The Press. — London, England, 1857-02-07 00:00:00

128 understood those pledges as the right hon. gentleman understands them. I have not forgotten them. I never can forget to the latest day of my life, and I must remem ber with gratitude, if not with satisfaction, the conduct of the House of Commons at the period when those measures were adopted, and the generosity of the sentiments which they evinced. I must endeavour to answer that conduct, at least, by what depends on me ; and I shall endeavour to answer that conduct by striving to bring the expenditure of the country and its fiscal arrangements into such a shape as will allow the extinction of the income tax in 18tin. (Cheers.) The right lion, gentleman said, and I think truly, that he would not view narrowly and jealously the mere circumstance of the Government possessing a large sum of money through the accidental operation of an Act of Parliament for a single twelvemonth, if he were satisfied as to the purpose to which the money was devoted. But the right hon. gentleman is not satisfied. Sir, 1 am like him in that respect, and it is my intention to bring that matter fairly to an issue on the floor of this house. Sir, there is another point not altogether unimportant, in which a portion of the public are interested, and in which I myself have a personal interest. On the Ist of April there will still be a half-year's income tax due. It is material to consider whether that half•year's income tax is to be considered as ways and means applicable to the ser vice of the year or not. I hope it won't be thought a piece of impertinence if I object to consider it as simply ap plicshle to the service of the year; I was going to say that it was my property. That would be au extravagant expres sion, and would lead to altogether erroneous notions. But my meaning is this :—ln the year 1834 we asked the house to provide us with 12,00%0001. additional taxes, which was thou estimated for the tint year of the war. It was neces wiry that we should make provision for the thst six months, during which our receipts for new duties would not be forthcoming. I said, we do not propose to borrow money for the expenditure of the year while it continues ou this scale ; but although we do not propose to borrow money, yet as the taxes which you have granted cannot be received for six months, we ask you to enable us to raise money by means of instruments which will hold in pawn the proceeds of those taxes when they fall due. Well now, sir, that is the purpose to which the half-year's income tax which will become due on the Ist of April is pledged; and in my judgment, the engagements into which the Government and the house entered at that period ought to be honestly performed by devoting the proceeds of that half•year's income tax to the liquidation of the debt thus contracted. Sir, I have detained the house, I am afraid, too long, and much longer than I had intended ; but my duty upon the subject was a special duty, and I feel it to be one of so much importance to the house, and of such deep interest to the country whose feelings are so much excited upon it that they are hardly to be described, that the House of Commons is bound to assume its proper functions, to guide the country towards right conclusions, to establish rational principles, to enforce them at all costs, with respect to the expenditure of the country, and to grant to the country that relief which it is entitled to anticipate. With respect to the resolutions of which the right hon. gentleman has given notice I wish to say only one ward. He will feel that the precise mode and time of his motion must have reference in some degree to what has been stated by my right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Rut, at the same time. whatever the proper time or the proper form may be, when he or any other gentleman makes a motion, having for its purpose the giving effect to the financial arrangements of lS;i3, he will find me, as he is entitled to expect, among his warmest and most determined supporters—(cheers)—because I feel that I have no choice with regard to such a question; and that it would he my own duty t.l raise it if the right hon. gentleman had not announced his intention to do so. Fidelity to this house and to the pledges which it has by implication given to the public render imperative the. raising of that question. No doubt the right hon. gentle man, when he spoke of the settlement of 1553, bare in mind that we have contracted some 91,000,0001. or 40,0011,0001. of additional debt, and that the interest of that debt must be provided fur, and that certain modifica tions of what was determined in IW must be made. That additional debt grew boni fide out of the circum stances which have occured since, and which it was not in our power to foresee. Other circumstances may occur before 1860 which may require other alterations to be made. The principle to which I understand him to give his adhesion, and to which I give my adhesion, is this, that nothing has occurred, either with regard to the creation of new debt, or the necessity for new expenditure, which calls upon this house to depart substaatially from the pledge's that it gave in 1'4)3 with regard to the cessation of the income tax upon its present basis, with its uniform rate; and that it is the duty of the house to adhere to its pledges, and to give effect to them by the use of every constitutional power that it possesses. (Cheers.) Lord PALMERSTON pronounced the statement made by Disraeli, with reference to the existence of a si crt t treaty with Austria guaranteeing tl that power her Italian possessions, to be" an entire romance ": The speech of the right bon. gentleman opposite appeared to me to be au instance of the dangers into which men of eminent talents, and who distinguish themselves in various hues, are sometimes tempted to fall, by indulging on one occasion in the exercise of talents which had obtained for them eminence in another capacity. The right hon. gentleman stands pre-eminent iu this house for statesmanship, eloquence, powers of debate, and other valuable qualities, but he has risen to great reputation as a man of genius in another department of intellect—in short, as a groat master of the power.. of the imagination. lam not going to acetv:c the right h-o. gentleman on this occasion of having been indebted to his imagination for his facts, and his memory for his argument, as was said of another distinguished orator, but I must say that a great THE PRESS. portion of his speech as regarded our foreign policy was a pure and entire romance. The noble lord then at some length entered into the I3olgrad question, contending that tho misunder. standing as to this line had originated in no want of geographical kEowledge on the part of the British Plenipotentiaries. It was not desirable, he thought, that the papers relating to these differences, which had been arranged, should be laid before Parliament. He vindicated the course pursued by the Government regarding the Neufchatel question, denying that they Lad given the advice to the Swiss alleged by Mr. Disraeli; and then, coming back to the Austrian secret treaty, made the following admission : I believe in the early part of the war with Russia, when it was a question what line Austria should take, commit nications passed between the Austrian and French Go vernments ; and I believe the French Government at that fiat agreed that they would take no part hostile to Aus.ria. With regard to the operations against Persia, they were undoubtedly taken on the responsibility of her Majesty's Government, the circumstances of the case, in their opinion, calling for and justifying them, in conformity with a policy founded upon a right conception of the interests of our Indian empire. Within the last few days he had been informed that the Persian Ambassador at Paris had solicited an interview with Lord Cowley, and had expressed his readiness to enter into negotiations for the settle ment of the question. It would not, therefore, pending this negotiation, be expedient to produce the papers. The operations against China had been the result of a violation by the Chinese of the Treaty of Nankin. He hoped that this dispute, too, would be speedily adjusted. He expressed his concurrence in the principles laid down by Mr. Gladstone, that the scale of public expenditure should be first fixed, and then the means should be provided for denying it. To discuss this question, therefore, before the estimates were pre pared was premature. The Government had no interest in proposing establishments greater than the public service required, thereby creating parlia mentary difficulties ; but the country must not be left without the means of defence : That is why it is important to utilise the experience which we have gained in the last war, to maintain the scientific establishments, and to keep up those portions of the army which cannot be so easily raised as the recruits who per. form the ordinary operations of a campaign. I say, then, I trust the house will suspend its judgment on these matters of estimates and finance until they have before them the elements upon which their judgment may he formed. Mr. 13tILLIE strongly candemned the expedition to the Persian Gulf, which, he observed, had been de termined upon while Parliament was sitting. The present double Government of India was open to many objections : The Affghan war was one of the results of this system, and that war was in many respects a parallel to the present, the object in both being to counteract the influence of Russia in Central Asia. The Affghan war was the most expensive and disastrous in which the Indian Government were ever engaged. It cost 16,000,0001. sterling; it in volved the destruction of • large army, and it failed to attain its object. Indeed, it was now admitted, he be. lieved, that the Affghan war was a gross and wanton act of aggression. For that war the East India Directors were not responsible. They protested against the war, and the President of the Board of Control was compelled to threaten the secret committee with a mandamus from the Court of Queens Bench before they would send oat that order. That order was issued by Sir J. Hobhouse, and it was done at the instigation of the then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Lord Palmerston 1. The noble lord was, therefore, mainly responsible for the Affghan war, and for the great debt that it entailed upon the resources of India. Lord JOHN RUSSELL regretted that so much as perity should have been shown towards Russia upon the Bolgrad question. Russia unquestionably had the letter of the treaty upon her side, though we had the spirit upon ours, but it was extraordinary iu the discussion which followed so much asperity should have been displayed, that it should have been thought necessary to rouse this country almost to fever heat, and that there should have been so much intem perance and feeling in respect to a point in itself so simple : I thought it necessary ( observed the noble lord) to say these few words because some persons have assume.l—and no doubt falsely assumed—that those who express the views of her Majesty's Government still speak of Russia as if she were a power with which we were at war. Now that the purposes of Russia have been defeated and the objects of the war fully attained, 1 hope that we shall not only have a termination of the war but a prevaler oe of the spirit of peace. • • - With respect to the Persian expedition, he r:. gar Jed it with some concern : An expedition into the heart of the country is one of the utmost importance, because it must have one of two oh. jests,—either you must be going to fight Persia alone, and if you are, that country is so real:, so disorganiird, so reduced by the vices of its Court and the character of its people, that you run the danger of altogether destroying its independence; or you must be going to fight Persia SATURDAY, supported by Russia; and in that case, you have a formid• able contest before you—a contest which can only result in doing what I should think most dangerous to our empire in India,—namely, in approaching closely the real frontier of our Indian empire and the real frontier of the Russiat. empire. With regard to Russian influence in driving Persia into the present war, he disbelieved it:— I cannot believe that any Russian statesman would be blind enough to the interests of his country to engage in a distant support of the Shah, instead of, for at least the next five years, taking every possible means to increase the resources of Russia. I believe, therefore, that unless your terms were destructive of the independence of Persia, the Russian Government would be happy to aid you in obt& g n• ing them and in terminating the war. The noble lord then, insisting upon its having been the duty of the Government to have called Parliament together when the expedition to Bushire was deter. mined on, passed on to the Italian question. In reply to Mr. Disraeli, he was by no means satisfied with what had taken place. Of all the courses open to the Government to adopt towards Naples, Lord Clarendon bad chosen the least effectual. The noble lord then described the deplorable condition of Naples, which he believed to be " the consequence, and the natural consequence," of our interference. The state of Italy was lamentable : Tt may be possible, by means of Swiss soldiers, to put down any insurrection in blood; it may be possible, also, in the Roman Legations, by means of the foreign garrisons there, to suppress any revolt ; but if we, at one time by en• couraging them, and at another time by withholding sup port, drive the people of Italy into that state of desperation which leads them to make fruitless efforts to improve their condition, and the country thereby becomes in a worse state than before, I think a heavy responsibility will lie upon the Government of this country. Lord John Russell then, recurring to questions of home policy, referred to the estimates I will not attempt, of course, to go into any calculation, but 1 do hope that my right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will reconsider his determination, u expressed to-night, and that he will do as Sir Robert Peel and others have done in a similar case, that is, bring the state of the finances before this house at a very early period of the session. Let us know what the estimated expenditure is, what are the ways and means to cover it, what are the intentions of the Government with respect to the taxes, and let this house judge of them. Alluding to Lord Palmerston's remarks upon the necessity of keeping up efficiently our military and naval establishments, he observed : All T should wish prevent, as far as my vote lies, would be the adoption of any new system with regard to our naval and military estimates. We have been accue. tomed (and very great Ministers—Ministers who knew what the country required—have sanctioned the practice) to keep up low establishments in time of peace; and though there has been always a complaint in the first year of war that we have been very unprepared, and have not made sufficient provision for a period of war, yet, somehow or other, after a time, we have generally found ourselves strong enough to meet our enemy with the establishment we possessed. Moreover, though the complaint I refer to has been made very recently, arising out of the events of the late war, I do not think that our experience during the last thirty years is at all adverse to the plan pur- sued. . . . . It is by moderate establish. ments, by rendering such establishments go‘d and efficient, by attending to everything which cannot be easily originated or replaced—it is by such a system, and by relying on the greatness of the country and on the spirit of our people, that you will be most formidable in war, anti not by any newfangled system of increased estimates during a time of peace. Mr. 3ILLNER GIBSON remarked upon the question of future finance : If he had rightly understood the obser►ations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer he thought that a question of finance was a rock ahead of the present Government. The right hon. gentleman the member for Oxford University had predicted that from 23,000,01k1i. to 24,0041,0001. would be asked for the army, navy, and ordnance departments as the peace establishment for this country. If that predic tion should prove true the country would not support the Government. With respect to the marked absence of all allusions to home policy in the Speech from the Throne, he observed : He had never known such a Royal Speech made to Parliament since the reign of the four Georges. There was scarcely a word about domestic policy—as if England had no domestic policy. There was nothing in the Speech bat wars and rumours of wars." Everybody was described as contented and happy, as in the good times of George ; and " the resources of the country," it was said, " remained unimpaired, and its productive industry con• tinned unchecked in its course of progressive develop. ment." This was an exaggerated statement of the condition of the country. He denied that it could be stated with truth that there existed general well-being anti con. tentment. There was displayed throughout the length and breadth of the land—not merely by the poorer classes, but by the affluent—the utmost impatience at the amount of the public burdens ; and were there not daily seen in the metropolis large gstberioga of unemployed work• men? When they regarded the amount of pauperism and crime, how could the Ministers deliberately describe, in the Royal Speech, the whole country as one paradise'