The Sun.
London, England, 1834-07-11 00:00:00

ILLUSTRATIONS OF TAXATION.

The Jerseymen Parting. A Tale. By Harriet Martineau,

C. Fox, London, 1834.

Miss Martineau's Tales are the only ones, illustrative of
a system, which we ever could read without occasionally
losing sight of the moral in the stirring interest of the
story, or forgetting the story in a long disquisition about
some abstract ethical theory. Perhaps she wants the power
of awakening sympathy in any very painful degree, but
whatever share of our better feelings, she enlists on the
side of her heros and heroines in the opening of her tales,
is never allowed either to slumber, or so to engross our at-
tention, as to make us wholly forget that they are in her
hands as plastic instruments of popular instruction as the
beans with which Pestellozzi would amuse children into a
knowledge of arithmetic. Let no one suppose that excel-
lence of this -kind is mechanical ; it is excellence of a high
order, and the want of it is painfully felt in the perusal
of some of the most elegant productions of modern times.
Who that has read " Tremaine"—a book, in every page
of which we trace the accomplished scholar and the well-
bred man of the world—will deny that he has not found
fault with the long discussions between Tremaine and
Evelyn ?
Whether the readers of Miss Martineau's " Illustrations
of Taxation" agree with, or dissent from, her theory of the
benefit of direct taxes, they will not fail to be struck with
the forcible manner in which she places her views before
them. Nothing can be finer than the conception of a
Jersey farmer, enraptured with a description of the happi-
ness of the people of England who have no direct taxes to
pay, coming with his family to take possession of a pottery
in Lambeth, to be ruined by Excise tines—imprisoned for
breaches of laws of which he was ignorant, and driven
home all but a pauper and a vagabond. Such a story
cannot be read by the legislator or the moralist without
giving rise to very serious reflections on the real causes of
crime among the people.
The following scene before the Commissioners of Excise
is far from being an effort of the imagination :

" What had Dennis Crook done that he was called upon to pay
4/. 15s. 4id ? Dennis Crook was a paper-stainer, and had neg-
lected to pay the duty of 21. is. Bid., and he was therefore called
on for the double duty, in order that the single might be recovered,
with costs. Poor Dennis declared that he had told the collector
that he would pay the duty, and the costs with it, the first day that
some money which was due to him should come in. It was very
cruel of the collector to bring him here, knowing that he had no
wish to evade the duty, and that the bringing him here was enough
to ruin his business. It had got abroad already, and he had lost
two customers by it. God forbid that he should be so inconsiderate
to the person who had brought him to this by not paying him to
the day ! Dennis could not pay the penalty till this person yielded
him his due,—not a bit the more for being brought here; but that
person should not be exposed by him as he was exposed in this
court, to the destruction of his business. If he should never pay
another shilling of duty to the King, the Court might ascribe it to
his difficulties being laid open in this way,— difficulties which might
have been got over easily enough if the Court had not stepped in
between him and his customers.—The Court did not see what it
had to do with all this. The single duty, with a small increase for
costs, was squeezed out of poor Dennis, who went away, pulling
his hat over his eyes, and saying that this would be the signal for
his landlord to turn him out of the little shop in which he bad car-
ried on his business for many years ; and God only knew where he
was to establish himself next.

" What could have brought hither that respectable elderly
woman, who looked as if she could never in her life have broken
a law or a rule ? She came to save her son from a prison, if it
might be within her small means to do so. On his coming of age,
she had given up to him the small tenement she possessed. She
had better have kept it till her death. He had been seduced into a
" speculation," and had set up a private still. The still and all the
spirits on the premises were seized, and the mother was now here
ts? e's 'ivact'iseiZiNe:ll?-fhle(M:s ti*itct,i& stkialjt. of littlett ,a is
onrne
likely that she should have to maintain John than that he would
ever repay this 1001., for his character was gone. She cast down
her eyes while she held out the money, with a trembling hand, and
did not speak to John as they went away, though he looked as if he
longed above everything for a word from her. Mrs. Brennan
found that much explanation was necessary before Anna could be-
lieve that all this ruin was caused by the act of distilling spirits
without the leave of the government.
" A widow, in shabby mourning, with a babe in her arms, was
quietly crying in a corner. She had sold her furniture by auction,
and had neglected to get a license. She had better have kept her
furniture; for the penalty swallowed up nearly all the proceeds of
the sale. Anna thought this the most cruel levy of a tax she had
ever heard of ; for this poor woman would not have sold her furni-
ture if she had not been in want. To be compelled to pay for per-
mission to do what was in itself a hardship, was a stranger piece of
oppression than Anna had witnessed vet,—much as she had seen.
She followed the widow, to make sure of the facts, and found that
the poor woman had been on the point of setting up a little shop,
and sharing a cheap lodging with a brother : but now that her
money was almost all gone, she could see nothing before her but
selling fruit in the streets ; but, in that case, she must look about
for some one who would take care of her baby, while the other two
little ones must tramp the streets with her. If she had but sold
her furniture in any other way ! But her brother advised an auc-
tion, and had taken upon himself to be auctioneer; and how could
she suspect what would happen ?
" The wonder was how those to whom the public money came
at last could enjoy it if they knew of its being wrung in ways like
these from the ignorant, the simple, and the distressed. The old
and obvious question recurred,—why not ask the nation for the
money that is wanted, instead of filching it? Why not settle
openly how it is to be paid, and take it directly, as rent is taken, or
as contributions for any other objects are collected? Surely no
objections to this simple method of taxation could long stand when
our great nation of buyers and sellers had once found the comfort
of natural and regular prices, of wages not arbitrarily and uselessly
raised,—the luxury of being rid of the oppression of Custom-
houses and Excise courts, and of the plague of a spreading host of
revenue spies. Little could be said of the dignity of the circum-
stances out of which the State funds arise by any one who had seen
others of the eases which Anna witnessed, and shish really amused
her, and beguiled her of her apprehensions for a time. It seemed
ridiculous that the King should, by his officers, be seriously com-
plaining of being injured by one man selling pepper without
a license and another removing wine without a permit,
and a third having more brandy in his cellar than he de-
clared he had, and a fourths having rum under a certain
strength among his stock, and a fifth forgetting to keep an
entry book, and a sixth tying up his pasteboard in a wrong
way, and a seventh having neglected one night to put down how
much black tea he had sold in small quantities. It did not seem
very dignified in any government to concern itself and worry its
subjects about such matters as these."

SERMONS AND FRAGMENTS ATTRIBUTED
TO ISAAC BARROW, D.D.,

Now first collected from the MSS. in the University of Cam-
bridge, by the Rev. J. P. Lee, M. A. Fellowes, London, 1834.
Sermons are the legitimate swords of the Christian
church ; argument, the only gospel-approved buckler of
the religion of the New Testament. Before the coming
of Christ, preaching formed no part of the priestly func-
tions either among the Jews or Gentiles. To offer sacri-
fice, to burn incense. to perform ablutions, to attend the
mysteries, and to propitiate the gods by prayers and pe-
nances, included the whole duty of the priests. Among
the Jews it was usual to read some portion of the law in
the synagogues on the Sabbath Day ; but the chil-
dren of any tribe, as well as those of Levi, were
eligible to this office ; indeed, it appears from the
fact of Christ reading and expounding the law
in the synagogues, at the age of thirty, without
seeming to attract any particular notice, that any person
might read aloud in these assemblies of the people who
considered himself competent ; though few besides the
Rabbins are presumed to have so aspired. Christ was the
first founder of religion who commanded his followers to
promulgate by preaching the sacred revelations made to
them. In almost every age this great instrument of salva-
tion was wielded in a different form. The immediate fol-
lowers of the Apostles, as Pollycarp and Dionysius,
confined themselves wholly to explanations of the
traditionary sayings of Christ, and the mysteries
of his nativity and resurrection ; the ecclesiastics of the
second century to the instruction of the catechumen ; and
those of the third to writing apologies for the Christians.
The Manichean, Nestorian, and Socinian heresies followed,
employing every tongue in the Christian world till peace
was restored, only to have it broken by the rivalry of
fanatics professing the same faith. Of these Anthony,
founder of the Egyptian Monks, and Augustin, of Hippo,
of the Hermits, were the most conspicuous. Augustin had
been a Manichean, of most licentious life before he became
a Bishop, and as he was a profound scholar, very fanciful,
and fond of mysterious allusions, his sermons did immense
injury to the world by creating a false taste, and a love of
reciting wonders in the pulpit. As the church became:more
and more corrupt, preaching was relingnished altogether,