Untitled

Observer, Volume 2, Issue 37, 28 May 1881, Page 400

Sir George Grey's plan of making taxation increase in proportion to a man's wealth has been also tried elsewhere. In the United States of America the income tax during their Civil war was iixed at one shilling in the pound on small incomes, and rose by successive stages until it amounted to 2s. 6d. on those of the highest degree. But it worked badly, and was repealed. It is hard, in practice, to fix a fair proportion, and there were cases in which the increase bore with great severity on the owners of incomes nominally large, but whose charges thereon were large in proportion. "Bursting-up" by any means that will not prove as ruinous to those who burst as to those who are "bursted," is an impossible policy. The attempt has always ended in bitter hatred between classes, and the triumph in the long run of those who have the longest purses and the union which common interests produce.