But the second point--that of the injustice of this measure--is most glaring, and demands immediate attention. Opposed as we are to the substitution of direct for indirect taxation, we can yet understand the motives of a minister who comes forward with a distinct and equable plan for an entire remodelment of the system. We believe that no such scheme can possibly be reduced to practice; and that, if attempted, it would prove utterly obnoxious and subversive of the national interest: we think that it would be unwise, but at the same time it might not be unjust as between man and man in the community. There is a certain burden to be borne by the whole of the nation, and the great problem is, to find out how every man can be made to contribute his proper share. Laws are framed and institutions founded for the protection of property and person; and, strictly speaking, every one is bound to bear the expense according to his means. The only effectual method which has ever yet been discovered for securing this, is the system of indirect taxation. By that system each man contributes to the revenue in proportion to the amount of taxed articles which he consumes. Wealth, in the aggregate, superinduces luxury, and the higher classes pay proportionably for the increased comforts they enjoy. Such were the principles of indirect taxation before Sir Robert Peel began to alter it, and even yet many of the original features remain. But we cannot recognise in his tariffs any thing of a consistent plan. That foreign luxuries, which cannot be produced in this country, should be brought in at as low a rate of duty as the state of the revenue will allow, is admitted on all hands. Wine, for example, which is no product of ours, is a case in point. But when we find him deliberately fostering foreign industry at the expense of home manufactures--reducing or abolishing the duties upon such articles as ornamental glass, boots, gloves, or made-up fancy silks, which, from their natures, are consumed by the higher classes only, our belief in his sagacity vanishes. The time is fast approaching when the artisan will feel severely the effects of that departure from our older system, which regarded home industry with peculiar favour, and refused to sacrifice it for the sake of increasing the yearly amount of our imports. Every curtailed or superseded branch of employment in this overpeopled country is a national loss and a misfortune.