The Sun.
London, England, 1853-06-14 00:00:00

VESSELS SPOKEN WITH.

The Queen of the South (s), March 31, lat. 28 S., long.
48 E.

The Try Again (American barque), standing to S. and
E., April 13, lat. 34 S., long. 16 E.
The Annie Worrall, Liverpool to Callao, May 8, lat.
5 N., long. 22 W.
The Queen, Pernambuco to the Clyde, Juno 1, lat. 45
N., long. 20 W.
A Dutch barque, Calcutta to Cowes, June 3, lat. 45 N.,
long. 18 W.
A Danish brigantine, standing to the eastward, showing
private signal, white field with a red border Y 62 in the
middle, aso a small square of red with black stripes in
the upper inner corner, June 5, lat. 46 N., long. 14 W.
The Nymph, Arracan to Falmouth, same day, by the
Adelaide Tremearne, off the Wight.
The Ada, Algoa, Bay to London, April 25, lat. 13 S.,
long. 9 W.
The Unicorn, for Melbourne, May 4, lat. 4 N., long.
23 W.
The Antoinette Maria, Batavia to Rotterdam, May 8,
lat. 7 N., long. 25 W.
The Lord Hardinge, London to Bombay, June 5, lat. 47
N.. long. 10 W., by the Jane Ewing, Dallass, arrived off
Dungeness.
The Washington (s), of Liverpool, bound westward,
May 29, IM, 40 kos, 27 W.

erty because that was sufficiently done ors the face of
prep • •
el-lir families
2 remind hon. gentlemen opposite that
• eurch interested, in this
ttilLeybald;.tnhoerirliefaeumi"hlies were as ...
measure as hon. gentlemen on that side one „,d
(Hear, hear, from the Ministerial benches.) -wee
assume that a younger child, having a portion on an estate,
had several years before settled that portion by deeds on
which heavy stamp duties had been paid; the tonantior
life being' still alive. Up to this time such a poi dim
would be free from duty; whereas this •ex post.fac,o law
would cast on the party the burden of the succession tax.
(Hear.) The right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the •
Exchequer in introducing this measure estimated the pre=
duce of the tax at about 2,000,0001:, stating at the same
time that the burden chargeable on land would be some-
thing like 400,0001. He (Mr. Mullings) estimated the duty
on settled personalty at ],503,0001., and the total produce of
the tax at 3,175,000/. ; this, it should be remembered, in
addition to the duty of 1,300,0001. now derived from the
income tax. (Hear, hear.) He could imagine no possible
case in which land would pay a lee e; rate of duty than
personalty. He believed that 21 y; , and not 30 years,
as calculated by the right. hon. ger.. eman, was the ordi-
nary duration of life. (Hear, hear.) He had tented the
Matter. Having gone through the copyhold descents in
the manors with which he had been concerned, he found
that they did not exceed 20 years. Let them look, again
at the sucoession in the Royal family from 1649 to 1837,
adding twelve years for the deposition of Charles; and
they got two hundred years. How many sovereigns had
there been during that period ? Ten. And ten times
twenty was two hundred.. (Hear.) Let the house con-
sider how it was proposed to get at settled pe •sonalty. No
machinely short of that of the Inquisition would accom-
'plish the object ; nothing else would prevent families from
handing down property among each other,' so as to evade
the succession tax. He believed that in futuro there would
be no trustees or executors. (Hear, hear, from the Oppo-
sition.) Who would place himself in such a position?
By the 47th clause the commissioners were empowered to
,require any accountable party to produce before them or
their officers " all such books and documents in their cus-
tody or control as may be capable of affordiag any neces-
sary information for that purpose, and they make extracts
therefrom and copies thereof, as they shall think necessary
for the purposes of this act." Talk about the Inquisition !
It was nothing to the establishment of a system which
might involve many persons in the loss of their estates.
Nothing could be more unjust than this attempt to stave
off a burden from themselves and cast it on those who
were to succeed them. He believed that the measure
would prove most burdensome ; and that, however popu-
lar it might be at present, ultimately, when its effect be-
came known, the people would say that they had " the
bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill"—(laughter)
—and that before twenty years had elapsed the right hon.,
gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) would be considered one of the
most dangerous and mischievous Chancellors of the Ex-
chequer that the country had ever seen. (Laughter.)
Mr. W. WILLIAMS said he should not have troubled
the house had it not been for some misrepreeentations of
what he had stated on former occasions by the right hon.
baronet opposite (Sir J. Pakington). On the last occasion
when he introduced the subject of the legacy duty, he
pointed out the great inequality and injustice exhibited in
the levying of the tax on personal property. On that oc-
casion he had referred to a return which demonstrated
that the large properties enjoyed the most extraordinary.
exemptions ; and he mainly approved of the measure be-
cause it would, for the future, be an efficient check upon
a faulty system. As regarded the extension to the land,
that was a bagatelle • but it was a great measure so far as
it would compel something like justice in dealing with real
property. The hon. gentleman then proceeded with great
minuteness to comment upon and to dispute the calcula-
tions of the bon. baronet. The hon. baronet talked of
sequestration, end the hon. and learned member for Wey-
mouth talked of considerations of morality, but where was
the morality of a party which had imposed so long such a
tax as the legacy tax, with all its gross inequalities, as it
stood at this 'Dement ? This new tax would, after all, only
be one of per cent. upon the estates of the landholders ;
yet now they actually taxed poor widows 121 per cent.
upon the legacies of their husbands. (Hear, hear.) The
party which maintained the present system was the Pro-
testant party—the church party ; and he should like to
know what Christianity there was in supporting the old
and in objecting to the proposed new system? (Hear, hear.)
Mr. Pitt had slid that this was a tax felt least of all taxes,
because the rum who paid the money had not himself
earned the money ; and he could not Understand upon
what ground the landed interest could pretend there was
an injustice is this partial extension to them of the prin-
ciple of an imeost applied for a long time to the rest of the
community. The land had long been spared from taxation.
Out of the gross taxation of the country (75,000,0001.) the
land only paid 17,000,000/.—(oh, oh)—and he would under-
take to prove that at any time. (Hear, hear.-) He
appealed to the landlords, therefore, for their own sake, not
to follow the eediscreet lead of the hon. baronet. At any
rate he would venture to tell the right hon. gentleman the
Chancellor of the Exchequer that 'n proposing this mea-
sure he had sewn mo le public virtue and public courage
than any statesman of the century*. (Hear, hear.)
Sir J. TROLLOPE represent: I a large mass of small
proprietors, aid ho regretted that the hon. gentleman who
had just sat dwell had talked of the landed interest entirely
as if it was aninterest made up of large properties. He
denied the correctness of the hon. gentleman's calculations
as to what land paid to the gross taxation of the country;
he believed, 01 the contrary, that the land paid more than
its share. }retook the case of small copyholders.
Mr. WILLIAMS—They pay the tax now.
Sir J. TROlLOPE—lncrease taxation on them and they
would have no resource but a mortgage, and that in such
properties was ruin. There were numberless such cases
where this tax would result in what he would call confisca-
tion ; and on bdialf of that hard-working class he demanded
the sympathies of the house. But he objected generally to
this bill as unjust in its incidence. It would depend on
the uncertainties of human life ; and, under it, some pro-
perties would pry ten times over what others paid. He
knew of the case of a noble lord in whose family there had
only been one stecessor since 1756 ; and if that noble lord
lived three years more, there would thus have been only
succession in a cciitury. In another case of a noble family
there had been seven successions in 66 years. This was
therefore a return to the old feudal system, when estates
were held in deputy from the crown. (Hear, hear.) Then
it was the law that a man could not sell an estate when
there was this sat of debt due to the crown, until he had
got the quietus from the crown. He did not complain of
the amount of this proposed taxation; he complained of
its difficulties and its injustice, and the viciousness of the
principle. He also thought that under this bill estates
would come rapidly into the hands of the Court of. Chan-
cery, for he believed men generally would repudiate guar-
dianship of children and such offices of trust, since, until
they had cleared these estates in trust of debts to the crown.
they could not deal freely with their own estates. (Hear.)
With regard to corporations sole, he did not see why they
should escape. (Hear, hear.) No doubt the humbler class
of clergymen inducted into benefices had great expenses to
•meet ; but then there were large as well as small prizes in
the church, and the result of this proposal of exemption in
this respect was, that the bishops had all, in the course of
a debate in the House of Lords, expressed their delight
with the measure. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) This
was simply because the bishops would escape scot free; and
under the circumstances he thought they had given a very
indelicate vote. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) It was well
known that many of the prelates of the church were
receiving three or four times as much as the ecclesiastical
commission or the legislature had sanctioned ; and he
wanted to know whether the country, if it did permit the
exemption proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
would approve of the bishops giving a vote on a matter in
which they were so directly concerned. (Hear, hear, and
great laughter.) Certainly for his own part, his confidence
in the correctness of the principle 'of permitting seats in
the House of Lords to the bishops had been greatly shaken
by what had passed on a recent occasion. In conclusion
the hon. baronet asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer
to look back to the debates of 1796, when, in a great na-
tional emergency, a tax like this being proposed, it had
been rejected ; and he trusted that the House of Com-
mons would have the wisdom and the justice to reject it
again. (Hear, hear.)
Mr. A. PELLATT was there to express the opinions of
his constituents, and his constituents were decidedly in
favour of this Succession Bill; and he should accordingly
vote against this amendment. The opinion of his consti-
tuents was strongly in favour of the budget as a whole.
They objected to certain details--as, for instance, to the
plan for licenses ; but believing that the extension of the
legacy duty was a great and just measure, they had
adopted the budget with acclamation. This had been
called the "poor man's budget," and he thought with a
great deal of justice ; and it was because all the benefit to
•be conferred on the poor man from exemptions and reduc-
tions would be dependent upon -the adoption of the Succes-
sion Bill, that he would vote heaetily against the amend-
ment. Objections had been taken on the other side to
taxing capital, but had they not for fifty years taxed capi-
tal, try making personal property liable to the legacy and
stamp duty. The hon. member :ar Warwickshire said it
was hard that a young man just .ucceeding to his father's
estate should 'be called on to pay a heavy tax, when ho
might be surrounded with difficulties. But was it not
equally hard on a young man in commercial life who suc-
ceeded to his father's business ? He quite agreed with the
hon. baronet, who spoke last, that a corporation sole should
be exeinpt. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer had pro-
posed to limit the exemption to clergymen' having under
2001. a year, then he should have looked to the income tax,
and other modes of taxation, to institute a fair compari-
son, but here it was proposed to entirely exonerate the
bench of bishops. Hon. gentlemen on the other side of the
house had expressed great sympathy with the owners of
small copyhelds and freeholds. In London there was a
great number of them, and he mixed with many, but none
of•them had ever asked him to bring their case before the
house. If hon. gentlemen opposite would be true to their
sympathies with these people, let them do all in their
power to get rid of the copyhold system. A point of ex-
treme value in this budget was that it increased the area
of taxation in the right direction. A large measure of
retrospective justice was due from the landed to the com-
mercial interest for a half a century's exemption from the
legacy and probate duty, the same kind of exemption
winch caused the breaking out of the old French revolu-
tion. The time had arrived when justice and equity was
to bo administered equally to the working, the middle, and
the higher classes.
Sir J. WALSH said there had been an union of parties
to throw out Lord Derby's Government, and it appeared to
him the government had brought forward this proposition
in order to secure the support of the democratic party.
He opposed this measure on principle. He considered that
the grounds on which it had been so o Jen urged by the
hon. member for Lambeth were, not founded on fact. The
supporters of the measure took personal property on the
one hand and real property on the other, and said the
whole onus was thrown on real property. He combated
that position entirely. This measure would not relieve the
owners of personalty, a great many of whom were also the
holders of realty, and they were going to inflict on the
holders of personalty a great wrong, because by deriving a
much larger amount of taxation from the most ob;ection-
able course, they thereby made it enter morn completely
into the system of the taxation of the country, and rendered
it more difficult to repeal it in future. Ho would not enter
into the question so ably treated by the right hon. member
(Sir J. Pakington) regarding the burdens on land, but he
considered that no substantial injustice had been' done to
the owners of personal property, considering the burdens
on real property. Ho thought prbperty had been hardly
dealt with in adjusting taxation, and that the. whole
tendency of legislation of late year 3 had been to
throw taxation on the property of the country, and to re-
lieve other classes, which, to 'a certain extent, was proper
and wise, but there was a limit to everything. The great
cry now was to relieve industry, to set commerce free, and
relieve the labouring classes from taxation—all great
theories in their way ; but the business of Government was
to reconcile conflicting interests and claims. He did not
consider that the circumstances of the country required
them to call on the landowners to make this great and
cruel sacrifide. When the legacy and probate duty were
imposed they were in "the midst of a great war, but now
they were at peace, the revenue was flourishing, the people
prosperous, and there was no reason why the should call
on the laudowp.ero to make Pull a sacrifwe. Re would en"