The Sun.
London, England, 1847-11-17 00:00:00

INCREASED PROPERTY TAX.
(From the Times.)
Among the many questions of the crisis, there is I
one of a very old fashioned sort beginning to press for
an answer. The nation is at this time living on its
capital. It has recently added nine millions to its
debt, a process which reduces the credit of the nation
by that amount, and entails the addition of about
270,0001. to the annual expenditure. The question
is, how is this loss to be met ? Are we to leave it
alone, letting it stand over as a bequest to posterity ?
Or are we to do our very best to retrieve it in a few
years, and to transmit the estate to our children with
no more encumbrances than we found on it when it
came into our hands ? The latter of these is the more
honest and more manly course. There is not a more
genuine and honourable object of pride than the
preservation of inheritances from waste and decay.
It is not, indeed, always permitted to man. Na-
tions, as well as individuals, are occasionally
obliged to preserve their existence or their liberty
at the cost of their substance. We will assume,
what it is useless to doubt, that such was the
necessity under which this empire was placed by
the overwhelming pressure of the continental war,
when itself; its possessions, and its trade were con•
tinually menaced and circumscribed by a furious and
powerful foe. In that extraordinary case there might
be no alternative than to charge on the future for
ever the stupendous cost of the national ransom. But
there is no such necessity now. It would be weak
to allege that a paltry nine millions can never be re-
paid, and that our posterity in A.D. 2000 must still
be paying the cost of Irish relief in 1847. No; with
our resources, we ought to wipe nine millions from
the score at most in nine years. With a revenue,
however, now on the decline, with a prospect of in-
creased demands on the Imperial Exchequer, with
economy, too somewhat overdone, it is evident
we cannot liquidate the debt recently con-
tracted without fresh taxation. To that, in fact,
we must come. It is a serious question whether we
have not gone too far in the plausible and self-
indulgent plan of fiscal remission; and whether we
should not have done very much better to apply the
surplus of good years to the abatement of our intoler-
able debt. The removal of those taxes which pressed
upon industry was a sound speculation. The re-
moval of those which checked consumption might
afford some relief, and make us more comfortable for
the time, without any immediate injury to the Ex-
chequer. So far, however, from adding to the capital
of the nation, an increased consumption of less neces-
sary articles can only be looked on in the same light
as an increased private expenditure, which we know
must make a man poorer, as far as it goes. It is still
a question, therefore, whether we have made a right
use of the savings which Providence lately threw
in our way. There is a growing opinion that
nations ought to seize the earliest opportunity for
extinguishing what they can of their debt, and
ought not to leave more than a moderate term of
indebtedness to their children. In this respect our
cousins across the Atlantic are teaching us a very
useful lesson. So long as a state, however, can be
sure of its own resolution to keep down its debts by
redeeming in good years the obligations contracted in
bad ones, it is much more convenient to reduce the
whole debt, old and new, to one simple and easily
negotiable form, as is our practice. We are only in-
sisting on the principle of keeping the debt down,
even at some temporary inconvenience, by a sustained
or even augmented taxation. Of all the forms of
taxation likely to come under review, perhaps the
easiest to collect, and at the same time the most pro-
ductive, would be the addition of two or three per
cent. to the Property and Income-tax. To that tax,
however, in its present form, there are serious ob-
jections often noticed in these columns, and, as it
happens, now more than ever apparent. The history
of this lamentable year sufficiently proves the uncer-
tain tenure and fluctuating amount of incomes
derived from trades and professions. The almost
daily catastrophes announced in our City ar-
ticles, and the increasing record of lesser mis-
fortunes presented by the Gazette, render it
probable that Income-tax, perhaps to the amount
of hundreds of thousands has been paid this
last year on profits starved below zero, and
doomed soon to expire altogether. The same crisis
which renders a new tax necessary has, in a multi•
tulle of instances, almost, or even quite, annihilated
income. All trades dependent on the price of colo-
nial produce, or on the condition of the money-
market, have proved not only unprofitable, but ruin-
ous. There could not be a greater mockery than a
tax on commercial incomes at this moment, when
there can be no doubt they do not generally exist,
except in the negative form of annual deficiencies.
Nor is it much to the purpose to allege that where
there is no income there -will be no tax. The ob-
jection felt to confessing no income is almost as
great as that felt against a more specious return.
If the emergency is to be met by raising the pro-
perty and income tax to five per cent., now is the
time to remedy, if possible, the original imperfections
of the measure. Now is the time to change it into a
property- tax, in which income will not be excluded,
but only estimated as property, according to its
marketable value. 'We have often exposed the in•
justice of taxing at the same rate as an estate in land
an income which, as property, is worth only five or
six years' purchase at the very most, which may fall
off next year, and cease altogether the year after. A
property-tax, to comprehend income estimated as
property, would present some difficuities of adjust-
ment, and perhaps would never be quite clear of
anomalies, so many and so fine are the gradations
from income to property. We see, however, no
insuperable difficulty, and, even if there should be a
few smaller anomalies, they are preferable to one
monster injustice, which falls heavy on poverty, and
exacts as much from the breath of the nostrils, from
the tongue, from the pen, from ephemeral reputation
and credit, from the capricious fancies of the multi-
tude and every other sort of fickleness, as from
houses and lands, pits and mines, railways and canals,
and, more solid than all the rest, the Three per Cent.
Consols.