Observations on the Social and Political State of the European People in 1848 and 1849; Being the Second Series of "The Notes of a Traveller." (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1850 Excerpt: ...them: but there can be no question or doubt, that those who do not use them at all, should not be made to pay an equivalent tax, that others might have them duty free. This would not be natural justice, if it should be political economy justice. It is the peculiar character of our financial legislation, and, by favouring the accumulation of small beginnings in every branch of industry, one great cause of our national wealth, thrift, and prosperity, that we have no tax on the time and labour of the working man for military duty, and no tax which he cannot, with frugality and economy in his habits and housekeeping, avoid altogether, and without prejudice to health of body or mind, or to his respectability and character; and that when he does consume taxed articles, he pays tax only on what he consumes. Magna Charta is to the common man a trifle--a straw, compared to this great social right of paying taxes only for what he consumes. It is the main point of difference between the taxation of the subject of a free and of a despotic state--a citizen and a serf. The advantage of having tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, spirits, and ale, which are the principal articles of indirect taxation that enter into the consumption of the working man, sold to him at one third of the present prices, would undoubtedly add greatly to the material comfort of his condition; but x 306 INJUSTICE AND OPPRESSION there are only two ways of obtaining this advantage--either by the total repudiation of the national debt, and the abolition of all the taxes it renders necessary, or by a conversion of those taxes into one direct tax reaching down, as in Prussia, to the earnings of the labouring man in the lowest class. With our indirect taxes, the man of this class can take his pipe of tobacco, ...