of the sum voted last year, while warlike stores are reduced by nearly £700,000, being set down at £838,000, instead of £1,537,000 as in the last estimates. The expenditure under the head of works and buildings is also brought down by £148,000, and these, with some minor savings, make the reductions for effective services amount to £1,532,000. Taking a small net increase on the votes for non-effective services, we find the gross increase to fall short of the gross reduction by £1,000,013, and by this sum the estimates of 1863-64 fall short of those by which they were preceded. AN OPTICAL WONDER. In 1858 CLAUDET, the eminent optical instrument maker, of London, startled Sir DAVID BREWSTER and other savants of England with the discovery that the half of a stereoscopic view could be made to present a solid (i. e. a stereoscopic) of feet. This discovery, says the Journal of Commerce, has been developed in something so brilliant and beautiful, that the pictures produced are as much beyond the ordinary photograph as that, in fidelity and beauty, is beyond the old fashioned engraving. In short, the delight which one person has in looking through the stereoscope, a thousand persons can have at once-so that there is sympathetic and social pleasure. The stereopticon, as it is called, takes the ordinary glass stereoscopic view, and by fine lenses and the most intense of artificial lights, throws and magnifies the miniature view upon a canvass, to such an extent that every one in a building as vast as the Academy of Music can see with distinctness each scene. There is no straining of the vision; there is no wearying of the eye as in the stereoscope, but one merely sits and gazes upon the sublime scenery of the Alps, the renowned old abbeys, the busy streets of London, Paris, Naples, and Grand Cairo; the grand, awe-striking remains. of Egypt, and the solemn, instructive scenes of Palestine, in the same manner and with the same ease that we would look upon a real landscape from the deck of a Hudson River steamer. The distant and the rare are brought to us or rather like the magic mat of the Arabian tale we are borne on swift and brilliant wings to the ends of the earth. The treasures of statuary art from the Louvre, the Vatican, and the Museo Borbonico are ours. Nothing seems so dream-like as the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de Medici, and the chefs d'œuvre of the great Thorwalsden, which appear upon the scene in all their roundness and beauty. It remained for our country to perfect this wonderful invention. Although the stereopticon was exhibited for a time in the Polytechnic Institute, and in the Hall of Illustration, Regent's Park, London, yet it did not advance beyond the first discovery. J. FALLON, Esq., of Lawrence, Mass., the chemist of the Pacific Mills, who has devoted thirty years to photology, imported from England one of these instruments for his own family. But under his hands it was developed into something so perfect that his friends desired that others might have the pleasure which he enjoyed. He has sent it forth on a charitable mission, and for churches, Sabbath schools, and sanitary commissions its charities can be counted by thousands. In Massachusetts, such men as Prof. AGASSIZ, LONGFELLOW, HILLARD, HOLMES, Rev. Dr. PARK, and many other leading representative men "assisted" with delight at many of the exhibitions, and the first two aided in delineating the scenes. During the past month this beautiful educator has been exhibiting in Brooklyn. ART. PAGE. I. NATIONAL ACCUMULATION AND NATIONAL INCOME......... .... 353 II. THE ISLAND OF ST. DOMINGO. BY A. K. SHEPHERD...... III. AGREEMENT and assenT. BY THEOPHILUS PARSONS, LL. D. PROFESSOR OF LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE........ IV. THE LUMBER TRADE OF THE UNITED STATES FOR 1862..... 378 ..... 861 365 COMMERCIAL CHRONICLE AND REVIEW. Fluctuating Currency-Change in Values-Oscillations in Trade-Alternate Animation and Depression-Cost of Imports-Sugar Prices-General Influ. ence-Restrictions on Gold Dealing-High Prices to Consumers-Legal Tender Effect on Banks-Circulation of-New York Constitution-Specie Payments-Duty of Superintendent-Mandamus-Specie Movement-California Remittances-Bills of Exchange-Produce-Exchange Table Rates of Gold-Debtors Abroad-Prices Comparative-Imports-Duties-Varying Cost-Tax on Consumers-Exports-Depression of Business-Government Stocks-Conversions of five-twenties-Prices-Confederate LoanNational Credit..... 877 VI. ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE MINT, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR Ending June 30, 1862....... 383 VIL VALUE OF THE EXPORTS OF THE GROWTH, PRODUCE, AND MANUFACTURE OF THE UNITED STATES DURING THE YEARS ENDING JUNE 30, 1861, AND JUNE 30, 1862.... 890 Rock Oil-Value of Flowing Wells..... 893 898 JOURNAL OF BANKING, CURRENCY, AND FINANCE. THE COTTON QUESTION. NAUTICAL INTELLIGENCE. South Entrance to Moreton Bay by Rous or the Amity Point Channel........ 413 THE MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE AND COMMERCIAL REVIEW. JUNE, 1863. ENGLAND'S TAX SYSTEM. THE tax system of England has in the present century undergone great changes, consequent upon the exigencies of the nation and the large experience which her statesmen have been able to bring to the adjustment of the revenues. A nation of small means and of little comparative magnitude, in a financial point of view, has far less opportunity of working out the great economical problems than one which, like England, is compact, populous, enormously wealthy, and the foremost manufacturing and commercial nation of the world. She has also the advantage that her internal and external policy turn almost altogether on financial and commercial questions. Her colonial policy, her foreign policy, her commercial system, and her financial plans hinge upon the promotion of her material welfare. The extension and growth of her present business, with the means of its future expansion are the elements of her governmental policy. Her statesmen of all parties emulate each other in the pursuit of that object, and all parties, whether in or out of power, shape their course by such considerations. It is in this sense that the great NAPOLEON described her as "a nation of shop-keepers." If he had called her government "the great mercantile firm of the world," he would have been nearer the mark. Her colonial policy embraces forty-five colonies, spread over the earth, each of which she hopes will become, and manages with the sole idea that it may become, the germ of an empire, useing the English language and English goods long ages to come. Even the policy of holding or giving up those colonies depends entirely upon how it will affect the future market for goods. If it is thought that they will be better customers when independent, she will, as in the case of the Canadas a few years since, tell them to go or stay, as they please. In a word, everything is made to bend to the one idea of commercial prosperity. The few years that have elapsed since the masses were freed from actual servitude have sufficed to show the landed gentry, the aristocracy, and the government, that the more the industry and trade of the people prospers the greater are the revenues from lands, from rents, and from taxes. The power of the nation and the wealth and splendor of the nobles grow with the successful industry of the people. Freedom, too, was necessary that this prosperity might be developed, and especially is this true of the Anglo-Saxon race. The hope of reward stimulates it to exertion; while with the Doric races indolence is their only charm in liberty. When, therefore, feudal servitude gradually gave way to free industry in England, and broad tracts of land were rescued from the grasp of monasteries, when industry was encouraged and the prosperity of the people sought, wealth began to flow from the working many up through land owners into the treasury. The funding system, introduced by WILLIAM, drew into the service of the state a portion of the surplus capital of the country. From that time the national wealth continued to increase, and with it the amount of taxes required to liquidate the interest on the public debt. The property of the country was, however, hampered by reason of the crude ideas entertained by the governing classes on economical questions. They all recognized the importance of seeking the prosperity of the people, but it was supposed it might be encouraged by protection, promoted by prohibition, stimulated by special privileges, and improved by restriction. HENRY VIII. freed one of his slaves-a tailor-for a sum of money, and encouraged the making of cloth by preventing wool growers from selling to any but manufacturers in their neighborhood. Other sovereigns, especially ELIZABETH, farmed out all sorts of privileges for sums of money. These and multitudes of enactments lingered, some of them, down to within thirty years, while the light was slowly but irresistibly making its way into the legislative halls. The frightful expenditures undertaken at the close of the last century to maintain English ocean supremacy, and which were continued through twenty-four years, produced the most extensive system of taxation the world ever knew. The ability to bear that taxation was based entirely upon the fact that steam, with a multitude of automaton assistants, stepped forward to do more productive labor than the whole people of England had been before capable of. The isolated position of England kept her out of the arena of combat, while her navies commanded the ocean and kept open every market of the world for the sale of her new machine goods at monopoly prices. This conferred great ability to pay taxes, which reached the enormous sum of $350,000,000 per annum upon 11,000,000 persons. With the peace came a new state of affairs. The monopoly of machines and markets was no longer possible, neither was the continuance of paper practicable. Specie prices, exposed to sharp foreign competitors, became the rule, causing terrible distress. Vainly did England strive to maintain her position by stringent laws against the export of machines or any parts of them, against the export of wool or other raw materials, and by duties protecting every interest which was supposed to be dying in consequence of the importation of foreign competing goods. The conviction, however, gradually forced itself upon the governing classes that, for England to keep her markets, she must manufacture and transport at least as cheap as other people, and that to do so every burden must be removed from the cost of goods and from every productive interest. In |