sent the English people, as not only the most heavily taxed people under the sun, but as actually ground down to the earth by the weight of their burdens, and suffering thereby under a process of gradual and accelerated extinction. It has long been our custom to swallow these representations with im plicit credulity, and even to listen to them with a species of savage and insane delight. Yet, nothing can be more certain than that both assertions are not only greatly exaggerated, but utterly untrue. The fact is, that the cuckoo note of the popular agitator has not varied since the beginning of the century, though the circumstances which gave rise to it have been in a state of perpetual alteration, so that what was substantial truth then, is the opposite of truth now. It will astonish most

of our readers to be told not only that our taxation, fairly calculated, is lighter than that of several other countries, but that it has long been steadily and rapidly diminishing. We are no optimists; we are far from imagining that our public burdens are not deplorably heavy; we are far from believing that a wiser course in former days might not have enormously lessened them; we are far from despairing of a great mitigation of them, by a judicious course in future;-but we protest against the childish and untruthful habit, so dear to the grumbling temper of our countrymen, of perpetually representing ourselves as the most ill-used and trampled-upon of mortals. We presume it will be allowed on all hands that the burden of taxation must be reckoned, not by the gross amount paid into the national treasury, but by that amount compared with the wealth and the numbers of the nation. Looking at the matter from this comparative point of view, we find that in 1801, the population of the United Kingdom was 15,800,000, and the revenue paid into the Exchequer, (exclusive, of course, of loans,) was £34,113,000, giving an average of 43s. a head. In 1815, the last year of the war, the population was 19,000,000, and the revenue £72,210,000; but as twenty per cent. must be allowed for the depreciation of the currency, the average will be found to have risen to 60s. a head. In 1821, after five years of peace, the population was 21,200,000, and the revenue £55,800,000, or 51s. a head. In 1850 the population was 27,000,000, and the revenue £52,300,000, or 39s. a head. That is, the pressure of taxation upon each Briton is actually less by one-tenth than it was fifty years ago; less by one-fifth than it was thirty years ago; and less by one-third than it was during our Buonapartean wars.

But this is not all. Taxation must be estimated not according to numbers only, but according to wealth also-and indeed chiefly -since it is our wealth that gives us the power of meeting it. An equal amount of taxation is obviously only half the burden,

Taxation diminishing in proportion to the National Wealth. 53

ceteris paribus, to a man of a thousand a year, which it is to one of five hundred a year. Now, we have no means of ascertaining with precision the increase of national wealth (i.e., capability of enduring taxation) since the beginning of the century, but there are on record a few significant facts, which suffice to shew that it has been certainly much greater than the increase of population. The real property of Great Britain was valued in 1803 at £967,284,000, and in 1842 at £1,820,000,000. The total amount of incomes (as assessed) derived from trades and professions was in 1812, £21,247,600, and in 1848, £56,990,000, being nearly a threefold increase in thirty-six years. The amount of capital subject to legacy duty sprung up from £4,122,000 in 1800, to £16,622,000 in 1812, and to £44,348,000 in 1845, or a tenfold increase in the half century. The sums insured against fire were £232,000,000 in 1801, and £722,000,000 in 1845. We think we shall be within the mark, if we assume that the wealth of the country has increased threefold since the beginning of the century, while the taxation has increased in the same period only from thirty-four to fifty-two millions; or in round numbers, the one has increased at the rate of 200 per cent., and the other only at the rate of fifty per cent. Mr. Norman, whose authority few will be inclined to dispute, after a careful examination of the whole question, and an ample allowance for the change in the value of money, sums up as follows:-" The reader will recollect that it has been shewn, supposing the increase of wealth to have kept pace with that of the population, that a diminution of pressure arising from public burdens has taken place since the peace to the extent of 53 per cent.; but on reading the foregoing observations, he will probably be of opinion that the reduction thus exhibited falls far short of the real truth. By how much short, can only be a matter of conjecture. If we say that the real reduction has been 67 per cent., or two-thirds, we shall probably be still too low; and, taking all things into calculation, it seems probable that we shall not be far wrong in fixing it at 75 per cent., or three-fourths. other words, it may be assumed on highly probable grounds, that an individual with a given income, who, in taxes and loans, paid £100 to the State in 1815, would now pay only £25."

In

If the public burdens of England are greatly diminished and diminishing, when compared with her wealth, which affords the only fair criterion of their severity, it is equally certain that they are not, when estimated by the same standard, so heavy in comparison with those of other European countries as it is usual to represent them. In England it is true, the taxation amounts to 39s.

* See Porter's Progress of the Nation. Norman on Taxation.

a head, against 29s. 7d. in France; 37s. 3d. in Holland; 21s. 8d. in Belgium; and 20s. in Spain. In France, indeed, it has recently reached 33s., and in the first year of the Revolution was 40s. a head. But will any one pretend that the wealth of England does not exceed the wealth of every one of these countries in a far greater ratio than her taxation? Is not England more than twice as rich as Spain?-is she not probably ten times as rich? Is she not more than one-fifteenth richer than Holland?-not more than one-fourth richer than France? With regard to the latter country, Mr. Norman calculates from premises, "which give his conclusions the force. of moral demonstration, that the per centage of the national wealth abstracted for State purposes, is more than double what it is in England. In other words, that a Frenchman pays out of his income or fortune, more than twice as much as is paid by an Englishman who may possess a similar income or fortune."

But the case of the United States of America is generally cast in our teeth as a specimen of the light taxation of a country where the people govern themselves. Let us inquire into the facts of the case, before sitting down quietly under the reproach. Let us ascertain the State taxes, and the local taxes, as well as the national or federal taxes, which commonly are alone taken into consideration by popular haranguers.

We find that in Great Britain, in the year ending January 5, 1850, the total State expenditure was £55,500,000

The Poor Rates,

7,250,000

The Local and County Rates,

4,000,000

£66,750,000

Total,

Now, as the population was twenty-seven millions, this would give nearly 50s. a head. But the real property in Great Britain now assessed to the Income-tax, amounts to £2,382,000,000; and this exempts not only all estates whose income falls below £150 a year, but the whole of Ireland. The personal property, as gathered from the Legacy Duty returns, is about £2,118,000,000, making a total of realized property of £4,500,000,000. Now sixtysix millions is equal to a tax of 1.46 per cent. upon this sum.

In the United States the national expenditure, as stated in the last Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, averaged forty millions of dollars during the last six years.† The population is now 23,674,000; but during the average of the six years it may

* See Johnston's N. America, vol. ii. p. 251, from which this comparison is taken. +Three of these were years of war (with Mexico,) and three were years of peace. They afford, therefore, a fair comparison with this country, of whose expenditure one-half goes to defray the interest of war loans.

Comparative Taxation of England and America. 55

be taken at 22,000,000. The national taxes, therefore, amount to about 7s. 8d. a head. In the State of New York, according to Mr. Johnston, the State and local taxes amount to two dollars, or 8s. 4d. a head. The total taxation may therefore be taken at 16s. Man for man, therefore, it is clear that the Englishman is taxed three times as heavily as the American. But what is the case when we come to estimate the relative wealth of the two countries? We may take the national taxes paid in the State of New York, (chiefly derived from custom duties,) at four millions of dollars in the last six years.* The State, County, and Township taxes were 5,500,000, making a total of 9,500,000, on a valuation of 666,000,000 of dollars of realized property. Great Britain, therefore, with realized property valued at four thousand five hundred millions of pounds, endures public burdens to the extent of sixty-six millions, or 1.46 per cent. The State of New York, with real property valued at six hundred and sixty-six millions of dollars, is burdened to the extent of nine millions and a half, or about 1.42 per cent.†

If, then, our taxation, fairly estimated, is not as heavy as is commonly alleged, neither is it levied as inequitably as we are accustomed to hear it represented. It is not true, as it is so habitually asserted, that it falls chiefly or disproportionately on the poor. Here, as elsewhere, we are satisfied with the careless and most unconscientious repetition of an ancestral war-cry. We are using language which was to a great extent true at the beginning of the century, during the war, and before the Reform Bill, but which is simply and culpably false now. Almost every year during the last twenty has witnessed the relief of the unpropertied classes of the community from some fiscal burden. The tendency now is, in our opinion, even to exempt them unwisely and unfairly. Incomes under £150 are exempted from the Income-tax houses under £20 are exempted from the House-tax. That is to say, six-sevenths of all dwellings, and nine-tenths of all incomes in the country, are allowed to escape from direct taxation altogether. Between 1830 and 1850, £21,568,000 of taxes have been repealed, and £7,925,000 have been imposed. But those that have been repealed were almost exclusively taxes which pressed upon the masses; and those which have been imposed (in order to render the repeal of the others possible) are taxes which are paid almost exclusively by men of property. Of the £7,925,000, £5,500,000 are raised by the Income-tax alone.

All taxes have been removed from the raw materials of that in

It is true that Mr. Johnston takes these at three millions of dollars, but his estimate of the total national taxes is taken at 30,000,000 dollars, which is ten millions less than it has recently been.

† A certain amount of every man's property is, we believe, exempted in America, which may be set off against our exemptions under £150.

dustry which employs the poor. All taxes have been removed from those necessaries of life which feed the poor. Corn comes in free; butchers' meat comes in free. Two taxes only exist of which the poor man cannot avoid paying his share-the excise on soap and the duty on timber. But the duty on timber only raises the cost of erection of the poor man's house 4s. 3d.,* and his yearly rent, therefore, only by about 34d. The excise on soap varies from 1d. to 1 d. a pound; and on the consumption of a poor man's family will amount to about 4s. 6d. a year.† These are literally the sole taxes which, in this country, are not optional with the poor man. Except in these items no poor man need pay one farthing to the revenue unless he please. But the rich man cannot so escape. The poor man may say, as Benjamin Franklin said, and as hundreds of wise and good men have done,

"Spirits are poison: I will not use them. Tobacco is nasty: I will renounce it. Sugar and tea are needless: I will dispense with them;" and he slips through life almost as untaxed as the Red Indian. But the upper and middle classes might renounce all these noxious and superfluous luxuries in vain, they would still have to pay £18,000,000 into the national, and £11,000,000 into the local Exchequer. In no other country, and on no other system of taxation, could the working classes escape so easily or pay so little.

But we shall be told that this is not a fair way of looking at the matter; that sugar, and tea, and beer, are now rather necessaries than luxuries, and that, whether they are so or not, the poor man has as much right to his luxuries as the rich. Unquestionably he has: we would be the last to grudge them to him. But we cannot think that he has a right to them untaxed any more than the rich man. Benevolence, and perhaps justice, seems to prompt that, as far as may be, our revenue should be levied on a man's superfluity, not upon that portion of his means which is essential to subsistence. But if a man has a superfluity, and spends that superfluity on sugar, which is pleasant to him, on beer, which is needless to him, on spirits or tobacco, which are mischievous to him, by that act and that possession he ceases

*The quantity of timber used in the construction of a cottage, costing about £100, is 212 cubic feet. The duty on American pine (the sort used for such houses) is Is. a load of 50 feet. The duty, therefore, adds 4s. 3d. to the original cost of the cottage. If Baltic timber were used, (the duty being 3s. 9d.) the addition would be 15s. 10d.

The average consumption of soap per family, in that rank, as we have taken pains to ascertain, is less than 1 lb. a week. This is confirmed by M'Culloch, (Account of British Empire, vol. ii. p. 396.) See also Porter, (Progress of Nation, vol. iii. p. 76.) The quantity of soap consumed in the United Kingdom in 1849, was 186,000,000 lbs., or 6.75 lbs. a head, which, at five persons to a family, would give 37 lbs. a year; and this, at 14d. a lb. duty, would amount to 4s. 7d.

Perhaps we ought also to except the advertisement duty.