The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1806-05-10 00:00:00

dered the extensive use of iron in all farm-yards,
faranit:g utensils, iren toilets, &c. he must conclude,
that a dire& tax upon husbandry, would be less
prejudicial than the "present t supposing it to pro-
&ice no more thin five shillings additional expellee
upon hushandty horses, yet as there was a million
of them in the kingdom, the addition on them
would amount to :10,0001. out of a tax calculated
to produce no mote than 350,0001., and the re-
mainder would be made up by what must he paid
upon pleas-are horses. When the House, therefore,
recolleßed the multiplied ill effeds it would have
upon the poor of all descriptions, he trusted they
would never be brought to consent to it.
Mr. S. WORTLEY thought, that from the
operation the tax would have upon all branches
of the trade, the manufanitrers must he completely-
ruined by it. From the high price of labour here,
the Russians and Danes were already enabled to
meet us in the foreign market., and would, in fu-
ture, engross the whole of the foreign trade. It
would be in vain to think of protecting the trade,
by a tax equal to it en the importation of foreign
iron. The people of England certainly must take
what they can get here at any price; hut as our
iron cannot be worked but by mixing•it with fo-
reign, the whole of the new import duties must
be paid by this country, with the loss of the foreign
trade into the bargain. He exhorted the Minister
not to put this corrcd;ng canker to the root of a
trade already far facto be•ng vigorous. Any per-
son that went into the poor man's dwelling, must
see that all his instruments. his articles of corer-

nience, and even his working tools, were made of
iron, and feel the force of these considerations,
which, operating on the great and luminous in.nd
of the late Minister, induced bins to abandon this
°hied of taxation.
Mr. MOIIDAUNT said, that however sorry he
may be to oppose measures of finance at this arducus
period, he could not but objefi to a measure, alert.-
feet of which, mu.,t inevitably be to throw a gloom
on the spirit of our merchants, to distress, in the se-
verest manner, all classes of our manufacturers. and
to drive from bread very numerous classes of our
industrious pour. The effeCl it would have upon
Manchester and Birmingham was beyond descry.
iinn. Birmingham, which in the best and most
flourishing times of this country, and the surround-
ing nations, was called the toyshop of Europe, had
now assumed a very different character, as long and
disastrous wars had driven her out of every particle
of that trade, and banished it to other countries.—
That loss alone was sufficient to distress a place so
very populous, and a loge portion of whose arti-
ficers depended on that traffic ; but the manufactu-
rers at least exponed, that if, instead of being gold-
smiths and jewellers, they were transformed into
black-smiths, the last trade they might be perinit-
ed to exercise, and extend with all the industry they'
were possessed of. They had now a more chancr-
ous rival than ever to contend with. Austria h rig
wished for the enj lament of this important trade,and
long laboured to gain possession of it in vain, as
their commodities could oot be exported until after a
long land carriage. At present, however, Inc aspeca of
things was changing; for by means of a canal which
they were cutting from the Danube to the Aug.,o
they would $O4ll have that facility of coaveyance
through these rivers, of which they were befcre de
priveei. Was this then, he would ask, a time tor
throwing impediments aud checks in the way ct the
enterprise of British manufaCtureis ? 71. e Minister
may as well take the folds irons the shepherd, or
the barns from the farmer, as Alfa:l them by this
tax; and as to the drawback proposed, it wouid af-
ford no relict whatever. It the matiufadurersut,
this country were left to themselves, they wbtilltntr
all times be an inexhaustible source of wealth-to ita•
but if put under such impositions, the House and
the country would soon bitterly lament it. He con-
jured Ills Majesty's Ministers to leave the trade of
the country to its own exertions, without imposing
clogs upon it. Were our inveterate enemy to plant his
cannon at the mouth of every river frcm the Aeri-
atic to the Baltic, in order to exclude British com-
merce from the Continent, yet in spite of all his
exertions, British commerce and British manufac-
tures would find their way to (Awry quarter of the
globe, if our Ministers would but attend to the in-
terest of our trade.
Mr. LASCELLES said, he hoped the Noble
Lord would proceed with caution in this business.
He was afraid the operation of this tax might be
attended with very serious and mischievous conse-
quences to this country. Ile had see is statements,
which said that foreign markets were selling the
same articles at levier rates than our own, such, par-
ticularly, as the grosser iron wares that are made in
Sheffield. If this be the case already, a tax upon
the raw material here would raise the price of the
.several articles of manufacture ye mach, that the
German markets would be able to undersell us.
He wished any other mode might be found and re-
sorted to, of raising money, rather than this, as the
sum received would by no mean, counterbalance
the ineonvediencies that would at ise from it, and the
risk we were likely to run of the loss of our menu-
failures, from the extravagance et the price that
must necessarily he laid ou them. if this tax were
laid on.
Mr. WILBERFORCE concurred entirely in sen-
timert with his Hon. Colleague, and others, espe-
cially the Hon. Gentleman who spoke last but one,
and who had delivered his opinion in a strain of such
impressive and unaffected eloquence against this
tea. It was impossible, he said, to deny. that the
' situation of a Finance Minister, in this country, be.
tame every year more difficult ; and he was sorry
to be under the necessity, at any time, of objeifing
to a tax, and thereby throwing difficulties in his
way : but he was convinced this measure was, in the
highest degree, objeCtionable, and ought not to be
persisted in. If we considered this as a raw mate-
rial, and the vast numbers who are employed on it.
and who compose a class of men of athletic make,
strong bodily frame, and robust habits, it became
an obj!ct of most serious and important concern.
They had been estimated, by some, to amount to
between 3 and 400,000 ; by others, to 4 or 3U0,000
men. Every fall grown man had long since been
reckoned, as a taxable commodity, at 101. a year;
and, when you consider the great increase of taxes
on malt, tea. soap, candles, leather, and other ne-
cessaries of life; if you consider, also, the immense
numbers employed on this article of iron, it became
a very great and impoaatit consideration, in point