The Press. — London, England, 1856-11-29 00:00:00

NOVEMBER 29, 1856. MR. SPOONER AND MR. NEWDEGATE AT RUGBY. AT the annual meeting of the Rugby Agricultural Association, Lord JOHN SCOTT, in proposing the healths of the county members, Mr. Newdegate and Mr. Spooner, observed that they deserved the thanks of their constituency for the industry, perseverance, and attention which they had ever shown to the interests of the county, and for their consistency and honesty of purpose as exhibited in their votes. At the present time he believed it was impossible for any statesman who bad taken a part in political matters from 1828 to 1856 to give a satisfactory account of himself. indeed, he had known a man say one thing for twenty years, and do the very re verse in one month. It was said that Conservatism was dead, and that there was no longer such a thing as a Conservative party : Now,in his opinion,there never was a time when there were more Conservatives than at present. A great many of the old Conservatives remained where they always had been, and he had never seen a Whig in Parliament in office wh) was not a Conservative. In point of fact, a Whig in office was the best Conservative in the world. But whether there was a Conservative party or not, there were certain things which must be carried out, and certain objects which must be kept in view. We did not live iu a day of standstill ; but there was a certain amount of go-ahead intellectual advancement which rendered it nonsensical to attempt now what was practised forty years ago. With regard to the members for the county, whatever might be their objects personally, they, at any rate, carried out their own conscientious views, and they had been consistent, honest, and persevering. Mr. NEWDEOITE on rising was received with loud cheers. He said that there was probably never a period when a member of Parliament bad more diffi culty to guide himself so as not to violate those political attachments which constituted the bond of party; for party, after all, was the power which directed the course of Parliament, arid to a great extent regulated those enactments which proceeded from it, and became the law of the land. In the first place he begged to congratulate them upon their present state of prosperity. Prices had been higher during the last three years than during any three years since 1819, higher even than Protectionists ever desired ; and he must say that he admired the patience with which the labouring classes had borne the pressure of those high prices, and also the noble and uncomplaining manner in which they had, in addition, borne their share of the burdens of the war. If the repealing of the corn laws and the adoption of the system of free imports bad produced this spirit, lie admitted the magnitude of that ad vantage, but he was grateful that he was no party to the delusions which were practised to force on those measures : He was not surprised that Mr. Cobden was singularly silent on the subject just now. Lord Palmerston had been visiting Manchester; of course, being fully com mitted, he bowed very low before the shrine of free imports in the town-hall there, and it was amusing to observe the dexterity with which he fenced with the difficulty of accounting for the non•fultilment of the prophecies and expectations of reciprocity on the part cf foreigners, hoping all things, but kindly devolving upon future Governments the task of adhering to free trade, and using all means consistent with it to obtain recipro city. Lord Palmerston's reply to the address of the Man chester Chamber of Commerce was very like the usual form of addresses to the Throne in answer to the Queen's speech at the commencement of thL session when no amendment had been moved. It was a very complimen tar) echo, full of hope, and hope was not a bad thing while it was fresh; but, like other good things, it would not, if based on worldly things, keep for ever. Ten years ago we were assured that foreign coun tries would be so impressed with the wisdom of free trade, that they would relax their duties and respect the system of free trade : Lord ralmerston and the free•traders had much to accomplish before they could persuade the Legislatures of foreign countries to adopt a system which they asserted to hare been so beneficial here. But how did the continental powers reciprocate?— The list which he (Mr. Newdegate) held in his hand contained twenty-eight denominations of articles exported from Birmingham ; and he found that of those articles France prohibited the importation of eleven, and levied upon the rest duties varying from 5 to 200 per cent. Upon the same articles the Zollverein levied duties up to 900 per cent., Austria to 150, Spain to 700, the Two Sicilies to 500, and Sardinia to 100 per cent. In the United States a duty of :30 per cent. was levied generally ; in Brazil a duty from sto RIO per cent. Lord Palmerston was placed in a position of some little difficulty when he had to deal with this question before the great productive industry of Manchester, because though he (Mr. Newde gate P had quoted the duties levied on Birmingham goods, those levied on Manchester goods were no less heavy. For his own part, he ( Mr. Newdegate) did not think it vet) , reasonable that this country should continue to take foreign products at nominal duties while such excessive duties were levied upon our produce. At the same time he could not but feel the force of this great fact, that, if the passing of flee trade had secured contentment among the mass of the people, no matter how impolitic the measure might be, it had obtained one great advantage. 1. THE PRESS. With respect to the few measures passed last session, he thought that when Lord Palmerston congratu lated the country on not having bad more than a small number of well-c , risidered measures passed it would be well in another year to consider it unseemly to waste the time of Parliament in debating measures which were admitted to b 3 ill-considered and abortive, and which were not passed because they were considered to be adverse to the welfare of the country and the principles of the Constitution. Mr. Newdegate briefly alluded to American politics and to the probable extension of the slave trade by the present Government of the United States, and said he trusted that all Englishmen were prepared to sustain Government in its efforts to suppress that trade. Mr. Newdegate then came to May nooth Upon one question with which the name of his hon. friend ( Mr. Spooner) was associated—namely, the Mays nooth grant—they could not be taunted with having done nothing. It was often urged that it would be a great act of injustice to deprive the Roman Catholics of the 30,0001. a year which they received at present, when it was re• membered that the Protestants had all the funds of the Established Church of Ireland at their command. He denied the force of the argument altogether, for, if it was unjust to deprive the Roman Catholics of the 30,0001. whichithey received annually for Maynooth, because the Protestants had the Church revenues, which amounted to between 1,000,0001. and 2,000,0001., then, considering that the Roman Catholics formed the majority of the popula- tion of Ireland, the 30,0001. they received was insufficient, and they ought to be endowed at the same rate as the Protestants. But did the people of this country wish to see the Church of Rome maintained in Ireland? He thought that no man who knew anything of the history of the Church of Rome, and who knew anything of her con tinual attacks upon civil and religious liberty, would wish to see it set up as the rival of our own Church in Ireland; and if so, he felt that his hon. colleague deserved support when he proposed the withdrawal of the grant. It was evidently insufficient if there was any question of justice as far as the endowment of the two Churches was con• cerned ; but it committed the Government of this country to the enlargement of a despotic, tyrannic, and corrupt jurisdiction of the Church of Rome. Mr. Newdegate concluded with a few words upon the state of agricultural prosperity:— That they were prosperous was a fact admitted upon all hands. But he believed that the present high rate of prices—a rate which they all felt was too high—had not been caused by the present commercial system, which on the contrary was a system which might, when existing causes bad ceased to operate, entail upon agriculturists a renewal of those unremunerative prices under which they had formerly suffered so terribly. Although it was true that party men, who had been united by a patriotic feeling, no longer ranged themselves so arbitrarily as they had done formerly under hostile political banners, he trnsted that when Parliament reassembled its members would be animated by an earnest and conscientious determination to do their duty, seeing that there was no longer the excuse of the country being at war, in effecting those great social improvements which they all desired to see carried out. Mr. SPOONER, M.P., in a brief speech maintained that, if the country were now in a flourishing condi tion, it was in spite of what was called free trade, but which was not free trade so long as the taxed labour of the people had to compete with untaxed imports. Upon the subject of Maynooth, Mr. Spooner ob served : He did not wish to impose a single restriction upon those Roman Catholics who, notwithstanding AI the errors of their faith, were still truly Christians. All the restric tions that he wanted were those only which were necessary for the preservation of Protestantism. The sovereign of the couutry was bound by her oath to maintain the Pro testant Church. The articles of religion declared the doctrines of Popery to be a blasphemous deceit and a dan gerous fable, and, therefore, it they continued this grant of 30,0001., they ought at all events to release the sovereign from that part of the oath. MR. COBDEN ON MARITIME LAW. A LETTER from Mr. Cobden, M.P., to Mr. Baxley, was read at a late meeting of the directors of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Cobden asserts that Mr. 3farcy's remarks upon the Paris declaration against privateering, and his offer to carry out, the principle fully exempting private property on the ocean from seizure by Government-armed cruisers, as well as by privateers, has not attracted the notice it deserves from our commercial country. Mr. Cobden, then, in order to show the necessity of our accepting Mr. Marcy's proposal, put the case of a war with France, or the United States : We will suppose—and it is no great stretch f the imagi nation, after all that diplomacy his achieved during the lest three years—that we are at war with France. I remember hearing the late Mr. Samuel Gurney state, in the presence of the Prime Minister of the time, as the result of careful inquiry, that the amount of British property in ships and cargoes afloat averaged from K 1,000,0001. to 100,000,0001. sterling. It would be a liberal estimate to put down the amount owned by France at from 20.000,0001.t0 30.000,00 W. We should thus have nearly four times as mach private pro- perty exposed to the depredations of Government cruisers as our enemy. But under the new maritime code, which admits the competition of neutrals, it may fairly be questioned 1135 whether a merchant ship under either of the belligerent flags would long continue to find it profitable to keep the sea. Railroads, which transmit the heaviest commodities 500 miles with little detriment to their exchangeable value, have virtually put an end to blockades. France, in case of war, could use the ports of Belgium, Holland, or Germany, through which channels her commerce, even with England, might be carried on in neutrals; for, once on board an American or Dutch ship, French exports or imports would be safe from molestation. The same applies to British commodities, whether imported raw materials or exported manufactures; they would be liable to seizure only when on board a British vessel. Now, I ask, would it be pos sible fur French and English ships and cargoes, which would be subject to a charge of ten or twenty per cent., for assurance against risk of capture, to compete with the neutral flags which would be free from any such burden? And bear in mind that our loss would be fourfold that of ur enemy, owing to the larger amount of our tonnage ex posed to this unequal competition. Or, let us suppose ourselves at war with the United States. It may be estimated that the value of American property afloat on salt water (a large part of their naviga tion is upon the interior lakes and rivers) does not exceed the half of ours. Unless their late proposal were previously adopted, the old system of privateering would be in force on both sides, to which we should offer two-thirds of the prey to their one-third. But the rights of neutrals which were proclaimed at the Paris Congress would admit all the European flags to bring and carry to and from England and America the produce of both countries without risk of capture during the 'var. Again, I would ask—could a vessel bearing the British flag keep the sea under these circumstances, with 501) or 1,000 armed American vessels cruising against our com merce? It is clear that nobody would charter an English vessel, and pay a heavy insurance against capture, when a neutral ship could be had free from any such charge. The practical effect, then, of the alterations made in our mari time law at the Paris Conferences, if we go no further, would be, in case of war with a naval power, to transfer the carrying trade even of our own ports to neutral bot toms. It is then our interest especially, and beyond all other countries, to go forward in the path to which the Americans have invited us. Mr. Cobden concludes : It is impossible to foresee all the consequences of inch a revolution in the rules of war. It is, I believe, the first time in the annals of the world that the powers of bellige rents will be restrained and defined in the interest of indi viduals by written international law. Who can tell in what other direction the precedent may be followed? Wars will henceforward partake more of the character of duels between Governments than of the old contests of nations. Private citizens will cease to be held responsible, or liable to injury, unless they become participators in the strife. There will no longer be plunder . and prize money to add the stimulus of cupidity to the passions of hatred and revenge; and we shall have one pretence less kr con• stantly increasing the burden of war navies in proportion to the growth of foreign commerce, on the plea of protect. ing our mercantile marine. These are some of the obvious consequences of this proposed innovation upon the tradi tions and precedents of the last century. THE REDUCTION OF THE PROPERTY AND INCOME TAX to 7d. in the pound was considered at a public meeting, held on Monday night, at the London Tavern. Sir James Duke presided. Mr. Alderman Sidney proposed the following resolution : That the present enormous charge of lfid. in the pound levied on incomes is, from the mode of its assessment, most oppressive and unjust ; and, as the understanding at the time of passing the acts of Parliament by which th• tax was increased was that they were to continue in force for one year after the termination of the war, and no longer, this meeting is of opinion that those acts of Parliament ought to be repealed from and after the Bth of April next. He then gave a sketch of the history of the modern income tax : At the termination of the war in 1416 the income tax was so strongly felt to be oppressive that the Government of that day recommended its entire repeal, and from the year 1816 to the year 1842, though we had various Ad ministrations, not one of them had thought it right or expedient to lay anything upon the shoulders of the people in the shape of property or income tax. In 1'42 Sir R. Peel proposed to reimpose an income tax. Sir Robert defended the measure, not upon the ground of the justice of the tax, because he confessed it was unequal in its pressure and in its operation ; but he told Parliament that it was only for a temporary purpose. A tax of 7.1. in the pound was then imposed for three years, but in 1845, in stead of keeping his word, Sir Robert Peel found further necessities for continuing the tax. In 1445 the tax was continued, but many other duties were taken off, the tariff was lightened, and the country appeared satisfied with the tax three years more. In 1848 there was another Ministry in office, and Sir Charles Wood, who was then the Chan cellor of the Exchequer, admired the working of the ncome tax so much that he modestly proposed to double it. The consequence was that meetings were held through out the conntry, protests were made, petitions were sent. to Parliament, and in the end Sir Charles withdrew his proposition, and simply proposed the continuance of the tax for another year at 7d. In IA-19 Parliament consented to swallow the tax for three more years, and in 1852 Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to make its working more equal, and showed that it. could be repealed altogether in 1860, when the long annuities fell in. We bad thus had the tax for fourteen years, and we were to have it by statute for four years longer. The tax as et present levied was unjust and op sivc, and unequal in its operation. The a A