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Untitled Article
of the present destructive rivalry . This is a very unwholesofne state of things . Heaven forbid it should be permanent ! We hope the time is coming for more rational modes of distributing the productions of nature and of art , than this expensive and demoralizing plan of individual competition , the evils of which have
arisen to such an enormous height . The statement as to the number of empty houses may have been quite true , as to any grven day , but when the fact is explained , and the explanation may be verified by any resident in the metropolis who will take the trouble to observe , it leads to a directly opposite conclusion from that deduced by the reviewer . His argument can only hold in what
must be a comparatively rare case , the overbuilding of shops in a locality which yet remains a desirable one . In that case the tax no doubt falls , as he says , upon the landlord ; but though he be a landlord , it may not be altogether just or agreeable for him to bear it . This does not affect the general character of the tax , which falls heavy on the private occupant , but often heaviest on the tradesman .
One great objection to these taxes ,, is the monstrous inequality of their pressure . To this a flimsy answer is attempted , accompanied by the venture of a most ill-timed and ill-judged panegyric on the aristocracy , whose exemption , somehow or other , from all but a mere modicum of the burden , has been very effectively contrived . It required considerable hardihood to contend that the
wealthy have been misrepresented in this matter by unprincipled demagogues , that the tax really falls upon them ' in an increasing ratio , ' and that they ought to be relieved by a different arrangement . True it is , that a house with forty windows pays Is . 5 Jc / . per window , and one with eight windows only 2 s . Ofd . per window : that on houses rated from 10 / . to 20 / . a year , the duty is Is .
6 rf . per pound , and on those of 40 Z . and upwards , 2 s . lOd . : here the scale stops . But the difference thus produced , is a trifle compared with the advantage which aristocracy has overtrade in the assessment . Had the reviewer , in his absorbing attention to Mr . Spring Rice , forgot the facts mentioned in Col . Evans ' s speech , that Northumberland House ( Charing Cross ) pays but 4 £ rf . per
foot , while the small grocer ' s shop next door to it is charged at the rate of seven shillings per foot ? Does he not know that , out of Ixmdon , the highest assessed house in all England , England with its thousand palaces and castles , is that of a tavern-keeper at Brighton ? The facts elicited and published by the United Parochial Committees are perfectly astounding . There are but
438 houses , in England and Wales , assessed at 400 L and upwards , and of these 419 are in the metropolis . A tradesman in Regent Street pays precisely as much house-tax ( 56 Z . 13 s . 4 d . ) as the Duke of Devonshire pays for Chatsworth ; one third more than the Primate of the Church for Canterbury Palace , the Duke of Buckingham for Stowe Palace , the Marquis of Westminster for Eaton
Untitled Article
580 On the Defence bf the
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 580, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/68/
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