The Sun.
London, England, 1852-05-01 00:00:00

1852,

I position to Ru3sell. It was but the other day that Sir John
Pakington, in answer to a question respecting the sugar
duties, declared his officially confirmed persuasion that the
giadual progress towards assimilation between foreign and
colonial produce was working calamitously for our West In-
dian dependencies, and his unchanged determination to re-
store in their behalf a differential system. But now Mr.
Disraeli comes forward as leader of the party in the Lower
House, and exultingly demonstrates the sound and
beneficial working of the Sugar Bill of 1818, and
positively repudiates all idea of resorting, even for
revenue, to an augmentation of our Customs du-
ties. Still more marvellous and edifying are the con-
fessions of the new convert on the subject of the Excise.
With a coolness and effrontery unparalleled, Mr. Disraeli re-
curs to the varied assaults which he and his followers were
accustomed to make during the existence of the late Govern-
ment upon each and all of the items from which this great
branch of our national revenue is derived. Nobody can
have forgotten the successive motions and divisions for the
abolition of the tax on malt, on hops, on paper, &c., in all
of which the new Chancellor of the Exchequer figured. Yet
he now confesses with inimitable sang froid that all that was
utterly unreasonable and absurd ; concluding his analysis of
the state of our Excise revenue with the casual expression of
his former coincidence in opinion with Lord George Ben-
tinsk, who sincerely desired to abrogate all such internal
taxes—and his own present resolution to maintain ovary
one of them. The third great branch of national
tinhceoumghe by a
sort
tsreaf cleliaixcaerte
eifutlelymerrietserhveecelhfooare tthoelavlaissiti;upaeln-
it in the earlier portion of his speeych a peculiarly emphatic
weed of reprobation. We allude to the
ncome-tax. Anti-
cipating the report of the Select Committee which he said it
would be presumptuous in him to anticipate, he declared
that the result of their laborious investigations was to prove
that any alterations in the schedules would be to render the
system, if possible, more intolerable than it is at present.
No modification, iu his opinion, was at all likely to mend it ;
and as for the tax as it stood, it was, he thought, deservedly
most unpopular, and, by reason of the large exemptions it
contained, utterly unjust in principle, and eminently dan-
gerous to the future welfare of the state. And therefore
Mr. Disraeli sums up his whole statement by the naked
proposal to continue it unmodified for another year.
So this, then, is the upshot of all the pompous pro-
mises of a new system of taxation, which should relieve
agriculture without oppresssng commerce, and equalise bur-
thens without endangering the income of the nation. The
bubble has suddenly burst, and nothing is left but the gaping
fools who have for six long years been running after the poli-
tical wizard, and the laughing spectators wbo were deceived
by his mystical talk and conjuror's trick,. The whole thing
turns out to be a miserable, shabby, and coarsely executed
delusion—at the end of which the dupes find themselves or-
dered home, as there is no more to be seen, and the lights
must be put out directly. In dumb and dogged despair, the
unhappy country gentlemen listened last night to the funeral
service extemporised by the great high • priest over the
corpse of Protection. As each new round of scornful cheers
broke from the crowded benches of the Opposition, they no
doubt still consoled themselves with the fond expectation
that something was reserved for them at the end
which might at all events serve as a decent pretence for ac-
quiescing in the open apostacy of their chief—something for
themselves, if not for the farmers, of whom they have been
such very dear friends. But when, having rapidly uttered
the sentence wherein he proposed to renew the income-tax
for another year, the great necromancer suddenly sat down,
the sense of their forlorn condition was too heavy to be borne,
and rushing from the House they left the Chancellor of the
Exchequer to receive, almost alone, the overwhelming ac-
knowledgments of Sir Charles Wood for the justice he had
tardily rendered to the free-trade financial policy. But whi-
ther will the hapless Newdegates and Youngs, Tyrells and
Thompsons fly? They accused Peel of having betrayed them
six years ago; at Disraeli's bidding they hunted him to
death; yet now they find themselves " sold" again, and by
the very person who led them out against the illustrious
statesman we have lost. For ourselves, we can hardly affect
to sympathise in their surprise, and still less in their chagrin.
We have frequently expressed our belief that six months
of office would dissipate the dream of returning to protec-
tion. We own, indeed, that we did not anticipate so rapid
and complete an annihilation of the phantom-hopes they
obstinately cherished, or that six weeks would have been
sufficient to accomplish the end. Neither could we have
supposed that, in addition to a solemn recantation of his
errors concerning free trade, Mr. Disraeli
of
israelileewt would heeanve.
volunteered such confessions as his speech
tains on the general subject of taxation ; or that he should
have abstained from sprinkling with some species of fiscal
confectionery the dry and bitter potion he laid before his
adherents. But so it is. The spell is broken, and the
matchless farce is ever.
CHRONICLE.—The Budget of 1852 has been more elo-
quently introduced and more favourably received than that
of 1851; yet, word for word and figure for figure, the two
will be found in every respect identical. The Government
proposes no change, great or small, in the financial system of
the country. For another year the income-tax is protected
from reduction, andthe indirect duties from any attempt to in-
crease them. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer has adopted
precisely the course which we have often indicated as incum-
bent on a Government opposed by a majority of the House
of Commons, we can have no disposition to withhold the
credit which is due to a prudent appreciation of existing
political circumstances. We may even conjecture that, if
the Minister's hands had been free, he would still have been
inclined to pursue a nearly similar course ; for, after carefully
attending to all the hints and general axioms contained in his
speech, we have been unable to discover any theory which
could become the foundation of a re-adjustment of taxa-
tion. It would be illiberal to deny the merit of Mr.
Disraeli's speech in point of language and manner. His
statement was sufficiently lucid and vigorous to command
the attention of the House for more than two hours; and
and the only rhetorical defect which it exhibited wasinse-
parable from the position of a speaker who knew beforehand
that his laboured premises would necessarily lead to nothing.
If he had had any novelty to introduce in practice, or to
suggest in argument,the would probably have contented him-
self with a simpler preamble, and would have reserved his
strength for his final disclosures. It is remarkable that the
most successful, and perhaps the most sincere, portions of his
speech were those passages in which the brilliant results of
a liberal commercial policy were set forth in gratulatory
language for the admiration of the House. The repeal of
more than ten millions of taxation in ten years, with
but a trifling loss to the revenue, is, indeed, a fact
which can scarcely be too often welt upon. Mr.
Disraeli must, however, have felt himself in a singular
position when he was dilating so cordially on
the success of a policy to which he has not even yet openly
adhered. His colleague of the Colonial-office can scarcely
have welcomed the cheering which followed the announce-
ment of the result of last year's reduction of the sugar
duties. Sir Charles Wood had estimated the loss at 330,0001.
—the revenue has actually suffered to the formidable amount
of 3091. It is difficult to suppose that the Minister dwelt on
this part of his subject either from an excess of candour or
from an idle desire to call forth the applause which naturally
follows any exposition of national prosperity. The history of
the financial triumphs attending a liberal commercial policy
was doubtless meant for' the Ministerial side of the House.
The obstinate sceptics of the back benches were reminded
by their own champion that the success of free trade is not a
fiction of their opponents, but a proof of the soundness of the
principles on which the recent fiscal legislation of the coun-
try has been based. We have no quarrel with Mr. Dis-
raeli's figures, which, indeed, are copied almost literally
from 'the balance-sheet of 1851. It may be prudent
to make a certain allowance for the temporary sti-
mulus given by the Exhibition to the consumption of
taxable commodities; and although there is reason to hope
that the receipts may somewhat exceed the estimate, there
is at the same time a danger that the Kafir war may lead
to an expenditure beyond the formidable amount at present
announced. The surplus, 'as we stated yesterday, falls
below half a million. Mr. Disraeli omitted to point out in
detail the mode in which the actual excess is absorbed ;
but the particulars may be collected from various portions
of his statement. The loss of half a year's window-tax
amounts to 640,0001., and the Kafir war will require at least
200,000/., in addition to the 460,000/. already voted. The
militia is to cost 350,0001., to which must be added the in-
crease in the army estimates. About 300,0001. are allowed
for:possible diminutions in the sugar duties and in the income-
tax; and a certain per-centage is taken off the extraor-
dinary receipts of the Post-office for 1851. Under these
circumstances the surplus of 2,180,0001. dwindles down !to
the humble amount of 460,0001. Having willingly given
all due credit both to the matter and to the manner of Mr.
Disraeli's financial statement, we can carry our eulogies no fur-
ther. The Members who so loudly cheered him have per-
haps, by this time, discovered that in all his sonnudildignve
pe-
riods he really told them nothing. llalf an hour
Almost every sufficedpro-
position
to
statet e read
that,the
with tables
a of
few
w apreceipteei andfi ed exceptions,expenditure v c't
fhoer l ti
samesl ,
figures would serve for the ensuing y
pwoaseitioointhcoernutnainmeedaniieng,thes
h oust denunciation of fiscal
is not too much to say that
etei ily
Pea
irrelavent,c beyond.
re rer erroneous. ontehc siPmeprlheafpacstisi
pexaneympstiior S in
Charlesgenerwralo.
Woods
n
that the
showed that the
proof we possessfurnishestfhweh htxheeahc :of; no' nlir
to the principles of
s'ogfce its steps by in-
creasingefinance.nter tainsl3:as Chancelloraaltareat
modifications suggested by
House would not
or the Excise. In the next
that the incomes-tetax was oppressive
either the Customs
d
schsdule D . ln connexion
Ina
singleha
nxl
onsoerdu inclined obpei
ne:
.
Schedules 8.,
eminent ac
andl)acee alleged
tunpopular,actuaries
eriand
reiterate
complain of the imprudent
readiness of the House to tamper with all the branches of the
Wood was weak enough to
and
dth theseataopuicanpharplraocer as
to
wouldthat t h e
render inndi
a charge which can only be described as a piece of traditional
of Commons is not reckless, nor is it •
revenue, and Sir Charles
parsi-
cant. The House of
sources of income
monious. The d. grpdr. Disraeli himself fully have been scrupu-
lously showed that the
lowly gu e.
ardauties on consumption h
reduction of
the revenub - and as has entailed no propor-
tionate loss to , to the risk of losing the
incomeste,, it has lasted for ten years and has just been
conceded for the eleventh. virtually _ The Chancellor of the
,zehesper himself can only be exonerated from the charge
of endangering the revenue by the fact that he was
speaking for the constituencies, without having any
definite theory to propose. The fallacy of representing
opposite doctrines respecting taxation as combined
attack's on the national income is at once far-fetched
and transparent. Some politicians denounce the income-tax
—others would reduce the indirect duties ; but it is admitted
on all hands that Parliament must choose between different
suggestions, and cannot adopt all simultaneously. Mr.
Disraeli and Sir Charles Wood affect to think that any* doubt
whether the public burdens are fairly apportioned is equiva-
lent to a desire prematurely to shake them off. Equally
unfounded was Mr. Disraeli's assumption of an antagonism
between the respective advocates of reductions in the Customs
and in the Excise. It is notorious that the desire to relieve
the community from both classes of imposts has been ex-
pressed, and partly realized, by one and the same school of
economists. The country gentlemen will be surprised to hear
that they are the natural enemies of the Excise. It is in-
deed easy to understand why Lord George Bentinck may
have professed a dislike to taxes on domestic industry.
Whenever an Excise duty is imposed on malt, hops, or pa-
per, a corresponding impost is levied on the foreign product.,
which might otherwise enter into unfair competition with
the home-made article. It would be highly convenient to
Protectionists to remove the domestic duty while retaining
the countervailing charge at the Custom-house ; and only a
few days ago such a policy was advocated by the most de-
voted organ of the late Government. Bat economists who
understand their principles reduce taxes for the benefit of
consumers, and not to confer new monopolies on certain
classes of produers. The supporters of the Ministry, to do
them just ice, appeared to be honestly astonished
when their leader reproached them by implication
for their . supposed tendency to tamper with the
Excise. The landowners and farmers may perhaps con-
trive to extract from the statement some prospect
of future fiscal favours; but it is difficult to understand by
what method these are to be bestowed. The Minister who
expiates so fully on the success of recent reductions cannot
be in earnest when he announces the intention of his partyisit
to allow no further diminution of indirect duties. .
clear that Mr. Disraeli is hostile to the income-tax, notwith-
standing the appeals to the prejudices to which that impost
is subject. Ills assertion that a majority of the House last
year called it in question is scarcely true even in the letter,
and
and not at all in Use spirit. Mr. Disraeli
hie
supporters

e_. _ •
formed that majority by coalescing with Mr. Hume and with
a section of the House professedly attached to the principle
of direct taxation. The great party which carried all the
reforms in the Customs and Excise has hitherto supported
direct taxation; and it is not improbable that Mr. Disraeli
may still continue, as at present, to avail himself of the suc-
cessful policy of his opponents.
ADVERTISER. —People looked forward to last night, in
the House of Conanons, with an anxiety far exceeding the
interest with which the proceedings in that Assembly are
usually regarded. The budget was to he produced immedi-
ately after the time for public business had arrived. Ac-
cordingly the House and galleries were, by that hour, seve-
rally crowded with psrsons on the tiptoe of expectation to
learn the leading features of the financial scheme of the new
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Nor can we wondee at the
intense anxiety which was felt to become acquainted with
the principal points in the Disraeli Budget. The new Chan-
cellor of the Excqequer has the reputation of being a bold,
dashing, and even brilliant man. He has distinguished
himself in various walks of life. He is a popular novelist, an
expert Parliamentary debater, a man of no inconsiderable ori-
ginality as a politician, and one, moreover, who has acquitted
himself, on the whole, in a very creditable manner since ne was
raised to the rank of a Cabinet Minister. It would, there-
fore, have been surprising had not the public felt more than
the average amount of anxiety to become acquainted, at the
earliest possible moment, with the contents of the Disraeli
Budget. And, if these considerations had not been sufficient
to work public curiosity up to the proper pitch of intensity,
the morning journal which is presumed to be the organ of
the Conservative Cabinet yesterday dealt in some strange
and mysterious speculations. as to what the budget might be
expected to be. The impression which our contemporary
sought to create in the public mind was, that the develop-
ments of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in unfolding his
financial scheme, would be of a decidedly bold character,—
so bold as to dazzle, if they did not startle, men of more
common-place minds than the Right Honourable Gentleman
himself. Well, the budget is now before the country; or
rather the :Teed' of Mr. Disraeli is—a speech which tasted
upwards of two hours in the delivery, and which was one of
the most elaborate pieces of financial eloquence ever pro-
duced in the House of Commons. Prodigious was the
ieurish of trumpets, and what entered? Tom Thumb? No;
not even that. The budget of the Right Hon. Gentleman is
one in name only. The thing itself is wanting. Canning's
knife-grinder had no story to tell, and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer has no budget to bring before the public. The
difference between the knife-grinder and Mr. Disraeli is this
—that the former did not profess to have any story to telt.
He candidly confereed he had none. mot Co with the Chan-
cellor of the ExchOgner. He kept the expectation of the
House wound up to the highest pitch, for more than two
mortal hours, and all for the purpose of telling them that he
had nothing to say—n o budget to bring forward —nothing to
yblieeafaofirrrte wd aonr ,eabyn Anythingda cahramenncoeeroel
oa
propose, but to ask a vote of 200,000/. for carrying on the
Tisuoopffr
et
nhtlhee el
yE i
xn
rccihod
emi
crieuu-letoratx for another
nwotasevennevleyer
Sir Charles Wood. The mountain in labour bringing fortlt
a mouse, was not a paralle I case, because here we had a
financial mountain in labour itOr more than two terrible hours,
without bringing forth anything at all. Dean Swift, when
ridiculing the elaborate lectures' which professors of the sur-
gical art were in his day, as in our own, in the habit of
giving on the most simple facts in surgery, remarked that
one of those learned professors would take half an hour to
convey the idea that a man's leg was fractfared, whereas the
unfortunate man himself would stat,l the fact in four words—
"My leg is broken." Mr. Disraeli ,'ltr outstrips these wordy
gentlemen. He takes more than two hours to tell the House
and the country, that he has nothing %whatever to communi-
cate. The author who wrote fifty page.l of a preface to prove
that he did not mean to write a preface at t ‘ll, because no preface
was necessary, was a very good type of our new Chancellor of
the Exchequer. For ourselves we are not disappointed, be-
cause we expected nothing. We have ilot attached the
slightest importance to the Disraeli Budget, though almost
everybody else, for some time past, has been i n an agony of
anxiety on the subject. We look on the ter. 'n of existence
allotted to the Derby Ministry as one which will be ex-
ceedingly brief, and therefore any financial pr, -pets which
the present Chancellor of the Exchequer may br.'ng forward
will necessarily have to be overhauled by his s nccessor in
office. But, besides that, we shall, within the s,`tort space
of two or three months, have a new Parliament. And that
Parliament will have a will and way of its own, i a refer-
ence to financial matters generally. It is to the new Legis-
lature that we look for an enlightened financial policy. • And
if the electors in the approaching contests only single out
men of intelligence, integrity, and patriotism, from the
host
of candidates soliciting their suffrages, they will the. 'eV
ensure financial measures creditable to the Parliament tnd
beneficial to the country—measures calculated to give ad
li-
tional stability to the credit of the nation at home al Id
abroad. It is on such a Legislature that our hopes are cen
tered,and not doubting that the intelligence and judgment of
the constituencies will select such a body of men to
represent thenee-itt the coming Parliament, we attach but
little importance to the financial freaks of Mr. Disraeli, or
any one else. To have brought forward any grand financial
scheme—one difle:ing in many essential respects from the
budgets of all preceding Chancellors of the Exchequer, at a
time, and under the auspices of a Ministry who can scarcely
yet be said to be warm in their situations, and at a time
when Parliament is notoriously in the throes of dissolution
—would indeed have been an act of surpassing boldness.
It would have been more. It would have been an act of
superlative folly. No man with a particle of judgment
would ever entertain the idea, even for a moment. Mr.
Disraeli urged 4this consideration with a force which the
House evidently felt. But what we complain of, and what
the country will complain of, when the speech of the Right
Hon. Gentleman, without a budget, wings its way through
all parts of the kingdom is, that he should have allowed the

politic for weeks Past to' be in a state of confident
expectation of something bold and dashing in the way of
financial projects. It was in the confident expectation that
Mr. Disraeli's budget would contain something extraordi-
nary, that Mr. Milner Gibson yielded to the Right Hon.

Gentleman's urgent request to adjourn the debate on his
motion for the remission of the taxes on literature until
after his financial scheme should be before the House. What

was this but a piece of downright deception? It was a most
dishonest expedient. And why, besides, tantalise the House
for upwards of two hours, when he did not mean to propose
a single alteration in the existing position of the finances
of the country? That was a gratuitous outrage on the
House, and an unwarrantable waste of the public time. It

isl to our minds so countervailing consideration that the
greater part of Mr. Disraeli's speech was a disquisi-
tion on the benefits of free trade, and a eulogg►tutn
on the enlightened financial policy of Sir Robert

Peel. That was, on the contrary, an aggrava-
tion of the Right Honourable Gentleman's conduct,-
for it affords au additional proof to the many before
given of the fact, that the Derby Ministry is a gigantic
organized hypocrisy. The public has not forgotten -the
public never will forget—the ferocious personal attaeks
which this very Mr. Disraeli made on Sir Robert Peel during
an entire session, solely because of his introduction of free-
trade measures. Nor will the fact ever escape the memory
of the country, that Mr. Disraeli, and the other members of
the Derby Goverment, traded solely on the political capital
which they acquired by systematically assailing free trade,
until the very hour that they got into office. And yet Hem
Right Hon. Gentleman has now the indecency to come forward
and proclaim, without a blush on his countenance, that the
commercial and financial policy which he had thus fiercely
attacked for years, and on the character of whose author ,he
sysematically heaped the coarsest calumnies, is the most
enlightened and beneficial policy which ever a Minister de-
vised! The force of hypocrisy and effrontery could no
further go.
POST.—Certainly, no person with only an ordinary ac-
quaintance with Parliamentary politics and party divisions,
would have gathered from the mode in which the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequr was received by the House of Com-
mons last night, that he was listeping to a " provisional
Minister," who was only tolerated because it was a recog-
nised fact that his powers were limited to oiling existing
machinery, and his duty was confined to keeping things
rubbing on till a successor shall be ready to take his plac..
So general, indeed, was the cheering which greeted the
Ministerial statement, that it was not easy to decide by
which side of the House the budget and its appended ob-
servations were received with most favour: The House
was
masteryevidentl under an impression that they were listening
to a in his craft, and persuaded, moreover, that he
was confiding to them his inmost ideas of financial policy.
;the perusal of metaphysical
We never get up from
essays without feeling es if
suddenly stuffed with our head had become
rmasepasiutreless information,
which, when we attempt to
into a marvellously little compgass. It isP ar ace irci
oa
ul
sy ,p
hc oe la olapsesme
non, and something of the same sensation we must confess
to having experienced ;in the hearing of Mr. Disraeli's speech
We of last night. no conception, till we endeavoured
to condense and analyse what we have got, that the Minister
had only made some very just remarks on systems of taxa-
tion, and placed before the country an explanation of its
financial condition, very simply, very clearly, and very con-
cisely. It must be' owned, that Mr. Disraeli fulfilled this
part of his task in a manner which showed that he had quite
made himself master of hiswtbdhecth;t3 and it is evident, that
whatever be the basis on proposes eventually to
organise our fiscal system, the newC Chancellor perfectly
comprehends the characteristics of the revenue with which
he has to deal, and the nature of the resources to which he
can have recourse. As we anticipated in our article of the
day before yesterday, the Budget for 1852-53 is simply
provisional, and its purpose limited to carrying on the
financial machinery till the Government has time to mature
a scheme of a permanent character. The only feasible mode
in which this could be effected was evidently by taking, as
the Minister proposes, for the limited period of one year, a
renewed lease of the income-tax ; and it was equally evident
that, under existing circumstances, any attempt to siodi'y
its provisions, or to introduce any new principle of assess-
ment or of levy, would have been unwise and ill-timed.
This is comparatively plain sailing ; but there are difficul-
ties a head with which the Chancellor will have eventually
to contend, of the most serious character, and he is wise to
do his best to bring Parliament to a temper proper for their
careful and unprejudiced consideration. We have ap-
plied to our present means of raising revenue the
term anomalous. We have said that our existing fiscal
system, if system it be, is full of anomalies, which present
serious and complicated difficulties to a Chancellor of this
Exchequer attempting the suggestion of a Budget which'
is to have about it a character of permanency. The
first great difficulty is, that, for many years now, the Budget,
if not of each year, at any rate of each period of three years,
has been essentially temporary in its character. This bas
been the case ever since Sir Robert Peel, in 1842, undertook
to cure the evils which the incompetence of his predeceseeers
had created. Everybody must remember that time,
the hapless Whig financiers, angling in the bottomless depths
of a Pool of Despond for a Budget which they nevers_
catch, appealed in their despair for advice to their kern:
rival, who stood by regarding their futile efforts with
I will pre
and confident contempt. "Call me in, andn they
scribe," was the reply of the patient
.taeddthnetiunteevitapobllie-
tician, who for years had quietly swatted
result of the bungling Administratio_a..norfehisasoppseantieanfitsed,
as certain of their ultimate
wfitg
the inevitable
of his own power tocope h: Whigs brought
sop
difficulty. Hisprevisions were
the linaneiil disorder of the ce
called upon to undertake the so-
sutni f it
re ed; toT
scheme of 1842, on
Robert Peel, in 1812,
lution of their ditiicultwieae!
•The financial
the faith a its limitation, in essentials, to three years, was
agreed to. It can scarcely be necessary, in 1852, to enter
upon an explanation of the details of this celebrated device.
The idea of its eminent
author was, by a remission of taxa-
tion in particular directions, to give such a stimulus to con-
sumption as to create an ultimate increase of revenue to an
extent exceeding the amount then in deficiency, while the
gap necessarily consequent, at the moment, was to be filled
up by the imposition for a limited 'period, of that income
and property tax with which, after successive re-
newals, it has become the duty of Mr. Disraeli
now to deal in 1852. Events justified Sir Robert Peel's
anticipations, and the result showed that he had not overes-
timatedthe elasticity of the revenve. At the expiration of the
period which he had calculated would be sufficient for the re-
invigoration of the vital system, and for the creation of new
blood requisite to restore it to its full powers of production,
his expectations were fulfilled. The ordinary resources of
revenue became equal to the provision for the ee_penditure
of the country, and the extraordinary resource which had
been, temporarily called in to its aid might hsye safely bees