The Sun.
London, England, 1842-04-08 00:00:00

THE CANTON RANSOM.

Mr. BLEWITT wished to ask the Right Honourable
Baronet if he had any objection to state to the House
what had been the amount received on account of the
Canton ransom, in sterling money. The present state-
ment
in dollars was very confused.
Sir R. PEEL said that as soon as the Sycee silver
should be coined, he would let the Hon. Gentleman know
its value in British currency. In answer to a question
which was put by the Noble Lord last night, he (Sir R.
Peel) had replied from recollection ; he would now give
the Noble Lord more particular information on the sub-
ject. There was a sum of 323,1931. from miscellaneous
revenue. He had told the Noble Lord that he was under
an opinion that a great part of that had arisen from the
ransom money. He would now, however, more particu-
larly account for that sum. There was for surplus fees,
20,7701. ; incidental, 50/ ; hereditary revenue, 373/ ;
Sycee silver, 302,0001. There was an additional sum,
for which credit was not given.
Mr. BLEWITT wished to ask the Right Hon. Baronet
another question, as to what was to be done with the
junks, &c., which had been taken as prizes in the Chinese
Seas. He hoped no application of the money would take
place, till he had an opportunity of speaking on the
subject.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL slid, perhaps the Hon.
Gentleman was not aware that an Order in Council had
been passed for the disposal of those prizes.
Mr. BLEWITT then wished to know whether, in pur-
suance of that order, proper instructions had been given
relative to the adjudication of the prizes.
Sir R. PEEL said that no doubt proper instructions
were sent when the Order in Council was made.
INCOME TAX—PRESENTATION OF PETITIONS.
Mr. T. DUNCOMBE. then rose to move—" That the
practice of this House, which precludes the presentation
of petitions upon the subject of any tax or duty under its
consideration, be discontinued." The Hon. Member said
that up to the time when the Right Hon. Baronet
(Sir Robert Peel) made his financial state-
ment, few individuals in that House, but much
fewer out of it, were aware that it had ever been the prac-
tice of the House to refuse to hear petitions upon the
subject of a tax. It was surprising that the
Members of the Reformed Parliament should at-
tempt to shelter themselves under an inconsistent and
almost obsolete practice by refusing to hear petitions
which were presented to it by those very individuals who
had placed them in the position which they occupied.
He was prepared to maintain and to insist upon the right
of the people to address that House upon any subject
which they might think proper. lie contended that the
people had as indubitable a right to address the House
by petition upon the subject of taxation, as upon
any measure of general legislation relating to the
right, the liberty, or the property of the subject.—
(Hear.) He took his stand upon those broad grounds,
~and he was not prepared to compromise the principle in
the slightest degree. Now it would be necessary to trace
the origin of the practice in question, the source from
which it sprung, how it had been enforced, and when
and where it had been departed from. The House would
observe that there was no standing order or rule whatever
for the course which they were then pursuing in re-
jecting the petitions of the people ; and, be thought,
when it was shown how the practice originated,
neither the House nor the public could be otherwise
than surprised at the slender grounds on which they
presumed to reject the petitions of those who had placed
them there to protect their property and their interests.
It appeared from llatsell's precedents, which he trusted
the House would consider no mean authority, that
this practice originated very shortly after the revolution
of 1688. The first time the right appeared to have been
questioned was in 1689. On the 15th of April a petition
was presented from the French Protestant ministers pray-
ing for relief. It was finally resolved that this petition
should be withdrawn. In 1796 a resolution was passed
in a Committee of Ways and Means for imposing a
tax of ten per cent. ad valorem on articles
of woollen manufacture. A cloud of petitions was pre-
sented against it, and although the resolution was car-
ried in the Committee of Ways and Means, • the
Bill was dropped ; in fact, the Bill was never
presented at all. It appeared, then, that in 1698,
the House having felt the inconvenience of admitting
petitions that had been presented in a preceding
session, refused to receive those petitions on a
tax then depending. In 1708 a tax was proposed upon
coals and culm ; a petition was presented against it and
was refused, by a majority of 113 against the presentation.
It appears that the House subsequently departed from
this rule, for on the 14th of February, a petition was
presented from various merchants and traders against
a duty on calicoes, and the petitioners asked to
be heard against the tax by counsel. That was refused,
but the petition itself was ordered to lie on the table till
the second reading of the Bill. On the 21st of
May, 1711, it was proposed to raise 1,500,0001
by a duty on vellum, parchment, and cards ; a petition
against the duty was presented by merchants trading in
Genoa paper, by stationers and haberdashers. That
. petition was' not only received, but was ordered
to be referred for consideration to a Committee

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of the whole House on the Bill. Now that practice of
I receiving petitions went even farther than he asked to
go, for the petition of 1711 was not only received, but
was ordered to be referred to a Committee of the
whole House. In 1732, the question was again
raised. The inhabitants of Rhode Island, in that
year, presented a petition against the Sugar Colonies
Bill; the same objection was taken to the peti-
tion as in 1698 ; and a Mr. Winnington, who ap-
peared to be then a great authority on the Ministerial
side of the House, said the practice of receiving such a
petition had never been followed except upon
extraordinary occasions, as it had been found in-
convenient from the time of the House being
occupied in discussing frivolous petitions. This ob-
jection could not apply at present; in those days
petitions on aßill could be discussed, and sometimes one pe-
tition would occupy a whole evening, consequently nothing
could be easier than to defeat a tax by petitions of that
description. No decision of this period could apply
against him (Mr. Duncombe), since the role of the
House now was, that a petition must be presented by
merely stating its object, without any debate arising on it,.
In the year 1733, a petition from the City of London
was submitted to that House against the then pending
Excise Bill. It was moved not only that the petition
should be laid upon the table, but that Counsel should be
heard at the Bar against the Bill. A long debate then arose.
Mr. Pulteney, Sir William Wyndham, and others, spoke
in favour of the petition being received ; while the then
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Robert Walpole, the
Attorney-General, and the Solicitor-General spoke
upen the other side. The arguments used upon
that occasion, were the same as those used in the pre-
ceding Session—namely, that the time of the House
would be too much occupied with a multitude of peti-
tions, and that public business would thus be incon-
veniently impeded. The matter ended, however, by the.
petition being allowed to be left on the table, while
Counsel was refused to be heard at the bar, but
only upon a narrow division, the numbers
voting with the Government being 214, and the,
numbers voting on the popular side being 197 ; so
that there had been a majority of only 17 In April
1733, more petitions came in from Nottingham, which
were ordered to be laid upon the table ; and
the Excise Bill was ultimately dropped. Now this
custom of not receiving petitions has certainly ob-
tained ever since that period, with a few isolated ex-
ceptions in cases when the petitions bad slipped in with-
out the observation of the House. But the question
had never afterwards been discussed until the month
of May, 1815. On the Ist of May in that year a
petition was presented against the then pending Pro-
perty -tax Bill. That petition was certainly rejected ;
but it was rejected not only on the ground of its relating
to a tax then pending, but also because it was supposed
to be disrespectful and libellous in some of its allegations.
• Sir W. Curtis presented that petition ; it was
rejected by 107 votes to 29. But there had
been no rule laid down upon the subject.
and it had always been left to the discretion of the House
to receive or to reject such petitions. From the .rear
1815 he would pass to what had occurred the other
day. On the 22d of last month he found that
there had been offered to the House a petition
from the parish of St. Clement's, Eastcheap; and also a
petition from Royston against the proposed duty upon
income. The Speaker, upon that occasion, said
that it appeared to him, from the • proceedings of
the Committee of Ways and Means, which were
published in the Votes • and Proceedings of the House,
that a tax -upon income had been proposed as
part of the Ways and Means for meeting the ex-
penditure of the year, and that according to the
established rule of the House no petitieu, against
a tax for the service of the year, under consideration,
could be received by the House. That was the rule laid
down by the Speaker, and he did not complain of the de-
cision, for he believed the practice alluded to had, with
slight interruption, prevailed for a considerable time.
He might raise a special plea in the present case, if he
did not think it would be unworthy the importance and
justice of the case. The Speaker had laid it down, thut
-against taxes-for the service of the year petitions
were inadmissible ; but the Right Hon. Baronet had told
them that this was not a tax for the service of the
year, but a tax for three years.—(Hear, hear.) He
might use that as a plea, but he thought it would be
a mere quibble, when he rested on the broad constitu-
tional principle that the people had a right to be heerd
by petition in all eases. Let the House look to the manner
in which this tax had been intreduced. The measure by
which the people were to be taxed, to• the amount of
four millions, was lint mentioned to the House
on the 11th of March, and the. Friday following
the House went into Committee of Ways and
Means ; and from that hour the doors of that
House were closed against the petitions of the
people.—(Hear, hear.) No doubt it was convenient
to a Minister, who was unpopular with the coun-
try, that such a. rule as the one in question should
be enforced ; but it was not the less a gross in-
fringement of the rights of the people. He concluded
by movit.g, " That the practice of this House, which
precludes the presentation of petitions on the subject of
any tax or duty ender its consideration, be dis-
continued."

Mr. WALLACE seconded the motion without any
observation.

Sir GEORGE CLERK was not prepared to contest
the argument of the Hon. Gentleman, that the doors of
the House ought to be open to the petitions of the people.
But the Hon. Gentleman himself had shown that front
the earliest period, since the Revolution, the rule to which
he (Mr. D.) objected had been maintained. Very soon
after the Revolution, a greater number of petitions were
presented than had ever before been known. It was
found inconvenient to have soinany petitions against the
Money Bills of the year, and after a few years the evil
was found to be so growing, that the House in 1693 came to
the resolution that no petition should be received against
a Money Bill under the consideration of the House.
After a great number of decisions by the House,
it seemed to have been admitted by all parties
in the House to have been a wise and salutary
rule respecting the restrictions of the presentation
of petitions. He thought the House also had been ex-
tremely jealous in preventing such restrictions on the
presentation of petitions going beyond that line which
was originally drawn in 1693. There had been
apparent, deviations from that rule. Those deviations
arose from doubts entertained by the House as to
whether the Bills under discussion, and which had
been petitioned against were, properly, Money
Bills, or rather only Bills for the regulation of
trade, by the provisions of which additional burdens
might • be thrown upon the people, either by increasing
the actual amount of duty to be levied on certain arti-
cles, or by imposing regulationg according to the ma-
chinery of the Act of an inquisitorial nature. He thought
that if the Honourable Member would look to
the discussion in 1733 he would see that upon that oc-
casion, when a Bill was introduced by Sir R. Walpole
for regulating the duties on tobacco, the point considered
was, whether it was a Money Bill, or one merely for the
regulation of trade. The precedents previous to that time
were ordered to be read during the discussion upon the Bill;
thus it would be seen that, from the year 1693
downwards, that rule obtained. Now, upon what
principle had the House adopted that rule. It
was upon this. If the House of Commons found
it necessary, in order to raise a supply in Com-
mittee of Ways and Means, to have recourse
to the disagreeable alternative of imposing fresh
taxes, there could be no doubt that the im-
position of fresh taxes would be felt as a
burden and a grievance by every class of the com-
munity. Now, the House would not require to
be informed, by petitions, that the people felt
the impositions of those taxes to be a grievance.
It was for the House to judge, whether, after having
voted large supplies to the Crown, and seeing no
other mode of raising those supplies but by the
imposition of fresh taxes, they were to desist from the
course of proceeding which they had adopted, merely
because it was felt by some individuals to be a grievance?
After the year 1733, the rule having been com-
pletely established, an attempt was made at devi-
ation from it ' • for, he believed, that in
1733, when an additional duty was sought to be
laid on receipt stamps, the City of London presented
a petition against the Bill introduced for that
purpose, and the petition was received under those
circumstances. It was the privilege of the City
of London to present petions to that House
by their Sheriffs who, for that purpose, came to the bar
of the House. No Member stated the substance
of those petitions, and the petition to which he now
alluded, was merely laid upon the table, and read
by the clerk, and consequently no question could
arise from the precedent of a petition so presented.
Mr. Fox had been present in the House on that oc-
casion, and no man in the then, or in the pre-
sent Mouse of Commons, could be more jealous of
the rights of the people than Mr. Fox—had
said, that although he had considered the sub-
ject of petitioning the House of Commons to
be an invaluable right of Englishmen, yet
if they permitted every man to petition against
every new tax, it would be impossible for the House
to go on with the business. Mr. Fox even went
still further, and said that the more universally a tax
should be petitioned against, the greater argument,
in his mind, did that constitute in its favour, because it
proved that the tax acted impartially—that it was an equal
tax, pressing equally upon all classes. This practice could
not be attended by any inconvenience, because if a tax
were proposed, those who were affected by it had
an ample opportunity of making their representa-
tives aware of their feelings on the subject. No
evil could possibly arise from refusing to receive
petitions upon this subject, as all constituencies had
an opportunity of instructing their representatives.
Was there anything he would ask in the tax, which
his Right Honourable Friend had proposed. to call
upon that House to depart from what had been
their practice for the last 150 years. He did not com-
plain of the course which Honourable Members opposite
had adopted before the recess for the purpose of delay-
ing the progress of the Resolutions. They had taken the
opportunity of the recess to ascertain the sentiments of
their constituents, and therefore whenever they should
come to a division on the subject, every Member would
be as well prepared to state the sentiments of his con-
stituents, as if they had had an opportunity of
presenting petitions on the subject. He was not
aware of any new arguments against this tax.
He conceived that if they refused the right in that
instance, where the interests of a particular clash.
of trades were concerned, the greater reason they
had to r/fuse it when the tax was universal
in its application to all classes, and included all
persons. It was for these reasons—because he
heard no argument from the Honourable Member
for Finsbury, showing that inconvenience had re-
sulted from the rule—because it had been adopted by
the House of Commons for 150 years, and had been
found by all parties a very expedient rule--be-
cause it had not been rashly adopted by
them—because it was likely to secure the
rights and privileges of the subject and of the country ;