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the House. All articles manufactured of cotton, wool, silk, worsted, flax, hemp, jute, India-rubber, gutta-percha, wood (?), glass, pottery wares, leather, paper, iron, steel, lead, tin, copper, zinc, brass, gold and silver, horn, ivory, bone, bristles, wholly or in part, or of other materials, are to be taxed-- provided always that books, magazines, pamphlets, newspapers, and reviews shall not be regarded as manufactures. It will be said that the amount of taxation to be levied on the immense number of manufactured articles which must be included in this list will be light, the tax itself being only 3 per cent. ad valorem. But with reference to every article, there will be the necessity of collecting this 3 per cent. As regards each article that is manufactured, some government official must interfere to appraise its value and to levy the tax. Who shall declare the value of a barrel of wooden nutmegs; or how shall the excise officer get his tax from every cobbler's stall in the country? And then tradesmen are to pay licenses for their trades--a confectioner 2l., a tallow- chandler 2l., a horse dealer 2l. Every man whose business it is to sell horses shall be a horse dealer. True. But who shall say whether or no it be a man's business to sell horses? An apothecary 2l., a photographer 2l., a peddler 4l., 3l., 2l., or 1l., according to his mode of traveling. But if the gross receipts of any of the confectioners, tallow-chandlers, horse dealers, apothecaries, photographers, peddlers, or the like do not exceed 200l. a year, then such tradesmen shall not be required to pay for any license at all. Surely such a proviso can only have been inserted with the express view of creating fraud and ill blood! But the greatest audacity has, I think, been shown in the levying of personal taxes,-- such taxes as have been held to be peculiarly disagreeable among us, and have specially brought down upon us the contempt of lightly- taxed people, who, like the Americans, have known nothing of domestic interference. Carriages are to be taxed, as they are with us. Pianos also are to be taxed, and plate. It is not signified by this clause that such articles shall pay a tax, once for all, while in the maker's hands, which tax would no doubt fall on the future owner of such piano or plate; in such case the owner would pay, but would pay without any personal contact with the tax-gatherer. But every owner of a piano or of plate is to pay annually according to the value of the articles he owns. But perhaps the most audacious of all the proposed taxes is that on watches. Every owner of a watch is to pay 4s. a year for a gold watch and 2s. a year for a silver watch! The American tax-gatherers will not like to be cheated. They will be very keen in searching for watches. But who can say whether they or the carriers of watches will have the best of it in such a hunt. The tax-gatherers will be as hounds ever at work on a cold scent. They will now be hot and angry, and then dull and disheartened. But the carriers of watches who do not choose to pay will generally, one may predict, be able to make their points good. With such a tax bill--which I believe came into action on the 1st of May, 1862--the Americans are not fairly open to the charge of being unwilling to tax themselves. They have avoided none of the irritating annoyances of taxation, as also they have not avoided, or attempted to lighten for themselves, the dead weight of the burden. The dead weight they are right to endure without flinching; but their mode of laying it on their own backs justifies me, I think, in saying that they do not yet know how to obtain access to their own means. But this bill applies simply to matters of excise. As I have said before, Congress, which has hitherto supported the government by custom duties, has also the power of levying excise duties, and now, in its first session since the commencement of the war, has begun to use that power without much hesitation or bashfulness. As regards their taxes levied at the custom-house, the government of