“They will find it all out soon,” replied Mr. Oliver. “Whatever is ruinous for many of us must be bad for all; and such men as Fergusson will see this before long.”
“They will not see it, sir, till they feel it; and what a pass we must have come to before they will feel enough to give up a prejudice some hundred years old!”
“Before we can ask them to give up the point entirely, we must relieve them of some of the taxes which bear particularly upon them. Their great cry is about the weight of their taxation. They must first be relieved in that respect.”
“With all my heart. Let them go free of taxation as great folks, in the same way that my wife and Mary are let off free at cards on Christmas night, because they are women. This was the case with the old French nobility, I have heard. They paid no taxes; and so let it be with our landowners, if they choose to accept the favour of having their burdens borne by the sweating people to whom they would not own themselves obliged in respect of money matters if they met in the churchyard, though the time may not be far off when they must lie side by side under the sod.”
“Their pride must be pretty well humbled before they would accept of that kind of obligation. They had need go to church, in those days, to learn to bear the humiliation.”
“Perhaps that is what they go to church for now, sir; for they are now taking much more from us than they would in the case I have mentioned. I don’t say they all do it knowingly,—nor half of them. There are many of our rich men who would be offended enough at being told, ‘Your eldest son’s bills at Eton were paid last year by contributions from three hedgers, and five brass-founders, and seven weavers, all of whom have families only half-fed.’ ‘Miss Isabella’s beautiful bay mare was bought for her by the knife-grinder, who has gone to bed supperless, and the work-woman who will have no fire next winter, and the thirty little children who are kept from school that Miss Isabella’s bay mare may be bought.’ O yes; there are many who are too proud to bear this being said to them, true though it be.”
“They would call you a leveller, Kay, if they could hear you.”
“Then I should beg leave to contradict them; for a leveller I am not.—I have no objection on earth to young gentlemen going to Eton, or young ladies riding bay mares, if these things are paid for by the natural rent which a free trade in corn would leave. If we have that free trade, and workpeople still go to bed supperless and sit up without fire, still let young gentlemen go to Eton, and young ladies ride bay mares. In that case, the landlords will be absolved, and the hardship must go to the account of imprudence in some other quarter. O, I am no leveller! Let the rich keep their estates, as long as they will let them find their own value in comparison with labour. It is the making and keeping up laws which make land of more and more value, and labour of less and less, that I complain of.”
“But you did not really mean, Kay,” said a bystander, “that you would let off every man that has land from paying taxes? It is the most unfair thing I ever heard of.”
“It is unfair enough, but much less unfair and ruinous than the present plan. It is better worth our while to pay the landowners’ taxes than to lose ten times the amount to enable the landowners to pay them; and that is what we are doing now.”