rents and taxes, for the indirect taxation levied by means of claims for personal service, or interference with the movements of commerce. The greater the tendency towards direct taxation, the less, therefore, will always be the proportion borne by taxation for the support of government, to the amount of production by the people. That such are the facts, is shown by the history of all advanc ing communities, of ancient and modern times. More especially is it shown in the recent history of France and Northern Europe. Enormous as is the political centralization of France, and burdensome as is her taxation in the forms of personal service and pecuniary contribution, no one can study her history for the last and present centuries, without remarking a steady increase in the proportion of the product retained by the laborer, and diminution in that taken by the government. A century since, the Farmers General were the real rulers of the kingdom - paying the sovereign for the privilege of taxing his people at their pleasure. Their fortunes growing with the growth of taxes, they, of course, omitted no contrivance by means of which the contributions might be augmented. Taxation is still most oppressively heavy; but, so far as regards land, while remaining in the hands of its owner, is a fixed and certain quantity, the payment of which is a guarantee against arbitrary demands by hosts of government agents, such as were of daily occurrence in the days of Louis XIV. and his immediate successors. Although the value of landed property, as the reader has already seen, has more than doubled, the amount of tax has remained almost unchanged since the period of its first imposition, fifty years since -thus proving the diminution in the proportion taken for govern. mental support, that accompanies a gradual substitution of direct for indirect taxation. * § 11. Such, too, is the tendency in all the countries of Northern Europe, and for the reason, that, as taxation becomes more direct, it addresses itself more to the reasoning being recognised The direct taxes of 1854, of every description, amounted to 412,000,000 francs, and constituted nearly a third of the ordinary resources of the TreaBury-the total amount having been 1,265,000,000. VOL. III.-13 as MAN, and less to the unreasoning one treated of in the Malthusian school always moved to action by passions over which he has no control, and remaining, therefore, little better than a brute. The one is asked to pay a direct contribution, the proceeds of which are to be applied to the maintenance of security for himself, his wife, and children, in the exercise of their rights. of person and of property. The other is urged to drink, to gamble, or to adventure in the lottery, that the government may have the opportunity of picking his pocket, while so employed. In no part of Europe does the value of person and property advance more rapidly than in Denmark. In none, has man more rapidly advanced towards civilization; and in none, therefore, has the tendency towards the substitution of fixed payments for the use of land, to its owner, and to the government, made more rapid progress; with necessary tendency towards diminution in the proportion borne by taxes to production. The revenues of towns and cities are all, there, derived from taxes upon property -abstinence from interference with the passage of property from the producer to the consumer, being the rule of action.* So, too, is it, in Germany - the great increase in the productiveness of labor, and in the value of land, being there attended by a decided tendency to the substitution of fixed and certain taxes, for those interferences with the movement of society known as "taxes on consumption." + *Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique, article Octrois. "The German bauer," now owner of his little property, "looks on the country as made for him and his fellow-men. He feels himself a man; he has a stake in the country as good as that of the bulk of his neighbors; no man can threaten him with ejection or the workhouse so long as he is active and economical. He walks, therefore, with a bold step; he looks you in the face with the air of a free man, but of a respectful one."- HowITT: Rural and Domestic Life in Germany, p. 27. How strong is the tendency of the state of feeling thus described, towards production of the security that needs no aid from governments, is thus shown by another English traveller: "Every peasant who possesses one of these estates becomes interested in the maintenance of public order, in the tranquillity of the country, in the suppression of crimes, in the fostering of industry among his own children, and in the promotion of their intelligence. A class of peasant proprietors forms the strongest of all conservative classes. *** Throughout all the excitement of the revolutions of 1848, the peasant proprietors of France, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, were almost universally found upon the side of order, and opposed to revolutionary excesses. It was only in the provinces where the land was divided among the nobles, and where the peasants were only serfs, as in the Polish provinces, Bohemia, Austria, and some parts of South Germany, that they showed themselves rebellious. In So, too, is it in Russia. -the tendency there being, everywhere, towards a limitation of the proportion of personal service due to both proprietor and government, for the use of land, and towards the substitution of direct and certain demands, for the indirect and uncertain ones heretofore in use.* Look where we may, among the advancing nations of the world, we find a diminution in the proportion of the product of labor and land, required for the maintenance of government, accompanied by a growing tendency towards an honest appeal to reasoning men for the payment of direct taxes, and towards an abandonment of the system which looks to filching from them a large proportion of the products of their labor. § 12. The more rapid the circulation, the greater is the tendency in the direction above described — the value of land and man increasing, in the direct ratio of increase in the rapidity with which consumption follows production. The slower the circulation, the larger is the proportion taken by governments, and the greater is the tendency towards indirect taxation-the first lookPrussia, they sent deputation after deputation to Frederic William, to assure him of their support; in one province the peasant proprietors elected his brother as their representative; and in others they declared, by petition after petition forwarded to the chamber, and by the results of the elections, how strongly they were opposed to the anarchical party in Berlin."- KAY: Social Condition of the people of England and of Europe, vol. i. pp. 33, 273. The free peasants of Russia constitute, as yet, a small class, but they live "as free and happy men, upon their own land; are active, frugal, and, without exception, well off. This they must be, for considerable means are necessary for the purchase of their freedom; and, once free, and in possession of a farm of their own, their energy and industry, manifested even in a state of slavery, are redoubled by the enjoyment of personal liberty, and their earnings naturally increase in a like measure. "The second class, the crown peasants, are far better off (setting aside, of course, the consciousness of, freedom) than the peasants of Germany. They must furnish their quota of recruits; but that is their only material burden. Besides that, they annually pay to the crown a sum of five roubles (about four shillings) for each male person of the household. Supposing the family to include eight working men, which is no small number for a farm, the yearly tribute paid amounts to thirty-two shillings. And what a farm that must be which employs eight men all the year round! In what country of civilised Europe has the peasant so light a burden to bear? How much heavier those which press upon the English farmer, the French, the German, and above all the Austrian, who often gives up three-fourths of his harvest in taxes. If the crown peasant be so fortunate as to be settled in the neighborhood of a large town, his prosperity soon exceeds that even of the Altenburg husbandmen, said to be the richest in all Germany. On the other hand, he can never purchase his freedom: hitherto, at least, no law of the crown has granted him this privilege."-JERMANN: Pictures from St. Petersburgh, p. 23. ing towards the MAN, recognised by Adam Smith as the subject of social science; the last towards the slave-the subject treated of by Messrs. Malthus and Ricardo-required, as he is, to give to his various masters, a constantly increasing proportion of a constantly diminishing quantity yielded by the earth. How small were the rights of person in Jamaica, and in the other British islands, is shown by the fact, that, out of 2,000,000 of persons imported, less than 800,000 were found existing at the date of emancipation-all the remainder, together with the millions that should have resulted from their natural increase, having been hurried from existence by the driver's lash. How little the rights of property have been respected, is shown in the adoption of a series of measures, resulting in the total ruin of nearly all the persons by whom the land was owned. Seeking the cause of this, we find it in a system that, by limiting the planters to the labors of the field, produced a necessity for making all their exchanges elsewhere-thus affording an opportunity for taxation, used with such severity, that the producer perished in the field, while the Englishman who, could he have sold his labor, would gladly have been his customer, was driven to the poorhouse to seek for bread.* How small has been the security obtained in India, in return for taxes paid, is shown in the gradual disappearance of the whole class of small proprietors - the men who paid directly to the government—and the substitution of great zemindars, a class of middlemen, through whose hands must pass all the moneys contributed by the people for the service of the State.† How miserable is the present condition of the people, is shown in the fact, that it is precisely as we recede from Bengal, the country longest subjected to the Company, we find the Hindoo becoming more and more a MAN.‡ Throughout the country, the whole system of taxation tends towards stoppage of the circulation the amount of contribution increasing with every additional effort on the part of the laborer, and diminishing as he ceases to apply himself to any pursuit calculated to aid production.§ Offering, therefore, a premium for inactivity, the result is seen in the payment, as taxes, of a * See ante, vol. i. p. 296. † Ibid, p. 355. larger proportion of the produce of land and labor, than in any other country of the world. Inquiring into the cause of this, we find it in the great facts, that the circulation of society has been annihilated, and that the cotton which leaves him at a penny a pound, comes back at a cost of thirty pence-the whole difference having been absorbed, on its passage from his little field to the bodies of himself, his wife, and children. Turning next to Ireland, we find a steady decline in the value of land and labor, accompanied by an increase in the proportion of taxation to production, strikingly manifested in the extension over her, of a tax on profits that, when Ireland was comparatively prosperous, was limited to Britain alone. Desiring to understand the cause of this, the reader may find it in the facts before referred to, that Irish food and wool are so heavily taxed on their road from the field in which they are produced, to the backs on which the cloth is worn, that circulation of labor, or of its products, can scarcely be said to have existence. Coming now to the United States, we find the government. contracting debts in the free-trade period from 1818 to 1825— paying them off in the protective one from 1826 to 1834-recontracting them in the free-trade one from 1836 to 1842-paying them off in the protective one from 1843 to 1846-re-contracting them again between 1847 and 1850-and then again. paying them off, by means of revenues derived from enormous importations, based upon private debts, requiring an annual payment of interest, to an amount greater than the average export of food to all the world. Indirect taxation, and interference with commerce, having now become recognised as the proper and permanent source of revenue, the result is seen in the fact, that the public expenditure has quintupled, in a period within which the population has little more than doubled. Lastly, arriving in England, we find expenditures increasing as profits are more and more taking the place of production, and as taxes on consumption more and more replace the few direct ones which previously had existed. At the date of the repeal of the house-tax, the average amount of contributions for the support of government was £46,000,000. Since then, it has grown rapidly having reached an average of £48,000,000 in the period from 1836 to 1841 - £53,000,000 in that from |