The evil is very possible; nay, it is imminent, if not present. That it is possible, we have too painful proof, I am sorry to be obliged to say it, in the States of North America; and nothing can be more instructive to Englishmen than to study the political history of those States, as that which shows into what errors an Anglo-Saxon people may fall. The North American colonists did, as Burke truly said, carry out with them that jealousy of taxation which they had received as part of the noble inheritance of English liberty. In the resistance to the stamp tax, which led to the revolution, the old weapon that had conquered in so many fights was once more taken down, and was destined to win yet another wreath of victory. But American independence once established, and the people being in the most complete sense self-governed, it was then time for the introduction of a new view of taxation, in which it should no longer appear as a mere shield against tyranny, needful in barbarous times, but as a highly convenient and valuable instrument for effecting every object of social well-being, which can be only or best accomplished by the community acting in its collective capacity.

This change of sentiment did not take place in America. The old dislike to taxation remained under circumstances in which it could not but degenerate into a sordid concern for the safety of the pocket. In that people, amongst whom life moves so swiftly, every seed of moral evil soon ripens, and the fruit of this one has been presented to the eye of the civilized world in the foul and loathsome form of REPUDIATION. It pains me, who love America and the Americans, to touch upon this sore subject, but there is no help for it. Impatience of taxation, indulged to the disregard of every higher principle, was the cause of bringing upon the fair fame of the young republic that deep dishonour. I do not make the mistake of attributing to the Federal Union acts which are chargeable only against single States. It is enough for this argument that any State was found guilty of such conduct, and, above all, that a State like Pennsylvania, with all the moral and intellectual

advantages which a people could possess, should have been capable of that long neglect of her just obligations, which proved as ruinous as formal repudiation could have done, to numbers of her innocent and helpless creditors. This is not said for the reproach of America, but for the warning of England, as showing to what lengths a strong popular dislike to taxation may lead when once it puts men upon making comparisons between the interests of the pocket and the claims of duty. There is not, indeed, it may be fairly hoped, any danger of our coming to repudiation, or to any practical breach of the national faith in England; but those who choose to turn to the popular discussions of 1821 and 1822, will find that, in a time of distress, ideas of that kind are not incapable of finding admission even into minds laying claim to superior enlightenment.

Present Danger from Dislike to Taxation.

Our present danger, however, is different, and perhaps harder to be guarded against, because it does not at once arouse all our nobler feelings to resist it, as they would be roused by the rise and growth of an open and flagrant dishonesty. That danger is, the gradual prevalence and ascendancy of a sordid and miserly spirit in all matters of finance, which will shut its eyes and close its ears to the most urgent wants, if, referring to anything beyond the indispensable machinery of police, they threaten to involve the least addition to the national expenditure. This temper is growing in the public mind, and its influence is every year more perceptible in the House of Commons. That a tendency to sordid economy in public matters is becoming more and more prevalent in the nation, is likewise often shown in the conduct of a more numerous class of popular representatives; namely, those who constitute the various boards of poor-law guardians. Amongst those boards there are differences, owing to the influence which energetic individuals always exercise; but in numerous cases it holds true that, in matters in which genero

sity would be perfectly safe, they are hard, close-fisted, and impenetrable to all appeals. Observe with what unrelenting meanness they screw down the medical officer to the lowest penny, which desperate professional competition compels him to take. Yet what services are of more value, or can involve such incessant toil and self-sacrifice? The guardians are obliged by law to give food to the poor, and they, no doubt, fulfil that law fairly. But they can withhold education from the youngthat education which, taking them for ever out of the slough of pauperism, would be the most enlightened of all kinds of prudence; and they do withhold it, for that which is usually afforded in workhouses, with some exceptions, happily increasing in number, is wholly unworthy of the name. Much, indeed, has been done for its improvement, by earnest practical reformers, but it is, after all, only a beginning. The state of pauper education is still the most eloquent of commentaries on the mischiefs of a false and short-sighted economy.

But it would be unjust to attribute this reproach exclusively to boards of guardians, for the spirit which animates them is in a great measure also the spirit of the House of Commons. The members of that assembly show no superiority in their regard for those whose claims to education are far stronger than the claims of the children of paupers. Why is the education vote for the country at large still so paltry? It is the fault of ministers, it may be said; but ministers are never slow to propose increased votes, when they expect them to be carried. No, cabinets are but instruments. It is that men in office are scared, and not in reference to this alone, but in reference to every object of public utility, by that economical bugbear which the House of Commons constantly holds up before their eyes. The consequence is, that a low huxtering spirit is becoming increasingly prevalent in the parliamentary debates. The debates form the chief intellectual food of many thousands of readers; and where no other mental stimulants will operate, it is a great good to have the mind of the people developed even by such matter as those wearisome reports supply;

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but, beyond all doubt, it will happen, that wranglings about cheese-parings and candle-ends, such as we have had so much of, if further continued, will deteriorate the whole moral tone of the nation, and dry up all the sources of those nobler emotions which give strength and elevation to the current of the national life.

Mr. Norman on Taxation.

A writer of much authority and experience has lately published the result of a very careful inquiry into the supposed great pressure of taxation, and his conclusion is, that the cost of the public service is by no means so great in England, either in reference to the work done, or to the resources of the people, as in the chief countries of the Continent. It certainly does appear to me, that no dispassionate man can read the calm and able pamphlet of Mr. Norman without conviction. No attempt worthy of notice has been made to show either error in the facts or fallacy in the reasoning, and however inveterate may be the prejudice against which it is directed, the truth is too hard and penetrating not to break its way through all obstacles at last. It would be useless here to repeat what Mr. Norman has already said so well, and evidently with such complete freedom from party and controversial bias; but fully believing his view to be in the main correct, and differing from him chiefly as to those allowances which he candidly makes against his own argument, on account of depreciation under the Bank restriction, which according to the representation given in the present work did not take place, I rest in, and argue upon, his conclusions as established, and regard them as amongst the most valuable materials for the use and guidance of the legislator that have been produced in our time.

Mr. Ricardo on Taxation.

With respect to the parties upon whom the burthen of taxation, whatever it may be, actually falls, if the purpose of the

present work required a full consideration of the subject, it would not be difficult to show, from the principles explained in the First Part, that most of the received economical conclusions do not rest upon a scientific basis, and also that the popular notions on the subject, though practically nearer to the truth, contain a good deal of error. Here, however, it must suffice to offer a few remarks tending to show the very wide divergence between some of the economical deductions and the facts of common experience. The abstract writers find it necessary from time to time to neglect the consideration of space in their reasonings, which is allowable enough, provided the dropped element is carefully taken up again, before passing out from the region of hypothesis to the region of practice. This last step, however, is sometimes omitted, and, of course, error is inevitable. But errors arising from the abstraction and subsequent oblivion of the element of space, are trifling compared with those which are caused by the wholesale and habitual annihilation of time. A change, for instance, such as a rise of wages effected through an action upon population (one of the rarest of all possible events), is once or twice spoken of with a recognition, more or less distinct, of the fact that it could not be accomplished in less than a generation. That fact being noticed, the conscience of the abstract economist is cleared, and he forthwith proceeds to crush up the long series of painful events involved in that change into a single link, connects it with other links condensed in a similar manner, and then the chain is made to fly backward and forward through every deduction, as easily and frequently as if the rapidity of association in the mind of the reasoner had some sort of correspondence with the actual movement of human affairs. By such extreme abstraction all the friction which is really experienced in the social machinery, and in connection with which many of the most important practical questions arise, is completely thrown out of view, and treated as non-existent. In this respect, Mr. Ricardo is a sinner of the first magnitude. His mind became so absorbed in the relations subsisting between his own abstract ideas, that