The Sun.
London, England, 1842-03-29 00:00:00

WIGAN.

The Committee, who were engaged till half-past five
VI deliberating upon this vote, adjourned till eleven
o'clock to-morrow (this day).
Mr. Standish and Mr. Crosse were again equal on the

SPIRIT:, 9f the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—Many of our readers have no recollec-
tion of a worthy who was in great repute, some thirty
years ago, when the income tax was in all its glory,
and when almost every one thought himself justified
in manoeuvring a little, in order to evade that
prying, hateful, and inquisitorial impost. The
worthy to whom we allude was a leading function-
ary in those days—not in position, but in practice—
almost universally hated and feared, and sometimes
despised, but more frequently the former than the lat-
ter, as many dreaded his appearance, knowing that
they were completely at his mercy, and that upon
his whim, or caprice, or interest, depended the
.amount they were to be assessed in the taxation
schedules of that period. 4s a matter Of course,
this worthy had his likes and dislikes, and he occasion-
ally exercised them, to the annoyance of those who had
the misfortune to offend him, and to the advantage of
those who thought it worth their while to secure his fa-
vour. Thus were a whole community, in a great measure,
dependent for their peace and happiness upon this single
functionary, whom a bad, odious, repulsive, and inequi-
table law had brought into existence and armed with
such hateful powers.*This law was the, income tax. As
the income tax will be re-imposed upon the country,
unless some strenuous effort be made to scare the
Premier from his pet project, and the worthy func-
tionary to whom we have alluded will be a necessary
appendage of that impost, we shall attempt to describe
him as he existed in the plenitude of his power, and,
in the full flush of our operations, so that our readers
may be prepared for the creature which Peel's
prolific Bill is sure to bring forth ; and if they are
not disposed to be " hand and glove" with this in-
come-imp of taxation, they had better strangle it
at its birth—that is the advice we give them.
Picture to yourself, reader, a little, dapper sort of
man, with a shabby coat and a " shocking bad"
hat, walking into your house with a paper in
his hand, and requesting you to fill it up at your
leisure, at the same time telling you that he
would call in a few days for it. This man is
a mere clerk at sixty or eighty pounds a year
—worthy men if kept in their station—and em-
ployed by the surveyor of the district, who receives
his appointment from the commissioners legally con-
stituted to adjudicate in all matters relative to the in-
come tax. You shall see how soon he was converted
into an important personage, by an ingenious device
of his own, and which he so managed that almost
all were obliged to comply with it—except a few,
who paid dearly for their virtuous obstinacy, their
heroic honesty. Mind, reader, we are speaking
from practical knowledge of the facts. All that
we are now relating occurred in a county town
not one hundred miles from the metropolis, and,
we make no doubt, the same facts and the
same functionary were common to the whole island
—ex uno disce. - Some few of the inhabitants, not
understanding the nature and method of the filling
up of the papers, which the seedy, dapper little
man left with them, asked the latter, as a favour,
to .do it for them, at the same time tipping him,
as the phrase goes. As a matter of course, he did
as they requested, and it was soon observed
that those parties who had secured the services
of the sub-surveyor, had no difficulty about the
amount of their returns as stated in the income sche-
dule. They were never hauled up before the com-
missioners, nor their books examined, nor their ser-
vants questioned, nor their neighbours pumped ; it was
always taken for granted that all was right—and they
had no trouble on that head. But a far different fate
awaited those who had not the sagacity or the incli-
nation to secure the services of the income-sub. They
were invariably annoyed in one way or other.
STANDARD.—We hold that the system of large
peace retrenchments is vicious in principle, and that,
as far as it is possible to effect it, the country
ought to be taxed less in war than in peace.
We hold, too, that a tax on property is the
fairest of all taxes, and that it ought to be the
basis of every sound financial system. It was
our earliest form of taxation—the fifteenths voted
to our old Sovereigns were a property tax in
the strictest sense ; and the subsidies were even in
form an income tax-2s. 6d. in the pound upon com-
mercial and professional incomes, 4s. in the pound
upon land, a proportion sufficiently just when land-
holders constituted the great body of the rich, but
which it would now be no less just to reverse, for
the opposite reason, were it not that the some-
what longer tenure in landed than in other in-
come, renders an equal rate of taxation upon the
whole the most equitable. We have already explained
the 'process, by which,indirect taxation has been sub-
stituted and the motive for the substitution—to spare
the rich at the expense of the poor. At first, while
indirect taxes were limited to tonnage and poundage
they were as equal in their pressure as an income
tax ; and when we speak of the equality of a tax,
we mean the equality of its pressure, and not in its
specific amount. Tonnage and poundage affected
only the rich—only those whose drank wine, and
those who exported at a profit. But who will
name a sip gle indirect tax that can be called
equal in' its pressure ? A weekly contemporary, the
Britannia, seems to recommend taxes on " beer, coals,
salt, and tobacco." Are these taxes equal in their
pressure ? Will the Marquis of 'Westminster, or the
Duke of Devonshire, feel any of these taxes as much
as it will be felt by the day labourer ? The truth is,
that indirect taxation upon necessaries, or upon
the lower comforts of life, must to avoid a bare-
faced acknowledgment of oppression and injustice, as-
sume a perfect equality in the distribution of wealth
uwnehapkvniolyw
redelsinngotfuerxthiset;
daanyd
from
which
e —an
whichec equality Yv
by day. The only fiction that can justify indirect
taxation in preference to a tax upon income, i% as
gross as that upon which Gatton and Old Sarum were
pretended to give representatives for the people, and it
is in the course of nature that the one absurdity follow
the other. No Excise or other officer will have autho-
rity to enter' any man's house under an income tax
law : there can, therefore, be nothing to fear from the
insolence of such. an officer. As thus " the ob-
noxiousness exists in the falsely supposed insult, and
the domiciliary visit," we are happy to be able
to inform our respected contemporary the griev-
ance is purely imaginary. A man will be called
upon for a statement of his income, which, whether
deemed satisfactory or not, will be guarded
in strict privacy—should the statement be. such as
to satisfy the commissioners, he will pay his tax
still privately, and there is an end. Should be he
suspected of returning less than the truth, a suspicion
that can very rarely arise where the per centage is so
small, and where, except in the case of very rich
men, so little 'can be gained by fraud, he will be sub-
ject to a surcharge, always privately communicated ;
and if he resist that, he will have an opportunity of
showing his grounds of objection in a private investi-
gation before commissioners, for whose' conduct the
GOvehment must be, of course, respoßsible,
_ls there
much reason to apprehend insult in this?