The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-02-24 00:00:00

Cavalry, at say 400
1Y 700

valry, a

y, at say 800

; in Ferozepore, Sappers and
Regiments, supposed with

The debate on Monday night, upon Lord Beau-
mont's motion for a select committee " to inquire
into the burdens on real property, and the impedi-
ments to agricultural transactions, caused by the
present system of excise duties, poor laws, and
local taxation," has brought before us facts which
place in a very strDng light the unfavourable
circumstances under which the British agriculturist
is called upon to enter into a competition with the
foreigner, as compared with those under which the
manufacturer is prepared to submit to the same
ordeal. We have never gone the whole length of
those who maintained that the landowner and the
farmer were unduly burdened, even taking into
account the protection which the corn law gave, as

a set-off against such burdens

But it is clear that

the withdrawal of all protection will render it im-
peratively necessary that a fresh and more equal dis-
tribution of taxation should be made, and the pres-
sure upon the cultivator and the owner of the soil
should be materially lightened, to enable them with
any fair chance to sustain the competition to which
they are about to be exposed.

Lord Beaumont does not Complain of the pres-
sure of strictly local taxation, such as the rating of
the land for draining, for sewerage, or for a rural
police. Where the benefit of such rating, sewer-
age, or police, is confined to particular localities,
he concedes the justice of such localities being made
to bear the cost. But taxation for the maintenance
.of the poor, he contends, presses very unequally,
and much to the injury of the agriculturist, as
compared with other classes of the community.
The original mode of raising this tax, as contem-
plated by the act of Elizabeth, by which every man
was made to pay according to his means, whether

those means were derived from the land or from
profits in trade, was fair and equitable. But since
the practice of rating profits in trade, or other in-
comes not tangible, has fallen into disuse, the
burden of maintaining the poor, he considers, and
we think justly, has fallen too heavily and in a most
undue proportion upon real property. The follow-
ing is the comparison which he draws between the
position of the landowner and the manufacturer.

" Suppose a large sum of money were invested in the
working of a mill ; the calculation which the mill-owner
would have to pay to the poor-rate would be in proportion
to the rateable value of the mill —that not being at the
rack-rent as was sometimes the case with land; but often
at two-thirds (Sr one-half of the rent, as he believed was
the case in Westmorland. That was all which such a
person contributed. He started his mill with an immense
sum of money—he collected all the healthy. able agricul-
tural labourers from the surrounding neighbourhood—
when he had accumulated sufficient money, and wished to
retire from business, he might close his mill—it was no
longer an occupied building—it paid no rates, and the hun-
dreds, or it might be thousands, of work-people that he
had employed were thrown back in their age upon agricul-
tural districts, which had to support them. Let them
contrast that case with the way in which it operated on the
farmer. The farmer had no choice whatever, but must
either employ the men or increase the rates ; and he knew
that many farmers in his own part of the country em-
ployed many more labourers in consequence than the
bare economical working of his farm required." (Hear,
hear.)

With perfect fairness he might have gone further
than this. He might have taken the cases of a man
who invests his capital of ten thousand pounds in
land or real property of any description, and one
who embarks it in trade or in the public securities.
The former pays poor rates upon four or five hun-
dred pounds, his entire income, whilst the latter is
only called upon to pay rates upon forty or fifty
pounds, the rent of the shop in which he carries on
his business or of the house in which he enjoys his
dividends.

Another oppressive feature in the operation of the
poor laws upon the agriculturist is occasioned by
the working of the present law of settlement by
birth. The manufacturer can have his labour when
and for what period he chooses ; and when it ceases
to be profitable, can throw upon parishes the neces-
sity of supporting the labourer until he is again in
request. He is unfettered and irresponsible. The
landowner, on the contrary, is rigidly bound, and
cannot evade his bond. The labourer can say to
him—
" I know there is work at Norwich or Manchester, but
here I am (in the north of Northumberland, perhaps,)
arid how can I get there ? I have been removed here by
the law of settlement, and I must remain a charge upon
the parish, because I have no money to get back to the
market where labour is in demand."

The law is therefore an injury both to the agri-
cultural body and to their labouring poor. It in-
creases the rates of the former, and it chains the lat-
ter to poverty and compulsory idleness.
The highway rates, he contends, press unequally
upon the land, whilst the towns, which are thereby
connected and benefitted, escape. We cannot, how-
ever, go the length of admitting with him that the
agriculturist derives an inconsiderable benefit from
the maintenance of good roads ; and do not think,
therefore, that his lordship's argument that the pre-
sent contribution of the farmer to the mainte-
nance of good roads is a grievance, has been
made out. And, again, we differ from him
upon the subject of the peculiar pressure of
tithe upon the land, which he maintains has
ceased to be a burden since its being commuted. In
its present state it no longer operates as a discour-
agement to improved cultivation, but it is none the
less a burden for having become a fixed one. Its
amount is part of the extra weight which the British
agriculturist Las to carry in the race of competition
with the foreign grower of corn. Upon this sub-
ject we may quote the forcible illustration of Lord
Stanley—

" When it was said that the imposition of tithe did not
add to the expense of producing corn, he (Lord Stanley)
would assume that a mill should be built in a certain
town, and a condition was imposed upon the owner of that
mill, that the one-tenth part of every piece of cotton pro-
duced in that mill (or, his Lordship might have added a
fixed yearly sum in commutation) should go as a payment
to the state—the question was, did not that burden add to
the cost of producing the article in the mill ? (Hear, hear.)
If, for instance, another mill were established in the same
town, and the owner of it was exempt from the tax of one-
tenth, how could the man who paid the tax give the article
produced at the same price, or realise the same profit ?
(Hear, hear.) He would apply the same argument to corn.
How was it possible that the corn which was raised on
land subject to the burden of tithe could stand in compe-
tition with the foreign article? (Hear.) It was said that
tithe was no longer a burden since the commutation ; but
he contended that it was, for a certain composition was
agreed to be paid for it, and it was as much a burden as
ever."

The excise duty on malt, Lord Beaumont con-
tended, was an impost which pressed more heavily
against the agriculturists than upon other consum-
ing classes, inasmuch as, besides increasing the
price of beer, it discouraged the growth of barley,
the most profitable crop of the farmer. They were
sufferers, too, from not being allowed to malt, or
even to steep their grain for feeding purposes, with-
out the interference of the excise. The excise duty
on bricks, too, his lordship thought might be re-
moved with advantage to the landowner, whose clay
would thus come into extended consumption. The
hop duty was also one which pressed peculiarly upon
the land.

Another serious grievance felt by the owner of
land and other real property was the stamp duty,
which rendered the transfer of such property most
expensive, and raising money upon it for temporary
purposes almost ruinous. He admitted that the
legacy duty upon personal property was to some
extent a set off ; but he wished that duty to he re-
moved. There were, also, on the other side of the
scale, a few exemptions, amongst which was the in-
surance duty on certain articles of an agricultural
nature, which were however justified, he contended,
by their necessary exposure to danger from the acts
of incendiaries, and to accident.

Lord Brougham, Lord Stanley, the Duke of
Richmond, and Lord Dacre entirely concurred in
the propriety of the motion, and, generally, in the
correctness of the statements of the noble mover.
The latter noble lord contributed the following
figures, which clearly show that to the poor-rates,
at least, the agriculturist contributes very much be-
yond his legitimate proportion : _ _

" There had been returns printed for the purpose of
ascertaining the rateable value of property prior to the
imposition of the income-tax in 1812. The valuation for
the poor-rates amounted to £48,400,000, while the pro -
perty-tax had been paid on one hundred and eighty odd
millions, exclusive of the incomes below £l5O a year,
which were not charged, though the poor-rates were levied
on the poorest cottiers. (Hear, hear.) He felt, therefore,
justified in saying that the value of property in this coun-
try was not lower than £200,000,000, including the in-
comes under £l5O, and that fully three-fourths of this
amount was not suljected to the poor rates, which thus
fell most heavily on the landed interest."

And what has Sir Robert Peel held out to the
agricultural classes, thus burdened, to enable them
to compete with the comparatively untaxed foreign
grower ? A few reductions of the duty upon articles,
the bulk of which are only apparent reductions,
and three-fourths of which are never likely to affect
the farmer at all. If justice is to be done to every
class—if the home grower of corn is to be allowed

a fair chance of success in the struggle to compete
with the foreign grower, and to maintain his relative
position amongst the great interests of the country
—he should bear no more than his fair proportion
of the public burdens. A great minister, whilst de-
vising such great changes in the fiscal system of the
country, .as those which have been making from
1842 to the present period, should surely have ex-
tended his views of amelioration beyond the mere
revision of a tariff, and not have left untouched and
uninquired into, every- other mode of taxation. If
the commerce of the country is to be advanced by
the application to it of the new principles of the po-
litical philosophy of modern days—if the pressure of
indirect taxation is to be lightened—why should the
direct taxation, which bears so heavily upon the
owners and cultivators of the soil, whom we are
about to embark in a fearful and perhaps a fatal ex-
periment, be permitted to groan beneath a system,
erected to meet very different circumstances than the
present, and when those upon whom it was imposed
were in a very different position to endure its weight ?
We trust that the motion of Lord Beaumont, and
the facts which his committee must elicit, will not
be without their results. In one respect it is clear
that a change must be made. An alteration of the
law of settlement mita be made, by which all classes
will have to contribute their fair share towards
the support of the poor ; or, perhaps better still, the
maintenance of the poor must be taken into the na-
tional charge.

The gentlemen of the Anti-corn Law League ap-
pear to be endowed with so universal a genius, that
it is matter of great difficulty to determine what is
their peculiar forte. They can discourse learnedly
on every subject, from cotton and corn to kite solun
tion of a problem in Euclid. They Qv?, lay, aside
their ledgers or their cash-books, step. put of their

counting-houses, and proceed forthwith to enlighten
even practical men in the science of the cultivation
of the soil. Yet, to look at their innocent faces, and
to contemplate their past lives, spent in adding loom
to loom or spindle to spindle, you would not imagine
they would know a plough from a flail, or a field of
wheat from a field of turnips. Their learning has
either come by intuition, or they have been born
philosophers.
One of these omniscient gentlemen is the quaker
member for Durham city—Mr. John Bright. The
world has imagined that, for the last twenty years,
during which this precocious youth has been im-
mersed in the cares of cotton-spinning and weaving,
in the sweet-smelling and most enlightened town of
Rochdale, he has not had an hour's leisure to direct
his mind to the subject of farming. Yet we find
him, on a sudden, so perfectly au fait to it in all its
details, that, amongst his fellow-townsmen who are
acquainted with the extent of his opportunities of
learning, we need not he surprised if—

" Still the wonder grows
T:iat one broadbrim can cover all he knows."

Draining, hedging, ditching, manures, crops—all
are as familiar to John as cotton or Cocker. He
detects faulty cultivation of the soil as unerringly as
he can detect a broken warp in a piece of his own
calicoes, or a hole in one of his own stockings.
Towards the opinions of such a man it is a sad
proof of human blindness that the world is not dis-
posed to extend implicit deference. An instance of
such recusancy is before us at this moment. A few
nights ago, in his speech in the House upon Mr.
Miles's amendment to the ministerial propositions,
the hon. member took occasion to enlarge upon the
bad farming to be met with throughout the county
of Chester—a county which, in our school days, we
were taught to style, we always presumed from its
superior cultivation and fertility, as " the Vale Royal
of England." According to Mr. Bright, however,
nothing can be much worse than the cultivation of
this pattern county. Its farming is slovenly. Its
land is not made the most of. Under the manage-
ment of such an agricultural genius as Mr. Bright
it would doubtless assume a totally different aspect
—deluge Liverpool and Manchester with milk, and
glut every market at home and abroad with " prime
old Cheshire." It is a pity, we repeat, that the facts
and the opinions of such a man are not implicitly
swallowed, and there are people in the world so
behind the present age as to prefer actual observation
and practical knowledge of agricultural pursuits to
the intuitive knowledge of cows and sheep, pasture
and arable, ploughs and harrows, which can now be
picked up in the counting-house of a Rochdale cot-
ton factory. One of the representatives of Cheshire
—Mr. John Tollemache—is afflicted with such old-
world notions, and has been hardy enough to deli-
ver himself of the following denial of Mr. Bright's
assertion, and vindicate the ability and enterprise
of the Cheshire farmers. Mr. Tollemache remarked
that—

" As the hon. member for Durham, after whom he had
risen to speak, but in vain, the last night of the debate,
gave vent pretty freely to the expression of his opinion on
the subject of farming in Cheshire, perhaps he might be
allowed, as one of the members for that county, to express
his belief that if the hon. gentleman had had the same ex-
perience in the cultivation of the soil that he had in the
manufacture of cotton goods, not only would he have ar-
rived at a very different conclusion with respect to the
state of farming in the county of Chester, but he would
also have been thoroughly satisfied that, so pressed down
was the landed interest by local and general taxation as to
make it utterly impossible for the British farmer to com-
pete with the foreign farmer ; and, therefore, the ho-
nourable gentleman, instead of being, as he then
was, a thorough-going and an ultra free-trader, would,
at this moment, have been a most determined and
rigid protectionist. It was not to an agriculturist
that the honourable gentleman would go for an opinion
when carrying on manufacturing operations, consequently
he must excuse him (Mr Tollemache) for declining, as he
did decline, to acknowledge him as any great authority, or,
indeed as any authority at all, on matters relating to agri-
culture. However, as the hon. gentleman had favoured
them with his observations, he should state that, although
he had the honour of being one of the members for South
Cheshire. he was connected, both as a landed proprietor
and as a resident, with another county, which was
acknowledged to be one of the best cultivated in the
kingdom; and, from all he had seen in that and other
counties he did not hesitate to declare that, in many parts
of Cheshire, agricultural improvement was progressing as
rapidly as in any other part of the country."

We may perhaps be exposing ourselves to some
little derision by the avowal which we are about to
make ; but we must candidly acknowledge that,
upon such a subject, we would regard the opinion
of Mr. Tollemache as one entitled to much greater
weight than that of the hon. member for Durham
city. We should readily defer to the judgment of
the latter gentleman with respect to the quality or
the value of a piece of calico, a pound of cotton
yarn, or a yard of flannel—commodities more im-
mediately in his own line. But, when he talks so
glibly about the slovenly farming and the absence
of improvement in Cheshire, we are inclined to sus-
pect that he cannot have carried his observations
much beyond the building land in the outskirts of
the large manufacturing towns, whose population
he has enlightened from time to time with his won-
derful discoveries in political economy. It may,
perhaps, be a shock to the vanity of such a remark-
ably sagacious personage as himself, if we were
to remind him of the moral of the old fable—" Ne
sutor ultra crepidam."

The third report of the Select Committee ap-
pointed for the classification of Railway Bills has
just been published, and must have materially con-
duced to remove the alarm with which its resolutions,
based upon instructions supposed to have been
offered by Government as the guide of its conduct,
were looked for. It was feared that we were to
have seen a clear sweep made of all those schemes
which did not partake of the character of necessary
extensions or branches of existing lines ; that no
merely competing lines were to be permitted to
occupy the attention of Parliament; and the old
companies were in extacies with the thought that
they were to be permitted to enjoy their monopolies
and to dictate terms to the public for some more
years to come. The report before us, however,
warrants no such conclusion. It plainly admits
that the committee "have not deemed it advisable
to recommend the house to make any selection from,
or to place any limitation on, the number of rail-
way schemes to be submitted to Parliament this
session ;" that the whole of the railways which shall
succeed in passing the standing orders are to be in-
vestigated upon their merits ; and intimates the
opinion of the Select Committee that, with such
alterations in the modes of procedure which it re-
commends, and the saving of time, and talk, which
it advises the committees to enforce, the entire rail-
way business of the session may be got through
without seriously inconveniencing the members of
either house.

Taking the whole number of Bills for which peti-
tions have been presented this session at 562—viz.,
395 for Railways in England and Wales, 120 for
Railways in Scotland, and 47 for Railways in Ire-
land—many of which they consider must fail in
standing orders, the Committee conceive that the
number for England and Wales may be conveniently
formed into 51 groups, and those for Scotland into
10. For the whole, therefore, only 61 Select Com-
mittees would be required, the Irish Bills, with a
certain class of English Bills, having already been
ordered to be taken up in the first instance in the
House of Lords. The number of Committees last
year was 52 ; but, owing to peculiar circumstances,
only 45 appear to have sate. When the tedious pro-
ceedings which took place before these Committees
are considered, it is not wonderful that they did not
succeed in getting through the entire business before
them. Months were taken up in hearing conflicting
statements of traffic, which were calculated only to
leave the Tribunals before which they were made in
a happy state of confusion. The Committee recom-
mend that with respect to these enquiries the practice
laid down by the present standing orders should be
altered ; that it should no longer be imperative upon
the Select Committees to report upon the traffic, or
probable profit to the projectors of the schemes sub-
mitted to them ; but nevertheless they may " make
such enquiries as they may judge proper with regard
to population and to the extent of accommodation
that would be afforded to the public." Any unop-
posed Railway Bill, they suggest, may be " referred
to the Chairman of Ways and Means, and the Mem-
bers ordered to bring in the bill, to be dealt with as
other unopposed bills." By this judicious course the
time of Parliament and a vast amount of unneces-
sary expenditure by the Companies will be saved.
With such opinions, coming from a committee,
one object of whose appointment was assumed to
be to ward off a supposed danger to the country
from excessive investment of its capital in railway
speculations, adway
speculations, we cannot think that the public, in-
terested in railway property, is warranted in enter-
taining the fear of any unnecessary severity or
rigidity being extended to really sound schemes by
the committees who will shortly have to sit upon
their merits. By this time, we think, the absiad.