Another monstrous hardship of the income-tax is its pressure upon professional men, and upon those whose incomes are precarious. No distinction is made by the act of 1842, between profits accruing from realised property, and those which are entirely the product of individual and personal exertion; and yet, in every point of view, there is a vast difference between the parties so situated. The man who derives an income of £1000 a-year from landed property, or from the funds, is in a far better position than the divine, the lawyer, the physician, or the military officer, whose incomes perish with their persons. That most pressing duty of life, the necessity of laying by Some provision for a rising family, is in the one case already fulfilled--in the other it is urgent; and yet no distinction whatever is made between the two. The professional man is compelled year after year to lay aside a large portion of his income, for the sake of securing, by insurance or otherwise, the means of subsistence for his family in the case of sudden death. He may not be able to spend one half of his apparent income, and yet no deduction is allowed on this account. He must pay for burdens not his own, and for ministerial folly in which he was no participator, an amount equal to that which is levied from the fund-holder or the man of acres, in the full knowledge that, when he dies, his capital is buried with him, whilst that of the other class remains tangible and available by inheritance. This is another ground upon which we decidedly object to the continuance and augmentation of the income-tax.