Is it really true that the Government intend to impose
the tax for male servants on all who employ small boys for half-an-hour or an hour in the morning to clean shoes and knives? The Commissioners of Inland Revenue say so on the tax-papers, and have raised a very natural and just discontent by saying so. Nothing can be more monstrous. It is most unjust, both to the taxpayers and to the boys in question ; —to the taxpayers, for the help of such boys is constantly the resource of very poor persons, who keep only one maid-of-all-work, or even none at all, and who are compelled to get a little aid from outside for the laborious muscular effort of knife and boot-cleaning ; and to the boys, be- cause it will cut off one of the few resources left to children, during the time they are compelled to attend school, for helping their parents. Clearly, the tax on male servants, like all the other assessed taxes, was meant to be paid by the prosperous. This tax would often be paid by the neediest of the needy.
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