eavesdroppers, "Can you keep a secret?" "Yes," replied Coleridge. "Then," said the barmaid, "you have, with the best intentions, thrown your shilling away. But I thank you all the same, for your action was kindly meant." What do you mean?" said Coleridge, "you speak in riddles. Is not that your own letter which you hold in your hand? And can you not open and read it if you like?" "Yes, I can," said the barmaid, "but there is nothing in it." And suiting the action to the word, she broke the seal, opened the letter, and showed Coleridge that there was nothing but blank paper inside. She said the letter was from her lover, to whom she was engaged. And as both he and she were too poor to pay for postage, they had agreed to send, once a fortnight, a letter to each other with only a blank sheet of paper inside. At the right side of the seal there was to be a very small cross, if the sender was well; if ill, a very small circle at the left side. The receiver then got the letter from the postman, looked for the cross or the circle, and then returned it with a sigh, stating that he (or she) was too poor to pay the postage.

The barmaid in the above episode told Coleridge that he had thrown a shilling away; but this was incorrect. He had made the Government the present of a shilling. The time may come when subjects will pay at least a portion of taxation voluntarily, just as missionary societies are supported by nothing but voluntary subscriptions. When taxation is paid voluntarily, the easiest way of doing so will be to tear up a guinea's worth or two guineas' worth of stamps. Every stamp destroyed without being used in postage is a gift to the Government, given secretly, unostentatiously, and without any blowing of trumpets.

It is right to denounce the present Excise laws, for they encourage drunkenness. Few men have ever uttered more important truths in a more telling manner than the late. lamented Duke of Albany did, when he said, “I think if we can train the children early to see the difference between what dirt, and waste, and selfishness make of a poor man's dinner, and what thrift, and care, and cleanliness can make of it at the same cost, we shall be civilising them almost more directly than by our sums or our grammar, and shall be taking in flank our great enemy, drink-drink, the only terrible enemy whom England has to fear."

It is the work of a true patriot to denounce drink as the great enemy of Britain. In doing this, however, we reflect most terribly on the excise laws of England. Now there is no doubt of this, that one great reason why the Governments of Europe are driven to the cruel and nationally destructive step of deriving a revenue from the vice and misery of their subjects is the great aversion of the virtuous classes to allow the articles they use to be taxed. As the virtuous therefore refuse to pay taxes, the Government is almost compelled to get them paid by the vicious classes. And vice is thereby encouraged. For it is a law to which no exception has yet been found, that in a free State, the classes which pay the greatest amount of taxes acquire the greatest amount of political power, and consequently of wealth-e.g., soap-boilers, publicans, opium merchants. We see this in England, where crimes arising from drink are treated with as much lenity and consideration as are the crimes committed by the aristocracy. The Government is compelled to be wonderfully kind to drunkards, because they are the best patriots, inasmuch as they pay such a large part of the taxation. But if the virtuous classes ever wish to see the iniquitous excise laws abolished, they must be prepared to allow Government to tax milk, lemonade, soda-water, ginger-beer, tea, coffee, sugar, and coal. It would certainly be wise also to aid Government by voluntary contributions, as missionary societies are aided. Such contributions would be like the cream of milk-immensely superior in value to, though immensely less in quantity than, the milk. And the best, easiest, and most unostentatious way of giving voluntary subscriptions to Government would be by the destruction of postage stamps. For every stamp destroyed before it is used is a present to Government. Any man in England can easily pay Government an income tax of five per cent. of his income, without letting the Government know, by merely destroying postage stamps to that amount. Such a suggestion will of course meet with the same hostile reception from the virtuous opponents of the iniquitous excise laws of England that Stephenson's proposed railway received from Baron Alderson, when he said, "It is the most absurd scheme that ever entered into the head of man to conceive."

There is no doubt that poor inventors have been greater sufferers from England's cruelty towards their class than rich inventors have been. And yet not a few memorable and appalling illustrations of national cruelty and national

stupidity in persecuting aristocratic English inventors are recorded on the page of history. The following are samples.

Perhaps one of the very greatest inventions of modern times has been the celebrated "Sinking Fund" of the great Pitt. "The public attention at this period had been strongly directed to the prodigious powers of accumulation of money at compound interest; and Dr. Price had demonstrated with mathematical certainty, that any sum, however small, increasing at that rate, would in a given time extinguish any debt, however great. A penny laid out at compound interest at the birth of our Saviour would, in the year 1775, have amounted to a solid mass of gold eighteen hundred times the whole weight of the globe. Mr. Pitt, with the instinctive sagacity of genius, laid hold of this simple law, to establish a machine by which the vast debt of England might, without difficulty, be discharged. All former sinking funds had failed in producing great effects, because they were directed to the annual discharge of a certain portion of debt; not the formation by compound interest of a fund destined to its future and progressive liquidation; they advanced, therefore, by addition, not multiplication-in an arithmetical, not a geometrical, ratio. Mr. Pitt saw the evil, and not merely applied a remedy, but more than a remedy; he not only seized the battery, but turned it against the enemy. The wonderful powers of compound interest, the vast lever of geometrical progression, so long and sorely felt by debtors, were now to be applied to creditors; and inverting the process hitherto experienced among mankind, the swift growth of the gangrene was to be turned from the corruption of the sound to the eradication of the diseased part of the system. Another addition, like the discovery of gravitation, the press, and the steam-engine, to the many illustrations which history affords of the lasting truth, that the greatest changes both in the social and material world are governed by the same laws as the smallest; and that it is by the felicitous application of familiar principles to new and important objects, that the greatest and most salutary discoveries in human affairs are effected.

"Mr. Pitt's mind was strongly impressed with the incalculable importance of this subject, one before which all wars or subjects of present interest, excepting only the preservation of the constitution, sank into significance. From the time of his accession to office in 1784, his atten

tion had been constantly riveted upon it, and he repeatedly expressed, in the most energetic language, his sense of its overwhelming magnitude. Upon the deliberation of this day,' said he, in bringing forward his resolutions on the subject on 29th March, 1786, 'the people of England place all their hopes of a full return of prosperity, and a revival of that public security which will give vigour and confidence to those commercial exertions upon which the flourishing state of the country depends. Yet not only the public and this House, but other nations are intent upon it; for upon its deliberations, by the success or failure of what is now proposed, our rank will be decided among the Powers of Europe. To behold this country, when just emerging from a most unfortunate war, which had added such an accumulation to sums before immense, that it was the belief of surrounding nations, and of many among ourselves, that we must sink under it-to behold this nation, instead of despairing at its alarming condition, looking boldly its situation in the face, and establishing upon a spirited and permanent plan the means of relieving itself from all its encumbrances, must give such an idea of our resources as will astonish the nations around us and enable us to regain that pre-eminence to which, on many accounts, we are so justly entitled.' The bill to form a sinking fund passed both Houses without a dissentient voice; and on the 26th May, 1786, the King gave it the royal assent in person, to mark his strong sense of the public importance of the measure.

"The sinking fund thus provided was amply sufficient to have discharged all the existing debt of Great Britain within a moderate time. The sinking fund continued to be administered with exemplary fidelity, not only during Mr. Pitt's life, but after his death, till 1813, when a total change in the system took place, which eventually led to its ruin, and has, to all appearance, rendered the financial state of the country almost desperate. To obtain a clear view of the practical effects of Mr. Pitt's system, it is necessary to anticipate somewhat the march of events and give a summary of the operation of the sinking fund which he established down to the period when it was abandoned by his more embarrassed and less provident successors.

"From the accounts laid before Parliament, it appears that the sinking fund of a million, which Mr. Pitt established in 1786, had increased by accumulation at compound interest, and the great additions drawn from the one per

cent. on the vast loans from 1792 to 1812, to the enormous sum of fifteen millions and a half yearly in 1813, while the debts which it had discharged during that period amounted to no less than £238,231,000 sterling. This great increase had taken place in twenty-seven years; whereas Mr. Pitt had calculated correctly that his original million would be only four millions in twenty-eight years, the well-known period of the quadruplication of the sum at compound interest at five per cent. The subsequent £200,000 a year granted, undoubtedly accelerated in a certain degree the rate of its advance; but the true cause of the extraordinary and unexpected rapidity of its increase is to be found in the prodigious accumulation which the one per cent. on subsequent loans produced.

"While the nation in general were entirely satisfied with Mr. Pitt's financial statements, and, delighted with the rapid growth of the sinking fund, never examined whether the funds for its prodigious extension were provided by the fictitious supply of loans, or the solid growth of the revenue above the expenditure, a few more sagacious observers began to inquire into the solidity of the whole system, and, mistaking its past operation, which had been almost entirely during war, for its permanent character, which was to appear chiefly on the return of peace, loudly proclaimed that the whole was founded on an entire delusion; that a great portion of the sums which it paid off had been raised by loans; that at all events, a much larger sum than the amount of the debt annually redeemed had been actually borrowed since the commencement of the war; that it was impossible that a nation, any more than an individual, could discharge its debts by mere financial operations, and that the only way of really getting quit of encumbrances was by bringing the expenditure permanently under the income.

"These doctrines soon spread among a considerable part of the thinking portion of the nation; but they made little general impression till the return of peace had diverted into other channels the attention of the people, formerly concentrated on the career of Napoleon; and democratic ambition, taking advantage of national distress, had begun to denounce all that had formerly been done by the patriots who had triumphed over its principles. Then they speedily became universal. Attacks on the sinking fund were eagerly diffused and generally credited; the delusion of Mr. Pitt's system, the juggle so long practised on the