The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-18 00:00:00

THE MALT TAX.

Sir F. KELLY mac to move the following resolution :
—" That upon any future remission of indirect taxation,
his house will take into consideration the duty upon malt,

with a view to its immediate reduction and ultimate re-
peal." The hon. and learned gentleman took the oppor-

tunity of going at some length into the question of the
repeal of the malt tax. lie said the Government had re-
duced the duties on bricks, timber, glass, cotton, wool, corn,
flour, soap, cattle, and provisions of every description, yet
the poor man's only comfort, if it could not be called a
necessary, was still subject to an oppressive and unjust
tax. The duty on wine, an article of foreign produce,
and consumed only by the rich, bad been greatly
reduced, yet malt, three-fifths of the whole manufactured
was consumed by the poor, and still maintained a high and
unjust figure. The effect of a reduction of the tax would
be to give the poor man good beer instead of bad, and that
fact alone, he thought, ought to weigh greatly iu favour of
his motion. If the malt tax was repealed, ho believed
ho was quite correct in stating that beer could be pur-
chased at one-third less than the price now paid.
He maintained that the consumer of beer paid three or
four times the amount of the tax as originally forwarded
to the Exchequer on malt ; while, unlike every other im-

post, whether levied on income, fire insurance, tea, coffee,
or sugar, it stood alone in this, that it affected an article
which was consumed almost entirely by the working and
poorer closses of the community. It bore, in fact, as no
other tax did, directly not only on the comforts but on the
necessaries of the labouring population. The value of the
beer sold in the United Kingdom per annum was
£60,000,000 ; and of this more than three-fifths was con-
sumed by the working classes, who paid, by this means,
the exorbitant impost ; while, on wine, for the rich, the
prohibitive duties had been reduced more than 70 per
cent. He asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how,
consistently with the great and enlightened principles
which he had so often laid down, he could perpetuate this
tax ? If the impost were repealed, the public, he stated,
would be able to buy beer at one-third of the cost at pre-
sent paid for it ; and, in addition, the obnoxious mono-
poly—whereby large brewers bought public-houses and
sold them, under restrictions detrimental to the consumer,
and at prices which bore no relation to their intrinsic
value—would be broken down. He pointed out that in
the days when there was no male duty beer was sold at a
penny a quart, and said that even now it was possible to
brew good beer at 7d. a gallon. It was his sincere belief
and conviction that if the malt tax was repealed it would
be attended by a great and immediate benefit to the
people of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Ho trusted
the time was fast approaching when those enlightened
\
principles of commercial policy would be applied to
this impost, and millions upon millions among the lower
section of the community would participate in the benefi:s
of that system to which they owed the groat commercial
prosperity of the country.
Mr. J. MORE briefly seconded the motion.
Mr. NEATE moved an amendment to the effect that in
the present state of the taxation and resources of the coun-
try, it was the duty of Parliament to make provision for
the systematic reduction of the national debt, au-I not to
sanction any proposal for any repeal or change of taxes
which was likely to bo attended with a diminution of the
revenue.

Mr. J. S. MILL, in seconding the amendment, said ho
had for some time felt so very serious and Solemn a con-
viction on the subject that his hon. friend had brought
for ward, that it was almost a matter of conscience with
him not to let slip any occasion of impressing that con-
viction on some hon. members. Not long ago it might
no altogether unreasonably be supposed that the un-
rivalled growth of this country in every description of
wealth the limits of which it was hardly possible to
define or to look forward to, was an excuse to us—
almost a justification—for leaving our pecuniary obliga-
tions, without any serious attempt to reduce them, to
weigh upon posterity, who, they might reasonably ex-
pect, would be far better able to support them than they
were themselves. This was, however, at no time a
conclusive argument or a sufficient excuse, because
future generations would have their exigencies too.
from it by the
(Hear, hear.) And they had had an example of it not
more recently many years ago. Two years of war sufficed to
re-add to our debt nearly as much as was substracted
factssavings of fifty years. (Hear, hear.) rut
Yuma had been brought to their notice which
was one not admissiblemi
they had too overlooked,e and the tendency of which
excuse they had made to themselves
. was to show that the
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