Chapter 3

We will not indulge ourselves, at the risk of wearying our readers, by traversing in the society of Mildred and Winston the environs of Naples; we will not wander with them through the disinterred streets and temples of Pompeii; nor attempt to partake of their delight at those exquisite views which their excursions, on both sides of the bay presented to them. Often did Winston sit by the side of Mildred, looking at those scenes, and his happy spirit for a while reflected them as calmly as the blue waters those beautiful islands within them. Alas! the pebble soon fell in _one_ of those mirrors--the tranquil mood was ever and anon cruelly disturbed.

We will not even trust ourselves in the museum of Naples, so rich in the curiosities of the antiquarian, and in works of art; nor stand with Mildred before those statues of the goddess Isis, from which it was difficult to persuade her to move, so much was there of thought as well as beauty in the countenances. One especially (for there are several) of these statues of Isis--it was the smallest in the group--she confessed, after all she had seen of sculpture, had affected her more intensely than any work of art, by its thrilling union of deep mystery with perfect loveliness. Of Isis herself, or of the religion taught under her name, she confessed, she said, to have very obscure ideas; but if ever a temple should be erected to human philosophy, that statue, she thought, was worthy to occupy the chief place in it.

One of their excursions, however, it is necessary, for the sake of our narrative, to give some account of--it is that to Vesuvius. Perhaps there are few travellers who have not recorded the day they visited the burning mountain as amongst the most remarkable of their lives. The extreme beauty of the views as you ascend, the strange desolation immediately around, and the grand spectacle that awaits you on the summit, so vary and sustain the interest, that every emotion which nature is capable of producing, seems to have been crowded into one spot, and one hour.

The whole party started together on this expedition, but Mr. and Miss Bloomfield had no intention of proceeding further than the hermitage--a small house erected, as every one knows, half way up the mountain, before the ascent becomes steep or severe, and, for the rest, very little like a hermitage. Here they designed to stay, enjoying the magnificent view it commands, while the younger half of the party proceeded to scale the mountain. It would have been easy for them to ascend thus far by a circuitous route in a carriage, but, beside that horses could convey Mildred and her companion somewhat further than the carriage road extends, the uncle and aunt were not unwilling to partake to a certain extent the spirit of the enterprise. They all, therefore, mounted their horses, and, accompanied by their guide, advanced by the steeper and more direct path.

The ascent begins amongst gardens and vineyards--the vine flowing from tree to tree, and making of a whole field one continuous harbour. The path next winds along a vast barren hill-side, utterly without verdure, whose brown furrows present the appearance of a ploughed field; but the clods here do not give way to the tread of your animal; you stoop and touch them, they are of stone, they are the old lava. As you ascend, these clods grow larger, grow darker, till the narrow road winds between great blocks of black lava, pitched here and there in the wildest confusion. You then reach a level piece of road, on which stands the hermitage.

Here Mr. and Miss Bloomfield paused. The rest proceeded somewhat further on horseback, till the mountain, taking the shape of a cone, presents a steep ascent, to be mastered only on foot.

"Let us pause a moment here," said Mildred, when they had dismounted, "and look at the bay. I have longed several times upon the road to make a halt, but if I had, it would have been a signal for the general hubbub of conversation. You," she continued with a smile, "are a sensible companion, you know how to be silent, or can talk in those snatches or broken utterances which rather relieve silence than dissipate it, which do not scare the gentle goddess altogether from our company. Had I asked my uncle to stop, he would immediately have commenced talking, and talked till we went on again."

The scene lay outstretched before them in all its beauty, and under an almost cloudless sky. One peculiar charm of this celebrated bay depends on the islands scattered on both sides of its entrance, as Capri, Ischia, and others. These, as you shift your position on the bay, produce an endless variety--interlacing the azure water with stripes of blue mountainous land, in the same manner as well-defined clouds are sometimes set, ridge after ridge, in the clear sky. From their present point of view, the centre of their picture was open sea, and the sides filled up and diversified by these islands. Seen under the mid-day sun, they appear invested in _a mist of light_.

"They rise from the deep blue sea like sapphires that love has breathed upon," said Winston. "What fantastic tricks," he continued, "but always beautiful--Nature plays under her own high heaven. The hills on yonder coast, huge as they are, have a way of hiding themselves in the very air--vanishing in the very light. And, look, yonder, in the extreme distance, the light seems to have _cut away_ the solid basis of the hills, and left nothing but the ridge, the wavy outline, which one might expect to rise into the air, it is so cloud-like."

"The earth and heaven do so mingle here, there is no separating them," said Mildred. "I wonder not that the inhabitants of such a region as this threw a certain dimness, as of twilight, over their future Elysium. Some difference it was necessary to imagine between it and their familiar earth, and could they fancy any thing more bright and beautiful than this?"

"Look behind you," said Winston. She turned, and started at the sudden and complete contrast which the utter desolation of the scathed mountain presented to her.

They then addressed themselves to their somewhat arduous undertaking. Mildred had refused to be carried up in a chair--had determined to walk. She had received a very accurate description of this part of her task, and found things exactly as she expected. The side of the mountain seems, at first, composed of large loose stones, of a brown colour; but the lava, which assumes this shape, is not loose, and you step from projection to projection with perfect safety,--with the same fatigue,--neither more nor less, as one walks up a flight of stairs. It is rather a long flight, however, and there is no bannister. This last deficiency the guide is in the habit of supplying--to such as condescend to accept his assistance--by fastening a leathern strap round his waist, and giving the end of it into the hand of the traveller. Winston insisted upon putting this strap round his own waist, and that Mildred should allow him to take what seemed to him the most enviable position, of the guide. It was a dangerous experiment. Not the weight of Mildred--for she leant very lightly--it was not the weight of Mildred which he felt at every step was exhausting his strength, till his heart beat and his knees trembled. After a little time he was compelled to sit down, faint as a child. Mildred was far from guessing the cause of this sudden weakness, but requested that the belt might be again transferred to the guide. Nor did he hesitate a moment. Had he attempted to proceed much farther they might both have been precipitated to the bottom.

Their march was toilsome; and Mildred, taking advantage of a commodious place, sat down to rest upon the lava. At the altitude which they had reached the temperature changes,--a cold wintry wind was blowing--and she had not quite prepared herself for so sudden a change. Winston, anxious only that the breath of heaven should not visit her too rudely, and forgetting to ask himself whether there might not be a too familiar kindness in the act, pulled off a light over-coat which he wore, and, making the best shawl he could of it, put it over her shoulders. She was not a little confused at the unaffected anxiety which had evidently given rise to this prompt attention; and blushed as she refused to rob him of his own attire. She attempted, by some playful remark, to remove the feeling of embarrassment which had seized upon both parties.

"But from a poor gentleman," replied Winston, alluding to something that had passed between them at an earlier part of the day, "any gift may be safely accepted. Like the priest, he wears a tonsure, which at once gives him unusual privileges, and reduces him to a subject of indifference."

Mildred made no answer; but she thought that, in one of these cases, the tonsure was so little visible, was kept so much out of sight, that it might fail of its due precautionary influence. She rose, and they proceeded on their walk, or, rather, their climbing. And now the volume of smoke which had, for some time, been concealed from view by the mountain itself, burst upon them, and a few minutes placed them on the summit. They stood within the crater, or what has been such, for, at present, the mountain discharges itself through a lofty cone which rises on one side of this strange, black, sulphurous amphitheatre. All around them, however, the volcanic vapours were steaming up from innumerable crevices, and the hot lava pouring out, moving slowly, with a dull red heat. No need here of further clothing. Their feet were burning where they stood. They had again exchanged the cold of winter, not for the heat of summer, but of a furnace.

There is a terrific grandeur in the scene. The black masses of lava, whose surface, here, is of the hue and texture of cinders, are piled and jostled together with the utmost irregularity, with deep fissures between them, in the same manner, though the material is so different, as the blocks of ice in the glaciers of Mont Blanc. Sometimes these cindery surfaces undulate and take the appearance of black coils, as of a huge cable laid in parallel folds. These coils, as you advance, are explained; for you will see the dull red lava sweltering out from underneath one of those great blocks, in a long and narrow wave, which does not subside, but stiffens as it cools, and, in this form, is pushed forward by the succeeding wave. In another part, the lava is flowing in a small stream, about a foot in breadth, just as the metal in a foundery, but more slowly, and the surface dimmed with a black scaly film; on raising which, with your stick, the flame bursts out. It flows so slowly that, sometimes, you must watch it narrowly before you detect the motion; you may be looking at such a stream and not suspect it to be this stealthy Phlegethon, till suddenly it is seen to stir, like a vast serpent moving in its sleep.

To the left of them, as they stood in this crater, the wall of the mountain enclosed them in, utterly without vestige of any kind of verdure, bare brown ore, with fissures exhaling their sulphurous vapour; before them, extending to and meeting the horizon, lay the tumbled masses of black lava, with the glowing at intervals of their dull red furnaces, and every where the same vapour steaming up; and at their right rose the conical summit from which Vesuvius was discharging its artillery, the sides of which are covered with a green and yellow sulphur that, elsewhere, might be mistaken at a distance for some sort of moss or other vegetation, but the eye has learnt to expect here nothing of so peaceful a nature. From this cone volleys of huge stones were perpetually issuing, with thunder-like explosions; and, above all, that majestic column of smoke! Smoke seems a very ordinary word, expressive of a very ordinary thing, but it forms here no ordinary spectacle. At each explosion it bursts up impetuously, struggling like frenzy from its imprisonment, revolving with amazing rapidity, thick, turbid, ruddy, mixed with flame; as it rises, it revolves less rapidly, and becomes more pure, more calm; ever rising higher, and expanding in greater and purer volumes, it at length fills the heavens, towering majestically, whiter than the whitest cloud, and floating off in light etherial vapours, which the blue sky gladly receives. "The spirit of Beauty," said Mildred, as she gazed upwards, "has triumphed."

As she looked with increasing interest on this spectacle, the spirit of enterprise grew strong within her, and she wished to ascend this cone itself. But besides that the huge stones which at that time were being constantly projected, rendered the expedition dangerous, the guide assured her that the fatigue would be to her excessive. In fact, he resolutely declined to lend his aid to such a scheme.

"If you had been alone," she said to Winston, "you would have gone farther. I am a sore hinderance to you, I fear."

"On the contrary," he replied, "if you had not come, I should not have ascended so far as this."

And he spoke the simple truth; for Vesuvius itself would have been forgotten in the society of Mildred. To ascend the mountain at night-time had been one of the most conspicuous objects he had proposed to himself in his visit to Italy; but as it was out of the question (the uncle and aunt would not have listened to it for a moment) that she should accompany him in such an expedition, he had at once foregone it, or rather it had slipped from his thoughts.

After some time longer spent in this remarkable scene, they began their descent, which they found to be quite an easy and amusing piece of business. The descent is made on a side of the mountain covered with loose ashes that yield to the foot. _Up_ this it would be impossible to get, but you go down it with the same facility as if you were skating along the side of the mountain. Mildred, with the help of a staff, accomplished this part of her task with much ease, and not without hilarity.

Mr. and Miss Bloomfield were happy to see them return--had begun to wonder what could keep them so long--had for some time grown quite tired of their own position. The carriage had been ordered to come slowly round by the other road, and meet them at the hermitage. It was waiting for them. They were all willing to enter it, and return by the carriage road to Naples.

On the ride home Mildred was very silent. Many little incidents had occurred, many words had dropped, during the course of the day, which became subjects of reflection, not quite so calm as the works of art or nature had hitherto supplied. Winston--she could not refuse to see it--loved! But loved, as he desired to intimate, without the least hope, the least prospect of alliance. Well, she was warned. What remained for her but to keep her own heart quite sure? Keep! was she quite sure that she still retained it in undisputed custody?

But we have lost sight, all this while, of Mrs. Jackson and her daughter, which it was not our intention to do. They had not lost sight of Winston. As they had inquired of him, when at Rome, what hotel he would recommend them at Naples, and as he had very naturally mentioned the one he had selected for himself, it was not at all surprising that he should find himself, one afternoon, seated very snugly by Mrs. and Miss Jackson, at the comfortable quiet _table-d'hôte_ of the _Hôtel des Etrangers_. Happily there existed no secrets, and no division of opinion between the mother and daughter on what now chiefly preoccupied the thoughts of both. Mrs. Jackson had herself conceived a great partiality for Winston--sympathised entirely with her daughter's romantic attachment--and was willing to promote her views by all means in her power. She was at heart a generous woman, though certain petty and rooted habits would, at first acquaintance, lead to an opposite impression. There was nothing she was not ready to do for Winston. It was only the good sense, or the somewhat better sense, of the daughter, that prevented her at Rome from secretly calling for his bill and paying it for him behind his back. At Naples, Winston almost always met them at the dinner table; and it was impossible for him to be churlish towards persons who seemed so very pleased with whatever he said, and so kindly disposed towards him. Mrs. Jackson was confidential in the extreme as to the several items which formed her worldly prosperity, and very clearly intimated the extremely benevolent designs she had upon himself. To Louisa, indeed, it was a sad blow and heavy discouragement when she met him in the company of one so beautiful as Mildred; but she had tact enough, even from Winston himself, to extract certain particulars respecting the fortune of the lady, which went far to set her fears at rest.

And now began in Winston's mind one of the saddest conflicts and confusions that could visit a poor mortal. On the one hand was hopeless passion--poverty forbidding; on the other, a fortune offered to a needy gentleman--ay, and affection too, if he could resign himself to accept it. Strange as it may seem, it was his very love for Mildred that gave its greatest influence to the fortune of Miss Jackson. By a marriage with this latter lady he should escape from the tortures of his hopeless passion; it would be a refuge from this, and all like disquietudes. Most people will be doubtless of opinion that the attractions of wealth need no auxiliary. Those, however, who are well read in the human heart, will have no difficulty in believing us when we say of Winston, that if he had never encountered Mildred, he would have merely smiled at the idea of a marriage with Louisa Jackson. It now came recommended to him as an escape from an intolerable torture: he would rush into matrimony as a shelter from love.

When passing the morning in the society of Mildred, not a single fragment of a thought fell to the share of Louisa. But when, having left her, he proceeded to his hotel with a heavy and perplexed heart, and asked himself where all this was tending--when he afterwards found himself seated by the side of two persons, somewhat silly and ridiculous it is true, but kind-hearted and most amiably disposed, able and anxious to offer him that only safe harbour of life which property builds up for us--a harbour, too, which would secure him from that wild tempest so evidently preparing for him--it seemed that a very little more would turn the balance in favour of Louisa.

That _very little more_, an incident which we have to record, supplied.

Whilst walking and sitting with Mildred in the Villa Reale, he had noticed that a tall, military-looking gentleman had appeared singularly struck with the beauty Of his fair companion. In this there was nothing unusual. Few people passed her without paying a certain silent homage to those blue eyes and their singular sweetness of expression. Even the common people, even the beggars, when they had received their alms and stayed no longer to beg, would still stay, lingering about, to catch another look at that face, when it should be turned towards them. But in the stranger's manner there was something more than admiration expressed; and, what was more remarkable and more alarming to the feelings of Winston, Mildred herself manifested towards this stranger--if he were a stranger--an almost equal degree of interest. On the last occasion, when they encountered him, this gentleman was observed to turn and follow them, and watch them to the door of Mr. Bloomfield's residence. Winston, after parting with his companion, re-entered the gardens opposite, and from this position he saw the same stranger return to Mr. Bloomfield's door, ring at the bell, ask, as it seemed, several questions of the porter, and then--enter the house!

As he stood staring at this inexplicable vision, he was accosted by a young Englishman, with whom he had some slight travelling acquaintance; and, by a singular coincidence, the very first question his companion put, was--whether he knew that gentleman who had just entered the house opposite?

"No! do you?" was the prompt reply of Winston.

"I do not," said the other; "but I confess I am rather curious to learn. He must be _somebody_--travels in grand style--has taken the best rooms in the _Victoria_. I took him for a Russian prince, but he speaks English like a native."

"The Russians are said to be such good linguists, this may be no criterion," said Winston, hiding, as best he could, under the commonplace remark, the agitation that he felt. He very soon made some excuse to escape from his companion, and returned to his hotel. That day he was at dinner more absent than usual; yet there was something in his manner which Louisa liked, which gave her more hope than she had lately entertained.

The next morning Winston called as usual at the Bloomfields. They had ridden out; and he learned, on inquiry, that his seat in the carriage had been occupied by this mysterious stranger. Where should he go? what should he do? He now felt how complete a slave he had become--how utterly dependent for all his happiness upon another. His happiness! what but misery could he reap from this passion? And now to love was to be added all the pangs of jealousy.

He entered the gardens opposite the Villa Reale. That "prince of promenades," as some one has called it, extending as it does along a quay unparalleled for the beauty of its position, with its thick dark shelter of olives on the one side of you, and its light and graceful avenue of acacias on the other, with its statues surrounded each by its parterre of flowers or niched in its green recess, with the fountain bubbling from the ground at its feet--all had ceased to please. At one part the promenade projects into a small semicircle, fitted up with marble seats, which commands an uninterrupted view of the bay and of Vesuvius. It is difficult to recognise our old boisterous friend, the sea, such as we know him in our northern latitudes, in the dancing blue waters which, stirred by the lightest breeze, are here flinging the whitest foam over the polished black rocks or stones that line these coasts, and still more, in the glassy azure which extends, like a lake, in the distance: it is a scene to induce the most perfect repose. But Winston found no repose in it, and its beauty awoke not a single emotion of enthusiasm. He turned towards Vesuvius. Its column of smoke, rising always there, neither subsiding nor increasing, now irritated him by its sameness and its constancy. "Always thus!" he mentally exclaimed. "Why does it not explode at once? Why not at once give out all its rage?"

He passed through the gardens. They lead, at the further extremity, into an open space, where much rabble assemble, where a sort of market is held, and where, on the neighbouring beach, the fishermen draw up their boats: fishermen bare-legged, bare-thighed, but legs and thighs not of flesh but mahogany. At other times he had been amused with the sudden contrast this scene affords with the well-dressed crowd within the gardens. It now disgusted him. There was nothing but noise and dirt, nothing but dust and heat, and glare. The various beggars who had often vexed him by their clamours, but had generally ended by extorting from him some pence and some good-humour, were quite intolerable. The little children, with their naked feet, tanned and dusted to the colour of the road, girt with their scanty complement of rags, with nothing on earth but their little shrill voices--their Signor! Signor!--to get their daily morsel with, and who had so often, when Mildred was at his side, received a whole handful of copper coins amongst them, now excited not the least commiseration, called forth nothing but some passing execration upon the slovenly government that could permit human life to sink down into all the wildness, and more than the destitution of the brute animal.

After the lapse of some hours, spent in this horrible restlessness, he again called on the Bloomfields. They had returned from their drive. He ran up the stairs: but, when he reached the landing-place, he paused. Perhaps that stranger might have returned with them. The door of the drawing-room was half-open: he looked, and saw that formidable intruder seated there. He was not formidable, evidently, to Mildred. She stood gracefully before him, and, putting back his dark hair from his fine manly brow, she stooped, and laid a kiss upon his forehead. Winston drew back instantly, and hurried from the house.

He had not retreated, however, so quickly, but that he had been seen by Mildred--thanks to the tall mirror before which she stood, and which had faithfully reflected his image. Had he been less distracted, he would have heard a soft voice call him by his name, from the head of the stairs; but he heard nothing, and he seemed to see nothing, as he strode along the street, and, rushing into his hotel, shut himself up in his room. "This intolerable anguish!" he cried; "it must have an end. To a passion which itself is the merest despair, must I add the maddest of jealousies?"

That day, after the dinner was concluded, Winston accepted an invitation which Mrs. Jackson had often pressed upon him in vain, to adjourn to her sitting-room, and partake of a dessert there. He accepted the invitation. It sealed his fate; and he intended that it should. He left that room--he, the lover of Mildred--the affianced of Louisa Jackson!

The next morning--it was a sleepless night that intervened--he paid his respects, with the due appearance of felicity upon his countenance, to Mrs. Jackson and her daughter. It was into their carriage he was now to enter, to take one of those drives in the environs which he had so often enjoyed with Mildred. It was to _their_ admiration he was now to listen and respond.

The party was preparing to start, when a message was brought to them that two ladies were below who wished to speak to Mr. Winston. Mrs. Jackson, all anxiety to be polite, told the servant to show the ladies into her room. Immediately after Miss Bloomfield and Mildred Willoughby were ushered up stairs.

Never was Mildred looking more beautiful, for never was she so happy in her life. The name even of Mrs. Jackson she had never heard pronounced; and, not aware of being in the apartment of that lady, but considering she was in some room destined for the reception of visiters, she merely made to the ladies that slight curtsey by which the presence of a stranger is recognised, and immediately turned and addressed herself to Winston.

"Congratulate me!" she said. "Congratulate me!--But first I must repeat my message from Mr. Bloomfield, who insists upon it that you break through your unsocial rule, and dine with him to-day. And now again congratulate me! My father has returned from India. It was he whom we called the mysterious stranger. As to the conflicting reports which had been spread of him in England, you shall hear all at leisure. But he has returned!--and he has returned wealthy and amiable."

There was a slight tremor in her voice as she uttered these last words. That slight tremor, it was the response now given to certain passionate but desponding declarations, which he had so often half uttered in her ear.

The answer came one day too late. Winston stood as if struck dumb. His rage, his shame, his agony of vexation, he knew not how to express. And indeed there was that convulsion in his throat which, if he had attempted to speak, would have choked his utterance. But there was one amongst the party who found words fit for the occasion, and quite explanatory. In what she conceived the prettiest manner in the world, Louisa Jackson laid her hand upon Winston's shoulder. She had heard something of an invitation--"But, Alfred dear," she said, "you will not surely dine out to-day!"

Mildred started at the tone of that address, telling as it did so strange a history, so utterly unexpected. Then collecting herself, and taking the arm of Miss Bloomfield, she expressed her regret, in some words of course, that they could not have the pleasure of Mr. Winston's company to dinner, and, curtseying slightly to the rest of the society, withdrew.

What a drama had passed between them, and in silence! What feelings had been hidden under those few words of formal and ceremonious speech!

No sooner had she left than Winston rushed into his own apartment. Amongst the curiosities which he had collected in Italy was a genuine stiletto. This had sometimes accompanied him in his solitary rambles; and of late he had sometimes, in his moods of despondency, contemplated that instrument, thinking the while of some other purpose than that of striking a foe to which it might be applicable. They are dangerous moments which we spend in reflecting on the mere possibility of some fatal act. The imagination becomes familiarised with the deed. When the fiery and ungovernable passion falls upon us, it finds the train ready laid. Winston locked his door--ran to the stiletto--buried it in his heart!

The horror and distraction of Louisa and her mother may be easily imagined. It might be a subject of more deep and curious interest to trace the influence of such a catastrophe on the mind of Mildred; but this also we must leave to the reflection and perspicacity of the reader. Mr. Bloomfield and his sister soon after left Italy, embarking in the steam-boat direct for Marseilles: they had grown weary of travel. Colonel Willoughby and his daughter Mildred took the route by land, and quitted Naples for the north of Italy and the Alps.

* * * * *

THE EARLY TAKEN.

The idea embodied in the following verses is the subject of an old German legend, intended, perhaps somewhat painfully, to represent a repining and diseased spirit awed by a fearful vision of eventual futurity into a becoming resignation for the early loss of those who might have proved unequal to the temptations of a longer life.

A mother mourned her children dead, Two blooming boys, whose opening prime Along her path a light had shed, Now quenched, alas! before its time.

She mourned as one who dreamed that here Our home and dwelling place should be; She mourned as if she felt no fear Of earthly sin and misery.

Once, in the watches of the night, Before her dim and tearful eye, Beyond the clouds an opening bright Revealed a vision of the sky.

There, amid amaranthine bowers, Where God's own glory seemed to shine, She saw, on beds of golden flowers, Her dear departed ones recline.

Thence bending down, a pitying smile Their fair illumined features wore: "For us now freed from guilt and guile, O, dearest mother, weep no more!"

But still her tears rebellious flow, And still she raves of angry fate, As if, with blind and selfish wo, She grudged her children's blissful state.

Again in visions of the night, Sent to impart a sad relief, The matron saw another sight That stayed the torrent of her grief.

A youth, by wine to madness stirred, Stood brawling on the midnight street, And as a clash of swords was heard, Sunk lifeless at a rival's feet.

New horrors o'er her senses steal; She sees, appearing through the gloom, A hardened outlaw on the wheel, While crowds around applaud his doom.

She gazed upon the hapless youth, She gazed upon the hardened man, And dawnings of the dreadful truth To rise upon her soul began.

Then thus a voice was heard to say, "What now they are thine eye hath seen: Here, had they not been snatch'd away, See also what they would have been."

* * * * *

A RIDE TO MAGNESIA.

STAGE FIRST.

Smyrna is a capital starting point for eastern expeditions, though it is too full of _gaóors_, of every description, to be, in itself, a fair specimen of orientalism. The man would carry home a queer account of Turkey who should begin his notes at Smyrna, and, passing up the Dardanelles, make up his book as he travelled overland from Constantinople to Jannina, _en route_ to Tower Stairs. This is the approved track, or, perhaps, it may be up the Danube in the Austrian steamer. Such an expedition is capital fun, no doubt, and to be recommended to any of our friends with a little loose cash, and some six weeks' holiday. It introduces to many notabilities, first-rate in their way, but not to that singular notability, the genuine old Osmanli. He is a branch of the ethnographical tree that will not flourish in European atmosphere: though the same exuberance of vigour that first sent forth the mighty shoot from central Asia, has prevailed to pass through the feeble defences of the West. It is as an overgrown weakling that he exists in our quarter of the world. His eyes are without fire, his manners without the stamp of originality. He succumbs beneath the presence of the Frank,--the hated and despised, and yet the feared and the envied. The better feelings of his nature suffer from the constant presence of those whose superiority he is forced to admire, but whose personal character he naturally detests. Such conflict of feeling cannot but be with detriment to the spirit, which, so fettered, refuses the generous offices of brotherhood, and yields the debt of civility only from policy or by constraint. How different is this man in his proper country! where the usages and language, and ideas are unmixedly those which have been his father's before him; where the leading idea of _gaóors_ is, that they are infidel dogs, who eat pork and are unenlightened of Islam; and where every one firmly believes that the whole set of Franks are allowed to occupy and rule only by the clemency of their high and mighty lord the Padishah! Here the Turk may condescend, and here he can be truly generous and hospitable. The Frank comes as a wanderer from his own remote, settlement (somewhere or other at the world's end,) to see the lords of the earth, the true believers. He is a poor ignorant stranger who cannot speak a word of intelligible language. It is kind, and gratifying to self-esteem, to receive such an one, and show him those good things that shall make him sigh to return to his own forlorn fatherland. Besides all this, the outward modifications affecting the European Turk spoil his nationality. The reforms of Mahmoud, and of the present sultan, have wofully cut up the appearance of their subjects; and, of course, sumptuary changes such as these affect especially those who mix with the world, and are near court. Who can believe in the ill-looking fellow with smooth face, regular built boots, and tight frock coat, buttoned up to the chin,--to say nothing of the wretched red cap he wears instead of a turban! That a Turk! pshaw!

When I landed at that nest of pirates, Valona,--what time we bore a message to the respectable inhabitants, that unless they took a little more pains to grow honest, we should be under certain painful necessities with respect to them,--was I to look upon that wretched rabble as Turks? Men dressed in every variety of shabby frock coat and trousers; and, above all, men who were undisguised in the exhibition of vulgar curiosity. What amount of excitement would it take to make a genuine Turk open the eyes of astonishment? or, should he even be betrayed into an unguarded Mashhallah! has the power of morbid attraction been discovered which may draw him from his seat and lead him to any effort of inquiry? When, then, I saw these people flocking together on their jetty to meet us, I at once recognised them as mongrel and degenerated. They were queer fellows in their way, too, quite worthy of observation. The whole community are piratical: the youth practically, the seniors by counsel. They manage their evil deeds with a singleness of purpose that neglects no feasible opportunity; and with a caution that restrains from doubtful attempts, and almost secures them from capture. They are not like the pirates of the nautical novels, who embark in a sea-going ship, and stand by to fight it out with any cruisers they may meet. Like cautious sportsmen, they mark down their prey first, and do not waste powder and shot. In a breeze there is no danger on their coast. But wo betideth the trabaccalo or short-handed merchantman that may happen to be becalmed in their sight. Incontinent they launch their boats,--terrible vessels that hold twenty or thirty armed men besides the rowers, and cleave their irresistible course towards the motionless and defenceless victim. On such occasions it is only by rare hap that any individual survives to tell the tale and cry for vengeance. And how shall this cry be satisfied? The bloody work is no sooner over than its traces are obliterated and the community restored to the appearance of inoffensiveness: the boats are pulled up on shore, the crews dispersed. Should an avenger arrive on the spot, he finds the miserable huts either deserted or tenanted by women and old men. How can these be made to suffer for other men's offences, or forced to give information which they declare themselves not to possess?

The same dissatisfaction must be confessed with Previsa Salonica, that place of steady disrespectability, which has maintained its bad character since the apostolic days, and even with Constantinople. This last is a gem of the earth, but, its beauties are to a great extent those of civilised elaboration. Courtiers form but one species, and breathe pretty much the same atmosphere throughout the world. He who has studied them throughout the world has marked only the circumstantial differences of locality producing their effect on a spring of action, itself one and constant. To search out and know this principle it may be useful to visit foreign courts; but Man, beyond the exhibition of this one phase of character, does not flourish in such places. If the best place of observation be not actually the wilderness, because that too is as extensive, calling forth necessarily particular energies, and exhibiting to a great extent one effect, we may take favourable ground somewhere midway between the extremes. It is to the heart and centre of a country that we should go for the vigorous current of its life. Here the colour is vivid, the speciality preserved, the family features of our brethren distinguishable.

I suppose it was some such profound rumination as this that suggested to my two friends and myself the idea of the cruise hereinafter to be recorded. All three were right travel-smitten, a state of mind which marvellously thrives on slight nourishment. We had had substantial food in this way, and were proportionately vigorous in enterprise. We had seen at odd times a good deal of our friends the Turks, but it had been chiefly of the vagabonds near the coast. Into all sorts of queer creeks and corners had we found our way in boat expeditions, that most capital mode of adventure; though rather ticklish for those who are not pretty strong in numbers. So had we dug into the sinuosities of Greece, of which both eastern and western borders were familiar to us; and it is not a little that I would take for my Horace, which I bore with me up the Ambracian Gulf, and which bears over the "_nunc est bibendum_" the note of my personal presence off Actium. Pleasant, too, are the recollections of our visit to Nicopolis, the mighty monument of this victory, now serving, as all things earthly must one day serve, to display the victory of time. We were forced to walk on this occasion, as to have touched a saddle or animal would have exposed us to the penalties of quarantine. Our good friend Achmet walked before with a long stick, booming the people off, who shrank from our contact right and left, as if we had been the lords of the soil, or as if it had been _they_, instead of us, who had to fear the plague-compromising touch. And then when we returned hungry as hunters from our march, full of ready forgiveness for any faults of cookery, what a banquet was that which consular hospitality had prepared! Oh, the jocosity of that breakfast, which was in the open air, because we could not go into the house, where we could take nothing from, and could give nothing to, the ladies, but had to keep them at most respectful distance, and be civil under the control of a vigilant _guardiano_.

There is no mode of travelling which can possibly be compared to this boat-work. The scope of such proceeding is certainly, by comparison, confined; but, so far as it goes, nothing is to be mentioned in the same day with it--that is, so far as comfort is concerned. Places even inland may be visited in this way, for almost any where a horse or two can be mustered, and the craft left in charge of her crew. What a difference between turning into your own berth at night, and affording the amusement one does on shore to the Hellenic vermin. One good joke in this way happened to me once upon a time, showing what quarters travellers may stumble upon even with the best recommendations. A large party of us had started, particularly recommended by letter from the consular agent of a place that shall be nameless, to no less a person than the Demarch of a high-sounding Greek town, who was to do every thing for us in the way of billeting. By great exertion, and with aching bones, we managed to reach this place after night-fall, prolonging, for its hope's sake, our course through a most break-neck road, and through unseen but clamorous numbers of their wolf-like dogs. At last we came up with a miserable shed, which proved to be the mansion of the great man. Of course we should have looked for no other floor but the mudden one we found, had it not been for our magnificent recommendation, which warranted the expectation of a suite of apartments. But the floor was so packed with goods and chattels, affording the most comfortable roosting for the fleas, and with children who brought in ever-fresh collections to the stock, that among the many undelectable nights we passed, none equalled in horrors that one of official introduction and high classical association. And such is pretty generally the hap of him who ventures to pass the night in one of those habitations where sweeping and washing remain exotics, and where the [Greek: autochthones] acquire impenetrable skins. Now, all this sort of thing you avoid in a boat, besides converting the mere locomotion from a frequent punishment into a delight: always supposing, be it remembered, that you have not to beat your way home up the Sinus Saronicus against a tempest. But the old story of the rose and the thorn comes in here too. By land you are exposed to the miseries of your nightly quarterings: by sea you may rejoice your heart with the beauties with which Nature rejoices to adorn, many of which she reserves for, the coast, and plunge each morning into the brine with an unsmarting skin; and if you be a genuine lover of the picturesque, you will be no less eager to seek it among the fantasies of human society than among the rocks and crags of a landscape.

So thought I and my two friends as we sat smoking the chibouque of reflection, at that best of Smyrna's cafés, on the French quay. We were unanimous on the conclusion that Smyrna had no earthly right to the title of a Turkish city, except the accident of its happening to be in Turkey. You may go half over the place and meet not a single Turk, except those wonderful fellows, the porters, whose Herculean powers have been so often noticed; or perhaps friend Hassan, the chief of the police, making a progress, with some couple of grim attendants. In fact, in the motley of its society, if any one colour prevail, it is that of France: for among all decent people her language is spoken, and in all reunions of pretension, her colonists are the more numerous body. The Greeks, to be sure, are in great plenty, but they occupy chiefly the lower grades. And as it so happens that the Sisters of Charity have here an establishment, and maintain, with much ability and diligence, a female school, the only one in the place--and that the Lazarists are equally sedulous in their province, it seems not unlikely that Smyrna will become entirely French in spirit, so far as the upper classes are concerned. At present the mixture only savours strongly of the Gallic ingredient. And a most agreeable mixture it makes, affording the blended essences of many nations. Few who have seen much of that society can entertain its reflection without pleasure; and all are wise to make the most of its image, as the wide world affords no twin establishment. Coming from many parts of Europe, the colonists have, by the influences of climate and association, been blended into a general assimilation of character, yet retaining the one or two salient points of nationality. Their physiognomies express the wild influences of Ionia; and it would be vain to seek in their native countries such beautiful specimens of French or Italian women (I except Englishwomen) as are to be found in this birth-place of poetry. It is a city of wonderful linguists, for the necessities of intercourse demand at least three, and in many cases four, languages: Greek with the servants, Italian with the shop-keepers, and French among the polished. Many of them possess more than this number, and truly wonderful it is to see them turn from one guest to another in their pleasant assemblies, and to each address the tongue of his proper country. The same causes that loosened the vowels and softened the utterance of the old Greek in Ionia, have dipped in honey the tongues of the modern Levantines; and whatever they be speaking it is always mellifluously. It is no less true that the old grace of these shores revives in the persons of the ladies, and gives a Lydian softness to all that they do. Whether you mark the Armenian matron, languid from her siesta, seeking the breeze at her lattice; or the more active Frank maiden at the hour of her evening promenade, you are ever struck with the idea of grace and poetry. But chiefly is it pleasant to mark them when the unruffled sea, and cloudless moon, invite them to wander on the marina, and embark on the waters--when the hot sun has persecuted the day, and evening first allowed to breathe freely. There is the bay alive with boats, and resonant of music and laughter, and the shore alive with gay promenaders. There are certain seasons when it might be presumed that the Smyrnists divorce night from sleep; for often have I listened to the cheerful sound till long past midnight, and still has some passing boat brought music to contribute to my dreams. Or, take your hat, and wander forth at evening to the banks of Meles, where Homer sang--whose waters have washed the feet of the epic father, and say whether Homer's self would not acknowledge these groups as worthy of the soil.

Now this is all pleasant exceedingly, but to enjoy this sort of thing sustainedly one should not have an English constitution. We are a phlegmatic set, to whom such zests should be dealt out homoeopathically: else do we soon begin to criticise and take exceptions. Now it so happens that we had entered upon the experience of this delectability with every good disposition towards it, but a still better disposition towards the getting beyond it if we could, that we might see something of the real state of the people. We soon voted Smyrna a bore, as was likely with those who in coming thither had been bent on using it only as a stepping-stone to get farther. But this was more easily said than done with us, who were travellers not for our own fancy's sake, but in the service of her most gracious Majesty. Had we been simply unfettered, our will was good to have started directly coastward, and to have explored those vast tracts of Asia Minor, of so much of which nothing is known. The country between the coast and the western border of Persia, explored in a direct line, not going towards Eszeroun, and a divergence southward towards and about Caramania, would be a fine field for travel. We could well afford to receive some addition to our knowledge of the central parts of Asia Minor, and I should like right well to be one of two bound to the borders of lake Van, to pay a visit to the Armenian patriarch. But such an expedition would take a deal of time and of money. Now we had but the short interval of time at our disposal, during which it was judged that Britannic interests might suffer our absence without detriment. Happily for us, we knew that foreign infection was but skin deep in this country; so that, although the curious recesses were beyond our reach, we might, by a comparatively short expedition, arrive at the texture and substance of the mass. Two cities invited us, Aidin, and Magnesia, both of which are, as nearly as possible, free from foreigners: for the rajahs, though they be Christians, are not, of course, to be considered foreign to that soil, in which they have been implanted since before its occupation by the Turks. In Magnesia, so far as we could discover, there dwelt but a single Frank, who was consular agent for England, as he was, probably, for half-a-dozen other European powers, an office little likely to be useful or needful in the case of personal protection to distressed wanderers, but no doubt not without value as a commercial relationship. Magnesia also is interesting, because it is the seat of the great Carasman, Oglû Pascha, a name to which are attached little less than royal honours. He is one of the great hereditary dignitaries of the kingdom, who, from olden time, and till but a few years ago, used to be almost kings within their territory. At the command of the Sultan, these men used to bring into the field enormous bodies of cavalry, raised by themselves, forming the staple of the Ottoman armies; and Mr. Slade, in his book on Turkey, places the alterations of Mahmoud with respect to these Beys among the prominent causes of the decay of the Ottoman empire.

The vote passed in favour of Magnesia; partly because we expected in that place to find, through the good offices of the consular agent, decent quarters in some Greek house. The question of ways and means remained. The ordinary mode of conducting these proceedings is through the ministry of a _Kawash_ or guide; a person whose assistance is generally considered indispensable, in a country where one neither knows the roads, nor can exchange a word of inquiry with the people. But this plan was little suited to our taste, as we knew by experience that these men are apt to assume the absolute control of their parties. In this respect they are no worse than the other whole tribe of ciceroni, who assuredly are among the greatest bores that necessity imposes. If they would confine themselves to leading the way, and interpreting, and rest contented with solicitude for the horses, they would be useful and endurable. S---- forewent for a moment his amber mouthpiece to give us his experience and opinion.

"These _kawashes_ are greater plagues on a journey than a pebble in the shoe. When I was a youngster on board the Blanche, we started, a party of us, for Aidin, under convoy of one of them with a first-rate character. We had hardly got clear of the town when he began to take command of us, coolly wanting to regulate our pace. We stood no nonsense, but set off full cry, with him at our heels shouting like mad. He was presently up with me, and caught my horse's bridle, uttering all sorts of unintelligible exclamations. The fellow drew his yataghan, and I really thought was going to cut my head off. However, he vented his rage on the brute, striking him with the flat of his weapon; and it was with difficulty I pacified him at last, by saying, 'Pasha!' several times, and pointing forward; giving him to understand that if he did not behave himself, I should complain to the Pasha as soon as we arrived."

"And then," said K----, "you must always battle with them for your halting-place, if they do not happen to fancy it. If you want to go ahead, the horses are tired; and if you want to stop, there's sure to be some better place farther on."

I joined in the vote against subjecting ourselves to tutelage.

"But these fellows do something else besides showing the way--they interpret. Isn't that rather a floorer for us?"

"Not a bit of it," said S----. "I'll be the [Greek: hêgemôn], for I've been the road once before; and K---- there talks a little Turkish."

"Yes, I know the numbers, and can say '_Kateh saket_,' which means, 'how many hours,' or 'how far to?'"

"That will do capitally; for if you say, '_Kateh saket_ Magnesia?' any blockhead will know that you mean 'How far to Magnesia?' Besides, we all can say, '_Salam Aleikum_,' so can do the polite as well as the interrogative."

Reader, this was a mistake. A Mussulman loves not to hear this salutation at the mouth of a Christian; it is the expression of a religious wish; and when uttered by one who receives not the Korán, it falls on the ear of a Turk as a profanation. The correct thing to say by way of being civil is, "_A-oorahah_!"

Thus slender was the stock of language with which we started; but perhaps we were not much worse off than we should have been had we known a good deal more. It is all very well with our European dialects to have a certain smattering of grammar and principle; but the hopeless languages of the East come under a different category. Any knowledge of their theory short of actual accuracy is nearly useless; perhaps worse than useless, because, by beguiling the unhappy smatterer into ambitious attempts, it cheats him of the little power he may have of rendering himself intelligible. A man who is content with the attainment of a certain vocabulary of substantives, in whose pronunciation he is perfect, has much the best chance, because he can eke out the other parts of speech by gesture. But the _attaché_ of legation, who has been poring over their orthography, and hammering at principle, often proves the uselessness of his acquisitions for colloquial purposes. However, we might have done very well with a little more knowledge than we possessed on this particular occasion.

We did not know at this time what Magnesia could do for us in the way of an inn, though we were quite aware of the fact, that throughout the kingdom khans are provided for the accommodation of travellers. What we had seen in this way was very undesirable, being little more than what might serve to minister to the comfort of the horses. In some places, the subsiding stream of travellers has left them bare and ruined; in others, Smyrna to wit, there is so ready entertainment elsewhere, that the khan has become little more than a public stable yard. And here, any time of the day, you may see tethered a collection of donkeys that would set up all the costermongers in London, and drivers who would surely make fortunes by their lessons, if their brethren of Hampstead possessed ambition and gratitude. The vulgar argument of the stick may be occasionally exhibited, but it is by the magic of a single word that the energies of the donkey are usually aroused. And the mystery of the training is this, that neither words nor blows are effective, except from the initiated. Often it will happen, that after long trial of coaxing, the meekest rider will be betrayed into the experiment of cudgelling. It will then certainly happen, that after having cudgelled his full, he will yield the victory to the impassible brute, and be reduced to hope, that when he has had thistles enough, he may be induced to move on. Suddenly there sounds behind him the exclamation of _Dêáh! Dêáh!_ and the donkey starts into a dislocating trot. This is your true driver's policy, to make his presence and aid indispensable. By dint of great practice, I acquired a pretty accurate imitation of this sound, and have practised it successfully. But the animals were quick to discover the imposture, and to punish it by extra impassibility.

Many of the best khans or caravansaries are of royal foundation; others, like the fountains, the monuments of departed piety. But much as we might admire the institution, we could not feel very ambitious of occupying a billet of so very gregarious and inexclusive character. Besides, in these khans you must provide for yourself all that you require in the shape of provisions; and it was too much of a good thing to carry with us tea, and bread and butter. We clung to the hope of finding lodging in the shade of domestic hospitality, the rather because of our recommendation to the consular agent. A second string was added to our bow by a worthy Armenian of Smyrna. He kindly assisted our intention by a letter to a compatriot of his at Magnesia, of whom the least that we could expect was, that he would receive us to the fellowship of trencher and hearth; that is, should we present our introduction, for, in the first instance, our purpose was to seek the man of office.

We had some debate concerning the propriety of our going ostensibly armed--no doubt, however, concerning the advisability of our actually being armed. In those desolate tracts, where you may ride pretty well all day and meet no wayfarer, except some lone camel-driver, riding at the head of his long string of animals, it is impossible to say what contingencies may be your hap. It is, to say the least, a locality where thieves might have things pretty much their own way; for the guard-houses, scattered throughout the routes, are far from being within hail of each other, and far from possessing the control of the road mid-way. Nay, they are themselves tenanted by men so fierce by nature, and so imperfectly disciplined, that some people might fear the guards more than the robbers. They are not detachments of the regular forces, but men taken chiefly from the Xebeques, whose manners and dress are sufficiently distinct from those of the ordinary Turks. Each of these detachments is placed under the control of an Agah; and on the personal character of this officer depends the security of the district. The prescribed discipline is necessarily strict, for any admitted relaxation would soon lead to confusion. Especially is it enjoined that all spirituous liquors be absolutely excluded from the guard-houses--and a neglect of this law by the Agah is never forgiven. When intoxicated, they are said to rage like demons, respecting no person or thing--utterly rejecting all semblance of discipline. It will be long before I forget the apprehensions connected with even faint symptoms in them of approach to such a state. A party of us, with ladies among our numbers, had halted for night at a guard-house. The spot was of the rarest beauty--the evening such as breathes only in Ionia; cities and men were removed out of sight and thought; and, full of poetry and peace--the pleasing sadness we had caught on the hallowed ground of the mighty Ephesus,--we resigned ourselves to the influence of the moment. What was that sound of revelry that broke upon the stillness? The mandolin tinkled--voices were heard in chorus. We got up to explore, and found, to our consternation, that the guards of our station, having received a visit from their brethren of the next detachment, were holding festival on the occasion. We had previously been informed that the Agah was absent on duty, and had left the command to his ancient--and this we were ready to suppose was not calculated to tighten the reins of discipline. Drinking and jollity were such natural associates, that we feared terribly these men would be getting at spirits--and then what did we not fear for the fair companions of our adventure? However, to make a long story short, the men did not get drunk, and separated peacefully after the performance of many Terpsichorean novelties. But they taught the careless to feel that travellers in such a country should not be without the means of defence. It is quite true that arms may do you a bad turn, either by tempting you to a hasty display, or by being of so costly a character as to excite the cupidity of some ruffian. But it is just as true that any other thing you possess may do you the like ill turn among men who would shoot you for the value of your skin. The golden mean is to be armed usefully, but not showily; and, above all things, to be very discreet in the production of weapons.

The first of these laws on this particular occasion I egregiously transgressed. My two friends were supplied with unimpeachable pistols of their own; but I, being of peaceable disposition, had made no such provision. A worthy friend on shore supplied the deficiency, by lending me a pair of the most formidable weapons one would wish to see. They were of the old style of theatrical horse-pistols, as long nearly as a small carbine, and beyond any ordinary man's power of holding steady. The stocks were deeply incrusted with silver, or something that looked very like it. The only objection to them was, that nothing could persuade the flint to give out a spark, or induce the pan to take the hint at the proper time. Yet though I knew them to be in fact thoroughly useless, they contributed sensibly to my comfort, for they were most excellent make-believes. Our steeds were supplied by our good friend George, the Greek stable keeper, as no Turk would have let out his animals on such an occasion without sending along with them a kawash to look after the mad Franks. It betokened no little confidence in George, that he allowed his horses to be taken away, whither and for how long he know not.

It is a noble climate where you can start of a fine morning, with a certainty that the weather will continue and fulfil its promise. One starts light without any wrappings, or any thing more than he has on. One _tescharé_, or passport, was our luggage for three. Our first little adventure was about this same _tescharé_. It is to be got, as are all things in this land, only through the medium of interpreters and kawashs. A first-rate bore it is to be in all matters of business subjected to the ministration of these gentry: and what a pity it is that some steady Englishmen will not qualify themselves to fulfil their functions. But, from the most important diplomatic negotiations down to the most trivial matter of convenience, procedure can only be had through such agency: at least almost without exception at present, whatever revolutions may lurk in the recent studies of the _attachés_ at Constantinople.

Mahmoud, the Janissary--by the way it is odd that they should call this consular body-guard of one by such a name--brought us the document, and then, of course, stood by to pocket his _backshish_. We were then making our final preparations for the start, laying in a little personal provender at the _restaurant_ in Frank Street, at the door of which stood our animals, saddled and impatient.

"Give him his tip," we said to S----, who had been installed pay-master for the nonce.

A smile and a coin were forthwith presented to the functionary. "Bow, wow, wow," or something like it, uttered by our Mahometan friend, made us look up, and we saw him unaccepting and unsmiling. "Why, thou greedy varlet," (friend, the words were innocuous, because unintelligible,) "'tis by so much exactly too much for thee."

It is an amusing thing to have a dispute where words will not second energy. Such a scene have I noted more than once, as a fine psychological demonstration. You abuse a guide or a donkey driver in a language he does not understand, for disobeying directions that he did not understand, word or particle. The whole thing is absurd, and as a man of sense you ought to be philosophical. But when I have noted you in such case, and seen that you do not lose your temper, nor abuse the offender in round English, I will set you down as of placid temperament. Mahmoud growled, and looked as if he would fain have resumed the paper, or abducted the horses; and thus it was with the interchange of such pleasantries, and followed by his good wishes, that we started.

"Bravo," said K----; "we start with a row, we shall be all right presently."

And now stoop well your head and keep your eyes open as you turn the corner into the Armenian quarter. These houses that make such beautiful streets, are ticklish things to ride by. They all project forward, having the upper story supported by a kind of flying buttress. These are at no great height from the ground, so that an unbending horseman passing under, would infallibly knock his head against the corner of one of their first floors. But chiefly on donkeys is this risk noticeable--the stubborn brutes which it is much the fashion to ride, and whom none but the drivers can guide. On entering Smyrna by night--those dull streets where gas is not--your only plan is to keep well in the middle of the street, right in the hollow. It is a beautiful quarter of the town; in itself picturesque and variegated in colour, and beset with the fairest embellishments. Look up at that lattice for a moment only, and then prick your way again. Did you see those lustrous eyes and graceful head-dress? The sun is now high, and these stars twinkle but from lattices. Pass this way at even, and you shall see them congregated in brilliancy. They are not of the retiring nature that shuns observation. They sit congregated round every door wooing the breeze. Supper is spread in the spacious halls, beyond which the open doors give to view a perspective of garden. Nay, you may stop and stare--the men are occupied with their pipes, and the women are not offended at admiration.

Right interesting are these Armenians, of whom the men have all the riches, and the women all the beauty (at least unveiled and cognisable) of Turkey. They have lost all trace of the active spirit that in an age of iron kept them busy in the _melée_ of nations. Their gravest senior would stare unintelligent were you to speak to him of Tiridates, or the Romans: and with their thoughts of Persia no ideas of tyranny are mixed; no stirring of the ancient spirit that kept them faithful in an ocean of foes, and rendered their land a continued battle-field. They give no signs of intelligence if you challenge them on the subject of Eutychus, by whose arch heresy they suffered severance from Catholicity, and in whose dogmas they live. They are a quiet, matter-of-fact, business-like people--the bankers and capitalists of the kingdom. Their mode of existence under the shadow of the Sultan's mercy, but without national representation or protection, has subdued them to a condition of patient endurance, and killed the energy of their nature. They are quiet, fat, and lethargic, reserving their anxieties for money-getting.

There might be to fiery spirits something humiliating in the dress to which they are so anxious to acquire the right: the huge and ugly cap which bespeaks them to be under some particular foreign protection, as the case may be, which is their only safeguard against all sorts of oppression. But where nationality is a mere idea without embodiment, it soon becomes as a dream. The Armenian is content to be endured and protected. Meanwhile he is not without a sort of national ambition; but it is of a new kind for him. They believe themselves to be the most ancient of people, retaining the original language that was spoken before the dispersion of Babel, and by consequence the identical language that was spoken by Adam. An interesting excursion might be made on this subject, seemingly so far at variance with the conclusions of learned ethnographers. Their deductions are from undoubted facts, and tend to their conclusion with a force that some philologists at least have considered irresistible.

Through the Armenian quarter our road lay onward for a short distance by the banks of Miles. It is but an insignificant stream, of scarcely sufficient tide to turn a mill; but in no better case are Ilissus and Cephissus found to be in the present day. The shade of Socrates still seems to linger over the Attic streamlet, swelling its puny tide to the capacity of the loftiest musings of the humanized; and the memory of Homer is wedded to these waters of Meles. The critics who would disprove the existence of the bard, and assign the different members of his compositions to numerous anonymous authors, or to indefinite traditions, would find this no vantage ground. The influences of the place would abash their contumacy. There is something poetical even now about the locality. The stream flows through the Armenian quarter, passing by a short course to the well-known Caravan-bridge, and thence into the open country. At pretty well all hours of the day, groups of nymphs may be seen washing clothes in the waters, exhibiting _tableaux vivans_ of Nausicaa and her maidens. No vulgar washerwomen are these with corrugated hands at reeking tubs, but such as painters and poets might celebrate. Washing is with them a pastime, and an elegance: their laundry a studio of art. They go right into the water, and splash about their things like naiads sporting; and anon returning to the bank, put forth their little strength in beating out the clothes. It would be rash to say that the process is so effectual as our more homely method; but it is at least pretty to look at. At evening the banks of the stream assume another appearance. Gay crowds promenade, and cavalcades linger; people of many nations congregate to unbend the brow laden with the cares of the day. Fathers muse, maidens gambol, and matrons chide.

A little farther on, and we come to Caravan-bridge,--of all Smyrna's objects, perhaps the one best known by reputation. It has its name from the number of caravans that, entering Smyrna from the interior, have to pass over it. And see, there is at this moment a string of camels in the way, so that we may as well halt in this convenient shade till they be gone by. That little Ethiopian will look after our horses, and Ali will bring us coffee and chibouques in a twinkling. See how pleasantly these trees overshadow our resting-place, and how the gliding of the water, here a broader and more rapid stream, seems to cool our very thoughts. This is the great picnic place for the citizens--a sort of Turkish Vauxhall. Yet what a difference between the orderly composure of these holiday makers, and the noisy mirth of our own compatriots. These folks take their _kef_, as they do every thing else, quietly. Here you may see hundreds of revellers, and not a drunkard among them. Perhaps the repose of the scene draws some of its influence from those sombre burying grounds, of which two are just opposite. No where is such truth of funereal effect preserved as in this country. Père la Chaise, and all European cemeteries are puerile in comparison. The stately evergreen which they have consecrated to the overshadowing of the dead fulfils the idea of solemnity and awe. There is effect in the manner in which the simple head-stones are planted together, with no separation of rails, no interspersion of pretending sarcophagi. All have returned to their dust, and have put off the ephemeral distinctions of life; they have returned to the bosom of their mother, where there is no aristocracy, and slumber as brethren till they shall be awakened to new distinctions.

This is a place where at odd times many a pleasant hour may be passed. It is such a thoroughfare, (at least the bridge, though you are in the shade by its side, well out of the bustle,) that there is always something passing worthy of notice. It is also a capital place to practise the language, if you have any of it to expend. You see the strangest figures entering from the interior with their merchandise, which is all diligently examined by the officer of the customs here posted. It is a singular thing that the long trains of camels are invariably headed by a donkey; who takes the lead as coolly as if it were quite in order that such an insignificant brute should drag after him some five hundred animals, each big enough to eat him. The Caravandgis might be supposed to come all from one locality, so strong is the family likeness subsisting between them. Perhaps they actually do, for this hereditary disposition of employments is quite according to the genius of the nation. They are short, stout, little men, with round smooth faces, especially stolid in expression. They dress in the old style, never wearing the fez; and sure we ought to take the portrait of one of them, were it only for the sake of their boots. Such buckets are not often worn, and to pedestrians would be impracticable. But these men do not walk: seated on their donkeys, they jog on at the head of the caravan, bearing the merchandise of Asia through wildernesses where the foot of man is strange. With man they have little communion, and with nature they have little sympathy, or their soulless visages belie them. Life to them must be a blended experience of tobacco and camel's bells. I have marked them at night, when arrived at their journey's end, and bivouacking in the midst of their animals. The brutes formed a circular rampart, in the centre of which reclined the men. It was a desolate spot, such as generally disposes men to sociability with the stray fellow-creature or two who may happen to have been led to the same point; and here were two or three fellow-countrymen of the drivers. But they took no notice of their neighbours; they performed their prostrations, they disposed of their supper, and coiled themselves up to rest. If they rose for a moment, it was to look after some restless camel; and early in the morning, long before the sun, when I turned out, they were departed to a more remote solitude. But now the road is clear, and we make a start of it, leaving the town fairly behind.

"Stop, my men," said J----; "look at your horses' feet."

"What's that for?"

"We shall pass never another smithy this livelong day; and should a screw be loose in any of their shoes, it would be rather a bring up for us." Sage and sound advice for those who have a long ride before them; which yet at this time of our need we rejected; and for which I afterwards suffered. Awakening to a sense of my error, I did afterwards make a divergence to a village by the way; but there found no artist, and in the course of the day I learned fully to appreciate the importance of a nail in time. By the way, the shoes hereabout are of a peculiar kind, composed of a plate that entirely covers the hoof. They are at least effective in preventing the infraction of pebbles.

Our road was in the line that leads to the pretty village of Bonabat, leaving the no less pretty village of Boujah on the right, but far away, and hidden among the hills. These are two pleasant suburban retreats that the merchants of Smyrna, have established as a _ricovero_ from the toils of the city. Bonabat is more especially inhabited by the French, and Boujah by the English. There is a third village somewhat farther off in the direction of Ephesus called Sittagui. A few years ago, when the Turkey trade was in its palmy days, the merchants used to do their business in most agreeable style. It was during certain months only that they went every day to their offices, the rest of the year being permitted to enjoyment. At present, though perhaps somewhat less magnificent in their style, they are eminently comfortable in their ways. During the summer months, their families are removed to these pretty country places; and at sundown each evening the ways are covered with the returning fathers and brothers. For us Englishmen, Boujah was naturally the accustomed haunt. Here is to be found the charming mixture of nationalities, which is the feature of Smyrneot society. Their ways are manly, without constraint, and in many respects patriarchal. The young ladies never wear bonnets, and are generally to be seen of a fine evening sitting in the open air before their own gates. The whole community having been pretty well all brought up together from childhood are on the happiest terms of intimacy: surnames are almost obsolete. Ungrateful must the heart be that can remember without pleasure days past in their society; where every house is open, and every face has a smile for the guest. There is one particular spot here, called the Three Wells, where my evening's walk has ever brought before me images fraught with recollection of Rebecca's introduction to Isaac, or of Jacob wooing Rachel. We now passed into the open country, where the road, leading over a low ridge of hills, becomes of less definite track. And the last village was passed, and thenceforward we were to meet stations only as rare landmarks. Hereabouts sugar, as a general luxury, disappears; the caffedgis supplying the mere coffee, unless some more luxurious stranger demand the drug. It is then dealt out from a small private store, and notified by a separate charge in the bill. The homely old Turks are ignorant of the uses of sugar; and it would seem that their language does not supply a descriptive term, as their "_shuk-kar_" is evidently a mispronunciation of our word. One could not, without romancing, say much of the beauty of the country through which we were passing at this early stage of our journey. It is even flat, and tame; and appears to be so more decidedly by contrast with most that lies in this region. Almost every where else the prospect is bounded by beautiful hills, here and there aspiring to the character of mountains, whose sides vary constantly in tint as they rangingly receive the rays of the rising or the setting sun. Or sometimes one has to pass through vast plains, where neglect and desolation have, in the exuberance of nature, assumed the appearance of luxuriant cultivation. Few artificial pastures could equal the natural beds of oleander that are sometimes found here stretching far away till lost behind the crags of a ravine; and which, in their unconstrained vegetation, show colours that the hothouse might envy. And particularly are the wildernesses of myrtle remarkable, which for miles grow in thick jungle, through which it is difficult to preserve the narrow track kept for passage. It is curious to pass through these odorous thickets, where you can never see around you, and seldom many feet before you, on account of the windings of the way. Long are heard the tinklings of the camel's bells, and the heavy plod of their feet, before the train comes into sight, and many are the manoeuvrings to effect a passage in peace. The camels, however many, are all linked together, and to the preceding donkey; and as they cannot be always persuaded to observe due distance, so as to keep the line _taught_, nor to follow each other on the same side of the road, it may be conceived that to pass them is sometimes a work of difficulty. It is a comfort that they never bite--at least never in ordinary cases; but still, till one is used to their near contact, it does seem formidable to be involved and hampered among these as one constantly must be. But this particular road of ours was, for some way, diversified by neither beauty nor incident; and, as things go, perhaps it is well that so it was; for therefore have I the less scruple at passing over observations topographical, and making haste to tell of what things befel us in the city of the unbelievers. One single party of travellers we did meet, whose journeying exercised considerable influence on our fortunes. It was about mid-day that we saw approaching, from the opposite direction to ourselves, a Frank gentleman, attended by a respectable looking squire. We knew him to be coming from Magnesia, because there was no other place from which he could be coming; and, by the same token, we shrewdly guessed him to be the one Frank inhabitant, the pro-consul, on whose good offices we had reckoned. The only alternative was, that he might be some casual visiter like ourselves, whom business or curiosity had led on a journey, whence he was returning. But, as he drew nearer, we read in the incurious expression of his face, that he was certainly at home; and the air of accustomed importance that beset him argued him to be one in authority. No men, surely, can be so alive to the sense of borrowed dignity as consular agents in out-of-the-way corners; at least no men carry so pompous an exposition on their brow. By these tokens we identified our stranger friend.

"Hail him," said K----.

"Bon giorno, signori!"

"Servo, signori. Andate in Magnesia?"

"I told you so," said K----.

And so it was. He, her Britannic Majesty's, and half-a-dozen other majesty's agent, stood convicted by his speech. The man had not been out of Magnesia, perhaps, any day for the last twelvemonths, and he had chosen, for the prosecution of his foreign interests, that precise day, when these three desolate Englishmen had come to throw themselves on his cares.

However, our blood was up, and our souls superior to trifles.

"Here's a poser! shall we reveal?"

"Not a bit of it. We don't want him, nor any one else. Any mixture of aid would have marred the spirit of our expedition: besides, remember our friend the Seraph."

This Seraph was of no higher than terrestrial order, being no other than the Armenian to whom we had the letter commendatory. What the word in their application means, I cannot say exactly, but believe it to be descriptive of the sordid occupation of a basqua; at any rate, it is a common style and title [Greek: Armenikôs].

In the confidence of this our possession, we allowed the European to pass on without giving him any hint of our forlorn condition, and without craving any direction for our conduct. He evidently thought that we had some bosom friend ready to receive us, or at any rate that we were fully up to all the ways and means of the country--as well he might, seeing us roam about in such _degagé_ style. We were far too jealous of our dignity to betray any symptoms of indecision, or having been taken aback; and our adieux were waved to him with a perfect air of being at home and comfortable.

"Now then for an Armenian at home! How fortunate that fellow should be out of the way, for now our friend the Seraph will be sure to insist on our honouring his roof."

"Capital spreads, too, they give--judging by the samples one sees laid out of an evening in their halls."

"Hospitable people; are they not, K----?"

"Oh, very. Not that ever I have been in one of their houses."

"Nor I--any farther than having a pipe with old John the Dragoman at his porch."

"Nor I."

Here was a crown to our adventure! An untrodden city, an unvisited people, a welcome to the mysterious bosom of Armenian hospitality!

* * * * *

DIRECT TAXATION.

"Free Trade," say the Americans "is another word for direct taxation, and direct taxation is another word for repudiation of states' debts." The Americans are right; it is so: and the strongest proof of these propositions is to be found in the conduct of the Americans themselves. The subject, however, is one not less interesting on this than the other side of the Atlantic. It involves the fortune and the temporal prosperity of every man in the united kingdom; and we do not hesitate to say that, on the embracing of just and reasonable views on this all-important subject by the constituencies of the united kingdom, the maintenance of the public credit,--the upholding of the public prosperity,--the ultimate existence of England as an independent nation, must come to depend.

We hear much, in the popular phrase of the day, of "great facts." We will assume "free trade" as a "great fact." We will not stop to inquire how it was brought about, or whether, by any means, it could have been avoided. These are the topics of history, and history, no one need fear, will do them justice. As little shall we stop to ask, whether direct or indirect taxation is the best, or whether a mixture of both is to be recommended. We shall not ask whether it is better to pay taxes on the price of the articles we purchase, when the amount is not perceived, or, if perceived, seldom objected to, at least against government, and when the disagreeable operation of paying money is compensated, at least in some degree, by the pleasure derived from the article purchased,--or to pay them at once to the tax-gatherer, when we get nothing for our ample disbursements but a bit of paper from the collector to remind us of the extent of our losses. As little shall we inquire, from history, how many nations have been ruined by direct taxation, and whether there is one, the decline of which can be traced to indirect; or from reason, whether it is _possible_ that a _nation_ can be ruined by indirect taxes, when the only effect of their becoming too high is, that they check the consumption of the articles on which they are laid, and therefore cease to be paid. We shall not remind our readers that, in the latter years of the war £72,000,000, under the protective system, was levied in the shape of taxes amidst general prosperity, on eighteen millions of people in the British empire; and that now, under the free trade system, fifty-two millions net revenue is felt as extremely oppressive by twenty-eight millions. These topics, vast and important as they are, and deeply as they bear on the past history and future prospects of the British empire, have become the province of history, because the great change on which they hinge has been made and cannot be unmade. We have chosen to have free trade,--in other words, to abandon indirect taxation; and free trade we must have, and indirect taxation will in consequence be abandoned.

But it is particularly to be observed, in the outset of this system, that free trade, once adopted and applied to certain great branches of national industry, must necessarily be _progressive_, and embrace _all_, if we would avoid the total ruin of many of the staple branches of our production and main source of our _direct_ revenue. In a short time, grain of all sorts will be left with the nominal protection of a shilling a quarter; and many branches of manufactures already find themselves with a protecting duty so small that, keeping in view the difference of the value of money in England and the continental states, it amounts to nothing. If the classes thus left without any protection, or a merely nominal one, exposed to the effects of foreign competition, are not indemnified for their losses by the diminished price of the articles which they themselves purchase, they must grow poorer every day. Amidst the general cheapening of the articles _sold_, which constitute the income of the productive classes, if there is not a proportional cheapening of the articles _bought_ which compose their _expenditure_, they must inevitably be destroyed.

This truth is so obvious that it is adapted to the level of every capacity, and accordingly we already see it producing agitation for the farther repeal of indirect taxes, which it does not require the gift of prophecy to foresee will, in the end, though perhaps after a severe struggle, prove successful. It may not do so in this session of Parliament or the next; but, in process of time, the effect is certain.

A squeezable ministry, a yielding premier, will ere long be found, who, in a moment of difficulty, will be glad to buy off one set of assailants, as we did the Danes of old, by giving up what they desire. The separate agitations which must, in the end, produce this result, are already manifesting themselves. The West India planters allege, with reason, that, exposed as they are, when burdened with costly and irregular free labourers, to the competition of slave labour in Cuba and Brazil, without, in a few years, any protection, it is indispensable that the market of the mother country should be thrown open to them for all parts of their produce, especially in distilleries and breweries. The farmers, exposed to this attack in flank, while the corn laws have been repealed in their front, have no resource left but to clamour incessantly for the repeal of the malt-tax. In this attempt it is probable they will, in the end, prove successful, not because their demands are either just or reasonable, for as power is now constituted in this country that affords no guarantee whatever for being listened to, but because their claims are likely to be supported by the _beer-drinkers in towns_, a numerous and influential class of the community. The tea-dealers, encouraged by the success of agitation in other quarters, are already making a loud clamour for a reduction of the duty on tea, and prepared to prove, to the entire satisfaction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that nothing is so likely to increase a branch of revenue now producing £4,800,000 a-year, as to lower the duty from half-a-crown to a shilling on the pound. The tobacco dealers will not be behind their brethren in agitation; and we may soon expect to see all the venal talent of the nation enlisted in the great cause of free trade in smoking and chewing. The spirit-dealers will, most assuredly, not be the last to insist upon a reduction of the duties affecting them; and they are sure to be supported by the whole publicans in the urban constituencies; a class of men so numerous that it is certain their united voice is not long likely to be treated without attention. Every class, in short, will insist for a remission of the taxes affecting themselves, without the slightest regard to the effect it is likely to have on the revenue, the public credit, or the general security of the empire; and when we reflect on the stupendous array of indirect taxes, which, under the influence of similar partial but fierce agitations, have been abandoned by successive conceding administrations to purchase temporary popularity, we feel convinced that the time is not far distant when the remaining customs and excise, producing, at present, about thirty millions of revenue, will share the same fate.

It is useless to lament this tendency, because lamentations will not stop it, and the reform bill has vested power in classes who, for good or for evil, will work it out. Nearly _two-thirds_ of the Imperial Parliament are, under its enactments, the representatives of burghs.[18] In these burghs the great majority of the voters are shop-keepers, that is, persons whose interest it is to buy cheap and sell dear. In making the first use of their newly acquired power to force on free trade, and a repeal of all duties affecting themselves, our burghs have exactly followed in the footsteps of their predecessors, when parliamentary writs were first addressed to them by the Earl of Leicester, in 1264. "The burghers," says Guizot, "as much astonished as charmed at the importance which Leicester gave them, took advantage of their influence to procure _freedom to trade, and to get quit of all custom-house duties_, instead of establishing, in conjunction with him, the government on a durable foundation."[19] The influence of these urban constituencies is not likely to decrease under the increasing embarrassments of the landed producers, and the augmented stimulus to certain branches of trade from foreign importations. And, in consequence, as the revenue melts away under the effect of successive repeals of the indirect taxes, the question will, ere long, force itself on the government and the country, How is the interest of the debt to be paid? How are the charges of the national establishments to be defrayed? The extraordinary prosperity of the last two years, the result of the three fine harvests which had preceded them, cannot be expected to continue. A railway mania is not immortal;--like every other violent passion it must soon wear itself out. Peace cannot much longer be relied on;--the clouds are already gathering in more than one quarter. A recurrence to general indirect taxes is not to be thought of in these days of restricted currency and unrestricted importation. The only alternative is, either a reduction of the interest of the national debt, or a great increase of direct taxation.

[18]

County Members. Borough Members. England, 162 336 Scotland, 30 23 Ireland, 66 39 ---- ---- 258 398

Or as 2 to 3 nearly.

[19] Guizot's Essais Sur l'Hist. de France, 475, 476.

It is not probable that a forcible reduction of the national debt will be attempted, at least till the other alternative has been tried and failed. The public funds are the great saving bank of the nation. Out of 192,970 persons who received the half-yearly dividend at the Bank of England in the year 1841, no less than 158,735 drew dividends under £50 half-yearly, of whom 58,000 were under £5; while those above £50 and not exceeding £200 were only 10,094, and those exceeding £2000 only 125![20] This is the great security for the public funds in England--the extent to which shares in them are held by persons composing that middle commercial class, in whom, under the present constitution, supreme power is practically vested.

[20] Porter's Parliamentary Tables, xii. 6.

Nor is it only the actual holders of the public funds who would be immediately struck at by an invasion of the national debt. Stock of every kind would at once fall _pari passu_ with the three per cents.--credit of every kind would be violently shaken--the rate of discount at the Bank of England would instantly rise--money would become scarce over the country--every debtor would find his whole creditors on his back at once, while his means of recovering payment from those indebted to him would be proportionately abated. It is not going too far to say that, within a year after a blow had been struck at the public funds, one-half of the whole trading classes would find themselves insolvent. None would be able to stand the shock but those possessed of considerable capital. The majority who carried the measure would, for the most part, be ruined by its effects. This consequence is not a remote or secondary one, which large bodies of men can never be brought to see; it is immediate and direct, and is practically known, by the intercourse with banks, and the necessity of getting bills discounted, to the whole commercial community in the country. It is not probable that the burgher class, to whom the Reform Bill has given power, will voluntarily advocate a measure so evidently and palpably destructive to themselves. The public funds of Great Britain rest on the securest of all bases in a popular community, the self-interest of the holders of power. They would soon be swept away under universal suffrage, as they have been in so many states of America, because the majority under such a system have no funds to hold.

Two things, then, may be considered as certain as any thing depending on the varying chances of human affairs can be. 1. That the indirect taxes which at present constitute three-fifths of the net revenue of Great Britain will, in great part, in process of time, be swept away. 2. That to uphold the public credit and save from ruin the commercial classes, a great addition must be made to direct taxation.

It has become, therefore, a matter of the very highest importance to consider how an additional revenue can be raised without wide-spread ruin in that way; and what are the _principles_ on which direct taxation should be founded, in order to be at once equal, just, and productive. It will be found, on consideration, that they are simple and of universal application--so plain as to be obvious, when stated, to every capacity, although a protracted struggle may doubtless be anticipated from the various classes whose immunities or exemptions such a just and equal system may abolish or abridge.

The first principles on the subject will naturally suggest themselves on the principle of "_lucus a non lucendo_," upon considering the gross inequalities, the enormous injustice of our present system of direct taxation. Upon reviewing it, one can hardly discover under what prevailing interest in the Legislature the regulations have been framed, so strangely is occasional and unjust favour to the landed interest, in some particulars, blended with frequent and equally unjust oppression of them in others--so unequally is undue favour to the middle classes, in some respects, combined with unjust and partial burdens upon them in others.

To begin with one particular, in which the landed interest are greatly and unjustly exempted, while the other classes are severely and unjustly burdened. There is no duty on bequests or inheritance in land, while there is such a duty, and a very heavy one, in movable succession. The legacy duty on succession, from one unconnected with the legatee by blood, is ten _per cent._; from relations six, and from parents one _per cent._ By the aid of the probate duty, which must be paid by the executors, and the expense of suing out letters of administration in England, or an edict and confirmation as executor in Scotland, these duties are practically nearly doubled. Succession in land, on the other hand, costs nothing, at least nothing requires to be paid to government; and though the expense of making up titles to landed estates is often very heavy, that is a burden for the benefit of lawyers, not the good of the state. A poor man who gets a legacy of £100, pays £10 direct to the Exchequer, and the executor, in addition, pays the heavy stamp on probate of the succession; but the great landholder succeeds to £100,000 a-year without paying a shilling to the state.

A creditor in Scotland, who succeeds to a bond for £100,000, heritably secured, pays nothing; if it is on personal security, he pays the full legacy duty of £10,000.

This glaring inequality, the remnant of the days of feudal oppression, or the relic of a time when the landholders had no money, and taxes could be extracted from movable property only, should forthwith be abolished. Succession of all kinds, whether in land, bonds heritably secured, or movable funds, should be taxed at the same rate. And by the addition of the vast amount of the landed property to the produce of the succession duty, it would be in the power of Government _to reduce the general tax at least a half_ without any diminution, probably a large increase, in the general result. This must be at once apparent, when it is recollected that out of £5,303,000, which the income tax produced in 1845, from Britain, no less than £2,666,000, or nearly a half, came from the land. When it is recollected that the remainder embraced, besides income from realized money, no less than £1,541,000 for professional income, which of course corresponds to a comparatively small amount of realized capital, it is evident how great an increase to the taxable amount of succession this most equitable change would produce. It need hardly be said that the land should pay on so many years' purchase, say thirty in Great Britain, and twenty in Ireland of the _clear rent_, after deducting the interest of mortgages or heritable bonds or jointures. _They_ would pay the tax on the succession of their holders respectively. And the distinction as to the lesser amount of the tax to be paid by children and relations, than strangers, now observed in the succession to personal property, should be applied also to landed succession.

This is one obvious burden, which should be applied equally to landed as to any other class of proprietors. But there are several particulars in which they are most unjustly subjected to burdens from which other classes are relieved; and if they get justice done them in this respect, they could well afford to pay the succession duty.

In the first place, the levying of the POOR'S RATE as a burden exclusively laid on _real_ property in England, that is, lands and houses, to the entire liberation of personal property or professional incomes, is a most monstrous inequality--indefensible on every principle of justice or expedience, and the long continuance of which can only be explained by the well known and proverbial supineness of that class of men, and their inability to rouse themselves to any combined or general effort, even for matters in which their own vital interests are concerned. The Poor's Rate, it is well known, is, especially in England, a very heavy burden. It amounted, prior to the late change in the law in England, to above £8,000,000 a-year: and although it was at first considerably reduced in the years immediately succeeding the first introduction of that Act in 1834, yet it has been steadily rising since, and has now nearly attained its former level.[21] Under the most favourable circumstances it cannot be estimated in round numbers at less than £6,000,000 a-year; in seasons of distress it never fails to reach £7,000,000. Scotland hitherto has paid less, because under the administration of the old law, the support afforded to the poor was miserably stinted, and quite inadequate to meet their necessities. This was fully exposed by the efforts of Dr. Alison and other distinguished philanthropists, and a parliamentary inquiry having demonstrated the truth of their statements, the Act of 1846 introduced a more humane and careful provision for the poor. Under the operation of this Act, the Poor Rate in Scotland has in most places considerably, and in some alarmingly, increased. The dreadful state of Ireland, suffering less under the failure, total as it has been, of the potato crop, than the general indigent condition of the poor, has at length forcibly aroused the attention of all classes in the empire, and it may confidently be predicted that the mockery of supposing the Irish paupers, 2,300,000 in number, to be provided for because £240,000 a-year, or about _two shillings_ a head a-year, is levied for their relief on a rental of above £12,000,000 annually, cannot much longer be maintained. The Poor's Rate, therefore, is a subject which already interests deeply, and is likely to interest still more deeply, every part of the empire, and it is of the highest importance to consider what are the principles on which, in conformity with justice and expedience, it should be levied.

[21]

Poor's Rate and County Rate. 1832 £8,662,000 1833 8,279,217 1834 8,338,079 1842 6,552,800 1843 7,085,595 1844 6,848,717

Parl. Paper. Porter, xii. 247.

The monstrous injustice of the present system will be rendered apparent by a single example. Manufactories, collieries, iron-works, and commercial towns, are, it is well known, the great _producers_ of the poor, because they bring together the labouring classes in vast numbers from all quarters while trade is prosperous, and leave them in a state of suffering or destitution a burden on the landholders the moment it becomes depressed. The commercial classes, too, are immediately and directly benefited by the labour of these manufacturing poor while they retain their health; while the landholders in their vicinity are only so indirectly and in a lesser degree. This is decisively demonstrated by the colossal fortunes so frequently made in the commercial classes, contrasted with the declining circumstances or actual insolvency of the landholders by whom they are surrounded. Do these, the merchants and manufacturers, pay the larger proportion of the poor tax, thus rendered inevitable by the nature of their operations, which are in so high a degree beneficial to themselves? Quite the reverse: they do not, in proportion to their profits, pay a _tenth part_ of its amount. The poor's rate, as at present levied, is on the rural proprietors an _Income_, on burgh inhabitants a _House_ tax. The difference is prodigious, and leads to results in practice of the grossest injustice.

A landowner has an estate of £2000 a-year in a parish of which the poor's-rate is 1s. in the pound, or £100 a-year on his property. A manufactory is established, or an iron-work set agoing, or a coal mine opened upon it, from which the fortunate owner derives £50,000 a-year of profit. The buildings on it, however, are only valued at £2000 a-year. He pays for his _pauper creating_ work, yielding him £50,000 a-year, £100 annually, the same as what the landowner in the same parish pays for his _pauper-feeding_ estate of £2000 a-year. In other words, in proportion to the respective incomes, the landholder, who had no hand in bringing in the poor, and derives little or nothing from their labour, pays just _five-and-twenty times_ as much as the manufacturer who introduced them, and is daily making a colossal fortune by their exertions! And this becomes the more unjust when it is recollected, that under the present system of free trade in corn and easy communication with distant quarters which railways and steam-boats afford, the little benefit the neighbouring landholders formerly derived from the presence of such manufacturing crowds, is fast disappearing. But further, the manufacturer or mine-owner having got off thus easily during the time of prosperous trade, when he was realising his fortune, stops his works, and discharges his workmen when the adverse season arrives. The rateable value of the manufactory or the mine has, for the present, almost or wholly disappeared, and the poor starving workmen are handed over to be supported by the land-owner.

Persons not practically acquainted with these matters may think this statement is overcharged: on the contrary, it is _within_ the truth in some instances. We know an instance of a great iron master, whose profits average above £100,000 a-year, who pays less poor's rates for the poor he has mainly created, than a landholder in the same parish, of £2000 a-year, who never brought a pauper on its funds in his life. Such is the consequences of the present barbarous system of levying the poor's rate as an income tax on the landlords who are burdened with paupers, and only a house tax on the manufacturers who create and profit by them. The first thing to be done towards the introduction of a just system of direct taxation is to lay the maintenance of the poor equally on all classes; and above all to abolish the present most unjust system of making it only a house tax on the producers of poor in towns, and an income tax on their feeders in the country.

The LAND TAX is another burden, exclusively affecting real property, which should either be abolished, altogether or levied equally on all classes. Its amount is not so great as the poor's rate, nevertheless it is considerable, as it produces about £1,172,000 a-year.[22]

[22] Porter's Parl. Tables, xii. 36.

The whole ASSESSED TAXES, though not avowedly and exclusively a tax on the landed interest, are, practically speaking, and in reality, a burden on them almost entirely; at least they are so much heavier on the landowners than the inhabitants of towns, that the burden is nothing in comparison on urban indwellers. Had they been practically felt as a grievance by the urban population they would long since have shared the fate of the house tax and been abolished. They have so long been kept up only because, with a few exceptions, they press almost exclusively upon that passive and supine class of landlords, the natural prey of Chancellors of the Exchequer, whom it seems generally impossible by any exertions, or the advent of any danger how urgent soever, to rouse to any common measure of defence. It no doubt sounds well to say that the assessed taxes are laid generally on luxuries, and therefore they are paid equally by all classes which indulge in them. But a closer examination will show that this view is entirely fallacious, and that the subjects actually taxed, though really luxuries to urban, are necessary aids to rural life. For example, a carriage, a riding horse, a coachman, a groom, are really luxuries in town, and their use may be considered as a fair test of affluent, or at least easy circumstances. But in the country they are absolutely necessaries. They are indispensable to business, to health, to mutual communication, to society, to existence. What similarity is there between the situation of a merchant with £1000 a-year, living in a comfortable town house, with an omnibus driving past his door every five minutes, a stand of cabs within call, and dining three days in the week at a club where he needs no servants of his own; and a landholder enjoying the same income, living in a country situation, with no neighbour within five miles, and having six miles to ride or drive to the nearest town or railway station where his business is to be transacted, or where a public conveyance can be reached?

Gardeners, park-keepers, foresters and the like, are generally not luxuries in the country, they are a necessary part of an establishment which is to turn the land to a profitable use. You might as well tax operatives in mills, or miners in collieries, or mechanics in manufactories, as such servants. Yet they are all swept into the assessed taxes, upon the rude and unfounded presumption that they are, equally with a large establishment of men-servants in towns, an indication of affluent circumstances. The window tax is incomparably, more oppressive in country houses than in town ones, from their greater size in general, and being for the most part constructed at a period when no attention was paid to the number of windows, and they were generally made very small from being formed before the window tax was laid on. Taking all these circumstances into view, it is not going too far to assert, that on equal fortunes the assessed taxes are _twice as heavy_ in the country as in towns; and that of £3,312,000 which they produce annually, after deducting the land tax, about £2,500,000, is paid by _landowners either in town or country_. It is inconceivable--no one _a priori_ could credit it--how few householders in town, and not being landowners, pay any assessed taxes at all--or any of such amount as to be really a burden. The total number of houses charged to the window tax, in Great Britain, is 447,000, and the duty levied on them is, £1,613,774, or, at an average, about £3, 10s. a-house, while the number of inhabited houses was, in 1841, 3,164,000, or above seven times the number. The total number charged with one man-servant, is only 49,320, and, _persons keeping men-servants at all_, 110,849,[23] facts indicating how extremely partial is the operation of these taxes, and how severely they fall on the class most heavily burdened in other respects, and therefore least able to bear them.

[23] Porter's Parl. Tables, xii. 37, 42; and xi. 275.

The HIGHWAY RATES are another burden exclusively affecting land, although the whole community derive benefit from their use. This burden, exclusive of the sum levied at turnpike gates, in England amounted to £1,169,891, a-year.[24] This charge, heavy as it is, is felt as the more vexatious, that the rate-payers are not at liberty either to limit the use of the road, for which they pay, to themselves, or to allow it to fall into disrepair. An indictment of the road lies at common law, if it becomes unfit for traffic, even at the instance of any party using the road, though he does not pay any part of the rate. In other words, the neighbouring landholders are compelled to keep up the roads for the benefit of the public generally, who contribute nothing towards their maintenance. This matter becomes the more serious that in consequence of the general adoption and immense spread of railways, the traffic on the principal lines of road in England, has either almost entirely disappeared, or become inadequate to contributing any thing material to the support even of the turnpikes hitherto entirely maintained by them. It is not difficult to foresee, that the time is not far distant when nearly the _whole roads of England will fall as a burden on the rate payers_; for these roads cannot be abandoned, or the country off the railway lines would have no communication at all. And the sums paid by railway companies, how large soever, to landholders, afford no general compensation; for they benefit a few in the close vicinity of the railways only, while the highway rate affects all.

[24] Lords' Report on Burdens on Real Property, 1846, p. vi.

The CHURCH RATE is another burden exclusively affecting land, though all classes obtain the benefit of it in the comfort and convenience of churches. It amounted, in 1839, the last year for which a return was made, to £506,512.[25] Nothing can be clearer than that this is a burden truly affecting real estates. It is entirely different from tithes, which are not, correctly speaking, a burden on land, but a separate estate apart from that of the landlord, which never was his, for which he has given no valuable consideration. But on what principle of justice is the burden of upholding churches exclusively laid on the land, when all classes sit in churches, and enjoy the benefit of their accommodation. The thing is evidently and palpably unjust, and won't bear an argument.

[25] Lords' Report on Burdens on Real Property, 1846, p. 6.

The POLICE, LUNATIC ASYLUM, and BRIDGE RATES, constitute another burden on real property to which no other property is subject, which, though not universally introduced, are very oppressive in those counties where their establishment has been found necessary. Mr. Blamire, a very competent witness, estimates these incidental and partial charges at 2s. 1d. an acre.[26] The land is still liable also to a heavy disbursement on account of the Militia, if that national force should be again called out. There has been no return yet laid before parliament of these partial burdens on land, but they cannot be estimated at less than the church rate, or £500,000 a-year.

[26] Ibid. p. 7.

The STAMP DUTIES, from deeds and instruments which produce annually £1,646,000 a-year, fall for the most part as a burden on real property. This must be evident to every person who considers that real estates in land or houses are the great security on which money is advanced in every part of the country, and the extremely heavy burdens, in the shape of a direct payment in the requisite stamps for deeds to government, is imposed on the transmission and burdening of such property. It is particularly severe, in proportion to the value of the subjects burdened, in the mortgaging or alienating of small freeholds or heritable subjects. It is stated in the Lords' Report, on the burdens affecting real property, "The stamp on a conveyance of a certain length, on a sale of real subjects of the value of £50, would cost 12-1/2 per cent, or £6, 10s.; on a £100 sale, to 5 per cent; on a £200 sale, to 2-1/2 per cent; on a £500 sale, to £1, 14s. 3d. per £100; and above that sum, to one per cent." The weight on the establishment of mortgages, especially on small sums, is not less remarkable. The same report adds, "A mortgage for £50 costs, in stamps, and law expenses, thirty per cent.; a mortgage for £100, twenty per cent.; one for £450 seven per cent.; for £1500 three per cent.; for £12,500 one per cent.; for £25,000 fifteen shillings per cent, and for £100,000 twelve shillings per cent."[27] These burdens on the sale or mortgaging of real property are felt as the more oppressive, when it is recollected that movable property to the greatest amount, as in the public funds, or the like, may be alienated, or burdened in the most valid and effectual manner for the cost of a power of attorney, which is a guinea and half-a-crown per cent. to the broker who executes the transaction. Materials do not exist for separating exactly the deed-stamps falling as a burden on land transmissions and mortgages, from those affecting personal estates; but it is certainly within the mark to say, that they are three-fourths of the whole stamp-duties on deeds and instruments, or £1,200,000 a-year.

[27] Ibid. 1847, p. 8.

Thus, it appears that, setting aside the tithe, as not the land-owner's property, and, therefore, a separate estate, and not, properly speaking, a burden on land; and saying nothing of the malt-tax, which produces annually £4,500,000 a-year, on the supposition that, at present at least, that falls as a burden on the consumer; and saying nothing of the income-tax, which, as will immediately appear, falls as a much severer burden on land-rents than commercial incomes,--these distinct, clear, and indisputable burdens laid on land, from which property of other sorts in England are exempt, stand thus:--

I. Poor's Rate in 1845, a very prosperous year, £6,847,205 II. Land-tax, 1,164,042 III. Highway Rates, 1,169,891 IV. Church Rates, 506,812 V. Police, Lunatic, and Bridge-rates, estimated, 500,000 VI. Excess of assessed taxes falling on land above personal estates, estimated, 1,500,000 VII. Stamp-duties peculiar to land, 1,200,000 ---------- £12,887,950

The rental of real property in England, rated to the Poor's Rates, is £62,540,030;[28] but the real rental, as ascertained by the more rigid and accurate returns for the Income-tax, is £85,802,735. On the first of these sums, the taxes exclusively falling on land amount to a tax of _twenty-five_, on the last of EIGHTEEN per cent. annually. This is in _addition_ to the Income-tax, and all the indirect taxes which the owners of land and houses pay in common with all the rest of the community, and which by it are complained of as so oppressive.

[28] Lords' Report, 1847, p. 7.

Enough, it is thought, has now been said to prove the extreme inequality and injustice with which direct public burdens are levied in this country, and the necessity for a thorough and searching revision of our system of taxation, in this respect, especially since, from the way in which the tide sets, it has become so evident that direct will progressively be more extensively substituted for indirect taxation. But, in addition to these, there are several other circumstances which aggravate fourfold the burdens thus exclusively laid on real property.

I. In the first place, the alterations in the monetary system of the country, by the resumption of cash payments in 1819, followed up in Scotland and Ireland, as well as England, by the stringent Bankers' Act of 1844, has added fully forty per cent. to the weight of all taxes and other burdens, public or private, affecting landed property, because it has altered, to that extent, the value of money, and diminished the price of the articles of rural produce from which the laud-holders' means of paying them are derived. If the prices of wheat and of all other kinds of agricultural produce, for ten years before 1819, and ten years before 1845, be compared, it will at once appear that the difference is even greater than has been here stated.[29] But that consideration is of vital importance in this question, for if the price of all kinds of rural produce has declined nearly as nine to six by the operation of these monetary changes, the weight of debts and taxes, of course, must have been increased in the same proportion. We are not now to enter into any argument as to the expedience or necessity of that great change in our monetary system: we assume it as _a fact_, and refer to it only as rendering imperative a revision of the direct taxes bearing so heavily on the great interests whose means of paying them have been thus so seriously abridged.

[29] Prices of wheat average, per Winchester quarter, in the years after mentioned, viz.:--

_s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ 1809 78 11 1834 46 2 1810 103 3 1835 39 4 1811 92 5 1836 28 6 1812 122 8 1837 56 10 1813 106 6 1838 64 7 1814 72 1 1839 70 8 1815 63 8 1840 66 4 1816 76 2 1841 64 4 1817 94 0 1842 64 6 1818 83 8 1843 54 4 1819 72 3 1844 51 3 ------ ------ Average 87 3 Average 56 5

Tooke on Prices, ii. 389, and Lords' Report on Burdens on Real Property, App. No. 26.

II. In the second place, and this is a most important circumstance, the burdens which have been mentioned all fall as a burden on the landowner, how much soever his property may be charged with mortgages, jointures, or other real burdens. These must all be paid in full by himself alone, how small soever be the fraction of the nominal income of his estate which remains to him after discharging the annual amount of its real burdens. There is no right to deduct poor's rates, land tax, or other burdens affecting land, from mortgages, or even jointure holders, unless they are expressly declared liable to such, which is very seldom the case. These annual charges must all be paid _clear_ to the creditor, without any deduction, except that of the income tax, which the debtor is allowed to retain by the Act imposing it. But this consideration is of vital importance to the landholders when the amount of their mortgages and other real burdens is taken into consideration. Their annual amount has been estimated by very competent judges at _two-thirds_ of the income derived from land, although, as there is no general record in England for real burdens, their amount cannot at present be accurately ascertained. But take it, in order to be within the mark, at _three-fifths_ of the real rental, as ascertained by the income tax returns, these show, as already stated, an income of £85,000,000 annually derived from land. Take three-fifths, or £51,000,000 of this sum as absorbed annually by mortgagers and annuitants holding real and preferable securities over land, and there will remain £34,000,000 annually to the holders of land and houses. Now on this £34,000,000 the real burdens above mentioned, amounting to £12,900,000 a-year, are fastened. If to these be added the income tax paid by the land, amounting, by the income tax returns, to £2,112,000, the clear income derived by landholders from the real property of England, with the _direct_ taxes paid by them, will stand thus--

Clear Income as above £34,000,000 Deduct direct taxes levied exclusively on land, £12,900,000 Income tax paid by land, 2,100,000 --------- 15,000,000 ----------- Remains, £19,000,000

Thus it appears that out of thirty-four millions of clear rental left to the owners of real property in England, no less than fifteen millions, or nearly _a half_, is taken from them annually in the shape of direct taxes which they cannot by any possibility avoid! How long would the commercial or city industry of England stand direct taxes to the amount of 46 per cent on their clear income? If that had been the state of their finances, we should have had no clamour in 1831 for enlarged representation, or in 1846 for the destruction, to their advantage, of all the protection to other branches of industry. We should have had no Anti-Corn Law League subscriptions of £100,000 to buy up all the venal talent in the form of itinerant orators and pamphleteers in the country. We should have had no conversions of conceding premiers by the weight of external agitation. In social, not less than military warfare, the longest purse carries the day; and the party which is the heaviest burdened is sure to be in the end overthrown.

III. The abolition of the Corn Laws, partially at present, entirely at the end of two years and a half, by the bill of 1846, not only has made this enormous burden of 46 _per cent._ on their clear income _deductis debitis_ a permanent load on the landowners, but it has rendered it a hopeless one, because it has destroyed every means which they previously might have possessed of indemnifying themselves for its weight, by sharing its oppression with other classes. This is a matter of the very highest importance, which will soon make itself felt, though, in consequence of the nearly total failure of the potato crop in the west of Great Britain and Ireland, it has not yet been so. The usual resource of persons, who are burdened with heavy payments to government, is to lay as much as they can of it on others, by enhancing as much as possible the price of their produce. It is in this way that indirect taxes fall in general on the consumer; and it is on this principle that, in estimating the burdens exclusively affecting land, we have not included the malt duty, because it is in great part at least paid by the consumers of beer or porter. But, of course, if it becomes from any cause impossible for the party burdened, in the first instance, to raise the price of his produce, or if, on the contrary, he is compelled to lower it, _the whole tax will fall direct on himself_, because he will be without the means of laying it on the purchaser from him.

Now, the abolition of the Corn Laws has done this. In two years and a half, the whole grain of Poland and America will be admitted into the English market at the nominal duty of a shilling a quarter. It will be impossible for the farmers and landowners after that to keep up the price of grain of any sort in the British market beyond the prices in Prussia, and with the addition of 5s. a quarter for the cost of transit, and perhaps half as much for the profit of the importer. Wheat, beyond all question, will fall on an average of years to forty shillings a quarter, barley and oats to twenty. This is just as certain as the parallel reduction of average prices of wheat from 87s. a quarter to 56s. has been by the money law of 1819. Accordingly, now that the stress is over, they have no longer an interest to conceal or pervert the truth; the anti-corn law journals are the first to proclaim this result _as certain_, and they coolly recommend the English farmers to abandon altogether the cultivation of wheat, which can no longer be expected to pay, and to lay out their lands in pasture grass and the producing of _garden stuffs_. But amidst this general and now admitted decline in the price of grain, the 46 per cent. of direct burdens on land will continue unchanged; happy if it does not receive a large augmentation. The effect of this will be to augment the weight of the burdens to which they are already subjected on the landholders by at least twenty per cent., and, in addition, to _throw upon them the whole malt tax_, now amounting to £4,500,000 a-year. The moment the British farmer is obliged to lower the price of his barley to the level of the continental nations, where labour is so much cheaper, and rents comparatively light, the whole malt tax falls, without deduction or limitation, on British agriculture.

IV. The income tax, though apparently a burden equally affecting all classes, in reality attaches with much more severity to the landed than to any other class. There is, indeed, an advantage unduly enjoyed by capitalists of all sorts, landed or moneyed, in comparison with annuitants or professional men, which, as will immediately appear, loudly calls for a remedy. But, as compared with the merchant or moneyed man, who derives his income from trade or realised capital in a movable form, the landholder is, in every direct taxation, exposed to a most serious disadvantage. His income cannot be concealed, and it is returned by others than himself. The farmer or tenant, who has no interest in the matter, returns his landlord's rent. The trader, shopkeeper, or merchant estimates and returns his own income. The possessions of the first, and their annual rental, are universally known, and concealment as to them is impossible or sure of detection; the gains of the last are entirely secret, and wrapped up, even to the owner, in books or accounts, generally unintelligible in all cases but those of considerable merchants--to all but the persons who prepared them. Whoever is practically acquainted with human nature will at once perceive the immense effect which this difference must have on the amount of the burden, in appearance the same, as it affects the different classes of society.

And the result of this difference appears in the most decisive manner, in the amount of the sums paid by the different classes of society, as shown by the income tax returns. From them, it appears that the contributions from commerce, trades, and professions of _all sorts_, is not _quite half_ of that obtained from landed property. The first is, in round numbers, £2,700,000; the second, £1,500,000.[30] But let it be recollected that the £1,541,000 a-year, which, in 1845, was paid by professional men of all descriptions, in Great Britain, included, besides merchants and traders, the whole class of professional men not traders, as lawyers, attorneys, physicians, &c. At the very lowest computation their share of this must amount to £341,000 a-year. There remains then £1,200,000 as the contribution of trade and commerce, of all kinds, from Great Britain, while that from land is £2,670,000 a-year, or _considerably more than double_. Can it be believed that this is founded on a fair return of incomes by the commercial classes? Are they prepared to admit that their property and income, and consequent interest and title to sway in the state, is not half of that which is derived from land? Or do they shelter themselves under the comfortable assurance that their real income is incomparably greater, and that they quietly escape with a half or a third of the income tax which they ought to pay? We leave it to the trading class, and their abettors in the press, to settle this question with the commissioners of income tax throughout the country. We mention the fact, that trade and commerce do not pay half the income tax that land does, as a reason, among the many others which exist, for a thorough and radical reform of our financial system, so far as direct taxation is concerned.

[30] Net amount of income tax for year ending 5th April, 1845:--

England. Scotland. Total. Schedule A, Land rents, £2,112,072 £253,976 £2,366,048. -------- B, Tenants 292,646 22,961 315,607. -------- C, Annuities, funds, &c. 766,066 ------ 766,066. -------- D, Trades and professions, 1,424,017 117,953 1,541,970. -------- E, Offices, Pensions, &c., 305,401 8,500 313,901. ---------- -------- ----------- £4,900,202 £403,390 £5,303,502.

Whoever considers seriously, and in an impartial spirit, the various particulars which have now been stated, will not only cease to wonder at the frequent, it may almost be said universal, embarrassment of the landed proprietors, but he will arrive at the conclusion, that if they continue much longer unchanged, they must terminate in their general ruin. We say _general_ ruin, because it will not be universal. The _great_ landowners, the magnates, whether moneyed or territorial, of the land will alone survive the general wreck. They will, by degrees, swallow up all the smaller estates in their neighbourhood; and it will come to be literally true in Britain what was said, by a Roman emperor, of Gaul, in the decline of the empire, "That the estates of the rich go on continually increasing and absorbing all lesser estates around them, till they come to the estate of _another as rich as themselves_." With direct taxes, amounting to 50 or 60 per cent. on the disposable income, which, under the change of prices, induced by the change in the corn laws, they will very soon be, even without any addition from farther taxes, it is wholly impossible that any landowner who does not possess enormous tracts of country, or vast funded or moneyed property in addition to his territorial possessions, can avoid insolvency. What the effect of the total destruction of the middle class of British landholders must be on the balance of the constitution, and the state of society in these islands, it is not our present purpose to inquire. Suffice it to say, that it is precisely the state of things which signalised the later stages of the Roman empire, and coincides with so many other circumstances in marking the striking analogy between our present condition and that which proved fatal to the ancient masters of the world.

Well may the Lords' Committee on the burdens affecting landed property have said, "Neither the law nor the spirit of the constitution originally contemplated so partial a system of taxation."[31] In truth, originally some of the heaviest present exclusive burdens on real property were born equally by personal estates. "The poor law of Elizabeth," says the report, "and the land tax of William and Mary, _embraced every species of income_; but in consequence of the comparative facility of rating visible property, and the small amount of income derived from other sources in the early period of their assessment, personalty seems to have escaped its legal share of contribution to the public service. The liability of stock in trade, however, was continued by law to a late period, and is, up to the present day, only suspended by an annual act of exemption." The Committee here point out, or rather hint at the real cause of the extraordinary exemption from their due share of the public burdens which has grown up insensibly in favour of movable property. Land has two admirable qualities in the estimation of Chancellors of the Exchequer. It can _neither be concealed nor removed_. Movable estates, stock in trade, are susceptible of both. The landholder has no secret invisible funds which he can bring forth when desired in the form of convenient loans to government to meet the state necessities. He has only a visible fixed estate, which can neither be concealed nor withdrawn from its annual burdens. Hence the influence and exemptions of the one, and the injustice experienced by and burdens of the other.

[31] Report, p. 9.

But in addition to this, there is another circumstance which has powerfully contributed to establish this extraordinary and iniquitous exemption of personal property from direct taxation. This is the difficulty which in practice amounts to an impossibility of getting by any means at the real amount of rateable personal property. The Commissioners of the Income Tax through the country will have no difficulty in understanding what is here meant. All the efforts of government and their official organs to ascertain the real amount of assessable movable property, have been insufficient to accomplish that end. Doubtless there are in the commercial and professional class many just and honourable men who give a true account to the last farthing of their gains. These are men, the honour and support of the country, whose word is their bond, and who may confidently be relied on to speak the truth under any circumstances. But, unhappily, experience has too clearly proved that the facility of concealing gains derived from stock in trade, and thus withdrawing it from its just liability for assessment, is too strong a temptation to be resisted. The proof of this is decisive. The returns of the income tax show £175,000,000 of annual income rated to that assessment, while only £1,541,000 was in 1845 paid by the whole professional persons in Great Britain. Of this £1,541,000, only £1200,000, at the very utmost can be estimated as coming from commercial or trade incomes, which, at sevenpence in the pound, corresponds to about £40,000,000 of annual income. Is it possible to believe that the whole commercial and trading classes in Great Britain, whose wealth is in every direction purchasing up the estates of the landed proprietors in the island, only enjoy forty out of one hundred and seventy-five millions of the rateable national income? Have they less than a fourth of the whole income rated to the income tax? If they have no more, they certainly make a good use of what they have, and must deem themselves singularly fortunate in that happy exemption from taxation which has enabled them, with less than a fourth of the general income, to get the command of the state, and buy up the properties of all the other classes.

There is one peculiarity in the income tax as at present established, which is productive of the greatest injustice, and loudly calls for immediate remedy. This consists in the taxing _all incomes at the same rate_, whether derived from professional income, annuity, land, or realized funds. This is just another instance of the careless and reckless way in which our system of direct taxation has at different times been framed, without any regard to principle, and alternately unjustly favouring or grossly oppressing every class in society, _except the great capitalists_. They have been always and unduly considered. What can be more unjust than to tax every man of the same income at the same rate, whether it is derived from land or funded property, worth thirty years' purchase, or railway or bank stock worth twenty, or an annuity worth five, or a precarious professional income, which would not bring, from the uncertainty of life and the public favour, or the winds or monetary changes, above _two or three_? Under the present most unjust system, they all pay alike on their income, that is, some pay about FIFTEEN TIMES as much on what they are worth in the world in comparison with others! A man who derives £300 a-year from the three per cents. on land has a capital stock worth about £10,000. He pays as much, and no more, as a poor widow, just dropping into the grave, who has a jointure of £300 a-year, for which no insurance company in the kingdom would give her above £500, or a hard-working lawyer or country surgeon with the same income, whose chances of life and business are not worth three years' purchase. The gross injustice of this inequality requires no illustration.

Nor is it any answer to this to say, that if the professional and commercial classes are unduly oppressed by the income tax, they, are proportionally benefited by their general exemption from the heavy, direct taxation which in other respects weighs down the land; and that the one injustice may be set off against the other. We protest against the system of setting off one injustice against another: there is no compensation of evils in an equitable administration. In the present instance there can be no compensation, for the acts of injustice are committed against different classes. It is the trading classes which enjoy the means, from the occult nature of their gains, of evading by fallacious returns the income tax. The honest and honourable pay it to the last farthing: it is the _dishonest_ who escape. The persons upon whom the levying the income tax in its present form operates with the most cruel severity are the professional men and annuitants. They cannot evade it, as the trading classes can. Their gains are generally known: if they are at all eminent or prosperous, the kindness or envy of the public generally helps them to at least a half more than they really enjoy. Merchants or shopkeepers are less in the public eye; and even when most prominent, their transactions are so various and wide-spread, that no one but themselves can estimate their profits. Every one knows, or can easily guess, what Dr. Chambers or the Attorney-General make a-year; but it would puzzle the most experienced heads on 'Change to say what were the yearly profits of the great bankers, merchants and manufacturers.

There is another enormous injustice connected with the income tax, and indeed all the direct taxes to Government, which loudly calls for remedy--_Ireland pays none of them_. It is high time that England and Scotland should rouse themselves to a sense of this most unreasonable and unjust exemption, and unite their strength by the proper constitutional means to remove it. We are always told Ireland cannot afford to pay any direct taxes. What, then, comes of its £12,000,000 of rental? Scotland, with little more than _a third_ of that land rent, pays it and the assessed taxes besides, without either complaint or difficulty. But it is said the landlords are so eat up with mortgages, that they have not a fourth part of their nominal incomes left to live upon. That is a good reason for only making them pay, as under the income tax they would, on the free balance, _deductis debitis_. But, in the name of Heaven, why should the bondholders pay nothing? If they sit at home at ease in Dublin, Cork, or Belfast, and quietly enjoy £9,000,000 out of the £12,000,000 of Irish rental, why cannot _they_ as well pay the income tax as their brethren in London, Liverpool, or Glasgow? The bondholders of Ireland _alone_, would, if they paid an income tax, contribute more to the common necessities of the State than _the whole land and industry of Scotland put together_. So vast are the natural resources which Providence has bestowed on that fickle and misguided people, and so few those enjoyed by the hardy and industrious Scotch mountaineers.

On what conceivable ground of justice or reason can this most monstrous and invidious exemption in favour of Ireland from income and assessed taxes be defended? Is it that Ireland with its 12,000,000 arable acres, and 5,000,000 of mountain and waste, has fewer natural resources than Scotland with its 4,500,000 of arable acres, and 12,000,000 of mountain and waste? Is it that 8,500,000 persons now in Ireland, cannot pay even what 2,900,000 now pay in Scotland? Is it that Ireland is so singularly peaceable and loyal, and gives so little anxiety or disquiet to the rest of the empire, that it must be rewarded for its admirable and dutiful conduct by an absolute exemption from all direct taxation to government? Is it that the troops required to be kept in it are so few, and in Scotland so numerous, that the former country may be liberated from taxation, while the latter is subjected to it in full extent? Is it that industry in towns in Ireland is so great, and manufacturing skill so transcendant, that it is entitled to be liberated from direct taxation in consideration of the vast amount of its indirect custom-house duties, in comparison of which those of London, yielding £12,000,000; of Liverpool, yielding £4,500,000 a-year; or Glasgow and the Clyde harbours, yielding £1,200,000; and Leith, yielding £589,000, are as nothing? Or is it that this extraordinary exemption is the reward of tumult, disaffection, and treason; of turbulent demagogues and factious priests, and an indolent people; of active and incessant combination for the purposes of evil, and total inability to combine for the purposes of good? And is it the first fruits of the regeneration of government by the Reform Bill, that it can raise a revenue only from the loyal and pacific and industrious part of the empire, and must proclaim relief from all taxation as the reward of tumult, disorder, murder, monster meetings, and treason? We leave it to the advocates of the present system of government, or those who established it, to answer these questions. We did neither the one nor the other, but have constantly opposed both; and Great Britain, in the system of direct taxation we have now exposed, is reaping the fruits of the changes she has thought proper to introduce.

Lastly, there is another peculiarity of the income tax which requires revision, and that is this;--at present it descends only to £150 a-year income; and every one practically acquainted with these matters, knows that this, with the trading classes at least, whose gains can be concealed, amounts to a practical exemption, generally speaking, of all under at least £200 a-year. Nothing can be plainer than that, as matters stand at least, this exemption of all below such line is invidious, unjust, and, if persisted in, will lead to ruinous consequences. No reason can be assigned for it which will bear examination; for it is to be supposed the practical necessity of conciliating the ten pounders, the great majority of whom escape the tax altogether in this way, will not, in public at least, be assigned as a reason, how cogent soever it may be felt and candidly acknowledged in private. Why should a man, whose income, perhaps derived from land or funded property below £150, pay nothing, while a hard working clerk, attorney, or country surgeon, who makes £155, and is not worth a tenth part of the other's realised capital, pays _income-tax_? It is in vain to say you must draw a line somewhere. So you must, but you must not draw it in a way to do gross and palpable injustice,--to exempt the comparatively affluent, and oppress the industrious poor. There is a vital distinction, which it would be well if the income tax recognised, between income, of any amount, derived from realised property and from professional exertions. By all means give the humble professional classes the benefit of this distinction. But to draw the line, not according to the _quality_ of the income as derived from capital or labour, but from its _absolute amount_, is arbitrary, invidious, and unjust.

The great advantage to be derived from making the income tax, modified as now suggested, descend lower in society is, that it would _interest a larger number in guarding against its abuse_. At present, it is said, there are three hundred and twenty thousand persons rated to the income tax in Great Britain, but not half of them really pay on _their own account_. Many pay the income tax of _one_; as a landlord's whole tenants for his rent, though not more than one or two, perhaps none, certainly not half the number, are separate persons whose incomes are really made liable. But can any thing be more unjust than to select in this way a particular class, not more than a _two-hundredth_ part of the community, and subject them and _them alone_ to the heaviest of the direct taxes? It is just the privileged class of old France over again, with this difference, that the privileged class in England is distinguished by being obliged _to bear_ not to _avoid_ the hated taille. Nevertheless, nothing is more certain than that, as long as this invidious and unjust accumulation of the whole direct tax is on one class of 150,000 persons, it will be highly popular with the remaining 29,000,000, and that the popular journals will never cease to resound with the propriety of extending still farther the _partial_ burden of direct, and the _general exemption_ under the name of Free Trade from the indirect taxes.

The increase of direct taxation, till it proved fatal to industry, population, national strength, and every thing save great capital, was the cause of the ruin of the Roman empire. Many circumstances, alas! concur in showing, and will ere long demonstrate to the most inconsiderate, that we are fast following in the same direction; and if so, we shall beyond all question share the same fate. The extension of the income tax, on a graduated scale, to persons as low even as £50 a-year, is the only way to arrest this great and growing evil. What is wanted is not the money to be drawn from these poorer but more numerous classes, but the _interesting them in resisting_ its undue extension. If 150,000 persons only pay the income tax, it is very likely ere long to be raised to 10 or 15 per cent. _If a million pay it, no such extension need be dreaded._ No matter though the additional 850,000 pay only 10s. a piece, or £425,000 in all: their doing so would probably save the state from ruin. What is wanted is not their money, but their breath; not their contributions, but their clamour. They have a majority of votes in the constituencies. In a serious conflict their voice would be decisive in favour of any side they espoused. Interested to prevent the confiscation of property, they will effectually do so. Exempted from direct taxation, they will promote its increase till it has swallowed up the state, and themselves in its ruin, as it did the Roman empire.

So much has been said on the inequalities and injustice of the present system of direct taxation established in Great Britain, that little room remains for the true principles on the subject; but fortunately, like a beacon, it shows what rock should be avoided in the course. A system of direct taxation would not be far from just, which in every respect was precisely the reverse of that which at present exists amongst us.

I. The first thing to be done is to equalise the succession tax, lay it equally on land and personal estate, and lower it to the whole _one-half_. Five per cent. in succession to strangers; two-and-a-half to relations; and a half per cent. to parents or brothers, alike in land and money, would probably augment the produce of the tax, and certainly greatly relieve a most meritorious class of society, the representatives of small capitals.

II. All direct taxes should be levied equally on landed and personal estates, and, subject to the distinction after-mentioned, equally on professional income, as the fruit of realised capital. This rule should apply to all local or parochial, as well as public burdens. The effect of it would be to let in, as taxable income, in addition to the £2,666,000 now derived from land, a sum at least as large derived from personal estates or incomes. It would therefore lower this most oppressive tax, supposing its absolute amount undiminished _one-half_. The same would be the case with land tax, highway rates, church rates, police rates, &c. They would all be lowered a-half to the persons at present burdened with them, and that simply by the adoption of the just principle, that all fortunes in the same situation should be taxed alike for the general service of the state, and that the commercial classes who create the poor, and are enriched by their labour, should contribute equally with the landed to their support.

III. In levying the income tax, a different rate should be imposed on income, according as it is derived or not derived from realised capital. If it is so it should be taxed alike for all direct taxes. But if it is derived from annuity or professions, a lower rate should be adopted. If the _property_ tax is 5 per cent. the _income_ tax should not exceed 2-1/2 _per cent._; whatever the one is the other should be _a-half_ of it only. This modification of an impost now felt as so oppressive by all subjected to it, would go far towards reconciling the numerous class of small traders, the great majority in all urban constituencies, to the change--to its continuance, and also justify its extension to all incomes above £50 or £100 a-year. Without that extension it will inevitably degenerate into a confiscation of property above a certain level.

IV. Stamps or conveyances, or burdening of property, should be the same, and _not higher_, on personalty or landed estates. For the additional security of the latter, the borrower pays amply in the greater expense of the law deeds requisite to constitute effectual securities over real estates than over stock or movable funds. Stamps on bills, &c., which are advances for a short period only, should be rated at a widely different scale from that adopted in permanent loans. But there is no reason why securities over real estates should require to be written on paper bearing a higher stamp than those over personal effects.

V. The present system of the _assessed taxes_ should be altered, so as to make it include all classes alike, and not, as at present, fall twice as heavily on the inhabitants of the country as those of towns. This may be done best by making these taxes a certain proportion of the _value of the house_ inhabited by the party, as rated for the property tax--perhaps a fourth or fifth part, abolishing all other assessed taxes. This would reach all classes alike in town and country: for whatever may be said as to doing without an establishment in town, no one can do even there without a house. And the rich misers who live in a poor lodging and spend nothing, would be effectually reached in the heavy property tax, on their funds, wherever invested.

VI. To obviate the innumerable frauds daily practised in the concealment of professional incomes, especially by small traders, a power should be given to the Commissioners in all cases where they were dissatisfied with the return of professional income, to assess the party for income _at five times the value at which his house is rated_. On this principle if a lawyer or physician lives in a house rated at £100 a-year, he would pay on £500 a-year as income: if he occupied one rated at £2000, he would be taxed on £10,000. If the tax on realised property was 5 per cent. which it will soon be, that would just subject the professional one to two and a half. Perhaps it would be better to adopt some such general principle for all cases of professional income, and avoid the _requiring returns at all_.

In some cases the above plan might be adopted as a substitute for the income tax, or rather as a mode of levying it on _professional_ persons. Those whose income is derived from land, the funds, or other realised property, would be entitled to exemption or deduction, upon production of the proper evidence that they were rated for the property tax at the higher rate.

VII. _Ireland_ should pay the income and all direct taxes, at least on land, bonds, and other _realised property_, as well as the assessed and other direct taxes, just as Great Britain. Nothing can be advanced, founded either in reason or justice, in favour of the further continuance of their present most invidious and unjust exemption.

We have thus laid before our readers a just and reasonable system of direct taxation, from which the landed interest, now so unjustly oppressed, would derive great relief, simply by doing equal justice to them and the other classes in the state. The amount of injustice which such a system would remove, may be accurately measured by the amount of resistance which the system we have now advocated would doubtless experience, just as the injustice of the exemption from direct taxation enjoyed by the nobles and clergy of old France was measured by the obstinate resistance they made to an equalisation of the public burdens. Men cling to nothing with such a tenacity as unjust privileges and exemptions. But the changes we recommend have one lasting recommendation: they are founded on obvious justice. They go only to levy all taxes alike on all classes, in proportion, as nearly as may be, to their ability to pay them. And we implore the Conservative body, with whom we have so long acted, to consider whether it would not be far wiser to unite their strength to convince the country of the justice and expedience of some, at least, of these changes, than to follow the example of the Free Traders in urging the repeal of the malt tax, which could only be followed, as no addition to the indirect taxes is to be thought of, by a vast increase of the _income tax_, two-thirds of which would fall on the land itself.

And now a single word in conclusion on ourselves. We need not say how long and steadily we ranged ourselves on the side of the late Premier, or how widely the principles now contended for differ from those which he has carried into effect. We are actuated by no spirit of hostility either to the late or the present Government. Our course is that of freedom and independence. During Sir R. Peel's long and able contest with the movement party from 1838 to 1841, we stood faithfully by him, and that when many who have been most courtly during the subsequent days of his power, were not the least intemperate leaders on the other side. From respect for his talents and gratitude for his public services when in opposition, and a natural reluctance to believe that we had been mistaken in one whom we so long acknowledged as the leader of the Conservative party, we tempered our political discussion during the last twelvemonths with more forbearance than we should have done under other circumstances. But the die is now cast: it has been cast by himself. We can feel no dependence in a minister who introduces measures directly at variance with the whole principles of his public life: and we earnestly trust that by far the greater portion of the true-hearted and loyal men who, from over-confidence in their chief, have allowed themselves to be compromised in the late political transactions, will not again commit themselves to any leader in whose candour and integrity they cannot thoroughly rely.

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_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._

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