LETTERS ON POLITICS 599

in respectability and comfort. Persons at present receiving such salaries are of course grievously oppressed by income tax, but all this will soon settle itself, and all salaries will be increased by the amount of the income tax, the weight of which will therefore bear on employers, and on the public who deal with those employers, not on officials. And as to the weight of it, felt by men living by the variable gains of daily labour, I conceive it wiser to tax the incomes of such men than their savings. A property tax would “dull the edge of husbandry”;¹ and still less would it be just or desirable that a man should be able to lay claim to any exemption from income tax because he was in the habit of always living up to his income.

I have occupied enough of your valuable space for the present. I will-if you favour me by the insertion of this letter-proceed to the subject of Election in a future one.

¹ [Hamlet, i. 3.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]