terference with the relations between classes, its increased control over vast categories of transactions between individuals. . . . The parent in dealing with his child, the employer in dealing with his workmen, the shipbuilder in the construction of his ships, the shipowner in the treatment of his sailors, the houseowner in the management of his house property, the landowner in his contracts with his tenants, have been notified by public opinion or by actual law that the time has gone by when the cry of laissez-nous faire would be answered in the affirmative. The State has determined what is right and wrong, what is expedient and inexpedient, and has appointed its agents to enforce its conclusions. Some of the highest obligations of humanity, some of the smallest businesses of everyday life, some of the most complicated transactions of our industrial and agricultural organisations, have been taken in hand by the State. Individual responsibility has been lessened, national responsibility has been heightened.'

Nor can the change of tendency in this respect be measured merely by actual legislation. It is to be seen still more clearly in the countless demands for legislative restriction that are multiplying on all sides; in the Bills which, though not yet carried into law, have received a large amount of parliamentary support; in the resolutions of trade-union congresses, or county councils, or philanthropic meetings or associations; in the questions asked and the pledges exacted at every election; in the great mass of socialistic or semisocialistic literature that is circulating through the country. Few things would have more astonished

Laissez faire; or, Government Interference, by the Right Hon. G. Goschen. Address delivered at Edinburgh, 1883, p. 4.

the old Radicals of the Manchester school than to be told that a strong leaning towards legislative compulsion was soon to become one of the marked characteristics of an Advanced Liberal,' and all contracts to the contrary notwithstanding'-a favourite clause in democratic legislation.

Accompanying this movement, and naturally growing out of the great change in the disposition of power, is the marked tendency to throw taxation to a greater extent on one class of the community, in the shape of graduated taxation. In certain forms and to a certain measure this has always existed in England. The shameful exemption from taxation enjoyed by both nobles and clergy in nearly all Continental countries up to the eve of the French Revolution was unknown in England, and it had always been an English custom to impose special taxes on the luxuries of the rich. Tocqueville, in a remarkable passage, which has been often quoted, observed that for centuries the only inequalities of taxation in England were those which had been successively introduced in favour of the necessitous classes. . . . In the eighteenth century it was the poor who enjoyed exemption from taxation in England, in France it was the rich. In the one case, the aristocracy had taken upon its own shoulders the heaviest public charges in order to be allowed to govern. In the other case, it retained to the end an immunity from taxation in order to console itself for the loss of government.' Arthur Young, in a little speech which he made to a French audience at the beginning of the Revolution, described vividly the difference subsisting in this respect between the two countries. 'We have many taxes,' he said, in England which you know

nothing of in France, but the tiers Etat-the poordo not pay them. They are laid on the rich. Every window in a man's house pays, but if he has no more than six windows he pays nothing. A seigneur with a great estate pays the vingtièmes and tailles, but the little proprietor of a garden pays nothing. The rich pay for their horses, their carriages, their servants, and even for liberty to kill their own partridges; but the poor farmer pays nothing of this; and, what is more, we have in England a tax paid by the rich for the relief of the poor." Both the window-tax and the housetax of the eighteenth century were graduated taxes, rising in an increased proportion according to the value of the dwelling. A similarly progressive scale of taxation was introduced by Pitt for carriages, pleasurehorses, and male servants, the duty on each of these rising rapidly according to the numbers in each establishment.

1

The doctrine that revenue should be raised chiefly from luxuries or superfluities has been very largely recognised in English taxation, and since the great fiscal reforms instituted by Sir Robert Peel it has been carried out to an almost complete extent. A workingman who is a teetotaller and who does not smoke is now almost absolutely untaxed, except in the form of a very low duty on tea and on coffee. In the opinion of many good judges, this movement of taxation, though essentially beneficent, has been carried, in England, to an exaggerated point. It is not right, they say, that any class should be entirely exempt from all share in the Imperial burden, especially when that class is entrusted with political power, and has a considerable voice in imposing and adjusting the expenditure of the

1 Pinkerton's Voyages, iv. 200.

nation. Taxes on articles of universal consumption are by far the most productive. They ought always to be kept low, for when they are heavy they produce not only hardships, but injustice, as the poor would then pay an unduly large proportion of the national revenue; but, on the other hand, their complete repeal is a matter of very doubtful expediency.

In England, however, the policy of absolutely abolishing the taxes on the chief objects of a poor man's necessary consumption has been steadily carried out by both parties in the State. Tory Governments abolished the salt duty in 1825 and (after many reductions) the sugar duty in 1874; while Liberal Governments abolished the coal duty and the tax on candles in 1831, the last vestige of the corn duty in 1869, the taxes on soap and on licenses for making it in 1853 and 1870. Both parties have also concurred in freeing nearly every article of a working-man's attire, by removing the duties on wool, calico, and leather.' It may be questioned whether this policy has been carried to its present extreme because legislators believed it to be wise, or because they believed that it would prove popular with the electors. Such measures furnish exactly the kind of topic that is most useful on the platform.

There is another principle of taxation which has been advocated by Bentham and Mill, and which; before their time, was propounded by Montesquieu. It is that a minimum income which is sufficient to secure to a labouring family of moderate size the bare necessaries, though not the luxuries, of life, should remain. exempt from all taxation. Strictly speaking, this principle is, no doubt, inconsistent with the imposition of taxation on any article of first necessity; but it has

'Dowell's History of Taxation.

been largely adopted in England in the exemption of the poorest class of houses from taxation, and in the partial or complete exemption of small incomes from the income-tax. Successive Acts of Parliament have wholly freed incomes under 1007., under 1507., and under 1607. a year from the tax, and have granted abatements in the case of incomes under 2007., under 4007., and, finally, under 5007. a year. The large majority of the electors who return the members of the House of Commons now pay nothing to the income-tax.

By all these measures a system of graduated taxation has steadily grown up. A few lines from a speech made by Lord Derby in 1885 give a clear picture of what in his day had been done. Take the income-tax. We exempt altogether incomes up to a certain point, and we exempt them partially up to a higher point. Take the house-tax. What have you got there? Total exemption of all that class of houses in which workingmen usually live. Take the death duties. They absolutely spare property below a certain limited amount. Take the carriage-tax. The class of conveyances used by poor persons, or used otherwise than for purposes of pleasure, are made specially free of charge. Take the railway-passenger tax. It falls on first and second class passengers, and leaves the third class untouched. . . In our poor law, now 300 years old, we have adopted a system so socialistic in principle that no Continental Government would venture even to look at it.'1

Articles of luxury or ostentation used exclusively by the rich are, in many instances, specially taxed. Such, for example, are the taxes on armorial bearings, on the more expensive qualities of wine, on menservants, and on sporting. In some cases taxes of this kind have

1 The Times, November 2, 1885.