POSTSCRIPT.
SATURDAY NIGHT.
The Income-tax is likely to prove more dangerous to Sir Robert Peel than he supposed, or than it need be, through gross mismanagement of the details. Some country papers have complained that the provision to secure secrecy, by which householders are empowered to forward their returns under sealed cover to a superior officer, is frustrated by the local Assessors' breaking the seal. Instances have come within our own knowledge of needless, and therefore unjust, trouble given : even the re- turns are negligently served, and when application is made at the offices they are frequently found to be unprovided with them. People the less grudged the tax, odious as its very name was, because they though that it would be well managed; and they regarded the Premier's repute for business-like qualities as a guarantee that it would. They did not indeed think that he would himself do duty in every office, but they expected him to see that others did theirs. Has that been looked to? Are the subordinates who execute the law fitted for their office by ability, zeal, and discretion ? is the army of tax-collectors free from traitors—political adversaries of the Government, who would like to make the tax not less, but more odious? The First Lord of the Treasury ought to be able to answer these questions ; and to say that the management of the tax has been intrusted to those who are not only able and honest in their own persons, but capable of choosing their subordinates properly. At all events, it is manifest, from the very pro- ceedings of the functionaries and the construction of the returns, that the system itself is faulty. It might be worth the while of the Minister to investigate this matter.
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