The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-05-22 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

TAXATION.
(From the Morning Herald.)
The Government journals are delighted with what
they consider the " successful debut" of the new
Chancellor of the Exchequer. The extremely kind and
courteous tone of the conservative opposition has been
taken as a decided acknowledgment of the transcend-
ant abilities of Mr. Baring as Finance Minister. It is,
indeed, a "lucky administration," and in nothing more
than this, that it has to deal with the most polite and
genteel opposition that any ministry in this country
ever had to deal with.
We have often had occasion to observe that the view
of the opposition in the House of Commons at the
present day seems to be bounded by the four walls of
that house. Seldom, indeed, do the speeches of the
leaders indicate the existence of a people out of doors,
to whom both ministers and their opponents are, or
ought to be, responsible.
Whigs in place are actually forgetful of the people,
and tories out of place do not much like to remind them
that there is a people in existence. In fact, an appeal
to public feeling from the conservative side of the
house is so rare, that one is inevitably led to infer that
it is considered beneath.the dignity of conservative se-
natorship to address the tribunal of public opinion at
all. Yet there have been oppositions in the House of
Commons quite equal in intellect, intelligence, and wis-
dom, dignity and eloquence, to the present, that did not
disdain to appeal from parliamentary divisions to the
sense of the universal people.
In the question of taxation it cannot he denied that
the people are peculiarly interested, and yet in the dis-
cussion upon the budget of the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer the interests of the people, and the faith of
Government pledged to the people on the subject of
the assessed taxes, were left as completely out of view
as if the members of the House of Commons on both
sides of the house only represented themselves. If they
alone paid the taxes we should have no objection to
their taking a view of the Chancellor's budget, which
had no reference to anything beyond the visible horizon
of the house. But whatever whigs and tories may
vote on the subject, it is certain the PEOPLE mustpay.
They have e. right, therefore, to be heard upon the me-
rits of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's plan. For
Mr. Baring's brass they have to give their sterling gold.
And surely whig brass never made a more impudent
demand upon the public pocket than in the matter of
a proposed augmentation of the ASSESSED TAXES.
When Ministers had the face to propose an increase
of the assessed taxes, the opposition were too genteel
to remind them that those were the very taxes that the
whigs, when out of office, were continually agitating
against, and with some reason, if their endeavour to
obtain a repeal of those taxes had been an honest one,
instead of a mere hollow and delusive pretence, The
assessed taxes were originally imposed expressly as
WAR TAXES—imposts that were to cease on the return
to a state of peace. Upon this ground the whigs used
to charge the tories with having broken faith with the
people in having prolonged those taxes after the termina-
tion of the war. This constituted the pith and marrow
of many a popular harangue by Lord Althorp, now
Earl Spencer, Sir John Hobhouse, and others, at the
time when Lord Palmerston was as yet an unconverted,
because a p!ace-enjoying tory, and Lord Melbourne
had a truly aristocratic horror of everything in the
shape or bearing the name of reform.
People of England ! see what golden fruit you gather
off the branches of the " tree of liberty," planted ten
years ago by the whigs, and labelled and ticketed on
every bough with the words " PEACE, RETRENCH-
MENT, and REFORM." For reform—that is, parlia-
mentary reform—it is admitted that bribery and cor-
ruption, which Lord John Russell positively declared
the Grey bill would extinguish, are greater than ever.
For "peace," we have had the Anglo-Gallic " little
war" of the Netherlands, with all its " amicable
slaughter." The non-intervention or buccaneering war
in Spain, in which Evans, if he lost the battle, won the
race at Hernani and Fontarahia; and we have now,
last but not least, the opium war with China, which has
cut off legitimate commerce with that great empire,
because the influence of opium smugglers on the na-
tional councils- is stronger than the voice of justice and
morality. For "retrenchment" we have an augmenta-
tion of the assessed taxes, though it is a quarter of a
century since that French war terminated for the con-
tinuance of which only were they originally imposed.
Such, people of England, are the benefits which ye
derive from the practical application of the whig motto,
" Peace, retrenchment, and economy." When the
whigs came into office there was about £2,000,000 sur-
plus of public revenue over expenditure ; now there is
nearly £3,000,000 deficiency.

(From the Scottish Standard.)

The results of whig " reform" are now developing
themselves in a way which must bring the country to
its senses, if anything will. The public burdens, it has
been officially announced, are to be seriously augmented
to meet the deficiency occasioned by the folly and ex-
travagance of our self-styled economical " reform" mi-
nisters ; and the initiatory has already been taken, in
the reformed House of Commons, to carry the liberal
object into effect. Surely John Bull will now find out
that he has indeed and in truth " paid too dear for his
whis le l"

‘v'e had prepared our readers for the whig chancel-
lor's budget, which was laid before the House of Com-
mon' an Friday night. The right honourable whig
economist candidly acknoss ledged that the expenditure
of the country had exceeded its income by two millions
seven hundred and thirty-two thousand pounds—which,
of course, must be made up ; so that instead of carry-
ing out the reductions of taxation so well begun by
tory administrations, the whig reformers, after ten
years' application of their boasted principles of eco-
nomy and retrenchment, and in this, the twenty-fifth
year of profound peace, are under the necessity of im-
posing additional burdens upon the people. There are
to be no new taxes. 0, no ! that would be an offence
against the majesty of the people which the whigs could
never think of committing for a moment; all, there-
fore, that is to be done is to increase the taxes which al-
ready exist !—a " distinction without a difference" for
which their friends, the people, will no doubt be most
thankful.
We have given a report of the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer's financial statement under the proper head.
He estimates the . expelfditure of the present year at
£49,432,000, inclusive of the previous deficit, and the
probable income from present resources at 546,700,000
—leaving an amount of deficiency to be made up, as
we have already stated, of £2,732,000, which he pro-
poses supplying upon the following plan :
Instead of new taxes, to impose 5 per :lent. additional on
the customs and excise duties, with the exception of a few
articles, and ten per cent. upon the assessed taxes without
distinction. The exceptions to the 5 per cent. duty are,
first the articles of spirits, including home, foreign, and colo-
nial, for which art advance of 4d. per gallon will be substi-
tuted; secondly, on corn imported, upon which no alteration
will De made, because the impost levied on that at ticle is not
considered to be for the purpose of revenue, but, for protec-
tion of the home producer ; thirdly, the duty on post-horses,
and the licenses upon stage-coaches are to be exempted from
the advance, on the ground of the competition they have to
encounter from the railways. The increase to the revenue
by this advance on existing taxes is estimated at £2,337,000,
reducing the deficiency to £395,000, for which, and also for
a further sum of 4155,000, as a guarantee for defalcation
from the estimate, a vote of credit will be applied for.

This plan, under all the circumstances of the case,
is perhaps as unobjectionable as any that could be de-
vised. Articles will, it is true, be included in the ad-
vance of the import duty, which ought to be the sub-
ject of a reduction rather than an augmentation of duty ;
and among them we would particularly notice the ar-
ticle of raw cotton, the present import duty upon which
is extremely mischievous both to the manufacturing
and agricultural interests ; but exceptions may be made
when the details are discussed. Certainly there are
advantages in augmenting old duties instead of impos-
ing new, since the expense of collecting is not increased,
and the channels of industry are not deranged.
No—At is not to the plan of increasing the taxation
of the country that there can be any great objections,
but to the necessity that has arisen for increasing it at
all.
We have now had a quarter of a century of peace—
a period long enough, in all conscience, for reducing
fully and permanently that large amount of taxation
which a protracted war had rendered indispensable, for
the security of the national honour, the national safety
—nay, our very existence as a nation at all ; and under
the administration of the country's affairs by conser-
vative statesmen, that amount was very considerably.
reduced ; and lad such statesmen only continued to

administer the country's affairs, it would by this time,
no doubt, have been reduced as low as any reasonable
man could expect. But, unhappily for the country, a
set of political charlatans, calling themselves whig re-
formers, have been allowed to have possession.of the
government of the kingdom; and although economy
and retrenchment were the most prominent principles
upon which they professed to act, instead of going on
reducing the public burdens, until made consistent
with a time of continued peace, we are now, as we
have shown, in the twenty-fifth year of peace, to have
the taxes increased upwards of two millions at one slap.
The fact is, it ought to have been done a year or two
ago, for the evil has been growing, and of course get-
ting worse all that time ; but the whig economists
were, no doubt, too muck ashamed of their handy-
work to bring forward a remedy for.it likely to be so
injurious to their popularity, until they could no
longer stave it off. They have at length, however,
been obliged, by stern necessity, to furnish the country
with this decisive evidence of the hollowness of their
professions, and the profligacy of their prrctices ; but
under the additional burdens which their conduct has
imposed, there is this consolation, that the exposure
must hasten their expulsion from office.