The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-13 00:00:00

in-that hou.se before it had been decided upon by the Queen

in Council.
THE FRENCH TREATY—THE ADDRESS.
Mr. BYNG brought up the address to her Majesty upon
the subject of the treaty of commerce with France, which
had been prepared by the committee appointed on Friday

night.
On the question that the address should be agreed to,
Sir H. WILLOUGHBY desired that it should be under-
stood that the division on Friday night took place not upon
the motion for the address, but upon the amendment of the
right hon. member for Stroud. Had the question been
whether or no the address should be adopted, he should
have voted for the address. (Hear, hear.),
The address was then agreed to.
THE, PAPER DUTY.
- - - • ---

On the order for the second reading of this bill,
Sir w. MILES rose to move the amendment of which he
had given notice. He begged first to put the,aiouse in mind
of the difference that existed between the present and the
first notice of motion. Then he propoSed to move the re-
jection of the 16th resolution, and that in the 17th the words
rilnepence" should be substituted for " tenpence," thus

showing his resolution to take the two subjects together,
and to discuss them as a whole, distinct from any other

portion of the budget. Taken by itself he should not have
been averse to the repeal of the paper duty, as he had been

a member of the Parliament which decided that it should no

be a permanent tax.

But the present was a season of finan•

cial difficulty, and it was quite another question whether
they were at liberty to deprive the revenue of £1,000,000.
(Hear, hear.) He could not separate the repeal of the
paper duty from a tenpenny income tax, nor its existence
for another year from the possession of a ninepenny duty.
The hon. baronet then referred to the budget of the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, and contended that the imposition
of the increased income tax was to meet the loss consequent
upon the repeal of the paper duty. He should like to con-
sider the position in which they would stand if they al-
lowed matters to remain as they were. The Chancellor of
the Exchequer took the revenue, after the reduction, as
£58,592,000, and then placed the tea and sugar duties at
£2,100,000, malt and hops at £1,400,000, and the income
tax for :three quarters of a year at £8,472,000, making a
totalof £70,564,000 ; the total expenditure beingl7o,loo,ooo,
leaving him an estimated surplus of £464,000. He believed
he (Sir W. Miles) could show if things were left as they
were that the right hon. gentleman would not lose more
than £30,000 of his surplus, and if that were the case, he
trusted the house would be willing to adopt any change by
which an addition to the income tax would be rendered un-
necessary. If they were to retain the paper duty and not
to impose the additional penny of income tax, then they
would have a surplus of £429,300. The sum received dur-
ing last year for paper duty was £1,232,000, but he had
been informed on the best authority to which he, had access
that an additional sum of £300,000 would in all probability
have been realised from all sources in the course of the
coming year. Ho would, with the permission of the house,
lay before it a brief account of the origin and growth of the
paper duty. It was first established in the 10th year of
Queen Anne, and after going through various emendations,
in 1335 a commission of inquiry, of which Sir H. Parnell
was head, sat on that and other excise duties. A discri-
minating duty was at that time imposed on paper, consist-
ing of 3d. in the pound on the higher class, and lid. in the
pound on the lower descriptions of the article. The com-
missioners recommended that as it was impossiblq alto-
gether to abolish the duty, it was at least proper that the
duty should be put on one uniform footing of three -half-
pence. In 1839 the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought
forward a bill to effect that purpose, and the measure
was carried, and much vexation and fraud thereby abo-
lished. At that time the duty on paper amounted to
about £700,000. It was some time before the revenue re-
covered from tliis change in the duty, but eventually it did,
and in 18-10 it amounted to upwards of .E-800,000 ; since
whieh period, excepting one year, it had gone on progTes-
r sieely increasing until, by the last return, it amounted to
upwards of £1,200,000. In 1855 the revenue from the paper
duty amounted to £1,091,914; in 1853, to £1,014,945, and
that was the only year wheal the paper duty fell back. In
1857 it again progressed, and amounted to £1,190,822 ; in
1858, to £1,242,722 ; and in 1859, to £1,281,023. So much
for the elasticity of the tax, and now for its nature. It was
peculiar in this respect, that no interference took place in
the manufacture of paper. While other taxes, like those,
for instance, arising from malt and hops, were under the
frequent interference of the excise, there was no kind of
obstruction put on the manufacture of paper, and this said
vary much indeed in favour of such a tax. (Hear.) In our
financial difficulties, when we were literally living from
hand to mouth and forestalling all our revenue— (Opposi-
eition cheees)—it was not the time for thinking of imme-
diately abolishing the duty on paper. But the question had
been asked, what was paper ? (Hear.) He wds perfectly
astonished, after the decision of the Lord Chief Baron, to
hear a cheer from the Treasury bench, because nothing
could be more distinct than the definition given in that
judgment. The question, if he recollected rightly, was this,
whether what was called false parchment was to be consi-
dered really paper or parchment. This fictitious parchment
was made of animal fibre, and ,it was endeavoured to be
passed off not as paper bat as parchment. Consequently,
there was a surcharge by the excise. That was appealed
from, and the who-le matter came before the Court of Ex-
chetreer, when the Lord Chief Baron decided that anything
orumuLts yarucias, wnetiier ammai or vegunsule, in
sheets, for the purpose for which paper ;ens usually applied,
Came under the denomination of paper. If that were the
case no difficulty whatever could arise ; but, however, it was
said that difficulty had arisen, and now ho must refer to
four reports made by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue,
and he thought four more contradictory reports had never
been placed on the table of the house. But there was some-
thing more than this. The fourth report had evidently been
made to back up the opinion of the right hon, gentleman
the Chancellor of the Exchequer in that house. Ile only
hoped this unusual proceeding would not be made a prece-
dent of, and that when a question was still actually before
the house the Board of Inland Revenue world not be
called on to give their opinion. The first report was dated
in 1857, and it stated that the regulations of the board had
been so far amended to meet the wishes of the paper manu-
facturers that they were enabled to collect the duty without
any complaints being made. The report in 1858 set forth
that there was scarcely any duty in the collection of which
the interference of the commissioners with the trade was so
little felt. In 1858 the house passed a resolution relative to
the paper duty, and a report was made in 1859, which stated
that the expectation that the paper duty would be repealed
on the first favourable opportunity had for many years been
a source of embarrassment in that collection. Why, accord-
ing to the reports of .1857 and 1858, the duty was collected.
with ease, and no complaints were made as to the collec-
tion; but directly the House of Commons proposed a reso-
lution, the opinion of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue
changed.
The SPEAKER here interrupted the hon. baronet, and
announced that he had received a message from the Lords
agreeing to a conference with the House of Commons on the
subject of the address to her Majesty in reference to the treaty
of commerce between England and France.
Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Milner Gibson and
other right honourable and honourable members, were
ap-
pointed to conduct the conference, and left the house fortlea
purpose. During their absence the debate was suspended.
The managers having returned,
Sir W. MILES, inresuming his speech, said that the Com-
missioners of Inland Revenue in their third report stated,
that in 1857 the complaints of paper manufacturers entirely
ceased, and that in 1858 there was scarcely any trade their
interference with which was so little felt as to the paper-
making. They must next consider the materials used in this
manufacture. He agreed that everything fibrous could be
converted into paper. The real question however was, what
could be converted into paper with profit. For printing, he
believed no good paper could be made except from cotton and
linen waste, and rags. All the best paper was made from the
best rags, but other substances might be used, such as straw,
which was used in combination with rags for an inferior kind
of paper; but they could not compete with the materials he
had specified. Some paper had been plaCed below stairs fter
the inspection of members which was made from grass ob-
tained from Spain and the coast of Africa. The objection:to
it was—first, that it would not bleach; and next, that it
would not receive a gloss ; and for the higher branches of
printing it was perfectly useless. Then came jute, an East
Indian product. It was imported chiefly for making com-
mon rope, and the residue from that manufacture went to
paper making, but what was the character of the paper so
produced ? It was hard and brittle ;it easily imbibed wet,
and from its salacious properties injured the printer's type.
Well, that being the case, they came back again to the old
substances of which paper had always been manufactured,
and he said that for thehigher descriptions of paper nothing
remained to them but woollen rags, cotton rags, linen rags,
and cotton waste. He had a letter written by a firm of paper
makers who had been in existence for half a century, but
who desired their name to be withheld. They said it ap-
pearedat he from the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
was led to believe that hundreds of fibres would be
imported which could be used in the manufacture ofpaper,
and that after the repeal of the paper duty there would be
an unlimited hi
the manuincture, and that car-
riages and almost everythinga
else would be made of paper.
Now, their answer increase in
thatfouri,i years ago a large reward
was offered to any one who produced an article which
could be used as a substitute for paper,"nd that although
hundreds of different things had been
aentantrboeduced in e
con-
sequence of that promise, not one h
except :by way of experiment.Astoall, tenr employed
nsu:::
enormous waste of material in the process of manufacture,
and they would not bleach. They added that they could not
have believed it possible that the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer could have been so deceived by the representations of
interested parties, and that so far from the supply of the raw
material being unlimited, it depended entirely upon the in-
crease of the population and the prosperity of those manu-
factures the waste from which could be converted into paper.
He now came to the objections which were made to the
existence of the tax. First of all it was said that the tax was
detrimental to the spread of knowledge. He had endea-
voured to make himself master of that subject, and his in-
quiries had satisfied him that, if the paper duties were re-
peated, Ito reduction would take place in the price of the
lower class of publieetions. With regard to the hundreds of
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