The Land Taxation ami the Economists. 185 



not the illustration of the bachelor and married landlord, used 

 by us before to expose the inequable nature of the land tax, 

 apply in this case also? Moreover, the self-same obstacles 

 which beset all attempts to estimate the sources of the in- 

 comes upon which it is levied, must gradually tend to reduce 

 it, in like manner as they reduced the older forms of property 

 tax, to another exclusive burden on the land. Lastly, its most 

 distressing effects are unfortunately experienced by people of 

 small means. 



In fact, this Act of 1799 was popular with no section of the 

 public. Holders of Government scrip loudly complained that 

 the State had failed to keep faith with them. They had 

 bought Consols on the understanding that they would receive 

 a certain fixed percentage as interest, free of all charges and 

 imposition, and they failed to see how their purchase could 

 with justice be brought within the purview of the Act. Pitt 

 saw the force of this contention, and when he renewed the 

 charge later on he arranged that incomes should be as far as 

 possible taxed whilst still in the hands of the original pro- 

 prietors, whereby he endeavoured to draw a nice but worth- 

 less distinction between the taxing of the bondholders and the 

 taxing of Consols.^ 



Whether, if the war had been prolonged, the tax would 

 have been a second time re-enacted, it is impossible to sa3^ 

 The Ministry parted with it reluctantly, but Parliament with 

 such manifestations of relief, that, when Brougham jestingly 

 proposed that all the records of the tax should be burned by 

 the public hangman, it adopted the idea so far as to gravely 

 order their immediate destruction.^ But, as we know now, no 

 obliteration of its assessment papers sufficed to keep the 

 thoughts of the Treasury from so convenient a source of 

 revenue ; and at the time at which we now write this inquisi- 

 torial impost is almost as stereotyped as the land tax, thus 

 complying, more than any other State charge, however direct, 

 with the famous principles of the great Scotch economist. 



' VidQ the report of j\Ir. G. Clure's third lecture on Stock Exchange 

 Securities, at the London Institution, Fiusburv Circus, Feb. 1st, 1893. 

 - Id. Ibid. 



