SHERIDAN ON DIRECT TAXATION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPROTATOR.”.1
SIR,—In your article, "The Budget and the Sugar-Tax," in the Spectator of April 25th you say :—" The only way to bring home to all the electors of the country the responsibility for public expenditure is to impose a direct tax upon every 'voter either in the form of Income-tax or of a House-tax." It might interest your readers to see what Sheridan said on the same subject in his speech against the repeal of the Receipt taxon December 4th, 1783 :— "In my mind the great recommendation of the Receipt-tax is that being paid directly and not indirectly the public feel it, and it naturally leads them to consider the state of the nation. This is the excellence of this tax and a right principle of taxation. If I may presume to lay down a principle of taxation as fit to be adopted in an arbitrary and in a free country, taxes should be imposed as indirectly as possible in the former and the giving alarm to men's feelings ought to be most studiously avoided. The reverse exactly should be the case in a free country. The taxes there ought always to be direct and open. The subject when he pays any of them should know that he pays a tax, and his attention should in consequence be provoked to an examination of the country's debts, the weight of which being obliged to be borne by all, they necessarily concern all in an equal degree."
Fernley, Coolcham.
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