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Untitled Article
away a large sum of money so that nobody should be even temporarily the better for it . They left themselves with the interest of twenty millions of new debt to provide for , and resources not more than equal to the existing expenditure . But an increasing revenue has been to them like a rising tide ; by its assistance
they have found themselves in deep water where they had reason to expect rocks and shallows . The revenue of the year exceeds last year ' s estimates by a million and a half ; and having effected ( for which we give them all reasonable credit ) further retrenchments to the amount of half a million , they have two millions to meet the expected charge of 800 , 000 / . ; leaving a surplus of 1 , 200 , 000 / ., about equal to the produce of the house-tax , which accordingly is to be taken off . The abrogation of this tax will certainly afford relief : this time the remission of taxation will be a benefit to somebody ; but to whom ? To the most clamorous and troublesome ; not to the most overburthened .
Are the 'low Radicals / as the Times' calls them , altogether wrong , when they affirm that the Reform Bill has but created what they term a shopocracy , in the place of , or rather by the side of , the aristocracy ; and that the people are still to be sacrificed for the joint benefit of both ? The first use which the middle classes have made of " their power , is to shake off their burthens , leaving those of the working classes as great as ever .
The window-tax is objectionable ; but a house-tax , honestly assessed , seems to us as unexceptionable an impost as exists , and one of the very last which an enlightened policy would have abandoned . Mr . Byng , indeed , ' wishes to see all direct taxes abolished : ' this we suppose passes
for c good old English feeling : * English liberty has always felt itself seriously aggrieved by the visits of the tax-gatherer : an Englishman , being free born , dislikes extremely , not the burthen , but to see the face of the man who lays it on . If Mr . Byng were mortally wounded by an invisible weapon , he would think he died a natural death . Let but the * keen knife
see not the wound it makes , ' he will never ' peep through the dark and cry " hold , hold . " ' This is very childish ; or rather like , not a child , but a hunted hare , who thinks she escapes her pursuers by hiding her face , and managing not to see them . Direct taxes are the best of taxes , because there is least of juggle about them , and least uncertainty upon whom they really fall . With taxes on
commodities there is always ao much doubt , or at least such interminable dispute , who pays them , that it is impossible to agree upon a mode of imposing them so as to bear equally on all classes and on all fortunes . Besides , to be productive , they must be laid on articles of general consumption , and of such the poor consume more , in proportion to their incomes , than the rich . A poor family consume * proportionally much more bread , more beer , more tea , more sugar , than a rich family . No tax caa be per-
Untitled Article
179 Notes on the Newspapers .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 170, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/10/
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