The Express.
London, England, 1866-02-06 00:00:00

LONDON. TUESDAY. FEBRUARY 6.

IT may reasonably be expected that the party
of retrenchment, if not of reform, will have a
serious accession to its numbers in the new
Parliament, if we are to judge from the grand
demonstration of the Malt Tax Repealer, in Free-
masons' Hall yesterday. More than thirty Con-
servative members of Parliament were on the plat-
form, and the hall, we are informed, was " almost
" two-thirds full" We do not gather from the
report of the proceedings that any striking novelty
in the way of doctrine or illustration was intro-
duced on this occasion by the speakers. Some-
thing, of course, was to be made of the cattle
plague, which had not come into force at the meet-
ing this time last year. Mr. READ, the member for
East Norfolk and representative of the tenant
farmer interest, ventured an opinion that free trade
had been the cause of introducing the cattle plague ;
• solution of a most perplexing problem, which has
at least the merit of not interfering with the
quarrels of veterinary science, while it pru-
dently avoids that purely sectarian interpretation
of the calamity which would describe the plague
as a judgment on free traders, or rather on the
country for adopting free trade, since the free-
traders as a body only suffer as consumers. Mr.
RILID, no doubt, means that if we had not im-
ported foreign cattle we should have no disease
among our domestic beasts, an inference not en-
tirely supported by the fact that the disease has
often appeared in countries where cattle were not
imported. By analogy Mr. READ would be dis-
posed to argue that free travelling brought the
cholera to these shores. Free trade, however, the
hon. member admits, has benefited "all but the
" farmers," and it is as thoroughgoing free-traders
that the eminent agriculturists who met in Free-
masons' Hall demand the repeal of • duty which
they variously describe as equal to 70 and to 100
per cent. upon the brewer at home, and to 140 per

sent wpm tie drinker who buys his beer at
lie bee. Indeed, they roundly affirm that
lie burden of the duty direct and indirect
upon the barley grower, the brewer, and the
soosninar is at least 60,0001. per annum.
This, it will be observed, is a very different figure
from the moderate 30 per cent. of bet session,
which Mr. Muaria Gilson was fain to reduce
to 12} per cent. It in but fair to the representa-
lives of the various associations organized for the
repeal of the duty to acknowledge that they op-
pose it every year upon broader and broader
pounds. It is no longer a farmer's or a mere barley
grower's question ;itis a labourer's—a poor man's
impost ; not only a fiscal, but a social wrong.
It is an injury to the barley growers;
though the quantity of barley grown in this country
has somehow not diminished since the agitation
began. It is a poor man's question, because the
agricultural labourer (in receipt of 10s. a week
wages) cannot at the present cost of malt brew at
home, while the brewer's agent at the public-house
sells him adulterated stuff which only makes him
thirstier, or he iaactually reduced to drink tea, which,
as one of the speakers observed yesterday, is "one
" of the most detrimental foreign drugs that arrive
" in this country," and, according to one doctor,
"produces manses." Sir F. KIMLY, the great
statistician of the malt duty, contends that beer
might now be sold at 2d. a quart, seeing that it
was sold in the time of Jaime I. at Id. a quart. This
startling calculation is quite independent of any dif-
ference in the relative values of money in
the course of the lest two hundred and fifty
years, and refers more particularly to the rela-
tive prime of barley at the two dates. Although
it is evidently as a social reform that these agri-
cultural friends of the labourer and working man
demand the abolition of the duty, they regret the
conscientious apprehension of some clergymen lest
cheaper beer should stimulate the national vice of
drunkenness. To this they reply that the cheaper
beer would be more wholesome and less intoxi-
cating. If Mr. GLLIMITONeB figures of last Session
are correct, we should be inclined to dismiss the
fears of those worthy clergymen as unnecessary,
not so much because the labourer's beer, released
from the duty, would be less intoxicating, but be-
cause it would not be sensibly cheaper to those
who cannot afford to drink it at the present rate,
and because those who can afford to drink it would
scarcely swallow more at any pries than they do
now.

Perhaps it is, after all, as a fiscal duty (though
the principle of fiscal duties is the very corner-
stone of liberal finance) that the Malt Tax was
moat powerfully assailed yesterday. Colonel
Barrrixor warned the meeting that "nothing but
"an irresistible pressure " could obtain the removal
of a duty that yields so large a revenue. With a
widoar which was not very palatable to his
bearers he even offered Mr. GLAWCONE a tax upon
beer, if the CrtexcasLos of the EXCHIQUKB was
afraid of cheap beer interfering with the consump-
tion of spirits. Nor was the gallant Colonel alone
in this generous offer. But the spirit duties, he
I should have remembered, are taxed according to a
principle which is not applicable to malt liquors, if,
as it was yesterday insisted, and as no one would
deny, malt liquors are indeed the poor man's
necessary drink. The principle by which spirit
duties are levied is not that of as small a duty as
possible over as large an area as possible, bat that
of as large a duty as possible (without defeating it-
self) over as limited an area as possible. In other
words, the fiscal question is, in reference to spirits,
determined partly by moral and social considera-
tions which the malt duty repealers apply, in an
opposite sense, to beer. On the whole, having no
especial love for a duty on malt, and as sincere a
desire as any gentleman expressed on the platform
yesterday for the extension of the benefits of free
trade to all classes, we should prefer to follow Mr.
ADDIBLEY'S standard, and to attack this grievance
from the side of retrenchment. Mr. ADDMILIY
declares that six millons of taxa:lon upon an
article of consumption are a great inequality and
injustice. But he considers that retrenchment
is one of Mr. Guarrorta's financial principles,
and, therefore, to those who pretend
that if six millions of taxation were taken
off something else must be pat on, he
would reply that there is another way of making
up the deficiency which would be occasioned by the
repeal besides proposing some new tax. And that
way is--retrench went. This is something like a policy,

and we congratulate the liberal party in the new
House on the accession of the whole force of the
malt tax repealer§ to their rinks under the good
old banner of "retrenchment." Is there no political
grievance analogous to the malt tax duty which
will bring these agitators round to Reform ? The
Conservative programme would then be complete,
without any need of a neutral ministry.