purpose the stringent poor-law has been enacted, which separates husband, wife, and child. For this purpose, prizes, and even liveries have been granted by agricultural societies, with noblemen at their head, to labourers who maintained their families on starvation wages without coming to the parish for relief. But the question naturally occurs, if pauperism in the small be so disgraceful, what is it in the great? If pauperism on 6s. a week be so infamous, what is it on 10,000l. a-year? If it be so scandalous for a poor man when without work, and driven by the desperation of his whole family's famine, to crave occasionally a poor pittance of a few shillings from the parish, what is it for a rich man to crave, not occasionally, but constantly, not when in famine, but in plenty, for thousands from his suffering country? Do not ordinary degrees and proportions of things hold good in these cases as in all others? Must not pauperism be infamous, just in proportion to the grossness of its nature, to the enormity of its demands on the country, and to the non-necessity of the applicant? Must not a man who asks for thousands when he has thousands of his own, be thousands of times more shameless, more disgusting, and more of a pauper, than a man who having nothing, asks for next to nothing, and that only under the direst gripe of necessity? The thing is too palpable to need a word. The pauper of a parish is a passable creature compared with the pauper of a nation. The one is, at best, ashamed of his reliefthe other brags of it and prides himself in it. Surely if the aristocracy found it necessary to pass the New Poor Law, to throw the people on their own resources, the people should pass another Act to throw the aristocracy on their own resources. What is good for Darby is good for Joan. If it be a merit to be thrown upon one's own resources, then who should be the first to exhibit this merit but the nobles of merit? If it be noble, the nobles should adopt it, or be forced into it. If they think it well to give a badge of honour to those poor men who are ready to starve their wives and children for it,-to give "a coat, waistcoat, and breeches, with the society's buttons," to those who keep off the parish, though earning only six shillings a week, how far more commendable it must be that the wealthy classes, who wear the national badges, who have "the coat, waistcoat, breeches, and buttons" of nobility, the stars and garters and robes, should have these for keeping off the nation, and for that only, seeing that with ample funds of their own, instead of six shillings a week, having perhaps their six hundred or six thousand a-week; instead of a house at 67. 10s. and no potato garden, they have halls and ample estates, and are still always coming for relief

to the nation, and when they do come, coming for no trifles? Five thousand, and ten thousand a-year! Truly, one man may still steal a horse with impunity, and another be hanged for looking over a hedge!

By such means has England allowed the aristocracy to seize on and hold possession of all offices, pensions, in fact, of the whole mass of taxation.

AND here we must take breath in a new chapter, to show by what means, while this debt has been accumulating to the amount of eight hundred millions, and the annual taxation to that of fifty millions, the aristocracy has contrived still to be the receiving instead of the paying party. Still to heave the weight of taxation from their shoulders to those of the people.

Having by their bargain with Charles II. freed themselves from all their feudal services, which from the conquest to the reign of James I. constituted with the crown lands, nearly the whole national revenue; and, having next got the crown lands from William III. too, they could not with any decency, when that monarch's wars, which were so profitable to them and theirs, had brought more charges than the popular taxes were adequate to defray, refuse to pay, or seem to pay

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something towards them. Therefore, in the fourth year of William III., a land tax was passed. This brought in then 1,474,9277.; or more than one-fourth of the whole revenue. This had a good look; a look well calculated to impose on the unthinking people. But what was the fact? The tax, though called a land tax, was a property tax. It was laid both on rental and on personal property;-4s. in the pound, on the true yearly value of real property;" and 24s. in the 1007., or 4s. in the pound on 67., the legal interest on money at that time. Thus the aristocracy got the credit of paying a fourth of the taxation, while in reality that amount was contributed by the whole community, on money, houses, incomes, and on everything except "debts, stock on hand, and household stuff."

Such was now the mass of wealth amongst the merchants, shopkeepers, and people in general, that the aristocracy actually paid a mere fraction of the amount. But even this fraction sat uneasily on them. They saw that all property was increasing in value, and they conceived the design of throwing the burden almost wholly on the personal property, trade and incomes of the general community. For this purpose various changes took place in this act, from its first passing in 1690 to 1697. The principal of these was, that the rate on personal property should be first carefully levied, and then the land should be taxed to make up the deficiency. Up to this period the sum raised by this tax was annually 1,474,9277. But then, finding that the people began to grow jealous of the exact levying of the amount on personal and not on real property, they gradually abandoned the levying it on personal property at all, seeing that the people's property and gains were rapidly becoming amply taxed by the customs, excise, and miscellaneous imports. From that period, therefore, to 1798 the land tax was collected on this principle, omitting personal property, and levying the tax on the land, not on its growing value, however, but on the old valuation of 1690, or that of the fourth of William and Mary, the first year of the land tax.

This was in two ways illegal and fraudulent. First, because the tax was, as worded, to be levied both on personal and real property; which, however, they carefully avoided, lest it should draw public attention to the actual state of property. Secondly, because the original act, and all the successive acts, up to the 9th of William III., or of 1697, had most clearly and distinctly enacted that the tax should be levied bonâ fide on the growing value of all lands; viz., in the very words of the act, according to the full yearly value thereof, without any respect had to present rents reserved for the same, if such rents have

been reserved upon such lands or estates made, for which any fine or income hath been paid or reserved, or have been lessened or abated upon consideration of money laid out in improvements; and without any respect had to any former rates thereupon imposed, or making any abatement in respect to reparations, taxes, parish duties, or any other charges whatever."- -Sect. 4.

Nothing could be clearer than that the whole yearly rack-rent was to pay 4s. in the pound. This clearness, however, was got rid of in the 9th of William III., or in 1697, and for a hundred years the tax was collected, not on the present real value, but on the old and original value of 1690, bringing in from 1,700,000l. to 2,000,000l. a-year. Then, our aristocratic legislators, in 1798, or the 38th of George III., seeing how enormously the real value of all property had increased, and how heavily the people were taxed to maintain the expenses of the French revolutionary war, grew fearful that they also should be called on to pay their due share, that is, according to the increased value of their land, and they called on their packed and purchased majority in the House of Commons, and passed a new act.

The customs, which in William's time, amounted to little more than a million, now amounted to upwards of ten millions; the excise, which then also yielded little more than one million, was now nearly fourteen millions; the miscellaneous taxes, which were then 784,3627., were now become twelve millions; and the whole revenue, upwards of thirty millions, while they were merely paying nominally for all their lands two millions! and in reality not more than a third of that, for the cities and towns were paying the rest!

It was a view of things that might well make them uneasy, and they therefore took time by the forelock, and passed the act alluded to, that of the 38th of George III., which fixed for ever the levying of the land tax, at the rate of the collection in William III.'s time, or in 1690! Thus, while all the other taxes were to be levied on the growing value of property, their sole tax was to be exempted from this rule. They were to reap in offices, pensions, and places, the whole income of taxation, and to pay only a mere infinitesimal fraction. They were to lay on corn-laws, or any other laws, that should keep up their rents, and yet to pay not a penny of this augmented rent to the needs of the country. This was certainly the most audacious act of legislation that the whole six thousand years of the world's history can produce, and is the greatest insult to Englishmen, a trading, active, sensible, and calculating nation, that could

possibly be offered. To this hour, however, this is the law and the operation of it, and the following table will show how this law has worked.

By this table we perceive that since the passing of this most nefarious of all acts, in 1798, the land tax presents the fixed annual sum to a farthing of 1,214,4307.: while all the other sources of taxation have grown to the most astonishing extent. The customs to more than twenty-three millions and a half; the excise to more than fourteen millions and a half; the miscellaneous to nearly eleven millions and a half; the very post-office to nearly a million and a half; while the land tax stands at the frostbound miserable sum of less than a million and a quarter; and that too for lands and tenements! This is the atom to which they have contrived to reduce that individual tax, which once was the great legitimate source of all taxation, which was indeed the price fixed for the possession of their estates,-1,214,4307. out of a total of FIFTY-TWO MILLIONS of taxation !

But even this table does not reach the gross amount of the present time. It comes up only to 1842, while the present income-tax, and the increase of other taxes, make the present total little short of sixty millions. In other words, our aristocratic legislators have taxed themselves to the amount of about two per cent., and the industry of the country at ninety-eight per cent. ! or, in still other words, they have defrauded the state to the present time of the taxation due on the growing value of their lands, which it had the same right to collect that a landlord under the laws of England had to collect an increased rent from his tenants.

Another remark is worthy of being made. The burden of excise which in the bargain with Charles II. they threw on the people, in lieu of their own feudal burdens, has grown from 294,9507. to 14,602,8477.! while their land tax, the sole remnant of the returns they engaged to make for the possession of their