ock worth twenty, or an
annuity worth five, or a precarious professional income, which would not
bring, from the uncertainty of life and the public favour, or the winds
or monetary changes, above _two or three_? Under the present most unjust
system, they all pay alike on their income, that is, some pay about
FIFTEEN TIMES as much on what they are worth in the world in comparison
with others! A man who derives L300 a-year from the three per cents. on
land has a capital stock worth about L10,000. He pays as much, and no
more, as a poor widow, just dropping into the grave, who has a jointure
of L300 a-year, for which no insurance company in the kingdom would give
her above L500, or a hard-working lawyer or country surgeon with the
same income, whose chances of life and business are not worth three
years' purchase. The gross injustice of this inequality requires no
illustration.

Nor is it any answer to this to say, that if the professional and
commercial classes are unduly oppressed by the income tax, they, are
proportionally benefited by their general exemption from the heavy,
direct taxation which in other respects weighs down the land; and that
the one injustice may be set off against the other. We protest against
the system of setting off one injustice against another: there is no
compensation of evils in an equitable administration. In the present
instance there can be no compensation, for the acts of injustice are
committed against different classes. It is the trading classes which
enjoy the means, from the occult nature of their gains, of evading by
fallacious returns the income tax. The honest and honourable pay it to
the last farthing: it is the _dishonest_ who escape. The persons upon
whom the levying the income tax in its present form operates with the
most cruel severity are the professional men and annuitants. They cannot
evade it, as the trading classes can. Their gains are generally known:
if they are at all eminent or prosperous, the kindness or envy of the
public generally helps them to at least a half more than they really
enjoy. Merchants or shopkeepers are less in the public eye; and even
when most prominent, their transactions are so various and wide-spread,
that no one but themselves can estimate their profits. Every one knows,
or can easily guess, what Dr. Chambers or the Attorney-General make
a-year; but it would puzzle the most experienced heads on 'Change to say
what were the yearly profits of the