the extent of our losses. As little shall we investigate, from history, how many nations have been ruined by direct taxation, and whether there is one, the decline of which can be traced to indirect; or from reason, whether it is possible that a nation can be ruined by indirect taxes, when the only effect of their becoming too high is, that they check the consumption of the articles on which they are laid, and therefore cease to be paid. We shall not remind our readers that, in the latter years of the war, £72,000,000, under the protective system, was levied in the shape of taxes amidst general prosperity, on eighteen millions of people in the British empire; and that now, under the free-trade system, £52,000,000 net revenue is felt as extremely oppressive upon twenty-eight millions. We have chosen to have free trade, in other words, to abandon indirect taxation; and free trade we have, at least for the present, and indirect taxation will in consequence be gradually more and more abandoned.

But it is particularly to be observed, in the outset of this system, that free trade, once adopted and applied to certain great branches of national industry, must necessarily be progressive, and embrace all, if we would avoid the total ruin of many of the staple branches of our production and main source of our direct revenue. In a short time, grain of all sorts will be left with the nominal protection of a shilling a quarter; and many branches of manufactures already find themselves with a protecting duty so small that, keeping in view the difference of the value of money in England and the Continental states, it amounts to nothing. If the classes thus left without any protection, or a merely nominal one, exposed to the effects of foreign competition, are not indemnified for their losses by the diminished price of the articles which they themselves purchase, they must grow poorer every day. Amidst the general cheapening of the articles sold, which constitute the income of the productive classes, if there is not a proportional cheapening of the articles bought, which compose their expenditure, they must inevitably be destroyed.

This truth is so obvious, that it is adapted to the level of every capacity; and accordingly we already see it producing agitation for the further repeal of indirect taxes,

which it does not require the gift of prophecy to foresee will in the end, though perhaps after a severe struggle, prove successful. It may not do so in this session of Parliament, or the next; but, in process of time, the effect is certain.

A ministry in difficulties, a yielding premier, will ere long be found who, in a moment of difficulty, will be glad to buy off one set of assailants, as we did the Danes of old, by giving up what they desire. The separate agitations which must in the end produce this result, are already manifesting themselves. The West India planters allege, with reason, that, exposed as they are, when burdened with costly and irregular free labourers, to the competition of slave labour in Cuba and Brazil, without, in a few years, any protection, it is indispensable that the market of the mother country should be thrown open to them for all parts of their produce, especially in distilleries and breweries. The farmers, exposed to this attack in flank, while the corn laws have been repealed in their front, have no resource left but to clamour incessantly for the repeal of the malt-tax. In this attempt it is probable they will in the end prove successful, not because their demands are either just or reasonable-for, as power is now constituted in this country, that affords no guarantee whatever for being listened to-but because their claims are likely to be supported by the beer-drinkers in towns, the constituents of a majority in the House of Commons, and therefore an important and influential class of the community. The tea-dealers, encouraged by the success of agitation in other quarters, are already making a loud clamour for a reduction of the duty on tea, and prepared to prove, to the entire satisfaction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that nothing is so likely to increase a branch of revenue now producing £4,800,000 a-year, as to lower the duty from half-a-crown to a shilling on the pound. The tobacco-dealers will not be behind their brethren in agitation; and we may soon expect to see all the venal talent of the nation enlisted in the great cause of free trade in smoking and chewing. The spirit-dealers will, most assuredly, not be the last to insist upon a reduction of the duties affecting them; and they are certain to be supported by the whole of the publicans in the urban constituencies,—a

class of men so numerous that it is certain their united voice is not likely to be long disregarded. Every class, in short, will insist for a remission of the taxes affecting themselves, without the slightest regard to the effect it is likely to have on the revenue, the public credit, or the general security of the empire; and when we reflect on the stupendous array of indirect taxes, exceeding £30,000,000 yearly, which, under the influence of similar partial but fierce agitations, have been abandoned by successive conceding Administrations to purchase temporary popularity, we feel convinced that the time is not far distant when the remaining customs and excise, producing at present about £30,000,000 of revenue, will, in part at least, share the same fate.

It is useless to lament this tendency, because lamentations will not stop it; and the Reform Bill has vested power in classes who, for good or for evil, will work it out. Nearly two-thirds of the Imperial Parliament are, under its enactments, the representatives of burghs. * In these burghs, the great majority of the voters are shopkeepers, that is, persons whose interest it is to buy cheap and sell dear. In making the first use of their newly acquired power to force on free trade, and a repeal of all duties affecting themselves, our burghs have exactly followed in the footsteps of their predecessors, when parliamentary writs were first addressed to them by the Earl of Leicester in 1264. "The burghers," says Guizot," as much astonished as charmed at the importance which Leicester gave them, took advantage of their influence to procure freedom to trade, and to get quit of all custom-house duties, instead of establishing, in conjunction with him, the government on a durable foundation."+ The influence of these urban constituencies is not likely to decrease under the increasing embarrassments of the landed producers, and the augmented stimulus to certain branches of trade from foreign importations. And, in consequence,

as the revenue melts away under the effect of successive repeals of the indirect taxes, the question will ere long force itself on the Government and the country, How is the interest of the debt to be paid? How are the charges of the national establishments to be defrayed? The extraordinary prosperity of the last two years, the result of the three fine harvests which had preceded them, cannot be expected to continue. A railway mania is not immortal; like every other violent passion, it must soon wear itself out.* Peace

cannot much longer be relied on; the clouds are already gathering in more than one quarter. A recurrence to general indirect taxes is not to be thought of in these days of restricted currency and unrestricted importation. The only alternative is, either a reduction of the interest of the national debt, or a great increase of direct taxation.

It is not probable that a forcible reduction of the national debt will be attempted, at least till the other alternative has been tried and failed. The public funds are the great savings bank of the nation. Out of 192,970 persons who received the half-yearly dividend at the Bank of England in the year 1841, no less than 158,735 drew dividends under £50 halfyearly, of whom 58,000 were under £5; while those above £50 and not exceeding £200 were only 10,094, and those exceeding £2000 only 125!+ This is the great security for the public funds in England-the extent to which shares in them are held by persons composing that middle commercial class, in whom, under the present constitution, supreme power is practically vested.

Nor is it only the actual holders of the public funds who would be immediately struck at by an invasion of the national debt. Stock of every kind would at once fall pari passu with the three-per-cents-credit of every kind would be violently shaken - the rate of discount at the Bank of England would instantly rise-money would become scarce over the country-every debtor would find his whole creditors on his back at once, while his means of recovering payment from those indebted to him would be proportionately abated. It is not going too far to say that, within a year after a blow

* How fearfully was this anticipation, written in January 1847, realised in the October of the same year, when the terrible monetary crash took place! + PORTER'S Parliamentary Tables, xii. 6.

had been struck at the public funds, one-half of the whole trading classes would find themselves insolvent. None would be able to stand the shock but those possessed of considerable capital. The majority who carried the measure would, for the most part, be ruined by its effects. This consequence is not a remote or secondary one, which large bodies of men can never be brought to see; it is immediate and direct, and is practically known, by the intercourse with banks, and the necessity of getting bills discounted, to the whole commercial community in the country. It is not probable that the burgher class, to whom the Reform Bill has given power, will voluntarily advocate a measure so evidently and palpably destructive to themselves. The public funds of Great Britain rest on the securest of all bases in a popular community, the self-interest of the holders of power. They would soon be swept away under universal suffrage, as they have been in so many states of America, because the majority under such a system have no funds to hold.

Two things, then, if free trade continue, may be considered as certain as anything depending on the varying chances of human affairs can be. 1. That the indirect taxes, which at present constitute three-fifths of the net revenue of Great Britain, will in great part, in process of time, be swept away. 2. That to uphold the public credit, and save from ruin the commercial classes, a great addition must be made to direct taxation.

It has become, therefore, a matter of the very highest importance to consider how an additional revenue can be raised without widespread ruin in that way; and what are the principles on which direct taxation should be founded, in order to be at once equal, just, and productive. It will be found, on consideration, that they are simple and of universal application-so plain as to be obvious, when stated, to every capacity, although a protracted struggle may doubtless be anticipated from the various classes whose immunities or exemptions such a just and equal system may abolish or abridge.

The first principles on the subject will naturally suggest themselves on the principle of " lucus a non lucendo," upon considering the gross inequalities, the enormous injustice of our present system of direct taxation. Upon reviewing it,