found that one
really productive tax might be made to take the place of a large number
of small duties which pressed with peculiar severity upon the people.
Government now turned longingly to that 'splendid source of revenue,' as
it was aptly called, which it had so reluctantly relinquished in 1816.
In 1842, Sir Robert Peel suddenly brought forward a plan for a new tax
upon incomes. It was at once adopted. This income tax differed, however,
in many important particulars, from the one which the Government had
been compelled to make use of in the wars with France. By it incomes
under $750 were exempt. A discrimination of very great importance was
also made, which has been the occasion since for much refined
discussion, and is founded in sound reason, but which has hitherto been
wholly overlooked in the legislation in this country. A discrimination
was made between salaries and the incomes divided from realized capital.
Taxable incomes, partaking of the nature of a salary, and upon which a
tax would have the character of a duty on capital, were required by the
provisions of this new act to pay only one half as much as those incomes
which arose from, and would be therefore added to, wealth already
acquired.

The income, or property tax, as it is now called, completes the system
of taxation which is now relied upon to supply the varying but always
enormous wants of Great Britain. Through these various sources during
the past year the English Government has collected an income of three
hundred and fifty million dollars--about the same it obtained through
the same channels from a population of thirteen million inhabitants in
the closing years of the war with Napoleon. With the same system of
taxation, our own Government has, during the past year, obtained an
income of one hundred and eleven million dollars. If we examine
particularly the sources of the English revenue at these two epochs, and
compare them with the corresponding branches of taxation with us, we
find that in the year closing in 1815, the receipts from customs
amounted to about fifty-six million dollars--a sum, it will be noticed,
considerably less than that drawn from the same source in this country
for the past year, but only about half the amount derived from customs
in Great Britain in the year ending September, 1863. From the property
tax was obtained about seventy-five million dollars--the modified form
of this tax now in use in Great Britain produces abou