encroaching on their capital, they can place in the stock reserved for immediate consumption, or spend upon their subsistence, convenience and amusements. Their real wealth is in proportion not to their gross, but to their net revenue" [income].

Now, apply this to the laborer's daily income, varying between eighteen pence and five shillings a day. Call it income or call it property,-it is still the day's wages for the day's labor. Is this the net revenue which can be taxed consistently with the condition of a just Income Tax, before mentioned ?

But a laborer's daily income is not equivalent to a day's wages, since he must earn in six days his income, or "daily bread," for seven at the least. The tax, therefore, to an ordinary laborer ought not to be on seven days of his week's earnings. It ought not to be on six days. All laborers are liable to sickness, accidents, loss of work. They must make up, while employed, their livelihood for the days on which they earn nothing. But they do not buy their tea and sugar, or other taxed necessaries of life, cheaper on one day than another.

Is this consistent with the condition, as laid down, for a just Income Tax? And is it any more consistent, if called a Property Tax?

Can anything show more plainly than this, the injustice and impolicy of taxing the wages of labor, and the profits of trade, or the produce of industry and skill, bodily or mental, of the common laborer, or skilled artizan, the manufacturer, or merchant, the agriculturist, the shop-keeper, or the professional man, until the products of his labor, or the profits of his industry and skill, have been realised?

Who can say, what is the net income of a common laborer, dependent on his daily labor for his daily subsistence? Or, even of a professional man, in like manner dependent?

How is the condition to be observed by a careful distinction between the gross receipts within the periods of computation, and the net amount reserved "to spend upon subsistence, conveniences and amusements"?

This is one of the impossibilities; for, it is admitted that, for the purpose of the income tax, a man's real income for a year, is not all the money which may come into his hands in that time, but what comes into his own pocket, or what he can spend in the twelve months.

The less the advocates of the present Income Tax say about "graduating" the tax, the better. The yeoman with £50 a year, does not pay income tax at all, being under the mark.

The professional man,-the Country Surgeon, for instance, has not £300 a year,—like the fundholder,— and is taxed above his income. But if once the graduated scale be let into our system of taxation, we shall have Socialism in its worst form, in a disproportionate exaction from the gains of genius and successful enterprise.

And who would really bear the cost of these abatements? Would it fall on the estates of the nobility, and landed gentry? Must they make up the deficit?

No. Not the old wealth of the country, but the new -not the ancient revenues of the soil, but the growing produce of the human arm and mind—would be required to make up the deficit.

But the philanthropists and philosophers,—the financiers and actuaries,-would graduate the Income Tax only to equalize it.

Let them beware of worse inequalities!

And it may be well for Mr. Hubbard to remember that something more than a good intention is sometimes necessary to insure a good result, as he might have learnt, in his early childhood, from the familiar song of his venerable namesake :

"Old Mother Hubbard,
"Went to the cupboard,"

With a very benevolent intention,

"But when she came there

"The cupboard was bare,"

And so the good intention was frustrated.

A graduated Income Tax could never help to fill the cupboards of the laboring poor. On the contrary,—the tendency of such a measure must be, to diminish the store of contents in their cupboards, by diminishing the fund for the employment of their labor,-consequently, diminishing the demand for their labor, and reducing their wages.

Mr. Gladstone, in his view of the case, was not altogether wrong when he said:-"If you take away a penny to relieve somebody under Schedule D, you must put it on somebody else." This he terms an application of "this grand true doctrine- the abatement of one man is the taxation of another.'"

This is true if applied to a tax on property, or on income derived from property; but it is not true if applied to a tax on the wages of labor, or the profits of trade before they are realised. It is quite true if applied, as Mr. Gladstone applied it, to a graduated scale of Income Tax for Schedule D., whether under the delusive notion of equalizing it, or any other notion.

"The abatement of one man is the taxation of another" and further,—it is loss and injury to both.

But a properly framed tax on property, and the abolition of all other taxes on property or income, would amply compensate the burden of the tax upon the smallest incomes. No property, on which the tax would be worth the expense of collecting, would be exempted. Thus the tax would be equalized by the

same per-centage to all, and in this way only can it ever be equalized.

It is not by "taking away the tax," that a Chancellor of the Exchequer can "build himself an everlasting name;" though Mr. Gladstone said, in making his Financial Statement, in 1853;—"I think that some better Chancellor of the Exchequer, in some happier times, may achieve that great accomplishment, and that some future Poet may be able to sing of him ;

"He took the tax away,

And built himself an everlasting name."

It is not by "taking the tax away," but by adapting it for perpetuity, and connecting his name with those reforms, which would make it a lasting monument of his political skill, and fearless justice.

TRADES UNIONS.

A few words on this subject will be in their proper place here, and may be useful to those most concerned, if they will only bring to the consideration of the subject a little common sense. There is, perhaps, nothing new to be said about it, but this is quite clear, that a great many of the working class, whom it most concerns, understand very little about it.

It will surprise those who are seeking to interfere, by Trades Unions, with the wages of Labor, to be told that they are trying to bring themselves down to the condition of slaves. But this is the truth. It is equally true that they have no more chance of equalizing the rate of wages, than of equalizing the division of property.

No honest man was ever so ignorant as to suppose it possible to bring about an equal division of property. It would be a harsh thing to say that, every leader of

a Trade Union must be either a knave or a fool, yet it is difficult to decide how otherwise to class him on his own showing. If he know that he is acting wrong, he is a knave. If he believe that he is acting for his own interest, as a working-man, and for that of his fellowworkers, he is a fool. In the former case, he is trying to make others believe what he does not believe himself, that he may the more easily cheat them. He is trying to make himself a slave-master, that he may have slaves under his command, always ready to work for him. The poor slaves look up to him, because he promises and threatens, and because they are slaves, very ignorant, and very cowardly. The black overseer is always the most cruel. He has been a slave himself, and he knows what slaves are.

This is a true practice, and no caricature. The only difference is that, instead of the brutal savage negro with his cow-hide lash, we have the cunning white slavemaster with his scale of fines and secret intimidation, the last to be used only on the refractory and cowardly slaves. In either case they are slaves, deprived of their own free will; in the one case, working under a master who controls them with the lash, in the other with the money-fine, and intimidation.

Now, this is a great mistake on the part of the white slaves. But the mistake is their own, and they must suffer for it. In the case of the black slaves, the mistake is their masters, and they are suffering for it. The law is with the white slaves, and could protect them; but they break the law and will not have the protection. The law is against the black slaves, and declares then to be personal chattels, and stock-in-trade.

In both cases, it is the mistake of interfering with the wages of labor. This never did, and never can, succeed. The market price of labor is regulated by the same natural laws as is the price of every other market