which we will take in the aggregate, on both sides of the Atlantic; and then, taking the population of each country, we shall see how much we pay per head, and how much you pay per head. There must be a little confusion here, in our part of the statement, because we have regular poorrates, by law, in England and Wales, while Scotland has no such law, though there are collections there also for the support of the poor. This, however, cannot be accurately come at. I will, therefore, leave it wholly out, and look upon the poor-rates of England and Wales as raised upon the whole of Great Britain. I will here leave out the shillings, pence, and farthings. Great Britain. Amount of Taxes paid? into the Treasury ....L.74,027,583 3,504,938 ers for collection Amount of Poor Taxes.......... 7,896,556 and management Total L.85,429,077 or the capital, the manure, and all other out-goings, and of the profits into the bargain. So that the tythe of the produce cannot, I should suppose, be less than a fourth of the rental; and, of course, that they amount to about 7,000,000/. in England and Wales, at this time; Scotland paying no tythes. But, then, it must be observed, that the Church does not receive more than the half of this sum. The rest is the property of lay persons. It is, in fact, private property, and is sold, or rented, as other private property is. Upon the subject of tythes, therefore, I shall not enter into any comparison between your country and ours. All the world knows, that you have no tythes and no compulsory payments on account of religion of any description; all the world knows Catholics, Episcopalians, the Quakers, the Catholics, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Lu-Paid to the Taxgather-" therans, the Calvanists, the Methodists, the Menonists, the Moravians, the Dunkards, the Swenk felders, the Seceders, the Unitarians, the Swedenburgers, and many other description of Christians, each condemning the opinions of all the others; together with Jews and Deists, who laugh at the whole of them, have their assemblies in your country; and that any one of them, or even of Atheists, may become your President, Vice-President, or a Member of the But now, in taking the aggregate of your Congress, without any question being asked taxes, you will see the necessity of my inhim with regard to his religion; while it cluding those which are raised upon the is equally well known, that no man can be people in the several States, for the supa magistrate, or fill any office of trust in port of the several State Governments, England, unless he first give a test of his which taxes, of course, form an addition to being a member of the Established Church, the taxes paid to the general government of the head of which Church is the King, the United States.-My materials for ascer who has the absolute appointment of all the taining the amount of these State taxes is Bishops and Deans, and of the greater not quite so perfect as I could wish. Yet I part of the beneficed Priests. These facts have means to do it to the satisfaction of any being merely mentioned, I need add no-one, whose object is that of arriving at thing further on the subject, except that we have many persons punished in England for publishing works on the subject of religion, while you have no such punishments; and, we have recently seen a man imprisoned for eighteen months and put in the pillory for re-publishing a work here, which had been first published in your country. Which system is best, and which worst, it is not my present object to inquire. Aly business, upon this occasion, is merely to state facts, which no one can deny, leaving it to the reader to form opinions and draw conclusions. We will now, then, return to the taxes, Dollars 341,716,308 truth. In 1805, Benjamin Davies, of Philadelphia, a man of great research and of great accuracy, published, in his "New System of Geography," an account of the revenues and expences of eight of the States, correct information from the other States, on this head, not being apparently at his command, or within his reach. This, however, is quite sufficient for our purpose; for no reasonable man will suppose, that these eight States; and those the principal ones, do not furnish a fair criterion whereon to found an estimate of the whole. His account stands as follows, in dollars and cents, or hundredths of a dollar. Tax per head on lars. Our population in Great Britain, in of the State. Cents. 12 21 7 Average......... 20 Deduct Paupers....... It appears, from Benjamin Davies's account, that these taxes, or rather these resources, arise, in many cases, from the interest of stock, of which the States are the owners, and which make part of the public debt in America. In other cases, they arise from the sale of lands belonging to the States. He represents New York State to be owner of 2,000,000 of dollars in stock, and to hold numerous shares in canals, &c. &c. But I shall suppose, that the whole of this money is raised in taxes upon the people, and paid out of their pockets. It will then come to this, that each inhabitant of the American Republic pays, in this way, and on this account, 26 cents, or hundredths of a dollar. You have also, in the great towns, some poor to assist. I am quite in the dark upon this head, except as far as observation of some years ago can guide me. This item, therefore, I will take at a guess; and, if I allow that the poor cost nearly as much as the State Governments, no one on this side of the water, at any rate, can complain of the estimate. I therefore take the State taxes, including poor taxes, at 50 cents, or half a dollar a head upon the whole of your population. I know that you will say, that this is a monstrous over-rate as to your poor taxes. But I am resolved not to be complained of on the other side. As to road rates, turnpikes, watching and lighting, and paving and watering, of cities and towns, I do not notice these in either Country, seeing that they are for the immediate benefit of those who pay them. We will now return to our comparison between the distribution, per head, of our taxes and of yours. Our year's taxes, including poor taxes, we find amounting to 341,716,308 dol 10,450,740 1,500,000 8,080,740 I make no deduction for prisoners in our jails, whether for crimes or debts; though, as I shall, with sorrow, have to state, by and bye, these are worthy of very serious notice, even in the comparative view which we are now taking. I suppose, that I shall not be contradicted, when I say, that it is impossible, upon any rational ground, to include soldiers, sailors, convicts and paupers amongst the payers of texes; and that, therefore, the deductions, which I have made, will be allowed to be necessary to the correctness of the comparison. But, to get rid of the chance of a cavil being raised; to put it out of the power of any human being.to object to my basis, I will distribute our taxes amongst the whole of the population, and will even take that population at its amount previous to the enormous emigration of natives, and re-cmigration of foreigners, which the peace on the Continent of Europe has produced. Taking the whole of the population of Great Britain, therefore, at 10,951,338, it appears, that, for each person old and young, male and female, there were taxes paid, last year, to the amount of 31 dollars and 20 cents (throwing away a fraction); or, in sterling money of England, 7.168.0d. This, you will observe, is for every soul, whether pauper, soldier, sailor, debtor, convict or other criminal. On your side I will take the population, of every description, at only 7,500,000, though it is notoriously much more. Your United States taxes, last year, amounted to 34,550,000 dollars, which, distributed amongst your 7,500,000 people, imposes upon cach a little less than 2 dollars; and, if we add the taxes of the State Govern as above, each person in your Republic paid, last year, including every species of tax, the sum of 2 dollars and 50 cents, or 12s. 6d. of our money; while, as we have just seen, there was paid in Great Britain, for every soul, including soldiers, sailors, paupers, debtors, convicts and criminals in prison, the sum of 31 dollars and 20 cents; or 7. 16s. Od. of our money. ments and the largely estimated poor taxes, I the war, were here last summer? Has he heard of the joy at the sight of the exhibition in the Green Park, and at that of the sham naval fight on the Serpentine River, which formed so apt a representation of the Lake of Champlain and its outlet? Mr. Madison must come hither (and the Times newspaper expects to have him here), before he can form the most distant idea of the extent and value of our patience and loyalty. The sum which one good farm pays here, in the various kinds of taxes, would, if attempted to be collected in America, set a whole township, if not a whole county, of your grudging Republicans in mutiny; and compel the Magistrate to call out the horse soldiers, if there were any at his command. Let us hear no more, therefore, of Mr. Madison's twelve-andsixpenny patience. Let us hear no more of his boasts of the fortitude of his Repub licans, till their fortitude makes somewhat of a nearer approach towards ours. this country. Really (for I must break out a little here) Mr. Madison does appear to have boasted betimes of the fortitude of your people; of the cheerfulness with which they bear the burdens which the war imposes on them; of their giving the taxes, direct and indirect, with promptness and alacrity! Let him, before he talks in this way, put the people into our state of trial. Let him try the whole population, man, woman and child, pauper, soldier, sailor, debtor, convict and criminal prisoner, with 31 dollars and 20 cents each, instead of 2 paltry dollars and a half; and, then, let him talk, if he likes, of their fortitude If you will excuse this digression, inte and patriotism. Our Lords and Gentle which, you will confess, I was so naturally men, in our honourable Houses, talk, in-led, not to say, dragged, I will now return deed, with good grounds of our unex- to my statement of facts, proceeding next ampled patience under our burdens. This to a view of the crimes and punishments in compliment, which Parliaments, in former times, seldom bestowed on our and your forefathers, and which, to acknowledge the truth, they as seldom merited, is fully due to us. But, really, Mr. Madison has begun a little too soon to compliment his fellow citizens on their quality of bearing burdens. Their twelve and six penny patience will be thought very little of on this side of the water, where we bear, taking paupers, soldiers, and all, cleven times as much, without even a whisper, in the way of complaint. There was, indeed, a few years ago, a man of the name of Carter, in Staf-softening of our criminal code, caused, in fordshire, who published an article, which was understood to contain a censure on his Majesty's Commissioners of Property Tax, in that country; but he was soon led to feel sorrow for his conduct; and, since that, the country has not been disgraced by one single soul, found to follow the evil example, or to be, in the like case, offending. Mr. Madison, says, that his fellow citizens will proudly bear their burdens. But, can they bear them so proudly as we have borne, and still bear, ours? Has he heard of the bonfires, the ringing of bells, the roasting of sheep and of oxen, the feasts, the balls, and the singing parties, which book place, while the Kings, our friends in As to our criminal code, you, who are a lawyer, know full as much about it as I do, except as far as relates to the experience in cases of libel. It is merely of the number and description of crimes and punishments that I am now about to speak; and, as in other cases, I shall not deal in vague surmises or general observations; but appeal to authentic reports, and build my statements on the unerring rules of arithmetic. Sir Samuel Romilly, who has, for many years, been labouring to effect a the year 1811, an account to be laid before Parliament of the crimes and punishments, as far as they came before the Judges, for several years preceding. Owing to some cause, with which I am not acquainted, the account came no lower down than the year 1809; and it extended no further than England and Wales, leaving out Scotland, where, as I am told, there are, in fact, but very few crimes and punishments, though the Sheriff's and other Officers of Justice, in that country, are pretty expensive, and are paid out of what is called the Civil List. The summary of the account, of which I have spoken above, is as follows: to be transported... 401 to be imprisoned, whipped, fined, &c. &c. imprisoned,} Actually put to death..... 800 57 of an execution, even in such a case, that the executioner was obliged to be disguised in such a way, that it was impossible that any one should recognise either his person or features, being brought to the spot, in a carriage, under an escort of constables, and taken away, in a similar manner, so as to make it almost impossible for him to become publicly known. Philadelphia, at the time I speak of, contained about 70,000 inhabitants. It is, as I observed before, impossible to come at any exact statement, on this subject, in the way of comparison; but a few Besides these, you will observe, there facts, notorious on the two sides of the are all the persons who were tried at the water respectively, will serve to aid you Quarter Sessions, in the several counties; greatly in forming your opinions as to this that is to say, the Sessions held by the matter. Here we have laws to guard our Justices of the Peace, four times in every turnip-fields from robbery, and very neyear, where as many of the Justices as cessary they are; for without them there is choose to attend form the Court, having no man, in any part of the country, who one of their own body for chairman. At could depend on having the use of his crop these Sessions the offences of a less heinous even of that coarse and bulky article. To nature are examined into and punished. steal corn out of a field, after it is cut, is But the Justices can sentence to imprison- punished with death by our laws; and if ment, whipping, fine, and, I believe, they we had fields of Indian corn, as you have, can transport. This is the great Court which is a delightful food for several weeks for the trial of persons charged with thefts before it be ripe, I cannot form an idea of of an inferior order; and, I should suppose, the means that would be necessary to prethat the number of criminals brought bc-serve it from being carried away. As to fore these Courts, is twice as great as that of the criminals who are reserved for trial before the Judges, who go into some counties but once in the year, and into none, except Middlesex, more than twice; whereas the Court of Quarter Sessions is held every three months. However, as I cannot speak here from any authentic document, I shall leave this as a thing whereon for you to exercisc your judgment. As to any comparison, on this point, between our country and yours, I am wholly destitute of any authentic document, relative to America, touching crimes and punishments. I can, however, speak as far as my own observation went. I lived in Philadelphia about eight years, with every disposition to find fault with every thing that I saw, or heard of, that was amiss. During that time, I never heard of any person, except in one instance, being tried for his or her life; I never heard of a murder, a highway robbery, or of a house being broken open. I never heard of an execution of death on any person, except (the instance above alluded to) of three men, hanged, on the banks of the Delaware, for piracy and murder; these men were foreigners; and such was the horror poultry, no man in England has the smallest expectation of being able ever to taste what he raises, unless he carefully locks it up in the night, and has dogs to guard the approaches to the hen-roost. In America, at within ten or twelve miles of Philadelphia, it is the common practice of the farmers to turn the flocks of turkeys into the woods, in the latter end of August, there to remain until towards winter, when they return half fat. A farmer in Fngland would no more think of doing this, than he would think of depositing his purse in any of the public foot-paths across his fields. In order to preserve their fences, the farmers sometimes resort to this expedient: they bore holes into the stoutest of the stakes, which sustain their hedges; put gunpowder into those holes; then drive in a piece of wood very tightly upon the powder; so that the stolen hedge, in place of performing its office of boiling the kettle, dashes it and all around it to pieces. This mode of preserving fences I first heard of at Alresford, a town at about twelve miles distance from Botley; and though it certainly does appear, at first sight, a very cruel one, what is a man to do? The thieves are so expert as to set detection at defiance; and there is nothing but his fences between him a garden at Mitcham. Besides these we and ruin. I have known a man, who as- are infested by gangs of itinerant thieves, sured me, that, by the stealing of his hedge, called gypsies. The life of these people in the month of March, and letting into very much resembles that of the savages, his wheat land the flocks from the commons, whom I have seen, on the borders of the he lost more than 300 in one night and River St. John, in New Brunswick; expart of the ensuing day. A few weeks cept that the latter gain their food by ago I myself had a fire, by which I lost a hunting and fishing, and the former by couple of barns and some other buildings. theft. The gypsies have no settled home; At this fire a numerous crowd was assem- no house, or hut, or place of dwelling. bled, many of whom came for the purpose They have asses, which carry themselvce, of rendering assistance; but one man was their children, their kettle, and their detected, while the fire was yet raging, means of erecting tents, and which tents stealing the lead and iron work of a pump, are precisely like those of the North Amefulfilling the old saying, that nothing is too rican savages. The nights they employ in hot or too heavy for a thief; and it re-thieving. Sheep, pigs, poultry, corn, roots, quired the utmost of my resolution and ex-fruit: nothing comes amiss to them.ertion, aided by three sons and half a What they steal in one place, they spend dozen resolute and faithful servants, to pre-in another place; and thus they proceed serve, during the night and the next day (which was Sunday), the imperishable and portable part of the property from being carried away. I will just add upon this subject, as an instance of the baseness of our press, that the Times newspaper published, upon this occasion, a paragraph, stating, that I had most ungratefully driven away "the honest rustics," who had kindly come to my assistance. It is very true, that I did drive the "honest rustics" away; but I succeeded in putting a stop to their thefts, which would, I verily believe, have been nearly as injurious as the fire. Since the fire happened upon my premises, a gentleman, who had a similar accident some years ago, has assured me, that almost every article of iron was stolen from his premises. It is notorious, that, in London, the thieving forms a very considerable part of every such calamity. But the thing which, better than any other, bespeaks the nature of our situation, in this respect, is the exhibition of notices on the top of garden walls and of other fences, menacing those who enter with the danger of death from man-traps and spring-guns. Peter Pindar has immortalised these by introducing them into a poem, where he ludicrously represents the King as intent upon "catching his living subjects by the legs." But he must have well known, that, without them, neither King nor subject could possess the produce of a garden. Sometimes the traps themselves are hoisted up upon a sort of gibbet, in the day time, in order to inspire greater terror; and, it is only a few months ago, that we had an account of a man being actually killed by a spring-gun, in a nocturnal expedition in all over the country. They commit acts of murder and theft and arson innumerable. The members of this moving community are frequently hanged, or transported; but still the troops of vagabonds exist; and, as far as I am able to judge, are as numerous as they were when I was a boy. But still the great evil, in this view of the subject, is the want of honesty in the labouring class, to whatsoever cause that evil is to be ascribed. Those writers on rural affairs, who have urged the employing of threshing machines for corn, have counted, amongst the greatest of their advantages, that they protected the farmer against the thefts of the thresher. Various are the ways, in which corn is stolen by those who thresh it; but I will content myself with one, the information with regard to which I derive from a very respectable neighbour. He perceived that his thresher brought a large wooden bottle with him to work every day. Being winter time, he could not conceive what should make the man so very thirsty. He watched him. Never saw him drink. At last he accosted him in his way home, and, after some altercation, insisted upon examining the bottle, which he found to be full of wheat. Thus was this man taking away three gallons of wheat every week, which, at that time, was not worth less than six shillings. It was this, I believe, and this alone, which made my neighbour resolve to use a threshing machine. Such is by no means an overcharged view of our situation in this respect. Of the causes which have led to it I shall not speak; indeed, I do not know that I am competent, That it is not owing to a |