LjIBRARY 
 
 ' OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 

 
 
 
 
 '. 
 
PLAN OF" AN 
 
 IMPROVED INCOME TAX 
 
 AND 
 
 REAL FREE TRADE, 
 
 WITH AN EQUITABLE MODE 
 
 REDEEMING THE NATIONAL DEBT, 
 
 AND SOME OBSERVATIONS 
 
 N THE EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF THE PEOPLE ON SYSTEMATIC 
 COLONIZATION AND ON THE WELFARE OF THE LABOURING CLASSES. 
 
 BY JAMES S. BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JAMES RIDGWAY, 169, PICCADILLY, 
 
 AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 r 
 
 1845, 
 
NOTE. 
 
 As no consideration of profit leads to the publication of this 
 Pamphlet, no Copy-right is claimed for it ; but free permission 
 is hereby given to any one who desires to reprint the whole or 
 any portion of it for the wider diffusion of its contents. 
 
 GENERAL 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 IT is no new observation, that each successive 
 period of life has its peculiar gratifications adapted 
 to the years attained. Those of youth embrace the 
 pleasures of hope, in active and untiring pursuit of 
 some object of desire or ambition ; those of man- 
 hood consist chiefly in the realization and enjoyment 
 of professional success; those of age are formed mainly 
 of the pleasures of memory, and pleasing retrospect 
 of the past, accompanied now and then with the 
 satisfaction of witnessing the progress of views once 
 deemed visionary, but progressively yielding to the 
 force of circumstances and the necessities which 
 compel their adoption. 
 
 I have had my full share of each in their turn : 
 the ardour of pursuit in youth, the fulness of enjoy- 
 ment in manhood, and the retrospect of the past in 
 age ; and so equally have these been participated, 
 that I know not which has yielded me the greater 
 amount of happiness ; but I am equally grateful 
 for all. 
 
 Among the latter, however, I may be pardoned 
 for naming the extreme satisfaction I have derived 
 from the progressive adoption of views and 
 
 104733 
 
IV 
 
 opinions, to which it was my misfortune according 
 to some, and my indiscretion according to others, to 
 have given utterance and publicity long ago, when 
 the period had not yet arrived for their popularity, 
 and when they were accordingly received with 
 distrust, visited with punishment, and either ridiculed 
 and abused, or condemned as impracticable and un- 
 just. It will be sufficient perhaps to name only a few 
 of these ; for the catalogue would be too long if all 
 were included. 
 
 In the West Indies, forty years ago, I maintained 
 the opinion that the abolition of Slavery would be 
 found perfectly practicable, without blood-shed or 
 revolution ; and that the planters themselves would, 
 ultimately, perceive the system of slave labour to be 
 most unproductive as well as unjust. And in Lon- 
 don, twenty years ago, before ever the Anti-Slavery 
 Society had entertained the idea of immediate eman- 
 cipation, I published an article, entitled " On the 
 Justice, Policy, and Safety, of giving Immediate 
 Freedom to every Slave in the West Indies.* This 
 was denounced by nearly all parties as utterly im- 
 practicable, and dangerous even to broach ; but in 
 nine years after this, their emancipation was peaceably 
 effected in a single day, on the 1st of August, 
 1834. 
 
 In the East Indies, I drew the attention of the 
 Bengal Government to the practicability of the 
 
 * " Oriental Herald," for March, 1825, p. 330. 
 
Overland Route, by Egypt and Suez, in the year 
 1818 ; but was regarded by all the then existing 
 members of it as a dreaming visionary, though I had 
 myself surveyed the Isthmus of Suez and the Red 
 Sea, for the Pasha of Egypt, and navigated it 
 throughout its whole extent. In little more than 
 ten years afterwards, this route was adopted, and 
 all parties are now receiving its benefits. 
 
 In Bengal, from 1818 to 1823, I advocated, 
 among other changes in the laws, customs, and 
 administration of India, the following : 
 
 1. The Abolition of the Suttee, or Burning of 
 Widows. 2. The Renunciation of the Idol Revenue 
 of Juggernaut. 3. The Colonization of India, by 
 British Settlers. 4. The Extension of Trial by Jury 
 to British Subjects. 5. The Freedom of the Press, 
 subject only to the laws, instead of the caprice of an 
 irresponsible censor. 6. The Right of Settlers to 
 purchase and hold land. 7. The Abolition of the 
 East India Company's Commercial Monopoly. 
 8. Free Trade to every part of India and China. 
 9. Extension of Education among the Natives of 
 India, subject to our rule. 
 
 There was not one of these which was not declared, 
 at the time, to be not only impracticable, but the 
 mere discussion of them fraught with the utmost 
 danger to the very existence of our Eastern Empire ; 
 and for persisting in their advocacy only, I was at 
 length banished from India, without trial of anv 
 
VI 
 
 kind, and a valuable property, of my own creation, 
 annihilated by the arbitrary power then existing in 
 that country. 
 
 I have lived, however, to see not one, or even a 
 few, but all these changes peaceably effected, and 
 the parties so effecting them honoured and applauded 
 to the echo for their deeds : Lord William Bentinck 
 for abolishing the Suttee; LordGlenelg for prohibit- 
 ing the collection of the Idol revenue from Juggernaut; 
 Sir Charles (now Lord) Metcalfe for establishing the 
 Freedom of the Press ; Lord Grey, Lord Melbourne, 
 Lord John Russell, and their colleagues, for abol- 
 ishing the Commercial Charter of the East India 
 Company ; Sir Robert Peel and Sir Henry Pottin- 
 ger for completing the Treaty for Free Trade with 
 China ; and Sir Henry Hardinge for encouraging 
 the Education of the Natives of India. It is quite true, 
 that I still remain a sufferer, from the loss of all my 
 fortune, because of the advocacy of these measures, 
 and that some of the very parties who have received 
 both reward and honour, while paying me many 
 compliments on the utility of my early labours, have 
 been themselves the persons to prevent my receiving 
 that justice, to which, by Resolutions of the House 
 of Commons, and the opinions of the Ministers of the 
 Crown, I was declared to be entitled. But, amidst 
 all this, I have a great and enduring reward, in seeing 
 all my early views adopted, and the best results 
 arising from them. 
 
Vll 
 
 To pass, however, from India to England, and to 
 come to the more immediate subject of this Pam- 
 phlet, I may name a few of the subjects to which 
 I drew the attention of the House of Commons, 
 while I was a Member of that body, from 1832 to 
 1837, with pretty nearly the same fate as that which 
 attended my Indian propositions. 
 
 Andiirst,the great question of Temper anceReform. 
 When the Committee of Enquiry on this subject was 
 first moved for by me in 1834, there was scarcely a 
 Journal in England that did not make it the subject 
 of ridicule or censure ; and in the House itself it 
 was a constant topic of sarcasm and sneer. But the 
 ten years that have since rolled by, have produced, 
 and mainly from the Evidence elicited before that 
 Committee, the greatest revolution in public opinion 
 and public practice, that has been witnessed for 
 centuries on any one particular subject. In Eng- 
 land, nearly two millions in Scotland, more than 
 one million and in Ireland, upwards of five millions 
 of people have enrolled themselves as members of 
 Temperance Societies, and embraced the views and 
 adopted the practice to which the Report of the 
 Committee, drawn up by myself as its Chairman, 
 gave the first high sanction of Legislative recom- 
 mendation. I presided at the first meeting held in 
 London to advocate these views, in the year 1832. 
 Father Mathew's labours in Ireland commenced in 
 1837 : and at this period, in 1845, the subject is 
 
Vlll 
 
 never mentioned, either in Parliament, on the Ju- 
 dicial Bench, or in the public Journals, without a 
 just appreciation of its immense national import- 
 ance to the health, morals, and welfare of the 
 people. 
 
 In 1836 I introduced a Bill to enable the local 
 authorities in all towns, to provide Public Walks and 
 Gardens, Public Baths, Institutions, and Museums, 
 for the promotion of the health, enjoyment, and 
 instruction of the labouring classes. It was op- 
 posed as visionary and absurd laughed at by some, 
 censured by others, regarded with indifference by the 
 rest, and finally defeated by a member of the Whig 
 Cabinet. Now, however, we perceive the Government 
 assisting towards such objects by grants of land for 
 Public Parks; the committees of Manchester and 
 other large places raising 30,000 and 40,000 for 
 establishing Public Gardens ; the Bishop of London 
 and the Clergy addressing the Civic Authorities and 
 opulent merchants of the metropolis, to obtain their 
 co-operation in establishing Public Baths ; and Mr. 
 Ewart winning the support of both sides of the 
 House of Commons for a similar Bill to my owa, 
 to enable the local authorities of towns to establish 
 Museums and Schools of Design for the improve- 
 ment of the taste of the inhabitants. 
 
 Such progress it is indeed most gratifying to 
 witness ; and a retrospect of the past, with all its 
 difficulties and obstructions, only heighten my sense 
 
IX 
 
 of present enjoyment at their gradual disappearance 
 and dissolution. 
 
 Another object that engaged my attention while 
 in Parliament, and on which I delivered my opinions 
 more than once, was that of a gradual removal of all 
 the existing imposts or taxes of every sort and kind, 
 by the progressive substitution of an Income and 
 Property Tax, as the only source of Revenue which 
 combined equity, economy, and productiveness in 
 the greatest degree, and the only one therefore that 
 ought to be used in every civilized country. 
 
 But on this, as on most other topics that engaged 
 my attention there, both the Ministers and the Op- 
 position were united in their objections ta its adop- 
 tion. Lord Althorp as the leader of the one, and 
 Sir Robert Peel as the leader of the other section of 
 the House, manifested the most cordial unanimity 
 on this subject ; and to judge from the speeches of 
 both, one could have hardly thought it possible that 
 either would ever have consented to be a party to 
 such a tax, by whomsoever it should be proposed. 
 
 Time, however, that " great innovator," as Lord 
 Bacon so justly calls him, has wrought marvellous 
 changes since then. Sir Robert Peel proposes an 
 Income Tax, and his followers support him. It was 
 at first meant to be only temporary. It is now 
 spoken of as probably to be made permanent. Lord 
 John Russell objects to this in theory, but votes for 
 it in practice, and his followers support him also 
 
while the chief question that now engages the public 
 attention, as far as can be gathered from the public 
 organs of opinion the Press is how to purge the 
 Tax of the unjust proportions of its assessment, 
 which all seem to admit that it possesses, but for the 
 revision of which no one has yet proposed any spe- 
 cific plan to the House or the country. 
 
 The period, therefore, seems to have arrived, in 
 which I may be permitted to revive and republish, 
 from the pages of " The Parliamentary Review," a 
 plan of such an Income and Property Tax as I be- 
 lieve would remove the principal objections to that 
 now in force. After the experience of the past, I 
 am not so sanguine as to hope that it will meet with 
 general approbation, at least for the present. But 
 I can wait, in this, as I have done in other cases, in 
 the calm but confident hope that the more the sub- 
 ject is considered, the more general will be the dis- 
 position to adopt it ; and having now no party inte- 
 rest to advance, and no personal purpose to serve, 
 beyond that of contributing my humble share of 
 consideration to measures calculated, as I sincerely 
 think, to promote the public good. I place the 
 Plan before the public in precisely the same form, 
 and in nearly the same words, with very slight excep- 
 tion, as it appeared in " The Parliamentary Review" 
 for April 5, 1834 Vol. 5, p. 363, as follows ; 
 
SUPERIORITY OF AN 
 
 INCOME AND PROPERTY TAX 
 
 TO EVERY OTHER SOURCE OF REVENUE. 
 
 THE object of this paper is to shew first, the justice 
 of an Income and Property Tax next, its practicability 
 then, its economy and lastly its productiveness ; and 
 if it exceeds all other modes of Taxation in these parti- 
 culars, its claim to speedy adoption will be complete. I 
 am aware of the odium which the very name of an Income 
 Tax carries with it to some ears ; but this will not deter 
 me from pursuing the advocacy of it. No great change 
 was ever yet produced in matters of legislation or finance, 
 which did not draw down on its earliest advocates the 
 censure of their being rash innovators, and theoretical 
 projectors. I am prepared for all this ; and beg the 
 reader merely to wait till he has examined the argu- 
 ments, and then he will be at liberty to refute them, if 
 he can, or to bestow on them what censure he pleases. 
 
 I begin with an enumeration of the principal ele- 
 ments of a just scheme of Taxation not enumerating all, 
 but taking only the most striking and important, which 
 appear to me to be these. 
 
1. That the smallest possible amount of tax, consistent 
 with the safety of the State, should be taken from the 
 people : Because capital is creative, and wealth becomes 
 the source of wealth ; therefore, while the sums abstracted 
 in taxes cease to be productive in their expenditure, 
 whatever is suffered to remain in the possession of the 
 people, augments and reproduces, by judicious use, in 
 every succeeding operation of agriculture, commerce, or 
 manufacture. 
 
 . That the nature of the tax should be so simple and 
 intelligible as that the most uninformed person who is 
 subject to its operation can easily comprehend it, clearly 
 understand its bearings, and give to it the full measure 
 of his approbation or dissent : Because cheerful acqui- 
 escence can only be given to that which is clearly under- 
 stood ; and because dissatisfaction arising from ignorance 
 is the most dangerous of all discontents, and the most 
 difficult to allay. 
 
 3. That the tax should be as certain and economical 
 as possible in its collection: Because all charges in- 
 curred in this operation are absolute waste, being equally 
 lost to the payer and receiver, or to the people and the 
 government, thus serving only to support a body of 
 useless and unproductive beings, who could be much 
 better employed. 
 
 4. That the tax should be as much as possible of a 
 nature not to be secretly evaded : Because the demo- 
 Talization which frauds upon the revenue occasion, is of 
 itself a serious evil ; and because the practice of enjoying 
 advantages, and not contributing the proper share of 
 sacrifice with others with whom such advantages are 
 participated, is selfish, dishonourable, and revolting to 
 -every just and patriotic mind. 
 
13 
 
 5. That the tax should be as favourable as possible to 
 consumption: Because the only wealth possessed by 
 the great bulk of the community is their labour ; and as, 
 whatever impedes consumption throws that labour out 
 of demand, and whatever increases consumption makes 
 that labour more in request : so, the great majority of 
 the people are in prosperity or in misery, in proportion 
 to the relation which consumption bears to their power 
 of supplying materials for its exercise. 
 
 6. That the tax should bear as strict a relation as pos- 
 sible to the means of the individuals who have to pay 
 it : Because by this alone can each man's interest in 
 the State be at the same time fairly burthened and fairly 
 protected. 
 
 It would be easy to show that every one of these prin- 
 ciples is violated by the existing mode of taxation in all 
 countries of the world ; and though different States 
 exhibit these errors in very different degrees, yet there 
 is not one nation on the earth in which they do not 
 abound in their financial laws. In the present inquiry, 
 however, reference will be made to England only. For 
 example . 
 
 1. Every undeserved pension, and every superfluous 
 appointment (and unhappily there are still many of each 
 of these evils left untouched) is a violation of the first 
 principle, " that taxes should never exceed the smallest 
 amount necessary to maintain the institutions, protect 
 the property, and preserve the peace and safety of the 
 State : " Because these excresences are not necessary ; 
 and the property of the whole is not protected, but 
 invaded thereby ; while every shilling of tax so appro- 
 priated is a waste of money for unproductive purposes, 
 which, had it remained in the possession of the 
 
14 
 
 people, would have been capable of continual improve- 
 ment. 
 
 2. The existing taxes, instead of being " simple and 
 intelligible," are so confused and complicated, that the 
 most skilful financier in the kingdom does not know the 
 names or amount of all, nor the bearings or effects of one 
 half that are raised. Hence the conflicting statements 
 of different Chancellors of the Exchequer; hence the 
 opposite pictures of prosperity and adversity drawn from 
 the very same tables and returns ; hence finance com- 
 mittees, who are years unravelling the mysterious web ; 
 and hence the ignorance, so general and so profound, 
 that the first merchants, manufacturers, and agricultur- 
 ists, differ in their opinions on the multifarious questions 
 that these multitudinous taxes generate; while the 
 most fatal errors are committed, in contracts, purchases, 
 and sales, from the impossibility of any single individual 
 having a complete, comprehensive, and accurate know- 
 ledge of all the taxes that at any time exist, their fluctu- 
 ations, their bearings, and their immediate or contingent 
 effects. 
 
 3. The taxes are now so " difficult to collect," that an 
 immense expense is incurred, in the establishment of 
 custom-houses in every port, excise-offices in every large 
 town, coast blockades, a revenue service by sea and land, 
 and hosts of collectors, informers and spies; with all 
 of which the business is but still imperfectly performed ; 
 and, in addition to the evil which this expense creates, 
 a still greater loss is incurred by many of the taxed ar- 
 ticles not being brought under the operation of the tax 
 at all, from the facility which this very cumbrousness 
 of the machinery affords to the dishonest for escaping 
 from its operation. 
 
15 
 
 4. The taxes are now the most powerful " impediments 
 to consumption" that human ingenuity could invent. 
 To say nothing of the raw produce which is consumed in 
 the state in which it is either imported or grown, 
 a* tea, sugar, coffee, and a variety of other articles, 
 the consumption of which is not one-fourth of what 
 it would be, if all were exempt from duties ; and by 
 the restrictions on which, all labour employed in their 
 growth, preparation, or conveyance, is less in amount, 
 and less in value, than if the consumption were greater ; 
 to say nothing of the evils inflicted by the present 
 system of taxation on all this imported produce, which, 
 by impeding its consumption in England, equally im- 
 pedes the sale of English goods, which would form the 
 payments for the foreign supplies ; if we turn to those 
 articles which derive their chief value from being wrought 
 into manufactures by the labour of the community, we 
 shall see that there is scarcely one that is not burthened 
 with a tax that impedes its consumption. Among 
 others, cotton,* silk, hemp, flax, wool, timber,* metals, 
 glass,* tallow, oil, leather, rags, paper, and a never-ending 
 catalogue of materials, the working up of which furnishes 
 the great mass of the people with labour and subsistence : 
 all these are so taxed, that not half the quantity of 
 either is now consumed which would undoubtedly find 
 purchasers if all were entirely free of impost; and 
 consequently, by these restraints, labour is thrown out 
 of demand, and all classes are sufferers thereby.* 
 
 5. The taxes levied at present bear no" just relation to 
 the means of the individuals called upon to pay them;" 
 
 * Since this was first published, in 1834, the several articles marked 
 thus,* have had either the whole or a part of the duties on them removed,, 
 but still the most important remain untouched. 
 
16 
 
 all those which are considered most productive, bearing 
 heavier on the poor than on the rich, in proportion to 
 their respective means of payment. Among others, the 
 taxes that affect the price of food, dwellings, light, 
 soap, candles, and apparel, are all grievous in the 
 extreme to the poor, because a certain portion of each 
 of these is indispensable to bare subsistence, and to the 
 performance of their daily labour; while the rich, by 
 not consuming in any case a hundred times as much as 
 of each of these as the poor do individual compared with 
 individual though their means are often a thousand 
 fold greater, do not sustain their just share of the 
 burthens, which thus fall heaviest on those who are 
 least able to bear them. Again: the taxes on justice 
 and knowledge, the duty on paper for correspondence 
 or for printed books, the taxes on friendly communication, 
 by the profits made on the conveyance of letters,* the 
 taxes on goods sold by auction, however great the distress 
 that occasions it,* and a great number of others, affect 
 the poor deeply, without affecting the rich in anything 
 like the same degree : and while the landholder, great 
 and small, is burthened with all manner of incumbrances, 
 in taxes, tithes, poor-rates, &c. he again burtheniiig 
 the farmer by correspondingly high rents, and all other 
 classes by the restrictive corn-laws, as an equivalent, 
 the fundholder, however rich, is exempt from burthens 
 of a corresponding nature on the property from which 
 his income is derived. 
 
 If there be added to all this, the taxes on legal pro- 
 ceedings, which offer a direct bounty to iniquity, by 
 giving the rich the power to impede justice to the poor : 
 
 * See note on the preceding page. 
 
17 
 
 the taxes on bills of exchange, receipts, agreements, 
 contracts, &c., which are a temptation to evasion, as well 
 as a clog to necessary transactions of business ; the 
 taxes on insurance, which are punishments for prudence, 
 and a bounty to carelessness and indifference : the taxes 
 on newspapers and advertisements, which are hindrances 
 to knowledge, and to the necessary facilities to inventions, 
 and novelties in trade ; not to mention a host of others 
 equally objectionable, it may be safely said that the 
 most ingenious man living could hardly hope to invent 
 any system so thoroughly and entirely clumsy, bar- 
 barous, unequal, and defeating all its avowed ends, as 
 the system of taxation under which we have now lived 
 in England for so many centuries, and from which, 
 unless there is a complete change in the entire plan, no 
 taking off the taxes from one commodity to place them 
 on another, will do more than afford a very partial and 
 temporary relief. 
 
 The substitution of one single source of revenue in a 
 direct tax on Income and Property would obviate all 
 these difficulties. It would not be subject to a single 
 one of all the objections enumerated; but would, on 
 the contrary, be conformable to each of the Principles of 
 Taxation, laid down as the basis on which all supplies 
 raised for the service of the State should be regulated : 
 so that if these principles be admitted to be just, the 
 system which best realizes them may be fairly considered 
 to be most worthy of adoption. 
 
 The data upon which any exact estimate can be made 
 of the probable result of a Graduated Income and Property 
 Tax, can only be collected by the Government. But as 
 we know that at the present moment a revenue of 
 70,000,000 and upwards, is actually raised from the 
 
18 
 
 pockets of the people of England including the tithes 
 and contributions to the church, the county and poor- 
 rates, and a variety of other branches of local taxation 
 over and above the revenue paid for the general pur- 
 poses of the State it must be evident that as large a 
 sum of money can be raised from the same mass of 
 people by taxing their Income and Property, as by taxing 
 the commodities they consume since in both cases 
 it is the people who pay it. At present the taxes 
 paid are on the amount of people's expenditure. We 
 would merely change it to a tax on people's income, 
 from whatever source derived; and if the general 
 surplus income of the country, (that is, all income above 
 that which is necessary for comfortable subsistence, and 
 which men would therefore accumulate and lay by a 
 capital,) be only equal to defray its general expenditure, 
 the amount of tax would be equally great in each case ; 
 though in reality, as all countries making progress in 
 wealth must have an excess of surplus income over 
 expenditure, the tax on income, if correctly levied, 
 would produce more than the tax on expenditure levied 
 at the same rate. 
 
 The amount of the population to be made subject to 
 the operation of such an Income and Property Tax, should 
 include only those who can contribute to the support of 
 the State without depriving themselves of any of the 
 necessaries of life ; and should therefore be kept within 
 certain limits of income, as a minimum, below which no 
 contributions should be raised. Now, the population 
 of the British Isles, according to the latest census, may 
 be taken in round numbers at 85 millions.* Taking 
 
 * Since this was written, in 1834 ,three millions at least have been added 
 to the population, which only strengthens the case. 
 
19 
 
 one-fourth of these to represent the adult males one- 
 fourth the adult females and the other half to include 
 children, which is about the proportion in which these 
 several classes stand to each other, there would then be 
 at least six millions of men, from whose incomes and 
 property (leaving the women and children untouched) 
 a revenue might be raised. Striking off, however, the 
 full half of this number, namely three millions, as being in 
 a condition of too great poverty to be taxed at all 
 (though, according to the present system, the very 
 poorest, and weakest, and youngest, of both sexes, are 
 all included in the grasp of those taxes which are placed 
 on the necessaries of life,) we should have a number of 
 three millions of men, as adults and heads of families, or 
 one-eighth of the whole population, from which to raise 
 the revenue required. 
 
 It is proposed, then, to begin the scale of taxable 
 income at 100 per annum, considering that less than 
 this amount of annual income ought not to be trenched 
 upon, if we desire to see comfort reign among the 
 humblest classes, and means afforded to every parent to 
 bring up his family in habits of order, propriety, and 
 religion to give to all his children that necessary 
 degree of education to fit them for the due performance 
 of their duties as citizens, and thus enable them to pro- 
 cure an honest livelihood, by the exercise of their mental 
 and bodily faculties combined. 
 
 Commencing at this point, we would proceed upward, 
 by a graduated scale, increasing by slight additions to 
 the rate of tax, till it reached incomes of the highest 
 class. 
 
 A clear distinction, however, should be made between 
 incomes derived from professions, trades, or other pre- 
 
carious and fluctuating sources of gain, incomes lasting" 
 only for life, as annuities, pensions, &c., and incomes 
 derived from fixed property, such as houses, funds, and 
 lands, descending in perpetuity to successors, taxing 
 them at different rates, in consideration oftheimperman- 
 ency of the one and the durability of the other, and 
 preserving that distinction throughout. 
 
 It has been contended by some, that incomes arising 
 from professions or trades ought not to be taxed at all, 
 inasmuch as such a tax would withdraw money from 
 productive and accumulating use, and thereby cripple 
 commerce and trade. But this argument, if it be worth 
 any thing, would be equally valid against taxing in- 
 comes arising from fixed property in land or funds ; 
 as, whatever is abstracted from the income of the rich 
 landholder or the poor shopkeeper, and absorbed by the 
 Government to pay its expenses, is equally withdrawn 
 from the productive expenditure and circulation of the 
 country. It is a good argument against raising one 
 farthing more of revenue than is absolutely indispen- 
 sable ; but is no better argument against the justice of 
 a tax on one description of income than it would be 
 against any other. To exempt incomes arising from 
 professions and trades from all tax whatever, and to 
 make incomes arising from realized property subject to 
 tax, would, indeed, be the height of impolicy, as well 
 as injustice, and could not be defended by any argu- 
 ment based on reason or common sense. Let us conceive 
 a case. Suppose a barrister or a merchant, each making 
 5,000 a-year by his pursuit, and spending the whole 
 sum as regularly as it was earned, without laying 
 by any portion of it. Suppose at the same time, a 
 physician and a manufacturer, each making 5,000 
 
a year by his pursuit, and each living on half his 
 income, and investing the surplus in realized property, 
 in houses, lands, or funds. Can anything be conceived 
 more impolitic, or more unjust, than that the thoughtless 
 spendthrifts, who lavish their incomes as fast as they 
 receive them, should go untaxed ; and that the thoughtful 
 husbanders of a provision for their old age, or their child- 
 ren, should be taxed because of their prudence ? The 
 question can receive but one answer ; for every one 
 must perceive that so to act would be to pay a premium 
 for improvidence, and to punish prudence and economy, 
 instead of giving them encouragement. 
 
 The next consideration, then, is the rate of such Tax- 
 ation in the whole, and in parts. We will suppose 15 
 per cent, to be the par, or average standard of rate. Con- 
 sidering, however, that all persons having incomes of 
 less than 100 a-year might be fairly exempt, and that 
 the population within the operation of the tax would not 
 exceed three millions of male adults and heads of fami- 
 lies, the rate should begin at 3 per cent, as the lowest, 
 and go up gradually to 30 per cent, as the highest 
 extreme. According to the present system of taxing 
 the necessaries of life, and leaving large masses of pro- 
 perty untouched, although 15 per cent, may be the 
 average rate at which the whole income of the country 
 is taxed, there is this manifest injustice in the gradation 
 of the scale, as it leaves the par or average centre, and 
 ascends or descends to either extreme. Assuming that 
 the middle classes at present pay from 10 to 15 per cent, 
 on their whole gains, it will be found, on ascending to 
 the gentry, or class next above them, that they pay only 
 about 8 per cent. ; and, ascending still higher, the 
 nobility, the more wealthy portion of the clergy, and the 
 
rich landholder and fundholder, pay about 5 per cent, 
 only on the incomes they enjoy ! Taking the descending 
 direction, however, from the centre or par, the scale 
 increases as the poverty grows more helpless ; and, 
 accordingly, while the middle class of prosperous and sub- 
 stantial tradesmen may be supposed to pay from 10 to 15 
 per cent., the hard-working artizan and the small shop- 
 keeper will pay from 15 to 20 ; and the labourer of the 
 lowest class above the actual pauper, from 25 to 30 per 
 cent., or nearly one-third of his miserable pittance, in 
 the taxes on those articles of daily use and consumption, 
 bread, meat, tea, coffee, sugar, soap, candles, apparel, 
 and other commodities w r hich habit has rendered neces- 
 sary to his comfort, if not to his very existence.* On 
 the article of tea alone, the rich man of 50,000 a-year, 
 who consumes, perhaps, not more than ten pounds of tea 
 in a-year, pays about 80 per cent, on the finer qualities 
 drank by him, or say shillings a-year only on the 
 whole of the tea consumed by himself individually : 
 while the poor man, with only 50 a-year, consumes at 
 least five pounds of tea in a-year, and pays about 200 per 
 cent, on the coarser qualities drank by him : so that his 
 contribution to the revenue derived from tea will be 10 
 shillings a-year out of an income of 50 and the rich 
 man will pay only double that amount of the same tax, 
 though his income is a thousand times more ! The same 
 ratio will apply to more than half the necessaries of life 
 consumed by each ; and the knowledge of this must 
 strike the poorer classes with a deep sense of the ine- 
 quality of our present System of Taxation. 
 
 * The articles of wine, spirit, beer, and tobacco, are here omitted, 
 because they are not deemed by the writer, " necessaries of life," but may 
 all be dispensed with advantageously. In a fiscal point of view, 
 however, the argument would embrace these also. 
 
Whatever objections, therefore, may exist to a graduated 
 scale of Taxation, must exist in much greater force 
 against the present system, than against any other that 
 could be substituted in its place; for here we have a gra- 
 duated scale from 5 per cent, to 30 per cent, on the 
 incomes of the parties contributing but in defiance of 
 justice, humanity, and common sense, it is graduated the 
 wrong way ; making those who are the richest pay the 
 smallest proportion of their incomes to the support of the 
 State, and exacting from the poorest the largest proportion 
 of their scanty store, to uphold the Government under 
 which they live. Such a violation of all equity as this 
 can surely never meet defenders. 
 
 It is proposed, then, to preserve the principle of gra- 
 duation, which is not merely acknowledged but acted 
 upon in our present system, and to reverse the order of 
 its progress; to begin by taxing the incomes of the 
 lowest class included in the scale, namely, 100, at 
 3 per cent, instead of 30 ; to make incomes of 1,000 
 pay 10 per cent. ; incomes of 2,000 pay 15 per cent. ; 
 incomes of 10,000 pay 25 per cent. ; and incomes of 
 30,000 and upwards pay 30 per cent., instead of 5, 
 which is about the average they pay at present ; acting, 
 therefore, in conformity with the principle of proportion 
 before laid down, namely, to lighten or increase the 
 weight of the burden with as exact a regard as possible 
 to the capacity of the parties to bear them. 
 
 When it is admitted that the great end of Govern- 
 ment is to protect the persons and property of its subjects 
 from foreign invasion and domestic spoil, it must be 
 clear that those who have the largest possessions to 
 protect, and the most numerous privileges to enjoy, 
 ought to be the parties who should contribute, not merely 
 
most largely, but in the largest proportion to their 
 income, for the support of the protection required. The 
 celebrated Dr. Paley, writing on this subject, says, 
 
 " A tax, to be just, ought to be accurately proportioned to 
 the circumstances (or more correctly, perhaps, to the amount 
 of the property) of the persons who pay it. But, upon what, 
 it might be asked, is this opinion founded ; unless it could be 
 shown, that such a proportion interferes the least with the 
 general conveniency of subsistence ? Whereas, I should rather 
 believe, that a tax constructed with a view to that conveniency, 
 ought to rise upon the different classes of the community, in a 
 much higher ratio than the simple proportion of their incomes. 
 The point to be regarded, is, not what men have, but what 
 they can spare : and it is evident, that a man who possesses 
 a thousand pounds a-year, can more easily give up a hundred, 
 than a man with a hundred pounds a-year, can part with ten ; 
 that is, those habits of life which are reasonable and innocent, 
 and upon the ability to continue which, the formation of 
 families depends, will be much less affected by the one deduc- 
 tion, than by the other. It is still more evident, that a man 
 of a hundred pounds a-year, would not be so much distressed 
 in his subsistence, by a demand from him of ten pounds 
 as a man of ten pounds a-year, would be by the loss of one : 
 to which we must add, that, the population of the country 
 being replenished by the marriages of the lowest ranks of the 
 society, their accommodation and relief become of more im- 
 portance to the state, than the conveniency of any higher, but 
 less numerous, order of its citizens." 
 
 It has been often urged, that Property is fairly 
 entitled to its just influence in the State, and when 
 Property contributes its just share towards the main- 
 tenance of the expenses, we shall have no objection to 
 see it invested with its due share of influence in the 
 direction of public affairs. It is accordingly provided, in 
 the plan of the proposed Graduated Income and Property 
 Tax, that the possessors of large Incomes, whose rate of 
 
25 
 
 taxation is increased in proportion to the increase of their 
 means, should be granted an additional number of votes, as 
 Electors, in proportion to the per centage of tax actually 
 paid by them ; and be so registered in all boroughs or 
 counties in which their residence or property may lie : 
 thus giving them an increase of political power, in pro- 
 portion to the weight of their contributions to the support 
 of the State, and making that power legal, open, and 
 acknowledged, instead of allowing it to be exercised, as 
 it too often is at present, illegally, secretly, and degrad- 
 ingly, to all the parties concerned. 
 
 There is one other point only to advert to, before we 
 introduce the Table of the Plan proposed ; and it is that 
 which raises an objection to an Income Tax, on account 
 of its inquisitorial character, and the necessity under 
 which it would place all men, of disclosing to others the 
 actual state of their affairs. This objection would be 
 entitled to some weight, if the present System of Tax- 
 ation, for which that on Income is proposed as a substitute, 
 were entirely free from any inquisitorial examinations 
 into men's property, operations, and affairs. But let us 
 see whether that is the case. 
 
 To begin with the least onerous of these inquisitorial 
 processes, that of the Customs. No merchant can ex- 
 port or import any of the various articles subject to duties, 
 without exposing to the proper officers, if required, his 
 invoices, bills of lading, and all particulars of quantity 
 and value, accompanied by bonds, oaths, visits of Cus- 
 tom-house officers to his docks, warehouses, and ships, 
 and liability to be called on to give a full explanation of 
 any matter or thing which these officers, in the course of 
 their duties may require, besides being subject to the 
 seizure of his goods, and himself to penalties of all kinds, 
 
for any infraction of the laws, however unintentionally 
 they may have heen made. 
 
 Passing from thence to the Excise, the inquisitorial 
 nature of its proceedings is far more searching and vex- 
 atious than that of the Customs. Manufactories of every 
 kind are subject to the daily and nightly visits of its 
 numerous and sharp-scented emissaries ; processes of 
 the utmost importance are retarded and interrupted to 
 suit their convenience ; private apartments, and even 
 the persons of individuals arriving from ahroad, are liable 
 to be searched, upon bare suspicion of contraband articles 
 being concealed in the places, or on the persons examined. 
 
 In the operation of the Assessed Taxes, the inquisi- 
 torial power is just as largely exercised, by inquiries being 
 made into the rent of every man's house, by counting the 
 number of his windows, to be determined often by actual 
 inspection, by examining the nature and number of his 
 carriages, his horses, servants, and even his dogs, and 
 by the most vexatious investigations that can be conceived. 
 
 Can anything be more inquisitorial than all this ? 
 Even then, if the levying an Income Tax were but as 
 inquisitorial as this, and not more so, its inquisitorial 
 nature would be no fair objection to its adoption. But, 
 we contend, that if those who are called upon to make 
 returns of their income will but do so honestly, they never 
 need fear a second visit from the returning officer or col- 
 lector : and if they should not do so honestly, they would 
 deserve to be visited, not merely with an ^inquisitorial 
 examination into their affairs, but with severe penalties 
 for attempting the fraudulent and cowardly injustice of 
 escaping from the payment of their due share of the 
 burthens of the State. 
 
 But to make the inquiry into the Incomes of individuals 
 
as little inquisitorial as possible, and to allow a fair, and 
 even an ample latitude for scrupulous and conscientious 
 persons to make their returns in round sums, and with- 
 out any unnecessary exposition of the minutiae of detail, 
 we have divided the Incomes into separate classes, each 
 taxable at the rate of per centage given, from 3 to 30 per 
 cent. ; and as these classes are separated from each other 
 by large distances, we propose that no individual should 
 be called upon for any more specific return, than that of 
 the sum which corresponds to the class within which his 
 Income may fall ; that is, for example, to state that it is- 
 above 100 a-year, but not equal to 200 a-year ; above 
 200 but not equal to 300 ; above 5,000 but not 
 equal to 5,500 ; above 10,000 but not equal to 
 11,000; and soon, as in the Table hereafter given; 
 the difference between the annual amounts becoming 
 wider and wider, as the scale advances upward. 
 
 If there are persons so scrupulously secret with respect 
 to the amount of their actual incomes, as not to be willing 
 to disclose them with such large intervals as these, and 
 who would defraud the revenue of its just due, after such 
 ample allowance for uncertainty, as these wide margins 
 of hundreds between the lowest class of Incomes, of 
 thousands between the middle class, and of five 
 thousands between the higher class, would admit such 
 dishonest persons, (for dishonest towards the rest of their 
 countrymen, and towards the common protector of all, 
 the Government of the State, such persons must be) 
 deserve no consideration ; and if they cannot be per- 
 suaded into patriotism by generous motives, they deserve 
 to be shamed into justice by other means, and compelled 
 to bear their share of the burthen, in common with their 
 countrymen at large. 
 
I may add also, that though this Scale is called a 
 Graduated Tax, yet in reality it is a perfectly equal one, 
 being constructed on this simple principle : that the 
 first 100 of every man's income whether he had only 
 100 or 200,000 per annum should be taxed only at 3 
 per cent ; the second 100 of his income taxed at 4 per 
 cent; the third 100 at 5 per cent., and so on the 
 increased rate on the third hundred not being applied 
 to the second or the first ; so that while the poor man's 
 only 100 would be taxed at 3 per cent., the rich 
 man's first 100 would be taxed no more than 3 per 
 cent, also ; and the increased rate of taxation would be 
 only applicable to the increased income above any certain 
 standard ; a plan w r hich combines the justice of taxing 
 every man's first, or tenth, or fiftieth 100 exactly at the 
 same rate throughout the whole community, and there- 
 fore possessing the most perfect equality ; with the 
 policy of taxing each increased 100 or 500 of every 
 man's fortune, as it rises, at a higher rate than the pre- 
 ceeding 100 or 500 above which it proceeds, and, in 
 that sense only, being a Graduated Tax. 
 
 What ought to reconcile all, however, but the very rich, 
 to the ready adoption of the plan, should be this ; let the 
 reader look at the line in the following Table, in which 
 his class of income lies, in any grade of the Scale from 
 100 per annum, up to 5,000 per annum. Let him 
 then calculate what amount of taxes he pays now, in 
 the duties of customs and excise, on most that he eats, 
 drinks, and wears ; in assessed taxes of every kind, 
 as well as tithes, church-dues, county and parish rates 
 for the maintenance of the poor (for all these are intended 
 to be covered by the tax proposed), and sum up the 
 whole. Let him then compare the aggregate amount 
 
with what he would have to pay on the new Scale, as 
 set down in the Table opposite to his Annual Income, 
 in whatever class it may he ; and he will be perfectly 
 satisfied that he, at least, would be a gainer of consider- 
 able relief by the change, and be ready to hail its adoption 
 as a blessing. 
 
 It has been estimated that the revenue produced by an 
 Income and Property Tax, thus graduated, would exceed 
 50,000,000 at least. But whatever might be the sum, 
 it is clear that taxes to the same amount, now pressing 
 on the productive industry of the country, and affecting 
 chiefly the poorer classes, might be at once taken off, and 
 the spring which this would give to trade of every kind 
 would be immense. If it fell short in the whole amount 
 required to cover all the expenses of the State, no other 
 change would be required than a proportionate increase 
 of the rates on all classes. If it exceeded what was 
 needed, the relief would be found in a proportionate 
 decrease of the rates ; so that instead of having the 
 shipping interest fighting against the monied interest 
 the agricultural interest fighting against the manu- 
 facturing and each quarrelling with the other who 
 should bear the additional impost or who enjoy the 
 additional relief proposed there would be but one inte- 
 rest in the State and any increase of the public burthens 
 by putting on a heavier rate of tax, or any decrease of 
 them by taking off some portion of the existing rate 
 would be felt in just proportions by all each according 
 to their share of wealth in, and share of contribution to 
 the expenses of State. 
 
 With these explanations, the following Table will be 
 sufficiently intelligible, and may, therefore, be introduced 
 here. 
 
SCALE OF A GRADUATED TAX 
 
 On Precarious Incomes Life Annuities and Property in 
 Perpetuity beginning at 3 and ending at 30 per cent, per 
 ann. ; and leaving all Incomes below 100/f. a-y ear untouched 
 
 Classes of 
 Income in 
 even Sums 
 of 100 
 
 Tax on 
 each 100 
 rising in 
 succession 
 
 Total Tax if 
 on incomes 
 from preca- 
 rious 
 sources. 
 
 One third 
 more if on In- 
 comes fixed 
 for Life. 
 
 One third more 
 if on Incomes 
 from 
 Perpetuities. 
 
 Elec- 
 toral 
 Votes 
 to each 
 Class. 
 
 
 100 
 
 3 
 
 
 3 
 
 s. d. 
 400 
 
 s. d. 
 500 
 
 1 
 
 200 
 
 4 
 
 7 
 
 968 
 
 11 13 4 
 
 2 
 
 300 
 
 5 
 
 12 
 
 16 
 
 20 
 
 3 
 
 400 
 
 6 
 
 18 
 
 24 
 
 30 
 
 4 
 
 500 
 
 7 
 
 25 
 
 33 6 8 
 
 41 13 4 
 
 5 
 
 600 
 
 700 
 
 8 
 8 
 
 33 
 41 
 
 44 
 54 13 4 
 
 55 
 
 68 6 8 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 800 
 900 
 
 9 
 9 
 
 50 
 59 
 
 66 13 4 
 78 13 4 
 
 83 6 8 
 98 6 8 
 
 8 
 9 
 
 1000 
 1100 
 
 10 
 10 
 
 69 
 
 79 
 
 92 
 105 6 8 
 
 115 
 131 13 4 
 
 10 
 11 
 
 1200 
 1300 
 
 11 
 11 
 
 90 
 101 
 
 120 
 134 13 4 
 
 150 
 168 6 8 
 
 12 
 13 
 
 1400 
 1500 
 
 12 
 12 
 
 113 
 125 
 
 150 13 4 
 166 13 4 
 
 188 6 8 
 208 6 8 
 
 14 
 15 
 
 1600 
 1700 
 
 13 
 13 
 
 138 
 151 
 
 184 
 201 6 8 
 
 230 
 251 13 4 
 
 16 
 17 
 
 1800 
 1900 
 
 14 
 14 
 
 165 
 179 
 
 220 
 238 13 4 
 
 275 
 
 298 6 8 
 
 18 
 19 
 
 2000 
 2200 
 
 15 
 15 
 
 194 
 220 
 
 258 13 4 
 293 6 8 
 
 323 6 8 
 366 13 4 
 
 20 
 21 
 
 2400 
 2600 
 
 16 
 16 
 
 252 
 
 284 
 
 336 
 375 6 8 
 
 410 
 466 13 4 
 
 22 
 23 
 
31 
 
 Classes of 
 Income in 
 even Sums 
 of 100. 
 
 Tax on 
 each 100 
 rising in 
 succession 
 
 Total Tax if 
 on incomes 
 from preca- 
 rious 
 sources 
 
 One third 
 more if on In- 
 comes fixed 
 for Life 
 
 One third more 
 if on incomes 
 from 
 Perpetuities 
 
 Elec- 
 toral 
 Votes 
 to each 
 Class 
 
 2800 
 
 17 
 
 318 
 
 424 
 
 530 
 
 24 
 
 3000 
 
 17 
 
 352 
 
 469 6 8 
 
 586 13 4 
 
 25 
 
 3200 
 
 18 
 
 388 
 
 517 6 8 
 
 646 13 4 
 
 26 
 
 3500 
 
 18 
 
 442 
 
 589 6 8 
 
 736 13 4 
 
 27 
 
 4000 
 
 19 
 
 537 
 
 716 
 
 895 
 
 28 
 
 4500 
 
 19 
 
 632 
 
 842 13 4 
 
 1053 6 8 
 
 29 
 
 5000 
 
 20 
 
 732 
 
 976 
 
 1220 
 
 30 
 
 5500 
 
 20 
 
 832 
 
 1109 6 8 
 
 1386 13 4 
 
 31 
 
 6000 
 
 21 
 
 937 
 
 1249 6 8 
 
 1561 13 4 
 
 32 
 
 6500 
 
 21 
 
 1042 
 
 1389 6 8 
 
 1736 13 4 
 
 33 
 
 7000 
 
 22 
 
 1152 
 
 1536 
 
 1920 
 
 34 
 
 7500 
 
 22 
 
 1262 
 
 1682 13 4 
 
 2103 6 8 
 
 35 
 
 8000 
 
 23 
 
 1377 
 
 1836 
 
 2295 
 
 36 
 
 8500 
 
 23 
 
 1492 
 
 1989 6 8 
 
 2486 13 4 
 
 37 
 
 9000 
 
 24 
 
 1612 
 
 2149 6 8 
 
 2686 13 4 
 
 38 
 
 9500 
 
 24 
 
 1732 
 
 2309 6 8 
 
 2886 13 4 
 
 39 
 
 10,000 
 
 25 
 
 1857 
 
 2476 
 
 3095 
 
 40 
 
 11,000 
 
 25 
 
 2107 
 
 2809 6 8 
 
 3511 13 4 
 
 41 
 
 12,000 
 
 25 
 
 2357 
 
 3142 13 4 
 
 3928 6 8 
 
 42 
 
 13,000 
 
 26 
 
 2617 
 
 3489 6 8 
 
 4361 13 4 
 
 43 
 
 14.000 
 
 26 
 
 2877 
 
 3836 
 
 4795 
 
 44 
 
 15,000 
 
 26 
 
 3137 
 
 4182 13 4 
 
 5228 6 8 
 
 45 
 
 16,000 
 
 27 
 
 3407 
 
 4542 13 4 
 
 5678 6 8 
 
 46 
 
 17,000 
 
 27 
 
 3677 
 
 4902 13 4 
 
 6128 6 8 
 
 47 
 
 18,000 
 
 27 
 
 3947 
 
 5246 13 4 
 
 6578 6 8 
 
 48 
 
 19,000 
 
 27 
 
 4217 
 
 5622 13 4 
 
 7028 6 8 
 
 49 
 
 20,000 
 
 28 
 
 4497 
 
 5969 6 8 
 
 7441 13 4 
 
 50 
 
 21,000 
 
 28 
 
 4777 
 
 6369 6 8 
 
 7961 13 4 
 
 51 
 
 22,000 
 
 28 
 
 5057 
 
 6742 13 4 
 
 8428 6 8 
 
 52 
 
 23,000 
 
 28 
 
 5337 
 
 7116 
 
 8895 
 
 53 
 
 24,000 
 
 28 
 
 5617 
 
 7489 6 
 
 9361 13 4 
 
 54 
 
 25,000 
 
 29 
 
 5907 
 
 7876 
 
 9845 
 
 55 
 
 26,000 
 
 29 
 
 6197 
 
 8262 13 4 
 
 10,328 6 8 
 
 56 
 
 27,000 
 
 29 
 
 6487 
 
 8649 6 8 
 
 10,811 13 4 
 
 57 
 
 28,000 
 
 29 
 
 6777 
 
 9036 
 
 11,295 
 
 58 
 
 29,000 
 
 29 
 
 7067 
 
 9422 13 4 
 
 11,778 G 8 
 
 59 
 
Classes of 
 Income in 
 even Sums 
 of 100 
 
 Tax o n 
 
 each 100 
 rising to 
 succession 
 
 Total Tax if 
 on Incomes 
 from preca- 
 rious 
 sources. 
 
 One third 
 more if on In- 
 comes fixed 
 for Life 
 
 One third more 
 if on Incomes 
 from 
 Perpetuities 
 
 Elec- 
 toral 
 votes 
 .0 each 
 Class 
 
 30,000 
 
 30 
 
 7367 
 
 9,822 13 4 
 
 12,278 6 8 
 
 60 
 
 32,000 
 
 30 
 
 7967 
 
 10,622 13 4 
 
 13,278 6 8 
 
 61 
 
 34,000 
 
 30 
 
 8567 
 
 11,422 13 4 
 
 14,278 6 8 
 
 62 
 
 36,000 
 
 30 
 
 9167 
 
 12.222 13 4 
 
 15,278 6 8 
 
 63 
 
 38,000 
 
 30 
 
 9767 
 
 13,022 13 4 
 
 16,278 6 8 
 
 64 
 
 40,000 
 
 30 
 
 10,367 
 
 13,822 13 4 
 
 17,278 6 8 
 
 65 
 
 42,000 
 
 30 
 
 10,967 
 
 14,622 13 4 
 
 18.278 6 8 
 
 66 
 
 44,000 
 
 30 
 
 11,567 
 
 15,422 13 4 
 
 19,278 6 8 
 
 67 
 
 46,000 
 
 30 
 
 12,167 
 
 16.222 13 4 
 
 20,278 6 8 
 
 68 
 
 48,000 
 
 30 
 
 12,767 
 
 17,022 13 4 
 
 21,278 6 3 
 
 69 
 
 50,000 
 
 30 
 
 13,367 
 
 17f822 13 4 
 
 22,278 6 8 
 
 70 
 
 55,000 
 
 30 
 
 14,867 
 
 19,822 13 4 
 
 24,778 6 8 
 
 71 
 
 60,000 
 
 30 
 
 16,367 
 
 21,822 13 4 
 
 27,278 6 8 
 
 72 
 
 65,000 
 
 30 
 
 17,867 
 
 23,822 13 4 
 
 29,778 6 8 
 
 73 
 
 70,000 
 
 30 
 
 19,367 
 
 25,822 13 4 
 
 32,278 6 8 
 
 74 
 
 75,000 
 
 30 
 
 20,867 
 
 27,822 13 4 
 
 34,778 6 8 
 
 75 
 
 80,000 
 
 30 
 
 22,367 
 
 29,822 13 4 
 
 37,271 6 8 
 
 76 
 
 85,000 
 
 30 
 
 23,867 
 
 31,822 13 4 
 
 39,778 6 8 
 
 77 
 
 90,000 
 
 30 
 
 25,367 
 
 33,822 13 4 
 
 42,278 6 8 
 
 78 
 
 95,000 
 
 30 
 
 26,867 
 
 35,822 13 4 
 
 44,778 6 8 
 
 79 
 
 100,000 
 
 30 
 
 28,367 
 
 37,822 13 4 
 
 47,278 6 8 
 
 80 
 
 105,000 
 
 30 
 
 29,867 
 
 39,822 13 4 
 
 49,778 6 8 
 
 81 
 
 110,000 
 
 30 
 
 31,367 
 
 41,822 13 4 
 
 52,278 6 8 
 
 82 
 
 115,000 
 
 30 
 
 32,867 
 
 43,822 13 4 
 
 54,778 6 8 
 
 83 
 
 120,000 
 
 30 
 
 34,367 
 
 45,822 13 4 
 
 57,278 6 8 
 
 84 
 
 125,000 
 
 30 
 
 35,867 
 
 47,822 13 4 
 
 59,778 6 8 
 
 85 
 
 130,000 
 
 30 
 
 37,367 
 
 49,822 13 4 
 
 62,278 6 8 
 
 86 
 
 135,000 
 
 30 
 
 38,867 
 
 51,822 13 4 
 
 64,778 6 8 
 
 87 
 
 140,000 
 
 30 
 
 40,367 
 
 53,822 13 4 
 
 67,278 6 8 
 
 88 
 
 145,000 
 
 30 
 
 41,867 
 
 55,822 13 4 
 
 69,778 6 8 
 
 89 
 
 150,000 
 
 30 
 
 43,367 
 
 57,822 13 4 
 
 72,278 6 8 
 
 90 
 
 155,000 
 
 30 
 
 44,867 
 
 59,822 13 4 
 
 74,778 6 8 
 
 91 
 
 160,000 
 
 30 
 
 46,367 
 
 61,822 13 4 
 
 77,278 6 8 
 
 92 
 
 165,000 
 
 30 
 
 47,867 
 
 63,822 13 4 
 
 79,778 6 8 
 
 93 
 
 170,000 
 
 30 
 
 49,367 
 
 65,822 13 4 
 
 82,278 6 8 
 
 94 
 
 175,000 
 
 30 
 
 50,867 
 
 67,822 13 4 
 
 84,778 6 8 
 
 95 
 
 180,000 
 
 30 
 
 52,367 
 
 69,822 13 4 
 
 87,278 G 8 
 
 96 
 
 185,000 
 
 30 
 
 53,867 
 
 71,822 13 4 
 
 89,778 6 8 
 
 97 
 
 190-000 
 
 30 
 
 55,367 
 
 73,822 12 4 
 
 92,278 6 8 
 
 98 
 
 195,000 
 
 30 
 
 56,867 
 
 75,822 13 4 
 
 94,778 6 8 
 
 99 
 
 200,000 
 
 30 
 
 58,367 
 
 77,822 13 4 
 
 97,278 6 8 
 
 100 
 
A Scale of Taxation, graduated as in the foregoing 
 Table, would produce, it is believed, 50,000,000 ster- 
 ling; but this is given only as an Estimate, approxi- 
 mating as nearly as our means of calculation will admit, 
 to the truth. The exact numbers of each class, and the 
 exact amount of Incomes of each, cannot, of course, be 
 accurately ascertained, without an actual Return from 
 every county, town, and parish, in the kingdom. But as 
 the Government have all the machinery for this purpose 
 already in their hands ; as the Schedules left by the col- 
 lectors of the Assessed Taxes, and the books of the 
 overseers of the Poor in all parts of the country, would 
 furnish the necessary information as to the persons from 
 whom such Returns should be called for, all that would 
 be necessary to obtain the most perfect information, would 
 be to command that a certain Schedule, prepared for this 
 purpose, should be left at every dwelling in the kingdom ; 
 and its filling up and return to the proper officers fixed 
 for a certain date. 
 
 A notice might be annexed to this, that any person 
 suspected of giving in a total amount of Income so much 
 less than his real gain, as to make it fall into a lower 
 scale of per centage, or into a lower class than that in 
 which its real amount would place it, should be liable to 
 be called before Commissioners appointed for that 
 purpose, with this condition, that if proved to have so 
 falsified the Return, to the extent named, he should be 
 liable to a penalty of double the amount due from him 
 on his actual yearly income ; one half of the penalty to 
 go to the revenue, and the other half to the party proving 
 the fraud. And, on the other hand, if it were not proved 
 to the satisfaction of the Commissioners that a falsifica- 
 tion of the Return, to the extent named, had taken place, 
 
 E 
 
34 
 
 the accusing party should then be liable to the penalty 
 of double the amount of the Return made one half to go 
 to the revenue, and the other half to the party unjustly 
 subjected to the false imputation. 
 
 SCHEDULE. 
 
 The Renter or occupier of the House, No. in Street, 
 
 in the Township, Parish, Ward, or District of is required to 
 
 fill up this Schedule, with a Return of his Income, as prescribed : and 
 to furnish each of the Persons residing on his premises, and above the 
 age of twenty-one years, with a Blank Copy of the same, for the purpose 
 of their making a Return of their Individual Incomes, according to the 
 Form given : the Renter or Occupier of the House being held responsible 
 
 for such Returns being all sent into the Office of 
 
 in on or before the day of in the year 
 
 -under a penalty of- 
 
 -in case of his neglecting so to do, 
 
 within the time named. 
 
 Delivered at the House named above, on the < 
 
 (Signed)- 
 
 .ay of- 
 
 Collector of Taxes. 
 
 Name. 
 
 Age. 
 
 Profession. 
 
 Ann. Income 
 from 
 Profession or 
 Trade. 
 
 Ann. Income 
 from Annui- 
 ties, Pensions 
 or Life 
 Interest only. 
 
 Ann. Income 
 from Lands 
 Funds, and 
 Perpetuities 
 
 
 
 
 Above Below 
 
 Above 
 
 Below 
 
 Above 
 
 Below 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 SOLEMN DECLARATION. 
 
 -do solemnly declare the above to be a true and 
 
 faithful Return of the full amount of Income received by me during the 
 past year ; and of the proportions in which it was derived ; from the 
 exercise of Professional labour, or profits on Trade : from Annuities or 
 Pensions for Life only; and from fixed Property in Lands, Houses, 
 Funds, or other permanent Sources ; and that the Return is made in 
 perfect honour and good faith, without any concealment, reservation, or 
 evasion whatever, and with a full knowledge of the legal penalties 
 attached to the conviction of presenting a false Return. 
 
 Dated the day of -in the year of our Lord 
 
 (Signed) 
 
To make the operation of this Tax as fair and 
 equitable as possible, it should be made to include every 
 British subject, wherever residing, whose Income was 
 derivable from fixed property or funds in this country, or 
 from pay, emolument or pension, derived from the British 
 Government. It should, therefore, embrace the whole 
 of the salaries paid out of the Civil List, including the 
 King, and all the members of the Royal Family* the 
 Judges and great officers of State, the Governors and 
 officers of all our Colonial Dependencies the officers of 
 the Navy and Army, wherever serving the dignitaries 
 of the Law and the Church the Sinecurists and Pen- 
 sioners of every class and grade : in short, every 
 person above the age of twenty-one, whose Income 
 should be derived from professions or trades, or from 
 landed, funded, or any other description of property in 
 England, Scotland, or Ireland ; or whose pay, pension, or 
 emoluments, should come from the Treasury of Great 
 Britain, and be paid out of the General Revenue, 
 wheresoever they resided, or to whatever other Govern- 
 ment they might contribute their share of taxation. The 
 justice of this "extension of operation must be evident : 
 for as the object of taxation is to pay for the protection of 
 property and the safety of the State, and as no classes can 
 be more deeply interested than those we have named, in so 
 securing the very sources from whence their Incomes are 
 derived, it is but fair that they should contribute, in as 
 large a proportion, according to the amount of their 
 Incomes, as any other class in the realm* : and through 
 
 * This article was written when William the Fourth was on the throne. 
 Since then, to the great honour of Her Majesty the Queen, Sir Robert 
 Peel announced publicly the Sovereign's wish to have her income made 
 subject to the same deductions as those of her people. 
 
the same channel as their remittances of rents, dividends 
 from the funds, pay, pension, or other emoluments, were 
 conveyed or paid to them through the same channels 
 could this Schedule be transmitted, and the Return to it 
 obtained ; any failure to reply to which, within the 
 proper time, might be visited with the penalty of double 
 the amount of Income Tax assessed, to be deducted from 
 their sources of supply. 
 
 Let us see, then, whether, in recapitulation, this plan 
 of a Graduated Income or Property Tax, as proposed, 
 would not correspond with all the principles of just tax- 
 ation before laid down. 
 
 1. All parties in the State contributing to its expenses, 
 in proportion to their wealth, all parties would have the 
 deepest interest in economy ; and every one would use 
 his efforts to see the smallest amount possible taken from 
 the people, consistent with the safety of the State. 
 
 2. The tax would be the simplest imaginable, as it 
 would be only on one thing, and that consolidated with 
 substantial political privileges, attached to every class in 
 proportion to the sum paid by each. It would be so 
 intelligible, that every child in the kingdom might under- 
 stand it ; and no possible loss could arise in questions of 
 property and trade, as daily happens now, from ignorance 
 and error of the nature and bearing of the taxes, duties, 
 bounties, drawbacks, &c. 
 
 3. The tax would be certain, and inexpensive in its 
 
 * Such a tax should extend to Ireland, India, and all the British Depen- 
 dencies, wherever situated ; as all who live under the protection of the 
 British flag, and for the safety of whose persons and property the expences 
 of our fleets, armies, and Colonial governments are maintained, ought, in 
 justice, to contribute to the revenue of the Parent State : and if this 
 should lead to their demanding a share of the representation in the 
 British Parliament it ought cheerfully to be conceded to them. 
 
37 
 
 collection, as one register-office, one receiver-general, and 
 a dozen clerks, in each county, would be all the machi- 
 nery necessary for that purpose. The payment should 
 he once a-year only, say the 5th of April ; and the 
 persons required to make their returns and payments 
 should either go to the office themselves for that 
 purpose, or send their documents and cash through 
 their agents or bankers, and not require to be waited 
 on by the officers of government. And if, at the 
 close of the payments made for each year, a List of 
 the names, professions, and sums paid by each, were to 
 be published in the County Gazette or General Register, 
 as in the case of the game certificates at present, no 
 further security against such omissions would be required. 
 The business of the year being thus at an end, the office 
 might be shut up for nine months, if necessary, as there 
 would be really nothing to do in the collection of taxes 
 until the commencement of the registration for the next 
 year at least. To avoid even this slight expense falling 
 on the State, if a small fee of only five shillings on each 
 Annual Return made and Receipt given (3,000,000) 
 were to be levied, (which Receipt of the Tax paid would 
 be the only proof of legal qualification required for the 
 Registration of all the Electoral Votes) it would exceed 
 750,000, and maintain 100 register-offices at 7,500 a 
 year each, so as to save all expense whatever in the col- 
 lection, and make the whole Revenue come into the 
 Treasury without a single shilling of deduction. 
 
 4. The tax would be impossible to be evaded, as men 
 cannot, like bales of goods, or casks of spirits, be smug- 
 gled from house to house, or from city to to city ; they 
 must be seen every day in their usual occupations, and 
 their residences known to all their neighbours ; and the 
 
absence of any individual's name in the column or page 
 of the class to which he belonged, when the Lists were 
 published in his county or parish, would be as fatal to 
 his reputation as his name now appearing among the 
 bankrupts in the Gazette. 
 
 5. The tax would be extremely favourable to consump- 
 tion ; for, as it would be a substitute for all others, there 
 would be no duties of any kind or sort whatever ; neither 
 on articles of food nor of clothing ; neither on dwellings 
 nor furniture ; neither on materials for manufactures , 
 nor on shipping for conveying them ; but everything 
 would be equally free, and consequently everything as 
 cheap as its natural value only could make it. The con- 
 sumption of every article now in use could not fail to be 
 greatly augmented by this, and consequently the labour 
 of men of every class employed in their preparation 
 would be in full demand, so that our agriculture and 
 manufactures might then equally rival all others in the 
 world ; while every increase to our population would, as 
 long as employment existed for them, be an increase of 
 national wealth, by their annual contributions to the 
 Treasury, as well as of their natural strength in numbers 
 and force. 
 
 6. The tax would be as nearly as possible in, proportion 
 to people's means of paying it ; this, indeed being the 
 basis on which the whole plan is formed. 
 
 At all events this must be clear, that by the plan here 
 proposed, the whole of the Revenue might be raised with 
 much greater ease than the same sum is now exacted 
 from the people ; since the capital and labour that can 
 and does pay the whole Revenue now, by a costly and 
 unjust process, could surely raise the same amount in a 
 cheaper and juster one ; while instead of burthening 
 
39 
 
 any one branch of industry, or setting in battle array 
 against each other the conflicting interests of particular 
 classes, or oppressing the poor and permitting the rich to 
 escape it would set the industry of all classes free ; it 
 would create a prodigious demand for labour, by the 
 increased consumption of every manufacture in which 
 labour is required ; it would set at rest for ever all the 
 angry contests between the landed and the monied the 
 shipping and the manufacturing interests ; and it would 
 also relieve all our Colonies, by the consumption of their 
 produce, as much as the Mother Country, by the relief 
 of its labouring classes in return. 
 
 I cannot close these observations, however, without 
 adverting to a few of the beneficial effects which it would 
 produce, as I believe, in the habits and feelings of all 
 classes of society from the very lowest to the very 
 highest. 
 
 The adoption of such a System of Taxation as the one 
 here proposed, by relieving the poor at once and entirely 
 from the operation of any tax whatever, up at least to 
 incomes of 100 a-year, and, even then, pressing them 
 only with the lightness of a feather, and making the rich 
 contribute their just proportions to the burthens of the 
 State, would so far change their relative positions, as to 
 do more than any thing else that can be conceived to lessen* 
 the disrespect and abate the ill-will, which now reigns 
 unfortunately among the poor towards the rich, and 
 gradually substitute better feelings in their stead. 
 
 On the rich it would have a different, but a very salu- 
 tary, effect. It would make them, what nothing else 
 would do, Economists of the Public Expenditure : and 
 why? Simply, because they would be large payers 
 towards its support. Hitherto they have been so lightly 
 
40 
 
 touched themselves, that they could see nothing in Public 
 Economy, but a vulgar reverence for pounds, shillings, 
 and pence. Only place them in the situation of the 
 payers instead of the receivers of the taxes, and the revo- 
 lution would be as great as could be achieved by the 
 magician's wand. The budget would be scrutinized by 
 an entirely new class of men, and Mr. Hume would have 
 more coadjutors among the rich landowners and fund- 
 holders of the Lords and Commons, than would ever be 
 brought to act with him by any other motive. 
 
 With both classes the rich and the poor it would 
 have the effect of inducing habits of scrutiny and regu- 
 larity in their accounts ; it would not merely inspire the 
 wish, but draw forth exertions, to make the income of 
 each succeeding year something more than that which 
 went before. No one would like to fall from the scale 
 or class in which he first stood, but all would be glad to 
 rise : and as, when men are really advancing in prosperity, 
 they take some pains to let their neighbours know the 
 agreeable fact, and do justice to their prudence or their 
 skill, so, increasing incomes would lead to larger returns. 
 And the habit of honourable willingness to pay their full 
 share of the public burthens, and see their names appear, 
 with a becoming annual income opposite to them in the 
 published Lists in the County Gazette, would so grow 
 in strength, that the frauds and evasions of smuggling 
 would rarely be known, and, when detected, be visited 
 with public scorn ; while the same honourable anxiety 
 which makes a man, when he subscribes his annual 
 donation to a public charity or a hospital, see that his 
 name appears in the right class ; that, if a Governor, 
 he is not put among the ordinary Members, and that 
 his rank as well as the amount of his annual donation 
 
41 
 
 is accurately reported, would induce him also to see 
 that his Income was published at the full amount at 
 which he returned it, and his annual contributions to 
 the burthens of the State, and that his rank, as to the 
 number of his Electoral Votes, was not omitted in the 
 County or Parish List, in which his name might 
 annually appear. 
 
 As to the benefits which would arise from the adoption 
 of this System of Taxation in a commercial point of 
 view, it would be difficult for the most sanguine imagin- 
 ation to picture the result. To see British ships built 
 wholly of untaxed materials ; British manufactures con- 
 ducted through wholly untaxed processes ; no Custom 
 Houses, or officers to levy duties on the raw material 
 imported into our harbours ; no Excise Officers, or inland 
 surveyors, to guage, weigh, and measure every man's 
 stock in trade, and examine his licence to deal in ex- 
 ciseable articles ; no Coast Blockade to prevent the 
 free entrance from abroad of cheap corn, cheap wine, 
 cheap tea, cheap coffee, cheap sugar, and cheap everything 
 else, since all things would come to us at their untaxed 
 price, and all things go from us unburthened with impost 
 or duty. Of such a state of things and the mere 
 adoption of this system of Taxing Income only, and 
 abolishing every other species of tax, would bring such 
 a state of things about it is difficult to form a conception. 
 But this at least we might safely predict, that it would 
 fill our harbours with the ships of all nations, without 
 lessening the occupation of our own ; that it would so 
 increase the demand for labour, that all our manufactories 
 would be in full employ ; and that the active and indus- 
 trious portion of the nation, at least, would feel like a 
 patient awakening from a disordered sleep, and shaking 
 
42 
 
 off the night-mare of disease, going forth to walk abroad 
 with freedom, life, and vigour; and while breathing 
 with new lungs the freshness of the morning air, gather- 
 ing health, strength, and enjoyment, at every step he 
 advanced. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 March 24, 1845. 
 
 WHILE these sheets were passing through the press, 
 my attention was attracted by a review in the Morning 
 Chronicle, of Friday, the 21st of March, of Mr. M'Cul- 
 loch's new volume on the Principles of Taxation ; and 
 from this review, and the few extracts it presents, I am 
 glad to perceive very similar opinions to those I have 
 ventured to put forth in this pamphlet ; so that I do 
 not despair of their being more favorably received than 
 I had at first ventured to anticipate. Speaking of the 
 great Master of Political Economy, and his text book, 
 the Wealth of Nations, the writer says 
 
 " The four maxims of Adam Smith respecting Taxa- 
 tion are shortly these : 
 
 " 1. That the subjects of a State should pay in pro- 
 portion to their respective abilities. 
 
 " 2. That the time, manner, and amount, should be 
 certain, and not arbitrary. 
 
 " 3. That the time and manner of payment fixed 
 should be most convenient to the contributor. 
 
 " 4. That every tax should take out, and keep out, 
 of the pockets of the people as little as possible." 
 
 Now I venture to affirm that the principles I have 
 
laid down are in strict accordance with these, though 
 they appear to me to be more complete, because they 
 embrace other elements, quite as essential, though here 
 omitted. 
 
 On examining the higher amounts of the Tables, 
 given in the preceding pages, the largeness of the sums 
 to be paid on the larger Incomes will, no doubt, be ob- 
 served. But the true way in which to view this, is not 
 so much to regard the largeness of the amount paid in 
 tax, as the largness of the net income that still remains 
 to the possessor when this tax has been paid. Some 
 persons, indeed, have supposed that such large deduc- 
 tions would take away all desire on the part of indivi- 
 duals to accumulate wealth ; but they must be ignorant 
 of the motives which chiefly actuate men in endeavour- 
 ing to increase their fortunes, if they so suppose. If, 
 indeed, the share required for the Revenue were much 
 larger than that remaining in a man's possession, he 
 might be indisposed to exert himself much to augment 
 his gains. But so long as the largest share remains to 
 himself, and so long as political power and consideration 
 among his contemporaries are the rewards of this wealth, 
 so long will he desire to increase it. In the case of the 
 largest incomes, however, they are generally made with 
 little or no effort on the part of their fortunate possessors. 
 The increased value of land, occasioned by increase of 
 population : the immense increase to the fortunes of in- 
 dividuals, by extensive buildings on their estates, in the 
 new quarters of increasing cities, such as London, 
 Brighton, Cheltenham, Leamington, Liverpool, Man- 
 chester, and others : the enormous sums made by 
 negotiating foreign loans, and what are called " for- 
 tunate hits," in various speculations require little or 
 
44 
 
 no bodily or mental toil for their acquisition, like the 
 physical labor of the artisan, or the mental wear and 
 tear of the author, the artist, or the legal and medical 
 professions ; and such persons are, therefore, fair objects 
 of taxation to an extent proportionate to the colossal 
 fortunes they possess. 
 
 An objection often raised to the heavy taxation of pro- 
 perty is, that it would drive capital out of the country, 
 and thus tend to impoverish it. But this effect is already 
 produced by taxes on commodities. Thousands of Eng- 
 lish families live abroad for no other reason than that all 
 the necessaries of life are so dear at home ; and making 
 these necessaries cheap would bring thousands back to 
 dwell in England again. The incomes of those so living 
 abroad are derived chiefly from lands, houses, or funds, 
 pay, pensions, and annuities. All these should be sub- 
 ject to the tax, whether they lived abroad or at home. 
 If they had to pay the tax in any case, and living were 
 rendered as cheap here as in France, Italy, Germany, 
 and Belgium they would live here in preference and 
 thus millions now spent abroad would be spent at home, 
 and give employment to English instead of foreign labor . 
 
 As to the removal of capital lands and houses for- 
 tunately cannot be removed : and until foreign funds are 
 as secure as English, men will hesitate before they risk 
 their principal in search of a higher interest, after the 
 experience they have had in Spanish, Portuguese, Mexi- 
 can, and American investments. 
 
 If, indeed, the Income and Property Tax were in- 
 tended, like the present, to be made in addition to 
 existing burthens, the argument would have some 
 weight ; but as it is intended as a substitute for all other 
 taxes, and to lead to their entire abolition, the change 
 
45 
 
 could not take more capital from the incomes of the 
 community than the present system, nor indeed so much: 
 for, in order to raise a fifty millions of revenue according 
 to the present practice, more than sixty millions must 
 be taken from the pockets of the people, to cover the 
 expense of collection, besides immense loss from smug- 
 gling and evasion; whereas, to put fifty millions into the 
 Treasury by the simple machinery of collection pro- 
 posed in the Registry Offices of each County, one mil- 
 lion extra would be quite sufficient, instead of the nine 
 millions now required. 
 
 Again : Though Mr. M f Culloch is not in favor of a 
 direct Income and Property Tax, but clings, with 
 strange pertinacity, to the system of indirect Taxation, he 
 cannot conceal the soundness of Adam Smith's first 
 maxim that " the subjects of a State should pay in 
 proportion to their respective abilities :" as he advocates 
 a Tax on Houses, mainly because it operates as " a fair 
 sort of Income Tax," it being presumed that people's 
 houses bear some general proportion of size and expense 
 to their incomes. 
 
 But why not come at once, not merely to " &fair sort 
 of an Income Tax," or a mere approximation to it, but to 
 a distinct and recognized Income Tax in reality. This 
 is sure to make people pay in proportion to their abili- 
 ties : but a tax on houses will often fall far short of the 
 mark. A man with 1,000 a-year will live in a house 
 of 200 rental. Will a man of 20,000 a-year live in a 
 house of 200 times that amount or at a rental of 
 40,000 a-year ? and yet unless he does so, it is not 
 " a fair sort of an Income Tax." It is notorious that 
 men of very large property are often misers, and con- 
 stantly live on a very small portion of their income. 
 
46 
 
 Without taking such extreme cases as the Elwes's and 
 Farquhar's, who, with 50,000 a-year, did not spend 
 500 ; neither the Rothschilds, the Jones Lloyd's, the 
 Morrisons, the Somes's, or the other great millionaries of 
 commerce, live in houses of more than 1,000 a-year 
 rental or spend more in the consumption of duty-paid 
 commodities, than 10 per cent, of their incomes. You 
 cannot reach them, therefore, by any system of indirect 
 Taxation which shall make them pay their just propor- 
 tion to the burthens of the State ; and yet no man can 
 deny but they ought to be made to pay in a much larger 
 proportion than their poorer fellow-subjects. 
 
 On this subject, indeed the justice of a graduated In- 
 come and Property Tax, the writer in the Morning 
 Chronicle expresses himself clearly enough, when he 
 says " The common sense of mankind has determined 
 that a tax of 3 on a man worth 1,000 a-year, causes 
 more severe pressure than a tax of 300 on a man worth 
 10,000 a-year ; and therefore, if graduation be allowed, 
 the rate of taxation should increase with the amount of 
 property. The heaviest of our Stamp Duties are framed 
 in direct opposition to this principle." 
 
 Mr. M'Culloch, too, has many glimpses of the injus- 
 tice of the opposite principle : since he condemns this 
 feature of the Stamp Tax in unmeasured terms : and 
 has the following paragraph, illustrative of the injustice 
 of making no distinction between the value of the Pro- 
 perty on which taxes are paid : when he says, " The 
 duty on advertisements acts most unequally and oppres- 
 sively. Can anything be more unjust than to impose 
 the same duty on a sixpenny pamphlet, or of a servant 
 wanting a place, as on that of the sale of a valuable 
 estate?" He thinks it desirable to all classes that it 
 
47 
 
 should be repealed altogether : but if so, then all other 
 taxes, such as those on tea, sugar, and other articles of 
 food, of which the middle classes consume nearly as 
 much, with their limited incomes, as the very richest in 
 the land, ought for the same reason to be abolished also. 
 
 Another example of the absurdity as well as injustice 
 of our present system of Taxation, is given in the follow- 
 ing passage, where Mr. M'Culloch says : " Perhaps 
 the duty on fire insurance is the most objectionable of 
 the existing Stamp Duties. It amounts to Ss. per cent, 
 on all property insured ; whereas the premium paid to 
 insurance offices for common risks is only Is. 6d. per 
 cent. : so that the duty demanded by the tax is double 
 the premium required to cover the actual risk. So 
 exorbitant a duty cannot be too severely condemned. 
 It discourages that providence and foresight which 
 should be encouraged by all prudent governments ; and 
 is the cause why much property is only partially in- 
 sured, and some not insured at all." 
 
 The Morning Chronicle says : " The great objection 
 to indirect taxation is, that it is paid chiefly by the 
 working classes. This happens because they are the 
 most numerous class." Undoubtedly this is the strong- 
 est ground of objection that can be raised, as it is in 
 violation of the first principle of justice that those who 
 have the smallest incomes, and those made with great 
 toil, anxiety, and suffering, should pay a still higher pro- 
 protion than those who have the largest incomes, ob- 
 tained, in many cases, without any labor at all, except 
 an occasional audit with an agent, and signing receipts 
 for the payments made from their rent-rolls, their divi- 
 dends, or their profits. 
 
 The main objection urged by the Chronicle to the 
 
payment of direct taxes is expressed in the following 
 passage : 
 
 " It may be doubted whether the vast burthen of the 
 National Debt would be borne with as much patience as 
 it is under our present system. Our regard for public 
 faith would be severely tried by an Income Tax of 20 or 
 30 per cent, in lieu of taxes on commodities, which we 
 pay without feeling them, if we were reminded every 
 quarter that one half of the tax-gatherer's demand was 
 for the satisfaction of national creditors." 
 
 Here, then, is an admission of the fact, which many 
 would doubt, namely, of our really paying or 30 per 
 cent, in indirect taxes on commodities ; but if the writer 
 supposes that the people pay this without feeling it, he 
 is not so well acquainted with their views as he imagines. 
 From the discussions that have taken place on the sub- 
 ject within the last twenty years, the very humblest of 
 the laboring classes know quite well the large amount 
 of tax that is interwoven with the prices of the several 
 articles they consume, and they feel the injustice of this 
 acutely. But the very fact of the tax-gatherer calling to 
 demand the tax personally, instead of it being paid in 
 the form of commodities, would operate most favorably 
 on public feeling, and tend to much greater care than is 
 used at present to see that the taxes were moderate in 
 amount, justly proportioned, and rightly applied or ex- 
 pended. I should be very sorry to suspect our country- 
 men of any want of regard for public faith in fulfiling 
 the national engagements : but the sooner this danger 
 is removed by the settlement of some plan for the reduc- 
 tion of the debt, which at this period of superabundant 
 capital, seeking investment in the remotest parts of the 
 
49 
 
 earth, and in the most uncertain speculations, might he 
 favorably entertained. 
 
 On this subject, too, I may take the present oppor- 
 tunity to repeat a proposition made ahout the same 
 period as that for a Graduated Income and Property 
 Tax, hut with no hetter success. The outline of it was 
 this : 
 
 To create a new Stock, to he entitled " The National 
 Annuity," which should hegin to pay an interest of 
 5 per cent, or 100 shillings in the first year, and gra- 
 dually extinguish hoth principal and interest in 100 
 years of time, hy the diminution of Is. per annum only 
 on the interest, till it came to nothing. 
 
 To convert all the existing Stocks of Consols, Long 
 Annuities, Exchequer Bills, and every other kind of 
 Government Security, into this new Stock, at the fair 
 market rate of value for the day, say with the 3 per cents. 
 at the par of 100, and without loss to the individual 
 holders, paying off, of course, as usual, the dissentients, 
 if any. 
 
 Thus, for every 100 so invested in the " National 
 Annuity," the holder would receive 5 interest for the 
 first year, 4. 19s. Od. for the second, 4. ISs.Od. for 
 the third year, and so on, diminishing by Is. per cent, 
 only in each succeeding year, till in 100 years the prin- 
 cipal and interest would hoth expire. 
 
 That this would he an equitable mode, no one can 
 doubt, as it proceeds upon the recognized principle of 
 sinking perpetuities at small interest for annuities at a 
 larger rate. That it would be popular, could be hardly 
 doubted, because it would take 20 years to bring down 
 the interest to 4 per cent. and 40 years to bring it 
 down to 3 per cent, by which time probably all the 
 
50 
 
 present holders would be in their graves. Even after 
 this, it would take another 60 years to bring it down 
 gradually to extinction, in which time other generations 
 would have passed away. While, therefore, the yearly 
 diminution would be so small as scarcely to be felt by 
 any one in his income, there would be one hundredth 
 part of the National Debt wiped off every year, and con- 
 sequently so much less taxes required to pay the interest. 
 And if the generations after the present should find the 
 funded property of their great grandfathers extinct, this 
 would be only the common fate of third and fourth 
 generations in almost all property except land, but with 
 this great advantage to our posterity, that if there were 
 no longer a debt of 800 millions, in which they had some 
 share, there would be no longer a Revenue of 30 mil- 
 lions required to pay its interest, from the burthen of 
 which they would be accordingly relieved. If at the same 
 time all the supplies required for the use of the State 
 were raised within the year, and 110 further debts con- 
 tracted, there would be a degree of economy introduced 
 into every branch of the administration, without impairing 
 its efficiency, which never did and never can take place 
 under the reckless and extravagant system of public 
 loans, by which the income of the future is anticipated 
 and spent, leaving those that come after to bear the 
 chief weight of the burthen. 
 
 This Plan for the gradual Redemption of the Public 
 Debt is quite as just, intelligible, and practicable, as that 
 of the Graduated Income and Property Tax proposed ; 
 and both might be carried into execution at the same 
 
 O 
 
 moment of time. Whether the present Prime Minister 
 of England will be the man to undertake it, and with 
 the immense power which he wields over both sides of 
 
51 
 
 the House, sweep away the absurdities and anomali es 
 of our present system of Taxation and Finance, time 
 only can determine. But if not that some other man, 
 in some future time, will make an entire change in the 
 system I cannot doubt believing, as I do, in the con- 
 tinued advancement of the great principles of truth and 
 justice, of which so many of the recent steps taken by 
 the heads of office in all departments of the Stale give 
 pleasing evidence, and in no department more than that 
 under Sir Robert Peel's own special direction the 
 finances and the commerce of the country. They are no 
 doubt still far short of what they ought to be, and what 
 he really desires ; but, considering the influences by 
 which he is surrounded, and the good he has done in 
 spite of their hindrances and obstructions, and consider- 
 ing also that these influences are growing weaker and 
 his strength greater by every change that is made, 
 there is reasonable ground of hope for much more good 
 to follow. 
 
 Again and again has it been made subject of evil 
 portent and alarm, from speakers of weight and authority 
 in the House of Commons, that every year the popula- 
 tion is increasing at the rate of a thousand per day with- 
 out a corresponding increase in the demand for their 
 labour. For this there are two remedies, each of which 
 should be carried into effect without delay ; first, to fa- 
 cilitate, by every possible means, the emigration and 
 settlement of those who are able and willing to seek on 
 other soils, a subsistence denied them on their own ; 
 next, to use the best means of bringing into cultivation 
 all the waste lands of the kingdom, and to adopt the 
 most approved modes of increasing the produce from the 
 old and the new surfaces of tillage ; and, lastly, to im- 
 
press, in every way in which it can be done on the 
 labouring population, the duty and advantage of placing 
 some some prudential restraint on their continually in- 
 creasing numbers, by which they are only bringing into 
 existence those for whom they cannot adequately pro- 
 vide in infancy, and rearing up a mass of rivals to 
 themselves in the labour-market when they attain to 
 manhood. 
 
 With equal earnestness has it been deplored, by states- 
 men of both parties, that the rich are every year getting 
 richer and the poor poorer though all admit that the 
 poverty of the latter is already the parent of much 
 misery and suffering to those who are its victims, while 
 excessive and continually increasing opulence is also 
 admitted to be unfavourable to the highest degree of 
 virtue, as engrossing the minds of the possessors too 
 much with its importance. The remedy for this, is 
 clearly, to draw largely from the increasing wealth of 
 the rich, to meet the expenses of the State, (to which, 
 indeed, it should be their chief glory, as it is undoubtedly 
 their strict duty to contribute,) and to let the poor have 
 some power, not merely to maintain their stationary 
 position and not recede, but actually to improve and 
 accumulate ; as some advancement from year to year, 
 be it ever so slight, provided it is really perceptible, is 
 necessary to keep alive the flame of hope, which can 
 alone give due energy and perseverance to their toils and 
 labours, and enable them to make some provision for the 
 training and education of their offspring. 
 
 Of the best plan of establishing a system of National 
 Colonization, I have written so recently, and so much at 
 large, in my Description of Canada, Nova Scotia, New 
 Brunswick, and the capacities of our Colonies in North 
 
America, to receive our surplus millions for years to 
 come, in addition to our extended territories in the Eastern 
 and Southern hemispheres, that it is unnecessary 
 to say more in this place, than that, with such vast 
 posssessions in land, with such overflowing capital 
 in money, and with such an abundance of unemployed 
 ships, mariners, and stores at command, nothing would 
 be more easy than to establish such a system as should 
 give England immediate relief enrich all our Colonies 
 extend our Commerce and increase rather than dimi- 
 nish our National Resources ; and with a separate Min- 
 ister for each Colony, instead of the irrational system 
 of placing the direction of all the Colonies under one 
 office, and in the hands of one man, who, if he were the 
 ablest and wisest on earth, could not possibly give his 
 attention to such multiplied subjects as these affairs 
 daily present for his decision our Colonial Empire 
 might become an honor and a profit, instead of being, 
 as it now too frequently is, a fertile source of disaster, 
 dishonor, and impoverishment. 
 
 HAVING been for many years deeply impressed with a 
 belief, that the morality and welfare of the humbler 
 classes of society were more deeply injured by the habit 
 of drinking intoxicating liquors, whether beer, gin, or 
 whiskey > (for each produces its similar train of evils in the 
 several localities in which the one or the other is most 
 generally used,) I availed myself, at an early period, of 
 every opportunity that fairly presented itself, for calling 
 public attention to this important subject. Among other 
 
incidents, I had seen with pleasure, that in the experi-r 
 ment tried by Mr. O'Connell, to become elected member 
 for the County of Clare, before the passing of the Catholic 
 Relief Bill, and before he could be legally admitted into 
 the House of Commons, he had issued an address to the 
 electors and their friends, entreating them not to permit 
 a single drop of whiskey to enter their lips from the day 
 of the issue of the writ, till the day of the close of the 
 poll, and his final return as the elected member for the 
 county. 
 
 His long experience of the habits of his countrymen 
 had taught him that the chief, if not the sole cause of 
 the dreadful scenes of riot and disorder which charac- 
 terized Irish elections, as well as Irish wakes and fairs, 
 was drinking intoxicating drinks ; and that if they could 
 but be dissuaded from this, they would be as peaceable 
 and orderly as the people of any other nation. He must 
 have known quite as well, too, that the habit of drinking 
 was the principal cause, in the waste of money and 
 the waste of time to which it led of the poverty and 
 rags by which an Irish multitude was usually cha- 
 racterized. 
 
 In order to secure his election, therefore, and to free 
 it from all chance of failure, by the existence of any 
 riot or disorder, he intreated the people not to touch 
 the poisonous and intoxicating draught. The friends 
 who organized and conducted the Election, steadily 
 enforced this abstinence, and the result was, that the 
 conduct of the populace, for the many days over which 
 the contest then extended, was more peacable and 
 orderly than had ever been known, in England, Scot- 
 land, or Ireland, where such periods have always been 
 characterized by the most unbridled intemperance and 
 
55 
 
 loss of life and property, while the greatest corruption of 
 the public moral has been the constant result. 
 
 Seeing the suecess of this experiment, it might have 
 been hoped that Mr. O'Connell would have profited by 
 it to use his great influence with the Irish people to 
 make the experiment of the Clare Election, a perma- 
 nanent rule of conduct, instead of a temporary one ; and 
 to ask all Ireland to imitate, not for a season only, but 
 perpetually, the example of the sober Electors of Clare. 
 But the time had not yet come either for himself or the 
 people of Ireland to see the imporsance of such a change : 
 as he not only failed to press the subject further upon 
 their attention when the end of his Election was an- 
 swered. But, on a subsequent occasion, having a wish to 
 use his influence to put an end to the factious fights that 
 disgraced almost every large meeting of his countrymen, 
 he addressed them a public letter, through the News- 
 papers, intreating them not to continue this foolish and 
 destructive practice, and studiously omitted all allusion 
 to that antecedent habit of drinking whiskey, which he 
 must have known was the sole cause of these factious 
 fights ; because, on withdrawing this stimulating and ex- 
 citing cause at Clare, not a single fight had taken place. 
 I therefore thought it my duty to address him a public 
 letter, whiclr, as its reasonings and conclusions are as 
 applicable to England as to Ireland, and may serve to 
 awaken public attention to the chief obstacle to the wel- 
 fare of the humbler classes of society, in every part of 
 our own country, may be repeated here. 
 
56 
 
 MR. O'CONNELL'S ADVICE TO THE IRISH 
 PEASANTRY. 
 
 TO DANIEL O'CONNBLL ESQ, M.P. 
 
 London, Aug. 15, 1836. 
 
 SIR, I have read, with, great pleasure, your excellent 
 advice to the peasantry of Ireland, intreating them to 
 abstain from those fights and brawls which have been 
 unhappily so frequent among them at their wakes and 
 fairs ; and I trust that the reasons which you offer in 
 support of your advice will have that effect which their 
 clearness and their cogency are calculated to produce. 
 In reading your address, however, I was forcibly struck 
 by the fact of your not adverting, in the slightest degree, 
 to the most potent cause of these fights and brawls, of 
 which it is impossible that you should be wholly ignorant. 
 As a Radical Reformer in all other matters, I was led to 
 expect that you would have gone to the root of the evil 
 in this, and that you would have discovered the most 
 powerfully operating of all the causes of these fights and 
 brawls to be the prevalent and pernicious habit of whisky 
 drinking, in which so great a number of the Irish pea- 
 santry indulge. If you had commenced your advice to 
 them, therefore, with these few words, " Drink no 
 whisky," and had added, in one of those short and 
 pithy sentences, which you know so well how to 
 pen, your reasons for this advice, namely, " That 
 the distillation of whiskey from grain, is a con- 
 version of that which the bounty of Providence has 
 supplied as wholesome food, into a poisonous and intoxi- 
 cating drink; that this drink destroys the reason, 
 inflames the passions, undermines the strength, wastes 
 
57 
 
 the health, interrupts the industry, exhausts the means, 
 and ruins equally the constitution and the character 
 of its victims ; and that to the devastating influence of 
 this all-pervading habit of whiskey-drinking is to be 
 attributed to the largest portion of the mendicity, pau- 
 perism, disease, insanity, riot and crime, that still afflicts 
 your native country," you would have struck more effect- 
 tually at the root of the evil, than you appear to me now 
 to have done. 
 
 Lest I might be supposed myself to take an exagge- 
 rated view of this subject, let me recal your attention to 
 some few authenticated and undoubted facts, which will 
 set the matter in the clearest point of view : 1st, That 
 the enormous sum of more than 6,000,000 sterling per 
 annum are spent in Ireland in whiskey ; a sum which, 
 if saved from this expenditure, and applied in furnishing 
 labour to the able-bodied, and relief to the helpless, 
 would be sufficient to remove nearly the whole of the evils 
 under which the poor of Ireland are now labouring : this 
 sum being considerably more than the whole amount ex- 
 pended for the relief of the poor in England and Scotland, 
 the united population of which is more than double that 
 of Ireland. 2dly, That in almost every part of Ireland, 
 the places for the sale of whiskey are so numerous, that 
 fifteen or twenty of these will be found for one place for 
 the sale of bread ; that in Clonmel, with a population of 
 15,000 souls, 50,000 had been expended in whiskey in 
 the year 1833 ; that in Waterford, with a population of 
 30,000 souls, upwards of 100,000 had been expended 
 on the same poison within the same period ; while in the 
 larger towns of Cork, Limerick, Dublin and Belfast, the 
 same proportion of expenditure to population, in this 
 pernicious drink, takes place. 
 
 H 
 
That some of the most distinguished of the prelates 
 of your own Church have been as deeply sensible of the 
 extent of this evil, as I confess myself to be, you must, I 
 think, be well aware of. But to others, less well informed 
 upon the state of Ireland than yourself, it may not be 
 unacceptable to adduce a few extracts from a letter of 
 the late Rev. Dr. Doyle, the Roman Catholic Bishop of 
 Kildare, addressed to the Secretary of the New Ross 
 Temperance Society, and dated Carlow, Dec. 29, 1829, 
 which will be found in the Parliamentary Evidence pre- 
 sented to the House of Commons in 1834. The Reverend 
 Bishop says 
 
 "Every Christian, indeed every man endowed with 
 reason, whether he be, or whether he be not a Christian 
 must look upon drunkenness and excessive drinking 
 as one of the most debasing and hateful vices which 
 infest the human kind : it stupifies and brutalizes men ; 
 and as to women, it reduces their condition far below that 
 of the brute. * * * * * l n towns where the vice of 
 excessive drinking chiefly prevails, you have opposed to 
 you all the drunkards, all the publicans, all the grocers 
 who sell whiskey, all the brewers, all the distillers, with 
 the wits and idlers who appertain to them. To eradi- 
 cate the use of ardent spirits out of a country, having 
 such a climate as ours, and /row among such a people as 
 ours, is impossible ; but to diminish the use of ardent 
 
 Spirits tO ONE-FIFTIETH PART OF ITS PRESENT AMOUNT, 
 
 is, in my opinion, perfectly practicable. * 
 Rash swearing, profanation of the Lord's day, blasphe- 
 mies without number, the poverty, the nakedness, the 
 destitution, the ruin of families ; the frauds, the thefts, 
 the robberies ; the seduction of innocence, the corruption 
 of virtue ; the disobedience of children, the infidelities 
 
59 
 
 of servants, the discords and disunion of those whom 
 God united; these, and many others which I do not 
 name, are the effects of drinking and of drunkenness, 
 which I deplore. *****! a m ready to co-operate 
 in the establishment and support of any measure, whose 
 object is to preserve the dominion of reason over passion, 
 and to aid virtue in her warfare against vice. If the 
 societies of tradesmen, which are found in almost every 
 town, could be induced to adopt, as a rule or regulation, 
 abstinence from ardent spirits, or even a temperate use 
 of them, if such be possible, much good would result to 
 themselves therefrom. Great numbers of tradesmen are 
 notoriously addicted to extreme drinking. They might 
 be comfortable and happy they are now poor and 
 miserable : they might be virtuous aad respectable they 
 are now vicious and despised. Sobriety would enable 
 them to provide for their children, and to lay up some 
 subsistence for their own helpless age ; but drunkenness 
 leaves the children destitute, and sends themselves, 
 through want and misery, to a premature grave ; and, 
 after a life of drunkenness, who can accompany them, 
 even in a thought, to that tribunal which is beyond the 
 grave ?" 
 
 You will, I am sure, excuse the length of these ex- 
 tracts though I have abridged them as much as pos- 
 sible from your just respect to the excellent character 
 and high authority of the reverend prelate of your own 
 Church by whose pen they were traced. That you en- 
 tertain an almost equal degree of repugnance to the 
 practice of excessive drinking, I am quite willing to 
 believe ; because your own habits are known to be ex- 
 tremely temperate, and because you have been heard 
 to express yourself favourably towards this practice in 
 
60 
 
 others. The only question then, that remains to be 
 asked, is this Would the more formal and authoritative 
 expression of your convictions on this point, and the 
 publication of your advice to the Irish peasantry, to 
 abstain from drinking whisky, as the best method, not 
 merely of avoiding the fights and brawls which you de- 
 nounce, but the long train of other ills enumerated by 
 thr venerable Dr. Doyle, be productive of any public 
 good ? Every one who hears the question asked, will 
 unhesitatingly answer in the affirmative. Of your in- 
 fluence over the great mass of the Irish people, ac- 
 quired by a long life devoted to the advocacy of their 
 national rights, no man can doubt : and, of the practica- 
 bility of your directing this influence to stay the deso- 
 lating plague of spirit-drinking in Ireland, former days, 
 if I mistake not, will afford sufficient proof. It has been 
 stated, on unquestionable authority, and I have never 
 yet seen it denied that on the occasion of your elec- 
 tion for Clare, when, from the opposition you had to 
 ^ncouiiter, it was of the utmost importance that every 
 exertion should be made to ensure your success, you 
 issued an address, enjoining, in authoritative and em- 
 phatic expressions, your earnest desire that the electors, 
 to a man, should not taste whisky till the election was 
 over ; that the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy 
 was on this occasion added to your own, for the purpose 
 of securing a compliance with your wish ; that these 
 united influences prevailed to such a degree as that not 
 an intoxicated elector in your interest was seen : and 
 that the consequence of this abstinence, was a degree of 
 order and decorum, unstained by a single fight or brawl, 
 unparalleled in the history of Irish Elections. 
 Let me entreat you, then, in the name of that country 
 
61 
 
 whose real interest I believe we both have sincerely at 
 heart, to repeat the exercise of that powerful influence 
 which you possess over the mass of your fellow-country- 
 men, whenever you address them on any question of 
 Reform, in order to prevail on them to save the 
 6,000,000 sterling per annum, which they now waste 
 in poisonous drink, and apply it to the purchase of 
 wholesome food, clothing, shelter, and healthy and 
 innocent enjoyment ; and if, by this great reformation 
 of their social habits, you shall be instrumental in abat- 
 ing the poverty, disease, and crime, which still afflicts 
 the land of yonr birth and the country of your renown, 
 you will add another and a prouder wreath to your 
 laurels, than any with which you have yet been crowned 
 by your enthusiastic and grateful countrymen. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. S. BUCKINGHAM. 
 60, Piccadilly. 
 
 To this letter I never received any reply ; but this 
 was more than a year before Father Mathew com- 
 menced his benevolent labours in Ireland. Since then 
 Mr. O'Connell has seen the great advantage of acting 
 upon the advice here given ; and to its adoption may be, 
 no doubt, traced the extraordinary spectacle of the 
 largest assemblies perhaps ever collected together for 
 any peaceful purpose, without a single intoxicated per- 
 son/an angry word, or a blow. Father Mathew, according 
 to the testimony of men of the highest rank and of all 
 parties, has wrought a greater change for the benefit of 
 
62 
 
 the Irish people than any man that ever lived, and made 
 millions of his fellow-countrymen and countrywomen, as 
 well as their children, happier than they ever were be- 
 fore, and given them habits of sobriety and industry 
 which will in years to come make them happier still. 
 
 But this is not all that requires to be done the State 
 has great and solemn duties to perform, and men should 
 never cease importuning it till they are discharged. 
 
 There are five great objects which ought continually 
 to be pressed on the attention of Government, as duties 
 which could be much better performed by the united 
 power of the State than by the divided efforts of In- 
 dividuals or Societies, and for which, therefore, they 
 ought to provide the necessary funds from the taxation 
 of the whole community. These are 
 
 1. To provide Asylums for all the helpless subjects 
 of the realm the old, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the 
 maimed, and all who are positively disabled from earn- 
 ing their bread by labour. Because this is a duty we 
 all owe to the sufferers, and which those who are able 
 but not willing, should be compelled to perform. 
 
 2. To provide Employment, in public works, in the 
 making of roads, repair of public buildings, manufacture 
 
63 
 
 of articles required for public use in the naval, military 
 and ordnance departments forming harbours of re- 
 fuge establishment of public fisheries draining and 
 cultivating bog and waste lands and many other highly 
 useful labours that might be devised, at the bare wages 
 of subsistence, for all able-bodied persons above the age 
 of ten years, who could not obtain employment in private 
 service. Because a human being, able and willing to 
 work, but unable to obtain employment, is as much an 
 object of compassion as one who is deprived of the 
 power of labour by any other calamity. 
 
 3. To provide the means of Emigration and Colo- 
 nization to all of this class who should prefer going to 
 any of our Colonial possessions, and exercising their 
 skill and industry there. Because this would be a valu- 
 able relief to the pressure of population at home, and be 
 fulfilling, in the best manner, the first command, to 
 " increase and multiply, and replenish the earth," while 
 it would tend to increase the commerce and enrich the 
 resources of the British empire at large. 
 
 4. To establish a National System of Parochial and 
 District Schools, in which gratuitous education should 
 be given to all children whose parents were unable to 
 provide the means of instruction themselves, and in 
 which industrial, moral, and religious training should be 
 as carefully considered and practised, as the increase of 
 
64 
 
 knowledge. Because this would not only prevent an 
 immense amount of juvenile depravity, in both sexes, 
 leading to maturer crime,, and thus save the country the 
 expence and dishonour to which the gross immoralities 
 of these neglected children leads, in the drunkenness 
 thefts, prostitution, and other forms of criminality which 
 throng our cities and towns ; but because it would the 
 better qualify them to get an honest livelihood by their 
 own industry, and make them better subjects, better 
 parents, and better members of a Christian common- 
 wealth. 
 
 5. To remove, as much as possible, the innumerable 
 and irresistible temptations to Prostitution and Crime, 
 which the united facilities of pawnbrokers, gin-palaces, 
 beer-shops and brothels afford by establishing National 
 Loan Societies, like the Monts de Piete in other coun- 
 tries, to afford pecuniary aid, on moderate security and 
 reasonable interest, to those who are really in want, 
 without receiving stolen goods, and advancing money on 
 the apparel of the profligate and drunken, to be spent at 
 the neighbouring gin-shop (as these establishments are 
 always in close proximity, to aid each other) ; by les- 
 sening the number and restricting the hours of all places 
 where intoxicating drinks are sold; by compelling 
 those which supply such drinks only, to be closed like 
 other shops, on the Sabbath-day ; and by prosecuting 
 and punishing all procuresses and keepers of brothels, 
 as public nuisances and criminals, with the utmost im- 
 
65 
 
 partiality, including those who minister to the vices of 
 the rich as well as to the poor. 
 
 That these are all within the power of the Legis- 
 lature to do, no one can doubt. The omnipotence of 
 Parliament has effected much more difficult things 
 than these. If an army is to be raised, or a fleet 
 equipped if a loan of a million is required for an 
 advance to the clergy for irrecoverable tithes or 
 a loan of twenty millions is needed to abolish 
 Colonial Slavery if the invasion of China, the 
 conquest of Scinde, the annexation of the Punjaub, 
 or any similar object, requires the advance of funds 
 or the exercise of power, no difficulties are found 
 to impede either the old adage of " where there's 
 a will there is also a way," is constantly verified. All 
 that is wanting to accomplish each of the objects here 
 proposed, is simply the " will," and not the " way" 
 for when the one shall be created or excited, the 
 other will speedily follow ; and that this may ^ and 
 ere long be accomplished, is my most earnest hope 
 and prayer. 
 
 As the issue of these sheets will furnish, perhaps, a 
 favourable opportunity for giving further circulation to 
 a late communication of mine on the subject just adverted 
 to, I will occupy the remainder of the space by reprinting 
 it here. It was addressed to a Public Journal, the Editor 
 
66 
 
 of which, in a leading article of the 18th of March, 
 had considered the attempts making by petition to the 
 Legislature to close up the puhlic houses on Sunday, 
 as an unjust infringement on the liberties and enjoy- 
 ments of the poor : and was as follows : 
 
 ON CLOSING UP PUBLIC HOUSES ON 
 SUNDAYS 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN. 
 
 March 19, 1845. 
 
 SIR, Believing you to be really disposed to promote the 
 happiness and enjoyment of the poorer classes of the com- 
 munity, I have been induced to ask your permission to say a 
 few words on the subject of your remarks, in your paper of 
 March 18, on the endeavours now making to prevail on the 
 Legislature to enforce the closing of gin-shops and beer-shops 
 on Sundays. If I thought this would really diminish the 
 rational and healthy enjoyments of the poor, I should oppose 
 it as warmly as yourself ; but believing that it would be greatly 
 for their benefit, in every point of view, I hope you will allow 
 me to state the reasons for this opinion. 
 
 I am one of those who have always thought the labourers 
 of this country agricultural, manufacturing, and every other 
 class over-worked, under-paid, under-fed, under-clad, under- 
 educated, and most unjustly deprived of many enjoyments to 
 which their claims, as human beings, as fairly entitle them as 
 those of the highest in the land : that the green fields, bright 
 flowers, and pure air of heaven, were as much designed for 
 their gratification as for that of the noblest or the wealthiest ; 
 and that any restrictions which impede their enjoyment of 
 these blessings ought, if possible, to be removed. I agree 
 
67 
 
 with you, therefore, entirely, in the feeling which induced you 
 to say, in the article alluded to, " If a labouring man is not 
 allowed to take refreshment on a Sunday if he is not to visit 
 his friends, to spend the only day he has to himself in rational 
 enjoyment and amusement, what is he to do ?" 
 
 Now the closing up the public-houses on Sunday will not 
 deprive any man of the pleasures you here enumerate. His 
 truest and best refreshments are in the wholesome and abun- 
 dant meals which his own dwelling affords him ; (and if he 
 is too poor to purchase these, he is still less excusable in 
 wasting his limited means in the public-house) and his high- 
 est enjoyment of these meals will be when he is surrounded 
 by his wife and children, if a married man, or his fellow- 
 workmen and companions if a single one. These, in- 
 deed, will help to recruit his strength, to increase and 
 purify his blood, to give energy to his body and cheerfulness 
 to his mind. 
 
 But will gin, and beer, and tobacco, or any other of 
 the intoxicating drinks and substances furnished by the 
 public-houses, and for which alone he can desire to fre- 
 quent them, give him health, strength, or true pleasure ? 
 Five millions of people in Ireland and three millions in 
 England and Scotland are ready to answer, after years of 
 practical experience, that these destroy health, diminish 
 strength, and, instead of enduring pleasure, produce only a 
 temporary excitement, which almost invariably ends in nausea, 
 head-ache, fever, loss of appetite, irritability of temper, and 
 every variety of disgust and pain. Besides which, the money 
 spent by the poorest person who frequents the gin-shop and 
 the beer-shop on the Sunday, when their possession of their 
 week's wages, and command of leisure, induce them to sit for 
 hours at a time over the gill, the tankard, and the pipe, would 
 maintain their families in comfort for several days in succession ; 
 
68 
 
 and thus the wives and children are deprived of their proper 
 share of the comfort and enjoyment wnich they have a right 
 to ask at their husband's and father's hands. 
 
 If persons are travelling, and require food and refreshment 
 on the road, or if persons are living at inns and hotels, as 
 inmates of the house, no one desires that any restrictions 
 should be placed on their supplies ; but the gin-shops, beer- 
 shops, and taverns, into which so many thousands who have 
 homes of their own, congregate on the Sundays, are not 
 necessary for such refreshment, and may therefore fairly be 
 put on the same footing as all other shops where provisions, 
 goods, or wares, are sold. 
 
 And then, as to the "innocent amusements and only 
 recreations of the poor," as you call them in one sentence, and 
 the " rational employment and amusement," as you call them 
 in another part of the same article, can anything be less deserv- 
 ing these terms than the scenes which the gin-shops and beer- 
 shops continually display ? That they are not so " innocent" 
 as you appear to believe, the annals of crime too fearfully prove ; 
 since there is hardly a day in which some cases are not brought 
 before the police-courts, which show that drinking is the origin 
 of more than half the offences and crimes committed in Eng- 
 land : and this is no new opinion. Lord Bacon and Sir 
 Matthew Hale, no mean authorities as judges, gave it as their 
 deliberate opinion that drunkenness was the principal source 
 of all the crimes known to them in their day, now two centuries 
 ago; and the judges of the present period of 1845 have all 
 borne testimony to the same melancholy truth, in their several 
 charges from the judicial bench ; while the keepers of gaols, the 
 superintendarits of hulks, the surgeons of lunatic asylums, the 
 coroners of counties and cities, and the guardians of the poor 
 nearly all concur in tracing the various forms of crime, disease, 
 and misery, with which they have to deal, to the habits of 
 
69 
 
 intoxication which the gin-shops and beer-shops so fearfully 
 generate ; and especially on Sundays, as the annals of the 
 police-courts in every town of the kingdom show more than 
 treble the cases of drunkenness on Sundays brought up for 
 examination on Monday mornings than occur on any other 
 day in the week. 
 
 They are, therefore, not places of " innocent amusement," 
 as you suppose ; neither are they places of " rational enjoy- 
 ment or recreation." That only is rational which cultivates, 
 strengthens, and delights the reasoning faculties of men ; gin, 
 beer, and tobacco weaken, confuse, and at least obscure those 
 faculties entirely, in various degrees, from being unreasonably 
 and obstinately " fuddled" to becoming " dead drunk." And 
 as to re-creation, or the making a man anew by reviving his 
 dormant energies into new life, it makes the strongest men. 
 helpless as infants, the cleverest men drivelling fools, and the 
 most prudent men ungovernably mad. In truth, of all the 
 single evils that afflict this country, there is not one that is 
 half so prolific of misery as this habit of using intoxicating 
 drinks. Upwards of fifty millions of money are annually 
 wasted in their consumption as much wasted as if thrown 
 into the sea. In addition to which, more property is destroyed 
 by sea and land, in wrecks and fires more sudden deaths 
 occasioned by brawls and accidents more diseases engendered, 
 from dropsy to delirium tremens more lunacies occasioned 
 by over-excitement of the animal passions more poverty cre- 
 ated by loss of time, unsteady work, and waste of wages 
 through the excessive drinking which gin-shops, beer-shops, 
 and taverns engender, than by all other causes put together. 
 
 Lastly, what shall be said of this monstrous inconsistency 7 
 If a baker, a butcher, a cheesemonger, or a grocer keep his 
 shop open on Sunday, he not only offends the law, but he 
 shocks public opinion. If a hatter, a bootmaker, or a tailor, 
 
70 
 
 were seen with all his men in full employment, in an open and 
 large shop on a Sunday, it would be thought a scandal. Now, 
 these might be excused on the ground of their trades being 
 " innocent," and their supplies being really " necessaries of 
 life." But these are all closed by law and custom, while the 
 most pernicious trade that was ever carried on the traffic by 
 which millions are impoverished, diseased, and otherwise in- 
 jured claims for itself especial exemption from all restraints of 
 days or laws, and demands to be free to vend its poisons and 
 make its drunkards especially on the day set apart by all other 
 trades to rest, recreation, and devotion. 
 
 If you contend that the Legislature should not interfere in 
 such matters at ail the plea comes too late it might have 
 been good a thousand years ago, when our ancestors were 
 little better than the Red Indians of America ; and if we wish 
 to see the effects of unlicensed and unrestrained sale of spiri- 
 tuous drinks among a people, Mr. Catlin will tell us of the 
 ravages which the "fire-water" has made among that gra- 
 dually sinking people. But we live in a civilised community, 
 under a dominion of law, and with a general acquiescence in 
 the principle that "prevention is better than remedy." Hence 
 we have a preventive police hence lights in our streets and 
 highways hence bolts and bars on our doors. For this rea- 
 son gunpowder may not be manufactured in a city lest it 
 should explode hence carriages and omnibuses are restricted 
 to a certain number of passengers, steam-boats to certain 
 rates of speed in crowded rivers and hence, indeed, the many 
 other rules and regulations which prevent every man from 
 " doing what he will " even " with his own." Upon this 
 principle, all public-houses are already licensed, on certain con- 
 ditions, and without such licence none can be lawfully opened 
 at all. Nay, more, they are already obliged to be closed dur- 
 ing the hours of public worship everywhere ; and have lately 
 been compelled, in London, to remain closed on Sundays from 
 
71 
 
 daybreak till one o'clock, from which recent curtailment of 
 their hours the greatest good has already arisen. Let the re- 
 maining half of the Sunday be as much respected by the law 
 as the first half, and gin-shops and beer-shops be closed to all 
 on that day while hotels and taverns, which furnish bed and 
 board as well as drink, are open only to travellers and inmates. 
 If this were done, the poor themselves would be the first to 
 feel its benefit, and the muddled dreams of intoxicating drinks 
 and the suffocating fumes of tobacco might then be exchanged 
 for wholesome food and raiment, green-fields, and fresh air, in 
 which husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and 
 children could all participate together, and for a much lest 
 sum than it generally costs the toper and the sot for hissingle 
 and selfish gratification only. 
 
 I hope I have said enough to show you that there are at 
 least some grounds for the proceedings you condemn ; and I 
 have sufficient confidence in your genuine English spirit to be 
 assured you will not deny me a hearing, because our opinions 
 may differ on a subject which all men are not likely to view 
 through the same medium. 
 
 I am, Sir, your very obedient servant, 
 
 J. S. BUCKINGHAM, 
 13, George-Street, Hanover Square. 
 
 Printed by W. H. Layers, 35, St. Martin's Street, Leicester Square. 
 
FISHER, S N, & C 0, 
 
 THE CAXTON PRESS, 
 NEWGATE STREET & ANGEL STREET, LONDON. 
 
 FISHER'S DRAWING ROOM SCRAP-BOOK, 1845, 
 
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YC 23269