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tions in Manchester, not long since. "Is it longer to be endured that the interests of an individual shall stand in the way of an empire? In Scotland, where men are few in number, the Bible is free. In Ireland, with its feeble section of Protestants, the Bible is free. England alone is in the house of bondage. What is the value of Scotch or Irish freedom to circulate the Word of God, compared with that freedom in England? Is not this the land of commerce, wealth and millions the seat of moral power-the source of missionary support-the dwelling-place of all the great and philanthropic, christian and evangelical institutions of our times. Oh! what hardship is Bible bondage in such a country! Men and brethren, will you not rise and put on your strength, and help break its fetters? * Tax the winds that waft our fleets-tax the rain as it falls and fructifies our soil-tax the light of the moon as she walks in her brightness-tax the beams of the sun as they are poured upon our planet-tax all, and if it must be, take all—but leave, O leave, and leave untaxed, the manna as it falls; and permit pilgrims to eternity to gather for themselves, at the simple expense of collecting it, the bounty of the Great Parent of Good!!"

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When will the rulers of the old world discover that man is born with a right to education and knowledge as inalienable, and as Divine as his right to liberty?

"But woe to those who trample o'er a mind:

"A deathless thing.-They know not what they do,
"Or what they deal with! Man perchance may bind
"The flower his step hath bruised; or light anew
"The torch he quenches; or to music wind
"Again the lyre-string from his touch that flew-
"But for the soul!-Oh! tremble and beware
"To lay rude hands upon God's mysteries there."

THE LAND TAX, is another source of the public revenue. It grew out of the subsidy scheme; having originated in 1692, when a new assessment or valuation was made by which a land tax of 1s. in a pound produced £500,000 a year revenue, (Blackstone, Book I. cap. 8.) "No subsequent change has been made on this valuation. The tax which was annually voted, usually amounted to 4s. per pound of valued rent. In 1798, it was made perpetual at that rate, leave being at the same time given to the proprietors to redeem it." (M'Culloch's Statistics, of the British Empire.)

This tax which at first glance might appear to come out of the owners of the land, who are certainly well able to bear it, after all comes out of the people; for they are the consumers of the products of the soil, and of necessity any tax laid upon the land, by raising the price of its produce, brings a tax upon the consumer.

It is in these various ways, that two hundred and fifty million dollars are annually raised to carry on the British Government and pay the National Debt. If this sum were raised by a direct tax upon the people, or rather the property of the

country, no objection could be offered against it, provided the unnecessary expenditures of the government were limited to its real wants. But under the present system two evils of great magnitude, as we have already seen, exist. The property of the country is not taxed to support the government; but the necessities of the people. The burdens fall upon the majority; for the revenue is raised by taxing the necessaries of life; which renders it impossible for the poor to escape bearing more than their share of the burden. Secondly. Not only does the chief part of the Revenue come from those classes which are least able to bear it; but they are forced to pay to protect the interests of the monopolists and favored classes, a much greater sum every year than the revenue itself amounts to. This I fancy

has been already made sufficiently clear. This was the opinion of Bentham who said, "The monopoly taxes amount annually to very considerably more than all those of the government." In this point there is little difference of opinion among the friends of the people.

We have now considered the sources from which the government derives its revenue, and the monopolists their wealth. There are very many other considerations connected with the condition of the people of Great Britain which would natu

rally come into such a discussion as this-but they must be excluded. Before we speak of the established church, we must bestow a few pages upon THE POOR LAWS and their relations to the poor: as has been seen from a former argument, for several centuries a grinding legislation has impoverished the working classes of the empire. Not many years ago great alarm began to be felt at the progress of this system of impoverishment -and not without sufficient reason. For the number of paupers it became necessary to relieve, to save from starvation, had increased to nearly one fifth of the entire population, and the Poor Rates, (i. e. taxes levied upon property for their support,) rose to between thirty five and forty million dollars annually, being about one fifth of the income of the land of England.

In 1834, Parliament passed the "Poor Law Amendment Act," to remedy the evil, whose great object was to lessen the expense of maintaining the pauper population-their expense having become too heavy to be borne; and how did Parliament go to work to accomplish so desirable a result. Not by removing restrictions upon commerce, and thereby increasing greatly the demand for labor for these restrictions by depriving foreign nations of the ability to purchase English manufactures to so great an extent as they desired, because they could not pay for them in coin, timber and other products of their own soil, had thrown nearly one fifth of the English people out

of employment, compelling them to stand idle till they became hungry and naked, and at last fell for support on the government that had impoverished them. Parliament must have known but too well, that the foreign trade of the nation was being deeply injured by excluding from its ports the grand necessaries of life that abounded so plentifully abroad and she so much needed at home; but the land owners would not give up their monopoly so long enjoyed, although it was so ruinous to commerce, and indeed to all the other interests of the nation. They did not deny the evil which they were called on to grapple with, and the path of justice was plain, but they chose to reach the evil in another way, and as the result has proved, they have reduced the Poor Rates, but only by increasing in a fearful ratio the sufferings of the poor :-they could have abolished the Poor Rates altogether, and left all the parish poor to starve, and it would have been only carrying out the experiment. By the Poor Law Amendment Act, various arrangements were entered into by which all motives for applying for parish relief were taken away from the poor, until they were actually dying of want. Under the old law, vast numbers of families received what was termed out-door relief; i. e. a small weekly allowance from the parish authorities, which, with the avails of their own exertions, enabled them to live. One leading feature of the new law was ultimately to cut off all such allowances, and this has been

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