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Untitled Article
fectly just , but a direct tax . And , where the rent of land , the best of all sources of revenue , has been permitted to become the property of individuals , of all direct taxes none practically speaking is so eligible as a house-tax . It is the best of
incometaxes . What a man pays for his habitation measures his income , not perfectly indeed , but better than any tax-gatherer can ; and makes all those allowances which an income-tax never makes , perhaps never can make . No income-tax can be precisely graduated according to the precariousness , the variableness ,, the limited or unlimited duration of incomes : all which circumstances a fair house-tax allows for , because they are all taken into consideration in hiring or buying a house . In short , a house-tax ( except that a miser may escape it ) realizes far more
perfectly than an income-tax , the perfection of an income-tax itself , —that of being proportioned not to what a man has , but to what he can afford to spend . But it was not by considerations so subtle and refined as those of the comparative justice or policy of different taxes , that this question was destined to be decided . When the Reformed Parliament met , the people of England , that part of them at least who are called the f better classes , ' commenced a contest , not to reduce the public expenses , but to shift off their burthen each man from himself upon all the rest . In this ignominious
scramble ., the shoparchy have carried off the lion ' s share . The housetax , though it did not touch the poor , was unpopular , because it fell disproportionately upon the middle classes , and spared the higher : and the aristocracy , having to choose between its equalization and its abolition , made a compromise with the middle classes , and removed the tax , to avoid paying their just share of it . The reconciliations , like the quarrels , of the privileged orders , are always at the people ' s expense .
We should give Lord Althorp some credit for the manifest reluctance with which he gave up this tax , if we did not remember how perseveringly , last year , he defended those inequalities in its assessment , which so disgusted the public , and which are the real cause of its unpopularity . If instead of defending those inequalities he had remedied them , the clamour against the tax would have been stilled . Now , it is too late .
We observe by the 'Chronicle' report , that w hen Mr . Hume recommended as a substitute for the present tax on wines , what if practicable would be so greatly preferable , an ad valorem duty , on the ground that by lightening the pressure of the duty on the cheaper wines , it would enable the poor to drink wine for a shilling a bottle , the House laughed . The idea of wine at a
shillinga bottle , and poor men drinking it , altogether overset what little ser iousness nature had bestowed upon them . The House is not aware how much it often betrays by a laugh . Tell me when a man laughs , and I will tell you what he is . We make no commerit upon the good feeling or the good sense of this exhibition .
Untitled Article
Lord Althorps Budget . 171
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 171, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/11/
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