articles. In America it is 30 per cent, and constitutes nearly their sole source of revenue: in Prussia it is practically 40 or 50 per cent. By this means nearly _half the tax is paid by foreigners_--for competition forces them to sell the articles taxed cheaper than their ordinary price, with the addition of the tax. It is spread over so vast a surface among consumers, that its weight is not felt; being mixed up with the price of the article sold, its weight is not perceived. We pay in this way half the taxes of America, Germany, and all the countries to whom we chiefly export our manufactures. Let us return them the compliment, and adopt a system which will make them pay the half of ours. The whole, or nearly the whole, of the Income Tax, which now produces L.5,400,000 a-year, would by this change be spent in increased purchases in the home market, and sensibly relieve its sinking state. This change would at once obviate our external dangers--for it would enable Government, without sensibly burdening the country, to maintain the national armaments on such a scale as to bid defiance to foreign attack. We shall see in our succeeding paper whether it would not, at the same time, be an effectual remedy, and the only one that would be practicable, to the most serious part of our domestic evils. FOOTNOTES: [3] "We have now lying before us both the printed and manuscript copy of the petition of a valued friend (the late Rev. W. Howells, of Long Acre) against the bill for granting to Roman Catholics the privilege of paralysing the hands and obstructing the labour of Protestant statesmen. At page 92, in the Memoirs of that eminent man, published by his friend and executor, Mr Bowdler, our readers will find that petition speaking with little less than prophetic voice of the confusion and misery certain to follow a measure which every Protestant, in proportion to the clearness of his views of Divine truth, must consider a downright infraction of his allegiance to his God. "We quote three of the clauses in the petition alluded to, and we ask whether the fears therein expressed have not been fulfilled to the very letter:-- "'That the concession of the elective franchise has not only multiplied the crimes and aggravated the miseries of Ireland, but shaken likewise the very foundation of the glorious British constitution, the majority of Irish votes being virtually at the disposal of a demoralising, disloyal, turbulent, and traitorous priesthood. "'That the concession of the representative franchise would be productive of further and progressive evils, and enable Romanists either to prosecute a successful crusade for supremacy, or involve the country in all the horrors of a civil war.