THE ILLUSTRATED

No. 20.

FOR THE WEEK ENDING SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1842. - REPRINT

THE INCOME TAX.

[SIXPENCE.

Now that the manufacturing districts are in that half-lull which is preliminary to a fixed calm ; now that the Boundary Question is settled and there are no more rumours of wars between Brother Jonathan and John Bull; now that the French have disposed of their regency question and hushed their noisy deputies for at least one interval of repose ; now that corn is considerably imported and cattle coming over in droves to cheapen butcher's-meat and bread now that Ireland is not " much [fermented," and Scotland recovering from the excitement of the Royal Tour; now that the Queen herself is back among her halls and towers of Windsor " to woo the whispering of her native gales;" now, moreover, that Doncaster is past and Parliament dumb: now when, to borrow from the emphatic vocabulary of John Reeve, " there's nothing stirring but stagnation,"-people naturally begin to look out for a grievance, and such, unfortunately, is the present political consti- tution of our society, that our enterprising Prime Minister has not left them far to look. He has got one staring and intrusive oppres- sion strong before them, plain and[palpable as the handwriting on the wall, frowning down upon them like the head of Medusa, " all snakes and horrors," peering with ominous eyes into every corner of their castle, ferreting its dangerous glances among their secrets and into their pockets, coffers, and banks in a word, shaking its gory looks before the startled vision of the domestic world, and assuming all hideous forms that may awaken in the public dread, re- pugnance, and disgust. And what is this " monstrum horrendum informe"-this national bugbear that pinches all men and pleases none ? What, alas ! but the crushing, merciless, hopeless, extorting INCOME TAX and, what is worse, its operation is beginning, as we have said, just in the heart of a sort of social repose, when men's minds are not diverted by ten thousand con- ficting considerations, but when they can afford to concentrate all their political abhorrence upon the first germs of the working of that particular measure of iniquity, which is most likely with the greatest amount of justice to call it forth.

Honestly we begin to see that the consequences of this odious tax will be much more dangerously felt than was at first contemplated we doubt even if they may not engender a very serious feeling of general discontent, which, although not of so violent a nature as to disturb the peace and order of society, will yet be of that fretful and impatient kind which unsettles confidence, ruffles trade, and produces unnatural and unwholsome excitement every way detri- mental to the happiness of the community.

Writers and contemporaries of nearly all shades of opinion are beginning to coincide in their sense of the evils of the tax, which within the last few days has undergone more general reprobation from the press than it experienced even in the first blush of its enormity ; while the early steps that have been taken towards its collection have added greatly to the general disposition to regard it as a sad and galling practical calamity. Globe, Post, Examiner. and Spectator-the four cardinal points of Whiggism, Toryism, Radicalism, and neutrality-have all poured " words of fire" or floods of gall" upon this most ungentle inquisition. The Globe could " go on multiplying instances of annoyance and oppression," and does not wonder that organs of public opinion, differing upon almost every other question of national policy, should unite in con- demning this. The Post tells of the intricacies of its operation, that " many who are scarcely able to provide a dinner for their families have been obliged to call in the aid of an attorney, and to pay six-and-eightpence, or eleven shillings, according to the trouble given for filling up what they never ought (to have been required to fill up at all." The Examiner confirms this position more strongly still. It declares " that every week brings fresh disclosures of grievance and vexation, (varying in the degree of apparent wil- fulness with which they are inflicted-instances of intolerable un- fairness in the measure itself, and of deception on the part of those who, before it became law, gave the most positive assurances that the stern severity should be administered with the utmost possible tenderness that a nice discrimination, and a care for every case of delicacy and difficulty, might imply."

All this the Spectator crowns with a sort of intimation that the tyrannizing spirit of the tax has gonefar to create'a reaction of poli-