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

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witv 141 oI Duo, -
THE t„.- TRIDAY MCI r 4. InCEMBE-11 2, 18531

advertise all the Custom-houses to be let, and that the last
Custom-hbnie officer, the last Coastguardsman, and the
last smrwler should be preserved as curiosities iu the Bri-
tiih Mu seum—(a laugh)—but I am going to mention what
I think would be a great and practicable stop in the right
direction, and what might ultimately lead to the accom-
plishment of the complete object which your association has
in view.- If you examine recent Parliamentary returns you
will find that, excluding the property of every man who
does not possess £lOll in any shape, the whole property of
the country amounts to something like £700,000,000. My
own calculations make it £670,000,000. If that property
could be fairly got at, and a reasonable' tax imposed upon it
all, a large stein would be easily obtained. Some persons
may say that you would not get at as much of it as pays
income-tax, but there is no reason why you should not be
able to put your hand upon more of it. There will always
be people willing to add taxation, but the more just your
system is the fewer they will be, and the more men are con-
vinced that a great change has been a great blessing the
more they will be disposed to support and continue that new
state of things. (" Hear," and cheers.) Suppose, then,
you *ere to pass a law that every £lOO of property, exclud-
ing the property of those who do not possess £lOO, should
pay annually the sum of Bs. to the State; that tax would
procure about 24 millions per annum, or more than four
times as much as the income-tax last year. It would be
imposed over many more persons, it would be collected at
an inconsideiable expense, and if district committees were
appointed; partly by the Government and partly by tax-
payers, it would be more cheerfully paid and produce less
of heartburning and complaint than the present income-
tax. (Cheers.) What would be the pressure ? The pos-
sessor of £lOO would pay Bs. a-year, but tea, sugar, and a
heap of other things would be -much cheaper to him, and
his trade, in all probability would receive a stimulus sueh
as it never obtained before. (Hear.) The owner of £l,OOO
would' pay £4 a-year ; the owner of £lO,OOO, £4O; the
owner of £lOO,OOO, £4OO ; and the owner of £1,000,000,
£4,000. Is there anything unreasonable in that ? Is that
revolutionary doctrine? (Cheers.) What would be the
result ? In the first place, trade would be extended to an
enormous degree. See what you would repeal; the present
income-tax would go, and the duties upon 439 articles in the
tariff, duties to which your association has sworn eternal
hostility, would also go. The income-tax produced last
year £6,500,000, and the 439 articles £750,000; tea,
£5,270,000; sugar, £5,979,000; and other articles various
sums, bringing up the whole amount to £27,000,000. If a
tax of Bs. upon every £lOO were imposed the duties upon
all those articles, including marine and other insurances,
could be abolished, trade would be extended, intercourse
with other nations would be vastly and immediately in-
creased, manufactures, shipping, commerce, and agriculture
would all participate in the benefits of the change. Better
than all, the grand result of all, the scale of comfort of the
great body of the people would be raised, while shopkeepers,
retailers, traders of every kind would find their condition
much improvod. (Hear.) Since 1846, to a large extent,
in consequence of a repeal of the corn laws, our exports have
more than doubled. Make the change lam now suggest-
ing, and our progress will be much greater than it has been

du-ring the last twelve years. (Cheers.) I repeat, then, in
spite of those gentlemen connected with the press in Lon-
don who were so uncivil to me that our present system of
taxation is cruel in its operation to the poor. The guilt,
whether it be of neglect or of intention, lies and must he at
the door of the rich and powerful, and at no other—(cheers)
—but let me suppose that you do not go the length I
have stated, and that you do retain two taxes, which some
people- have a notion, though I think an erroneous one,
ought to be maintained for moral considerations—the taxes
upon spirits and tobacco. Those taxes produce a large sum,
they are paid mainly by the working classes, and I ask
you whether it would not be fair and reasonable to call upon
the upper and middle dosses to sustain all other burdens
which might be required for the purposes of the State P I
know what I am now saying will not meet the approval of
year association, which is agitating for the utter destTuc-
tioti of all Customhouses; but, we must accept instalments,
and even our opponents, when they saw the advantage of
such a change as I have indicated, might at last consent to
all our wishes. (Hear, hear.) Por my complaint is that
the people who govern the country are not informed upon
this question, that they do not wish to be informed, and
that they commit a great injustice upon the poor by allow-
ing the present system of taxation to exist. I say further,
that Parliament is to blame because of the burdens it im-
poses upon trade and industry, and from which it most
unfairly exempts that vast amount of permanent property
which is to be found in the soil of the kingdom. (Hear.)
Let me direct your attention to a report of a department of
taxation in which there is a great deal of injustice. There
is a tax upon bills of exchange which produces £457,000,
and another upon receipts and draughts which produces
£418,030 ; nearly the whole of those duties are paid by the
ept7xpoorntimonarbibye the
landed proprietors. So in the case of the tax on marine in-
and heart of the Chancellor of the Exchequer who first pro-
posed tradingaunr ad nedce Ps
r. community,llrWhatie to rcsa. n hSaoanvi( Ine
beentollnonly
y tah
e smallocfotm the
position of the head
a duty on marine insurances ? (Cheers.) It is one of
the worst taxes that could be imposed, wholly indefensible,
and ought to be abolished. (Hear.) There is a remarkable
peculiarity connected with the duty on fire insurances.
Landed estates do not require to be insured from fire ; that
was a good reason why no duty should be levied upon fire
insurances, for why should the warehouses and shops of
Liverpool and other towns be called upon to pay a tax which
cannot be applied to landed property ? The fact is, how-
ever, that not only has a duty been imposed upon fire in-
surances, but from that duty all farming stock is especially
exempted. (Hear, hear.) No doubt tinder the old corn
laws agricultural labourers were periodically starved, dis-
contented, and revengeful, but farming stock is now
no more insecure than any other description of property.
I say that the tax from which it is exempted is an
impudent and oppression tax. (Cheers.) Let me give you
one other illustration. A legacy duty is perfectly reason-
able, but to be fair it ought to apply to all kinds of pro-
perty. Our legacy duty was imposed in 1797 ; the Minister
who proposed it wanted to impose it upon every description
of property, but he had not fathomed the depth ; no
plummet line will ever fathom the depth of the selfishness
of any particular class—no matter what class it may be—
intrenched in the seats of irresponsible power. (Cheers.)
.Parliament obliged him to introduce two bills--one for per-
sonal property, the other for real property. What was the
result? Our patriotic Legislature passed the bill which
imposed a duty on personal property, but com-
pelled the Minister to withdraw the measure which
related to freehold houses and land. Last year the
probate duty produced £1,140,000, and the legacy duty
£1,400,000. Ts 1063 Mr. Gladstone sought to remedy the in-
justice in partly passing what is called a succession-tax ;he
stated that it would yield £2,000,000 a-year, but it has not
produced more. than from £700,000 to £BOO,OOO, and it is
. most unequael its operation. When a man dies and leaves
£lO,OOO in ships, or cotton, railway shares, or public
stock, it has to pay £l,OOO, or 10 per cent., in the
shape of succession duty, but landed property to the
same amount does not pay £l,OOO, or anything like it. In
the latter case a calculation is made, based upon the annual
value of the estate and the age of the person to whom it has
been left, and the result is that a far less sum than the
£l,OOO is paid to the State. It is a scandal and disgrace
that such an inequality should exist. (Loud cheers.)
But look for a moment at the grand result. From
1797 town to the present time the legacy and probate
duties imposed upon personality alone have, together,
produced 103 million pounds. If you deduct 3 millions
on account of the succession tax there will still remain 100
million pounds, which has been derived exclusively from
personal property, and from which freeholdhouses and land
have been entirely exempted. (Cheers.) With such facts
before us I think we are justified in protesting against such
a state of things, and in asking our follow-countrymen to
resolve that a fair and more honest system of taxation shall
be established. (Hear.) The poor are taxed oppressively
to spare the rich, and trade is taxed oppressively to spare
landed property—(cheers)—nor is the explanation difficult
to find ; our Parliament is essentially a Parliament of th 4
rich ; I have shown you that 24,000,000 of people living in
houses under the value of £lO are excluded from the repre-
sentation, which is confined to 6,000,000, composing the
upper and middle classes; but our Parliament, besides being
a Parliament of the rich, is especially a Parliament of the
landed 'gentry. More than 200 members of the House of
Commons are the nominees of some dozen of the chief pro-
prietors of land in the respective counties from which they
come. (Hear.) What is the remedy ? There ire two reme-
dies, which perhaps may go together. One consists of
spreading information upon this subject, making this so
universal that even with our present bad system of repre-
sentation the wrongy might be redressed in some great excite-
ment and after some long and perhaps perilous agitation ;
the,other is the amendment of our representative system.
Surely it cannot be safe or advantageous to shut out
24,000,000 of people from representation in Parliament. The
great mass of our countrymen aro wholly unrepresented.
Those who pay far %ore than half of our indirect taxes have
no voice in the Parliament which imposes them. Our mo-
narch is not absolute, and can perhaps do little to change
our system of taxation while our Houses of Parliament are
not really responsible to the people for whom they purpose
to legislate. I asked the ingenious gentleman connected
with the Times, who discovered that if a working man set
up a carriage and 'pair his employer would be fined to en-
able him to maintain that expenditure, to give him a plain
answer to one or two questions. Do not the 24,000,000 who
live in houses under £lO pay half of the revenues of the
State? Do they not work harder and produce more of value
from their industry than any other equal number of people
in any other country in the world ? Are there not more of
them without property in land, houses, or other invest-
• metits than is the ease in an equal population in any other
civilized and Christian country ? Are they not wholly un-
represented ?--purposely excluded by the Reform Act of
1832, and dreaded now by the monopolists of power P Only
the other day you had on this platform the expelled Minis-
ters of the last Cabinet. A year ago what were they doing p
They were pretending to construct a Reform Bill. You re-
collect the exceeding duplicity they manifested upon that
question. You recollect their grievance of the people's
wishes, their utter contempt of the people's understandings,
and you remember their ignominous and well-merited
downfall. (Cheers.) You have now another Cabinet which
at this very monient is discussing the same question, not, I
hope, to come to the same result by attempting the same
system of subterfuge ; there are men in the present Cabinet
who honestly wish that the representation should be greatly
improved. They know what was the question upon which
their predecessors were thrown out, and upon which they
succeeded to power. They knew what was the understand-
ing ; what were the declarations ; what, if you will, were
the pledges by which a majority was secured against the
Government of Lord Derby. I know some of the difficul-
ties they, have to contend with. There may be colleagues
who do of like Reform at all; there may be colleagues
who are faint in their affection for it; there may be some
whose courage is always .00zing out at their finger ends
when there is something good to be done. I have seen
Statesmen—so called—who were fit for nothing but clerks.
I make no confluent on the present Cabinet. I simply
describe the' circumstances under which they suc-
ceeded to power, and the expectation of the peo-
ple with respect to this great question. I hope and pray
that Ministers may see that the future of their Govern-
ment, and for a long time the future of their
party, depends upon the honesty and courage with
which they deal with this great and unavoidable question
(Cheers.) A word more and I have done. lam assailed
with virulence, even charged with falsehood, by those
masked conspirators against • the commonwealth who write
in the leading columns of the Times. Congenial slanders
are vomited forth every week in the lines of the great Satur-
day reviler, but tho facts which I have stated to-night re-
main, and they remain, 1 hesitate not to say, to the dis-
honoui of our country and the weakening of our Govern-
ment. Aristocracy intrenchod within the citadel of power,
and resting upon generations of unchallenged rule—
monarehy itself, venerable with, the willing homage of a
thousand years—authority of every kind must be shaken,
and mriltpass away, ,unless it be based upon the true inte-
rests and commend itself to the conscience of the people.
(Cheers.) I ask that Parliament should be made a real re-
presentation of the property, tat industry, and the intelli-
gence of the nation—that we may be delivered, if possible,
from chaotic legislation, from reckless expenditure, and from
a taxation oppressive, unequal, and unjust. (Cheers.) The
monopolists of power reject that demand with scorn. The
day may come when it will be made in a louder voice than
mine, when this question will be grasped in a ruder hand
than mine, and wen it is sp made, as was the case in 1832,