The Express.
London, England, 1847-09-15 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, WEDNESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 15, 1847.

the It Mans of America are decidedly in
advises of the people. The sentiments and
=set which there impart their form and
to political events, differ (if at all) leas from
those which are operative in Europe than the forms
al government. In endeavouring to anticipate the
raters of the United States, we must look less to con-
stitutional forms and fictions than to popular cha-
rmer.
Notwithstanding the surmises of the party at pre-
med in opposition in the United States, we have little
dank that the war with Mexico approaches its close,
sad that it will terminate agreeably to the wishes of
the government which began it. No doubt appears
to be anywhere entertained of General Scorr's being
able to enter the city of Mexico. As little does it
seem to be doubted that he will be able,
when there, to patch up a Mexican go-
vernment that will make peace with the
cabinet at Washington on its own terms. These are,
the cession to the United States of all the territory
at present possessed or claimed by Mexico north of a
certain parallel of latitude. The Americans having
thus obtained a formal title to the country they wish
to acquire, will evacuate the southern province*, which
they have no object in acquiring at present; and their
ability to retain any territory that may be ceded to
them, in defiance of any Mexican government that
can be organised, is beyond dispute.
Bat then comes the question, what effect the acqui-
sition of this apple of discord is to have upon the
internal organisation of the Union itself? The views
prevalent in the slave-owning states, and those of the
partisans of the Witmer proviso, are utterly
irreconcilesble. Will this occasion a secession of
the states of the north and north-west from the slave-
owning states? The alternative of the enactment of the
WILMOT proviso, or a dissolution of the Union, is
already boldly spoken of in the New England states;
but in this we suspect there is more cr j than wooL
As was long ago remarked by Captain BASIL HALL,
there is an intense loyalty to the Union throughout
America: and the thorough-going devotees of negro
rights would not be found so numerous among the abo-
litionists when it came to break up the Union in act, as
when it is only to be spoken about in stimulating
sgesebee.
The strongly marked difference of character how-
ever—almost amounting to a distinct nationality—in
the Americans to the north and the Americans to
the south of Baltimore, seems to indicate the possibi-
lity of a separation at some more remote and not
easily definable period. But by that time other
changes in the communities inhabiting North America
may not improbably have occurred. There is much
weight in the temperate and tar-seeing remarks of
our Montreal correspondent in his letter, which we
publish to-day, regarding the ultimate consequences
of such a federal onion of our North American pro-
vinces as is at present in agitation. Should his antici-
pations ever be realised,lthe inhabitants of the Canadian
provinces have more in common with the Americans
of the northern states, than the latter with their
fellow-citizens of the slave-holding states. Here
then we have the approximate boundary of two
possible North American states indicated, not by
streams or mountains, but by the more natural and
efficient dividing lines of national character. We
might go further, and conjecturally trace the southern
boundary of the slave-owning republic. In the more
thickly-peopled Mexican states, in Ilsyti and in the
British West Indies, we find a third population with
a distinctive character as sharply defined from
that which occupies the southern states of
the American Union as it is from the New
Englanders of the Union. This third population
resembles that of the slave states in being a mix-
ture of various races, that of the non-slave-holding
states by its indomitable hatred to the institution of
personal slavery. These three populations indicate
with tolerable precision the limits of the states, or
groups of allied states, which are likely at some period
more or less remote to occupy North America and its
Wands.
The time may not be so distant as it appears;
accident may accelerate changes, which, in the coarse
of nature, would approach at a mere tedious pen.
But, near or distant, a regard to this future
ought to regulate the policy of Great Britain in all
its dealings with the great trans-Atlantic continent.
Our object is, whatever political connexions may
hereafter exist between us, to maintain friendly rela-
tions with the kindred race which is certain to be
dominant there. Oar proud mission is, to assert the
equality of all races in the eye of the law. This we
can and ought to make the pole-star of our national
policy, preserving always a due regard to the rights of
independent nations to legislate for themselves free
from foreign interference, even when their legislation
happens to proceed upon false principles.

the income tax, for ti`o of illustration; and we
are bound to suppose th&Plitr= the majority and the
minority of theThouss ponsideeed that the ble
perpetuity of the tax reskiered it • • to the
case as it then stood. On any ether hypothesis, it is,
as we have said, incredible, that the hardshis
in-
flicted upon holders of terminable incomes
have been so coolly proposed and so mildly repre-
hended. We refer to the language of the opposition,
and to the acts of the minister ; for those who have
watched dir ROBERT PEEL'S career WM have ob-
served, with indignation or amusement as it may
have happened, that he never wastes a good answer
on an ObLection which is not brought forward in
wiped. When the thrust is a feint, his guard is
always the established official flourish, which gives
the genuine opponent no opportunity of conjecturing
his mode of defence on a senous imams.
The same excuse will not apply to the unjust bear-
ing of the tax upon incomes arising from industry, or
to the readiness with which that part of the system
was sanctioned by parliament. Only two, we believe,
among the leading members of the house have denounced
this part of the system with any considerable vigour
or earnestness. One of them is at present out of par-
liament, thanks to the caprice of the electors of Bath ;
and the other (Mr. C. BILLER) must for the present,
on a question of this nature, be in a great measure
tongue-tied by his official position. It is, therefore,
of the greatest importance that the grievance should
be publicly discussed before the next opportunity
arises for redressing it. A measure which excites
general public interest is not likely long to want par-
liamentary advocates. Hitherto the objections to the
taxation of trading and professional incomes have
been, for the most part, too vaguely and generally
raised. To make them popular and effective, it is ne-
cessary to understand the exact grounds on which
they rest. . .

There is something of a Macy in vindicating the
claims of talent and industry to exemption from
taxation, because those qualities are admirable or
laadable. If the income which they produced was
as certain and perpetual as that arising from land or
from the funds, no sentimental feeling would induce
us to make a distinction between the different sources
of revenue. -The tax-gatherer would demand from
Sir WALTER SCOTT so much for the proceeds of his
bad land, and so much for the profits of his good
novels. On this hypothesis, the great author would be
as certain of a perpetuity of production and popu-
larity, as that the Tweed would continue to flow by
Abbotsford. He could mortgage er entail his
genius, or settle it in shares on his children,
and there would be no reason why he should not
pay sevenpence in the pound out of it towards'
the public revenue. Non olet—the tangible bank-
notes would not smell of their intellectual origin. A
refined distinction might, no doubt, be drawn in
favour of labour as a more meritorious soures
wealth than proprietorship; but mccessful industry
has a reward in the fact of success as well as in its
pecuniary results; nor is it easy for a financier to
enter on similar inquiries. All that the labourer,
with hands or head, can fairly require, is to be taxed
accordinr to the actual amount of his wealth. He
has just cause to complain when he finds that his
principal ie assessed at the same rate as the annual
income of the proprietor.
If a property tax was levied once for all, or if it
was levied in the shape of an income tax for a short
period, each as two or three years, the only fair
method of dealing with trading and professional in-
comes would be to exempt them altogether from the I
charge. The receipts would contribute to the revenue
of capital, according to their amount, in the same
manner as fixed capital arising from any other
source. It would be unjust to tax them further as
representing the ability of their owners to obtain in-
comes in future years, except on a scale so reduced as
probably not to be worth the trouble of calculating.
The case, howeber, becomes more complicated when
the tax is permanently imposed. A part of the is-
I come acquired by Industry is generally treated as
income, while another part more properly be-
longs to the owner as principal. A surgeon,
with a practice of 1,0001. a year is, of course,
far less rich than the landholder with a rental
of the same amount; but at the same time he is much
richer than many persons whose capital is larger than
his own. His power of acquiring an income is not
equivalent to a certain perpetuity, but it is evidently
much more than a nonentity. As far as the pecuniary
value of his ability can be ascertained, it is a fit sub-
ject for taxation, and no farther.
It is of course impossible to calculate such probabi-
lities in every separate case ; but almost any arbitrary
mode of assessment which could be devised would be
fairer than the present system, which must be unjust.
Whatever may be the value of the surgeon's practice,
it is quite certain that it can never be equal to the
same income for ever—the rate at which it is now as-
sessed. The true guide to an approximate valuation
would be an estimate of the expenditure—not of
course of the individual, but of the average of persons
of ordinary prudence in similar situations. To the
amount of realised capital the annual income accruing
from it is a sufficient index ; but of the profits arising
from industry, that part only is income which the
owner can reasonably spendas such. The less
wealthy, it is true, in all occupations, small traders and
young or comparatively unsuccessful practitioners in
every profession, are often compelled to live up to their
annual profits : but a forced expenditure of this kind
is to be compared to an encroachment on capital. If a
fundholder is compelled to sell out part of his princi-
pal, or a landowner to raise money on mortgage, he
pays no tax on the additional receipt. As a general
rale, the man who works for his livelihood is to be
considered unsuccessful, if his receipts are only suffi-
cient for his ordinary expenses. The necessity of
saving, if possible, makes him always an incumbrancer
on his own income, and the amount of the incum-
bmnce ought, as in other cases, to be deducted from
the taxable value of his means.
The proportion of earnings which can be consider, d
as income varies of course with the regularity and
certainty of the occupation from which they arils.
A partner in an old-established bank er London
brewery may calculate on a livelihood for himself,
and probably for his children. A popular writer, to
recur to our former illustration, is probably at
the other extreme of the scale. In one
year he may earn thousands, in the next
his talents may be exhausted, or his style
out of fashion. A successful physician or lawyer
occupies an intermediate position. In the most favour-
able case of a profession, the real income caa seldom
exceed half the nominal amount. In trades, where
the goodwill and connexion are comparatively inde-
pendent of personal qualities, the proportion may be
somewhat higher. If an average was applied as this
principle to all those who are charged with blOOlllO-
- on profits and earnings, a third of the actual re-
ceipts would be quite a sufficient basis for the calcu-
lation of income for taxation. That is to say, if a
fundholder pays sevenpenoe in the pound on his
income, the professional man ought not to pay more
than a third of tke same rate. The trader ought of
course to be charged in addition on the annual value
of his capital.
We have passed over many questions intentionally,
and many more perhaps unconeciously, which would
wise when the re-adjustment of the income-tax was
to be practically carried out. Many opportunities
will offer of recurring to the subject. lor the pre-
sent it is enough to call attention to the most obvious
abuses connected with it, and to the principle which
must be kept in view in rectifying them. The dis-
cussion of the matter must be conducted more se-
riously than has hitherto been the case, if any
practical result is expected to follow it.

WE yesterday called attention to the expediency of
a re-adjustment of our direct taxation. Our main
object, in the article referred to, was to point out the
vexatious and impolitic character of the assessed
taxes. In addition to this topic, however, we threw
out a suggestion as to an arrangement by which the
whole of our direct taxation, the property and in-
come tax as well BB the assessed taxes, might be
massed under one collection. In returning to the
consideration of this branch of the national revenue,
our object is to enter more in detail into the
question of the income tax, with a view to
show, that whether it be or be not deemed ex-
pedient to transform it into a tax upon the
rents and profits of realised
.property alone, some
extensive modification of it is imperatively called for.
We wish to prove that if the income tax is to be per-
manent it requires re-adjustment; and we shall
incidentally show that if it is assumed to be a tem-
porary impost, the injustice of the present principle
of assessment is more flagrant in proportion as the
duration of the tax is shorter.
We assume, however, that this tax, in some shape
or other, is destined to be permanent. The suc-
cess of the experiments which have been made
in reducing indirect taxation, and the growing
influence of the classes who are most interested in
fixing the burdens of the state upon property, will
powerfully second the natural inclination of all
governments to avail themselves of so simple and
abundant a resource. Before the House of Commons
is again called upon to grant the income to for a new
term of years, it is desirable that the principle on
which it is assessed should be fully considered. It is
practically too late to discuss a tax after the
budget is prepared. The CHANCELLOR of the
EXCHEQUER must insist on the amount o

revenue which ho has calculated to be necessary
and with more or less criticism and discussion, par-
liament always grants what is asked for. :The stereo-
answer to all objections against unjust taxes—
that the revenue cannot dispense with their proceeds—
is felt to be conclusive when it is too late to provide
an equivalent for any deduction, however reason-
able or expedient. There are few matters in which
public opinion is so likely to influence the determina-
tions of a cabinet as in questions of taxation, if the
public will take the trouble to form an opinion in
time. Comparative popularity, or diminution of un-
popularity, must always form a weighty considera-
tion in deciding upon the mode of raising a revenue.
Almost all administrations will be ready to assume
that the silenhe of a country as to an existing tax
amounts to a consent to its continuance ; and they
will not allow the implied consent to be retracted at
the last moment, when parliament is called upon to
grant the revenue demanded.
If, when the budget of 1842 was brought forward,
it had been seriously expected that the tax should be
continued only for three years, it is difficult to sup-
pose that the monstrous iniquity of treating termi-
nable incomes as equivalent to perpetuities could have
been so feebly and faintly represented by the opposi-
tion as to enable the minister to pass it over with •
few of the conventional phrases which are ordinarily
used to conceal from the world the issue of a sham
fight in parliament. If the state required an extra-
ordinary contribution from all owners of property, it
was impossible to defend the system of levying
from an annuity worth two years' pur-
chase the same sum which was charged
on a rental of equal amount worth thirty
years' purchase, and therefore of ten times the value.
If, on the other hand, the income tax was intended to
furnish a perpetual revenue, the injustice was at an
end. The annuity for two years would bear the pro-
portionally larger deduction for two years : the rental
would be subject to the smaller per centage for ever.
The relative value of fixed incomes for longer or
shorter periods, or for ever, could in no way be
altered by a perpetual annual deduction from all in-
comes. The purchase-money of an annuity would be
reduced in value in exactly the same proportion as
the annuity granted. This consideration was more
than once suggested in the course of the debates on

AMONG the labours of the metropolitan sanitary
commission, the next in importance to the reform of
the sewerage will be the banishment of all grave-
yards and burial places, by whatever name and de-
signation known, from the purely urban districts of
London.
The story of the Spaflelds receptacle of decomposi-
tion still taints the public memory with its ghoul-like
revelations; the bones with gobbets of undecomposed
flesh on them, shot like rubbish near the Regent's
Canal, are not forgotten ; the falling in of the side
walls, composed of almost unmixed putrid remains of
mortality, in St. Bride's churchyard, haunts the re-
collection like a night-mare; while %be revolting in-
cidents in the vaults of Elim eligpel stalk past
ns, leaving the impression that the spectral train will
lengthen till the " crack of doom."
The Elim chapel details published in our yester-
day's paper, as the most recent, suggest some of the
readiest illustrations of the consequences of intra-
mural burial. It appears that in tue vaults of that
chapel there have been "at one time, heaped
together in one corner, at least three waggon-loads of

the ends. foes, and bottoms of coffins." " Ile grave-
digger chopped up the coffins in the open paeldge4
and gave the wood to the neighbours to burn 1,1.
The wood was "saturated with human material
sad the people who burnt it stated " that the smell
greatly injured their health." Mr. FOWLER stated
"that on Sundays he had seen as many as nine
persons removed from the chapel in fainting fits,
induced by the pestilential exhalations from the
vaults."
Now, let the reader bethink him how many chapels
and churches there are in the metropolis with burial
vaults beneath them. Let him recall to his memory
the many churchyards which lie immured among
surrounding houses, giving evidence by the rankness
of their unwholesome vegetation to the rich fer-
tilising powers of the rottenness which is fester-
ing below. Let him take, in fancy, his stand
in Farringdon-street, where the graveyard of St.
Paul's nods in neighbourly loathsomeness across Fleet-
ditch to the receptacles of St. Bride's and St.
Andrew's, Holborn, each within its boundary-
wall threateningly impending over the head of
the passenger, and distilling its corruption into the
neighbouring wells. Psssingwestward,he comes to the
graveyards of St. Dunstan's and St. Clement-le-Dane.
Ascending northward, he passes between the Spa-fields
graveyard on the right, and the graveyards of the two
St. Georges and St. Andrew's—trio juncta in uno
almost—on the left, reaching ultimately the grave-
yard of St. Pancras and the adjoining catacombs. If
he continue his charnel pilgrimage through the rest
of the metropolis, he will in every vicinity find these
pestilential depositaries as thickly, if not more thickly,
strewed through it.
This review is calculated to impress the mind
strongly with a sense of the exquisite silliness of a
remark made by Mr. CHARLES PIARsoe, at the in-
spection of Elim Chapel vaults :—" The scene they
had witnessed proved that burials should only be per-
mitted in consecrated ground." Why, some of the
very worst instances we have of the revolting and
unhealthy character of intramural burial are in " con-
secrated grounds." Does Mr. PEARSON imagine that
consecration is a disinfecting agent?
Consecrated, or unconsecrated, the health of the
inhabitants requires that no burial-grounds or vaults
shall any longer be tolerated in the metropolis. The
preservation of the salutary sentiment of respect for
the remains of the dead requires that they shall no
longer be endured. The limited accommodation of
our metropolitan burial places, and the constant
influx of dead bodies, renders periodical removals of
the earlier occupants of the graves indispensable as
long as these cemeteries continue in general use. If
the practice of burying is to continue in these old I
depositories, the dead cannot be " allowed to rest."
Entombment is a mockery —an affectation of
respect for the remains which a year hence will
be allowed to be carted away to some undis-
tinguished pit, if not more indecently got rid of. The
scenes witnessed in the metropolitan burial grounds
are calculated to demoralise and harden the more ig-
norant classes of spectators. Morally, as welt as phy-
eically , they are among the worst nuisances of the
metropolis.
The remedy is obvious. Cemeteries under the im-
pulse of private speculation have already been formed
in many parts of the environs of London. Cannot
each parish, or union of neighbouring parishes, pro-
cure a piece of ground fairly out of the town, to be a
substitute for their present grave-yards? The burial
places within the fully built up part of the metropolis
ought to be regarded as closed for ever, but, in reve-
rence to those who have been laid there, to be held
for ever sacred from common uses. After the" great fire"
a considerable number of the London churches wore
not rebuilt. Their little churchyards are now rarely,
if ever, used as places of sepulture, but, with their
green turf and few trees, they form breathing places
in the most crowded central regions of the city ; and
the associations that cluster round them are, to those
who know the story of each, among the best moral
lessons of London's daily life. As the old Romans
enclosed and regarded as sacred any spot where the
thunderbolt had fallen, so would we treat and regard
every spot where human beings have been laid to
take their long rest. We would not drive streets and
thoroughfares through them, even to obviate consi-
derable inconvenience : we would not hear of their
being sold to erect upon them places of deposit
for the precious metals of a bank. The me-
tropolis in its growth has crept round and
hemmed in successive ranges of extra-mural burial-
grounds. These, if preserved among our crowded
streets, undeseerated by the rode mercenary trade in
temporary graves now carried on in them, would be
among the most touching monuments of the past
history of the mighty city we inhabit
'We learn from our advertising columns that
• meeting on the subject of the grave-yards of
the metropolis is to be held this evening at
the Crown and Anchor. The subject cannot 11
escape the investigation of the commission on the
sanitary state of the metropolis, or be omitted
from any legislative measure bared upon their
report. Our fellow-citizens who take an interest
in this important local reform have now such
an opportunity as was never before afforded them
of striking one comprehensive final blow at the
nuisance of intra-mural burial. Meetings to promote
the abolition of the practice have from time to time
been held in various parts of the metropolis. The
meeting of this evening might appoint a committee to
put itself in communication with the local advocates
of the cessation of city burials in all the districts of
the metropolis. There might thus be, in a very short
time, a comprehensive organisation brought into
existence, to urge upon the sanitary commissioners a
root and branch measure to remedy such evils as we
have detailed above, and to support any satisfactory
measure of the kind that may be introduced in par-
liament at their suggestion.
It is thus that London common sense and right
feeling is to be brought to co-operate in the great task
of rendering all London clean and healthy. Some men
—like our Ingenious correspondent Mr. MOREwOOD,
or Mr. MARTIN, whose letter received this day re-
minds us that he was among the first, if not the first,
of our sanitary reformers—have studied thoroughly
the question of sewerage. Others, like Mr. WALKER,
have studied thoroughly the subject of intra-mural
burial. Others, again, have made one or other of all
the subjects that demand the attention of the commis-
sioners his especial study. Let each of these exert
himself to awaken the interest and co-operation of his
friends and neighbours, and, through them, of the
general public, with a view to effect the reform to
which he has devoted most attention. Thus will the
commissioners find plenty to push them on, and to sup-
port them ; and they will need all the assistance of
both kinds that can be given them.

Ir all the possible benefit of county courts is to be
secured, and all their possible mischief obviated, a
sharp eye must be kept on the practice of their
officers. It is rather hard to ask an old-fashioned
lawyer to administer cheap law. In his eyes, at
least, it must look like calling on an orthodox M.D.
to prescribe Morison's pills, or a pore-practising
M.R.C.S. to apply Holloway's ointment We can-
not expect that the old hand should take kindly to
the new tool, or that the official accustomed to luxu-
riate in the rich, easy-flowing, well-wadded robe of
Westminster practice, should be otherwise than
uncomfortable in the modest, curt, close-trimmed jacket
of the county-court costume.
But, although we may understand the longing,
lingering looks which functionaries accustomed to
other ways and other times cast back to the
tutwe cannot let them forget that they
' new and present duties to perform. They
have a cheap legal machine to work, and must
work it cheaply. There must be no natural indul-
gence afforded by them to legal chicane and technical
subtlety. We must have as few as possible of such
cases as that recorded in our paper of yesterday, from
the Whitechapel County Court. Inthat case the solicitor
for the defendant, when the case came on last Thurs-
day week, stated that his client was not liable, as his
wife (with whom he was not living) was responsible
for the debt The hearing was adjoyned for proof of
this. On Monday, when thews was called, the solicitor
admitted the debt at once, and offered to pay it on the
spot Here was a delay allowed which should have
been refused. The solicitor who had such a defence
as that alleged ought to have come prepared to sup-
port it by evidence, or to take the consequences of
not being so prepared. The result showed that no
such defence could really be substantiated. The alle-
gation of it was a mere ruse to obtain an adjourn-
ment There is a new fee on every hearing. The
officers, paid by fees. have thus a direct interest in
adjourning eases. The object of tike act, however, is
not to fill the officers' pockets, but to assist the debtor
cheaply and promptly to his due. Thus the primipla