Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/86

74 Gladstone, in an address to the country, especially asked that the confidence and continued administration of the Government be given him on the ground that he contemplated an early repeal of the income tax. Circumstances, however, have prevented any such action, and in subsequent years of office Mr. Gladstone has not hesitated to raise the tax whenever the necessity of additional revenue for the Government became imperative. That he has regretted his inability to abolish it is evident from his saying, in his financial statement in 1853: "I think some happier Chancellor of the Exchequer may achieve this great accomplishment, and that some future poet may be able to sing of him:

 He took the tax away, And built himself an everlasting name."

From the outset the income tax has been more odious and unpopular in Great Britain than any other form of taxation. Among statesmen and economists there is hardly any dissent from the opinion that the tax is bad in principle, because unequal and unjust in its assessment, and incapable of being made equal and just; and this, too, although the administration of the revenue laws of Great Britain—owing to the comparatively small area of territory subjected to supervision, and the fact that the tenure of office on the part of officials is dependent solely on honesty and intelligence—is wonderfully efficient, far more so than can be expected under existing conditions in the United States. The annual reports of the British Commissioners of the Inland Revenue always mention extensive evasions of the income tax. For the year 1864-'65 the amount of such evasion was estimated to have been equal to about one sixth of the revenue collected under it. The demoralizing effects which are inevitably produced by the habit of making false returns respecting income are regarded by many British authorities as far more deplorable than those resulting from any inequality contingent on this form of taxation; as the transition from a fraud upon the Government to a fraud upon the public is comparatively easy. The reported product of the income tax of Great Britain for 1893-'94, was £15,200,000 ($76,000,000); an amount beyond the estimate.

—The following incident, which has become a part of English political history, is curiously illustrative of the state of public opinion in England at the time of the first imposition of the income tax under the statute of Mr. Pitt, and is derived from the memoirs of John Horne Tooke:

Mr. Tooke was an Englishman who participated actively in British politics during the latter third of the last century. He early espoused the side of the Americans in their struggle for liberty, and was persecuted, fined, and imprisoned by the British Government for publishing an advertisement for a subscription for the widows and orphans of the Americans "murdered by the King's troops at Lexington and Concord." After his release