6.—The Injustice resulting to Taxpayers.

From these propositions laid down as premises, Blackstone thus proceeds to draw the following further conclusions :—"The thing therefore to be wished and aimed at in a land of liberty is by no means the total abolition of taxes, which would draw after it very pernicious consequences, and the very supposition of which is the height of political absurdity." Between the premises and the conclusion there is no connexion whatever. It may be true or it may not, that the total abolition of taxes is "by no means to be wished in a land of liberty;" but the truth or falsehood of that proposition has no more connexion with the proposition "that every gentleman in the kingdom would find himself a greater loser by being stripped of such of his lands as were formerly the property of the crown, and again subjected to all the feudal tenures, than by paying his quota to such taxes as are necessary to the support of government," than it has with the proposition or axiom, that the whole is greater than its part, or that four is greater than one. Unfortunately for the conclusiveness of the learned and accomplished commentator's reasoning, and for a very large proportion of those whom the result of his reasoning concerns, there is a considerable number of persons in these kingdoms who pay their quota of taxes without possessing any lands that were formerly the property of the crown, or any lands that were formerly subject to feudal services. If all the tax payers of Great Britain and Ireland were gentlemen possessed of such lands as Mr. Justice Blackstone describes, nothing could be more just, more sound, more conclusive than the learned judge's reasoning. But his conclusion is entirely based on the hypothesis that the said tax payers are identical in every respect with the said land-holding gentlemen, and that hypothesis having not the slightest foundation, the superstructure raised upon it must of necessity fall to the ground.