d is not worth a tenth part of the other's realised
capital, pays _income-tax_? It is in vain to say you must draw a line
somewhere. So you must, but you must not draw it in a way to do gross
and palpable injustice,--to exempt the comparatively affluent, and
oppress the industrious poor. There is a vital distinction, which it
would be well if the income tax recognised, between income, of any
amount, derived from realised property and from professional exertions.
By all means give the humble professional classes the benefit of this
distinction. But to draw the line, not according to the _quality_ of the
income as derived from capital or labour, but from its _absolute
amount_, is arbitrary, invidious, and unjust.

The great advantage to be derived from making the income tax, modified
as now suggested, descend lower in society is, that it would _interest a
larger number in guarding against its abuse_. At present, it is said,
there are three hundred and twenty thousand persons rated to the income
tax in Great Britain, but not half of them really pay on _their own
account_. Many pay the income tax of _one_; as a landlord's whole
tenants for his rent, though not more than one or two, perhaps none,
certainly not half the number, are separate persons whose incomes are
really made liable. But can any thing be more unjust than to select in
this way a particular class, not more than a _two-hundredth_ part of the
community, and subject them and _them alone_ to the heaviest of the
direct taxes? It is just the privileged class of old France over again,
with this difference, that the privileged class in England is
distinguished by being obliged _to bear_ not to _avoid_ the hated
taille. Nevertheless, nothing is more certain than that, as long as this
invidious and unjust accumulation of the whole direct tax is on one
class of 150,000 persons, it will be highly popular with the remaining
29,000,000, and that the popular journals will never cease to resound
with the propriety of extending still farther the _partial_ burden of
direct, and the _general exemption_ under the name of Free Trade from
the indirect taxes.

The increase of direct taxation, till it proved fatal to industry,
population, national strength, and every thing save great capital, was
the cause of the ruin of the Roman empire. Many circumstances, alas!
concur in showing, and will ere long demonstrate to the most
inconsiderate, that we are fast following in the same dire