The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-09 00:00:00

CONTENTS.

Section I.—The Physiology of the Generative Organs.
Section ll.—Puberty—Manhood—The Morale of Generative
Physiology—True and False Morality.
Section lll.—Marriage in its Social and Physical Relations—
Happy and Unhappy Unions —How to secure Healthy Off-

spring. _ _
Section IV.—Touthful Abuse—The Secret Cause of Nervous

Debility, Impotence in Man, and Sterility-in Man and
Woman.
Section V.—Spermatorrhcea, or Chronic Impotence: its His-
A ge.
tory, Causes, and Moral Consequences—The Sterility of
The objeet of this treatise is to furnish the reader with in-
formation of the most useful kind, and which every man
should be acquainted with, on the physiology of the repro-
ductive organs, and on the nature and peculiarities of those
physical functions on which the satisfactory fulfilment of the
Obligations of Marriage depends. The work is not filled
with mysterious and intricate theories, but is intended to
elucidate the effects of imprudence, to remove unfounded
alarm, and, where there is real cause for apprehension, to in-
dicate the course by which complete recovery can be effected,
and the preservation of functional, physical, and nervous
health secured.
Price ls., post free for 13, or in a sealed envelope, 20
stamps, by Mann, 39, Cornhill ; or the Author, who may be
consulted daily till 2, and from 6 to 8, at his residence, 37,
Bedford-square.

DR. CURTIS' MEDICAL WORK, MANHOOD :
MEDICAL ESSAY ON SPERMATORRHCE A,
NERVOUS AND GENERATIVE DEBILITY, &c.
lust Published, the 150th thousand, with numerous plates,
in a sealed envelope, price le., Sold by all Booksellers, and
sent post paid, by the Author, for 12 stamps,
NAI ANHOOD: the CAUSE and CURE of PRE-
Y I MATURE DECLINE IN MAN, with Plain Directions
for Perfect Restoration to Health and Vigour. By Dr. J. L.
CURTIS, 15, Alberniarle-street, Piccadilly, London.
CONTENTS :
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER on the Physiological
Aructure and Functions of the Reproductive Organs.
CHAPTER ll.—Causes of Sperniatorrhcea and Impotence;
1i:only Vicious Indulgences; Dangers of Neglect.
CHAPTER lII.—A Review of the various Disqualifications
,f Marriage ; whether resulting from Youthful Abuse, the
Follies of Maturity, the Effects of Climate, or Infection.
CHHAPTERS IV. and V. on the modern Treatment of
_O orrhcea and Syphilis.
,__e
Book concludes with numerous varied and interesting
ascii, to which is added the Author's recipe of a preventive
Lotion.

REVIEWS 014"IIIE WORE..
"Curtis on Manhood.--This is a truly valuable work, and
should be in the hands of young and old."—"Sunday Times,"
lurch, 1856.
"The author has conferred a great boon by publishing this
little ork in which is described the source of those diseases
which w
produce decline in youth or more frequently premature
old age."-_,. Daily Telegraph," March 27, 1856.
" This work, which for twenty years has stood the test of
professional criticism and empiri cal hostility, treats in a plain
ands Ympathising manner on the various disqualifications
and ImPediments arising from nervous excitement and de-
bility ; and to invalids suffering from youthful errors and
excesses it will be found valuable and useful."—Record.
London : Published by J. Allen, 20, Warwick Lane, Pater-
noster-row; Mann. 19. Qornhill.
f
hours Consultation—lo to 3 and oto 8 ;.SulluaYod4" i"n*"2

The grand dispute about the policy of an Income-
tax is tame beside the minor dispute about the
inequality of its incidence. The question of direct
or indirect taxation is only a question of rich
.and
poor, and this distinction of interests is too familiar
and old-fashioned to excite much active party spirit;
but the arguments for deducting savings from
income, for giving the professional man or merchant
an advantage over the landholder or fundholder, for
relieving the annuitant at the expense of the grantee
of a rentcharge for life, touch the very points upon
which mankind, as taxpayers, are most sensitive.
It is not, after all, the division of society
into " horizontal layers," but the jarring together
of the various sections and fragments in the
same stratum, that causes most disturbance and
uneasiness, and with all their social equality we
suspect our American cousins will find this the rub
in the financial experiment which they are now
making. No one can peruse, however cursorily,
the report, or rather the four reports, on the
property and income tax, of which the most meagre
and negative was curtailed and adopted by the
committee, without marvelling how conclusively
each or every side of the question can be stated,
if only the others can be excluded from view.
Some of the problems, indeed, that used to be
solved with infinite ingenuity were found to re-
semble that said to have been submitted by
Charles 11. to the Royal Society. For instance,
it was common to ask with perfect assurance why
precarious incomes should pay as much as perma-
nent incomes, and it was not discovered for some
little time that in fact they do not, inasmuch as
the receipts from the one class are quite as pre-'
carious as, and cease together with, the income
itself, while the other contributes to the Exche-
quer for ever, if the tax should last so long.
Still, there are many which cannot be disposed
of so easily. The oftener we read over Mr. Hub-
bard's draught report, with Mr. Lowe's answer
to it, the report proposed by Mr. Sotheron Est-
court, and the argumentative passages struck out
of Sir Stafford Northcote's before it was adopted,
and the cross-examination of Mr. Mill by Mr.
Gladstone, the more we shall be tempted to despair
of a really equitable adjustment of the income tax.
If we take Mr. Hume's scheme for adjusting the
assessment in accordance with the value of pro.
perty, the tenure of the owner, and the age of
owner, we shall find that we are in effect capi-
talising the income, and taxing it on its value as
capital or property—a plan the injustice and im-
practicability of which are denounced by Mr. Mill
himself. If we prefer Mr. Mill's own principle,
and rigorously apply the rule of exempting savings
we shall have converted the tax from a tax on
income into a tax on expenditure—a source
already ransacked by indirect taxation. If, with-
out importing this motive into our theory we
divide incomes, with Mr. Hubbard, into " indus-
trial" and " spontaneous," we confound under
the former head the profits and even the interest on
trading capital with the hard earnings of labour;
and, under the latter, subject such incomes as the
dividends of shareholders to a higher rate of taxa-
tion than we apply to partners in business. Every,
move in this great game of calculation has a counter-
move corresponding to it, every objection admits of
an answer, and every answer of a further objection,
till we see that it must be a drawn battle unless
some party can succeed in getting both the first
and last word.
Taking, however, the three main features of Mr.
Hubbard's scheme, as analysed in the Report, we
need not shrink from having an opinion, not, indeed,
on their fitness to become the primary axioms of
taxation, but on their intrinsic merits. The first
of these is a proposal to make nett, instead of gross,
income the basis of assessment. The existing prac-
tice is, of course, founded on practical convenience,
and, though we are bound to reject all arguments
in its favour which might equally well be brought
against all change, however salutary, practical con-
venience has a strong prima facie case. When we
examine Mr. Hubbard's details we find that even
he is forced to have recourse to an average, that this
average must vary with each class of gross incomes,
such as " mines and mining adventure," " land-
rents," "house-rents," and "fines," and that the
very postulate by which the deduction is to stand
or fall is shifting, sometimes taking the form that
a man should not be taxed "in respect of income
which he does not get," sometimes that " capital
should not be taxed in its transfer." Without pre-
tending to have exhausted the pros and cons of
this proposal, or to have fully weighed the validity
of the sweeping exception to the second rule claimed
for the Succession Duty, we cannot wonder that
Mr. Hubbard failed to convert the committee to this
article of his creed. Again, in the suggestion for
distinguishing between that element in an annuity
which represents capital and that which represents
income, we can detect the presence of two very
questionable doctrines. It is assumed, in the first
place, that the capital invested in an annuity retain
its identity as capital, so to speak, in the annual in-
stalments, and that the same reasons which prevailed
against taxing it in its former shape continue to ope-
rate against taxing it after its conversion. Secondly,
it seems to be taken for granted, by a petitio
principii the very converse of that which under-
lies the demand for the protection of savings as
savings, that the law is specially interested in spar-
ing those who have deliberately sacrificed a fund
which would have survived them to the augmenta-
tion of present income. Moreover, why should the
taxgatherer discriminate between annuities which
are the " annual product of a permanent property"
and annuities which "consume the property itself,"
when the two, as Mr. Lowe puts it, are "equal in
amount, duration, and value, and actually conver-
tible the one into the other ?"
While, therefore, we are far from denying that
remedies might be devised for these two grievances,
we cannot blame the committee for drifting into
the conclusion that their chairman's plan " does not
afford a basis for the practicable and equitable re-
adjustment of the income tax." The case of those
whose profits are made by personal skill or intelli-
gence rests on different grounds. This class is toler-
ably clearly defined, and all its members are entitled
to nearly equal consideration. " Industrial incomes
are both precarious as to amount and also temporary
as to duration;'' so that, if both or either of these
are grounds of exemption, their claims are para-
mount. But this is not all. Labour of this kind
is the very machinery of accumulation ; its earnings
are the reward of the most valuable work that is
done for the country, and much the same reasons of
policy which led to the remission of import duties
on raw materials militate against docking heavily
the gains of professional men. It will not do to
limit the motives far the concession in question,
with Mr. Mill, to the " necessity of saving." If
this view be adopted, means must be taken to as-
certain not only that the saving might be made, but
that it has actually been made, and the best way
of doing this might be by extending the encourage-
ment already given to life insurance by the Act of
1853. But then it may well bp doubted whether
it be any part of the duty of the State " to give
bounties to saving, or to lay penalties on expendi-
ture." "A father may do more wisely if he expend
£2OO a year in giving his son a good education than
by laying by the money," yet, if saving be the condi-
tion of relief, he will thereby put himself on the same
footing with the owners of land or Consols. The
truth is that it is very difficult to find any technical
formula that will comprise all the ideas that con-
verge in the all but unanimous sentiment that this
class of incomes should be lightly taxed. It is
partly the feeliag that they are chiefly made by men
during the short working prime of life, with many
dependent on them, and amid many anxieties for
the future. It is partly, no doubt, that the sense of
property in the yearly produce of one's own hands
or brains is stronger than in that which has been
received from others, or even acquired and invested
by oneself at an earlier period. But it is probably
the precariousness of such receipts, and the fact that
so much of them goes to replace the cost of educa-
tion and the expenditure of those long years of
waiti▪
ng that pre2ede professional Access, that
weighs most with the majority of minds. Mr.
Newmarch did but sum up an anomaly which has
bt en recognised, without being redressed, by every
Mini▪
ster from Pitt to Gladstone, when he specified
two risks and two wants affecting the owners of
industrial incomes, as such, which do not affect the
owners of permanent incomes, as such. An appeal
for indulgence so favourably entertained by the
country for so long a time can never be shelved by
the mere reluctance of a committee to unsettle the
present basis of the tax. The hardship has been
admitted by Mr. Gladstone himself ; the difficulty
of remedying it, with justice to other claimants, is
confessed by all. This then is just a case in which
a Chancellor of the Exchequer should face the diffi-
culty boldly, and set himself to smooth over the
administrative and political obstacles for which Mr.
Mill could not undertake to find a specific. If we
cannot have absolute justice, we must have an ap.
There is
i slittle likelihood of the
days. We have grown
withi
the hideous mein of this
proximationtaat
xbeing
length
so
repealed
ft
a o
m i a
rin 9
monster that, from scarce enduring, we have almost
learnt to embrace it. But we fear that the accru-

escence of many people is founded on a guilty com-
plicity rather than on genuine affection, A sense
of wrong is apt to beget a lax conscience, and the
demoralising character of the income tax has long
been added to the list of complaints which are
periodically brought against it. There can be no
doubt that Schedule D takes very good care of itself,
but we believe that much of the temptation to fraud
would be removed were the law to recognise those
distinctions between industrial and permanent in-
comes, which, however difficult to reduce to a ma-
thematical formula, every man's instinct pronounces
to be real.— Times.