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With this statement we take our leave of the subject of prisons, thoroughly convinced that, since the days of their cleanliness and salubrity, they have been so managed as to become the great school for crimes and wretchedness; and that the public, though beginning to awake, are not yet sufficiently aware of this fact, and sufficiently alarmed at it. Mrs Fry is an amiable excellent woman, and ten thousand times better than the infamous neglect that preceded her; but her's is not the method to stop crimes. In prisons which are really meant to keep the multitude in order, and to be a terror to evil doers, there must be no sharing of profits-no visiting of friends-no education but religious education-no freedom of diet-no weavers' looms or carpenters' benches. There must be a great deal of solitude; coarse food; a dress of shame; hard, incessant, irksome, eternal labour; a planned and regulated and unrelenting exclusion of happiness and comfort. *

ART. IV. Remarks upon the last Session of Parliament. By a NEAR OBSERVER. London. Ridgeway, 1822.

IT

T was long ago remarked by Mr Burke in, perhaps, his best, certainly his most faultless work, that where popular discontents have been very prevalent, there has been generally something amiss in the Constitution, or in the conduct of the Government.' The universal dissatisfaction with their rulers, which the people of this country for some years past have displayed, and which has, if not alienated their affections from the system of the Constitution, at least weakened their ancient attachment to it,-while it furnishes a new illustration of this truth, is calculated to awaken very gloomy apprehensions for the future fate of the Monarchy. Nor can any more acceptable service be rendered to the cause of good order, and to the sta bility of all that deserves to be perpetuated in the frame of our polity, than they offer who show, that the 'mischiefs so much. complained of, and, we fear, so much more deeply than loudly deplored, belong to the abuses of the system, and are not essential to its nature;-that though there may be something amiss in the constitution,' it has crept into it through neglect; and that the ills we endure proceed rather from the conduct of the Govern

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All this, of course, applies to prisoners after conviction. Before trial, they should experience every possible indulgence compatible with their detention and with good morals.

Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents, &c. Works, ii. 224.

ment' than from the fundamental principles on which it rests. The able and instructive Tract now before us, is full of matter which has this wholesome tendency. But, before calling the attention of the reader to its contents, we must take a somewhat more general view of the aspect of the national concerns, in order to ascertain whether or not there be, in reality, as little occasion of despondency and discontent, as the official supporters of the Government, and their literary agents, are fond of asserting; and to examine the grounds upon which these candid and disinterested persons impute the distrust and vexation of the people to an entire ignorance of their real situation— a disregard to their true interests-and a silly passion for being duped by factious demagogues. According to these high and impartial authorities, the country is, if not as well off as can be imagined, at least as well as could have been expected, after the late war; and the inhabitants have nothing to complain of, but the arts of those who are making them dissatisfied with their condition. The nature of Englishmen, it seems, is become such, that they can no longer judge for themselves when they are burthened, and when at their ease. They must wait till some speaker, or some writer, expounds the matter to them; and then they decide, -not upon what they know and feel of their own situation, but upon the stories which those adepts tell them, and the fancies which they stir up. A few plain statements, will, probably, suffice to show, that the sufferings of the patient warrant the description of the physician; and that, whatever difference there may be in the opinions entertained of the cure, there can be none as to the existence and pressure of the malady-and hardly any as to its origin.

When we estimate the burthens that press upon the empire, with a reference to the persons who bear them, we must confine our attention to the inhabitants of these Islands. Very few of our colonies pay the charges of governing and defending them; and in the aggregate, they are undoubtedly a considerable expense directly, and the less immediate source of a prodigious cost. They contribute nothing directly to the revenues of the State; and, in augmenting the fund out of which that revenue is raised, they only differ from our foreign customers-from any country round the Baltic or the Mediterranean, for example-inasmuch as a small number of colonial proprietors reside in the mother country, and pay taxes out of their colonial income. The enormous expenses of the late wars were therefore borne by the people of England and Ireland; but in very unequal proportions,-the wealthier, though comparatively less populous Island, bearing by far the larger share. For some years, the sums raised by

taxes of all kinds, from the whole country, exceeded ninety-four millions annually, allowing only five millions for parish and county rates; and, exclusively of those local burthens, we may take the sum yearly paid by thirteen or fourteen millions of people in Great Britain, at very near seventy-eight millions Sterling, while between six and seven more were paid by about half the number of our fellow-subjects in Ireland. If France were taxed equally with England in proportion to her population, the publick revenue would considerably exceed 160 millions, whereas it has never exceeded forty;-and that of the United States of America never reached three and a half, except during the short war, though their population does not now fall one-third below our own. We grant that these are very vague and imperfect approximations to a comparison of the pressure felt in these countries; because the wealth is different in them all, and that portion of price which is affected by the value of money, varies in them all materially; but we wish to illustrate the peculiar situation in which the war placed this country, and the unnatural disproportion between the national and the private resources of the people. If, then, it af fords but a dim light to state, that there was raised at the rate of nearly six pounds a head from all persons, of all classes and ages, or nearly thirty pounds a year from every family rich and poor, upon an average, let us look to income as a surer test. But, first of all, let us more particularly advert to the gross amount of the expenditure.

The enormous sums which we have mentioned above were actually raised by taxes during three years-1813, 1814, and 1815. The average for Great Britain in these years was seventy-eight millions, with eight millions parochial and county rates, of which it is a very large allowance, indeed, to suppose that three millions. were for payment of wages;-and the average of the Irish taxes was 63 millions. In one year, 1815, no less than 93 millions were thus raised. But we shall confine the statement to this Island; and if we take the seven last years of the war, with the year 1816, when its costs may be said to have ended, we shall find the average sum yearly raised by taxes, and by such portion of parish rates as are strictly taxes, very near seventy-seven millions. Now, what proportion did this bear to the income of the inhabitants? Perhaps it might be more accurately asked, what proportion the income bears to this drain; for, continued so long, it seems as if it must have encroached upon the capital. In attempting to estimate the yearly produce of land, capital and labour, the only guide we have is the Property-tax. In 1815, that intolerable burthen, having reached its utmost amount, raised upwards of

14 millions, of which nearly 5 were paid by landlords, and above 2 by occupiers; whence we may infer, that the income of the former was about fifty-five millions, and of the latter twenty-eight-but adding eight and four respectively for the incomes below 60%., we have the whole income arising from land, ninety-five millions. Nor is it probable that the clear taxable income was nearly equal to this; for the farmers could not, generally speaking, pay their proportion; they threw it upon their landlords; and all were agreed that the method of estimating the gains of the tenants was erroneous. It was clear, too, as soon as the cruel machinery of the tax had attained perfection, that hardly any property escaped. Now, if the rental of a country be any criterion of its capacity to undergo taxation, we have here the means of judging how far that of the times in question was bearable. Of the actual occupiers of land, by far the largest portion are those paying rent. Except in the northern counties of England, no considerable number of yeomanry are now to be found cultivating their own land; and we shall probably exceed the truth, if we add seven millions to the landlord's income, for persons of this description. This will make the whole rental of Great Britain seventy millions in the years under consideration, when there were raised in taxes seventyseven millions; so that the publick income exceeded, by a tenth, the whole rental of the country; and did not fall much more than a sixth below the whole income derived from the land in every manner of way, a state of things, we will venture to say, as unnatural as can well be imagined.

But let the comparison be pursued with respect to the whole income of the people. From trades, manufactures, and professions, were raised a little more than three millions,-thirtyseven was the estimated amount of the income, and about three millions a year was the amount of returns below 60%. If, however, instead of forty we put fifty millions for the whole, in consideration of the concealments practised by this class, we shall be more near the truth. This, with the incomes from office, would make the whole income of the people about 155 millions, exclusive of those who only receive annuities for money formerly lent to the Government. It may perhaps admit of some doubt, how far official income ought to enter into this statement; but there can be no hesitation in rejecting income from the funds, provided we deduct from the taxes the produce of the direct impost upon that income. The balance of the account will then stand thus

* 3,825,000l. is the amount returned in 1812, as under the taxable sum in the occupiers' class.

that for the eight years in question, about seventy-seven millions were raised by taxes, out of a total income from all sources, of 155 millions; or that one half the income of the whole country, derived from the produce of its land, its capital, or its labours, was wrung from it in order to support the expenses of the Government and the war. In this estimate, we have not made any allowance for the income immediately derived from labour, in the form of wages to workmen, because these never pay any tax, except in the moment of its being imposed, or a very short time afterwards. The value which they create or add becomes taxable in other hands as income; but the articles, in the purchase of which the wages are bestowed, belonging to the class of necessaries, any tax imposed on such articles must be ultimately paid by the capital which sets the labour in motion.

If, from the manner of raising the revenue, we turn to the mode of expending it, the first thing that strikes us is its deficiency, and, vast as it has been, its total inadequacy to meet the demands upon it. The expense of governing and defending the United Kingdom in one year, 1814, reached the unheard of, and perfectly intolerable amount, of 137 millions; the aver age cost of three years, 1813, 1814 and 1815, was above 132 millions. If we include only 5 of the 8 millions of rates levied yearly, the cost of 1814 was 142, and the average cost of the three years 137; but, taking only the public expenditure, it exceeded, in two years, the whole amount of the national debt contracted from the Revolution to the beginning of the late war, by more than the whole current charges of those two years. Again, taking all the expenses, local and general, at both periods, for two years at the beginning of the war, and two years at its close, those amounted, in 1813 and 1814, to above 278 millions. In an equal period before the war, they did not exceed 40 millions, including Ireland and the parish rates; leaving a difference of above 238 millions, or more than the whole amount of the national debt at that time. Even if we take the longer period of eight years, to which our estimates of the income and revenue referred, we find that the average yearly expense was above 117 millions, including Ireland and the parochial expenditure; and exclusive of those heads, 104 millions; so that the clear addition made to our debt, by the excess of our extravagance above even our enormous means in those concluding years of the war, was such as to add more than 240 millions to the debt, and to entail upon the people a perpetual burthen of nearly thrice as much as the whole costs of the government (exclusive of the debt) had amounted to when the war began.

It is a very common fallacy, in reasoning upon the effects of

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