The Express.
London, England, 1848-10-21 00:00:00

income, this was all MO to Sir CUAELSA WOOD :
he would exact the same per centage. Although
the tax was but a nail-paring in one cue, and a pound
of flesh from off the heart in the other, Sir CHARLIIII
WOOD declared that, although he saw the difference,
he could take no account of it.
Parliament, we feel confident, will put up with no
such tome t and, whatever parliament may, the
public will not. ALd the only consequence of the ex-
restive coafessiag its inability to cape with this and
similar questions will be, that parliament most take
them op and do itself the work that government ma-
fioso Welt no longer capable of. Let there be a com-
mittee or committees to examine into the whole state
of taxation, so as to arrive at an equality of burdens,
and *distribution of them en some other principle
than that of hazard, or of pushing the weake4 to the
wall.

As to the claim of life incomes to pay less than per-
manent ones, it is almost an insult to reason to argue
such a pint. it stands to reason of itself with suffi-
cient prominence. The French committee of finance,
appointed to examine the question of an income
tax, began by laying down the principle that if
permanent property should pay, as was proposed, 4 per
cent., temporary income should pair two. As the French
proposed to treat capital engaged in trade or manufac-
ture in the same category as fixed capital, they were
stopped by the difficulty of distinguishing in incomes
that part which was the interest of capital, from
that which was the return for personal talent and
exertion. And then another weightier consideration
arose, being the great amount of direct taxation
already paid in France, amounting to seventeen
millions sterling, of which more than eleven millions
are from land tax. . .

N. Tntrna too has entered upon the question in his
work on " property." We regret to see that he has
taken neither a liberal nor what we should consider
an enlightened view. His work was undertaken as
a refutation of communism' but unfortunately it ad-
vances into such hazardous and ultra assertions, that
instead of crushing COMM211;3111 it lays open a very
weak side to an eloquent reply from the champions of
that party. M. Thralls launches at once into the dis-
puted field of direct and indirect taxation, gives the
decided preference to the latter, and declares+, with Sir
CHARLFA WOOD, that no approach to equality can be
made with direct taxation ; whilst taxes on consump-
tion are according to him the only fair mode of appor-
tioning the public burdens.
- - •

Strange to say, one of theee indirect taxes, which
M. Thmits extols as fair, is the salt monopoly; in
other words, that tax which weighs most exclusively
and iniquitously on the poor. The very nature of in•
direct taxation is, indeed, to weigh upon the poor, and
to be raised from the wages of labour. This M.
TRIERS thinks advisable and just ; and it is with assir-
tions such as these that he hopes to rebut and unpopu.
larise the theories of PROUDUON and LOUIS BLANC.
We car.aot conceive any line of argmnent so well cal-
culated to strengthen communism as the doctrines put
forth by M. Timm.
The partisans of indirect taxation, icdced, affect to
make a difference between the necessaries and the
luxuries of the poor. They would give the loaf free
and cheap. But the salt, that savours it, they tax.
Experience shows that some sort of stimulant is as
necessary to life as solid food. And the necessity of
this stimulant is felt in even a greater degree by the
poor than by the rich. Be it spirit, wine, tea, coffee,
tobacco, the poor will use some one of these. And
lower wages as we may, a portion of the pittance will
go for excitants. A tax on these is therefore a tax on
necessaries.
But, it will be said, a tax on the necessities and
on the wages of labour will finally fall on the em-
ployers of labour. No doubt, unless there be a
surplus of labocr. If there be, even of a momen-
tary nature, and if trade is stack, the tax falls
directly on the poor. But even if it fell on the em-
ployers of labour, the weight is not by that means
equally distributed over the population according to
their means. The possessors of realised property em-
ploy proportionately bat little labour. It is the
capital esgitged in active trade, in mannfac-
tures, that employs labour. And on it falls the
great weight of indirect taxation.. Even the farmer's
capital does not bear so great a proportion of it as the
manufacturer's, for the rustic population do not re-
quire and do not make such use of stimulants as the
town population. This (Won non, however, need not
be taken into account; and the farmer is as much en-
titled u the manufacturer to demand that he should
pay on his floating capital a less per centage than
fixed property. Mr. MILL, we think, does hot take
into account how much more the burden of indirect
taxation falls on capital engaged in trade and manu-
facture, than upon idle or fixed capital, when he as-
serts that an egad burden of direct taxation should
be imposed upon both.
However object;onable it may seem, it would be
fairer, perhaps, to raise a direct tax on the wages of
labour, that is, extend the income tax to the lowest
earnings, than to raise the same amount by taxing
three and five hundred per cent, those stimulants, and
their accompaniments, such as tea, coffee, and sugar,
which are found to be necessaries. It would be easier
for the labourer to get back from his employer the
sums he would then pay, than it is for him now to get
back the surplus price which he pays on his tea and
sugar; whilst those who were out of work, or on
short wages, or in momentary distress, would not be,
as now, taxed alike in adversity and in prosperity,
the government making itself felt by the poor, merely
as taking from hiss that has little, the little that he
bath.

Tux Archiehasp of DUBLIN enjoys but • very
moderate delves of popularity amongst his reverend
brethren. He is eminently practical, and hen an ob-
stinate trick of callirg things by their right names.
He does not keep his hearers or readers in a myste-
rious haze, which prevents them from seeing events in
their due proportions. He looks upon the church as
a great organisation, placed in the world with enor-
mous resources, for the purpose of effecting important
ends. His addressee, therefore, to his clergy may be
generally resolved into two parts. He reminds them
of their heavy responsibilities, and gives them
instructions how beet to perform their ap-
pointed mission. His discourses to them, on
this account, are not verlioicital: . We are
told that not a few of his show some dis-
content and even alarm at the • • ' of a pastoral
charge from his lordship—these addresses cause a
flutter amongst the black robes to the very extremity
of his diocese:

POl:onsie asset simmer
intsaditque roam, qoa protases cam,
Osatrennat ensue, et mire iDIOWINK• profendw.
It is much more pleasant to listen to unatuons ora-
tions on the apostolical maccession—to retrace with the
Bishop of OXFORD put centuries, and fancy one's self
an Minion oral:lmam—than to be told " there is
a black mass of poverty, filth, and crime festering
under those mud cottages in your rural parish ; your
constant labour must be to do something to heal this:
there is a hot-bed of dense ignorance and misery con-
fined in those crowded alleys of your city parish,
which will bring forth pollution, discontent, and re-
bellion, it is your task to see that the ground en-
trusted to your cars shall produce some other harvest
than this." His lordship,. however, persists in deliver-
ing such messages u this to his clergy, and accom-
panies them with practical directions how to set about
remedying those evils which he points out with such
accuracy.
In a Charge just delivered, amongst a number of
sound practical suggestions as to the conduct of the
clergy, there are some admirable remarks as to the
importance of their "promoting the diffusion, among
the people at large, of secular instruction." Some of
these remarks are corroborations of the highest value,
coming from such a quarter, of the view we have
always taken of the subject, particularly in its appli-
cation to Ireland:
In reference to the religious improvement of thee* under
our especial care, we should reeollect that we are sot, as you
well know, appointed to the office of guides, to be ("Rowed
implicitly by a credulous and unthinking multitude, to
whom we ere to dictate with absolute authority what they
are to believe and to do solely upon our word. Ws are not
is a woman aorespndius to that of a physician, who pre-
&vibes to patients ignorant of the medical art, and whose
patients, if they do but Oaks • suitabis medicine which he
prescribes may derive equal benefit from it, though, they
themselves neither know nor wish to learn any-
thing of his art. Our office, ea the eontrary, is
to give what is properly called religious itutrudion.
to enlighten and to guide the judgment of men who ought ,
to use—and whe tesU use and act on—their own judgment.
Now, for • pastor who is to dictate absolutely to men who
us required blindly to conform to his dictation, it may be
desirable that his people should be kept in ignorance, and
with their mental powers unexereised and uncultivated.
But he who is called on to iustuver, and really does set
himself to that talk, will find instruction more eerily and
more profilibly received by those whose mental faculties
have already reeeived some training—whose intellect has
undergone such Wags, r it were, as to prepare it for