The affairs of a merchant or a tradesman become generally known to his banker, his solicitor, or those houses with whom he deals; to their clerks, and to his own clerks; but they are all interested in keeping the secret, while the commissioners and the clerks employed by them have no similar interest. The opposition of the rate payers to the tax is enlivened by this circumstance, and if the income tax from earnings and profits in trade be continued, the Government should appoint paid commissioners to proceed from place to place as an assize, in order to fix the payments, hear appeals, and receive explanations. They would really have the advantage of local knowledge, for they would ac quire acuteness in estimating profits, because that would be their work from January to December; and they would be diocesan in their nature, confined within geographical limits, in which clever men might acquire an acquaintance with an entire population.

Twenty years since, or nearly, the late Mr. O'Connor threatened to become Chancellor of the Exchequer, Premier, or something of that kind. | He was the leader of a great multitude, who, if they had been managed well, might have secured large changes. We remember a long conversation with him upon a plan of direct taxation. His project, although perhaps, like some others, a little Utopian, had method in its madness; if less imaginative people than the late member for Nottingham deem it mad. He held that tradesmen should be allowed to rate themselves. Every man in business should be considered the best judge of his income, and deemed honest in his statements; but the general list of names and returns was to be published. The tax was to be voluntary under the dread of publicity, and while Mr. O'Connor admitted that advantage would accrue to persons of miserly habits from his scheme, he calculated that avarice would be overcome by vanity, and that, upon the whole, the persons who might exaggerate their means would outnumber those who would underrate their possessions.

The present income tax can only approximate to justice by a division of the tax into the three obvious classes-of persons earning profits or wages, of others having annuities or salaries, terminable only with their lives; and of those who live upon the proceeds of acquired property.

The means of ascertaining profits must be modified in the manner we have described, or by some other plan that will give greater security to the public against unnecessary disclosures.

If the friends of uniformity adhere to their opinions rigidly, they must allow taxes on annuities and on property, separate from those on income. They cannot allege that employment and strength are equally secure with houses and lands. They cannot even say that they cause equal trouble to the State. Every family's peace and rights have to be defended or enforced, but every family has not property to be guarded from foreign foes, or watched from tickets-of-leave men. A graduated

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property tax has been often proposed, and often with a snivelling apology for the daring nature of the scheme, as if he who expounded truth was, nevertheless, ashamed of himself and it. Still, this plan consists with equity, and is perhaps the only plan possessing that qualification. Five per cent. takes many little pleasures from a family doomed to live upon one hundred pounds a year. It is a journey to the coast, forfeited. It is the new gown or shawl that cannot be bought. It may be the school-fee that cannot be paid—and the child grows up in ignorance. It may be the week's leisure that dare not be enjoyed-and the weak man grows weaker on that account, until, perhaps, this little tax makes a widow and orphans at a day that might have been postponed, except for five per cent.

The same rate taken out of a thousand pounds per annum is scarcely felt upon the expenditure of a family. It causes, certainly, no real hardship -for we all know that there is no perceptible difference in the style of living between £950 and £1,000 per annum. The poorer family are taxed severely-the richer are taxed lightly; yet we have an equal rate, and without an equitable result. We need not multiply illustrations of the same argument. The facts are self-evident, and they are not applied to tax gathering, chiefly because the rich have hitherto had the principal control over the construction of the tax gatherers' schedules-as they, indeed always will have, because they have leisure to superintend these proceedings; but, ultimately, they will superintend them with more than present justice.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is reported to have said that the Government intended to exempt the working classes from the operation of direct taxes. So long as the minimum rate is £100 per annum, we regret to believe that three-fourths, or nine-tenths, of the number are exempted—because, although a larger proportion may nominally earn £2 weekly-which we doubt-yet even they are exposed to dull seasons, idle times, and other reductions. The working classes appear, therefore, to be exempted, with few exceptions; but we are not certain that they object to a fair tax, levied directly, accompanied by fair rights. The better portion of the working classes do not want favours. They are not desirous of exemptions; but would share all the burdens of the state cheerfully, accompanied by its privileges. No small part of the apparent zeal for their interests originates with the determination to resist their rights; or, if some persons dislike the name of "rights," their "claims." A large proportion of the indirect taxation of the country is necessarily paid by them, for it is levied upon articles which they consume. The Chancellor of the Exchequer produced a list of necessaries of existence, upon which a man might live well, that contributed nothing to the revenue. Biscuit and bread, fish and meat, foreign and native fruits, form a bill of fare equal to any hermit's; but in this country other produc

tions have become almost necessaries, and while we have neither the desire to see many of them untaxed, nor any wish that the operative classes should escape taxation, yet it may be remembered that a large part of their income must necessarily be expended upon articles that contribute largely to the revenue. Although their payments to the general fund are still equal to their participation of its benefits, yet if any effort had been made to popularise the income tax, it might have been extended and made more productive than the sevenpenny rate, restricted to the classes with incomes exceeding £150 per annum, can ever become. Not only however, has it been stained by injustice and with the reproach of a domestic and local inquisition; but it has been made the ground of a charge of bad faith; while at no period from its first imposition by Sir Robert Peel, as a "temporary expedient" to the present day, has any statesman endeavoured to save trouble by its payment, or grounded upon it a single qualification. Ten years since some persons urged the propriety of extending the circle, and rendering its receipts equivalent, under the necessary restriction of residence, to registration. They suggested the union of political payment to political right. In this way all the failures and frauds of our former system of registration would have been avoided; and without the destruction of any other qualification a larger supplemental roll would have been formed than the original. The adoption of this course should have been more interesting to those who fear the consequences of any rapid extension of the franchise, than to bolder persons who stand in no dread of evil from doing right. It might have even led to a kind of representative electorate among those classes whose incomes are under fifty pounds yearly, and who form a very large portion of the people. They might have clubbed together the means to qualify a voter for four or five families; and by a complicated arrangement the nation might have reached that representation of classes which other states attain by houses of peasants and nobles, a little after the fashion adopted by the Turkish Government as in the new constitution of Moldavia and Wallachia.

The war extra of ninepence will be abandoned for the financial year from April next. The arrangement of 1853, which was to finish the tax in three years hence, will probably be revived. The radical evils of the system will be allowed to re

main, because they are only small evils to endure for a short period, according to Act of Parliament, whereas, according to common sense and experience, the income tax in some form will be perpetual. Its repeal in 1860 is a mirage. Those who live to see 1860 will pay it if they are within its pale. Ministers of finance of all parties, will oppose its repeal. They find it a great convenience, and a good foundation on which they can build. Let us, therefore, bear the fact before us in all discussions on the subject, that the tax may live longer than any persons of this generation. It will probably see us all in our graves. For that reason it should be clearly and effectively re-adjusted, and then it could fall or rise with national exigencies.

A rumour has been common in some political quarters, that the Palmerstonites and the Peclites are to commit fusion for the preservation of the tax. They may coalesce for some other object, but they are not to commit the folly ascribed to them. They could not save the present arrangements and rate of payment by a coalition. The Derbyites would throw them out upon that subject. They would be abandoned by the extreme Liberal party. Even the Manchester school, supporting, as they necessarily support, direct taxation, would be unable to vote for direct injustice. But speculation upon contingency that can never arise is useless. The coalition in question is equally useless.

What strength could the Premier acquire from this alliance? He could only form it at the cost of personal friends. Some of them would be turned out, in order to make room for other people's personal friends, who would bring to the Cabinet no additional popularity. A general election must be at hand, and any defeated Government would now be justified in appealing to the electors. All these circumstances oppose the probability of any coalition to maintain a tax that cannot be preserved in its present rate; and a coalition to oppose Lord John Russell's Reform Bill, if the noble lord's Italian sojourn has matured that measure, would lose to the Government more independent members than the Peelites five times counted; while the latter will, of course, afford the benefit of their conscientious opposition to any plan for the extension of the suffrage upon a satisfactory basis, as a duty, without fee or reward, in the shape of a coalition, which will not occur, ether to preserve the income tax as it stands, or to oppose a Reform Bill.

a

"God

upon as though he were a beast, and not created man," is a wickedness from which humanity turns with horror. Yet shocking as such a sight unquestionably is, it is of almost daily occurrence in the slave states of America. Men, women, and

children of tender years, are publicly sold by auction, and their physical merits descanted upon in much the same manner as an English auctioneer at an agricultural sale would enlarge upon the excellence of an enormous ox.

As might be supposed, such scenes cannot be participated in, or even frequently witnessed, without producing great demoralisation. As no one can violate the laws of nature without punishment following, so the people of the slave states of America, by permitting a most iniquitous system to exist in their territory, inflict upon themselves a moral injury which, although it may be unobservable by themselves, nevertheless produces appalling results. Were the evil terminated to-morrow, many years would elapse before the southern states could cast off the demoralisation which has grown around them; and, until this be done, they will never enjoy among the nations of the earth the moral weight which their political influence should enable them to wield.

But it is not upon the slaveholders alone that the crushing weight of demoralisation falls. Upon the guiltless heads of the unfortunate blacks, the galling curse of slavery is felt with all its souldegrading influences; and that they become puerile in their intellects, degenerate in their feelings, grovelling and unambitious in their pursuits, and sensual in their propensities, are circumstances which can excite neither wonder nor surprise. The negro race in America have endured the thraldom of slavery for nearly three hundred years-a period during which, notwithstanding the advances made in civilisation, not the slightest improvement has occurred in the condition of the poor negro slave.

Three years ago, while residing in the city of St. Louis, I witnessed for the first time the sale of a slave. One day, while rambling about the streets of that extensive city, my attention was attracted by a large concourse of people who had assembled in front of the "Court-house" (a church-looking edifice without a steeple), used in the United States for the purposes of guildhalls in England. On approaching I learned that a slave sale was about to commence; and, with the view of observing the proceedings, I remained among the crowd. In the portico of the building, a number of negroes, -men, women, and children, of all ages, the subjects of sale-were accommodated.

to fevers, and chills-had contributed to enfeeble him, and partly to deprive him of the use of his limbs. His clothing was of the coarsest and meanest kind. The old shooting coat, made of woollen material, probably the cast-off clothing of his master, which he wore, was torn and ragged. One of the sleeves was partly gone, and a huge rent in the side would have afforded ample scope for the reparatory genius of the tailor. His vest, at some remote period, had been formed of black cloth; but had grown so rusty with age, that the original colour was with difficulty distinguished. Of buttons it possessed only two or three, and even those were placed at great intervals from each other. His trousers were made of fustian, or some such material. An ugly looking pair of brogans, or coarse shoes, such as are generally worn by the slaves, protected his feet from the damp ground, and bis grey, woolly head was covered with an old shapeless felt hat. "Take him for all in all," he was a most wretched looking spectacle. Generally town negroes are better dressed than English mechanics, yet this slave was in poverty, being, as I afterwards learned, sold because his master had been unfortunate in a speculation. Certainly, the old man looked most unhappy. When any one spoke to him, and addressed him by the familiar appellation of Uncle," his visage for a moment brightened with a smile, and then relapsed into a look of utter despair. Once he involuntarily gave utterance to a laugh; but again the quivering lip and half stifled sigh betokened too perceptibly the agony within.

A young mulatto woman, of about twenty years, carrying in her arms a baby, on which her eyes ever and anon glanced with looks expressive of tenderness and fear, stood next; and looked timidly and anxiously upon the brutal throng who were gathered to hear what she and her child would bring. Large tears trickled down her dusky checks. Beside her stood another female slave, whose respectable and cleanly attire evinced that she had been accustomed to a more refined life than usually falls to the lot of slaves. Her woolly head was neatly encircled with a scarlet handkerchief,-a mode of head decoration in which negresses take much pride.

In close proximity stood three or four young men whose ages could scarcely have exceeded twenty years. They were all tall and muscular, accustomed, as their appearance indicated, to hard

sad and dejected. Their sorrow was too deep for tears. Their dress consisted of merely a pair of trousers, made apparently of fustian, or some snch material, and a blue checked shirt. Their feet, head, and arms were without covering of any kind, and their straw hats they carried in their hands. They had been evidently subjected to cruel treatment. One had lost a toe and two fingers, another was marked by deep scars upon the arms, which showed plainly that he had felt the driver's lash. Another had had an eye