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in her present state it would be " imprudent to send her to sea on a lengthened voyage ; "the decks are not tight , and a great deal of inferior material and workmanship have been used in them , " and " there is a considerable amount of work necessary to be performed before the ship can be trusted on a lengthened voyage across the Atlantic , which work would require a considerable time to execute in an efficient manner ; and even with this done the ship would not be what the contract requires her to be , and deficiencies in other respects would be a constant source of expense and annoyance to the company . " A fine stoi * y this for the bears who
confidino- shareholders and for the " will be on the look-out for an opportunity of buying the concern cheap , and starting some new company under the auspices of Dodge , Diddledom , and other friends of the contractor tribe . All that the surveyors report may be true , and the ship still worth rescuing . No doubt has been thrown upon the principle or the main features of construction ; but to do what is required to the vessel , and provide additional boilers for the engines ' , will make a hole in another £ 100 , 000 , or we shall be much mistaken . There are about 3 , 000 shareholders in the company , and they might easily obtain the money required if they would first purge their direction .
They should forthwith appoint a committee of investigation , trace out all the faults that have been committed , and track them home to the parties who committed them . Some of their directors they will probably find were dummies ; others may have joined Mr . Magnus in protesting against what was wrong . Let them carefully separate these sheep from the goats , and when they have ascertained the men who are to blame , let them declare that they will not consent to the raising of another farthing until they have left the board . One single act of something like justice and intelligence on the part of a body of shareholders would do much to redeem the Jointrstock system from the disgrace into which it has fallen . Shareholders
who cannot attend the next meeting of the Great Eastern Company should send their proxies to men pledged to inquiry and determined not to screen any blunderers or evil-doers . The big ship may be saved yet by honesty and good management : and the public really want an example of shareholders who have enough pluck and sense to rescue themselves from contractors and boards .
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WHO RECEIVES THE TAXES ? Proceeding now to examine the question , " Who receives the taxes ? " or the produce of taxation , we must beg our readers to remember that we did not take to the subject spontaneously . It was forced on the public notice by the extraordinary assertions of certain class-journals , which , for . the behoof of the aristocracy , think it no scandal to libel the multitude , and no robbery to plunder them . These journals made it out that the taxes
were paid by the rich , and were appropriated to national services . In their pages every kind of imputation against the bulkof the people—though it is either a condemnation of the existing system of Government , which , professing to make the people wise and good , only degrades them , or a censure on the Creator of mankind—is greedily inserted ; We have a very different object in vjfew , however , and a much more noble one than retorting on , a class the abuse they unceremoniciely heap on the multitude and the works of the Creator . We refer to their tactics only to show , while we will not imitate them , that wo are aware of their aim . Their poisoned arrows will wound their masters .
Our first object is to ascertain how much of tho immense revenue , oollected from those who have no other income but wages by tho fiat of tho Government , goes back to this large class ; and we pxust first state that the amount of what is taken is grievously underrated when it is confined to the public revenue . In the last year of grace—not the financial year— -1858 , the net receipt of income , draw
after repayment of allowances , discounts , - backs , bounties , &o ., &e ., a ll of which wo thought had been , and ! certainly ought , to be , abolished , was £ 66 , 280 , 995 . We shall at once make our leaders sensible that this is only a part of taxation , when wo state that the cost of the police , in England and Wales alone , was in the same year , . £ 1 , 447 , 019 , Of this , however , £ 288 , 689 was paid out of tho public revenue , above referred to ,
which reduces the actual charge for police , more than the revenue , to £ 1 , 158 , 380 . Then we must add [ all the borough , county , and poor rates , &c . Now , taking only the sums levied as poor rates in 1858— , £ 8 , 188 , 880— £ 1 , 158 , 380 of this sum has just been mentioned as the cost of the-police , and for our purpose we put the amount at £ 7 , 030 , 500 . We do not know exactly the amount of all the other rates , but we shall not overstate them when we say , including all that , are ' paid in Scotland and Ireland , barony , poor and other rates , that they are not less than £ 5 , 000 , 000 a-year . To this we must add , in reason and justice , all the money paid by any kind of tax , mortuary dues , and others , to the State Church ; and , including Scotland and Ireland , we cannot put the sum down at less than £ 10 , 000 , 000 a year . Every sixpence of these payments comes out of the produce of living labourers—ancient endowments , of which much may be said , being only a legal claim enforced by the State on the annual produce of industry . Now , to sum up roughly and generally , the whole amount of taxation raised by the authority of the State in 1858 , chiefly from those who have no other income than wages , without including the large sums collected from them in the price of articles to remunerate the dealers who collect indirect taxes , was—Revenue paid into the Exchequer .. £ G 0 , 28 O , 90 ;> Cost of the Police ... . 1 , 158 , 380 Amount of poor rates ... i 7 , 030 , 500 Other rates of all kinds .. 5 , 000 , 000 Collected for State Church 1 . 0 , 000 , 000 je 80 , 47 . ' '» , 875 We are aware , and must state , that a small part of this revenue is collected by the income-tax from the servants of the State , and ought to be deducted , and that a still larger portion is collected from them and other receivers of taxes and rates , on the articles they consume , subject to indirect taxation ; but we have no means of ascertaining the amount of the latter . The , amount of the former for the year 1858 was £ 439 , 140 . At the same time , the total we have put down is undoubtedly a narrow estimate of the sum annually extorted of the produce of labour by the action of the State ; but we are content to be moderate , as our case does not depend on one or two hundred thousand pounds , more or less . We may mention , in corroberation of our view , that the balance-sheet of the Government for the year ending March , 1859 , showed a total sum of £ 100 , 312 , 638 ; and it is Jiard to believe that of this sum something more than the . £ 66 , 286 , 995 did not cleave to the adhesive hands of the Treasury . But , assuming that £ 89 , 475 , 875 is annually collccted'by the State from the produce of labour , the question is , how much of it goes back to those who have no income but wages ? First , we put down the sum of . £ 3 , 845 , 107 , expended on the maintenance of the poor . We will not put down the whole sum of money said in the returns to be expended on relief , because much of that goes to other classes , and for other purposes , than the mere relief of the jioor . Next we estimate the number of soldiers , ^ exclusive of those paid out of the revenues of India , at 110 , 000 ; of sailors and marines , at 03 , 000 , and of all other labourers pmp loyed by the State , including those in tho dockyards— 10 , 850 , iu tho police of tho Empire 31 , 600— at 45 , 000 , making . a total of 218 , 000 . Now , assuming that each one of these receives of tho public money-, iu wages and victuals , £ 60 per annum , this will make a total of £ 13 , 080 , 000 . In order to include all ' ¦ the housekeepers , doorkecpox's , chamber cleaners , and others the State may employ , wo have no objection to carry the figures up to 15 , 000 , 000 , which will be an ample allowance for tho sum which the State returns as wages to tho class which lives on wages , or one-sixth of the whole ; It must , at the same time , bo remembered that from ovei'y one of those men , as the rule , the State exacts a liard day ' s work for its daily pay . In oases of forced service , as in tho iiavv , ana in tho army , into which men are beguiled and then constrained to servo for a considerable time limited , or for an , unlimited period , the wages aro really below tho value of tho services . The State , however , has tho privilege of being both rapacious and unjust . That it misdirects tho labour it hires ia no fault of tho labourers . Tharo is ono peculiarity , however , of its service which deserves notice , In all other employments the labourers have a chance , by their own industry and
care , to become capitalists and masters , but till within a very short period it was almost impossible for a mere sailor or soldier ever to rise to the rank of an officer . Now adding to the sum the State returns to the multitude as wages'the sum it . allots to paupers we shall have £ 18 , 845 , 107 as the laboux-er ' s share of the taxation he pays . In order to avoid cavil we have no objection still further to swell this total sum , and for the sake of speaking in round numbers , and fixing the facts on the memory , we will say that the State really returns to the labouring classes £ 20 , 000 , 000 of the sum it takes from them . The remainder of the £ 89 , 475 , 875 is simply a-transfer by the authority of the State of so much of the produce of the labourers to oilier classes .
First , there is a transfer of £ 28 , 751 , 479 to the owners of the National Debt , amongst whom are very few of the class who derive their income from wages . Next comes the sum devoted to the Civil List and civil charges of all kinds , which includes her Majesty , the royal family , the Court officers , the ; persons who receive pensions for naval and military services , for civil services , for judicial services , as compensation on account of offices discontinued , and for no services at all . This head of civil charges includes , too , trie salaries of various officers with real or ' nominal duties— -such as Lord
Monteagle , who is . called Comptroller-General of the Exchequer , and . has , for filling the nominal office ,.. £ 2 , 000 a-year . It includes audit officers , lunacy commissioners , &c , &c , not one of whom , if we except six trumpeters and a few servants , can be considered as belonging to the classes who live on wages . There is also the salaries and allowances to the diplomatic class , to the judges and officers of the courts of law— -including heaps of compensations for abolished sinecures . The total sum set 'down under this head is X' 9 , O 85 , 636 . If it be said , as it may , that many of ; the persons receiving portions of this money—such as the
judges—really belong to the wages class ,-we must add that their wages are not determined by the competition of the market—of man with man- ^ -but by ah aristocratic standard , and , consequently , "are totally different in amount and in nature from the wages received by productive labourers . They are settled by a standard of slightly curbed rapacity , not justice . If they wore settled by competition , they would not be higher than the wages of other labour , for there is no reason whatever , naturally , why the man who provides subsistence should be worse paid than he who only contributes to its being consumed in safety .
On looking over the various civil services performed , for which a large part of this £ 9 , 085 , 636 is expended , there aro many tliat are no longer beneficial , or never wore . Take , as an example , the salaries — £ 4 , 700 — of the inspectors of corn returns . When tho corn laws were in existence , on these returns were founded the duties on imported . corn . They were a necessary part of that abominable law , ' and their functions censed to be of the smallest even legal utility when that law was abolished ; nevertheless , they nrc still retained , -like many other useless persons , ana receive part of the money annually transferred from tho producers to the non-prodlicorri . Or ,
toko as an example the £ 67 , 847 which the Board of Trade annually costs . It wns J ' onnorly proposed , because trade ought " not to bo interfered with , that , jthe Board should bo abolished ; but modern meddling legislation—regulating railroads , ships , &c ., &c . —hhs multip lied tlio functions of this Hoard , and it is now one of tho most active and most troublesome of Mill tho dena ' rUnonts oi Government . Tho General Kogistor Office , lop , lor tho three kingdoms , costing £ 47 , 762 , i& entirely a novel creation , of which the functions ore moro qontinually puffed than they arc signally useful . Biiico 1841 ) tho expense of all these civil services has increased £ 2 , 300 , 000 por annum , and the whole of this increase has been an additional transfer from the class of productive labourers to
tho unproductive classes . Tho amount of monoy voted for tho army , 1858-9 , was £ 12 , 015 , 746 , of which £ 4 . 007 , 735 was for works . The sum devoted to tho men » according to tho former estimate of £ 60 n hen »» which is an exaggeration as to the soldier , woula be 6 , 600 , 000 , leaving £ 3 , 400 , 000 of tho sum transferred to the officer classes , who , as tho rule , arc not connected with tho class having no income *
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1322 THE LEADEK , [ No . 506 . Dec . 3 , 185 ft .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 3, 1859, page 1322, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2323/page/14/
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