The Press. — London, England, 1853-05-14 00:00:00

IFv - V rottebings in V arliantent. THE litisH cOMPACT CHARGE. Mr. T. BALI., on Monday night, insisting that Ministerial virtue ought not to he suspected a mo ment longer than necessary, called upon the mein her fur Westmeath to give names and details .c -specting the charge of corruption he had brought against the Whig Uo‘ernmeut, or their accredited agent. Captain MAOAN declined to answer such a chal lenge until the question it conveyed had appeared formally upon the notice paper of the house. Mr. BALI. explained that such a notice had been prepared, but was not inserted on the paper on rie• count of some technical informality. It was, hew ever, sufficiently well known that be had inteuded to make his present application to the lion. member. Lord J. Russeo. seized the opportunity of giving the house a pledge that whereas the allegation in question imported that. some person was authorised by the Whig party, before the late Government left power, to make some sort of contract with the Irish members, to the effect that they would not be parties to the imposition of an income tax on Ireland if those members would vote against the late Govern ment, he had ealy to say that, according to his knowledge and belief, there was no person so autho rised, and there never was any such proposition made to the Irish party. (Hear, hear.) Lord A. VANE renewed the endeavour to extract some further reasons from Captain MALIAN, who reiterated his refusal to give any, except upon compulsion. Colonel DUNNE, as an Irish member, saw no dis credit in the alleged compact. None such was ever proposed to himself ; but, if it had been, he should have deemed himself only doing his duty to Ireland by accepting it. Mr. Mooing went to the point of the matter. He knew nothing of the alleged transaction, but he and everybody knew that the supposed " accredited agent " meant Mr. Hayter, whom he called upon to defend himself. Mr. RAWER rejoiced t't find an opening for that purpose. Recapitulating the terms of the alleged compact between Ministers and the Irish members, ho repudiated any part in, or cog,nistince of, such a transaction "He never 'nal hcen authorised by any person or any laxly of persons to mahe any such cismitunication to any roam 4)r to ally party. He never had atti'lltled at any meeting at ally time of his life of Irish members—( Ile«r, hear, and a laugh. }—and he never lout stated to any per tain at any time that. he was autlanistsl iu any manner to say that, if the thovemincut 1.))ol. Derby w 4.1.4) over. thrown, the ligoventutent to he sttlistitut,sl in its place would undertake not to put the income to% up! iii In•hoid. He ti'llStl . ll that. the la anattable member would be sot Hic‘l with this reply. ( Hoff, hoar. Captain MALIAN said it. WAS all a mistake. Il e had carefully used the plural number, and the accredited agents he had alluded to were three Irish members, whom he still refitsod to name with out formal notice. On Thursday, upon the motion for going into the committee of ways and means, Capt. MAttAN at length entered into full explann tion. He had never intended to refer WI Mr. hurter, met he had been wrong in stating three as the number of interme4liarios between the Whig mi nisters expectant MO the members. Two hon. gentlemen only were involved in his allegation. That allegation, according to the veision Ito now gave, amounted to this, that, being present at. a coital» meeting, they asserted that, if the p.e.ty who ex pected to tune into ottive should succeed in rievont plishing their object, no income tax should he imposed upon Ireland. 'The members alluded to he named as the representatives for Roscommon and Tralee, Messrs. F. French and Maurice O'Connell. Roth of the named monhers successively 'droves' explanations on their own weenie, the common burden hieing, that, while c onfessing to the assenuice they were charged with having given to the other Irish members, their grounds for giving it. were derived from sundry ntiserllimeous lobby conversa tions with Mr. I layter. That. hon. member had always referred them to the budgets and speeeltes of Sir C. Wood, whence they hail derived the pleasing convietion that a Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer had always opposed the extension of the income tax to Ireland. Mr. HAVTER, acknowledgitig thin prollahility that such conversations had taken Olive, confessed to having utterly forgotten them. Sir C. Wool) interjected on his own a re mark that his participation i n th e a ff a i r wi . un . e d only through the pages of Hensard. Mr. MALINN, commenting upon tile singular dis appearance of the "aecredited regents" who had figured so conspicuously in the former discos_ slow, charged the member for death with much incaution in stating matterd of fact : THE PRESS. " It now appeared that those accredited agents, who of course were very well known before they were more di rectly mentionea, or at all events that one of them, the right hon. member for Wells (Mr. Havter), was not a party to any compact whatever, but that the whole affair, from beginning to end, was one of those numerous con ferences to which the right Iwo. gentleman was a party — and 1 suppose no one is a party to a greater number of conferences than my Hieit hon. friend—( laughter)—it was ono of those loose conversations in the lobby—(peat laughter )—in which I suppose every member of the house, from time to time, takes a part. I admit I do. ( l.'heeru and laughter.) Although politically opposed to the right hon. gentleman, I have known him for 20 years ; he is a member of the same profession as mysvlf, and I must say it laws) . * affords me pleasure to converse with him. But when an hon. member, on the strength of one of those loose converslitions'—(iaughter)—getS up u statement like this, and brings a chargo against the overnment of this country, a charge involving a degree of perfidy entirely unworthy of the tiovertnnent of this great nation, that hon. gentleman, accenting to my views of right and wrong in these mutters, owes an apology to the house for having mad., such an erroneous statement." Capt. 11AOAN denied that his statements were erro neous. " Accredited" in his former speeches meant "so considered." To the insinuations in the speech just delivered he then applied epithets which, under a rebuko, from the Speaker, he retracted. A number of Irtmch members afterwards spoke, detailing their various impressions, coniectures, and reminiseenses. At last, upon an appeal from Sir R. H. Inglis, the matter was allowed to drop. THE INCOME TAX. THE Commons being on Monday once more invited to pass the income-tax resolutions of the budget, 31r. R. PALMER proposed an amendment, by which the 7d. in the pound assessed on incomes from land should be charged only upon the net rental remain ing after repairs, insurances, and expenses of manage ment had been duly deducted. Accepting the income tax as perpetual, and referring to Mr. Gladstone's admission that the nominal 7d. on land was an actual 9d., he insisted on the justice of allowing the land lords the same remission which tradesmen obtained ou the score of dilapidation, expenses, insurance, and other drawbacks from their ostensible receipts. Mr. !wax): declined to disturb the general ap proval he had already given to the budget. Never theless he recognised the possibility of improving it in some details. He especially wished to have the tax extended to all classes, even so as to include the labourer who earned twelve shillings a week. Every body would then contribute to an impost which now fell upon only about one person in sixty-five, and the exchequer would receive thirteen millions a year instead of five or six, and thus be able to spare other duties, such as those upon malt and hops. Mr. W. 3111. es contended that the concession now asked for was perfectly fair, and one to which the landlords had a right. Capt. Scumme chara c terised the budget as one of equivalents. in which disadvantages on one side were made up by disadvantages on the other. On first hearing the Chancellor of the Exchequers long speech, his scheme had looked like a Chinese puzzle, but the more he studied it or heard it discussed the better he learned to appreciate its harmony. Mr. Pitmen's feared that any alteration in the budget would be tantamount to overthrowing it alto gether, and could not take the responsibility of such a e abe,tcopl Mr. 1.. Ilrywou'rn liked the income tax so much that he hoped to see it raised to ten per cent. Mr. Iti . eK and Mr. Ael,tosinv enumerated some of the special burdens which fell on the land, and sought ti►r a partial r. imbursement, especially for the small proprietors. Col. HARCOURT believed that his vote in favour of Mr. Disraeli's finance scheme on December lath had pledgeA hint against adopting a feature which was not included in it. Mr. Seooxen did not view his vote of December 16th in any such light. He thought the income tax altogether unjustifiable in time of peace, and would adopt every proposal that tended to diminish and restrict its operation. Mr. HT reiterated his constant declaration that the owners of land had nothing or less to complain of. He entered into a variety of hypothetical details showing the possibility of mannfaeturers sintering losses and depreciations for which theylleould obtain no corresponding reduction's in their income-tax assess ments. Sir T. 1). ACL.%ND and Sir W. JourrE having briefly spoken in favour of the amendment, The CHANCELLOR of the Event:oven, while ac knowledging the plausibility and even the equity of the amendment, as a naked proposition, found him self compelled to oppose it with all his personal and official power, when taken in conjunetion with the oilier provisions of the tax of which it formed a part, with the group of circum4ances which at present bore on the renewal of the tax, and with the pledges given on former and on recent occasions. Respecting these pledges, he conten.►od, first, that the approvers of Mr. Disraeli's budget could not consistently vote for the present amendment, because that budget SATURDAY, bore even more heavily against the land than his own:— `' Here was the combination of events in December last. You had an unmitigated schedule A—you had the princi ple of ditlerentialism established against you in schedule D—you had nu prospect of the abolition of the tax—and you 'had the promise of a legacy duty. (Hear, hear.) Well, now, it is supposed that party and factious motives alone could have determined me to resist the scheme of Decem ber last. It was not so. I opposed the scheme of December last because, in the first place, I thought its mode of deal ing with the income tax unjust. That was my conviction at the time. 1 thought that the mode of dealing with the income tax which was then proposed would lead to confu sion, and that impression has been strengthened since I heard the right honourable gentleman the member for Buckinghamshire say the other night that his proposal of last December was not a financial measure, but the acknow ledgment of a principle. I still remain of opinion that the mode then proposed of dealing with the tax would have led to financial confusion, would have opened up difficult and impracticable questions, and would have produced a war of classes." Secondly, he contended that the Opposition on the previous Monday had voted to redress an alleged injustice totally opposite to, and irreconcilable with, the injustice ou the land, of which they now corn- plained : " What was the meaning of that vote ? To what int.. qualities did it refer? You know the meaning they bore, and still bear, in the public mind. Do you attach the same meaning to them or do you not ? There are two quite different kinds of inequalities in the income tax. First, there are those of which we have heard so much to-night. We have been told that the property assessed in schedule A is taxed at a somewhat higher rate than the property comprised in the rest of the schedules. Was that the ine quality which was meant to be pointed out for correction by the motion of the honourable baronet the member for Hertfordshire ? If that was your idea, I can only say that you were most unfortunate in having adopted words which conveyed to the understandings of the community at large a meaning totally opposite and contradictory, and in having chosen for your organ and exponent upon the occasion an honourable gentleman of great ability, but one who, in the speech with which he introduced his motion to the house, exhausted all the stores of his rhetoric in setting forth the hardships—what hardships ?—the hardships of the landed interests *.—no—but the hardships of those whose enter prise, whose intelligence, and whose skill constitute, us the honourable baronet had said, their only property, and whose continued good health is their only guarantee. (Hear"). Looking at the practical results of the amendment, if it were carried, Mr. Gladstone computed the loss it would inflict at 450,000/. per annum on schedule A, and, declaring that equal justice must be done by allowing some corresponding; remissions in other schedules, estimated the total sacrifice of revenue at a million. This he argued would totally annul the whole financial arrangements he had proposed : " If you make these deductions, what becomes of the financial measure.? What becomes of the remissions of duty ? (Hear, hear.) I am afraid you will be obliged to commence a counter process, and having begun by reducing land front ltd. to 741., and effecting an equivalent deduction upon the other schedules, you will require to retrace your steps and raise the land from 7d. to Std., and so on with the rest of the schedules. I am not repared to enter upon that course. lam convinced you never could carry through such u process, and that the adoption of this motion would introduce utter and hopeless confusion into the as sessment and collection of the tax. The motion, if adopted, breaks up the whole income tax : and. breaking up the whole tax, it necessarily breaks up that which rests upon the tax. It breaks up the whole financial measures and proposals of the Government. It is impossible for us to undertake the reconstruction of the tax. If we meddle with it we peril that very extensive remission of taxation which we have laid before Parliament, and which I think I may say with ont presumption has received and is receiving the approba tion of the country. (Cheers.) We will not take the first step in such a course." The amendment, he finally urged, invited them to tamper" with the income tax, a thing they could not do without destroying its efficiency. ‘• We must keep faith with those that have supported us." Mr. 1 nsitAt:tt recalled the right hon. gentleman's memory as to one feature of the Disraeli budget which he had forgotten—the proposal, namely, to relieve the land of two and a quarter millions in the shape of malt tax. Not only was this remission now refused, but Mr. Gladstone, after confessing that the income tax amounted to 9d. in the pound on land, had proceeded to lay further burdens on real pro perty by a legacy duty, which, with the income tax, he intended to make perpetual : " Then there was very great inconsistency iu the course taken by the right honourable gentleman. It was incon sistent to show to the house that real property was assessed to more than it was equitable that it should bear, were it not for grow considerations of state, and then immediately to propose a new tax, which would add to its burdens. (Loud cheerx.) But is that all ? Is that strange incon sistency the only or the greatest inconsistency in the argu ment or in the policy of the tight hon. gentleman ? He says, One of your nalneements for accepting my pmposal of the income tax is, that you have got my personal pro mise, and every fair public prospect. that the tax will end at the termination of seven years from the present time.' Unquestionably there was some difference cf opinion about that point; but the, basis of all the urge!