The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-10-17 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORI,ING, OCT. 17, 1843.

At length the improved position of the country
has vindicated the justice and wisdom of the policy,
pursued steadily and firmly, amidst pressure both
from friends and opponents, by the ministry of Sir
Robert Peel. We are enabled this day to present to
our readers an abstract of the financial statement just
tuned for the year ending October 10, which shows
a nett increase of revenue during 1843 amounting
to £4,076,346 over that of the year preceding.
Upon the quarter the evidence of growing financial
prosperity is still more, being an increase of
£1,565,931 over the amount received in the corre-
sponding quarter of last year.
That this gr tifying improvement in our finances
is accompanied by a progressive :improvement in
the condition of the people and the activity of com-
merce, is clearly deducible from an examination of
the items, whose productiveness has increased, and,
as well, of the steady rate of their increase. For the
entire year, upon every item, with the exception of
the income tax and miscellaneous revenue, we have
exhibited to us a decrease, amounting in the aggre-
gate to no less than £1,868,443, of which more than
a million was under the head of customs, thus con-
clusively shewing the impossibility which existed of
effecting those large reductions in the tariff to which
such decrease is attributable, without having recourse
to some measure of direct taxation. Without the
income tax, which has produced for the year
£5,052,057, we must have had a deficiency, to add
to the large accumulation of debt during the period
of Whig misrule, amounting to little short of three
millions sterling !
For the quarter, although the increase is still
mainly composed of the produce of the income tax,
it is not attended with the same decrease in the pro-
ductiveness of those items, which are generally re-
ceived as forming an index of the internal condition
of the country. The customs, it is true, exhibit a
falling off of £400,000; hut this we attribute still,
of course, to the operation of the tariff. It was
sully anticipated to arise from that measure, during
the first year of its operation, and until the increased
amount of our imports should have compensated for
the decreased rates of duty. In the excise, however,
the principal index of the prosperity and consuming
power of the community, we find, for the quarter,
an increase of £240,515 ; and this has been pro-
gressive, for in the first quarter of the year there
Ives a deficiency under this head of 700,000, in the
second a very trifling deficiency, in the third an in-
crease of £140,000, and now of £240,000. Under
the head of stamps and taxes we have likewise an
increase on the quarter; and thus the only decrease
appears under the head Df customs, the amount of
which we have already stated, post-office and mis-
cellaneous.
That this statement, of itself, affords gratifying
evidence of the advancing prosperity of the country,
there are few men will be prepared to deny. Nay,
sanguine men may even hope for the rapid arrival
of the period when, commerce and industry having
regained their wonted activity, it will be no longer
necessary to sustain the revenue and the public
credit by the imposition of a tax, which we admit to
have been very generally unpalateable. But it is
not to the state of the revenue alone that we look for
proof that the policy of Sir Robert Peel's govern-
ment--its concession of ameliorations of our com-
mercial code, and its firm resistance to the sweeping
changes clamoured for by the ultra free-traders—
have been based upon the principles of justice and a
deep and sober investigation of the real position of
the country, external and internal, at the time of his
entry upon the functions of office. That proof is
before us and around us on every side. It is to be
found in our revived and increasing manufacturing
prosperity—in our extending commerce with all the
world--in the restored energies of our merchants
and our traders—in the universal confidence with
which an entire people (with the exception only of
here and there a knot of ditaffected grumblers)
have, through months of acknowledged suffering,
looked up, and now, when a brighter day has come,
still koli 1::e to that statesman and his colleagues as