THE NUMBERS OF THE COMFORTABLE.
WE are able this week, in continuation of our recent dis- courses upon the numbers of the very rich among us, to give a curious fact as to the numbers of the Comfortable class of
the population. The Income-tax returns ought to tell us exactly how many well-off people there are in Great Britain, but they do not, for the comfortable usually return their incomes under many headings, and no one has yet asked the Commons for "A return graduated in divisions of £100 a year each, and to be separated from the returns of partnerships and companies." Such a return would, with Lord Derby's "Domesday Book," tell us nearly all we want to know as to the distribution of wealth in Britain ; but meanwhile Mr. Locke King has induced Parliament to give him a most sug- gestive return, a list, county by county and borough by borough, of the assessed rental of all houses. We have gone through this list with much care, and well aware as we were of the singular distri- bution of wealth in Great Britain, we confess to be somewhat taken aback at the number of the really comfortable. In this land of millionaires and princes it is under 1i per cent. of the popula- tion. The rental of a house does not, as is often asserted, vary in proportion to its occupier's means, for a majority of professional men are " overhoused," in London more especially, and the number of considerable houses let in lodgings must be very great. Still, looking abroad over the whole surface of Great Britain, it may, we think, fairly be alleged that the man who permanently occupies a house assessed to the house-tax at more than £100 a year—that is, worth more than £120 a year rent—belongs to the class of the Comfortable, is out of the class of the anxious, intends to give his children the benefit of good education, has more than enough to eat and drink, and can contemplate a holiday without any sicken- ing feeling of despair. That assessment implies in London a house costing for rent, taxes, repairs, and water-rate, which, be it remembered, is compulsory, at least £175 a year, and an income of not less than £800; and in the country an outlay of £150, and an income of at least £600. The ratio of rental to income varies excessively in different places, owing partly to differences in the value of houses, and partly to the necessities imposed by fashion and professional convenience,—for example, all London journals must be published within certain limits, or the newsagents could not get them in time for post ; but on a broad view of the facts, we have rather understated than overstated the truth. The gradations are almost infinite, but still, if we must select an arbitrary line, it is fair to say that a family inhabiting a house assessed at more than £100 is, as a rule, "comfortable," while a family paying less is not so. Vell, there are less than 60,000 of the comfortable. The exact number is 72,042, but a heavy deduction must be made for places of business which are taxed because people sleep in them, but which are not exactly inhabited houses. For example, the most highly-rented building in Great Britain is a "house" in the City assessed at nearly £36,400 a year, and is, we presume, the Bank of England, which covers a whole block, and if sold by auction would produce perhaps the largest sum ever paid in this world for a "house." The deduction ought, we suspect, to be much greater ; but after making it as moderate as possible, the number of really comfortable families, of families from which a guinea subscription might be expected, or which could take the Times without feeling extravagant, cannot, in any case, exceed 60,000 out of the 4,600,000 within Great Britain. Fortunately, however, the list of the Respectables is of very much larger proportion. No less than 150,000 families (the number returned is 162,548) are fairly well-to-do, paying between £50 and £100 of rent, as assessed ; 200,000 more (261,268) pay from £30 to £50; and 300,000 more are struggling, but still well above the rank called usually the poor, and pay more than £20. Taking them all, as we fairly may do, as siding with the Haves rather than the Havenots, we have a total force of 710,000 families who would be irritated at the assertion that they were anything but respectable in position, and who do not live by direct manual labour. As each family counts for five, the total Army of Respectability in a pecuniary sense num- bers 3,550,000, or one-eighth of the population of the island. It follows, and should never be forgotten, that the taxation of this country, rich at it seems, falls upon a population seven in eight of whom live in houses of less than £.20 a year,—that is, are not, in the ordinary sense of that word, comfortable at all, but are, with more or less of content, always struggling to make ends meet, always compelled to think of money, always affected in the most direct and serious way by a tax, a rise in prices, or a stoppage in the coarse of trade. It is only to one in eight of our population that a sovereign is not a very serious sum, only to four in a thou- sand that a five-pound note is not an important, most important, amount of money.
Any impection of the higher columns of this return is embar- rassed by the intrusion of buildings only nominally inhabited, but we confess, when we remember the great cities, we are surprised to find only 8,123 buildings assessed at £300 a year and upwards, —that is, that the number of really rich families, families with £3,000 a year, must be greatly less than that—and still more to find how very few pay on 11,000 a year and upwards,—there are only 758 of them, and they include the London Clubs, the huge shops, the City warehouses, and so on—till we half doubt whether the palaces can be assessed at all in any fair proportion to their value. That part of the speculation, indeed, is valueless till we know something more of the system on which these assessments are arranged ; and meanwhile we are driven back on the broad fact that while men with a quarter of a million die at the rate of sixteen a year, and while every year sees a new millionaire enter society, the number of the really comfortable in Britain cannot by possibility exceed 70,000, while it may be very little more than half of that amount.
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