The Sun.
London, England, 1859-12-02 00:00:00

_ .
processes by which wealth is produced, but the wealth
Itself, when actually realised by its possessor.
" In this faith and hope we once niore bid you gratefully
and heartily welcome to Liverpool."
Mr. Bnieurv, Whose rising was greeted by vehement
cheering) Said—Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen,—l,
wish I were able in fitting language to Make some answer
to the address whith has just been presented to me, and
which was also intended, and may be underistoodt to be pre-
sented to my friends Mr. Cobden and General •ThOisipson ;
but I can make no emitter to it but this; I feel most grateful to
the council of this association, and to all present who have
taken part in the presentation of this address. If vie have
done anything that is wor thy of it, we can only endeavour to
repay you by striving to do that in the future which may
not allow you to look back on the proceedings of this even-
ing with regret. I am sorry—more sorry than any one else
in this room, I believe—Gen. Thompson and Mr: Cobden
are not here, for I thought I was coining to this hail on this
occasion as an auxiliary, and I find myself in the position of
having a much larger share of labour thrown on me to-
night than I hadcalculatedupon. However, whether friends
of mine be present or absent, this I can say with a clear
conscience, that I am ready now, as I believe 1 always shall
be as long as health or any power of usefulness is given me,
to co-operate heartily with your association, and with any
association whatever that shall endeavour to carry out in
the legislation of this country those great and noble princis
pies on which your movement is founded. (Cheers.) There
aro many minds so small as. to *emu only capable of ridiculing
that which is noble; minds which are unable to comprehend
the grandeur of the scheme which this society offers to the.
public ; they cannot understand the simplicity or the eleva-
tion of the purpose which they have set befote themselves
in the attempt to abolish custom-houses, and to make the
world, not a number of nations jealous of and dreading each
other, often fighting each other, but rather one vast nation
governed by separate municipalities, but living in perfect
'happiness and harmony together.• (Cheers.) Let us endea-
vour to-night to look at this question with the eyes of men
of business and of common sense, with that kind of faculty
which. we bring to bear on our own private affairs when we
are considering the course we ought to take. Your associa-
tion proposes to influence Government on two points—first,
as much as possible to confine the Government to an econo-
mical expenditure ofpublic money; And, secondly, to confine
them to this simple principle of j ustie,e, that. whatever may be
the amountrequired to be levied, it shall be levied from the
people in proportion to the property which every man pos-
sesses by reason of the security which the Government gives
him. (Cheers.) I think you will scarcely meet with a
man of ordinary intelligence who will not say at once that
it is fair, in a State where large funds have to be raised to
carry on the purposes of Government, that all should sub-
scribe according to their, means ; and, that being agreed
upon, one would suppose it would not be difficult to arrange
the system by which that end could be arrived at. That
end, however, can only be attained by some plan of what
is called direct taxation, because if you turn to taxes upon
necessary articles of consumption, you will at once discover
that though the consumption, for example, .of bread, but-
ter, beef, cheese, tea, coffee, and sugar is equal to a great
extent in all the families among the people, that is no test
of an equality in the means of those families. The more,
'therefore, you fix your taxes on the basis of what you sup-
pose is an equal consumption of taxed articles, the more
yondepart necessarily from the principle we have laid down
—namely, that men should pay in proportion to the pro-
perty they possess. Nature has made us all so much alike
that any 20 men dining will eat just about as much as any
20 other men dining with the same fare before them—(a
laugh)—but the 20 men at one table may be worth £lOO,OOO,
or, for aught I know, £1,000,000 a-piece, while the other
20 men may not have more than the Is. 6d. or 2s. which
they will be called upon to pay for their dinner. The con-:
sumption of taxed articles, then, is no criterion whatever of
the means of particular individuals or families, and can
never be honestly adopted as the rule or measure of taxa-
tion by those who admit that taxation should be regulated
by the means of the taxpayer. (Cheers.) Well, this does
not look like a very irrational proposition. I dare say,
however, that some newspapers in yonr town; and no doubt.
two or three; perhaps half a dozen, in London, the day
after to-morrow will tell us that it is irost irrational and
revolutionary. (A. laugh.) Some rich men—but 'I am
happy to say not many among the trading classes—doubt
the principles we are now upholding, and think it would
be pernicious to the -country. Among the landed pro-
prietors, who are always the least informed on these ques-
tions, you find a very strong dread of what you propose.
This arises in some, doubtless, from selfishness, but in
many others purely, I believe, from entire iamorance of the
facts and requirements on which our position is based. I
Maintain that the landed; gentry • 'of England ought to be
very modest on subjects of this nature. Twenty years ago
an agitation was begun on the Corn Laws by a body of
gentlemen as few as the Council of your association ; and,
while some of those predictions were put forth, seine of which
are still almost ringing in our earse there were Some great
men in this country, and at least one dnke, who gave the
country full notice that they should leave it if any such
measure as the League advocated was carried. ' (Laughter.).
In fact, we all expected that if anybody wanted to see a
duke hereafter he would be obliged to go abroad to get a
glimpse of one. (A. laugh.) Well, what has happened?
That probably twice as much corn and cattle has come into
this country during the last 13 years as alsmst anybody
anticipated—amounting, in fact, to something like 20 mil-
lions sterling per annum in value. The dukbs are net
gone, the land is more valuable than ever it was under Pro-
tection, the class of farmers is higher, there is more capital
laid out upon the land, and millions of your countrymen to
whom the law denied the commonest right of free men, and
who were then suffering periodical starvation of the bitterest
kind, are now living in a degree of comfort to which they
had hitherto been unaccustomed. (Cheers.) Am • I not,
then; entitled to say that the landed proprietors,. noblemen,
and gentlemen of England—many of them so kind person-
ally, so unwilling, as I believe, to do an unjust act—on this
-great question were wholly mistaken ? ' (CheerS.) Go a
'little further ; when the income-tax was laid on for the pur-
pose of enabling certain considerable changes •in the tariff,
to be mane, there was great dislike to that tax. There are
very good reasons for disliking it apart from that for which
we dislike all taxes—because they take our, money. But
mater 'persons dislike it because they did not like the object
for which it was imposed—namely, :to snake approaches in
the direction of Free Trade; and yet everybody knows
who knows anything—(laughter)—there may be people
who know nothing—(laughter)—but if you can find a per-
son who knows anything from his own discovery, frets his,
own thought, I will undrtake to say he knows that it was
by the imposition of the income-tax that the amendment of
the tariff was mostly done under Sir Robert Peel's Govern-
ment, and that it has been productive not only of very great
advantage to the labouring people and commercial classes
in this country, but that it has actually increased and given
additional security to the riches of the landed proprietors
themselves. '(Cheers.) So now this scheme which is put'
before the country by your association is ridiculed by some
as an imagination of a lunatic—scoffed at by others as a
democratic and revolutionary movement. The thee will.
come when every sensible man in England will admit that
the carrying out of these great principles has proved to be
an additional step in the salvation of tke poor, had to have
conferred additional blessings upon, those who were fortu-
nate enough to be rich. , (Cheers.) ' But we cannot conceal
froin ourselves that there aro people who sometimes think
that if you are saying anything for the pour you mean some-
thing ill to the rich. (A laugh.) You cannot make a speech
as I am doing now without being' either mistaken, or mis-
represented, or calumniated. A man cannot write a letter
to his constituents without having I don't know how many
newspapers barking at his heels as if he was sPreading some
desperate disloyalty through the nation. .(Laughter.) I
wrote a letter a few weeks ago to a respectable association
amen.- my constituents iii thotown of Birmingham, in which
I touched upon the subjectof the income-tax, and upon the
pressure of indirect taxation on the labouring population of
this country. Now, if you would 'allow me I would like to
show you what kind of instructors in-political economy some
of these great authorities arc. (A laugh.) I said in my letter
what I thought nobody would have been disposed to call in
question, that the Customs and. Excise raised more than'
12,000,000 collected upon articles—the great bulk Of which
is consumed by that portion of the population which has
no property but its labour, and no income but its wages
.--(cheers)—and which, as might be expected from the
fact just stated, has no voice in Parliament, and' is really
without representation in the Government of the country.
(Cheers.) And I said, further, that a greater proportion of
the heaviest taxation in the world is thrown upon the class
possessing no property but its labour than is the case with
other countries whose system of taxation we aro acquainted
with. I said, also, that there is, something essentially mean
and singularly cruel in the manner in which the taxes of
this country have been and aro still levied. (Cheers.) Well,
now the most influential newspaper in this country, from
its long-standing, its large circulation, and great means, is
the Times. The Times has written several articles on' hie
particular letter, and it would be difficult to say which of
them is the most illogical, or the one which most entirely
Contradicts what it has said in a hundred others of its articles
on questions of political economy. (A. laugh.) But in its
number of the llth of November there occurs this passage :
"It is impossible to say who
,are not affected by a tax."
Now, that is not the question. The question is, who is af- .
fected by a tax ? (A laugh.) The Times, however, says :
"'lt is impossible to say who are not affected by a tax;
whether it be direct or indirect, whether it be aimed at in-
come or expenditure, whether at one class or another: The
employer pap the, employed, and he pays them according
to their usual rate of If they cannot or will not work
without beer, spirits, anetobacco, or if they will give their
families tea, coffee, and sugar, he has no choice, but to give
them wages sufficient to provide those luxuries.". Now,sl
will read this passage as it might be read with equal logic
.:
—The employer pays the employed, and he pays them ac-
cording to their usual rate of living. If they cannot or will
not work withour beer, spirits, and tobacco, or if they.will•
give their families tea, coffee, and sugar, and a carriage and
pair—(laughter)—he has ,no choice but to give them wages
sufficient to provide these luxuries. Again, in the same ar-
ticle it is said, " Whether the 65 millions is extracted immez
diately and nominally out of- the income or out of the ex-
penditure—out of the employer's pocket or out of the
pocket of the tradesman who,supplies the: employers, .ser-
vants, and workpeople—makes but little difference to the
effect of the taxation on individuals; the incidence or pres-
sure is on all sides." Now, if this were true there could be
no objection whatever, and it would be much the simplest
mode to lay all the taxation if it were possible on the pro-
prietors of the Times—(laughter)—or on the proprietors of
land. The whole; or at least the largest portion of this rea-
soning is a simple mystification, and the conclusion of the
writer is that somehow or other the £05,-000,000 are ob-
tained, arid" the incidence is on all sides." Why, I under-
hike to say, and no man with the smallest idea of political
economy will attempt to de y it, that if the duties on tea,
coffee, sugar, malt, spirits, tobacco, and those artielea which
are mostly
,used by the great body of the people were all re-
pealed ,to-night, not only would there not be a singlela-
bower in Lancashire whose wages would fall, but I believe
every man's wages would rise., (Cheers.) Now, the man
who wrote this must either' be a very ignorant man, which
it Would be a great offence to a writer in. the Times to assert,
or elce he must be; what is much worse, a than of a, very
low mora'ity, who thinks he can say anything to-a public for
whose intellect-114'11as a sovereign contempt. But another
paper of long-standing,and great respectability, the Spet.t-
iv, in an article certainly- not in the least degree offensive
to me, contains reasoning of much the same kind, and
only said to myself when I road it, " What a declension
from the time when :Is. Psintoul conducted the Spectator to
the gentleman, whoever he may be,. who now manages its