aristocracy was consolidated; and that terrible curse of a national debt was begun, to defray the expenses of continental wars.' From William III. to George II. aristocratic legislation took its natural course. Its grand object was to augment the value of land; to attach to that kind of property every conceivable immunity; and to render its rental increasingly productive. The game laws, replete with the worst spirit, were passed in the year 1753,' and reminded Englishmen of the dark ages. Our rulers, imagining that cheap food would best answer their purpose, (as in a certain sense it undoubtedly would,) within ten years after the accession of George III., discontinued the bounty on the exportation of wheat, and opened their ports for foreign grain. The conclusion of the American war, however, threw them upon still more selfish, though less beneficial measures. They were now getting jealous of the manufacturing and commercial interests; whilst revolutionary principles in France so alarmed our sensitive nobles, on this side the channel, that they ranged themselves, with rare exceptions, under the banners of the altar and monarchy, against all rights of mankind whatsoever. They passed a law in 1791, prohibiting the importation of bread-corn, unless the prices were above 54 shillings a quarter in the home market. William had saddled the landed interest with an impost of four shillings in the pound; or, in other terms, no less than twenty per cent. upon the then rental. The aristocracy 'having entered into that terrible struggle with France, which has caused such miseries to this country, fixed by law a limit to the tax on land, and rated the amount at about the same price as it had been ninety years before. The amount of land-tax, to be for ever collected, was limited to about £2,000,000 per annum, with the privilege of redemption by landowners; and at the end of fifty years from the passing of the law, the amount has dwindled down to about £1,200,000.' When the land tax was first imposed, our landed rental was hardly more than about ten millions sterling per annum; of which no less than two were contributed, and that justly, to the public treasury. Since that time, our landed rental has quintupled; but in lieu of paying ten millions of land tax, the consciences of an aristocracy and squirearchy are perfectly satisfied with matters as they are! The church blesses them in a composition with their creditors, whereby they exactly contribute half a crown to the revenue instead of an honest sovereign. On this count alone our aristocracy, as a system, is chargeable with having robbed the country during the last fifty years, to the extent of four hundred millions sterling, or nearly a moiety of the entire national debt!

Not that cheap food was any longer an object with the British aristocracy, in thus relieving the land which produces it from

this enormous share of fiscal burthens. The load was to be shifted from the shoulders of property to those of industry; for it had now been discovered that high prices would support high rents. Hence came the corn laws, with all their atrocities and absurdities; avowedly claimed and acknowledged by a large majority of the peerage as their own offspring, as essential to their own maintenance, as the foundations upon which their corinthian columns are to stand or fall. For the last quarter of a century, these laws, on the most moderate calculation, have at least raised the price of the first article of life about ten millions per annum; so that here we have another count against the aristocracy, of having inflicted on the country, since the Peace, an aggregate expense for bread alone to the extent of two hundred and fifty millions sterling. But what shall we say to the whole mass of provision duties, with regard to which Lord Stanley declared, as Secretary to the Government, that it was necessary to keep up prices, and thereby rents, for the sake of the farmers, the landlords, but, above all, the humbler classes;'what shall be answered to them, in better keeping with truthfulness, than the following extracts from Mr. Macintyre?

In pursuing these subjects into their depths and tortuosities, the mind is alternately roused by the enormity of the injustice, or excited by the folly and simplicity displayed; and the pen wavers on the line, between the denouncement of the enormity, and the expression of the sense of the ridiculous, as seen in the spectacle of an order of nobles, maintained chiefly by a morsel from the penny loaf of this agricultural labourer, and a bite from the lean bacon of another, from contributions infininitesimally collected from the artisans crowded amidst the smoke and filth of our large cities, which add to wealth imperceptibly but surely, like the sweatings of sovereigns to the hoard of the Jew. Every anvil delivers its quota, through the food which strengthens the arm that wields the hammer; and a driblet from every pot of porter that washes the throat and cheers the stout heart of the bargeman, sends its representative to the table of the duke. What heaps of wealth are squeezed out of these countless swarms in cotton mills; but oh! what agony is endured in the process! Even the little printer-boy, who brings the sheets from the press to the author, has paid his tax to the aristocracy, through the breakfast his mother prepared for him in the morning. It has been demonstrated, that a family in easy circumstances, spending at the rate of about 250l. a year in provisions of all kinds, is charged in the prices of the articles from 20 to 25 per cent., as an advance that accrues to the landowners, in consequence of laws which tax food, or restrict its importation into this country. This will make a contribution of from 50l. to 601. a year. Be it observed, that 250l. a year spent in provisions will measure a gross income of about 1,000l., so that the 501. and 607. of tax to the landed interest amounts to from 5 to 6 per cent. only on that sum. But as the income diminishes, the ratio of the tax increases.

It has been shown that a man with 5007. a year spends in provisions 1667.; a man with 2507. spends 1057.; so that the first contributes 6 to 8 per cent., and the second contributes from 8 to 10 per cent. to enable my Lord Dashly to speculate in horses, run his carriages, sport with his ladies, hire his French cooks or Swiss valets, and to pay the interest on money borrowed of usurers, assurance companies, and other wealthy parties; or to indulge the rural tastes of Lord Landly, gracefully exhibited in the extension of his pleasure grounds, in the addition to his gardeners, or in the increase of his grooms.'-Macintyre, pp. 391, 2.

We have hitherto rather mingled the subjects of food and taxation together, because it is almost impossible to separate them in exhibiting the mischievous effects upon both of aristocratic legislation. The same principle runs throughout our whole fiscal system. Robbery, in ermine and scarlet, has had for a protracted period the task in its own hands of arranging governmental revenues! Trahit sua quemque voluptas. It can be no enemy, as an Irishman would say, to its own flesh and blood, its own kith and kin. Of these, indeed, it has taken such effectual care, that Opulence revels in luxury, whilst Poverty pays the piper! In our customs and excise, our imposts levied on consumable articles, our direct taxes, there will be apparent this one unavoidable result: duties will be found almost invariably to have been laid on the quantities, and not on the value of the various subjects falling within the grasp of the executive. Thus, for instance, tobacco furnishes a striking example of what we mean; referring to matters as they stood, until last year. Ordinary Virginia costs about three pence per pound; the duty stands at three shillings, or twelve hundred per cent. on the prime cost of the article. Fine Virginia costs about sixpence; the duty stands at three shillings, or about six hundred per cent. on the prime cost. Best yellow Maryland costs about fifteen pence; the duty is three shillings, or only about two hundred and forty per cent. But Havannah cigars, which cost at first about eight shillings and sixpence a pound, pay no more duty than nine shillings, which comes to only a fraction above cent. per cent. on the prime cost. In this case, it will be perceived, the poorer classes pay double the duty that the middle classes do; and five times as much as the better classes do; and a dozen times as much as the gentleman. Who can fail to discern, the real authors of such enactments,-stone blind to the glaring injustice,-oblivious of smuggling, with all its fearful consequences,-only mindful of themselves, and their temporary advantages? Take, again, sugar, as another example, now amongst the necessaries of life. Brown and soft Muscovado cost twenty-five shillings per hundred weight; the duty is one

pound four shillings, or about 96 per cent. on the prime cost. The middling Muscovados cost twenty-eight shillings; the duty is no higher than on the former sorts, or about 86 per cent. on the first price. The fine kinds are worth about thirty-seven shillings per cwt.; the duty is 24, or about 65 per cent., whilst the double-refined pay only the same impost, although they bear a value of seventy-one shillings per cwt., being thus taxed at the rate merely of about 34 per cent. So here again, the poorer classes pay nearly one-half more than the middle classes, and nearly three times as much as the higher ones. This refers to colonial sugars only; since the case becomes vastly stronger if we take the East Indian or foreign article. Soap pays excise upon analogous principles; the washer-woman contributing a double amount to the treasury, in proportion to countesses and duchesses, who wash their faces in oil, and breakfast upon pensions and sinecures. Wines are treated in the same way. The inferior ports, frequently used by our respectable tradesmen, have had to pay 165 per cent., under the head of custom, upon their prime cost, whilst the first growth of claret merely pays about 28 per cent. We are well aware of all the dust which has been thrown in the eyes of the public, through old Methuen treaties and modern commercial tariffs. But amidst the confusion, let our ten pound voters keep well in mind, that our law-makers for five generations have taken care that their sensual enjoyments should pass as much as possible scot-free, whenever the screw was to receive another turn into the purses of our fat and good humoured burgesses. Take another article, such as currants: these, together with raisins, used to yield, and will now, half a million to the revenue; but this was effected at the expense of the poorer and middle sections of society, the chief consumers. Whigs have formerly been as bad as tories in these respects; for the genius of oligarchy has ever wanted to be exorcised out of the former as well as the latter. In their late scale of tea-duties, the Westminster Review demonstrated that a distinction was made between the consumption of the poor and rich, equivalent to 120 per cent. in favour of the wealthy, while the middle classes have to pay double the duty of the higher ones! The matter, said one of the ablest contributors to that journal, may be stated thus: 'the poor shall pay an ad valorem duty of 200 per cent. on their consumption; the middle classes shall pay 180; and the privileged classes shall pay only 90! This is, in reality, within a minute fraction of the state of the facts.' The atrociously unfair dealing of the legislature with regard to the land-tax we have already glanced at; but it is curious to contrast the difference of its conduct, when submitting its own fleece to the shears of collection, and

when called upon to clip that of another nation. A very few years prior to the British Parliament having enacted a law, fixing their own land-tax in perpetuity at four shillings in the pound, on a careless and imperfect assessment, made one hundred years before, they had passed an act fixing the land-tax of India at 188. in the pound, on a modern and inquisitorial assessment. This they called creating an Indian landed aristocracy. 'Sir,' said the farmer to the lawyer, in the fable, my ox has gored one of yours; how shall the matter be settled? Oh,' easily enough,' replied the man of papers; 'you must give me one of yours as an equitable compensation.' 'But,' said the complainant, I have made a mistake; for it was one of your oxen which has gored one of mine.' 'Ah,' cried the lawyer, 'that makes a wonderful difference; you should have been accurate in your first statement: get along, you rascal!' Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur, England must say to her peerage.

One more illustration we cannot pass over, and that is the house tax, of which the originator was no less a person than the celebrated Adam Smith, who intended it to reach the incomes and ostentation of the wealthier orders. The privileged sons of Zeruiah proved however too much for him. They not only contrived to establish a most delusive classification, as fraught with fraud as Sir Robert Peel's sliding-scale, but the mode of rating to the duty placed the public at the mercy of surveyors appointed either directly or indirectly by the aristocracy. Hence arose a partiality towards their patrons, we believe without a parallel even in this country. Chatsworth, the almost regal seat of the Duke of Devonshire, was rated at no more than 400l. a year; Stowe and Blenheim at only 300l. a year; Eaton Hall, which absorbed three quarters of a million sterling, at the same; Alnwick and Belvoir Castles at 2007.; Bishops Auckland and Hatfield at no more; Godolphin Park at but 1501.; and Euston Hall, the palace of the Duke of Grafton, at 1007. sterling! This last magnate figures high amongst those who ought to be designated as public paupers; his two hereditary pensions from the Excise and Post Office amounting to 11,9007. per annum! All the years that the house tax lasted, the London Tavern was rated at 1000l. a year; the White Hart at Bath at 9007.; the Plough at Cheltenham at 8507.; the Old Ship at Brighton at 7501.; Lacey's Hotel at Manchester at 6001. We cull these instances at random from the regular returns. Nottingham Castle, the provincial town-house of the Duke of Newcastle, was rated at only 100%. a year to the house-duty; but when his grace demanded compensation for some damage inflicted on his mansion, in a riot, he remembered the lawyer in Esop, and contrived to extract from the unfortunate Hundred no less than 20,0007.! Its