The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-17 00:00:00

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4t9,34,,,

LONDON, FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 1863.

T/Openee off the Income-tax and Fivepence from
the Tea Duty well render last night's Budget wel-
come to every homestead in the land. The gist of
Mr. GLADSTONE'S new Financial Statement may
be regarded as given in those two most important
announcements. The rest of his nearly three hours'
oration was little more in fact than so much rheto-
rical garniture to the intimation of those same
remissions. An estimated excess of income over
expenditure to hag extent
affordtd of but
he Chancellor trifle
of
short
of £4,000,000 t
the Exchequer, it will now be seen, the op-
portunity of which he has for once happily
been not so slow in availing himself. Even
with our enormous disbursements, the right hon. gen-
tleman showed that the prospective surplus for the
ensuing financial year would not, according to any
reasonable caleulation, be short of, at the very least,
£3,711,000. Hence the possibility not merely of a
choice between an appreciable diminution of the
income tax and a perceptible reduction of the war
duty upon tea, but—we hardly yet seem to have
fully realised the full scope of the beneficence of this
double boon—for a dropping of a fraction of those
two heavy burdens simultaneously 1. More ame-
liorations, even then, are vouchsafed to the coun-
try by our great financier in addition to
the two most important ones here specified at
the very outset of our remarks. But, valuable and
deeply interesting though several of these would
infallibly have been under ordinary circumstances—
they dwindle into comparative insignificance when
coupled with the announcement made last night,
almost in one and the same breath, by Mr. GLAD-
STONE, that the Income-tax will be henceforth 7d.
instead of 9d. in the pound sterling ; and that the
duty upon tea will henceforth be at the one uniform
rate of one shilling !
When it is remembered that the remis-
sion of 2d. in the pound on the Income Tax
means nothing less than the foregoing by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer of £1,600,000 per
annum under that head—and that the dropping of
sd. upon tea is equivalent to the abandonment of
£1,300,000 under that head—it will be perceived
at a glance that very nearly three millions sterling,
that exactly £2,900,000 sterling, are allowed to
stip out of the estimated surplus of £3,741,000.
Mr. GLADSTONE has undertaken, with the best
grace possible, to yield up all this, too, not
as it were upon compulsion, but quite voluntarily and
at once. Moreover, in addition to this—his scheme
for the new Financial Year, as elaborately explained
by .him last evening to the House of Commons in
Committee of Ways and Means, involves in it a
lesser, but still far from inconsiderable boon in the
shape of a distinct abolition of certain small charges
upon consumers, equivalent altogether annually to
a sum of £143,000. Beyond which and to complete
the whole catalogue of the new remissions resolved
upon by our Financier there is his ingenious and
somewhat complex system of abatement in
the mode of levying the income tax
won minor incomes—a system of abatement,
resulting in the remission under the head
of those minor incomes, of a yearly sum of
not less than £300,000 altogether. So that, com-
bining together in one total, the twopenny remission
of the Income-tax, yielding £1,600,000, the five•
penny reduction of the tea duty sweeping off an-
other £1,300000, the abatement of the income-tax
on various incomes to the estimated extent of
£300,000, and the abolition of small charges
on commerce to the tune of £143,000, we
have a loss to the revenue
foro the ensu-
ing year of precisely Recollect
however, that the estimated revenue for the finan-
cial year before us has already been set down by
:Ir. GLADSTONE at 171,490,000, whereas the esti-
mated expenditure he puts at £1,553,000 less than
that of last year, or in round numbers at £67,749,000,
substracting which total of expenditure from the
immediately preceding total of revenue, we have, as
the very welcome quotient, the prospective surplus
befen'e specified, the surplus namely of £3,741,000.
Nor is even this all. By placin g all charities and chari-
table corporations henceforth within the operation of
the Income Tax, as Mr. GLADSTONE distinctly pro-
poses to place them, and by one or two other minor
imposts, he furthermore enhances that excess of in-
come over expenditure by an additional £133,000!
Daiving, as he calculates he shall, from the exten-
sion of the Income Tax to the charities and chari-
table corporation £75,000 out of that supplemen.
the remaining £58,000 he
tart' £133,000,
draws from his already announced modifications in
'regard to tobacco. From an equalisation of the duty
..on chicory, making it equivalent to that on
'''tree- From the imposition of the same license
''4l clubs selling strong liquors that have now
to be taken out by hotels and ' coffeehouses. From
raising the duty paid by beer dealers, who having
obtained a beer license through a spirit license, had
afterwards dropped the spirit license and continued