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No. 1197. Fourth Series, No. 58. 11 May, 1867.

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POETRY: A Child's Trade in Bethnal Green, 416. Society in Japan, 416.

SHORT ARTICLES: Ladies Parliament, 400. Books in Russia, 415. New Editions of Poets,

415.

HOW TO RAISE A REVENUE. The article from the N. Y. Evening Post, upon Mr. Atkinson's striking pamphlet, deserves the attention of Members of Congress, and of all who vote for them. Spreading the taxation over thousands of articles, which in many cases do not pay the cost of collection, is entirely opposed to the experience of Great Britain. Sir Robert Peel struck off his list of taxables all but some leading articles which yielded much revenue, thus avoiding unprofitable friction, and saving to the public at large very much more than was given up by the government. We now know that excessive taxation is not necessary, and ought to learn from experience a simpler system of revenue. Let all persons who suffer from the high price of necessaries of life, aid in making this reform, and work besides for a reduction of national bank notes, as the best way of reducing our redundant currency.

We give in this number of The Living Age, a translation of Count de Montalembert's "Victory of the North," which many persons have wished to see in English. If any of our readers think it takes up too much room, we pray them to notice that we have added thirty pages to the number, so that it costs them nothing. A memoir of the author is appended.

"OUT OF CHARITY," 75 cents, and "THE VICTORY OF THE NORTH," 25 cents, will be published immediately.

Preparing at the Living Age Office

A WEEK IN A FRENCH COUNTRY HOUSE.

THE STARLING. By Norman Macleod, D.D.

THE TENANTS OF MALORY. By J. S. Le Fanu.

GUILD COURT-a London Story. By George MacDonald.

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OUR tax system is now felt by the people to be so oppressive as to be exhausting to industry; It interferes in every part of every business; it raises prices unnecessarily, by taxing products at successive stages of their manufacture; it interferes with production and with sale, disables us from competing in foreign markets with other nations; and has already almost exterminated several of our most useful and important industries, and driven millions of capital out of the country, because it can be more profitably employed in Canada and elsewhere than at

home.

Suppose that we could raise all the money we need without all this oppression, injury, and loss? Would not that be one of the greatest boons possible to be conferred on the American people? Few men will deny this; but the most will refuse to believe that it can be done: yet it is quite possible, as the Evening Post has asserted again and again. Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, shows in a pamphlet, "on the Collection of Revenue," which he has just published, how it can be done; and we cannot do a better service to the public than to make a statement of the facts he gives, and recommend the pamphlet itself to all who feel the burden of taxation, and desire to have it eased.

Under our present revenue system, the number of articles which pay internal revenue, according to a statement of Commissioner Wells, is "not less than ten thousand!" and the number of articles on which a tariff is levied amounts to six thousand!

Consider what an enormous amount of clerical force alone is needed, besides spics and informers, to collect taxes all of them heavy on sixteen thousand different articles! Consider what vexatious interference with production and consumption is involved in the collection by the government of taxes on sixteen thousand articles ! Consider that each one of these sixteen thousand articles furnishes an occasion for an error and a chance for a bribe!

And then consider this; With an economical administration of the government, we need the sum of three hundred millions per annum to pay all our expenses, including interest on the debt, and to pay a small part of the principal. Now, Mr. Atkinson tells us that during the last fiscal year the revenue, internal and external, derived from the following eighteen articles- incomes, stamps, licenses, banks and insurance companies, legacies and successions,

"On the Collection of Revenue." By Edward Atkinson. Boston: A. Williams & Co.

gross receipts of railroads, canals, lotteries, telegraph companies, &c., tea, coffee, sugar, spices, Ispirits and wines, fermented liquors, tobacco, and manufactures of silk amounted to $260,000,000, of which $80,000,000 was in gold. Count this for only $250,000,000, and we need to raise only another $50,000,000 to complete the sum required; and this Mr. Atkinson proposes to raise by a low tariff-strictly laid for revenue to be lowered as the wealth and consumption of the country increases.

Under this system, our whole home manufac-
tures could be at once relieved of the internal
revenue tax; our tariff would be reduced within
such a compass that it would no longer vexa-
tiously and wastefully interfere with commerce;
our tax system would be simplified at a blow,
would revive and increase.
and industry and commerce, now prostrate,

members of Congress and politicians. It de-
We commend Mr. Atkinson's pamphlet to
serves their attention. The people are already
grumbling at the monstrous tax system which
The last Congress refused
oppresses them.
them relief. If the present Congress, at its
next session, does not move in this direction,
the people will demand to know the reason
why.

themselves a powerful and industrious body
'The manufacturers of this country have shown
for the futherance of their peculiar interests.
They groan dolorously over the burden of inter-
have always had the opportunity to relieve
nal taxation they are compelled to bear. They
themselves of special taxation.

- as we have

often told them. Will they now, with these facts before them, join the people in an effort to simplify the tax system in such a manner that home manufactures shall be relieved of special

taxation?

The Southern people, who will, we hope, be represented in the next Congress, have in this a means of relieving themselves from the injuri Let them ous and oppressive tax on cotton. make haste to reconstruct their State governments, that they may help in Congress to repeal this tax on their home industry.

We may so adjust our burden of taxation that we shall scarcely feel it. Let the people see to this; let them instruct and command their representatives in Congress that as soon as they meet in December they shall take measures to perfect and adopt a system founded on just principles. Unless the people command it, it will not be done, for all reform in this diThey have the rection depends upon them. summer and fall to talk with their representatives; let every member of Congress be in

structed that before all else his constituents want to be relieved of a burden which is totally unnecessary and fatally injurious.

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Translated from Le Correspondant.

THE VICTORY OF THE NORTH IN THE
UNITED STATES.

BY CTE. DE MONTALEMBERT, OF THE
FRENCH ACADEMY.

the creation of Belgium, came to honor the youth of this age, to rejoice and strengthen liberal hearts, and mark the steps of true progress. Behold again, after too long an interval, a happy victory. Behold, once at least, evil conquered by good, forever triumphing in the service of right, and yielding us the unwonted and supreme enjoyment of aiding in this world in the success of a good cause effected by good means and

DURING the last days of the debates upon the address, an orator, forever illustrious, charmed our minds and our hearts in plead-gained by honest men.

ing the best of causes; whilst borne upon Let us, then, thank the God of armies for the wings of justice and of truth, he hov- this glory and this happiness. Let us thank ered over unaccustomed heights and bore him for this great victory that he has grantaloft with him his enchanted audience, ed for the consolation of the friends of jusnews happy and glorious above all other tice and of liberty; for the everlasting contraversed seas, and brought to faithful souls, fusion of the varied and numberless classes smitten with liberty, the pulsations of a joy of those who impose upon and oppress their and of a consolation too long unknown. fellow-men by servitude as well as by corruption, by falsehood as well as by cupidity, by sedition as well as by tyranny.

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The immense mourning, which has impressed upon the triumph of the Northern States a sacred character, could not change this joy. It must survive the consternation, the terror, that the assassination of President Lincoln has produced over all the unia victim sacrificed upon the altar of victory and of the country, in the bosom of one of those catastrophes supremely tragical, which crown certain causes and certain existences with an incomparable majesty, in adding the mysterious grandeur of expiation, and of an expiation unmerited, to the virtues and the glories that humanity esteems the most.

to Let us greet, then, with a satisfaction without alloy, the happy victory which secures in the United States the triumph of the North over the South; that is to say, of legitimate power over an inexcusable revolt, of justice over iniquity, of truth over falsehood, of liberty over slavery.

It is well known that we are not accustomed to pay homage to victory, to applaud conquerors. It is the first time that this has occurred for more than thirty years; it is very certain that we shall not abuse this novelty, and that we shall not make it a custom. May we be permitted, then, now to abandon our selves to a joy so rare in associating present emotions with those days too quickly passed, in which the constitution of 1814, the freedom of Greece, the emancipation of the English Catholics, the conquest of Algeria,

But already I hear the murmur of surprise, of displeasure, of protestation. Even in the Catholic camp, the cause of the North has been, is still, unpopular. At the report of her victory, this shameful cry, "The more's the shame!" related by the Moniteur as uttered in the bosom of the Corps Legislatif, it has perhaps escaped from more than one breast, from more than one heart accustomed to beat as ours for the cause we love and that we serve from the cradle.

Is it necessary, then, we are asked, must we, then, truly rejoice and bless God for this victory? Answer without fear: Yes, we must. Yes, we should thank God because a great nation is raised again; because she is purified forever from a hideous leprosy which served as a pretext and as an excuse to all the enemies of liberty to disparage and to defame her; because she justifies now all the hopes which reposed upon her; because we had need of her; and because she is restored to us, repentant, triumphant, and saved.

Yes, we must thank God that the leprosy of slavery has disappeared under the sword of the conquerors of Richmond, extirpated forever from the only great Christian peoples who, except Spain, were still infected by

* In its report given of the session of April 16. 1805.

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and that we shall never see again, upon the glorious continent of North America, a human creature, made in the image of God, put up at auction to be bid off, and abandoned as prey, with his wife and children, to all that is arbitrary, to cruel selfishness, to infamous lucre, to the vile passions of one of his own kind.

it; because that great mart of men is closed, | cause that those who first drew the sword, have perished by the sword; because impunity has not been granted to the instigators of an iniquitous revolt, of an impious war; because this time, at least, audacity and cunning did not suffice to make honest people ridiculous; because the authors of crime have been the victims of it; because in passing the Rubicon of law they have found Yes, we should thank God, because in re- upon the other shore defeat, death; because storing and purifying herself, America has that, having risked the fortunes of their justified, honored, glorified France and the country, with the temerity of an adventuFrench policy, her true policy, the old hon-rer and the adroitness of a conspirator, alea est and courageous policy of our best times, jacta est has not profited them, and that in those that sent forth the chivalric and liberal this impious and bloody game they have not élite of our noblesse, upon the footsteps of! succeeded. They have played and they La Fayette, to the camp of Washington; be- have lost. Justice is done. cause, that there, at least, the generous devotion of our fathers will not have ended, | as elsewhere, in a bloody and cruel failure; Let us resume and persist. We do not because there results from it one crown allow ourselves to be blinded by the momenmore for Louis XVI., for the martyr king, tary dissatisfactions of the adversaries of for him who was among us the expiatory the American cause and of ours. We do victim of a great revolution, victim all the more touching and more sacred, that, instead of disappearing as Lincoln in the midst of universal mourning, he was outraged before being immolated; that these outrages remain still; and for this reason he carries our admiration and our pity to a point where there is none above it save the crucified Lord.

Yes, we must thank God, because in this great and terrible struggle between servitude and liberty, it is liberty which has remained victorious,-liberty which, with us, is so much mingled with contempt, treason, and disorder, compromised and dishonored by so many false friends and unworthy champions, required retribution, and that it should suddenly dazzle all eyes by its inestimable merit. Yes, it is necessary to thank God, that from reports, well attested, victory has remained pure; because the good cause has neither been tarnished by any excess nor soiled by any crime; because that its advocates have not to blush for its soldiers, nor these soldiers for their chiefs, nor these chiefs for their fortune, nor fortune herself for having crowned mean cupidity or base conspiracies.

Yes, finally we must thank God because the aggressors have been conquered; be

not believe them really converted or enlightened. In proportion as the dazzling light which has burst so suddenly upon Europe, the taking of Richmond, followed by the tragic death of Lincoln, decreases; as the clouds, inseparable from all victory and every human cause, appear above the horizon, we shall hear again these invectives, these diatribes of which the United States in general, of which the Northern States in particular, have been the object. Raillery and calumny will resume their assault in order to reanimate that malevolence of opinion that we have seen so skilfully, so learnedly, maintained within and without. This perverse joy, so often uttered by all the enemies of liberty, since they believed the fall of the great republic possible, would again become noisy and powerful at the first embarrassment, at the first terror of our friends beyond the sea.

Now all the world defends itself from wishing, or ever having even wished, the preservation of slavery; but the arguments and the interests favorable to slavery have not ceased to maintain their empire.

This has been no ordinary lesson, to see how from the first days of the breaking out of the conflict between the North and the

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South the classifying of opinions has operated. I do not say, God forbid, that all the friends of the South should be the enemies of justice and liberty; still less do I say that all the partisans of the North should be taken for true and sincere lovers of liberty. But I say that an instinct, involuntary perhaps, all-powerful and invincible, has immediately ranged upon the side of the slaveholders all the avowed or secret partisans of fanaticism or absolutism in Europe, I say that all the enemies, open or secret, political or theological, of liberty, have been for the South. It would be useless and puerile to deny that the United States count a certain number of adversaries amongst the Catholics, and notwithstanding the prodigious and gratifying progress of Catholicism in that republic, a progress seen nowhere else since the first ages of the Church. I shall abstain from fathoming the causes of this unpopularity of America in general and of the American Abolitionists in particular. This investigation will lead me too far: I shall limit myself to the remark that men of my time have always met upon their way an opinion falsely religious and blindly conservative. It was so in 1821 with Turkey against Greece, in 1830 with Holland against Belgium, in 1854 with Russia against Poland; it is the same now with the slaveholders of the South against the Abolitionists of the North. The events at first, then the sympathies of the mass of the clergy and of the Catholics enlightened by events, have inflicted, by this tendency, cruel falsehoods and humiliating recantations upon the Eastern, the Belgic, and the Polish question. I am convinced that the same thing will happen some day or other for the American question. But it is hard that it should come often so slowly to the assistance of justice and of truth: if, with the exception of the learned and eloquent Dr. Brownson,

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we shall not discover amongst the Catholics of the United States any champion of the emancipation of the blacks, we have at least the small consolation of being able to state that there has not come from their ranks any apology for American Slavery. I object to recognize the sacerdotal character in the author of a recent and anonymous work entitled, On Slavery in the Confederale States, by a missionary.* If the author of this shameful book was really a priest, and if he was contented as he affirms to live amongst the American planters for twenty-four years, to extol highly the utility and the legitimacy of the slavery of the blacks, in order to see even in their servitude the only possible barrier to their licentiousness, the fact alone of such a perversion of the moral sense and the sacerdotal conscience, would constitute the most cruel argument against the social and religious régime of the slave country.

But, independent of the question of slavery and even before this question had occupied the mind, there existed amongst too large a number of Catholics an instinctive aversion against America, of which we might perhaps trace the origin to the Count de Maistre. This influence, it is known, upon the greatest as upon the less important questions, has been incontestably the most powerful upon all those which the Catholics of the nineteenth century have left. This great man, like many others, owes more of his fame to his exaggerations than to his great mind. His paradoxes have gained more favor and a louder response than the genius and good sense, of which he has left upon most of his works the ineffaceable impress.

There is too little known of the exquisite tenderness of his charming spirit, and still less of the proud independence, the mind at the same time chivalric and liberal, the luminous politics often far in advance, which his varied correspondence recently published, has revealed. But he did not admire the United States; their origin and progress contradicted some of his most cherished theories; he did wrong by transforming his repugnances into prophecies. The fate of those is known that he uttered

* Chez Dentu, 1865, in 8vo.

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