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a cost as the 50 , 000 , 000 ? ., which by Mr . Gladstone ' s proposition mi g ht , perhaps , be bequeathed to them . The third alternative is capable of being viewed in a manner different from that of your correspondent . Instead of the indefinite reserve of labour and skill assumed , we have in your columns reports of the steady advance of wages through the country , showing that " the reserve of labour always at command" has been trenched upon considerably . Scarcity of labour is not confined to home . We hear from America that so scarce and bad are the seamen now obtainable , that for economy ' s sake it will soon be prudent to have steam-engines to make and set the sails . Our markets are not stationary . The business of buying in England for America increases year after year . Yankees and Canadians are looked for as regularly now in the manufacturing markets as the London buyer . is not
Mexico is promising an increase of custom . India only increasing in territorial boundaries , but its native inhabitants , rapidly Europeanising in manners and ideas , are acquiring a taste , indeed a necessity for our products , which is not likely to limit our trade there at present . Beyond these few instances , and others which might be mentioned , there are the Australian colonies , whose wants for some time to come will of themselves add materially to the demands upon our productive capabilities . Labour , therefore , being not unlimited , and our markets obviously extending , with prices all over the world rising , the position of the commercial agency in this country does not appear to be so hopeless as is assumed- Nor does the mobilization of the debt to the extent of thirty millions appear so erroneous and uncalled for , nor the danger to the country and its institutions in " a fever excited to madness , " so imminent as your correspondent anticipates .
I read your article with pleasure , inasmuch as it enabled me more thoroughly to understand the subject than before , though my conclusions differ . Whether my reasonings or yours are the juster your readers will judge , and time may show . —I am , sir , yours obediently , Geobge Walxeb . London , April 18 , 1853 .
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( To the Editor of the Leader . ) Sib , —I have to thank you for a perusal of Mr . Waller ' s letter , which I return , to you with a hope that it will appear forthwith . The following remarks on it are all that time permits : — The proposition of Mr . Waller , that a reduction of interest will operate to our benefit , after it shall have compensated for an addition to the principal , is no doubt correct , if we admit also two suppositions . One of these is , that the debt now commuted is to remain without
discharge or diminution , —the other is , that tho ordinary rate of interest will not be lower than three per cent . If the first of these be not true , then there will remain no interest on which to effect a saving , and we shall have paid tho 101 . capital into which the saving of interest was converted . If the second should not bo tho fact , then we might have diminished the interest without increasing the capital . As I said before , Mr . Gladstone's plan looks to tho permanence of tho debt ; it looks not less to tho permanence of the present rates of interest .
Mr . Waller truly says , that money in tho pockets of tho people may bo mado to earn more than will pay the interest of tho same sum in the hands of the public creditor . Hut if this argument will justify Mr . Gladstone ' s plun , it will also show that any repayment or diminution of tho dobt , past , present , or future , is a mistake in policy . Hut in truth , our large taxation consequent on the debt has other vast evils beyond its inoro amount . If our faxes , instead of being' fifty-two millions , were twentyfive or twenty-six millions , as they would bo without tho charges of Mio debt , half our political difficulties , and not a few social difficulties , would bo extinguished . It is , therefore , nofc ( jriough to compare the money we earn with tho capital of the debt , with that we pay for interest ; tho question comprehends much more than that , and they were right who did what they could to diminiuh tho debt .
Thin would bo true were , tho debt duo to foreigners , and tho fnpit . nl were to bo clean taken away on repayment . But , in fact , repayment would not bo by so much an abutruction from tho total produclivo power of tho country but only a transfer of capital from tho active debtor momborH of tho community to inactive creditor members . Tho creditor members , when paid off , must bestir themselves like other pooplo to make their capital profitable , and so add their own working energies to tho former total productive power . Mr . Waller can hardly conclude that Air . Gladstone would make us richer , freer , or utrongor , by keeping ono part , of us in debt to tho othor .
My objection to tho now Exchequer Bonds is , I think , not diminished by Mr . Waller ' s argument , when tho facts are clearly understood . In tho ordinary utato of things I wnu describing , there BoeniB to mo ovidontly " a reservo of labour always at command ; " no doubt that resorve in just now much touched on . I Haid , wo aro now within tho descent to the rapids . Th » influr of gold w ono cause of tho r ' wo of prices , and the consequent demand for labour . Another oause , probably , is to bo found in tho fact , occurrin g now as on former occasions , that during- the fivo or hix yoars which havo elapsed einco tho last panic , a part of ih » moroantilo community who lsarnod caution from ihafc convulsion , hava been replaced by younger men , 1 mb
But Mr . Waller refers to several parts of the world as constituting expanding markets for our goods . Let us look at the facts , remembering that it is an increase of markets we need to find . America ia affected by much the same causes as ourselves . The appearance of American buyers in our manufacturing towns is no novelty , as my own knowledge for forty years past assures me . Mexico must both improve her government wonderfully , and learn the good policy of a low tariff , before her seven or eight millions of people , scattered over a country almost half as large as India , with its one hundred and fifty millions , can render us much service as customers . The inhabitants
disposed than they had learned to be to restrict the operation of credit . The demand for goods , and the rise of prices , are of no value to us , except they originate in an actual increase of consumption , beyond the contemporary increase in our power of production . If it came of an increase of gold equally diffused all over the world , it would only be of service to us negatively , —that is , it would be an evil if it did not occur ; but it would alter none of our relations for the better . If , as is most likely , our increase of prices is occasioned in great part by an increase of gold and credit , which , as yet , is local , then we may look for evil days ; for it will only lead us to lay out our energies on products which will not realize their high cost at points the tidewave of gold has not yet reached .
of India are " becoming Europeanised , " in comparatively small numbers , at the Presidencies , and in a few other cities ; but the vast bulk of them are altogether guiltless of consuming European commodities ; and they must remain so , while they have no means of sending their goods to the coast at a cost which enables them to meet other countries in the general markets of the world . On a line of more than one hundred miles long , starting at forty miles frem one of the seats of our government , I had reason to believe there was neither pump nor wheelbarrow ; there was certainly no wind or water-mill , and , probably , not a doctor- I found a town of seven thousand
inhabitants in which all the smiths in the place could nofc muster half a hundredweight of iron , and from which a carpenter must travel fifty miles to buy an English chisel . Men have been met , and in no remarkable solitudes , travelling forty miles to grind their bill-hooks , ready for the season which required them . India is a customer to us at the rate of lid . per head per annum ; South America , with , however , only twenty-five millions of people , buys of us at the rate of more than 8 s . per head per annum . India is ready for any increase of industry and of consumption ; but without roads she sits idle and powerless . Our colonies , valuable as they are , cannot possibly afford us an increase of demand of much more than one million per annum , or
say twice as much . Mr . Waller rightly looks to extended and extending markets as the true means of balancing the effects of extended production , through increasing prices , occasioned by increaso of floating capital or its substitutes . The object of tho foregoing remarks is to show that no such extended and extending markets aro available to us . I beg to suggest to him to look over a map of the world , to enquire into tho extent and condition of the population of its various countries , into the circumstances affecting our commercial relations with them , and into the accessibility
of their people and products ; and I shall venturo to predict ho will conclude wo have at present no such extensible field as ho now supposes , and that wo have , in our own potocr , only one means of providing such a field , and that is tho neglected means which India presents . In necessary consistency with these views I still hold , as I bolievo Mr . Wallor also must in the end , that to add thirty millions of Exchequer Bonds within a brief poriod to our present capital available for productive purposes , in a measuro which , in our present circumstances , can hardly fail " to inflamo a fover to madness . "
Let it not bo supposed that I look with any pleasure on stunted markets , a half employed poople , and their consoquonco a dominant plutocracy . I hold tho normal state to bo that of full employment and equal independence on all sides . Tho condition of our people in tho brief fits of our most onergetic periods gives us glimpses of what it should bo in ordinary . What I maintain is , that that fltato cannot bo roached for permanence by means of any artificial stimulus—that tho attompt uo to reach it without markets to carry off the products , loads only to violent oscillations of condition—that wo aro now on the upward part of such an oscillation—and that Mr . Gladstone ' s Exchequer Bonds will carry us to a greater hoight only to bring us afterwards to a groator fall . I remain , sir , yours obodienfcly , J . 0 . London , April 20 , 1 H 53 .
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I 1 TCOMB AND PROFEBTT TAX . The projeofc of our correspondent , whose intelligent communication ire have inserted in our " Open Council , " may be described as a half-successful empirical groping aftor what we take to be the true principle of Taxation . Tho
far as the effect of " good-will" raises the selling value of any material objects , through the use of which that " goodwill" operates , it is rightly taxed ; but in so far as " goodwill" depends on the qualities of the man who has possessed and is selling the business , ifc would be just as reasonable to tax singly diligence , skill , method , integrity , persuasiveness , or any other of the virtues or qualities of which the concrete effect is " good-will , " a 8 to tax the
writer discerns that property is ihe true subject-matter of taxation ; but he imagines that an intangible advantage of circumstances in earning income- is property . If he had begun by inquiring for the work done of wnich taxes are the payment , we believe he would have come , on this point , to a different conclusion . " Good-will , " although property in the single sense of being saleable , is not property in any sense which subjects it to taxation . In so
" good-will" itself . Our correspondent , under the fourth head , makes Bome perfectly just remarks , which appear to us to indicate that he approaches at least the true princip le . But when he translates income into capital , for the sake of classing it with capital in taxation , he betrays himself into inconsistencies , such as that of his distinction between the " good-will of a physician's and that of a surgeon ' s business . "
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[ IN THIS DEPARTMENT , AS AM , OPINIONS , HOWEVEB BJTBBMB ARE ALLOWED AN EXFBESSION , THE EDITOB NBCEJSAEIIiT HOLDS HIMSELF BB 8 PONSIBLE FOB NONE . ]
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THE LAW AS TO THE ADMINISTRATION OF OATHS . * II . ( To the ' Editor of the Leader . ) Sib , — " It is certain , " says Mr . Best , " that # ie enunciation of truth and doigmnent of wilful falsehood , among men in their intercourse with , each other , are secured by three guarantees , or sanctions : the natural sanction , the moral or popular sanction , and tup religious sanction . And , first , of the natural sanction
Mutual confidence between man and man being ] indispensable to the acquisition of knowledge , the happiness of the human race , and , indeed , to the very existence of society , the author of nature has planted the springs of truth very deep in tho human breast . According to Bentham , the natural sanction is altogether physical in its nuture , arising out of a lovo of ease , and njemory being prompter than invention . Uentham mentions the sympathetic sanction as a branch of the natural ono , describing it to be tho feeling by which we pro deterred from fulBehood , by regret for the pain and injury which it may cause others .
" Tho moral sanction may be described in a word . Men having found the advantages of truth , and inconveniences of . falsehood , in their mutual intercourse , and , perhaps , further actuuted by the reflection that truth is in conformity with the will of God , and the laws of naturo , have , by gonerul consent , affixed the brand of disgrace on voluntary departure from it j and hence , us observed by several authors , tho infamy attached to tho word ' liar . ' " Thirdly , there is the religious sanction , which is founded on tho belief tl ^ at truth ia acceptable , and falsehood abhorrent to the Governor of tho universe , and that ho will in some way reward the ono and punish tho other . "—Principles of JKvidence , fyo ., by W . M . Best , A . M ., L . L . I 3 ., ( pp . 11 , 12 , 13 . ) To these three sanctions of truth , the municipal laws of most countries liavp added a fourth , tho legal or political sanction , which consists in orocting false testimony into an offenco cognizable by penal justice . " As tho mqdo of applying tho religious sanction .
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There is no learned man but will confess he hath much profited by reading controversies , his senses awakened , and nis judgment sharpened . If , then , it be profitable for him to read , why sho \ ild it not , at least , be tol&rable for tua adversary to write . —Milton .
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496 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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. T "" * See Leader . No . 164 .
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Leader (1850-1860), May 21, 1853, page 496, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1987/page/16/
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