Looking next to Mexico, we find a system of taxation almost entirely indirect seven-eighths of the revenues being the produce of export and import duties, taxes on playing-cards and tobacco, postage, lotteries, and stamps. Thus far, as we see, the poorer and weaker the country, the less is the power of those by whom it is governed, to apply to those possessed of capital, material and mental, for direct contributions to be employed in the maintenance of the public peace.

§ 6. Turning now to Great Britain, we find the course of affairs to have been precisely the same with that above recorded in regard to Greece and Italy-direct taxes having gradually disappeared, to be replaced by those which are indirect. The land and house taxes had their origin, as the reader has already seen, in the reign of William III.-progress having been manifested by the passage towards a direct application to the people, for the means of supporting government. In the early period of its existence, the first of these was variablevibrating between a tenth and a fifth of the annual rental. possible. Yet the Company must pay its dividends, its officers, its armies, its fleets, its public works. The money must be found, the screw must be put on. So the pressure, applied at the head-quarters of the system, reaches to its lowest and furthest extremities, and comes at last to a very hateful class of fiscal and judicial agents-for they are one and the samewho have to deal with a still more miserable class, without shame, with no position, reckless of life, and indifferent even to pain, and caring only for one thing, which by long habit they have come to care for the possession of a few rupees. Of course, there is a perpetual collision between these two classes the one bullying and threatening, extorting and grinding, and practising every art to extract money; and the other evading and cheating, and lying, and enduring anything rather than pay. Everybody knows how it has been done, and what is the last resort. The merciless, and often unjust, peons screw the rupees out of the ryots, by all sorts of torture. It is not torture of the high European sort, which made a five-feet man six feet, or, vice versa, which pressed him as flat as a pancake, or dropped water on him till he died. No: Indian torture is ready, impromptu, ingenious, cheap, annoying, disgusting, revolting, and petty in the extreme. It is the torture of very wicked children, suddenly become men and women, but without acquiring a particle of self-respect. It is done with twisted sticks, and heavy stones, and the fibres of trees, and chillies, and red ants, and burrowing worms, and acrid juices. This is the whole apparatus of the Indian Inquisition, but it is made up by dexterity and promptness. The defaulter-no matter the age or sex-a dozen defaulters, half a village, are trussed in a row, like so many fowls, with big stones upon their necks, and laid to bake under the midday sun. much less do others care for them. live by it, both here and forever. them."-London Times.

They don't seem to care much for itPain is part of their religion, and they Pain and ignominy are respectable with

Being, however, at length fixed, permanently, at the highest of these proportions, an act was then passed, for enabling the owners of land to buy off the tax-thus freeing their property, at once and forever, from all contributions for the public service. Almost simultaneously therewith, appeared a new theory of popu lation-proving, as its author supposed, that mankind had always erred, in supposing that the wealth and strength of a nation. tended to increase, with increase of numbers. Directly the reverse of this, as the British people were now told, was the fact -the supply of food tending to diminish in its ratio to population, as wealth and numbers increased. This, too, as they were assured, was a consequence of a great natural law, not to be evaded, in virtue of which the land-owner took a larger proportion, as the return to labor diminished - obtaining, thus, a constant increase of power to command the laborer's services. Such being the case, however slow might be the process, the relation of master and slave must ultimately be re-established.

The poor-houses being everywhere filled, and pauperism becoming, more and more, the habitual condition of a growing proportion of the laboring people, it was needed that the facts. should be accounted for. This was done by Mr. Malthus, who -rejecting the simple explanation furnished by Adam Smith*— invented a great law of nature, for the purpose of accounting for results produced by the action of man. The policy of the country, for more than thirty years, having tended towards the enslavement of the artisan, by those who, being rich, did not need to work, all these theories and measures were in keeping with each other. The year that followed the one in which the wealthy proprietor of land—abounding in coal and iron-ore - was enabled, at trivial cost, to emancipate his property from taxation, witnessed the passage of a law prohibiting colliers from seeking, abroad, that remuneration for their services which was denied them at home; thus, in effect, imposing a personal tax for the benefit of the rich and powerful, at the moment when the latter had been freed from all taxation, for the maintenance of that security of person and property which he so much required. From that time forward, every movement was in the same direction that of arresting the wheels of commerce, for the

* See ante, vol. i. p. 415.

benefit of those deriving their means of support from the public treasury. Taxes were piled on taxes, until they reached, said Sidney Smith, "every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under foot; taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste; taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion; taxes on everything on earth, and in the waters under the earth; on everything that comes from abroad or is grown at home; taxes on the raw material; taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man; taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug which restores him to health; on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal; on the poor man's salt and the rich man's spice; on the brass nails of the coffin and the ribbons of the bride; at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay.

"The school-boy," as he further said, "whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine which has paid seven per cent. into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon the chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent., makes his will on an eight-pound stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothecary, who has paid a license of a hundred pounds, for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers, to be taxed no more. ""*

Thus far, as we see, the progress has been from the taxation of fixed property, to the taxation of property in motion-being, precisely, towards the state of things now existing in all the semi-barbarous countries of the East; towards that, too, which had prevailed in France and England of the Middle Ages, when land and labor were of little value, and when fixed property scarcely at all existed.

Five-and-thirty years later, we meet with another step in the same direction, in the repeal of the tax on houses, by which was nearly closed the history of direct taxation in the United King

*Edinburgh Review.

dom. The result is seen in the fact, that, in the year 1854, there were collected £21,000,000 as duties on imports -£16,000,000 as taxes of excise-£7,000,000 from stamps-£3,000,000 from taxes on horses, carriages, railroad passengers, etc.-£7,500,000 from taxes on profits- and £1,500,000 from taxes on epistolary intercourse and other minor sources of income-making a total of £56,000,000-$270,000,000-being $10 per head of the whole population, almost nine-tenths of which were derived from an exercise of the power to stop property, or ideas, on their way from the place of production to that of consumption. Such is what is called freedom of trade.

7. Freedom of commerce looks to the promotion of rapidity in the circulation of property, whether material or mental. Freedom of trade looks, as we see, to the arrest of the circulation, with a view to the collection of contributions for the support of government. The one applies directly, and honestly, to the man who has property requiring to be protected. The other does so indirectly, and fraudulently-filching from his pocket, the amount required. Who is it, however, that ultimately pays the vast amount of taxes now collected for the service of the British government? Is it the auctioneer, who pays the auction duty? Certainly not; for he includes it in the commission charged to the owner of the goods. Is it the broker, who pays an incometax? Certainly not; for he lives by taking a portion of the goods he sells. Is it the trader, who pays the stamp-tax? Certainly not; for he charges the stamps to his principal. Is it the railroad owner, who pays a tax on the people who travel in his trains? Certainly not; for he charges it to his passengers. Is it the publisher of newspapers, who pays a tax on advertisements? Certainly not; for he makes his customers pay it. Is it the merchant, who pays a tax on letters? Certainly not; for he charges his correspondents with their postage. Is it the publisher who pays a tax on paper? Certainly not; for he includes it in the price of his books. Is it the ship-owner who pays a tax on his insurance ? Certainly not-insurance being, like freight, a charge to be borne by the goods insured.

Who, and what, is it, then, that pays this enormous sum? Seeking an answer to this, the reader will do well to consult,

again, the diagram representing the movement of society, here reproduced, because of the importance of the question now submitted for his consideration.

Slavery.

Paper.

Rags....

Land valueless.

LAND.

Land high in value.

The broker, the auctioneer, the trader, the payers of stamp and auction duties, the tax-gatherers, and the men who live by the produce of taxes, each and all, stand between the men who produce and those who consume all living out of the share taken by them from the produce of the land, in the act of passing from the hand by which it is produced, to the mouth that is to eat it, or the back by which it is to be worn. In the early periods of society - the obstacles to circulation being greatmiddlemen abound, and land and labor have little value. In the later period, they become less numerous-all the saving consequent thereon, being divided between the labor and the land, both of which acquire value, in the direct ratio of the removal of impediments standing in the way of circulation. Who and what, then, is it, that pays the taxes? What can it be, but the labor given to the raising of the corn and the wool, and to the conversion of raw materials into cloth? The broker produces nothing. The trader adds nothing to the quantity, or quality, of things produced. The tax-gatherer affords no aid in the work of production. The fields would be as well cultivated, and yield as much corn, did there exist neither politicians, admirals, nor generals. The great farmer, who takes the place of small proprietors, merely replaces men who had every inducement to exertion, by others who know, and feel, too, that they have none. The more of such people there are, the smaller will always be the product-the larger must be the proportion borne by movable property to that which is fixed-the larger the proportion of the diminished product taken by the middleman - the poorer the

Massachusetts.