vince the British nation that a man who owns 1000l. per annum issuing out of land, or from the public stocks, has not a broader back for the purposes of direct taxation than the merchant or manufacturer,—than the lawyer or literary man, who for three years last past has earned an equal sum as the produce of his commercial risks, or the premium on his overwrought brain. Income, taking the word in its naked sense, is a most insufficient and fallacious test of property. To tax his income in place of his property is to tax a man’s transitory and apparent, not his permanent and real means. How little do those who hold this opinion know of the risks, the vicissitudes, the anxieties of commerce, or the feverish and destructive conditions under which the physician, the lawyer, the writer, the artist, the actor, earns his painful bread and the means of maintaining his family in respectability and comfort. The usual answer is, that his income is only taxed whilst it lasts—whilst property endures, and is always obnoxious to the inspection of the collector. But when the income ceases, what remains? Tax property as you will, so this be not done in a tyrannical and ridiculous manner, at the end of each year the holder of property is just where he was at the beginning of it—he and his children after him. Mr. Hubbard’s effort of the other night was to obtain some remedy for this great anomaly. If the Income-Tax is to endure until the year 1900, and even longer, let it not be levied in a manner so repugnant, as at present, to the most ordinary notions of justice and fair play. Mr. Gladstone resisted the proposition for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the subject with the usual stock arguments about the difficulty of apportionment, and so forth. As the late Duke of Wellington said of the French at Waterloo, he just came on in the old style, and was driven back in the old style. The motion for a Select Committee was carried in a very full House, despite of the most strenuous efforts of the Government. Without being very sanguine as to the results which may follow from the decision of the House of Commons, thus much of advantage seems reasonably certain. Until the deliberations of the Committee are concluded, the Chancellor of the Exchequer can scarcely venture to screw up the Income-Tax to a higher point than that at which it at present stands fixed. The ten-pence of 1860 can scarcely be converted into the shilling of 1861. Considering the rapid ratio of increase, according to which the Income-Tax has developed itself, and, moreover that Mr. Gladstone at the present moment is not without his embarrassments as a finance minister, there is some consolation in this thought.
With regard to a further reform of our system of Parliamentary Representation, and the propositions of Mr. Locke King and Mr. Baines for further enfranchisements, little need be said but this. When the nation desires Reform, and demands it—but not till then—it will have it. There is no use in reckoning upon Parliamentary agitation as of much account with reference to immediate action. It is well that there should be members there who should keep the torch alight, and pass it from hand to hand, even though they be few in number, and not amongst the most considerable amongst our public men. Time was when the advocates of Religious, Political, and Commercial Freedom stood in small minorities, and were exposed to the gibes and jeers of our public writers, and our club-house politicians. The time arrived, however, when the sun shone on their side of the hedge, and they who had come to curse remained to bless. The Liberals of England should not join in the cry which is raised against the advocates of Reform, just because Reform happens to be out of fashion at the present moment. Just now our minds are far more intent upon continental politics than upon any other subject. Until we feel a certain assurance that no great movement in which we ourselves may be involved is likely to occur in Europe, we certainly shall not give serious attention to a question of domestic politics which cannot be discussed in any decisive way until party feeling again runs high, and men are in earnest upon the matter. Meanwhile, do not let us discredit our Reformers, simply because they are discharging garrison duty, and not actually engaged in the turmoils and dangers of a campaign.
Are we at last to see an end of the temporal power of the Pope? The Romans believe it. The French troops at Rome believe it. The vast majority of the Italian nation desire it most anxiously—to what extent they believe in the proximate deposition of the priests from power, it would be difficult to say. Here in London we are sceptical in this matter. In Paris the subject is freely discussed by the Pamphleteers, and the Pamphleteers of Paris do not usually discuss a subject save with the full assent of the Government. M. de la Guerronière, the Emperor’s chief scribe, seems all for the speedy release of the Pope from the harassing anxieties of worldly affairs. The Ami de la Rélgion takes one side of the question—La Presse, the other. The contention has now assumed a more sincere form. Is it for the benefit of France upon the whole that the Pope—however infallible in spiritual things—should in matters temporal be reduced to the condition of First Subject of the King of Italy? Is Italy, which seems destined to fill a large space in the eyes of men as a great naval power in the Mediterranean, to have the further advantage of housing the Pope? Such are the points which the French Emperor is just now leaving to the consideration of his faithful. As far as we know of the pamphlets, no writer of note has just now revived the notion which was thrown out some months back, that the secession of the Gallican Church from a strict allegiance to the See of Rome was amongst the political propositions of the time. It is difficult to suppose that this would not follow as a natural consequence of the Pope’s dethronement; for a French ruler could scarcely tolerate that the subject of another country should be the leader and inspirer of discontent and disorder within the limits of his dominion. So far, the Pope’s French friends are in the right; but they are in the wrong, when they do not see that a remedy for this evil would very speedily be forthcoming. The