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Untitled Article
than upon the poorest who are subjected to it , that is what no one , that we know of , has ever advocated . Taxation touches the means of bodily support of the poor , and the personal comforts of those of the middle classes : but whoever imagined such imposts on property as should reach even the amusements and luxuries of
the wealthy ? A higher per centage does not make a heavier burden . The annuitant of two hundred a year would pay far more in a twentieth of his income , than would be paid in a tenth by the Lord of Chatsworth . The latter need never know of the reduction by any effect upon his personal enjoyments ; the former would feel it in many a privation . And what jugglery there is in the reviewer ' s
association of' a fortune' with ' sagacity , ingenuity , and economy . ' One would suppose from reading it , that we lived in a country where wealth was meted out proportionally to the worthiest ; society constituted according to the principles inculcated in our little story books and nursery tales ; and the whole island one beautiful picture of' Virtue Rewarded . ' Of the great fortunes which are made ,
how many are made thus fairly ? And of those which are , why should not the possessors pay for the security of that which society has enabled them to gain by the toil of others ? A property tax is only an insurance on their share of the cargo with which the vessel of the state is freighted . But the reviewer knows well enough , though , for a sophistical and insidious purpose , the fact
be misrepresented , that the acquisition of wealth is much less common than its inheritance . It would not indeed have appeared quite so < monstrous' to say that they , ' who toil not neither do they spin / who are born to live idly and luxuriously on the fruit of others' labours , and whom any conceivable amount of needful taxation will leave the quiet possessors of unearned advantages in abundance , should bear the chief burden of the institutions from
which they derive the chief benefits . This would have seemed not so very unreasonable . The class is therefore kept out of sight entirely . Better forget the aristocracy when there is talk of taxes . They will come into remembrance again when places are to be filled and reforms to be resisted . But there is a corollary to the reviewer ' statement . * A policy of this sort would , by
paralyzing industry and invention , and driving capital and talent abroad , speedily bring about the total ruin of any country insane enough to adopt it / Would it ? We rather apprehend that the men of capital and of talent , the inventive and the industrious , would think twice before they expatriated themselves on such a score . If we can keep them now , little need we fear the loss of
them when almost every manufacture , lightened by the removal of some drag-weight or other , would spring forwards with unprecedented activity . Were the price of food to fall , as it then must , to the continental level , and every article and implement of productive industry to bear only its own cost , what a spirit of life and energy would be diffused through the entire population of the country ,
Untitled Article
576 On the Defence of the
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 576, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/64/
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