The Sun.
London, England, 1848-02-25 00:00:00

Mr. HUIIE insisted that no chart ought to be
allowed to be published until it had been passed by
the Admiralty, and hoped Government would take
up this subject without waiting to have it fc'rced upon
them by the House. Allusion had been m ade to the
fate of the Great Britain, and he could assure
the House that several of the charts taken. ,out by that
vessel were discovered after she met with, her unfor-
tunate accident to be most defective.

Mr. WYLD said, an immense amormt of public
money had been spent in surveys conducted under
the direction of the Admiralty, but these surveys
were almost worse than useless to the public, on
account of the trifling amounts that were spent in
publishing the results of the surveys.
Mr. COWPER was glad the Hon. Member for
Bodmin had called the attention of the House to the
loss the public sustained through the not -publication
of the charts prepared by the officers of tht, Admiralty,
and he trusted when the estimates which related to
this subject came under discussion, the lion. Member
would repeat the observations he had just made.
Until this evening he hail never heard anything
uttered against the judgment of the Hydrographer of
the Admiralty, but the character of that officer, both
in a public and a professional point of view, was held
in so much estimation that it was hardly necessary for
him to answer the aspersions that had been thrown
out against him. The Hydrographer, holvever, was
fully prepared to justify the opinion he had expressed
upon the subject of the best route open to steam-
vessels going to Australia, and there was, therefore,
no objection to laying tn the table of the House the
papers which the Hon. Member had moved for.
After a few words from Mr. DIVETT, the motion
was agreed to.

THE WINDOW DUTIES.
Lord DUNCAN presented a petition from up-
wards of 5,000 persons, inhabitants of Bath, includ-
ing the mayor, most of the magistrates, and members
of the town council, praying for the immediate and
total repeal of the window-tax ; also, similar petitions
from owners and occupiers of houses imhabib3d by the
working and middle classes iu Sunderland, and iu the
borough of Bury, in Lancashire.
Sir B. HALL presented a petition from Maryle-
bone to the same effect.

Lord DUNCAN said that, in rising to propose the
motion of which he had given notice, he: was well
aware of the objections and difficulties which might
be made to this or to any other motion for a reduction
of taxation, more especially at the present crisis. He
would own that he was in hopes that he should have
been anticipated by the Noble Lord (J. Russell), or
by his Right Hon. Friend the Chancellor -of the Ex-
chequer in the motion, because when he consiclered•that
in a time of peace the budget, of which they had heard
so much, proposed an augmentation of the property-
tax, he should have expected that it would have been
put forward as a substitute for one which pressed
most grievously on
,the labouring classes of this
country. He had been told that this was not the
time to bring forward the present motion, but he bad
always observed that the unsuitable character of the
time was always made the pretext for opposition by
those who did not wish it to be brought forward at
any time whatever. On the last occasion when the
question was mooted he had moved for a Committee
of inquiry, but that motion was defeated, and he now
therefore moved for a total repeal of the-window-tax.
On looking over the taxation of the country, he
thought he had found a substitute for this tax, and it
was on this account that he had been induced to come
forward as speedily as possible and lay the whole
question before the Chancellor of the Exchequer
for his consideration. It was made a great boast
that out of 3,500,000 houses in Great Britain
less thon 500,000 paid the window-tax. The
reason why so many houses were exempt was,
that the windows of a great number were reduced to
seven windows only. He had received a letter from
a very great authority, which he recommended to the .-
consideration of his Noble Friend the Chief Commis-
sioner of Woeds and Forests, and in which the
writer said that no plan of sanitary reform would be
complete till the window-tax was abolished. He had
also received a similar letter from Mr. Byers, the
chairman of the Carpenters' Society in Lo adon and
a very extensive builder. Mr. Byers stated . that in
the poorer description of houses the washhouees and
privhs were entirely without ventilation, from the
operation of the window-tax, and that in Compton-
street he had been employed to stop up no less than
five windows in almost every house in the street. The
history of the house duty and window tax was worth
the attention of the House. In 1695, in the reign of
William the Third, the first Act was passed for
levying duties on inhabited houses in Great Britain.
The
,duty on each house was only 2s. but there
was a duty of 4s. on houses having 10 windows
and a duty of Bs. on houses with 20 windows. That
tax was considerably increased in the time of Queen
Anne and in the time of George 11. In 1747, Mr.
Pelham got an Act passed by which houses• and win-
dows were taxed separately. In 1784 Mr. Pitt passed
his famous Commutation Act, which greatly increased
the window duty, and in 1797 he found it necessary
to increase the tax upon houses. In 1802 and 1808
two more Acts vvei e passed, which augmented the
duties on windows, and in 1822 Sir John Hobhouse,
the:i Member for Westminster, brought forward a
motion very similar to that which he (Lord Duncan)
had now laid on the table. Sir John Hobhouse was
told that it was absolutely impossible to repeal the
window-tax, but so strong was the opinion of the
people on the subject that in the year following Mr.
Robinson, at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer,
found it necessary to reduce the window-tax one-half:
In 1834, when Lord Althorp repealed the house-tax,
he passed also another Act, to which he should beg
leave to call the attention of the House. In that Act
Lord Althorp inserted a clause, in which it was
stated that persons then duly assessed should have
power to open as many windows as they pleased. A
great number of persons took advantage of that pro- '
vision, and accordingly opened a very great number
of windows. Unfortunately, in 1840, there was,
vault was found to be the case at present, a deficiency
in the revenue, and Mr. Baring, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, passed another Act, laying an addi-
tional 10 per cent. on the assessed taxes; and, at the
same time he had recourse to what is called a re-
assessment. It would be found, on comparing the
year ending April, 1840, which was previous to Mr.'
13aring's Act, with the year ending April, 1841, that
in 1841 there were 450,913 houses paying 1,613,3081.
to be set against 394,036 houses in 1840, paying
1,350,930/. ' • thus showing an increase of 56,877
houses, and of 262,3781. additional taxation. Not- j
withstanding, however, the increase of population
which was going on, the window-tax immediately
afterwards fell off, as the people had recourse to the
expedient of blockading their windows. The number
of houses assessed gradually decreased from 450,913
in 1841 to 447,383 in 1844. But the most striking
future in this part of the case was the diminution
which had taken place within the same period in the
number of houses having eight or nine windows. In
1841 the total number of houses having eight win-
dows was 62,898, while in 1844 they had dwindled
down to 55,692. Again, in 1841, the number of
houses with nine windows was 54,241 ; and, in 1844,
this number had decreased to 53,781, showing a total
decrease in the lowest class of houses assessed to the
window-tax of 7,296 houses. The mistake made by
financiers was that windows were taken to be a criterion
of the value of a man's house ; though they might as
well take the number of buttons on his coat as a cri-
terion of the value of what was in his pocket. There
was another point to which he wished to call the
attention of the House, and thai was, the inequality
of the assessment. In Berwick-street and in Poland-
street, Soho, no one house was rated at 2001. a year,
and most of the houses in them at 301., 40/., and 501-;
yet these two streets paid 898 t. window-duty, while
in St. James's- square, where there was no house
rated under 1001. a year, and many houses were
rated at 500/., and even 1,0001., only contributed 6891-
to the window-duty. Berkeley-square paid but 7121-•
and Grosvenor-square 983/. It would be found,
therefore, that houses with a rental of 30/. or 401.
a year, paid 80 or 40 per cent. in addition in the shape
of window-duty, while many houses, occupied by'
richer people, only paid in the proportion of 4 or 6
per cent. upon the rental. Mr. Porter's table showed
' that the houses under 15 windows paid 544,000/-1
one-third of the total amount of the duty; those
under 20 windows 854,000/., one-half of the duty;
those under 24 windows 1,028,0001.; and those
under 35 windows 1,500,0001., two-thirds of the duty,
leaving 147,0001. to be contributed by large houses.
Now, upon looking at a little book which he held in
his hand, called the Assessor's Warrant and lnstrac'
tions, the first thing that struck one was the number
of exemptions from the duty. In the first place, Ire-
land was exempted altogether—(Hear, hear)—and if
the Right Hon. Gentleman would allow him, be
would tell him why. Mr. Robinson stated in 1821
that:the impoverished inhabitants of Ireland, in order
to avoid the window-tax, had resorted to the miser-
able expedient of stopping up the apertures in their
houses, and had thus made their houses dark and up'
wholesome ; but he added that such was not the case
in this country. He (Lord Duncan) had already
shown, however, that this process was going on to A
considerable extent even in England. IVell, the next
exemption was for all public offices, and therefore the
gentlemen who enjoyed themselves in public
offices might open as many windows et
they pleased. The next exemption was in favour of
all occupying tenants of farms at a rent under 201- a"
year; an exemption confined to country districts
only. Then, Lord Althorp, an agricultural Chancel-
lor of the Exchequer, brought in an Act which ex-
empted windows in dairies and cheese-rooms. Next
windows in shops and factories were exempted, and
of course there was also an exemption in favour of the
law and the church. He found that chambers in the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and 111
Lincoln's Inn, were to be charged as separate dwell-
ing houses, and consequently they would not be
liable to window-duty, unless they had more tball