TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 177 
- to pay a smaller percentage on his income, in the shape of assessed taxes, customs, 
and excise duties, than an unencumbered bachelor of equal income. It is the 
income-tax alone which falls with indiscriminating weight upon both, and which, 
regarding not the ability to pay taxes, but simply the amount of income, makes 
the same deduction from the £1000 by which a dozen persons are to be supported, 
as from the £1000 appropriated to the exclusive use of a single individual. 
Here is one inequality incidental to a uniform income-tax. Another arises from 
the equal assessment of permanent and precarious incomes. Two persons, each of 
£1000 a year, but derived in the one case from landed, funded, or otherwise 
realized property, and .in the other, from the profits of trade, the gains of a pro- 
fession, or the salary of an office, have not the same means of paying taxes, The 
one may spend his £1000 a year for fifty years together, and at the end of that 
period his means of spending £1000 a year will be found undiminished. Butifa 
merchant, or tradesman, or doctor, or lawyer, or railway secretary be silly enough 
to spend the whole of his £1000 a year, then if health fail, or business fail, he may 
suddenly find himself without a penny. Accordingly, he commonly puts by part 
of his income, and spends only the remainder; andthe amount of that remainder 
is the measure of his ability to pay taxes, the amount therefore on which he ought 
to be taxed. In support of his view on this point, the writer quoted an expression 
of Adam Smith, to the effect that “ every subject of a state should contribute to 
the support of the government in proportion to the revenue which he enjoys under 
the protection of the state ;”’ from which he inferred that Smith intended to distin- 
guish between the income which a man possesses and enjoys and that which he 
ossesses and does not enjoy, remarking that a man enjoys only that part of his 
income which he spends, and that he no more enjoys what he saves for the benefit 
of his heirs than be enjoys the wine which is ripening in his cellar, and which 
may not be fit to drink till he is gathered to his fathers, or which may be kept till 
it spoils and may never be drank at all, just as money that is invested may not be 
accumulating for the benefit of the actual owner, and perhaps may not be accumu- 
lating at all, but may be dwindling away to nothing in the shape of railway shares. 
Mr. Thornton proceeded to remark that, among the many faults of an income-tax, 
there is only one which can be remedied. The tax is in most respects incurably 
bad. Nothing can prevent its being a discouragement to honesty and a bounty 
upon fraud, or from being collected at the expense of national probity, or from 
pressing with equal weight on single and married men of the same income, not- 
withstanding their unequal ability to bear the weight. One of its iniquities, how- 
ever, is partially remediable. It might be prevented from fipressing equally on 
permanent and precarious incomes, in the manner proposed by Mr. Mill, viz. by 
exempting from taxation that proportion of a precarious income which, taking the 
average of cases, its recipient would be bound in prudence to save. 
The remainder of the paper was occupied with an examination of objections to 
Mr. Mill’s suggestion. It has been urged that there is often a great difference between 
what a man ought to save and what he does save; and it has been asked, what could 
be more monstrous than to extend exemption to a spendthrift, who, being bound in 
prudence to lay by, say, a fourth of his income, thinks proper to spend all, and to 
save nothing? What could be more monstrous than to confer the reward assigned for 
the performance of a particular duty to one who had culpably neglected to perform 
that duty? In Mr. Thornton’s opinion it is more monstrous still to withhold the 
reward from those who have performed the duty. In a country in which economists 
must be to spendthrifts as 100 to 1, it would, he thinks, be better that one spend- 
thrift Bhould obtain an exemption which he does not deserve, rather than that a 
hundred economists should be denied the exemption they do deserve. 
Again, it has been urged that to assess precarious at a lower rate than permanent 
incomes, on the avowed ground, too, that the former belong to a poorer class of 
men, would be to tax the poor at a lower rate than the rich—a measure subversive 
of security of property. If, however, a reduced rate has been proposed for preca- 
rious incomes, it has been on the supposition that whatever rate were adopted 
would be assessed on the whole income. But to assess the whole of a precarious 
and the whole of a permanent income at the same rate would be to disregard their 
ee ability to hear taxation. If only that part of an income be taxed on which 
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