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

on corporations brought to 021 e mind of the Governmeni
this further remarkable fact, that in this country we ha've
irytoci kiring the financial year which as just closed about
15 millions of hard monby in direct taxation, but that every
shilling of tint money is taken out of the poccc, ts of indi-
vidtals, and that whatever is held Bttictly in oortmain, in
the hands of corporate bodies, or professes t) 1 romote cha-
rity, does not contribute one shilling, as I s'l,l contend, to
those .215,000,000. (Hear, hear.) I venture to say that
this is an unjust state of things. It is not fair that the tax-
payers of this country, the fathers of families, men labouYing
to support their wives and children, shoitldpay taxes aug-

• -
menteel in order to encourage gentlemen on their death-beds,
when they can no lOnger enjoy the money themselves, to
devise ingehioits methods of disposing 'of their wealth, which
shall r atise their names to be written up in enormous capital
letters, and create governors of trusts who shall meet toge-
ther at sumptuous dinners from year to year in order to
glorify the pious and immoTtal Memory of the man who has
devised this ingenious method of disposing of his proper y.
(Loud cheers.) I am not going to say one word in disparage-

ra tilt of these institutions, except up to the point that they
ought, not to enjoy that Very large amount of positive pe-
cuniary preference at the cost of the general community
which is a:carded to them by the present state of the law.
(Hear, hear.) I refer now to what is the principal part of
the whole mai ter, that when the exemption was first granted
the state of the case was very different. At that time the
State undertook no direct expenditure tor education—one of
Ithe main objects of endowed charities. The State under-

took no direct expenditure for the poor—another main pur-
pose of these endowed charities. Far less did the State

undertake any expenditure on account of charities them-
selves. How stands the case now ? The votes which are
submitted to this house for the present year for those gur-

poses include—for educai ion, £1,111,000 ; for the Poor• Law
oard, £227,000 ; for Universities, £35,000 ; and for these
charities themselves a little item of £lB,OOO a-year. So that
the public are now called upon, not only to have the pro-
perty of these charities maintained and improved at the cost
of these gene. al taxes, without contributing a farthing, but
are called upon to provide the expenses of a board, secre-
taries, clerks, and a considerable establishment, in order to
manage charities of this description. There are other
points upon which Ido not intend to dwell. One is, that

it being hardly possible to construe the law, it is obliged to
be administered roughly and hand-over-head, as it canbest

be done. The opinions of law officers come to throw great
doubt upon any exemption. If a person leave property for
the benefit of the poor of his parish, one would suppose that
that is charity. But, no ; that is nut charity, because it goes in

aid of the poor•rate. An infinity of questions of the most
perplexed kind arise, and the difficulty in the execution of
the law is beyond anything that can be conceived. I have
spcken of the £lB,OOO a year for the maintenance of the
Charity ( ommission, It is a very useful and beneficial ex-

penditure. But, over and above that, the revenue depart-
ment is at a great expense for the pureose of endeavouring
to administer this law. The complexity and minuteness of
the claims are indescribable. A single institution has pro-
perty in 40 or 50, and sometimes in 100 different parishes,
and on each of those properties are charged jlittle bequests
and little payments, into the investigation of which it is
impossible to enter with the view of ascertaining whether
they are for the purposes of charity or not. Therefore, upon
the sound general ground that all property ought to contri-
bute to those taxes, which, if they are justly paid, are not a
penalty on property, but are the means of keeping property
available for the enjoyment of the owner, upon the ground
of the altered practice of the State, and upon the ground of
the difficulty and confusion of administering the law as it at
present stands, we propose that that exemption shall cease
to exist. At the same time there are certain provisions
which it is necessary to keep alive. Part of the exemption
refers to buildings belonging to hospitals, colleges, and cha-
rities of various descriptions. We do not propose to take
away that part of the exemption, and simply on the practical
ground that having in view the simplification of the law we
should not assist our object, as it would be extremely diffi-
cult to arrive at a principle upon which the buildings aad
their sites could be valued. We propose also to continue
the exemption for the repairs of places of Divine worship.
With regard to what are termed voluntary subscriptions,
they stand on a totally different footing. No person will
le assessed in respect of them. The property of endowed
charities will be taxed by being taxed at its source, but all
incomes from voluntary subscriptions comes from persons
who have paid the tax already, and it will remain as now
unaffected by this change in the law. Another reserva-
tion justice requires us to make, and it is thus. Where
there is an individual whose income is under £lOO, and who
receives a portion of that income from charity, he shall in
no case be liable to any abatement. If we were to refuse to
return him the tax, which otherwise we should be obliged
to do, we should place him in a worse position in derogation
of rights acquired anterior to the passing of the enactment
which we now propose, and therefore a provision is made to
secure him the same amount of income. (Hear.) This is a
matter of detail, but I am anxious to state completely what
the change will be. (Hear.) I might detain the committee
longer in dealing with this subject, inasmuch as it is one on
which there is a good deal of perplexity involved. I, how-
ever, now omit many points connected with it, to which I
may take an opportunity of adverting on some future occa-
sion. We do not, I may add, precisely know the exact
financial importance of this question ; but this we do know,
that we retain taxes on £2,500,000 of property. We like-
wise know that a very large amount of property in the coun-
try is discharged from assessment altogether, and that has
been done as a mode of meeting the hopeless difficulties of
the case. But it is very probable—indeed, it is almost cer-
tain—that much of this property has passed from charities
into the hands of private individuals, who now pay no tax
upon. it. In fact, we have completely lost sight of a consider-
able portion of it. But the tax, as estimated, is over £lOO,OOO
a year, and the removal of the exemption would bring it
down to £75,000, which is all that will come into the cof-
fers of the State in the present year. The minor changes I
mentioned bring in about £58,000 a year; these, together
with others which were suggested for the amendment
of our fiscal system, amount to £133,000 a year, which
added to a surplus of £3,741,300, makes it £3,874,000
(Hear, hear.) Then comes the question of the manner in
which we are to dispose of that surplus. (Cheers.) The
first subject which I have to mention is one to which I can-
not allude without a pang to my self-love. I refer to the
penny charge on goods brought inward, which is sometimes
called a petty and sometimes asmall charge, and which was
proposed in 1860. It was originally proposed in the belief on
the part of the Government that it would be levied without
entailing any delay in the course of trade, or opposing to the
progress of trade any practical obstacle or hindrance. That
expectation has, lam bound to say, broken down. The
proposal was maintained for the purpose of getting the
money which was required at the moment. But, although I
think the state of the trade of the country amply shows
that the imposition of the charge amounts to no capital
grievance, yet a good deal of inconvenience does attend the
levying of the tax, It is liable to all the objections which
attach to droits de balances, or, as we call them, nominal
duties, and we have now, I am happy to say, arrived at a
condition of the revenue which enables us to dispense with
this particular duty. I therefore propose that after the Ist
of next July, this penny charge inwards should cease and
determine. Alongside this there runs another charge, one
of ls. 6d. en bills of lading outwards. The operation of
the two is, however, very different. There is no delay or

obstruction connected with the levy of the ls. 6d. duty.
It was imposed mainly with the view to statistical ob.
jects. A committee of this house, presided over by my
hon. friend the member for Honiton, having examined into
the matter, reported that in their opinion there were no
important statistical advantages to be derived from its im-
position, and the necessary statistical information could be
obtained without it. Now, having assented to the reference
of the question to that committee, the revenue derived from
the duty not being very important, and certain merchants
in this country, who are themselves most interested in
securing good statistics, and whose authority is entitled to
considerable weight, having stated it to be their opinion
' that the tax was unnecessary for that purpose, we thought
it better to deal with it in the same manner as the penny
inward duty. We therefore propose that this ls. 6d. duty
shall disappear from the same date. The total revenue re-
ceived from these charges amounts to £191,600, and as that
revenue will cease on the Ist of July we shall have the
charge for nine months, or £142,000, to deduct from the
surplus which I have stated. There have been times, in
ancient nations, at all eN ents, when it was considered not
only warrantable but highly laudable for parents to bring
their own children to the scaffold or the axe. I now find
myself in that predicament. (A laugh.) I offer up these
children of mine with the greatest cheerfulness and good
humour, as far as I am concerned, on the altar of the corn.
merce of my country.
(Laughter.) The next subject
n 1
time which I have to submit to the notice of the committee is one
ttofown.hic
Ith Ii 8 foefelgvreearyteranmsaigounifustode draw its favourable
than
the
have just mentioned; but it is not at the same of such
magnitude as to dispose of a very large
a mattersabl
whicheatten-
tion. t e
portion of
the
surplus at our command. It relates to what may be called
the minor incomes now liable to the income tax, and I
must remind the committee of the course with respect to
it which has been taken by the legislature. When Mr.
1 Pitt first introduced the income tax, £6O was the limit
of the incomes to which the tax began to attach. But it
began to attach in a form so very mitigated as to be
of very little financial value, and I should be sorry to
be the man to return to such a provision in the
construction or rather reconstruction of the tax. Mr.
Pitt fixed the limit upwards at £2OO, and it was only
on incomes at and above that amount that the full force of
the tax fell. A very complicated series of arithmetical
tables of deductions was submitted by him to Parliament
which provided that the deductions should grow larger and
larger as the incomes became less and less down to the point
fixed. I have cited the authority of Mr. Pitt simply to
show that in his view, and in the view of the Parliament of
that day, £2OO censtititted the limit at which the full opera-
tion of the tax ought to begin to attach. It is undoubtedly i
true that since the time of Mr. Pitt the wealth of the country-
has enormously increased, and with that enormous increase
in wealth the relative value of a given pecuniary income has
become diminished by many pounds sterling. An income
of £2OO a-year at the present day gives less consequence to
a man, and less social standing than it did in the time of
Mr. Pitt; and an important part of the proposal I am about
to make is, that we should fix £2OO a year as the limit below
which some deduction or tavour in some form should attach