September 28, 1861.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

129

THE SPINSTER’S READY RECKONER

Showing at an Ante-nuptial Glance how to Live with Connubial Frugality
on £1389 for one year only.

To start with— first a pair of Ponies
At eighty guineas, cheap you ’ll own is ;

As elegant a lilac Phaeton
As ever charming Countess sate on,

Page, footmen, high-bred horses, carriage
(Or how ridiculous is marriage P)

Five hundred guineas, in round numbers
Would surely break no consort’s slumbers;

Am operarbox—first tier—three hundred,

A perfect bagatelle which none dread;

Dresses for balls and drawing-rooms,

Three hundred—(this includes perfumes) ;

Bonnets and gloves could not reach fifty.

Of course assuming one is thrifty;

To spend a month at Matlock Bath,

A hundred pounds need wake no wrath;

A month at Emms or Baden-Baden,

Won’t bend, as Cockneys say, a “farden; ”

Another month or so at Paris—

Expenses left to Mrs. Harris,

Who keeps my keys—so stout and ruddy—
Economy I’d make her study.

Pompeian Villa—country seat,

Town mansion and marine retreat.

Such necessaries need not grieve them;

So to Mamma and Charles I leave them.

Subscriptions—pew rents—fancy fairs,
Pic-nics—buns to please the Bears,

Gifts to poor dames in rustic hovels.

Pees for editing my novels,

Patronage for dawning merit,
Crochet-needles—pins and gerret,

Portrait by Carmine, R. A.,

Presents on Papa’s birthday;

All these my private purse would pay.

Eor Charles—his pleasures dress and snuff.
Twenty I guess would be enough.

Some knick-knacks p’rhaps I have omitted,
If so, the balance—ten—will hit it.

£

84

525

300

300

50

100

(Expenses

nominal.)

1

j (Left to Mrs.
I' Harris.)

J

(Left to
Charles
and

Mamma.)

(Paid by
L Private
Purse.)

(For

Charles)

(The

Balance)

20

10

Q. E. D. Errors excepted

£1389

THE STATE OE THE HOLY SEE.

The Holy See is getting in a sadly troubled state, and the Holy
Eather Pius must be getting Holy See sick. Tossed about as he has
been, and with everything around him so tempestuous and threatening,
one wonders the old gentleman does not seek some quiet haven, where
he could pass his few remaining days in comfort and in peace. It is
clear he can have neither while he keeps where he now is; and, indeed,
things look so stormy that there is a great likelihood of his fortunes
being wrecked.

The only course of safety would be for him to fling his old tiara over-
board, and thus relieve and lighten his nearly sinking ship. If the
Pope would throw away his temporal possessions, a hundred hands
would instantly be stretched forth to his help, and he would quickly be
enabled to steer into smooth water, and rest in safety from the storms
which now disturb the Holy See.

Heart and Head.

Among tavern-waiters a ready-reckoner is termed a “good chalk
head. Certain financiers assert that the justice of an Income-Tax,
incident as heavily on precarious as on perpetual incomes, is demon-
strable by simple arithmetic. This demonstration seems to require a
good chalk head. _ The same ciphering sages sneer at the plea for con-
sideration urged in behalf of the earners of precarious incomes as
sentimental.’’ In these gentlemen the chalk head appears to be
associated with a heart of stone.

Advice to Match-Making Mammas.—The first and only thing
Heir’’6 13 Slm^y’ as ^-RS- Glass very wisely says, “Eirst catch your

AN IGNORAMUS ON THE INCOME-TAX.

“ Mr. Punch,

“That shallow and inexperienced financier, Mr. Wilson,
was one of those impostors or idiots who advocate the imposition of
discriminating rates upon different classes of incomes. The Economist
has lately republished a memorandum written by him, and containing a
series of futile arguments on behalf of that injustice. Your readers
perhaps would like to know how prodigiously absurd and despicably
weak those rotten arguments are.

“Mr. Wilson begins by observing that, ‘the origin of the Income-
Tax was to provide a substitute for Customs and Excise duties repealed
and reduced.’ Premising a quantity of argumentative fudge, too long
to quote, he goes on to say:—

“If all men expended the whole of their incomes, then it is true that a uniform
rate of Income-Tax would be equivalent to customs duties. But the actual difference
of the fact it is, probably, which has suggested that the fairer method would be to
charge the tax on expenditure in place of income, which no doubt in its incidence
would be as nearly as possible the same as the tax collected from customs and
excise duties. But the objection to taxing expenditure in the place of income is,
that it would be impracticable. At present, out of £5,589,000, there is collected at
the sources, without any return being required from the taxpayer, and without the
slightest inquisition into his affairs, no less than £4,039,000, while only 1,550,000 is
collected from incomes for which returns are required. If the same returns and
inquisition were required for the whole that are for the £1,550,000, it could not be
maintained for a day, or if it were it could only be under such lax regulations that
half would be evaded.”

“ The following hackneyed truism is assigned by Mr. Wilson as a
plea for the proposed iniquity of charging different incomes at different
rates:—

“ A person with £1,000 a-year, in the shape of a perpetual annuity from rents ot
land or dividends in the funds, is in a condition to spend the whole of it without
impairing his prospects for the future, while a person deriving £1,000 a-year from a
trade or profession has to provide generally against one contingency in the former
case, and two contingencies in the latter case.”

“ It has been argued, with profound wisdom, by the cleverest writers
in existence, that, even if the Income-Tax is unequal now, all incomes
will adjust themselves to it in time. Mark the utterly inconclusive
reply of Mr. Wilson:—

“ The obvious answer is, that if they are adjusted now by a discriminating
charge, we do at once that which time would accomplish years hence, and that fees
and salaries would remain as they are, in proportion to other incomes.”

“This is simply an inapposite quotation of the vulgar proverbial
saying, ‘ No time like the present.’

“ Subsequently, Mr. Wilson ridiculously attempts to demonstrate
that the self-adjustment of the Income-Tax, on physicians’ fees, for
example, could never take place. To make out this denial of an
acknowledged certainty, he enters into irrelevant arithmetical calcu-
lations. Mr. Wilson knew nothing of figures.

“ I do not attempt, dir. Funch, to refute any of the fallacies above
quoted. They have, I think, most of them appeared in your columns
before, published by you of course as jokes, laughable by reason of their
self-evident absurdity. But they will be received by your readers, if
not as new jokes, yet as much higher jokes than they previously seemed
to be, now that they appear as the serious propositions of Mr. Wilson,
whose reputation as a financier is as great as it is unmerited.

“Let me, however, direct your attention, and that of your readers,
to one perilous indiscretion which occurs among Mr. Wilson’s imbe-
cilities. Your circulation lies altogether among the higher classes, to
which we both belong, therefore I do not hesitate to notice that mis-
take in this place, whence, of course, it will go no farther—will not, foi
example, get into the penny papers. I allude to the most injudicious
exposition of the fact that the inquisition of the Income-Tax is au
annoyance which affects a portion only of those who pay it—the con-
temptible wretches whose incomes are derived from trades and pro-
fessions. This information must necessarily aggravate their hatred of
Schedule D. Mr. Wilson has the imprudence to add the declaration
of his belief, that if the same inquisition were extended to the higher
classes of Income-Tax payers, such as our noble selves and our readers,
who are all independent gentlemen and ladies, it could not be main-
tained for a day. Of course it could not; but to tell the people so,
how sure a way to excite then brutal indignation against au impost at
whose partial operation they are already howling quite loudly enough
to disturb the serenity of the better orders represented by

“ Your humble Servant, Crassus.”

Amusements in Rome.

The Romans have started a new game, called Aunty Nelly. It con-
sists of a figure, considerably blackened, of a well-known Cardinal,
whose name somewhat corresponds in sound to the above. The fun
turns upon the players pitching into the figure as hard as they can.
The Cardinal comes in for several hard blows, but no one has succeeded,
as yet, in putting his pipe out. However, it affords infinite sport to
the Romans, and is, altogether, a very fair substitute for the English
game of Aunt Sally.

Vol. 41.

5