undoubtedly pinches severely men of small and uncertain incomes, who are
striving, on slender means, to maintain a respectable station in
society; the man who, with a large family to be supported _and
educated_, and who moves in a respectable sphere of society, has to pay
his L.9 or L.12 out of his precarious L.300 or L.400 a-year, is an
object of most earnest sympathy. Still, let him not lose sight of the
undoubted hardships borne by his wealthier brethren. Is it nothing for a
man--say the Duke of Buccleuch, the Marquis of Westminster, the Duke of
Sutherland, or Lord Ashburton, or Mr Rothschild--to have to pay down
their L.3000, L.4000, or L.5000 clear per annum, as the per-centage on
their magnificent incomes, in sudden and unexpected addition to the
innumerable and imperative calls upon them already existing, such as
compulsory upholding of many great establishments in different parts of
the country--various members of their families--married and single--to
support in a style adequate to their rank and position in the country?
It is needless, however, to pursue the matter further. The plain truth
is, there is no help for it; the burthen is one that must be borne, and
it is being borne bravely.

_But why_ must this dreadful income-tax be borne? What has led to it?
The vast majority of honest and thinking men in the nation have but one
answer to give to the question. That the income-tax is the penalty the
nation must pay for its weakness and folly, in permitting a Whig
Ministry to get into power, and continue in power, "playing such
fantastic tricks" as theirs, for the last ten years, both at home and
abroad, as the nation _ought to have foreseen_ would be inevitably
followed by some such grievous results as the present. This income-tax,
however, let our opponents know, will serve for many years to come, long
after it may have been removed, as a memento to prevent the country from
tolerating the return to power of men whose reluctant and compulsory