It is announced by telegraph that Lord Northbrook will probably
abolish the Income-tax and take off the export duty on wheat. The Income-tax in India has been too thoroughly condemned to be maintained when Government has a surplus, as it will this year have from its opium sales, but we shall regret if the opportunity is not taken to make a bargain with Native opinion. We believe we might have secured a most excellent tax, one on betel, a pernicious luxury, which is singularly open to taxation.. The cultivation is as visible as that of hops, and is, we believe, a strict monopoly in the hands of a special caste of natives very limited in number. As the consumption of betel, though tolerated, is held by all the stricter Hindoos and Mussulmans to be of doubt- ful propriety, the tax would not have offended Native opinion any more than those upon opium, cannabis indica, or spirits, which latter tax, by the way, is not half heavy enough. The dread of illicit distillation is, we suspect, unreal in India. Anybody can make salt and avoid the tax, but nobody does.
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