| GREAT BRITAIN. | UNITED STATES. | | | | | National taxes, £50,000,000 | National taxes, £6,000,000 | | Local ditto,[7] 14,000,000 | Local ditto,[8] 5,680,000 | | ----------- | ----------- | | Total, £64,000,000 | Total, £11,680,000 | | Whereof the poor man's | Whereof the poor man's | | share, or customs, is £20,000,000 | share, or customs, is £6,000,000 | | or 32½ per cent. | or 52 per cent. | | | | [7] We give this amount as it is usually estimated, although it is certainly far below the truth. [8] _The American Almanac_ for 1851. Even if we were to throw into the scale a large portion of the excise duties levied in Britain, which Professor Johnston may be entitled to claim as a peculiar burden on "the masses"--at least as much as the customs--it would still be apparent, that, if such payments are to be taken as a fair criterion, _the people's burdens are not relatively heavier here than in America_. We shall only add further on this subject, that while many of the less opulent class of our fellow-citizens have undoubted real grievances to complain of, and while writers, with worse intentions than Professor Johnston, are ever ready to exaggerate them, and to foster discontent, it becomes one of his high character to guard against allowing a somewhat undisciplined taste for statistics to betray him into rash general allegations, calculated to produce error and irritation. The parallel he has drawn, however, is very instructive on one point, although he has failed to notice it. He has taken some pains to prove that, tried by the American standard, our poor men pay too much, and our owners of real property too little, in both which conclusions we have shown his grounds to be fallacious; but he takes no notice of a far more obvious anomaly, the glaring injustice of which is every day attracting more public comment--the comparative _immunity of the owners of personal property_ in this country. The local taxation of the States, it has been seen, is levied by an equal assessment on property _of all kinds_; and although, from the character of a great part of the country, the real property much exceeds the movable in amount, the rate upon both is a uniform one. No description of possessions is favoured with an invidious exemption. We will take the assessment of one State as an example, and copy the following "Items of the valuation of the taxable property for the State of Iowa, according to the assessor's returns for 1849." They are as follows:--