The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-01 00:00:00

THE BCDGET,

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(From the Time.%)
The debate on the Budget, though. it has had but
little liveliness, and hitherto but little point, has
been very intelligible. Few cases of Parliamentary
controversy have been more thoroughly compre-
hended out of doors than that on which the house
is now engaged. By a natural artifice of rhetoric
Mr. Bright and Mr. Gibson may ask what it is that
is disliked in the Budget, or what more can possibly
be desired, but they know as well as the rest of us
where the hitch is. No doubt, we get the Paper
Duty remitted for nothing, and we get a penny off
the Income Tax to boot. Nobody suffers ; every-
body gains. All this may be true, but it is true
only for the moment, and if at the next day of
reckoning affairs should be altered, the cost will
fall upon one side only. Mr. M. Gibson and his i
friends stand to win only, while the rest stand to
win or lose. The bargain appears the harder, too,
when the terms are more closely examined. It is
but too probable that we shall want all our re-
sources, and yet we are abolishing a source of
taxation which is increasingly productive, and
against which, when it comes to the point, less can
be alleged than against any similar impost. All
this the house feels ; but it cannot help feeling also
thatits peculiar position in this matter materially,
interferes with its freedom of action, and it is un-
easy accordingly. There is a great reluctance to
destroy a source of indirect taxation which can only
be replaced by an addition to direct taxation. This
reluctance is strengthened by the belief that the
proposed remission will really benefit only a com-
paratively narrow interest, and it is confirmed by
the reflection that if indirect taxes are to be thus
abolished one after another the country will be
compelled to defray an immoderate proportion of
its ordinary expenditure from a single tax so ex-
ceptional and exceptionable as to have been hitherto
reserved almost exclusively for the emergencies of
war. In this predicament—pledged to a.measure
which on a nearer view appears fraught with fewer
advantages and many more perils than had been
assumed at first, unwilling to take the step, and
yet scarcely able to decline it, the house hesitated,
and indulged in speeches which did not
indeed point to very definite objects, but which
showed the misgiving and apprehensions generally
entertained. Nothing could be more natural.
There is no point on which Mr. Gladstone's pro-
positions are absolutely satisfactory. To make
them so we ought to be able to assume either that
our expenditure will certainly and speedily de-
crease, or that the remission of the Excise duty on
Paper will be attended with such benefits to the
whole community as to justify its reduction even
in the face of peril, or that its place can be supplied
in case of necessity by some other tax as produc-
tive and as inoppressive. Can any of these points
be clearly established ? Of the political aspect of
Europe we need hardly speak. It may not be so
menacing as Mr. Horsman supposes, but it would
certainly have been thought formidable enough by
a generation less familiarised than we have been
to revolutions and wars. The utmost that is said,
even by those least given to alarm, is that European
war may now probably be postponed for a twelve-
month. Preparations, too, for war or against war
are more costly than at any former period, and no
nation is now safe without armaments of a kind
unheard of but a few years back. But our warlike
expenditure is not our only expenditure. The cost
of our Civil Services is increasing incessantly and
under every head. Government upon liberal and
philanthropic principles costs money, and we are
finding it out. Although, therefore, we may be
content to believe, on Mr. Gladstone's authority,
that we have a surplus at present, it is by no means
certain that it represents any such permanent
superfluity of income as would suggest the utter
destruction of a source from which a convenient
portion of that income is derived. It would be
perfectly allowable to relax the screw if it could be
tightened again when necessary; but, though the
p
pmay be put on again to-
morrow,enwill be gone for ever.
penny off t
ithe Idnucotym oefi Ta;er
Mr. Bright utterly mistakes the nature of the
case when he thinks that a set is made against the
remission of the Paper Duty on grounds of special
jealousy. There is no doubt that at first the press
was taxed for political as well as fiscal purposes,
just as there is no doubt that recently the " taxes
on knowledge" were assailed with a double view
also. But the fact is that we have now got beyond
that ground of debate. Men look with misgiving
on the proposed remission, not because they are
angry with Mr. Gladstone, or because they are
opposed to the enlightenment of the people, but
because one after another of the indirect taxes has
been abolished, till it seems as if direct is to be gene-
rally substituted for indirect taxation. Mr. Bright,
in fact, has as good as told us that, if Budgets were
but left to him to frame, he would remove tax after
tax until Property and Income were left with the
obligation of supporting the expenditure for which
he is pleased to hold the propertied ilasaes alope
accountable. This prospect people do not like ;
and, as the present Budget actually goes a step
towards realizing it, they do not like the Budget.
This is .the whole secret of the matter, It is not
" vindictiveness" or political jealousy. It is not
that there is any special " affection for the Excise
in the case of paper " beyond what was felt in the
case of glass or soap. But the Excise on glass
has gone, and the Excise on soap is gone, and if
the Excise on paper is to go, and Excise duties
are thus to continue going, what is to become
of that class of taxpayers who have to make every
reduction good again, when it is found, too late,
that the money could not be spared ? The Paper
Duty is neither better nor worse than the rest, but
it is one of the last teeth in our heads. That is why
there is all this murmur about it.
However, we repeat once again that there is no
help for it. After what has taken place, we do not
see how the Paper Duty is to be retained in the
face of a surplus, however unsubstantial, and the
fact of a surplus has been officially announced. It
may be very true that cheaper paper will not h el l)
the million to live, and that it will not even help
them to read, for, if cheap newspapers were wanted,
the people have got them already, and will get
them no cheaper, It may be very true that the
papermakers themselves are, as Mr. Bright mildly
expressed it, " not enthusiastic for the repeal of
the tax," and that the class immediately interested
in the abolition of the duty is a small one, but we
can only add that all this should have been thought
of before. The time for such arguments was when
the repeal of the tax was originally proposed.
With the light now thrown upon the subject, it is
probable that even an " abstract resolution"
against the continuance of the Paper Duty would
fail to be carried ; but, for all that, the Paper Duty
—whatever Mr. Disraeli may think—has been
formally condemned by the House of Commons.
No tax has ever yet passed through such condem-
nation and survived. This time last year it was
thought as good as dead. People, indeed, do not
think now as they thought when those decisions
were taken, but Ow obligation has been assumed.
Promises and payments are always rather different
things, especially when the latter come on at a
season of inconvenience and repentance, but one is
apt to bring abbut the other. We promised, and
we, however disagreeable it must be, must pay.
Parliament marked out the Paper Dui; for extinc-
tion before it knew that we could spare it, and
when it did not know what little ground there was
for condemning it, but the resolution was taken.
More now turns upon the point than the loss or
gain of a thillion. Events give the question another
aspect, and it is eminently desirable that it should
now, with all its incidents, be set finally at rest.

(From the Morning Post.)
We give Mr. Disraeli every credit for the inge-
nuity with which he framed his argument on Mon-
day night, when he narrowed the question between
himself and the Government to Tea v. Paper. He
strove to conciliate all parties, and at a very low
rate of political exchange undertook to sell each
point of consistency for each vote not yet bought up
in the Parliamentary market. He was in this di-
lemma, that without the support of the Radicals ho
could not hope to outvote the Administration ; and
yet, in opposing the repeal of the paper duty, he
was ensuring their hostility to his own cause. Ac-
cordingly, Mr. Disraeli rather adroitly inveighed
against what he termed " the profligate expendi-
ture" of the Government. Was there not thus a hope
that a few of the greener and more innocent Radi-
cals might see in the chance of his advent to power
the prospect of a great retrenchment ? We fear,
however, that this artifice will deceive few. If the
expenditure of the present Government, falling as
it does two millions within its presumed income, be
profligate, what is to bn said of the expenditure of
Mr. Disraeli's and Lord Derby's own Government,
whose great merit was said by its defenders to rest
in the fact that they overspent their income in the
naval and military establishments which Mr. Dis-
raeli now desires to reduce ? At any rate, that third
Derby-Disraeli Administration, which however is
xt present in nubibus, can have no cry of " Pak-
in 'gton and the reconstruction of the Navy" to sup-
poi t it, We sincerely, sympathise with that right
hon.. bennet at his being thus unceremoniously
thrown over by his chief, and at the declaration of
profligacy against an expenditure once so vaunted
by. th,e Conservatives for its application to the
def,lnc e of the country, and in fact Sir John
Paki'voton's solitary political testimonial. But,
suspicious of some inconsistency in his
powerhapt nw
-gument, Mr. Disraeli adopts the bold
rof denying the fact of a surplus. This
hsterokoees, -upon grounds purely technical. Technically
there is „of course a hiatus. If the property and
tax, 93 were not renewed, the expenditure
nod zp4. would consider Ably exceed the inC9MC.
noo ?) u
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