Page images
PDF
EPUB

assessed to the income-tax, on profits of trade in that year. If the profit of domestic or home trade was ten per cent, then the sum of accumulated capital, of which the sum of 45 millions of profit was the fruit, was 450 millions, or nearly nine times the amount of the accumulated capital invested in exports from Great Britain to foreign countries in the year 1843.

But the disproportion between the amount of the profit on foreign, and the profit on home trade in the United Kingdom, in the year 1843, must have been much greater than what appears from the foregoing analysis of the income-taxbecause the whole home-trade of Ireland is excluded,* Ireland not being subject to the income

* As to the foreign trade of Ireland-the value of all the produce and manufactures of the United Kingdom, exported from Ireland on an average of the two years ended 5th Jan. 1843, was less than 400 thousand pounds (£392,668; Finance Accounts, U. K. No. 147, Session 1844) about one-third of which was value of productions of the soil.

If nothing but wheat had been imported into Ireland in return for such exports, the value of 133 thousand (133,333) quarters of wheat, at three pounds a quarter (which is less than what was the average price of wheat in England and Wales in those years), would have been 400 thousand pounds.

133 thousand quarters of wheat would, at the rate of a gallon and a half per man per week, furnish bread for a year to 110 thousand men (109,402)-the population of Ireland being 8 millions of persons (8,175,124, by the census of 1841).

The quantity of foreign wheat, subject to duty, imported

18

tax—and because although there be, perhaps, no merchant engaged in foreign trade, whose income is less than £150 a-year; there is a very large number of small home-traders whose profits are less than £150 a-year, and therefore not subject to the income-tax-which profits,-if they could be ascertained, and were added to the profits of home traders, whose profits of £150 and upwards were assessed to the income-tax, in the year 1843, —would swell by many millions the said sum of 45 millions, the amount of the profits of home trade assessed to that tax in Great Britain in that year.

into Great Britain, and retained for home consumption on the average of the same two years, ended in January 1843, was more than 23 millions of quarters (2,798,502, Parliamentary-paper, No. 48, Sess. 1845), which at the same price of three pounds a quarter, was of the value of more than 81 millions (8,395,506), of money, or more than twenty times the value of all the exports from Ireland to foreign countries in that year.

If the measures proposed to the House of Commons by the prime minister of the day should become law, it is not easy to see how Ireland (containing nearly one third of the population of the United Kingdom), which never imports but annually exports very large quantities of grain to Great Britain, is to derive benefit and not injury from such an alteration of the law, as shall permit the importation into Great Britain of grain, the produce of foreign countries (in many of which countries it can be grown cheaper than it can be grown in Ireland), upon the same footing as grain the produce of Ireland; that is to say duty free.

To the political economist who asserts that the public revenue of taxes is derived entirely from accumulated capital, it is surely needless, after what has just been said, to make any answer.

From the foregoing, therefore, it is clear to demonstration-from what source soever the public revenue of taxes is derived, that it cannot be mainly derived either from the owners or farmers of land, or from the dealers in trade, especially not from the dealers in foreign tradeand that the main source of that revenue is the earnings of labourers, it is hoped has been satisfactorily shown.

On the average of three years of the last war, ending in the year 1814, there were serving in the army and navy of the United Kingdom more than five hundred thousand men (522,446).* All those men (their commissioned officers only excepted) were enlisted or raised from the class of labourers; and that they were paid and maintained in the service of their country out of the public revenue, arising mainly from contributions thereto drawn from the toil and industry of the same class, seems, upon attentive consideration of the foregoing facts and figures, to be incontrovertible.

[blocks in formation]

If it be true, then, as from the same premises. seems to be equally incontrovertible, that the physical force and financial power of the realm reside in that class, it is surely a deep debt, and the imperative duty of the legislature, and of all who possess influence, or have sway over the moral and social condition of that class, to weigh well, and with the most anxious care and circumspection, in what manner such influence or sway shall be directed or exercised.

CHAPTER II.

On the Incidence of the Taxation of the
United Kingdom.

ALL taxes, direct and indirect, paid by owners
or occupiers of land; and all taxes paid by the
dealers in the productions of land, on their way
from the producer to the consumer-and all
taxes whatsoever, paid by producers within the
United Kingdom, and by importers of all com-
modities for home-consumption, and by the
dealers in all such commodities, on their way
from such producer or importer to the consumer
-as well as all taxes of Customs or of Excise im-
posed on such productions or commodities, by
their measure or weight,-ultimately fall upon
and are paid by the consumers of those productions
or commodities,—by whomsoever such taxes may
have been paid to the collectors thereof, or into
the public chests.

The merchant importer sells the commodities imported by him to the wholesale dealer, at a price including the prime cost and all charges the duties of Customs or of Excise, and all taxes whatsoever direct or indirect (including the income-tax) paid by him the merchant-importer, and all taxes paid by his clerks or employees (the taxes

[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »