The Sun.
London, England, 1848-02-19 00:00:00

THE BUDGET.

On the motion of the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHE-
Q,SER, the House then went into a Committee of Supply.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER having
then, pro forma, moved a vote of eight millions,

Lord JOHN RUSSELL rose to make the annual fi-
nancial statement. He said—l feel my strength so
unequal to perform adequately the important task I have
undertaken, that I believe I shall best discharge that
duty by laying before the House an outline of the finan-
cial policy of the country, leaving to future discussion
the greater part of the arguments which may be required
to enforce that policy, and to recommend the conclusions
which I shall propose to the Committee to adopt. I
shall, therefore, proceed at once by reminding the Com-
mittee that the year which has passed over our heads, or
I should perhaps rather say the last eighteen months,
have been a period which, except in cases of foreign war
and domestic insurrection, have been without a parallel
I think I may say in the history of this country.—(Hear,
hear.) The changes, the vicissitudes of prices, the difficul-
ties of commerce, the panic which more than once has pre-
vailed, the extreme physical distress of one portion of the
United Kingdom, and the extraordinary efforts made to
relieve that distress, have altogether affected the condi-
tion of this country to a degree wholly unprecedented
in its annals. (Hear.) , To give merely a notion of
these vicissitudes I will refer to the changes in prices of
wheat, to the changes in the rate of commercial discount
at the Bank of Eegland, and to the changes in the
amount of bullion'
_held by that establishment. In the
first week of September, 1846, the average price of
wheat was 495.; iu January, 1847, the average price was
705.; in the week ending May 29, 1847, it was 1035.3 d.;
on the Bth of September following, it had fallen to
495. 6d., being only sixpence difference between it and
the avi rage price in the previous September, but more
than one hundred per cent. difference from the price
which ruled in the preceding May. The rate of dis-
count—the lowest allowed at the Bank—was in No-
vember, 1846, 3 per cent.; in April, 1847, it was raised
to 5 per cent.; in October, 1847, the lowest rate of in-
terest charged by the Bank was 8 per cent. ; and in
January, 1848, it was again 4 per cent. The amount of
bullion held by the Bank on the 10th of October, 1846,
was 15,787,3501. ; in October, 1847, it was only
7,865,4451., and again on sth February, 1848, it was
13,821,854 Z Now, lam referring to these changes, not
with the view, at present, of speaking either of the
causes which may have produced them, or of the reme-
dies which, from time to time, have been proposed in
Parliament for some of the more aggravated symptoms
of these calamities; I refer to them merely for the pur-
pose of showing to the House how great the changes in
cur position have been, and how much suck changes
mast have affected the revenue of the country. It is
obvious, in the first place, that there could not have
been such great vicissitudes in the price of corn, without
very much affecting the consumption of exciseable
goods, both by the agricultural and by the commercial
classes.—(Hear, hear.) This, likewise, is shown by
another return, exhibiting the number of hands em-
ployed et Manchester, at full time and at short time, and
unemployed, at the different periods to which I have
referred. On the 16th of February, 1847, the number
of hands employed, full time, was 21,698 ; on the
2d of November, the number had fallen to 14,861;
on the Bth of February, 1848, the number had
risen to 32,146. The number of hands employed
short time was, on the 16th of February, 1847,
13,404 ; on the second of November, 1847, 16,578 ; on
the Bth of February, 1848, 4,901. The number of
hands unemployed was, on the 16th of February, 5,600 ;
on 2d November it had risen to the enormous extent of
11,616 ; on the Bth of February, 1848, it had fallen to
7,500. I think the House will be of opinion that it was
impossible for such changes to take place, for such dis-
tress to be felt, and for the revenue from excise duties
not to be very much affected by such a state of things.—
(Hear, hear.) The commercial vicissitudes to which I
have referred must: also have affected the customs' re-
ceipts to a very considerable extent. When in April,
and again in October, 1847, there was so wide-spread
and 80 great discredit—a discredit amounting to panic
—that no man was sure what bills he could take up,
and the greatest commercial houses, even though not
in actual danger of stopping, were at least
compelled to undergo the greatest privations, it was
inevitable that there must be most extreme embarrass-
ments in trade, and that merchants would countermand,
as they did countermand, orders they had given to
foreign merchants, and would require payment to be
made to them in bullion, or other shape, other than
goods; and the equally inevitable result of this would
be that the trade of the country would be materially
paralyzed, and that the revenue would suffer severely,
as it had suffered.—(Hear, hear.) I will allude here to
a statement of Mr. Huskisson, in July, 1817, after the
country had suffered from the misfortune of a defi-
cient harvest, and there had been a coisequent defi-
ciency in the revenue. " The falling off of 10 per cent.
in a revenue of fifty millions," said the Right Hon.
Gentleman, " is not to be wondered at, when we con-
sider the scarcity of provisions and the want of full
employment for the people;" so that the Right Hon.
Gentleman regarded a deficiency of 10 per cent. in a
revenue of fifty millions as a deficiency at which no
man could be surprised, under the circumstances.
Having thus stated this general case, to the details of
which I will not further allude, because every Hon.
Gentleman in the House must have fully in his memory
the state of alarm which at different times prevailed,
and the discussions which have already taken place
here on the subject, having, I say, stated thus much,
I will now go on to state that which I think is due to the
present Government to state, especially after the gross
misapprehensions which have been spread abroad. The
Right Hon. Gentleman who held the office of Chancellor
of the Exchequer in the late administration, made, be-
fore he went out of office, a statement marked by the
ability and plainness which usually characterised his
financial explanations, a statement of course, applying
only to the year of which he was speaking, the Right
lion. Gentleman manifestly not taking into his estimate
for that year the sums which would naturally fall under
the next year, which sums happened tops() very consider-
able. In the first place, with reference to some of the
military estimates, the Right Hon. Gentleman only took
three-fourths of the year, owing to certain changes in the
mode of keeping the particular accounts ; and,
in the next place, there were several sums
voted which were considered as compensations
for the change in the corn-laws, and of which the
burden did not fall on that year. In the following
year—that is, last year, there was an increase in the
estimates, as compared with the year 1846-7, of
932,7001. ; but then the services unprovided for in
1846 7, and which fell upon 1847-8, involved a charge
of 628,500/., so that the actual increase in the estimates
of last year was not 932,7001., but only 304,2001. The
present Government, in the year before last, made an
alteration in the sugar duties, the result of which had
been a very great increase in the revenue derived from
those sugar duties. In 1845, the revenue derived from
the sugar duties was 3,574,000/. ; in 1846, 3,€73,000/. ;
and in 1847, 4,414,000 L, exhibiting an increase, as com-
pared with 1845, of, in round numbers, 840,0001., and,
as comparred with 1846, of 541,7801.—(Hear, hear.)
Thus, under the head of the sugar duties, did the revenue
increase concurrently with diminished impost upon