It has been argued that the proposal to lay on a tax of 8s. on every £100 worth of property or capital is something quite unheard of in the history of taxation, and more especially in the history of taxation in this country; but we are prepared to prove that this is a great mistake. Let us first, however, see what Mr. Bright's plan really is. As reported in the Financial Reformer, that gentleman says:"I am going to show what I think would be a great, just, and practicable step, a long way in the direction which has for its realisation the ultimate and complete object which your association has in view. If you take the various Parliamentary returns which can be obtained, and spend a little time in calculation as to the probable value of the property possessed by the people of this country, I believe you will find that, excluding the property of every man who does not possess £100 in one shape or another, you would find the whole property of the country would approach, probably, seven thousand millions sterling. From calculations which I have made from these returns, I have put it down at six thousand seven hundred millions. Now, if this property could be fairly come at, and a reasonable tax imposed upon it, it is obvious that a large sum would be easily obtained. People say you could not get at it, but you do get at what is known as the income-tax, and there is no reason you should not get more. There will always be some men, in every country, who will endeavour to evade taxation of that kind, but the more just every man feels the taxation to be, the fewer will be the men to evade it (hear, hear); and the more men are convinced that a great change has been a great blessing, the more they will be disposed, by their own personal conduct, to support and continue the new state of things. Suppose, now, you were to pass a law that every £100 worth of property, exclusive of the property of those who don't possess £100, should pay 8s. to the State annually, make it more or less, but I will take the point to argue from-8s. would produce a sum of about twenty-seven millions sterling it would be four times what the income-tax was last year-rather more; it would be spread over many times more persons; it would be collected at an inconsiderable expense; it would collect no more than was wanted, and the tax in reality would be nothing but what it pretended to be; and if in different districts there were appointed committees chosen-selected in some way partly by the Government and partly by the tax-payers of the district-it would be the means of giving confidence to the people; and I have no doubt whatever

£1,833,295. Adding this to the former sum, the cost of collecting and managing the national revenues amount to the enormous grand total of £6,326,916. The net revenue being only £59,767.225, after deducting the sum received from the sale of old stores, the real cost of collecting and management, when fairly stated, is 10 per cent., besides leaving over about £350,000 to be disposed of by those who may think any of the departments has been charged unduly with extraneous expenses. As one instance of the extravagant management which prevails, it may be noticed that the net revenue derived by the post-office from the packet service, which thus costs £1,006,337, is only £142,689 (Finance Accounts, p. 33).

but the tax would be as readily collected, and with infinitely less of the heart-burning, inquisition, and objection, than the income-tax is collected at the present hour. Now, what would be the pressure? The possessor of £100 would pay 8s. a year, but then his tea, coffee, sugar, and a heap of things, would be much cheaper to him, and his trade, whatever he might be engaged in, would receive a stimulus it never had received before. The owner of £1,000 would pay £4 a year. The owner of £10,000 would pay £40 a year. The owner of £100,000 would pay £400 a year. The owner of £1,000,000 would pay £4,000 a year. Is there anything unreasonable in this? Is this revolutionary doctrine ?" (Great cheering.) Now, so far from this plan thus described being a scheme entirely unheard of in the financial history of this country, it is identical in its principles and details, and in the machinery proposed for bringing it into successful operation with the principles and details of the annual supply, Act. IV. William and Mary (1692), which was continued by other annual Acts, with this single exception, that the Act of William and Mary, in place of laying on a tax of 88. on every £100 worth of property or money, laid on one of three times that amount, of twenty-four shillings on every £100, as will be seen by the following quotations from the Act :-"That all and every person, bodies politick and corporate, guilds and fraternities, &c., having an estate in ready monies, or in any debts whatsoever owing to them, within this realm or without, or having any estate in goods, wares, merchandise, or other chattels, or personal estate, whatsoever, within the realm or without, belonging to or in trust for them (after deducting therefrom all debts owing by them, and all bad debts owing to them), shall yield and pay unto their Majesties four shillings in the pound, according to the true yearly value thereof for any one year; that is to say, for every £100 of such ready money and debts, and for every one hundred pounds worth of such goods, wares, merchandise, or other chattels, or other personal estate, the sum of four and twenty shillings.”—(§ 2). The explanation of the apparent discrepancy between "four shillings in the pound" and "four-andtwenty shillings" on every £100 worth" of capital or property is, that six pounds per cent. per annum was then the recognised rate of interest payable for borrowed money, and also the recognised average rent derived from every £100 invested in land or houses, or any other description of property. In short, £100, in whatever way it might then have been employed, was really worth, and held to be "worth" £6 a year to the owner; and hence, as 4s. on every £1 would be 24s. on every £6 of interest, it would likewise be 24s. on every £100 of capital which the £6 of interest represented. The average price of land did not then exceed sixteen years' purchase. An invester in lands would thus get 6 per cent. for his money, and an invester in the public funds got rather more, for this very Act authorises Government to borrow a large sum on the security of the new taxes at the rate of 7 per cent. per annum; and an Act of the same kind, passed two years thereafter, authorised a million and

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a-half to be borrowed at the rate of 8 per cent. At the present time both kinds of property bear to each other as nearly as possible the same relative value, although now yielding hardly three and a-quarter per cent. per annum. But the point to which we wish chiefly to direct attention is, that it was on the real amount of the money, or goods, or other property which any man possessed, that the tax was then laid, and that the 4s. per pound on the annual proceeds was merely the convenient form for stating the account, and applied with equal fairness to owners of all property, of whatever kind, whether real or personal. There was no scrutiny respecting the separate scales of income accruing to persons who possessed the same amount of money (or other property, although employed in various forms. There were no questions put whether the capital was employed in trade, or lent on mortgage. The inquiry of the tax-gatherer was not how much did you make last year by your money or business? He did not inquire whether it was 3, 6, 9, or 12 per cent. per annum, according to the different ways in which it was employed, but how much was the amount of your capital? Putting it in another form, and one well understood at the present day, the question was, how much is your whole property and capital "worth" after deducting all the debts you owe and all the bad debts standing in your books? The answer to this question being given, all persons were equally charged at a rate corresponding with 248. a year on every £100 which they were worth;" or, what was then the same thing, 4s. on every pound of their income, computed at one uniform percentage, just as Mr. Bright proposes to charge onethird of that amount, or 8s., for every £100 which the present taxpayers may be "worth." The only other difference between the two plans is, that while Mr. Bright altogether exempts parties who do not possess £100 in all " in one shape or another," there is no such exemption in the Act of William and Mary.

Having thus dealt with the question of personal property, the Act thus proceeds to deal with landed property, charging it in like manner four shillings on every pound of annual rent, which, as already stated, was equal to 24s. on every £100 that the land was "worth."

"And to the end, a further aid and supply for their Majesty's occasions may be raised by a charge upon all lands, tenements, and hereditaments with as much equality and indifference as is possible by a pound rate of 4s. for every 20s. of the true yearly value for one year, and no longer; be it enacted that all descriptions of lands, &c., are hereby charged, for one year only, and no longer, with the sam of four shillings for every twenty shillings of the full yearly value." -(§4.)

The holders of all public offices derived in any way from the State, whether having fixed salaries, or incomes wholly or partially derived from fees were charged in the same way as incomes from land and personal property; but there is no clause in the Act taxing any other parties than public officers, or taxing any mere incomes

which might be derived from professional skill or personal labour, except in so far as the past earnings of that professional skill or personal labour might have been accumulated into money on other property, in which case the accumulated money or other property of the professional and trading classes was taxed under the clause first quoted, in the same way as the accumulations of all other classes; and this is also the leading principle of Mr. Bright's plan. The plan had not then been invented which now prevails, of relieving land of its fair share of taxation by making professional and mercantile men who earn, say, £1,000 a year by their skill or personal labour, pay the same amount of property-tax as the men who get £1,000 a year from estates, for which they invested £30,000. The clause taxing the holders of public offices is as follows::

"All persons exercising any public office or employment shall pay unto their Majesties the sum of four shillings for every twenty shillings which he or they do receive in one year by virtue of any salaries, gratuities, bounty, money, reward, fees, or profits to him or them accruing." There is no limitation as to the amount of the emoluments of these public officers at which the tax is to commence. Four shillings in the pound was made chargeable on what each person received, whether his emoluments were great or small. Mr. Bright proposes that local committees should be appointed in every district or town to aid the Government in laying on the tax fairly. This was also the plan adopted in the Act of William and Mary.

The question whether professional and trading incomes as such should be taxed apart from the capital which such parties may possess connected with their several professions and occupations, or which they may have invested in some separate and distinct form, is one on which much difference of opinion exists. The late Joseph Hume's Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed in 1852, took a great deal of valuable evidence on the subject, to which those who wish to go deeply into the matter would do well to refer. Many actuaries and other eminent men, including Dr. Far, of London, contended that all such incomes ought to be taxed, but only after being first capitalised into a sum which would fairly represent the present value of the probable earnings of such parties during their whole lives. In this computation, these witnesses would take into account not only the probabilities of life, but also the probability of sickness or successful competition diminishing the present income, and all other considerations which might render the incomes uncertain. Thus, an income of £1,000 a year might, in certain circumstances, be valued at ten years' purchase, or £10,000, and a property-tax of, say, 5 per cent. in place of being levied on £1,000 a-year and charged at £50, would be levied on the interest of £10,000 at 4 per cent. per annum, or whatever was considered a fair rate of interest for the time being. In this way the interest being only £100, the 5 per cent. property tax would be charged in that sum, and thus the pro

fessional or mercantile man would have to pay only £20 in place of the £50 which he is forced to pay by the present iniquitous system. Mr. Bright's plan, like that embodied in the Act of William and Mary, disregards all these niceties of calculation, and charges the professional man only on the value of his library, his house, his furniture, horses, carriages, pictures, plate, money in the bank, including therein the whole of his annual or quarterly savings, and on any separate property he may have invested in other forms; in short, it charges him on what his executor would say he was "worth" if he were to die immediately after the proper time for making out his tax schedule had arrived. The mercantile man would be charged for the same kind of property, and also for all the capital, fixed and floating, employed by him in his mercantile affairs. Which of these would be the better plan it is not our province to determine; but it ought to be remembered, that so long as only twenty-seven out of sixty-seven millions of gross revenue are proposed to be levied in the form proposed by Mr. Bright, the question is not one of great pecuniary magnitude. The usual objection is put in the form of a question: "What would you do with the man who earns £1,000 and saves nothing, for by this plan he would pay no taxes ?" The answer is, that in spending his £1,000 a-year, although he would altogether escape Mr. Bright's tax, he would pay his share of the other forty millions of taxes on that expenditure of £1,000, and thus would contribute more to the national revenue than the man who earning £1,000 a-year, always saved £500 of it, and continued to pay 88. on every £100 of this accumulated capital, because he would pay his share of the forty millions of taxation only on his expenditure of £500 a-year. But if the whole national revenue were to be raised in this new form, the question would be one of a great pecuniary magnitude and importance, as would also be the question, "How would the working classes contribute their fair share of the national debt?" Since, however, Mr. Bright's proposal does not contemplate this result, it is not necessary at present to go more deeply into these questions. Thanks to the untiring energy and perseverance of Mr. Cobden, the enlightened liberality of the Emperor of the French, and the distinguished financial ability of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Financial Reforms which we have been discussing must come into more or less general operation much sooner than many even of the zealous friends of the cause contemplated at the time when Mr. Bright delivered his able address. A commercial treaty with France will no doubt require, in addition to reducing the wine duty to one shilling per gallon, and abolishing the duty on silks and other articles of French manufacture, that the duty on French brandy should be reduced to the same rate as the duty on Colonial spirits, which is now 8s. 2d. per gallon, which will occasion an additional loss of revenue not included in Mr. Bright's computations. The duty on brandy and other foreign spirits amounted last year, at 158. per gallon, to £893,370; and a reduction to 88. 2d. would therefore occasion a loss of about £126,000. This financial loss