evident, as far as the Government itself is concerned, an anxious desire
to enforce the provisions of the act with the greatest possible degree
of delicacy and forbearance, consistent with the discharge of a painful
but imperative duty. We repeat that the outcry in question, however,
was principally occasioned by those who had least real cause, on
personal grounds, to complain; who (unfortunately, it may be, for
themselves) never yet approached, nor have any prospect of infringing
upon, the fatal dividing point of L. 150 a-year, in spite of their long
and zealous literary services, under the very best-conducted and _truly
liberal_ Radical newspapers, which they have filled, with persevering
ingenuity, day after day, with eloquent descriptions of the awful state
of feeling in the country on this most atrocious subject. Where,
patriotic, but most imaginative gentlemen! where have been the great
meetings summoned to condemn the principle of the tax? The great
landholders, the great capitalists, the great merchants, are pouring
their contributions into the exhausted Treasury, with scarce a murmur at
the temporary inconvenience it may occasion them!--thus nobly responding
to the appeal so earnestly and nobly made to them by the Prime Minister.
So, moreover, are the vast majority of those persons on whom the tax
falls with peculiar severity--we allude to the occupants of schedule
D--who must pay this tax out of an income, alas! evanescent as the
morning mist; which, on the approach of sickness or of death is
instantly annihilated. These also suffer with silent fortitude; and we
think we have heard it upon sufficient authority, that it was on these
persons that Ministers felt the greatest reluctance in imposing the
tax--at least to its present extent, only under an absolute compulsion
of state policy. The total, or even partial exemption of this class of
persons from the operation of the income-tax, would have been attended
with consequences that were not to be contemplated for a moment, and
into which it is impracticable here satisfactorily to enter. The tax