CHAPTER XIV. ON THE COLLATERAL BENEFITS OF A PROPERTY TAX, OR THE ADVANTAGES OF CONSTITUTING THE TAX-VOTING CLASS THE TAX-PAYING CLASS. "The advance of civilization has already put a stop to plunder by force; it remains for the march of intellect to devise a check for plunder by stratagem."-Dilemmas of Pride. THIS check is our great national want. Property, as distinct from industry, ever has been, and, even under a reformed parliament, still is the maker of laws, the deviser of budgets, the voter of subsidies,-in short, the tier-up of public burdens; property, therefore, must be charged with the carrying of those burdens: nothing less can ever inspire it with a sufficiently feeling and careful appreciation of their weight. In our reformed parliament we have, no doubt, many honest individuals, and we shall in time, it may be fairly presumed, have many more. But, speaking of property as a body, all its prejudices, as well as all its misconceived notions of its own interest, are opposed to the just claims of industry. Take, for instance, the obstinate blindness of landlords on the subject of corn-laws. While ever, therefore, property, as a body, can fling the greater proportion of the burdens of the state on the shoulders of industry, property, as a body, will never be brought to reflect with sufficient seriousness on the devastating effects of oppression on national prosperity. But lay the burdens of the state exclusively, or chiefly, on already realized property—that is, make the tax-voting order the tax-paying order-and the representatives of property, whether reformers or non-reformers, would immediately feel, and therefore understand, the necessity of rendering those burdens as light as circumstances would permit. Sinecures and unnecessary offices would be abolished, and the indispensable ones remunerated moderately; or, if the property class thought fit, instead of each dividing his own possessions among his own children, to keep up, at the expense of the order, establishments in which their younger sons might still be placed to scramble for the prizes, it would become a sort of club affair, and, whether wise or not, would at least cease to be unjust to other classes. Another most essential advantage attendant upon laying the burdens of the state exclusively on already realized property, calling in always the aid of new property as fast as realized, is, that such an arrangement would not only teach : the representatives of already realized property, now the law-making order, economy, but also, which is of infinitely more importance, give them an immediate personal interest in the increase of national wealth, and therefore set them upon devices to bring about and secure general prosperity. Industry-that is to say, the immediate interest of industry-would thus, at length, be virtually represented a privilege it has never yet possessed, and which no reform in the freedom of election, not even universal suffrage and vote by ballot, could bestow upon it. For the man who has his daily bread to earn has seldom education, never leisure, still less a legal qualification to take himself a seat in parliament, and so become the actual representative of industry; and it is in vain that by his vote, however fairly given, he sends thither a delegate who has made his fortune in the same occupation at which he is himself still a labourer; by the very fact of having acquired a fortune that delegate has ceased to be the representative of industry, and become in fact, and, what is still more important in feeling, the representative of property; it has become his supposed personal interest to devise laws for the more than just protection of already realized property generally, and special enactments securing to the property portion, or great capitalist of his own peculiar trade or calling, some unfair monopoly, calculated to oppress at once the public and the operative; and such, R therefore, has been in general the conduct pursued by what is called the great mercantile interest in the house-men who, though risen from the people, are no longer of the people. In fact, our boasted three estates have long had absolutely no existence. Whether the maintenance of such a fancied harmony, arising out of discord, is either desirable or possible, is another question. Again, the real identity of interest of the whole community is a truth which is little understood, and less acted upon. What we have at present to deal with, therefore, is the supposed separate interests of the various parties in the state; and these consist, in name only, of King, Lords, and Commons, -in reality, of King, Property, and Industry. Lords and Commons thus, instead of being two such supposed interests or estates, are united, by the possession of property, into one such supposed interest or estate; and industry, while ground into the very dust to pay whatever this united interest chooses to demand, is shut out from all particle of share in the virtual representation. And yet the national importance of already realized property, compared with industry, or the power of creating wealth, is but as that of the income of an estate for a short period compared with that of the value of the estate itself. What rents would lands pay without labour? What interest would money yield unless the principal were employed to set labour in motion? Now there is no question that what both houses of parliament vote, constitutes law; yet already realized property, this comparatively unimportant interest, is represented in both houses: industry, or the power of creating wealth, that stupendously important interest, not in either. Thus the great stability giving majority of the nation, whose property consists in this power of creating wealth by labour, though they send nominal representatives to parliament, have no one, with an interest felt to be identical with their own, to plead their cause in any constitutional form, except indeed the drawing up of humble petitions for that which they have a right to demand. If, therefore, neglecting the prayers of those petitions, the property-holding, corn-growing union,-being also the law-framing, place-holding, subsidy-voting, and subsidy-appropriating unionchoose to make industry or labour, which it is their supposed interest to buy cheap, unprofitable, and bread, or the produce of the soil, which it is their supposed interest to sell dear, unpurchasable, and yet to take (for so doing) large salaries levied on industry,—what has industry left? The terrible remedy of turning the ploughshare into the sword!!! This remedy, however, (though in reserve) gives to the rights of industry a guarantee in nature which is indestructible, the ultimate security against the wanton invasion of those rights being |