The Agitation for Abolition or Reduction of the Duty on
Fire Insurance. By an Insurant. (Thomas Harrild, Shoo lane.)—This extraordinary production is issued by the association which kindly conducts the agitation alluded to in its title, and is intended as a reply to Mr. Goode. The author treats Mr. Goode as if ho was arguing in favour of the tax, instead of merely showing that the arguments by which the insurance offices try to prove it the worst tax in the statute book are exaggerated and insufficient. For instance, the offices always call tho tax a duty of 200 per cent., because it is a duty of that amount on the very lowest premiums paid. Mr. Coode says that the fair way is to take the average premium paid, say five shillings. This seems obvious enough, and the Insurant fancies he answers him by replying :—l. That five shillings is not the average premium—an assertion which he does not condescend to prove, and which is nothing to the purpose if true. Mr. Coode never put forth five shillings as the true average, but as the best conjecture he could make. 2. If the average be five shillings, "this assumption leaves untouched" the insurances below this amount. 3. If the duty is only 3 per cent. on the most hazardous property, and, therefore, diminishes in proportion as it becomes desirable to encourage insurance, that 3 per cent. is "the last straw that breaks the camel's back." Such logic as this is best left alone. As a specimen of the Insuraut's temper and good manners, we note that he calls Mr. Coode—" a scribe of the Exchequer"—" a master of the art of sophistry"—" hotheaded partizan and unjust;" and his arguments are "a logical fraud"—"finoss- ing"—a thing "in which it is difficult to discover whether malice or mystification is the preponderating element," and "egregiously menda- cious." Whatever may be the case with the Exchequer, the association is not fortunate in its choice of a "scribe."
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