The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-05 00:00:00

were crowded, the question was then put from the chair,

when,
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER said,—This
debate having be n brought to a close, we have further
means of ascertaining the opinion of the committee upon the
proposal submitted to them. It was certainly not the in-
tention of the Government to press this as a merely official
proposal on the part of the Executive upon the notice of the
house, unless the house itself showed a disposition to receive
it. Our opinions upon it are fixed and clear ; but as the
debate has come to a close without any independent member
having declared himself in the same sense, I am bound to
say that I think the case has arisen which I contemplated
earlier in the evening, and that it would not be consistent if
we were to take the sense of the committee upon the clause,
(Loud Opposition cheers.)
Mr. DISRAELI—I must say that the announcement
which has just been made appears to me a very rational de-
termination. (Cheers and laughter.) At the same time, I
never heard an announcement for which I was less prepared
than by the speech of the right hon. gentleman in which this
proposition was introduced. (Hear.) I should not have risen
to make any remark after the last observations of the
right hon. gentleman had they not been preceded by a
speech which appears to me to have introduced to the con-
sideration of the house principles so dangerous—(bear,
hear)—l would even say so monstrous—(hear, hear)—that
think it hardly becomes the house, after having heard such
an address from the Government, to allow the debate to
close in silence without attempting to obtain some evidence
that the opinions which have been advocated to-night by
the Chancellor of the Exchequer are at least shared by his
colleagues, and especially by the First Minister of the
Crown, (Hear, hear, and a laugh.) The speech of the
right hon. gentleman was at once answered by my hon.
friend (Sir S. Northcote) with a thorough knowledge of the
subject, and touching, as I thought, with a master hand
those glittering fallacies which had been introduced with
such confidence to the attention of the house. (Hear,
hear.) Tho debate went on. No one rose on the part of
the Government to answer the objections which had been
made to the proposal of the right hon. gentleman, and
I think it was due to him, due to the house, and to the
character of the Government that some answer should have
been made to the objections urged to a proposition brought
forward in a tone of so much confidence,—l will not say of
so much dictation. Sir, under ordinary circumstances,
when the Government had withdrawn a measure put for-
ward with so much parade I should willingly have remained
silent. But here occasion was taken to circulate principles
of policy to which the Government may recur upon sub-
sequent occasions, as if those principles had received some
sanction from the silence of the house ; and the opinions
which have been promulgated by the right hon. gentleman
to-night appear to me to be such as should not be allowed
to pass unnoticed. (Hear, hear.) Some short time ago the
right Eton. gentleman introduced his general financial state-
ment, and when. I listened to it I was extremely anxious
that it should pass, as to its main features, without any
organized opposition, for I felt confident that in the course
of the discussion which would arise the objectionable parts
in it would disappear and be withdrawn, without
being painfully obtruded upon the attention of the house.
For such a result I was anxious for the honour of the House
of Commons, because the budget of the right hon. gentleman
in its main features was the budget of the House of Com-
mons, Last year the house was called upon—never mind
who called upon it for the decision; let us not stop now to
consider on what aide of the house he may sit—was called
upon to decide whether it was not expedient in the state of
our finances to counsel the Government to make a consider-
able reduction in the public expenditure, seeing that by that
reduction alone could the requisite relief in taxation be ob-
tained. (Hear.) We were then told that reduction of expen-
diture to any considerable amount was perfectly illusory,
that no one could venture to touch the great sources of ex-
penditure in the army and navy, and that the man was guilty
of subserviency and servility to France who could for a mo-
ment, in however moderate a tone, intimate the wisdom, the
policy, and the possibility of such a course. This session
has brought forward a very different view of public affairs.
Economy is possible. It is not subserviency or servility to
France to obtain by the most salutary and legitimate means
a reduction of the public burdens. And I say that for the
great measures of reduction brought forward by the Govern-
ment we are indebted to the House of Commons, and not to
the Government ; that it is the House of Commons which
has reduced the tea duty and the income tax, and that in
those main features it is the budget of the House of Com-
mons. (Hear.) Sir, I regretted to find that along with
these some remarkable features of eccentric invention were
again introduced by the right hon, gentleman, as if to vin-
dicate his title to financial originality, and renew his claims
to the wonder and gratitude of an admiring Parliament.
(Hear, and laughter.) I was very much interested in op-
posing the tax upon carriers, for I could realise, with many
other members, especially those on this side of the house,
the amount of ingenious vexation which that extraordinary
device would certainly have secured. (Hear, and laughter.)
That tax, however, disappeared before the order of
battle could be formed. (Hear, hear.) Then there was
the plan for taxing clubs. After listening to the bewilder.
ing rhetoric of the right hon. gentleman I hardly know
whether it has passed ; but if it is any consolation to him to
feel that though defeated by the charities he has at last been
a conqueror of the clubs, he may cherish that consolation
this evening. (Laughter.) It is possible that before our la-
bours terminate that eccentricity may also disappear from
the budget of the House of Commons. (Hear, hear.) But
to-night our attention was called to an invention of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer which was of a much more
serious character than those just referred to. This is ano-
ther unnecessary novelty in our finance—one in itself ob-
jectionable, but still more objectionable from the manner in
which it has been introduced, and the principles with
which in discussion it has been associated by the Govern-
ment. (Cheers.) Now, to-night, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer called on us to tax the charities of the country ;
and he would have been perfectly justified in making
that appeal if he could have established a case which
would have recommended itself to our consideration.
(Hear, hear.) I am quite sure that if the principles on
which he recommended that course were such as would have
satisfied our reason, no sentimental objections would have
prevented the House of Commons from responding to his
appeal. But he laid down a principle which is the basis of
all the injudicious arguments which he has treated us to this
evening. This principle is, that the charities which are
exempted from taxation may be looked upon as donatives of
the btate. That was the basis of the entire of the eloquent
harangue to which fur two hours we listened with so much
pleasure and with much more surprise. (A laugh.) What-
ever train of reasoning, whatever novelty of argument,
whatever new conception the right hon. gentleman ad-
vanced, that may be taken as the fundamental principle
of his policy and his harangue—a principle which I say is
utterly false in its premises, and equally fallacious in
its consequences. (Hear, hear.) The Chancellor of the
Exchequer assumes that exemption from taxation is the
same as a contribution by the State of an equivalent
amount of money to the person or the property. (Hear.) Is
that so ? I deny it. (Hear.) You may have an injudicious
and unjust exemption, as unquestionably you may have an
injudicious and unjust tax ; but an exemption, if founded
on justice, is founded on the assumption that you have esta.
blished your claim. On that principle you ought not to be
liable to the tax, and the exemption is a just one. That
exemption is not a privilege—it is a right. (Cheers, and a
cry of hear.) An hon. gentleman says "Hear," as if the
onus pa obandi was upon me to show that this exemption is a
just one. But we have not got as far as that. The argu-
ment of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is founded on
what he deems the abstract truth that any exemption is a
donation from the State. I deny the principle which is
advanced. I say we have wright to assume that the exemp-
tion is founded on justice, and that there is nothing in the
abstract assumption which for a moment justifies the posi-
tion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in making it the
foundation of an attack upon our charities. It is for the
House of Commons to decide whether they believe the
claim of these charities to be exempted from taxation is just
in itself. (Hear, hear,) That is an entirely different pro-
position from that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—
namely, that exemption is a contribution to the person or
property. What we have to decide to-night is whether the
exemption enjoyed by those charities is sound in principle
or not. (Hear, hear.) Having laid down that principle,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer proceeded, in a strain of
argument, or I should rather say invective, against the in-
stitutions which enjoy the exemption. The greater part of
his speech was directed not against the intolerable state of
affairs which allowed a large portion of property to be un-
justly exempted from the incidents of taxation, but was an in-
vective against the very nature of this property, against the
very conditions on which it existed, against the principle
which has called it into existence, against the practices and
traditions of an ancient country. (Cheers). The right hon.
gentleman, proceeding always in that line, and weakened
and embarrassed, in spite of all his ingenuity, by the false
course on Which he had started, was obliged to misdescribe
the character of the income tax itself. He argued through-
out that it was a tax on property, while, if there be anything
clear, anything universally acknowledged in finance—and
this I think my hon. friend the member for Stamford put
lefore the house in a conclusive manner—it is that the in-
come tax is a tax on persons, and not on property. Being a
tax on persons, we naturally ask why are those persons who
are not in the enjoyment of the amount of income at which,
under your ordinary regulations, the tax commences--
why are they to be liable to this impost, while others
enjoying the tame or a larger income are free? The
answer is, because the Chancellor of the Exchequer
chooses to entertain views of those endowments different
from those which have always influenced Parliament for at
least the last century and a half, and opposed to the opinions
and convictions of the country. (Cheers.) And what is the
remedy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer for all those
evils—for all that vicious principle which is the foundation
of the endowments of England, for all that mismanagement,
for all that impolitic state of affairs which he denounces
with so much power ? What is his remedy for the enor-
mous imperfections in the old bequests—from the evils in
those petty charities which he has called forth from their
obscure existence—for the abuses connected with those mag-
nificent endowments for hospitals and colleges which have
contributed so much to the promotion of education and the
development of benevolence in this country ? (Hear, hear.)
Why, it is the application of the income-tax. (Hear,
hear, and a laugh.) The condition of our charities has