The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-02-01 00:00:00

ITIE LIVERPOOL STANDARD, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1853

REDUCTION OF TAXATION.

As the time is approaching when some financial
statement must be submitted to the House of Com-
mons, as a matter of course, the public feeling out
of doors will be anxiously directed to agitation for
the repeal or reduction of such portions of the pub-
lic burdens as press more immediately upon the
immediate interests of the individual agitators. If
the State followed the example of the prudent man
in private life, the surplus income would be devoted
to a partial reduction of the heavy debt, the interest
of which forms such an important portion of the
annual expenditure:; but the system of modern
policy is to absorb all the surplus in reduction of
taxation, leaving the debt unreduced, and to be
further augmented when the necessities of war,
which now hovers over the political horizon, shall
demand a greatly increased expenditure. So long,
however, as this system is pursued, and popular
demands for devoting the surplus income to reduc-
tion of taxation must be met, it becomes a question
for grave consideration in what way it can be most
beneficially applied. Among the many schemes
now afloat, a petition for the abolition of the duty
on Soap has been extensively signed in Liverpool
during the last few days. This has strong recom-
mendations on sanitary grounds, but it may be
doubtful whether habits of cleanliness will be ma-
terially promoted by a reduction in the price of
Soap, though there is no doubt it ought to have that
effect. The demand for an abolition of the duty
on Paper is not without its supporters, who have
many strong reasons in its favour ; and this ques-
tion has also been mixed up with that of the Ad-
vertisement Duty and Stamps on Newspapers. The
two former are entitled to attention as a positive
benefit, while the latter may be of questionable ad-
vantage, especially if coupled with the loss of free-
dom from postage. There is also the question of
the heavy duty on Tea, a reduction of which has
been postponed through the defeat only of a Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, and is confidently expected
to form an item in the next Budget. There are also
the claims of the Shipping and Agricultural interests
to special relief in any further reduction of the
public burdens, and they are claims which cannot
escape the attention of the House of Commons,
however they may be evaded by the present mon-
grel Administration. But, perhaps, the most im-
portant of all is the Income-tax, which has still to
be renewed. It is felt by most as a grievous impost,
and the unfairness and inequality of its pressure
has been acknowledged by all parties. It is a mode
of taxation which nothing but stern necessity can
justify, and any margin in the National Balance-sheet
should be devoted to its ultimate extinction, lest,
when war comes upon us in its stern reality, the
sources of additional taxation will be pre-occupied.
With these claims, and the many more which the
ingenuity of Financial Reformers and popular agi-
tators will discover, the concoctor of the next Bud-
get will find it a much more difficult task than he
did to help to demolish Mr. DISRAELI'S financial
scheme.

MINISTERIAL DIFFICULTIES.

IT does not seem to have required a Parliamentary

campaign to expose the utter weakness of that un-
natural coalition which is put forth as the ABER•
BEEN Administration, and boasted of by Liberals
and renegade Conservatives as comprising "all the
talents" of the country. Rumours are already rife
of serious disagreements on important subjects,
and changes in the highest offices are talked
of. It is said that the Earl of ABERDEEN will re-
sign the Premiership, on the plea of ill-health, and
that his place will be supplied by Lord JOHN
RUSSELL. If this be true, it will prove that the
whole fabric has been raised on false pretences—
that the affair has been a wholesale swindle, for the
sake of entrapping reluctant PEELITES,—and that
the real object is to restore the party who this time
last year, with a more favourable House of Com-
mons, confessed their inability to carry on the
Government of the country. This view is further
confirmed by the report that the vexed question of
the Income-tax has proved a stumbling-block to
financial unity, and that Mr. GLADSTONE, the new
Chancellor of the Exchequer, unable to agree with
his colleagues—which no one ever fancied he would
—has been required to give place to a man of more
Whiggish tractability. The next rumour will be
that Lord PALMERSTON has resumed the seals of
the Foreign-office, with which he has been so long
familiar, and that each of the few remaining
PEELITES has found some convenient pretext,
apart from acknowledged political disagreement,
for surrendering his office, in order that there may
be no clog to the march of Liberalism. It is evi-
dent that there is something wrong, that either the
PEELITES are ashamed of their position, or find it
impossible to go the lengths demanded of them,
and in either case the time cannot be far distant
when the Earl of DERBY may be called upon to try
his hand once more at the formation cf an Adminis-
tration. He will have the advantage of experience,
and be better able to select his officers, with due
regard to their capacity for fulfilling the duties they
will have to perform. Nor would it be at all sur-
prining, atop what has taken place, if come of the
moderate members of the PEELITE section give
their adhesion to a DERBY Cabinet, and excuse
their apparent tergiversation by attributing their
late adverse votes to their objections to the Lois-
RAELI Budget. There is no doubt that the Earl of
DERBY may make some alterations in the selection
of his colleagues with advantage to the country.
The Earl of MALMESBURY has not been most
felicitous in his essay at Foreign diplomacy, and
many may be of opinion that, with Mr. HERRIES
as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. DISRAELI
as Home Secretary, a Conservative Cabinet would
enjoy a larger share of the confidence of the House
of Commons. Under any circumstances, it is next
to impossible that the present Cabinet can endure,
for it will have to encounter the enormous strength
of the Conservative phalanx, in addition to the
Romish Brigade and the disappointed PEELITES.