The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-22 00:00:00

disposal. I think, however, that if we limit our inquiry t
the present year—although as prudent men we ought to-
..

consider what will be the demands of 1861—(hear)—we

shall find nothing consolatory in the prospect before us.
The balance upon an estimated income of £70,000,000 is
only £474,000. Such a surplus cannot inspire confidence in
our financial position; but have we really got it? No such
thing. Even in the short interval which has elapsed betvieen
the opening of the budget and the present time ths't £474,000
has gone after the £2,000,000 of annuities, and has vanished
into thin air. (Hear, hear.) Nor is that all. Ho* is the
balance of £174,000 produced ? It has already passed away,
but aslong as it existed it was created by the most extraor-•
dinary combination of discordant ways of appearing rich
without being so that ever was beheld, either in public Or-
in private life. There is one sum of £1,400,000 which is
made up of payments that would otherwise fall in next year
—(hear)—and which no more belongs to the income of the
present year than do the rents of any of your lordships'
estates for the year 1861 properly form part of your income
in 1860. (Hear, hear.) I thiuk, therefore, you will see that,
instead of a surplus, we have to deal with a deficiency. Dut
is this all? In the case of the China war there has been are
attempt to transfer a charge from the present to the follow-,
ing year—to say nothing about it until the pressure became
irresistible, and to leave your lordships to imagine that no
such charge really existed. I think that I have accurately
ascertained the result of the answers given to the questions
put by noble friend near me (Earl Grey). The native
troops sent to China are to be paid out of the military
chest, but that chest was not provided for this Chinese
war, and cannot properly be applied to the payment of its
expenses, unless Parliament votes a sum to replace that
which is taken from it. if that sum is voted you must place
it in your balance-sheet, and it will make your position
more desperate than it appears to be at present. But that
sum is borrowed without any means of repaying it. Both
the debt and the means of repayment are kept, from your
knowledge; and I say it will be unpardonable if, even at
this period of the session, a vote is not taken with a view
to replacing in the military chest the sums which have been
so advanced from it. No provision is made in the army esti-
mates for the pay of the native troops serving in China;
the vote of. credit granted this year is for the expenses of
the past one. No estimate is presented for the expenses of
the China war during the current year; the army estimates-
cover only part of the expenses of the British force in China
and no part of the expense of the native force, and large
arges under these heads will have to be provided for
hereafter. There is another destruction of that which has
already been destroyed,—this imaginary balance. You have
also had a debt paid. The Spanish Government has been
both sufficiently rich and sufficiently well disposed to pay
its debts; and the sum so received you have carried to the
credit of this balance-sheet. During the progress of the
budget there has been an extra loss upon the wine duties of
£171,C00, and many of the penny duties upon trading ope-
rations have been abandoned, and yet your lordships are
called upon, without a full, clear, and distinct explanation
to show that you are parting with your own money, and
not with that which belongs to others, for whom you are
trustees, to abandon a tax to which there is but slight ob-
jection. Although I may be supposed, from old habit, to
view taxation with a more favourable eye,than can be ex-
pected from those who have not held the disagreeable office
of national tax-gatherer, I am not going to praise either
the paper duty or any other tax. No doubt, it would be
better if you could abolish both that and many other
duties; but you cannot afford it. I remember that Mr.
Hunt, a member of the House of Commons, a man of no
great observation, but of. considerable shrewdness and com-
mon sense, said what was very true, that you could not
raise a large, income like. £70,000,000 sterling without tax-
ing the millions ; you might attempt to substitute direct
taxation in order to relieve the lower class, but you could
not tell how that would influence wages, and thus affect
them. (Hear, hear.) One of the most extraordinary
commendations which has been passed upon this budget
is that you are reducing the subjects of taxation; that you
are about to depend for all the means of meeting the en-
gagements of the country upon, I think, 16 articles. Why,
that augments the danger of your position, by dirainishiiag
your resources 1 It is a practice which is contrary to the
old principle of taxation, and entirely at variance with the
system of Mr. Pitt, than whom, I say it without admiring
his general politics,—there never was with regard to com-
mercial subjects and general views of finance a greater,
wiser, or more successful Minister. It hai up to this time
been admitted by all writers upon the subject that if you
wish to diminish pressure and lessen danger you should in-
crease the service over which that pressure is to extend.
Any other doctrine may be plausible, and may be popular
for a time, but unless it tends to the general security and
credit of the country the poorer classes as well as the richer
will suffer. (Hear, hear.) How, my lords, will you stand
next year ? All this time you have heard nothing as to
that. Suppose that all is right for the present year, how
will you stand in the following one ? I will assume the
estimated income for the present year to be. 570,600,000.
Next year you will lose, as compared with that sum,
£700,000, the proportion of the paper duty _which is paid
this year; and, unless you break your word ante relieving
the people from the war duties on tea and sugar, a further
sum, which, together with that, will amount to £1,500,000.
Then you can't expect to call up a further sum upon the malt
and hop credits. You will have exhausted the whole amount
that you can obtain in that way. Therefore your income
next year will necessarily be £1,400,000 less than that of the
present year. You had also taken into account for this year
one-half of the casual payment received from. Spain. Now,
assuming the expenditure to be the same as that of 1860,
there will be a clear deficiency for the next year of £11,033,000.
I pray your lordships' attention to that fact. But that is not
all. There is a variety of other things which you will have to
provide for. Have we not all heard of ascheme for thenational
defences ? Information on that subject was promised to Par-
liament some time ago, but it has not been produced. We'
ace, therefore, left to conjecture as to the probable cost of
carrying out that scheme ; but the surmise is that it,will
involve an expenditure exceeding 7,000,000 or 8,000,000
sterling. I may be told that sufficient provision _has been
made for this object in the present year ; but that only shows
that a very large sum will be required for what I must pre-
sume is a necessary work in the course of next year. Such,
then, is the condition in which I apprehend you will find
yourselves in 1861; and I put it to the house whether, under
these circumstances, your lordships are warranted in de-
priving the revenue of a capital sum of 36 millions. It has
been said, indeed, that the income from the paper duty can-
not be collected. To that assertion, however, there is this
manifest and triumphant answer, that this tax is the very
best and most economically collected portion of our whole
revenue, and that it is increasing every year. The total
expense of collecting an annual sum of a million and a
quarter is only £6,250. If any noble lord should doubt that
statement, he will find it supported by the authority of Sir
Henry Parnell's commission of inquiry in 1835, which has
already been referred to. The report of that commission
contains returns showing that no greater a reduction than
the sum of £6,250 would be effected in the charge for the
Excise establishment by the repeal of the paper duty. Com-
pare that item with the cost of collecting your Customs'
duties, with the cost of collecting other portions of your Ex-
cise revenue, or even with the cost of collecting your pro-
perty tax, and you will see that you are now asked to part
with the easiest and cheapest collected part of your.entire
system of taxation. I had the honour of myself proposing
the remission of one-half the paper duty, and since thatmea.
sure was adopted the revenue under the reduced tax has in-
creased from £715,600 to £1,400,000. The augmentation
has been steady and continuous, and the exportation of paper
has also rapidly increased. (Hear, hear.) I ask your lord-
ships, then, by agreeing to my amendment, to give the
House of Commons the opportunity of dealing with this
source of taxation next session, when avowedly the whole of
our system of finance must be brought under their review.
Do not, by assent to this bill, let them practically decide
the fate of British finance for years to come by one hasty
and ill-considered vote. I appeal to their own goid
sense to leave this part of the revenue to be discussed
hereafter in connexion with all other branches of the
public income, when it can be seen whether we have the
money to spare for dispensing with this tax, and whether
its repeal would involve smaller loss to the Exchequer,
and afford greater relief to the community than the
remission of any other impost. I do not ask the
House of Commons to surrender any of its valued privileg s.
I do not call upon your lordships to affirm that circum-
stances may not yet arise when it will be expedient to abo-
lish the paper duty ; but 1 hope by our vote to-night we
shall induce the House of Commons to claim for itself what
it ought to claim as a matter, of prudence and sound policy,
viz., an opportunity of wisely and dispassionately consider-
ing the whole question, not of the paper duty only, but of
that duty as contrasted with all the other taxes which press
upon the trade andindustry of the country. My noble friend
referred to the cause of est 'cation, and the advantage which
it would derive from a repeal of the paper duties; but if he
will take any one of the excellent school-books which are
circulated under his administration, and weigh the small
fractional part of the price which the paper duty represents,
he will agree with rue that it can form but a very inconsi-
derable argument for the abolition of the tax under present
circumstances. Under the French treaty we are in this po-
sition—syou have either a prohibition or a prohibitory duty
on the exportation of foreign rags ; and I should like to
know how any reduction of duty without an increased sup-
ply will give a relief to the consumer. It is only when you
can get the power of making more paper that the price will
be diminished in the market. It was not for the noble earl,
then, to use the hackneyed, threadbare, worn-out argument
insisting that the diffusion of knowledge was a reason for
parting with a million and a quarter of revenue. But I have
detained your lordships too long. I have endeavoured to
state the case in no adverse or disagreeable manner to the
Government. The course I have adopted upon this occasion
.is one I have taken every year when I thought any finan-
cial measure objectionable. The noble earl opposite knows
well that on former occasions when he was in the Govern-
ment I objected to some of his financial measures. I have
felt it right, from the position I formerly held, and that
which I now hold, to give some attention to questions of
this kind, and to state my opinions on them, though some-
what distasteful, I fear, to many of your lordships. Ibe g
now, my lords, to move that this bill be read a second time
this day six months. (Hear, hear.)
Lord DUFFERIN said that after anxious inquiry and
duo deliberation he had come to the conclusion that it was