now contribute to the Customs revenue are beer, mum, spruce, chicory, cocoa, chocolate, tea, coffee, currants, figs, prunes, raisins and other dried fruits, rum, brandy, gin and other spirits, tobacco, cigars, snuff and wine-a sufficiently long list for a country boasting of its adherence to Free Trade principles. The revenue raised from Customs and Excise amounts to £44,500,000 annually, of which £19,300,000 come from spirits, £1,300,000 from wine, £9,400,000 from beer, £9,700,000 from tobacco, £4,200,000 from coffee, cocoa, tea, &c., and dried fruits, and £600,000 from a number of smaller items.

Who Pays the Indirect Taxes.

Taxes upon food and other necessaries of life are obviously objectionable, and as a general source of revenue are no longer advocated in this country by practical politicians. The present remnant of these taxes is maintained on the ground that without them the working-classes would not contribute to the taxation of the country at all. But this argument misses the crucial point of modern industrial life. If idle men grow rich on the rents and dividends produced by the labor of workers, it is folly to pretend that the Income Tax paid by such rich men is not contributed by the working classes. It is by the deduction of rent and interest from the worker's share of what he produces that his wages are reduced either to bare subsistence point, when taxation is impossible, or to within such a small distance from it that every addition to his burden in the shape of taxation necessarily tends to render his position more precarious than ever. As Mr. Gladstone once said, the taxes on the earnings of the people "form in no small degree a deduction from a scanty store which is necessary to secure them a sufficiency, I do not say of the comforts of life, but even of the prime necessaries of clothing, of shelter, and of fuel."

But the present Customs and Excise Duties press much more heavily on the poor family than on the rich. From the particulars given in a return of Working Men's Budgets issued in 1889 by the Board of Trade (C-5861), it has been calculated that whilst the income tax payer pays 7d. in the £, the average artizan purchases his exemption from income tax by paying 15gd. in the £ in indirect taxation. Tea at 4d. a pound is taxed at the same rate as t that sold at one guinea an ounce. For every shillingsworth of tobacco bought by the poor man, 101d. is tax; whilst the rich man who smokes cigars a 1s. a piece, only pays from 2d. to 6d. tax, because the same rate of duty is paid on the common tobacco as on the finest leaf for making cigars. For every shilling spent on cocoa, 1ąd. goes for the tax; for every shillingsworth of coffee bought, 2d. is tax; for currants 1d., and for raisins, 23d.; and these are all articles of daily use among the masses.

The proposal to remedy the admitted grievance of a disproportionate tax on tea and tobacco by the establishment of duties graduated according to value, has always been met by an official declaration that this is impossible. Probably the officials are right;

but this matters little, as such taxes, instead of being tinkered, müst be swept away as the last remnant of an antiquated fiscal system. They not only transgress every one of Adam Smith's canons, but are precisely analogous to hundreds of the taxes long ago repealed in the name of Free Trade. They are unequal in their incidence, uncertain in their amount, and costly to collect-in many cases they cannot repay the cost of collection. As a recent writer has pointed out, it takes the same army of watchers, collectors and superintendents to prevent the revenue being defrauded when the taxes are small as when they are large. No port can be left unwatched; and the fact that so many ports do not yield enough in duties to pay the cost of the staff in charge, is an argument used by many for the total abolition of import duties.'

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The Evils of Indirect Taxation.

One objection to indirect taxation is that the individual taxpayer has no easy means of ascertaining exactly how much he is paying year by year, and consequently does not feel the burden. "The indifference engendered by this fact is the main cause of the maladministration of public funds, and the corruption and extravagance that are more or less characteristic of the public departments and other bodies which spend the nation's money. If all taxation were direct, every voter would be able to translate into £ s. d. the exact cost to himself of a war or other piece of national policy for which he had voted at an election, and thus his pecuniary responsibility would be brought home to him. The vast incubus of our National Debt, which was placed upon our shoulders surreptitiously, has been tolerated so long and with so little grumbling only because the interest on it is drawn from indirect taxation. We do not realize that year by year an average of £3 6s. 3d. per family, or 13s. 3d. per person, is being paid as interest on a debt incurred generations ago.

Although the bulk of the revenue arising from indirect taxation is collected by means of the duties of Customs and Excise upon articles in general use, there are a few other forms of this kind of tax that have not even the merit of contributing very largely to the national revenue. The Stamp Duties-other than the Death Duties, which are collected by means of stamps-are many of them insignificant and pettifogging, such as the duty of 2s. 6d. which is payable upon indentures of apprenticeship, a term which includes every writing relating to the service or tuition of any apprentice, clerk or servant placed with any master to learn any profession, trade or employment. Others, such as the legal fees and stamps on various kinds of commercial documents, are obstacles to the free course of justice and unnecessary restrictions on the development of trade and industry.

The host of licences that have now to be paid annually by appraisers, auctioneers, game-dealers, hawkers, pedlars, house-agents, pawnbrokers, refreshment-house keepers, tobacco manufacturers and dealers, plate-dealers, patent medicine vendors, playing-card makers,

cabmen, and London chimney-sweeps, are absurd restrictions on industry, and cost more to collect than they are worth. Whenever a licence is required for registration or other purposes, there should be no fee charged for what is demanded only for the public convenience.

The extent to which industry is hampered and ordinary daily occurrences obstructed by vexatious duties and licences may be illustrated in a homely way :-John Smith, the licensed pedlar, being engaged to be married to Mary Jones, the licensed refreshmenthouse keeper, purchases the marriage licence, and agrees with a licensed house-agent to take a house-the agreement for which has to be stamped. On the wedding morning, after chaining up his licensed dog, he hires a licensed cab, driven by a licensed cabman, and goes to the chapel licensed for the solemnization of marriages, in the company of his best man, who is a licensed tobacco-dealer. At the chapel they meet the bride, who is accompanied by her uncle the licensed game-dealer, and her aunt the licensed pawnbroker. After the ceremony has been performed, the wedding party adjourns to a licensed hotel where a meal has been prepared, taxed beer being brought for the gentlemen and taxed wine for the ladies. The breakfast over, the gentleman light up their taxed cigars and drink a cup of taxed coffee. The ladies prefer a cup of taxed tea and a slice of wedding cake, every raisin and currant of which has been duly taxed. The bride and bridegroom once more have recourse to the licensed cab to be driven to the station where they take their tickets, on which Railway Passenger Duty has been paid, for the place at which they are to spend their already taxed honeymoon.

It is therefore clear that the establishment of the Free Breakfast Table (the repeal of the taxes paid on tea, coffee,. chicory, chocolate and cocoa) about which the Liberals are now talking, must include also the abolition of the duties on currants, figs, raisins, prunes and other dried fruits; and even then. the work would be far from complete.*

For instance, there would remain untouched the taxes on alcoholic liquors, now amounting to £29,000,000 annually. But this question is less within the domain of taxation than within that of local administration. The popular demand for the local control of the drink traffic is strictly on Socialist lines; but there is great need for careful definition of the extent to which Local Option should be carried. The main evil of the drink traffic arises from the fact that. the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors are in private hands, and that consequently the quality of liquor sold, and the way in which it is sold, are regulated, not by considerations of the public welfare, but entirely for the private profit of those who sell it. To incite their customers to drink as much as possible, and especially to get them to drink the kind of stuff on which there is the largest amount of profit, is the natural aim of every private publican. What is wanted is the establishment of cafés and halls, where, for the expenditure of a few pence, the Englishman may sit and enjoy himself in the same free and comfortable manner as his continental brethren. Let the public house be a place where a man can take his wife and children, and where he shall not be pestered to drink. There is no need to abolish the public house, one of the few remaining incentives. to social life; but the public reading room and the music hall should be grafted on to it. Let us municipalize the public-house and the music hall. The promised Parish Councils, as well as the existing Town Councils (and in London the

Direct Taxation.

Our direct taxes do not so glaringly infringe the canons of Adam Smith in principle; but they fall deplorably short of his ideal. They must be simplified, increased, graduated, levied with equity, and with some regard to convenience. The present direct taxes are the Land Tax, the Income Tax, and the Death Duties.

Land Tax.

The history of the Land Tax is a most damning illustration of the fraudulent way in which the Landlord Parliaments of the past. have relieved land from the burden of taxation by shifting it on to the backs of the people. There is an absolute consensus of opinion amongst constitutional authorities, that the land of the kingdom is the property of the Sovereign as the head of the State, and that it is. inalienable except temporarily and on certain conditions. The right of resumption by the Crown has never been given up. Prior to 1660 the whole burden of military service fell on the landholders of the country. The State-tenants in the Convention Parliament of Charles II. in 1660 abolished all the conditions upon which they held their land, and, in place of the payments to which they were liable, substituted Excise duties on the drink of the people.

Experience proved that the government of the country required. some further source of revenue; and in 1692 it was enacted that a tax of four shillings in the pound should be paid by "every person, body politic or corporate, etc., having any estate in ready monies, or debts owing to them, or having estate in goods, wares, merchandise, or chattels, or personal estate whatsoever within this realm or without." By the third section of the Act the profits and salaries of all persons having office or employment of profit (except naval and military officers) were subjected to the same tax; and then the fourth section proceeds to enact a tax on land: "And to the end that a further aid and supply for their Majesties' occasions may beraised by a charge upon all lands, tenements, and hereditaments with as much equality and indifference as is possible by an equal pound rate of four shillings for every twenty shillings of the true yearly value, be it enacted that all manors, messuages, lands, and tenements, and quarries, mines, etc., tithes, tolls, etc., and all hereditaments of what nature soever they be, shall be charged with the sum of four shillings for every twenty shillings of the full yearly value."

The express enactment, coupled with the rules for assessment, shew that the tax was levied as much upon personal estate as upon land, in fact that it was a general property tax. The valuation of 1692 was most imperfectly made, and is not above suspicion of fraud.

County Council), should have power to establish and maintain a sufficient number of places for the supply of alcoholic drinks, the proceeds going to the benefit of the community. This "municipalization of the public-house" has been in successful operation in Sweden and Norway since 1865. The really "public" house should become, under public management, the poor man's club.

But although the Act of 1692 was the first of the Land Tax Acts, it was not until 1798 that the tax was imposed precisely in the form which has been preserved to the present day.

Up to 1798 the tax was continued by annual Acts of Parliament, the rate varying from four shillings to one shilling in the pound. By two Acts passed in the reign of George III. (38 Geo. III., c. 5 & c. 60) the Land Tax was made perpetual at four shillings in the pound on the valuation of 1692, on all "manors, lands, tenements, hereditaments, mines, ironworks, salt springs and works, parks, chases, warrens, woods, fishings, tithes, tolls, annuities:" that is, on all profits arising out of real property. The amount to be raised was put at £2,037,627. The apportionment of the tax to the various counties of England, Wales, and Scotland is still maintained. Each parish is now charged with precisely the same amount of land tax as was imposed upon it in 1798, except in so far as the tax has been redeemed. In no case is the original four shillings in the £ paid at the present time. The amount paid varies from 94d. in the £ in Buckinghamshire to Old. in Lancashire; or if the proportion is taken by parishes, there are cases in which the rate is as low as a hundredth of a penny in the £. In London the tax varies from nothing at all in Paddington to 11d. in St. Anne's, Soho, and 1s. 3d. in St. Paul's, Covent Garden.

The

By the operation of the power of redemption upon payment of a lump sum the receipts have dwindled down to little more than £1,000,000. From £3,000 to £4,000 is redeemed every year. old tax must be got rid of by a compulsory redemption of the outstanding quotas, and the way left clear for dealing with the whole. question of the land in the light of modern ideas and knowledge.

The Unearned Increment.

The most pressing point in the land question to-day is how to divert the flow of the unearned increment from the landlords to the community. The increased value of land caused by the growth and concentration of population, local improvements, the discovery of minerals, etc., must be brought into the public pocket.

In London alone the unearned increment during the twenty-one years from 1870 to 1891 amounted to £7,154,844 in annual rental, representing a growth in saleable value of more than one hundred and ten millions sterling, or over four millions sterling every year.

It is obvious that the only final method of appropriating the unearned increment is by the nationalization or municipalization of the land. But as the fee-simple of all the land cannot be appropriated at once, and the matter is one of extreme urgency, some other plan must be put into operation, if the present daily spoliation of the community by the landlords is to be stopped.

Taxation is the only immediately practicable means of tapping the unearned increment.

This is why we must teach our Chancellors of the Exchequer to look upon their Budgets, not merely as means of meeting the necessary expenditure of the community but also, as Bentham long ago