II. All direct taxes should be levied equally on landed and personal estates, and, subject to the distinction after-mentioned, equally on professional income, as the fruit of realised capital. This rule should apply to all local or parochial, as well as public burdens. The effect of it would be to let in, as taxable income, in addition to the £2,666,000 now derived from land, a sum at least as large derived from personal estates or incomes. It would therefore lower this most oppressive tax, supposing its absolute amount undiminished _one-half_. The same would be the case with land tax, highway rates, church rates, police rates, &c. They would all be lowered a-half to the persons at present burdened with them, and that simply by the adoption of the just principle, that all fortunes in the same situation should be taxed alike for the general service of the state, and that the commercial classes who create the poor, and are enriched by their labour, should contribute equally with the landed to their support.
III. In levying the income tax, a different rate should be imposed on income, according as it is derived or not derived from realised capital. If it is so it should be taxed alike for all direct taxes. But if it is derived from annuity or professions, a lower rate should be adopted. If the _property_ tax is 5 per cent. the _income_ tax should not exceed 2-1/2 _per cent._; whatever the one is the other should be _a-half_ of it only. This modification of an impost now felt as so oppressive by all subjected to it, would go far towards reconciling the numerous class of small traders, the great majority in all urban constituencies, to the change--to its continuance, and also justify its extension to all incomes above £50 or £100 a-year. Without that extension it will inevitably degenerate into a confiscation of property above a certain level.
IV. Stamps or conveyances, or burdening of property, should be the same, and _not higher_, on personalty or landed estates. For the additional security of the latter, the borrower pays amply in the greater expense of the law deeds requisite to constitute effectual securities over real estates than over stock or movable funds. Stamps on bills, &c., which are advances for a short period only, should be rated at a widely different scale from that adopted in permanent loans. But there is no reason why securities over real estates should require to be written on paper bearing a higher stamp than those over personal effects.