Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 421, November 1850

Alas for poor Snip! They gave him three years.

Three years passed in prison afford ample time for reflection, and are calculated to lead to amendment. We are sorry, however, to say that Mr Alton Locke by no means turned them to profit. He had many long interviews with the chaplain, who attempted to reclaim him to Christianity; but it would seem that the reverend gentleman did not set about it in the right way, as he advanced only old-fashioned arguments against infidelity, whereas the inspired tailor "was fighting for Strauss, Hennell, and Emerson." So the chaplain gave him up at last, and he turned for recreation and solace to the works of M.M. Prudhon and Louis Blanc, which he got somehow smuggled into his cell. During his imprisonment he experienced great tribulation by the sight of a handsome new church rising not far from his window, and occasional glimpses of a person whom he took to be the incumbent, and who bore a marvellous likeness to his cousin George. Sometimes this personage was accompanied by a lady, who might possibly be Lillian – for the mooncalf, notwithstanding the court-scene, and the consciousness that he was a sentenced felon, still seems to have supposed that he was beloved, and to have expected a visit to his cell – and the bare idea was distraction. And it turns out that he was right. George Locke, the incumbent, was about to be married – a fact which he learned immediately before his own release, coinciding in point of time with the French Revolution of 1848.

Back to London goes Alton, and, as a matter of course, instantaneously consorts with Cuffey. Then come the preparations for the memorable demonstration of 10th April, the provision of arms, and the wild schemes for resorting to physical force. That a large, ramified, and by no means contemptible conspiracy then existed, no man can doubt; and there is but too much reason to believe that social suffering was as much the cause of the projected outbreak as abstract political doctrines, however pernicious, or even the influence of the revolutionary example extended and propagated from the Continent. Alton had by this time worked himself up to such a pitch that he was ready to mount a barricade, and so was his companion and coadjutor, the valorous John Crossthwaite. But old Sandy Mackaye, who had some acquaintanceship with pikes in his youth, and experience of the extreme doubtfulness of the popular pluck, especially under the guidance of such leaders as the imbecile and misguided fools who made themselves most prominent in the Convention, astonished his friends by denouncing the whole concern as not only silly but sinful, and prophesying, almost with his dying breath as it proved, its complete and shameful failure. Very beautifully, indeed, and very naturally drawn, is the deathbed scene of the old reformer; the spirit, ere quitting for ever the tenement of clay, wandering back and recurring to the loved scenes of childhood and of youth – the bonny braes, and green hillsides, and clear waters of his native land.

Old Sandy dies, and Alton watches by his corpse till the morning of the 10th of April, the day on which the liberties of England were to be decided, and a general muster of the adherents of the Charter held on Kensington Common. Going forth, he encounters at the door a lady dressed in deep mourning, who had come to visit Mackaye, and who should this prove to be but the widowed Countess of Ellerton! It now comes out that Alton had been altogether mistaken in her character: instead of being a proud imperious aristocrat, she proves to be a lowly, devoted, and self-sacrificing friend of the poor, who has surrendered her whole means for the relief of unfortunate needle-women, and even lived and worked among them, in order personally to experience the hardships of their condition. There is nothing in this to provoke a sneer; for it is impossible to exaggerate the extent of that sacrifice which women in all ages have been content to make, either at the call of love, the claim of duty, or the demand of religion; and the noble and unswerving heroism, which they have exhibited in the accomplishment of their task. To tend the sick and dying even in public, hospitals – to brave the pestilence and the plague – to visit prisons – utterly to abjure the world, and to give up everything for the sake of their Divine Master – all these things have been done by women, and done so quietly and unobtrusively as to escape the notice of the multitude; for good deeds are like the sweetest flowers, they blossom in the most secret places. But our author goes a great deal further, and, as usual, plunges into the ludicrous. Lady Ellerton has, from the first, recognised Alton Locke as an inspired being; she has kept her eye upon him throughout the whole of his career; has paid his debts through old Mackaye, with whom she seems to have been in constant correspondence; has supplied the means for his defence at his trial; and has now come to arrest, if possible, the headlong career of the outrageous and revolutionary tailor! We must indulge ourselves with one more extract, and it shall be the last.

"'Oh!' she said, in a voice of passionate earnestness, which I had never heard from her before, 'stop – for God's sake, stop! you know not what you are saying – what you are doing. Oh! that I had met you before – that I had had more time to speak to poor Mackaye! Oh! wait, wait – there is a deliverance for you; but never in this path – never! And just while I, and nobler far than I, are longing and struggling to find the means of telling you your deliverance, you, in the madness of your haste, are making it impossible!'

"There was a wild sincerity in her words – an almost imploring tenderness in her tone.

"'So young!' she said; 'so young to be lost thus!'

"I was intensely moved. I felt – I knew that she had a message for me. I felt that hers was the only intellect in the world to which I would have submitted mine; and, for one moment, all the angel and all the devil in me wrestled for the mastery. If I could but have trusted her one moment… No! all the pride, the suspicion, the prejudice of years, rolled back upon me. 'An aristocrat! and she, too, the one who has kept me from Lillian!' And in my bitterness, not daring to speak the real thought within me, I answered with a flippant sneer —

"'Yes, Madam! like Cordelia, so young, yet so untender! – Thanks to the mercies of the upper classes!'

"Did she turn away in indignation? No, by heaven! – there was nothing upon her face but the intensest yearning pity. If she had spoken again, she would have conquered; but before those perfect lips could open, the thought of thoughts flashed across me.

"'Tell me one thing! Is my cousin George to be married to – ?' and I stopped.

"'He is.'

"'And yet,' I said, 'you wish to turn me back from dying on a barricade!' And, without waiting for a reply, I hurried down the street in all the fury of despair."

But Alton Locke did not die on a barricade, any more than Mr John O'Connell on the floor of the House of Commons. He did not sever with his shears the thread of life either of soldier or policeman. He got down from the waggons with the rest when Feargus showed the white feather, and by way of change of scene and subject, contrived to get into the house where Lillian was residing, and in a very sneaking way to become witness of sundry love passages between her and his cousin George. As a matter of course, he was kicked into the street by two able-bodied servitors in plush. Then follows a scene with a former comrade of his, a drunken, worthless, treacherous Dung, by name Jemmy Downes, who had become a sweater and kidnapper, and descended through every stage of degradation to the very cesspool of infamy. His wife and children are lying dead, fever-stricken, half-consumed by vermin in a horrible den, overhanging a rankling ditch, into which Downes in his delirium falls, and Alton staggers home with the typhus raging in his blood. Then come the visions of delirium, ambitiously written, but without either myth or meaning, so far as we can discover. Sometimes Alton fancies himself a mylodon eating his way through a forest of cabbage palms, and "browsing upon the crisp tart foliage," – sometimes he is impressed with the painful conviction that he is a baboon agitated "by wild frenzies, agonies of lust, and aimless ferocity." The conscience, it would seem, was not utterly overpowered by the disease. He at length awakes to reality —

"Surely I know that voice! She lifted her veil. The face was Lillian's! No! Eleanor's!

"Gently she touched my hand – I sunk down into soft, weary, happy sleep."

Of course, with the Countess for his nurse, Alton gradually recovers, at least from the fever, but his constitution is plainly breaking up. He then hears of the death of his cousin George, caused by infection conveyed in a coat which he had seen covering the wasted remains of Downes' wife and children. His first impulse is again to persecute Lillian; but the Countess will not allow him, not because he is an impertinent, odious, contemptible, convicted snip and coxcomb, but because "there is nothing there for your heart to rest upon – nothing to satisfy your intellect"!! So she reads Tennyson to him, and expounds her views throughout several chapters upon Christianity as bearing upon Socialism – views which we regret to say that the noble lady, by adopting that peculiar exaltation of speech which was said to characterise the oracles of Johanna Southcote and Luckie Buchan, has rendered unintelligible to us, though they appear to have had a different effect upon her audience.

The end of the story is, that Alton is sent out to Mexico by the desire and at the expense of the Countess, in order that he may become "a tropical poet," not only rhetorically, but physically; and he is accompanied by Crossthwaite and his wife. We are led to infer that failing health, upon both sides, was an insuperable obstacle to his union with the Countess. He pens this autobiography during the voyage, and dies within sight of land, after having composed his death-song, than which, we trust, for the credit of tradition, that the last notes of the swans of Cayster were infinitely more melodious.

Such is an epitome of the story of Alton Locke; a book which exhibits, in many passages, decided marks of genius, but which, as a whole, is so preposterously absurd, as rather to excite ridicule than to move sympathy. What sympathy we do feel is not with Alton Locke, the hero, if we dare to desecrate that term by applying it to such an abortion: it arises out of the episodes which are carefully constructed from ascertained and unquestionable facts, and in which the proprieties of nature and circumstance are not exaggerated or forsaken, whilst the pictorial power of the author is shown to the greatest advantage. Of this character are the scenes in the needlewoman's garret – in the sweating-house, from which the old farmer rescues his son – in the den inhabited by Downes – and the description of Mackaye's deathbed. These are, however, rather the eddies of the story than the stream: the moment we have to accompany Alton Locke as a principal actor, we are involved in such a mass of absurdities, that common-sense revolts, and credulity itself indignantly refuses to entertain them.

We are sorry for this, on account of the cause which is advocated. If fiction is to be used as an indirect means for directing the attention of the public to questions of vital interest, surely great care should be employed to exclude all elements which may and must excite doubts as to the genuineness of the facts which form the foundation of the story. A weak or ridiculous argument is, according to the doctrine of Aristotle, often prejudicial to the best cause; and we cannot help thinking that this book affords a notable instance of the truth of that observation. But we have more to do than simply to review a novel. Here is a question urgently presenting itself for the consideration of all thinking men – a question which concerns the welfare of hundreds of thousands – a question which has been evaded by statesmen so long as they dared to do so with impunity, but which now can be no longer evaded – that question being, whether any possible means can be found for ameliorating and improving the condition of the working classes of Great Britain, by rescuing them from the effects of that cruel competition which makes each man the enemy of his fellow; which is annually driving from our shores crowds of our best and most industrious artisans; which consigns women from absolute indigence to infamy; dries up the most sacred springs of affection in the heart; crams the jail and the poor-house; and is eating like a fatal canker into the very heart of society. The symptoms at least are clear and apparent before our eyes. Do not reams of Parliamentary Reports, and a plethora of parole testimony, if that were needed to corroborate the experience of every one, establish the facts of emigration, prostitution, improvidence, crime, and pauperism, existing and going forward in an unprecedented degree – and that in the face, as we are told, of stimulated production, increasing exports, also increasing imports, revivals of trade, sanitary regulations, and improved and extended education? Why, if the latter things be true, or rather if they are all that is sufficient to insure the wellbeing of the working classes, we should be necessarily forced to arrive at the sickening and humiliating conclusion, that the English people are the most obstinately brutalised race existing on the face of the earth, and that every effort for their relief only leads to a commensurate degradation! That belief is not ours. Though we think that a monstrous deal of arrogant and stupid jargon has of late been written about the indomitable perseverance and hereditary virtues of the Anglo-Saxon race – principally by contemptible drivellers, who, so far from possessing the pluck, energy, or sinews of the genuine Anglo-Saxon, are cast in the meanest mould of humanity, and endowed with an intellect as poor and feckless as their limbs – we still look upon the British people as the foremost on the roll of nations, and the least willing to degrade themselves voluntarily, to transgress the boundaries of the law, to avail themselves of a humiliating charity, or to subside shamefully into crime. And, if this view be the correct one, how is it that misery not only exists, but is spreading – how is it that the symptoms every day become more apparent and appalling? When Ministers speak of the general prosperity of her Majesty's subjects, as they usually do at the opening of every session of Parliament, it is perfectly obvious that they must proceed upon some utterly false data as to the masses; and that the prosperity to which they allude must be that only of an isolated class, or at best of a few classes, whilst the condition of the main body is overlooked and uncared for. The fact is, that her Majesty's present advisers, one and all of them, as also some of their predecessors, have suffered themselves to be utterly deluded by a false and pernicious system of political economy, framed expressly with the view of favouring capitalists and those engaged in foreign trade, at the expense of all others in the country. Their standard of the national prosperity is the amount of the exports to foreign parts; of the home trade, which is of infinitely greater importance, they take no heed whatever. Thus, while the vessels on the Clyde and the Mersey are crowded with industrious emigrants, forced to leave Britain because they can no longer earn within its compass "a fair day's wage for a fair day's labour" – whilst benevolent people in London are raising subscriptions for the purpose of sending out our needle-women to Australia – whilst the shopkeeper complains of want of custom, and the artisan of diminished employment and dwindling remuneration – we are suddenly desired to take heart, and be of good cheer, because several additional millions of yards of calico have been exported to foreign countries! And this, according to our philosophical economists, is reasoning from cause to effect! Cotton manufactures are, no doubt, excellent things in their way. They give employment or furnish subsistence to about half a million of persons, out of a population of twenty-seven millions – (that is, in the proportion of one to fifty-four) – but the exportation of these manufactures does not benefit the artisan, neither is its augmentation any proof or presumption that even this single trade is in a flourishing condition. Increased exports may arise, and often do arise, from a decline in home consumption – a most ominous cause, which even cotton manufacturers admit to have been last year in operation. But this is not a question to be narrowed, nor shall we narrow it, by dilating upon one particular point. We shall reserve it in its integrity, to be considered fully, fairly, and deliberately in a future article, with such assistance as we can derive from the exertions and researches of those who have already occupied themselves in bringing this subject prominently before the notice of the public. It may happen that some of those writers to whom we allude have greatly overshot their mark, and have arrived at hasty conclusions, both as to the cause of the evil and as to its remedy. The Communist notions which peep through the present publication, are not likely to forward the progress of a great cause. But those ideas evidently have their origin in a deep conviction either that Government has been wanting in its duty of protecting the interests of the masses, or that it has erred by adopting an active line of policy, to which the whole evil may be traced. Both propositions will bear all argument. It would be easy to point out many instances in which Government has refrained, to the public prejudice, from using its directive power; and instances, still more numerous, in which legislative measures have been proposed and carried, directly hostile to the best interests of the nation. And therefore, although some remedies which have been proposed may appear absurd, fantastic, or even worse, we are not entitled, on that account, to drop the investigation. Failing the suggestion of possible cures, people will grasp at the impossible; but the tendency to do so by no means negatives the existence of the disease. There is at present, we believe, but little or no active agitation for the Charter. So much the better. If the experience of 1848 has taught the working-men that this demand of theirs is as visionary as though they had petitioned for a Utopia, they will be more prepared to listen to those who have their welfare thoroughly at heart, and who have no dearer or higher wish than to see Englishmen dwelling in unity, peace, and comfort in their native land; all these disastrous bickerings, feuds, and jealousies extinguished, and order and allegiance permanently secured, as the result of an altered system of domestic policy, which shall have for its basis the recognition and equitable adjustment of the claims of British industry. The task may be a difficult one, but it is by no means impossible. Every day some fallacy, hatched and industriously propagated by selfish and designing men, is exposed or tacitly withdrawn; every day the baneful effects of cotton legislation become more apparent. If the representations of the Free-Traders were true, the condition of the working-classes would now have been most enviable. Is it so? The capitalist, and the political economist, and the quack, and the Whig official may answer that it is; but when we ask the question of the masses of the people, how different is the tenor of the reply!

Next month we propose to resume the consideration of this most important topic.

FOOTNOTES:

THE RENEWAL OF THE INCOME-TAX

Although a considerable period must yet elapse ere the expiration of the Parliamentary holidays, it will be well for the public to be prepared for the discussion of certain questions which must perforce engage the early attention of the Legislature. We know not, and have no means of knowing, what may be the nature of the coming Ministerial programme. Were we to argue entirely from the results of past experience, we might well be excused for anticipating the absence of any kind of programme; seeing that the Whig policy of late years has been to remain as stationary as possible, and to take the initiative in nothing, unless it be some scheme devised for the evident purpose of bolstering up their party influence. Whether the old line of conduct is to be pursued, or whether Lord John Russell, desirous to give a fillip to his decreasing popularity, may propound some organic changes – for there are rumours to that effect abroad – is at present matter of speculation. One subject he must grapple with; and that is the taxation of the country, taken in connection with the Property and Income Tax, which, unless renewed by special Act of Parliament, expires in the course of the ensuing year.

That an attempt will be made to continue this tax, no reasonable person can doubt. Ever since it was imposed, Ministers have acted as though it was permanent and not temporary. They have done this in spite of the solemn pledge given to the country by its originator, that it should not be made a regular burden – in spite of the frequent and unanswerable remonstrances advanced by many who felt themselves aggrieved by its unjust and unequal operation. The limited nature of its duration was made the first excuse for avoiding its revision – the necessities of Government the next excuse for continuing it in all its imperfection; and yet these necessities, so far from being casual, were purposely created by the remission of other taxes, in order to afford the Premier of the day an apology for breaking his word – in plain English for violating his honour. We defy any man, however skilled he may be in casuistry, to alter the complexion of these facts, which are anything but creditable to the candour of the statesmen concerned, or to the character of our political morality.

We are, therefore, fully prepared for a demand on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the reimposition of the Property and Income Tax. He will attempt to justify that demand by the usual allegation that it is absolutely necessary in order to meet the exigencies of the State; and that it yields very near five and a half millions of revenue, not one penny of which he can spare if he is to defray the expenses of the public service and the interest of the National Debt. This might be an excellent argument if employed to meet the proposal of any financial Quixote for abolishing a tax which the Legislature has solemnly declared to be permanent. But it is no argument at all for the continuance of this tax after its stated legal period has expired, any more than for the imposition of some tax entirely new. The real state of the case will be just this, that our recent commercial policy and its attendant experiments have landed us in a deficit of some five and a half millions, which, on the whole, in the opinion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, may be most conveniently supplied by a New Act authorising the direct taxation of Property and Income, on the same terms as before, for a certain period of years. That is all that can be said for the reimposition; and, cæteris paribus, the same argument would be as effective and as well grounded, if the honourable gentleman using it should propose to raise the sum required by clapping on an additional land tax, or by doubling or trebling the assessed taxes.

What the exigencies of the State now require is the raising five and a half millions more than the ordinary produce of the revenue, and NOT the resumption of the Property and Income Tax. These are two separate and distinct things; but, as a matter of course, we must expect to see them confounded, as if the fact of a peculiar tax having once been raised, gives a sort of servitude to the provider for the Exchequer over the property from which it is levied, notwithstanding the express limitations of the statute, continuing the impost for a certain time, but no longer. This has been, and no doubt will be the Whig logic; and it is very material for those who think with us that it is full time that this odious, unjust, and inquisitorial tax should cease, to remember that they stand now on precisely the same footing which they occupied when the impost was originally proposed. Sir Robert Peel, then in the zenith of his power, and with a large and undivided party at his back, dared not propose it as a permanent source of revenue. He asked it, in 1842, as a special and exceptional boon – almost as a mark of personal confidence in himself; and as such it was given. He did not attempt to aver that the measure was perfect in its details; on the contrary, he admitted that it was partial; but he excused that partiality on account of the shortness of its duration; and the public, believing in the sincerity of his statement, was willing to accept the excuse. He used the money thus partially raised for the reduction of other taxes, in the hope of effecting "such an improvement in the manufacturing interests as will react on every other interest in the country;" and when, in 1845, he proposed its continuance for another limited period, he expressly said, "I should not have proposed the continuance of the Income-Tax unless I had the strongest persuasion, partly founded on the experience of the last three years, that it will be competent to the House of Commons, by continuing the Income-Tax, to make such arrangements with regard to general taxation as shall be the foundation of great commercial prosperity." And again, "If we receive the sanction of the House for the continuance of the Income-Tax, we shall feel it to be our duty to make a great experiment with respect to taxation." So, then, by the confession of Sir Robert Peel, its author, the Income-Tax, a great portion of which is levied from the agricultural section of the community, was laid on for the purpose of enabling him to stimulate manufactures; and that being done, it is to be made permanent, – the landed interest, in the meantime, having been almost prostrated by the subsequent repeal of the Corn Laws!

Such is the history of this tax; and we apprehend that, even without, reference to the iniquity and inequality of its details, it is so manifestly unjust in point of principle, that no statesman can, consistently with his honour and duty, propose it again for the adoption of the Legislature. Have manufactures benefited by the remission of duties thus purchased for them by the extraordinary sacrifice of so many years? If so, let them contribute to the national revenue according to the amount of that benefit. If not, why, then, the vaunted experiment has totally failed – the money been uselessly squandered; and the sooner that the taxes which have been taken off are reimposed, the better. But to subject the agricultural portion of the community and all professional men to a perpetual extraordinary tax for the purpose of advantaging the manufacturers, is a proposition so monstrous, that, notwithstanding the tenor of recent legislation, we can hardly bring ourselves to believe that it will be seriously entertained.

But we must not be too confident as to that. The Whigs are not famous for financial ability; and even if their talent in that line were much greater than it is, they would find it difficult, without seriously compromising that course of policy to which they are committed, and mortally offending some of their slippery supporters, to devise means for raising a revenue at all adequate to the deficiency. Last year an annual sum of nearly £600,000, the average amount of the brick-duty, was remitted, nominally for the benefit of the peasantry, actually for that of the manufacturers: the window-duty may be considered almost as doomed, and there are clamours for other reductions. So that we need not be surprised if, about the time of the opening of the Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be driven nearly to his wits' end, and the Whigs determined, at all hazards, for the fourth time to lay on the Income-Tax. Now, in counselling opposition of the most determined nature to any such attempt, we are actuated by no factious spirit. We are quite aware that money must be raised for the efficiency of the public service and the maintenance of the public credit. We see the difficulty as clearly as Sir Charles Wood can state it; but the existence of a difficulty by no means implies that most of us are to submit to gross injustice, and many to be subjected to positive plunder. In short, we hold that the period has now arrived when, for the public safety, the general good, and the satisfaction of all classes, the whole of the taxation of Great Britain should be revised, and adjusted on distinct and intelligible principles, so that each man may be made to bear his own burden – not, as at present, either to carry double weight, or to shift his load to the already cumbered shoulders of his neighbour. Surely this is no extravagant demand, no unreasonable expectation. Heaven knows, we have now been experimenting long enough to enable our rulers, if they are at all fit for their duty, to have arrived at some positive results. Why should any "experiments" have been tried, if they were not to lead to such an end? We say deliberately, that no better opportunity than the present can occur for forcing on that revision of the taxation which almost every one believes to be necessary. The excise reformers – those who demand the repeal of the taxes on paper and on soap – those who wish the window duty abolished – those who advocate a further reduction of customs duties, and those who, like Mr Disraeli, desire an equitable adjustment of the burdens upon land – have all here a common ground to rest upon, – namely, the injustice or the inexpediency of our present fiscal regulations. We occupy the same ground in protesting against the continuance of the Income-Tax. Surely, with such general testimony from men of all parties against the continuance of the present heterogeneous and unsatisfactory arrangements, it is time that our statesmen should really bestir themselves, and announce to us upon what principles for the future our taxation is really to proceed. We cannot go on for ever robbing Peter to pay Paul. We cannot always submit to a perpetual shifting of burdens, as if the people of this country were so many dromedaries, to have their hourly capabilities of relief determined by the caprice of their drivers. Yet such, in effect, is the present state of matters; and such it will continue, unless we are resolved to avail ourselves of an opportunity like the present, and force our governors, as is the clear right of the governed, to explain and justify the principles upon which their method of taxation is framed. Unless this be done, we are indeed a degraded people; because, when every class believes that it suffers injustice, to submit tamely to that, with constitutional remedies in our hands, would argue a pusillanimity utterly unworthy of a free and enlightened nation.

We have long foreseen that some such crisis as the present must arrive. It was, indeed, inevitable, from the time when the two rival Premiers began to bid against each other for popular support, and to make the British nation a chess-board for the purpose of exhibiting their individual dexterity. The cleverer man of the two lost the game by over-finessing. But before that occurred, enormous mischief had been done. All was disorder; and the conqueror at this moment does not see his way to a proper readjustment of the pieces. But order we must have, and arrangement, and that speedily too, if the functions of the State are to go on tranquilly and unimpeded. Men are tired of being used as actual impassive puppets. They want to have a reason for the moves to which they have lately been subjected; and a reason they will have, sooner or later, let Ministers palter as they may.

Very little consideration will show that such a revision, upon fixed principles, is absolutely necessary, if justice is to be regarded as any element of taxation. The ordinary revenue of the United Kingdom, on the average of the last ten years, is rather more than fifty-five millions, whereof twenty-nine millions constitute the annual charge of the public debt. Those fifty-five millions, it is evident, fall to be paid out of the annual produce of the country, as well as the local burdens, which amount to a great deal more, there being, in fact, no other means of payment; for, without produce at home, foreign commodities cannot be purchased, and the consumer of such commodities is the party who pays not only the prime cost of the article, but all the taxes which may be levied upon it; and this he must do, if not directly, at least indirectly, out of produce. Hence, the burden of taxation remaining the same in money, and not fluctuating according to the value of produce, it is evident that it never can be for the general interests of the country that produce should be unduly depreciated; that is, that it should be sold at prime cost to the consumer, perfectly free of that portion of taxation which it ought on principle to bear. It is really amazing that so self-evident a proposition should have escaped the notice of our legislators; nor can we otherwise account for the fiscal blunders which have been committed, than by supposing that men in power had become so used to shuffle and deal with taxation, that they entirely lost sight of its clear and fundamental principles. Let but the reader bear this in mind, that all taxation is ultimately levied from production, from which also all incomes are derived,[51 - The exceptions to this rule are so few, that they need hardly be stated. Incomes from investments in foreign funds are perhaps the principal exception, but the amount of these is not large, and cannot affect the general principle above laid down, which lies, or ought to lie, at the foundation of every system of Political Economy.] and he will be able clearly to follow our reasoning to the points at which we wish to arrive – first, the absurdity, anomaly, and injustice of the present system; and, secondly, the necessity for a complete and speedy remodelment.

The direct burdens or taxes upon agricultural produce, by far the most important, permanent, and extensive branch of production in this country, are levied principally through the land. These are estimated as follows: —

It is foreign to our purpose at present to compare this amount with that of the direct and local burdens paid from manufactures, though it may be useful to recollect that the latter amounts only to £4,432,997, being less than a third of the sum derived from the other. What we wish the reader to observe is, that the sum of fourteen and a quarter millions is a primary fixed burden upon the land, and must, in the first instance, be levied from the land's productions.

But the cost of production is further increased by the effects of indirect taxation. More than one half of the fifty-five millions which constitute the public revenue – twenty-eight and a half millions, arise from taxes imposed on the following articles of consumption – spirits, malt, tobacco, tea, sugar, and soap. All these are consumed principally by the labouring classes, and must be paid for out of produce in the shape of wages. Consequently, in addition to the prime cost of produce and the profit of the grower, the consumer does or ought to pay that portion both of direct and indirect taxation which is leviable according to justice, and distinctly levied by the State on the article which he purchases. To make this matter more plain, let it be understood that every quarter of wheat grown in Great Britain, before it can be brought to market, is charged with a portion of the direct taxes which we have enumerated above, and also of the indirect taxes which come through the labourer; and that these are positive burdens levied by the State for the public service and the payment of the national obligations. Now, mark the anomaly. The cry is raised for cheap bread, and it appears that cheap bread can be obtained by importing grain free of duty from abroad. A law is passed allowing that importation, and an immense quantity of corn is immediately thrown into the British markets. But on the production of that corn on a foreign soil, no such charges are leviable as exist here. Direct burdens on the lands do not, in many countries, exist; and in no country save our own are indirect taxes levied to the same amount upon articles indispensable for the labourer's consumption. The excise duty on soap alone – in 1848, close upon a million – is said to cost each labouring man in this country a week's wages in the year. What is the consequence? The foreign grain is brought into this country, and exposed at a price which immediately drags down the value of British grain. If the supply were limited, the power of the foreign grower to exact an enormous profit might in some measure tend to counteract the evil; but the supply being unlimited – not confined to one locality, but extended to two continents – there arises a competition between foreign markets for the supply, which drags down prices still more. The farmer, when he complains of the ruin which has overtaken him, and the writer who advocates the cause of Native Industry, when he points out the disastrous consequences which must arise from the pursuance of such a course of policy, are met – not by argument, but by flippant and contemptible sneers. We are asked "whether we object to have our food cheap?" – "whether plenty is a positive evil?" – and so forth: questions which only expose the shallowness and the imbecility of the inquirers. We have no objections to cheap bread – quite the reverse – provided you can have that consistently with putting the British grower upon an exact level or equality with the foreigner. Take off the direct taxes on land, and the indirect taxes which bear upon the labourer; persuade the manufacturers, now so uncommonly prosperous, to defray the interest of the national debt; clear away customs and excise duties on malt, tea, tobacco, sugar, and soap: and then – but not till then – will we join with you in your gratulation, and throw up our caps in honour of your veiled goddess of Free Trade.

Two things cannot be doubted – the existence of such burdens here, and their non-existence abroad. Well, then, let us see if Britain possesses any peculiar counterbalancing advantages. Our climate, it will be conceded, is later and more uncertain. This remark applies even to the south of England, which is but a section of the corn-growing districts. In Scotland we notoriously struggle under vast climatic disadvantages. Capital may be more easily commanded than elsewhere; but then, people seem to forget that in order to have the use of capital it is necessary to pay interest, and the payment of that adds materially to the cost of rearing produce. We are said to have more skill – and we believe it in part; but if we farm better, we farm also more expensively; and those who are now our competitors have had the full benefit of our experience without the corresponding risk and loss. As for freights, these are as low from ports in the Baltic as they are from many of our corn-growing districts to the nearest available market. If there are any other points for consideration, we shall be glad to hear them; but we know of no other: and the upshot of the whole is, that our landowners and farmers are now expected to compete on equal terms with the foreigner in the home market – the equality consisting in the produce of the former being taxed directly and indirectly to an amount certainly exceeding two-thirds of the whole national revenue, whilst that of the latter is admitted tax free, on payment of the merest trifle!

"All these," says the Free-trader calmly, "are exploded fallacies!" Are they so, most excellent Wiseacre? Then tell us, if you please, where, when, and by whom they were exploded? Admirable Solon as you esteem yourself – and we admit that you are qualified for the Bass – it would puzzle you, with the aid of all the collective wisdom you can gather from the speeches or writings of Cobden, Bright, Wilson, Peel, or your daily organs of information, to refute one single proposition which has been here advanced, or to negative a single conclusion. Do you deny that the burdens we have specified exist in Britain? You cannot. Do you deny that the wheat-growing countries from which we now receive our principal supplies are exempt from similar charges and taxation? You cannot. Do you deny the truth of the economical proposition, that all burdens and taxes imposed by the State upon any kind of produce are proper elements of the cost of production, and ought to be paid by the consumer? You do not. Well, then, will you venture to aver that, at present prices, wheat being at 42s. 2d. per quarter, according to the average of England, or at any period which you may choose to specify within the last eighteen months, the purchaser of British wheat has repaid the grower of it the whole cost of its production, comprehending the full amount of its direct and indirect taxation? If you venture to say Yes, then you are at issue, in point of fact, with your own vaunted authorities, Sir Robert Peel, Wilson of the Economist, and every writer of the best ability on your side, none of whom have supposed that wheat can be grown in this country with a profit at a lower rate than 52s. 2d. per quarter, whilst others assume the minimum rate to be 56s. If you answer No, the whole question is conceded.

The fact is, that our opponents, if they had the least regard for common decency, ought to be chary of talking about exploded fallacies. We should like to know on which side the burden of the fallacy lies? Have we not, even within the last six months, seen long and elaborate articles in the leading Free-Trade journals, assuring us that wheat was rising, and must rise to a profitable point? Was not this argued over and over again in the columns of the Economist, with such an array of statistical authorities as might have overcome the conviction of the most desponding farmer? Where are the assurances now, and the arguments to prove that a free importation of foreign corn would simply have the effect of steadying, and not of permanently depressing prices? And yet these men, as miserably detected and exposed as Guy Fawkes when dragged from the cellar, have the consummate assurance to talk about "exploded fallacies!"

But we must not suffer ourselves to be led away from the point which we were discussing. What we wish to enforce is the fact, that at present there are no fixed principles whatever to regulate the taxation of the kingdom; and we have brought forward the case of the agriculturists, not being able to find one more important or strictly apposite as a remarkable illustration of this. Taxation remains the same, notwithstanding the operation of a law which has produced a violent and permanent change in the value of agricultural produce. Now, if produce is accepted as the real thing to be taxed – and you can truly tax nothing else, since all taxes must be paid from produce – can this be just and equitable? Certainly not, if your former mode of taxation was likewise just and equitable. The agriculturist who was secured by law against unlimited foreign competition, might calculate on selling his hundred quarters of wheat for £280, on an average of years, and could therefore pay his taxes. You change the law, bring down the value of his wheat to £200, and yet charge him the same as before. How can his possibly be otherwise than a losing trade? Then mark what follows. We have said that no kind of produce whatever can be remunerative unless the consumer of it repays the grower the full cost of production, along with the grower's profit, and the whole of the direct and incidental taxation to which it is liable. In the case of corn this cannot be, because you now admit to the British market grain which is exempt from all taxes, and grown at far less cost than here, and the competition so engendered drags down the price of British corn far below the remunerative point, consequently the consumer does not pay the charges and costs of production, (taxes inclusive,) and the farmer goes to the wall. Such is the plain and inevitable course of things; and those who sneer at the tales of agricultural distress will do well to examine the matter dispassionately for themselves, and see if it can be otherwise. Very possibly it may never have occurred to them – for it does not seem to have occurred to our statesmen – that the indirect taxation of the country is at least as great an element in the cost of produce as that which is direct. Nevertheless it is so. The beer which the labourer drinks, the tobacco which he smokes, the tea and sugar used by his wife and family, the soap which washes their clothes, and many other articles, all pay toll to Government, and all contribute to the cost of the grain. And if the grain when brought to market will not pay its cost, there is an end not only of British agriculture, but of the best part of the revenue which at the present time is levied from the customs and excise!

Sift the matter as closely as you will – the more closely the better – and you can arrive at no other conclusion than this, that in the long run all taxation must necessarily be levied from produce. If so, what is the inference? Clearly this, that you cannot permanently levy taxation except upon a scale commensurate to the value of produce.

If the value of production is lowered, the power of taxation must decrease in the same ratio. Cheap bread then ceases to advantage the consumer; for that amount of taxation which was formerly levied from the production of corn in this country, must necessarily, since taxes have a fixed money value, be raised from something else – that is, from some other product – if any can be found adequate to sustain the burden. Towards this consummation we must gradually tend by the operation of an inevitable law, unless the eyes of our statesmen, and also of the constituencies of Britain, are opened to the extreme folly of the course which we are just now pursuing. In pure theory no one can object to Free Trade. It is a simple rule of nature, and a fundamental one of commerce, the free exchange of superfluities among nations. But taxation alters the whole question. We are not now, as before the Revolution of 1688, free from debt as a nation, and at little annual cost for the maintenance of our establishments. By an arrangement, in which the present generation certainly had no share, we have taken upon us the debts not only of our fathers, but of our ancestors of the third and fourth generation, and have become bound to pay the annual interest of the expenses of wars, the very name of which is not familiar in our mouths. The annual amount of taxation necessary for that purpose has heightened the price and value of all commodities in Britain, and consequently, by rendering living more expensive, has increased the cost of our establishments. How, then, is it possible, under such circumstances, to have free trade? You may have it, doubtless, in one article, or in many – that is, you may have free importations, but that is not free trade; nor can it exist until you have abolished the last farthing of customs duties at the ports. Well, then, let us suppose this done; let us assume that every article of foreign produce is admitted duty-free: the question still remains, how are you to raise the fifty-five millions for the public revenue, and a still further enormous sum for local taxation, including the maintenance of the established churches, the poor and county rates, and all the other necessary charges? It obviously cannot be done from capital, without gradually, but surely, making capital disappear altogether. It must be done from income; and income, as we have seen, is entirely dependent upon the value of produce. Agricultural production, estimated at the former prices, was calculated to amount to £250,000,000 annually. That can no longer be calculated upon. £91,000,000, according to Mr Villiers, was the amount of the depreciation in a single year; and as the net rental of Great Britain and Ireland is under £59,000,000, it is plain that, supposing all rents were abolished, the tenantry must expect to draw £32,000,000 less than formerly, a depreciation which evidently would leave no room for taxation whatever. We must, however, upon the supposition above stated, that all customs duties are abolished, (and we shall include also the excise,) deduct from this latter sum the amount of the labourer's consumption of articles formerly taxed. In order to avoid cavil, we shall estimate the number of the agricultural labourers, with their families, at 10,000,000; and as the customs and excise duties together amount to about £30,000,000, we take off £11,500,000 as the labourer's proportion. This is greatly above the mark; but it will serve for illustration. It reduces the tenant's loss, after extinction of the rents, to £20,500,000 annually.

Next, let us see what manufactures would or could do for maintaining our public establishments, and discharging our engagements to the national creditor. It will, we think, be shortly conceded, if it is not so already, that agricultural distress cannot possibly stimulate the consumption of manufactures in the home market. That market, indeed, depends entirely upon agriculture, because we have no other very important branch of produce which can furnish it with customers. Without agriculture the home trade must utterly decay; and as for the foreign trade, it is enough to observe, that in the very best year we have yet known (1845) we exported goods from this country to the value of just £60,000,000, being only £5,000,000 more than the amount of our yearly revenue, independent altogether of the large local taxation.

This is a simple sketch of Free Trade, worked out from ascertained and unquestionable statistics. The reader may like it or not, according to his preconceived political or economical impressions, but "to this complexion it must inevitably come at last." What we are doing, and have been doing for the last five or six years, is to reduce the value of all kinds of British produce as much as possible, and that by admitting foreign produce, which is in fact foreign labour, duty-free; and still we expect to maintain our revenue – all derivable from British produce – at the same money value as before! Such is the besotted state of political opinion, that a Ministry holding these views, and daily plunging the country deeper into ruin, can command a majority in the House of Commons; and whenever an intelligent and clear-sighted foreigner, like the American Minister, ventures to express an opinion, however carefully and cautiously worded, in favour of agricultural protection, the whole pack of the Ministerial press assails him open-mouthed, yelling and yelping as though he had committed some atrocious and inexpiable crime.

We have thus shown, we hope clearly enough, the dependence of revenue upon produce; a very important point, but one which is apt to be lost sight of in consequence of our complicated arrangements. People used to talk magniloquently, and in high-sounding terms, about taxed corn, and we have had ditties innumerable to the same effect, more or less barbarous, from Ebenezer Elliott and his compeers; but neither orator nor poetaster ever condescended to remark that the sole reason why duties were levied on the importation of foreign grain, was the existence of other duties to an enormous extent, directly and indirectly levied by Government from the British grower. Relieve the latter of these burdens, and he does not fear the competition of the world. But so long as you tax him who is, on the one hand, your largest producer, and, on the other, the best customer for your manufactures, you cannot, in reason, wonder if he demands that an equivalent for his taxation shall be imposed upon foreign produce; so that the economical law, and not less the law of common sense, which provides that the consumer shall pay all charges, may not be defeated – in other words, that his trade may not be annihilated altogether. We have seen articles, intended to be pungent and satirical, about the farmers "whining for protection." The writers who use such language evidently intend to insinuate that the British agriculturist is a poor weak creature, unable to cope with foreign tillers of the soil – more ignorant than the Dane, more idle than the German, less active than the Polish serf, and not near so handy as the American squatter. If they do not mean this, they mean nothing. It is not worth while replying directly to such paltry and contemptible libels, but we may as well remind these gentlemen with whom the "whining" commenced. It began with the manufacturers, who have been whining for heaven knows how many years, that bread was too dear, and that they were forced to pay high wages in consequence. The papermakers are "whining" at this moment for a reduction of excise, and the nasal notes of a good many newspaper editors and conductors of cheap and trashy periodicals are adding power and pathos to the whine. No spaniel at the outside of a street-door ever whined more piteously than Mr Cardwell is doing at this hour about reduction of the tea duties. He is absolutely not safe over a cup of ordinary hyson. There are whines about hops, whines about sugar, whines about window taxes, whines about cotton, and all Ireland is and has been in a state of perpetual whine. In short, if by "whining" is meant a complaint against taxation, we apprehend it would be difficult to find a single individual who, in the present anomalous and jumbled state of finance, could not advance sufficient reasons for uttering a cry. The only way to remedy this is to reconstruct the whole system. Let this be done on principles clear and intelligible to all men, and we are perfectly convinced that for the future there would be few symptoms of complaint. It is not the amount of taxation which causes such general dissatisfaction; it is the unequal distribution of it, rendered still more glaring by the pernicious habit indulged in by Ministers of arbitrarily remitting taxes for the benefit of some exclusive class, and laying, on others – such as the Income-Tax – not on the plea of absolute State necessity, but confessedly "to make experiments." Of course, after such all announcement, everybody thinks that he, in his own person, may profit by the experimentalising. Without asking, nothing is to be had, especially from the Exchequer; and accordingly there is hardly any duty whatever which is not made the subject of petition, and against many there is a regular organised agitation. This is a most unhappy state of things, for it is inconsistent with the security of property. Values may be raised or depressed in a day at the single will of a Minister. Those who gain become clamorous for a further concession; those who lose become disgusted with what seems to them a gross partiality. In short, we devoutly trust that the days of experiment are over; and the Whigs may be informed, once for all, by the general voice of the nation, that it is now absolutely necessary for them to undertake the task of setting the financial house in order. The best method of accomplishing this desirable end, is by sternly refusing to permit the Income-Tax to be reimposed for the fourth time upon any plea or pretext, whatever.

But we must further say a few words, bearing directly upon this tax. Odious as it may be to the community, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that there is much danger of its being reimposed; because Ministers possess a certain majority in the present House of Commons, and are not likely to leave any means untried for effecting their object. It is to them, indeed, of paramount importance; because, if they can succeed in saddling us with this tax for a further period of three years, they may easily excuse themselves for declining to undertake the revision of our financial system. We therefore deem it our duty to look a little more narrowly into the details of the former acts than, would otherwise have been our wish or inclination.

Our readers will certainly recollect that in 1848, when the Income-Tax was reimposed for the third time, the Whigs made a strenuous effort both to extend its existence and to augment its burdens. What they modestly proposed was this, that the Income-Tax should be extended over a period of five instead of three years, and that during two of these years the assessment should be raised from sevenpence to a shilling per pound. The result – which it argues the uttermost degree of imbecility in Ministers not to have foreseen – was a roar of disapprobation from one end of the country to the other; and the scheme thus foolishly broached was as pusillanimously withdrawn. Indeed, had it not been for the peculiar circumstances of the time, which rendered it exceedingly unadvisable that the stability of any Government, however weak and incompetent, should be endangered, it is very questionable whether Ministers could have succeeded in persuading the House of Commons to submit to this tax even upon modified terms. But the contents of the budget were hardly disclosed, before the roar of revolution was heard in the streets of Paris, and the Throne of the Barricades was overthrown by the self-same hands which had reared it. That evidently was not a time for the lovers of order to persist in an opposition which, if successful, might have resulted in confusion at home; so that a new lease of the Income-Tax was granted upon the same terms as before. On occasion of the first obnoxious proposition, we expressed our opinions freely with regard to the whole constitution of the tax, pointing out both its injustice and its impolicy, in an article to which our readers may refer for the more general argument.[52 - Vide the Magazine for March 1848. No. CCCLXXXIX. Article, "The Budget."] But there are one or two points with which we must separately deal.

The Act presently in force provides that farmers shall be assessed, not upon profits, but upon rental, to the extent of threepence-halfpenny per pound, on farms for which they pay £300 per annum and upwards. The gross amount of the sum so raised was in 1848 £309,890. Now, it is perfectly well known to every person that not one farmer out of ten has made a single penny of profit since the withdrawal of the duties on foreign corn in the commencement of last year. In the great majority of cases rent is at this moment paid out of capital, as the landlords will find to their cost when the leases expire, if many of them are not already perfectly cognisant of the fact. If this be the case, it becomes plain that this mode of assessment cannot be continued. To do so, would be for the State to use its power to commit an actual robbery. So long as any profit exists, the State has a right to tax it; unjustly it may be, and partially, but still the title is there. But the State has no right whatever to deprive any man of his property under false pretences. If a tax must be levied on income, so be it; but income is not a thing to be presumed under any circumstances, still less when the State, by its own deed, has made a violent change on the relation and values of property. To force the farmers, of new, to pay this tax under the old conditions, would be an act of intolerable tyranny and oppression, for which the constitution of Great Britain gives no warrant; and we hardly think that any Ministry will be insane enough to adopt such a course.

There is, however, another feature in the Income-Tax upon which far too little attention has been bestowed. In this country Repudiation has always been looked upon with just horror. Something Pharisaical there may be, no doubt, in this grand adulation of credit; for an unprejudiced bystander might be puzzled to comprehend the precise reasoning of those who are convulsed at the thought of a lessened dividend from the Funds, whilst they can look quietly on at the ravages which are made in property of another description. Still, the feeling exists, and assuredly we have no wish that it should be otherwise. But we are bound to say that, if other ideas are to be encouraged on the subject of unimpaired credit, this Income-Tax seems to us most eminently calculated to pave the way for their introduction.[53 - See on this subject a remarkable pamphlet, entitled "Past and Present Delusions on Political Economy," by Alexander Gibbon, Esq. The author has the merit of having pointed out at least one direct infringement of an Act of Parliament, to which we have referred in the text; and we must also bear our testimony to the soundness and precision of many of the views which he has stated on the intricate subject of taxation.] Such was our opinion in 1848, and such is our opinion now. Once establish the principle of taxing the Funds, and there is no length to which it may not be carried. It will not do to say that the Funds are taxed in proportion with other property. That is not the case. This is an exceptional Act, creating and enforcing distinctions, and it excepts all incomes under a certain amount. It therefore virtually establishes the principle that it is lawful to tax the possessors of one kind of property (the Funds) for the benefit of the possessors of another kind of property who are excepted. In 1848 it was proposed that the assessment should be raised to one shilling in the pound. What would the fundholders say if some future unscrupulous Minister were to raise the assessment to five shillings or ten shillings per pound, and exempt every one from the operation of the act except the holder of national bonds? There can be no difficulty about a principle for doing so: it has been already admitted. Nay, more: the provisions of the Income-Tax are in direct violation of the most solemn engagements entered into by Acts of Parliament. As an instance of this, take the following: —

The act 10 Geo. IV. cap 31, which has for its object the funding of £3,000,000 of Exchequer Bills, contains the following clause: "And be it enacted, That such subscribers duly depositing or paying in the whole sum so subscribed at or before the respective times in this act limited in that behalf, and their respective executors, administrators, successors, and assigns, shall have, receive, and enjoy, and be entitled by virtue of this act to have, receive, and enjoy the said annuities by this act granted in respect of the sum so subscribed, and shall have good and sure interests and estates therein according to the several provisions in this act contained; and the said annuities shall be free from all Taxes, Charges, and Impositions whatsoever." It needs no lawyer to interpret the clause. By solemn Act of Parliament the dividends were guaranteed free from all taxes whatsoever.

So thought Sir Robert Peel in 1831. When in that year a proposal was made to levy a small tax from the transfer of stock in the public Funds, he denounced the measure in the strongest terms, as a violation of the contracts made with the public creditor, and as a proceeding which must necessarily "tarnish the fair fame of the country." "He (Sir Robert Peel) dreaded that an inference would be drawn from the proposed violation of law and good faith, that a further violation was not improper. If in these times of productive industry and steady progressive improvement – if, in such times, in a period of general peace, when there was no pressure on the energies and industry of the country —the Government contemplated the violation of an Act of Parliament, and express contract entered into with the public creditor, what security could the public creditor have if the times of 1797 or 1798 returned?" Contrast this language with the propositions of the same eminent statesman in 1842, when he introduced the Income-Tax for the first time. "I propose that, for a time to be limited, the income of this country should bear a charge not exceeding sevenpence in the pound… I propose, for I see no ground for exemption, that all funded property, held by natives in this country or foreigners, should be subject to the same charge as unfunded property."

No ground for exemption! Mark that, gentlemen who are interested in the Funds. On no mean authority was it then announced that an Act of Parliament, however solemn and stringent in its terms, is no fence at all against the inroads of a Chancellor of the Exchequer. True, people may have lent their money on the strength of that positive assurance; true, it may have been made the basis of the most important family arrangements: but all that matters nothing. Money is wanted to make "experiments," for the purpose of stimulating manufactures; and what is the maintenance of public faith and honour, compared with an object so important? So, in order to stimulate manufactures, the principle of repudiation was recognised.