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

the producer, but that the amount would be swallowed
up by the maltsters and the brewers. A Chancellor of
the Exchequer who year after year had been
either proposing, or supporting other Chancellors
when they proposed, to repeal or remit Excise
duties, on the score that the producer and the
consumer would be alike benefited, placed himself
in a very awkward position when he gravely told the
house that neither producer nor consumer would derive
any benefit from the remission of above 2,000,0001. of
Excise taxation. (Hear.) Was it to be understood
that the right hon. gentleman, who supported the remis-
sion of the duty on glass, and the auction duty, and
proposed the remission of the duty on bricks, was really
persuaded that he was only giving a great fiscal boon to
brickmakers, auctioneers, and glass manufacturers ?
(Hear.) The great mass of the inhabitants of this coun-
try, who had tasted the benefits derived from those re-
missions of the Excise duties, would know full well that
there was not a man, whether inhabitant of a town or
tiller of the soil, who would not derive some appreciable
benefit from this remission of half the malt tax, in the
increased consumption he would be able to enjoy of that
old English beverage which, in spite of the apprehen-
sions of the hon. member opposite, would be dear to the
working classes of this country while they laboured and
toiled for the means of their subsistence. (Hear, hear.)
It was very well for the hon. member to read the house
a lecture against what in slang phrase might be termed
"all alcholic beverages ' • but did he believe in his con-
science that any one of his eminent medical authorities
thought it necessary to abstain from the use of them,
even for one day in a week 1 Thelton. member, who was
willing to vote at some impossible period fora repeal of the
malt-tax as a boon to the farmer, and in accordance with
the principles of unrestricted competition, entertained
now very grave doubts how far he should be justified as
a moral man in voting for the repeal of a tax the remis-
sion of which might increase the consumption of beer.
He had fallen, then, into what his hon. friend the mem-
ber for Montrose (Mr. Hume) would tell him was an old
fallacy, for be was prepared to try to make men strong,
healthy, and moral, not simply by Act of Parliament,
but by the maintenance of an outrageous duty upon an
article the use of which he thought objectionable on a
moral ground. Let not the house hear the maintenance,
of an unjust tax supported by gentlemen because tl-,ey
might not themselves appreciate the beverage which was
dear to the labouring classes of this country. (Heal.,
hear.) But did gentlemen opposite mean to tell the
house that the system which they had always said was
the necessary and just corollary of their favourite prin-
ciples was one which would not stand the test of expe-
rience ? The right hon. gentleman said that direct
taxation could only be made endurable by being so levied
that the great masses of the community should be un-
touched by it. A system of direct taxation founded
upon enormous exemptions had not, indeed, that merit
of novelty, the absence of which in the budget the right
hon. gentleman so much regretted; it was as old as the
days of Robin Hood, who took from the Bishop of Here-
ford his gold in the merry glades of Sherwood. The house
would now clearly understand that the right hon. gentle-
man's Budget was to be founded upon a system of unjust
taxation upon professians—a system of taxation levied
upon a small number of houses ; and, should the
right hon. gentleman regain that place which he for-
feited, to the universal satisfaction of the tax-payers,
those classes would find the favourite weapon in his
armoury was the maintenance of the income tax in all
its present iniustice, while the landed interest would
find that the seat greatlarm upon which he depended for
maintaining the credit and institutions of the country
was the tax which interfered most with the operations
of farming industry ; and the right hon. gentleman
would give no relief beyond repealing the tea duties,
which the Government now proposed, and the 100,0001.
for tlae relief of the shipping interest. Beyond this the
right hon. gentleman would return to office with his
views unchanged as to the great principles of that direct
and indirect taxation, with regard to which the hon.
member, on the contrary, had never ceased to state that
they were unjust and inequitable, and must at no dis-
tant day be altered. [The noble lord then bent for a
moment towards the table, apparently to ascertain if ho
had a note of any further topic on which to remark ; to
the Opposition members he seemed to be resuming his
seat, and at least half-a-dozen of them sprang up, pre-
pared, in that case, to address the house.] The purport
of the opposition of the heterogeneous sections on the
other side of the house, and of the contradictory asser-
tions and arguments to which the house had been
doomed to listen, and, from what they saw, were pro-
bably doomed to listen for some nights to come, was
really to maintain in all their injustice and want of
equity the present financial arrangements which charac-
terised the income and house tax. (Hear, hear,)
Mr. RICH found credit taken in the budget for
400,0001., as the result of the repayments of the loan
commissioners. Now he wished to know what reason
existed for the change proposed by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. Although there was at present an abund-
ance of capital, the right hon. gentleman ought to look
to the future, when depressions might arise. He found
by the returns on the table of the house, that there was
a balance of 2,700,0001. yet unpaid from loans that had
been issued ; and the right hon. gentleman intended to
be put his hand on the re-payments as they might fall in,
and devote them to the current services of the year, as
old stores. This was a serious question which ought to
brought fully before the country. (Hear, hear.) The
right hon. gentleman estimated his surplus at 1,350,000/.,
the saving from the termination of the Kafir war at
250,000/., the payments from the loan commissioners
at 400,0001., and the produce from the increase of the
house tax at 500,000/.—making in all 2,500,0001. On
the opposite side the right hon. gentleman calculated the
loss from the remission of the malt and hop duties at
1,000,0001., the loss from the change of the tea-duty at
400,000/., the extraordinary estimates at 600,000/. and the
loss from light dues and other remissions of that kind at
100,000/.—making a total of 2,100,000/. This would
leave him with the narrow surplus of 400,0001. Now,
setting aside the payment of the loan commissioners,
the balance would be nil ; and in the event of the
embers of the Kafir war being again lighted up, his sur-
plus would turn to a deficiency. (Hear, hear.) And
this risk was to be run for the sake of a reduction of the
malt tax. Now, what benefit would the country derive
from such a reduction ? The honourable baronet the
member for Hertfordshire (Sir E. Lytton) said the other
night that the consumer would gain a penny on each pot
of beer. He (Mr. Rich) had taken the liberty of asking
the hon. member for Derby the number of gallons of
good beer produced from a quarter of malt, and found
the quantity to be 124 gallons. Now, multiplying the
number of quarters consumed by the number of gallons
brewed, he found the total number of gallons to be
about 600,000,000 The reduction proposed by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer was 2,500,0001., and that
sum reduced into pence gave 600,000,000, consequently
the benefit to the consumer could not be more than a
penny per gallon, supposing every particle of the re-
mission to go to the consumer, and no portion of it be
kept by the brewer. (Hear, hear.)
Mr. LOWE said, when he considered that we had on
the showing of the Chancellor of the Exchequer a sur-
plus of 1,300,0001., he should have thought the wisest
and best course that any Government could have adopted,
would have been to persevere quietly and steadily in the
system hitherto carried out with such successful financial
results. It appeared to him that no case had been made
out for a change ; all that we had to do was to have
gone on as before, and when the surplus had been dis-
posed of we might consider that we had done all that
wise and prudent men could do under the circumstances.
Further, he should have thought that the present time
being one of unexampled prosperity, and remembering
that the lot of mankind was mutable, the probability was
that when any change did occur, that change would be
wise in our proceedings and calculations not to count on
being better off than we are, not even to suppose that
our present state of prosperity was always to continue,
and not to imitate the person in the parable, who says
that "to-morrow shall be even as to-day, and much
more abundant" ; and that we should rather look our
dangers in the face, and make our arrangements not on
the calculation that we were to have a period of un-
limited prosperity, but that out of many hundred contin-
gencies any one might arise which might temporarily or
continually prevent our progress. The budget before them
did not take this into consideration. The Chancellor of the
Exchequer had not only adopted free trade, but he now
seemed unable to persuade himself that the existence
of free trade was consistent with any of the mutations to
which human affairs were liable. Further, he (Mr.
Lowe) should have thought, considering what the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer had so ably shown, that the
cause of the great emigration now taking place from this
country was not from any want or suffering of the people
here, but arose out of an anxiety to participate in the
great opening for prosperity in another country ; and
therefore that the causes which ruled our emigration
were causes over which the internal organisation of this
country had little or no control, and that it was not in
our power, by ameliorating the condition of the emi-
grating classes, to prevent them from emigrating. When
he considered all this, he should have thought that this,
of all others, was not the time to add an additional im-
pulse to that mighty emigration, and by making men
pinched in their circumstances at home, and by taxing
those who worked for wages, to suggest to them that
there were other lands where there was neither house
tax, assessed taxes, nor excise. (Hear.) He (Mr. Lowe)
thought that the right hon. gentleman had made out no
case for the surplus put forward by him in the Budget.
The state of the Budget amounted to this : that it pro-
posed to reduce the revenue to the extent of something
like 1,200,000/. by the remission of the tea duties and
the light dues; and by the increase to the national de-
fences—with all of which nobody quarrelled—while, on
the other hand, it only imposed 1,000,000/. in the shape
of house tax ; and for the rest, to meet the loss of half