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

SUN,

LONDON,

have put before us every combination which experience
and philosophy can devise and invent. I will not pre-
sume to enter into the question as to the justice or injustice
of the schemes which those gentlemen—the most eminent
actuaries of the country—have offered us ; but, as a practical
man, as looking to the effect upon the revenue, as looking,
at this moment especially, to the most desirable
means by which revenue can be raised, I may say this
(not prejudging, understand, the question at issue ; not for
a moment maintaining—neither acknowledging nor deny-
ing—that the principles these actuaries have offered to us
are just)—that if these principles be adopted, I am painfully
sensible that Schedule A, Schedule B, and Schedule C will
not be less odious than Schedule D.—(Cheers and laughter.)
Well, Sir, when I am to recommend a means of raising re-
venue, I must necessarily consider circumstances of that
character, for in these questions of finance the feelings of
the people must be considered as well as the principles of
science.—(Loud cheers from both sides of the House.)
Then there is another point upon which I shall
speak with more frankness, with respect to the tax upon
property and income. I have not presumed, and 1 shall not
presume, to give an opinion upon the justice or injustice of
the methods in which another system of assessing perma-
nent and temporary incomes may be effected. I leave that
point. But there is one point upon which the Committee
is so unanimous that their opinion need not be a
secret, and I believe the same opinion is unanimously enter-
tained by the House of Commons, as lam sure it is unani-
mously entertained by the country—namely, that if taxes of
this character, if measures of direct taxation like the income-
tax, are to form, not temporary, but permanent features of
our system of finance, we cannot rest upon a system of ex-
emptions.—(Cheers.) Well, but if they are Hot to rest
upon a principle of exemptions, do you increase the methods
by which a Chancellor of the Exchequer may raise a re-
venue ? (Hear, hear.) No doubt that direct taxation is in
its theory an easy, a simple, and a captivating process; but
when you wish to apply that direct taxation generally, it is
astonishing what obstacles you encounter and what preju-
dices you create.--(Hear, and a laugh.) In my mind—
and I think now it is a principle pretty well accepted—
direct taxation should be nearly as universal in its appli-
cation as indirect taxation. The man who lives in the
palace, and the cottager, as consumers, are equally and
proportionably assessed. It is not, perhaps, possible that by
direct taxation you can effect so complete a result. Per-
haps it is not necessary; but that, if your revenue is to
depend mainly; or in a great degree, upon direct taxation
—if it is permanently to depend upon such taxation
—you must make the application of direct taxation very
general, is to me a conclusion that it is impossible to with-
stand.—(Cheers.) No doubt, by establishing a temporary
measure of direct taxation, based upon a large system of
exemptions, you may give a great impulse to industry; you
may lighten the springs of industry very effectually for a
time; but—not to dwell upon the gloss and glaring injustice
of a system of finance that would tax directly a very limited
portion of the population—but looking only to the economi-
cal and financial consequences of such a system, who can
but feel that in the long run industry itself must suffer from
such a process? For, after all, what is direct taxation
founded on a system of exemptions? It is confiscation.
It is making war upon the capital which ultimately must
employ that very industry which you wish to promote.—
( Cheers.) Well, then, when you have examined the first
and most memorable essay towards direct taxation which
has occurred during the memorable ten years to which I have
called attention with regard to the reduction of Customs'
and, Excise duties, is the instance of the property and income
tax' very encouraging to the Minister who looks to direct
taxation as the means of supplying deficiencies? That law
was universally admitted to be fraught with great injustice.
Not that I am urging this as any objection to the Minister
who introduced it. That Minister—the law being avowedly a
temporary measure, a measure to meet peculiar circumstances,
and to encounter an emergency—was perfectly justified
in the course which he took, and met with the success he de-
served ; but I am speaking of a system of finance of which
a tax like that to which I am now referring is to become a
permanent feature. This tax, frame,' by the most adroit
of modern financiers, softened in all those circumstances
which would have created apparent hostility, has yet en-
countered such a degree of odium, and is acknowledged to
be the source of so much oppression, that we have not
been ab'e to keep it standing; but those who were respon-
sible for the finances of the country have been obliged to go
upon their knees to the House of Commons to insure it a
provisional existence—("Hear," and a laugh)—and, as I
which
years,have
been already
submittedremi ded thetu
beHouse,
severest
any mode of raising public money can be i t
h aosr dneoalv, to for
sub-
jected-to the searching scrutiny of a Committee
of the House of Commons, judges who are themselves
victims, and who are therefore alive to all the grievances
into which they have to inquire.—(Loud cheers.) But, if
I proceed a step further, and try to induce the House to con-
sider whether direct taxation is that simple, that facile, and
that satisfactory method by which revenue can be raised
in a country like England, can you shut your eyes 'to
the remarkable circumstance that occurred in the last ses-
sioa of Parliament with regard to direct taxation? What
was the principal feature of the last financial year? The
abolition of one of the most considerable sources of direct
taxation. The Minister, at one fell swoop, by the removal
of the window-duty. deprived us of nearly 2,000,000/.
sterling raised by direct taxation.—(Some cries of "
no!" from the Opposition.) I think I shall be able to show
that was the case.—;Cheers from the Ministerial benches.)
I think I can show those Hon. Gentlemen who, I am willing
to believe, are on this occasion friendly critics, that my
statement is fully authorized. It was said on the occasion
to which I allude, that the principles of direct taxation
were not in question. Direct taxation to the amount of
nearly 2,000,000/. was at once taken off, but then it was re-
mitted not on fiscal but on sanitary considerations.—(Laughter
and cheers.) Every one knows now that all the sanitary
objects we wished to accomplish could have been accomplished
had the tax remained.— (" No, no !" from the Opposition
benches ) I think I shall have no difficulty in showing that
that is the fact. That the plea was a plausible plea—an
amiable plea—l acknowledge; but the consequence is that
the Chancellor of the Exchequer has last 2,003,0001. raised
by direct taxation. [An Hon. Member on the Oppo-
sition side expressed dissent.] I notice the murmuring
negative of the Hon. Gentleman opposite. "No," says he
" you did not lose nearly 2,000,0001., for you forget the sub-
stitute of the house.tax." Now, were I to fix upon any
subjkt—upon any measure—which would alarm me, if I
am taught to believe that direct taxation is to be the main
source to which the Minister of Finance is to look for his
revenue, it would be that very substitute, the recollection
of which led the Hon. Gentleman to murmur his negative re-
specting the window-tax. The revenue of the country could
not bear that rude and entire loss of nearly 2,000,000/.
sterling by the repeal of the window-tax. It was
necessary, therefore, to have some substitute— to find some
means by which the revenue should be sustained ; and what
did you do? You could not go to Customs' duties in the
teeth of that catalogue of exploits which I have mentioned.
—(Hear, hear.) You could not have recourse again to Excise
duties, when you yourselves were bringing forward motions
asking for the repeal or the redaction of those duties. You
were obliged to have recourse to direct taxation, even while
you' reduced one source of direct taxation to such an
enormous amount; and what did you do? You imposed a
direct tax—a tax which I have always regarded as more
just' and less oppressive than any other form of direct
taxation—l mean the house tax.—(Cheers.) That invalu-
able weapon in your financial armoury was taken doyen
carelessly, and was used for a very inglorious result. You
raised a very small revenue by your direct taxation. Out of
3,500,000 houses, following the vicious principle which per-
vades all our direct taxation, you touched little more than
400,000 (Hear, hear, and cheers) —and you again practi-
cally announced to the people of this country that direct
taxation is intolerable, unless it is based upon a large sys-
tem of exemptions.— (Cheers.) I think, then, that by res
calling facts, and by calmly inducing the House to survey
their past career, I have shown them that the difficul-
tiestot raising revenue in this country are not confined
to Customs' duties, as their early cheers would have
seethed to intimate—that they are not confined to Excise
duties, AS some of my Honourable Friends near me
may suppose—but that, if you attempt to impose direct
taxation on any principles which are calculated to pro-
duce permanent effects, you are stopped either by the pre-
judice of the House and of the people, or by their intoler-
able, sense of the incidents of that form of taxation.—(Hear,
arid cheers.) The moral I would draw, and which I would
wish most earnestly to impress upon the House—because
they may rest essured that the time is not far distant when
they must arrive at definite conclusions upon this subject—is
that they should come to some certain results to guide them
in the management of their finances. A Chancellor of the
Exchequer who has to make a financial statement, and who
is supposed to be in possession of that happy but most em-
barrassing incident, a surplus, is looked upon by both sides
as an individual who is merely an object of prey and plunder.
—(Laughter and cheers.) in the general scramble every
one wishes to obtain his purpose, and no one looks to the
future.—(Hear, hear.) No one looks to the inevitable danger
that must be impending over the finances of a country where
all demand relief, while at the same time they lay down
principles which prevent the raising of taxes in any form
whatever. (Hear, hear.) Whether it is a duty
upon articles of foreign import, whether it is
a duty upon articles of home manufacture, or whether it is
a direct tax, the experience of ten years has brought us to
this result—that the House of Commons disapproves of all
three measures.— (Cries of " Oh !" from the Opposition, met
by cheers from the Ministerial benches.) Having made
these observations, which I shall, I fear, have painfully to
apply in the coarse of my subsequent remarks, I shall now
call the attention of the Committee to the income and ex-
penditure of the year which has just terminated. In
February, 1851, the income for the year ending in this
month of April was estimated by the Right Hon. Member
for Halifax (Sir C. Wood) at 52,140,0001. The actual in-
come whieh had accrued- has been 52,468,3171.—(Cheers
from the Opposition.) The Right Hon. Gentleman, whose
actual income exceeded his estimated income, is well en-
titled to that cheer—(Hear, hear, and cheers)—but I
am bound to say that the statement I have made does
not do sufficient justice to the merits of the Right Honour-
able Gentleman. Not only did the actual income exceed
his estimate by more than 320,0001., but I must say that in
the interval vast remissions of taxation took place, and yet
notwithstanding those vast remissions, the income of the
year that has just ended exceeded the estimate of 1851. In
that period the Right Hon. Gentleman repealed tke window-
tax, by:which a loss of 640,0001. was experienced in theyear,
after allowing for the substitution of the house-tax ; and the
Right Hon. Gentleman also reduced the duties upon coffee
and upon timber, and had besides to encounter one of the
most considerable reductions that has occurred in the sugar
duties.—(Hear, hear.) Yet, notwithstanding that great re-
mission of direct taxation—notwithstanding that reduction
on three of the most important articles of foreign import, the
income of the Right Hon. Gentleman (the late Chancellor of
the Exchequer) exceeded his estimate, which was made
without reference to those reductions, by the sum of more
than 328,000/.—(Hear, hear.) On that occasion the
Right Honourable Gentleman estimated the Customs at
20,400,0001., and he then anticipated from the re-
duction of the duties on sugar, coffee, and timber,
a loss to revenue, which he estimated at 800,0001.,
which, however, trusting to the increased powers of con-
sumption in the community, he placed in his budget at only
400,000/. ; therefore the Customs really, as estimated by the
Right Hon. Gentleman, would have been only 20,000,00/.
We have obtained from them 20,673,900/.—(Hear, hear.)
I think it due to the Right Hon. Gentleman—l think
(which, with all courtesy to him, is of still more importance)
that it will be interesting to the House and to the country—
while our experience upon these subjects is fresh, that we
should trace the action of the reductions of the Right Hon.
Gentleman upon our Customs' revenue.—(Hear, hear.) The
duty on coffee, it will be recollected, was reduced last year
from 6d. per lb. on foreign, and 4d. on colonial, to a uniform
duty of 3d. Now this is the effect of that reduction of
duties upon consumption. In the year ending April, 1851,
there was an increase in the consumption on the article of
foreign coffee of 2,076,375. b. ; in the year ending April,
1852, there is an increase from 2,076,0e016. in 185), to
5.525,0001 b., being an increase in 1852 upon 1851 of
at the expense of the
3 448,0001b.—(110ar, hear.) Nor was this increase obtained
In 1851 we imported 28,216,0001 b. of colonial coffee ; in 1852 s
after the reduction of the daty, d • that great increase
uty, and during
of the consumption of foreign coffee, instead of 28,21.6,000113•1
growers of colonial coffee.—(Hear.)
we have imported 29,100,0001b.—(Hear hear.) In 185 d we
imported 32,511,0001 b. 01 foreign au colonial coffee;