Tory, or Radical be in the ascendant, an anxiety for the benefit of their common country is the predominant motive for action; and the slightest knowledge of human nature would impel to the belief that the rich can never derive the full benefit and enjoyment of wealth, so long as the mass of human beings, who are the main stay of that wealth, are sinking and perishing from want. To expose, therefore, the evils of the existing system of finance, and to propound for consideration a better, because a juster system, is a benefit to the rich as well as to the poor: the immediate advantages being greater (while the permanent fruits are equal) to the former than to the latter; and as regards the governing and the governed, it must be equally obvious that, in the present pounds, shillings, and pence age, no party can long hope to hold the reins of authority but by the adoption and execution of sound financial principles.At present the greater portion of the revenue of Great Britain and Ireland is levied on the necessities of the working classes, and consequently on the industry of the country: therefore whenever remissions have been made in taxes which enter extensively into the consumption of the bulk of the people, the elasticity of our revenue is remarkably observant. In the present Number there is only space to shew our intention to lay before the public a complete view of the finances; and we have no more room than is sufficient to demonstrate the argument with which we set out, namely, that the burthen of taxation now unduly presses on the working classes, as thus exemplified.

1. MALT-LIQUOR.-If a labouring man consume one pot of beer (porter) daily, the taxation direct and indirect is-1st on the land whereon the barley is grown-2nd on the taxed labour which grows it-3rd on the malt-4th on the malster's charge for vexatious excise regulations-5th on the hops-6th on the license for a publicanon all these items, (3d. out of the 4d. is tax, therefore on 365 pots of stout, the working man pays a tax of £4. 11s. 3d. per

tax, (on a wholesome stimulant) of £1. 48. per annum.

N. B. If coffee be used instead of tea, it will not make any perceptible difference in the amount of the taxation, because the indirect mulct by reason of the West India monopoly of the coffee market fully compensates for the difference of tax levied. This is independent of the license for permission to sell tea or coffee;

4. SOAP.-If a labouring man use one lb. of soap weekly, to wash himself and his clothes, he pays a direct tax thereon for making and license of 2d. per lb.; and an indirect one of a penny more, owing to harassing excise laws, and custom duties on tallow, oil, barilla, &c. as well as on the taxed labour preparing it: thus 3d. per week for one year is-138. per annum.

5. HOUSING.-A labouring man it is to be supposed requires housing-for the poorest tenement or part of a tenement he is taxed in a variety of ways; and the income of the ground or land (house) lord must be made up from his portion of rent: thus, if he pay 1s. per week or £2. 128. per year, he pays a proportion of the land-tax, of the tax on window glass, on timber, on bricks, and on various building articles, as also on the outlay of taxed labour in preparing the house; to say nothing of the window tax, or of the local rate or parish assessment which every house must pay-it is therefore a very low estimate to say that the tax for all these is not less than 12s. per annum.

6. BREAD AND MEAT.-The indirect effect of the corn laws, (the result of heavy taxation) in raising the price of bread and meat, it is difficult to make evident by figures, but to a person who studies the subject of finance, a conclusion may be readily arrived at in his own mind. There can be no doubt that the burthens which the landed interests endure, such as tithes, poor rates, county cess, land-tax, &c. &c. enhance the prime cost of the necessaries of life by at least 20 per cent, if not more, while the general taxation on the labour requisite to grow the food, still further augments the price thereof to the working classes. We will estimate the cost of bread and meat to a labouring man, or artizan, at 10d. per diem, or £15. 4s. 2d. per annum-the minimum of supply to a hard working man, who is thus directly and indirectly mulcted, by local and general taxation, at the very least £3. per annum. At the same time, if the Corn Laws were repealed, numbers of labourers would be thrown out of employ, and the general distress would be increased rather than diminished, by withdrawing protection from our agriculture.

7. CLOTHING.-The poorest clad man will require in the year in shoes, stockings, shirts, smock-frock, trowsers, hat and hand

Take a labourer earning 1s. 6d. per diem, and working 300 days in the year his income will be £22. 10s.

Thus it will be admitted that at the very least 50 per cent, or half of his income is abstracted from him by taxation, indeed this is rather a low estimate, for do what he will, eating, drinking or sleeping, he is in some way or other taxed. But when prices and wages are sufficient to meet taxation, taxation is not felt by the productive classes; it is only under a system of half wages and half employment, that the labourer and producer feel the burden of taxes.

N. B. Our next Number will contain a full exposition of the taxes paid by the rich, middle, and working classes.

M.

trict. For what purpose does he set up shop? To serve the labourer, the tenant and the landlord with the things they don't produce themselves. If the agricultural district had not existed, along with those who own and cultivate it, the town would not have existed. York, Canterbury, Lincoln, Beverley, Royston, Haddington, and a hundred other towns, are as agricultural as the little villages which house the plough-boys, the blacksmiths and the country joiners.

There is the grocer, the linen draper, the ironmonger, (not to mention the tailors, shoemakers, &c. who are a sort of provincial home manufacturers); these sell their respective goods to the landlord, the farmer, the joiner, the blacksmith, the plough-boy of the villages in the district around them. They also sell among themselves—but their power to buy of, and to sell to, each other, depends on the quantity of things bought from them by the agriculturists around

them.

The tradesmen buy their goods of the manufacturer, or the dealer in colonial or foreign produce; these latter then become as much interested as the tradesman himself in the quantity of goods which he sells to his agricultural customer. It is plain, then, that if the farming interest be in a prosperous state, it will make these other interests prosperous; if the farming interest be in distress, the other interests become depressed in the like proportion, except inasmuch as they trade with foreigners.*

In the evidence taken before the Agricultural Committee, 1833, there was a very curious illustration given of this. Mr. Robert Merry of Lockton, near Pickering, (a market town) is asked-You have said that

TRADE.

THE manufacturer makes the goods, he generally disposes of them to some merchant or wholesale dealer, who again turns them over to the retail dealer; i. e. to the tradesmen in the different towns and villages in the kingdom, who keep shop to sell to the public, from time to time, the different articles in which they deal.

In asking the question-what has been the condition of the tradesman for the last twenty years, we except the two intervals of 1817-18 and 1823-4, which were prosperous, and when the system differed from that which has prevailed during the remainder of the period.

What then has been the tradesman's condition for twenty years? Has it differed at all from the condition of those around him? He lives in a town or village; that town or village, in nineteen cases out of twenty, is situated in the midst of an agricultural dis

a fox-hunting as you used to do; in the market towns do the farmers spend as much money as they used to do ?-No; since I can remember they used to be found there at the farmer's bed-time, but now they are generally out of the market town before sunset.

Do the wives and family lay out as much money in the market towns as they used to do?—I should think not near so much.

Does that affect the trade of the shopkeepers ?-Most seriously.

Have you ever heard that said by them? -I have.

Can you state any particular instance?A shop-keeper that I enquired of some years since, about 1814, was selling goods to the amount of £6000. a year for several years

Physicians, also, surgeons, solicitors, &c. in the country towns and villages, have all one common interest with the agriculture and trade around them: men buy both physic and law twice as readily when their pockets are full, as when they are nearly empty.

together; in 1815 things came down a little, and he sold about £5000. worth; in 1817, 1818, 1819, he sold rather better than £ 6000. worth; in 1820 about £5000. worth; in 1821 about £4000. worth; in 1822 and 1823 about £3000. worth, and a little more than half of it paid for at Christmas. He is a person of property, and in the habit of giving credit-In 1824 he sold about £4000. worth; in 1825 about £5000. worth, and had his bills paid up; nearly as it used to be before the depreciation. Since then his average has been about £3000. worth; and because he had such heavy debts in his book, on all his payments he gives a discount of five per cent; till within this last three months. Those that were taken on credit, he counted at about six months, and he allowed five per cent discount for cash payments, and still he cannot get paid up so well as he did at one part of his time.

Do you know that shop-keeper well?Yes; I see him nearly once a week.

It is scarcely necessary to state that during 1823, 4 and 5, as well as 1817, 18, prices were higher, because of a more extended circulating medium.

Let any impartial man go to the provincial towns throughout the country, and ask the tradesmen whether their books will not tell a similar tale to this related by Mr. Merry. We have enquired of many, and with the same result. The chief trade of London is retail, but London owing to the fashion of resorting to it by country families, and by being the seat of the legislature, will necessarily feel distress the last; and yet to what do we owe the remission of the house tax? To nothing else under Heaven than the distressed state of the shop-keepers of London. The taxation or low prices operating on members of the legislature and country families resorting to London, caused them to spend less in London shops; the London shop-keepers then found that it was their customers who had paid their taxation. They clamoured and besieged the Chancellor of the Exchequer until he could stand out no longer. It was high time for them to clamour, if their tale was true, that in all the great thoroughfares from Regentstreet to St. Paul's every third house had been a bankrupt within the last twenty years. They clamoured against the house tax; but was it the house tax in particular they objected to? No; it was because at a fixed time the tax gatherer came round and they I could not evade him. Indirect taxation they could evade by denying themselves the indulgence of the articles on which it was charged: but they could not pay hard cash out, where hard cash never came in.

The shop-keepers all over the country, (except a few of them who saw further) till about three years ago, were seduced by the

inviting sound of cheap bread, no corn laws and low prices. Their tone is entirely changed. They now look on the agricultural interest as their great purse; if the purse be full, they know they will come in for a share of it; if it is empty, they have learnt from sad experience they have no other purse to go to. Alas, they wanted no King's speech to tell them they had found the bottom of the great agricultural money-box.

There is indeed an astonishing coincidence of opinion at this moment on the subject of low prices-the sellers of the country, the sellers of labour, as well as the sellers of the produce of labour, have learnt the salutary lesson, that their powers to buy depend on their powers to sell. And they are convinced that if they cannot themselves sell, it is useless other things being cheap for them to buy, when they have no returns wherewith to buy them.

We now despair less of our country: when all are agreed as to the cause of a disaster, we may rely on a united effort to secure its removal. The shop-keepers are mainly the electoral body of towns: two Sessions of the Reformed Parliament have shewn an indisposition to do any thing effectual to relieve distress. We shall see if the present conviction of the shop-keepers of the country will not (without reference to Whig or Tory) operate on their choice of members to be sent to the next Parliament. We are mistaken if their opinions on distress won't be the main test applied to every candidate.

THE COTTON MANUFACTURE.

Y.

THE rapid extension and increase of this very important branch of our national industry, is, perhaps, without parallel in the history of manufactures, and more especially within the last eighteen years; a period in which bankruptcy, ruin, and distress have been greater, and the consequent complaints more general, than had been ever known before. These disasters, moreover, befel those engaged in this apparently prosperous business. Every observer unacquainted with the facts of the case must have been struck with surprise and astonishment at the conflicting opinions maintained on this subject. Statements of distress, with facts to prove it, have been reiterated by the productive class employed in this manufacture, on the one side; while "the thrice-told" tale of prosperity has issued from another quarter (here to be nameless), drawn solemnly from figures, which shew an amazing increase in the exports of cotton manufactures. It will be our endeavour to point out the manner in

which this subject is treated by these par

ties.

Mr. Fielden, the member for Oldham, in a letter to Mr. Fitton, one of his constituents, published about a year ago, inserts four tables, shewing the downward progress of the cotton manufacture, well worthy the attention of all who feel interested in acquiring information on this subject. We shall give Mr. Fielden's own words, immediately following his tables in the letter. He says, "These tables present a history of the works of those engaged in the cotton trade for the eighteen years ending 1832; and I have no hesitation in saying, that history presents no parallel to a like increase of production, or to a like increase in the taking away from the producers, for the use of those who do not produce. Industry is deprived of its just reward; and, in the midst of unexampled plenty, those who labour and toil, and that more effectually than any other people, are not allowed to have what is necessary to supply their wants. The fear of want increases, the hope of reward is blighted, and laudable individual selfishness is disappointed amongst those who toil, in more than the ratio of increase of production; in fact, the harder they labour-the more they produce, the less they have.

"Whether we look to the products of manual labour, as instanced in the case of the hand-loom weaver, or of manual labour, aided by the most improved machinery employed in the cotton trade, we find that, for a nearly three-fold quantity produced in 1832, the manufacturers and their workpeople had a much less command over the first necessary of life than they had in 1815, for little more than one third of the quantity. Truly it may be said, we labour for that which is not bread, and spend our strength for nought; while those who tax us and live on fixed money incomes, get an additional increase of the fruits of our labour, more than correspondent with the increase of our production, and for which we receive no equivalent whatever. And can this Course of proceeding last? No, it cannot. The manufacturers cannot go on in this course much further, however disposed they might be to do so. Seventy parts out of one hundred, constituting the whole for labour, expences, and profit, have departed between 1815 and 1832, both years inclusive, and many parts more will be found to have fled in 1833; and there is no possibility of preventing the mass engaged in this business from being involved in one common ruin, unless they retrace their steps. They are contending against nature. Providence designed that the gifts she has bestowed on man for increasing his supply of the necessaries and comforts of life, by the invention

and aid of machinery or otherwise, should not be abused; and so surely as we take improperly from those who labour, and give it to those who do not labour, so surely will a day of retribution and vengeance overtake the oppressors." A little farther on, in the same letter, Mr. Fielden proceeds, "I shall be told, Sir, that this reasoning makes out a strong case for the repeal of the Corn Bill. I admit it; but such repeal ought to be preceded by a large reduction of taxes: and if the landed interest will not cause such reduction of taxes to be made, they must have the Corn Bill wrested from them, and take the consequences. The taxes press so severely on those engaged in agriculture, that, notwithstanding they get the little clothing they can purchase so much cheaper, all the evidence taken on the subject tends to shew that they are in a condition which it is frightful to contemplate. They give at least three quarters of wheat for the same amount of taxes that could be paid with two quarters during the war; and this, with corn at the present price, I do not believe they can do so much longer.

"But how do the taxes affect the manufacturer with his increase of production? This is shewn in table No. 1, column 12, in which you will see that all living upon fixed-money incomes, have experienced a progressive increase, in the command a given sum of money has afforded them over manufactured articles since 1815; that £3. at that period would only buy three pieces and one third, whereas, in 1832, the same sum would purchase ten pieces and two thirds, an increase of 220 per cent. drained out of the labour of the manufacturer."

The evidence of many respectable witnesses before the Committee of Manufactures, Shipping, and Commerce, as future numbers will afford us the opportunity of shewing, fully corroborates the statement of decline given by Mr. Fielden. No sooner, however, was Parliament assembled in 1834, than the country was treated with a very different version of the state of manufac tures, in the speech from the throne, and in the speech of Mr. Morrison, the member for Ipswich, who seconded the Address. Agricultural distress was deplored, and with too great reason, for two thirds of the farmers are insolvent; but manufactures were declared to be in a state of progressive improvement. Mr. Morrison, to confirm this opinion, gratified his hearers with a flourishing announcement of the increase of exports, as instanced in cotton manufactures; the cry of the prosperity of our manufacturing interests was echoed by the press, and even our courts of law were made available to render as public as possible the pleasing and joyous news. These two speeches made a strong impression on the manufacturers out