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Leader (1850-1860), 3rd December 1859, Edition 2 of 2, Page 14

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      From The Fate To Which Directorship Is F...

      in her present state it -would be " imprudent to sendherto sea onalengthened voyage ; " "the decks are not tight , and a great deal of inferior material and workmanship have been used in them , " and ** there is a considerable amount of work necessary to be performed before the ship can be trusted on a lengthened voyage across the Atlantic , which work would require a considerable time to execute in an efficient manner ; and even with this done the ship would not be what the contract requires her to be , and deficiencies in other respects would be a constant source of expense and annoyance to the company . " A fine story this for the confiding shareholders and for the " bears _ who will be on the look-out for an opportunity of buying the concern cheap , and starting some new company under the auspices of Dodge , Diddledom , and other friends of the contractor tribe . All that the surveyors report may be true , and the ship still worth rescuing . No doubt has been thrown upon the principle or the main features of construction ; but to do what is required to the vessel , and provide additional boilers for the engines , will make a hole in another , £ 100 , 000 , or we shall be much mistaken . There are about 3 , 000 shareholders in the company , and they might easily obtain the money required if they would first purge their direction . They should forthwith appoint a committee of investigation , trace out all the faults that have been committed , and track them home to the parties who committed them . Some of their directors , they will probably find were dummies ; others may have joined Mr . Magnus in protesting against what was wrong . Let them carefully separate these sheep from the goats , and when they hare ascertained the men who are to blanje , let them declare that they will not consent to the raising of another farthing until they have left th < 5 board . One single act of something like justice and intelligence on the . part of a body of shareholders would do much to redeem the point-stock system from the disgrace into which it has fallen . Shareholders who cannot attend the next naeeting-of the Great Eastern Company should send their proxies to men pledged to inquiry and determined not to screen any blunderers or evil-doers . The big ship may be saved yet by honesty and good management : and the public really want an example of shareholders who have enough p luck and sense to rescue themselves from contractors and boards .

      1322 Th E Leade H. [No. 506. Dec. 3, 185...

      1322 TH E LEADE H . [ No . 506 . Dec . 3 , 185 $ .

      Who Receives The Taxes? Pboceeding Now T...

      WHO RECEIVES THE TAXES ? Pboceeding now to examine the question , " -Who receives the taxes ? " or the produce of taxation , we must beg our readers to remember that we did not take to the subject spontaneously . It was forced on the public notice by the extraordinary assertions of certain class-journals , which , for the behoof of the aristocracy , think it no scandal to libel the multitude , and no robbery to plunder them . These journals made it out that the taxes

      which reduces the actual charge for police , more than the revenue , to £ 1 , 158 , 380 . Then we must add ^ all the borough , county , and poor rates , & c . Now , taking only the sums levied as poor rates in 1858— . £ 8 , 188 , 880- — . £ 1 , 158 , 380 of this , sum has just been mentioned as the cost of the police , and for our purpose we put the amount at £ 7 , 030 , 500 . We do not know exactly the amount of all the other rates , but we shall not overstate them when we say , including all that are paid in Scotland and Ireland , barony , poor and other rates , that they are not less than £ 5 , 000 , 000 a-year . To . this we must add , in reason and justice , all the money paid by any kind of tax , mortuary dues , and others , to the State Church ; and , including Scotland and Ireland , we cannot put the sum down at less than £ 10 , 000 , 000 a year . Every sixpence of these payments comes out of the produce of living labourers—ancient endowments , of which much may be said , being only a legal claim enforced by the State on the annual produce of industry . Now , to sum up roughly and generally , the whole amount of taxation raised by the authority of the State in 1858 , chiefly from those who have no other income than wages , without including the large sums collected from them in the price of articles to remunerate the dealers who collect indirect taxes , was—Revenue paid into the Exchequer .. . tG 0 , 2 S ( i , 9 <) 5 Cost of the Police 1 , 158 , 380 Amount of poor rates ...... .. ¦ 7 , 030 , 500 Other rates of all kinds 5 , 000 , 000 Collected for State Church 10 , 000 , 000 ¦ £ 89 , 475 , 875 We are aware , and must state , that a small part of this revenue is collected by the income-tax from the servants of the State , - and ought to be deducted , and that a still larger portion is collected from them and other receivers of taxes and rates , on the articles they consume , subject to indirect taxation ; but we have no means of ascertaining the amount of the latter . The amount of the former for the year 1858 was £ 439 , 140 . At the same time * the total we have put down , is undoubtedly a narrow estimate of the sum annually extorted of the produce of labour by the action of the State ; but we are content to be moderate , as our case does not depend on one or two hundred thousand pounds , more or less . We may mention , in

      corwere paid by the rich , and were appropriated to national services . In their pages every kind of imputation against the bulk of the people—though it is either a condemnation of the existing system of Government , which , professing to make the people wise and good , only degrades them , or a censure on the Creator of mankind—is greedily inserted . We have a very different object in view , however , and a much more noble one than retorting on a class the abuse they unceremoniously heap on the multitude and the works of the Creator . We refer to their tactics only to show , while we will not imitate them , that we nro aware of their aim . Their poisoned arrows will wound their masters . Our first object is to asoertain how much of the immense revenue , collected from those who have no other income but wages by the fiat of the Government , goes back to this largo class ; and wo must firSt state that the amount of what is taken is grievously underrated when it is confined to the public revenue . In the last year of grace- —not the financial year—1858 , the net receipt of income ,

      roberation of our view , that the balance-sheet of the Government for the year ending March , 1859 , showed a total sum of . £ 100 , 312 , 638 ; and it is hard to believe that of this sum something more than the ^ £ 66 , 286 , 995 did not cleave to the adhesive hands of the Treasury . . But , assuming that £ 89 , 475 , 875 is annually collected by the State from the produce of labour , the question is , how much of it goes back to those who have no income but wages ? First , we put down the sum of , £ 3 , 845 , 107 , expended on the maintenance of the poor . We will not put down the whole sum of money said in the returns to be expended on relief , because much of that goes to other classes , and for other purposes , than the mere relief of the poor .

      care , to become capitalists and masters , but till within a very short period it was almost impossible for a mere sailor or soldier ever to rise to the rank of an officer . . Now adding to th ^ e sum the State returns to the multitude as wages the sum it allots to paupers we shall have « £ 18 , 845 , 107 as the labourer ' s share of the taxation he pays . In order to avoid cavil we have no objection still further to swell this total sum , and for the sake of speaking in round numbers , and fixing the facts on the memory , we will say that the State really returns . to the labouring classes £ 20 , 000 , 000 of the sum it takes from them . The remainder of the £ 89 , 475 , 875 is simply a transfer by the authority of the State of so much of the produce of the labourers to other classes .

      First , there is a transfer of £ 28 , 751 , 479 to the owners of the National Debt , amongst whom are very few of the class who derive their income from wages . Next comes the sum devoted to the Civil Liist and civil charges of all kinds , which includes her Majesty , the royal family , the Court officers the persons who receive pensions for naval and military services , for civil services , for judicial services , as compensation on account of offices discontinued , and for no services at all . This head of civil charges includes , too , the salaries of various officers with real or nominal duties—such as T , nrrl

      Monteagle , who is called Comptroller-General of the Exchequer , and has , for filling the nominal office , . £ 2 , 000 a-year . It includes audit officers , lunacy commissioners , & C-, & c ., not one of whom , if we except six trumpeters and a few servants , can be considered as belonging to the classes who live on wages . There is also , the salaries and allowances to the diplomatic class , to the judges and officers of the courts of law- ^ including heaps of compensations for abolished sinecures . The total sum set down under this head is . £ 9 , 085 , 636 . If it be said , as it may , that many of the persons receiving portions of this money—such as the judges—really belong to the wages class , we must _ add that their wages are not determined by the competition of the market—of man with man—but

      by an aristocratic standard , and , consequently , are totally different in amount and in nature from the wages received by productive labourers . They are settled by a standard of slightly curbed rapacity , not justice . If they were settled by competition , they would not be higher than the wages of other labour , for there is no reason whatever , naturally , why the man wbo provides subsistence should be worse paid than he who only contributes to its being consumed in safety . On looking over the various civil services performed , for which a large part of this £ 9 , 085 , 636 is expended , there arc many thnfc are no longer beneficial , or never ivcrc Take , as an example , the salaries — £ 4 , 700 — of

      Next we estimate the number of soldiqi's , . exclusive of those paid out of the revenues of India , at 110 , 000 ; of sailors and marines , at 63 , 000 , and of all other labourers employed b y the State , including those in the dockyards— 10 , 850 , in the police of the Empire 31 , 600— at 45 , 000 , making a total of 218 , 000 . Now , assuming that each one of these receives of the public money , in wages and victuals , £ 60 per annum , this will make a total of £ 13 , 080 , 000 . In order to include all the housekeepers , doorkeepers , chamber cleaners , and others the State may employ , we have no objection to carry the nguros up to 15 , 000 , 000 , which will be an ample allowance for the sum which the State returns as wages to the class which lives on wages , or one-sixth of the whole .

      Jt must , at tho same time , be remembered that from every one of these men , as tho rule , tho State exacts a hard day ' s work for its daily pay . In casos of forced service , as in the navy , nnu in tho army , into which men are beguiled and then constrained to servo for a considerable tirno limited , or for an unlimited period , the wages arc really below the value of tho services . Tho State , however , has tho privilege of being both rapacious and unjust . That it misdirects the labour it hires is no fault of tho labourers . There is ono peculiarity , however , of its service which deserves notice . In all other employments tho labourers have a chance , by their own industry and

      the inspectors of corn returns . When the com laws were in existence , on these returns were founded the duties on imported corn . They were a necessary part of that abominable law , and their functions ceased to be of the smallest even lcgnl utility when that law was abolished ; nevertheless , they arc still retained , like many ofher useless persons , aiul receive part of the money annually transferred from the producers to the non-produccrd . Or , take as an example the £ 67 , 847 which the Board of Trade annually cos (^ . It was formerly proposed , because trade ought not to be interfered but

      with , tliat the Board should be abolished ; modern meddling legislation—regulating railroads , shins , & c ., & c . —1 ms multip lied the functions of this Board , and it is now one of tlie most active and most troublesome of all the departments of Government . The General Register Office , too , for the three kingdoms , costing . £ 47 , 762 , is entirely a novel creation , of which the functions nro more continually pufl'ud than they arc signally useful . fciinoo 1849 tho expense of all these civil services has increased £ 2 , 300 , 000 per annum , and the whole of this increase has been an additionnl transfer from the olass of productive labourers to the unproductive classes .

      The amount of money voted for tbo army , 1858-9 , -was . £ 12 , 015 , 740 , of which . £ 4 , 007 , 735 was for works . Tho sum devotod to the mon , according to the formor estimate of £ 60 a head , which is an exaggeration as to the soldier , would bo 6 , 000 , 000 , leaving £ 3 , 400 , 000 of tho sum transferred to the officer classes , who , as the rulo , m ° not connected with tho olass having no inoomos

      after repayment of allowances ., discounts , drawbacks , bounties . & c , & c , all of which we thought had been , and certainly ought to be , abolished , was £ 66 , 286 , 995 . We shall at once make our readers sensible that this is only a part of taxation , when we state that the cost of the police , in England and Wales alone , wns in tho same year , 411 , 447 , 019 . Of this , however , £ 288 , 639 was p ' aia out of tho public revenue , above referred to

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 3, 1859, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03121859/page/14/