The Press. — London, England, 1856-10-04 00:00:00

OCTOBER 4, 1856. THE PRESS. - THE REVENUE. 1.-THE NET REVENUE. Quarter ended I Year ended J._ -...5--..., ,- Sept. 30, I Sept.: -. 30, S e pt. 30, Sept. 30, 1855. 1856. 1855. 1835 . A s 4 C CUSTOMS EXCISE 5,137,000 5,446,000 17,388,170 17,861,77 d STAMPS 1,652,723 1,770,619 7,259,585 7,180,041 TAXES PROPERTY TAX POST OFFICE 615,000 645,000 2,709,094 2,768,152 CROWN LANDS 66,516 67,837 275,516 2 , 3,837 MISCELLANEOUS 188,557 156,343 935,867 1,120,581 TOTAL 11.-COMPARATIVE STATEMENT. Quarter ended Ilalt.Year ended Year ended Sept. 30,1856. Sept. 30, 1856. Sept. 30, 1856. a _i_ -.. ..- --.. ~.--.......1-......, Increase. I Decrease. Increase. Decrease. Increase. f Decrease. A s A A A s CUSTOMS EXCISE STAMPS TAXES PROPERTY TAX POST OFFICE 9,000 59,058 CROWN LANDS MISCELLANEOUS TOTAL 1,183,645 69,357 1,585,649 46,572 9,291,232 79,524 I l I I % 41,114,288 £1,53 ' 9071 £3,211,708 Net Increase. Net Increase. Net Increase Quarter ended I Year ended J._ —__...s---, ,- Sept. 30, I 5ept......80, S e pt. 30, Sept. 30, 1655. 1856. 1855. 1835 . A A A A CUSTOMS EXCISE 5,137,000 5,446,000 17,388,170 17,861,778 STAMPS 1,852,723 1,770,819 7,259,585 7,180,041 TAXES PROPERTY TAX POST OFFICE 615,000 645,000 2,709,094 2,768,152 CROWN LANDS 66,516 67,857 275,516 2 , 3,6157 MISCELLANEOUS 188,557 156,343 935,867 1,120,581 TOTAL MR. GLADSTONE AND THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL. THE Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., attended the annual meeting at Liverpool, on Monday even ing, of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The Bishop of Choster presided. Mr. GLADSTONE eloquently recommended the ob jects of the society. He remarked that this period was a crisis in the history of the society, whose means had been increasing, but whose obligations bad gone on increasing even faster than its means. The society had recently suffered the sudden withdrawal of one of the resources to which it had been accustomed to trust. That resource consisted of a Queen's Letter, which after all amounted to no more than a permission, attended with the royal sanction, to the members of the Church to offer their freewill off!rings in all the churches of the land on behalf of the society. He believed that was a resource that it would have been perfectly competent to the Church of England to make use of, with full profit, irrespective of the sanction of the Crown. But it was a particular form in which the Church had been accustomed to make her appeal to her members; and the sudden break ing up of any form whatever, although one of no peculiar virtue in itself, and one which might originally have easily been dispensed • with, was attended with a momentary inconvenience; and the inconvenience was in the present instance something like a loss of an average income of 10,0001 . a year. Sreaking of the operations of the society in the colonies, the right hon. gentleman said he would not touch upon its agency amongst the heathen, but would rather allude to that which was more espe cially its characteristic work. He approved of the system of te m p orar y sup p ert t o co l on i a l commu nities : There may be an impression after all that those who quit our shores in order to find their habitations in foreign lands—l should not say foreign, but in distant lauds—and to continue the subjects of the British Crown in their new character as colonists—there might be an impression tha these men should bear for themselves the burden of pro viding for themselves religious ordinances. Well, now. I think the true principle is that temporary support and aid should be lent to them from home. I don't hesitate to go even so far as to say that permanent support, in the shape of money to the colonial community, with a view to the sustentation of their own ministers and the due preparation of the ordinances of religion, would not only not be a good, but it would be an evil, because it would separate between them and the true, proper, national, Christian discharge of their duties. The function of this society is to cherish them in their infancy. Believe me, every community has a state of infancy and of helplessness. There are, no doubt, belonging to the Crown great and powerful colonies —there is not one of them that has not arisen from the smallest beginning. Every community that has ever been founded, since the days of our first parents, has had first to go through a crisis of difficulty and danger. There is a period when the State finds it necessary to make provision for the civil wants of the early settlers. There is also a period when assistance should be rendered them with respect to their spiritual wants. The wise policy of the State has been for many years to shorten the period as much as possible—not merely out of a sense of justice to the British people ( though justice to the British people requires it), hut likewise because it is right that those who in the political sphere enjoy the privileges of freemen should bear burdens of freemen, and because in point of fact there can be no such thing in the long run as the pri vileges of freemen without the burdens of freemen. The very same thing applies to this society. If this society were to promise permanent aid to the support of the Church in the colonies, it would be to abandon her duty not less to you than the colonists. It would be asking you to bestow your alms upon an object that did not require them ; it would be enervating and emasculating that tone of reli gion in the colonies, preventing the growth of a due sense of its inestimable value—if we treated the colonists in their Christian capacity as mere children and not as grown men, that they permit themselves to imagine that they have so little sense of the value of the religious ordinances that they were willing to discharge in that respect what they did for themselves with regard to every other temporal blessing. Now, I think we have received assurances in the form of facts that this is the wise principle upon which the society has been acting. You have been told that in one important diocese of Tasmania, within a couple of years, the grant of the society will be practically abolished. You have been told that it will be absolutely abolished in a still more important district, the diocese of Toronto. As I have said, it is not for me to give information which I scantily possess, but it may be worth mentioning to you that, not only has the principle of subscribing for the sup port of the parochial clergy made great way in the colonies, but we have seen within the last two years the principle of support for the episcopal heads of the Church likewise re cognised as a burden the colonies ought to take upon them selves ; and, unless I am much mistaken, there are at this moment contemplated—if they are not gradually advancing towards maturity —two funds in Upper Canada, raised solely from colonial resources, with a view to the founda tion of two bishoprics in that colony. I might also venture to say what has been done by the Bishop of New Zealand. Unless I am greatly mistaken, that admirable man, as pru dent and practical in his measures as he is fervent in his zeal and unbounded in his sacrifices to God, from the very first moment when he went to take the charge of that mis sionary church has been contemplating and preparing for the time when it would have to depend only upon its own resources ; and, by the prudent acquisition of land, he has been forming a fund the object of which is, after a limited period, to relieve this society of all pecuniary charge to the Church of New Zealand. So I trust you will feel that the object for which you are now asked to contribute is a just, a prudent, and a reasonable object. Ido not say that our case would be hard if we threw our alma away, for alms given in piety and faith, even though the object be one not to require them, are far better spent, I fear, than large portions of the expenditure of this great Christian country. Still, it is not for the society to proceed upon that principle. It is her duty to satisfy every one of the thorough reason• ableness, the justice, the prudence, and the foresight with which she acts; and you will agree with me she does what is just and fair to the people of England who support, and, what is most for the interest of the settlers in the colonies, whose spiritual nurse she has been for so many generations, when she adopts the rule which is adopted in the State, because it is in regard to its own sphere—namely, that during the petiod of the first difficulties and pressure the liberal offerings of the people of England should be given to prevent the want of religious ordinances ; but, after the difficulties of the first stage of colonial life are surmounted, she consents, not for our sakes but for their own, that they should take upon themselves the burden of supporting their own colonial ministry. One of the principal duties of the society had refe rence to the care of emigrants. Nnw, the great work of emigration was one of the marked characteristics of the nineteenth century, and it was plain the func tion of colonising the earth belonged to England : Is it not the truth that within the last two centuries Europe has made as it were a great spring outwards? Various countries attempted to appropriate large portions of the fertile, but up to that time unoccupied, spaces of the earth. We were not the first in the field ; there were other countries that then had either greater power or greater opportunities ; Spain and Portugal, in particular, appro priated to themselves vast regions beyond the ocean. France likewise was, at least, our rival in that respect. We were in the race, but we were by no means the foremost in it. It has, however, continued; and how do these matters now stand? What has Portugal now to do with the colonisation of the world? What has Spain to do at this time with the colonisation of the world ? What has Germany or Italy to do with the colonisation of the world ? What has that great, powerful, civilised, and enlightened people, the French nation, our present neighbours and I hope to continue our friends—what has that great nation to do at this moment with the colonisation of the world ? Undoubtedly she occupies a foremost place in the ranks of civilisation—undoubtedly she has important duties to discharge in reference to her own people, and in reference to Europe; but it is plain from experience that colonising is not the function which it has pleased Providence to commit either to that great country or to any other among the leading and most powerful European nations. And yet has colonisation stopped? It. has stopped in the States which were founded from those sources. They appear to carry within them no principle of vigour and elasticity. But when you look to those which have sprung from the loins of England, how marked is the difference. What were to be the future results of this colonisa tion ? - - Is it enough that you multiply the inhabitants of this earth ? Is it enough that you provide them with the meat which perishes ? Is it enough that you add wider and wider spaces to our dominions? Is it enough that you exult in thinking how many races of men there are that speak your language, that obey your laws, that own alle giance to your sovereign, or that, in the essential particu lars of social and human life, recal perpetually the origin from which they sprung? Is this enough, or is it not? It was beautifully said by a writer of great imagination, that if you reared up men with cultivated tastes, with the know ledge and the habits of civilisation, with the means of indulging these tastes, and of surrounding themselves with the comforts of life, and if at the same time they remained ignorant of that guidance which leads them heavenward, you were only preparing a more costly banquet to satiate the appetite of death. And that is true. These empires, it is reasonable to believe, will exist—these cities will be reared, they will be in the closest relations with you, and the network of your commerce reaches over the whole earth. You know yourselves how incessantly both are extended, and their relations are increasing ; but shall these people be people rejoicing above all things in the knowledge of the living God ? That was a question the society could answer : It is the function of this society—it is her peculiar pri vilege, that she manages to be peculiarly wanted at that season of weakness and of infancy to which I have already endeavoured to call your attention. It is her business to prevent a fatal interval during which the sound of the name lII.—EXPENDITURE AND RECEIPTS. (From all Sources.) Surplus Balance beyond the Charge of the Consoli• dated Fund for the Quarter ended June 30,1836, viz., Great Britain • Ireland /339,581 Income received in the Quarter ended Sept. 30, 1856, as shown in Account I Amount received in the Quarter ended Sept. 80,1856, in full of Second Loan of t 5,000,00 C 2,500,000 Amount received in the Quarter ending Sept. 30,1858, in repayment of advances for Publio Works, &c. 422,M764 Balance, being :the deficiency on the 30th Sept , 1856, upon the charge of the Consolidated Fund in Great Britain, to meet the Dividends and other charges payable in the Quarter to December 31, 1e56, and for which Exchequer Bills (deficiency) will be issued in that Quarter 500,333 Amount applied out of the Income for the Quarter ended Sept. 30, 1856, to Redemption of Exchequer Bills (deficiency) for the quarter ended June 90, 1856 Amount applied out of the Income to supply Ser• vices in the Quarter ended Sept. 30, 1856 11,229,963 Charge of the Consolidated Fund for the Quarter ended Sept. 30, 1856, viz.:— . . . Interest of the Permanent Debt 45,550,977 Terminable Debt Interest of Exchequer Bills (De ficiency) The Civil List Other Charges on Consolid. Fund 919,424 Advances for Public Works, 80. .. 352,450 Sardinian Loan 8,258,611 Surplus Balance beyond the Charge of the Consoli- dated Fund for the Quarter ended Sept.. 30, 1856, viz.:— Great Britain Ireland 123,363,097 943