A Hundred Years Ago
THE SPECTATOR, SEPTEMBER 12TH, 1829. STATE OF THE COUNTRY.
The substitution of an income-tax for various others which press more immediately on production, as proposed by "Hermes," is no new plan. We question its propriety. An income-tax must be searching, inquisitorial, oppressive, or it must be useless. The great mass of the tax is necessarily drawn from small incomes, which can ill afford direct diminution, as it is only by prudential abstinences from taxed conveniences that their possessors make shift to live. Besides, for all that is said on the subject, the inequality, of taxation is more apparent than real. The aggregate amount, rather than the distribution of the impost, is the evil. It is of extremely small importance to him who is compelled to part with three-fourths of his loaf, whether the party claiming cut from the bottom or the top.
CHARACTER OF TtiE FRENCH.
In the French temperature Blackwood's writer admits an amiable cheerfulness and gayety ; but he lays, according to'custom, a heavy share of vanity to their account. The last article of accusation we do not mean to dispute, but we will affirm that it is a vanity, in its modes of exhibition, singularly free from affectation. The Frenchman is sufficiently vain to be vain of what he is. The Englishman's vanity is not so conscientious, and it attempts a fraud in an affectation—he would seem something he is not.
Our vanities seem seldom to run parallel with those of our neigh- bours. The pretences of wealth or fashion, to one of which most English affectations may be traced, are sources of foible scarcely known in France. The vanity of the Frenchman is substantive, and stands alone. The Englishman's is adjective, and leans for support on his associations or his purse. He shines with borrowed lights.
In a French drawingroom, too, the English visitor will in vain look for those knickknackeries of fancy and luxury which are common in our apartments. He will remark few indulgences beyond the useful. In the bijouterie of the mind they delight as much as we do in the bagatelles of the decorator.
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