subsistence of the 
 laborer, and determines in what degree it shall be either 
 liberal, moderate, or scanty. The ordinary or average 
 price of provisions determines the quantity of money 
 which must be paid to the workman in order to enable 
 him, one year with another, to purchase this liberal, 
 moderate, or scanty subsistence. 
 
 In all cases a direct tax upon the wages of labor must, 
 in the long run, occasion both a greater reduction in the 
 rent of land, and a greater rise in the price of manufac- 
 tured goods, than would have followed from the proper 
 assessment of a sum equal to the produce of the tax, 
 partly upon the rent of the land, and partly upon con- 
 sumable commodities. 
 
 If direct taxes upon the wages of labor have not 
 always occasioned a proportionable rise in those wages, 
 it is because they have generally occasioned a consider- 
 able fall in the demand for labor. The declension of 
 industry, the decrease of employment for the poor, the 
 diminution of the annual produce of the land and labor 
 of the country, have generally been the effects of such 
 taxes. In consequence of them, however, the price of 
 labor must always be higher than it otherwise would 
 have been in the actual state of the demand ; and this 
 enhancement of price, together with the profit of those 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 791 
 
 who advance it, must always be finally paid by the land- 
 lords and consumers. 
 
 Absurd and destructive as such taxes are, however, 
 they take place in many countries. 
 
 Taxes ivhich it is intended should fall indifferently upon 
 every different species of Revenue. 
 
 These are capitation taxes, and taxes upon consum- 
 able commodities. These must be paid indifferently 
 from whatever revenue the contributors may possess ; 
 from the rent of their land, from the profits of their 
 stock, or from the wages of their labor. 
 
 These taxes, if it be attempted to proportion them to 
 the fortune or revenue of each contributor, become alto- 
 gether arbitrary. The state of a man's fortune varies 
 from day to day, and without an inquisition more into- 
 lerable than any tax, and renewed at least once every 
 year, can only be guessed at. His assessment, there- 
 fore, must in most cases depend upon the good or bad 
 humor of his assessors, and must, therefore, be altoge- 
 ther arbitrary and uncertain. 
 
 Such taxes, therefore, if it be attempted to render 
 them equal, become altogether arbitrary and uncertain ; 
 and if it be attempted to render them certain and not 
 arbitrary, become altogether unequal. 
 
 Let the tax be light or heavy, uncertainty is always a 
 great grievance. In a light tax a considerable degree of 
 inequality may be supported ; in a heavy one it is alto- 
 gether intolerable. 
 
 Taxes upon Consumable Commodities. 
 
 The impossibility of taxing the people, in proportion 
 to their revenue, by any capitation, seems to have given 
 occasion to the invention of taxes upon consumable com- 
 modities. The State not knowing how to tax, directly 
 and proportionably, the revenue of its subjects, endea- 
 
792 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 vors to tax it indirectly by taxing their expense, which, 
 it is supposed, will in most cases be nearly in proportion 
 to their revenue. Their expense is taxed by taxing the 
 consumable commodities upon which it is laid out. 
 
 Consumable commodities are either necessaries or 
 luxuries. 
 
 As the wages of labor are everywhere regulated, partly 
 by the demand for it, and partly by the average price of 
 the necessary articles of subsistence; whatever raises 
 this average price must necessarily raise those wages, so 
 that the laborer may still be able to purchase that quan- 
 tity of those necessary articles which the state of the 
 demand for labor, whether increasing, stationary, or 
 declining, requires that he should have. A tax upon 
 those articles necessarily raised their price somewhat 
 higher than the amount of the tax, because the dealer, 
 who advances the tax, must generally get it back with 
 a profit. Such a tax must, therefore, occasion a rise in 
 the wages of labor proportionable to this rise of price. 
 
 It is thus that a tax upon the necessaries of life, ope- 
 rates exactly in the same manner as a direct tax upon 
 the wages of labor. The laborer, though he may pay it 
 out of his hand, cannot, for any considerable time at 
 least, be properly said even to advance it. It must 
 always in the long-run be advanced to him by his im- 
 mediate employer in the advanced rate of his wages. 
 His employer, if he be a manufacturer, will charge upon 
 the price of his goods this rise of wages together with a 
 profit ; so that the final payment of the tax, together with 
 this over-charge,, will fall upon the consumer. If his 
 employer be a farmer, the final payment, together with a 
 like over-charge, will fall upon the rent of the landlord. 
 
 It is otherwise with taxes upon luxuries; even 
 upon those of the poor. The rise in the price of the 
 taxed commodities will not necessarily occasion any rise 
 in the wages of labor. A tax upon tobacco, for example, 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 793 
 
 though a luxury of the poor as well as of the rich, will 
 not raise wages. 
 
 The high price of such commodities does not neces- 
 sarily diminish the ability of the inferior ranks of people 
 to bring up families. 
 
 Any rise in the average price of necessaries, unless it 
 be compensated by a proportionable rise in the wages of 
 labor, must necessarily diminish more or less the ability 
 of the poor to bring up numerous families, and conse- 
 quently to supply the demand for useful labor; what- 
 ever may be the state of that demand, whether increas- 
 ing, stationary, or declining ; or such as requires an in- 
 creasing, stationary, or declining, population. 
 
 Taxes upon luxuries have no tendency to raise the 
 price of any other commodities except that of the com- 
 modities taxed. Taxes upon necessaries, by raising the 
 wages of labor, necessarily tend to raise the price of all 
 manufactures, and consequently to diminish the extent 
 of their sale and consumption. Taxes upon luxuries are 
 finally paid by the consumers of the commodities taxed, 
 without any retribution. They fall indifferently upon 
 every species of revenue, the wages of labor, the profits 
 of stock, and the rent of land. Taxes upon necessaries, 
 so far as they affect the laboring poor, are finally paid, 
 partly by landlords in the diminished rent of their 
 lands, and partly by rich consumers, whether landlords 
 or others, in the advanced price of manufactured goods ; 
 and always with a considerable over-charge. 
 
 The advanced price of such manufactures as are real 
 necessaries of life, and are destined for the consumption 
 of the poor, of coarse woollens, for example, must be 
 compensated to the poor by a farther advancement of 
 their wages. The middling and superior ranks of people, 
 if they understood their own interest, ought always to 
 oppose all taxes upon the necessaries of life, as well as 
 all direct taxes upon the wages of labor. The final pay- 
 
794 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 ment of both one and the other falls altogether upon 
 themselves, and always with a considerable overcharge. 
 They fall heaviest upon the landlords, who always pay 
 in a double capacity ; in that of landlords, by the reduc- 
 tion of their rent; and in that of rich consumers, by 
 the increase of their expense. 
 
 Certain taxes are, in ijie price of certain goods, some- 
 times repeated and accumulated four or five times, and 
 this is perfectly true with regard to taxes upon the 
 necessaries of life. 
 
 Such taxes, in proportion to what they bring into the 
 public treasury of the State, always take out, or keep 
 out, of the pockets of the people more than almost any 
 other taxes. 
 
 The perquisites of Custom-house officers are every- 
 where much greater than their salaries ; at some ports 
 more than double or triple those salaries. 
 
 If the salaries of officers, and other incidents, there- 
 fore, amount to more than ten per cent, upon the net 
 revenue of the Customs; the whole expense of levying 
 that revenue may amount, in salaries and perquisites to- 
 gether, to more than twenty or thirty per cent. 
 
 Such taxes necessarily occasion some obstruction or 
 discouragement to certain branches of industry. As 
 they always raise the price of the commodity taxed, they 
 so far discourage its consumption, and consequently its 
 production. If it be a commodity of home growth or 
 manufacture, less labor comes to be employed in raising 
 or producing it. If it be a foreign commodity of which 
 the tax increases in this manner the price, the com- 
 modities of the same kind which are made at home 
 may thereby, indeed, gain some advantage in the home 
 market, and a greater quantity of domestic industry 
 may thereby be turned toward preparing them. But 
 though this rise of price in a foreign commodity may 
 encourage domestic industry in one particular branch, 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 795 
 
 it necessarily discourages that industry in almost every 
 other. The dearer the consumers in one country pay 
 for the surplus produce of another, the cheaper they ne- 
 cessarily sell that part of their own surplus produce with 
 which, or, what comes to the same thing, with the price 
 of which they buy it. That part of their own surplus 
 produce becomes of less value to them, and they have 
 less encouragement to increase its quantity. All taxes 
 upon consumable commodities, therefore, tend to reduce 
 the quantity of productive labor below what it otherwise 
 would be, either in preparing the commodities taxed, 
 if they be home commodities ; or in preparing those 
 with which they are purchased, if they be foreign com- 
 modities. Such taxes, too, always alter, more or less, 
 the natural direction of national industry, and turn it 
 into a channel always different from, and generally less 
 advantageous than, that in which it would have run of 
 its own accord. 
 
 The hope of evading such taxes by smuggling gives 
 frequent occasion to forfeitures and other penalties, 
 which entirely ruin the smuggler ; a person who, though 
 no doubt highly blameable for violating the laws of his 
 country, is frequently incapable of violating those of 
 natural justice, and would have been, in every respect, 
 an excellent citizen, had not the laws of his country 
 made that a crime which nature never meant to be so. 
 
 Not many people are scrupulous about smuggling, 
 when, without perjury, they can find an easy and safe 
 opportunity of doing so. To pretend to have any scruple 
 about buying smuggled goods, though a manifest en- 
 couragement to the violation of the revenue laws, and 
 to the perjury which almost always attends it, would in 
 most countries be regarded as one of those pedantic 
 pieces of hypocrisy which, instead of gaining credit with 
 anybody, serve only to expose the person who affects to 
 practise them, to the suspicion of being a greater knave 
 
796 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 than most of his neighbors. By this indulgence of the 
 public, the smuggler is often encouraged to continue a 
 trade which he is thus taught to consider as in some 
 measure innocent ; and when the severity of the revenue 
 laws is ready to fall upon him, he is frequently disposed 
 to defend with violence, what he has been accustomed 
 to regard as his just property. From being, at first, 
 perhaps, rather imprudent than criminal, he at last too 
 often becomes one of the hardiest and most determined 
 violators of the laws of society. By the ruin of the 
 smuggler, his capital, which had before been employed 
 in maintaining productive labor, is absorbed either in 
 the revenue of the State, or in that of the revenue 
 officer, and is employed in maintaining unproductive, 
 to the diminution of the general capital of the society, 
 and of the useful industry which it might otherwise 
 have maintained. 
 
 Such taxes, by subjecting at least the dealers in the 
 taxed commodities to the frequent visits and odious 
 examination of the tax-gatherers, expose them some- 
 times, no doubt, to some degree of oppression, and 
 always to much trouble and vexation ; and though vexa- 
 tion is not, strictly speaking, expense, it is certainly 
 equivalent to the expense at which every man would be 
 willing to redeem himself from it. The laws of Excise, 
 though more effectual for the purpose for which they 
 were instituted, are, in this respect, more vexatious than 
 those of the Customs. When a merchant has imported 
 goods subject to certain duties of Customs, when he has 
 paid those duties, and lodged the goods in his ware- 
 house, he is not, in most cases, liable to any further 
 trouble or vexation from the Custom-house officer. It 
 is otherwise with goods subject to duties of Excise. The 
 dealers have no respite from the continual visits and 
 examination of the Excise officers. The duties of Excise 
 are, upon this account, more unpopular than those of 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 797 
 
 the Customs; and so are the officers who levy them. 
 These officers, it is pretended, though in general,, per- 
 haps, they do their duty fully as well as those of the 
 Customs; yet, as that duty obliges them to be fre- 
 quently very troublesome to some of their neighbors, 
 commonly contract a certain hardness of character which 
 the others frequently have not. 
 
 After all the proper subjects of taxation have been 
 exhausted, if the exigencies of the State still continue 
 to require new taxes, they must be imposed upon im- 
 proper ones. The taxes upon the necessaries of life, 
 therefore, may be no impeachment of the wisdom of that 
 State which is compelled to adopt them. 
 
 The sarcasm, whether intended or not, in the last 
 paragraph, may be an appropriate conclusion to these 
 Extracts. 
 
 The whole of these Extracts, though, probably, not so 
 intended, are, in fact, a reproachful commentary on our 
 System of Taxation. 
 
 This eminent Writer, and profound reasoner, in the 
 main correct, probably did not himself see the full force 
 of his own condemnatory remarks. 
 
 It is not pretended to be said that, he saw the full 
 extent to which his own reasoning led. 
 
 If he could have seen what, in his time, was very 
 obscure, but what, in the light let in by the experience 
 of nearly a century since he wrote, is now very clear, he 
 would have corrected the few errors which he has left in 
 his great work ; and he would have qualified still more 
 than he has done, his indirect acquiescence in many 
 practices quite inconsistent with the principles which he 
 has so clearly laid down, especially as regards the taxa- 
 tion of the laborer in his own labor. ' It is not pre- 
 tended however that he contemplated the Scheme of 
 Taxation here proposed. 
 
798 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 But those who are well acquainted with the writings 
 of Adam Smith can hardly fail to see, in this scheme, 
 the realisation in practice of every principle which he so 
 strongly advocated in theory. He could not, in his 
 time, see the way to carry out in full those principles 
 which he has so clearly, and, in the main, correctly, laid 
 down ; but it was evidently the object of his great work 
 to direct the public mind to these principles, as the true 
 sources of the Wealth of Nations, and to advocate the 
 raising of the necessary revenue of the State, as nearly 
 as then appeared possible, in conformity with these prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 But the great principle here relied upon as the basis 
 of taxation is thus clearly and forcibly laid down by 
 Adam Smith (Book 1. chap. 10). 
 
 " The property which every man has in his own labor, 
 as it is the original foundation of all other property, so 
 it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of 
 a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his 
 hands ; and to hinder him from employing this strength 
 and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without 
 injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this most 
 sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon 
 the just liberty both of the workman and of those who 
 might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the 
 one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders 
 the others from employing whom they think proper ." 
 
 The light which has been let into human affairs 
 within the last century, has made many things practical, 
 which had never before been dreamt of, even by the 
 most lively imagination. It is no more matter of sur- 
 prise that Adam Smith did not see the way to realise in 
 practice his principles of perfect government, than that 
 he did not see how to turn the power of steam to the 
 practical purposes of the locomotive steam-engine of the 
 present day ; or the electric fluid to the purpose of the 
 
ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 799 
 
 telegraph. But it would be as unreasonable to reject 
 the new light in the one case, as in the other; or to 
 assume that what a hundred years ago appeared to be 
 impossible, is still impracticable. Questions of this 
 kind are not to be determined by the judgment and 
 experience of even the most learned and thoughtful men 
 of a past age ; but rather by that wisdom of experience 
 which is ever showing us how very narrow have been 
 the limits of all human knowledge, in all ages. 
 
 In these abridged Extracts, from the great work of 
 Adam Smith, is comprised the substance of his opinion 
 on the whole question of Taxation, and this may be 
 taken as fairly representing the highest wisdom on the 
 subject at that time; and, much as that wisdom is 
 worthy of admiration in this day, yet, the lessons of 
 experience which we have since learnt, have taught us to 
 rely with greater confidence on many truths which were 
 so imperfectly perceived by him, as to be then but little 
 relied on ; and to reject now, as clearly erroneous, some 
 which were then regarded by him as possible, though 
 doubtful, truths. All these doubtful questions have been 
 kept out of view as far as could be, in these Extracts ; 
 the present object being, only to support the principles 
 here propounded, by the weight of this high authority, 
 as far as it can be fairly claimed. There is a fashion in 
 authorities as well as in many other things; and it is 
 fortunate that it is the fashion to quote from Adam 
 Smith; but, certainly, many of those who are in the 
 frequent habit of quoting from his writings, have never 
 redde them, and still fewer, perhaps, have any clear un- 
 derstanding of his meaning. 
 
 The fact is, and it must be admitted, however 
 humiliating, that most persons but very imperfectly 
 understand their own meaning. Comparatively few 
 and unimportant would be the errors of men if they 
 
800 ADAM SMITH AND TAXATION. 
 
 did but know, first, what they themselves mean ; and, 
 secondly, what the words mean by which they attempt 
 to convey their meaning. As it is, f the errors of men 
 cause all their misery.' Malebranche inscribed upon 
 the frontispiece of his book this sentence : " L'erreur 
 est la cause de la misere des hommes." 
 
 In this abridged form, the careful reader will have no 
 difficulty in understanding the meaning of the text, and 
 he cannot fail to see that, as far as it goes, it entirely 
 supports the view of the whole subject presented in these 
 pages ; and that this view, when carried beyond the text, 
 is, nevertheless, always in perfect consistency with it. 
 
PAET V. 
 
 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS, 
 
803 
 
 PAET V. 
 CONCLUDING OBSEBVATIONS. 
 
 BASTIAT, in his ' Harmonies of Political Economy/ 
 commences his ' Concluding Observations/ thus : 
 
 " In the first part of this Work alas ! too hastily 
 written I have endeavored to keep the reader's atten- 
 tion fixed upon the line of demarcation, always flexible, 
 but always marked, which separates the two regions of 
 the economic world natural co-operation, and human 
 labor the bounty of God, and the work of man the 
 gratuitous, and the onerous that which in exchange 
 is remunerated, and that which is transferred without 
 remuneration aggregate utility, and the fractional 
 and supplementary utility which constitutes value 
 absolute wealth, and relative wealth the co-operation 
 of chemical or mechanical forces, constrained to aid 
 production by the instruments which render them 
 available, and the just recompense of the labor which 
 has created these instruments themselves Com- 
 munity, and Property." 
 
 It would be hardly possible to find more appropriate 
 words than these are, for commencing the Concluding- 
 Observations to the present imperfect work. 
 
 The Author, too, has endeavored to keep the 
 reader's attention fixed upon the line of demarcation 
 between human labor, and its results through the 
 bounty of God; to preserve the marked distinction 
 
804 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 between labor and property, and also to preserve the 
 just recompense of the labor which has created Com- 
 munity and Property. 
 
 Bastiat has marked these two orders of phenomena : 
 he has also described their relations, and their harmo- 
 nious evolutions. 
 
 But he has left to others the task of showing their 
 application to the practical purposes of the social 
 government of mankind. 
 
 No one more than the Author wishes that this task 
 had fallen into hands more capable than his. As 
 already noticed, he had undertaken it long before the 
 name of this great Master was known to him. But he 
 entered on his further attempt to elucidate these views 
 with renewed confidence, and he submits the present 
 result with an assured conviction that there are not 
 wanting, in this country and in other countries, good 
 and able men who will hold fast and follow out the 
 great economical truth here advocated ; namely, that 
 it is unjust and unwise to tax the laborer in his own 
 labor, or the trader in his- own trade, until he has 
 realised the fair reward of his industry and skill. 
 
 He too, like Bastiat, has " essayed to explain how 
 the business of Property consists in conquering utility 
 for the human race, and casting it into the domain of 
 Community to move on to new conquests so that 
 each given effort, and consequently the aggregate of 
 efforts, should continually be delivering over to man- 
 kind satisfactions which are always increasing." 
 
 But he has gone further.. He has essayed to show 
 how human services, fairly exchanged, while preserving 
 their relative value, may l>e made productive of an 
 always increasing proportion of utility, which is gra- 
 tuitous, and, therefore, common ; and that in this con- 
 sists, what may be truly called, progress the progress 
 of a nation in political prosperity and power, through 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 805 
 
 the progress of the People in all that concerns their 
 moral and physical welfare. 
 
 Let us now throw a glance back on the ground over 
 which we have passed. 
 
 By the light of the theory, the foundation of which 
 has been laid in this small volume, it may be seen : 
 
 1. That the rights of all the classes, which compose 
 the social state, are distinctly recognised, and pre- 
 served. That no existing rights are disturbed. That 
 nothing is taken from one class to be given to another. 
 But that the great providential arrangements, as far as 
 we can see them, are observed, respected, and followed 
 out. 
 
 2. That by following this great principle, of doing 
 right to all, we get Justice to act with us, instead of 
 against us. That we ^disarm envy, hatred, and malice 
 remove the stumbling-blocks to lawful authority, 
 and good order abate, if not destroy, hostility of 
 classes, by uniting all in one common interest of public 
 and individual good. That we raise the moral, as well 
 as the physical, condition of the People, by encouraging 
 the growth of self-respect, by independence, and 
 industry, by successful labor. 
 
 3. That we destroy smuggling, and diminish the in- 
 ducements to drunkenness, adulteration of food, per- 
 jury, fraud and violence of many sorts, and raise the 
 moral standard of the whole nation. 
 
 4. That by setting Trade and Industry free from all 
 Taxes and other impediments, we shall increase the 
 demand for our manufactures and natural products at 
 home and abroad, and raise the rate of wages through- 
 out the kingdom. 
 
 5. That we raise the rents and, consequently, the 
 market price of all the Land and House Property of 
 the kingdom, and remove or greatly reduce the burden 
 of the Poor Rate. 
 
806 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 6. That we place this country on the best foundation 
 for preserving the peace of the world. 
 
 These are some of the leading results to be con- 
 fidently looked for from the practical application of the 
 principle here laid down, and which may be described, 
 in a few words, to be, setting free from all impo- 
 sitions and other impediments, Agriculture, Trade, 
 Machinery, and Labor ; thereby acting in concurrence 
 with the providential laws, which are constantly ap- 
 proximating "towards a level which is always rising 
 in other terms; Improvement and Equalisation;" 
 which Bastiat decribes by the single word, " HAR- 
 MONY/' 
 
 "Such" he adds "is the definite result of the 
 arrangements of Providence of the great laws of 
 nature when they act without impediment, when we 
 regard them as they are in themselves, and apart from 
 any disturbance of their action by error and violence." 
 
 Thus we may see the germ of all the Social Har- 
 monies included in these two principles PROPERTY, 
 LIBERTY ; and that all Social Dissonances are only the 
 development of these two antagonistic principles 
 SPOLIATION, OPPRESSION. 
 
 In Liberty we have the principle of harmony. 
 
 In Oppression we have the principle of dissonance. 
 
 It is truly said by Bastiat : " The struggle of these 
 two powers fills the annals of the human race : and, as 
 the design of Oppression is, to effect an unjust appro- 
 priation, it resolves itself into, and is summed up in, 
 Spoliation. 
 
 " Man comes into this world bound by the yoke of 
 Want, which is pain. 
 
 " He cannot escape from it, but by subjecting him- 
 self to the yoke of Labor, which is pain also. 
 
 " He has, then, only a choice of pains, and he detests 
 pain. 
 

 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 807 
 
 '' This is the reason why he looks around him, and 
 when he sees that his fellow-man has accumulated 
 wealth, he conceives the thought of appropriating it. 
 Hence comes false property, or Spoliation. 
 
 " From the day when it first made its appearance in 
 the world, down to the day when it shall have com- 
 pletely disappeared, if that day ever come, this 
 element has affected, and will affect, profoundly the 
 whole social mechanism ; it will disturb, and to the 
 extent of rendering them no longer recognisable, those 
 laws of social harmony which we have endeavored to 
 discover and describe." 
 
 That day; probably, never will come in the present 
 dispensation of this world ; but our duty will not have 
 been accomplished until we have made our laws, as far 
 as we can, in conformity with those providential laws 
 which, we may hope, will ultimately regulate the whole 
 social mechanism. 
 
 The absolute absence of evil through human laws is 
 beyond our hope; but, in the gradual diminution of 
 evil, we may not only hope, but look forward with 
 assured confidence to such a result, when we make our 
 human laws in consonance with the providential laws, 
 which must ever work harmoniously and with infallible 
 power. 
 
 But, for this, it is of the utmost importance to have 
 a right understanding of the limits of human laws : 
 to see clearly what is within, and what is without the 
 true limits. 
 
 It is clearly within the true limits, as it is the espe- 
 cial duty of the State, to watch over and direct all that 
 concerns the common welfare. 
 
 Seeing the deplorable dissensions of the theologians 
 of all past ages, this seems to make evident the neces- 
 sity of a State Religion; which without absolutely im- 
 posing, or interfering with, private creeds, should 
 
808 CONCLUDING OBSEEVATIONS. 
 
 regulate all outward observances. Because, as it is 
 the Office of tlie State to watch over all that concerns 
 the common welfare, so should it watch over the 
 Church, (which most of all concerns the common wel- 
 fare,) and direct it according to the general wish. 
 But two things perfectly distinct must not here be 
 confounded, namely; liberty of observance, and 
 liberty of thought. The latter is independent of all 
 Civil power ; but the former must be subject to it for 
 the sake of the public tranquillity and welfare. 
 
 The chief duty of the State, or Government, is to 
 direct all things according to the general wish ; but to 
 interfere as little as possible with anything. It is very 
 doubtful whether Government interference with Edu- 
 cation has not, from first to last, done more harm than 
 good. 
 
 Government should never found Colleges or Schools 
 for learning ; Establishments for encouraging the 
 Arts and Sciences; Hospitals, or other Charitable 
 Institutions; for they serve more to discourage the 
 efforts of individuals to those ends, more to discou- 
 rage private charity, more to oppress than to en- 
 courage genius. 
 
 Government should give only by the free will of the 
 People, and should give only as rewards for public 
 services. 
 
 It is not the duty of a Government to administer 
 charity out of funds raised by taxes on the People. 
 
 As Burke wisely said " To provide for us in our 
 necessities is not in the power of Government. It 
 would be a vain presumption in Statesmen to think 
 they could do it. The people maintain them, and not 
 they the people. It is in the power of Government to 
 prevent much evil ; it can do very little positive good 
 in this, or perhaps in anything else. It is not only so 
 of the State and Statesmen, but of all the classes and 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 809 
 
 descriptions of the rich they are the pensioners of 
 the poor, and are maintained by their superfluity. 
 They are under an absolute, hereditary, and inde- 
 feasible dependence on those who labor, and are mis- 
 called the poor. The laboring poor are only poor, 
 because they are numerous. Numbers in their nature 
 imply poverty. In a fair distribution among a vast 
 multitude, none can have much. That class of depen- 
 dent pensioners called the rich, is so extremely small, 
 that if all their throats were cut, and a distribution 
 made of all they consume in a year, it would not give 
 a bit of bread and cheese for a night's supper to these 
 who labor, and who in reality feed both the pensioners 
 and themselves. But the throats of the rich ought 
 not to be cut nor their magazines plundered because 
 in their persons they are trustees for those who 
 labor, and their hoards are the banking-houses of the 
 latter." 
 
 Nor is it the duty of a Government to educate the 
 People, or to teach them the Arts and Sciences. 
 
 But it is the duty of a Government to allow every in- 
 dividual to teach what he thinks, at his own risk and 
 peril j though not to hold place in Church or State if 
 he teach doctrine in either, contrary to the tenets 
 thereof as declared by Law. 
 
 It is the duty of a Government to watch ov,er the 
 welfare of the People, and to encourage, by judicious 
 assistance, all that can contribute to their welfare. 
 Most especially is it the duty of Government so to 
 provide that, all willing laborers may find the means 
 of comfortable subsistence for themselves and families. 
 
 This part of Louis Blanc's creed is, undoubtedly, 
 true : " Wherever the certainty of living by labor 
 does not follow from the very essence of social institu- 
 tions, there iniquity reigns." 
 
 It is a great reproach to Governments when they 
 
810 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 require to be taught such a truth as this, and by such 
 a man as this ! 
 
 Anything which is calculated to lower the self- 
 respect and degrade the character of a People, must 
 tend to the injury of the Nation. 
 
 It is an incalculable injury to a People to make them 
 objects of charity, when they are able and willing to 
 provide for themselves and their families by their own 
 industry and skill. Moreover, such a state of things 
 is the highest injustice to the People, and the lowest 
 shame to the Government. 
 
 Private charity never can supply the place of the 
 wages of labor. 
 
 A providential law mercifully interposes to defeat 
 any such attempt. It is not charity to make any such 
 attempt. 
 
 Daniel De Foe saw this, and expressed many sound 
 truths on the subject, in his own forcible way, in his 
 Tract, entitled ; " Giving Alms no Charity, and Em- 
 ploying the Poor a Grievance to the Nation -," pub- 
 lished 1704. 
 
 Unjust and unwise laws have rendered it impossible 
 to distinguish the true from the false objects of charity. 
 Many of the rich are embittered in their possessions 
 by the sight of the misery around them, and for their 
 own relief, quite as much as for the relief of those 
 whom they would help, they distribute their charity, 
 as it is called, indiscriminately, amongst the deserving, 
 and the undeserving. They are unable to distinguish 
 nobody can. 
 
 Some make work for the purpose of charity. But 
 then the work, if done at all, is never well done, 
 never so well as when done for the wages of labor. It 
 were better to give the money as charity. Some would 
 then be ashamed to take it as such. Work, to be well 
 done, must be paid for as work. Charity should be 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 811 
 
 given as charity. When the wages of labor are con- 
 founded with charity, the independence of the laborer 
 must be destroyed. 
 
 This is the effect of our system of filching the taxes 
 out of the laborers' wages; "a very easy form of 
 plunder /' vulgarly called f chousing ;' but, aristo- 
 cratically speaking, this might very properly be desig- 
 nated, the ' Oligarchical System/ or, the system of 
 making the many pay for the few. This is also called 
 the ' Conservative System/ We have no very clear 
 understanding of the meaning of the term '' Conserva- 
 tive/ but we may form a guess about it, from Dr. 
 Newman's description. 
 
 " A Conservative, in the political sense of the word, 
 means a man who is at the top of the tree, and knows 
 it, and means never to come down, whatever it may 
 cost him to keep his place there. It means a man who 
 upholds government and society, and the existing 
 state of things, not because it exists, not because it 
 is good and desirable, because it is established, 
 because it is a benefit to the population, because it is 
 full of promise for the future, but, rather, because he 
 himself is well off in consequence of it, and because to 
 take care of number one is his main political prin- 
 ciple." 
 
 If we would master the ideal of a beneficent and 
 judicious system of Public Finance, as the preliminary 
 to all profitable insight into the defects of any particular 
 system in actual existence, an apter illustration, per- 
 haps, cannot be found, than in those vast and fertile 
 tracts of land in the East, which owe all their fertility 
 to artificial irrigation. 
 
 The tanks and reservoirs would represent the capital 
 of a nation ; while the numberless rills, hourly varying 
 their channels and directions under the laborer's spade, 
 would give a pleasing image of the dispersion of that 
 
812 CONCLUDING OBSEKVATIONS. 
 
 capital through the whole population, by the joint effect 
 of taxation and trade. For taxation itself is a part of 
 commerce, and the Government may be fairly consi- 
 dered as a great manufacturing-house, carrying on in 
 different places, by means of its partners and overseers, 
 the trades of the ship-builder, the clothier, the iron- 
 founder, and the like. As long as a balance is pre- 
 served between the receipts and the returns of Govern- 
 ment in their amount, quickness, and degree of dis- 
 persion ; as long as the due proportion obtains in the 
 sum levied, to the mass in productive circulation ; so 
 long does the wealth and circumstantial prosperity of 
 the nation (its outward prosperity), remain unaffected; 
 or, rather, they will appear to increase in consequence 
 of the additional stimulus given to the circulation 
 itself, by the reproductive action of all large capitals, 
 and through the check which taxation, in its own 
 nature, gives to the indolence of the wealthy, in its 
 continual transfer of property to the industrious and 
 enterprising. If different periods be taken, and if the 
 comparative weight of the taxes at each be calculated, 
 as it ought to be, not by the sum levied on each 
 individual, but by the sum left in his possession, the 
 settlement of the account will be in favor of the 
 national wealth, to the amount of all the additional 
 productive labor sustained or excited by the taxes, 
 during the intervals between their afflux, and their re- 
 absorption. 
 
 But, on the other hand, in a direct ratio to this 
 increase will be the distress pro.duced by the disturb- 
 ance of this balance, by the loss of this proportion ; 
 and the operation of the distress will be, at least, 
 equal to the total amount of the difference between 
 the taxes still levied, and the quantum of aid with- 
 drawn from individuals by the abandonment of others ; 
 not overlooking the further quantum which the taxes, 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 813 
 
 that still remain, have ceased to give, by the altered 
 mode of their dispersion. But to this we must add 
 the number of persons raised and reared in conse- 
 quence of the demand created by the preceding state 
 of things, and now discharged from their occupations : 
 whether the latter belong exclusively to the executive 
 power, as that of soldiers, and the like, or from those 
 in which the laborers] for the nation in general are 
 already sufficiently numerous. Both these classes are 
 thrown back on the public, and sent to a table where 
 every seat is pre-occupied. The employment lessens 
 as the number of men to be employed is increased ; 
 and not merely in the same, but from additional 
 causes ; and, from the indirect consequences of those 
 already stated, in a far greater ratio. For, it may 
 easily happen that the very same change which had 
 produced this dispersion at home, may, from equiva- 
 lent causes, have embarrassed the countries in com- 
 mercial connection with us. At one and the same 
 time, the great customer at home wants less, and our 
 customers abroad are able to buy less. 
 
 The conjoint action of these circumstances will 
 furnish, for a mind capable of combining them, a 
 sufficient solution of the melancholy fact. They can- 
 not but occasion much distress, much obstruction, and 
 these again, in their re-action, are sure to be more 
 than doubled by the still greater and universal alarm, 
 and the consequent check of confidence and enter- 
 prise which they never fail to produce. 
 
 Now, it is a notorious fact that, these causes have 
 all existed to a very extraordinary degree, and worked 
 with united strength, in this country, since the termi- 
 nation of the long war. 
 
 It was one among the many anomalies of that war, 
 that it acted, after a few years, as a universal stimu- 
 lant. We almost monopolised the commerce of the 
 
814 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 world. The high wages of our artisans, and the high 
 prices of agricultural produce, intercirculated. Leases, 
 of no unusual length, not seldom enabled the provi- 
 dent and thrifty farmer to purchase the estate he had 
 rented. Everywhere might be seen roads, railways, 
 docks, canals, made, making, and projected; villages 
 swelling into towns, while the metropolis surrounded 
 itself, and became, as it were, set with new cities. 
 Finally, in spite of all the waste and havoc of a twenty 
 years' war, the population of the Empire was increased 
 by more than two millions. The efforts and war 
 expenditure of the nation, and the yearly revenue, 
 were augmented in the same proportion; and to all 
 this must be added the fact that, the war was at last 
 brought to its conclusion by a concentration, or by a 
 spasm of energy, and, consequently, by an anticipa- 
 tion of our resources. 
 
 We conquered by compelling reversionary power 
 into alliance with our existing and natural strength. 
 The first intoxication of triumph having passed over, 
 this agony of glory was succeeded, of course, by a 
 general stiffness and relaxation. The antagonistic 
 passions came into play ; financial solicitude was 
 blended with constitutional and political jealousies, 
 and both were exacerbated by personal imprudences, 
 the chief injury of which consisted in their own ten- 
 dency to disgust and alienate the public feeling. 
 And, with all this, the financial errors and prejudices, 
 even of the more educated classes, in short, the 
 general want, or imperfection, of clear views and a 
 scientific insight into the true effects and influences 
 of taxation, and the mode of its operation, became 
 now a real misfortune, and opened an additional source 
 of temporary embarrassment. Retrenchment could no 
 longer proceed by cautious and calculated steps, but 
 was compelled to hurry forward, like one who, cross- 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 815 
 
 ing the sands at too late an hour, finds himself threat- 
 ened by the inrush of the tide. Nevertheless, it was 
 a truth, susceptible of little less than mathematical 
 demonstration, that the more, and the more suddenly, 
 the revenue was diminished by the abandonment of 
 the war taxes, the greater would be the disturbance 
 of the balance ; so that the agriculturist, the manufac- 
 turer, and the tradesman, all, in short, but annui- 
 tants and fixed stipendiaries, who, during the war, 
 having paid as five, had fifteen left behind, but shortly 
 had less than ten, after having paid but two and a 
 half. What was the pressure then placed upon the 
 country, when, to all this, is added the operation of 
 the return to cash payments in pure coin, of former 
 intrinsic value, so as, in effect, to re-impose the 
 amount of taxes nominally remitted, may be easily 
 understood. And yet, under all this pressure, the 
 prosperity and power of the nation has been increas- 
 ing during the same period, with an accelerated force 
 unprecedented in any country ! 
 
 To a combination of many causes must this be 
 attributed, but chiefly to vast resources brought into 
 activity by the energy, labor, and skill of a multitude 
 of enterprising individuals, encouraged and assisted 
 by the timely relaxation of many of those bonds and 
 fetters by which the trade and productive industry of 
 the country had been bound down and restricted. By 
 increasing and cheapening the food of the people, and 
 leaving them more free to labor, and to produce, and 
 thereby to accumulate new capital for further employ- 
 ment, and further enterprise, and thus increasing and 
 extending the wealth and power of the Nation. 
 
 If the causes of the many and serious evils, here 
 referred to, have been so far diminished in number, 
 and mitigated in effect, by the adoption in practice of 
 these new and improved principles of legislation, how 
 
816 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 great is the encouragement to proceed in the same 
 line of improvement ! 
 
 The universal practice, consequent on the present 
 system, of enhancing the sale price of every article 
 subject to taxation, to remunerate the dealer for his 
 advance of the amount of the tax in the first instance, 
 calculated not only at the rate of trade profit, but also 
 on the presumption of bad debts, and this additional 
 per-centage repeated at each intermediate stage of its 
 elaboration and distribution, from the grower, or 
 importer, or manufacturer, to the last retailer exclu- 
 sively, is not one of the least operative evils inflicted 
 on the whole community. Necessary, and, therefore, 
 justifiable, as this plan of reprisal by anticipation may 
 be in the case of each individual dealer, yet taken col- 
 lectively, and without reference to persons, the system 
 itself which not only authorises, but also renders 
 necessary this sort of nondescript privateering is 
 rather startling to an unfamiliarised conscience ; and, 
 by a curious anomaly, these exactions are not pro- 
 miscuous, only because the letters of marque and 
 reprisal, under this system, grant a free pass to the 
 offending party. 
 
 Or, if the law-maxim, volentilus non fit injuria, be 
 applicable in this case, it may, perhaps, be described 
 more courteously, as a benefit society of all the careful 
 and honest men in the kingdom, to pay the debts of 
 the dishonest, or improvident. It is mentioned here, 
 however, as one of the inevitable consequences of the 
 present system of laying the taxes on things in 
 common use for the daily necessaries of life, and as 
 one of the principal appendages to the twin paramount 
 causes, the present state of the currency, and the 
 national debt, and for the sake of the conjoint results. 
 If we would learn what these results are, we may see 
 them in the multitudes of workmen in the streets of 
 
CONCLUDING OBSEEVATIONS. 817 
 
 London without work ; in the country, a peasantry 
 sinking into pauperism, step for step with the rise of 
 the farmers' profits and indulgences. 
 
 Fluctuation in the wages of labor, alternate priva- 
 tion and excess (not all at the same time, but suc- 
 cessively in each), consequent improvidence, and, over 
 all, discontent, and a system of factious confederacy ; 
 these form the history of our cities, towns, and 
 country. 
 
 On the side of the landlord and his compeers, the 
 presence of the same causes are attested by answer- 
 able effects. Great as their effects were on the 
 increase of prices in the necessaries of life, they were 
 still greater in all articles of show and luxury. With 
 few exceptions, it became difficult, and at length 
 impracticable, for the gentry of the land, for the pos- 
 sessors of fixed property, to retain the rank of their 
 ancestors, or of their own former establishments, with- 
 out joining in the general competition for sudden and 
 inordinate gains. The temptation of obtaining more 
 than the legal interest for their principal, became 
 more and more strong with all persons who, neither 
 trading, nor farming, had lived on the interest of their 
 fortunes. It was in this class that the rash and, too 
 frequently, the unprincipled projector found his readiest 
 dupes. The secret history of too many of the joint stock 
 speculations, only in the vicinity of the metropolis, 
 would supply an afflicting, but instructive, comment. 
 
 Not that these were results of an increased mo- 
 mentum in the spirit of trade, but of the system which 
 restricted trade, and impeded it in its natural channels, 
 by artificial obstructions, thereby forcibly diverting it 
 into unnatural channels, where it soon dried up, leav- 
 ing only a sandy and desert waste, with little or 
 nothing of a fertilizing deposit; and, so far from 
 extending, checking the commercial spirit of the 
 
 3 G 
 
818 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 nation, and, at the same time, as a necessary con- 
 sequence, depressing the agricultural. 
 
 Many and great have been, and are, the afflicting 
 evils of this country, but so greatly have all these been 
 aggravated by the operation of our revenue laws, re- 
 flected in the habits and tendencies of the people, and 
 of the working classes especially, that here, it may be 
 truly said, is the groundwork of our national calamity, 
 and the main predisposing cause of most of our past 
 and present distresses. 
 
 If the spirit of commerce were only now set free, 
 she would carry such healing on her wings, that past 
 errors would* soon be forgotten, and afflictions would 
 be remembered no more. 
 
 But if the wings be shortened and confined by a 
 much longer continuance of the present system of 
 clipping and restraining, the power of rising may 
 be lost for ever, and blessings, in the abundance of 
 Nature, may then come too late to avert calamity 
 ruinous to all. Princely capitals will still be accumu- 
 lated, but these will be but as telegraphs of coming 
 troubles, of the return of those times of frequent 
 failure, with all the disgraceful secrets of fraud and 
 folly, of unprincipled vanity in expending, and despe- 
 rate speculation in retrieving; when bankruptcies 
 spread like a fever, at once contagious and epidemic ; 
 when no man's treasure is safe who has adopted the 
 ordinary means of safety, neither the high, nor the 
 humble ; when the lord's rents, and the farmer's 
 store, entrusted, perhaps, but as yesterday, are asked 
 after at closed doors ! but, worst of all, in its moral 
 influences, as well as in the cruelty of suffering ; when 
 the old laborer's savings, or, as Coleridge expres- 
 sively, and truly, calls them " the precious robberies 
 of self-denial from every day's comforts ;" when the 
 orphan's funds, the widow's livelihood, the fond con- 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 819 
 
 fiding sister's humble fortune,, are found among the 
 victims to the remorseless mania of dishonest specu- 
 lation, or the desperate cowardice of embarrassment ; 
 to the drunken stupor of a usurious selfishness which, 
 for a few months' respite, dares incur a debt of guilt 
 and infamy for which the grave itself can plead no 
 statute of limitation. 
 
 This is the character which Milton has so philo- 
 sophically, as well as sublimely, embodied in the 
 Satan of his ' Paradise Lost.' 
 
 Alas ! too often has it been embodied in real life. 
 Too often has it given a dark and savage grandeur to 
 the historic page. And, whenever it has appeared, 
 under whatever circumstances of time and country, 
 the same ingredients have gone to its composition ; 
 and it has been identified by the same attributes, so 
 forcibly described by Coleridge as " Hope in which 
 there is no cheerfulness ; steadfastness within, and 
 immoveable resolve, with outward restlessness and 
 whirling activity ; violence with guile ; tenacity with 
 cunning ; and, as the result of all, interminableness of 
 object, with perfect indifference of means." 
 
 " But," as Coleridge asks, " by what means can 
 the lower classes be made to learn their duties, and 
 urged to practise them ? The human race may, 
 perhaps, possess the capability of all excellence, and 
 Truth -is omnipotent to a mind already disciplined for 
 its reception; but, assuredly, the over- worked laborer, 
 skulking into an ale-house, is not likely to exemplify 
 the one, or prove the other. In that barbarous tumult 
 of inimical interests which the present state of society 
 exhibits, Religion appears to offer the only means uni- 
 versally efficient. The perfectness of future men is, indeed, 
 a benevolent tenet, and may operate on a few vision- 
 aries, whose studious habits supply them with employ- 
 ment, and seclude them from temptation. But a 
 
 3 a 2 
 
820 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 distant prospect which we are never to reach, will 
 seldom quicken our footsteps, however lovely it may 
 appear ; and a blessing, which not ourselves, but pos- 
 terity, are destined to enjoy, will scarcely influence the 
 actions of any still less of the ignorant, the pre- 
 judiced, and the selfish.-" 
 
 "Go preach the Gospel to the poor." By its sim- 
 plicity it will meet their comprehension, by its benevo- 
 lence soften their affections, by its precepts it will 
 direct their conduct, by the vastness of its motives 
 ensure their obedience. 
 
 But, the first object of man is to supply his pressing 
 wants : to provide food : to protect himself amidst 
 the war of the elements. In his savage state no know- 
 ledge is valuable to him, but the knowledge connected 
 with his common appetites. 
 
 The savage of Avignon regarded not the noise of 
 the multitude in the streets of Paris, but he was 
 roused in a moment by the cracking of a nut, or the 
 murmuring of water. 
 
 The situation of the poor is perilous : they are, in- 
 deed, both "from within and from without unarmed 
 to all temptations." Prudential reasonings will gene- 
 rally be powerless with them ; for the incitements of 
 this world are weak, in proportion as we are wretched. 
 They, too, who live from hand to mouth will most 
 frequently become improvident. Possessing np stock 
 of happiness, they eagerly seise the gratifications of 
 the moment, and snatch the froth from the wave as it 
 passes by them. Nor is the desolate state of their 
 families a restraining motive, unsoftened as they are 
 by education, and benumbed into selfishness by the 
 torpedo touch of extreme want. Domestic affections 
 depend on association. We love an object if, as often 
 as we see or recollect it, an agreeable sensation arises 
 in our minds. But, alas ! how should he glow with 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 821 
 
 the charities of father and husband, who., gaining 
 scarcely more than his own necessities demand, must 
 have been accustomed to regard his wife and children, 
 not as the soothers of finished labor, but as rivals for 
 the insufficient meal ! In a man so circumstanced, 
 the tyranny of the present can be [overpowered only 
 by the ten-fold mightiness of the future. Religion 
 will cheer his gloom with her promises, and, by 
 habituating his mind to anticipate an infinitely great 
 revolution hereafter, may prepare it even for the 
 sudden reception of a less degree of amelioration in 
 this world. 
 
 But, if we would confer this spiritual and mental 
 benefit, we must not neglect the physical and bodily 
 welfare. We must not make the free gift of the 
 spiritual remedy an excuse for withholding what is 
 due to the bodily maintenance and comfort. 
 
 If the revenue laws were bat half as productive of 
 money to the State, as they are of guilt and wretched- 
 ness to the people, there might then, perhaps, be the 
 miserable ground of sad necessity for their further 
 continuance. But, if this mode of raising revenue be 
 attended with greater loss in actual money, than the 
 whole amount raised, and if all the consequent guilt 
 and wretchedness to the people be an addition to this 
 loss, then, indeed, is this system an absurdity, as well 
 as a shame and disgrace to the nation which continues 
 it; and it is a mockery to tell people who are thus 
 deprived of all worldly comforts by unjust laws, that 
 they have the comforts of religion. 
 
 The happiness of mankind is the end of virtue, and 
 truth is the knowledge of the means ; which he will 
 never seriously attempt to discover who has not ha- 
 bitually interested himself in the welfare of others. 
 The searcher after truth must love and be beloved; 
 for general benevolence is begotten and rendered 
 
822 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 permanent by social and domestic affections. Let 
 us beware of that proud philosophy which affects to 
 inculcate philanthropy, while it denounces every home- 
 born feeling by which it is produced and nurtured. 
 The paternal and filial duties discipline the heart and 
 prepare it for the love of all mankind. The intensity 
 of private attachments encourages, not prevents, uni- 
 versal benevolence. The nearer we approach to the 
 Sun, the more intense his heat ; yet what corner of 
 the system does he not cheer and vivify ? 
 
 We cannot inculcate on the minds of each other too 
 often, or with too great earnestness, the necessity of 
 cultivatingbenevolent affections . We should be cautious 
 how we indulge the feelings of even virtuous indigna- 
 tion. We should remember that vice is the effect of 
 error, and the offspring of surrounding circumstances ; 
 the object, therefore, of condolence, not of anger. But 
 to make it spread from the understanding to the affec- 
 tions, to call it into action not only in the great exertions 
 of patriotism, but in the daily and hourly occurrences 
 of social life, requires the most watchful attentions of 
 the most energetic mind. It is not enough that we 
 have once swallowed these truths we must feed on 
 them, as insects on a leaf, till the whole heart be 
 colored by its qualities, and show its food in every the 
 minutest fibre. 
 
 But what have we done, and what are we doing ? 
 
 We have made our laws, and regulated our lives, in 
 the knowledge of evil, instead of in the wisdom of love, 
 and truth, and justice. We have turned away from 
 Divine guidance, to follow our own theories, formed on 
 our own narrow and selfish views. We have kept out 
 of view all that is most beautiful, and have held fast 
 to that which is most crooked and deformed. We 
 have neglected to read, and to learn, even from the 
 Book of Nature spread open before us. 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 823 
 
 The bud which never opens to the sun and to the 
 rain, never nourishes as a flower. Nature has provi- 
 ded the cup to receive and to hold the fertilising dew- 
 drop. Has Nature been less provident to the human 
 being than to the flower of the field ? Nature is as 
 impartial, as bountiful. It is man alone who has pre- 
 vented the sun from shining, and the rain from falling 
 equally on all. It is man alone who prevents the 
 bud from opening to the sun and to the rain, and 
 prevents the cup from receiving the fertilising dew- 
 drop ; and the flower of human life withered in the 
 bud, is man's work alone ! 
 
 This state of things cannot go on for ever. Nature 
 will work the change for us for the worse, if we do not 
 ourselves make it work for the better. 
 
 If the People would unite and take counsel together, 
 and with moral fortitude and national faith, with pa- 
 triotic loyalty and with universal benevolence, would 
 make their appeal to the Government of the Country, 
 for the removal of these most obnoxious and injurious 
 revenue laws, and the substitution of a more open, just, 
 and simple system for the due provision of the proper 
 means, and maintenance of the necessary powers of the 
 State ; if the land-owners would consider themselves as 
 holding offices of trust, with duties to be performed in 
 the sight of God and their Country, and would concern 
 themselves in the moral training as well as in the 
 education of their natural dependents ; and if the 
 manufacturers and traders, and all the other working 
 classes, would concern themselves with their own 
 separate and peculiar duties, and learn to appreciate 
 the honor due to their respective callings by the faith- 
 ful fulfilment of their duties, then may the People of 
 all classes rely upon the promise of the King of Kings, 
 by the mouth of His Prophet : 
 
 " Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters." 
 
824 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Readers who have in their recollection the writings 
 of that great Moral Philosopher,, Coleridge, will recog- 
 nise in some of the foregoing observations his thoughts, 
 and expressed often in his own words, when these could 
 be properly applied, though sometimes in a manner 
 more or less different from their original application. 
 For, however abounding in high thoughts was that 
 highly gifted man, and however rich in varied and 
 expressive language ; however many he may have 
 helped to make distinguished writers on Political 
 Economy, he will himself, in these days, hardly be re- 
 garded as an authority on that subject. But honor to 
 his memory, who taught many of the best and greatest 
 men of his day to think and to reflect, and whose 
 name, as long as men are able to appreciate the 
 noblest qualities of the human mind when directed to 
 the highest aim, will be held in grateful remem- 
 brance by his Countrymen ! 
 
 There is in the character of the British People good 
 ground to hope that they will, by timely reforms, pre- 
 pare for the changes which time must, of necessity, 
 bring, and that time is, probably much nearer than 
 many suppose. 
 
 By placing the Government of the Country on the 
 basis of sound principles, those changes we may con- 
 fidently hope, will raise the nation to a higher position 
 of prosperity and power than it has ever yet reached. 
 
 The basis will then be a much nearer approach, than 
 it has ever yet been, to truth and justice, and then we 
 may hope to see carried out into practice, more nearly 
 than we have ever yet seen, the Divine command, 
 
 "Do UNTO OTHEES AS YOU WOULD THEY SHOULD DO 
 UNTO YOU/' 
 
 The People will then be found to be the best sup- 
 porters of the Government, by a new and willing obe- 
 dience, which will then be yielded from a sense of 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 825 
 
 self-interest,, as well as duty, and self-respect. Of this 
 we may be sure ; " that whatever will lighten the 
 burden of existence,, and prevent the necessity for the 
 now never ceasing struggle for mere life, will give 
 both mind and heart breathing time to contemplate 
 and yearn after the real life to come. He who exists 
 only to toil, must be absorbed in the present. For 
 him the future can have but little charm, or little ter- 
 ror. It is ordained that man shall live by the sweat 
 of his brow, not that he shall die under it.-"* 
 
 With all the mighty preparations for great changes 
 now passing before our eyes, it were folly to suppose 
 that men's misgovernment will much longer be per- 
 mitted to counteract the intended good. 
 
 When it is found, as it surely will be, that the only 
 true and lasting interests of mankind are one and the 
 same, the human races will gradually merge into each 
 other, and though each nation may still preserve its 
 own nationality and language, yet these will no longer 
 be barriers for separation : a common interest will 
 bind all together, as one Nation, and one People, for 
 their common good, and then the rulers and the ruled, 
 masters and servants, of every order and degree, will 
 learn that their own welfare is so intimately bound up 
 with, as to be, in a great measure, dependent upon, 
 the welfare of those who are placed above, or under, or 
 around them. Then mankind will begin to see, more 
 
 * These words, in inverted commas, were written in Bethle- 
 hem Hospital, by a Gentleman, and Scholar, who has been con- 
 fined there for some years, as a Criminal lunatic, for depriving 
 his wife of life in a paroxysm of madness. He was devotedly 
 attached to her, and destroyed her life under the insane terror of 
 a greater evil befalling her. 
 
 The writer, who has on several occasions-seen this Gentleman 
 in his present confinement, believes him to have been long ago 
 perfectly restored to reason, but he is still confined as a Crimi- 
 nal Lunatic at Broadmoor. 
 
826 CONCLUDING OBSEEVATIONS. 
 
 clearly than they have ever seen before, the folly of 
 their own selfishness. Then will they begin to learn, 
 and to appreciate, the blessings of freedom in every 
 form, and to distinguish between lawful liberty, and 
 unlawful licence. Then, though we know that the 
 poor will always be with us, destitution to those who 
 are able and willing to work, will be unknown in the 
 land; for, there will then be a more equal distribution 
 of the good things of this world, so bountifully pro- 
 vided, and so mercifully intended, for the use of all. 
 " Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," was 
 never meant to recommend waiting for the day of evil, 
 if it might be averted. There is the calmness of 
 energy, as well as the quiescence of idiotcy. There is 
 danger in change, but there is also safety in change. 
 The rising tide may overwhelm the unwary wanderer 
 on the sea-shore, but the ebbing tide may wreck the 
 ship upon the sunken rock. 
 
 All things are for ever changing ; but change is not 
 necessarily innovation. On any great change pro- 
 posed, we are all accustomed to hear the cry " No 
 Innovation ! J} 
 
 To say that new things are bad, is to say that all 
 old things were bad at the commencement ; for, of all 
 old things ever seen or heard of, there is not one that 
 was not once new. Whatever is now established was 
 once innovation. The first inventor of Juries must, 
 in his day, have been considered a pestilent fellow. 
 Many must remember that description once so fre- 
 quently applied to Kowland Hill for his invention of 
 the Penny Postage Stamp. Nearly all the inventions 
 of men of genius once filled the world with alarm, and 
 were considered the great precursors of ruin and dis- 
 solution. 
 
 But this remark is nothing new. More than half a, 
 century ago, Sydney Smith wittily wrote : " No 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 827 
 
 pews, no parish clerks, no vaccination, no turnpikes, 
 no reading, no writing, no popery ! The fool sayeth 
 in his heart, and crieth with his mouth, ' I will have 
 nothing new ! } There is not one single source of 
 happiness, against which this class has not uttered the 
 most gloomy predictions. Turnpike roads, navigable 
 canals, railways, hops, tobacco, the reformation, the 
 revolution there are always a set of worthy and 
 moderately gifted men, who bawl out death and ruin 
 upon every valuable change which the varying aspect 
 of human affairs absolutely and imperiously requires. 
 There is in the words of these feeble friends to virtue 
 and improvement an imaginary period for the re- 
 moval of evils, which it would, certainly, be worth 
 while to wait for, if there were the smallest chance of 
 its ever arriving a period of unexampled peace and 
 prosperity, when a patriotic sovereign and an en- 
 lightened people shall unite their ardent efforts for 
 the amelioration of human affairs ! But the history of 
 human nature is so contrary to all this, that almost all 
 improvements are made after the bitterest resistance, 
 and in the midst of tumults and civil violence the 
 worst period at which they can be made, compared to 
 which any period is eligible, and should be seised hold 
 of by the friends of salutary reform. What human 
 plan, device or invention, 300 years old, does not re- 
 quire alteration ? If a man dressed now as men 
 dressed BOO years ago, the dogs in the street would 
 tear him to pieces. If he lived in the houses of 300 
 years ago, unaltered and uncorrected, he would die of 
 fever or rheumatism in a week. If he listened to the 
 sermons of 300 years ago, he would perish with sad- 
 ness and fatigue; and when a man cannot make a 
 coat or a cheese for 100 years together, without 
 making them better, can it be said that laws made in 
 those days of ignorance, and framed in the fury of 
 
828 CONCLUDING OBSEKVATIONS. 
 
 religious hatred, need no revision, and are capable of 
 no amendments ? 
 
 " A hundred years, to be sure, is a very little time 
 for the duration of a national error ; and it is far from 
 reasonable to look for its decay at so short a date. 
 Whoever, speaking of human affairs, talks of unalter- 
 able laws, may be set down as an unalterable fool. 
 But, in the affairs of State, the folly of deferring the 
 reform of a crying evil, is like the case of a man 
 who has a wound in his great toe, and a perilous fever 
 at the same time ; and he refuses to take the medi- 
 cines for the fever, because he thinks it bad for his 
 toe ! The mournful folly stricken blockhead forgets 
 that his toe cannot survive him that if he die, there 
 can be no life apart from him : yet he lingers fondly 
 over this last part of his body, soothing it with little 
 plaisters and fomentations, while the neglected fever 
 rages in his entrails, and burns away his whole life. 
 To lie by, in timid and ignorant silence, and to neg- 
 lect a regular and vigorous appeal to public opinion, 
 is to give up all chance of doing good, and to abandon 
 the only means by which the few are prevented from 
 ruining the many." These are some of the wise and 
 witty sayings of Sydney Smith, upwards of fifty years 
 ago. 
 
 There was in that man, and some few others of our 
 own past time, a strength and a truth that made one 
 feel as if they were standing between two worlds; 
 amid the ruins of an older age j upon the threshold of 
 a new one. 
 
 The same thought has been somewhere expressed by 
 the Kev. Charles Kingsley, something in this way 
 " Men feel that they are no longer in the beginning of 
 the end, but in the end itself, and that this long pro- 
 logue to the reconstruction of rotten Europe is played 
 out at last, and the drama itself begun/' 
 
CONCLUDING OBSEEVATIONS. 829 
 
 Coleridge somewhere declares that the new can only 
 assume a living form, by growing mechanically out of 
 old institutions : and the two well-known lines of Keats 
 declare : 
 
 " These things too are eternal: 
 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." 
 
 Though the effects of the change here advocated 
 would, undoubtedly, be very great, yet the change 
 itself would be, simply, a return to a very old prac- 
 tice, founded on a just and constitutional principle. 
 
 It is, therefore, not like an experiment to be tried in 
 ignorance of the result. The result is already well 
 known from experience ; and, what is even still more- 
 remarkable, the principle, in theory, is universally 
 approved of. But, though admitted to be true in 
 principle, it is said, it would not now work well in 
 practice. But, Who says so ? And, why not ? 
 Who comes forward with definite objections, open to 
 definite answers ? Nobody. And yet, very eminent 
 men have come forward to maintain this principle, and 
 to recommend it in practice. 
 
 Such an advocate as M. Turgot, so eminent as a 
 Statesman, a Financier, and a Political Economist, 
 might well suffice for all. 
 
 And our own Adam Smith, who may be said to 
 have been his pupil, has confirmed him on all material 
 points. But to us in these days what are all that 
 ever wrote on this subject, in comparison with Bastiat ? 
 
 It is strange that, with such Masters, we have made 
 so little advance in carrying out in practice the princi- 
 ples of good government. 
 
 It is not pretended that, the Scheme of Taxation 
 here presented is complete in all details. It purports 
 only to be a simple Outline of a Practical Scheme, in 
 conformity with sound principles, which always have 
 been, and always must be, true ; and which must, 
 
830 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 therefore, be equally applicable to all times, and to all 
 nations ; but, subject always to changes in details 
 according to times and circumstances. 
 
 The settlement of the details is the peculiar province 
 of the Government which enjoys the confidence of the 
 People. 
 
 But not so of the principle. 
 
 The settlement of that question is the peculiar pro- 
 vince of the People ; and to carry out in practice, what 
 they have settled in principle, is the duty of the 
 Government. 
 
 It is weakness to wait for the Government in any- 
 thing which concerns principle. What great prin- 
 ciple that has ever been established in this country, 
 or, perhaps, in any other, originated with the Govern- 
 ment ? Has any great principle, for the benefit of the 
 people, ever been established that has not been, at 
 first, opposed by the Government ? 
 
 But, as before stated, the chief duty of the State, or 
 Government, is to direct all things according to the 
 general wish, and to interfere as little as possible with 
 anything. 
 
 The proper purpose or end of a political govern- 
 ment, or the purpose or end for which it ought to 
 exist, is the greatest possible advancement of human 
 happiness. If, then, the welfare of mankind be the 
 proper object of a Government, it commonly ought to 
 consult directly and particularly the welfare of the 
 particular community committed to its rule. 
 
 It is impossible to show that the general and 
 particular ends conflict. Universally the ends are 
 perfectly consistent, or, rather are inseparably con- 
 nected. An enlightened regard for the common 
 happiness of nations, implies an enlightened and uni- 
 versal patriotism. 
 
 If a people were adequately instructed or enlightened, 
 
CONCLUDING OBSEEVATIONS. 831 
 
 the habitual obedience to its government which was 
 rendered by the majority, would arise exclusively from 
 reasons founded on supposed general benefit. Their 
 conviction or opinion to this effect would be their 
 motive to obey. 
 
 If their conviction or opinion were to an opposite 
 conclusion, a fear that the evil of resistance might be 
 greater than the evil of obedience, would be their in- 
 ducement to submit. 
 
 But they would not persist in their obedience to a 
 government which they deemed imperfect, if they 
 thought that a better government might probably be 
 got by resistance, and that the probable good of the 
 change outweighed its probable mischief. 
 
 Since the people of all nations are inadequately in- 
 structed or enlightened, the obedience to its govern- 
 ment which is rendered by the majority, is partly the 
 consequence of habit, and partly the consequence of 
 prejudices : meaning by ' prejudices/ opinions and 
 sentiments which have no foundation whatever in the 
 principle of general utility, or benefit. 
 
 But though that habitual obedience be partly the 
 consequence of custom, or partly the consequence of 
 prejudices, still it partly arises from a reason founded 
 on the principle of utility. It partly arises from a 
 preference, by the majority, of one government to 
 another government, or of any government to anarchy. 
 They detest the established government, but they de- 
 test another government more ; and if they would 
 change it, for one of their own selecting, by resorting to 
 open resistance, they must attain their object through 
 an intervening anarchy, which they detest still more. 
 
 The only general cause of the permanence of political 
 governments, and of the origin of political govern- 
 ments, are very nearly or exactly alike. Though every 
 government has arisen in part from specific or par- 
 
832 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 ticular causes, almost every government must have 
 risen in part from the general cause before noticed. 
 
 The permanence and origin of every government are 
 owing to the people's consent; that is to say, every 
 government continues through the consent of the 
 people, or the majority of the political community : and 
 every government arises through the consent of the 
 people, or the majority of the natural society from 
 which the political is formed. 
 
 Now the permanence of every government depends 
 on the habitual obedience which it receives from the 
 majority of the community. For if the bulk of the 
 community were fully determined to destroy it, and to 
 brave and endure the evils through which they must 
 pass to their object, the power of the government 
 itself with the power of the minority attached to it, 
 would scarcely suffice to preserve it, or even to retard 
 its subversion. But all obedience is voluntary or free, 
 or every party who obeys consents to obey. In other 
 words, every party who obeys wills the obedience 
 which he renders, or is determined to render by some 
 motive or another. 
 
 Since, then, a government continues through the 
 obedience of the people, and since the obedience of the 
 people is voluntary or free, every government con- 
 tinues through the consent of the people, or the bulk 
 of the political society. 
 
 The position, therefore, " that every government 
 continues through the people's consent/' merely 
 amounts to this : That, in every society political and 
 independent, the people are determined by motives of 
 some description or another, to obey their government 
 habitually : and that, if the bulk of the community 
 ceased to obey it habitually, the government would 
 cease to exist. 
 
 But that the majority of every community approve 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 833 
 
 of the established government, or prefer it to every 
 government which could be substituted for it ; and 
 that they consent to its continuance, or pay it habitual 
 obedience by reason of that approbation, or by reason 
 of that their preference ; as thus understood, the 
 position is ridiculously false : the habitual obedience of 
 the people, in most or many communities, arising 
 wholly or partly from the fear of the probable evils 
 which they might suffer by resistance. 
 
 With this meaning, the position amounts to this : 
 That, if the bulk of a community dislike the established 
 government, the government ought not to continue : or, 
 the government therefore is bad, and the general good 
 of the community requires its abolition. And, if every 
 actual society were adequately instructed or en- 
 lightened, the position, as thus understood, would ap- 
 proach nearly to the truth. 
 
 But, in every actual society, the People are unin- 
 structed in sound political science ; and pains have 
 been taken by the government, or by the classes that 
 influence the government, to exclude the bulk of the 
 community from sound political knowledge ; or, what 
 is the same thing, to prevent them from acquiring it, 
 by keeping them in a low and degraded position, and 
 thus to perpetuate or prolong the prejudices which 
 weaken and distort their understandings. 
 
 Every society, therefore, is inadequately instructed or 
 enlightened : And, therefore, the love or hate of the 
 people towards their established government would 
 scarcely beget a presumption that the government was 
 good or bad. An ignorant people may regard their 
 established government, though it totally disregards 
 their clearest rights, and most essential interests. So 
 an ignorant people may disregard their established 
 government, however much and wisely it labors for 
 their general welfare. This melancholy truth was 
 
 3n 
 
834 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 strikingly exemplified in the dislike of the French 
 people to the ministry of Turgot. They stupidly 
 thwarted the measures of their wisest and best friend, 
 and made common cause with his and their worst ene- 
 mies. They led to their own destruction. 
 
 But if the People may lead to their own destruction, 
 they may, by pursuing an opposite course, lead to their 
 own great good. Such a course would be by pre- 
 paring themselves for the reception of sound political 
 wisdom, and having attained to this, the expression, 
 " that every government arises and is maintained 
 through the people's consent," would carry with .it a 
 great deal more meaning than it does now. It would 
 then very soon be discovered, that no government 
 could arise and be maintained, which did not first con- 
 sult the People's true welfare. 
 
 It is not necessary, for the present purpose, to carry 
 these views further. The intelligent reader will hardly 
 fail to understand what is here meant to be conveyed ; 
 though some weak minds will, no doubt, imagine evil 
 which is neither expressed, nor intended. But those 
 readers who wish to extend their inquiries into this im- 
 portant subject should make a careful study of it in 
 that profound and valuable Work of the late Mr. John 
 Austin, entitled " The Province of Jurisprudence 
 Determined." 
 
 Now, let us take a parting glance at this "Practical 
 Scheme," which some would defer till approved of by 
 the Government ; and many more would defer for ever ; 
 and about which the People, whom it most concerns, 
 yet know little or nothing. 
 
 It will be seen by readers who have arrived thus far, 
 that the main design, and merit, (if any,) of this 
 Scheme is, a just and equal distribution of the State 
 burden upon the realised property of the kingdom ; 
 and an equal contribution by all householders., on a 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 835 
 
 limited scale in proportion to the scale of their houses, 
 in return for the protection extended to them by the 
 State, its laws and regulations, for the preservation of 
 the rights of person and property. 
 
 This latter contribution might, perhaps, have been 
 more equally levied by a uniform Capitation Tax. But 
 a Poll Tax being almost universally objected to, must 
 be regarded as impracticable ; and a consequence of 
 this, namely, that Lodgers escape the contribution, 
 must be regarded as inevitable. But this seems to be 
 of little consequence : at any rate, it is a matter of 
 detail only, involving no principle. Of the few who 
 will thus escape, the chief part will be of the poorest ; 
 though some will be of the richest, but the injury to 
 any, through this exemption, will be so small as to be 
 scarcely appreciable ; and if the just and constitu- 
 tional privilege proposed to be attached to the position 
 of the householder, be adopted, it may, with many, 
 operate as a laudable and beneficial inducement to 
 greater industry and prudence, and thus compensate 
 largely for the actual or supposed injury from the 
 exemption. 
 
 With regard to the principle, put forward by some 
 Writers as the basis of any plan of taxation, that a 
 man should pay to the State in proportion to the bene- 
 fit which he derives from it ; this seems to be one of 
 those Utilitarian theories which it must be impossible 
 ever to carry out in practice. If the benefit be the 
 protection of life and property, as usually stated, these 
 services seem to admit of no precise and uniform mea- 
 sure of valuation. To say that the service rendered in 
 the protection of property varies with the value of the 
 property, is manifestly an unfounded assumption. It 
 seems to be, and certainly ought to be, more nearly 
 true to say that the State yields precisely the same 
 protection to every man in it ; and if so, it would seem 
 
 3 H 2 
 
836 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 to follow that the State should require an equal sacri- 
 fice from every man in it. Such equality, we say, is 
 obtained, not by a contribution of the same sum, but 
 of the same share of his 'realised property from every 
 tax-payer. 
 
 It is manifestly one of the many absurd inconsisten- 
 cies of the Income Tax, that it discourages the accu- 
 mulation of capital, or savings, by taxing the income 
 twice over. Thus, if a person having an income of 
 1000 a year, save 500, and spend 500, he pays the 
 tax on the 1000, and the 500 saved he invests, 
 minus the tax. But he pays the income tax again on 
 the amount invested. The produce is thus doubly re- 
 duced ; in the first place by a reduction of the capital, 
 and in the second place by a tax upon the returns. If 
 there had been no income tax, he would not only have 
 escaped the income tax on the new revenue, but the 
 new revenue would have been greater by the amount 
 deducted for the tax, and, therefore, it is said, he has 
 been taxed twice for the same thing. Thus, every 
 person who saves out of his income, and invests his 
 saving, and pays income tax on the returns, pays the 
 tax twice on his saving. He cannot both spend the 
 income and save it ; but he is taxed as if he did both ; 
 he is taxed on it, in the first instance, as if he had 
 spent it, and he is taxed again on the produce which 
 he does spend. He is taxed as if he used it for both 
 purposes, but he can use it only for one, though he 
 may use it for either. 
 
 This is a glaring injustice, and an egregious absur- 
 dity ; and it must be opposed to public policy too, 
 because the portion which is taxed twice is just the 
 portion employed as public policy would encourage its 
 employment. It is liable to the same objection, in 
 some degree, as that which applies to a graduated 
 property tax, the great injustice of which is that, by 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 837 
 
 sparing the prodigal, and taxing the saving, it is a 
 punishment for economy, and a reward for extrava- 
 gance. So is the present income tax ; since, whoever 
 saves part of his income, pays on that part double the 
 tax he would have paid if he had spent it. 
 
 Mr. J. S. Mill concurs in this view, and such is the 
 substance of his evidence on this point before Mr. 
 Hubbard's Committee on the Income Tax. [No. 3578 
 to 3581.] 
 
 But this is only one of the many ways of stating 
 the objections to an Income Tax, and it is obvious that 
 this injustice is one of the many evils incident to an 
 Income Tax, which it is impossible to remove, without 
 letting in other and, perhaps, greater evils. 
 
 Mr. J. S. Mill thinks that an Income Tax, in its 
 practical incidence, ought to fall only on expenditure. 
 [No. 3584.] 
 
 But he goes farther, and says : " I think that every 
 tax, in so far as it is levied upon anything but expendi- 
 ture, does sin against first principles. 
 
 This seems to bring all our existing taxes into a 
 sinful state, nor is it easy to see what tax could be im- 
 posed which would not sin against first principles, 
 whatever those principles may be. 
 
 But, great as this authority is considered, yet, un- 
 til Mr. Mill show us how to levy an Income Tax, or 
 any other tax, without committing this sin, we must 
 continue to regard his suggestion as a Laputan, or 
 Utopian, idea. 
 
 Bad as the Income Tax is, it is not easy, if possible, 
 materially to amend it. This the would-be reformers 
 of the Income Tax have already experienced. But, 
 still, Mr. Mill's illustration of injustice and absurdity, 
 in the case before given, is not quite so unjust or 
 absurd as he would make it appear to be. It is both 
 unjust and absurd, but not so much so on his ground 
 
838 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 of ' twice taxed' as on the ground that, as income it 
 ought never to have been taxed at all. If an Income 
 Tax is to be maintained, and, we say, it never ought 
 to be, it must be admitted that, income must be 
 taxed : and if a portion of that income be saved, and 
 thereby be converted into capital producing income, 
 by the same reasoning that income must be taxed also. 
 Such a tax may properly be called an Income and Pro- 
 perty Tax ; but, whatever called, still Income must be 
 taxed, and that is just what is taxed. That portion 
 which is said to be taxed twice over, is not taxed twice 
 over as ' the same thing ; ' for, before the second tax is 
 levied, that which was income, has become capital, 
 distinguished from income ; and the second tax, is 
 taken upon the produce, which then is income. This 
 is an injustice and absurdity, and it is also impolitic, 
 but it is not inconsistent. It would be inconsistent if 
 it were as Mr. Mill, and others, would have it. But 
 how to make it work as they would have it, they do 
 not tell. 
 
 Now, in the scheme of taxation here presented 
 this difficulty is avoided. It is said, and though 
 it has been often answered, many will go on saying 
 the same thing, that a greater difficulty and a much 
 stronger objection here arises, in the large number 
 of persons of ample means who will avoid all tax- 
 ation. But we maintain that, it is much less inju- 
 rious to the State that they should escape all taxation, 
 than that others should be unjustly and injuriously 
 taxed ; and we admit that we do not know how to tax 
 them without committing greater injustice and injury 
 to the State and to individuals. We maintain that the 
 injustice and injury, if any, can be only on the supposi- 
 tion that, the escape from taxation of those who do 
 escape, will impose a heavier taxation on those who 
 pay ; but we say that, this will be so small in amount 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 839 
 
 as to be inappreciable ; and that by imposing a tax on 
 those who ought not to be taxed; or, who cannot be 
 taved consistently with the principles here laid down, 
 much greater loss and injury will thereby be inflicted 
 on the State, and on all the individuals in it. 
 
 This position we have endeavored to establish, and, 
 we think, we have established, in these pages. 
 
 It has been urged as a great objection to this scheme, 
 that it imposes upon Land too large a portion of the 
 State burden, considering the heavy local burdens 
 already supported by land. 
 
 This objection, though often answered in these 
 pages, will, probably, continue to be urged by many 
 land-owners. But what if the charge be true ? 
 
 As Turgot saw, in his time, and said : " The earth 
 was ever the first and the only source of all riches : it 
 is that which has afforded the first fund for advances, 
 anterior to all cultivation." 
 
 Again : " The person who invests his money in land 
 let to a solvent tenant, procures himself a revenue 
 which gives him very little trouble in receiving, and 
 which he may dispose of in the most agreeable man- 
 ner, by indulging all his inclinations. There is a 
 greater advantage in the purchase of this species of 
 property, than of any other, since the possession of it 
 is more guarded against accidents. We must, there- 
 fore, purchase a revenue in land at a higher price, 
 and must content ourselves with a less revenue for an 
 equal capital/' 
 
 Again : ' f He who lends his money on interest, en- 
 joys it still more peaceably and freely than the posses- 
 sor of land, but the insolvency of his debtor may 
 endanger the loss of his capital. He will not, there- 
 fore, content himself with an interest equal to the 
 revenue of the land which he could buy with an equal 
 capital. The interest of money lent, must consequently 
 
840 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 be larger than the revenue of an estate purchased with 
 the same capital ; for if the proprietor could find an 
 estate to purchase of an equal income, he would prefer 
 that." 
 
 Again : " By a like reason, money employed in agri- 
 culture, in manufactures, or in commerce, ought to pro- 
 duce a more considerable profit than the revenue of the 
 same capital employed in the purchase of lands, or the 
 interest of money on loan : for these undertakings, 
 besides the capital advanced, require much care and 
 labor, and if they were not more lucrative, it would be 
 much better to secure an equal revenue, which might 
 be enjoyed without labor. It is necessary then, that 
 besides the interest of the capital, the undertaker 
 should draw every year a profit to recompense him for 
 his care, his labor, his talents, the risk he runs, and to 
 replace the wear and tear of that portion of his capital 
 which he is obliged to invest in effects capable of re- 
 ceiving injury, and exposed to all kinds of accidents." 
 
 Again : " The different uses of the capitals pro- 
 duce very unequal profits ; but this inequality does not 
 prevent them from having a reciprocal influence on 
 each other, nor from establishing a species of equili- 
 brium among themselves, like that between two liquors 
 of unequal gravity, and which communicate with each 
 other by means of a reversed siphon, the two branches 
 of which they fill ; there can be no height to which the 
 one can rise or fall, but the liquor in the other branch 
 will be affected in the same manner." 
 
 Again : " Real estates are equivalent to any capital 
 equal to their annual revenue, multiplied by the cur- 
 rent rate at which lands are sold. Thus, if we add the 
 revenue of all lands, viz. the clear revenue they render 
 to the proprietor, and to all those that share in the 
 property, as the lord that levies a rent, the curate that 
 levies the tythe, the sovereign that levies the tax ; if 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 841 
 
 we should add all these sums, and multiply them by 
 the rate at which lands are sold, we should have the 
 sum of all the wealth of a nation in real estates. To 
 have the whole of a nation's wealth, the moveable 
 riches ought to be joined, which consist in the sum of 
 capitals converted into enterprises of culture, industry, 
 and commerce, which is never lost ; as all advances, in 
 any kind of undertaking, must unceasingly return to 
 the undertaker, to be unceasingly converted into enter- 
 prises, which without that could not be continued. It 
 would be a gross mistake to confound the immense 
 mass of moveable riches with the mass of money that 
 exists in a State ; the latter is a small object in com- 
 parison with the other. To convince one's self of this, 
 we need only remember the immense quantity of beasts, 
 utensils, and seed, which constitute the advances of 
 agriculture ; the materials, tools, moveables, and mer- 
 chandises of every kind, that fill up the work-houses, 
 shops, and warehouses of all manufacturers, of all mer- 
 chants, and of all traders, and it will be plain, that in 
 the totality of riches either real or moveable of a 
 nation, the specie makes but an inconsiderable part: 
 but all riches and money being continually exchange- 
 able, they all represent money, and money represents 
 them all." 
 
 Again : " We must not include in the calculation 
 of the riches of a nation the sum of lent capitals ; for 
 the capitals could only be lent either to proprietors of 
 lands, or to undertakers to enhance their value in their 
 enterprises, since there are but these two kinds of 
 people that can answer for a capital, and discharge the 
 interest : a sum of money lent to people that have 
 neither estate nor industry, would be a dead capital, 
 and not an active one. If the owner of land of 
 400,000 borrow 100,000, his land is charged with a 
 rent that diminishes his revenue by that sum. If he 
 
842 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 should sell it ; out of the 400,000 he would receive, 
 100,000 are the property of the creditor. By these 
 means the capital of the lender would always form, in 
 the calculation of existing riches, a double estimate. 
 The land is always worth 400,000, when the pro- 
 prietor borrows 1 00,000 that does not make 500,000, 
 it only follows, that in the 400,000, one hundred 
 thousand belongs to the lender, and that there re- 
 mains no more than 300,000 to the borrower. 
 
 " The same double estimate would have place in the 
 calculation, if we should comprehend in the total calcu- 
 lation of capitals, the money lent to an undertaker to 
 be employed in advance for his undertaking; it only 
 results that that sum, and the part of the profits which 
 represents the interest, belong, to the lender. Let a 
 merchant employ 10,000 of his property in his trade, 
 and engross the whole profit, or let him have those 
 10,000 borrowed of another, to whom he pays the 
 interest, and is satisfied with the overplus of profit, 
 and the salary of his industry, it still makes only 
 10,000. 
 
 " But if we cannot include^ without making a double 
 estimate in the calculation of national riches, the capi- 
 tal of the money lent on interest, we ought to call in 
 the other kinds of moveables, which, though originally 
 forming an object of expense, and not carrying any 
 profit, become, however, by their durability, a true 
 capital, that constantly increases ; and which, as it may 
 occasionally be exchanged for money, is as if it were a 
 stock in store, which may enter into commerce and 
 make good, when necessary, the loss of other capitals. 
 Such are the moveables of every kind; jewels, plate, 
 paintings, statues, ready money shut up in chests by 
 misers ; all those matters have a value, and the sum of 
 all these values may make a considerable object among 
 wealthy nations. Yet, be it considerable or not, it 
 
CONCLUDING OBSEKVATIONS. 843 
 
 must always be added to the price of real estates, and 
 to that of circulating advances in enterprises of every 
 denomination, in order to form the total sum of the 
 riches of a nation. As for the rest, it is superfluous to 
 say, though it is easy to be denned, as we have just 
 done, in what consists the totality of the riches of a 
 nation ; it is probably impossible to discover to how 
 much they amount, unless some rule be found out to 
 fix the proportion of the total commerce of a nation, 
 with the revenue of its land) a feasible thing, but 
 which has not been executed as yet in such a manner 
 as to dispel all doubts." 
 
 These extracts, translated from the French of Tur- 
 got, are not here introduced as containing anything 
 new, but as confirming, by the authority of that emi- 
 nent man, what many may consider new and unsup- 
 ported by any authority in these pages. It is sub- 
 mitted that these extracts fully support the main 
 principle of this Practical Scheme. 
 
 It is manifest that, if the interest of money lent be 
 taken on the revenue of lands, or on the profits of 
 enterprises of culture, industry and commerce, as here 
 shown, there can exist no revenue strictly disposable 
 in a State, but the clear produce of land. If this be 
 so, and it is impossible successfully to dispute it, it 
 must follow, as a necessary consequence, that the more 
 directly the clear produce of lands is taken by the 
 State, for the purposes of State revenue, the better it 
 must be for the Nation, and for all individuals com- 
 posing the nation, provided that what is so taken, be 
 taken in equal proportion from the same class. 
 
 It is here demonstrated that, what the other classes 
 of society receive is merely the salaries and profits 
 paid, either by the proprietor upon his revenue, or by 
 the agents of the productive class, on the part des- 
 
844 CONCLUDING OBSEEVATIONS. 
 
 tined to their wants, and which they are obliged to 
 purchase of the industrious class. Whether these 
 profits be now distributed in wages to the workmen, 
 in profits to undertakers, or in interest of advances, 
 they do not change the nature, or augment the sum of 
 the revenue produced by the productive class over and 
 above the price of their labor, in which the industrious 
 class does not participate, but as far as the price of 
 their labor extends. 
 
 Hence it follows that, there is no revenue but the 
 clear produce of land, and that all other profit is paid, 
 either by that revenue, or makes part of the expendi- 
 ture that serves to produce the revenue. 
 
 Such was the correct view of Turgot, and if there be 
 anything new in this, it is in the discovery of the 
 means of forming a Practical Scheme of Taxation in 
 perfect consistency with these sound conclusions. 
 
 In this view of the subject, it may also be seen, how 
 very futile, if not delusive, are all attempts to sum up 
 the property of a nation and if made, with tolerable 
 accuracy, by any imaginable means, how very transient 
 must be the approach to accuracy, and how very use- 
 less, even if attained. 
 
 Nothing can be more absurd than all the attempts 
 of this kind which have yet been made, the only value 
 being to show the utter worthlessness of the opinions 
 of all those who have made such pretensions, on every 
 thing in relation to the subject. 
 
 This view alone seems to be a complete answer to 
 the objection that the proposed Scheme imposes upon 
 Land a larger portion than it ought to bear of the 
 State burden. 
 
 But it will, probably, be urged by many as an ob- 
 jection to this Scheme, that it too much favors Land 
 and Houses. 
 
 Others will say, as many do say, under cover of a 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 845 
 
 more vague and sweeping objection, that this Scheme 
 proceeds on no principle, but that of confiscating wealth. 
 
 It will be very easy to maintain all or any of these 
 objections with specious argument. 
 
 But here the truth lies in a well deeper than such 
 short-sighted reasoners can see to the bottom of. 
 And yet it is not very deep. 
 
 It is quite true that by this Scheme, a larger tax 
 will be imposed on Land and Houses than is now im- 
 posed. But there will be a greater compensation then, 
 than there is now ; and the real question is, what 
 will be the balance ? 
 
 This has been already answered, by showing the 
 great relief from other taxes ; and the inevitable ten- 
 dency of the whole measure to raise the rents, and 
 consequently to uplift the market price of Land and 
 Houses. 
 
 It is not necessary here to go over again all the 
 grounds which lead to these conclusions. 
 
 There is, perhaps, something more, if more can be 
 set against nothing, in the objection, that Land 
 and Houses will be too much favored. 
 
 It is quite true that, by this Scheme, Schedule B. 
 will be abolished, and that the Tenant-Farmer will no 
 longer be taxed directly for his Farm. 
 
 Why should he be taxed ? 
 
 The Farm does not belong to him, as his property. 
 He only rents it. The Owner has paid the tax for it. 
 
 Why should the same thing be taxed twice ? 
 
 But, why not tax yearly crops ? 
 
 The answer has been already given : to tax yearly 
 crops would be to tax the profits of trade not realised, 
 and the wages of labor. 
 
 But, why not tax food in store ? 
 
 The answer has been already given : a tax between 
 the food in store, and the hunger that craves it, is bad. 
 
846 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 But, why not tax farm-stock ? 
 
 The answer has been already given. It has cost 
 money and labor, and has yet produced no profit. 
 
 It is bad enough that capital and labor should be 
 taxed after it has brought a man money. It would be 
 far worse if it should be taxed before it should be re- 
 munerative. 
 
 But, why tax land, which is property, and not tax 
 agricultural implements, which are property ? 
 
 The answer has been already given : the income 
 from the land is not from the owner's own labor : that 
 from tools wielded by a man's own hands is so. 
 
 Why not tax housergear ? 
 
 The answer has been already given : a tax between 
 the hand and its utensil, is bad. 
 
 Why not tax unsold goods made or bought for sale ? 
 
 The answer has been already given : a tax on what 
 is only a loss, as long as it is unsold, is bad. 
 
 And so forth, as already given, under the head : 
 " Why not tax Ships ? " 
 
 But would the Tenant^Farmer get off scot free ? No. 
 
 He would escape all the worry and vexation of 
 making his return under Schedule B., but he would 
 pay his occupation tax in increased rent, and his land- 
 lord would pay the whole tax direct in one sum. 
 Thus the Landlord would be a gainer in the risk of loss 
 saved ; and the Tenant-Farmer would be a gainer, in 
 all the trouble saved ; and the State would be a gainer, 
 in the expense of collection saved. 
 
 Another gain would be in the removal of the absurd 
 distinction in Schedule B. between 2^d. in England, 
 and IfcL in Scotland and Ireland. 
 
 This seems to be a true statement, as far as it goes, 
 of the case as it would be, between the Landlord and 
 the Tenant -Farmer. 
 
 But the gain to the Public from this arrangement, as 
 
CONCLUDING OBSEKVATIONS. 847 
 
 a material part of the whole scheme, would be incal- 
 culably great, if the views presented in these pages be 
 not altogether unfounded. 
 
 The other objection ; namely, that this Scheme 
 proceeds on no principle but that of confiscating 
 wealth ; has been already answered, and seems to be 
 undeserving of any further notice, 
 
 There will, no doubt, be many other objections 
 which have not been here anticipated and answered. 
 
 But these, it is expected, will be more in matters of 
 detail, than of principle ; and it is not pretended that, 
 in some details modifications may not be improve- 
 ments, particularly in the valuations, assessments, and 
 such like details. For instance, Fines, representing 
 the accumulated Rent of property ; perhaps, these 
 should not be taxed where the annual value of the pro- 
 ceeds of that land has been already taxed. But clearly, 
 the fewer the cases of exception to the general prin- 
 ciple the better ; and the fewer the exemptions from 
 the tax the better. 
 
 In the Income Tax, the questions of exception for 
 exemption have been very numerous, and have occa- 
 sioned great diversity of opinion ; but experience has 
 proved the expediency of reducing these to the lowest 
 limit, and thereby reducing them to the smallest num- 
 ber. Many think that the most effectual, and there- 
 fore the most expedient way would be to allow no 
 exemptions. The principle of regulating the tax by 
 an equal per-centage, seems to remove occasion for 
 any exemption, where the amount of the tax would be 
 more than the cost of collecting it. This principle has 
 been kept in view in the present Scheme. 
 
 The Valuation of all the Land and Houses of the 
 Kingdom, some think would be a great difficulty. 
 But this would be no difficulty at all ; or, if any, would 
 be easily surmounted, and at an expense very triflng 
 
848 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 in comparison with the magnitude and importance of 
 the object. 
 
 A complete Survey and Valuation of the Land and 
 Houses in England and Wales was made many years 
 ago for the purpose of the Tithe Commutation. The 
 Ordnance Survey, on a large scale, has since been 
 completed ; and a Government Survey, on a still 
 larger scale, is far advanced. 
 
 The Survey of Scotland and Ireland is completed on 
 a much larger scale, so large, indeed, as to show 
 almost every House, the boundaries of every Estate, 
 and even the divisions of the fields, and enclosures. 
 
 This part of the work is, in fact, nearly done. The 
 valuations, of course, must be ever changing. But 
 when the whole work is completed, as far as it ever 
 can be completed, what a valuable State Record will 
 such a Survey and Valuation be ! 
 
 How easily, from time to time, revised and corrected ! 
 
 And, what a standard this would be for levying all 
 the State and Local Taxes at once, under the same 
 Assessment, but, of course, at different rates ! What 
 a saving of expense in collection ! And, under pro- 
 per management, what a saving of loss from frauds ! 
 
 So much for the objection as regards the Survey or 
 Valuation. 
 
 It is pleasant to hear such an objection as this, be- 
 cause it is a sign that we are very near the end of all 
 objections. 
 
 With regard to Assessment, that will require special 
 and careful arrangement. Every one, who is familiar 
 with Parish government and taxation, knows that true 
 and fair assessment requires that intimate local know- 
 ledge which only those on the spot can have. It may 
 sound systematic to propose the enforcement of new 
 valuations, to be made by Surveyors and Assessors 
 appointed by foreign bodies with high sounding titles, 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 849 
 
 such as Lords of the Treasury,, Commissioners, etc. But, 
 practically, no amount of ability, or skill, or authority, 
 can compensate for the want of intimate local know- 
 ledge. 
 
 What are wanted for this National Valuation are, 
 local knowledge, ability, skill, and integrity, with 
 independent authority for the removal of existing 
 obstructions to responsible action. 
 
 These objects may,perhaps,be best attained by the ap- 
 pointment by Government of a London Board of Commis- 
 sioners, consisting of honorable, independent, and able 
 men, with liberal salaries. Also a Country Board of Com- 
 missioners, appointed by Government, but to be selected 
 from the Land Proprietors of each County, or District, 
 with liberal Salaries, to be paid by the Government. 
 
 The Government Surveyors to be chosen by the Lon- 
 don Board of Commissioners ; and the like number of 
 County or District Surveyors to be chosen by the Coun- 
 try Board of Commissioners ; all to be liberally paid 
 by the Government. 
 
 The Assessors to be selected from the County, or 
 District, by the Country Commissioners, subject to the 
 approval of the London Commissioners; and to be 
 liberally paid by the Government. 
 
 The London Assessments to be approved of and 
 signed by the London Commissioners. 
 
 The Country Assessments to be approved of and 
 signed by the Country Commissioners. 
 
 The Appeal from the London or Country Assess- 
 ment to be to the Lords of the Treasury, or to a Jury, 
 at the option of the party appealing ; and the decision, 
 or verdict, to be final. 
 
 These are merely suggestions, on matters of mere 
 detail. But these are details of great importance for 
 the safe and satisfactory working of the whole Scheme. 
 It is of the utmost importance that justice should be 
 
 3 i 
 
850 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 observed, and that the most simple and effectual 
 means should be adopted for that end. 
 
 The whole responsibility,, and all the expenses should 
 be borne by the Government, and, therefore, the Col- 
 lectors, or Tax-gatherers, should be appointed solely 
 by the Government, and their receipts should be final 
 discharges for the amounts stated to be received. 
 
 It seems desirable to give the option of a final 
 appeal to a Jury, for the satisfaction of the Country ; 
 and the Costs of such appeal should, of course, fall 
 upon the losing party, that is, either the Government, 
 or the party appealing. 
 
 The expense of the whole of such machinery, for 
 carrying out such a Scheme, would be very trifling, in 
 comparison with the object. 
 
 After the valuations had been once established, the 
 expense of revising the valuations every five or seven 
 years, or other period fixed upon, would be much less. 
 
 These further remarks on details are given merely 
 as explanatory of the object in view, and to show that 
 there is no real difficulty in this part of the question. 
 
 Other details have, perhaps, been already sufficiently 
 given for the present purpose, which is, to show the 
 outline of a Practical Scheme of Taxation based on 
 sound principles. 
 
 That much is left open to objection and improve- 
 ment, in minor matters of detail, is very probable ; but, 
 in any attempts at improvement in such matters, great 
 care should be taken not to infringe in the slightest 
 degree, upon any principle ; for, in preserving intact 
 every principle here laid down, the safe-working of the 
 whole Scheme undoubtedly depends. 
 
 But ; after all, that many objections will be made by pre- 
 judiced and unreasoning men is to be expected. This 
 appeal is not made to them. They must be passed by. 
 
 The power of making objections may be abused 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 851 
 
 with so much ease, that it always will be abused. 
 There never was, and never will be, any plan executed, 
 or proposed, against which strong, and even unanswer- 
 able objections, may not be urged; so that unless the 
 opposite objections be set in the balance on the other 
 side, we can never advance a step. 
 
 " There are objections," said Dr. Johnson, " against 
 a plenum, and objections against a vacuum, but one of 
 them must be true." No course of conduct is alto- 
 gether free from errors, no legislative scheme is alto- 
 gether free from defects. 
 
 A critic, therefore, who dwells exclusively on the 
 defective points, who does not attempt an impartial in- 
 vestigation of both sides of a question, who does not 
 endeavor to compare the advantages with the disad- 
 vantages, and to strike the balance between them, can 
 never be at a loss for finding the means of censure and 
 condemnation. Moreover, a legislative scheme may 
 always be reduced to absurdity by supposing extreme 
 cases, and by assuming that every provision will be ex- 
 ecuted with mechanical inflexibility, and without re- 
 gard to ulterior consequences ; suppositions wholly at 
 variance with the truth, and inconsistent with the 
 spirit in which laws are really carried into effect, but 
 which, nevertheless, serve as the 'substratum of a 
 large part of the objections made to measures of 
 legislation, while they are under discussion. 
 
 The fallacy consists in showing that there are objec- 
 tions against some plan, theory, or system, and thence 
 inferring that it should be rejected ; when that which 
 ought to be proved is, that there are more or stronger 
 objections against the receiving than the rejecting it. 
 
 This is the remark of Archbishop Whately, who has 
 included the Fallacy of Objections in his enumeration 
 of sophistical modes of reasoning. He illustrates this 
 sort of sophistry in an amusing way, by one of Dr. 
 
 3 i 2 
 
852 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Johnson's paradoxes, more popular in his time than 
 now, but far from being now exploded ; that a given 
 amount of ability may be turned in any direction, 
 f even as a man may walk in this way or that/ And 
 so he can ; because walking is the action for which 
 the legs are fitted ; but though he may use his eyes for 
 looking at this object or that, he cannot hear with his 
 eyes, or see with his ears. And the eyes and ears are 
 not more different than, for instance, the poetical 
 faculty, and the mathematical, as in Milton and 
 Newton. ' Oh, but if Milton had turned his mind to 
 mathematics, he might have been the great mathe- 
 matician, and Newton the great poet/ This is open 
 to the proverbial reply : ' If my aunt had been a man, 
 she would have been my uncle/ For the supposition 
 implied in these ifs is, that Milton and Newton should 
 have been quite different characters from what they were. 
 
 One course generally adopted by a caviller, with 
 respect to any proposal that is brought forward, is, if 
 it be made in general terms, to call for detailed par- 
 ticulars, and to say, ' explain distinctly what kind of 
 regulations you wish for, and what are the charges you 
 think needful, and who are the persons to whom you 
 would entrust the management of the matter/ etc. 
 
 If, again, any of these details be given, it will be 
 easy to find some plausible objection to one or more of 
 these, and to join issue on that point, as involving the 
 whole question. Sancho Panza's Baratarian Physician 
 did not at once lay down the decision that his patient 
 was to have no dinner at all ; but only objected to each 
 separate dish to which he was disposed to help himself. 
 
 But, in proposing any scheme, the best way is, to 
 guard, in the first instance, against cavils on details, 
 and establish, first, that some thing of such and such a 
 character is desirable ; then proceeding to settle each 
 of the particular points of detail, one by one ; thus, as 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 853 
 
 it were, to cut a measure into mouthfuls, that it may 
 be more readily swallowed ; dividing the whole measure 
 into a series of resolutions ; each of which will, perhaps, 
 pass by a large majority, though the whole at once,, if 
 proposed at once as a whole, might have been rejected. 
 For, supposing it to consist of four clauses, A, B, C, 
 and D ; if out of an assembly of one hundred persons, 
 twenty are opposed to clause A, and eighty in favour of 
 it, and the like with B, and with C, and D, then, if the 
 whole were put to the vote at once, there would be a 
 majority of eighty to twenty against it ; whereas, if di- 
 vided, there would be that majority in favor of it. 
 
 It is fairly to be required, however, that a man should 
 really have though he may not think it wise to pro- 
 duce it in the first instance some definite plan for 
 carrying into effect whatever he proposes. Else, he 
 may be one of another class of persons as difficult to 
 negociate with, and as likely to baffle any measure, as 
 the preceding. There are some, and not a few, who 
 cast scorn on any sober practical scheme by drawing 
 bright pictures of a Utopia which can never be realised, 
 either from their having more of imagination than judg- 
 ment, or from a deliberate design to put one out of con- 
 ceit with everything that is practicable, in order that 
 nothing may be done. E. g. ' What is wanted, is, not 
 this and that improvement in the mode of electing mem- 
 bers of parliament, but a Parliament consisting of truly 
 honest, enlightened, and patriotic men. It is vain to 
 talk of any system of Church-government, or of im- 
 proved Church-discipline, or any alteration in our ser- 
 vices, or revision of the Bible translation ; what we 
 want is, a zealous and truly evangelical ministry, who 
 shall assiduously inculcate on all the people pure Gospel 
 doctrine. It is vain to cast cannon, and to raise troops ; 
 what is wanted for the successful conduct of the war 
 is, an army of well- equipped, and well-disciplined men,, 
 
854 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 under the command of generals who are thoroughly 
 masters of the art of war,' etc. 
 
 It is vain to propose any Practical Scheme of Taxa- 
 tion ; what is wanted is, an honest Government which 
 shall bring forward some well-considered scheme, which 
 shall be approved of by all classes of the People. 
 
 Thus, one may, in every department of life, go on in- 
 definitely making fine speeches that can lead 'to no 
 practical result, except to create a disgust for every 
 thing that is practical. 
 
 When (in 1832) public attention was called to the 
 enormous mischiefs arising from the system of Trans- 
 portation, we were told in reply, in a style of florid and 
 indignant declamation, that the real cause of all the 
 enormities complained of, was, a want of sufficient fear 
 of God;(!) and that the only remedy wanted was, an 
 increased fear of God. (!) As if, when the unhealthi- 
 ness of some locality had been pointed out, and a sug- 
 gestion had been thrown out for providing sewers, and 
 draining marshes, it had been replied that the root of 
 the evil was, a prevailing want of health; that it was 
 strange, this the true cause should have been over- 
 looked ; and that the remedy of all would be to provide 
 restored health ! 
 
 As for the penal colonies, all that is required to make 
 them efficient, is, we must suppose, to bring in a Bill 
 enacting that ' Whereas, etc., be it therefore enacted, 
 that from and after the first day of January next en- 
 suing, all persons shall fear God. (!)' 
 
 It is such Utopian declaimers that give plausibility 
 to the objections of the cavillers above noticed. 
 
 It is but fair, after one has admitted (supposing it is 
 what ought to be admitted) the desirableness of the 
 end proposed, to call on the other party to say whether 
 he knows, or can think of, any means by which that 
 end can be attained. 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 855 
 
 Some of tlie latter remarks are abridged from Arch- 
 bishop Whately's Annotations 011 Bacon's Essays. 
 
 There are abuses known by all the world, against 
 which every voice is raised, and yet these have secret 
 supporters who know how to defend them, in a manner 
 to tire out well-meaning people. 
 
 There are false characters, perverse hearts, that seem 
 to regard errors and abuses as. their patrimony. But it 
 must be admitted that evil is generally perpetrated in 
 a less wicked manner when it is done without the inter- 
 vention of any strong passion ; by vulgar, yet all-power- 
 ful routine, and ignorance. 
 
 The ' same thought, though clothed in calm and 
 cleverly circumspect language, was expressed by Bailly, 
 in describing the Hotel Dieu at Paris. 
 
 " The Hotel Dieu has existed, perhaps, since the 
 seventh century, and if this Hospital is the most im- 
 perfect of all, it is because it is the oldest. From the 
 earliest date of this establishment, good has been sought, 
 the desire has been to adhere to it, and constancy has 
 appeared a duty. From this cause, all useful novelties 
 have with difficulty found admission; any reform is 
 difficult; there is a numerous administration to con- 
 vince ; there is an immense mass to move." 
 
 He who sows a thought in a field rank with prejudices, 
 with private interests, and with routine, must never ex- 
 pect an early harvest. But in this world the tares and 
 the wheat grow together, and all we have to do is, to 
 sow the wheat. 
 
 The author of a discovery beneficial to mankind has 
 always to contend against those whose interests may be 
 injured, or are supposed to be injured, the obstinate 
 partisans of everything old, and finally, the envious : And 
 these three parties united form the great majority of the 
 Public. Furthermore, we know that, men may devote 
 themselves to deep studies, possess knowledge and 
 
856 CONCLUDING OBSEEVATIONS. 
 
 probity, exercise to an eminent degree oratorical 
 powers that move the feelings, and influence political 
 assemblies, and yet sometimes be deficient in plain 
 common sense. 
 
 But, after all, facts must prevail in the long run ; and 
 what astronomical records or meteorological registers 
 are to a rational explanation of the movements of the 
 planets, or of the atmosphere, statistical returns are to 
 social and political philosophy. Unfortunately for man- 
 kind, facts are not sufficiently regarded. Men, in gene- 
 ral, do not adopt that celebrated maxim of Lord Bacon 
 for their guide : 
 
 " To write, speak, meditate, or act, when we are not 
 sufficiently provided with facts to stake out our thoughts, 
 is like navigating without a pilot along a coast strewed 
 with dangers, or rushing out on the immense ocean 
 without a compass, or rudder." 
 
 No eloquent declamation is capable of resisting such 
 a process of reasoning, or withstanding the force of 
 such conclusions, as are to be drawn from facts and 
 figures. As the eminent Astronomer, Arago, said : 
 te The Mathematics have been, in all ages, the im- 
 placable adversaries of scientific romances." 
 
 Even probabilities are to be calculated by figures. An 
 event is 'probable' when its probability, numerically 
 estimated, exceeds improbable when it falls short of 
 that fraction. As probability is the numerical measure 
 of our expectation that an event will happen, so it is 
 also that of our belief that one has happened, or that 
 any proposed proposition is true. Expectation is merely 
 a belief in the future, and differs in no way, so far as 
 the measure of its degree is concerned, from that in 
 the past. 
 
 La Place described the theory of Probabilities as 
 " good sense reduced to a system of calculation." 
 
 To render the consequences of our actions certain 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 857 
 
 and calculable, as far as the conditions of humanity will 
 allow, and narrow the domain of chance as well in 
 practice as in knowledge, is so thoroughly involved in 
 the very conception of law and order as to make it 
 a primary object in every attempt at the improvement 
 of social arrangements. Extensive and unexpected 
 fluctuation of every description, as it is opposed to 
 the principle of divided and independent risks, so it 
 also, by consequence, stands opposed to the most im- 
 mediate objects of social institutions, and forms the 
 element in which the violent and rapacious find their 
 opportunities. 
 
 Nothing, therefore, can be more contrary to sound 
 legislative principle, than to throw direct obstacles in 
 the way of provident proceedings on the part of indi- 
 viduals (as, for instance, by the taxation of Insurances), ; 
 or to encourage a spirit of general and reckless specu- ; 
 lation, by riding unreservedly over established laws of \ 
 property, for the avowed purpose of affording a clear 
 area for the development of such a spirit on a scale of 
 vast and simultaneous action. 
 
 So, also, nothing can be more contrary to sound 
 legislative principle than to throw direct obstacles in 
 the way of provident proceedings on the part of the 
 largest portion of the community, with a view to benefit 
 the position of the smallest portion. 
 
 The working classes must always be by far the 
 largest portion of every community. They are the 
 principal purchasers of those domestic and foreign com- 
 modities which enter most largely into the general con- 
 sumption. By far the greater part of the agricultural 
 produce of the country is raised for them ; they are the 
 chief buyers and consumers of tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, 
 beer, and spirits, and other articles of necessary or ordi- 
 nary consumption ; and they are the best customers of 
 the manufacturers and producers themselves. 
 
858 CONCLUDING OBSEEVATIONS. 
 
 To say that it is injudicious in a Government to throw 
 any unnecessary obstacle in the way of the principal 
 consumers of these necessary articles must seem, to 
 most persons, to be only a truism : and yet this is what 
 all Governments are doing ! 
 
 Take, for instance, the Sugar Duties. 
 
 What term of indignation is too strong to be applied 
 to a Government, which permits the existing state of 
 our Sugar Duties ? 
 
 Can anything be more impolitic than our present 
 system of differential duties on that necessary, and even 
 essential article, Sugar ? 
 
 Could any person, of ordinary understanding, sup- 
 pose it possible that any civilised Government could 
 so impose its duties on this necessary article for human 
 comfort, and even life, so abundantly produced by 
 Nature in a tropical climate, and so easily made service- 
 able for human use, as not only to prevent consump- 
 tion by a very large portion of its own people, but 
 actually to prevent the best Article from coming into 
 the country at all. 
 
 The consequence of all this is, that the pure article, 
 as expressed from the cane, which, evaporated under a 
 tropical sun, becomes a perfectly white and pure Sugar, 
 is absolutely unknown to the consumer in this country, 
 and an inferior article, manufactured at a heavy addi- 
 tional cost, is forced upon him in order to confer a 
 doubtful benefit on a small body of Refiners in this 
 country, and on those growers who employing less 
 capital, energy, and enterprise, make bad Sugar. 
 
 Thus, for the comparatively trifling gain to a few 
 monopolist-sugar-refining-firins, thirty millions of 
 people in this country have imposed upon them an in- 
 ferior, adulterated, and positively unwholesome, article, 
 at a much higher price than that for which they might 
 have the pure, genuine, and highly nutritious, article, 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 859 
 
 which Nature so abundantly supplies, and evidently 
 intended for the benefit of all. 
 
 The differential duties on Sugar, imported into this 
 country, are so imposed, on the ad valorem principle, 
 that the producers are compelled, for their own in- 
 terests, to lower the quality of the sugar in its manu- 
 facture, and it is a fact well known in the trade that, 
 the manufacturers, when they find that, by accident 
 they have made it too good for our market, mix with 
 it sugar refuse, and even sand and dirt, in order that it 
 may arrive in this country in a sufficiently impure state 
 to pass under the lower scale of ad valorem duty, and 
 to be fit for purification by the the filthy process of our 
 sixty or seventy great sugar-refining firms. 
 
 But this is not all. 
 
 In order that the raw Sugar may arrive in this coun- 
 try in a sufficiently impure state to evade one or two 
 duties, and to come in under the lower duties, the 
 adulterate'd article is shipped in such an impure state 
 that, according to the estimate in the trade, about 12 
 per cent, escapes from the cask, and this is so offen- 
 sive that, it is thrown over-board, for the sake of the 
 health of the crew. 
 
 This loss, of course, is made up by an additional 
 charge to the consumer. 
 
 All this miserable evasion, which, in plain terms, is 
 wholesale cheating, of the worst description, by the 
 Government, in connivance with the partly ignorant, 
 partly negligent, legislature, is, as before said, for 
 bringing the impure article within the lower scale of 
 ad valorem duty, and for adding some thousands a year 
 to the PublioRevenue ! 
 
 These Statesmen, or Legislators, do not see how 
 much more they lose in thus imposing upon the 
 People. 
 
 It is impossible to suppose that they see this, for 
 
860 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 that would be to suppose them indifferent to the con- 
 sequences, which nobody does suppose. 
 
 Nor does anybody suppose that they persist in the 
 present scale of duties for the sake of helping the 
 great sugar-refining firms to make their large fortunes; 
 and nobody blames these wealthy monopolists for 
 availing themselves of the Law to make their large 
 fortunes. The Government cares nothing for them. 
 The Government is thinking only of the revenue from 
 the Sugar Duties. They do not see that, if they must 
 have a duty on this necessary of life, they would get 
 much more, by a lower and fixed duty, than they could 
 ever get by any scale of differential duties which 
 human ingenuity could devise. 
 
 Who is the Chancellor of the Exchequer who will 
 venture to dispute this assertion by a plain and simple 
 denial ? 
 
 If any Chancellor of the Exchequer will venture to 
 stake the whole question on this issue, judgment will 
 soon be pronounced against him, by the People. 
 
 When the People understand the question, they will 
 not submit to any duty on Sugar. 
 
 A low fixed duty might now deceive them into sub- 
 mission, for some time to come. But it will be better 
 for them, in the end, if even this small concession to 
 common sense be withheld a little longer. Some years 
 hence, and perhaps, not many, the Sugar Duties will 
 be referred to as a thing of the past, as a marvellous 
 instance of the ignorance of past Governments. It is 
 only a question of time. Nature must, in time, pre- 
 vail over the weak and sinister artifices of narrow- 
 minded men to restrain her marvellous bounty and 
 loving-kindness to all mankind. But, Parliament and 
 the People must be enlightened before that happy 
 time will come. 
 
 Then, Sugar, now unknown in this country for rich- 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 861 
 
 ness, sweetness, and fine flavor, will be sold here for 
 Jess than 2d. a pound, and so abundant will then be 
 the supply, that Farmers will then fatten their cattle 
 with better sugar than is now sold to the poor at a 
 high price ; and, moreover, Farmers will then manure 
 their land with sugar, nothing inferior to much now 
 brought to the English market for their consumption. 
 
 Many will laugh at this as a contemptible prophecy. 
 But it is no prophecy. The fulfilment is much too 
 plain for that, and many now living will live to 
 see it. 
 
 It requires no great foresight to see that, the inex- 
 haustible richness of the earth under a tropical sun, 
 was intended to fertilise and sweeten the comparatively 
 sterile and sour soils in less favored climes; and he 
 must have a bold imagination who can believe that 
 human selfishness and meanness will for ever thwart 
 and counteract the bountiful designs of abundant 
 Nature. 
 
 Who, now living, supposed twenty years ago, that 
 he should see ship-loads of pine-apples brought over 
 to this country, and sold in the streets of London, for 
 2d. and 3d. a-piece ? 
 
 Would it be more wonderful if the purest and 
 sweetest white sugar were sold in London at or under 
 2d. a pound ? 
 
 What is now known as lump sugar, would then be 
 unknown, or remembered only as a curiosity. 
 
 The expressed juice of the cane would then be im- 
 ported into this country, in its natural state, as per- 
 fectly pure white sugar. For this, all that would be 
 required would be, to expose the pure juice in shallow 
 pans to the process of evaporating the water by the 
 action of the tropical sun. 
 
 This would produce a whiter and more perfectly 
 crystalised sugar, than by any of the nasty and 
 
862 CONCLUDING OBSEEVATIONS. 
 
 artificial processes of the Sugar Refiners, and all the 
 loss and expense of their processes would be saved. 
 
 Those nasty products, known in the Trade by the 
 appropriate names of ' Pieces ' and ' Bastards/ now 
 sold as sugar in vast quantities, chiefly to the poorer 
 consumers, but quite unfit for consumption, would be 
 known and sold no more ; or, if known and sold, not as 
 sugar, but as manure. These are the remains to the 
 Refiner, after he has made his Lump Sugar ; and, by 
 the inexperienced, can be better distinguished by the 
 nose, than by the eye, the Pieces being the least and 
 the Bastards the most nasty; the former having lost 
 their virtue, and the latter having the smallest possible 
 quantity of goodness remaining. 
 
 It appears, from all the evidence given by the Trade, 
 that these corrupt remains are brought into existence 
 by the present scale of differential duties, and that, if 
 there were no duty at all, or, even if there were a 
 fixed low duty only, there would be no consumers of this 
 offal. There could be no Bastards, if there were no 
 Pieces. 
 
 This Evidence seems, to the uninitiated in the mys- 
 teries of Sugar Making and Refining, to be founded 
 on plain common sense reasoning, for the Raw Sugars 
 being prohibited, by high duties, from entering into 
 our market, the Refiners are compelled to use the 
 articles of low and impure quality, which the differen- 
 tial duties, in actual effect, alone permit to enter, and 
 they would not manufacture these into Sugar, if they 
 could work with better materials. 
 
 But, as before said, if there were no duty at all, 
 there would be no need for any refining, as the finest 
 and purest crystalised white sugar would come direct 
 to our market from the first producer, who would also 
 be the manufacturer. 
 
 Can anything exceed the human folly of the artifi- 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 863 
 
 cial system which prevents this natural and simple pro- 
 cess from coming into operation ? 
 
 It is impossible to imagine what can be said for folly 
 such as this ! 
 
 There is the folly of ignorance, and there is the folly 
 of wickedness. 
 
 In this case, it cannot be of the first, and no one 
 likes to say that it is of the last. But whichever or 
 whatever it may be, it is inexcusable. 
 
 This is a subject thoroughly understood, in all its 
 bearings, by the wholesale dealers, men of great in- 
 telligence, as well as great wealth. 
 
 For many years past, some few of them have spared 
 no pains in bringing before Government by Memorials 
 and Deputations, and before Parliament by Petitions, 
 the whole question of the Sugar Duties, in all its bear- 
 ings, and in all its inconsistencies. But still these in- 
 consistencies are continued ! The People who are the 
 sufferers, do not trouble themselves, and, therefore, 
 their Representatives in Parliament do not trouble 
 themselves. Most probably there are very few amongst 
 them who know much about the Sugar Duties. How 
 many persons read these Memorials and Petitions 
 against the Sugar Duties ? 
 
 The Writer of these pages has taken that trouble. 
 And what a display of intelligence, what sound 
 reasoning from well ascertained facts and well known 
 principles, and what conclusive results, do these Me- 
 morials and Petitions present ! 
 
 This subject, already exhausted in the earlier pages, 
 is here again adverted to for the sake of leaving, in 
 these last words, a final and lasting impression of the 
 monstrous iniquity and impolicy of this Tax. 
 
 It is too late in the day, and we are too near the end 
 of this volume, already too much swelled out, to be 
 drawing out more Tables to show the injurious effect of 
 
864 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 our remaining Duties on necessary articles. But those 
 who wish to satisfy their curiosity on this subject may 
 refer to the Parliamentary Returns, showing the quan- 
 tities of Tea, Coffee, Sugar, Molasses, Spirits, Malt, 
 Wine, and Tobacco, retained for Home Consumption 
 in the United Kingdom in each year for the last thirty 
 years ; the Amount of Duty received upon each Article ; 
 the Rate of Consumption, per Head, of the Population, 
 and the Rate of Contribution, per Head, to the Re- 
 venue. 
 
 From these it will be seen how great and unneces- 
 sary has been and is the deprivation and suffering of 
 the working classes in this country in all these articles, 
 especially in the one important article, Sugar; and 
 how great and immediate would be the relief afforded 
 if all these duties were abolished. 
 
 It must be admitted to be most desirable that, the 
 Working Classes should be enabled to supply them- 
 selves with all the necessaries of life, to rent comfort- 
 able dwellings, to clothe themselves decently, and 
 to educate their children creditably. 
 
 For these purposes their earnings should be suffi- 
 cient ; and the great question arises : How is this to 
 be secured ? 
 
 Under the free competition system which prevails, 
 the master's interest is, to get the work done for as 
 little as possible, compared with other employers, in 
 order that his profits may be the larger ; whilst it is 
 the workman's interest to obtain as high wages as 
 possible, in order that his command may be the 
 greater over the commodities of life. How are these 
 interests conflicting, as they are improperly called, 
 to be preserved ? how made to work together har- 
 moniously ? 
 
 The true answer, it is humbly but confidently sub- 
 mitted, is to be found in these pages. To make this 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 865 
 
 answer practically true, all that is required is, to carry 
 out, earnestly and faithfully, the few and simple prin- 
 ciples here laid down ; to believe it true, and then to 
 prove it to be so ; to act towards the working-classes, 
 of all denominations, as if what is here said of them 
 were true beyond dispute ; to regard them as the 
 first to be cared for, not the last ; to trust them, and 
 to try them ; to trust a principle which we may know 
 to be true, to be applicable to all persons, in all cir- 
 cumstances, and in all times ; and to rely upon it ; 
 to act under a sense of justice ; to trust the old 
 saying, 'Honesty is the best policy ;' though, as it 
 has been said : ' He who acts on that principle is not 
 an honest man/ 
 
 It was Arnold's view of life that, "the highest 
 virtue of which a man is capable, and the last at 
 which he arrives, is,- a sense of justice." Let it be 
 the last. 
 
 Belief is the first step to attainment. But it is not 
 enough to believe what you maintain : you must main- 
 tain what you believe; and maintain it because you 
 believe it. But, as any one may bring himself to 
 believe almost anything that he is inclined to believe, 
 it makes all the difference whether we begin, or end 
 with the inquiry, "What is truth?" To wish to 
 find truth on one side rather than the other, is natural, 
 and often wise ; but to think that true which we wish, 
 and merely because we wish it, is always an undeniable 
 folly. te It is one thing to wish to have truth on our 
 side, and another thing to wish to be on the side of 
 truth." 
 
 Some persons follow the dictates of their conscience, 
 only in the sense in which a coachman may be said to 
 follow the horses he is driving. 
 
 An aversion to doubt a dislike of having the judg- 
 ment kept in suspense, combined with indolence in 
 
 3K 
 
866 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 investigation, induces the great mass of mankind 
 to make up their minds on a variety of points, not 
 one of which they have thoroughly examined. 
 
 A choice of difficulties seems a necessary condition 
 of human affairs. For it perpetually happens, in 
 every department of life, that there will be objections, 
 greater or less, to each of any possible causes before 
 us. And yet, many intelligent persons sit down quite 
 satisfied that they have proved their point when they 
 have shown the grave objections to one course, with- 
 out at all noticing those that lie against all the others ; 
 and without perceiving that they are in the condition 
 alluded to in the Roman proverb, " Lupum auribus 
 teneo" when it is difficult and hasardous to keep 
 one's hold, and eminently hasardous to let it go. 
 
 Suspension of judgment, so often urged, as long as 
 there are reasons on both sides, is practically, since 
 there always will be reasons on both sides, the very 
 same thing as a decision in favor of the existing state 
 of things, " Not to resolve is to resolve/' 
 
 Disbelieving is believing ; since to disbelieve any 
 assertion is to believe its contradictory ; and whoever 
 does this on slight grounds is both credulous and 
 incredulous ; these being, in fact, one and the same 
 habit of mind. 
 
 One may often hear it observed that, there is a 
 great deal of truth in what such a man has said ; i. e. 
 perhaps, it is all true, except one essential point. 
 
 Amongst these remarks are introduced some of the 
 aphorisms so richly scattered through the writings of 
 Archbishop Whately. The application will be plain 
 to many who read them. 
 
 But after all that can be said on a subject so exten- 
 sive as this is, so deeply affecting the interests of all 
 people, so open to varying opinions, swayed by so 
 many varying and interested motives, and long esta- 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 867 
 
 blished prejudices, there will be much remaining to 
 be said, much which might have been said much 
 better, and much which might better have been left 
 unsaid. Arguments well addressed and with good 
 effect to one class, will be ill suited to and will pro- 
 duce an opposite effect with another class. The best 
 way of proceeding, for arriving at a conclusion satis- 
 factory to the honest-minded inquirer, is to reject all 
 arguments and reasoning which do not go directly to 
 his own honest judgment ; but never to allow the 
 judgment to be prejudiced against the subject by any 
 errors, or supposed errors, of the advocate. The case 
 may be very good, though the advocacy be very bad. 
 The opinion of t]ie advocate can never be of even the 
 smallest consequence ; but the question itself is of 
 the most momentous importance, not only to every 
 individual inhabitant of this country, but also of every 
 other civilised country of the world. 
 
 If there be anything in the views put forth in these 
 pages, which seems to be inconsistent with a well 
 known and acknowledged principle, that ought to 
 make the reader pause before he gives his assent. 
 
 But if his assent be withheld only because these 
 views are new and untried, that is the same thing as 
 saying that his assent shall never be given ; for, then, 
 whatever is new and untried must for ever remain so, 
 as it can never be brought to the test of experience. 
 
 That is a very good rule in the case of anything 
 new which is not reconcileable with sound principle ; 
 but there are many new questions which can be more 
 safely determined by principle, than by what is under- 
 stood by the term, experience, and the present question 
 seems to be one of these. 
 
 The views here presented, though never yet carried 
 out in practice, rest upon principles well known, and 
 supported by authority, admitted by all to be the 
 
 3K2 
 
868 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 highest which the world has yet produced, and to be 
 perfectly consistent with all that we know on the 
 subject from experience. 
 
 We are confirmed in these views by those three 
 great men, Turgot, Adam Smith, and Bastiat, whose 
 enlightened minds have thrown such light upon the 
 subject for our guidance, that what was previously as 
 obscure as night, is now as clear as the sun at noon- 
 day. 
 
 The enlightened Government that would carry out 
 these views might be sure of their ground without 
 further experience. 
 
 The wise caution, in the beautiful couplet of Dean 
 Trench, would have been observed : 
 
 " Wouldst thou go forth to bless be sure of thine own ground, 
 Fix well thy centre first, then draw thy circles round." 
 
 No ground can be more sure for the foundation of 
 any scheme of human government, than that which is 
 confirmed by Reason, in conformity with the Divine 
 Will, as far as it has been revealed to us, nor can 
 experience be wanted to make that ground more 
 sure. 
 
 Human legislation seldom proceeds on ground so 
 sure as this is. 
 
 In these pages there has been occasional reference 
 to providential laws, or the laws of Nature ; also to a 
 rational, or common sense, view of questions concern- 
 ing human affairs on which we are called upon daily 
 to determine according to our imperfect judgment. 
 
 Many, indeed most persons, deny that there is any 
 revealed law of God for the regulation of human 
 government ; and they regard with something like 
 derision any appeal, on these occasions, to providen- 
 tial laws, or the laws of Nature, and to what is called, 
 a rational or common sense. 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 869 
 
 But, in this opinion the Writer does not concur. 
 
 No doubt, common sense is a very yielding and 
 accommodating phrase, which has been moulded and 
 fitted for the purpose of expressing the hypothesis in 
 question, In all their decisions, mankind in general 
 claim to be determined by common sense. 
 
 This impression is so common that, we are led to 
 the conclusion that God has not committed us to the 
 guidance of our slow and fallible reason, but has 
 endowed us with feelings, which warn us at every 
 step ; and pursue us with their importunate reproaches 
 when we wander from the path of our duties. 
 
 These simple or inscrutable feelings have been 
 likened to the outward senses, and styled the moral 
 sense. The objects or appearances which properly are 
 perceived through the senses, are perceived imme- 
 diately, or without any perceptible inference of the 
 understanding. According to the hypothesis here 
 briefly stated or suggested, there is always an infer- 
 ence of the understanding, though the inference is 
 short and inevitable. From feelings which arise 
 within us when we think of certain actions, we infer 
 that those actions are enjoined or forbidden by the 
 Deity. 
 
 The laws of God, to which these feelings are the 
 index, are not unfrequently named innate practical 
 principles : or they are said to be written on our hearts 
 by the finger of their greaf Author, in broad and 
 indelible characters. 
 
 These feelings, on ordinary occasions, are expressed 
 by the term, common sense : considered as affecting 
 the soul, when the man thinks especially of Ms own 
 conduct, these sentiments, feelings, or emotions, are 
 frequently styled his conscience. 
 
 The laws of God, therefore, which are not revealed 
 or promulged, must be gathered by man from the 
 
870 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 goodness of God, and from the tendencies of human 
 actions ; and the feelings or moral sense with which 
 He has endowed us must be our index or guide to Hia 
 unrevealed law. In other words, the benevolence of 
 God, with the principle of general utility, is our only 
 index or guide to His unrevealed law. 
 
 God designs the happiness of all His sentient 
 creatures. Some human actions forward that bene- 
 volent purpose, or their tendencies are beneficent or 
 useful. Other human actions are adverse to that 
 purpose, or their tendencies are mischievous or per- 
 nicious. The former, as promoting His purpose, God 
 has enjoined. The latter, as opposed to His purpose, 
 God has forbidden. He has given us the faculty of 
 observing ; of remembering ; of reasoning : and by 
 duly applying those faculties, we may collect the 
 tendencies of our actions. Knowing the tendencies 
 of our actions, and knowing His benevolent purpose, 
 we know His tacit commands. 
 
 Inasmuch as the goodness of God is boundless and 
 impartial, He designs the greatest happiness of all 
 His sentient creatures : He wills that the aggregate 
 of their enjoyments shall find no nearer limit than 
 that which is inevitably set to it by their finite 
 and imperfect nature. From the probable effects 
 of our actions on the greatest happiness of all, 
 or from the tendencies of human actions to in- 
 crease or dimmish that aggregate, we may infer the 
 laws which He has given, but has not expressed or 
 revealed. 
 
 These laws are binding upon us (who have access to 
 the truths of Revelation), in so far as the revealed law 
 has left our duties undetermined. For, though his 
 express declarations are the clearest evidence of His 
 Will, we must look for many of the duties which God 
 has imposed upon us, to the marks or signs of His 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 871 
 
 pleasure, which are styled the light of Nature. Paley 
 and other divines have proved beyond a doubt, that 
 it was not the purpose of Revelation to disclose the 
 whole of these duties. Some we could not know, 
 without the help of Revelation ; and these the revealed 
 law has stated distinctly and precisely. The rest we 
 may know, if we will, by the light of Nature or 
 Reason; and these the revealed law supposes or 
 assumes. It passes them over in silence, or with a 
 brief and incidental notice. 
 
 If we do not read them in the light of Nature or 
 Reason, we know no more of them than do those who 
 are without the revealed law. 
 
 But we do not therefore escape the consequences of 
 our wilful ignorance. 
 
 The laws of Nature work unerringly, whether we 
 regard them or not. Our disregard does not disturb 
 their harmony, though our human laws can never 
 work harmoniously for us, if not in conformity with 
 the laws of Nature. 
 
 The laws of Nature were made to work equal good 
 to all. This we may clearly see in that which is 
 revealed, and by this light we may see our way in 
 that which is unrevealed. 
 
 We may see that human laws, for the most part, are 
 not made on any such just and beneficent principle : 
 but quite the contrary. Our human laws are often 
 made on the very opposite principle : consequently 
 they produce effects the very opposite of those 
 intended. They do not work, and were not intended 
 to work, equal good to all : therefore they work injury 
 to all. There is no harmony, because there is no 
 justice, no reason, no moral sense, no common 
 sense, nothing to satisfy that innate feeling which 
 is common to all. 
 
 The common feelings of human nature revolt at 
 
872 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 such injustice ; and, until harmony be established 
 between human laws, and natural or providential laws, 
 there can be no peace among men, no common bond 
 for their mutual welfare. 
 
 It is by this antagonism against the evil of oppres- 
 sion, that a righteous rule will be established, if 
 ever, on this earth; and then, but not till then, it 
 will be clearly seen that, " THE WELFAEE OP THE 
 PEOPLE is THE HIGHEST LAW." 
 
 But these are abstruse researches, and the bulk of 
 mankind can have little opportunity for comparing the 
 respective merits of the varying opinions, and deter- 
 mining for themselves where the truth lies in such 
 inquiries as these. 
 
 Anxiously busied with the means of earning a pre- 
 carious livelihood, they are debarred from every 
 opportunity of carefully surveying the evidence of 
 facts, and following the sound reasoning therefrom : 
 whilst every authority, whereon they may hang their 
 faith, wants that mark of trust-worthiness which 
 justifies reliance on authority. 
 
 The bulk of the people, it must be admitted, are 
 utterly incompetent to follow out this inquiry to the 
 just conclusion. Moreover, they have little faith in 
 those who profess to make the inquiry for them. They 
 know, because they feel, that things are not as they 
 ought to be, but for anything beyond that they know 
 their own utter incompetency, and in all the political 
 changes which pass before them, they find no material 
 change for their own benefit. 
 
 There is, therefore^ not much cause for wonder that 
 the People manifest but little confidence in any 
 Government, and but little interest in the question 
 of Taxation, in comparison with its deep importance 
 to their own welfare. Nor can the bulk of the 
 community ever be made acquainted with more 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 873 
 
 than a few of the most prominent facts, calculated 
 to strike home ; and such facts must be calculated 
 to appeal more to their feelings, than to their under- 
 standings. 
 
 Herein lies the difficulty. 
 
 To address arguments to any Government, in this 
 or any other country, in support of such a Scheme as 
 t this, can never be anything more than an idle waste 
 of words. 
 
 To look for the active support of the bulk of an 
 ignorant community, in such a question as this, is 
 equally hopeless. 
 
 But there is another course open, and to that we 
 would now direct attention. 
 
 To a certain but narrow extent, the People may be 
 instructed on this question. But, on such a question 
 as this, the bulk of the People will always be very 
 ignorant. On this question, the highest and the most 
 educated are almost as ignorant as the lowest and the 
 least instructed. They all want to be taught, and to a 
 certain but narrow extent, they all may be taught. 
 They may be taught a few primary principles, from a 
 few well selected, and well known facts. From these 
 facts the bulk of the People may be made to see that 
 they are unfairly treated, and that, through them, all 
 are really injured. They may be made to see and to 
 understand that, the present system was "ingeniously" 
 contrived for the purpose of serving a small class of 
 the community, at the expense of a large class ; how 
 this system has always worked, and always must work, 
 to the injury of all classes; that to this system is 
 mainly attributable the depressed state of all the labor- 
 ing classes, particularly the agricultural laborers, the 
 deprivations and sufferings of the poor, and their 
 consequent guilt and wretchedness. 
 
 They may be made to see and understand all this, 
 
874 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 and how the greater part of this may be easily removed 
 and prevented. 
 
 When they do see and understand this, but not 
 before it may be confidently assumed that, they will 
 be interested in this inquiry, and eager to know the 
 remedy. 
 
 The remedy being very simple, and in their own 
 power, they will soon see how to use it. 
 
 They will see that they must be represented in the 
 Council of the Nation by those who will really repre- 
 sent the true interests of the Nation ; and they must 
 unite together with a steadfast will and a firm resolve 
 to oppose the admission into Parliament of any repre- 
 sentative of the People who has not previously pledged 
 himself to support, at least, the principle of this Scheme 
 of Taxation, for Justice to the People, and for the 
 National Prosperity. 
 
 To carry out this teaching and organisation of the 
 People, a large fund will be required. This must be 
 raised by a National Subscription, to be entitled : 
 'THE NATIONAL FINANCIAL REFORM FUND.' 
 
 It will then be a reasonable hope, when the Mer- 
 chants of Liverpool have put forth a PRACTICAL SCHEME, 
 which they are prepared to maintain and defend 
 against all enemies, that every Merchant, Manufac- 
 turer, and Trader in the Kingdom, when he under- 
 stands that Scheme, and sees clearly the great benefit 
 which he, individually, must derive from it, will assist 
 liberally, according to his means, for bringing it into 
 practice : and it will not be unreasonable to hope that, 
 a fund of 100,000 will soon be raised for such a pur- 
 pose, that purpose being practically, to leave the . 
 laborer in the full and free possession of the wages of 
 his labor, the Agriculturist, the Merchant, the Manu- 
 facturer, and the Trader in the full and free possession 
 of the profits of their respective pursuits, and the 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 875 
 
 professional man in the full and free possession of 
 his professional income, thus leaving to industry 
 and skill their full and fair reward, and to Capital its 
 full and fair return, and thus tending to that great 
 and holy end : " THE REALISATION OF THE UNITY OF 
 MANKIND." 
 
 The Author of "The People's Blue Book" will be 
 found in his proper place in the List, but with his 
 visor down, at least, until the battle be over and won ; 
 and that will depend on the Merchants of Liverpool, 
 who were the first to come forward, as the champions, 
 in this trial for truth and justice, and who must be the 
 leaders of the People for their own and the Nation's 
 welfare. 
 
 As leaders, the Merchants of Liverpool have taken 
 the first step. 
 
 It now remains for them to lead the People on to 
 Victory. 
 
 But, to have the People with them, the People must 
 clearly understand the cause in which they are engaged 
 what they are fighting for and how the battle is to 
 be fought, and won. 
 
 By these means only will it ever be won, and it will 
 be well and cheaply won for the Merchants, Manufac- 
 turers and Tradesmen of this great Commercial nation, 
 at the cost of 100,000. Nor will the great Land- 
 Owners, Capitalists, and Professional Men,, be less 
 gainers, though they will, probably, be less helpers. 
 
 And now, to bring to a conclusion these ' Concluding 
 Observations/ which commenced with the commence- 
 ment of Bastiat's ' Concluding Observations' to his 
 ' Harmonies of Political Economy/ and shall conclude 
 with the conclusion of his ' Address to the Youth of 
 France.' 
 
 The Author could not find any words of his own 
 half so appropriate as these are, for the expression of 
 
876 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 his feelings, not only to the Youth of England, but to 
 all Englishmen; to the whole People of this great 
 United Kingdom. 
 
 He addresses them in the same words, because these 
 were written for all mankind; because he entertains 
 the same belief; and because his "judgment accords to 
 them a deliberate assent/' 
 
 " I shall esteem myself happy if this work, as you 
 proceed in its perusal, should bring to your lips the 
 consoling words, I BELIEVE, words of a sweet-smelling 
 savor, which are at once a refuge and a force, which are 
 said to remove mountains, and stand at the head of the 
 Christian's Creed I believe. 
 
 " I believe, not with a blind and submissive faith, for 
 we are not concerned here with the mysteries of reve- 
 lation, but with a rational and scientific faith, befitting 
 things which are left to man's investigation. I believe 
 that, He who arranged the material universe has not 
 withheld His regards from the arrangements of the 
 social world. I believe that, He has combined, and 
 caused to move in harmony, free agents as well as inert 
 molecules. I believe that, His over-ruling Providence 
 shines forth as strikingly, if not more so, in the laws 
 to which He has subjected men's interests and men's 
 wills, as in the laws which He has imposed on weight 
 and velocity. I believe that, everything in human 
 society, even what is apparently injurious, is the cause 
 of improvement and of progress. I believe that, Evil 
 tends to Good, and calls it forth, whilst Good cannot 
 tend to Evil ; whence it follows that Good must, in the 
 end, predominate. I believe that, the invincible social 
 tendency is a constant approximation of men towards a 
 common moral, intellectual, and physical level, with, at 
 the same time, a progressive and indefinite elevation of 
 that level. I believe that, all that is necessary to the 
 gradual and peaceful development of humanity is that 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 877 
 
 its tendencies should not be disturbed, but have the 
 liberty of their movements restored. I believe these 
 things, not because I desire them, not because they 
 satisfy my heart, but because my judgment accords to 
 them a deliberate assent." 
 
 " Ah ! whenever you come to pronounce these words, 
 I BELIEVE, you will be anxious to propagate your 
 creed, and the social problem will soon be resolved, for, 
 let them say what they will, it is not of difficult solu- 
 tion. Men's interests are harmonious, the solution 
 then lies entirely in this one word LIBERTY." 
 
 The very title of this work, " The People's Blue 
 Book/' may incline some, who do not take the 
 trouble to read it, to think that, the object is to 
 advocate Communism, Socialism, Republicanism, or 
 any other of the political growths of modern times that 
 tend to destroy distinction of classes and order in 
 society. 
 
 The meaning and object of " The People's Blue 
 Book" is to show Christianity practically carried out 
 in the government of human affairs. 
 
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER 
 ON IRELAND. 
 
881 
 
 ^ 
 Librcury* 
 
 tRELAND. 
 
 A VISIT of three months in the summer of 1870 
 enabled me to traverse Ireland in its length and 
 breadth and nearly in all directions. 
 
 Having never before been in Ireland, but being 
 pretty well acquainted with its history, as far as it is 
 written, though Sir William Wilde says it is not 
 yet written, I went for the purpose of forming my 
 own opinion of the present state and condition of 
 the country and the people, from my own personal 
 observation and communication with the natives. 
 
 I am induced to make this visit the subject of a 
 supplementary chapter to a new edition of " The 
 People's Blue Book/' long out of print, in the 
 hope of being able to offer some remarks, the result 
 of my visit, on the chance of benefit to that most un- 
 prosperous portion of the so called United King- 
 dom. 
 
 I think it necessary for an Englishman to have 
 seen Ireland and Irish people in Ireland, in order to 
 form an opinion of the state and condition of that 
 country and people. I can truly say that, although 
 a stranger, I met with the greatest kindness and 
 hospitality in all parts of Ireland, and from all classes 
 of the People, even in the wildest parts along the 
 western coast, and in that climax of desolation and 
 destitution, Connemara. 
 
 3 L 
 
882 IRELAND. 
 
 In no other parts of Europe, that I have visited, 
 have I seen poverty so nearly bordering on destitution 
 as in those and some other parts of Ireland. But 
 what struck me most in the midst of all this poverty 
 was, the apparently easy indifference and cheerfulness 
 of the people, and their extraordinary volubility in 
 thankfulness for small favours. I was rarely asked 
 for anything, but the donation of a few shillings to 
 young and old, assembled round the carriage when it 
 stopped in any town or village, brought sufficient 
 evidence, by the sudden clutch and instant rushing 
 away of the recipients, how highly they appreciated 
 silver, and the increasing crowd told how quickly the 
 news of the stranger's arrival spread amongst them. 
 But they seemed scarcely less pleased when I was 
 talking with them, as one of themselves, in their own 
 familiar way, and telling them how much I wished it 
 were in my power to help them. If their prayers 
 could help me and my family in return, we were safe 
 from all human affliction, with life indefinitely pro- 
 longed. We met with no mishap and suffered from 
 no petty larceny in all our wanderings over Ireland, 
 and in the poorest cabins we always found a kindly 
 welcome. 
 
 The improving effects of industry in the appear- 
 ance of the people and the face of the country in 
 Belfast, Coleraine, and all those manufacturing parts 
 of the North of Ireland are so striking that, it ap- 
 pears like another country inhabited by another 
 people in comparison with some other parts of Ire- 
 land ; and, as far as I could learn, the influence of 
 the Roman Catholic Priests is much less there than 
 in other parts of Ireland. 
 
 In the Southern and Western parts of Ireland the 
 peasantry and working people in general seemed lazy, 
 indifferent, and improvident ; as if the want of profit- 
 
IRELAND. 883 
 
 able employment had taken out of them all induce- 
 ment to labor beyond absolute necessity,, and long 
 absence of the comforts of life had rendered them in- 
 different to the loss of them. But yet they seemed to 
 have retained more sense of some of the refinements 
 of life than is usually found amongst their class in 
 England. I never saw an Irishman beating his wife, 
 or an Irish woman beating her children, and I never 
 saw them cruel to their animals. To each other they 
 are charitable, and for hospitality they are proverbial. 
 In moral qualities they are, at least, equal to English 
 men and women, and in no departments of human 
 knowledge inferior. In vivacity of character and 
 vigor of body and mind, in courage and patient en- 
 durance under hardships, and never failing love of 
 country, Irish men and women have proved them- 
 selves pre-eminent amongst the races of mankind, 
 and Education is more generally spread over Ireland 
 than over England. I will add, not forgetting the 
 danger of comparisons, I saw more beauty of per- 
 son and gracefulness of manner amongst the young 
 women of the peasant class in Ireland, than I have 
 been fortunate enough to meet with amongst the 
 same class in England. 
 
 With all these fine qualities, which, in other coun- 
 tries, are accompanied with prosperity, why is Ire- 
 land an exception ? 
 
 Many think that, Ireland's greatest misfortune has 
 been her priest-ridden people, and that, of all evils 
 which can afflict a people this is the greatest. Be 
 this as it may, the greatest of all evils can be coun- 
 teracted by carrying out in practice that invincible 
 Christian principle, of doing unto others as you 
 would they should do unto you. This is the best 
 that the best of us can do, and this I take as my base 
 of operations for present purposes. 
 
 3 L 2 
 
884 IRELAND. 
 
 One of my objects was to ascertain the opinions of 
 the Irish People on the question of a Parliament in 
 Ireland for Irish affairs, distinguished from Imperial 
 affairs. 
 
 I took great pains to collect the opinions of all 
 classes on this question, now generally known by 
 the name of " Home Rule," and the result was con- 
 clusive, the Irish Landowners and Property-holders 
 generally, and the Linen Manufacturers in the North 
 of Ireland, being decidedly unfavorable. 
 
 Being satisfied that, this is the feeling of Irish 
 Landowners and Property-holders generally, I with- 
 hold any further expression of my own opinion on 
 this question, in deference to theirs. 
 
 I have always advocated Civil and Religious 
 liberty, and equal justice, but not equality of power 
 or community of goods. To talk of equality in any- 
 thing but justice, has always appeared to me idiotic, 
 if meant in its literal sense, which, I believe, it never 
 is. I look upon it as the common form of expression 
 of ignorant demagogues and revolutionists. 
 
 Of two men occupying a position of equality as re- 
 gards others, the man who contributes most to the 
 happiness of others, by bestowing a greater quantity 
 of service, will infallibly become the most influential. 
 He will strengthen his position by augmenting the 
 number of his good works. Every benefit conferred 
 on others will be prolific of good to himself, and the 
 benefits conferred on others increase the power of 
 others ; and the increase of power in the hands of 
 those willing to do him service, is the increase of his 
 own power. The compound interest brought to 
 effective benevolence by deeds of benevolence is 
 happily without limit ; of the seeds scattered by the 
 husbandry of virtue few will turn out barren; but 
 equality there never has been and never can be. 
 
IRELAND. 885 
 
 I withhold the expression of my opinion on Roman 
 Catholic dogmas, but only out of respect to the per- 
 sons who maintain them, and whilst writing thus of 
 myself and of my opinions, for which I ask my 
 readers to make the best excuse they can find for me, 
 I will go on to add that, I have always advocated 
 the utmost freedom for all religious sects, consistent 
 with the pre-eminence in position and predominance 
 in power to which the Protestant Established Church 
 has attained, through the most bloody and fiery per- 
 secutions that the page of history has recorded, and I 
 trust, that pre-eminence in position and predominance 
 in power will be preserved through all times and 
 through all trials. 
 
 The right way of dealing with Ireland is to allow 
 her the largest measure of independence in the 
 management of her own affairs, consistent with the 
 maintenance of Union between the two countries. 
 The great obstacle in the way of an entente cordiale 
 between them is, the Romish Priesthood, which will 
 never be satisfied or, as far as its influence reaches, 
 let Ireland be satisfied or cease to complain of perse- 
 cution, until it has become dominant, and is itself in 
 a condition to persecute. But if Ireland will only 
 consent to let Education be an Imperial question, 
 which the Romish Priesthood will move heaven and 
 earth to prevent, the sinister influence of the Priest- 
 hood will be virtually extinct, and the prosperity of 
 Ireland will be secured. 
 
 It is well known that, supremacy, not equality, is the 
 object of ambition to the Roman Catholic hierarchy ; 
 but that never can be conceded whilst the Established 
 Church of England is in faithful union with the State. 
 The Roman Catholic Bishops in Ireland are, in fact, in 
 a position of perfect equality as compared with the 
 Protestant Bishops ; and the pretensions of the Pope 
 
886 IRELAND. 
 
 to spiritual authority include all temporal questions. 
 It happened that, Lord Clifford was a witness before 
 the recent Committee on Convents, and on that occa- 
 sion he was asked whether, if the law dealt with all 
 denominations on an equality, the Church of Rome 
 would be satisfied with being placed on the same 
 footing as, for instance, Wesleyans, Independents 
 and Baptists? Lord Clifford did not like this ques- 
 tion, and when it was pressed, being an honorable 
 man, he appealed to the Chairman of the Committee 
 to be allowed to decline giving an answer. 
 
 No further answer being necessary, the question 
 was withdrawn. If the answer had been given, it 
 must have admitted that, the demand of Roman 
 Catholics for religious equality was made merely as a 
 step towards supremacy. 
 
 I resisted, by every small means in my power, the 
 abandonment of the Established Church of the State 
 in Ireland, and the unconstitutional seisure of its 
 property ; but I have always advocated the abandon- 
 ment by the State of all claim for tithes or other 
 compulsory payments to that Church, except by her 
 own members, and that, full compensation should be 
 given by the State to all lay Impropriators, with all 
 proper allowances. 
 
 I hold to the union of the Established Church and 
 State as essential for the welfare of the State, and I 
 say in the words of Oliver Cromwell " If any 
 whosoever think the interests of Christians and the 
 interests of the Nations inconsistent, or two different 
 things, I wish my soul may never enter into their 
 secret." 
 
 I think it due to myself to say so much for myself, 
 to balance my errors, if errors they be, on the other 
 side. 
 
 I will not venture here to give what passed 
 
IRELAND. 887 
 
 between Cardinal Cullen and myself, at the long 
 private interview, of my own seeking, which I had 
 with him, by his own appointment, at his own 
 house (October, 1870), on the subject of National 
 Education in Ireland ; though, at the commencement 
 of our conversation, I explained my object to be en- 
 tirely political, and expressly requested that it might 
 not be considered private, to which the Cardinal 
 distinctly assented. I also stipulated for the utmost 
 freedom of speech on both sides, and that freedom 
 we both exercised without the slightest reserve. 
 
 I will only say that, I, for one, would never 
 consent to a Parliament in Ireland, if I thought 
 that would place the education of Ireland under 
 the sole direction and control of the Holy Father 
 in Rome, or Cardinal Cullen in Dublin, or the 
 Roman Catholic Priests in Ireland. They will, of 
 course, be the shepherds of their own flocks, and so 
 must we be of ours ; but, I trust there is still in Eng- 
 land a spiritual power powerful enough to intimidate 
 a British prime minister from ever daring to attempt 
 such a surrender of Ireland to the Roman Catholic 
 hierarchy; far better would it be if the Emerald 
 Isle, ( the bright gem of the sea/ were, as Queen 
 Elizabeth once said, " at the bottom of the sea." 
 
 With regard to the Roman Catholic Clergy, I am 
 not competent to offer any opinion, my acquaintance 
 with them having been very limited, and I had few 
 opportunities of meeting them when in Ireland. But 
 as far as my inquiries went, I always heard the 
 Roman Catholic Parish Priests in Ireland spoken of 
 as a virtuous and devout class ; but narrow-minded 
 and extremely ignorant. This is not surprising, if it 
 be true that, their numbers are recruited chiefly from 
 the ranks of the peasantry, and that, their lives are 
 passed chiefly amongst the same class. Nor can their 
 
888 IRELAND. 
 
 minds be much enlarged by their associates in May- 
 nooth College, if, as I was informed, that College be 
 supplied chiefly from the same ranks. I should infer 
 from this fact, if it be a fact, that, the Roman Catholic 
 Parish Priest in Ireland has deteriorated intellectually 
 rather than advanced since the endowment of the 
 College at Maynooth. 
 
 Formerly the Roman Catholic Priests received 
 their education in the larger sphere of the College at 
 St. Omer or other Roman Catholic Educational 
 Institutions in France, where, at least, they must 
 have been associated with larger and more enlight- 
 ened classes, of various creeds and opinions, from 
 various nations. From this point of view it seems to 
 me doubtful whether the College at Maynooth has 
 been any real benefit to Ireland. 
 
 But be that as it may, I never could see the con- 
 sistency of a Protestant Established Church and 
 State endowing a College for the express purpose of 
 disseminating doctrines directly opposed to the prin- 
 ciples and constitution of that Church and State, and 
 toleration does not mean endowment. 
 
 The same remark applies to the Regium Donum. 
 
 But as both these grants are now bought up, and 
 the topic is tender, I drop it; nor should I have 
 touched upon it, but that I do not wish to pass myself 
 off to my readers, of any sect or class, as better or 
 worse than I am. I am really very tolerant, because 
 I am really very indifferent to the opinions of others, 
 in matters which concern themselves alone; and, 
 verily, I believe that, the sincere and faithful, what- 
 ever be their faith, are acceptable, and will be accepted, 
 by their Divine Maker ; though, certainly, it is very 
 mysterious how anything good can be turned out of 
 the materials with which some seem to be made. 
 But, in this world " where much is to be learnt and 
 
IRELAND. 889 
 
 little to be known/' I am unceasingly and inexpres- 
 sibly thankful for the little I am permitted to know, 
 and what I most devoutly desire, before I quit this 
 world, is to be permitted to mitigate, in however 
 small a degree, some of what I call the needless 
 misery of mankind. 
 
 What, I trust, most of us would value, as the 
 privilege of our position, is to be permitted to lend 
 a helping hand to bind us all, apart from any particu- 
 lar sect, to a common Christianity for our common 
 and equal temporal good, and so to unite us all to the 
 national life of the present, and to the possible hopes 
 of the future. 
 
 It is not by controversy that any good can be done. 
 Controversy has kept alive much bitterness, and that, 
 I believe, is all that it would accomplish if it continued 
 to the day of judgment. Erasmus said : " I do not 
 care to make a post of myself for every dog of a 
 theologian to defile." 
 
 In physics nothing that is unproved can ever find 
 permanent place ; and in matters of faith, which can 
 never be proved, there can never be universal agree- 
 ment. But although we can never hope to be all of 
 one mind on questions which lie beyond the scope of 
 human research and are the unknowable realities, yet 
 we may hope to be united in Christian fellowship for 
 the attainment of the known realities. 
 
 As I said to Cardinal Cullen, at my interview with 
 him, just referred to ; Why may we not pursue our 
 way in peace together, each on his own road, all 
 being bound on the same journey, and all seeking the 
 shortest and the safest way ? Why may we not come 
 to an agreement on equal terms for our common 
 temporal good, and leave all free to follow in the way 
 they think best in matters purely spiritual ? Why 
 should we attempt to overthrow or interfere with that 
 
890 IRELAND. 
 
 faith, which is the consolation of the present and the 
 hope of the future? Why should we attempt to dis- 
 turb that which is established and satisfies all faiths ? 
 Cardinal Cullen's answer was: " How can we 
 pursue our road with you, we holding you and all 
 who believe as you do, to be out of the pale of 
 salvation ? " 
 
 I do not think it necessary to make any further 
 reference to my conversation of one hour with Car- 
 dinal Cullen, nor should I have attached the smallest 
 importance to these words, if spoken by anybody else 
 than Cardinal Cullen. 
 
 But our interview was very courteous, if riot en- 
 couraging, and still I say, with that liberal and en- 
 lightened Churchman, Dean Stanley : " Let us not 
 cast away the golden chance for this age of transition 
 which enables us to wait in patience the changes and 
 the trials and the blessings which may be in store for 
 us the golden chance which, when it is gone, will per- 
 haps be vainly lamented by those who, within and 
 without the Establishment, are labouring to cast it 
 aside. Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Wesleyans, 
 Unitarians, Independents, Quakers, we may become, 
 if the Establishment be overthrown; but English 
 Churchmen with all which that name implies of glory 
 in the past, and of hope in the future, we shall be 
 no more." 
 
 I was told in Ireland, and I have heard the same 
 in England, that, about nine-tenths of the land in 
 Ireland is owned by Protestants and Presbyterians. 
 I hope it is so. But, however that may be, where- 
 ever I went in Ireland, arid I went over nearly the 
 whole, I thought I could say, pretty confidently, 
 from my own observation of the state and condition 
 of a Farm, whether it was held by a Protestant or 
 Presbyterian tenant farmer, or by a Roman Catholic 
 
IRELAND. 891 
 
 tenant farmer. On many occasions I stopped to 
 make the enquiry, and I was never mistaken. Pro- 
 testant or Presbyterian generally keeps his fields free 
 from weeds; but Roman Catholic Paddy attends 
 more to the Saints 5 Calendar than to the Farmers' 
 Calendar, and consequently he cultivates considerable 
 crops of weeds. In numerous instances I saw fields 
 with more weeds than corn or potatoes, and adjoining 
 fields with fine crops and not a weed to be seen. In 
 many fields I saw crops of nothing but docks. 
 
 But I do not mean to say there are no good Roman 
 Catholic tenant farmers in Ireland. As a rule, the 
 English and Scotch Farmers are the best, and so 
 much the best as to be very clearly distinguishable ; 
 but this rule, like most others, has exceptions. lam 
 sorry to say, I have never, in any part of agricultural 
 Europe, seen so much bad farming as in Ireland, 
 though, in some few instances, I have seen as good 
 farming in Ireland, as in England or Scotland ; but, 
 in all these instances the farmers were English or 
 Irish Protestants or Scotch Presbyterians. But, I 
 admit, the true Irishman of his class, takes uncom- 
 mon care of his pig, even to sharing with it the com- 
 forts of his cabin, and not only in the day, but also 
 in the night, and I have sometimes seen this domestic 
 lodger, occupying the best place before the turf fire, 
 covered up with fragments of old woollen garments. 
 But, then, as the poor Irishman says, ' the pig pays 
 the Tint. 3 
 
 But, the important question is, how to improve 
 the condition of Ireland and raise the standard of 
 comfort of the Irish tenant farmer and laborer; and 
 I cannot doubt that, the moral influence of Land- 
 owners may be trusted for forwarding this improve- 
 ment, by wise liberality, and especially by helping 
 the advance of enlightened education. 
 
892 
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 The moral influence of landed property is very 
 great in England, and this arises from the feeling of 
 personal respect and the sense of mutual obligation 
 which generally exists between Landlord and Tenant 
 in England, the chief interruption being, our impo- 
 litic Game Laws, which must soon be swept away by 
 advancing Education. 
 
 The same feeling will arise in Ireland with the 
 progress of improvement in the condition of the 
 people; and, as I never heard of any complaint by 
 Landlord or Tenant about Game in Ireland, I am 
 encouraged to hope that Game will not be a subject 
 of discord in Ireland, as it too often is in England. 
 
 In all their miseries the Irish People have kept 
 their native character, with virtues and qualities 
 which fit them for a higher and nobler condition than 
 any they have filled, at least, for many centuries. 
 Nowhere are the affections of home and family stronger 
 or more beautiful than in Ireland. Nowhere is there 
 more love or tenderness than round the poor Irish- 
 man's domestic hearth. Nowhere is the hand of 
 charity more freely extended to the poor. Nowhere 
 is the stranger more welcome to share the scanty 
 meal. Nowhere is the marriage-tie more sacred. 
 Nowhere is female virtue more honored. 
 
 Amongst the poorest peasantry in Ireland I often 
 met a simple courtesy and grace, which riches cannot 
 purchase and education often fails to impart. In the 
 severest trials of poverty and depression, and under all 
 the inducements of temporal advantages they have 
 never bartered away their faith. 
 
 But a false system of government has corrupted 
 the finer feelings and exasperated the naturally fierce 
 and hasty spirit of the Irish People. Without ex- 
 tenuating the faults, which have led to fearful crimes, 
 I believe there are in the Irish nation virtues and 
 
IRELAND. 893 
 
 energy enough to rise above all these, under free in- 
 stitutions and self-government. Their love of country 
 may be intense and demonstrative ; their hatred im- 
 placable, but really unrevengeful. Such a people are 
 vulnerable only through their affections. 
 
 The sufferings of Ireland may have been myste- 
 riously permitted for some high purpose, which may, at 
 the appointed time, be fulfilled. Sharp and sore trials 
 may train a people to fidelity and endurance, and the 
 poverty of a country may save it from many of the 
 evils which attend on luxury and wealth. Education 
 may lift a people out of the darkness of superstition 
 and priestly thraldom, into the light of that faith 
 which gives perfect freedom, but with it all its re- 
 sponsibilities. 
 
 The appointed time of fulfilment we know not, but 
 whenever that may be for Ireland, we may hope it 
 will be the time of her reformation, and that Ireland 
 will then be the strength and blessing of the sister 
 land, united with her by the holy bond of the same 
 pure faith. Then will be the time of fulfilment, and 
 the t Isle of Destiny ' will then be, indeed, the ' bright 
 gem of the ocean ' and a beacon of light to the world. 
 
 We must look to sound knowledge and the cul- 
 tivation of the higher parts of man's nature to cast 
 out the grosser vices. Vows and mechanical asso- 
 ciation will not do it. Sumptuary and inhibitive 
 laws will not do it. As far as law can go, there is 
 nothing for it but perfect freedom for buying and sell- 
 ing all that concerns the necessaries, comforts, con- 
 veniences and decencies of life, all the free gifts of 
 Nature, without any of the artificial restrictions in the 
 form of imposts. If our. Customs and Excise duties 
 were removed, and our licensing system abolished, 
 we should find that, men cannot be made virtuous by 
 Act of Parliament. We must give them knowledge, 
 
894 IRELAND. 
 
 and intellectual and moral freedom, by means of 
 Christian education, arming them against not only 
 the demon of drink, but the whole legion of devils, 
 by giving every man the entire possession of himself, 
 in all his faculties. 
 
 These are the expressive words, or substance of 
 the words, of Miss Martineau, before quoted, and 
 are here repeated as peculiarly applicable to the pre- 
 sent subject. 
 
 With a system of taxation that does not touch the 
 wages of labor, with the abolition of all duties of 
 Customs and Excise, and of every other tax that 
 taxes the laborer in his own labor, the day's wages, 
 in purchasable power, will be increased one-half, if 
 not more, for all the necessaries, comforts, and con- 
 veniences of life. Every Irishman will then begin to 
 feel that, he has something to lose as well as to win, 
 and that, there is much before him which, by lawful 
 industry, he can and may win for himself and family. 
 But this view will be brought more plainly before 
 every Irish working man when he knows, as he soon 
 will know after the adoption of this new system of 
 taxation, that it is preparatory to the abolition of the 
 Poor Law, when he and his family will be left en- 
 tirely dependent on his and their own industry for 
 their own support. The Poor Law has been one of 
 England's great afflictions, and its introduction into 
 Ireland has been one of Ireland's great misfortunes. 
 But this subject has been fully entered into in the 
 pages of the 'People's Blue Book.' 
 
 No greater service could be rendered by Ireland 
 for her own improvement than by joining England in 
 urging the adoption of this new system of taxation 
 by the Imperial Parliament. 
 
 Without the energetic help of Ireland, I have too 
 much reason to fear, from my own knowledge of the 
 
IRELAND. 895 
 
 political parties in England that, another generation 
 will pass away before this reform in our system of 
 Imperial Taxation will be entertained by the British 
 Government, or any one will be found bold enough 
 to bring it into public discussion in the British House 
 of Commons. But, to qualify this general remark, I 
 can say that, my late honored friend, Mr. Cobclen, 
 expressed to me his unqualified approval of this new 
 system of taxation, and I hope I am not taking a 
 liberty with my honored friend, Mr. Bright, M.P. for 
 Birmingham, in saying that, he entertains the same 
 favorable opinion. I have also great satisfaction in 
 adding that, the late Count Cavour, in a Letter ad- 
 dressed to me by him not long before his death, con- 
 veyed to me his unqualified approval, by declaring that, 
 if he should live to see a united Italy, and to direct 
 the Government, he should make this new system 
 the basis of taxation for the Kingdom of Italy. 
 
 As I have in the pages of the ' People's Blue Book ' 
 answered all the objections which I have thought worth 
 answering, I shall not enter further into the subject. 
 
 I do not see anything to fear for England or Ire- 
 land, unless it be in the careless ignorance that hides 
 from us the danger, and prevents us taking those 
 measures by which alone the real danger can be 
 avoided. What we want are statesmen, who have at 
 heart the prosperity of the country, through and by 
 means of a united, happy, and contented People. But 
 for this we must also have a ready, willing, indus- 
 trious, sober and loyal People. So prepared, the 
 British empire has nothing to fear, and these islands 
 are safe from the horrors of invasion. 
 
 Dreadful as are the consequences of the crimes of 
 nations, we may believe and hope that, even these 
 are working to some beneficent though unseen end, 
 and that, in the ultimate disposition of human 
 
896 IRELAND. 
 
 affairs there is a power that over-rules the schemes of 
 statesmen and the tactics of successful war. Where 
 the Crown is, there is the Sovereign, there is the 
 State. Nothing is irrevocably lost as long as the 
 vital principle of the monarchy is preserved. But, 
 when that is lost, revolution is ever at work, and the 
 reign of anarchy begins. 
 
 In this country, if by any misfortune the principle 
 of hereditary monarchy should be destroyed, the 
 golden band, which holds together the British Em- 
 pire, would be broken. The central force, which 
 makes this nation so great a power would be dis- 
 persed. The symbol, which is recognised alike by 
 the free settlers of Australia and by the dusky 
 natives of Hindostan, would be lost. The outlying 
 realms of British rule would recognise no allegiance 
 to the elected rule of the English people, for our 
 choice would not be theirs. As it is, whatever may 
 be the defects of our political and social institutions, 
 Great Britain may boast that, for more than one 
 hundred and eighty years the course of law and the 
 tranquillity of the realm have been unbroken, and 
 that, enjoying as much freedom as any people in 
 the world, she has also enjoyed a degree of internal 
 peace, order, and security to which no other nation 
 can lay claim. 
 
 Examples are not wanting to illustrate the value 
 and the strength of the principle of hereditary mon- 
 archy ; and however seductive the theory of re- 
 publican election may be to some minds, even the 
 most successful example, in America, shows suc- 
 cess to be not through, but in spite of that delusive 
 principle. Dynastic law and tradition alone place 
 the representative of the supreme power above every 
 accident, except that of the extinction of his race. 
 The French Revolution in striking down the ancient 
 
IRELAND. 897 
 
 monarchy destroyed the tradition and it has not been 
 restored. France has substituted for the real the 
 ideal ; but the name is not the power. A Committee 
 of declamatory lawyers is as helpless as an idol 
 of wood in the place of an efficient lawful sovereign. 
 
 In 1760 it was computed that, a quarter of the 
 land of France was held by the peasantry, a quarter 
 by the bourgeoisie, two-tenths by the clergy, and three* 
 tenths by the nobles. The subdivision of the land 
 was regarded as the best remedy for the deplorable 
 condition of the country, and the creation of a peasant 
 proprietary was to be the panacea of the nation. The 
 ideal was that, the land should belong to those who 
 cultivated it. The result was, the destruction of the 
 monarchy and the downfall of the nation. Many 
 other causes conspired to this end, but this was the 
 main cause, which impoverished the country, and in 
 the end overthrew the monarchy with all its most 
 valued institutions. 
 
 The Civil Code, which is the root of the democra* 
 tic social condition of France, limits the testamentary 
 power, and virtually divides a man's property be- 
 tween his offspring in his lifetime, by the indefeasible 
 recognition of their share in it ; thus rendering al- 
 most impossible the accumulation of wealth in a 
 family for several generations. 
 
 It proscribes, prohibits, and defeats all trusts, 
 settlements, entails, and limitations of real and per- 
 sonal property; and it favours the two prevailing 
 passions of the people the passion for equality and 
 the passion for the acquisition of land. The interests 
 of morality suffer ; and the numerical strength of the 
 population is restricted in its natural growth by a 
 sordid view of personal interest. The effects of this 
 check to the rural population of France are sufficiently 
 obvious, and even the physical growth of the race is 
 
898 IRELAND. 
 
 stunted by it. Under the operation of these causes 
 and motives, the soil of France is greatly subdivided. 
 Four or five millions of citizens and their families live 
 by the cultivation of their own parcel of land, and in 
 the enjoyment of the political rights connected with it. 
 
 The services which may be rendered to a na- 
 tion by a class of educated proprietors and capi- 
 talists, by the performance of the public duties of 
 their station, by the improvement of cultivation 
 and rural administration, and by the local influ- 
 ence of each solicitous for the common interest 
 of those around them, must be in a great mea- 
 sure lost, as they were in France, by the minute sub- 
 division of land amongst peasant proprietors. There 
 is no " public spirit," no improvement, no progress. 
 There is bare subsistence, without independence ; 
 poverty without wealth ; no savings, and, conse- 
 quently, no capital. Even on the larger estates in 
 the hands of those who are capable of discharging 
 the duties of a resident gentry, the good offices of the 
 wealthy are regarded with suspicion and hostility, 
 as great perhaps as when those duties wore the in- 
 vidious form of feudal privileges. There is a chasm 
 between them and the surrounding peasantry, which 
 is rarely crossed ; and the peasantry instead of re- 
 cognising the representatives of their own interests 
 in the gentry, look upon them with suspicion and dis- 
 trust, and often with implacable hatred as enemies. 
 
 To encourage by any law the fatal error that, the 
 land should belong to those who cultivate it, or to 
 assist in the minute subdivision of the land amongst 
 the laboring classes, is the most effectual means that 
 can be adopted for pauperising the country and pro- 
 ducing in the course of a few generations a degraded 
 and disaffected population. 
 
 Those who seek in the democracy of France the 
 
IRELAND. 899 
 
 models they desire to introduce in this country in the 
 tenure of property and the organisation of society, 
 assume that, those reforms were highly beneficial. 
 Undoubtedly it was so in the improvement of the 
 condition of the French peasantry, by liberating them 
 from feudal burdens, which, happily, have no parallel 
 among ourselves. But this was only removing one 
 great evil by introducing another, which stunted the 
 growth of the country, and gradually undermined 
 the monarchy. The change involved the extinction 
 of the social and political influence of the upper 
 classes ; for the abuses of the feudal tenures and the 
 vices of the aristocracy had engendered throughout 
 France a fierce hatred of social inequality, and that 
 democratic spirit, so introduced and fostered, has 
 gone on increasing to the present bitter end. 
 
 The selfishness of the small proprietors is the basis 
 of democratic institutions. All equal, all sharing 
 one class of interests arid passions, intolerant of any 
 superiority of intelligence, wealth, or power, they re- 
 semble the atoms of a floating mass. In ordinary 
 times they are industrious and contented, but they are 
 unprepared to meet any emergency, because they are 
 governed by no public spirit or sympathy with public 
 objects. Beyond their own narrow field of vision, they 
 see and acknowledge nothing but the power of the 
 Government, which they are trained to live under as 
 an absolute authority. Should that absolute autho- 
 rity fail in the discharge of its public duties, there is 
 nothing to protect such a people from anarchy or sub- 
 jugation. Life is so short and the power of a single 
 generation is so limited that, it is only by adding to- 
 gether the efforts of several generations and securing 
 permanence to the results of human labor that great 
 institutions are created. Trusts and settlements, 
 which give permanence to family property, endow- 
 
 3M2 
 
900 IRELAND. 
 
 ments, chartered corporations, and hereditary rank, 
 are all legal contrivances for securing and perpetu- 
 ating the benefits of successful labor. Thus strength 
 and stability are given to society by creating interests 
 and powers more lasting and comprehensive than 
 those of the present time. They are to the moral 
 energy of man what mechanism is to human force, 
 by preserving and applying what moral energy un- 
 aided is unable to maintain. But to all institutions 
 of this permanent nature, the spirit of democracy is 
 opposed. It views with a jealous and hostile eye 
 everything that it cannot control. 
 
 It resists permanence as a restriction on personal 
 freedom. It therefore resists and weakens the tradi- 
 tional elements of society and sacrifices the past and 
 the future to the supposed interest of the present. 
 By one system, men are raised to power of short 
 duration ; by the other institutions, which should be 
 permanent, are reduced to the uncertain duration of 
 that precarious power. Democratic power is a useful 
 check to the abuses of authority, but is a feeble in- 
 strument of government, and under such a govern- 
 ment the strength of a nation must fade away. 
 
 There is nothing new in these remarks, which are 
 but a very short summary of the views of that clear 
 and long-sighted Frenchman, De Tocqueville, stated 
 by him with admirable precision in the following 
 sentence : " A people amongst which individuals 
 should lose the power of achieving great things single- 
 handed, without acquiring the means of producing 
 them by united exertions, would soon relapse into 
 barbarism" (Democracy in America). 
 
 The principle of the Imperial Government of 
 France was that, " the more enfeebled and incom- 
 petent the citizens became, the more active the 
 Government was rendered, in order that society at 
 
IRELAND. 901 
 
 large may execute what individuals can no longer 
 accomplish." 
 
 There was the delusion. 
 
 The strength of the nation is the strength of the 
 Government. When the nation sinks in energy, 
 morality, and independence, the Government must 
 sink too. 
 
 In England everything is organised to give per- 
 manence and perpetuity to the relations of life and 
 property. Property is held by one person under in- 
 numerable limitations for the benefit of others, not 
 only in the present generation, but in generations to 
 come. Few dispose absolutely of what they possess, 
 unless it be self-acquired. All classes, ranks, and 
 individuals are bound each to each by mutual duties. 
 The land is worked by a combination of the laborer, 
 the farmer, and tlie landlord. Each is indispensable 
 to the other. The laborer draws his wages indepen- 
 dent of the variations of prices and seasons; the 
 farmer is enabled to farm two or three hundred acres 
 with his own capital, which would not purchase a 
 twentieth part of that quantity ; the landlord is the 
 chief capitalist, who bears the main risk of the ad- 
 venture. He has his duties to his family, to his ten- 
 ants, and to the public. The public funds, and 
 securities of all sorts, are held to an immense amount 
 in trust under family settlements, by which the 
 immediate interests and power of the individuals are 
 checked and circumscribed by the interests and rights 
 of others. This mutual dependence, which exists with 
 reference to property and its uses, runs through every 
 branch of English social life. This is the basis of 
 our credit. This is the secret of our enormous 
 power of association. This is the breath of public 
 life, for it begets a sense of duty to others, and a 
 sense of reliance on others. 
 
902 IRELAND. 
 
 With a peasant proprietary the desire to obtain 
 possession is increased by the sense of absolute 
 property. The owner of a small parcel of land be- 
 comes selfish and self-contained in proportion to this 
 sense of individual power. The land suffices to main- 
 tain and employ himself and his family. He owes 
 nothing to the landlord, and wants nothing from the 
 laborer. His wants and his sympathies are bounded 
 within the limits of his means. He is self-reliant and 
 independent, but he is indifferent to the wants and 
 claims of others, and his sympathies are bounded 
 within the narrow limits of his own desires. This 
 engenders selfishness, and distrust of everything that 
 interferes with it, with utter indifference to the more 
 enlarged interests of society. 
 
 The French peasant regards the extreme partition 
 of his property, under the Code Civil, as an evil to be 
 avoided only by limiting the number of his descen- 
 dants. 
 
 He therefore restricts himself to two children, 
 against the interests of morality and the numerical 
 strength of the population. 
 
 It is well known that, with this check to the 
 rural population, the conscription drains off' the whole 
 natural increase of the country, and the rural popu- 
 lation of France is kept almost stationary. 
 
 A peasant proprietary, occupying small parcels of 
 land, implies such a subdivision of land as must in 
 a few generations be insufficient for the maintenance 
 of the families living thereon, and capital diminishes 
 as population increases. 
 
 These inverse relations being proportionate and 
 slow, the effect is gradual and slow. But the ulti- 
 mate effect of this operation must be, as emphati- 
 cally stated by De Tocqueville, " a relapse into bar- 
 barism." 
 
IRELAND. 903 
 
 These remarks will be, I know, unacceptable, if not 
 offensive to many ; but I entreat the People of Ireland 
 not to think that, I am presuming to give them a 
 moral lecture, when I am offering them only proved 
 political results drawn from the history of all the 
 fallen empires of the world. 
 
 The truth here brought out, like the moral of a 
 Fable, is drawn from the experience of all times over 
 the whole world. 
 
 I entreat the People of Ireland to receive this as a 
 political truth of the deepest importance to them, and 
 to apply it to whatever is the least congenial with 
 their own views in these remarks, for I have reason to 
 know that, these remarks have met with a reception 
 from some in Ireland very different from what I 
 had expected or intended. 
 
 I have no personal or other ties in Ireland. I am 
 of no political party, and I have no confidence in any 
 Government. But I believe any Government to be 
 better than no Government, and that to be best> 
 which is conducted on the principle of equal justice; 
 and I hold it to be an axiom of political justice that, 
 no laborer should be taxed in his own labor. 
 
 I believe this principle of equal justice, carried out 
 in Ireland, would do more than all that has ever yet 
 been done for Ireland. 
 
 I think that, the British Parliament committed a 
 great error in the " Irish Land Act/' 
 
 If, instead of confirming the old and injurious 
 custom, known as the Ulster tenant-right, brought 
 into Ireland, more than two hundred and fifty years 
 ago, by one of the meanest and weakest of our 
 Kings, and since spread in endless variety of forms 
 over Ireland, if, instead of confirming these injurious 
 infringements on the rights of property, the legisla- 
 ture had removed them all, and at the same time all 
 
904 IRELAND. 
 
 the taxes upon the wages of labor, the mutual in- 
 terests of landlord and tenant would have been their 
 best protection, and this dangerous tampering with 
 the rights of landlords would have been avoided. 
 Throughout Ireland I never heard a word in approval 
 of this measure. The Ulster tenant-right I heard 
 approved of by tenant-farmers where that custom 
 prevailed, but I never heard it approved of by land- 
 lords, and, I believe, that custom had never before 
 been recognised as a right by law. It was a custom in- 
 troduced nearly three centuries ago by a weak alien 
 King, to carry out, by violent and unjust means, the 
 settlement of new races in that part of Ireland. 
 
 To get rid of an evil state of things, a far greater 
 evil has been introduced into Ireland by a false prin- 
 ciple, which threatens the very foundation of property, 
 not only in Ireland but, by example, throughout the 
 whole united kingdom, multiplying and keeping open 
 the breaches between landlord and tenant by inter- 
 minable law suits. 
 
 As far as my opportunities of observation went, 
 there is not the smallest ground for attributing pro- 
 sperity in any part of Ulster to the tenant-right. On 
 the contrary, wherever there is prosperity in Ulster 
 it is in spile of this custom. Ulster in the county of 
 Down shows great prosperity, but Ulster in the 
 county of Donegal shows misery on the level of 
 nakedness and starvation. And so in other parts of 
 Ulster where this tenant-right exists. There was no 
 record for it ; nor was the custom of sufficient anti- 
 quity to give it the validity of a common-law right. 
 In a legal view there was no title, until title was given 
 by the recent Irish Land Act. 
 
 Even if the right existed, it was against the policy 
 of the law to perpetuate such a claim, and not only 
 was a most serious injury thereby done to Ireland, but 
 
IRELAND. 905 
 
 to England also, and the whole kingdom, by such a pre- 
 cedent against the constitutional right of property. 
 
 These foolish and injurious customs take away 
 all inducement from the land-owner to improve his 
 estate, because all control is taken from him. He 
 becomes a mere receiver of a fixed and unimproving 
 rent; and whilst every kind of property in the 
 country is improving, his estate or property in the 
 soil knows no improvement. The control of the 
 estate being taken from him, it is not in his power to 
 carry out an improved system, however much he may 
 wish to do so. 
 
 The Legislature should encourage Leases by taking 
 off the stamp duties, and should facilitate the means of 
 enforcing the due performance of covenants in leases 
 at slight expense ; thus encouraging land-owners to 
 give Leases for twenty-one years, a term sufficiently 
 long to enable a tenant to repay himself for any 
 reasonable improvements on the land and buildings. 
 
 If the tenant will not improve under such a Lease, 
 then the landlord is not to blame. But according to 
 the motives which usually actuate human nature, the 
 tenant would then improve. 
 
 The Land-owner would then be the Landlord with- 
 out the middle man, and the landlords' and the 
 tenants' interests would then be the same. 
 
 It is absurd to suppose that, any tenant would lay 
 out money in improving the land, or in building, as 
 a mere tenant-at-will, without any security for being 
 repaid. 
 
 I leave my readers to apply these remarks for 
 themselves to Ireland ; and to answer for themselves, 
 whether the growth of democracy in France has 
 given greater union, force, and power to the Nation 
 and to the State. 
 
 With all her advantages of position, soil and 
 
906 IRELAND. 
 
 climate, -with a native race equal to the highest in 
 the scale of human beings, Ireland is divided and 
 discontented, and, in many parts, in a state of chronic 
 misery bordering on destitution. The dreary Irish 
 statistics, from time to time brought forward, serve 
 only to show Ireland a little more or a little less 
 miserable than usual. 
 
 In the meantime her People are rushing away by 
 hundreds of thousands from their miserable homes 
 to seek happier homes in other countries, and the 
 strength of Ireland is departing with her People. 
 
 Under good government and equal justice in all 
 the relations of life, the moral influence of property 
 will as surely prevail in Ireland as elsewhere. Against 
 this influence the power of the priesthood will be 
 harmless in temporal affairs, and the priests, if let 
 alone, will confine themselves to their own duties in 
 matters spiritual. When the people attend to their 
 own temporal affairs and have the good sense to pre- 
 vent their spiritual advisers from interfering, all will 
 go on in harmony together, and the hostile spirit of 
 parties in Ireland, no longer excited and aggravated 
 by the ill-judging zeal of the Orange party, will 
 gradually disappear. 
 
 In the professed objects of the Orange Institution 
 I entirely agree, but the objects have not been 
 advanced by these Institutions. All such exclusive 
 Associations are wrong in principle and injurious in 
 practice. One Association provokes another, and 
 thus religious factions spread. Ribbon Associations, 
 which are secret societies of assassins, are Roman 
 Catholic Organisations against Orange Societies. 
 
 In every part of the habitable world where the 
 power of the Roman Catholic Priests has prevailed, 
 temporal prosperity has been blighted, and in propor- 
 tion to the diminution of that power has been the 
 
IRELAND. 907 
 
 progress of improvement in the worldly condition of 
 the people. In the north of Ireland, where the 
 people find profitable employment and sufficient food, 
 the power of the priests, in comparison with other 
 parts of Ireland, seems to be very small, and this 
 power, at least over temporal affairs, must gradually 
 become smaller until it disappears, as liberal and 
 enlightened Christian education advances. 
 
 And what are these observations, but a com- 
 mentary on passing events in Ireland ? 
 
 Where was the influence of Father Conway, P.P. 
 once so powerful in Ireland at the recent election 
 of a member of Parliament for Catholic Galway ? Not 
 even the appearance of Father Conway before the 
 public, after the election, with a basin of water, and 
 washing his hands before the people to acquit himself 
 of this "guilty job" could save him from the con- 
 tempt even of his own flock ! And what was this 
 guilty job ? The election to Parliament by the con- 
 stituents of Galway, without a contest, of Mr. 
 Mitchell Henry, a Protestant Gentleman, whose 
 munificent and judicious liberality and kindness as a 
 landlord has endeared him, not only to his own 
 tenantry, but to the whole people, as their friend. 
 
 When passing through the wilds of Connemara, I 
 was struck with his magnificent domain and newly 
 erected Castle of Kylemore, then nearly finished. He 
 was a stranger to me and my party, but we all stopped 
 and were kindly permitted to inspect the Castle, the 
 Gardens arid the Pleasure Grounds, and for grandeur 
 of design, beauty of execution, and picturesque effect 
 of the whole in that wild region, we saw nothing to 
 compare with it in all Ireland. 
 
 But my inquiries of the people in that part of the 
 country were chiefly, ( W T ho is Mr. Mitchell Henry'? 
 The answers were all to the same effect : ' He is our 
 
908 IRELAND. 
 
 great landlord and our friend. If we had a few more 
 such landlords, how different would Ireland be ' \ 
 This is the man whom Father Con way condemns, and 
 then, with irreverent mockery, washes his hands to 
 acquit himself of the guilt. 
 
 If the People of Ireland would receive in the 
 spirit of the offer, the advice of a stranger who 
 knows little of Ireland, but something of its history, 
 and has seen much of the world, let alone the 
 Priests : treat them tenderly, but deprive them of 
 all power of interference in temporal affairs. 
 
 No Priests, of any denomination in any part of the 
 United Kingdom, should be admitted into the 
 Magistracy or permitted to exercise civil jurisdiction 
 in matters temporal. In time it will come to this, 
 and then the Ministers of religion, of all denomi- 
 nations, will be respected according to the perfor- 
 mance of the duties of their faith. 
 
 An Imperial Parliament can never exist in Ireland, 
 as long as an Imperial Parliament exists in England. 
 
 But with internal peace and united action for the 
 common good, the trade of Ireland would revive and 
 fresh capital would flow in. 
 
 The great natural resources of Ireland would be 
 developed, and emigration would cease with the 
 increased demand for labor. 
 
 The wages of labor would soon be doubled and 
 destitution in Ireland would be no longer known. 
 
 The face of the whole country would be changed, 
 and the People would be changed with it. 
 
 Literature, the Arts and Sciences, now perishing 
 by long neglect in Ireland, would revive with her 
 renewed strength. 
 
 New Institutions would foster and encourage the 
 genius of her People, and new Associations would 
 open new fields of industry and wealth. 
 
IRELAND. 909 
 
 It does not come directly within the scope of the 
 subject of these pages to suggest remedial measures 
 for the suppression of the atrocious outrages, which 
 are of not unfrequent occurrence in many parts of 
 Ireland, but I will avail myself of this opportunity for 
 making a few observations, which I have for many 
 years past urged upon the attention of the British 
 Government and the Public. 
 
 My proposal is, to empower the Lord Lieutenant 
 of Ireland, on his own responsibility, to suspend the 
 Writ of habeas corpus in any proclaimed district in 
 Ireland, where any murder or agrarian outrage has 
 been committed, and follow the suspected criminal 
 or criminals into any part of the United Kingdom . 
 
 It is a mockery of justice to give power to magis- 
 trates to examine persons who could give evidence on 
 oath, and bind them over to give evidence at the 
 Assizes, without also giving power to the chief 
 magistrate to protect those persons whose lives are 
 endangered by giving their evidence. 
 
 It is not to be expected that, the poor ignorant 
 men and women who, in most of these cases, are the 
 only witnesses, would give their evidence to insure 
 conviction, at the imminent risk of their own lives, 
 and against which risk the government has no power 
 to protect them. 
 
 The consequence is, these atrocious criminals have 
 four chances of escape : the chance of not being 
 caught ; of witnesses fearing to give evidence ; of 
 the Jury not convicting on the most conclusive 
 evidence of guilt; and, if convicted, then of misplaced 
 mercy. 
 
 These associated bands of murderers are individually 
 well known to the police, but the Peace Preservation 
 Act (1870) gives no sufficient power to the police to 
 lay hands upon them, and when they are arrested the 
 
910 IRELAND. 
 
 magistrates are unable to inflict the penalties of the 
 law for want of evidence. 
 
 These secret Societies, the members of which are 
 bound together by unlawful oaths, punish by assassi- 
 nation every breach of their rules, either as regards 
 landlord and tenant or as regards employer and 
 employed. By such means these societies have suc- 
 ceeded in putting their own edicts into the place of 
 the law of the land. They exert such power that, 
 no landlord dare exercise the commonest rights of 
 property, no farmer or other employer dare exercise 
 his own judgment or discretion as to whom he shall 
 employ. The mere fact that, a man is known to 
 belong to the society secures him against competition 
 whenever he is seeking for work. The organisation 
 of this conspiracy is so perfect that, the powers vested 
 in the police for the detection and prevention of these 
 secret meetings are of no avail. 
 
 To a country in this state there can be no pro- 
 sperity. But it is a mistake to suppose that, all these 
 horrors spring from the starving people. Many well- 
 to-do farmers are engaged in them. They have for 
 their object a system of terrorism, which shall set the 
 law and the rights of individuals at defiance, and they 
 are directly encouraged by the Repeal agitation, 
 which is really High Treason in disguise. 
 
 I heard it from many, and I believe the account to 
 be true that, the small farmer expects that, if he get 
 Repeal he will get possession of his land without pay- 
 ing rent to anybody. Under this impression terror- 
 ism is encouraged, which resists not only ejectment 
 from land, and the payment of arrears of rent, but 
 forbids the turning away of a servant, resists the pay- 
 ment of debts, prevents the giving of evidence, and 
 punishes the assertion of every right with violence or 
 death, which is almost invariably carried out. 
 
IRELAND. 911 
 
 In this state of things, who can wonder that, capi- 
 tal will not come to Ireland, that landlords will not 
 live in Ireland, that Ireland does not prosper? 
 Courageous resistance carries with it no sympathy, 
 but marks out the victim for further attack by the 
 cowardly ruffians. It is not uncommon, I was told, 
 to see men going about their daily affairs, in many 
 parts of Ireland, guarded by the police. 
 
 It is vain to hope for prosperity in a country whose 
 working men, farmers, schoolmasters, agents and 
 landlords are obliged, whilst following their vocations, 
 to have their lives protected by policemen. 
 
 In vain will be all attempts for the improvement of 
 Ireland until security be established for life and pro- 
 perty, and every Irishman who opposes the measures 
 of Government for this object should be looked upon 
 as an enemy of his country, for these are the men 
 who, under the pretence of patriotism, are exciting 
 and keeping up the spirit of outrage, the curse and 
 ruin of their country. 
 
 I believe, at no period of past history was a cordial 
 union between England and Ireland so important for 
 the welfare of both countries as at the present time ; 
 and, certainly, there is but one feeling of sincere 
 desire in England to satisfy every reasonable wish cf 
 the Irish People, consistently with the true interests 
 of both countries. 
 
 There never was a time when the united strength 
 of England and Ireland could be so effective as at this 
 present time, for the permanent welfare of both 
 countries. 
 
 There never was a time when England and Ireland 
 wanted each other's help, as they want it just now, 
 for their mutual benefit. 
 
 There never was a time when England was so will- 
 ing and so able to make all just concessions to Ireland 
 as now. 
 
912 IRELAND. 
 
 There may never again be such an opportunity, as 
 there is now, for establishing a real union between 
 England and Ireland on the sound basis of mutual 
 interests. 
 
 We see the spread of infidelity from the monstrous 
 absurdities of pretended philosophers, drawn from 
 their pitiful researches into the scattered fragments 
 of earlier creations, out of which they form their im- 
 pious theories for the degradation of the human being, 
 whom " God created in His own image/' and into 
 whom "the Lord God breathed the breath of life, 
 and man became a living soul," and for the denial of 
 all the blessed hopes derived from divine revelation. 
 
 We see, keeping pace with the absurd and daring 
 theories of these godless philosophers, the spread of 
 opinions destructive of all reverence for and obedience 
 to constituted authorities, threatening the overthrow 
 of order and the substitution of anarchy, with the 
 total disruption of society, as if to give some color 
 of truth to the theory of these false philosophers, by 
 making men act more like monkeys than like men. 
 Fortunately for the world, the lordship of fire is re- 
 served to man, for if monkeys knew the use of fire 
 they would set the world in flames. 
 
 We have present to us the inevitable result in 
 the overwhelming ruin upon a neighbouring nation, 
 which, only a few months before, was supposed to be 
 the most wealthy, most prosperous, and most powerful 
 in the world. 
 
 We see all this going on before our eyes, and we 
 look on, indifferent spectators, watching with idle 
 curiosity the course of the hurricane, which is speed- 
 ing towards us. 
 
 All the preparation we want is, the drawing to- 
 gether of our own People in a firmer bond of union. 
 
 There never can be a united people where there is 
 
IRELAND. 913 
 
 an unjust interference with those natural rights on 
 which their social welfare mainly depends. 
 
 Nobody thinks or says that, all are equally endowed 
 by Nature, but nobody can deny that, the free gifts 
 of Nature were intended for the equal benefit of all, 
 and that, human laws have interposed to prevent such 
 intention from being carried out. 
 
 It is written : " The fear of God is the beginning 
 of wisdom/' But where is the fear or the wisdom 
 in interference with this beneficent design ? 
 
 It is the want of that fear, which turns the wisdom 
 of the wise into foolishness. 
 
 By far the greatest portions of the human race in 
 all countries have no other worldly possessions than 
 their brains, bones, and muscles, and on these they 
 are dependent for their daily subsistence. 
 
 By the exercise of these personal gifts they acquire, 
 what may be properly called, a vested right to a share 
 in the free gifts of Nature, sufficient for existence and 
 life's enjoyment. 
 
 This is obviously the divine will and intention. 
 
 But man, who is permitted to exercise his own 
 free will, has over-ruled that beneficent design. 
 
 The divine will was expressly declared to the first 
 man, for all his race. 
 
 " By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." 
 
 But the human law came afterwards and declared : 
 ' By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread when 
 thou hast paid the cost, including the tax/ 
 
 Almost every necessary, comfort, and convenience 
 of life has been taxed in addition to the first cost, 
 " the sweat of the face/' 
 
 On many of the free gifts of Nature the tax still 
 remains. 
 
 The tax enhances the market price to the consumer 
 on some articles from 50 to 100 per cent. ; on others 
 
 3 N 
 
914 IRELAND. 
 
 from 100 to 200 per cent., and even to 500 per cent, 
 and upwards. Of these, to the working-classes, the 
 following may properly be called " necessaries of life," 
 viz. : Sugar, Tea, Coffee, Tobacco, Barley for Malt, 
 Beer, Wine, Spirits, to say nothing of the luxuries, 
 comforts and conveniences of life. 
 
 All these, the free gifts of Nature, are taxed to an 
 amount so far enhancing the market price as to place 
 them only to a very limited extent within the reach 
 of a large class and entirely out of the reach of a 
 much larger class of the People, and the amount 
 paid into the Exchequer is less than one-third of the 
 amount so taken out of the pockets of the consumers. 
 
 From the amount collected, before it is paid into 
 the Exchequer, is to be deducted the Cost of Collection, 
 an unascertainable sum; then misappropriation, 
 another unascertainable sum ; then fraud, another 
 unascertainable sum. The per-centage of loss, in the 
 aggregate, on these sources of the revenue, is, of 
 course, incalculable, but considerable. 
 
 The amount taken out of the pockets of the con- 
 sumers, in addition to the duty, is the interest, at 
 the rate of 5 per cent, on the advance of the duty. 
 In addition to this is the 10 per cent, for profit, charged 
 by each party through whose hands successively these 
 articles pass ; that is, from the manufacturers to the 
 wholesale dealers, and from the wholesale dealers to 
 the retailers, all of whom must have their charges to 
 cover the additional charges already made, as well as 
 their charge for profit, sufficient to cover losses and 
 risk of bad debts. 
 
 All these charges are paid by the consumers in 
 addition to the duty. 
 
 These are the direct consequences, and are calcu- 
 lable with tolerable accuracy. 
 
 The indirect consequences are, the loss and injury 
 
IRELAND. 915 
 
 to Trade. These are incalculable, though I have 
 made the attempt, in the pages of " The People's 
 Blue Book/* to calculate some of the consequences. 
 
 These taxes fall with unequal weight on rich and 
 poor, and as the poor constitute a very great majority 
 of the whole population, these taxes are paid chiefly 
 by the poor. 
 
 In this way the poor are made poorer, until they 
 become paupers, and with the continuance of this 
 system is the increase and spread of pauperism and 
 the increase of the Poor Rate, the whole of which is 
 ultimately paid by the Landowners, however levied 
 in the first instance. 
 
 From long and careful investigation of the Govern- 
 ment Accounts and the best authenticated statistics, 
 I have stated and, moreover, proved by these official 
 documents, as shown in the pages of " The People's 
 Blue Book/' that rather more than two-thirds of our 
 Customs and Excise duties are paid by those who 
 gain their livelihood by the sweat of the brow. 
 
 I have for many years presented this fact as the 
 shame of the Government and the disgrace of the 
 People, for the Government governs only by the will 
 of the People. 
 
 I present this fact as the great danger in the dis- 
 tance, which threatens the country, the monarchy, 
 the constitution, and the well-being of society. 
 
 I present this fact as tending to these inevitable 
 consequences in the course of time. 
 
 Poverty, bordering on destitution, is on the increase 
 in every part of England, Wales, and Scotland. 
 
 In many parts of Ireland poverty has passed over 
 the border and is in destitution. 
 
 Under the existing state of things, in a few years 
 hence, the natural increase of population must enlarge 
 the borders of destitution throughout the kingdom. 
 
 3N2 
 
916 IRELAND. 
 
 But will the People then abide quietly in the misery 
 of destitution ? 
 
 Will the People, without property, leave the 
 owners of property in quiet possession and peaceable 
 enjoyment ? 
 
 Will they be content to contribute one-half of 
 their wages of labor for the maintenance of our army 
 and navy, our high officers of State, and State pen- 
 sioners ?. 
 
 Will they be content to make this self-sacrifice 
 to maintain the magnificence of monarchy ? 
 
 I cannot answer these questions ; nobody can. 
 
 But it is prudent to begin in time to avert any 
 tendency to these evil ends. 
 
 What folly for a man to do that, which he must 
 certainly undo, or be undone for ever ! 
 
 What folly for a man to neglect to do that, which, 
 left undone, must certainly be his ruin ! 
 
 What, if the time should come when a starving 
 people seise the property of others and defy the law ? 
 
 What, if the tenant-farmers and peasantry of Ire- 
 land rise up as one body and divide amongst them- 
 selves the land of their landlords and masters ? 
 
 Is it not wise to prevent such an attempt, by doing 
 in good time that which is right in common justice, 
 according to common sense? 
 
 It is true that, such an attempt, if successful, 
 would only make their ruin more complete and hope- 
 less ; but what is the use of talking political economy 
 to ignorant and starving people. They know they 
 are starving, but they do not know why. I am now 
 telling them why, but I would not tell them if I had 
 confidence in any Government. 
 
 I tell the working-people of the whole kingdom 
 that, they are unjustly treated by being made to 
 bear more than their fair share of the burdens of the 
 
IRELAND. 917 
 
 State, at the expense of the health, comfort, arid well- 
 being of themselves and families. 
 
 But I am telling them this not for their own sake 
 more than for the sake of the lords of the soil, and I 
 am telling them only what the Rev. Dr. Chalmers 
 told them many years ago in these words : 
 
 " If the whole of our public revenue were raised 
 by means of a territorial impost, it would ultimately 
 add nothing to the burden which now lies on the pro- 
 prietors of land ; for they, when fighting against such 
 a commutation, are fighting in defence of an imagi- 
 nary interest. What a death-blow would be thus 
 inflicted on the vocation of demagogues ! What a 
 sweetening influence it would have on British society, 
 after the false medium was dissipated, through which 
 the high and the low now look on each other as na- 
 tural enemies ?" 
 
 Such a political economy as this, had it preceded, 
 would also have superseded all these tempestuous 
 politics, which brought about the abolition of the 
 Corn Laws, against the will of nearly all the Land- 
 owners of the kingdom. 
 
 As one of the few Landowners who lent a help- 
 ing hand to that great act of justice to the working- 
 people, I claim the right to be heard on the present 
 question. 
 
 Having given the words of Dr. Chalmers, I will 
 now give my own words from ' The People's Blue 
 Book/ and here they are : 
 
 " This is the enlarged view, which should be taken 
 by statesmen in directing the legislation of this 
 country, and if this principle were firmly relied upon 
 and fully carried out, the results would soon dispel 
 all fears for the consequences, and then all classes 
 would soon find out that, their true interests were 
 identically the same and inseparable. 
 
918 IRELAND. 
 
 " If the landed aristocracy, instead of their blind re- 
 sistance to all change, or, as they called it, innova- 
 tion, and their tenacious adherence to what they 
 imagined, but falsely imagined, to be their own indis- 
 pensable interest, had paid all taxes, and left all trades 
 unfettered, so far as human actions can be calculated 
 upon by human motives, it may be confidently said 
 that, no political sacrifice would have been required 
 of them, and they would have remained in the un- 
 disturbed possession of their natural and rightful in- 
 heritance, as lords of the Commonwealth. 
 
 ' ' But the democracy of England, fired by a sense of 
 injury, made head against them, and wrested from 
 them by force, what ought to have been freely and 
 willingly conceded in the spirit of an enlightened 
 policy. May the landed aristocracy take warning 
 from the past, for the protection of their natural and 
 lawful rights for the future ! There lies yet before 
 them a noble field of improvement in rightly shifting 
 the burden of taxes, in emancipating trade, and that 
 without reserve or limitation ; above all, in providing 
 amply and liberally providing both for the Chris- 
 tian and literary Education of the People." 
 
 Landowners may be usefully reminded of this 
 warning, the signs of the times being far more por- 
 tentous of evil to them now than when this warning 
 was first given to them, fifteen years ago. 
 
 As education advances and the masses of the work- 
 ing-people better understand their natural rights, and 
 can fairly compare these with such rights as the law 
 allows, it is not to be expected, nor is it to be desired 
 that, they should continue to allow the greatest part 
 or any part of the revenue of the State to be extracted 
 from the Wages of Labor. 
 
 Certainly, if this system be persisted in many 
 years longer, it will not be with impunity to the 
 
IRELAND. 919 
 
 Landowners, who are already marked out by the 
 present Government as victims to calm the rising 
 outcry against the annual Thirty-six millions sterling 
 for Local Rates. 
 
 Why realised personal property should not bear 
 its fair proportion of local rates as well as land and 
 houses, is a question which ought to be answered to 
 the satisfaction of the Landowners before further 
 burdens are put upon land and houses. 
 
 But if the Landowners wait in any such expec- 
 tation, they will certainly miss their opportunity. 
 
 A prime minister with a majority of a hundred at 
 his back is not likely, of his own free will, to open a 
 question, which would certainly turn that majority 
 against him, and turn him out of his place; for 
 certainly, nearly every English, Welsh and Scotch 
 Landowner would vote against him. 
 
 If the object were to relieve the poverty of Ireland 
 and to make the Irish a contented people, nothing 
 can be more simple. But for this object no states- 
 man, of either party, will incur the risk to his po- 
 sition as a minister, by an attempt to make the ne- 
 cessary changes in our fiscal system, and in no other 
 way can this object ever be obtained for Ireland. 
 
 It is generally known and admitted that, the land 
 of every country is the real and substantial basis of 
 its wealth as a nation. 
 
 But it is generally denied that, the land and the 
 realised personal property are the real ground-work 
 of taxation for the support of a nation, by an equal 
 per-eentage rate on the market price or value of the 
 yearly produce. It is not so laid down by Adam 
 Smith, in his ' Wealth of Nations/ and that great 
 work is to be the authority agaiust advanced know- 
 ledge from nearly a hundred years of subsequent 
 experience ! 
 
920 IRELAND. 
 
 The revenue of 10 per cent., as shown in < The 
 People's Blue Book/ would yield an annual revenue 
 to the State of between seventy and eighty millions 
 sterling. 
 
 It is also shown that, the effect of this property 
 tax, in substitution of all other Imperial stamps and 
 taxes, except Postage stamps, would be to reduce 
 very greatly the existing burdens on land and houses, 
 and to raise the general rate of wages throughout the 
 kingdom. Another and most important effect is 
 also shown, in the gradual diminution of the Poor 
 Rate, and the ultimate abolition of the Poor Law. 
 
 All the attempts of the present Government to 
 relieve distress in Ireland have completely failed, 
 either from misunderstanding the cause of distress, or 
 from unwillingness to apply the only effectual remedy. 
 
 The same cause is operating in the same way in 
 England, Wales, and Scotland, as in Ireland ; the 
 only difference being in the greater counteracting 
 forces in Great Britain than in Ireland, which pre- 
 vent the effects being so clearly visible in the one 
 country as in the other. 
 
 Pauperism is visibly and largely on the increase, 
 and, under the present system, it is impossible that 
 it should be otherwise with an increasing population, 
 without the possibility of any increase of land. 
 
 No temporary prosperity in trade, no occasional 
 extraordinary harvest, can materially alter this ine- 
 vitable consequence, as long as the wages of labor are 
 taken by indirect taxes to supply the necessities of the 
 State. 
 
 The system, so radically wrong, is drying up the 
 resources of the country, pauperising the whole 
 kingdom,- -and demoralising the population. 
 
 In the end, may be in a long course of years, 
 a great portion of the rents of land and houses 
 
IRELAND. 921 
 
 must be swallowed up by the Poor Rates, and all 
 the land of inferior quality must be thrown out of 
 cultivation ; or, before this comes to pass, an infu- 
 riated people will rise up in force and help themselves 
 to a more equal division of the land and houses 
 and property of the kingdom. All these consequences 
 may be expected as the ultimate end of persistence in 
 the present system, and it is only a question of time. 
 
 This is no wild prophecy, but calm reasoning 
 from cause to effect, confirmed by experience. We 
 read of it in the history of the past, and we see it in 
 the events now passing before us in the neighboring 
 kingdom of France. 
 
 Why should we not in good time take precautions 
 for avoiding like events in our own country ? Even 
 animals learn to avoid that by which from experience 
 they retain a sense of danger. As Horace said, 
 and for the benefit of the country-gentlemen whom I 
 am now specially addressing I give it in English ; 
 ' The wolf cautioned by experience dreads the pitfall, 
 the hawk suspects the snare, and the pike the covered 
 hook/ 
 
 I am showing Irish Landowners how to avoid the 
 pitfall, the snare, and the hook. 
 
 The only practicable industry in Ireland is the 
 cultivation of the land, and the free and untaxed use 
 of all its produce. But Malt and Spirit duties block 
 the way, and British Statesmen are determined to 
 starve down or starve out the surplus population. 
 They think it enough for Ireland to make it a mere 
 grazing country, and so they keep up the enormous 
 penalty on the four-course rotation, destroying the 
 chief crop, barley, by their 70 per cent, excise 
 upon it. 
 
 The Government that undertook to satisfy Ireland 
 has signally failed, from not understanding the re- 
 
922 IRELAND. 
 
 medy, or not applying it, and applying wrong mea- 
 sures, which have satisfied no party, but caused the 
 greatest distrust in all parties ; distrust of each 
 other and distrust of the Government. 
 
 The remedies of the present Government, instead 
 of being remedial, have greatly aggravated all the 
 previously existing evils by increasing the malignant 
 feelings between parties and turning the activity of 
 men to mischief, instead of encouraging their em- 
 ployment in production of commodities, as food and 
 fodder, and other convenient articles of commercial 
 value. Instead of encouraging these industries, for 
 which Ireland is so peculiarly adapted and through 
 which alone peace and prosperity can ever be esta- 
 blished in Ireland, all the fiscal impediments, fatal 
 to prosperity, have been maintained, and a breach of 
 faith with the Church of Ireland has spread discord 
 and distrust instead of peace and confidence. 
 
 Labor in Ireland, which ought to be expending 
 itself healthfully and producing plentifully for the 
 welfare and contentment of the people, is converted 
 into hatred of her rulers and disaffection to British 
 rule, or any rule of social order. 
 
 This is what the present Government has done for 
 Ireland, and this mischief is what the educated and 
 intelligent landowners and loyal people of Ireland are 
 now invited, by temperate and lawful means, to repair. 
 
 But though differing with Mr. Gladstone, as the 
 head of the present Government, in his measures of 
 relief for Ireland, I should be very sorry if any ex- 
 pression of mine were open to the inference that I 
 doubted his good intentions for Ireland, or the great- 
 ness of his intellectual gifts. I fully acknowledge all 
 these, with the highest sense of his services to his 
 country, by preserving, with honor and dignity, the 
 peace of Europe, and laying a safe foundation for the 
 
IRELAND. 923 
 
 re-organisation of our army, by the abolition of pur- 
 chase. 
 
 But I regret to have differed with him from first 
 to last on all his measures for the relief of Ireland, 
 on grounds political and moral. 
 
 His first measure, the abolition of the Irish Church, 
 was unconstitutional, and brought much disaffection, 
 but no relief whatever. 
 
 His next measure, the complicated and difficult 
 Land Bill, was wrong in principle, and has brought 
 no relief to Ireland, but will bring much litigation. 
 
 Both these measures were misdirected efforts, and 
 have left the real Irish question untouched. But look 
 at the mischief that follows. The Irish question is in 
 this way made a precedent for unsettling, one after an- 
 other, all the most valued institutions of the country. 
 
 In Ireland the whole agricultural body, consisting 
 of landowners, tenant-farmers, and laborers, is sub- 
 ject to a heavy tax, which compresses and limits the 
 productive power of the land. The regular, most 
 productive, and most profitable way of farming is as 
 good as prohibited. The four-course rotation is ren- 
 dered impossible, as proved by the statistics. Barley 
 and turnip lands pay in Ireland the same amount of 
 excise on the grain produce as in England. This 
 amounts to nearly 5 an acre on medium land. 
 Every quarter of malting barley pays 21s. 8d. The 
 consequence is, the greater part of Ireland is kept 
 out of cultivation. 
 
 Hence the large number of grazing farms employing 
 little or no labor, and the small number of arable farms 
 paying wages. Hence the innumerable small holdings 
 and mud cabins, the non-employment and starvation 
 of the peasantry, whose wages, when employed, are 
 only 6s. to 8s. a week. These are the direct and 
 indirect results of excised and arrested agriculture. 
 
924 IRELAND. 
 
 Here is the crop of evils and here are the morbid 
 growths of the Irish question; all moving in a vicious 
 circle round Mr. Gladstone's alternative "starva- 
 tion or emigration." 
 
 For this state of things the Government and the 
 Legislature are alone responsible. The people are 
 ignorant of the real cause of their physical and social 
 miseries. They only know they suffer, want bread, 
 and have no means of living. They are driven to the 
 wall and faced by coercion bills. If our statesmen 
 cannot or will not apply the proper remedy, how can 
 the parties themselves be required to do so ? 
 
 The grounds of Irish misery have never been 
 clearly stated in Parliament. They are neither reli- 
 gious nor political. They are physical and agricul- 
 tural. 
 
 The Irish People want work, wages, and food. 
 They are deprived of those by law ; and Parliament 
 prescribes for their relief the abolition of the Protes- 
 tant Irish Church ! 
 
 This failing, the State physicians make another 
 guess at the true diagnosis of the suffering patients' 
 case, and prescribe a Land Bill, which leaves the 
 system, with all its evils, just as it was, taking a bit 
 from one and giving it to the other, thus perpetuating 
 and aggravating the existing system of bad farming 
 and small holdings, and encouraging litigation 
 between landlord and tenant without doing good to 
 either. It misses altogether the real causes of the 
 destitution and misery of Ireland, the non-employ- 
 ment and low wages of the agricultural laborer, 
 the small holdings and small profits, the bad system 
 of farming, and the disproportionate quantity of the 
 best land laid down to grass. There is an overflow- 
 ing population and very little tillage to employ them. 
 
 Nearly all the crimes that are committed in Ireland 
 
IRELAND. 925 
 
 are agrarian, the outbreak of a strong feeling almost 
 universal in Ireland, because proceeding from a cause 
 almost universal, namely, want of employment and 
 consequent starvation, or that extreme degree of dis- 
 tress which drives men to desperation. That is at 
 the bottom of all the misery of Ireland, and that 
 is the cause of " Ribandism," under whatever name 
 it assumes. I saw it stamped upon the faces of men, 
 women, and children, in most parts of Ireland. I 
 don't know what they call it in Ireland, but in Eng- 
 land, it would be called " Starvation." I heard it in 
 the ring of their reckless laughter. I felt it and 
 understood it as I never could have felt it and under- 
 stood it if I had not seen and heard it. I felt shame 
 and pity ; but the shame was all for England, the 
 pity all for Ireland. 
 
 The chief blame of all this has been thrown on the 
 landlords. How that may be I do not know, but the 
 answers to my inquiries, wherever I went in Ireland, 
 were anything but confirmatory of that charge. The 
 impression with which I left Ireland was that, cases 
 of unjustifiable eviction were exceptional; that, the 
 landed gentry as a class, excluding from my remarks 
 one or two of the Land Companies, have not behaved 
 badly under the peculiar circumstances of their posi- 
 tion, and that, they have not been generally wanting 
 in the performance of their duties as landlords. 
 
 Productive labor is the source of all wealth, and 
 as the amount of the productive labor of any nation or 
 community is increased or diminished, so must be 
 the proportion of its wealth. Consequently, every- 
 thing which tends to promote productive labor tends 
 to the creation of wealth ; and everything which tends 
 to paralyse productive labor as certainly insures 
 poverty. As Adam Smith says: "The annual 
 labor of every nation is the fund which originally sup- 
 
926 IRELAND. 
 
 plies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of 
 life which it annually consumes, and which consist 
 always either in the immediate produce of that labor, 
 or in what is purchased with that produce from other 
 nations." " Labor was the first price, the original 
 purchase money, that was paid for all things." 
 
 The demand for labor in Ireland bears no propor- 
 tion to the supply. The surplus population emigrates 
 or perishes, and either way Ireland perishes ; for what 
 can a country do when its strength is gone, and with 
 it the power of accumulating capital, which is only 
 the savings out of annual gains? 
 
 " The demand for those who live by wages neces- 
 sarily increases with the increase of the revenue and 
 stock of every country, and cannot possibly increase 
 without it. The increase of revenue and stock is the 
 increase of national wealth. The demand for those 
 who live by wages, therefore, naturally increases with 
 the increase of national wealth, and cannot possibly 
 increase without it." 
 
 So says Adam Smith. 
 
 What says the Chancellor of the Exchequer ? 
 
 Does he take this admitted rule in political eco- 
 nomy for his guidance ? 
 
 Look at Ireland. 
 
 The want of capital confines productive industry to 
 the land. By a law of nature population increases ; 
 but the land does not increase. The produce of the 
 land is limited, but the increase of population is un- 
 limited. When confined, as in Ireland, to the pro- 
 duce of the land for subsistence, that produce must be 
 consumed as population increases, until the whole 
 amount of the limited produce is consumed by the 
 increasing producers. 
 
 In this state of things, wealth cannot increase, nor 
 capital accumulate to afford other means of employ- 
 
IRELAND. 927 
 
 ment. Hence arises, as in Ireland, intense competi- 
 tion for land (the only means of subsistence), want of 
 employment, starvation, discontent, and disturbance. 
 Disturbance carries with it insecurity, and insecurity 
 drives away capital, the only remedy for the evil. 
 
 This is the state of Ireland, further aggravated by 
 duties of Excise and Customs, which stop the demand 
 for productive labor, and at the same time hasten 
 the progress of starvation, by enhancing, on a pro- 
 hibitory scale, the prices of nearly all the necessaries, 
 comforts, conveniences, and decencies of civilised life. 
 
 Such are the inevitable consequences of disregard- 
 ing the rules of good government, and how much 
 longer the Irish People will submit to be governed by 
 a British Parliament, which has for so many cen- 
 turies proved itself to be incompetent or unwilling to 
 govern Ireland according to Irish interests, is only a 
 question of time. One thing is certain, this state 
 of tilings cannot last many years longer. 
 
 There is no use in saying, Ireland is improving, 
 when Ireland is still starving. There is no use in 
 the British Parliament trying more experiments after 
 all the failures of past centuries. 
 
 Ireland must and will now try her own experi- 
 ments. Any attempt to prevent it will only make 
 matters worse. When the power of stopping run-a- 
 way horses is lost, it is wise discretion to confine the 
 attempt to guiding their course. In this way only 
 can mischief be prevented, and failure then will not 
 be England's fault. 
 
 Ireland is only an agricultural country, and offers 
 the finest field for the exercise of skill and the em- 
 ployment of capital. Capital might be invested on 
 land in Ireland with far greater profit than on land 
 in England. 
 
 Spenser's account of the actual state of Ireland, 
 
928 IRELAND. 
 
 is as true at this day as when he wrote. He thus 
 describes the capabilities of the country : 
 
 " And sure Ireland is yet a most sweet and beauti- 
 ful country as any is under Heaven, being stored with 
 all sorts of fish most abundantly, sprinkled with many 
 very sweet islands and goodly lakes, like little inland 
 seas, that will carry even shippes so commodiously as 
 that, if some princes of the world had them, they 
 would soon hope to be lords of all the seas, and, 'ere 
 long, of all the world ; also full of very good ports 
 and havens opening upon England, as inviting us to 
 come unto them to see what excellent commodities 
 that country can afford ; besides the soyle itself most 
 fertile, fit to yielde all kinde of fruit that shall be 
 committed thereunto. And, lastly, the heavens most 
 mild and temperate, though somewhat more moist 
 than the parts towards the east." 
 
 Lord Bacon has written in the same terms of '' the 
 many dowries of nature with which this Island is en- 
 dowed." 
 
 With such natural capabilities it is impossible to 
 account for the destitution and misery of Ireland but 
 through mis-government. 
 
 The forced idleness and starvation of the peasantry, 
 the miserable condition of the small farms, and the 
 devotion of the best land to grazing purposes, are all 
 accounted for by the simple fact of the excise tax of 
 70 per cent, on the chief crop of the four-course 
 rotation. For this the Government and Legislature 
 are to blame, not the Landowners. 
 
 The original Statistics of Ireland show that, the 
 total acreage under all Crops in the year 1870 was 
 5,642,556 acres, and that the acreage of Barley in 
 the same year was only 240,952, of Wheat only 
 260,914, and of Oats 1,648,764; but in Potatoes 
 the acreage was, in the same year 1,043,788, and of 
 
IRELAND. 929 
 
 Turnips 339,059. Such are a few of the results out 
 of, in round numbers, about 15,000,000 of acres of 
 good land in Ireland. 
 
 I cannot give with satisfactory accuracy the pre- 
 sent quantity of acres in grass, but according to the 
 Return of Agricultural Statistics for Ireland in the 
 year, 1868, the statement was as follows : 
 
 Permanent Grass . . . 10,003,918 acres. 
 White and Green Crops . 5,547,335 
 Bog and waste land . . 4,423,340 
 
 Total . . 19,974,593 acres. 
 
 These facts are sufficient to show the enormous dis- 
 proportionbet ween the arable and grassland in Ireland. 
 
 The acreage in Oats is some guide to an estimate 
 of what would be the cultivation of Barley in Ireland 
 under a free system, the soil and climate being more 
 suitable to that growth. But Irish Oats are not con- 
 sidered to be of the finest quality, and they fetch a 
 lower price in the market than English Oats, though 
 this may be accounted for, in some degree, by the 
 careless manner of sending the Irish Oats to market 
 with a mixture of dirt and grit. 
 
 It must be evident to all persons experienced in 
 the cultivation of land that, the farmers in Ireland 
 cannot afford to employ much labor when the pro- 
 duce of tillage farming is so heavily taxed. 
 
 In other countries, in Holstein, in Holland, in 
 Denmark and Germany, great profits are made by 
 feeding stock, with the aid of malt, for the London 
 market ; but our Government has said t0 Irish 
 farmers, ' if you do so you must pay us 70 on 
 every 100 worth of barley grown on your farms/ 
 
 Why should not Ireland feed as well as breed 
 stock, and pocket the profits now pocketed by Hol- 
 land, Denmark, and Germany ? 
 
 3o 
 
930 IRELAND. 
 
 It is only the Malt Tax that prevents it. 
 
 Proh pudor ! The Irish just want this malted 
 barley to give their potatoes and linseed the highest 
 feeding quality, but we hold fast and refuse to let 
 them have it. 
 
 The climate of Ireland, from too much moisture 
 and too little summer sun, is not suitable for growing 
 wheat with profit, and the best paying crop, barley, 
 for which the climate is better suited, is taxed 70 per 
 cent., and the pernicious operation of the tax is aggra- 
 vated by levying it at the point of production, so that 
 consumers pay more than 200 per cent, prime cost. 
 
 The pressure of the duty increases at every stage 
 of the trade and manufacture in about the following 
 proportions : 
 
 The Maltster, paying the tax of 21s. Sd. requires 
 5 per cent, interest and 10 per cent, profit for this 
 portion of his capital invested, and charges his brewer 
 24s. lie?.; the brewer, requiring also 15 per cent, 
 upon this expenditure, charges the retailer 28s, Sd. -, 
 and the retailer recovers from the consumer this 
 amount with 10 per cent, added for his profit, 
 making the total tax paid by the consumer 31s. 6d. 
 for 21s. Sd. actually accruing to the revenue. Thus, 
 according to this estimate, the amount of malt duty 
 paid by consumers is 9,425,000 for 6,500,000 re- 
 ceived by the revenue, showing an absolute loss of 
 2,925,000, or 45 per cent, upon the duty collected. 
 
 The four-course rotation of crops in Ireland is 
 nearly annihilated by this enormous tax on the best 
 paying crop. 
 
 These facts are established by the Report of the 
 Select Committee of the House of Commons on the 
 Malt Tax in the year 1867. 
 
 The following is an extract from that Report: 
 il Taking the price of barley at 31s. a quarter, the tax 
 
IRELAND. 931 
 
 when paid by the maltster is 70 per cent. ; the per- 
 son who buys malt and brews beer from it pays a tax 
 of 100 per cent. ; and the person who buys beer by 
 retail in a public-house pays a tax of 140 per cent. 
 Your Committee are of opinion that the principle on 
 which this calculation is based is correct, and that 
 the consumer of beer pays a very much heavier tax 
 than goes into the exchequer." 
 
 If the malt-tax were off there would be some rise 
 in the price of barley, and the price of medium malt- 
 ing barley may be taken at 40s. the quarter. In 
 malting it. will be nine bushels of malt, and the extra 
 bushel will pay for the malting. But when brewing 
 becomes free by the repeal of the malt-tax, brewers 
 will take advantage of diastatic* malting, which re- 
 quires only one-third or one-fourth of malt, the rest 
 being comminuted barley. The difference between 
 crushing and malting on three-fourths of a quarter 
 may be taken at 2s. 6d., which being deducted from 
 the credit side of the brewing, the rest of the total 
 expense of converting a quarter of malt into beer, of 
 four-barrel strength tothe quarter, maybe taken at 26s. 
 This added to the 40s. before mentioned, makes the 
 prime cost of four barrels, or 144 gallons, amount to 
 66s. A barrel will be one-fourth of this, or 16s. 6d. ; 
 a gallon 5^d. ; and a pint less than three farthings. 
 
 It is well known that, brewers obtain much more 
 beer out of a quarter of malt than private brewing. 
 They get out of it, quality for quality, four barrels, 
 
 * The diastase of malt is a peculiar ferment, which has the 
 singular property of turning starch into sugar without malt- 
 ing. It is a sort of extract of malt, and does the same thing 
 in the human stomach, helping it to assimilate all starehy 
 materials. 
 
 It does the same with animals. 
 
 This is the reason why malt is so fattening in small quan- 
 tities, a benefit our excise forbids. 
 
 3o2 
 
932 IRELAND. 
 
 whereas private brewing gets only three. In other 
 words, they brew 144 gallons against 108, being a 
 difference in their favor of 25 per cent., or one-fourth, 
 which, the tax off, would be represented in money 
 by 20^. 3d., or the selling price of a barrel of 36 
 gallons. But as there are two brewings in the year, 
 spring and autumn, and continuous deliveries of beer, 
 of course the trade turns over its capital twice a year, 
 doubling the 25 per cent, and making it 50 per cent. 
 
 Thus, if the malt-tax were off, beer, of the strength 
 of four barrels to the quarter of malt, if sold at a half- 
 penny a pint, would still leave enormous profit to the 
 brewers. 
 
 Out of a population of 30 millions, only about six 
 millions are at present consumers of beer owing to 
 the prohibitive pressure of the malt-tax making it 2d. 
 a pint at the brewers, and 3d. a pint at the public- 
 houses, when it could be sold, on the repeal of the 
 malt-tax, at a half-penny a pint for consumption at 
 home, and with a profit of 100 per cent, to the 
 brewers ! 
 
 These calculations are confined to the prime cost 
 and selling prices of beer made out of malt and hops 
 alone ; but the brewers will enjoy great advantages 
 when the trade is made free by the repeal of the 
 malt-tax. Besides malting by the diastatic process, 
 they will obtain additional profits by employing the 
 coarser sugar, saccharine roots, and sprouted grain 
 other than barley in the manufacture of beer, which is 
 another reason why private brewing should be made 
 free, as a further check to the deterioration of quality 
 which otherwise might ensue, notwithstanding the 
 safeguards of free-trade and mutual competition. 
 
 At a half-penny a pint there would be above seven 
 millions additional of the poorer laboring classes, now 
 excluded, ready to come in; and as each man counts 
 
IRELAND. 933 
 
 for a quarter of barley every year the effect of the 
 repeal of the malt-tax would be prodigious to the 
 agriculture and food-production of the United King- 
 dom. It would alone revolutionise Ireland by the in- 
 troduction of the four-course system, and tend more 
 to the physical and moral benefit of the Irish People 
 than any single measure that can be suggested. 
 
 The pressure of this tax on the agriculture of Ire- 
 land and its injurious effects upon the People, cannot 
 be appreciated by the effects in England, bad as they 
 are there. The malt-tax is mainly destroying the 
 agriculture of Ireland, driving away the peasantry, 
 or leaving them in a state of destitution, which is 
 driving them to destruction. 
 
 To the laborer beer is a necessary of life ; good ale 
 from malt and hops is food of the very best description, 
 both physiologically and chemically considered. At 
 present, it may be said, the laborers, as a class, have 
 no beer. They have very few articles of food. As a 
 rule, they have bread and cheese, sometimes a little 
 meat, with tea or cold water in the place of beer. 
 When they do have beer it is generally poor, unwhole- 
 some stuff, and often adulterated with poisonous in- 
 gredients. 
 
 I am here referring to the laborers, as a class, in 
 England ; but what of the same class in Ireland ? It 
 is a rare sight to see a laborer drinking beer in Ire- 
 land ; and then what beer ! And as to meat, no 
 Irish laborer ever tastes it, unless his pig dies a 
 natural death. 
 
 In all my tour through Ireland, in any Irish cabin 
 that I entered, and I entered many, I never saw a 
 jug of beer, or a loaf of wheaten bread! 
 
 The more Mr. Gladstone's financial policy is con- 
 sidered the more clearly it will be seen that, he 
 has deliberately made the Malt and Spirit duties not 
 
934 IRELAND. 
 
 only the foundation of his financial scheme, but also 
 the central idea of his general Imperial and Social 
 policy. 
 
 This is to be seen in Mr. Bruce's Licensing Bill 
 lately brought in. It all turns on the excise duties. 
 Instead of permitting and encouraging the popula- 
 tion of the United Kingdom to have and enjoy their 
 good and wholesome Ale at Home with their families 
 for a half-penny a pint, direct from the breweries, 
 which they could easily have, Mr. Gladstone main- 
 tains his " unchanged convictions," and forces men, 
 women, and children into the Public Houses to drink 
 poor adulterated stuff called beer, at prices far beyond 
 their means; thus making them contribute, out of 
 the wages of their labor, to the revenue of the State, 
 with all the risk to health and morals, and all the 
 unmentionable consequences. 
 
 This is what Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues 
 are now doing, and these are the Statesmen that 
 Ireland is to look to for prosperity and peace ! 
 
 When we consider that, this tax of 21 s. Sd. per 
 quarter amounts to <4. 17s. 6d. an acre, reckoning 
 4J quarters per acre, and is borne with difficulty and 
 discontent by producers in a rich country like Eng- 
 land, with resident gentry, we may form some con- 
 ception what must be its pressure and evil effects in 
 a poor agricultural country like Ireland, which is 
 almost entirely a food-producing country, with a 
 superabundant population and without any of these 
 advantages. 
 
 The effects have been most disastrous. 
 
 The returns show that, the land under wheat in Ire- 
 land is year by year getting less, and the importation 
 of bread stuffs from Eastern America, and even from 
 California, shows that, Ireland cannot grow wheat at 
 the price those countries can afford to send it. Irish 
 
IRELAND. 935 
 
 barley is not of the quality to pay the heavy malt 
 duty. Irish barley, with the taK on, can only be used 
 profitably with oats for feeding and distilling pur- 
 poses. 
 
 The acknowledged excellence of Irish and Scotch 
 Whisky proves that, the climate and growth of those 
 countries are peculiarly favorable for the production 
 of such a spirit. 
 
 But our statesmen treat malt and beer as foreign 
 productions, such as tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, wine 
 and brandy, forgetting that, the countries producing 
 these articles, instead of taxing the raw material, 
 encourage its growth by every possible means. 
 
 Why do we not do the same with ours ? 
 
 The repeal of the Malt tax would be giving to us, 
 and to Ireland most especially, our share of free 
 trade, and this, with the repeal of the wine and spirit 
 duties, would make new and profitable employments 
 spring up in our country, which would soon change 
 the face of Ireland and the condition of its people. 
 Nearly all the barley would be malted for one pur- 
 pose or another, and the demand for it would be im- 
 mensely increased. 
 
 This demand could be met only by an increased 
 breadth of crop, and Ireland would very largely 
 benefit by it, because it would necessitate an increased 
 cultivation of turnips, rape, mangolds, etc., barley 
 following a root or green crop as naturally as beef, 
 mutton, and long wool. 
 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer says it is impos- 
 sible to take off the tax on Malt without putting it 
 on some other production, which will be equally in- 
 jurious to trade. That is admitted ; whether equally 
 injurious or not being an immaterial inquiry. 
 
 Last year (1870) the Malt Tax produced 
 6,483,612 ; Spirits 10,969,188, and imported 
 
936 IRELAND. 
 
 spirits 4,191,400, together 15,160,588; Wine 
 1,476,404. Taking only these three articles, here 
 is a revenue of 23,120,604. 
 
 We do not want a Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 to tell us that, we cannot raise that amount of revenue 
 by taxes on natural productions without serious injury 
 to trade, and that means, to the whole People. 
 
 But what right has any Government to tax the free 
 gifts of Nature, and thus to inflict serious injury on 
 the whole People ? 
 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer says : ' I admit 
 the serious injury to Trade and to the whole People, 
 but the State requires the money, and show me how 
 I can get it with less injurious consequences/ 
 
 I answer : ' I have shown it, in the pages of the 
 - f People's Blue Book/ first published 15 years ago.' 
 I have since heard of that book in every quarter 
 of the globe, though every Edition has gone forth 
 without dedication, without patronage, without the 
 Author's name; and further, I have heard, from 
 many quarters, of 5 being offered for a copy of that 
 Book, published at the price of 5s. Reluctantly, I 
 now avow myself the Author, for one more trial, and 
 that for the sake of Ireland; because I know that, 
 without the help of Ireland, the book and its author 
 will be condemned by a very large majority of Eng- 
 lish Landowners, Fund-holders and realised Property- 
 holders in general. They do not understand the sub- 
 ject, and think they will be worse off under the new 
 system than under the old one. They do not see 
 that, under the new system of State Taxation, they 
 would be far better off than they are now under the 
 present absurd and evil system. 
 
 If the Irish People can understand it, they will see 
 that, it gives them all they can ever want, and far 
 more than they have ever asked for. 
 
IRELAND. 937 
 
 When they do understand it they will have it, or 
 Ireland will cease to be part of the United Kingdom. 
 
 It is our system of State Taxation, which is starving 
 agricultural profits in Ireland. It makes poor people 
 poorer, and does not make the rich richer. It does 
 not pay commercially to invest capital in tillage, and 
 so Irish landowners are prevented from making those 
 improvements, which landowners iri other countries 
 find it their interest to make. Neither will the richer 
 tenants take tillage farms; they seek only grazing 
 farms. The consequence has been, in the course of 
 time, to multiply the small holdings, from 10 to 50 
 acres, all over Ireland, and the tenants of such farms, 
 being poor, avoid the four-course rotation and exhaust 
 the land by scourging crops of potatoes and oats. 
 The prohibitory tax explains all this, and why the 
 agricultural laborers are only partially employed, and 
 when they are employed, the 6s. to 8s. a week they 
 receive is inadequate for the decent maintenance of 
 themselves and families. Hence they must starve, 
 unless they can get some small portion of land to eke 
 out a miserable existence. 
 
 This explains their passionate attachment to the 
 land, and at the same time those bloody acts of 
 despair and revenge when evicted. If the plough 
 were untaxed, and the wages of labor untaxed, things 
 would soon right themselves in Ireland in obedience 
 to economic laws, and tenants with capital, of which 
 there are many in Ireland, would be only too glad 
 to take large farms and to work them in the regular 
 way, employing laborers and paying them higher 
 wages, thus converting them from instruments of 
 destruction into instruments of production for the 
 common weal. The energies of men when diverted 
 from their natural course always turn to mischief. 
 
 A general rise in the rate of wages, from the 
 
938 IRELAND. 
 
 increased demand, would be a certain consequence of 
 this change in the state of things in Ireland ; but, 
 independently of this, the purchasable power of the 
 wages would be increased more than one-half by the 
 reduced price of all the necessaries, comforts, and 
 conveniences of life to the working man, now en- 
 hanced by customs and excise duties. 
 
 To employ the great mass of the population in 
 Ireland permanently and profitably nothing less than 
 the general arable cultivation of the land will suffice, 
 and this can be done only by putting it under the 
 plough for grain and green crops, which, according 
 to the published statistics of the Board of Trade, are 
 dwindling down to nothing in Ireland. But this is 
 impossible with the excise on malted barley, the key 
 of the four-course rotation. The land is consequently 
 laid down in grass, and the consequence of this is that, 
 Ireland feeds in summer immense quantities of stock, 
 and is forced to sell at any sacrifice when winter ap- 
 proaches. Hence the want of profitable employment 
 for the Irish People, and their minds are turned to 
 agitation in the direction of their peculiar mental 
 activities, which, by continual exercise without control, 
 get stronger and stronger, until they culminate in 
 Fenianism. 
 
 Irish difficulties will never cease until the plough 
 be made free, and free-trade principles are carried 
 out in our agricultural as well as fiscal systems. 
 
 Then Great Britain and Ireland will be one united 
 kingdom, united by the strongest ties of loyalty and 
 love, with mutual respect and mutual interests. 
 
 It is only charitable to suppose that, the Govern- 
 ment is ignorant of the mischievous consequences of 
 the malt tax, and how much of the misery of Ireland 
 is attributable to this single cause. 
 
 But what human intellect is competent to follow 
 
IRELAND. 939 
 
 out all the consequences through the intricate con- 
 fusion, which must follow the attempt to interfere with 
 and frustrate the beneficent designs of Providence ? 
 
 Mr. Lowe, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 thought he was giving the farmers a boon when he 
 allowed them to sprout their barley without charging 
 Excise duty on it, before they gave it as fodder to 
 their cattle. The farmers laughed at this as of no 
 use compared with malt. But at the same time he 
 aggravated the operation of the malt tax on farmers, 
 by allowing brewers to use sugar for brewing, on 
 payment of an excise duty of 76'. 6d. per cwt. a cwt. 
 being the chemical equivalent of the sugar contained 
 in a quarter of barley, which pays 21s. Sd. 
 
 Thus, 21s. Sd. 7s. Qd. = 14s. 2^. makes in brew- 
 ing so much diiferential duty in favor of sugar pro- 
 ducers against barley producers. 
 
 This is what Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 did for farmers and for Ireland, last Session, (1870), 
 when he had a surplus of 44 millions to dispose of ! 
 
 No wonder people feel uneasy at finding themselves 
 in the power of a man capable of such con fusion of ideas. 
 
 The Government apportion 2 cwt. of sugar to the 
 quarter of barley, but chemistry and science are 
 against the Government. 
 
 This is proved by the exact chemical formula, 
 showing the respective weights, and I will give it in a 
 note for the satisfaction of those who can follow it.* 
 Of course the brewers want the Government to allow 
 more. 
 
 * The tax of 21*. Sd. on malted barley per qr. as com- 
 pared with the tax of 7s. 6d. per cwt. on sugar. 
 
 The following formula shows that in malting and brewing, 
 one cwt. of sugar is about equal to a quarter of malt. 
 
 Sugar chemically considered is Carbon 12 + Hydrogen 12 -f 
 Oxygen 12 for one equivalent, but in malting, four equiva- 
 lents of carbonic acid are given off, namely, Carbon 4 4- 
 
940 IRELAND. 
 
 But taking the official allowance, the differential 
 duty amounts to 6s. 8d. a quarter. 
 
 This is shown thus : s. d. 
 
 Malt duty 21 8 
 
 Brewing sugar, 2x7s. 6d. = l5 
 
 Difference 6 8 
 
 In March, 1870, Mr. Lowe received, at his official 
 residence in Downing Street, a very numerous and 
 influential deputation from the Central Chamber of 
 Agriculture and other Chambers in the provinces on 
 the Malt Tax, and on that occasion he very properly 
 said to them : " Let me understand you. I am not 
 very clever about these things." 
 
 Oxygen 8, leaving Carbon 8 + Hydrogen 12 -f Oxygen 4, 
 whicli constitute two equivalents of alcohol. 
 
 The atomic weights of Carbon being 6, Hydrogen 1, and 
 Oxygen 8, the result is shown in the following table, viz. 
 
 C C 12 by 6 equals 72 
 
 Sugar \ H 12 by 1 equal 12 
 
 ( O 12 by 8 equals 96 
 
 180 
 
 Carbolic C C 4 by 6 equals . . 24 
 Acid i O 8 by 8 equals . . 64 
 
 88 . . 88 
 
 Dry alcohol 92 
 
 So that, out of 180 parts, say 180 Ibs. of sugar, 92 Ibs. 
 are converted into dry alcohol, and 88 Ibs. into carbonic acid; 
 in other words, given a certain quantity of sugar, half its 
 weight, or a little more, becomes dry alcohol. That is, out 
 of 14 Ibs. of sugar, rather more than 7 Ibs. of dry alcohol 
 can be produced. This is more than a gallon, and a gallon of 
 dry alcohol is about equal to two of proof spirit which is 50 
 per cent, water. Therefore a stone of sugar is chemically 
 capable of producing two gallons of proof spirit, which is 
 the quantity obtainable from a bushel of malt : in other words, 
 8 stones, or one cwt. of sugar, are equal to 8 bushels or one 
 quarter of malt. Q. E. D. 
 
IRELAND. 941 
 
 How should he be ? 
 
 But he spoke very plainly to that deputation, and 
 told them that, it was quite impossible for him to 
 give up the Malt tax, but he would think very care- 
 fully of all they had told him ; whereupon they 
 bowed and retired, thanking him for the honour he 
 had done them by his courteous reception of them, 
 and giving up to them exactly 45 minutes of his 
 valuable time. 
 
 Some people are thankful for small mercies, not 
 a characteristic of the Irish People, and in that 
 very numerous deputation, probably, there was not a 
 single Irishman, certainly not a single Irish Land- 
 owner. 
 
 But what must Mr. Lowe have felt and suffered 
 on finding himself waited on by such a deputation 
 of men, so far cleverer than himself on the serious 
 question then before him, concerning the welfare of 
 many millions of his countrymen, the e alien ' Irish 
 included ! 
 
 What a penalty for high office, to hold it at the 
 sacrifice of one's common sense, and every feeling, 
 if one has any, of justice and humanity, with 
 only the wretched consolation of a mistaken be- 
 lief in political expediency, if one really does be- 
 lieve it ! 
 
 This was all the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 could say for himself in answer to the overwhelming 
 evidence, brought before him on that occasion by the 
 highest agricultural authorities in the kingdom, to 
 sliow the injustice and inhumanity, as well as the po- 
 litical inexpediency of this most absurd and cruel tax. 
 
 It would be only repeating from the pages of ' The 
 People's Blue Book/ to enumerate all the collateral 
 advantages to the Public at large, which would follow 
 the additional acreage put under the four-course ro- 
 
942 IRELAND. 
 
 tation, reckoned by millions of acres, consequent on 
 the repeal of the Malt Tax. 
 
 Practical farmers of high standing assure us, it 
 would bring down the price of meat, at least, 2d. per 
 lb., or 25 per cent. As the sum now annually paid 
 for the stock consumed in the United Kingdom 
 amounts to about 80 millions, sterling, there would 
 be a saving, in this alone, of 20 millions, sterling, a 
 year ; and, no doubt, a like reduction of price would 
 follow in bacon, butter, and poultry. 
 
 It is difficult for those who know the evil conse- 
 quences of this tax to reconcile the maintenance of 
 it, even on the pitiful pretence of political expediency, 
 with common sense or honesty. 
 
 The persistent maintenance of this tax is a perma- 
 nent declaration of war to Ireland. 
 
 And yet, this is what the Government is doing : 
 the Government that was to remove all the ills of 
 Ireland ! 
 
 And still they prate of peace, and call a little graz- 
 ing prosperity the wonderful result of their Church 
 Confiscation and Coercion Bills ! 
 
 They have taken good care of themselves and ap- 
 propriated exclusively all the benefits of free-trade to 
 England, and they deny to Ireland the only benefit 
 they can confer on her, whose only possible industry 
 is agriculture ! 
 
 We talk a great deal about our free -trade prin- 
 ciples, the true principles, which must prevail over 
 the whole world, but what have been the blessings 
 conferred by free-trade on Ireland ? 
 
 Where is the trade of Ireland, and wherein is it 
 free ? 
 
 It is free only so far as it suits the views of Mr. 
 Gladstone and his colleagues with reference to the 
 interests of England. 
 
IRELAND. 943 
 
 It is a mockery to play in this way with a great 
 political truth, and to Ireland it is adding insult to 
 injury. 
 
 The end will be, this stupid and cruel tax must be 
 given up, or the Gladstone Government must be 
 broken up. 
 
 I am persuaded that, if the measures here proposed 
 were carried out for the benefit of Ireland, there 
 would be no more occasion for coercive measures in 
 Ireland than in England, and no more talk of "Home 
 Kule." 
 
 I am also persuaded that, if coercive measures be 
 again resorted to before these measures of justice and 
 policy are tried, the 23,000 soldiers now in Ireland 
 must be doubled, and the civil force must be largely 
 increased. But physical force will only prevent open 
 rebellion. It will not prevent assassination. It will 
 not prevent starvation, and it will not prevent the 
 consequences. What will prevent a starving people 
 from doing mischief? 
 
 Why not try something new, which will be good for 
 all? 
 
 If the minds of men were once impressed with the 
 conviction that, there must be order and law every- 
 where, they would never rest until all that seems 
 irregular had been withdrawn, and the full beauty 
 and harmony of nature were displayed. Then the 
 eye of man would catch the eye of God beaming out 
 from the midst of all His works. 
 
 But our system of government, instead of impress- 
 ing that conviction on the minds of men, interposes 
 to disturb divine order and law, and to hide the full 
 beauty and harmony of nature. The eye of man 
 does not catch the eye of God beaming out from the 
 midst of all His works. By human contrivances, for 
 selfish purposes, the beneficent design has been par- 
 
944 IRELAND. 
 
 tially obscured. A great part of the wages of labor 
 of those who have borne the heat and toil of the day 
 is withheld from them and appropriated to uses over 
 which they have no control,, and from which they 
 derive no benefit. 
 
 We are all of us the worse for too much freedom of 
 action. "Deteriores omnes sumus licentia." The 
 heart is generally deteriorated in those who can carry 
 out their every wish without responsibility or restric- 
 tion. 
 
 This is no new view. It was the view of wise men, 
 ages ago, in pagan times, unenlightened by Christian 
 precept. 
 
 It was the view of the enlightened philosophers of 
 ancient Greece and Rome, whose memorable words 
 are handed down to us, preserved for our example. 
 But I will here give only the words, peculiarly 
 applicable to the present question, of that remark- 
 able man, Cicero, through whose bright intellect the 
 divine spirit shone out in glorious contrast with the 
 darkness of those pagan times : te Detrahere aliquid 
 alteri, et hominem hominis incommodo suum augere 
 commodum, magis est contra naturam quam mors, 
 quam paupertas, quam dolor, quam cetera, quse pos- 
 sunt aut corpori accidere, aut rebus externis." 
 
 If I have dwelt on this part of the subject at wea- 
 risome length, it has been solely to show the great 
 importance to Ireland of the proposed new principle 
 of taxation, and to invite the support of the Irish 
 People to this measure. 
 
 I have shown that, the abolition of the malt tax 
 alone would confer benefits on Ireland substantial 
 and incalculably great. 
 
 We have now the satisfaction of knowing, from the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, that, "Malt produced in 
 1871 the extraordinary sum of 431,000 more than 
 
IRELAND. 945 
 
 in 1870. In spirits there was an increase of 481,000, 
 so that the revenue derived from these two articles was 
 larger than at any former time. The case is the more 
 remarkable because the duty on Malt was reduced in 
 1865 from 4s. to 2*. Id. per bushel." Such is the 
 result of the Right Honorable Gentleman's " care- 
 ful consideration" of the facts brought before him by 
 the deputation, which waited on him in 1870, on the 
 subject of the Malt Tax. 
 
 It is not easy, for ordinary observers, to see the 
 result of " careful consideration." But the Chanr 
 cellor of the Exchequer has favored us with his 
 principle of taxation, in the following words : " I 
 say boldly ... all people should be taxed, as the 
 phrase goes, 'according to their ability;' and this 
 is a principle which is sound in finance, that every 
 man should be taxed unless the public would be a 
 loser by the transaction." 
 
 This is a bold saying, though something like it 
 was said by Adam Smith, nearly a century ago. 
 But this is a saying open to much commentary and 
 qualification. I cannot here enter into this inquiry, 
 nor is it necessary, as I have gone into it very fully 
 in the pages of the ( People's Blue Book.' But it is 
 easy to see that, the whole question turns on the 
 words : " according to their ability ;" and that, 
 " every man should be taxed unless the public would 
 be a loser by the transaction." 
 
 With these qualifications, the principle here laid 
 down by Mr. Lowe, from Adam Smith, is harmless. 
 But if it can be shown that, the taxes fall, upon the 
 greatest number of the people, not, ' as the phrase 
 goes/ "according to their ability," but beyond 
 their ability ; and further; if it can be shown that, 
 by taxing people beyond their ability, the public 
 must be a loser ; then those taxes are impolitic and 
 
 3 p. 
 
946 IRELAND. 
 
 unjust. Now, all this is shown in the pages of the 
 < People's Blue Book/ and the principles there laid 
 down, though obnoxious to many, and by many ano- 
 nymous writers denied, have never yet been disputed 
 on any ground deserving notice. I am not willing 
 to enter into controversy with anonymous disputants, 
 but I challenge any person of authority to state be- 
 fore the public, under his own name, the grounds of 
 his objections, and I undertake to answer him before 
 the Public. " Veniet tempus quo posteri nostri tarn 
 aperta nos nescisse mirabuntur." 
 
 I say boldly, that Budget of the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer was a continuance of the declaration 
 of war by England against Ireland ; but, if the 
 Irish People be guided by reason and prudence they 
 will ' grin and bear it ' ; for, they may be assured 
 that, the time will come when the remedy here pro- 
 posed will be adopted and carried out by an en- 
 lightened British Government, enlightened by the 
 force of truth or by the force of circumstances. 
 
 In the meantime the Irish should be careful not to 
 encourage the feeling, that, they are influenced by a 
 settled revenge ;-r that, they can neither forget nor 
 forgive ; that they live in the past ; have no pre- 
 sent or future, but live with their heads turned 
 backwards. Just so the Roman Catholics live, with 
 their eyes turned to the Cross. They have not seen 
 the Angel in the Tomb, nor heard his voice : "Why 
 seek ye the living among the dead ?" 
 
 It is up-hill for all in this world, but it is too bad 
 to make it harder for those who have to work their 
 way up by their own unaided efforts. They ought 
 to have, at least, the benefit of Nature's free gifts to 
 help them on their way. They ought to have their 
 resting-places wherein to rest and be thankful, and 
 the resting- places should not be in the Poor Houses 
 of the Union. 
 
IRELAND. 947 
 
 But there is better hope for all in the future, and this 
 idea has been so much better expressed by Christina 
 Rossetti that, I will give it in her own sweet words. 
 
 " Does the road wind up-hill all the way ? 
 
 Yes, to the very end. 
 
 Will the day's journey take the whole long day? 
 From morn to night, my friend. 
 
 But is there for the night a resting-place, 
 A bed for when the slow dark hours begin? 
 May not the darkness hide it from my face ? 
 You cannot miss that inn. 
 
 Shall I meet other way-farers at night, 
 Those who have gone before ? 
 Then must I knock or call when just in sight ? 
 They will not keep you standing at that door. 
 
 Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak ? 
 
 Of labor you shall find the sum. 
 Will there be beds for me and all who seek ? 
 
 Yes, beds for all who come." 
 
 It seems to be a characteristic of the Irish People 
 to neglect the things that are placed before their eyes, 
 and, regardless of what is within their reach, to pursue 
 what is and ever must be beyond their reach. Some- 
 thing like this was said a long time ago, though 
 of another people, on a different occasion, by Pliny : 
 " Ea sub oculis posita negligimus : proximorum 
 incuriosi, longinqua sectamur." 
 
 Their objections are chiefly to the position in which 
 providence has placed them and their country. They 
 want to alter the latitude and longitude of Ireland. 
 They want to be where they were never intended to 
 be, and never can be. They aim at impossibilities, 
 1 prendre la lune avec ses dents/ and are offended 
 with those who point out the impracticability. With 
 querulous weakness they dwell on trifles, and pass 
 over without attention what alone deserves their 
 
948 IRELAND. 
 
 attention. They are untaught except by their own 
 priests, and are, consequently, in profound darkness 
 about their own interests. Their priests, for the 
 most part, as ignorant as themselves, are the causa 
 causans of a great part of the calamities of their coun- 
 try. " Causa latet, vis est notissima." 
 
 But these remarks, made in sorrowful sincerity, are 
 applied only to certain classes of the Irish People. 
 There is a bright and clear intellect and generous 
 spirit in Ireland, which, under prudent treatment, will 
 in time disperse that darkness, and in the meantime 
 does not discourage those who would help to introduce 
 the light of truth into that benighted country. 
 
 " Non fumum ex fulgore sed ex fumo dare lucem." 
 This is a large question, and I have brought it be- 
 fore the Irish People as shortly and clearly as I could, 
 at some trouble and no small inconvenience to myself. 
 It very little concerns me, personally, how they 
 answer it, but I hope the Irish People will now take 
 the whole subject into their own hands, and make 
 Great Britain and Ireland, de facto as well as de 
 jure, a United Kingdom. 
 
 CHAS. TENNANT. 
 
INDEX. 
 
951 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abstinence, Total, recommended by I 
 
 ' Edinburgh Reviewer,' 495. 
 Abstractions, not taxable, 567. 
 Absurdities of Customs, Excise, 
 
 etc., 177. 
 Accounts, Public, Sir Robert Peel's 
 
 Opinion on, 403. 
 Accumulative effect of certain taxes, 
 
 794. 
 Agricultural Class, savings by, 518, 
 
 519. 
 
 Population, 748. 
 Agriculture, Profits of, 84(X 
 Albert, Prince Consor^ on the 
 
 Laboring Classes^ 3, 4, 874. 
 Arago, on Mathematics, 856. 
 Aristocracy, The, 607. 
 Arnold, Dr., on the necessity of 
 
 Change, 430. 
 on Sense of Justice, 865. 
 Art, not taxable, 577. 
 Ashburton, Lord, and Petition of 
 
 the Merchants of London, 
 
 416. 
 
 Assessed Taxes, Absurdities of, 268. 
 Assessments, National, revision of, 
 
 370. 
 
 Assessor. See Bysitter. 
 Association for Promotion of Smug- 
 gling, 491. 
 of Wolves, for Protection of 
 
 Sheep, 738. 
 
 Austin, Mr. John, his valuable 
 Work on Jurisprudence, 834. 
 
 Avignon, The Sarage of, 820. 
 
 Axiom, Adam Smith's, on Taxa- 
 tion, 629. 
 
 Babbage, Mr., on Taxation, 665. 
 Bacon j Roger, his Opus Maynum, 1. 
 Bacon, Lord, his Novum Organum, 
 
 1. 
 the Order of Nature the best 
 
 guide, 11. 
 on the necessity of repairing the 
 
 effects of Time, 421. 
 on the folly of too much reve- 
 rence for Old Times, 428. 
 on the belly, 548, 677. 
 his Maxim for Writers and 
 
 Speakers, 856. 
 
 Bailly, on the Hotel Dieu, 855. 
 Balance of Account between the 
 present system and the pro- 
 posed system, 362. 
 Banks, Savings, 729. 
 
 Amount of Deposits, 731. 
 Number of Depositors, 510. 
 Barclay, Dr. John, of Leicester, his 
 pamphlet ' On Ale, Wine, Spi- 
 rits, and Tobacco,' 693. 
 Baring, Mr. Alexander, and the 
 Petition of the Merchants of 
 London, 416. 
 
952 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Barnes, The Kev. William, his 
 Yiews on Income and Property 
 Tax, 625. 
 Bastards, 226. 
 Bastiat, his Harmonies Economi- 
 
 ques, 3, 6. 
 
 his View of Liberty, 453. 
 on Competition, 458. 
 on the Distinction between Utility 
 
 and Value, 590. 
 his "Concluding Observations," 
 
 803, 875. 
 Belief, the first step to attainment, 
 
 865. 
 
 Benefit Clubs, 701, 729. 
 Blanc, Louis, 7, 809. 
 Blasphemy and Perjury promoted 
 by Customs and Excise Duties, 
 487. 
 " Blessed are ye that sow beside all 
 
 waters," 823. 
 
 Blockhead, A, exemplified, 828. 
 Bloody Queen Mary, Criminal 
 Laws, Corn Laws, Customs, 
 and Excise Duties, 491. 
 Bonding System, 384. 
 Books not taxable, 578. 
 Brewers, nearly a Monopoly, 464. 
 Bright, Mr., on Reform, 506, 604. 
 British Taxation, The Edinburgh 
 
 Review on, 475. 
 Universality of, 728. 
 Brotherly Love Societies, 736. 
 Burke, Edmund, on Scarcity, 554. 
 on Grin, 702. 
 on the Poor, 720. 
 on Government, 808. 
 Bysitter, one who sits by the Judge, 
 to prompt him, 569. 
 
 Cabet, his Mistake, 7. 
 Campus Martius, 661. 
 Canada Timber, 434. 
 
 Canals, not taxable, 588. 
 
 Canting Hypocrisy about the Poor, 
 
 720. 
 Capital, the Foundation of Wealth, 
 
 275. 
 
 surplus, 465. 
 
 unwise to tax it, 461, 472. 
 what is, 461. 
 from savings, what it might be, 
 
 518. 
 
 how it affects wages, 533. 
 natural tendency of population to 
 
 increase faster than, 535. 
 hoarded or transferred to another 
 Country, if profitable invest- 
 ment discouraged, 543. 
 employs labor, 544. 
 something saved from revenue, 
 
 514, 553. 
 
 never creates value, 597. 
 what is, 657. 
 labor-won goods, exemplified, 
 
 658. 
 
 like the tanks and reservoirs, 811. 
 the different uses of, produce un- 
 equal profits, 840. 
 lent, not to be included in the 
 calculation of the riches of a 
 nation, 842. 
 Capital and Income, distinguished, 
 
 346. 
 Capitalising Income for Taxation, 
 
 637. 
 
 Cavillers, 851, 854. 
 Cavour, Count, on the rights of pro- 
 perty, 12, 13. 
 
 Chalmers, Dr., on Taxation, 397. 
 Chances of a majority, 853. 
 Change, Dr. Arnold, on the neces- 
 sity of, 430. 
 Channing, Dr., 551. 
 
 Coleridge's opinion of him, 552. 
 Chicory, 256. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 953 
 
 China, trade with, injured, 164. 
 Chocolate, 256. 
 Chousing. See Filching. 
 Church government, as sometimes 
 
 advocated, 853. 
 Clarke, Mr. Erskine, 738. 
 Classes, Propertied and Working, 
 
 as taxed, 512. 
 divisions of, 518. 
 sayings by how to be effected, and 
 
 the results, 518, 519. 
 Clubs, Benefit, 701, 730. 
 Coal, of no value, 585. 
 
 not taxable, 587, 596. 
 Cobbett, his last words for the 
 
 People, 714. 
 
 Cobden, Richard, 456, 610. 
 Cocoa, 256. 
 
 Coffee, effect of duty on, 254. 
 Colbert, 611. 
 
 Coleridge, on Taxes, 409, 549. 
 his opinion on Channiug, 552. 
 on happiness, 703, 818. 
 on Political Economy, 824. 
 on Novelties, 829. 
 
 Collectors to be appointed by Go- 
 vernment, 850. 
 
 Collieries, not taxable, 582, 587. 
 Colonial Land, a State possession, 
 
 447. 
 
 Combinations of Workmen, 679. 
 Commerce, profits of, generally 
 
 greater than from same capital 
 
 invested in land, or on loan, 840. 
 Commissioners, how to be appointed, 
 
 849. 
 
 Community, 459, 594. 
 Comparative view of charges on 
 
 Trade and Industry and Real 
 
 Estate, 171, 172. 
 Compensation, 449. 
 Competition, 455. 
 Confiscation, 439. 
 
 Congress, Peace, a Chimera, 607. 
 
 Conscience, how followed by some, 
 865, 869. 
 
 Conservatism, 436. 
 
 Conservative, A, 811. 
 
 Consumption, checked by high 
 prices, 541. 
 
 Consumable Commodities, Taxes 
 upon, how payable, 791. 
 
 Conquerors and thieves, their prin- 
 cipal object, 524. 
 
 Copper smelting, nearly a mono- 
 poly, 464. 
 
 Corn laws, their effects, 412, 465. 
 
 Cost of Collection, Actual, 127. 
 Indirect, 158. 
 
 Cost of raising the Revenue, 170. 
 
 Credo, 876. 
 
 Crops, standing, not taxable, 596. 
 
 Crown Lands, 440. 
 
 Culpeper, Sir John, his words against 
 monopolies, 728. 
 
 Currants, 257. 
 
 Customs, Board of, 135. 
 Absurdities of, 177. 
 
 Custom House Officers, effect of, 
 
 612, 794. 
 
 their perquisites greater than their 
 salaries, 794. 
 
 Custom-House Acts Bill, 1842, Sir 
 Robert Peel's Speech on intro- 
 ducing it, 333. 
 
 Customs and Excise, Cost of, as 
 
 estimated, 169, 170. 
 Duties of, promote blasphemy and 
 
 perjury, 487. 
 Grocers the best Customers, 482. 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphry, his view of 
 
 Education, 717. 
 
 Debt, the National, 76, 750, 753. 
 De Foe, Daniel, 810. 
 Devonshire Lanes, 423. 
 
954 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Diamonds, 6f no value, 586. 
 Differential Duties on Sugar, 221, 
 
 858. 
 
 Difficulties, a choice of, 865. 
 Direct Taxation, benefits of, 380, 
 
 514, '758. 
 most effectual for retrenchment, 
 
 546. 
 Direct and Indirect Taxation, as 
 
 defined by Mr. M'Culloch, 399, 
 
 475. 
 his recommendation of indirect, 
 
 399; 
 
 opinion of M. Turgot, 758. 
 
 Disbelieving, is believing, 866. 
 
 Dividends of the Public Debt, pay- 
 able to a comparatively fw, 
 510, 511, 731. 
 
 Dogs don't like innovation, 827. 
 
 Domat, on Superfluities, 497. 
 
 Dried Fruit, 257. 
 
 Duties, High, Sir Robert Peel's 
 Opinion on, 333. 
 
 Duties, Customs, effect of, 794. 
 ad valorem, impolicy of, 218. 
 
 Earth, The, the source of all riches, 
 
 343. 
 
 Economic Sophisms, of Bastiat, 610. 
 Edinburgh Review, 'On British 
 
 Taxation,' 475. 
 
 Audacity exemplified, 480, 483. 
 Confusion of mind exemplified, 
 
 481. 
 
 Education, mistaken views of, 712. 
 Education, Sir Humphry Davy's 
 
 view of, 717. 
 Efforts, Services, 593. 
 
 the foundation of value, 592. 
 not taxable, 596. 
 
 Elbing, Sir E. Peel's Letter to the 
 Inhabitants of, on Free Trade, 
 330. 
 
 Emigration, 544. 
 
 Enfantin, M., the Socialist, 273. 
 
 " England expects every Man to do 
 
 his duty," a chimera, 408. 
 ' Merrie,' 716. 
 Equality df Income Tax, impossible, 
 
 668. 
 
 Equality, Liberty and, 452, 470. 
 Equalisation, 466. 
 of Prices, 542. 
 Equilibrium, The, preserved by com- 
 
 petition^ 462. 
 
 Error engenders suffering, 8, 800. 
 Estimate of the Property Tax, 
 
 351. 
 
 of Householders' Tax, 355. 
 of Revenue, as proposed) 357. 
 of Lands, 359. 
 of Houses, 360. 
 of Tithe Rent Charge^ 360. 
 of Manors, 360. 
 of Fines, 360. 
 of Fee Farm and Quit Rents, 
 
 360. 
 
 of Fisheries, 361; 
 of Public Debt, 361. 
 of Canals^ 361. 
 of Railways, 361; 
 of Joint Stock Companies, etc., 
 
 861; 
 of the Property of the Nation, a 
 
 delusion, 844. 
 Evasion^ 491, 493. 
 idvil turned to goodj 447. 
 Exchequer, Balances, 99. 
 Excise, Stamps, and Assessed Taxes, 
 
 absurdities of, 17^. 
 Licences, 261. 
 Duties, effect of, ?94, 797. 
 Exchange of Services, necessary for 
 
 value, 467. 
 
 Exemptions from Taxes, 348. 
 Expenditure, Public, small saving 
 
INDEX. 
 
 955 
 
 to be expected from reduction 
 of, 546. 
 
 Exports and Imports, for the year 
 1870, value of, 105. 
 
 Explanatory Observations on the 
 proposed New Scheme of Taxa- 
 tion, 363. 
 
 Farr, Mr. William, his views on In- 
 come and Property Tax, 685. 
 on Capitalising Incomes, 637. 
 on reversions, 639. 
 the fallacy of his views exposed, 
 
 666. 
 
 Filching, explained, 811. 
 Financial Reform Fund, 874. 
 Fisheries, taxable, 582. 
 Flea-bite, The, of Mr. D'Israeli, 
 
 515. 
 
 Food in store, not taxable, 578. 
 Folly, mournful instance of, 828. 
 Footsteps, following in one's own, 
 
 423. 
 Force only justifiable for justice, 
 
 468. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, on the Agricul- 
 tural class, 519. 
 on Trade, 612. 
 Freedom of Labor, maintained by 
 
 Burke, 564. 
 
 Free Trade Reforms, results of, 391. 
 Free Trade, conclusions in favor of, 
 
 414. 
 Petition of Merchants of London 
 
 in favor of, 416. 
 the best protection against famine, 
 
 541. 
 
 means Free Labour, 608. 
 What is, 608. 
 
 existed before Protection, 617. 
 French Revolution, Cause of the, 
 
 773. 
 Friendly Societies, 701, 729, 732. 
 
 Fruit, Dried, 257. 
 
 Fullpurse, Mr., how he may escape 
 taxes, 495. 
 
 Gladstone, retrograding, 492. 
 
 his opinion on Indirect Taxation,- 
 
 498. 
 desirous of "an everlasting name,'* 
 
 673. 
 
 and Godivaj 673. 
 Glass beads, the first missionaries, 
 
 607. 
 
 c Go, preach the Gospel,' 820. 
 Godiva and Gladstone, 673. 
 Golden Rule, The, 14. 
 
 Pillar of the State, The, 607. 
 Gold, the measure of value for the 
 
 service, 585. 
 
 no value in the gold, 591, 682. 
 Good cannot tend to evil, 876. 
 Goods, unsold, not taxable, 578. 
 Goodies and Noodles, 740. 
 Governments, The duty of, 550, 
 
 808. 
 
 the purpose of, 830. 
 the permanence of, depends on 
 the obedience of the majority 
 of the community, 831. 
 Grand Remonstrance, The, 728. 
 Gratuitous services, 467, 594. 
 Greg, Mr., his estimate of cost of, 
 
 Customs arid Excise, 481. 
 Grisi, Madame, 660. 
 Grocers, The, best customers of 
 
 Customs duties, 482,. 
 G, H. S., 825. 
 
 Hales* Lord Chief Justice, 
 Wages, 530. 
 
 Hallam, Mr., on the relative condi- 
 tion of the laborer for the last 
 200 years, 531. 
 
 Hampden, and Ship-money, 489. 
 
956 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Happiness, Coleridge on, 703. 
 Paley on, 703. 
 Dr. Johnson on, 719. 
 the great object of existence, 718. 
 Head, Sir Francis B., on the neces- 
 sity of change, 430. 
 Heath, Mr. Justice, on inferential 
 
 reasoning, 490. 
 
 Henry VIII. on the Poor Law, 725. 
 Hill, Sir Rowland, 826. 
 Honesty, the best policy, 865. 
 Horses, not taxable, 578. 
 House-gear, not taxable, 578. 
 Householders' Tax, as proposed, 
 
 351, 355. 
 estimate of, 355. 
 
 Hubbard, Mr., his views on the In- 
 come Tax, 628. 
 supports his views by reference to 
 
 Adam Smith, 629. 
 ability means revenue, 630. 
 his reasoning, 629. 
 his scheme for improving the In- 
 come Tax, 653, et seq. 
 the fallacy of his views exposed, 
 
 666. 
 Hypocrisy, 720. 
 
 If, 852. 
 
 Imports and Exports for 1870, 105. 
 
 Income Tax, 173. 
 
 Income, What is, according to Mr. 
 
 Hubbard, 630. 
 
 according to Adam Smith, 670. 
 of the majority of the People, 
 
 very small, 510. 
 Income and Property Tax, Mr. 
 
 Newmarch's views, 618. 
 Mr. Hubbard's view, 629. 
 Mr. Farr's views, very far from 
 
 right, 636. 
 
 opposed to Mr. J. S. Mill, 837. 
 Mr. Jeffery's views on, 642. 
 
 Mr. Babbage's views on, 665. 
 fallacy of the views of Mr. Farr, 
 Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Jeffery, 
 exposed, 666. 
 
 equality of Inco'me Tax, impos- 
 sible, 668. 
 
 error of graduating, 671. 
 impolicy of, 499. 
 discourages savings, 836. 
 Income and Capital distinguished, 
 
 346. 
 
 Indirect Taxation, Loss from, 158. 
 origin of, 381, 515. 
 absurdities of, 177. 
 the effect of, 167. 
 summary of Loss, 168. 
 defined by Mr. M'Culloch, 475. 
 increase of, a sign of increase of 
 
 National wealth, 514. 
 first introduced, 515. 
 effect of, to lower prosperity, 554, 
 
 761. 
 
 Mr. Newmarch's views on, 618. 
 Inference, An, notable instance of, 
 
 490. 
 
 Injustice to the Laborer, 472, 508. 
 Inland Revenue, Commissioners of 
 
 498. 
 
 Innovation, 421, 828. 
 Intoxicating Drinks, 690. 
 
 mistaken views of the Temperance 
 
 Advocates, 691. 
 the question examined, 492. 
 how to make them harmless, 704. 
 Ireland, 
 
 how to be raised up, 516. 
 injured by Trades Unions, 684. 
 Supplementary Chapter on, 881. 
 
 Jeffery, James R., on Income and 
 
 Property Tax, 642. 
 on reversions, 643. 
 proposal to tax reversions, 661. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 957 
 
 Jeffery, James E., the fallacy of his 
 
 views exposed, 666. 
 Jewels, not taxable, 578. 
 Jogee, a naked Indian, 524. 
 Johnson, Dr., his saying on Life, 
 
 398. 
 
 on getting drunk, 697. 
 on happiness, 719. 
 on cavilling objections, 851. 
 Justice, mistaken views of, 468, 623. 
 Truth at work, 575. 
 the sense of, 865. 
 
 Justice and Mercy supplanted by 
 Injustice and Cruelty, 743. 
 
 Keats, on a thing of Beauty, 829. 
 Ken 1 , Judge, on Loan Societies, 
 
 735. 
 Kings and Governments cannot 
 
 misuse their impunity, 742. 
 Kingsley, Rev. Charles, Professor of 
 
 History, University of Oxford, 
 
 On the state of Europe, 828. 
 Knowledge, Plato, on, 717. 
 
 Labor, Adam Smith's view of, 2. 
 the right of, to be preferred to 
 
 property, 13. 
 
 productive and unproductive,343. 
 unjustly treated, 471, 508. 
 widely different from property, 
 
 507. 
 
 the difference illustrated, 508. 
 not a subject for taxation, 563. 
 driven away by taxes, 543. 
 employed by capital, 544. 
 a continued effort opposed to 
 
 ease, 550. 
 
 free, means Free Trade, 607. 
 Laborer, The, unjustly treated, 472, 
 
 508. 
 his past and present condition, 
 
 530. 
 
 Laborer, his income uncertain, 670. 
 Lady Godiva, and Mr. Gladstone, 
 
 673. 
 
 Laissez faire, 611, 738. 
 Land Tax Acts, The, 284. 
 Lands, The Crown, 440. 
 the basis of property, 405. 
 origin of titles to, 440. 
 a tax on the, most equitable, 
 
 447. 
 generally yield a less revenue for 
 
 an equal capital, 839. 
 Landlords, sometimes tyrannical, 
 
 443. 
 
 La Place, on Probabilities, 856. 
 Large, an indefinite term, 641, 653. 
 Law, The, against smuggling, 775. 
 Laws, Human, imperfection of, 491,. 
 
 722, 724. 
 Laws of Nature, work unerringly 
 
 and equally, 871. 
 Legislative protection to the Poor 
 
 exemplified, 738. 
 
 Leonards, Lord St., on the Succes- 
 sion Duty, 271. 
 Lewis, Sir G. Cornewall, 475. 
 Liberty, Bastiat, on, 453, 468. 
 Liberty and equality, 452, 470. 
 Licences, Excise, 261. 
 Life, what it ought to be, 718. 
 Limited Liability, 738, 748. 
 Lind, Jenny, 660. 
 Liverpool injured by Trades Unions, 
 
 684. 
 
 Loan Societies, 729. 
 Local Expenditure, 368, 369. 
 Local Rates, as Estimated, 512. 
 Lodgers, 835. 
 " Love one another," 607. 
 Louis Blanc, 7, 809. 
 Louis XIV., on the Rights of Kings, 
 
 769. 
 
958 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Macculloch, Mr., his opinions, 373, 
 399, 400. 
 
 Maclaren, Mr. Duncan, in favour of 
 
 Direct Taxation, 565. 
 his erroneous views, 565. 
 his views on Property and Income 
 
 Tax, 624. 
 his strange conclusion, 625. 
 
 Macedon, Philip of, 660. 
 
 Machinery, not taxable, 578, 596, 
 598, 
 
 Malebranche, his motto, 800. 
 
 Malt, 185. 
 
 Maltster, the poor, 491. 
 
 Malthusian Doctrine, The, practi- 
 cally disproved, 543, 553. 
 
 Mental Confusion of the Edinburgh 
 Reviewer, 523. 
 
 Merchants of London, Petition for 
 Free Trade, 416. 
 
 Merry Days of England, The, 716, 
 752. 
 
 Mill, James, Mr., on Wages, 537. 
 
 Mill, Mr. J. S., on Income and 
 Property Tax, 635. 
 
 Milton, on the Wars of the Anglo- 
 Saxons, 651. 
 
 Missionaries, 607. 
 
 Money, on interest, generally yields 
 a larger revenue than land, 840. 
 
 Monopoly, 462, 464. 
 Of Sugar Refiners, 233. 
 Sir John Culpeper, on, 728. 
 
 Montserrat, and its enlightened Go- 
 vernor, 745. 
 
 Morgan, Mr. Henry Lloyd, his 
 Public Services in suggested 
 improvements in the Public 
 Accounts, 25. 
 His General Balance Sheet, 29. 
 
 Navigation Laws, repealed, 383. 
 Table, 383. 
 
 Neate, Mr., Professor of Political 
 Economy, University of Oxford, 
 his opinions, 667. 
 
 Necessaries, Taxes upon, the effect 
 
 of, 793. 
 Adam Smith's apology for, 797. 
 
 Net Revenue, Adam Smith's defini- 
 tion of, 670. 
 
 Nevis, and its enlightened Governor, 
 745. 
 
 Newman, Professor, on titles to 
 
 Lands, 445. 
 
 Dr., his description of a Conser- 
 vative, 811. 
 
 Newmarch, Mr., Answered, 618. 
 His reasoning, 619, et seq. 
 
 Newton and Milton, 852. 
 
 Novum Organum, 1. 
 
 Numbers and proportions,sometimes 
 deceptive, 407. 
 
 National Assessments, Revision of, 
 370. 
 
 National Debt, The, 76, 750, 753. 
 
 Nation, The Property of a, cannot 
 be estimated, 844. 
 
 National Review, The, on the work- 
 ing man's home, 698. 
 
 Nature, The gratuitous services of, 
 
 467, 591, 599, 682. 
 The revelation of an Infinite Ra- 
 tional Will, 740. 
 Impartial, 822. 
 Laws of, 871. 
 
 Obedience, different kinds of, 831. 
 Objections Answered, 421. 
 The fallacy of some, 851. 
 Observations, Concluding, 803. 
 Oligarchical, The, System, explained, 
 
 811. 
 
 Order, Social, 459. 
 Organisation, 450. 
 Organum, Novum, 1. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 959 
 
 Pain has a great work to do, 
 
 717. 
 Paley, on Happiness, 703. 
 
 On the light of Nature, 870. 
 Parliamentary Remembrancer The, 
 
 492. 
 
 Parson, The Country, on the Work- 
 ing Man, 700. 
 Pas trop gouverner, 612. 
 Patents for Inventions, Absurdity of 
 
 taxing, 413. 
 Pauperism, a great cause of crime, 
 
 725. 
 
 How to be mitigated, 726. 
 Peel, Sir Robert, on the Income 
 
 Tax, 331, 336. 
 On Free Trade, 333. 
 On High Duties, 334. 
 On the Timber Duties, 335, 336, 
 
 337. 
 On the Soap and Tallow Duties, 
 
 337. 
 
 On the Silk Duty, 339. 
 On the Inequality of Taxation, 
 
 339. 
 
 On Public Accounts, 403. 
 On Indirect Taxation, 404. 
 Penny Tracts, 739. 
 People's Wants divided into two 
 
 classes, 520. 
 Perjury promoted by Customs and 
 
 Excise Duties, 488. 
 By Income Tax, 493. 
 Person and Property, fallacy of the 
 
 Edinburgh Reviewer, 522. 
 Petition of the Merchants of London 
 
 in favor of Free Trade, 416. 
 Philanthropic Societies, 735. 
 Pictures, not taxable, 578. 
 Pieces, 226. 
 
 Plato, on Knowledge, 717. 
 Plenum and vacuum, 851. 
 Poll Tax, objected to, 835. 
 
 Polio, Edward, hanged by inference, 
 
 490. 
 Poor, Treatment of the 595, 725, 
 
 739. 
 
 Poor Rate, Costs of, 162. 
 How to reduce it, 605. 
 Poor Laws, 309. 
 Population, 113, et seq, 
 Population, how it affects Wages, 
 
 534. 
 Natural tendency to increase faster 
 
 than capital, 535. 
 Practical, The Scheme, 347, 850. 
 Pratt, Mr. Tidd, on Friendly Socie- 
 ties, 729. 
 Price and Value, difference between, 
 
 682. 
 
 Prima Donna, The, not taxable, 662. 
 Probabilities, b56. 
 Progressive Community, 594. 
 Property, Realised, defined, 344, 
 
 592. 
 
 The subject of Taxation, 564. 
 Property Tax, The, proposed, 347. 
 Mode of Assessment and Collec- 
 tion, 349. 
 
 Estimate of, 351, 354. 
 Personal, or Householder's Tax, 
 
 348. 
 
 Estimate of, 355. 
 Summary of Revenue, 357. 
 Estimates, how made, 359. 
 Property, the Rights and Duties of, 
 
 741. 
 Of a Nation cannot be estimated, 
 
 844. 
 Definitions of, 576, 592, 594, 
 
 651. 
 Tax on property, and on labor, 
 
 widely different, 507. 
 Proportions and Absolute Numbers 
 
 sometimes deceptive, 407. 
 Prosecutions, Costs of, 161. 
 
960 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Protectionists, their mistake, 6, 609, 
 612. 
 
 Protection, an innovation of Free 
 
 Trade, 617. 
 Legislative, 738. 
 
 Protective System, The, explained, 
 609, 613. 
 
 Proudhon, his mistake, 7, 471, 597. 
 
 Providential Laws, guides to govern- 
 ment, 469. 
 
 Public Expenditure, small saving 
 to be expected from reduction 
 in, 546. 
 
 Ragged Schools, 739. 
 
 Eailway Duty, 268. 
 
 Railways, not taxable, 588. 
 
 Rates Rocal, as estimated, 369, 511. 
 
 Rates, County, how to reduce them, 
 
 604. 
 Rates, Poor, how to reduce them, 
 
 603. 
 
 Real Estate, Proposed Tax on, 349. 
 Equivalent to any Capital equal to 
 
 the annual revenue multiplied 
 
 by the current rate of sale, or 
 
 market price, 840. 
 Realised Property defined, 344, 576, 
 
 592. 
 
 Reciprocity, The fallacy of, 616. 
 Reduction in Public Expenditure, 
 
 small saving to be expected 
 
 from, 546. 
 
 Refiners, Sugar, 218, 220, 222, 227. 
 Reform, Parliamentary, 602. 
 
 Mr. Bright on the necessity of, 
 
 604. 
 Remarks, in Answer to Objections, 
 
 651. 
 
 Remarks, Practical, 737. 
 Remonstrance, The Grand, 728. 
 Resolve, Not to, is to resolve, 866. 
 Results of Free Trade Reforms, 391. 
 
 Returns, Parliamentary, viz. : 
 Rates of all Taxes and Imposts, 
 
 50, 51, 52, 53, 54. 
 Cost of Collection, 112. 
 Inland Revenue, and Cost of Col- 
 lection, 55. 
 Income Tax Acts from 1798 to 
 
 the present time, 106. 
 Custom House Duties repealed, 
 
 93. 
 
 Revenue, Meaning of, 629, 670. 
 Public Expenses to be defrayed 
 
 out of, 344. 
 Revenue and Expenditure, from 
 
 1855 to 1870, inclusive, 86. 
 Gross amount of the several 
 
 branches thereof, 88. 
 Amount of Taxes Repealed, or 
 Reduced and Imposed, 93, et 
 seq. 
 
 Balances in the Exchequer at the 
 end of each year from 1855 to 
 1862, inclusive, 99. 
 Total National Debt at the end of 
 each year from 1855 to 1862, 
 inclusive, 76. 
 Review, Summary, of Taxation as it 
 
 is, 169. 
 
 As it ought to be, 357. 
 Review, general, 399. 
 Reversions, Mr. Farr, on, 639. 
 
 Mr. Jeflery, on, 643. 
 Reviewer Reviewed, 475. 
 Ricardo, on Customs and Excise, 
 
 481. 
 
 Ridicule sometimes better than Ar- 
 gument, 720, 740. 
 Rule, T^e Golden, the best for Go- 
 vernments as well as Indi- 
 viduals, 14, 824. 
 
 Salaries, Official, how affected by the 
 proposed new Scheme of Taxa- 
 tion, 378. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 961 
 
 Sancho Panza, and his Physician, 
 
 852. 
 
 Savage, The, of Avignon, 820. 
 Savings-Banks, 729. 
 
 Number of depositors, 510. 
 Amount of deposits, 732. 
 Savings by the Working Classes, 
 
 517. 
 
 Scarcity, Burke's Pamphlet on, 555. 
 Schedule B, 845. 
 
 D, 672. 
 Scheme, The Practical, proposed, 
 
 347. 
 
 Science, not taxable, 577. 
 Sculpture, not taxable, 577. 
 Sense, Common, 869. 
 
 Moral, 865. 
 Services, by efforts, 591, 598. 
 
 Gratuitous of Nature, 467, 682. 
 Sheffield, injured by Trades Unions, 
 
 685. 
 
 Ships, not taxable, 576, 594, 596. 
 Ship-money, 489. 
 Simon, Duke de St., 765. 
 Singapore, 744. 
 Sismondi, his Estimate of Costs of 
 
 Customs and Excise, 481. 
 Slavery, not conducive to mental 
 
 improvement, 433. 
 Smith, Adam, his Wealth of Na- 
 tions, 2. 
 
 A Pupil of Turgot, 829. 
 On Taxation, 20, 21, 343. 
 His Axiom, 629, 774. 
 On Public Prudence, 407. 
 On Wages, 537. 
 Mistaken View of Value, 597. 
 'His Definition of Net Revenue, 
 
 670. 
 
 His View of Smuggling, 775, 795. 
 Smith, A., his Apology for Taxes on 
 
 the Necessaries of Life, 797. 
 Smith, Kev. Sydney, On Gin, 719. 
 
 Smith, Rev. Sydney, On Penny 
 
 Tracts, 740, 828. 
 On Innovation, 828. 
 Smith, Dr. Southwood, on the 
 
 Working Man's home, 701. 
 Smuggling, Cost of Prosecutions for, 
 
 160. 
 
 Adam Smith's view of, 775. 
 Societies, Friendly, 701. 
 
 Temperance, 719. 
 Socialism, True, What it is, 455. 
 Socialists, their mistake, 6, 459, 
 
 470, 727. 
 
 Social Order, 459. 
 Social Science, 727. 
 
 Harmonips of, 806. 
 Societies, Loan, 729, 734. 
 Friendly, 701, 729. 
 Temperance, 719. 
 Numbers of, 729. 
 Number of depositors, 732. 
 Solidarity, 8, 9. 
 Somerset House, Costs of, 129. 
 Sophismes Economiques, of Bastiat, 
 
 610. 
 
 Spirits, 203. 
 Spiritual Wants diminish by neglect, 
 
 548. 
 
 Spoliation, 10, 611. 
 Stamps, absurdities of, 269. 
 States, Organisation of, 455, 459. 
 Statuary, not taxable, 578. 
 Statute of Carlisle, 725. 
 State, The, has the greatest in- 
 terest in preserving Capital, 
 761. 
 Statesmen, their mistaken notions 
 
 about Capital, 545. 
 Stock in Trade, not taxable, 566, 
 
 578. 
 
 Strength in Union, 607. 
 Strikes, Error of, 683. 
 Style, Specimens of, 854. 
 3 Q 
 
962 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 tS accession, The, Duty, impolicy of, 
 
 271. 
 Lord St. Leonards' opinion on, 
 
 271. 
 General Review of Taxation, As 
 
 it ought to be, 399. 
 Direct and Indirect, 474. 
 Opinion of Mr. Gladstone on, 
 
 498. 
 
 Of M. Turgot, 758. 
 Of Marshal Vauban, 764. 
 Direct, the most effectual means 
 
 for Retrenchment, 546. 
 Present system of, prolific of guilt 
 
 and wretchedness, 549, 739. 
 Proposed system, benefits of, 708. 
 Indirect, Effect of, to lower pros- 
 perity, 554. 
 
 To destroy Capital, 762. 
 To oppress laborers, 763. 
 Should be on property, not on 
 
 labor, 564. 
 Falls eventually on the Owners of 
 
 the Soil, 762. 
 
 Mr. Newmarch's views on, 618. 
 Pym, on, 728. 
 Turgot, on, 758. 
 Vauban, on, 764. 
 Adam Smith, on, 724. 
 Sugar, a necessary of life, 211, 228, 
 
 497. 
 Sugar Duties, The, 210, 858. 
 
 Drawback Convention, 229. 
 Summary Review of Taxation As it- 
 is, 127. 
 
 Of Revenue, as proposed, 357. 
 Superfluities, as defined by the Edin- 
 burgh Reviewer, 496. 
 As defined by Voltaire, 497. 
 As defined by Domat, 497. 
 Supplementary Chapter on Ireland, 
 
 881. 
 Surplus Capital, how applied, 466. 
 
 Surveyors, Government, 849. 
 
 Tables, viz. : 
 
 Public Income and Expenditure 
 
 from 1800 to 1870, 71, 72. 
 General Balance Sheet, for the 
 
 year ended 31 March 1870, 29. 
 Customs, 30. 
 Excise, 31. 
 Stamps, 31. 
 Land Tax, 32. 
 Assessed Taxes, 33. 
 Income Tax, 33. 
 Post Office, 33. 
 Telegraph, 33. 
 Crown Lands, 34. 
 Miscellaneous, 34. 
 Public Debt, 35. 
 Army and Navy, 36. 
 Revenue Departments, Collection, 
 
 and Management, 37.' 
 Public Works, 38. 
 Salaries and Expenses of Public 
 
 Departments, 39. 
 Law and Justice, 41. 
 Prisons, 43. 
 
 Education, Science, and Art, 44. 
 Colonial and Consular, 44. 
 Superannuations and Charities,46. 
 Special and Temporary Objects, 
 
 46. 
 
 Civil List, 47. 
 
 Annuities and Pensions, 47. 
 Interest on Loans and Secret Ser- 
 vice, etc., 48. 
 Fortifications, 49. 
 General Summary, 49. 
 Customs Revenue (Gross) for 
 
 year ended 31st March 1870, 
 
 51. 
 Aggregate amount for five years, 
 
 55. 
 Excise, 55. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 963 
 
 Tables (continued] : 
 Licences, 56. 
 Stamps, 60, 63. 
 Assessed Taxes, 65. 
 . Land Tax, 67. 
 Income Tax, 68. 
 Aggregate Inland Revenue for 
 
 five years, 68. 
 Post Office, 69. 
 Aggregate Collection in the four 
 
 previous years, 70. 
 Public Income and Expenditure 
 
 from 1801 to 1870, 71. 
 Aggregate for seventy years to 
 
 March, 1870, 72. 
 Gross Income and Expenditure 
 
 for eighteen years to 1870, 72. 
 Sources of Income during eight- 
 een years, 73. 
 H ow the Money was got in 1850, 
 
 and in 1867, 1868, 1869, 1870, 
 
 74. 
 
 Imperial and Local Taxation, 75. 
 National Debt, 75, 76, 100. 
 Taxes repealed or reduced, and 
 
 imposed, 77. 
 
 Progress of Foreign Trade, 77. 
 Food Imported in 1840 and 1869, 
 
 78. 79. 
 
 Import Duties Repealed, 80, 81. 
 Quantities of Wheat, etc., im- 
 ported, 82. 
 Average Annual Price of Wheat, 
 
 etc., 83. 
 Assessments to Income Tax for 
 
 last five years, 83. 
 Estimated Population from 1840 
 
 to 1870, 84. 
 Public Revenue Expenditure, 
 
 etc., 85, 86. 
 Local Taxation, 87. 
 Amount of Gross Public Revenue, 
 
 88. 
 
 Tables (contimted) : 
 
 Amount of Gross Public Expen- 
 diture, 89. 
 
 Revenue from Customs, Excise, 
 and Stamps, 90, 91, 92. 
 
 Taxes Repealed, Reduced, and 
 Imposed, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 
 99. 
 
 Annual Value of Property and 
 Profits Assessed to the Income 
 Tax, from 1855 to 1868, 101, 
 102, 103, 104. 
 
 Real Value of Imports, 105. 
 
 Income Tax Acts from 1798, 106, 
 107, 108, 109, 110, 111. 
 
 Charges for Collection of Revenue, 
 etc., 112. 
 
 Population of England and Wales 
 in 1871, 113. 
 
 Houses and Population in Eng- 
 land and Wales in 1871 and 
 1861, 114. 
 
 Houses and Population in Eng- 
 land and Wales at each Census 
 from 1801 to 1871, 115. 
 
 Increase of Inhabited Houses and 
 Population in England and 
 Wales from 1801 to 1871, 116. 
 
 Houses and Population in Scot- 
 land in 1871, 117. 
 
 Population in Scotland in 1861 
 and 1871, 118. 
 
 Increase of Population in Scot- 
 land between 1861 and 1871, 
 119. 
 
 Ireland, Population between 1861 
 and 1871, 120. 
 
 Ireland, Houses, in 1841, 1851, 
 1861, and 1871, 121. 
 
 Ireland, Population in Provinces 
 122. 
 
 Ireland, Religious Professions, 
 123. 
 
964 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Tables (continued^ : - 
 
 Emigrants from United Kingdom 
 
 1861, 1871, 124. 
 
 Public Income and Expenditure 
 since the Union with Ireland, 
 125. 
 Taxable Property, What is, 498, 
 
 575, 651, 658. 
 Taxation, Principles of, 19. 
 
 As laid down by Adam Smith, 20, 
 21, 774. 
 
 As it is, 25. 
 
 Summary Review of, 169. 
 
 Actual Cost of, 170. 
 
 Indirect Loss, 168. 
 
 Comparative Statement showing 
 the charges on Trade and In- 
 dustry, and on Real Estate, 
 171. 
 
 As it ought to be, 343. 
 
 Summary of, as proposed, 347. 
 
 Local, 366. 
 
 Effects of, on Profits and Wages, 
 375. 
 
 Benefits of Direct, 380, 710, 716. 
 
 Indirect, origin of, 381. 
 
 Direct and Indirect, as defined by 
 Mr. MaccuUoch, 399, 475. 
 
 His recommendation of Indirect, 
 400. 
 
 Effect of, 412. 
 
 Direct and Indirect, 474. 
 Tax on Realised Property, as pro- 
 posed, 347. 
 
 Estimate of, 351. 
 
 Personal on Householders, 351. 
 
 Estimate of, 355. 
 
 On Land, the most equitable, 446. 
 
 On Houses, equitable, 448. 
 
 Does not affect the building Rent, 
 778. 
 
 On labor and property, widely 
 different, 507. 
 
 Tax, the difference illustrated, 508. 
 
 On Articles of Consumption tends 
 to drive away labor, 542. 
 
 On Stock in Trade, erroneous, 
 565. 
 
 On Labor, more injurious than on 
 
 Property, 620. 
 
 Taxes, ought to be for the preserva- 
 tion of property, 761. 
 
 Indirect, destroy Capital, 761. 
 
 Which are proportioned, not to 
 Rent, but to the produce of 
 Land, 777. 
 
 Upon the Rent of Houses, 778. 
 
 Upon Profit, or upon the Revenue 
 arising from Stock, 783. 
 
 Upon the Profit of particular Em- 
 ployments, 785. 
 
 which increase the Expenses of 
 Cultivation, diminish the rent 
 of land, 762. 
 
 Upon the Capital value of Land, 
 Houses, and Stock, 786. 
 
 Upon the Wages of Labor, 788. 
 
 Which it is intended should fall 
 indifferently upon every differ- 
 ent species of revenue, 791. 
 
 Upon Consumable Commodities, 
 how payable, 791. 
 
 Upon Wages, lower the demand 
 for labor, 788. 
 
 Upon Wages, absurd and destruc- 
 tive, 790. 
 
 Upon Necessaries, the effect of, 
 791. 
 
 Adam Smith's Apology for, 797. 
 
 Amount of, Repealed, Reduced, 
 
 and Imposed, 93. 
 Tea, effect of the duty on, 164, 245, 
 
 863. 
 
 Temperance, The, Question, Conclu- 
 sions on, 694. 
 
 Societies, Address to, 719. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 965 
 
 Temperance, Pledge, The, Absurdity 
 
 of, 691. 
 the Temporising Party, 696. 
 
 Temporal and Spiritual Wants, The 
 Consequences of neglect of, 548. 
 
 Tenant-Farmer, The, ought not to 
 be taxed for his Farm, 845. 
 
 Thieves and Conquerors, their prin- 
 cipal object, 524. 
 
 Tile, A, in time, 429. 
 
 Timber, 261. 
 
 Time, remark on, by Bishop Co- 
 plestone, 433. 
 
 Timber, Growing, taxable, cut, not 
 taxable, 583, 587. 
 
 Title to Lands, 439. 
 
 Tobacco, effect of duty on, 177. 
 
 Toiler, John, 495. 
 
 Tools, not taxable, 578. 
 
 .Tooke, Thomas, on Free Trade and 
 Prices, 392, 416. 
 
 Tracts, Penny, 739. 
 
 Sydney Smith's opinion of them, 
 740. 
 
 Trade and Industry, and Eeal Es- 
 tate, comparative view of the 
 Charges on, 171, 172. 
 
 Trade, Free, results of, 414. 
 What is, 608. 
 
 Trade, the principal employment 
 
 for excessive population, 549. 
 Profits of, generally greater than 
 from the same capital invested 
 in land, or on loan, 839. 
 And Manufactures diminish as 
 the price of food increases, 543. 
 
 Trades Unions, 673, 701. 
 
 Trench, Dean, his couplet, 868. 
 
 Truth, a great deal of, may mean 
 
 falsehood, 402. 
 What is, 885. 
 
 Turgot, his enlightened views, 528. 
 On Taxation, 758, 839. 
 
 Turgot, His Golden Kule, 761. 
 Tyranny of Capital, a mistaken ex- 
 pression, 461. 
 
 Union constitutes strength, 607. 
 
 Unions, Trades, 673, 701. 
 
 Unity of Mankind, The Realisation 
 
 of, 4, 874. 
 
 Utilities, how made Services, 467. 
 Utility, distinguished from Value, 
 
 585, 590, 595, 599, 682. 
 
 Yalue, What is, 467, 590, 593, 600. 
 not an attribute of matter, 593. 
 Adam Smith's mistaken view of, 
 
 597. 
 
 The diamond of no value, 586. 
 Gold of no value, 590. 
 Valorem, The Ad, Duty on Sugar 
 
 impolicy of, 216, 858. 
 Valuation of the Land and Houses 
 
 of the Kingdom, 849. 
 Vauban, Marshal, on Taxation, 764. 
 Vested interest in a public injury, 
 
 435. 
 
 Virgil's Shepherd, 568. 
 Voltaire, on Superfluities, 497. 
 
 Wages, Effects of taxation on, 375. 
 
 Not Taxable, 498. 
 
 The principle which regulates, 
 525. 
 
 How affected by Capital, 533. 
 
 not regulated by the price of 
 necessaries, 538, 680, 681. 
 
 the funds for payment of wages 
 are of two kinds, 538. 
 
 Generally higher in a rising, than 
 a stationary country, 539. 
 
 Should be sufficient to supply all 
 necessaries of life, 540. 
 
 Fall, as the price of food in- 
 creases, 543. 
 
966 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Wages, Burke's view of, 554. 
 
 Generally low where prices are 
 
 high, 543. 
 Not revenue, 630. 
 How regulated, 792. 
 Taxes upon, absurd and destruc- 
 tive, 790. 
 
 Wants, Temporal and Spiritual, dis- 
 astrous consequences from neg- 
 lect of, 548. 
 
 Wants, of the People, divided into 
 classes, 520. 
 
 Warehousing, or Bonding System, 
 384. 
 
 Water, of no value, 585. 
 
 Way, The Ancient, not always the 
 best, 438. 
 
 Wealth of Nations, 2. 
 
 Welfare, The, of the People, should 
 be the first object of Govern- 
 ments, 830. 
 
 Welfare, the highest law, 872. 
 
 Whately, Archbishop, on Fallacies, 
 
 402, 407. 
 On the folly of following in one's 
 
 own footsteps, 423. 
 On the folly of Conservatism as 
 
 advocated, 436. 
 On neglect of spiritual wants, 549. 
 
 Wholesale and Retail Perjury, 493. 
 
 Wine, 197. 
 
 Wood and Timber, 261. 
 
 Works of Art and Science, not tax- 
 able, 578. 
 
 Working and Propertied Classes, as 
 charged, 512, 
 
 Working, The, Man's Home, how 
 to improve it, 698. 
 
 Workhouses, Prisons for the Poor, 
 726. 
 
 Wrong, never made right by re- 
 prisals, 679. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 TATLOB AND CO., PRINTERS, LITTLE QUEEN STREET, W.C. 
 
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