sink mines, he had paid them to wait behind his chair, or attend to his hothouses, or his hounds. Now, if the man with L.2000 ayear, whom we have supposed to save half his income, be subjected to a tax falling on his expenditure, the only consequence will be his personal inconvenience. He has so much less to spend, the Government so much more. He may be forced to discharge a footman-the Government is enabled to engage a soldier. But if the tax fall on the portion of his income which he saves, it forces him to discharge, not a footman, but a man whose services created every year a capital exceeding his wages. He is forced to withdraw a workman from a farm-yard, a railway, or a manufactory. Suppose such a man to be taxed 50 per cent on his income, and to pay the tax one-half out of what he had been accustomed to spend, and the other half out of what he had been accustomed to save, the L.500 a-year paid out of his expenditure, if it were paid for twenty years, would not affect the capital of the country; but the L.500 paid out of his savings would take L.500 from what would have been the capital of the country the first year, L.1000 the second, L.1500 the third, and so on, more and more, during every year that it lasted. this reason, because they fall principally on unproductive expenditure, we prefer the assessed taxes to all other forms of direct taxation. If any other form of direct taxation be necessary, we prefer a direct tax on every man's declared expenditure.

For

Such a tax would have little tendency to diminish the accumulation of capital: to a certain extent, indeed, it would have a tendency to promote it, since many men would save in order to avoid the tax. It would have the further advantage of being, to a considerable extent, self-imposed. Its assessment, too, would be far less painful. Few persons would feel much objection to declare their expenditure, or to suffer it to be notorious; because its notoriety would neither affect their credit nor injure their vanity; and, so far as professional men and traders are concerned, expenditure is more easily ascertained than income.

We have said nothing of the vexatious procedure by which the proposed income tax is to be assessed or enforced; nor of the evasion, fraud, and demoralization which it will introduce; nor of its tendency to drive British property into foreign funds, and British subjects into foreign countries; nor of the danger of promoting extravagance, or even war, by a source of revenue so easy of increase. We have omitted these, and many other branches of the subject, not because we undervalue their importance, but simply because we cannot discuss them, at present, as we could wish.

The same reason prevents our adverting to the details of the debate upon the Budget, so far as it had proceeded at the

time of writing these pages, in the House of Commons. It is a striking exhibition of the predominance of Sir Robert Peel over his immediate associates, a predominance as marked in 1842 as it was in 1835. Whether he is equally absolute in the Cabinet, is a different question-a question which a comparison of the measures which he brings forward, with those which he must be supposed to wish to bring forward, would lead us to decide negatively. But in the House it is clear, that either from choice or from necessity, (we suspect from necessity,) he represents every department, and refuses to be encumbered by assistance. Another remarkable characteristic of the debate, has been the superiority of the Opposition. Their cause, without doubt, gives them a great advantage; but it might have been expected that they would have had to buy their victories in discussion a little dearer.

Before we quit this part of the subject, we must express the regret-which we believe to be general throughout the country among all who are opposed to an income tax-that this part of the Budget was not met, by Lord John Russell, with an immediate expression of decided hostility. The vigorous supporter of the repudiated Budget of the preceding year, would have been guilty of no inconsistency-no impropriety-in opposing in toto the Budget of 1842. But that the Income tax section of itthat a proposal calculated to startle, and to meet a hesitating and grudging acquiescence even under the pressure of an expensive war for a just cause-should not have encountered, when brought forward in peace, and under no alarming destitution of other expedients, the instant resistance of the clear-sighted and firm-minded leader of the Opposition, seems to us truly surprising. The prudence and candour of his nature may have here seduced him into a great practical error. It may be that he was unwilling, without consulting his party, to follow his own impulses, and act on his own judgment. The result has been most unfortunate. The interposition of a whole week between the announcement of the measure and of the resistance, led to a suspicion that it was possible that it might be acquiesced in. seems to us very clear that the public ought not to have been allowed, for a single day, to contemplate such a possibility. We now know that it was not contemplated by the leaders of the Liberal party; and we think that, in such a cause, they might have ventured to assume the responsibility of answering for the opinions and conduct of the whole body of their supporters.

It

It is scarcely possible that this paper should come into the hands of any one who, not having heard, has not read, Lord Brougham's very cogent speech, in the House of Lords, on the 17th of March. It will be seen that we differ from his Lordship

as to the necessity of an income tax; but, as to the general evils of such a tax, and as to the specific mischief and injustice of the details of the present measure, we are delighted to find ourselves supported by his high authority. In one respect, indeed, he goes further than we do. We have suggested that incomes derived from personal exertion should pay at two-thirds of the rate of incomes derived from property. Lord Brougham proposes that they should pay only one-third. We tax them, therefore, twice as heavily as he does. We leave the public to decide between the two plans, and should not be dissatisfied if the difference were divided. But we think that Lord Brougham's proposal, of which we were not aware until the passages containing our own had been completed, proves that we have not been too liberal in our exemption.

Before concluding, we will, in despite of the ridicule which generally follows unconsummated predictions, hazard one.

We are convinced that if the income tax be persisted in, it will ultimately be fatal to the present Administration. We believe that it will be carried. We believe that a combination between the country gentlemen, who think that they are raising a bulwark around the corn-law; the planters, who think that they are securing the sugar-law; and the members whose constituencies rejoice in it as a blow to the aristocracy, will force it through the House. But when once it has come into operation-when the painful exposure and the humiliating discussion have been undergone-when men have felt what it is to tremble at the knock of a tax-gatherer, and to deprecate the suspicions of a commissioner-when the pain of loss has been embittered by that of degradation;-a detestation of the tax will arise which all the discipline of the Tory party will be unable to control. Unfortunately for that party, the eminent person who leads it is not distinguished for political foreknowledge. He has often yielded to circumstances, but always too late. If he should perceive the signs of the gathering storm in time to change his course if the working of his new Corn Law should be such as to convince his followers that an alteration productive of a steady price, and a steady revenue, is expedient-if a treaty with Brazil should give him a fair pretext to add a million and a half to the revenue from sugar--if he can open his budget for 1843 by a promise that the income tax shall expire before 1844, and it shall be believed that he will perform that promise; he may be able, to a certain degree, to skin over the wound which its introduction has inflicted on his influence among his real supporters. Many of them, indeed, are lost to him irretrievably. Some detest the injustice of his measure, others are frightened at its democratic tendency, and all writhe under its severity. It is probable that

he is not aware-no minister, perhaps, ever is aware of the deep and bitter feeling of distrust and dissatisfaction which he has roused. He never will again be popular with his own party, and he has too much experience not to know the value of the praise with which his fiercest enemies have endeavoured to blind him. He knows well with what motives and with what sincerity he is called bold, direct, and honest, Still, however, while they believe it to be their interest, a large portion of the Tory party may continue to serve under him against the Whigs. But they will make no sacrifices in his defence. They will volunteer no expensive contest for him. They will not endanger their seats in his service. They will refuse no pledge against an income tax. If his power imply a continuance of that tax, his majority, strong as it may now appear, will have crumbled away long before the period which he has ventured to assign for the duration of the tax shall have expired.

ART. VII. Frederic the Great and his Times. Edited, with an Introduction, by THOMAS CAMPBELL, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1842.

TH

HIS work, which has the high honour of being introduced to the world by the author of 'Lochiel' and 'Hohenlinden,' is not wholly unworthy of so distinguished a chaperon. It professes, indeed, to be no more than a compilation; but it is an exceedingly amusing compilation, and we shall be glad to have more of it. The narrative comes down at present only to the commencement of the Seven Years' War, and therefore does not comprise the most interesting portion of Frederic's reign.

It may not be unacceptable to our readers that we should take this opportunity of presenting them with a slight sketch of the life of the greatest king that has, in modern times, succeeded by right of birth to a throne. It may, we fear, be impossible to compress so long and eventful a story within the limits which we must prescribe to ourselves. Should we be compelled to break off, we shall, when the continuation of this work appears, return to the subject.

The Prussian monarchy, the youngest of the great European states, but in population and revenue the fifth amongst them, and in art, science, and civilization entitled to the third, if not to the second place, sprang from a humble origin. About the beginning of the fifteenth century, the marquisate of Brandenburg was bestowed by the Emperor Sigismund on the noble family of Hohenzollern. In the sixteenth century that family em

braced the Lutheran doctrines. Early in the seventeenth century it obtained from the king of Poland the investiture of the duchy of Prussia. Even after this accession of territory, the chiefs of the house of Hohenzollern hardly ranked with the electors of Saxony and Bavaria. The soil of Brandenburg was for the most part sterile. Even round Berlin, the capital of the province, and round Potsdam, the favourite residence of the Margraves, the country was a desert. In some tracts, the deep sand could with difficulty be forced by assiduous tillage to yield thin crops of rye and oats. In other places, the ancient forests, from which the conquerors of the Roman empire had descended on the Danube, remained untouched by the hand of man. Where the soil was rich it was generally marshy, and its insalubrity repelled the cultivators whom its fertility attracted. Frederic William, called the Great Elector, was the prince to whose policy his successors have agreed to ascribe their greatness. He acquired by the peace of Westphalia several valuable possessions, and among them the rich city and district of Magdeburg; and he left to his son Frederic a principality as considerable as any which was not called a kingdom.

Frederic aspired to the style of royalty. Ostentatious and profuse, negligent of his true interests and of his high duties, insatiably eager for frivolous distinctions, he added nothing to the real weight of the state which he governed perhaps he transmitted his inheritance to his children impaired rather than augmented in value, but he succeeded in gaining the great object of his life, the title of king. In the year 1700 he assumed this new dignity. He had on that occasion to undergo all the mortifications which fall to the lot of ambitious upstarts. Compared with the other crowned heads of Europe, he made a figure resembling that which a Nabob or a Commissary, who had bought a title, would make in the company of Peers whose ancestors had been attainted for treason against the Plantagenets. The envy of the class which he quitted, and the civil scorn of the class into which he intruded himself, were marked in very significant ways. The elector of Saxony at first refused to acknowledge the new Majesty. Louis the Fourteenth looked down on his brother King with an air not unlike that with which the Count in Molière's play regards Monsieur Jourdain, just fresh from the mummery of being made a gentleman. Austria exacted large sacrifices in return for her recognition, and at last gave it ungraciously.

Frederic was succeeded by his son, Frederic William, a prince who must be allowed to have possessed some talents for administration, but whose character was disfigured by the most odious vices, and whose eccentricities were such as had