"Acres of land--Improvements on land--Town lots and improvements--_Capital employed in merchandise_--Mills, manufactories, distilleries, carding machines and tan-yards, _with the stock employed_--Horses, cattle, sheep, &c.--Pleasure carriages, watches, pianofortes--_Capital stocks and profits in any company incorporated or unincorporated_--Property in boats and vessels--Gold and silver coin, and bank-notes in actual possession--_Claims for money, or other consideration--Annuities--Amount of notes, mortgages, &c. All other personal property over 100 dollars._" All these descriptions of property contribute alike, dollar for dollar, towards the expenses of the State, which--be it remarked--embrace not only the general charges for interest of debt, and for the support of the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments, but include also payments for prisons, asylums, the militia, the public roads, and several other branches of expenditure, which in this country are saddled either upon real property or upon the land alone. Let any one look at the items of the above list printed in italics, and say what portion of such wealth passes through the national exchequer, or goes to uphold the public institutions, of Great Britain. The whole annual incomes above £50 a-year in Great Britain are estimated, on the best attainable data,[9] to amount to upwards of £352,000,000 sterling, of which the taxed real income is £86,000,000, or one-fourth part only. Is there any one with a conscience so elastic as to maintain that the owners of the other three-fourths contribute fairly to the support of the State, in proportion to the revenue they enjoy under its protection? From the investigations of Mr Smee, to whom we have referred, it appears that while the number of those who pay the direct taxes is about five hundred thousand, _there are upwards of one million eight hundred thousand persons in Great Britain enjoying incomes of above £50 a-year, who do not contribute one farthing to them_. What is this but a system of iniquitous exemption of the one class, and of virtual confiscation as to the other? But the whole subject occupies far too prominent a place in the public mind to be treated thus incidentally. For the present then we leave it, thoroughly persuaded that, under a form of government which acknowledges no distinctions between classes and interests, so shameless a violation of the plainest principles of equity cannot long be permitted to continue, and cordially joining in the wish that no object of less momentous interest--no schemes of impracticable retrenchment--no wily bait of extended suffrage--no flourishing of the old red rag of reform, may be suffered to distract the attention of the public, from the one great paramount practical reform--A READJUSTMENT OF TAXATION. [9] See Mr Smee's pamphlet on the Income-Tax.