TARIFF DUTIES IN ENGLAND. 407 



The English, after haying violated for a long time every one of 

 these four fundamental principles, now at length levy their tariff- 

 taxes in strict accordance with them. I quote from the Monthly 

 Report of the Bureau of Statistics of the United States for Decem 

 ber, 1872, the following facts: All tariff duties in Great Britain are 

 levied under nine heads, as follows: One, tobacco; two, sugars; 

 three, tea, coffee, chickory, and cocoa; four, spirits; five, wines; six, 

 dried fruits; seven, malt products; eight, table ware; nine, playing 

 cards. The taxes on these are all specific, that is, by the pound, 

 gallon, dozen, and so on, so that anybody can calculate them; they 

 are laid on things exclusively imported,, or, whenever they are not, 

 as in the case of spirits and malts, a corresponding excise tax is put 

 on the domestic product, so that the government gets all that the 

 people are compelled to pay as the result of the tariff-taxes; and 

 while the duties in some cases may be said to be high, they are not 

 so high in any case as to discourage the importation of the things on 

 which they are laid. There is no tariff- tax on any portion of the 

 food of the people, except sugars; no tariff-tax on any article of 

 clothing; and no tariff-tax on any raw materials or implements of 

 production. This tariff of Great Britain, which can almost be writ 

 ten on the palm of one s hand, yielded, in the fiscal year 1872, 

 $101,630,000 of revenue, which was $3 20 for each man, woman, 

 and child in the United Kingdom. If there are to be tariffs at all, 

 this is the only form of a tariff that even approaches towards justice 

 and equality. Taxes on stimulants and sugar, which yield almost 

 the whole of British customs revenue, are as unexceptionable as 

 any taxes on commodities can be, because everybody uses them in 

 some form, and because it is optional with everybody how much of 

 them they shall use. Bui w r e shall see that there is a more excel 

 lent way of taxation than this. 



The only just taxation is the taxation of incomes, because the net 

 annual income is the exact gains of one s exchanges for the year; 

 and as one can only pay his taxes out of the gains of his exchanges, 

 the taxes ought to be proportioned to those gains. In a country 

 organized as this is, in which there are municipal, state and national 

 taxes, the local authorities ought to ascertain (and they would surely 

 be able to ascertain) the net income of every person within their 

 limits; and, taxing this income a certain fraction for local purposes, 

 then report it to the state for another fraction of state taxation; and 

 then the state, reporting incomes to the nation, would be the 

 medium, through its local officers, of collecting the third fraction 

 for national purposes. Under this plan one set of local officers 

 could gather all three kinds of taxes at one time in the cheapest pos 

 sible way; custom houses and national internal revenue offices, with 

 all their political abuses and pecuniary corruptions, could be abol 

 ished; it would make no difference where the property was located, 

 whether in one s own state or elsewhere, or whence the income was 

 drawn, whether from commodities or services or credits, a man s 

 clomicil would mark the place of his taxation, and he would be 

 taxed throughout exactly in proportion to his income. The more 

 you think about this scheme the better you will like it, and the fewer 

 objections and more excellence you will see in it; but I have no 

 expectation of seeing it adopted in my time, because habits and prej- 



