Taxation as affecting the Agricultural Interest. 399 = 133 
\ course, no doubt, requiring caution in itself. So far, however, 
IS this transfer has already proceeded, we have not jet, perhaps, 
cached the anticipated, and of course possible, danger of disso- 
ating the responsibility of paying for the maintenance of poli- 
ical institutions from the practical possession of political power. 
But it may be questioned whether the same apportionment of Taxation of the 
nxes to classes as is here shown holds good throughout the "j;i'icultuial 
pecially agricultural as well as the other sections of the com- 
nunity. Since the number of the landowners has been already 
hown to include 200,000 persons who do not possess 10 acres 
piece, since more than half of the English occupiers cultivate 
ess than 20 acres each, and since among the Irish farmers 
he small cultivator still more largely predominates, it is clear 
hat with agriculturists many more than those in the nomi- 
lal labouring class will really enjoy no more than working- 
lass incomes. Belonging, therefore, so far as taxes on ex- 
)enditure are concerned, to the lower order of incomes, such 
)ersons will have to bear at the same time a further and ex- 
eptional liability in their share of some of the more direct 
mposts which ordinarily fall on propertied classes of a higher 
)r(ler. 
If these petty cultivators be excepted from the class, the tax- The agiicul- 
tion fallino: on the srrade of agricultural labourers is the very \ 
m Gl'S tdXGS. 
ightest exacted anywhere. The labourer who neither smokes 
lor chews tobacco, who neither drinks his beer, nor rises to the 
igher taxed luxury of spirits, is practically an untaxed member 
t the community. Even where he desires it, the narrower wage 
f the average farm-workman leaves far less margin for that 
oluntary taxation by means of the gin-palace, to which, in too 
lany cases, it may be feared, the more highly-paid artisan 
ubjects himself. 
It is not easy to fix the average payment the labourer will 
lake. The articles on which he pays are few in number and 
ery irregularly consumed in different districts. A not unfair 
ample of the English farm-labourer's present taxation may, 
owever, be gathered from the following Table, in which a 
ommon average is struck of the consumption of taxed com- 
lodities by ten labourers' families in Yorkshire, Essex, and 
lampshire. The figures are abstracted from Returns given in 
Ir. Dudley Baxter's book on taxation ; and I have selected (as 
lese Returns were furnished ten years ago) only those based 
n the higher scale of earnings, as tallying more readily with 
resent circumstances. Each household, it should be said, 
ijoyed 43/. 6s. 8(/. of average yearly earnings, and consisted of 
mean number of 5f persons. 
VOL. XIV.— S. S. ' 2 F 
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