“When Sir Robert Peel was just entering upon his work of tariff reform in England,” said Mr. Wilson, “he read to the House of Commons a letter that had been sent him by a canny Scotch fisherman. The writer protested against lowering the duty on herrings, for fear, as he said, that the Norwegian fisherman might undersell him; but he assured Sir Robert, in closing the letter, that in every respect except herrings he was a thoroughgoing free-trader. I trust that no Democrat to-day will be thinking more about his herrings than the cause of the people.” It was not the “herrings” which had found their way into the bill, however, which caused the largest number of Democrats to hesitate over it. They were all accustomed to them. It was a greater innovation, an amendment providing for a tax on all incomes of over $4000. Mr. Wilson had not approved of it, he had believed it inexpedient; but when the committee decided otherwise, he threw in his fortunes loyally with them. “I have never been hostile to the idea of an income tax,” he said. “It has been opposed here as class legislation; it is nothing of the kind, Mr. Speaker; it is simply an effort, an honest first effort, to balance the weight of taxation on the poor consumers of the country who have heretofore borne it all. Gentlemen who complain of it as class legislation forget that during the fifty years of its existence in England it has been the strongest force in preventing or allaying those class distinctions that have harassed the governments of the Old World.”