THE NEW INDIFFERENCE TO TAXATION.
[To MIR EDITOR Or THI " EINICTILTOR."] SIE,—Your article in the Spectator of March 20th on the new in- difference of the free peoples to taxation, due largely, no doubt, to their increased wealth, suggests some other consequences of the same change in their condition that, perhaps, deserve
notice. We find in it, I think, the explanation of the aug- mented strength of Protection in the modern world. The appeal to the consumer was the mainstay of Free-trade at the time of the repeal of the Corn-laws. In America and in our Colonies it nowadays always falls on deaf ears. It seems, indeed, to be the case that if we substitute the words, "the ownership of gold," for the words, " the actual possession of gold," in the formulation of the much decried Mercantile Theory, it is as completely the animating principle of the policy of modern democracies as it was of the nations of Europe before Adam Smith's time. The increased money- wealth of the citizen of any State is taken for granted always
as the true goal of its fiscal policy ; and quite as much by the Free-trader as by the Protectionist himself, whenever the Free- trader has to face a popular audience. It would be idle for a
Sydney Free-trader, for instance, to tell his audience that if they take the duty off sugar they will save a few shillings each in their annual expenditure. His audience are not selfish enough to allow so nearly inappreciable an advantage to themselves to outweigh the counter consideration advanced by the Protectionist, that if they abolish such a duty they will shut up the mills, cause the abandonment of the planta- tions, and throw many thousands of poor fellows who are now making comfortable livings out on the world to hunt for em- ployment. Yet Free-trade has won in Sydney, and the duty on sugar is being reduced and will be finally abolished. How, then, has this come about ? Not, certainly, by the appeal to the consumer. What the Free-trader says, and says with effect, is :—Look at the case generally. Look at Sydney, with her Free-trade policy, property rising in value, population pouring in, shipping increasing by leaps and bounds, every one making money, in fact ; and look again at Melbourne, with its Protectionist policy, and note that the reverse of this is happening. All through, the appeal is made by both sides to a population that thinks, and thinks only, about making money, and cares not a jot about the cheapening of com- modities, except in so far as this cheapening conduces to the making of money.
Is this, then, all wrong and all absurd ? We have been brought up, of course, on the doctrine that it is. " Money is a mere tool for effecting exchanges." We are told "it is of no use till it is spent. The desire for money is always to be interpreted as, in effect, the desire for commodities, and nothing else." These are the doctrines of Mill, of Cairnes, of Professor Price, and, I suppose, of the economists, with hardly an exception, unless it be Mr. M'Leod. It is true, of course, that the measure of money is the commodities that it will purchase, as the measure of Potential Energy is the work that it will do. For all that Potential Energy, instead of being the same thing as Work, is the antithesis of Work ; and so, the common-sense of the nations recognises, in spite of the economists, is money the antithesis of commodities.
What each individual in the aggregate that forms the nation most wants is not more and cheaper coramoditiee, but security in the future and consideration in the present ; and it is these wants that unspent money, and unspent money only, can satisfy.
The current economy takes it for granted that the motive- power that keeps the industrial machine in motion is the Struggle for Existence, and that only. If it were so, it is hard to see how Malthus's prediction that increasing population could only be kept in check by starvation could have failed to be verified. Yet England's population, we know, is increasing, while its well-being is increasing in a far greater ratio. Even in the lower world Darwin found that the Struggle for Existence could not account for everything. It had to be supplemented by the struggle on the part of the males for the admiration of the females. The very possibility of the improvement now happily being realised in the modern world depends on the fact that a principle akin to Sexual Selection is, as civilisation progresses, daily more and more supplanting the principle of the Struggle for Existence, as the motive- power of human exertion ; it depends on the fact, in other words, that what men want in striving after money is not- commodities, but is consideration.—I am, Sir, Aso., WILLIAM W. CARLILE..
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