THE WASH-TUB DUTY. HAD our worst enemy been entrusted with the devising of a system of taxation for us, the utmost effort of his malice could not have produced a worse system than that for which we are indebted to the natural working of our "matchless Constitution,” as it existed before the Reform Bill. Not even Napoleon, with all his genius for mischief, and hatred of this country, could have approached that sublime degree of perniciousness which our system of taxation owes to the wisdom and virtue of our House of Hereditary Legislators, and our House of Boroughmongers. Of all modes of taxation, the levying a tax on real property, as it is called, or lands, Houses, &c., is the fairest and best in every respect. A property tax falls only on the wealthy; or at least on those who have something valuable which the rest of the community have not; it falls on that class only in proportion to their wealth; it cannot be evaded; every man sees exactly the amount which he contributes to the state, and may compare his contribution with the value of the objects on which it is to be expended by Government. A property-tax opposes no obstacles to production or commerce; and the sum taken from each individual reaches the public treasury, lessened by only a mere trifle,-the expense of collection. These advantages are great and obvious. Let us contrast this mode of taxation with that which our Lords and Boroughmongers, with the aid of Satan, have imposed on the British people. In a great Manufacturing and Commercial country like ours, there should, on no account, be any obstruction to the production, and free exchange of commodities. No tax should be laid on the materials of any manufacture; no tax on the manufactured article; no tax on its free exchange with our own countrymen or foreigners; no tax on the intercourse between buyer and seller. From the transport or production of the materials to the manufactured article's ultimate destination, the tax-gatherer should not be allowed to impose a single obstruction, or to levy one farthing, in relation to the article. The reverse of this rule is the description of our blessed system. The materials of manufacture are taxed; the manufactured article is taxed; the trade in it is taxed, by stamp duties of various kinds, as bills of exchange, receipts, bonds, &c. ; the correspondence between the dealers is taxed by the Post-Office, in so far as it is made a source of revenue, or the means of bestowing higher salaries than the duty could be done for; and the intimation of the dealers to their customers is taxed by the advertisement duty. In short, every obstacle is thrown in the way of manufacture and exchange, the two chief sources of wealth in this Manufacturing and Commercial country. The trading portion of the community are heavily taxed, annoyed, and burdened in their operations; while the landed interest is comparatively free from taxation of any kind, except Poor Laws, and totally free from Custom House and Excise Officers. But, as if this inequality of conditions was not enough, a most grievous and oppressive burden is laid on the trading classes to raise the rents of the proprietors of land. We have a BREAD TAX ! We acquit those who imposed the taxes from any desire to annoy, obstruct, or limit the operations of the manufacturers, or the transactions of buyers and sellers. The sole object of the immortal Pitt, in imposing taxes, was to raise the means of " carrying on the war" against French and British liberty.; Had he proposed to the Houses of Lords and Bo roughmongers, whose voices were, like Moloch's, "still for war," to come down with the means of war, either in cash, or in bonds upon their estates; or to furnish their fair proportion along with the trading classes, who were opposed to the war,-all Pitt's eloquence would not have sufficed to charm the two houses into any such proposition. He took a more knowing plan. As to its fairness, or its mischievous tendencies, with these Pitt never troubled his head. It was an old method; and he only carried it farther than had been previously done. To all his proposals of laying taxes on articles of manufacture or consumption, he obtained a ready assent. The lords and squires could see far enough into a millstone, to discover that Pitt's mode of raising money threw the burden of ultimate payment on posterity; and by far the largest share of the interest of the debts he was contracting, on other shoulders than their own. The consequence is, that the country is in debt to nearly the value of the whole of the landed property; and has, in the course of an expenditure as lavish as the borrowing was reckless, contracted such extravagant habits, that almost twenty millions are annually required to carry on the business and maintain the dignity of the state. Of the fifty millions required for the annual public expenditure, and the interest of the debt, it is evident that only a small part could be raised by means of a property-tax. The rest must be raised, therefore, in the old way; chiefly by means of the Excise and Customs. But we maintain that a property tax should be resorted to, in lieu of some of those Excise duties which press most heavily on the labouring part of the community. Of these duties, one of the most oppressive and impolitic is the duty on Soap. This duty has all the bad qualities a tax can have. It is an indirect tax, and so takes considerably more from the payers than it yields to Government. It is a tax which falls with a most startling inequality on the poor and the rich. It is so high, in proportion to the natural price of the article, as to have the effect of a prohibition to a very large extent. It causes great annoyance to the manufacturers, and throws obstacles in the way of improvements in the manufacture. Its collection is very expensive to the Excise. It causes a great deal of fraud and smuggling to the injury of the fair trader, of public morals, and of the Revenue. We shall bestow a few words on each of these evils; much cannot be necessary in so plain a case. On the evils of indirect taxation, we need not dwell, having repeatedly explained them in our previous numbers. Indirect taxation, it will be recollected, increases the price of the article, not by the amount of the tax only, but by the amount of the profit which the manufacturer, wholesale dealer, and retailer, successively lay on that part of the sum which each of them pays which consists of tax; and all indirect taxes are evaded by absentees. The gross inequality of taxation caused by a duty on an article like Soap, which all classes must consume, and in proportions widely different from that of their incomes, which Mr. Fox described long since as an impost on cleanliness, a tax upon women and children, is sufficiently obvious. Of the £1,138,000 paid by the people of England and Scotland, only a very small part is drawn from the rich. The duty may almost be said to fall exclusively on the middle and labouring classes; and most heavily on the latter. Common Soap, too, it is worthy of notice, pays altogether a duty of about 120 per cent.; whereas, the fine kinds of Soap, used only by the wealthy classes, pay a duty of from 50 to 75 per cent. There needs nothing but the simple fact of the duty, along with the duties on the materials, being so high as 120 per cent. to shew that the Excise Laws, in reference to this article, so essential to the health and comfort of the poor, must, to a very great extent of the natural demand, amount to a prohibition. The duty on hard Soap (the common kind) is £28 per ton, or 3d. per lb. ; the price charged to the grocer is about £56 per ton, or 6d. per lb., and the price charged by the grocer to the public is generally 64d., very little profit being taken on this and a few other" leading articles," as they are called. But the materials of Soap are taxed, as well as the manufactured article. Foreign tallow, rosin, and palm-oil, all pay Customhouse Duties. Were there no duties on the materials, and were the soapmaker relieved of the vexation, hindrance, and actual expense, with more than double amount of bad debts, caused to him by the Excise Regulations, he could afford to make a large abatement from the price (£28 per ton) which is now required to remunerate him. This abatement, and the repeal of the heavy duty of 100 per cent. laid upon the present aggravated natural price of Soap, would enable the people to purchase this useful article at 24d, instead of 6åd. per lb. How much such a reduction would increase the consumption of Soap among the labouring classes, we leave it to our readers to estimate. We fear that an account of the annoyance, hindrance, and expense, caused by the Excise Laws to the Manufacturers of Soap, could not be made interesting enough to our readers, to warrant our laying before them the long details. Suffice it to say, that every Soap Manufactory is blessed with an exciseman for its own special use and comfort, besides constant visitations from erratic functionaries; that the manufacturer cannot take a single step in his operations without previous formal intimation to the Excise, a certain number of hours before hand; that the operation must go on at the time fixed, or the intimation must go for nothing and the expiry of another twelve or twenty-four hours, after a new intimation, be waited for; that the boilers must be kept under the lock and key of the guardian angel (exciseman) of the establishment; that a certain fixed quantity is expected by the Excise from a certain quantity of materials, and duty exacted for the expected quantity, although it should come out (as it often does) much short; that Soap spoiled in the manufacture is not allowed to be re-manufactured, but must pay the duties, let the unlucky maker obtain for it what he may,-perhaps not the amount of the duty; that the manufactured article cannot be removed until it has been inspected, marked, and certified, by the excisemen, after due intimation made, so many hours before, of the intention of removal. In short, there are regulations to which the manufacturers are subject, that would fill many pages of description; and which, if rigorously acted up to, would ruin the manufacturer against whom a caco-demon of Excise might choose to nourish a spite. It is no inconsiderable hardship to be subject to the caprice, ill temper, insolence, and tyranny of a set of uneducated men, intrusted with so much power, and too frequently inclined to ride on the top of their commission. Of all the varieties of the "insolence of office," heaven preserve us from the insolence of the officer of excise! The best proof of the obstacles which the Excise presents to improvements in the manufacture of soap is, that there has been no improvement in The Wash-Tub Duty. the process of manufacture for a long course of years. The processes and apparatus are essentially the same as they were one hundred years ago. A duty amounting to cent. per cent. on the cost of the article, operates A regular and extensive trade as an irresistible premium on smuggling. is carried on in the smuggling of Soap, to the great injury of the honest manufacturer. Of 190 places where there are Soap Works, 170 places do not pay duty for above 25 tons each on an average; and many of these places do not pay for more than one, two, or three tons; some not Most of the works in those places have sprung up more than half a ton. in consequence of an increase of the Soap Duty from 2d. to 3d. per lb. ; which, along with many similar favours, we owe to that worthy sinecurist, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, now called Bexley, but whose deeds of renown were perpetrated under the notorious cognomen of Vansittart. Is it possible to believe that a Soapmaker, who has to pay L.4 annually for a licence, (another hardship on the manufacturer) should open a work for half a ton, or a whole ton, or even five tons, per annum? The thing is absurd. These small works may fairly be viewed as mere cloaks for illicit trade. Ireland pays no soap duty. Large quantities of soap are shipped for that country, and drawback allowed for even more than the nett amount of the duties previously paid. Much of this Soap, however, finds its way back to this country in a fraudulent manner. In 1824, the export of soap to Ireland was only 50 tons. In 1831, it had risen to 4000 tons. With Belfast, a trade is carried on in smuggled Soap, to such an extent, that it comes over in hogsheads as IRISH HAMS. One quantity, which we happened to detect, reached Edinburgh in large, square, iron-bound chests, of from 4 to 5 cwt. each, marked LINEN. If this system is allowed to go on,-and without a repeal, or large reduction of the duty, it cannot be put down,-every honest manufacturer will be ruined, and the trade left entirely to those whose principles permit them to defraud the Revenue. The expense caused to the Government by the collection of the Excise Duty on Soap must be very great. There are about 190 places where there are Soap Works, but there are probably not less than 250 different works. Each of these, however small, has its own special Excise Angel. A work that produces or pays duty for so little as a ton, or half a ton, costs Government at least L.100 for watching; as we are assured, on the The total expense of the authority of several extensive Soapmakers. Revenue Officers, of one sort or other, required for the collection of the Soap Duty, must be prodigious. The distressed state of the industrious classes makes it the duty of Government to repeal such of the Taxes as press with peculiar weight on the poor; and provide for the abolition by a corresponding reduction of the national expenses; or, at least, to shift such unequal, impolitic, and oppressive burdens as the Soap Duty, from the necks of the poor, to shoulders more capable of bearing them. It will be impossible to retain the more unjust parts of our system of taxation much longer. If those in power will take our advice, they will not continue to tax Soap one hundred and twenty per cent; and call the industrious artizans, whom an iniquitous system has reduced to poverty, and who cannot afford to pay three times the natural price of Soap, "The Great Unwashed !" CORN LAW HYMN.-No. 3. BY THE AUTHOR OF CORN-LAW RHYMES. LORD! to the rose, thy light and air To air's embrace her sweets she owes, With morn's warm kiss her beauty glows: Give us Freedom! Give us Freedom! Free Trade! Hark! how it floats the vale along! The lone flower hears the sky-lark sing, But pays the song, that cheer'd and bless'd, The wild bird bears the foodful seed To farthest wilds, where birds would feed; Lo, food springs up, where hunger died, Give us Freedom, &c. Streams trade with clouds, seas trade with heav'n, Air trades with light, and is forgiv'n; While man would make all claims his own, Where torrid climes intensely glow, Thy winds, O God, are free to blow, Thy clouds are free to roam the sky; Let man be free his arts to ply! Give us Freedom, &c. The fiends would chain thy winds and sea, Who famish men, and libel thee: Lord! give us hope! oh, banish fear! "From every face wipe every tear!" Give us Freedom! Give us Freedom! Free Trade! |