598 LETTERS ON POLITICS

there are some articles of luxury, jewels, for instance, of which the harmful effect is chiefly in excess, and which within certain limits might by a moderate duty be made a considerable source of revenue, and beyond certain limits might by heavier duty be nearly prohibited, while there are others altogether injurious, cigars,¹ for instance, on which the duty ought at once to be rendered as far as possible prohibitory.

§ 8. Having thus arranged the excise duties, let the revenue of the country be boldly and permanently provided for by both an income and property tax, the latter only on fortunes exceeding £10,000 (for in the case of fortunes less than this a tax on property is a tax on economy).² Let the income tax be 10 per cent. on all fortunes exceeding £1000 a year, and let the weight of it die away gradually on the poorer classes. A man whose income was under £100 a year should pay nothing; above 100, 1 per cent.; above 200, 2 per cent., above 300, 3 per cent., and so on, up to 1000-all fortunes above which should pay 10 per cent.; and in addition to this, there should be a tax on property above £10,000, according to the necessities of the revenue. The resistance made by men receiving small salaries to income tax is exceedingly short-sighted. All work for which regular salary is given, is done in the long run for as small a salary as it is possible to do it for

¹ [Ruskin was a sworn foe of tobacco-”the worst natural curse of modern civilisation,” he called it (Queen of the Air, § 76); “the most accursed of all vegetables” (Proserpina, i. ch. vi.).]

² [The income-tax, it should be remembered, was not at this time regarded as a permanent burden; it had been reimposed by Peel in 1842, for a limited term of years (as was proposed and hoped), in connexion with his free-trade measures. As originally imposed (in 1798 and again in 1803), the tax was graduated on incomes below £200 (1798) or £150 (1803); incomes below £60 were in those years exempt. At the time when Ruskin wrote £150 was the limit of exemption, and there was no graduated scale. In 1853 Gladstone lowered the limit to £100, but levied the tax at a lower rate on incomes between £100 and £150. The principle of graduation (by means of exempting a certain amount of income where the total was below a certain amount) was further carried out in 1861, 1871, 1876, 1894, and 1899. But in none of these cases was any graduation admitted on an income of more than £700. The fuller exercise of the principle, for which Ruskin here argues, was to be seen in Sir William Harcourt’s “Death Duties” of 1894. Ruskin returned to the subject in Fors Clavigera (1871), Letter 7.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]