for the dignified matron; her countenance, eminently expressive, portrays all the strongest passions which can agitate the breast; her voice, powerful and melodious beyond example, alternately melts our hearts with the emotions of pity, and thrills them with the agonies of terror. There is nothing that is now, or ever was, on the stage superior to the last scenes of her Norma and Lucretia Borgia. DIRECT TAXATION [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, FEB. 1847] "FREE TRADE," say the Americans, "is another word for direct taxation, and direct taxation is another word for repudiation of states' debts." The Americans are right; it is so and the strongest proof of these propositions is to be found in the conduct of the Americans themselves. The subject, however, is one not less interesting on this than on the other side of the Atlantic. It involves the fortune and the temporal prosperity of every man in the kingdom; and we do not hesitate to say that, on the embracing of correct views on this all-important subject by the constituencies of the United Kingdom, the maintenance of the public credit, the upholding of the public prosperity, the ultimate existence of England as an independent nation must come to depend. We hear much, in the popular phrase of the day, of "great facts." We will assume We will assume "free trade" as a "great fact." We will not stop to inquire how it was brought about, or whether, by any means, it could have been avoided. As little shall we stop to ask whether direct or indirect taxation is the best, or whether a mixture of both is to be recommended. We shall not inquire whether it is better to pay taxes on the price of the articles we purchase, when the amount is not perceived, or, if perceived, seldom objected to, at least against Government, and when the disagreeable operation of paying money is compensated, in some degree, by the pleasure derived from the article purchased, or to pay them at once to the tax-gatherer, when we get nothing for our ample disbursements but a bit of paper from the collector to remind us of - the extent of our losses. As little shall we investigate, from history, how many nations have been ruined by direct taxation, and whether there is one, the decline of which can be traced to indirect; or from reason, whether it is possible that a nation can be ruined by indirect taxes, when the only effect of their becoming too high is, that they check the consumption of the articles on which they are laid, and therefore cease to be paid. We shall not remind our readers that, in the latter years of the war, £72,000,000, under the protective system, was levied in the shape of taxes amidst general prosperity, on eighteen millions of people in the British empire; and that now, under the free-trade system, £52,000,000 net revenue is felt as extremely oppressive upon twenty-eight millions. We have chosen to have free trade, in other words, to abandon indirect taxation; and free trade we have, at least for the present, and indirect taxation will in consequence be gradually more and more abandoned. But it is particularly to be observed, in the outset of this system, that free trade, once adopted and applied to certain great branches of national industry, must necessarily be progressive, and embrace all, if we would avoid the total ruin of many of the staple branches of our production and main source of our direct revenue. In a short time, grain of all sorts will be left with the nominal protection of a shilling a quarter; and many branches of manufactures already find themselves with a protecting duty so small that, keeping in view the difference of the value of money in England and the Continental states, it amounts to nothing. If the classes thus left without any protection, or a merely nominal one, exposed to the effects of foreign competition, are not indemnified for their losses by the diminished price of the articles which they themselves purchase, they must grow poorer every day. Amidst the general cheapening of the articles sold, which constitute the income of the productive classes, if there is not a proportional cheapening of the articles bought, which compose their expenditure, they must inevitably be destroyed. This truth is so obvious, that it is adapted to the level of every capacity; and accordingly we already see it producing agitation for the further repeal of indirect taxes, which it does not require the gift of prophecy to foresee will in the end, though perhaps after a severe struggle, prove successful. It may not do so in this session of Parliament, or the next; but, in process of time, the effect is certain. A ministry in difficulties, a yielding premier, will ere long be found who, in a moment of difficulty, will be glad to buy off one set of assailants, as we did the Danes of old, by giving up what they desire. The separate agitations which must in the end produce this result, are already manifesting themselves. The West India planters allege, with reason, that, exposed as they are, when burdened with costly and irregular free labourers, to the competition of slave labour in Cuba and Brazil, without, in a few years, any protection, it is indispensable that the market of the mother country should be thrown open to them for all parts of their produce, especially in distilleries and breweries. The farmers, exposed to this attack in flank, while the corn laws have been repealed in their front, have no resource left but to clamour incessantly for the repeal of the malt-tax. In this attempt it is probable they will in the end prove successful, not because their demands are either just or reasonable-for, as power is now constituted in this country, that affords no guarantee whatever for being listened to-but because their claims are likely to be supported by the beer-drinkers in towns, the constituents of a majority in the House of Commons, and therefore an important and influential class of the community. The tea-dealers, encouraged by the success of agitation in other quarters, are already making a loud clamour for a reduction of the duty on tea, and prepared to prove, to the entire satisfaction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that nothing is so likely to increase a branch of revenue now producing £4,800,000 a-year, as to lower the duty from half-a-crown to a shilling on the pound. The tobacco-dealers will not be behind their brethren in agitation; and we may soon expect to see all the venal talent of the nation enlisted in the great cause of free trade in smoking and chewing. The spirit-dealers will, most assuredly, not be the last to insist upon a reduction of the duties. affecting them; and they are certain to be supported by the whole of the publicans in the urban constituencies,-a class of men so numerous that it is certain their united voice is not likely to be long disregarded. Every class, in short, will insist for a remission of the taxes affecting themselves, without the slightest regard to the effect it is likely to have on the revenue, the public credit, or the general security of the empire; and when we reflect on the stupendous array of indirect taxes, exceeding £30,000,000 yearly, which, under the influence of similar partial but fierce agitations, have been abandoned by successive conceding Administrations to purchase temporary popularity, we feel convinced that the time is not far distant when the remaining customs and excise, producing at present about £30,000,000 of revenue, will, in part at least, share the same fate. It is useless to lament this tendency, because lamentations will not stop it; and the Reform Bill has vested power in classes who, for good or for evil, will work it out. Nearly two-thirds of the Imperial Parliament are, under its enactments, the representatives of burghs. In these burghs, the great majority of the voters are shopkeepers, that is, persons whose interest it is to buy cheap and sell dear. In making the first use of their newly acquired power to force on free trade, and a repeal of all duties affecting themselves, our burghs have exactly followed in the footsteps of their predecessors, when parliamentary writs were first addressed to them by the Earl of Leicester in 1264. "The burghers," says Guizot," as much astonished as charmed at the importance which Leicester gave them, took advantage of their influence to procure freedom to trade, and to get quit of all custom-house duties, instead of establishing, in conjunction with him, the government on a durable foundation."+ The influence of these urban constituencies is not likely to decrease under the increasing embarrassments of the landed producers, and the augmented stimulus to certain branches of trade from foreign importations. And, in consequence, |