Lastly, It has not been overlooked that there is an income tax now: and if the whole proceeds of the sixteen-pence income tax were used to fill up the deficiency in customs and excise, then we have to make up a deficiency equal to the present proceeds of the income tax. This might be done (to start with) by the National Property Rate now to be suggested. But the expectation is, that with Universal Free Trade, and the tremendous stimulus thereby given to commerce and manufacture, the National Income would rise with a bound, and that in two or three years a much lower rate than sixteen-pence income tax in the pound would supply the amount of all the indirect taxes abandoned. 4. THE RANSOM OF THE LAND. Many people see quite clearly that, the population of England being 25,000,000, the next baby born has a right to one twenty-fifth-millionth part of the area of England in soil of average fertility. The arrangements of society by which the laud is partitioned among a limited class, and the complicated rights sanctioned by law in one plot of land, are considered of no validity as against the natural right of the new-born baby. I do not see this theory to be self-evident: on the other hand the supporters of it always give it as fundamental, axiomatic; they no doubt presume rightly that the land is limited, and that if one man holds more than his arithmetical share, he must push out somebody else from his arithmetical share: while a man who keeps a hundred pocket-knives does not perceptibly hinder other people having numerous pocket-knives. Still I do not see how this consideration weighs against Lord Derby's title to his lands, if the body politic has determined that on the whole it is best for the community that land should not be held equally by all, and sanctions by law Lord Derby's monopoly of a large area. On the theory of the natural right of every infant born to its arithmetical share, the monopolisers of land are liable to a perpetually recurring ransom: this can only practically be carried out by a special National Rate on Real Property (_i.e._ Land, with the houses, mines, etc., inseparably attached to it), which must be in addition to such taxes as income tax, succession duty, etc., which land already suffers equally with trades, professions, offices, and personalty. The local rates in England exceed £25,000,000 annually; and the ratepayers perhaps reckon this a large enough ransom. I should remark in passing that one man with 1000 acres of land does not dispossess any more babies of their rights than do ten men with 100 acres each. The ransom therefore must be a strictly level rate: to put a higher rate on large holders, or to despoil large holders of a portion of their landed property, will be to work the ransom unfairly. It hence will follow that any heavy ransom is now impracticable. Of late years some farms have gone out of cultivation because they will not pay the tithe, land tax, and rates already on