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more accurately still, we do not and cannot burden our successors at all; we can only transmit to them property more or less burdened.-A new and most unwelcome light seems thus to be shed on national debt. No minister, in contracting a loan, can mortgage any thing but the existing property of the country for the payment: if he pretend to mortgage its future industry, his act is of itself as null and void, as if he had contracted to sell the children and grand-children into slavery.

This reasoning (we beg to inform the reader) has come upon us as a painful discovery, and is original to ourselves, though probably it has long been familiar to the Chartists; for poverty and the pressure of taxes sharpens men's wits as to such matters. We have revised it again and again, and can find no error in it; so directly does it seem to flow out of first principles. It is thus demonstrably clear that only that wealth which existed prior to 1815 can justly be taxed for the National Debt. Now in what does that consist? The first reply will be, that the thing mortgaged was, Government Property of every kind. Yet it must not be forgotten, that no one would ever advance money on many parts of this property. Not only Martello Towers or Portsmouth fortifications would afford to a mortgagee a very poor revenue; but even Government Offices and Royal Palaces would be worth little, unless there were a rich Government willing to pay high rent for the use of them. In this way, certainly, if a debt is but moderate, it may be fixed upon what is strictly public property, without peculiarly implicating that which is private. But while not a quarter of the eight hundred millions could have been borrowed on this understanding, it is doubtful whether the entire public property in 1815 could fitly be valued at from one to two hundred millions. It is farther to be considered, that even if the Government had then yielded over to the creditor the whole public estate, the enormous annual sums paid on the score of the debt by the industrious were in ten years' time abundantly sufficient to replace all that Government could reasonably desire. Yet these payments with some diminution continue to this day, and the interest of the debt is still 27 millions. The industrious have thus already far more than re-possessed themselves of the actual public property of the

country, and there is nothing whatever left equitably to meet the claims of the fundholder, but the Private estates of land and houses which have been transmitted from the times in which the debt was contracted.

This is a very formidable conclusion; but if it be true, let us not shut our eyes to it; and even if it be not wholly and without modification true, let it be considered how many an honest man among the Chartists is unchangeably persuaded of it, and by no means intends to oppose the just rights and sound principles of property, when he repudiates the National Debt, in its present form, as "a fixed injustice;" though he would have no objection to fixing it on the estates of the landowners. It need hardly be said, that not only is that impossible without a violent revolution, but, by reason of the land having been purchased in ignorance of this fearful mortgage, it would be resisted as unjust. But in what a condition does this represent the nation! We have a debt of about 767 millions, to repudiate which will not only disgrace us, but will by the shock given to mercantile confidence bring industry to a stop, and afflict us with unmentionable horrors. Yet industry ought not to pay the debt or its interest, and property will not or cannot. The Chartists loudly proclaim, that they will "repudiate" as soon as possible, and that they regard as pillage the taxes imposed on them; thus disaffection spreads and will spread. Meanwhile the thought forces itself on us,-What is all this but a confession that the STATE, as such, is utterly INSOLVENT, though we are a wealthy people?

One thing seems manifest; that if the present spirit of logical and fanatical resistance to taxation is met in no other way than hitherto, all our evils must be exasperated. If Government expenditure continues; if taxes, a little remitted from the lowest class, are, by means of an income tax, put upon the professional and commercial classes; these last also, in despair of other remedy, will in great numbers become Chartists. Not only all new taxes, but the substitutes for many old taxes too, must come upon hereditary wealth; else the history of the past will be more and more raked up, and the sins of the old landowners will be visited on their living representatives. Nevertheless, in the outcry of public indigence, and after

so many continental revolutions, the Reformed House of Commons will not hear even of subjecting Freehold Land to those Legacy and Probate duties which all other property has so long paid! This is something very like the aristocracy crying as the Chartists do,-"Other people may pay the debt; we do not care who; but we will not."

Whether we are to be called an Insolvent State, is quite a secondary question: but we make bold to assert, that a moderately wise statesman would feel bound in conscience to act on that assumption, and look upon it as his first duty to call out in every rank, not only an increased willingness to pay taxes, but even, if possible, patriotic enthusiasm. At present, they talk and act as if the State had no embarrassments; in fact, they could not be haughtier, if, instead of a debt, they had a store of 767 millions. Parsimony is treated as contemptible; every other honour is thought more of, than the honour of clearing off our debts: and it is wholly useless to propose schemes of retrenchment, because it is perfectly certain that they will not be carried. Yet an entire revolution in finance is essential, to arrest us in our career of improvidence; to break violently through those evil precedents of a lavish and unprincipled race of ministers, by which all our statesmen are bound hand and foot. month of March does not leave affairs in England in the same state in which the month of February found them. The revolutions of France, Italy and Germany have shortened the time allotted to us for self-reformation; and our existing legislators, though the new Parliament is far less aristocratic than its predecessors, remain blind to our danger!

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The question, which of late seemed so interesting, concerning the relative advantages of Income and of Property Tax, is now merged in far greater considerations. For all Property and all Incomes have so much to lose by leaving the Debt unsettled and the Taxes on the poor unjust, that it may seem suicidal for either class of the rich to insist punctiliously on their rights. But unhappily, the same landlord class which refuses to be taxed, insists also on maintaining the public expenses at their present height; fatally assimilating themselves to the old

nobility of France. Such a combination is quite unbearable to the middle classes, who, in their turn, imitate the Parliament of France, in resisting farther taxation, in spite of the difficulties of the Government. And what now are the true prospects of the Fundholder? Is it not already revealed what a mockery and cheat is that word Perpetuity? If we estimate the payment as a real perpetuity, it appears that (at 5 per cent) about 2 millions added to the annual interest would exterminate the whole in half a century: and so mad a proceeding is it to leave the debt to perplex remote posterity, that our first impulse is, to advocate this process; namely, by sustaining the revenue 2 millions above what would otherwise be necessary. But we have to choose and compromise between opposite injustices, (what clearer mark seek we that the State is Insolvent?) and as, without continued sacrifice of strict right by the industrious, the interest of the debt cannot be paid at all,-neither 50 years, nor one year, it seems, under the difficulties, a mild compromise to fix a rather distant time, (say 60 years hence,) on which the payments shall totally cease. Few persons now living will be affected by that; and if it made part of a comprehensive system of financial reform, adding stability to the Government and constitution, it is probable that it would not lower the Funds at all, nor in any way affect Public Credit.

That the interest of the debt was mingled up with the general expenses, instead of being defrayed by special taxes, is no accident, but matter of State Craft. To secure us from this in future, we want a law to forbid all public loans without stipulations for extinguishing the debt in ten years time; and to enact that special taxes, within those years only, shall be always levied to defray it. Perhaps a real Reformer would even now insist on providing for the 27 millions by separate taxation.

* The difficulty is, what rate of interest to assume. We find that at the end of the century, a little more than 23 millions for ever will still be due to the fundholder. The value of that (at 5 per cent.) in the year 1900, as paid down, would be twenty times the sum: accurately, £471,600,000. Now as £1 a-year for fifty years amounts to £209.348, at 5 per cent., it follows that £2,252,708 a-year, for fifty years, (i. e. from 1850 to 1899,) would remunerate the fundholder for losing all payments after 1899.

Unless the landed aristocracy is willing to pay the half of it themselves, or an enormous reduction of expenditure takes place, no part of their power, and perhaps no part of their estates, will be retained by their immediate children.

But all Financial Reform is and must be a delusion, until a decisive Organic Reform of both Houses of Parliament takes place. If members chosen by the poor formed a powerful minority in the Lower House, and the Upper were disabled from obstructing, our finances might yet be saved, the parsimony suitable to bankrupts might be enforced, and the hearts of the masses be won back to the Constitution.

The absorbing interest of these topics almost paralyzes us from more than a slight notice of Mr. Babbage's pamphlet, noticed at the head of this article.

From the name of the author all would know it to be lucid and ingenious. As in a mathematical treatise, the whole of his few pages is evolved out of his primitive Postulate, which stands thus:

"It is obvious, as a general principle, that all taxation ought to be proportioned to the cost of the service for which the taxes are paid."

He proceeds to argue that the Service performed by the State is an annual one, and that accounts must be annually made up. He tacitly assumes that the cost of the service is proportional to the value of the property defended, and infers that men ought to be taxed according to that annual value, whether the property be permanent or temporary. An Income Tax therefore is the proper enactment. One objection to his doctrine he condescends to notice and refute; viz. that "permanent structures" are not an annual outlay; but he replies that on an average the same sum is devoted to them every year; which prevents their affecting his conclusion. Yet, strange to say, he does not at all notice the Debt! his "annual" principle, such a Debt is an impossibility. But while this hangs about our necks, that he should enter the lists as a champion for an Income Tax is a peculiar absurdity, damaging to his own cause; for it follows at once from his principles (as indeed from ours) that the Debt falls equitably only on hereditary property CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 40.

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