"What then is your panacea for so many crying ills?" asked Lord Darlingford, "Do you call on us to render up our trusts and proclaim an Agrarian law?" "No; those whose motives are honest dare not go such lengths. This would be to resolve society into its mere elements, to open the flood-gates of anarchy, and awake the savage spirit of wanton plunder. Many large landed properties too have been purchased with the wages of industry; so that besides the horrible convulsions attendant upon the dissolution of the social system, there would be no such thing as drawing the line; to avoid, therefore, worse evils, I would allow the 'frightful disparities,' as an able writer of the day terms them, to exist till industry, unchecked, unladen, could work out for itself a gradual emancipation from the bondage of want. But I would not add to evils I dare not too suddenly remedy! I would not require the children of Israel to make bricks without straw! I would not lay the burdens of the state on shoulders already weighed down by nature's demand for daily bread. I would exempt from the whole weight of taxation the labourer, whether of brain or limb; he has no stake in the stability of the state; he can carry his head or his hand wherever he goes. He who keeps back the hire of the labourer is denounced in holy writ: I would not be worse than such, and rob the labourer of his hire. I would, therefore, repeal every tax _direct_ and _indirect_, which now exists, and substitute for _all_ a graduated property-tax, on _independent_ property _only_, trifling in amount, say one per cent., where the property was small; and doubling, trebling, nay, quadrupling, if necessary, as it rises. What, if a man with thirty thousand per annum, pay twenty thousand, can he not live on ten? or if the man with two hundred thousand per annum, pay one hundred and fifty thousand, can he not live on fifty? This, some people are not ashamed to answer me would be robbing the rich; while they talk as loudly as vaguely of the sacredness of property and vested rights. But I would answer such, that starvation in the midst of plenty, on the plea of the sacredness of justice, is a practical blasphemy! What, therefore, relief from taxation did not effect for the absolutely destitute, I would complete by an amended system of poor-laws;--such assessments, however, to be levied on independent property only." "Poor-laws are bad things," interrupted Sir James, who having finished his luncheon, was now lolling on a sofa, "they make the common people so lazy."