The Press.
London, England, 1853-05-21 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

SATURDAY,

man ! Regarded solely as a question of political prudence, I grant
candidly that very reasonable doubts may be entertaine whether
the same budget should have contained an extensio e tax on
income and an extension of the tax on houses. But wi ect to the
last, the precise verge of exemption, and the precise a of the tax
inil►osed, Mr. DISRAELI wisely and pointedly left as a . The prin-
ciple that was asserted, you, the Whigs, were especially bound to defend :
you had created the class of the ten-pound householders ; you had
made those voters potent agents in the decision of all fiscal burdens.
And was it for you to say that the constituencies you had called into
being were to stand wholly exempt from the taxation their represen-
tatives were admitted to levy upon all householders save themselves?
Was that a doctrine agreeable to the theory of repreeantation ? Was
that your notion of a " Conservative Democracy"? You inveigh
against the bribery practised in a borough election. Small, indeed,
is ►such septennial corruption to that which you would perpetuate in
the doctrine that men who hold a suffrage in right of a property qua-
lification should keep sacred from fiscal burdens the very property
which qualifies them to tax their neighbours ! And the danger
becomes immeasurably heightened when the only excuse you can make
for their exemption is that it might curtail their franchise (in other
words, diminish their political power) if you did not annex to their
right of thrusting their hands into the pockets of others—the privilege

of buttoning up their own.
No, I repeat it, and I challenge you to disprove the assertion,
there was not a single principle in the budget on which Lord DERBY'S
Government staked its existence which you, the Whigs, were called
upon to oppose :—not a principle which had not been recognised by
all the economical authorities you have received as guides :—not a
principle which (lid not tend to consummate that policy of which you
were the legal inheritors, and to restore to it the value it had lost by
your neglect. Had you, then, refused to join all attempts to overthrow
Lord Dminv's Government upon the introduction of its budget, you
would have maintained the position you resigned to Mr. GLADSTONE and
his coterie ; you would have been the party to form a Cabinet whenever
the fitting moment to regain your ascendancy had arrived. I reinforce
the proposition previously stated—present neutrality would have
secured to you the power of future arbitration. And what then would
have been your relative gain? Clearly this :—the liberal tendencies of
the late Government would have compelled you gradually to amalga-
mate with its chiefs. A Government reconstructed from Lord DERBY'S
would have united all those who, instead of undoing your Reform Bill,
would make the Reform Bill do its work. The old quarrels between
Whigs and Tories would have passed away in the midst of the new
combinations which, as Whigs, sooner or later you must resist, or they
will sweep you wholly from the scene. Tories had already recognised
the necessity of employing all the popular elements of the Constitution
in support of its monarchical foundations; and you as Whigs would
have recognised no less the necessity of preserving all that constitutes
the life of monarchy from insidious attempts to remove from due
influence in legislation that order of gentlemen which has hitherto
given dignity to freedom, and' maintained a constitutional throne apart
from the dangerous hostility or the still more dangerous adulation of
tickle numbers. Remove that order, and the republic of to-day is the
despotism of to-morrow. Nor is there a country in the world in which
the reaction from democracy to despotism would be so sudden and so
complete as in England, because in no other country is there the
same timidity of CAPITAL ; and just in proportion as democratic progress,
by levelling the influences of birth, elevates the influences of money.
does it create a power that would at any time annihilate liberty—if
liberty were brought into opposition with the Three per Cents.
But this post of neutrality you renounced. You preferred to be-
come the tools of the section most embittered against Lord DERBY'S
Government, because most identified with the memory of your own
inflexible opponent. Mr. HATTER has conversations (unauthorised of
course—all such conversations are) with the chiefs of the Brigade.
No income tax extends to Ireland, if Sir CHARLES WOOD be a consistent
man and the member of a new Cabinet. You unite with the Radicals,
who overthrew you before—whom, unless you also become Radicals,
you can never conciliate. You unite with the Peelites, whose organs
in the press had been, up to the last, treating your principles and
your party with contumelious disdain. And you throw out the Go-
vernment of which the Premier had been the most eloquent
defender of your Reform Bill,—of which the leader in the House
of Commons had been accused of too warm a desire to reanimate
that Toryism of Queen Anne's day which sought to identify itself with
popular reforms,—in order to make a Premier of my Lord ABERDEEN,
and a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Mr. GLADSTONE ! A Premier
of the man who had treated your Lord JOHN as a religious incen-
diary, and your Lord PALMEarros as a meddling revolutionist ! A
Chancellor of the Exchequer of the man who, in the very speech that
preceded his elevation, styled himself " a Conservative," pathetically
expressing his regret for the rupture of ancient tics and his hope of