perty to be valid till such return be made, nor any amount above such return (till made in a fresh return) to be recoverable at law, from the party in possession or use thereof.

All, or much of this however, would probably be found unnecessary, as in general the property would be the mark, whoever was its owner, private agreements being sufficient to regulate the ultimate incidence of the tax. But as to the mode of collection, be it arranged how it may, it can hardly be attended with difficulties amounting to any thing like an objection. For the collection of one direct tax can scarcely be made as intricate and expensive as the machinery required for the regulation, and collection of the customs, and excise, with the preventive service, and the assess taxes to boot so that something in the way of simplicity and economy must be gained.

CHAPTER XVI.

A POLL TAX SUGGESTED IN AID OF A PROPERTY TAX, (IF NECESSARY,) AS LESS MISCHIEVOUS THAN THE CONTINUATION OF INDIRECT TAXATION.

ON fairly weighing the facts and calculations which have been brought forward in the foregoing pages, drawn as they are from the most respectable authorities, it seems but reasonable to hope, that low or natural prices, considered together with the remission of all other taxes, the majority of the property class would not, even at first, find their burdens much, if at all increased by taking upon themselves, in the shape of a property tax, the whole sum, which, with strict economy and freedom from the cost of collection, would still continue to be the necessary public expenditure; while the entire relief thus afforded to the industrious classes would enable multitudes of them to become wealthy enough to be liable to, and therefore assist in paying the said property tax.

If, however, before the rich fruits of this hoped for prosperity have time to ripen, and rates and prices to find their level, the burden on the property class should be found oppressive, it would surely be better to draw assistance from almost any other more general but equally direct tax; such as, perhaps, a poll tax, than to keep up any part of the present wasteful and destructive system of indirect taxation. Or should it even prove advisable to keep up a poll tax in constant aid of a property tax rather than render the property tax complex, neither of these direct taxes would be open to the principal objections against all indirect taxes. And when we consider that the population of Great Britain is already twenty-five millions, it would appear that a poll tax might be made very productive, without being very oppressive. With the blessings of free trade, full employment, cessaries below half price, and no other tax, one pound a year could be no great object to even the mere operative or labourer who was at all industrious.

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Parishes might possibly be rated to make up for their defaulters, such as their poor and the children of their labouring classes; or wealthier classes, such perhaps as persons in prosperous business, but not liable to the simplified property tax, might pay double or treble to keep up the average. Or it might be no bad plan in country parishes, to make absentee landlords pay for all the defaulters through

poverty of their parishes, the poverty being, in all probability, caused by their absence. Witness Irish landlords spending every shilling of their rents in London, and at English watering places, and allowing middle men to oppress their more than halfstarved tenantry. And English nobles scattering their princely revenues over France, Germany, and Italy.

In London, and other great towns, it might be well to marry each parish consisting chiefly of the dwellings of the poor, to one of those consisting entirely of the houses of the very rich, it being obvious that the entirely poor parishes could not, without oppression, pay for their own defaulters, and that, without some such regulation as this amalgamation of parishes, the very wealth which makes the duty of assisting the poor doubly imperative, would furnish the title of exemption from its performance.*

If the averages of the pound per head were thus kept up, it would of course, at the present population, be twenty-five millions at once. As the population, which always keeps pace with pros

Gentlemen and noblemen with great retinues should, of course, pay the tax on all their servants male and female.

↑ So that, if the fifteen millions of improvable waste land, already alluded to, were made to yield a rent of even one pound per acre to the state, we should have forty millions of revenue, without oppression to the poor, or any interference with, or hindrance to trade.

perity, increased, it might be found sufficient to charge adults only with the poll tax; and, surely, any man or woman who can earn a livelihood could, with a very trifling additional exertion, earn one pound a year more, particularly when they could procure full employment, and purchase first necessaries at half-price. In short, as not only population, and the comparatively useless wealth which collects in masses rapidly progressed, but that every labouring man thus found his resources doubled, the whole fifty millions, while raised by any means unattended with collateral mischiefs, would very soon cease to be felt at all, much less looked upon as a burden of national importance. A considerable portion, however, of the fifty millions, as has been already shown, would, under the new arrangement, cease to be required.

Lastly, it is necessary to remark before quitting this part of the subject, that, if a property tax is not to be the sole tax, it becomes important that the sum to be raised by the poll tax, or any other assistant tax or taxes, should be a definite sum, and that the property tax should be the one to vary with the exigencies of government; so that, on the grounds already explained at full length in the chapter on the collateral benefits of making the tax voting class the tax paying class,* the

* Chap. XIV.