burning questions settled every day by Parliament, and the lesser but still important matters decided by town councils and school boards? We in England long ago made up our minds that the most excellent way to get public work done is to choose the best men, give them the requisite authority, and then allow them to do the duty to which they are called. And if we can disestablish a church, revolutionize the land system, or reform our institutions from top to bottom through our representatives, without a direct vote of the people, the question of renewing public-house licences can scarcely demand so exceptional a process as is by some suggested.

My answer, therefore, to the question, "How is Local Option to be worked?" as well as to the kindred temperance question, "How is Sunday closing to be settled?" is, "By means of licensing boards, directly elected by the ratepayers." And if this solution be adopted, our licensing system will be placed upon a basis at once more safe and more free from friction or the likelihood of injustice than any other that has been proposed.

XXIII.-WHY AND HOW ARE WE TAXED?

TAXES are the price we pay for being governed: they defray interest upon money borrowed and wages for protection and service. The fact that they are called by a name which is to many obnoxious, or that they are handed to the State instead of to an individual, ought not to blind us to their real nature -that they are the price of services rendered. The name is nothing. In churches the money we pay is called a pew-rent or an offertory; in clubs it is a subscription; to doctors or lawyers a fee; to tradesmen a price; to railway companies a fare; for personal services wages; for the loan of a house rent; for life or fire insurance a premium; and for water a rate. All are in a measure taxes; and if it be answered that the difference is that these payments are voluntary, may not the same be said of much that is called "indirect taxation"?

When the subject is considered, there are three questions which naturally demand reply.

1. Why are we taxed?

2. How are we taxed? and

3. How ought we to be taxed?

To the first question some answer has already been given. Put in the simplest fashion, the reply would be that it is cheaper to pay taxes and be taken care of than not to pay them and have to take care of ourselves. As members of an organized society, we have to provide for external protection and internal service -for the army and navy as a safeguard against enemies from without, for the officers of the law as a safeguard against depredators within, for the means of government, for education,

and for a large number of other matters designed for the security of our persons and property and for the welfare and advancement of the community. We have further to pay the interest upon the National Debt-money borrowed by the State at times of emergency to prosecute such wars as Parliament had sanctioned.

In point of fact, taxes are a substitution for personal service. The State in England once compelled this as a means of raising an army; and, though this form of personal service was long ago commuted by the payment of a sufficient sum through taxation for the maintenance of a standing force, the State has only waived, not abrogated, the right. Even as lately as the last century people in our country districts had to give six days in the year to the repair of such highways as were under the management of the justices of the peace. In the one case the personal service has been commuted into a tax, in the other into a rate--the difference being that a tax is imperially and a rate locally levied-it being found that forced labour of the kind indicated is more wasteful and less efficacious than hired labour; and, if any want to know how wasteful and how inefficient, they can find abundant illustrations in the history of the old régime in France, or that of the Egyptian fellaheen.

There has been indicated the difference between imperial and local taxation-the one being a tax imposed by the State and the other a rate levied by a local authority. The object in each case is similar; but, while the cost of the central administration, the army and navy, and the superior courts of justice, with the interest on the National Debt, is paid by taxes, that of lighting, draining, and other purely local matters is defrayed by rates, and that of the police, the poor, the highways, and education comes out of taxes and rates combined.

So much for the why of being taxed; let us now consider the how. At present the receipts of the State are derived from direct and indirect taxation, together with a form which may be said to come under both these heads. The most familiar mode of direct taxation is the Income Tax; of indirect, the Customs and Excise; and of that which savours of both, the stamp duties and the profits from the Post Office.

These methods of taxation are, as far as England is concerned, comparatively modern. In the earlier days of settled government in this country, the mode of taxing was different and somewhat fitful, causing much trouble in the collection, and sometimes forming the pretext for revolt. "Aids" to the King were a frequent means of oppression long ago; and as far back as the time of John they were felt as a grievance, Magna Charta providing that the King should take no aids without the consent of Parliament, except those for knighting the lord's eldest son, for marrying his eldest daughter, and for ransoming the lord from captivity (the lord, it being remembered, holding at that time his land direct from the sovereign). "Benevolences"—a charming name for an unpleasing idea-were also in vogue in the Middle Ages, and, although specifically declared by an Act of Richard III. to be illegal, were levied in a fashion which caused much discontent. "Loans 99 were another form of raising money which the nation resented, as Charles I. found to his cost; while a "Poll Tax," as all men know, drove Wat Tyler into rebellion. 'Subsidies" and "Tenths" and other taxing devices equally failed in the long run to answer the desired purpose of filling the National Exchequer; and after the Restoration all such gave place to a system by which the Customs, the Excise, and the Land Tax provided most of the money required.

Gradually the proceeds of the Land Tax dwindled, and direct taxation was almost extinct when, in the throes of the great war with France, which lasted, with slight intervals, for twenty-two years, the younger Pitt revived it in an Income Tax, the form in which it is now mainly known. With the end of the war this ceased, and the proceeds of indirect taxation were again chiefly those upon which the State relied. What the result was, how in every direction trade was hampered and public comfort destroyed, has been summed up for all time in one of Sydney Smith's essays; and the quotation is worth re-perusal by everybody interested in the subject, and especially by those who to-day are wishing to get rid of the main form of direct taxation we possess-the Income Tax, as revived by Sir Robert Peel.

Uttering, in 1820, a warning to the United States to avoid that spirit which we now call "Jingoism," Sydney Smith wrote -"We can inform Jonathan what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory-TAXES upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot; taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste; taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion; taxes on everything on earth and the waters under the earth-on everything that comes from abroad or is grown at home; taxes on the raw material; taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man; taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health; on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal; on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice; on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribands of the bride-at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid 7 per cent., into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid 22 per cent., and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from 2 to 10 per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers to be taxed no more."

Ludicrous as the picture seems, it was correctly painted for the time it depicted; and it is first to Sir Robert Peel and next to his greatest pupil, Mr. Gladstone, that we owe the change from the harassing indirect taxation of the past to the comparatively innocuous forms of it we have to-day. But it is still from indirect taxation that most of our revenue is derived. The heads of that revenue, as given officially, are- —(1) Customs, (2) Excise, (3) Stamps, (4) Land Tax, (5) House Duty, (6) Income Tax, (7) Post Office, (8) Telegraph Service, (9) Crown Lands, (10) Interest on Advances for Local Works and Purchase