The Press. — London, England, 1853-06-11 00:00:00

~~ THE PRESS. 132 * lit * The Report of the Adjourned Meeting of THE COMMISSION OF ENQUIRY ON THE PRESENT MINISTRY, which is in type, is postponed till next week. TO THE WHIGS. LETTER V. GENTLEMEN, You have rallied round Mr. GLADSTONE'S Budget as round a banner. The Budget is popular, I grant it. But why ? Be- cause of the political principle that lies concealed amongst its financial details. It is popular because it flatters all those whose passions are yet warmed by the remembrance of the long disputes on the Corn Law-. It revives the ignes suppositos by the eineri dolooo. It renews the triumph over the landed interest by a fresh attack upon the land. I have said in a former letter that we would consider why the complaint against the assessment of the income tax, once so loud, was now so silenced. I invite you to that consi devatiou. You cannot deny that at the commencement of the present Parliament it, was generally computed that not one hun dred and fifty members could he found who would vote for the reas sessment of the income tax, according to the principle upon which it had been imposed and continued. Now, Mr. GLADSTONE has obtained a willing majority not only to the renewal but to the extension of the tax, unmitigated in its stern principle—and how ? By annexing to it the new duty on successions. Take from the Budget this tax, and where would be Mr. GLADSTONE'S popularity—where the acquiescence in the renewal of the income tax, which, like that grim impartial visitor described by the poet— " Xrytil pulbat petle pauperuu► tabernaw Regtunque turreh - ? It, may or may not be true that the now tax on successions is but a claptrap for popularity—that it will little injure the land—that only .100,0001. will be raised from that description of property. Not so, at least, was the proposition regarded by the Movement, who cheered the assault on aristocracy, and the shopkeeper who silenced as a Radi cal the complaints he had uttered as a Tradesman. It became popular solely on the ground that it inflicted on the principle of hereditary aristocracy a something that had heretofore been resisted as detri mental to its existence. The popularity was increased because the attack was unaccompanied by one conciliatory measure towards the class it assailed—not even an attempt to mitigate the expenses of the sale or the mortgage which the tax might not unfrequently compel. Do the democrats pause to think whether the gain from land will be less than half a million? No! to use the language of their own press, " they have inserted another wedge into the tree." I say nothing on the general question as to whether real property imuld or not be exposed to the legacy duty ; or whether it be a sound principle in political economy to relieve our own incomes by deductions from the capital of posterity. All that I say is. that the time and the mode in which the duty is now imposed convert a ques tion otherwise financial into a measure especially political. The income tax was mainly defended as an instrument for the aboli tion of protective duties. Aud now the sole prospect of our release from that burden is made to rest upon the profits of a new tax on the very class which the abolition of those duties had most galled and most injured. You thus ultimately pay for free trade out of the pockets of those whom free trade had impoverished. You conclude your war, not by grace to the enemy who has retired from the field, but by an act that is meant to charge him with its expenses. You have cheered on your followers by the shout of " Ve viols!" and in the spirit of Eastern despots have made the proof of your victory consist in the fine you have levied on the vanquished. Titus it is that Mr. GLADSTONE purchased the popular consent to the inequalities of his income tax. And Lord ,lona sate beside Mr. GLADSTONE, and Lord JOHN subscribed to the impost, because it was a symbol of political insult.—having during his whole career as a 'Whig opposed the impost as a measure of finance ! And do you think that this fresh triumph to the Peelites is no fresh damage to the Whig: ! Mr. GLADSTONE'S Budget itself, regarded purely as a financial mea sure, has some great me. its ; and amongst them that which is only second to o ig'nality. v:z., felicitous imitation. Mr. BRODIE'S pam phlet s-pplies the conception of the new succession tax—to Mr. Dts aAE'. 's Budget we owe the mitigation of the tea duties, the relief of the shipping interest. Then; is one authority, indeed, to which Mr. GLAD STONE never turned his classical taste, whether for paraphrase or trans lation, viz., the Bud ets of the Whigs. But that which predistinguishes the scheme of Mr. Gtstistotot. from the propositions of Mr. DISRAELI is notable and significant. It is the utter absence of ever: desire to remove the irritation and to gain the affections of the vast class trnployed iu the production of wealth, SATURDAY, through its earliest and deepest source—the cultivation of the soil. When our Hannibal of the Exchequer has gained the summit of his Alps, and looks down on his Italy of Relief, a divine com passion seizes him for the sufferings of all—except the class which alone has suffered. He thinks the case of the post horse-masters " very hard " he reserves a corner of his heart for the wrongs of attorneys—ponies and dogs come under benignant consideration ; but the husbandman, whose earnings had been seized to defray the cost of ascending the Alps, is excluded from all the bene fits showered down on the rest of the Italy ! The land is ignored for relief—it is only remembered for taxation. And therefore the old grudge still remains, and the golden opportunity of effecting concilia tion between town and country upon easy terms is irrevocably cast away. Meanwhile the Parliament stands pledged for six years to the continuance of the income tax, with all the grievances which will again find voice when the hurrahs that cheered the new tax upon bloated landlords have passed away,—remaining in full force, and extend ing to a wider range all the feelings that weaken respect for property, and all the temptations which can demoralise the honest. In the speech by which Mr. DISRAELI introduced his budget he contemplated the future extinction of the income tax, while redressing, for the pre sent, its inequalities. But on what did he rely for aid to the resources obtained from the termination of the Long and other Annuities? Upon the diminution of expenditure in the Public Works. The two millions which Mr. GLADSTONE is in six years to obtain from a tax that it now seems is to disappoint popular expectation, and fall rather upon humble houseowners than opulent landholders, Mr. DISRAELI would have raised, perhaps, in three years, by drawing only on that MAGNUM VECTIGAL PARSIMONIA which has no place in the calculations of Mr. GLADSTONE. " Retrenchment " was one of the three conditions of Lord GREY when he entered into office ; Lord DERBY'S Government took up the long-dormant principle upon which the Whigs had based their pretensions to power; and the Whigs turned aside, to cry out, with Mr. GouLauaN, "Dangerous and abominable principle! to count on retrenchment for the future repeal of a tax." _ And now, gentlemen, I close my appeal to you. You have united yourselves with men opposed to all your past policy, for the purpose of suspending your present existence as a party, and for the prepara tion of a measure which must either complete your unpopularity by its tnilurc. or destroy all the elements of your future power by its success. Meanwhile you have the fullest opportunities to cultivate the virtue of patience under affront. My Lord JOHN has had the pre sumption to speak for himself on a question he might well be sup posed to understand—my Lord ABERDEEN disavows, on the part of himself " and many of his colleagues," the sentiments expressed by the nominal Leader of the Commons. Periods polished with literary care, and delivered with the frigid solemnity of elaborate preparation, are excused as expressions liable to be " misunderstood," indiscreet ebullitions from the " heat of debate." The apology that would damage the raw tyro in politics is applied to the colleague grey with the ex perience and conflicts of forty years ; and the services of Mr. KEOGH arc repurchased by the marked humiliation of the ci-decant First Mi nister of the Crown. Your India Bill, purely Whig, is already ex posed to contempt by the defenders of that part of the Cabinet which is purely Peelite ; and the grave troubles in the East introduce into your councils every ancient subject of discord that can distinguish a PAL MERSTON from an ABERDEEN. But such differences of policy are insig nificant compared to that which Lord JOHN himself holds in reserve. Let the seeds of disunion lie interred through the present session—the crop will be richer for the repose of the fallow. Another year, and the old posi tion of the Whigs will be gone for ever. You must then do as others have done before you—make your bold choice between abjuring your creed of moderation, and passing as Radicals to the expectant camp of Mr. COBDEN,—or carrying that creed into the forces that gather round the standard of Lord DERBY. The brief Government which you overthrew lasted long enough to suffice for proof that a Ministry which never pledged itself to finality can comprehend the necessities of progress ; that to redress grievances, conciliate classes, retrench expenditure, reform the laws, take into council Public Opinion, are not only within the power, but become the essential duty, of those who call themselves Conservatives,—simply because they would preserve to their children the constitution once reverenced by the Whigs. I do not doubt the choice to which intelligence and patriotism will compel some amongst you, and those not the least eminent, nor the least liberal. And looking to your uneasy and undignified post in the present Administration, certain that all the motives which guide human conduct forbid you long to retain it,—conscious that you cannot, for years to come, form an Administra tion solely from your own ranks, I foresee that fusion be tween the more thoughtful of the chiefs and supporters of the present Government and the leaders of the present Opposition which will terminate in the creation of such a Government as will bring all the forces of the constitution to bear upon the cure of ~.r j~,<+ 'I