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often perishes from the same cause; -is, provement Society, in a letter which con

killed by misdirected kindness. It is known that a canary bird in a cage, placed at night within the closed curtains of a tent bed, in which two persons are sleeping, will be found dead in the morning. We yet place childhood in similar situations, in which every breath inspired is nearly as fatal to health as if it contained the fumes of arsenic.

Granted that neither of these are cases affected by the window duties, is it not obvious, that whenever air and light are blocked out to avoid the window duties, the same process is repeated, and that the process is death?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, entrenched behind Mr. Wickham, the Chairman of Stamps and Taxes, who was present at the interview, had another answer to the deputation, which at the time admitted of no reply. Mr. Wickham stated that the deputation were in error upon a material point, and that houses might be ventilated by perforated plates of zinc, which would not be liable to duty, although placed

in external walls.

We pray the reader to note this as an instance of those hasty and often wholly unwarranted assertions, common to official men, by which great measures of public improvement are often defeated, for the mere object of getting a minister out of a temporary dilemma.

A correspondence ensued between Mr. Biers, the President of the Carpenters' Society, and the Board of Stamps and Taxes, in which Mr. Pressly, the Secretary, stated, by order of the Board, that perforated plates of zinc would be chargeable, "if so perforated as to afford light, but not if so as to serve the purpose of ventilation only."

The allusion here, it is supposed, is to some kind of zig-zag opening which should admit the air by a winding course, and prevent the light passing through in a direct line; but such a contrivance, although practicable in a thick castle wall, is obviously not so in the thin walls of a third rate house. In reply to further inquiries from Mr. Biers, how perforations were to be made that would admit air and yet exclude light, the Board declined to give any information.

A mistake had evidently been committed by Mr. Wickham, and one of such serious moment that it was deemed sufficient to lay it before the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to ensure the adoption of at least some partial and really practicable mode of relief. The case was stated by Mr. H. Gally Knight, on the part of the Metropolitan Im

cluded with the following inquiries :

"1. Whether her Majesty's government will introduce any measure corresponding in principle with the draft of the bill left with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, of the 27th April alluded to, by fixing a maximum to the existing window duties, beyond which new openings might be made for light and ventilation without subjecting the occupant to additional charges!

"And should the Chancellor of the Exchequer not be prepared with any such measure, whether, 2. Government will pass a short bill to exempt from taxation, upon sanatory grounds, all unglazed openings in basement stories and closets of every description, that the evils complained of from defective ventilation may in some degree be palliated, if not wholly re

moved?

"Either measure might be so framed as to be attended with little or no loss to the revenue, and the former especially would be gratefully received by the public as a most valuable boon."

REPLY OF THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. "Downing street, June 26, 1844. "My dear Sir, I have received the memorandum which you have enclosed to me from the Metropolitan Improvement Society. I can have no difficulty in declining to sanction either of the alterations of the law relative to the window tax which they have submitted to me, it being evident that either of them, if acceded to, would enable parties to have windows without the payment of the tax.

"There has been no mistake, as the parties suppose, on the part of Mr. Wickham, in stating that openings for ventilation might be made which would not be chargeable as windows, and I cannot think it at all inconsistent with such a statement to decline expressing beforehand a general opinion as to whether certain openings when made would or would not be considered as windows, and as such liable to charge.-Yours ever, my dear sir, most truly,

"HENRY GOULBURN.

"H. Gally Knight, Esq., M. P."

From the tone of the above, one might fairly infer that to desire the untaxed enjoyment of light and air, to any extent, however small, is a moral offence in the eyes of a Chancellor of the Exchequer; and that the Health of Towns Commissioners deserve to be put in the stocks. The letter would also appear intended to teach the publice that it is wrong to seek such a clear explanation of the law as would guard them against its infraction; and that a Government Board is quite justifiable in "declining to give any opinion beforehand;" but we will confine ourselves to the sentence in which Mr. Goulburn denies the mistake of Mr. Wickham, and repeats the statement, that openings may be legally made for ventilation which would not be chargeable as windows.

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■ Unaccountable as it may seem, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Wickham are both in error on this material point, so ☐ pertinaciously maintained; and the proof is so striking, that we doubt not we shall be able in a few words to demonstrate the fact. In the first place, there is no special provision in any one of the acts relating to the assessed taxes for excepting openings of any kind (zig-zag openings nor any other) made for purposes of ventilation in dwelling houses, from the duties chargeable on windows.

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In the second, the 38th Geo. III., chap. 40, expressly provides that all openings in 24 external walls not chargeable as windows or lights, shall be stopped up with brick or stone, or the materials of which the walls are composed.. Under this act a gentleman at Croydon, who wished to rid himself of mice, was lately surcharged for a small hole in his cellar, made to admit a cat; and there is no exception in favour of perforated plates of zinc in any general act.

deficiency of light is as injurious to the health of animals, as it is to the growth of plants, and is a check to the full and perfect development of all organic structures, vegetable or animal. Upon this head some important testimony was given by a distinguished surgeon, Mr. Ward, to the Health of Towns Commissioners.

"Dupuytren (I think) relates the case of a lady whose maladies had baffled the skill of several eminent practitioners. This lady resided in one of the narrow streets of Paris. After a in a dark room (into which the sun never shone) careful examination, Dupuytren was led to refer her complaints to the absence of light, and recommended her removal to a more cheerful situation. This change was followed by the most beneficial results; all her complaints vanished. Sir James Wylie has given a remarkable instance of the influence of light. He states that the cases of disease on the dark side of an ex

tensive barracks at St. Petersburg, have been uniformly, for many years, in the proportion of three to one to those on the side exposed to strong light. The experiments of Dr. Edwards are conclusive. He has shown that if tadpoles are nourished with proper food, and exposed to the constantly renewed contact of water (so that their beneficial respiration may be maintained), but are entirely deprived of light, their growth continues, but their metamorphosis into the condition of air-breathing animals is arrested, and they remain in the form of large tadpoles. Dr. Edwards also observes, that persons who live in caves and cellars, or in very dark and narrow

In the third place, both these facts were admitted by the legislature this very last session, in the passing of a local act for the La protection of property in the borough of Liverpool from fire (7 and 8 Victoria, chap. 51). In this local act a provision was introduced (clause 10) for allowing circular ventilating apertures of not more than seven inches in diameter, "provided such aperture, if made in a direct line, is protected by a grating of cast iron, the interstices of streets, are apt to produce deformed children;

which shall not exceed one-quarter of an ✓inch in width."

This then is the state of the law;-- a cir

and that men who work in mines are liable to disease and deformity beyond what the simple closeness of the air would be likely to produce."

cular aperture seven inches wide, protected by 'The author of a philosophical work of

an iron grating, may now be made in a cellar at Liverpool for the escape of foul air; but if made in a cellar in London, it is chargeable as an additional "window or light."

This trifling concession to the sanatory interests of the people of Liverpool, obtain ed through the interest of private parties, was, as we have seen, formally refused to the public.

But ventilation cannot be perfect without the influence of the sun's rays, to rarefy the air and produce a current, and we cannot have darkness or gloom without dirt and filth. The sanatory properties of light, apart from the question of ventilation, form another important consideration.

The public are familiar with the fact that light is essential to vegetation--that the ruits of the earth will not ripen without the ays of the sun, and that their influence is sensibly felt in an exhilaration of the aninal spirits. But it is now beginning to be inderstood by medical practitioners, that a

somewhat rare merit,* in dwelling upon the influence of light upon animal formations, remarks, that

"Some poor people having taken up their abode in the cells under the fortificatious of Lisle, the proportion of defective infants produced by

them became so great, that it was deemed necessary to issue an order commanding these cells to be shut up."

Here in England we think it no evil to turn living rooms above ground into dark cells, by our fiscal enactments. In the crowded lodging-houses of the poor there is not a dark closet that does not contain a bed; and there would be no dark closets, where they adjoin an external wall, but for the window duties.

It is much to be regretted that both the public and the government, in the days of the Reform Ministry, were so ill-informed upon the subject discussed, that when Lord

* Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,' page 229.

Althorp was Chancellor of the Exchequer,, the words in italics, because one means by the repeal of the house tax was preferred to which the Commissioners of Stamps and that of the window duties. The repeal of Taxes have evaded the act has been by conboth taxes however was called for, and the struing it to refer not to houses then existing, government of the day, not being wholly in- but to then existing occupiers. So that in sensible to the injurious operation of the lat- every case where an occupier of 1835 has ter, a pledge was given to remove the evils opened additional windows under the 4th complained of in the case of all houses then and 5th Wm., c. 54, and then removed to built, and a bill (the 4th and 5th of Wm. IV., another residence, the Commissioners have c. 54) was actually introduced and passed to caused the new occupier to be surcharged for carry out the object. all the additional windows; and this Mr. Goulburn (who had not referred to the precise terms of Lord Althorp's speech) explained to the deputation of May last, was both the meaning of the law and its design.

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This pledge has been broken, and the clear and unmistakeable intention of Lord Althorp's act has been deliberately evaded for the sake of revenue. A brief reference to the discussions which preceded the act, and its subsequent history, will show that we do not make this statement without foundation.

"Thursday, July 17, 1834. "Mr. Hume.] I hope there is no occasion to remind the noble Lord the Chancellor of the Exchequer, of the pledge he gave us some time ago relative to the tax on windows. I am quite sure that the noble Lord is desirous of rendering it as little oppressive as possible, and that if he cannot reduce its amount now, he will endeavour to do so next session. If the noble Lord would limit the tax to its present amount, and allow every man who has paid the window rate for an entire year to continue to pay the same composition and to open additional windows, it would be a very great relief. It is not at all uncommon in old-fashioned houses which contain a greater number of windows than modern buildings, to see many windows bricked up for the purpose of avoiding the tax. If the noble Lord would redeem his pledge, he would confer a very great boon upon those parties."*

In reply, Lord Althorp stated that he did not remember having given any distinct pledge on the subject, but that he should be prepared to discuss the question when the Bill was in committee.

The House resolved itself into committee the following week, Wednesday, July 30, when Lord Althorp rose and said

"I have now to beg leave to bring up a clause which was suggested to me by the hon. member for Oxford, enabling persons to open fresh windows in houses at present existing without any additional charge. As I apprehend there will be no objection to the clause, it will be unnecessary for me to trouble the Committee with any observations upon it. I will therefore only say that it cannot occasion any loss to the revenue; its only effect is to prevent an increase of the revenue in the case of houses already existing."t

We direct the attention of the reader to

"Lord Althorp's words were, 'its effect will be to prevent an increase of the revenue in the case of houses already existing! What effect upon the revenue has really been produced?"

Produce of the window duties for the years ending

April 5, 1835,
April 5, 1842,

1,177,6567. 8s. 9d. 1,613,774/. 1s. Od.

A large portion of this increase is of course occasioned by the new houses erected since 1835, but the full amount of the difference is not to be thus explained. The increased produce of the window duties, it will be seen, is in the proportion of nearly two-fifths within seven years; but the population returns show that the increased number of houses within a period of ten years, including the fourth-rate tenements which pay no window duty, is only in the proportion of less than one-fifth, leaving a sum of at least the rigid assessments of late enforced; as200,000l. per annum to be accounted for by sessments more severe, vexatious, and exacting than have ever been known since the window duties were placed upon the statute book t

Prior to 1835 the duty of assessment had been somewhat negligently performed, and perhaps there were few persons in the country charged to the full amount of window duty for which they were liable. This, be it observed, was not the fault of the public, if fault it were, but of the government of the day. The occupiers of houses do not assess themselves to the window duty; no returns are left with them to be filled up with

† Inhabited houses in England and Wales:
1831.
1841.
2,481,544.
2,943,939.

*One contrivance is to get rid of the exemptica

Mirror of Parliament,' p. 2,757 of vol. for of farm houses where a farmer takes in a lodger.

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† Mirror of Parliament,' p. 3,116.

The farm house in such case is assessed as a lodg ing house.

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the number of chargeable windows, as in the lath and plaster, and not with brick as recase of other branches of the assessed taxes. quired by the law.* The case was brought Indeed not one person in a thousand is at before the judges in innumerable shapes: this moment aware for what number of win- but in vain. The judges ruled in favour of dows he is really liable; shop windows, the injustice; deciding that whatever might dairy windows, and some others being ex-te a fair and reasonable excuse for a wrong empt; and there being more than a dozen acts relating to the subject.* The assessor is a government officer, whose duty it is to count the windows of every house, and charge accordingly.

It is important to note this fact, to estimate correctly the value of state morality when it gets entangled in a question of finance.

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assessment, the words of the act "duly assessed" were imperative.

The act was loosely and carelessly worded; but what is said in private life of the honour of a tradesman who, in making out a bill of charges, allows himself to take advantage of clerical errors in his own favour, instead of hastening to correct them?

That the errors in this case have not By accident, or more probably by the been rectified, and public faith kept, is not, sinister design of some underling, a de- of course, the fault of Lord Althorp; he has sign to which Lord Althorp could not have retired from public life; but the present been a party, the words duly assessed were Earl Spencer is fully aware that no man is introduced into the 4th and 5th William at liberty entirely to renounce responsibiliIV., chap. 54. Clause 7 provides that addi- ties he has once assumed. Earl Spencer tional windows may be opened free of duty pledged the faith of government on the winby every person who is or shall be duly dow duties, and to Earl Spencer the public assessed for the year ending 5th of April, may not unreasonably look for some expla1835." Without suspecting the interpreta-nation of the sense in which that pledge was tion that would be put upon these words, many thousand persons in all parts of the country, set about improving the comfort and healthfulness of their habitations by opening additional windows; and what then did the government? A time had come when the treasury was empty; ministers were perplexed about ways and means; "the prince of the power of the air" flew from Somerset House to Downing street, and whispered into their ears this advice:"A vast number of silly people have put themselves in your power by a blind credulity in the faith of an act of parliament. None of these persons were duly assessed in 1835; the mistake was your own, but you may profit by it; take their money."

The advice was followed.

In the history of modern governments we have never met with a parallel case to this gross violation of the spirit of an unrepealed act of legislation. The people of Pennsylvania have renounced repudiation; shame at last has reached them; but British statesmen have adopted the principle and yet defend it.

the

9 Every person without a single exception, who opened additional windows Ws upon faith of Lord Althorp's act, was surcharged for the increased number; some on one pretence, some on another; this being a very common ground of surcharge,-that former window openings had been stopped out with

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given; the less unreasonably from the fact, that whatever blame the public or the present ministry may seek to throw upon the Chairman of Stamps and Taxes, as a wrong interpreter of the act, or an unsafe adviser, the appointment of that gentleman originated with his lordship, and not with any member of the cabinet of Sir Robert Peel.

The revenue derived from the window duties we do not desire to see wholly abolished. The burden falls upon the owners of house property, and would be borne without a murmur if imposed in a less objectionable form. To remedy the late injustice committed, we would reduce assessments to the standard of 1835, and collect them (as was proposed) in the shape of a modified house tax, or of the present occupancy tax, which might be increased for the purpose, and

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which is, in part, but the old house tax under a new name.

ed progress, "there is a lion in the path !"*
and who see no moral turpitude in a measure
which, from the mere indolence of incapaci
pure
ty, robs their fellow-creatures of the
of heaven, and the light of the sun.

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We submit the case as one of grave interest in itself, and as belonging to a large question of sanatory improvement which we had proposed to discuss, but the apparent hopelessness of the task has induced us, for the present, to relinquish its further prosecution. Of what avail has been all the recent agitation upon the subject of cemeteries, drainage, abundant supplies of water, or upon a really efficient plan of medical reform? A few laborious investigators, to whom posterity will decree statues, have shown how the annual mortality of the population may be diminished and the phy-portant off-shoot measures for the improvement of sical enjoyment of life increased by the most simple and economical arrangements, and they address a government beset with the ignorant, the doubting and the mercenary, who exclaim at every step of contemplat

* It is to be hoped of Sir Robert Peel, at least, that the same pelty yet intense official jealousies which in the case of the postage reform diminished, as we confidently believe, the probable receipts by at least half a million per annum, and restricted the correspondence of the country more than one-third what it would have been had the measure been carried out in its integrity with increased facilities, as well as the reduction in price,-jealousies which, it is now well known, have marred the poor-law reform of the beneficent objects embraced in its first conception, may not, in the course of its more imthe sanatory condition of the population, be allowed to stand in the way of the adoption of and execution of those comprehensive improvements, which, as they never have been conceived, so they never have nor will be executed by the torpid minds of men of mere routine.

CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES. AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY. ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY. By Sir Humphrey Davy. A New Edition, with Instructions for the Analysis of Soils, and Copious Notes, by John Shier, A. M., Professor of Agriculture, University of Aberdeen. THE present work is a reprint of the admirable Lectures of Sir Humphrey Davy on Agricultural Chemistry, accompanied with an exposition of all the doctrines and methods that have been discovered on the subject up to the present time.

these beautiful expositions of all that was known thirty years ago on the grand processes of vegetable life, production and nutrition, had been entirely useless to the large class of knowledgeseekers in this department which now exists. Happily it is not so. The grounds and first principles of the subject have not changed amid the mass of additions that recent years have contributed.

The character of Davy, as an eloquent and felicitous expounder of scientific truths, is known by all the world to have been as pre-eminent as his powers of original research. Chemistry in his hands had all the fascination of the belles-lettres; his lectures in the Royal stitution divided public attention with the theatre, and the merits of his style were of that solid kind which could appear in his published writings..

These lectures were first published in 1813, after having been delivered annually for more than twelve years to the members of the Board of Agriculture. They may be considered as the author's highest effort in popularising important scientific doctrines; and in no cause could the labour and genius have been better bestowed. To open the door to the introduction of methods by which blades of grass and ears of corn might multiply far beyond the experience of any past generation, was an effort on which any man might justly pride himself.

The present editor of the lectures seems to have displayed an amount of diligence and fidelity, as well as knowledge and ability, seldom found in the annotators even of the greatest works. He has taken up every statement of the author which was insufficient, and appended to it a very clear and careful condensation of the best views which present science and observation can furnish; not a few of which are the print of his own individual experience and research. We have rarely seen a writer on science so painstaking both in matter and in expression, or so successful in making thoroughly intelligi ble everything, whether in doctrine or description, that is meant to be conveyed. When we say that the notes are worthy of the text, we give them the highest praise that they could deserve.

Besides completing the views of Davy by those of Liebig, Boussingault, and other che mists, and the experiments of good observers, Mr. Shier has inserted a number of valuable tables collected from many sources, such as the comparative nutritive power of aliments-the comparative value of fodders-the ultimate anaIt would have been much to be regretted if lyses of field crops the nutritive matter of

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