of the people as other than unfair and offensive?” It is a most important principle of judicious finance that the incidence of taxation should be as little felt as possible, and also that it should not only be fair, but be seen to be fair. We believe that the present taxation of this country falls very equally on all classes; but, unfortunately, under Mr Gladstone’s “reforms,” it has assumed an appearance of gross inequality. We have largely increased the spirit duties, and we have kept up the taxes on malt and beer, yet we have greatly reduced the duties on wine. Moreover, we have made the reduction of the duties on wines in such a way that the finest wines pay no more than the cheap wines. Several articles of luxury have likewise, under the operation of the French treaty, disappeared from the tariff, and their absence, though of no great importance as affecting the revenue, gives a handle to demagogues who desire to excite the masses against the taxation of the country. The “Financial Reform Association,” and the Radical party in general, could have no better ally than Mr Gladstone; and the chief result of his “popular” Budgets will inevitably be to render our whole system of taxation extremely unpopular. Mr Gladstone’s new Budget is less ingenious, less experimental, less obviously hazardous, than those which have preceded it. The balance is, in appearance at least, kept even between direct and indirect taxation: and the twopence off the income-tax, and the fivepence off the duties on tea, reduce these taxes to the level at which they stood prior to the Russian war. The modification of the Income-tax upon incomes between £100 and £200 a-year is an improvement. Mr Gladstone has also done well in admitting a past error of his, by abolishing the small charges on certain operations, of trade which he imposed in 1860, but which have been found exceedingly vexatious to commerce. Nor can any objection be taken to the change which he proposes to make on the taxation of railways, by which the tax on the passenger traffic is reduced from 5 to 3½ per cent, while the exemption at present enjoyed by parliamentary and excursion trains is abolished. His proposal to levy the Income-tax upon the revenues of corporations which are expended in charity, and on the income of endowed charities, is more open to question; and so are some of his other minor proposals; but the interests affected are not sufficiently powerful to offer much opposition to the Government.