"Oh, it is all but too true!" said Lady Arden, feelingly. "I do think your scheme of taxation would be but justice. Willoughby would certainly have a great deal to pay; but he can surely afford it better than poor creatures who have nothing but what they earn, or what they beg. I see the subject now in quite a new light. I have always been in the habit of thinking people _poor_ who had but _one_ or _two_ thousands a-year; and I never took the trouble of considering that there was any difference between hundreds a-year and nothing." "How would you apportion this property-tax of yours?" asked Lord Darlingford; "and how ensure its being sufficient for the exigencies of the state?" "On a graduated scale, as I have already said," replied Henry, "from justice to individuals: let those who have the largest property to ensure, pay, as at all other insurance offices, the most; but, as to details and calculations, I leave those to Mr. Hume, or some of the multiplication table people; I only advocate the principle. Indeed, one of the great recommendations of this plan is, that the principle once established, the work is done: when those who tie up the burdens have to carry them, they may be trusted to find scales of sufficient nicety in which to weigh them: we need, in that case, no longer call for estimates, or petition against sinecures; nay, we may give the very voting of the subsidies to the _Lords_ themselves!--many of whom, I make no doubt, would forthwith become immortalised by the economical or '_twopenny halfpenny_' ingenuity, developed in the devising of future budgets. '_Twopence halfpenny_,' I would have the noble lords to know, though no object to them, is a sum which many of their destitute fellow-creatures would, at this moment, receive with joy of heart! Then, remember, in further recommendation of this scheme, the millions a-year of unprofitable expense that would be saved to the nation, by having but one instead of innumerable taxes to levy." "I don't think," said Sir James, looking as if he had made a discovery, "that the people with large fortunes will like this law of yours, Henry." "Many people, too," replied Henry, contemptuously, "don't like paying their Christmas bills." Alfred, who had been looking over a morning paper near a window, and from time to time lending a share of his attention to the disputants, now joined them.