The Press. — London, England, 1853-05-21 00:00:00

rw TO THE WHIGS. LETTER 111. GEwrisum—l have said that Lord DEnav's Government took pre cisely that ground which the Whigs should have appropriated. Brief-lived as that Government was, never since the time of Lord GREY'S Administration has any Cabinet evinced equal energy in the redress of popular grievances. What was the loudest complaint throughout the kingdom ? The abuses of the Court of Chancery. And here the Reform that had been put out to nurse, swathed and coddled by it Commission until it see ned to have lost all power of movement, at once assumed vitality and vigour , all that the Whigs, throughout six long years, had been proposing to do, was done by a Government that scarcely lasted six months ; the spirit of BENTHAM united itself with the learning of Lord ST. LEONARD'S, and became practical. What complaint, now so smothered (and why it is smothered we shall see later when examining Mr. GLADSTONE's budget), was then loudest amongst all subdivisions of labour and skill? The unequal assessment of the income tax. All Governments before had refused to deal with the injustice. A Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer had proposed to double it. The Govern ment of Lord DERBY founded its financial scheme on the remedy of this popular grievance. What had been for the last four years the urgent demand of the mercantile world ? The extension of our trade with China by the diminution of the tea duties. The demand was conceded. In a like spirit the complaints of the shipping interest, long neglected, wore promptly heard. There remained the grievances urged by the colonial interest, and still more loudly by the agricultural. Here, free trade once established as a fixed principle, it was only in the power of the Government to give such redress as that principle permitted. It is true that the Governinent could not here restore immediate prosperity ts► diminished capital. But it could at least achieve one object of immense national import►nice—it could conciliate discontented classes. - - - • ---- --- To ---- judge of the budget produced by Mr. DianAtm in the dry spirit of a financier is to do signal injustice to the grand political principle that presided over the whole scheme, and should have won favour to a hundred petty errors in detail. That principle was the conciliation to an inevitable commercial policy of all whom the effects of the policy had, for the time, most alienated front the Legislature and the Consti tution. That principle went farther still—it went to the foundation of our representative system—it animated the ancient liberty that exists in the Right of Petition—it connected the supply of subsidies with the redress of grievances. Its merit here was precisely that which the Whigs had ever affected to identify with the wisdom of liberal legislation—the merit of reco vering to the State the alienated affections of some large division of the people. Thus, the Derby Government having conceded Reform to all who appeal to law out behalf of property—having met the complaint which, day by day, the trading public and the press had united to utter against the iniquity of taxing precarious income at the same rate as that derived from realised capital—having taken into con sideration the just assertion contained in the Report of the Committee on the Income Tax, that the whole of the burden was at present borne by about 350,000 persona, and that under such an assessment one person contributed not only his own share to the expenditure, but the share justly chargeable on three other capable persons—having given to the merchant the boon he most demanded—having earned the grateful ac knowledgment of the representatives of the shipping interest—it turned to the class most suffering front the effects of free trade. It could not repeal free trade for the sake of that class : was it, therefore, to exclude that class front the benefits it was conferring on those whom free trade had most enriched ? What was its language to the agriculturists ? "We accept your own cry at the hustings ; we will " seek to carry Out free trade fairly. You assert that the excise duty "on malt cripples your industry in the direction of your capital: that "assertion no political economist can deny. The relief, in such re " duction as we can effect, may he small ; but, in dealing with the malt " tax and taking off one moiety, we will at least try to do you this " justice—we will prosecute free trade for the enlargement of your own " energies, the freedom of your own capital." And something far more important than the reduction of a malt tax is the conviction of English fair play in the minds of men in whose loyalty England reeognises the best defence for her domestic institutions, and the firmest guarantee for that safety from a foreign foe for which, at this moment, you are levying your militia and manning your naval armaments. And yet, all that you, the Whig gentlemen who aspire "to make demo " eracy Conservative," could see in a measure framed with this obvious end was the miserable question—whether the gain upon a pot of beer would be a farthing or a penny ! Well, but the late CIIANCELLOII of the I?xeH}:Qt•t:R /imposed to bring the ten•pound householders within the pale of taxation. Audacious THE PRESS. SATURDAY, man ! Regarded solely as a question of political prudence, I grant candidly that very reasonable doubts may be entertaine whether the same budget should have contained an extensio e tax on income and an extension of the tax on houses. But wi ect to the last, the precise verge of exemption, and the precise a of the tax inil►osed, Mr. DISRAELI wisely and pointedly left as a . The prin ciple that was asserted, you, the Whigs, were especially bound to defend : you had created the class of the ten-pound householders ; you had made those voters potent agents in the decision of all fiscal burdens. And was it for you to say that the constituencies you had called into being were to stand wholly exempt from the taxation their represen tatives were admitted to levy upon all householders save themselves? Was that a doctrine agreeable to the theory of repreeantation ? Was that your notion of a " Conservative Democracy"? You inveigh against the bribery practised in a borough election. Small, indeed, is ►such septennial corruption to that which you would perpetuate in the doctrine that men who hold a suffrage in right of a property qua lification should keep sacred from fiscal burdens the very property which qualifies them to tax their neighbours ! And the danger becomes immeasurably heightened when the only excuse you can make for their exemption is that it might curtail their franchise (in other words, diminish their political power) if you did not annex to their right of thrusting their hands into the pockets of others—the privilege of buttoning up their own. No, I repeat it, and I challenge you to disprove the assertion, there was not a single principle in the budget on which Lord DERBY'S Government staked its existence which you, the Whigs, were called upon to oppose :—not a principle which had not been recognised by all the economical authorities you have received as guides :—not a principle which (lid not tend to consummate that policy of which you were the legal inheritors, and to restore to it the value it had lost by your neglect. Had you, then, refused to join all attempts to overthrow Lord Dminv's Government upon the introduction of its budget, you would have maintained the position you resigned to Mr. GLADSTONE and his coterie ; you would have been the party to form a Cabinet whenever the fitting moment to regain your ascendancy had arrived. I reinforce the proposition previously stated—present neutrality would have secured to you the power of future arbitration. And what then would have been your relative gain? Clearly this :—the liberal tendencies of the late Government would have compelled you gradually to amalga mate with its chiefs. A Government reconstructed from Lord DERBY'S would have united all those who, instead of undoing your Reform Bill, would make the Reform Bill do its work. The old quarrels between Whigs and Tories would have passed away in the midst of the new combinations which, as Whigs, sooner or later you must resist, or they will sweep you wholly from the scene. Tories had already recognised the necessity of employing all the popular elements of the Constitution in support of its monarchical foundations; and you as Whigs would have recognised no less the necessity of preserving all that constitutes the life of monarchy from insidious attempts to remove from due influence in legislation that order of gentlemen which has hitherto given dignity to freedom, and' maintained a constitutional throne apart from the dangerous hostility or the still more dangerous adulation of tickle numbers. Remove that order, and the republic of to-day is the despotism of to-morrow. Nor is there a country in the world in which the reaction from democracy to despotism would be so sudden and so complete as in England, because in no other country is there the same timidity of CAPITAL ; and just in proportion as democratic progress, by levelling the influences of birth, elevates the influences of money. does it create a power that would at any time annihilate liberty—if liberty were brought into opposition with the Three per Cents. But this post of neutrality you renounced. You preferred to be come the tools of the section most embittered against Lord DERBY'S Government, because most identified with the memory of your own inflexible opponent. Mr. HATTER has conversations (unauthorised of course—all such conversations are) with the chiefs of the Brigade. No income tax extends to Ireland, if Sir CHARLES WOOD be a consistent man and the member of a new Cabinet. You unite with the Radicals, who overthrew you before—whom, unless you also become Radicals, you can never conciliate. You unite with the Peelites, whose organs in the press had been, up to the last, treating your principles and your party with contumelious disdain. And you throw out the Go vernment of which the Premier had been the most eloquent defender of your Reform Bill,—of which the leader in the House of Commons had been accused of too warm a desire to reanimate that Toryism of Queen Anne's day which sought to identify itself with popular reforms,—in order to make a Premier of my Lord ABERDEEN, and a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Mr. GLADSTONE ! A Premier of the man who had treated your Lord JOHN as a religious incen diary, and your Lord PALMEarros as a meddling revolutionist ! A Chancellor of the Exchequer of the man who, in the very speech that preceded his elevation, styled himself " a Conservative," pathetically expressing his regret for the rupture of ancient tics and his hope of ,4