The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-09 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times allows the Chancellor of the gichequer the
triumph of having introduced the most ingenious Budget
of the present century. He had to tell a wretched story,
and, behold I it is triumphant. He had to unfold a dismal
tale of mere equilibrium, painfully secured by attenuat-
ing the balances of the Bank to a degree which was
scandalous if not unsafe, and lo ! there is a
surplus. Men who listened to his faltering periods,
which seemed but too appropriate to a lame
conclusion, asked themselves whether it would be
possible to tide over the present unhappy state of
affairs by borrowing on the strength of our future
resources, or whether it would be necessary to impose new
taxes in order to pay our way, and Mr. Lowe has
astonished them by repealing and reducing taxes in all
directions. We need say no more to prove that the
Budget of this year contained all the elements of dramatic
surprise ; but, without any appearance of design, in the
most natural way in the world, the Chancellor led his
hearers to the very brink of despair, and then
suddenly revealed a way out of all their embarrass-
ments. It is surprising, but it is so. Abyssinia has
been paid for, at a price which would be extravagant as
the purchase money of the country in fee simple, and we
have everything we could desire—more than any of us
dreamt of receiving—in addition. The surplus is £32,000,
not a farthing more, nor less, and yet Mr. Lowe has taken
a penny off the income tax, has abolished -the corn duty
at the cost of £900,000, has abolished the fire insurance
duty, has set free the carrying trade of the conntry, gives
us better cabs, allows us to powder our hair, and to sell
tea without a license, and at the end of all leaves us with
a prospective surplus of £442,000, with which to face the
casualties of the current twelve months.

The Standard believes that one person in the House of
Commons, and perhaps only one, must have been gratified
by the manner in which Mr. Lowe performed the function
that Thursday night for the first time devolved upon him.
Ever since 1860 the House has been accustomed to regard
the Budgets of the Liberal party as an intellectual treat.
To feel assurred that, however little men might like the
substance of the statement, its manner was sure to afford
them that kind of gratification which educated men derive
from a brilliant display of intellectual power and oratorical
skill on a difficult topic ; from seeing dry figures clothed
with life, and interest imparted to the dullest and most
sterile of political themes by sheer force of fancy and of
eloquence. Mr. Gladstone, as he listened to his successor in
office, must have felt that he was in no danger of being
outshone by a rival who seemed to have imitated only the
faults of his financial style ; who bad achieved the prolixity
without the vivacity, the intricacy and minuteness without
the lucidity, of his well-remembered Budget speeches.
AIL Lowe labours under certain personal disadvantages,
to which he alluded with tact and delicacy, and the con-
sequences of which he bore with perfect good humour ;
but these have no connection with the faults of his
speech—with the tedious and minute elaboration of
trifles, the reiteration of unmeaning assurances, and
the total absence of proportion which distinguished it.
In short, for so eminent and able a man, the Budget
speech was a surprising and somewhat inexplicable failure.
The Budget itself could hardly be a very satisfactory
one. Circumstances are very unfavourable to the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer. We have, as Mr. Lowe said, a
revenue which has lost for the nonce its former elasticity;
an ordinary expenditure which has been kept down within
its actual limits only by exertions on the part of the
chiefs of " the two great spending departments," for
which they received full credit from their colleague, and
which may prove to be sound economy or criminal extra-
vagance when we are able fully to appreciate its conse-
quences ; and an extraordinary charge of more than four
millions and a half which, at the end of last session, was
entirely unexpected. Under these conditions no Finance
Minister could accomplish much, nor could the country
expect a Budget of the popular kind.

The Poet declares that the circumstances under which
the new Chancellor of the Exchequer was called upon on
Thursday evening to make his financial statement were
eminently calculated to secure for him that indulgence
which he claimed at the hands of the House of Commons.
The task which a Financial Minister is annually called
upon to discharge is either eminently ungracious or the
very reverse. But, notwithstanding the disheartening
circumstances under which Mr. Lowe rose to unfold his
Budget, the House of Commons was joyfully
surprised at hearing that not only would there be no
additional demands on the patience of the taxpayer,
but that very sensible reductions would be effected
in the present taxes provided a particular modification in
the existing mode of collecting some of them received the
assent of the Legislature. In a word, the House of Com-
mons assembled on Thursday evening with the almost
certain conviction that a deficit would be declared and an
increase of direct, and probably indirect, taxation de-
manded ; but, before the Chancellor of the Exchequer
resumed his seat, his hearers had the satisfaction of
learning that, after all current demands on the national
purse are met, and a considerable diminetion of both
direct and indirect taxation effected, the Chancellor
reckons on a surplus at the end of the financial year of
very nearly half a million of money.

The Herald maintains that Mr. Lowe developed to the
House of Commons on Thursday night a Budget of which
be was not the author. The voice was the voice of Jacob,
but the bands were those of Esau. All the really impor-
tant proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer were
imposed upon him by the Prime Minister. The Budget
is as clearly that of Mr. Gladstone, with its small merits
and its great defects, with its sacrifice of the future to
the present, with its hocus pocus where plain, straight-
forward dealing would have answered better, as any one
of those which the member for Greenwich presented,
whether as a member of the Aberdeen, Palmerston, or
Russell Administrations. Shortly summed up, Mr. Lowe's
proposals amount to this. Particular classes of taxpayers
are to pay something like two years' taxes in the course
of the current year in order that the fire insurance and
corn duties may be repealed ; or, looked at from another
point of view, it may be said of the Budget, that whilst
by adhering to the existing system of taxation the revenue
of the year would pay all its charges, and the deficit of
the previous year too. Mr. Lowe has chosen to enter
upon a hazardous speculation, which, at the best, will
leave him with little larger surplus than he. was assured of
without that speculation, and will not improbably—for
his finely-drawn calculations as to the times of payment
.
under his new system are to prove in many re-
spects erroneous—leave him or his successor the duty of
acknowledging next April a large deficit.
The Daily News congratulates Mr. Lowe upon having i
prepared an agreeable surprise for the country. While t
has been anxiously asking what new taxes would be put
on, he has responded with a long list of taxes to be taken
off. The income tax is to be lowered from 6d. to sd. in
the pound ; the duty of a shilling in the quarter now
imposed on foreign corn is to be removed ; the tax on lire
insurance is to be altogether remitted ; the taxes on loco-
motion are to be greatly reduced ; the tea license is to be
abolished ; and the assessed taxes are to be equalised and
lowered. Detailed criticism on Mr. Lowe's scheme
must be deferred. It does credit to his inventive power
as a financier; and would have made a stronger impression
on the House than it seemed to do, if its very novelty and
boldness had not taken men by surprise, while its magn*l
tude and complexity interfered with the full and clear
apprehension of its scope and details. Mr. Lowe has not
that sustained power of distinct exposition and that
oratorical art which enchains the interest of an audience,
and facilitates the reception of details. If no more
damaging criticism is produced than Mr. Ward Hunt's
suggestion that the gain in the new method of collecting
the income tax and the assessed taxes is only a gain for
one year, while permanent sources of revenue are foregone,
the Budget is not likely to be very much damaged in dis-
cussion. Does Mr. Ward Hunt anticipate an Abyssinian
war every year? Apart from that source of exceptional
expense, Mr. Lowe has a surplus of £4,632,000 at his
disposal.

The Star thinks that the Chancellor of the Exchequer
has produced an ingenious, an original, a beneficent, we
may almost say a magical, Budget. He has found corn in
Egypt, and where all was expected to be impost and exac-
tion, the hungry taxpayers are to be filled with good
things. Instead of adding a penny to the income tax
Mr. Lowe takes one off. Instead of passing by the fire
insurance duty, he entirely repeals it. Mr. Alderman
Lawrence will never again have to plead against the
hackney carriage duties ; they, too, are to be abolished.
The obnoxious shilling duty on corn is also to be num-
bered amongst things that were. And all this is done
without a surplus, at a moment of financial gloom. Mr.
Lowe began his statement by declaring that the situation
was wanting in no element of difficulty and embarrass-
ment. When he ended it the difficulties had been sur-
mounted and the embarrassment was at an end. In fact,
being a competent financer and administrator, instead of
an incompetent tinker, Mr. Lowe had produced a financial
policy which proved as agreeable a surprise, in point of
elaborate tact, as Mr. Gladstone's Irish Church measure
itself. There is nothing after all in real intellectual and
statesmanlike power. Peace bath its Bismarcks and its
Moltkes no less renowned than those of war.
The Telegraph says that the proverbial difficulty of
making a silk purse out of a sow's ear was on. Thursday
night overcome by Mr. Robert Lowe. The first impulse
of which the bold Briton will be conscious when he
opens his paper will be to express unbounded gra.
titude towards the right hon. gentleman the Chancellor
of. the Exchequer. For, what has that distinguished states-
man promised to do? Like the cleverest magician
that ever delighted an audience of holiday gazers. he
has produced, apparently out of nothing, a multitude of
delicious boons, and dispensed them in a dazzling shower
among the taxpayers of this tax-ridden country. We knew
we had fallen behind in our finances, and we were pain-
fully apprehensive that even worse things were in store
for us ; when, presto ! with a graceful dexterity that
should for ever place him high in rank among political
wizards, the Chancellor of the Exchequer dispels the dark-
'less with a wave of his wand, and opens a Fortunatus's
purse of gifts such as in our wildest visions we
had scarcely dared to anticipate for years to
come. The improved collection of the assessed
and house taxes needs no formal approbation, since it is
only another step in a course already commenced and
admitted to be successful. Are the taxpayers, then,
willing to bear some extra pressure for three months next
year, in order to secure a more than equivalent gain, which
will begin to be available at once? If they are, Mr. Lowe
may be congratulated on one of the most successful
schemes for converting temporary depression into perma-
nent prosperity that any Finance Minister of our tim•
has at • opted.