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

THE PRESS.

of the EXCHEQUER that the reduction of the
duty on tea (assuming it to operate as he con-
templates, without disturbance from the causes
we have ad verted to shove), and his premature ex-
pression of opinion as to a remote alteration in
the import duty on wine, would ere long involve
the necessity of an entire readjustment of that
enormous mass of taxation which is at the
present moment raised from intoxicating
liquids, and of which the revenue from malt
and British spirits forms so prodigious a pro-

portion.
It does not attract sufficient attention that,
putting aside the proceeds of the income tux,
nearly one half the income of the United Kingdom
is raised from the sale of drinks, either exhila-
rating or fermented. Taking the revenue
(minus that impost) at forty.six millions sterling,
the excise and customs realise upwards of seven-
teen millions from wines, spirits, and beer, and
between six and seven millions from coffee
and tea. And Mr. Disraeli is not singular in
the belief that the increased consumption of
the simply exhilarating beverages has already
exercised a perceptible effect on the di
minished use of the intoxicating class. Pun.
TES, in his " Progress of the Nation," some
years ago called attention to the fact, that, on
the reduction of the duty and cost of coffee
and tea, their increased consumption through-
out the kingdom had been signalised by a
simultaneous decline in that of spirits and
beer. But this intimation, significant as it is,
affinqls an inadequate conception of the change
that has been induced, and the extent to which
the use of the highly-taxed and home-produced
articles has been discouraged, by stimulating
the introduction of their foreign rivals. Taking
the consumption of tea, coffee, and cocoa at the
rate of the year 1836, and calculating the ex-
pansion by the mere ratio of population, the
increase has exceeded all anticipation. For
example :—The consumption of entice in 1836
was, in round numbers, twenty-three million
pounds, and in 1830 it ought to have been
twenty-seven millions, but the returns show
it to have exceeded thirty-four millions. In
like manner the tea consumed in 183 K was
. thirty-six million pounds in 1830 it ought to
to have bees forty-two millions, but it exceeded
fifty millions. And of cocoa, of which one
million pounds were used in 1836, upwards of
three and a quarter millions were taken in
1.N311, whereas, the strict calculation would
hove indicated less than half the latter quaff
tity.
But mark the effect of this unexpected
movement upon time consumption of wine,
spirits, and beet—applying to them precisely
the same conditions as to coffee, coma,
and tea :

Gallons.
Tim consumption of ;ur in I`4lll was 6.110,311
In I mAti it might to lnit-o in ii
lint it only amounted t,l 6,1

The consumption of !, r n s in NM 16,330,1 XX)
Taking the increase 01 population in
it ought to have he,
Hut it fell to 13,14:1,651

opirils by the :411I1P Stallthird showed
in DM a entoonniai-ot of 24,710.1aa
And ought to have riso3 in 1..40 to 1t4.673,63A
Hut it fell to
In other words, whilst the consumption of
tea. coffc,., and cocoa exceeded all calculation
of legitimate lucre:ow, its effect upon the
consumption of wine, spirits. and beer, which
ought to have exhibited an increase of 100
million gallons. was to produce a failiny qf
40,000.000 yawls a year.
It was not, then. without just grounds for
anticipation that Mr. Disraeli warned Mr.
Gladstone of the change which he is precipi-
tating by still further stimulating the consump-
tion of the uuintoxicating beverages to the
jeopardy of the enormous revenue which he
now extracts from their rivals. It is manifestly
unjust to the producers of these highly taxed
articles in Great Britain to remove year after
year the import duties from the foreign pro-
ductions which contend with them for public
favour, without holding out the assurance of
au early reduction in the imposts which press
upon articles the growth of our own land, the
produce of our own industry.
And, bearing in mind the startling results
which we have exhibited above, it will be seen
with how much foresight the late Chancellor
of the Exchequer has conveyed to his successor

SATURDAY,

in office the friendly intimation that in his cal-
culations of the probable revenue of 1860, when
the income tax is to be abandoned, it will be
unsafe for him to rely on that exuberant reve-
nue which he now derives from spirits and
beer, if their consumption and productiveness
are to exhibit this uniform decline which the
experience of the pant leads us to anticipate
from their unequal competition with the lightly-
taxed production* of China and Brazil.

IMPLIED CONTRACTS AND SPECIAL
DENIALS.
WE do not recollect at this moment to whom
the English language is indebted for that
happy combination of words which describes
some persons as " economists of truth." Last
week will certainly supply, in the discussions
of the House of Commons, some illustration of
the felicity of the phrase No miser ever
clutched his guineas with more desperate
tenacity than some Whig gentlemen, in the
progress of those discussions, hoarded their
facts. No miserable Hebrew under the pressure
of the torture ever gave out his gold with more
reluctance than these personages have yielded
to the successive applications of the press by
which some little of the truth has been pain-
fully squeezed out of them at last. To
" squeeze blood from turnips" has—we know
not upon what authority—been vulgarly consi-
dered the ne plus ultra of such feats. More
educated schoolboys read with wonder of the
Florentine experiment in which pressure com-
pelled the water to ooze through solid gold.
Parliamentary science, we doubt not, will re-
cord as a greater triumph of moral mechanism
the more than hydraulic pressure that eau
force the details of an awkward secret from the
conscience of a Whig official.
Lord Aberdeen's whipper-in has manifested
a most creditable and almost incredible power
of withholding facts. Talleyrand himself
never exhibited more marvellous dexterity in
the use of the language that conceals our
thoughts than did the right hon. member for
Wells in those skilfully-framed denials by
which he so long evaded the disclosure of that
conspiracy which we suppose we must now
teen the Hay-ter and O'Connell intrigue. The
whipper-in, perhaps, almost from association,
takes lessons from the fox. N ever, certainly,
did Reynard make more shifts, and winds, and
turnings before the hounds than did poor Mr.
Hayter last week before the yelping pack that
have at last fairly run him to earth. Once or twice
they overran the scent, and had to try back,
giving, us is usual, no inconsiderable quantity of
tongue ; but run to earth poor Reynard, beyond
all question, is at last.
If our metaphors are varied, it is merely be-
cause the dexterity of which we speak ex-
hausts all ordinary powers of description. Let
us ask the attention of the reader to the plain
fi.cts of this rather singular case. We may
presume that the House of Commons have at
last done with the subject. and that we know
all of the matter which it pleases the high
contracting parties that we ever shall know.
We venture briefly to sum up the incidents of
a transaction which we cannot help thinking
reflects but little credit upon the principal
actors ; or, indeed, upon the system under
which the affiiirs of this great country are ma-
naged.
We now know, beyond cavil or dispute, that
in December last a number of gentlemen who
have figured in parliamentary nomenclature,
under the various fanciful appellations of " the
" Irish Brigade," " the Pope's Brass Band," or,
as they choose—we cannot help thinking a
little audaciously—to call themselves, " the
" Irish members,"—it is now. we say, incon-
testably established that these gentlemen as-
sembled in some chamber, hereafter no doubt
to be classic in history, but the locality of
which is now unrevealed, to determine what
Ministers should hold the reins of power in
this country. Chance, and the unprincipled
combination of parties against the Conserva-
tive Government, have thrown this power in
their hands. We are not able• unfortunately,
to give the names of those who constituted
this illustrious congress, who, while the House
of Conwons was supposed to be debating the
fate of Ministers and parties, were, in truth, de-
ciding that fate in a little separate conclave
of their own. Hewtil•, indeed, must the

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