The Sun. — London, England, 1860-03-13 00:00:00

in that house before it had been decided upon by the Queen in Council. THE FRENCH TREATY—THE ADDRESS. Mr. BYNG brought up the address to her Majesty upon the subject of the treaty of commerce with France, which had been prepared by the committee appointed on Friday night. .On the question that the address should be agreed to, Sir H. WILLOUGHBY desired that it should be under stood that the division on Friday night took place not upon the motion for the address, but upon the amendment of the right hon. member for Stroud. Had the question been whether or no the address should be adopted, he should have voted for the address. (Hear, hear.) The address was then agreed to. THE PAPER DUTY. On the order for the second reading of this bill, Sir W. MILES rose to move the amendment of which he had given notice. He begged first to put the house in mind of the difference that existed between the present and the first notice of motion. Then` he proposed to move the re jection of the 16th resolution v and that in the 17th the words ~n inepence" should be substituted for " tenpence," thus showing his resolution to take the two subjects together, and to discuss them as a whole, distinct from any other portion of the budget. Taken by itself he should not have been averse to the repeal of the paper duty, as he had been a member of the Parliament which decided that it should not be a permanent Ws. But the present was a season of finan cial difficulty, and it was quite another question whether they were at liberty to deprive the revenue of £1,000,000. (Hear, hear.) He could not separate the repeal of the paper duty from a terspenny income tax, nor its existence for another year from the possession of a ninepenny duty. The hon. baronet then referred to the budget of the Chan cellor of the Exchequer, and contended that the imposition of the increased income tax was to meet the loss consequent upon the repeal of the paper duty. He should like to con sider the position in which they would stand if they al lowed matters to remain as they were. The Chancellor of the Exchequer took the revenue, after the reduction, as £58,592,000, and then placed the tea and sugar duties at £2,100,000, malt and hops at £1,400,000, and the income tax for :three quarters of a year at £8,472,000, making a total of Z 70,564,000 ; the total expenditure being £70,100,000, leaving him an estimated surplus of £464,000. He believed he (Sir W. Miles) could show if things were left as they were that the right hon. gentleman would not lose more than £30,000 of his surplus, and if that were the case, he trusted the house would be willing to adopt any change by , which an addition to the income tax would be rendered un necessary. If they were to retain the paper duty and not to impose the additional penny of income tax, then they would have a surplus of £429,300. The sum'received dur ing last year for paper duty was £1,232,000, but he had • been informed on the best authority to which he had access that an additional sum of £300,000 would in all probability have been realised from all sources in the course of the . coming year. He would, with the permission of the house, lay before it a brief account of the origin and growth of the paper duty. It was first established in the 10th year of Queen Anne, and after going through various emendations, in 1835 a commission of inquiry, of which Sir H. Parnell was head, sat on that and other excise duties. A discri minating duty was at that time imposed on paper, consist ing of 3d. in the pound on the higher class, and lid. in the pound on the lower descriptions of the article. The com missioners recommended that as it was impossible alto gether to abolish the duty, it was at least proper that the duty should be put on one uniform footing of three •half pence. In 1836 the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought forward a bill to effect that purpose, and the measure was carried, and much vexation and fraud thereby abo lished. At that time the duty on paper amounted to about £700,000. It was some time before the revenue re covered from this change in the duty, but eventually it did, and in 1840 it amounted to upwards of £800,000; since which period, excepting one year, it had gone on progres sively increasing until, by the last return, it amounted to upwards of £1,200,000. In 1855 the revenue from the paper duty amounted to £1,094,914 ; in 1856, to £1,014,945, and that was the only year when the paper duty fell back. In 1857 it again progressed, and amounted to £1,100,822 ; in 1858, to £1,242,722; and in 1859, to £1,281,023. So much for the elasticity of the tax, and now for its nature. It was peculiar in this respect, that no interference took place in the manufacture of paper. While other taxes, like those, for instance, arising from malt and hops, were under the frequent interference of the excise, there was no kind of •bstruction put on the manufacture of paper, and this said very much indeed in favour of such a tax. (Hear.) In our financial difficulties, when we were literally living from hand to mouth and forestalling all our revenue—(Opposi- sition cheers)—it was not the time for thinking of imme diately abolishing the duty on paper. But the question had been asked, what was paper ? (Hear.) He was perfectly astonished, after the decision of the Lord Chief Baron, to hear a cheer from the Treasury bench, because nothing could be more distinct than the definition given in that judgment. The question, if he recollected rightly, was this, whether what was called false parchment was to be consi dered really paper or parchment. This fictitious parchment was made of animal fibre, and it was endeavoured to be passed off not as paper but as parchment. Consequently, there was a surcharge by the excise. That was appealed from, and the whole matter came before the Court of Ex chequer, when the Lord Chief Baron decided that anything made of fibrous particles, whether animal or vegetable, in sheets, for the purpose for which paper was usually applied, came under the denomination of paper. If that were the case no difficulty whatever could arise ; but, however, it was said that difficulty had arisen, and now he must refer to four reports made by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, and he thought four more contradictory reports had never been placed on the table of the house. But there was some thing more than this. The fourth report had evidently been made to back up the opinion of the right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer in that house. He only hoped this unusual proceeding would not be made a prece dent of, and that when a question was still actually before the house the Board of Inland Revenue would not be called on to give their opinion. The first report was dated in 1857, and it stated that the regulations of the board had been so far amended to meet the wishes of the paper manu facturers that they were enabled to collect the duty without any complaints being made. The report in 1858 set forth that there was scarcely any duty in the collection of which the interference of the commissioners with the trade was se little felt. In 1858 the house passed a resolution relative to the paper duty, and a report was made in 1859, which stated that the expectation that the paper duty would be repealed on the first favOurable opportunity had for many years been a source of embarrassment in that collection. 'Why, accord ing to the reports of 1E57 and 1858, the duty was collected with ease, and no complaints were made as to the collec tion ; but directly the House of Commons proposed a reso lution, the opinion of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue changed. Tho SPEAKER here interrupted the hon. baronet, and announced that he had received a message from the Lords agreeing to a conference with the House of Commoas on the subject of the address to her Majesty in reference to the treaty of commerce between England and France. Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Milner Gibson, and other right honourable and honourable members, were ap pointed to conduct the confernee, and left the house for that par p 9s e. During their absence the debate was suspended. The managers having returned, Sir W. MILES, in resuming his speech, said that the Com missioners of Inland Revenue in their third report stated, that that in 1857 the complaints of paper manufacturers entirely ceased, and that in 1358 the re was scarcely any trade their interference with which was so little felt as to the paper making. They must next consider the materials used in this manufacture. He agreed that everything fibrous could be converted into paper. The real question however was, what could be converted into paper with profit. For printing, he believed no good paper could be made except from cotton and linen waste, and rags. All the beat paper was made from the best rags, but other substances might be used, such as straw, which was used in combination with rags for an inferior kind of paper ; but they could not compete with the materials he had specified. Some paper had been placed below stairs stir thuinspection of members which was made from grass ob tained from Spain and the coast of Africa. The objection:to it was—first, that it would not bleach; and next, that it would not receive a gloss ; and for the higher branches of printing it was perfectly useless. Then came jute, an East Indian product. It was imported chiefly for making com mon rope, and the residue from that manufacture went to paper making, but what was the character of the paper so produced ? It was hard and brittle ; it - easily imbibed wet, and from its salacious properties injured' tho printer's type. Well, that being the case, they came back again to the old sub Stances of which paper had always been manufactured, and he said that for thehigher descriptions of paper nothing remained to them but woollen rags, cotton rags, linen rags, and cotton waste. He had a letter written by a firm of paper makers who had been in existence for half a century, but who desired their name to be withheld. They said it ap peared from the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he was led to believe that hundreds of fibres would be imported which could be used in the manufacture of paper, anan unlimited after th e re p ea l o f th e p a per duty them would be increase in the manufacture, and that car riages Now their dalmost everything else would be made of paper. answer was, that four years ago a large reward who produced' an was offered t o any one pr - - article which could be used a s a substitutesne n for paper, and that although hundreds of different thing s h o a t d been introduced in con sequence of that pm one had been employed except by way of experiment. As to all, there was an enorm ous waste of material i n the process and they would not bleach. They added that aotfthmanufacture, have believed it p ossible that the Chancellor of they could not Exche quer could have been so deceiv ed by the represent a ti ons i n t e rested parties, and that so far fro m the supply of th e raw of raw material being unlimite d, it de p ended entirel y u pon the in crease of the population and the prosperity of those manu factures the waste from which could be converted into paper. He new came to the objections which were made to the existence of the tax. First of all it was said that the,tax was detrimental to the spread of knowledge. He had , endea voured to make himself master of that subject, and his in quiriei had satisfied him that, if the paper duties were re pealed; no reduction would take place in the price of the lower class of publications, With regard to the hundreds of PennYpftpens issued throughout the country, it was not said, nor was it imagined, that the purchasers would get them cheaper, and the only parties possibly who would benefit by the abolition of the duty would be the rag dealers, the paper makers, and the publishers. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Bohn, the publisher, had given some particulars with re ect to the effect of the duty upon a few standard works. and it ap peared from those that the tax upon the " Annual Register," which cost 18s., amounted to 3d. ; upon o volumes of Lord Macaulay's " History of England," which cost 365., to 6d. ; upon Colenso's " Arithmetic," costing 4s. 6d., to a halfpenny; and upon the " Cornhill Magazine," price ls., to a halfpenny. Now he asked whether the consumers of knowledge would be one fraction benefited by the total abo lition of the tax ? (Hear, hear.) There might be some trades which would be benefited, bat in respect to literature he did not see how, in the face of those facts, it could be contended that any benefit could accrue. Take the common schools in the country, which he was proud to say were increasing, how were they supplied with books ? Why, they gene rally obtained them from the British and Foreign School Society and other institutions at less than the cost price, and where only a halfpenny would be saved on a book like Colenso's " Arithmetic," he wanted to know how the middling schools would be benefited by the abolition. (Hear, hear.) Our manufacture of pliper had largely in creased, and our exports of paper had increased in a most extram dinary ratio during the last few years. Some went to Hamburg, but nearly all the rest of our exports were for America and the British colonies. In 1857, 191,721,6201b5. of paper came to charge, of which was exported 16,031,0531b5. ; in 1858, 192,347,3251b5., of which 20,068,7091b5. were exported. Without comparing last year with the preceding the manufacture had increased to the extent of 24,379,3721b5., while the exports had increased by 3,518,9211b5. (Hear.) But it was said that whenever there was a village with good water, pure and healthy air, paper manufacture would rear its head. Ho lived in a county where such villages existed, and he now saw in ruins there many paper mills and cloth manufactories which were for merly in operation. What was the cause ? Except in one or two districts in Somersetshire, those trades had left and gone to the north, and all because they were generally in stituted by men who had not sufficient capital. The larger manufacturers in the north had capital, and were enabled to purchase that expensive machinery which was now used in making paper. The President of the Board of Trade said that 20 years ago there were 625 paper mills in the country, while the number at present did not exceed 393. It was lamentable indeed that so many had fallen to the ground, but if he had gone back to 1813 he would have found that at ihat time there were no less than 700 paper mills in Eng land and between 70 and 80 in Scotland, and for Ireland there was no return in that year. As for giving more em ployment to the labourers he had some difficulty now in getting sufficient labourers on his estate, and were it not for the machinery now used half his harvest would be spoiled, so that he did not thank the right hon. gentleman for that. (Hear, hear.) That morning he had conversed with Mr. Potter, of Lancashire, and his working partner, who had informed him that the expense of erecting a paper mill, with all the appliances of the newest machinery, would be £4,000 or £5,000 for a water mill, and £lO,OOO or £ll,OOO if a steam engine were used, and the looking after the machinery and keeping it in repair would cost £1,200 a year. There was no chance then of t 7small establishments being able to exist. But if the right hon. gentleman was determined to repeal the paper duty, how did heintend to meet the deficit of £1,200,000 caused by that repeal ? He intended to propose another penny of income tax. Now the income tax was formerly used only in time of great necessity. Until 1842 it was always affirmed to be a war tax. In that year, when it was put on, the emergency was great. There was a great de ficit, accruing from the four or five preceding years ; the deficiency for that year (1842) was £2,334,000, and the esti- mated deficiency for 1843 was put down, if the income tax had not been put on, at £10,772,000. That was the prime reason for the income tax being put on, and the improve ment of our commercial code was only a subsidiary reason, and it was at first imposed for three years only. In 1853 the right hon. gentleman held out an illusory promise ;that this year it would be done away with. It bore hard espe cially on those whose incomes were less than £l5O a year. In the assessment under schedule D last year these incomes , amounted to one-fourth of the whole amount of the assess ment, and, taking the number of persons, they formed a much larger proportion of the whole. In 1858 there were 288,202 persons assessed under schedule D, and 155,116 were those with incoMes under £l5O. There were 91,731 persons assessed under schedule E, out of which 57,605 had incomes under £l5O. (Hear, hear.) He would intercede with his right hon. friend on behalf of that class of persons. Was this a time to sweep away the paper duty, and place it on their income tax ? (Hear.) The 7d. income tax on £lOO a year would amount to £2 16s. 4d. of direct taxation taken out of the small income of such a poor persen,who had hard work enough; God knew, to support his wife and family, and to live respectably, as he was obliged to do, if hebelonged to the useful class of clerks or commercial travellers ; and how would the importation of French wines and silks benefit him? The odiousness and hardship of this tax was shown by the report from the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, as to the diZSGultica of its collection, and the panizul appeals maae TO their compassion and forbearance. He (Sir W. Miles) would now ask permission of the house to move the following amendment instead of the one ,of which he had given notice :—" That as it appears that the repeal of the dFty on paper will necessitate the addition of a penny in the pound to the property and income tax, it is tke opinion of this house that such repeal is, under the circumstances, at the present moment inexpedient." Mr. B. STANHOPE seconded the amendment. Re ferring to the financial situation of the country, as described by the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day, he ob served that without any additional income tax ho would have been able to make all the customs alterations. The additional palmy of income tax was therefore the immediate consequence of the repeal of the paper duty. The objections that had been taken to the paper duty, and the arguments for discontinuing it, were not particularly applicable now. If the House of Commons passed a resolution against it in 1858, and thought it so odious and bad a tax, why was it not repealed at that time ? In 1858 they declared that the paper duty was not to remain a permanent source of re venue, but that year not only did they not increase the in come tax, but they considerably decreased it. There was one objection which had been used for a great many years to the paper duty, and that was that it was a tax ou know ledge. Did they mean to say that the whole amount of the paper duty (£1,200,000) was a tax on knowledge ? If so, that was an erroneous opinion. He had inquired of a large manufacturer, and though only an approximate estimate could be formed, he believed that of all the paper manufac tured two-fifths only were used for printing purposes, one- fifth was used for writing purposes, and two-fifths for the purposes of trade. Mr. M'Culloch, who was often quoted on . thp other side of the house, said, " The abolition of the duty on paper would not make any difference in the price of books, newspapers, and other periodicals. The duty on a copy of a double sheet of the Times is about id. On a number of the _Edinburgh or Quarterly Review, which sold at 65., it was 2d. ; and on "Macaulay'g History of England," which sold at 325., it was only 6d. It is idle, then, to pretend that the existing duty on, paper is any obstacle to the circulation ' of literature, or that books would be cheaper if the duty were abolished. The question really before the house was not whether they would repeal the paper duties, but whether they would increase the obnoxious income tax? That was the question which they had really to answer; and on whish they would have to explain theli answer to their consti tuents, to whom they had now.a-days to pay almost an an nual visit. (A laugh.) If the house really represented the views of the community, they would indorse without hesi tation the opinion that it was impolitic by taking off a tax that was burdensome at most to but a small portion of the public, to render it inevitably necessary to increase one of the most odious imposts that was ever levied upon the country. (Cheers.) the descriptionsM r. N ORRIS would venture to assert that neither of g su iv b e j n oot t s o u t t h t e h h at ou m se om as en t t he wa st s a s t t e ri o o f tly pu oo hli r f opinion on thes e rect, He believed tha t the public generally were not much with either in love duty. The truth was, they found them selves in the p os i t i on of being compelled and he t o w aaccept inclinedone o t o r other of the two evils before Chancellorthink th at upon of th ea Exchequerbalanee of them, testimony would be the tho u proposal e o r f a t b h l o e to the supplemental budget of hon. gentlemen opposite. He (Mr. Norris) understood that the Chancellor of the Exche quer asked the house to assent to th e i ncome tax foron y e ar, and for one year only. (A lau g h.) That motione wo uld only touch one - seventieth portion of th e budget, and he did not think that would give weight or authority to the proposed alteration. The income tax was objected to upon the ground that it was a war tax. But what was the paper duty ? Why, it was a tax 'imposed in the year 1711, in the reign of Queen Anne ; and the preamble of the act expressed that it was imposed for the purpose of carrying on the war then raging until her Majesty had made a good and lasting peace. If that were true, then all the arguments of the hon. gentleman against the income tax, upon the ground that it was a wartax, were equally applicable against the paperduties. (Hear, hear.) It was a mistake to suppose that the paper duties did not enter into the cheaper class of semool books. The fact was that the tax augmented the price of them from 6 to 20 percent. ; mad, if it was true that the purchasers of such works as Lord Macaulay's "History of England" paid so little to the State in the shape of paper duty, while the poor paid so largely, then the incidents of that tax were most unjust, and it pressed heavily on the poor, while the rich escaped almost altogether. Seeing the difficulties by which the question was surrounded, he thought the tax ought not to be continued. Mr. Al ILLS reminded the house that they were not then considering the nature of the tax, for all taxes were objec tionable, but whether at the present time, with an exhausted Exchequer, they were to repeal the Excise duty on paper, and add to the amount of income tax. The house had al ready decided that the paper duty should be repealed when the proper time arrived, but the question was, had that period arrived? He thought the opinions put forward by the noble lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in June, in 1858, w h en t h e r i ght hon. gent l eman now t h e Pre sident of the Board of Trade brought forward his motion for the repeal of the paper duty, should have prevented him from supportin g the repeal of the tax. He stated distinctly that good faith requi re d th at the taxes on tea and sugar and other articles of consumption should be first abolished, and _ THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, MARCH 13, 1860. ber for Buckinghamshire, addressed, the house on that occasion, arid said, upon every ground it was desirable that the duty on paper should be abolished, and the right hon. gentleman voted in favour of his resolution. This being so, he claimed the vote of the right hon. gentleman in favour of the measure before the house. (Hear, hear.) Carrying out the purpose which he had in view in reference to the abolition of the paper duty, he had interviews with Lord Derby on the subject, and that noble lord at one of those interviews expressed this .opinion —that the paper. tax was bad in principle and in practice, and that it ought to be re pealed as soon as possible; and in 1858 the noble earl inti mated that if the Conservative Government held office for two years, he thought it was likely that the paper duty would be repealed. (Hear, hear.) He now found by the last report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, that they looked upon the paper tax as doomed, and they asked Par liament to legislate on the subject as soon as possible. Well, the house having resolved that the paper duty was not to be regarded as a permanent duty, he could not see how the Government, being desirous of relieving the trade and industry of the country, could do otherwise than select it as that which ought to be abolished. (Hear.) The hon. baronet (Sir W. Miles), at the opening of his speech, said that ho did not mean to declare that he should desire that the paper duty should be continued as one of the indirect taxes of the country—although the latter part of his speech was at variance with the first portion of it, for he went on to show that the tax was a profitable one to the country. The Government, however, he (Mr. M. Gibson) thought, after the resolution that had been come to by that house, would have been wanting in their duty if they didnot propose to abolish the tax in question. The noble lord had said that the report the commissioners had made had been got up for the occasion. Now, that was a monstrous charge to make, that they had got up a report to serve the Government. The question raised was, as to the collection of the tax; and he (Mr. M. Gibson) maintained that if this tax was to be continued, they must bring in a bill to define how the collection of this tax was to be made. But they were told that the definition of paper was very clear, and that it was to be found in the last decision of the Court of Exchequer. All that the Act of Parliament said was, that in whatever way paper might be made it should still be called paper. Now, the Court of Exchequer said that paper might be made from fibres for writing puiposes, to which flexible sheets were applicable. Now paper came into collision with felt, which could be sold at a cheaper rate, and how were they to apply the duty to the article of felt. The commissioners, therefore, said, if the paper duty should be retained they must come to Parliament to define more accurately what was to be deemed paper. (Hear, hear.) He (Mr. M. Gibson) therefore said that Parliament must make up its mind after what had passed that if this tax be not thought to be one of permanent revenue it ought to be abolished altogether. The right hon. gentleman then re ferred to the third report of the Board of Inland Revenue of the last year in Lord Derby's last Administration, which he contended fully, bore him out in the view he was now taking of the question, and he farther asserted, that, with reference to such a tax, no men could be looked to for advice with so much advantage as the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, who,. he believed, had given their deliberate and honest opinion. (Hear, hear.) In fact, if the duty had not been levied in the most considerate manner,it would not have been possible to have kept it on so long. (Hear, hear.) If the Commissioners of Inland Revenue say there is no way to relieve them from the difficulty in which they are placed but by the repeal of the tax, he must say that he considered the opinion of the commissioners was entitled to more re spect than the opinions of those hon. members who had spoken in support of the tax. The argument that this tax was one which stood in the way of the diffusion'of know ledge was not the only one which could be used against it. Looking at the population of this country, the consumption of paper here was not at all equal to what it was in other countries. In the United States, with a smaller population, the consumption of p a p er was three times as great as it was in England, and America produced rags enough to make much more paper than was made in this country. (Hear, hear.) In this country, with a larger population, it ought to be supposed that the consumption would be large. The hon. gentleman here quoted the authority of Mr. Rawlins, of Wrexham, to the effect that,ln consequence of the greater facility of making paper inAmerica,they were enabled there to sell it at a price below what was charged for duty in England. Now, there was no doubt that the excise survey and other annoyances crippled the manufacturer in this country, and there were a variety of ways in which it could be shown that the duty on paper operated very injuriously in this country. Upon the coarser qualities of paper the tax was an enormous per tentage. A manufacturer in Bir mingham had told him that out of the manufacture to the amount of £33,000 he had to give so much as £12,800 to the Government. (Hear, hear.) Now, there could be no doubt that England possessed abundance of raw materials for making paper. It was, however, said in 1836, when the tax on paper was reduced, that this country had not a sup ply of the raw material. But what was the fact ? Why, that after the reduction of the tax the quantity of paper produced increased to 90,000 tons per annum, although pre viously to the reduction of the tax the produce was only 40,000 tons per annum. (Hear, hear.) Now, though they had nearly trebled their produce, the raw material had fallen in price 40 per cent, He was, therefore, convinced that the repeal of the duty would lead to a largely increased manufacture of paper, and that the raw material would also be largely increased, for he held it to be a mis take to suppose otherwise, if they took the whole world and did not limit themselves to two or three countries. (Hear.) it was a fallacy to suppose that the manufacturer would pocket the paper duty when foreign paper was to be ad mitted free of duty. They had been told that the paper duty was not a farmer's question, but he contended that it was so if the subject had fair consideration. It had been shown that flax fibre and flax refuse could be converted into paper, and the farmers would, therefore, be enabled by the sal e o f th ese articles, and of straw, to the paper manufacturer, to corn pensate themselves for any reduction that ing produce could be profitably disposed of in that way, which were at present destroyed. If the farming interest, therefore, would only give their support to Government in this matter, they would find that in the end they would be largely benefilted. It had been truly said, that the tax upon paper was a tax on the diffusion of knowledge, although some had stated that it was simply a clap trap to make such an assertion. . The saying, however, was not his (Mr. M. Gibson's). It had been used by the right hon. gentleman the member for Hertfordshire (Sir B. Lytton) in a speech which he made on the subject some years ago. In the reign of Queen Anne they found that the duty was remitted upon the paper used in printing books in the Latin, Greek, Orien tal, and Northern languages, and he did not see why, in the reign of Queen Victoria, they ought not to remit the paper duty altogether. (Hear.) It might even be argued that the \English was a northern language. (Laughter.) The paper duty was a tax upon knowledge, because it was a tax on the principal means of spreading knowledge amongst the people. If the paper duty were 6d. instead of lid. they would still be told by its opponents that Is. was nothing on a book cost ing two guineas. But that was not the question. The ques tion was how this duty acted on publications of extensive -circulation at a low price ; for these were the only publica tions by which they diffused useful information amongst the great masses of the people. The hon. baronet the mem ber for Herts had once advised the great political party to which he belonged not to resist the repeal of this duty, which stood in the way of the refinement and improve ment of the people. (Hear.) The right hon. baronet told his political friends that their own principles would be pro moted by the repeal of the duty, which would remove the impediments to the promulgation of knowledge. They wished at that time to have a penny Conservative daily paper, which they now had, and it was selling wholesale nine copies for 6d. Now, nine copies weighed 11b., and therefore paid a duty of. lid. ; so that for every pound's worth of that paper Ss, was paid in the shape of paper duty to Government, and this.ss., after being originally advanced by the papermaker, afterwards advanced by the wholesale stationer, become increased to 7s. or Bs. So that for every pound's worth of this penny daily Conservative paper 7s. paper duty was paid to Government. (Oh, oh.) Such a tax must, of course, be an immense impediment in the way of the success of cheap periodicals ; for supposing the paper in question to have a circulation of 2.5,000 a day, which he had no doubt it was, then the paper duty to them amounted to £2O a day. This was somewhere near the mark; but he had not made any exact calculation. But the question was not merely one affecting the penny newspapers, but all cheap petiodicals. If they were to have cheap newspapers and periodicals, they had a political interest in making them as good as possible. An impoverished. Press instead of being productive of good, would be productive of evil to the country. Amongst cheap publications, perhaps the " Religious Tract Society" held the first place. Many hon. gentlemen no doubt subscribed to that excellent institution, including probably the noble lord who had just addressed the house. The Religious Tract Society was the most Catholic and probably the largest of all these institutions. He did not know how many tons of paper this admirable society male use of in the course of the year. He be lieved that the secretary of the society had been applied to for this information, but had net been able to supply it. But there were two excellent publications issued by this society, the Leisure Hour and the Sunday at Home—(hear, hear) — and the paperdutyon those twopublieations alone amounted to £3,000 per annum. It was surely an enormous sum to pay the Government for permission to publish these two publications. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Charles Knight, the well-known publisher, had stated that during 20 years, he had spent £BO,OOO in remunerating authors in connection with various literary publications, and £50,000 in the paper duties. (Hear.) It was no clap-trap, therefore, to call the paper duty a tax upon knowledge. The paper duty was not only a tax upon knowledge, but it was a great drawback on the freedom of authors. Had the large sum of money (£50,000) paid by the publisher alluded to in the shape of paper duty been at his disposal for the remuneration of au thors, a higher style of literary talent would have been secured by the money which, as it was, went into the Ex chequer. Seeing, therefore, that the present opportunity had occurred, and that public expectation was excited on the subject, he hoped the house would consent to the second reading of the bill by a large majority. (Hear, hear.) Mr. HORSMAN said he had heard with interest' the speech of his right hon. friend, who had been very lively about the Tract Society, and very eloquent about rags, but as to the principle of the bill, he had not touched it at alb, (Hear.) By a skilful processof Parliamentary manipulation it was so arranged that the treaty carried the budget, and the budget carried the treaty.. (Cheers and laughter.) So now, the budget and the treaty combined were to carry the paper duty. Under the semblance of a small remission, the house was called upon to agree to ono of the most important financial changes ever sutmitted to Parliament by any Mi nister—important, not only because of the principle it in volved, but also because of the consequences to which it must lead. He could not allow his right hon. friend to sepa rate the income tax from the paper duty. (Hear, hear.) The Chancellor of the Exchequer made a calculation of the in come and expenditure of the year, and, on balancing his account, placed the income-tax at 9d., with which he had no fault to find. But then the Chancellor of the Exche quer performed another operation, making the remission of the paper duty, by means of which he created a deficit of upwards of a million—(hear, hear)—and how did he fill up that deficit ? By an additional penny on the income-tax. (Hear.) It was on this last point that he had to grapple with his right hon. friend. To abolish the paper duty and substitute an additional ld. income-tax was not a remission of taxation at all. (Hear, hear.) It was a mere shifting of the tax from paper to income. (Hear.) When they heard of a remission of taxation they understood it in the sense of a relief to the whole community, and not the relief of the manufacturing class at the expense of the rest of the people. (Hear, hear.) Such a "remission" as this was virtually no thing more than protection for that class, and, under pre tence of free trade, a perpetuation of favouritism and mono poly. (Hear, hear.) To the remission of the tea and sugar duties, both on fiscal and on moral grounds, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, more than any other public man, stood pledged ; and how did he get over the difficulty ? It was by coining a new principle of political economy, which in order to be believed would require faith enough to remove a whole chain of mountains. (Hear, and laughter.) It was a mistake to say that you would benefit the labouring classes by remitting the duties on commodities through which they obtained employment. (Hear, hear.) This was the principle of his right hon. friend, which was certainly as bold as it was novel, and as false as it was novel and bold. (near, hear.) Supposing a man had gone down to the Liverpool Financial Reform Association, and said that the working classes would be benefited by repealing the duties on articles consumed by employers. (Hear, hear.) In those days of refinement such a person would be pro bably laughed out of the roem, but there were days when :he would have been removed from the place by a speedier and less ceremonious process. Would not a reduction of taxation on articles of prime ne cessity stimulate and increase labour and employment? (Hear.) The questions were, they had a million of taxes to remit, and would they remit them from articles largely con sumed by the working classes, or from paper ? The Chan cellor of the Exchequer says, " I'll remit it from paper, because to do so will increase employment ;" but he (Mr. Horsman) contended that remitting the duty on tea and sugar would enable the people to lay out that million in another and more productive way, which would yield the right hon. gentleman a surplus. The people did not want to lay out the million on tea and sugar, but they wanted to lay the money out in something else, and that would yield more employment than the right hon. gentleman antici pated from the remission of the paper duty. In the one case, they gave up a million in favour of the manufacturers of paper, and of the consumers of paper, who were mainly composed of the rich classes and those who paid the income tax, and they retained the million upon the hard-working consumers of tea and sugar. (Hear, hear.) There was one tax which affected the consumption of the poor, but which was not a war tax, and that they allowed to remain un touched. But it had been said by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "You are about to admit the operative classes to a much larger share of power than they previously en joyed ;" and to that the working classes reply, but "you have broken your promises to us." You led us to hope that you were going to remit two millions of taxes on tea and sugar, and this year you. put on a war tax which came up to one shilling. But how long would it remain there ? De putations would come up to the Chancellor of the Exche quer and tell him that those two millions on tea and sugar were a tax on temperance. Now, the Chancellor himself was a temperate man, yet he told them that the deficit of nine millions was to be made up partly by retaining those two millions on tea and sugar. Well, then, the voice thus raised would reach the large towns, and would say, " You must lay the tax upon property ;" and remember he (Mr. Horsman) told them they must lay it on property. (Hear, hear.) Now it was here that he challenged the right -hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and told him that the question of direct or indirect taxation was the problem of the day, and that they must eventually lay the tax directly on property. (Hear.) No one felt that more than Sir R. Peel. He (Mr. Horsman) must say that a man of the great ability of the Chancellor' of the Exchequer ought to review the whole question, and to justly shift the burden, and not apply to the working classes to pay the tax —(hear, hear) —and he should have done that honestly in the broad daylight, and placed the pressure of taxation where it ought to be placed. (Hear, hear.) He should not have shifted the burden from ono class to another in the manner he had done, and he should not leave the masses at the mercy of the tax collectors. The Chancellor of the Exchequer could not believe that the poor had any burdens, and if a tax was required he should lay it on the broad back of the working man—he is able to bear it ; and the pro posed tax was, by a sudden wind of taxation, shifted accord ingly to the shoulders of the working classes. (Hear, hear.) It became arbitrary, and ultimately ended in confiscatien. (Hear, hear, from the Opposition.) Now, let them not mince the matter. (Laughter.) Let them give "honour to whom honour was due." This was not the budget of the Govern ment—(hear, and cheers front the Opposition)—it was the budget of his hon. friend the member for Birmingham. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) His hon. friend had, in the autumn, made a most able financial statement at Birming ham, and he (Mr. Horsman) could imagine the Chancellor of the Exchequer saying—" I have read with great interest your speech at Birmingham. You have made a convert of me. (Laughter.) I beg you'll come up by the early train to Downing-street, and help me to frame my budget." (Laugh ter.) And when they had the twin stars closeted together, his hon. friend might say to the right hon. gentleman— " Don't go too fast ; you are too impulsive ; converts always are so. (Laughter.) You be led by me ; thosetwo millions on tea and sugar de not touch at all. There is the paper duty, take that off, and lay it on in another way—it will only be a penny; get rid of this tax on industry, and the rest will follow, and you can hereafter mislead, by your embellished and disguised rhetoric, and we will produce a prime article of the last new and best Oxford mixture"—(cheers and loud laughter)—the last and newest sample of the Oxford mix ture.-- (Great laughter.) Well, they had had two samples. They had had the treaty, which the hon. member for Bir mingham had told them was the dearest object of his affec tions, and it was also the child of the Chancellor of the Ex chequer. Both however, like all progenies, must have two parents. (Renewed laughter.) They might assume that while the hon. member for Birmingham enjoyed the pride of paternity, it was upon the Chansellor of the Exchequer that devolved the pains of labour. (Tremendous laughter.) The first-born was Master Treaty. In'the fulness of time appears Miss Budget, with every prospect of a numerous progeny. (Cries of " Oh," and laughter.) And they already had timely notice of a third approaching birth. He held in his hand a letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to a clergyman in Wales, who had written to him complaining of the income-tax, and of the grievances of the rating to the poor. The Chancellor of the Exchequer replies; and he begins by knocking down this unf or t una t e c l ergyman , as he knocks down everybody. (Laughter.) He has then the uoulage to Irate luta publlall ate .11/111.m1us .—" I utet ro mind you that the cause of the income-tax is not the will of the Minister, but the will of the nation—(a laugh)—which a few years ago war content to expend on the military ser vice"—so many millions. The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER—Be so good as to read the passage. (Hear, hear.) Mr. HORSMAN (reading the extract with the aid of his eye-glass, and apparently with great difficulty)—" On the supply services. LThe Chancellor of the Exchequer— " Hear, hear."]—£2l,ooo,ooo, but which now thinks fit to expend on the same services £21,000,000." An Host. Meiesen—£3l,ooo,ooo. Mr. HORSMAN—I think the right hon. gentleman says the increase is principally on the military expenditure of the country, but I can't read it. (Cries of " Read, read I") I can't read it clearly. Several Hose MEMBERS—Let the clerk read it. Mr. HORSMAN (throwing down the document which he had been endeavouring to decipher)—l can't read it. If I have touched on a point which I can't make out—and I confess I can't-1 must apologise to the house, and so I leave this unfortunate clergyman. (Hear, hear.) Perhaps, however, the right hon. gentleman might meet him that night as he did on Friday, by saying that on that question her Majesty's Ministers had not been so fortunate as to find favour with him Perhaps, too, the right hon. gentleman might again go so far as to say that he thought his (Mr. Horsmau's) sense of duty had better remain inscrutable. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) He (Mr. Horsman) must, at any rate, confess that there had been three great questions before the house during the session, the part taken by th e Government as to which he had felt it his duty to con demn. Two of them were involved in the bill before the house; and if he asked him what his third objection was, he would say—asking the house to excuse the vulgarity of the expression—that he was a great enemy of shams. (Cheers, and laughter.) When the Reform Bill was intro duced, and put off for a fortnight, he conjectured it was a sham, end he stated that the relation of the right lion...gen tleman to it was the greatest sham of all—(cheers, and oh) —for he had already supported the bill brought in by the right hon. gentleman opposite, with a gentle protest that it went too far. He thought, then, that the expression of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not called for by which he obtained a cheer from the hon. gentlemen sitting behind the Treasury bench, when he said that his sense of duty had better remain inscrutable. (Cheers and laughter.) Let him, however, give a word of advi s ee to the right hon. gen tleman. (Cries of "Oh," and laughter.) It was this. He said the right hon. gentleman was the • last man in that house who should diverge from political questions to invite a war of personalities; because, in the four corners of the British empire, there lived not a politician so vulnerable as he. No man had owed so much as he did to the forbear ance of the House of Commons--(oh, and laughter)—no man was ever so largelyindebted to its generous indulgence. (Cheers and counter cheers.) No one ever insulted him by asking the question whether the epithet " inscrutable " was applicable to any political eccentricities of his, but should any one venture to describe those eccentricities, he (Mr, Horsman) would treat him with more generosity. (Hear, and laughter.) No one knew better than the right hon. gentleman that when, in their hot war of party and political strife, any man in that house chose to separate himself from the mancoutres of faction, he was quite cer tain to be assailed with petty personalities and expressions, which, coming from ordinary quarters, no man of sense and character would trouble himself about, but which as sumed a very different character when they proceeded from a Minister of the Crown. The character of the house and the independence of its members were compromised by pro ceedings like those, which were altogether unworthy of those who resorted to them. He wished now to draw the attention of the house to the position in which it stood. (Oh, and divide.) They saw at that moment the necessity of the bill before them, which was nevertheless fraught with the most dangerous principles. The right hon. gen tleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer claimed the confi dence of the country by saying that he was following in the footsteps of Sir Robert Peel. Now he (Mr. Horsman) could show that, so far from that being true, the right hon. gentleman had abandoned in every respect the great prin ciplessaf that statesman, and attached himself to a newer and bolder school. (Cheers.) With an exceptional in stance, his whole measure was a flagrant abandonment of the principles of that policy which he professed to keep in view. The great principles of Sir Robert Peel consisted in making the country secure against future deficit ; yet, the right hon. gentleman began by crowning - the burdens of the country with a heavy deficit, and by anticipating the revenue of future years, the deficiency arising f;nirnillvolibeerht he knew must be met by increased taxation. Peel so operated on the national finance as to facilitate the discontinuance of the income tax. Instead of following his example the right hon. gentleman threw obstacles in the way of i ts reduction: Again, Sir Robert Peel's principle was to reduce taxes, and by the increased consumption the commodities upon which they were reduced,• the Exchequer to its former state. .The policy of the right hon. gentleman trampled on that principle, by destroying a branch of tho indirect taxation at the moment of its b eing most flourishing, and substituting a war tax in its place. (Hear, hear.) Sir Robert Peel denounced class legislation, and aimed at making his budgets confer boons on the working classes. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the contrary, enriched the manufacturers and the middle classes, while he withheld from the operatives thei r j us t demands. Sir Robert Peel, with all the power he could command, exhorted Parliament to keep the income tax as a great reserve to meet any unexpected emergency, so that by making foreign nations know what a . great resource we had, it might be at once as mighty an engine for war as it would be a powerful guarantee for peace. The measure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, made it a great re lief fund, for which class interests were to contend. To-day the paper-makers would assail him. Next year the clamour would be for the remission of the t ea and sugar duties; while the licensed victuallers would coerce him the third. Thus our great resource would have broken down; and, when the hour of trial came, aggravated by commercial pressure, bad harvests, or a war, we should be awake to the magnitude of our folly and the reality of the disorganisa tion which history warned us was too often the precursor of national convulsions. (Cheers.) The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER—Sir, at any hour of the evening, especially at the late hour we have nevi reached, I should endeavour to be yery short in DIY reply to that part of the speech of the right hon. gentleman which refers to me. (Hear, hear.) Until to-night I was really not aware that I had by any unhappy or casual ex pression given him any occasion for that terrific onslaught which we have heard. I was not aware that any expression had fallen from me on Friday night which could have wounded the feelings of tho right hon. gentleman, and I can only say, apart from what has occurred this evening, that I am extremely sorry for it. (Hear, hear.) The right hon. gentleman is not quite right, I think, in supposing that he has always been remarkable for the particularity of his language. (Hear, hear.) It is fresh on my mind that on Friday night last the right hon. gentleman said with a blandness of manner for which he is well known that Sir R. Peel had conducted his finances in the spirit of a statesman, ' while the present Chancellor of the Exchequer had com menced as a spendthrift and finished as a footpad. (Loud cheers.) In the contrast which the right hon. gentleman has drawn to-night between . the policy of Sir R. Peel and the present Government I do not think he has succeeded in producing a sharper antithesis than on that occasion. (Hear.) I pass from those consideratiOns to the question which the house has to decide, and here quite agree with the right hon. gentleman that he has not minced the matter, for he has shown such a picture which it would be perfectly won derful to have from any other source than his own. (Hear.) The right hon. gentleman has imagined a letter which the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote to the hon. member for Birmingham, but it must have been observed how much more the hon. gentleman dwelt upon what he imagined than upon the facts. (Ilea; hear.) It is necessary for me to ask why the right hon. gentleman has imagined that a series of errors must follow the alterations in this year?— and he pursued his remarks in deference to the increasing cheers of a very small but intrepid band on the opposite side the house, which led the right hon. gentleman to a climax when he deliberately asserted that the budget of the pre sent year would be in accordance with a general system of confiscation. (Loud cheers.) There may be here and there in this house a few hon. members who partake of that opinion, but I own I think it will be ,a waste of time to reply to such observations, and I prefer leaving them to the sentiments of persons out of doors, and to let them stand refuted by what I will venture to call their own absurdity. (Loud cheers.) I will venture to ask how the right hon. gentleman intends to vote to-night because the motion of the hon. member for Somerset is' uul. lIICI ely a declaration that it is inexpedient to abolish the paper duty, but it is a declaration, so far as I can understand it, that this house will not vote the income tax as proposed by her Majesty's Government. (Cheers.) The right hon. gentleman has most ingeniously made a speech in which he has raised a contrast as between the claims of the paper duty on the one hand and the sugar and tea duties on the other. (Hear.) Though the right hon. gentleman has pointed oat errors in the present course, he has not proposed the repeal of any other indirect tax. He has only said that the Government have made a bad selec tion. What is the view of the right hon. gentleman ? Does he agree that this million or so ought to be bestowed upon some other indirect tax ? If he does not, then what are all these appeals to the house respecting the tea and sugar duties, if he does not mean that they should be repealed. (Hear, hear.) If the right hon. gentleman has no inten tion to give any relief at all to the consumers of tea and sugar, but if he has been merely playing off the repeal of these duties against the repeal of the paper duty, then I say he has only intended to bewilder the house and the people s If he thinks it right that we should grant these remissions to trade and industry, and that we have only made a mis take in the mode, then this is but a secondary matter. But we carefully examined into the cases of tea and sugar on the one side and of paper on the other, and we came to the conclusion that the repeal of the paper duty would be by far the most beneficial to the community at large. And this is a principle which I think my right hon. friend had not in his view : we did not deny the expediency of a repeal of the paper duties, but we deny that any decrease of duties to the same amount would produce the same increase of trade. The grounds which induced us to propose the repeal of the paper duties were founded on careful examination.' It is true that by reducing the war tax on tea and sugar you would cheapen articles of general consumption, and give a general impetus to trade ; but when we looked at the paper duty, we found it recommended itself on most peculiar con siderations. There is no commodity so much in use, and it is a _great error to call it a commodity consumed mainly by the rich.. It is consumed by the rich, but it is also enormously consumed by the poor, who can hardly get any commodity which is not required to be wrapped in paper, which of course enhances the price. The paper of the rich may be enhanced four or five per cent. by the duty, but the paper of the poor is enhanced forty or fifty per cent. Does my right hon. friend forgot that another great use of paper is this, that it is a most important raw material in this sense, that as a wrapper it is an indispensable accessory to nearly all our exports and manufactures ? Of the whole £1,200,000 levied, a very large proportion is paid for wrappers on manu factured goods. But that is not the whole case. lam sure the right hon. gentleman has taken no pains to examine into this truth. What he says may be perfectly true as re gards the qualities upon which the duties are usually levied, but we besides have to deal with the enormous mass of raw material applicable for so many purposes, but which is ar rested in its progress to manufacture by the operation of the excise duties. That is perhaps a View of the case which the right hon. gentleman never had before him; but that was the ground upon which the Government came to its conclusion. We felt that in abolishing the duty we should be relieving a vast number of trades, which but for its imposition would be most probably in a flourishing condition. Permit me to give one exaniple. Here is a material as hard as corrugated iron. (The right hon. gentleman here held up a sample of the material.) It is one-fourth in weight to the same bulk, and costs a very small fraction of the cost of the iron ; it is entirely uninflammable, and rot in any degree acted upon by temperature. It is made impervious to water by pitch, and is corrugated fit for roofing. Let me tell my right hon. friend that had we been in possession of this material in 1854, when shelter was wanted for the army in the Crimea, and when the best expedient we could think of was to send out thousands of wooden huts, which on account of their weight could not be taken up from Balaclava to the camp, you might have saved not only a vast amount of treasure, but also a vast amount of human life. (Hear, hear.) Here is the account given of this material by the manufacturer :-- "Near four years ago I took out a patent for corrugated sheets of papier-mache for many purposes, principally house building. With it you may live in a paper house, as by corrugating, it can be made invulnerable. It is a non-cone ductor of heat, and from its various qualities it is admirably adapted for military huts. Yet simply in consequence of the excise regulation, we are unable to manufacture it. If those regulations were removed hundreds of thousand of tons of raw material could be used in the manufacture!' This is a material which appears to possess all the qualities neces sary to render it capable of answering the most important uses, and of which there are unbounded masses of the raw material which it is impossible to apply to the creation of this trade on account of the excise regulation. I will not enter into many questions connected with these operations, which extend in so many directions, not for the mere relief of existing manufactures, but for the removal of what amounts to a positive prohibition, which you might as well prohibit by law as by your excise regulations. And now I hope the house will see that we acted wisely in proposing the reduction of the paper duty, instead of the duty on tea and sugar, be. cause by doing so you may call into existence two or three times as much trade as you would by the reduction of the, sugar duties. (Hear.) The right hon. gentleman says the grand principle of Sir R. Peel was to reduce duties, but net to repeal them. Well, I should have supposed that when that right hon. gentleman undertakes to instruct us in the policy and principles of Sir It. Peel, he would at least have made himself acquainted with his measures. Who repealed the duties on the export of wool, of soap, and of glass? I do not hesitate to say that, taking the paper duty as a ques tion not in the state in which it was ten years ago, but as it is now, there is a far stronger case for its repeal than there ever was for the repeal of glass or soap, or any other duty that has been repealed for the last twenty years. (1 e r,t hear.) It is perfectly true that this is an increasing duty,a and I admi t that the duty is not one of those which has the greatest claim to bo repealed, but it was a - duty of that kind which the right hon. gentleman said upon another occasion ought to be repealed. And now when we had £2,000,000 and more of indirect taxes falling in, and when £1,400,000 of casual receipts are going to be applied to our yearly expenditure, is not that an op portunity, if ever there is to be an opportunity, for the re peal of this duty ? (Cheers.) The other policy is simply this— that you take whatever you can, and throw it into the gulf of expenditure. (Hear.) The hon. baronet (Sir W. Miles) brought forward his motion in a manner to con nect the question of the income tax as far as he could with the paper duty, and he brought it forward without any notice, which I must regret, *hough I don't mean to charge him with wishing to stifle discussion. All I regret is, that his motion, as it stands, is not true ; that it states as an un doubted truth that which, in my opinion, is exactly the reverse of truth, and mixes up questions which we ought to keep separate. Why is the paper duty an increasing duty ? For this reason, that it is in most cases accessory, and is sub ject to the causes which are in themselves accessory—such, for instance, as when we repealed duties on advertisements and newspaper stamps. That measure resulted in a greatly increased demand for newspapers, though it was no proof that the paper duty was a good duty. You cannot expert manufactured goods without paper to pack them ; how, then, was it possible that the duty should not be an increasing duty ? (Hear.) Suppose you laid a very heavy tax upon igrnoe natshetreabbteeoedof book a ne r trade. rt laugh),reader mustard, you would not materially diminish the demand for and yet mustard is an accessory to roast beef. He might observe tho singular state of things h in e fl e u ff e e ige of of th th e e d p a a ty pe h r a d a u h t ee n n e t s h p e ec e i r a e l a ly . thet i crea tion makero f one to oht indeorniotphoeleiaeleaanadareetahsieonwohfomloownaoypofrlioema. The publisher cannot deal with the paper maker ; he must deal with the wh o l esa l e stationer, and the wholesale stationer stands between the paper maker and the public. (Hear.) Next to these comes the publishers, and for the higher class of books thi s country continues to be the dearest country in the world. There is France 'publishing books value for value, for little more than one-third the price of ours, and if we compare our railway library with that of France, it is a disgrace to a country which prides itself upo a its manu factures. (Hear, hear.) But besides the stationers and pub lishers, there is the printers' combination—one of the most formidable kind—which proceeds upon this proposition, that no woman must be employed in the trade, although we all know that women are peculiarly adapted from their small fingers to the delicate handling of type. (Hear, hear.) Some hon. gentlemen may be inclined to smile at my holding that proposition; bat I believe it is an undoubted truth that women are admirably suited for that particular trade, not withstanding they are absolUtely and entirely excluded from it by the combination of the printers. Such le the result of these laws, which end in producing a cluster of monopolies in the trade. My hon. friend the member for Somersetshire referred to a report which has recently been presented to the house from the Board of Inland Revenue ; and I only wish that those hon. members who followed him would have fol lowed the tone in which he alluded to it.:(Hear.) Melton. ba- ronet most properly criticised the proceedings of the Govern.. ment, and also my proceedings in introducing that report, but he cast no aspersions on the able, independent, and honourable men, who conducted the Board of Inland Re venue—that vast department, with its vast public interests, and which is generally marked as a credit to the c , mntry. (Hear, hear.) But the noble lord (Lord R. Cecil) says that it is a report made to order. He has no right to say that It is an abuse of the privilege of a member of Parliament to use such language towards geutlemeu holding 41). portant station in the public service, and whose feelings are quite as acute as ours, and to let it go forth that they are capable of sending us a report made to order. (Hear, hear.) I can only say that I hope the noble lord is sorry for having used such terms. This is no report made to order. The hon. baronet said that he thought it was a pity we had induced the board to make such a report, and he hoped no such thing would be done again. But my hon. friend was guilty of that error in reasoning which to use an agri cultural simile is putting the cart before the horse, because he says the Chancellor of the Exchequer had formed an opinion that the paper duties should be abolished and having done that he directed the Board of Inland Revenue to make a report. It was the Board of Inland Revenue that formed an opinion first, and the Government in cesafigg to their de cision on the subject were mainly influenced by the opinion of the board—(hear, hear)—and surely the hon. baronet will not tell me that in that case the Government were wrong in informing the house that those who were respon sible for the collection of the revenue had given them fair notice that the final term for the collection of those duties was rapidly approaching. It would have been a breach of duty on their part if they had shrunk from telling it (Hear, hear.) What does that report come to ? This house thought fit to pass a vote promising the repeal of the paper duty in 1858. In that year the difficulties of levying the paper duty had not been found insurmountable or very serious, and it is therefore since the vote of the house that these proceedings have taken place which have reduced, the board itself almost to despair. What does the hon. baronet expect to do with this motion ? Does he consider what weuld be the effect of carrying it ?' There must be a new set of rules altogether for enforcing this duty, which has been condemned two years ago by the unanimous vote of the House of Com mons. (Hear, hear.) The case of the paper and the sugar duties was one which had to be decided by us on peculiar considerations. lam sorry to see that my hon. friend gives no weight to the argument that the repeal of the paper duty bears as directly upon the rural labourer as on the dis posal of the rural commodity. If we take the disposal of rural commodities Tam told there is an hon. member of this house much given to the cause of protection, even now in its decline, who has lately taken an active part in the formation of a society to promote the growth of flax upon this ground, that so long as you will depend only on linen manufactures you cannot grow flax la the country, but if you are permitted to apply any kind of fibre to the manufacture of paper, flax will become a profit. (Hear.) If the paper mills come into his immediate neighbourhood my hon. friend will pay more dearly still for his labour. lam sure that he will do so willingly for the good of his country — (laughter)—but whether he does or not it is an object which we are bound equally to promote. (Hear, hear.) To increase the demand for labour in the country, but par ticularly for rural labour, is the best and most legitimate object to which we can direct our efforts in any commercial legislation (Hear, hear.) I am sure in saying that I give no offence to the great employers of the congregated masses in the country, but it is in other parts of the country—it is in Ireland and other places where the wages of labour aro lower, that we ought to quicken the demand for labour. (Hear, hear.) We have now to deal with two very different questions. My hon. friend wants us to deal with the two at once. He wants us to vote that there shall be no repeal of the paper duty, and that there shall be no further remission of indirect taxation. These two• things are combined in the mind of my hon. friend, but tkey aro not combined in the mind of the Government, and think they cannot be combined in the mind of the house. We considered the position in which we stood—whore we should stop in our remission of indirect taxation—and we came to the conclusion that, under all the circumstances of the time, viewing the state of the expenditure and of the re venue, the lapse of the annuities, the lapse of the war tea and sugar duties—taking all these circumstances into con sideration, and adding to them the fact that we were going to apply 1,500,000 of casual monies to the service of the year, we came to the conclusion that at least £2,000,000 of indirect taxation ought to be repealed. (Hear.) I may say with truth, that that was understood by the house and the eountry.to be the principal announcement contained in the financial plan of the year. (Hear.) But it did not rest there, because the member for Essex made a motion which had for its object to condemn the remission of indirect taxa tion as not being opportune. That motion was rejected b a majority of over 100, and that being the case I ask gentlemen opposite whether they did not believe that that decision of the house did not amount to an accept ance of the doctrine that £2,000,000 should he remitted ? Hear, and " No.") That is our belief, and that i s th e be lief on which we are going to act. If my hon. friend succeeds in his motion, our first duty would be, therefore, to remind the house of those other claims whichi were so eloquently put forward by the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Horsman) to— night, the claim of the people with regard to tea and sugar —(hear)—and the claim of the Exchequer Bonds to be paid up. It is not therefore a question between. the acceptanceor - the repeal of;theipaper duty on the one hand and an escape from the tenpenny income tax on the other. Ide not see hew you canescape from that tenpenny income tax, because if you do not accept of the repeal of the paper duty we should - take the earliest opportunity—within a few days probably— of inviting the house to- repeal the war tea and sugar duties. But as the tea duty is unfavourably circumstanced at pre sent in consequence of our relations with China, I should probably invite them to repeal the sugar duty. And, let me ask, what security will you have for your revenue if you do that ? We should have given away the sugar duty which at all events is a perfectly intelligible and tena ble duty, and one which the people are content to pay as long as they are satisfied that it is required for the public service. But if we give up the sugar duty, which we can keep this year, the next year we should be asked to give the paper duties, in accordance with the expressed resolu tion of the house and the opinions of the commissioners of inland revenue. That, I. apprehend, would not be a profitable or safe cone to adopt. (Cheers.) It is better, in my opinion, to adopt the course we now propose—a course which will stimulate the trade of the country and obviate the inextricable difficulties of levying the paper duty. The question, then, really is not whether £1,000,000 of indirect taxation shall be repealed, but simply in what manner it shell be supplied ? That is the principle on which we shall act. I believe that the house will adopt the proposal of the Government, and I have the more assurance of that from the fact that I have not been able to understand from the speakers on the other side what duties they would propose to repeal. My hon. friend the member for Somersetshire did not quite see the inconvenience of introducing the treaty as he introduced it in this debate. He founded his appeal on the lowest class of payers of income tax ; but it is not a question as to them, no one proposes to add a penny to their income tax—the addition to it is a penny ; but let me remind the house that the question as to what exemption from income tax shall be allowed still remains to be dealt with. The hon. mem • ber for Lancashire has given notice of a motion for the par tial exemption of all incomes up to £5OO. I don't think that such a change will be adopted by the house, because it would be beyond precedent; and not only inconvenient but dangerous. But the question what amount of exemption shall be given to persons of very small means is a question entirely open, and with respect to which latitude may be allowed to the house in perfect conformity with precedent derived from the history of the income tax in former years ; but let nie ask myhon. friend if it is a fair test of the income tax to take only its incidence on the very lowest class who pay it ? (Hear, hear.) The income tax is a grievous tax in its incidence to that body of persons, and for my own part I would neither be astonished nor complain if the house was disposed to increase. the partial remission which it makes on their behalf now or at some future time. It is impossible to deny that it is a grievous tax as it affects per sons of small incomes, and especially of small fixed incomes. (Hear, hear.) I have heard it said that I have given a fall account of all the phases of the income tax. I have de scribed them, and my opinion remains now very much what it was before upon that subject. (Hear, hear.) I think the vices of the income tax are many, great, and manifold ; but I said that why you retain it, in my opinion, was because it was essential to assist in giving those great benefits to the people which alone made it endurable, .and caused it to be endured. (Hear, hear.) It has many vices, but it has one great virtue, which is this—that in the main, without any injustice in its general scope, without any of those idle dreams of plunder and confiscation, which we have heard to-night, it does make the property of the country subservient to the uses of the state within limits which are safe and for purposes which are beneficial. (Cheers.) The position of the Government then with respect to the paper duties is this : We think it part of our public duty, part of the pledge we gave to the country which has given such a w general should a n r d e d w e a e rmm pppleodrtgetowoheirchfiwnane gave eial a me m as o e st ago— eh antt viz., that under thtehSe ue xisting circumstances of th urn e the p s r year, we should ask for such a repeal of indirect taxation as should not exceed two millions of money. We desire the house to exercise an impartial judgment on the question— what is the best mode of applying that sum ? but for all the reasons I have stated, we submit that the wisest and most prudent choice we could make was to determine to repeal the paper duty, and to give freedom to a great branch of industry, which we have great reason to hope will de velop itself in a thousand directions, and add to the demand for labour, and through the demand for labour to the prosperity of the country, in a degree out of all proportion to even the considerable amount of revenue which the duty now represents. (Cheers.) Sir J. PAKINGTON, who was listened to with much impatience, and threatened to move the adjournment of the house if he were not listened to, denied that there was any understanding, as alleged in the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer when introducing the budget, on the part of the house to the effect that when the Long Annuities fell in the amount should be applied to the repeal of indirect taxes. On the contrary, it was generally understood that the money would be applied to the reduction of the income tax. (Hear, hear.) The budget was a great boon to the osi ners of coal and iron; and to the rich it gave the boon of taking off the duties on wine and silk, but what did it do for the work ing classes? It maintained the high duties on tea and sugar, and upon those of small incomes it inflicted the grievous hardship of doubling the income tax. He would ask the Government, again, what wag the amount of the duty they were going to abandon ? The gross amount last year was nearly £1,300,000, but there was now a rumour that in the current year, to end at the close of this month, the paper duty would yield a million and a half. He wanted to know whether this was true, or was there any difference from the £1,300,000 of last year ? It was not a question of whether the paper duty was or was not a good impost, but whether the state of the revenue was not such that they could not afford to part with it. He contended that it was unwise and improvident to do so, and that the moment was most inopportune. The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER said the right hon. baronet had asked him to explain his reference to the amount of revenue to be lost by the repeal of the paper duty. He had not stated the details to-night, but on the first night, when he made his financial statement, he spoke of a million, because that was precisely the sum which he found, by the estimates of the Board of Inland Revenue, would be lost by the repeal of the duty during the next financial year, supposing that repeal to take place on the Ist of July; of course, if the repeal were postponed, it would be somewhat less ; but the further amount which would take place in the next financial year would be £230,000 more, in addition to the £1,000,000, making for the next financial year, according to the estimates with which he had been furnished, £1,230,000. Against that, there were three direct sets-off to be made—one being for the savings in the Inland Revenue establishments, a second for the savings on the whole of the paper used for Govern ment purposes and in the Government establishments, and the third being the saving by the abolition of the impressed stamp and by the changes in the regulations, the amount of which would be altogether, he supposed, £lOO,OOO or £150,000 a year. He knew nothing whatever of the ru mour which the right hon. gentleman had mentioned about the million and a half. The house then divided— For the second reading -15 Against it Majority for the Government -53 The other orders were then disposed of, and the house adjourned at two o'clock. LONDON : Printed_ and Published by MUEDO YOUNG , of No. 112, Strand, Printer, at The Sun Office, No. 112, Strand, in the Precinct of the Savoy, in the county of Tuesday, Maid, 13, 1860. i the income tax reduced, before any other tax was repealed. The right hon. gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department held the same opinion; and he thought, under such circumstances, they should vote for the amend ment of his hon. friend. It was monstrous to raise an in come tax on the general body of the people of the country, in order to enable the proprietors of cheap newspapers to carry on their business. He had no wish whatever to oppose the present Conservative Government, but he thought the motion of his hon. friend a sound and just one; that the time had not arrived for repealing the duty, and sacrificing 4200,000 for absolutely nothing ; and for that reason he should certainly support it. Mr. ADAM BLACK would vote against the motion of the hon. baronet. From his own experience he could say that the duty was a very serious burden, not only to the publisher but to the public. A ream of paper 241 b. in weight had to bear a tax of 3s. One of the works he had published would cost in duty between £3,ooonnd £4,000, and before it got into the hands of the public it would be in creased by the per tentage upon the capital employed to nearly £7,000. Now, he would ask, was that an economical mode of raising the small sum of £1,20,000 for the Ex chequer ? He thought it would be better for a short time to bear an extra ld. income tax, though he by no means ad mired that tax, on the contrary, he hated it—(a laugh)— and he hoped to see it done away with altogether. Mr. MAGUIRE, after having listened attentively to the speeches of the hon. baronet, mad those who had supported his motion, had heard no reason whatever to shake his de - termination to support the measure of the Government. If there was any force in the argument of the hon. baronet at all, it was that trades should be monopolised only by those who possessed large capitals. But he said, why should not enterprise and industry be opened to men with small capi tals and small means ? With respect to the incidence of the duty on large and expensive books as compared with cheap papers and periodicals, the hon. gentleman read a commu nication from Mr. Potter, a practical painter, in answer to the statements made by Mr. Bohn on that subject. Mr. Potter, in fact, said that the duty acted with most destruc tive effect on the publications which were most in demand. On the Cornhill Magazine a saving of a halfpenny a copy would be equal to £l,BOO a-year, which would no doubt be spent in improving its literature and engravings. The hon. baronet who had moved the amendment had talked of let ting in the light and air to the cottages of the poor ; but there was light of another kind, the light of knowledge required, and by sweeping away this tax it would be more wisely and universally diffused among all classes of the people. He contended that the growing of flax would be con siderably promoted by the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to take the duty off paper, and the agricul tural interest would be proportionately benefited. Instead of flax being grown for its seed, it would be cultivated to secure the straw and refuse, which would be used in the manufacture of paper. The duty had been condemned by the House of Commons and the Commissioners of Excise, and its continuance ought to be no longer sanctioned. The trade and the country expected the abolition of the tax. The penny newspapers were morally and honourably conducted, faithful to t heir friends, but fair to their opponents, and not characterised by that abominable license which disgraced many of the newspapers at the other side of the Channel. He was not amongst those who were ashamed of the penny papers— , — Lord R. CECIL—One of them is difficult to be read. Mr. MAIMIRE—An hon. gentleman below him whis pered that one of the cheap newspapers was rather unread able at the present moment. Take the duty off, was his answer, and the publisher could afford better paper. Be lieving that the abolition of the paper duty would tend to the spread of education amongst the people, and give a new impulse to a great trade, he felt bound to vote against the amendment of the hon. baronet, and to support the propo sition of the Government, even though that proposition might entail another year's income tax. Lord R. CECIL said that in the abstract no one wished for the continuance of a tax—a tax was in inself an abomi nable thing. Therefore, the question really was, not whether they should or should not repeal the duty. Those who argued the matter in that way, did not put, ' the case as, it should be stated. What the house had to decide was, a question of the balance of taxation—whether hon. members wore for their constituents to pay the paper duty or to pay another penny income tax. Both taxes produced about £1,200,000, and he was justified in say ing that they counterbalanced each other. The paper was in his opinion, a tax which took a low place in the order of those taxes which ought to be abolished. Ile know that in saying this he was speaking in opposition to a resolution which the house had unfortunately adopted. We depended for our raw material to a very great extent on foreign na tions, some of :which were barbarous and unenlightened on questions of protection and free trade. We depended on Spain, Portugal, and Italy. If in France and Hungary the Prohibition on the export of the raw material were removed, still the increase of consumption would be sure to increase the price of the article, so that things would remain un changed. The only difference would be that the £1,200,000 would be taken out of the exchequer of this country and put into the exchequer of other countries. (Hear, hear.) rafted. Numerous pamphlets had poured in upon hon. members from all quarters for the purpose of demonstrating that fact. If nothing could be substituted for rags and the supply of that article remained limited, then what relief could the consumer of paper obtain from the proposed re mission of taxation ? What appeared extraordinary to him (Lad R. Cecil) was, that no two members of the paper trade'could agree on the subject. An hon. member con nected with the trade had told the house that he had paid the Chancellor of the Exchequer in one year £3,000 duty on paper ; but the duty paid by the public on the same quantity of paper was no less than £7,000. That showed, at all events, how the trade could tax the people. As to the phrase " tax upon knowledge," that was a grand, high sounding, sentimental cry. (Hear, hear.) It was a delw sion. Out of the £1,200,000 paid as a paper duty, only two-fifths of that sum were paid for paper on which news papers were printed. He did not think any reduction of the duty on paper would beneit the consumer. It had been said that it was an anomaly for the Government to pay large sums for the education of the people, and again tax the means of education. Was that so? Why, the so-called tax upon knowledge was limited to very cheap books and very cheap newspapers. Now, with respect to the latter, what were the people at large likely to learn from penny papers ? They might know something of what hon. members said in that house. and scraps of foreign intelligence, but of what great use was that as a means of education to the lower classes ? (Hear.) As to books, it was well known that no one liked to pay odd sums for what they had purchased. You could not charge for a novel now selling at ls„ 111 d. You could not reduce the price of printed matter in the ratio of the exact fraction which the tradesman might derive from the remission of the duty, and consequently, while the public at large would derive no advantage whatever from the re mission, the revenue would be diminished £1,250,000. (Hear, hear.) Mr. M. GIBSON said that the hon. gentleman had wan- dered from the question before them; and had introduced a variety of subjects which were not within• the limited scope of the question before the house. The house was to recol lect that they had now agreed to the Commercial Treaty between England and France, by which, amongst other things, they had agreed to admit foreign paper into Eng land upon the duty imposed upon the home manufacture, and he had also to remind them that they had, by the vote given on the motion of the hon. member for Essex, given their assent to the general policy of the Government. And what was that ? Why, that after providing for the expen diture of the country they agreedto a reduction of the indi rect taxation, with the view of relieving the trade and in dustry of the country. His right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed, when laying the budget before the house, to apply the £2,200,000 which fell in from the Long Annuities to relieving the indirect taxation of the country. Well, the French treaty had swallowed £1,190,000 of this £2,200,000. Well, supplemental reductions had also been made in that direction, but these had been met by other changes: There was, therefore, £1,000,000 of the £2,200,000 to be applied to the reduction of the indirect taxation of the country in accordance with the vote of that house given upon the motion of the hon. member for Essex. It was not a question between the paper duty and the income tax, but whether they would lessen the indirect taxation of the country. This being so, the next question to bo considered was this--had the Go vernment, in selecting the paper tax as the proper one to be abolished, exercised a sound judgment ? (Hear, hear.) He might here mention that the hon. baronet who brought this subject before the house had at first placed a notice on the paper that he would, on the question that the bill for the abolition of the paper duty be read a second time, move an amendment that it be read a second time that day six months. The hon. baronet had, however, that evening changed his amendment by moving a resolution, the effect of which was that it was inexpedient at that time to abolisk a the pap er d uty. The right hon. gentleman having read the resolution, as k e d how appeared that it was inexpedient to abolish to the pppalpyerthdeumtye.an(lslNevarhi.c)hTthhee Government had h an adin mightits attempt hands to reduce the sugar tax or any other indirect tax that pressed upon the community, but after the vote th ey bad come to on the budget, he was afraid that the hon. baronet could not get rid of the additional penny income tax. Now, why did the Government select the paper tax rather than any other indirect tax as that one which they should abolish ? The Government, in reviewing the various indirect taxes which pressed upon the trade and industry of the country, looked to those which had the greatest claims upon their consideration with the view of promoting the end in ques tion. Well, then, what did they find ? Why, they found that for the last 25 years those who were entitled to have the greatest weight with Parliament had given it as their opinion that the paper duty ought not to be continued as ono of the per manent indirect taxes of the country, and that it ought to be abolished at the most convenient opportunity. Th ey commenced with the commission that sat in 1835, to con sider the whole question of the Excise du ties, and they found that that commission had reported against the paper duty being considered as a permanent tax. Well, he (Mr. Milner Gibson) moved a resolution on the subject ten years ago, which stated that such financial arrangement ought to be made by the Government to enable Parliament to abolish the paper duty. Well, the right hon, gentleman, the mem- ~: