If by taking off these taxes, you reduced the expense of a common action from £25 to £20, you might open the door, suppose, to one in five of those against whom it is shut at present. Even this would be something: at any rate whatever were the remaining quantum of abuse, which you still suffered to subsist, you would have the consolation at least of not being actively instrumental in producing it. To reform in toto a system of procedure is a work of time and difficulty, and would require a rare union of legal knowledge with genius:—repealing a tax may require discernment, candour, philanthropy, and fortitude,—but is a work of no difficulty, requires no extraordinary measure of science, nor even so much time as the imposing of one.
But by whatever plea the continuance of the subsisting taxes of this kind may be apologized for, nothing can be said in favour of any new addition to the burthen. The subsisting ones, it may be said, have been acquiesced in, and men are used to them: in this respect at least they have the advantage of any new ones which could be substituted in the room of them. But even this immoral plea, which puts bad and good upon a level, effacing all distinction but that between established and not established, even this faint plea is mute against any augmentation of this worst of evils.
To conclude—Either I am much mistaken, or it has been proved,—that a law tax is the worst of all taxes, actual or possible:—that for the most part it is a denial of justice, that at the best, it is a tax upon distress:—that it lays the burthen, not where there is most, but where there is least, benefit: — that it co-operates with every injury, and with every crime:—that the persons on whom it bears hardest, are those on whom a burthen of any kind lies heaviest, and that they compose the great majority of the people:—that so far from being a check, it is an encouragement to litigation: and that it operates in direct breach of Magna Charta, that venerable monument, commonly regarded as the foundation of English liberty.
The statesman who cares not what mischief he does, so he does it without disturbance, may lay on law taxes without end: he who makes a conscience to abstain from mischief will abstain from adding to them: he whose ambition it is to extirpate mischief, will repeal them.[1]
General error makes law, says a maxim in use among lawyers. It makes at any rate an apology for law: but when the error is pointed out, the apology is gone.
NOTES.
Mem.—Anno, 1796. At a dinner at Mr. Morton Pitt's, in Arlington Street, Mr. Rose, then secretary of the treasury, in the presence of Mr. William Pitt, (then minister) took me aside, and told me that they had read my pamphlet on Law-Taxes; that the reasons against them were unanswerable, and it was determined there should be no more of them.
Anno 1804, July 10, 12, 14, 18.—This being in the number of Mr. Addington's taxes, Mr. Pitt, upon returning to office, took up all those taxes in the lump. On the above days, this tax was in the House of Commons: and Mr. W: to the report in the Times, on one of those days, spoke of this pamphlet as containing complete information on the subject; observing at the same time, that it was out of print. On behalf of administration, nothing like an answer to any of the objections was attempted: only the Attorney-General (Percival) said, that the addition proposed to those taxes, was no more than equal to the depreciation of money.
Mr. Addington, before this, had recourse to the tax on medicine here spoken of (page 575.) So that, in the course of his administration, if the representation here given be correct, he had had the misfortune to find out and impose the two worst species of taxation possible. Compare this with Denmark, and its courts of Natural Procedure, called Reconciliation Courts.
26th February 1816.—Unalleviated by any adequate hope of use, too painful would be the task, of hunting out, and holding up to view, the subsequent additions, which this worst of oppressions has, in this interval of twenty years, been receiving.
Money, it is said, must be had, and no other taxes can be found. The justification being conclusive, the tax receives its increase: next year, from the same hand, flow others in abundance.
Grievous enough is the income-tax, called, lest it should be thought to be what it is, the property-tax. Grievous that tax is, whatever be its name; yet, sum for sum, compared with this tax, it is a blessing. Instead of 10 per cent suppose it 80 per cent. Less bad would it be to add yet another 10 per cent than a tax to an equal amount upon justice.
Grievous have been the additions, so lately and repeatedly made, to the taxes on conveyances and agreements. Extensive the prohibitory part of the effect, though the pressure,
- ↑ The duties on nearly every proceeding at law or in equity were repealed by Geo. IV. c. 41. The duties which were left were those upon proceedings, which were generally used for and operated as conveyances. By the subsequent alterations in the laws relating to fines and recoveries, these latter duties have become extinct also.—Ed.
