The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-11 00:00:00

have submitted to the committee a sum of £640,000.

We,

therefore, stand worse than we should have stood by
£1,170,000 for additional charges on the army expenditure
and 1640,000 likely to be lost on our Customs receipts in
consequence of the treaty with France. The total of these
two is £1,810,000, which, being deducted from the surplus
we should have had, would appear to place us on the wrong
side of the account. But deliverance has come in from a
quarter from which perhaps it would not have been expected.
" Via prima salutis,
Quoad minime reris, Grata pandeter ab urbe."
A friendly kingdom has undertaken to pay us a debt at the
very moment when she herself is engaged in war. (A laugh.)
Spain is just now under peculiar pressure, but with a high
sense of honour and duty—(cheers),—not wishing to avail
herself of the plea which, I do not hesitate to say, she
might under the circumstances have advanced for time, has
remitted to us a sum in bills which will shortly come due,
of £500,000, of which £250,000 will come to the credit of
the revenue before March 31. If the committee will take
the trouble to compare the figures, it will be seen
that we set out with a probable surplus of
£1,625,000; adding to that surplus the £250,000 of
which I have spoken it becomes £1,875,000, against which
we have a charge of £1,810,000, a state of account which
will leave the Chancellor of the Exchequer with a surplus
_ _

—undoubtedly one of the narrowest on record, but still a
surplus, not a deficit. (Hear, hear.) This is the state of
the account for the present year. I now proceed to approach
the more extensive and more difficult part of the subject—
that which relates to the charge and expenditure of the
coming year, 1860-61. The estimated charge for the funded
and unfunded debt in the coming year is only £26,200,000,
which shows a decrease of £2,438,000—a sum considerably
larger than the annuities which are about to fall in. But
the reason of that greater decrease is that—as the commit-
tee may probably recollect—we were called on last year to
make a special provision for the quarterly payment that
falls into this year in consequence of the determination of
the annuities; whereas, if it had continued to run its full
term of half a year, it would have gone into the year 1860-
61. That arrangement swelled the charge for the debt in
1859-60, and proportionately augments the relief from that
charge in the year 1860-61. (Hear.) Therefore, the charge
for the debt stands only at £26,200,000. The Consolidated
Functcharges, commonly soicallad,:stand at £2,000,000, ex-
hibiting an increase of £40,000. The Army and Militia,
including a vote of credit to the amount of £500,000, which
it will be our duty to propose on account of the Chinese ex-
pedition, will amount to £15,800,000. The Navy and
Packet Services—which I mention together for the purpose
of easier comparison with former years, though tke packet
service is likely to be separated from the Admiralty—will
stand in the Estimates at £13,900,000. These two sums,
which together include the whole military expenditure of
the country by land and sea, with the cost of the packet
service, amount to £29,700,000, showing an increase of
£3,618,000 on the. Military Estimates, in the same sense of
the term, which were voted last year, and an increase of
£2,448,000 on the Military Estimates for the current year,
augmented by the additional charge that will be brought
into them if the house should grant the sum for which the
Government think it their duty to ask. The Miscella-
neous Civil Estimates are taken at £7,500,000. That
amount exhibits a decrease as compared with the Esti-
mates of last year of £325,000; and if the committee which
the house has in some manner declared its intention of
appointing should be enabled to enter on its labours at
an early period, and shall prosecute them with such vigour
and success as to enable us to carry further the process of
retrenchment, I assure the hon. gentleman who ' moved,
the hon. member for Birmingham who supported, and the
other members of the majority who carried the motion for
its appointment, that it will be a result acceptable to her
Majesty's Government. (Hear, hear.) The Revenue
Department standing at £4,700,000 presents an apparent
increase of £225,000 ; but do not suppose that this is a real
increase of the charge ; it is due, to speak in general terms,
to an increase of accommodation in the Post-office Depart-
ment, which I have no doubt will continua to be fully
balanced by the increase of revenue in that branch of the
public service. The total of the six sums whick I have
stated to the committee is £70,100,000. With respect to
one great, but fair and legitimate head of increase, that on
the Military and Naval Estimates, it is not my intention at
the present to enter into any discussion, but it will be the
duty of my right hon. friend and of my noble friend who
represent those departments respectively, to explain that
subject to the committee at the earliest date, and to lay be-
fore them the nature of the special, and, we may hope, in
a great degree temporary, causes which have rendered.it ne-
cessary to make so considerable a demand on the country.
Now, Sir, when we look at the estimated income for
the coming year, it is a matter which at the first view will
not appear satisfactory. And I confess I am not sorry that
the figures should be such as will draw serious attention to
the. whole subject. For it is well that,. in addition to
your annual review of the income and expenditure, there
should be special junctures with circumstances so marked
that you are obliged to institute a deeper and more com-
prehensiro examination, and to consider more at large
what is the proper scale both of taxation and likewise of ex-
penditure for this great country. The estimated income for
1861 will be taken by me in the first instance with reference
simply to the law as it stands ; but I shall assume that the
committee would, of necessity, think it right to renew
the taxes on tea and sugar at a rate not less than that which
they deliberately adopted in 1852. Pray, understand that
I am assuming the renewal of these duties at what

would be called the minimum rate, but I shall assume no-
thing else beyond what is absolutely given us by the law, so
that I may exhibit to the committee as fully and as clearly
as I can the nature and the whole extent of the deficit
which they will have to supply, in order that they may
exercise the largest and the freest choice with respect to the
means which they may think proper to adopt for that pur-
pose. Approaching the subject from that point of view, we
estimate that the Customs will yield £22,700,000; the Ex-
cise, £19,170,000; Stamps, £8,000,000; and the Taxes,
£3,250,000. The Income-tax, that is, one-half year still
outstanding at the rate of sd. in the pound, would yield
£2,400,000; the Post-office, £3,400,000; the Crown Lands,
£280,000; and the Miscellaneous Revenue, £1,500,000.
The total of these receipts would be £60,700,000. The
total charge which I have exhibited is one of £70,100,000,
and the apparent. deficit, I need barely state to the com-
mittee, amounts to £9,400,000. I am not representing a
brilliant state of affairs as respects the revenue and expen-
diture of the country, nor do I pretend to place on it any
such colour. We have a prosperous country, a wealthy
wintry, a country rapidly growing in wealth and power ;
but the relative state of your revenue and expenditure is
'such as I have depicted. And pray observe that in that
charge of £70,100,000 we get the benefit of the £2,000,000 of
annuities which will fall in during the year; and lam bound
also to say that I am not in a condition to ask you to do what
might under other circumstances have been desirable. I
frankly own that I do not feel myself in a position to propose,
as I otherwise might, that you should make provisionrfoprotshee
payment of the sum of £1,000,000 which will be due for
Exchequer-bonds in November next. Without any such
provision you have the deficit before you. And now, sir,
it would be perfectly possible for me to close, ware it not for
the Treaty which I have to discuss ; it would, at any rate,
have been perfectly possible for the House, if such were the
view which they entertained, to close the whole account by
a very simple, but, ,1 must say, a very rude process.
£9,400,000 is wanted. I will suggest to you two modes, by
either of which you might have thought fit to supply it.
You might have said, or you may still say, we shall keep
the tea and sugar duties at their present rates ; that would
supply a sum of £2,100,000. But £2,100,000 taken from
£9,400,000 still leaves the less formidable, yet rather in-
tractable sum of £7,300,000. And now I beseech the com-
mittee to observe that if they think, with the Government,
that the large and ample provision which we are about to
propose for the services of the country is a necessary out-
lay, they will have to make good the deficit of £7,300,000,
irrespective of any relief to the people, of any improvement
of the commercial laws, of any remission whatever of taxes
affecting trade or industry, even to the extent of a single
shilling. And what is meant by filling up the defi it of
£7,300,000 ? It means, at any rate, an Income-tax of 9d.
in the pound. That would give you £7,672,000, or a sur-
plus of £372,000. This would certainly be a possible mea-
sure.
.But, again, supposing you were to take a more li-
beral view of the matter, and to say we do not think it right'
that there should be no remission on articles connected with

the trade and industry of the country, or that duties on tea
and sugar which were imposed for the purposes of war, and
have been kept on during three or four years of peace,
should be further prolonged. Well, then, abandoning the
war duties on tea and sugar, and keeping on what may be
called peace duties, in order to fill up the deficit of X 9,400,000
you would requite the very neat and easilystated and easily
understood sum of an Income-tax of ls. in the pound.
(Laughter and sensation.) This also would be without
any other remission of duty, but simply what is required
for the general demands of the revenue. Then, Sir, it may