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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
and honesty thai ! from any other cause—derive princely fortunes without paying a shilling in the way of licence . Are their establishments expensive ? Not a doubt of it ; but their rent , their carpeted shops , their plate glass , their chandeliers , their
newspaper puffs and the support of the misemployed effeminates whom they retain to impose on our womankind , are paid by their customers . They make immense incomes beyond all their expenses ; and out of their incomes every man of them having more than four shopmen or women , or other persons , male or female , employed in serving the customers should pay ,
Firstly , a licence duty of £ 40 per annum : 2 dly , for each shopman or woman above four , a tax of £ 2 per annum . Of the gin-shops the same thing may be said as to principle : the details must necessarily differ . Few , I believe , of the people who fit up with meretricious gaudiness huge establishments for the manufacture of thieves and paupers , keep more than four persons to dole out their filthy compounds . With them , therefore , we must go differently to work .
With mere public houses it would not be necessary to interfere . But every house fitted up as a gin-shop—that is , not having a parlour for the accommodation of the more select company , and a tap-room , with accommodation for the labouring man to cook or to eat his meal ; every such house should pay , in addition to all licence-duties at present levied , the sum of £ 200 per annum .
I know that these sums will seem large to the unreflecting reader . But let him just ask himself whether it would seriously oppress these trades ? Oppress , indeed ! they would scarcely feel it . It would be impossible—so enormous is tl ^ eir trade—for the one trade to add the fiftieth part of a farthing to the price of ribbon per yard , or for the other to add the thousandth part of a farthing to the price of gin per glass ; and , consequently , these taxes would not injure the manufacturer of ribbon or of gin , but
would simply take a small portion of an enormous gain , ill made , in order to remove an unjust pressure from useful productivkness . Though I have dwelt only upon two * of the callings upon which a licence-duty might be levied , there arc many others equally obvious . But from even these two , Lord Althorp may , if he sincerely wish it , raise double the annual sum he will
g ive up by repealing the stamp-duty on newspapers . And as his Lordsnip must be well aware that that duty enables fools and knaves to play the charlatan , and prohibits men of talent and integrity from publishing in a chea p form , it is to be hoped that he will adopt the advice I now most respectfully give him , viz ., to bear constantly in mind that no permanent power or popularity
? One of these—spirit dealers—Lord Althorp recentl y proposed to charge more than heretofore per licence ; but all who already pay £ 10 to bu exempted from the m * crease , t \ r . the very person * who ought to be roost highly taxed—gin-palace keepers . 1
Untitled Article
770 Hints on the Errors of Party .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1834, page 770, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2639/page/24/
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