charges, the better for these active correspondents.

The next item is three hundred thousand
pounds derived from Crown Lands—a class of
property which is not very productive. The
gross income from these lands is only about
four hundred and thirty thousand pounds, and
many quiet observers, including Mr. Hankey,
are puzzled by this remarkable barrenness. There
is a tradition, meandering through old law-books,
which is painful to all taxpayers, that these
Crown lands were once sufficient to pay all the
expenses of the State, before a large number of
royal prodigals took to running through the
national property. William the Conqueror's
income from this source, according to a reliable
estimate, was equal, in our present money, to
something like six or seven millions per annum,
without taking into consideration the increased
value of property. Now the forests—the
anything but merry green woods, and part of this
property—cost more than they produce, showing
an annual loss of seven thousand pounds. If
this was the case in Robin Hood's time, no
wonder his Chancellor of the Exchequer set the
practice of thieving.

The last items on our list are the
miscellaneous receipts, a group that amounts to
about two millions and three-quarters. Here
we have small branches of the hereditary
revenue (an insignificant sum): about one
hundred and thirty thousand pounds paid by
the Bank of England for the privilege of issuing
bank-notes, or creating capital, to the extent of
fourteen millions; fees of public offices, a large
proportion of which consists of charges on
private bills (railway and public company bills),
sufficient to pay all the working expenses of
Parliament; a sum returned by the King of
the Belgians out of his pension, seemingly to
promote as much book-keeping as possible; and
a receipt of seven hundred thousand pounds
from the sale of old stores, which represents a
loss of a million and a half, and an annual sop
thrown to auction-room jobbers. These are
followed by what are called extra receipts—a
large part of which is the profit on coinage—
more than sufficient to pay the whole cost of
the Mint. The profit is made on the silver and
copper coinage, and chiefly on the latter. Gold
being the standard coin, is manufactured free
of charge, to keep it steady in value. Next
in these miscellaneous receipts, comes the
profit made from those useful but not very
lively government publications, the Gazette
of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin; then
follow the repayments from India for military
charges; the colonial contribution towards
the cost of our Post-office services (which we
have before taken into account); the unclaimed
wages and effects of deceased merchant seamen
which are paid into the Exchequer after six
years; a saving on the issue of parliamentary
grants, paid back in cash; ten thousand pounds
received from the public as "conscience money"
—partly from people who think they have
defrauded the revenue, and partly from enthusiasts
who wish to pay off the National Debt; a surplus
remaining unappropriated from former votes of
supply; and sums derived from the Malta and
Alexandria telegraph contractors, the Emperor
of China, in the shape of an indemnity; and
from the capture of slavers, and other sources,
These sums end the miscellaneous receipts, and
when the whole account is added up, we find
that the result of Sucking Britannia—the total
income from revenue of all kinds—is a little
more than seventy millions and a half. The
total amount received from taxation, exclusive
of the Post-office, is about sixty-seven millions,
and the cost of collection, excluding the Post-
office, but including superannuations, is about
two millions and a half, or three and three-
quarters per cent, as they say in the City.

This simple account of Ruling and Sucking
Britannia only gives the pure income and
expenditure of the national balance-sheet, leaving
out certain items which always appear in the
official statement. These items, on both sides,
generally reach another eighteen millions, and
represent certain financial operations of the
government. There are the balances standing
to the credit of the government at the
commencement of the financial year—the 1st of
April, or All Fools' Day—the money borrowed
from the Bank of England by the government,
under parliamentary restrictions, and partly
repaid during the year; the temporary advances
so borrowed and wholly repaid every quarter; and
the creation or redemption of additional debt.
The last item maybe interesting to those who wish
to watch the progress of the National Debt. The
repayments of advances that are not temporary,
includes an operation by which the silver and
copper coin finds its way into circulation. The
Mint buys copper and silver, and coins both, as
before stated, at a profit, but the coin is only
issued to the Bank of England, or to other
parties willing to give the full nominal value
for it, because they require the small coinage of
silver and copper for the wants of their customers.
Only those persons who require the coin for
such purposes would give twenty shillings' worth
of gold to receive only eighteen shillings intrinsic
value in silver, or probably not above seven or
eight shillings intrinsic value in copper.

One of the cleverest inventions to conceal
the real pressure of taxation was the so-much-
a-head theory. When financial reformers
complain that the active expenditure of the country
has increased sixfold during the last seventy
years, they are referred to the population
returns, and told that seventy millions a year,
drawn from thirty millions of people, is only
about two pounds five shillings a head. If
taxes were paid to Chancellors by sucking
babes, idiots, paupers, and a number of other
similar persons, there would be some fairness
in this poll-tax calculation, but the chief
heads in the country who pay these seventy
millions a year are heads of families. If Britannia
really believes in this head theory, with how
much disgust must she regard those constantly
occurring cases of death from starvation which