“Everybody knows the sarcastic description of English taxation by Sydney Smith, but I lately met with something on stamps, by an English writer, that I copied in my note-book, and here it is: ‘The Englishman was a stamped animal; he was tattooed all over. There was not a single spot of his body corporate, that was not stamped several times. He could not move without knocking his head against a stamp, and before he could arrive at any station of responsibility, he must have paid more money for stamps than would have set him up for life. The stamp penetrates everywhere, it seizes upon all things, and fixes its claws wherever there is a tangible substance. Sometimes, indeed, it flies to the intangible, and quarters itself upon the air, the imagination of man, his avocations, his insanity, his hopes and prospects, his pleasures and his pains, and does not scruple to fasten upon his affections. Even love is stamped. A man cannot fall in love and marry a lady without an acknowledgement of the omnipotence of the stamp. An Englishman is born to be stamped, he lives in a state of stamp, and is stamped while he is dying, and after he is dead.’ “No wonder the English are cross-grained with all this embarrassment of stamps, and ever in fear of being caught delinquent by some excise officer. “To show you the difference of taxation in the two countries, I will read you a note I have on that subject. In the United States the government receives five per cent on the products of the country; capital, in the shape of interest, rent and dividends, twenty-five per cent; and labor the balance, or seventy per cent. In Great Britain the government receives twenty-three per cent; capital thirty-six; and labor forty-one per cent. Another item I have noted from an India paper, ‘England spends twenty-three pence, America one hundred pence, and India seven-tenths of a penny per head of population for primary education.’ The paper says that India spends seven pice a head. A pice is such a curiosity to me that I have one in my pocket, and a pound weight of them in my trunk, taking them home as presents to my friends. Yet, I am told, there is still a smaller currency, a cowrie, a glaring proof of the poverty of the people. No wonder that Dr. Marshman wrote that ‘The Bengalis reckoned in cowries.’ “You see from this that the two systems of government, the English and the American, are the reverse of each other. The one exacts all it can from labor, and deprives the poor of education, while we favor the laborer in every possible way, and provide that every youth in the United States can have a good school education, whether the parents pay a penny of taxes or not, and in many states, school books are also provided free of charge. “We begin to build our social structure at the bottom with education and the elevation of the poor; the English system begins at the top and builds downwards.