Here, then, we see the highest law officer of the State openly "bidding" for office—truckling to faction—and indecently condescending to enact the part of a "soft-sawderer." That term, we presume, is the proper American equivalent for the stinging soubriquet with which Persius stigmatises some Chatfield—some supple attorney-general of his day—
"Palpo, quem ducit hiantem
Cretata ambitio."
When persons of the highest official position scruple not thus undisguisedly to trim their course according to the "popularis aura," one can scarcely help suspecting a want of firmness of principle and genuine independence among the classes below them. De Tocqueville's observations have taught us to doubt whether the tree of liberty that grows under the shadow of a tyrant majority can ever attain a healthy stability, however vigorous it may appear externally. No one questions that the Americans enjoy, under their institutions, very many of the blessings of a liberal and cheaply-administered government. You have perfect liberty of speech and action, so far as the government is concerned. The avowal of one's opinion is not followed, as in Italy, or in the rival republic of France, by a hint that your passport is ready, or by the polite attendance on you, wherever you go, of a mysterious gentleman in black; but you feel yourself, nevertheless, perpetually "en surveillance," and constrained either to sail with the stream, or to adopt a reserve and reticence which, to an Englishman, is almost as irksome as the knowledge that there is a spy sitting at the same dinner-table with him.
The spirit of Professor Johnston's strictures on such anomalies will, of course, insure his being set down by his democratic friends in America as an unmitigated "old hunker;" and he certainly shows no great liking for practical republicanism. But to find fault with our neighbours' arrangements, and to be contented with our own, are two very different things; and, accordingly, our author takes many opportunities, as he goes along, of showing that he is quite aware of the innumerable rents in our own old battered tea-kettle of a constitution, and of the infinite tinkering it will take to make it hold water.
We should have held him unworthy of the character of a true Briton if he had omitted the occasion of a grumble at our system of taxation, though, of course, we differ with him entirely in the view he takes of the evil. After an elaborate comparison of the taxation in the United States with that of Great Britain, he sums up all with the following somewhat sententious apophthegm:—
"The great contrast between the two sections of the Anglo-Saxon race on the opposite sides of the Atlantic is this—On the one side the masses rule and property pays; on the other side property rules and the masses pay."—(Vol. ii. 254.)
The sentence sounds remarkably terse and epigrammatic. Most of such brilliant and highly-condensed crystals of wisdom, however, will be found on analysis to contain, along with some exaggerated truth, a considerable residuum of nonsense; and this specimen before us, we apprehend, forms no exception. Even if the fact so broadly asserted were indisputable, we should still be inclined to doubt, after what the author has himself told us, whether the "rule of the masses" is always an unmixed blessing to a community. He has seen enough of it to know at least that the preponderance of popular sway is not incompatible with much social restraint—with prejudice and narrow-mindedness—with what he considers a false commercial principle—with a disregard of public faith, and of the rights of other nations; and lastly, with a contempt of the rights of humanity itself, and a legalised traffic in our fellow men. But, if we understand him rightly, he does not so much defend the abstract excellence of the democratic principle as advocate a nearer approach, on our part, to the American model of taxation. In the States, he says, property pays—in England the masses pay;—that is, if we strip the proposition of its antithetical obscurity, the owners of property pay less here than they do in America—not only absolutely less, but less in proportion to the whole amount of taxation. The calculations on which he founds this assertion are too long and involved to be quoted at length, but we will endeavour to abridge them so as to enable the reader to judge of their accuracy.
The taxes in the United States are of three classes: 1st,—the national taxes, amounting to about six millions a-year, which are raised chiefly by customs duties on imports; 2d,—the state taxes; 3d,—the local taxes, for the service of the several counties, cities, and townships. These two last classes are levied chiefly in the form of an equal rate assessed upon the estimated value of all property, real and personal.
In order to compare the incidence of the public burdens upon property in the two countries, Professor Johnston selects the case of New York State, in which the total taxable property (personal as well as real) in 1849 was 666,000,000 of dollars, and the amount of rates levied for state and local taxes 5,500,000 dollars, or about 4⁄5 per cent on the gross valuation. Turning then to Great Britain, (excluding Ireland,) he sets down the fee simple value of the real property alone in estates above £150 a-year, as rated to the income-tax, at £2,382,000,000.
"Four-fifths of a per cent (the rate levied in New York) on this sum would realise £19,000,000 sterling; and were all property, real and personal, in this island below £150 a-year, and the amount of property in Ireland rated in a similar way, and fairly collected, our entire revenue of £50,000,000 would probably be obtained as the revenue of the State of New York now is, by this one property tax only."—(Vol. ii. p. 257.)