plan abolishes only twenty-seven millions of existing taxes, and leaves forty millions untouched. This is, no doubt, an important difference; but to abolish taxes to the amount of sixty-seven millions, and substitute a direct tax on wealth sufficient to raise the same sum, would require the rate to be fixed at exactly one pound on every hundred pounds of realised wealth, supposing the amount of that wealth to be, as estimated by Mr. Bright, six thousand seven hundred millions. The sum of £67,000,000 is so large, and would so materially and suddenly interfere with numerous existing arrangements, that however beneficial the change might be in its ultimate results, which we are not now going to discuss, few persons would be found to advise that the agitation for Financial Reform should now and for ever be fixed on this broad basis. The fact is, however, well worthy of remembrance, that a tax of £1 a year on every £100 of realised wealth would raise £67,000,000 a year, and supersede the necessity for any other taxes. Accustomed as we are to conceal the footmarks of the tax-gatherer by means of the system of indirect taxation, we are apt to be startled by the suggestion of such a plan; but with our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic this mode of taxation for defraying the expenses of the separate states, is a matter of every-day occurrence, although not adopted by the Federal Government; and because of its proved fairness, and its economy as regards the expenses of collection, it meets with general approval. In the most recent book we have seen respecting that country, an interesting little volume on "Prairie Farming in America, with Notes by the way on Canada and the United States, by James Caird, M.P.," we find the following information.* "The average rate of taxation for Ohio is 1.02 per cent. on the estimated capital of the entire property of every kind in the state." (Page 120.) This rate (20s. 5d. on every £100 of capital and property) is rather more than would be required in the United Kingdom; and Mr. Caird adds, apparently without any surprise, "and yet this state (Ohio) is reckoned to be moderately taxed, compared with many others."

The opponents of Mr. Bright, who belong to the opposite extreme, assert that £27,000,000 is far too large a sum to be raised by a tax on the realised wealth of the country; and that by such an arrangement the working classes would be unduly exempted from taxation which they now pay-and justly pay, as these parties argue-for good government, and for the support of the national institutions. To such reasoners it might be answered, that these twenty-seven millions would all be required to pay the interest of the National Debt, in which the working classes, and all others whose whole possessions are worth less than £100, cannot have the same interest as the wealthy and governing classes, at whose instance and for whose benefit mainly it was incurred. But we do not lay any stress on this argument. We would even concede that the working classes are as fully entitled, and as willing, and as able to pay the interest of the National Debt, as the upper classes of

Longmans, London, 1859.

the community. But in the first place it must be borne in mind, that the abolition of the indirect taxes, which Mr. Bright has proposed, would relieve all classes alike, and the upper classes, individually, in a greater measure than the lower, since they are individually the largest consumers of the taxed articles. It is true, however, that the exemption will not equal the burden of direct taxation to be imposed on them, and from which the working classes are to be entirely freed. And this brings us in front of the great economic question involved in this controversy. Should the property and funds of the wealthy classes, be taxed in an equal ratio with the small and precarious income of the working classes derived from labour? At present there is a frightful disproportion, and in the wrong direction. The working man with 20s. a week, which may be stopped to-morrow, pays an immensely greater proportion of his uncertain wages, than the landlord pays of his thousands, of which no eventuality short of death or civil war can divest him. On many grounds the evil of this may be exhibited, as, in fact, it has been by every distinguished political economist who has discussed the subject of taxation. It may be that the comparative freedom of capital, from its natural and righteous liabilities, as the Times has derisively argued against Mr. Bright, facilitates and provokes the accumulation of capital, which is the fund for the support of labour. But capital too hastily, and wrongly accumulated, at the expense of the working classes, is seldom applied to reproductive purposes, but is spent in the exorbitant and wasteful expenses of vanity and ambition, or in those manias of hazardous speculations which periodically witness to the prurience of our wealth, and squander it by a species of phlebotomy, till capitalists are reduced to a sober business level again. We are assured that the inducement to acquire property, which is the strongest passion in the heart of man, as Economists tell us, will resist and overcome the comparatively small proportional tax which our Finance Reformers would lay upon it; and that business would flourish better when wealth bore its just share of public burdens, and not only supported labour by providing a fund for wages, but supported the labourer by relieving him from the disproportionate amount of taxation which he has now to pay. In the next place, it may be answered that the working classes would, even if the proposed plan were carried into effect, pay their share, and more than their just share, of the national taxation; for it must be remembered that the indirect taxation which still remained would amount nearly to or as much as the proposed wealth tax would produce; and that this taxation, amounting to nearly £25,000,000, would be paid mainly from the wages of the working classes. Let us look at the indirect taxes which would remain, and which they would still have to pay. They are as follows:

Let any candid man fairly go into an examination of the incidence of these taxes, and he will be forced to admit that, with the trifling exception of £761,738 from wine, at the reduced rate of duty, probably nine-tenths of the total amount would be paid by the working classes and others who do not in any shape possess £100 of property or capital; and taking a low estimate, it is undeniable that these classes would pay at least £20,000,000 a year from these sources, after the wealth tax had been imposed to raise £27,000,000. And let it be remembered, that this would be £20,000,000 out of a total sum of £67,000,000 raised for all national purposes. But what share would they have in the national representation in the House, entrusted with the laying on of these and the other taxes which they pay? Next to no share at all. The subject was fully and ably discussed in Mr. Bright's recent speech at Birmingham. The hon. member then showed that there are not more than a million of voters in the United Kingdom, after allowing for persons belonging to the richer classes who have two or more votes in counties and boroughs, or in more counties than one ; and that supposing each voter was the head of a family of the usual size, five persons, the represented classes of the population would amount to 5,000,000, and the unrepresented to 25,000,000; for the population of the United Kingdom is now 30,000,000. Here, then, we have the undoubted fact that five-sixths of the population of England, Scotland, and Ireland are entirely unrepresented, and have no greater power in the laying on of the taxes which they are forced to pay by the governing classes, than the people have in Russia or Austria; and yet we find, when a proposal is made by Mr. Bright and others to lessen the injustice to which they are subjected, that a cry is raised on the part of the tax-eating class, that their tax-paying political Helots would be unduly relieved from their fair share of the national burdens! And even now, when a Whig Government is pledged to carry a Reform Bill, which was expected to double the number of voters-an operation which Lord Derby's Bill, as explained by Mr. Disraeli, was to have accomplished-we find influential members of Parliament, and others calling themselves Liberals (!) expressing their fears that to double the number of voters would be to place the constitution in jeopardy! Even to double the number of voters, and supposing that there was only one voter in a family, would only be to place the whole power, and the Government of the country in the hands of "the upper ten millions" of the population, and still leave an industrious and tax-paying population of twenty millions entirely unrepre

sented; but if the statistics quoted by Mr. Bright at that meeting were correct, a £10 franchise for the counties, with a £6 franchise for the boroughs, which is understood to be the Government plan, would add only half a million of voters to the electoral roll, and consequently leave a population of twenty-two and a half millions entirely unrepresented. We have thus linked Financial and Parliamentary Reform together, because we believe them to be intimately connected, and that the one will never be attained to any great extent, except by means of the other. For this reason we most heartily rejoice that Mr. Bright, who has worked so vigorously for Parliamentary Reform, has also lent the influence of his talents and power to the cause of Financial Reform. The proposal made by Mr. Bright is, then, most just in itself; it is eminently practical; it is not rashly subversive of the established customs and habits of our people, but rather extends (though some may think too widely at one step) the principle which has been gradually at work in our recent legislation, of supplanting indirect by direct taxation. It puts on a nearer equality the incidence of the taxation of the country upon wealth and labour, and applies the boasted maxim of our and all representative Governments, "They who spend the taxes should pay them," more clearly than it has ever been applied before. And lastly, it would save, at a low estimate, eight millions a year, which the consumers of taxed articles now pay more than the Government receives.

It may have surprised our readers that we have ventured to name the positive amount of saving to be derived from this partial substitute of direct for indirect taxes. It is a further and sufficient reply to the argument of the Times-that a tax on wealth will prevent its accumulation-to state that this saving will chiefly benefit the trading and moneymaking classes, and be ultimately more than an equivalent to them for the just charges made on their realised wealth. The saving would partly arise from the abolition of Custom-houses, and partly from the abolition of the equal percentage of profit which the retailer is now obliged to charge on the amount of the tax, as well as on the original cost of the taxed article; for both as regards the capital employed and trade risks, he is clearly entitled to make such charges, and does make them. If Mr. Bright's plan were carried out, there would be only three articles on which Customs duty would be chargeable-spirits, wine, and tobacco; and as it could be enacted that these articles should all be landed only at a few of the principal ports, subject to proper facilities being given for transmitting them to all other places, it is plain that Custom-houses might be altogether abolished, except at perhaps a score of the chief ports, where a small staff of Custom-house officers might be kept, and thus an enormous saving of trouble and expense would be effected to the public. The coast-guard could watch the smugglers of the three articles, as they do at present. The saving would be equally obvious under the other head-the profit now charged on the duty by traders. Take a gallon of Cognac brandy as a simple illustration of the principle. The consumer of a gallon of brandy pays the spirit dealer perhaps 32s. for the gallon, including the original cost,

the duty, the profit of the importer, middleman, and retailer, on the original cost, and also on the duty from the time it was paid. If this transaction be traced to its source, it will be found that the original cost in bond was 98. ; that the duty was 15s.; and that the accumulated profit of all the parties through whose hands the gallon of brandy has passed, has been 8s., or one-third part of the original cost and of the duty. But abolish the duty, and the original cost being still 9s, if one-third be added to this by the dealers, the gallon of brandy will then be purchased for 12s. in place of 32s., so that the consumer will save 20s., while the Government will lose only 158.; and even from this 15s. the whole expenses of the Customhouse department have to be deducted, and probably 14s. will be the sum really lost by the Government, while the consumer will save 20s.* Apply this rule to the amount of customs duties proposed by Mr. Bright to be abolished, which is £17,643,287, including therein the customs and excise duties on books and paper. Let us assume that only £16,500,000 of this sum reaches the Exchequer, and then make a question of simple proportion of the saving to be effected, thus: If every 14s. of net loss to the Government saves an additional sum of 6s. to the consumer, what additional sum would be saved to the public by the loss of £16,500,000 to the Government? Answer. -The additional saving would be £7,071,000 per annum. The saving on the other ten millions of duties of various kinds proposed to be abolished by Mr. Bright would be smaller in proportion, but they would certainly increase this saving to £8,000,000.

*The finance account for the year ending 31st March, 1859, shows that the net amount of the national revenue paid into the Exchequer from all sources was £60,961,315 (p. 12), including therein £1,194,090 received from the sale of old stores, &c, which is not properly a branch of revenue at all. The sum expended in collecting and managing this revenue was £4,493,621. Of this amount the customs cost £838,202; inland revenue, £1,307,010: post-office, £1,854,808; woods and forests, £24,276; and "superannuations of revenue departments," £469,324 (p. 17). These sums are exclusive of the coast-guard service, which is included in the naval estimates; as is also the post-office packet service. These two branches, including the superannuations connected with them, cost above a million and a half additional, and thus increase the total cost of collecting and managing the public revenue to upwards of six millions, or ten per cent. on the net amount paid into the Exchequer. The navy estimates for the current year show that the "charge for the coast-guard service and Royal naval coast volunteers, included in the naval estimates, is £726,958" (Par. paper 42, p. 22); and there was afterwards voted a supplementary estimate of £100,000 (Par. paper 57, Sess. 2, p. 5) for the same purposes, making the total amount £826,958. Now this sum properly belongs to the expenses of the customs department, and should be so dealt with. There was a further payment last year of an annual charge of £65,775, for superannuations to the coast-guard service; but this sum is included in the general charge for superannuations for all the revenue departments before quoted (Finance Accounts, p. 19). The estimates for the post-office packet service, which ought to form a primary charge against the revenue derived from the post-office department, are included in the naval estimates, and amount to £1,006,337 (Par. paper 57, Sess. 2, pp. 2 & 3). The total cost of these two services, not included in the ordinary accounts under their proper heads, is thus