The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-03-28 00:00:00

THE INCOME-TAX.

On bringing up the report of the Committee of Ways
and Means,

Sir H. WILLOUGHBY moved an amendment, the object
of which was that the additional income-tax should not
be levied in the first half-year, but collected half-yearly
with the old tax.

Mr. HANKEY reviewed the financial policy of the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer last year, and censured as inju-
dicious and erroneous his operations upon both the funded
and unfunded debt. The result of his conversions had
been that, although he had paid off a considerable amount
of the national debt, it had been done at a serious loss to
the country, by means of balances in the Bank of England,
which would have been otherwise applicable, without loss,
to the reduction of the debt.

A lengthened discussion ensued, in the course of which
Mr. DISRA.ELI said he could not approve of a proposition
for increasing taxation, unless a clear necessity had been
proved, and this proof, especially since the recent docu-
ments had appeared, was wanting. He then adverted to
what he had said upon a former occasion respecting the
diminution of the Exchequer Balances from nearly
£9,000,000 in 1853 to £4400,000 in 1854., and the effect
of dealing with the interest of the funded and unfunded
debt, for the purpose of vindicating the accuracy of his
own statements and impugning the correctness of those
made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, proving the
improvidence of the Finance Minister's conduct. He
accused Mr. Gladstone of meeting with discourteous
taunts his warnings against the reduction of the rate of
interest on the unfunded debt, from the depression of the
funds and other symptoms which no wise man, he said,
would have disregarded. The raising of the rate of dis-
count by the bank twice in the same month, occasioned by
the rapid efflux of the precious metals, ought alone, he
thought, to have made the Chancellor of the Exchequer
hesitate before he commenced an operation which was to
end in a reduction of the interest of the whole funded
debt. He pursued the alleged inaccuracies of the Finance
Minister into other statements, and reproached him with
undertaking so hazardous a project as that of dealing with
the interest of the funded debt, in spite, not only of the
efflux of bullion, of falling funds, over-speculation, and
the prospect of a bad harvest, but of the knowledge
which he must have had of the ominous contents of the
secret documents just disclosed. Irrespective of all these
circumstances, he contended that the scheme, being radi-
cally defective, must have failed, and the attempt to work
a double system—to pay off old incumbrances, and at the
same time to bear the cost of a war out of our own imme-
diate resources, was impracticable, and must end inevita-
bly in a loan.

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER said he was not
responsible for changes in the money market, and that
the objection would imply that no, financial operations of
this kind ought to be tried except at the very moments of
time the most favourable for the operation.
The amendment was rejected without a division, and
the house adjourned at two o'clock.