The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-06-06 00:00:00

BLACKWOOD ON THE MALT-TAX.

Arrne. combating Mr. Gladstone upon every
issue taken in favour of the Malt-Tax in his
budget speech, Blackwood's Magazine for June
thus finishes with the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer :

"It is not without a purpose that Mr. Gladstone
throughout the whole of his financial statement persists
in contrasting and comparing things which have nothing
in common together. Wine is the produce, the manu-
factured produce of foreign countries. Tea is an article
produced abroad and imported largely for home con-
sumption. Barley is the growth of English soil, a raw
material to be worked up at home, a valuable and use-
ful commodity. Barley unmalted cannot be compared
with tea as it grows on the tea-tree in China, or with
wine as it lies in the cellar of the merchant at Bor-
deaux; but it does bear a strong resemblanoe to iron-
stone in the wine. And what would our iron-masters
or the people of England say if Mr. Gladstone were to
propose a tax of even 20 per cent. upon iron ore after It
bad undergone the procem of smelting. The tax upon beer
is not, we believe, 20 but only 125 per cent. • bet the
tax upon malt, without which we believe beer cannot
be made, is not lees than 70 per cent; so that the beer-
drinker pays to the revenue not less than 925 per cent.
in the shape of duty, while the drinker of wine pays 50,
and of tea 45 per cent Granting the one to be iss
legitimate an object of taxation as the other, is there
anything like equality in the extent to which they are
respectively called upon to bear this burden? Besides
you halt in the application of your own principle. If
it be sound policy to lay a heavy tax on barley after
it becomes malt, why should not wheat be taxed
after it has become bread? No we should be
told the cases are different. Beer is not like
bread, a necessary of life. Granted; but malted barley
is not used exclusively for growing beer; it saw to
fatten cattle, or would go were the tax repealed. Is
, meat less a necessary of life than bread? Again, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the President of the
Board of Trade equally fall back upon the aasumption
that the consumers of beer in reality pay the Malt-Tax,
and that till they complain the farmers only make
donkeys of themselves in trying to get rid of it. We
deny that the tax is paid wholly by the consumers of
beer. It is paid, if not out of their purees, in their
bellies, partially at least, by all the poor men and
women who cannot now afford to eat a morsel of
butcher's meat. But allowing to a certain extent the
consumers of beer do pay the tax, is their apparent
reticenoe in not c ,mplaining of it any reason why they
should oontinue to be subject to that harden? You
lower the duties on French wines and brandies, avowedly
in the hope that you shall tempt your neighbours to
take woollen goods and cottons in exchange for these
things. Your success has been by no means extraor-
dinary. Meanwhile the rich, or comparatively rich,
who alone consume French wines and brandies get these
things at a greatly reduced price; while the poor—such
of them at least an are able to drink beer at all—pay
upon each pint which they consume • larger amount by
far into the public treivuey than the rich man pays
upon his pint of claret or of sherry. IR this fair ?"
The political hits are, however, the most
smiting. The following iD possibly near the truth
as regards
-

'LORD PALMERSTON AND Mn. GLADSTONE.

" tArdWi-naere-t-on—011Og; to Mr.-61114e-to-n-e-, because he
hal been sncosesful al financier ; had his calculation only
mi,•carried a little—had there been a deficiency haat year,
instead of a surplus—or, had the surplus been less con•
siderable than it is, without doubt, Mr. Gladstone
would have bon ostraci.ed long ago, But to ostracise a
finance Minister, whose scheines the general progress of
the country has rendered harmless; and to the vulgar
eye, successful is, in those days, no easy matter. But
surely Lord Palmerston cannot be ignonuit that Mr:
Gladstone's schemes have proved successful, not so mach
through any merit inhenut in themselves, as by the
force of circumstances over which he had no oontroL
With efforts and imports continually increasing, and a
trade extending itself throurh the operation of railroads,
'team navigation, and the electric wire, there would be
needed positive inzenuity on the part of the Fitianoe
Minister to prevent the public revenue from rising."
These indications declare a number of Black-
wood of more than average ability. The side
which this leading magazine adopts, as an ad-
vocate of party principles, is well known to all
our readers. And it ti well to hear what every
jealous reasoner has to urge.