Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/155

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that out of ten shillings each family expends five shillings on bread. The tax of 40 per cent, is, therefore, a tax of 20 per cent, upon the earnings of every labouring man's family earning ten shillings a week. How does it operate as we proceed upwards in society? The man with forty shillings a week pays an income-tax of 5 per cent.; the man of £250 a year pays but 1 per cent.; and the nobleman or millionaire, with an income of £200,000 a year, and whose family consumes no more bread than that of the agricultural labourer, pays less than one halfpenny in every £100. (Laughter.) I know not whether the laugh 'is at the monstrous character of the case, or at the humble individual who states it; but I repeat that the tax upon the nobleman is less than one halfpenny per cent., while upon the poor man's family it is £20 per cent. I am sure there is not an hon. member in the House who would dare to bring in a bill to levy an income-tax on all grades of society upon a scale similar to this, and yet I maintain that the bread-tax is such a tax, and is levied, not for the purposes of the State, but for the benefit of the richest portion of the community. That is a fair statement of the tax upon bread. I can sympathize with the incredulity of hon. gentlemen opposite, but if they knew the case as it really is, and felt it as they would if they did know it, they would also feel that they could not lie down to rest in comfort or safety if they voted for such a tax. … Let me remind the House, that the parties who have so patiently struggled for three years past for a hearing at your bar, have never been allowed to state their case; that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. Charles Villiers)—for whose great and incessant services I, in common with millions of my fellow-countrymen, feel grateful—when he