The Sun.
London, England, 1852-12-14 00:00:00

the magnitude of these transactions. Instead of receiv-
ing Bloat 30,000--from 25,000 to 30,000 bales of cotton
a week as we do now, we had some forty or fifty years
ago only as many hundred. This increase will overbear
you; and suppose America should adopt the system, you
must follow. With this large mass of taxation hanging
over you, and haling got rid of this question of protec-
tions, you will have to deal with many of these duties,
and, if a growing surplus to the revenue does not allow
you to abolish them, depend upon it with regard to the
fresh taxes you must, in the interests of commerce,
which are the interests of the whole community, increase
direct taxation, and make that system fair. There is
too much intelligence—too much discussion now, for any
party to escape their fair quantity of taxation--property
of all sorts must bear its share, and when we make up
our minds to that, let us see if it does not lead to a fair
system of expenditure. Here we are adopting a system
of free trade, but yet extending our colonial empire, and
spreading our establishments all over the world. That
might have been very wise and proper, this extension of
our establishments, very desirable a hundred years ago ;
for seventy years since, when Adam Smith wrote, he
said he did not expect we should live to see the days
when protection would be abolished altogether. But we
have survived these days. They have changed, and
with them our position with regard to our colonial em-
pire. You must not let your pride and vanity prevent
your telling the people what they must do in this
matter. They must let the colonies maintain their
own establishment and pay their own expenses. It
does not add to our power or strength to incur all this
expenditure. On the contrary, the people will run away
from your extravagance ; for with the facilities they
now enjoy for emigration, at half the expense and in half
the time sufficient heretofore, there were also removed
the physical as well as the moral objections to emigration.
People are not now going into exile—they are going to
their friends and their families when they set out for
America: They go there as they would on a visit. Do
you suppose, then, that if you waste your money in Ca-
nada or Australia, people will not go away, whither their
acquaintance and relations have preceded them, to escape
from taxation ? The right honourable gentleman the
Chancellor of the Exchequer told us the other day that
this emigration did not tend to impair our resources or
diminish the consumptive ability of this country ; and to
a certain extent, no doubt, the right honourable gentle-
man is perfectly correct. But he must remember this is
a question of degree. It may be that, as far as our re-
cent experience goes, he is correct—that there has only
been emigration enough to give elbow-room to those of
the poor left behind. But this, though true up to a
certain point, became a fallacy beyond it. Suppose hall
the population to go away, what would be the consuming
ability of the other half, however prosperous ? There is
every reason why we should look this question in the
face, as the beginning of a controversy which will widen
in extent and scope, and lead us to inquire whether we
are not able to diminish the whole amount of our expen-
diture. It may be done ; but if we agree to a large
amount.of expenditure, let no class in this country ex-
pect to escape taxation. I will never pretend to exempt
the middle classes or the 10/. householders, if they send
people here to vote for increased expenditure. Let them
make up their minds to this, that, increased expenditure,
which their representatives support, must fall upon their
class as upon others. But as regards this house tax. I
am dealing with it now because you propose to levy it to
meet the deficiency arising out of the partial repeal of
the malt tax. Show me that you have an increased ex-
penditure approved by this house, and show me that that
increased expenditure necessitates an increased tax, and
I may support your proposition, for that is a very diffe-
rent thing. But when you propose to create a deficit by
reducing the tax on malt, apd then ask to be allowed by
the house to meet it in this way, I repeat what I have
• already said over and over again—that it is only in the
case of a sufficient surplus that I will ever support the
reduction or abolition of the malt tax ; and that being
the case, I shall of course say " No" to this house tax.
(Cheers.)
Lord J. MANNERS said, that they had learnt from
the hon. gentleman who had just spoken that he and his
party would never consent to the system of what had
been termed " unrestricted competition." (Cries of
" Oh !" from the Opposition, and cheers from the Minis-
terial benches.) The hon. gentleman had told them,
with perfect fairness, that he objected to the term itself,
and that he preferred that one-sided system of financial
legislation which was more properly termed " free im-
ports." (Hear, hear.) He could not compliment the
hon. gentleman (Mr. Cobden) upon having redeemed the
pledge he had given to instruct the hon. member for
Cambridgeshire (Mr. Ball) in what he was pleased to
term the ABC of his political science. If, indeed, the
hon. member for the West Riding had endeavoured to
make the A B C of his political creed plain to the under-
standing of his hon. fried (Mr. Ball), he seemed entirely
to have forgotten the DE F which followed. The hon.
gentleman had told them that there was no necessary
connexion between the system of direct taxation and
the system of free imports, and towards the close of
his speech he entered into an elaborate argument to
show that if they touched the Custom-house duties at
all they would inevitably find themselves landed in a
general system of direct taxation. He (Lord J.
Manners) would let the D E F of the honourable
gentlemen answer his own A B C. Having got
the sanction of the honourable member for the West
Riding, in the concluding part of his speech, to
the system of direct taxation, he would ask the house
to observe what were his objections to the mode in
which the Government proposed to carry that system
out. The hon. member had alleged that the proposal of
the Government with respect to the house-tax would
array class after class, and set town against country
(" hear, hear," from the opposition); and, as figures were
never wanting, so they were not wanting in this instance
to him to make out some show for his proposition. But
it must have struck the house, when the hon. member
gave his catalogue of the items which were to be added
to this house-tax, and which were to swell the taxation
upon houses up to 21 per cent. against 3 per cent. upon
the land, that he omitted all reference to the land-tax
and those other taxes which pressed especially upon the
land. (Hear.) He gave, as an illustration, property in
London, and talked of Belgrave-square, and of the great
"lords of the soil" deriving an income from that ground
free from impositions which others paid ; but he forgot
to tell the house that in proportion as their revenue was
increased the proposed income-tax would take from what
he called their inordinate receipts. The hon. member
alluded also to the soap duty ; his argument upon this
particular was a little hazy, and perhaps. that was not
surprising, for while it would appear to ordinary intel-
lects that the soap duty was, in one respect, to the mas-
ter manufacturer very much what the malt-tax was to
the farmer, he forgot to state that the master manu-
facturers enjoyed a drawback upon all soap used in their
manufactories, while the farmers got no drawback upon
malt. (Hear.) The hon. member, admitting that the
claim of the farmer to the repeal or diminution of the
malt tax was undeniable in point of justice and fiscal
equity,` and on the ground of real free trade legislation,
said, Permit me to tell you the landed interest of
England, and those farmers whom I have for years as-
sured, when it suited my purposes to do so, that in me
they would find the most strenuous opponent of this ob-
noxious tax, that whenever I gave them any such assu-
rance it was coupled, at least in my own mind, with the
determination never to consent to the repeal of this tax
so lone- as any other tax was to be imposed to make up
the deficiency." The hon. member would vote for the
repeal of the malt tax at "the Greek Kalends " and no
before. (Hear, hear.) He told the house he though
that the whole system of Custom-house duties would
give way, that other Excise duties must be repealed,
that the malt tax was an unjust tax upon the farmers,
and that he would be prepared to vote for its repeal
when there was no other tax to be substituted for it.
(Hear.) The farmers, it might be hoped, would know
how to appreciate the often vaunted professions of friend-
ship of the hon. member. ("Hear, hear," from the
Ministerial side.) Differing from the right hon. gentle-
man (Sir C. Wood), the hon. member did ample justice
to the motives of the Government in proposing their al-
tered schedules for the income tax ; the same considera-
tion, it might have heen thought, wn,ilA induced him to
see the injustice of the accusations he brought of an at-
tempt to set town against country, and re-open the war
of classes. If any step that could be taken by the
landed gentlemen of England could prove that there was
no thought of the kind lingering in their breasts, lif it
ever existed—which he (Lord J. Manners) denied--it
was the proposal made to the house in behalf of that
great class to establish the house and income-tax upon a
just and equitable basis. (Hear.) The right hon. gen-
tleman (Sir C. Wood), indeed, seemed so oppressed with
a sense of the justice that was going to be done to the
industrial interests that he warned the landed gentry
how they permitted the Government so to place taxa-
tion upon their backs ; but the consolation offered by
the right hon. member to the landed gentlemen was not
of such a nature as to be likely to make them look to
his embryo budget for the relief which he somewhat 01)-
8c:111.81y hinted. He stated, frankly enough, that he was
?!. opinion the income and property-tax must be con-
Tatnued, that the amount of taxation levied by it from
the landed
under Mg gentlemen must continue unabated ; but that
latiou of ,sceheme they would, at least, have the conso-
tained ttp:-n °Zing that an unjust rate was still main-
was not a
landed and professional men. There
consent to
derive gensolatintleman in the house who would
source. (Hear,
hear
roon from so contaminated a
The hon. member (Mr. Cobden)
argued that it was
to continue the exemption of
the small farmers. There
Zatßei not a landed. entleman in
the house who would wish
upon the smaller farmers thane more taxation placed
resent. The
hon. member asked whether they would con(Hsentear.) to be thus freed from taxation to which otherwciltasstes were sub-
jected, The question might be aswkhedem
hehenfold force
forgot to ask
of another class, with respect to
resttheof the
it, but who did object to be taxegdeelit the
community, Would he have the
meeting he might attend in any town at next
in the West
Riding, to ask the 10/. householders the question , e
now asked of the farmers,—whether they woulduano_
longer consent to be exempt from taxation which wa're
being-paid by the smaller portion by far of the house-
holders of the country ? (Laughter, and cries of ‘, hear,
hear.") The right hon. gentleman (Sir C. Wood), in
his eagerness to show how objectionable were the main
sources from which the deficiency created by the pro-
posed remission of taxation was to be made up, was led
into the most grievous indiscretion, an ex-Chancellor of
the Exchequer could commit—that of revealing to the
country his own embryo budget. He was prepared to
maintain the present property and income tax in all its
injustice and inequality and also the small house tax ;
he objected to the mode proposed of bringing 400,000/.
a-year into the Exchequer ; and he said the repeal of the
malt tax would be a boon neither to the consumer nor