to a high Tariff, which has a most pernicious effect in placing them beyond the means of the poor to enjoy. If we had space we should speak of them at length. Butter, cheese, cocoa, fish, eggs, fruit, honey, lard, tallow, maccaroni, onions, pearlbarley, pickles, potatoes, rice, sausages, tapioca, malt, tobacco, &c. &c. These articles, with those already enumerated, constitute the chief means of human subsistence in the present state of society, and therefore mainly consumed by the poorer classes. Every one of them are taxed and taxed heavily. Thus it is not the means of the people that are taxed, but their NECESSITIES; and hence it is that the rich grow richer, and the poor, poorer. These facts illustrate the truth of a saying, of a celebrated London writer: "The uniform spirit and tendency of the legislation of the last quarter of a century, has been to shift the burdens of the country from the shoulders of those who enjoy its emoluments, and to place them upon the necks of those whose only inheritance is incessant labourlabour so ill-requited, as barely to furnish the ordinary means of subsistence." This last winter Lord Brougham is reported to have said, in speaking of the connexion that existed between taxation and suffering, "As soon as you tell the foreigner who lands on the British shores, and witnesses the unparalleled distress of the lower classes, that government imposes a tax upon all the necessaries of life, and the more indispensible the article, the heavier the tax; he must have been taught in a

strange school of political economy, if he does not cease to be astonished that so much distress exists. In our oppressive legislation he discovers an adequate cause for all this suffering."

THE EXCISE DUTIES still remain to be considered. To meet the extravagant demands of the Government, Parliament has been called on to exert all its ingenuity in discovering new schemes of taxation, until it has become next to impossible, to engage in any business, profession, or pursuit, without being followed by the tax gatherer, close at the heels. "Excise Duties," says M'Culloch, "now introduced into England by the Long Parliament, in 1643, being laid, on the makers and venders of ale, beer, cider and perry. The Royalists soon after followed the example of the Republicans; both sides declaring that the excise should be continued no longer than the termination of the war. But it was found to be too productive a source of revenue, to be again relinquished."-Blackstone also has the following, "From its first original to the present time, its very name has been odious to the people of England,"-" But it has been continued to the present time, and furnishes nearly a third part of the entire revenue of the kingdom," (M'Culloch). The excise duties are taxes upon articles produced, and consumed at home, and upon the various kinds of business transactions carried on in the three kingdoms-I have before me a complete list of all excise duties; published by the Board of Trade

in 1832-34.-But it is too voluminous to be extracted. I shall speak briefly of those features only which operate with particular severity upon the lower classes. I shall omit any notice of the duties upon spirits and wines-as O'Connell remarked when Sir Robert Peel proposed in his new scale of duties to increase the tax upon Irish spirits, "I make no objection to that: you will do no harm to Ireland by making it expensive as well as contemptible, to be a brute.-But God forgive you for taking to yourself any credit for helping Ireland by it."

But all dealers in tea, coffee, sugar, &c. makers of soap, glass, vinegar and other articles, so necessary to the comfort of the poor, are obliged to pay large sums to the government for prosecuting their business, and the poor cannot escape their influence.

Tax the rich for their plate, carriages, horses, servants and dogs,-but tax not the light that sends its cheering rays through the poor man's window. Above all tax not the light God has provided for the soul. We must allude again to the STAMP DUTY. The tax upon Intelligence, above all other taxes, is the most unjustifiable. It cuts off the possibility of diffusing intelligence widely among the humble classes-by means of newspapers, pamphlets, or books. With that regard for the interests of the people so apparent in every thing he writes, M'Culloch makes the following remarks on this subject. "These taxes

upon literature, have been carried to such an extent in England, as to be in the highest degree injurious. They are at once impolitic, oppressive, and unjust impolitic, because they tend to obstruct the growth and diffusion of knowledge: oppressive, because they very frequently swallow up the entire reward of the labours of the most deserving persons; and unjust, because they are not proportioned to the value of the article on which they are laid, and are indeed much oftener paid out of the capital than out of the profit."

These taxes consist of the duty on paper; on all newspapers; advertisements; the number of copies of all publications required to be given to the public libraries; and the tax paid on every Bible that is printed.

If I had space I should be glad to say a few words here in favor of the poor authors of England, who suffer greatly in consequence of these taxes; but a consideration of more importance claims the brief attention we can bestow. In this, as in every other instance upon which we have dwelt, the people are the great sufferers.

As a general rule, all Books, Pamphlets, Magazines, and Papers printed in Great Britain, cost as much again as they do in the United States! How can the laboring man be an intelligent man with these fearful odds against him. But of all the odious and unjust features of this tax upon intelligence, the most unchristian is the TAX upon the BiblE! The government has given

to certain patentees and Universities of England, what is equivalent to a Copy Right of the Revelation of God, and no person in England is allowed to print the Bible without paying an enormous premium to the monopolists. Even the British and Foreign Bible Society cannot print their own Bibles, but are compelled to pay a tax to these monopolists on every Bible they sell, nearly, or quite equal to the entire cost of manufacturing it. The operation of this unholy restriction has been to double the price of every Bible sold in England, and reduce the circulation probably one half. I once heard a slave-holder ask, What sincerity can there be in the taunts England is continually hurling at Southern-men for enslaving the image of God, while she, a nation which maintains an Established Religion at an enormous expense, ostensibly for the religious education of the people, puts fetters upon the Revelation of God?" More easily asked than answered. To enrich the universities, from which sectarianism of the grossest kind excludes every man whose conscience is not elastic enough to bend itself to a church which, in the language of the Earl of Chatham, has "a Calvanistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy," and to fill the pockets of the Queen's printer, many thousand families are deprived of THE WORD OF GOD! Is it thought I speak with too much zeal? Let me then adopt the language of a minister of the Gospel at a conference of clergymen of all denomina