icient to accomplish that
end. Doubtless there are in the commercial and professional class many
just and honourable men who give a true account to the last farthing of
their gains. These are men, the honour and support of the country, whose
word is their bond, and who may confidently be relied on to speak the
truth under any circumstances. But, unhappily, experience has too
clearly proved that the facility of concealing gains derived from stock
in trade, and thus withdrawing it from its just liability for
assessment, is too strong a temptation to be resisted. The proof of this
is decisive. The returns of the income tax show L175,000,000 of annual
income rated to that assessment, while only L1,541,000 was in 1845 paid
by the whole professional persons in Great Britain. Of this L1,541,000,
only L1200,000, at the very utmost can be estimated as coming from
commercial or trade incomes, which, at sevenpence in the pound,
corresponds to about L40,000,000 of annual income. Is it possible to
believe that the whole commercial and trading classes in Great Britain,
whose wealth is in every direction purchasing up the estates of the
landed proprietors in the island, only enjoy forty out of one hundred
and seventy-five millions of the rateable national income? Have they
less than a fourth of the whole income rated to the income tax? If they
have no more, they certainly make a good use of what they have, and must
deem themselves singularly fortunate in that happy exemption from
taxation which has enabled them, with less than a fourth of the general
income, to get the command of the state, and buy up the properties of
all the other classes.

There is one peculiarity in the income tax as at present established,
which is productive of the greatest injustice, and loudly calls for
immediate remedy. This consists in the taxing _all incomes at the same
rate_, whether derived from professional income, annuity, land, or
realized funds. This is just another instance of the careless and
reckless way in which our system of direct taxation has at different
times been framed, without any regard to principle, and alternately
unjustly favouring or grossly oppressing every class in society, _except
the great capitalists_. They have been always and unduly considered.
What can be more unjust than to tax every man of the same income at the
same rate, whether it is derived from land or funded property, worth
thirty years' purchase, or railway or bank st