accounts, to sum up all, taking care of their own purses. An office, the duties of which chancellors, in general, pronounce marvellously few men incapable of performing, considering that poets and philosophers assert that all men are more or less deranged.

But the misfortune has been, that the real business for which, till very lately, at least, all parliaments have met, has been to distribute among themselves and their connexions, places and pensions, and to devise and lay on taxes for the keeping up of the fund, out of which the emoluments of such places and pensions were paid, taking care that the burden of those taxes should fall as exclusively as was likely to be endured on industry, the ranks of which they thought fit to pronounce "the lower," and, therefore, never intended that either themselves or their children should join.

Any other acts of the legislature have generally been points yielded, at last, yet in haste, to clamour from without, or to the wily arguments of an interested faction within, but neither considered nor understood by members in general, who had, as already remarked, their own all-absorbing arrangements to attend to, and who, therefore, when they interfered with the welfare of the country in general, as by the permission of monopolies, or the sanction of restrictions injurious to trade, etc. resembled the directors of a joint stock company

exercising power over concerns in which its members have not a sufficiently strong individual interest, and, therefore, doing mischief: the difference on their own single share of the legal dividend of national prosperity, not being, under the " disposition of things " which has hitherto obtained, worth near so much to each individual director, as the privilege of permitting their own families, connexions, and followers, to plunder with impunity from the whole. But, if the burdens of the state were laid on property only, and that the aid of industry could not be obtained in bearing those burdens, but by causing the trade of the nation to flourish, and industry to become property, the general weal would become to each individual of the property class, a subject too important to be trifled with.

Men of property, therefore, would not merely take care how they voted away their own money, but they would no longer go into parliament without having learned so much as the A. B. C. of political economy. The social science, on the contrary, would become the study, the business of the hitherto idle classes, while a little honesty of intention, aided by keen scented self-interest, would, in a short time, unravel all the reputed difficulties of a subject which, like the simple precepts of pure practical religion, has been mystified by those who would not see a path they did not choose to tread.

The industrious classes, the while, instead of wasting precious time, and inducing dangerous excitement, by assembling in thousands to petition for justice, might follow their own peculiar calling (the creation of wealth by labour) with thorough singleness of purpose, certain, that without their interference, their best interests were being considered by persons fitted by education to understand the most difficult questions in all their bearings, and, what is a still better security, who could not benefit themselves, but by first benefiting them.

This is the centre jewel, the very vital spark of the principle of a property tax. This, it is, which must not be lost sight of, and this it is which, in any mixed system of taxation, would be endangered.

By pressing this consideration, as invaluable, no offence to individuals, or even to any individual class, is contemplated. The average of every class, as a body, follows, to the best of its knowledge and ability, what it conceives to be its own immediate interests. To identify, therefore, the interests of every other class of the community, with that of the class whose peculiar province it is to legislate, or rather to render that identity of interest which always must exist, so practically obvious that all must perceive it, is assuredly one of the most effectual securities for good government. In short, it

converts, at once, the intricate machinery of legislation, hitherto so difficult to manage, into one great self-acting engine, which needs but to have this, its main spring kept in constant repair, to work well as long as the world lasts.

CHAPTER XV.

PLAN OF A PROPERTY TAX.

Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state.”

Adam Smith.

By a property tax on realized property is meant a yearly per centage on the rents of all lands and buildings, and on the interest of all sums of money, whether placed on mortgage, in the funds, or lent out on any other security. And also that all other realized property, being valued at its market price, the interest of the capital sum that such property would bring, if sold, should also pay a per centage, the interest chargeable with such per centage, to be calculated at what such capital sum would bring, if placed in the funds. All per centages on rents and interests to vary according to the nature of the property.

The interest of money on mortgage, or in the funds, being the property least expensive to its