The people in the shop testified to two stout porters having arrived early, and asked permission to go in and out through the shop. They had each carried a heavy box, and been accompanied by the lady in deep black, whose veil was over her face when she went out. She had not gone without another word, as Morgan at first, in the bitterness of her heart, reproached her for doing. She had left a note, with an affectionate assurance of remembering her old friend, not only in her will, but during every day of her life. Morgan would also find that a sum of money had been left in Henry’s hands for her, as some acknowledgment of her long services. There was also advice about purchasing an annuity with it, which Morgan did not read to-day.
The shop-boy had the benefit of the hot roll. Morgan set off to discover how much Mr. Henry knew of Jane’s proceedings. Marie could tell no more than that she had missed the bird on coming down into the cheerful breakfast-room of their new lodgings. Their maid had admitted a lady in black to write a note there this morning, as the family were not down. The bird had not been seen since; and it could only be supposed that it was carried away in its cage under the lady’s long black cloak.
Jane acknowledged this in her note to Henry. She could not resist carrying away this living relic of old times. It must be more precious to her than to them; and she should send Marie from abroad some pet to be cherished for her sake, if Marie cared enough for her to do so. They had better not enquire where she was gone, or how; but trust to hearing of her through M. Verblanc (when he should be again abroad) or his agents.
Patience seemed to be the only one who had seen her sister, while thus scattering her ghostly adieus. Patience related that the house was in such confusion when Jane came in, (so unreasonably early!) that she had no very clear recollection of what had passed, further than that Jane cried very much, so that the elder children did not know what to make of it; and that her black veil frightened the little ones when she was kissing them all round. She hoped Jane did not really mean that she was going away for any length of time. She somehow had not half believed that; but as Morgan did believe it, Patience began at last to be very sorry indeed.
Morgan could not quit London these two or three days, if she was to leave her mistress’s little concerns in the exact order in which she desired them to remain. She would not be persuaded to pass her few days any where but in the old kitchen, or to leave unvisited for a single night the chamber where her master died. This evening was cold and stormy. She thought first of her mistress’s rheumatism; and, as the wind rose, and whistled under the doors, and roared in the chimney, she wandered to the window to see how things looked in the Row. The flame of the lamps flickered and flared within the glass; women held on their bonnets, and the aprons of workmen and the pinafores of children fluttered about. Morgan was but too sure that it must be a bad night on the river, or at sea. She wished she knew whether Mr. Henry thought so. This would have settled the matter with Morgan, for she believed Mr. Henry knew every thing; but it was too late to intrude upon him to-night. She would go in the morning.
In the morning, when she got up early, to observe the heavy clouds still drifting rapidly over the narrow slip of sky which was all that could be seen from even the back of the house, she found a little bird cowering down on the window-sill, as if drowsy through fatigue and cold. There was no mistaking the bird, and in another moment it was warming itself against Morgan’s cheek and in her bosom, while the hand which was not employed in guarding it was preparing its holiday mess of crumbs, milk and sugar.
“O, my bird!” exclaimed Marie, the moment Morgan produced it from beneath her red cloak.
“Did not my mistress say something to you, ma’am, of sending you some living thing for a remembrance? Do you think it likely she should send you this bird?”
No: nobody thought it likely. But how the creature could have escaped from such guardianship as Jane’s was very unaccountable. There was no connecting it with the gales of last night; yet Morgan could not forget her own words about the wide and rough waters, and what Jane would feel when she saw them in their might.
While Marie was yet weeping over the departure of her father, on the expiration of his month of imprisonment, and listening to her husband’s cheering assurances that peace must come, and with it, liberty for all to go to and fro, she said,
“Meanwhile, there may be comfort for you in hearing through him of Jane. Will she not send us tidings, as she said?”
No such intelligence came; and in M. Verblanc’s frequent letters was always contained the assurance that no tidings of the estimable lady, the sister of his son-in-law, had reached his agent or himself.
Henry had been long settled down to his duties and enjoyments as a country clergyman, when he received a letter from Peek containing the following intelligence, which was immediately forwarded to Morgan.
“I had been applied to several times,” Peek wrote, “about Jane Farrer, spinster, the surviving claimant of the tontine annuity last year, on whose behalf no claim has been made this year. You will see presently that government has had a lucky bargain of that annuity, which is more than can often be said of that sort of transaction. The whole thing has come to light; and Patience was in great distress about it, all yesterday. We have had a rare catch of smugglers; and one of them let out, when he began to be chop-fallen, that it was very odd he had escaped such a many risks, to be trapped at last. Among the rest, he told us of one surprising get off when he thought he was sent for to the bottom where all the rest went. After a windy day, which had blown their boat out of the river at a fine rate, till they were almost within sight of their smuggling vessel, their cockle-shell could not stand the gale. He swears that they should have done very well but for the heavy chests that they were carrying for a gentlewoman who wanted to be smuggled abroad. She was almost desperate when they heaved both chests overboard, though she had been quiet enough while the gale was rising. She went down quietly enough too, when the boat filled, and sunk from under them all, leaving such as could to save themselves on any thing they could find to float on; by which means he and one other only got to shore. All he remembers about the gentlewoman is that she wore a black cloak, and noticed nobody, more or less, but a siskin that she had with her in a cage. One of the last things she did,—and he remembers it by a joke that went round, of her caring about a brute creature’s life when her own was not worth a farthing,—the last thing she did was letting fly the bird, and she looked after it, to see how it fared in the wind, when the water was up to her own knees. From the oddness of this, and the black cloak, we feel convinced it must have been sister Jane, besides the date being the same. Patience fretted a good deal about it yesterday, as I mentioned. We suppose that we shall now see you in town about the affairs, and you know where you may always find a pipe and a bit of chat.”
“Do not go, Henry,” said Marie. “Let Peek have all the wealth. Do not let us touch that which has poisoned the lives of three of your family.”
“It poisoned the peace of their lives, Marie, and it caused their deaths. We will not die of such solicitude, nor, if any of our children must die by violence or accident, shall it be for such a cause. They must be taught the uses of wealth; and fearfully has Providence qualified us for teaching this lesson.”
“That wealth is but an instrument, and that they are responsible for the use of it?”
“Responsible, not only to Him who maketh rich and maketh poor, but to society,—to the state. We will teach our children that to evade or repine at their due contribution to the state is to be ungrateful to their best earthly protector, and to be the oppressors of those who should rather be spared in proportion as their means are less. If to lay on burdens too heavy to be borne be one crime, it is another to refuse a just burden.”
Henry checked himself on perceiving that he was reproaching the memory of his deceased brother and sister. He regarded them, however, as victims rather than aggressors,—victims to their father’s false views, and to the policy of the time, which, by making the state a spendthrift, rendered too many of its members sordid.
“This is the favourite that Jane sent me to be cherished for her sake,” said Marie, approaching the bird. “It shall be cherished.”
“I failed in my trust,” thought Morgan, as she went out to call home the kids from the mountain,—“I failed in my trust when I doubted about Miss Jane’s old age. What did I know about whether she would ever be old; or, if she should be, whether there would not by that time be peace, and a less heavy burdening of the people, so that they might be free to see more clearly whether or not they were made to struggle with low things all their lives, like a sick person in a dream who is always trying to fly, and is for ever baffled?—I don’t know whether one ought to be sorry that Miss Jane has been wakened up untimely from such a dream; but I mourn that she did not come here to see what a fearful mistaking of Providence it is to dream on in that restless bed when here are such wide fields of sweet thyme for one’s eyes and one’s heart to rest upon. Let men live in cities, if they will; but why should they think that the fields and the brooks are for those only who live among them? These brooks must run over silver sands, and yonder harvest fields must bear ears of real gold before men may fancy that gold is in favour with God, and that it should therefore be sought as a main thing by men. I wish it had pleased God that Miss Jane had but once come here.”
Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume.
All the members of a society who derive protection from its government owe a certain proportion of the produce of their labour or capital to the support of that government,—that is, are justly liable to be taxed.
The proportion contributed should be determined by the degree of protection enjoyed,—of protection to property,—for all are personally protected.
In other words, a just taxation must leave all the members of society in precisely the same relation in which it found them.
This equality of contribution is the first principle of a just taxation.
Such equality can be secured only by a method of direct taxation.
Taxes on commodities are, from their very nature, unequal, as they leave it in the choice of the rich man how much he shall contribute to the support of the state; while the man whose whole income must be spent in the purchase of commodities has no such choice. This inequality is aggravated by the necessity, in order to make these taxes productive, of imposing them on necessaries more than on luxuries.
Taxes on commodities are further injurious by entailing great expense for the prevention of smuggling, and a needless cost of collection.
They could not have been long tolerated but for their quality of affording a convenient method of tax-paying, and for the ignorance of the bulk of the people of their injurious operation.
The method of direct taxation which best secures equality is the imposition of a tax on income or on property.
There is so much difficulty in ascertaining to the general satisfaction the relative values of incomes held on different tenures, and the necessary inquisition is so odious, that if a tax on the source of incomes can be proved equally equitable, it is preferable, inasmuch as it narrows the province of inquisition.
There is no reason to suppose that an equitable graduation of a tax on invested capital is impracticable; and as it would equally affect all incomes derived from this investment (that is, all incomes whatsoever), its operation must be singularly impartial, if the true principle of graduation be once attained.
A graduated property tax is free from all the evils belonging to taxes on commodities; while it has not their single recommendation—of favouring the subordinate convenience of the tax-payer.
This last consideration will, however, become of less importance in proportion as the great body of tax-payers advances towards that enlightened agreement which is essential to the establishment of a just system of taxation.
The grossest violation of every just principle of taxation is the practice of burdening posterity by contracting permanent loans, of which the nation is to pay the interest.
The next grossest violation of justice is the transmitting such an inherited debt unlessened to posterity, especially as every improvement in the arts of life furnishes the means of throwing off a portion of the national burdens.
The same rule of morals which requires state-economy on behalf of the present generation, requires, on behalf of future generations, that no effort should be spared to liquidate the National Debt.
PREFACE.
The task which I originally proposed to myself is now finished. I have done what I could to illustrate the leading principles of Political Economy. But I cannot leave off without attempting something more which I believe will improve the purpose of what I have already done. Now that Taxation is everywhere considered a subject of deep importance,—attention having been called to it in a remarkable degree since my series was planned,—I feel that my work is not complete without a further illustration of the practice as well as the principle of Taxation. In the present doubtful state of our financial policy, the few Numbers which I am about to issue may be expected to be of greater temporary, and of less permanent, interest than those which have preceded them. However this may be, I believe myself called upon to offer them, before laying aside my pen for a long interval.
That I should be permitted to complete, without interruption, my original plan of monthly publication, for two years, was more than, in the uncertainty of human affairs and the inconsistency of human projects, I ventured to anticipate with any degree of assurance. This is not the place in which to express more than a mere acknowledgment of the fact. But I must be allowed to add that so long a continuance of health and leisure is less surprising to me than the steadiness of the favour by which my exertions have been supported. Unless I could explain how far my achievements have fallen short of my aims, I could not express my sense of the patience with which the wise have borne with my failures, and the ardour with which (for the sake of the science) they have stimulated my successes: while those who have done me the honour of learning anything from me, have given me a yet higher pleasure by their studious appreciation of my object. I know not that my friends of either class can be better thanked than by the assurance, that while in their service I have not experienced a single moment of discouragement or weariness about my task. I have been often conscious of weakness, amounting to failure; but I have never been disheartened. Long after my slight elementary work shall have been (I trust) superseded, I shall, if I live, recur with quiet delight to the time when it formed my chief occupation, and shall hope that the wide friendships which it has originated will subsist when my little volumes are forgotten.
It must be perfectly needless to explain what I owe to preceding writers on the science of which I have treated. Such an acknowledgment could only accompany a pretension of my own to have added something to the science—a pretension which I have never made. By dwelling, as I have been led to do, on their discoveries, I have become too much awakened to the glory to dream of sharing the honour. Great men must have their hewers of wood and drawers of water; and scientific discoverers must be followed by those who will popularize their discoveries. When the woodman finds it necessary to explain that the forest is not of his planting, I may begin to particularize my obligations to Smith and Malthus, and others of their high order.
I proceed to my short remaining task untired, and happy to delay, for a few months, the period when I must bid my readers a temporary farewell.
February, 1834.