The Express.
London, England, 1851-04-08 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, APRIL 8.

THE Americans manage best the different uses of
direct and indirect taxation. The money which tley
want for purposes decidedly federal, and ;
to the union, such as the expense of the central
executive, of the navy, of the federal tribunals, and so
on, these are furnished by the customs. Fortunately
these expenses are light in time of peace, and fortu-
nately also peace is the normal state of the Union.
Were it otherwise, the demands for expenditure
would infallibly create the necessity of duties which,
though laid on for revenue, would'haye all the effect
of duties for protection.
Whilst they thus depend upon indirect taxation for
great state purpises, the Americans raise a more consi-
derable proportion of the public revenue by local ma-
chinery for local purposes. And the secret by which
this is done effectually and equably is, that in
fact the citizens tax one another. Each person
is worth, or supposed to be worth, so
much capital, so many hundred, or so many
thousand dollars. A man's fortune is estimated not
so much by what he may earn, as by what he is
actually worth. And fellow citizens and fellow'
colleagues in the same towns and states can form a
pretty accurate guess at the relative fortunes of each
other: no one can shirk, for, in fact, it would be

cheating one another.
We have attempted, in the organisation of a
income-tax, a very futile and feeble Imitation of this
plan of mutual taxation. A tradesman is appointed
to be the assessor of a district. But one man
cannot have the same interest or the same know-
ledge. Neither has he the same interest, the
same vigilance, the same point of honour. He who
makes a lower return of his income than the truth,
does but cheat that imaginary being, the government.
He does not fed that he is wronging his neighbour,
nor does his neighbour know and scan his conduct
with a vigilant eye. And in this manner a great
part of the floating capital of the country escapes the
income tax altogether, without any justice, the
income of personal exertion escaping too, we had
almost said, with justice. Direct taxation, there-
fore, in a considerable amount, must be self-
imposed, or mutually imposed. Even then it
will be dictatorial, inquisitorial; and if publicity be
really injurious to trade, to monied dealings and
monied classes, direct taxation, in the form of either
property or income tax, cannot be safely applied to
them.
But direct taxation is one of the principles most
necessary to a commercial and monied state. Can
another principle be found? Some have proposed
the system of licenses to trade, with a graduated
stale of dittiTent categories of tradiwg capital. This
is the case in Russia, where merchants are
divided into classes ; this is the case in France,
as fur as sonic branches of commerce are concerned,
in which those ciagagcsi pay patents.
What seems certain, however, is that to apply
the same system of a tax to supposed income, to
land, to visible capital, to realised property, and also
to the turning of commercial capital and the result of
pisdissional or personal exertion, is a monstrosity
and an absurdity. It bespeaks the very infancy of
the fiscal science. The CUANCELLOR of the *Es-
eimaimi is a schoolboy to propose it ; his
only excuse being, that he is no more a school-boy
than any one else in the world. All we begin to
know upon the subject is our own ignorance.
It is to be regretted that in such a state of finan-
cial ignorance, the minister should feel bound to de-
mand the renewal of the Inane-tar, no it utowle, for
a term so long as that of three years;
especially as this three years' term, when
passed, will be a reason and an excuse for
no one's troubling their head about the subject for a
year or two. And at the close of the two, the country
and parliament will be just as unprepared us ever.
To be sure, next session will be the last of the pre-
sent parliament, and the ensuing session will be the
first of a new parliament, both, for this reason, unfit
for serious and intricate business ; so that the third
session from this would really present the best period,
should nothing extraordinary intervene, for the con-
sideration of the question. Still we must own it is
with feelings of disappointmeut and of anger, almost
bordering on contempt, for the Treasury and all its
solemn functionaries, that we submit to this appa-
rently inevitable adjournment.
As to the debate of last night, we never heard
anything so empty. Mr. HEIRIES did certainly make
a hit theother night by disinterring front "llansurd”
a passage of Sir CHARLES WOOD'S former spets:hes.
lie spoiled it, however, by the dull reiteration of the
same arynnwalant ad handneni last night. What
matters it what our statesmen thought in 1842, since
which epoch the financial and political world has
been turning on its axis? Sir CumftEs Woob's
speech was less pretentious than on opening the
budget, but it was more politic and more just. He
wisely abandoned the insumations that the income
tax was immortal. Ile merely said it was better than
a deficit, or any approach to a deficit, that might
serve as an excuse for re-imposing a duty on corn.
If dissatisfied with Sir CHARLES Woou's philoso-
phy of finance, we must confess ourselves to have
Little preference for that of Mr. FREDERICK rm.
and Mr. Paisser, who dwelt on the necessity of
taxing expenditure, not income. The main fault of
our present system is the tendency to throw every
burden on the middle class, by exonerating the
richlower class altogether, and the classes compara-
tively. But the expenditure of the middle class is
in a fur greater proportion to their income
than the expenditure, at least all that is
visible of it, made by the wealthier class.
A house tax is a tax on expenditure, not on income;
and it may be tolerated, because, after all, it forms
no great proportion of taxation. But were all the
revenue to be raised by such a rule, it would sweep
the entire earnings of the professional and middle
class out of the country. What are we to say to al
theory of taxation that spares the miser and the ma-,
litagaire, and falls heaviest on the industrious man,
• in proportion to the largeness of his family? Yet
this is the plan that Mr. FREDERICK PEEL, under
the authority of Mr. Mitt, expatiates on.
We shall have, however, a triennial period of
leisure for the consideration of this question. For
the income tax was virtually decided last night by a
majority of 46-278 having voted for the motion,
and 230 against it.

Tim moral of the late Aylesbury election inquiry
—as also, it is to be feared, it will be of the St. Al-
bans investigation—is, that honest politicians and
conscientious gentlemen ought not to bring them-
selves into contact with corruption, venality, and
impurity. As you cannot touch pitch without being
defiled—as you cannot kick an insolent chimney-
sweep without being dirtied—as you cannot go to
Rome without doing as others do at Itome—so hi-
therto you could not contest Aylesbury without
scandal, reproach, and unpleasantness. And until
lour public men refuse to pay such prices fur a seat
in parliament. Aylesbury and St. Albans will, if per-
mitted to return members, pursue the even tenor of
their corrupt ways.
It was, theectore, rash and
cautious in Mr. CALVERT—in a lawyer so experi-
enced from his parliamentary practice in the wants
and wishes and practices of such vile places—to
i stand for Aylesbury. No one who knows Mr. CAL-
VERT, will doubt his assertion that he went resolved
not to yield to its unlawful solicitations—not to
spend one shilling in the purchase of votes. Still by
going he placed himself within influences he could
not control ; at the mercy of agents who took for
granted that his sincere instructions not to treat, or
bribe, or to pursue the ordinary practices of Ayles-
bury 4:tedious, were merely verbal devices to cover

and in-