error, and formed only fops and fencers: their trained bands, previously to a sham fight, would induce the mayor, or Gonfalonier, of their independent corporations, to issue a formal declaration of war. Lucca would defy Pisa, and win a deathless victory; but the refined natures which attain pre-eminence in conficts of skill have seldom the stubborn energy requisite in real warfare. Whatever becomes of the military speculations of men of pen, Mr. Frend has rendered an important service to Lis country by thus disposing the public mind to the public cause. Non solu. ille reipublice prodest, qui uetur reo, e' di pace belloque censet; sed qui juventutem exhorta tur, qui in tantá bonorum præceptorum inopii, virtute instruit animos; qui ad pecu iaa, luxuriamque cursu ruentes, prensat ac repre hendit; is in privato publicam negotium agit. ART. XXIV. The true Interest of the United Kingdom proved in two beneficial Plans of Finance, by JOSEPH COAD. 4to. pp. 16. THE first proposal of this headlong politician is to value the land according to its rent from five to forty shillings per acre, and impose at once a land-tax equal to such rent, of the average value of 20s. per acre. However wise the taxation of land may be, we imagine the sudden absorption of rents to be practically impossible: it would occasion immediate rebellion. In the course of one generation of proprietors, a fourth of the rent, perhaps, could, under a constitution of government not monopolized by landlords, be step by step obtained. varying according to the circumstances (the income?) of the persons im posed. He is for charging every individual, men, women, children, paupers, from twenty shillings to twenty pounds each, and expects so to raise thirty millions sterling annually. All other taxes are to be withdrawn : the benefits of which measure are detailed with probability and glee. Rum (says our author, p 13) may then be sold at two shillings per quart; porter at three pence a pot, and good hyson at six shil lings per pound. Our author makes his Odin's paradise dearer than need was. The second proposal is for a polltax (as the author strangely calls it) ART. XXV. Desultory Observations on the Property-Tax, addressed to the landed Interest of Great Britain, by a LANDHOLDER. 8vo. pp. 55. UNDER the British constitution the landed interest is a privileged class; which is a natural consequence of the excessive representation that falls to its share; the whole house of lords and nine-tenths of the house of commons having the great mass of their property vested in land. Landlords have nowhere an interest habitually coincident with that of the tountry. Their property is agreeably affected by war and by famine, which increase the demand for produce and enhance its price. By the desolation of towns and the ruin of commerce, their relative importance is increased. Their property, easily ascertained and little exposed to depredation, requires less precision in the statutes, and less interior police, than the possessions of townsmen. Of foreign warfare or domestic anarchy they have therefore naturally less dread than citizens. Every government by the landed interest, from Poland to Jamaica, every country during its feudal ANN. REV. VOL. III. age, when the landed interest alone bore sway, has been remarkable for the unequal distribution of happiness; the few were barons, and the many slaves; all were barbarous, all ignorant. In Great Britain, the influence of the metropolis, which is essentially commercial, counteracts that of the legislature, which is naturally territorial; and hence the injurious consequences of the power of landlords have in our country been far less sensible than elsewhere. Yet we have lately seen, under the name of a corn bill, a heavy tax, perhaps of twenty millions sterling, levied on the per ple, no part of which is for the use of the state, but which is wholly to be divided between landlords, in the form of rent, and tenants, in the form of profit. In the framing of the income-tax, or property-tax, a similar effort may be traced to exempt from their regular share of the burden the persons connected with the soil. Thus, in schedule B, the tenant's duty being assessed on his R rent, and his other sources of income consequently excused, the farmer pays nominally but three-fourths, and really not one half, of what a trader in the same rank of life is ordered to pay. Why this? Because every indulgence shewn to the farmer, will be repaid eventually to the landlord, in the form of rent. A similar unjust indulgence is shown to the Scottish tenantry above the English; they being taxed at only sixpence in the pound: as if in a case of percentage the small value of Scottish lands did not itself occasion the corresponding deduction of tax, But the Scotch are determined still to be Scotch; instead of aspiring to the name of British. This Scotch spirit, this provinciality of public zeal, pervades the pamphlet before us. It complains of the propertytax as an infringement of the treaty of union. Every effort should now be directed on both sides the Tweed, and on both sides the Irish channel, not to the vigilant guardianship of the distinct privileges, which the habits of the people rendered expedient at the time of the junction; but to the entire consolidation of all the three countries under uniform laws and equal taxes. In taxation, it is advantageous to the extremities of the empire to have their utmost share of the burden; circulation can no otherwise be propelled to the remotest shores and districts. The price of produce and of labour commonly rise where taxes rise, and thus pump back the extra payments; so that the new earnings are proportioned to the new expenditure. And it will also commonly be found that there is more enjoyment, a more various and profuse consumption of the articles of life, under heavy than under lenient taxation. This writer complains that the property-tax includes landed property, and seems to think that the bill for permitting the redemption of the old quitrents ought to have exempted proprietors for ever from taxation. This exemption from taxation has in all countries been the perpetual drift of the landed interest under Bonaparte, the ancient privileges are again creeping in. One of the forms of allowing salary to the honoured classes of the French nation is to exempt the individual from his contribution fonciere: the result will be to exempt his estate and his heirs. These vicious and unjust exemptions made their appearance in Great Britain about the time of the assessments, and extended to members of the royal family and offi cers of the household. "Raise their salaries, but levy their taxes," ought to be towards its aristocracy, the maxim of every government, which values the reputation of strength or of justice. This author speaks of the commercial interest, as if they were favoured by the property-tax, and recommends the du closure of all incomes, as a mean of compelling merchants to pay. They are, on the contrary, taxed nearly double the land-owner: the industrious man is made to work for himself, and for the idle man besides. The merchant first of all pays his five per cent. on his income, which is assessed by commercial commissioners; not on the fraudulent system, by which rent of land has been assessed, on old returns and unaltered rates; but by an average of the three last years, verified if neces sary on oath, and commonly swelled by vanity, or want of credit, beyond fact, and sometimes beyond probability. A merchant's income is usually pro portioned to his returns, and may be estimated at about a tenth of his returns, in common lines of business. If there fore his returns are taxed one-half per cent. or 10s. in the hundred pounds, he will pay on his neat income five per cent. His returns are the sums anno ally received by his customers, and paid to his banker. His returns less his profits, are the amount of the sums issued from his banker to the different persons of whom he buys. If therefore on one side of the banker's account there were a stamp-duty of one-half per cent. or on each side of the banker's account a stamp-duty of one quarter per cent. the merchant would thereby pay, on bis probable profits, five per cent. or one twentieth. Now, the stamp-duties bills of exchange and promissory notes do already amount to this quarter per cent. on the receipts and payments: sù that, in the form of stamps alone, the trading interest already pays its full share of the property-tax, and ought to have escaped any other assessment of its income. The merchant pays his income-tax twice over. A curious flaw in the income-tax or property-tax is indicated by this author. No dwelling-house, to which land i .not attached, is taxable. "I beg leave, however, in the first plac to mark what appears to me an egregiona blunder in this act, with regard to the proposed tax on dwelling-houses. "Schedule A is certainly meant to impose the shilling duty or tax on the pound of rent upon every species of real estate within the kingdom, and although dwelling-houses are not particularly named, in the foug and anxious enumeration of subjects to be so taxed by this schedule, still it shall be admitted for the present, that the words may seem broad enough to embrace and comprehend them under it. "In like manner schedule B is meant and intended to impose an additional duty of nirepence or sixpence on the pound of reut, to be paid without relief by the occnpiers of every subject, or real estate, specified in schedule A; and had matters stopt here, without any enumeration of particulars in schedule B, dwelling houses might have been taxed in this second duty, although not particularly named in schedule A, as falling under the spirit and meaning of its generic words; but schedule B begins with an enumeration proper and peculiar to itself, and in the first particular therein put down we find dwelling-houses, which, in my humble opirion, does somewhat more than seem to imply that dwelling-houses are not to be taxed under schedule A, and were on that account, ex-proposito, omitted, and left out of that schedule. "This proposition is strongly corroborated by the following words of schedule B, which duties shall be respectively charged in addition to the duties contained in scheaule A, and shall be construed to extend to all the properties therein particularly charged." Certainly, dwelling-houses are not particularly charged in schedule A, and constructive taxation, like constructive treason, sounds harshly in a British ear. "Quod voloit non fecit." "The act must also be amended before the erapiers of dwelling-houses can be subjected to the duty of schedule B; for if I do not uch misapprehend the meaning of the following exception in this schedule, it goes protect and liberate every dwelling-house within the kingdom, from the ninepence or the sixpence duty; it" excepts dwelling houses not occupied with a farm of lands, for the purpose of farming such lands, or with a farm of tythes or tiends for the purpose of farming the same.” As the houses cupied by the tenantry of Great Britain are let, with hardly an exception, for a gross tent for the lands and the dwelling-houses and fices occupied by the farmer, and as that Cross rent is taxed in the duty of this schedule, it follows as a matter of course, that not one dwelling-house within the kingdom can be subjected to this branch of the tax, until the word not shall be expunged out of the act. I see in an explanation of this act, eculated by authority, after I had wrote thus far, it is said, merely, in my humble ption, to reconcile this blunder, that par liament never meant to subject dwellinghouses to the tax of schedule B, for what reason I do not immediately perceive, as the proprietors of dweiling-houses are to be al lowed two per cent. of the shilling tax for repairs, so they will pay only about three per cent. of tax; but holding that dwellinghouses are not to pay the tax of schedule B, there is this obvious absurdity in the business, that dwelling-houses are not enumerated or named in the schedule under which they are to be taxed, and the commissioners are left to imply and conjecture it from the words of that schedule, and we find dwellinghouses the first particular enumerated in the other schedule under which they are not to be taxed, although the first enacting words of this schedule does, in the most express and explicit words, impose this second tax upon dwelling-houses, and in the following line, merely by inserting the word not, the first clause of it is repealed. So much for the accuracy of the framers of this law." Several forms of income eroded by the property-tax would, by a wise financier, have been passed over. Such is the income of annuitants. All life annuities convert capital into revenue, and thus diminish the future resources of the country. Whatever tends to lessen the income of an annuitant, resists his saving, or hoarding, or accumulation; and thus intercepts that partial atonement for the mischievous character of his revenue, which his frugality, economy, or prudence would sometimes make. The state therefore should consider such incomes as the resource of a necessity and penury, which it ought to pity and spare. Such again are the incomes of professional men. As capital may be be represented by capital. A perpetual represented by revenue; so revenue may annuity in the funds sells for above twenty years purchase. A life annuity may be estimated, on the average, at ten years purchase. The earnings of a professional man may in like manner be estimated at ten years purchase. What ever erodes them diminishes their capital value, and lessens the chance for their ever assuming the form of capital. The motive to engage in professions, which are the repositories of all the forms of public instruction and of intellectual excellence, is diminished by such taxes; and the accumulation of successful professionists is intercepted by them. We recommend therefore a total omission of life-long and professional incomes, in every income tax: this would bring us to a repeal of the present bill, and to a substitution (1) of a rent-tax, (2) of a tax on the funds, (8) and of stamp duties. This arrangement would affect all the other sources of income here attacked by the state, except those arising from bonds and mortgages. These ought surely not to be taxed without a previous repeal of the laws limiting the interest of money. Why may the lender not pro portion his claim of interest to the demand of the money-market? By com pelling the registration of all bonds, mortgages, or notes of hand, which bear a higher interest than three per cent. (the bankers must be allowed to assess this interest without the formality of record) the amount of such securities could be come at. They might then be assessed by an appropriate registration-duty, on a par with other sources of income. ART. XXVI. The Principles of Taxation, or Contribution according to Means: in which it is shewn that if every Man pays his Proportion to the Stake he has in the Country, the present ruinous and oppressive System of Taxation, the Custom-House and the Excise-Office, be abolished, and the National Debt gradually and easily paid off. By WILLIAM FREND, Esq. 8vo. pp. 72. may SOME citizens of London convened by public advertisement a meeting of the livery, or as the Londoners ought to say (for it is surely time to drop the Norman jargon of the law) of the freemen of their city, in order to deliberate about petitioning parliament for a repeal of the property-tax. This convocation was somewhat unbecomingly postponed to latter Lammas, without the conveners having assigned any public reasons for their recantation. To this project of mecting, and to the individuals who stirred about it, Mr. Frend's preface chiefly relates: it is therefore already out of date. The pamphlet itself treats of the principles of taxation, and derives the word tax, not as usual from task, but from an old word meaning to touch. We are next told, (p. 33) that "Taxation is equitable, when each member is taxed in proportion to his means of paying the tax; it is inequitable, when each member is not taxed in proportion to his means of paying the tax. Thus where two persons, having the same means, are taxed unequally, or two persons having different means are taxed equally, the taxation is not equitable." In short, Mr. Frend makes equality of pressure the criterion of wise taxation; and procoeds to examine the property-tax by Now let us take an opposite case, put in our second volume, p. 358. Suppose that in Ireland taxation raises the price of spirits, at the same time that it lowers the price of tea. What is the consequence? The numerous classes are immediately reminded, that it is become expedient for them to employ less their wages than before in the purchase of spirits, and more in the purchase o tea. Tea is drunk at home; spirits at the gin-shop. Hence an increased habit or domesticity sets in throughout the familic of the poor. Tea requires a little apparatus of kettles and cups and saucers Hence an increased consumption of br ziery and pottery, by which the mant factures are benefited; and a great habitual capital becomes vested in fu niture; by which means the love o home, the fear of the workhouse, ar the means of obviating a sudden pre sure are all augmented. Yet this ta was literally taken off the rich, an laid upon the poor; for, previously it, the rich were the tea-drinkers, ai the poor the spirit-drinkers. Here is good tax, in which the assumed crit rion, equality of pressure, is inverted. Those are good taxes which encroac on the money unwisely expended by ti subject. The financier should procee on the principles of a Roman censer and seize on that, of which the mult tude render themselves unworthy abuse. Every tax should place the pe ple in a better condition than it fon them: it should have distributed me: equitably the rewards of conduct and virtue: it should diminish the well-be of the idle, and the resources of th spendthrift; but leave unshortened speculation his casting-net, and to i dustry his oar. Taxes on the rent houses and land are of this kind: were they progressively to absorb half the rental, they would leave shelter and produce as abundant as before; but they would have compelled many idle consumers to occupy themselves productively and usefully. The rent of houses is heavily assessed in the form of windowtaxes and parish rates. But the rent of land is scarcely touched; because the land-owners depute a majority of the house of commons, and constitute the whole house of lords. Every tax ought to be a public benefit, a wiser employment of the national property than the people would voluntarily have made of it; several of our taxes are so; but not those on soap, leather, candles, sugar, or tea. Mr. Frend thus classes the resources of the nation. "The property of an individual arises out of one, or two, or all of these three things: unproductive capital, productive capital, personal industry. By unproductive capital are meant valuables, which do not produce any increase to the possessor; as furniture of houses, carriages, pictures, and the like. By productive capital is meant property, which produces a yearly rent, or money producing annual interest. By personal industry is meant the application of mental or bodily powers to procure an annual income. "The difficulty of comparing together two persons, whose property depends in a different manner on these things, will be evident from one or two examples. Suppose a man, with a wife and family, to be in possession of five hundred a year, arising from productive capital, and to have besides a good house, well furnished, worth three thousand pounds. Let another man, with a wife and equal family, have the same income, from personal industry, and an equally good and well furnished house: What is the relative situation of the one to the other? In productive capital there is no proportion between them. In unproductive capital they are equal, and in income also they are seemingly equal. But personal industry may be ruined or diminished by a thousand accidents: and, whilst the possession of the productive capital makes the one totally easy, in case of death, with respect to be his wife and family, the other, if a prudent man, is endeavouring to save something for their future provision; thence it would the same sum. Suppose again, two men very great injustice to demand from cach to have from personal industry the same annual income of five hundred pounds, the one possessing an unproductive capital worth a thousand pounds, the other an unproductive capital worth only a hundred pounds. Let each have spent his five hundred pounds, when a tax of fifty pounds is demanded. To pay this, the one reduces his unproductive Capital to 9501, the other to 501. and at this other is that of 950 to 50, or of nineteen to moment their relative proportion to each one; but the moment before the tax was paid, the relative proportion to each other was that of 1000 to 100, or that of ten to Thus such a tax would be in a very high degree unjust, since it changes so materially their relative situation." one. How can Mr. Frend think of classing furniture as unproductive capital? If a family hires a ready-furnished house, it pays twelve or fifteen per cent. on the estimated value of the furniture, for the yearly use of it. A man may live in a house of his own, or use furniture of his ther: but both are productive properown, and therefore pay no rent for eities, by whatever such a house and such furniture would cost yearly. There can be no such thing as unproductive capital; the terms are inter-destructive. Books, pictures, are as much productive objects, as a nectarine-tree, or a silkworm. The value of the pleasure they afford constitutes the cause of their price. this is translated into rent at the cirerlating library, and at the exhibition; it is translated into capital at the bookseller's and the auction room. Mr. Frend throws out the question, (p. 71.) should laws be written in a plain and clear style, or be filled with technical jargon? yet in his own schedule of valuation (p. 69.) he has made a subdivision for unproductive capital. This pamphlet, though not wholly convincing, abounds with instructive and interesting remarks. ART. XXVII. Egeria, or Elementary Studies on the Progress of Nations in Political Economy, Legislation, and Government. 8vo. pp. $24. THOSE who have perused the lec political principles, published by the Rev. David Williams, in 1789, will, probably believe themselves acquainted with the Numa of this Egeria. In both works, there is bold thinking and splen did illustration; in both, an oracular, mystical, dark, indefinite turn of expression; in both, Montesquieu is the peculiar favourite of the auther, his chosen in |