INCOME TAX—REPORT —ADJOURNED DEBATE.

HC Deb 13 April 1842 vol 62 cc377-456

The Order of the day for resuming the debate having been read,

Mr. Aldam

said, I can assure the House, that, in moving the adjournment last night, I was not guided by the wish to offer a factious opposition to the measures proposed by Government. My sole reason was, that several Members on this side of the House, representing important constituencies, and entitled to be heard, and even called upon to speak upon a question of the magnitude of that now before us, have not yet addressed the House. And when it is recollected that the debate on the Income-tax last night commenced at so late an hour as half-past eight, and that three Members only on each side of the House had the opportunity of speaking, and how great was the impatience of the House after twelve o'clock, it will be conceded that it was not unreasonable to ask for another night's debate. Hon. Members on the other side of the House have spoken of the feeling of the country, of the petitions with 20,000 signatures in favour of the measures proposed, and of hole-and-corner meetings against them. I did not employ the Easter recess in agitation, as has been insinuated of hon. Members on this side; but a meeting was held in the borough which I have the honour to represent,—a meeting, to the getting up of which I was no party, but which I was specially requested to attend, to which the electors generally were invited,—of which ample notice was given,—held in the room where important public meetings are usually held,—and presided over by the chief magistrate. Many persons of the first respectability were present, and large numbers of clothiers, artisans, and small tradesmen, not personally or immediately interested in the proposed impost. I may say a unanimous opinion against the Income-tax appeared to be felt, and resolutions condemnatory of it were carried by a large majority. It is felt in commercial towns that it is unjust to tax the hard-earned produce of industry on the same footing as the income of realised property, annually received without toil and without risk. It is felt, too, that the real burden of the Income-tax, a Government inquiry into men's private affairs, falls exclusively upon the trading classes. Instead of indulging in general declamation against the inquisitorial operations of an Income-tax, I will ask the permission of the House to read a few questions, addressed to the parties in a mercantile firm by commissioners under the former Income-tax. These questions were read at the meeting of which I have spoken, from papers in the possession of a gentleman who had given much attention to the working of the former law. [The hon. Member read the following questions in a paper read by Mr. Tottie at the meeting at Leeds:] How did the increase arise in the sums of money employed by you in your trade in the year ending 5th of April, 1810; and whence did the decrease arise therein for the year ending 5th April, 1811? What was the amount of your stock in hand, including book debts and all your partnership effects, in the several years 1808,1809, 1810, and ending 5th April, 1811, distinguishing the amount, therefore, in each year? What was the amount of excise duties paid by you in your trade in each of the above-mentioned years, distinguishing the amount paid each year? How much money did each of you draw from the stock in the several years 1808,1809, and 1810, ending 5th April, 1811? Have you in your estimates of profits included any, and what sums, expended by you or either of you, in support of your respective families? What is the average of the prices at which you have bought and sold the different articles you have dealt in, in the several years 1808,1809, and 1810, ending each year on the 5th April in the succeeding year, and the amount bought and sold in each year at that average? Have you in your statement made any, and what deductions on account of losses sustained by you in any matter not connected with your trade, or not arising out of it, with the particulars of any such deductions? Or on account of any improvements of your premises, or for repairs, or supply of your utensils? Or on account or pretence of the interest of the capital employed by you, and which, or any part of it, might have been made thereon, if laid out at interest? If you make no deduction in the settlement of your profit or loss, how or in what manner do you make the balance of your profits or loss appear in each year; It is idle to say that questions like these are not vexatious and irritating; they would be so under any circumstances, and with any people, but with none so much as with the English, who have a natural abhorrence of interference with and inquiry into their private affairs. But it is not a mere question of feeling; the state of men's affairs will be divulged; the whole experience of the working of the last Income-tax proves the impracticability of strict secresy; and men who are in temporary embarrassment, but not altogether insolvent, or so that they might retrieve themselves under other circumstances, will be in danger of immediate ruin. It is not necessary for a Member on this side, in opposing the Ministerial scheme of finance, to furnish a budget of his own. In so doing he would but lay himself open to the just sarcasm of the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government, as a provincial Chancellor of the Exchequer. But as one or two taxes have been discussed by both sides as a substitute for the Income-tax, I will take the liberty shortly to allude to them. It is possible that a tax on the descent of real property might produce considerably less than some sanguine estimates that have been made, from the necessity of a prior deduction of mortgage money; but there can be no doubt that such a tax would bring in a large sum. It was the intention of the Minister who proposed the legacy duty, that it should extend to property of all descriptions, and this House will never be free from the charge of class-legislation until personal and real estate is placed upon the same footing. An objection which the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government makes to the imposition of assessed taxes, or any additional taxes, other than the Income-tax, is that you increase the motives for absenteeism. This reason appears to weigh much with the right hon. Baronet, for it was adduced by him in the discussion of the budget pf 1840, as an argument against the addition to taxation proposed by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. The objection is a serious one. but the remedy seems obvious—an-Income-tax on absentees. The difference of expense of living in England and on the continent is mainly caused, directly or indirectly, by our heavy taxation, and the man of property who, by living abroad, makes his income go one-fourth further than at home, abstracts an amount equal to one-fourth of his income from the English Exchequer. You may say that the machinery for levying such a tax would be difficult. I admit it; but no difficulty of this kind ought to weigh, when you can invent a machinery for determining the amount of every man's income. I believe there is a very general opinion prevalent throughout the country, that it would have been better to have left the timber duties unaltered rather than sacrifice revenue by their reduction. I concur in this opinion; but I will do the Government the justice to admit, that in this reduction they have acted a perfectly disinterested part; that the great and wealthy interests of the country will not thank them for it; that the owners of mills, of houses, and of ships do not wish it; for with cheaper timber, cheaper mills, houses and ships will be built, and their property will be depreciated. Nevertheless, it is of great national importance to have cheap timber, that mills, houses, and ships may be built at less expense, that we may compete with the foreigner under more favourable circumstances; and more, especially that the habitations of the poor may be of a better description. It is remarked by travellers that the poor are well or ill lodged as timber may be cheap or dear. In parts of Ireland and Scotland where no timber is found, their dwellings are wretched. In Switzerland and Norway, which abound in it, they are commodious and comfortable. I admit that if duties are to be taken off, timber is a judicious selection; but I think with the alternative of an Income-tax, these duties should be retained until a surplus of revenue make a reduction of taxation practicable. It may appear chimerical in the present state of the finances of the country to speak of a surplus. It must be admitted, that it is long since we have had surpluses to deal with; but the reason is easily seen in the disastrous state of the trade of the country, arising from four successive bad or indifferent harvests, the evil results of which our Corn-laws have not permitted us to counteract by the importation of foreign grain. Let us have a recurrence of favourable harvests, {and in the natural order of the seasons we may expect it, for it has rarely happened that more than four bad seasons have followed each other), and let the Corn-laws be put on a rational footing, or abandoned altogether, and we shall again have an improving revenue, and, as in the three years preceding 1837, the more pleasing duty of selecting taxes to reduce. I regret that the difference of duty of foreign and colonial coffee has remained unchanged. You have reduced protection to the maker of gloves, of shoes, of straw plait, and you have left the planter as he was. Had you reduced the duty on foreign coffee to 8d., and left 6d. a pound on colonial, as before the benefit to the consumer would have been the same—the price would have been the price in bond of foreign coffee, with the 8d. duty, and the retailer's profit; and a sum of fully 120,000l. on the present consumption of colonial coffee would have been saved to the revenue. But I regret most of all that you have made no change in the sugar duties—that on the present consumption, and at the actual prices you have left us tributary to the planters to the amount of fully 4,000,000l. a-year. You say you will not admit foreign sugar, because it is a slave-grown production — so is coffee, but you admit that; you tell us that the cultivation of coffee is not a laborious occupation—that it involves but little of hardship to the slave—your reasoning is good, but you have not consistently carried it out. Why do you admit foreign rice? Under the old tariff the duty was 15s. a cwt., about (½d. per lb., and amounting to a prohibition of any extensive trade. Under the new, it is admitted at a duty of 5½d. a pound) and the rice of the Carolinas and Georgia will compete with the free labour rice of Bengal. The cultivation of rice would prove fatal to the White in a single season; and what is the condition of the negroes engaged in it? I will ask permission of the House to make this clear, by reading a passage from Mr. Buckingham's late work on the Slave States of America. I have high authority in quoting Mr. Buckingham; the right hon. Premier has done it before me. Mr. Buckingham says, speaking of Savannah in Georgia— For all I could learn of the condition of the household slaves, it was quite as comfortable as that of servants in the middle ranks in England. This extract shows that Mr. B. will not give an aggravated account of the circumstances of the slaves, from a feeling against the institution of slavery, He then gives this account of a rice plantation near Savannah, which he describes as being a fair average:— The slaves are up by daylight—they have their meals cooked for them in the fields—they continue to work till dark—they have no holiday on Saturday afternoon, or any other time, except a day or two at Christmas—their allowance of food consists of a peck of Indian corn per week. This they must grind themselves. It is then boiled with water, without anything to eat with it—boiled corn and water only, and barely a sufficient quantity of this for mere subsistence. Absence or neglect of duty is punished with stinted allowance, imprisonment, and flogging—no instruction was allowed to be given in reading or writing—no recreation provided—in appearance all the negroes we saw looked insufficiently fed, most wretchedly clad, and ill accommodated in their dwellings; and we agreed that the prisoners in all the state prisons we had seen in the country were better off, and less severely worked than these men. I have read this, not to induce you to reject the rice of the Carolinas, for you cannot do it without excluding at the same time the free-grown rice of Java and the East, but that you may no longer act upon a principle which you cannot carry out. As well might you refuse the tallow and the hemp of Russia, as grown upon estates cultivated by serfs, whose personal rights are scarcely greater than those of slaves. I object to the Income-tax as promoting immorality. We are proud of the veracity of Englishmen; this feature in the national character may be the result of our institutions. The English law carefully avoids placing men in temptation; it does not allow a witness to give evidence in a cause in which he is interested;—and yet, by your Income-tax you compel a man to disclose the circumstance on which the amount to which he is taxed depends. You may make a first assessment for this tax; but when the nature of the inquiry to be made is known, when your first papers of questions have been answered, when your first surcharges have been made, you will find public feeling so excited that a second assessment will be impracticable.

Mr. Escott

believed, that the measure when considered together with its accompanying measures was well adapted to meet present exigencies, while it created no undue burthens, and did not, in the amount proposed to be raised by the tax, exceed the necessity of the times. Of the hon. Members who had spoken upon the opposition side of the House, some had accused those upon his side of the House with having adopted a system of silence, and with having refrained from expressing their reason for supporting the measure proposed by the First Lord of the Treasury, while they had nevertheless determined to support by their votes. There was nothing, he thought, extraordinary in hon. Members preferring, whilst others exhausted the time of the House in discussing what they could hardly be supposed yet to comprehend, to examine a proposition calmly and deliberately which was fraught with such important consequences before they spoke in its favor or condemnation, that at least had been his course. There was a description of silence to be noticed amongst hon. Gentlemen opposite which was rather remarkable, namely, a silence as to the causes which led to the deficiencies that made the measure then before the House necessary; not only were hon. Members opposite silent as to those causes; but whenever hon. Members at the side of the House at which he (Mr. Escott) sat alluded to them, they were met with reproach for so doing, and charged with factious views in adverting to the conduct of those who had rendered the measure of the right hon. Baronet necessary. Another more serious charge had been brought against the majority of that House by the noble Lord, the Member for London, who asserted they were in the present instance not impelled by a desire to do what was right, which was beneficial to the country, but by a desire to keep a Minister in place. To hear this from a noble Lord who had so prominently exerted himself in effecting the reform of that House was strange indeed—a House which might be considered to be now nearly modelled anew upon his own suggestions, and with which he had shown himself abundantly complacent as long as it had sanctioned his measures, and suffered him to remain in power. As one of that majority he must deny the charge, and deny it in terms as distinct and positive as were consistent with the respect due to the noble Lord's character and station in that House. But he would contend that it was that very conduct, and those identical measures of the noble Lord that had rendered it necessary for his right hon. Friend to bring forward the present energetic measures to remedy the mischief consummated by the late Government. The question, it should be recollected, was not one between the old and the new system of finance. The old finance system had been destroyed; the finance system of Mr. Canning, Lord Liverpool, Lord Grey, or the Duke of Wellington, was utterly annihilated and gone, it had been broken up and destroyed; it had been destroyed by the late Government. The question now was between the merits of the financial system of the noble Lord opposite, and the financial system of his right hon. Friend, Sir R. Peel. Against the financial system of the noble Lord the House had already decided. The resolutions of the noble Lord on foreign sugar had been negatived by two Parliaments, principally owing to the indisposition of the House to give encouragement to sugar the produce of slavery, for the suppression of which the Commons of England had voted no less a sum than 20,000,000l. The noble Lord last year had accompanied that proposal with another of greater importance to the public—namely, that corn should be importable from foreign ports at a fixed duty of 8s. per quarter. That, too, had been rejected by Parliament and the country. He now proposed another Corn-law, in which his fixed duty was to vanish to 1s. a quarter. The noble Lord had explained that in this proposition he meant to reserve to the Queen in Council a power to re-impose the duty of 8s. when it might be so considered expedient. What! Was this guardian of the constitution the person to propose that, whenever it should suit the purposes of revenue, the Queen of these realms should become herself the imposer of the bread-tax? The noble Lord the Member for London had declared that he was the consistent friend of the farmer; and he asked hon. Members at his (Mr. Escott's) side of the House if they did not perceive a growing feeling amongst farmers in favour of the fixed duty. He (Mr. Escott) knew that there was an opinion amongst some farmers, and even landowners, that a fixed duty (not the duty of 8s. however) would be a more efficient protection than a fluctuating duty; but then they objected to the fluctuating scale for the very reason which induced him to approve of it, namely, because when the price was high they lost their protection under that arrangement. But the noble Lord the Member for London had admitted that it was his intention to take off the fixed duty when the price became high, by the Queen in Council. He hoped, therefore, that the farmers of England would not forget what the advantage was which the noble Lord offered to them; namely, that they were to have an insufficient protection when corn was low, and to lose it altogether when the price repaid them for their labour and expense. What was the measure of the right hon. Baronet which they were called on to consider? It consisted of two parts, namely, imposition of taxes and the remission of taxes. What he would ask, was the state of the country which called for the measures of the right hon. Baronet? A deficiency in the revenue, which required to be made up by the imposition of taxation; and a languishing trade which required to be invigorated by the remission of duties. These were two evils, and there must be two remedies. It was, therefore, impossible to take the measures of the right hon. Baronet into fair consideration without considering both parts together. "The right hon. Baronet proposed to impose a tax upon the annual ability to pay of all classes in the country, and a great deal had been said against it, as if such a tax ought only to be imposed on property. But the plan of the right hon. Baronet was to impose the tax, which was an annual payment upon the annual property of those who were to pay, and it exempted every man whose income was less than 150l. annually, thus omitting from its operation, as far as such was possible, every poor man throughout the kingdom. He (Mr. Escott) did not mean to contend, that a man with 150l. per annum might not be poor and distressed, but so might a man of 300l. per annum, or of much larger income; yet he should say, that taking some fixed sum as a criterion of ability to pay, it was a fair presumption to assume, that the man with 150l. per annum was not so poor, at least, as to be an object of compassion, and thereby entitled to a total exemption from contribution. If they looked at the tax in relation to the advantage likely to arise from the remission of duties by which the tax was accompanied, he (Mr. Escott) thought, that so far from 'losing, the person so paying the tax would be a gainer by the measures of the right hon. Baronet; but then came another consideration. If, as he believed, those whose incomes were above 150l. per annum, and those whose incomes were under that amount, would be gainers by the measures of the right hon. Baronet, he might be asked upon whom the taxation would fall? To this he would answer, that it would fall on the owners of land and on the hoarders of money, and he believed those were two classes which every right-minded man would wish to see fairly contribute to the support of the State. But those classes would be greatly benefitted by the measure of the right hon. Baronet, for the monied man would get greater security for his future dividends, and it was evident they felt that from the rise in the funds, whilst the landowners also obtained corresponding advantages in the tardy admission of the principle that monied property ought to bear its share in the burthens of the State. He could not doubt the course which he should feel it his duty to take on the division on this question. He should take the measures of Government as a whole. He should not look minutely into the tariff, unless there were any parts of it which appeared to him likely to create greater weight and burdens than those from which they relieved the great body of the consumers with that view. There was one part of the tariff to which he wished to call attention—namely, the great reduction of the import duty on articles of foreign manufacture, and which were also articles of considerable manufacture in this country. He particularly alluded to two articles—namely, shoes and gloves. He would particularly allude to the article of gloves, because that was an article of comparative luxury. It should be recollected that a great remission of the import duty on gloves had already taken place, and the glovers had ever since been struggling with the difficulties which their trade had suffered since that remission. He was afraid that the shilling saved to the consumer in the price of a pair of gloves was a shilling, which the consumer could better afford to pay than the manufacturer could afford to lose. He certainly thought, that in the case of gloves, that the consumer could much better afford to bear the loss than the manufacturer. However, he would look to this measure as a whole. He trusted, that whatever apprehensions might be entertained with respect to its effects upon any branch of our productive industry, that those effects, if they occurred at all, would be but temporary, and that the advantages which the manufacturers would derive from increased sale and increased consumption, and restored credit and trade, would fully compensate them for any loss to which for a time they might be subjected. He had felt it his duty to state those opinions to the House, and he was the more inclined to do so in consequence of the statement of the noble Lord, that the majority in that House did not look to the merits of the question so much as to the support which they wished to give to the Ministers of the Crown. He would look to the merits of this and every question. He wished to support the present Ministers of the Crown, perhaps as much from this reason as any other, that at the last general election, when questions of commercial policy Were put before the country to be decided on by the people, there was another question also put to the country, which he had not yet heard adverted to in this debate, and that question was, what men the country would have to administer the affairs of the State. They had heard of pledges at the last election. The only pledge he had been called upon to give was, whether he approved of the Administration of the right hon. Baronet. He had expressed his opinion in favour of the Administration of his right hon. Friend, and that expression of opinion had, more than any other motive, been the means of influencing his constituents to return him to that House. He never had given any pledge to the people on any particular measure, and he never would; but he wished to respect the opinion of the people, and in answer to the charge of the noble Lord he had stated the grounds on which he supported the policy of the right hon. Baronet. The country would gratefully respond to the call of the right hon. Baronet. He found the country, on his accession to power, struggling with evils which were not of his creation, and with the courage, wisdom, and foresight, worthy of a great Minister, he found a remedy for those evils.

Mr. J. Parker

trusted, that those who, like the hon. Member who had just spoken, supported the plan of the Government as a whole, and who now were so ready to give their support to the first part of that plan, which was, no doubt, the most agreeable to them.—namely, the Income-tax, would be equally ready to support the second part of the scheme, with which they (the Opposition) for the most part concurred, and to which the only objection which he saw was whether they were not paying for it rather too high a price. If the right hon. Baronet's tariff had proposed to deal with the great primary articles of life, and had placed the trade in corn upon a satisfactory footing for the future—as the proposition of the late Government would, he believed, have done; and if it had included also a large and liberal mode of treatment of the article of foreign sugar, he should have been disposed, as representing a large commercial constituency, to say that the advantage to the country would even have been worth the sacrifice which they were called upon to make. He did not think the necessity, either in regard to our relations abroad or our domestic difficulties, was so great as had been represented by hon. Gentlemen opposite, or formed any justification for their resorting to an Income-tax — a tax which they should always avoid looking upon as a permanent resource of the Stale. He admitted the importance of having a revenue equal at least to the expenditure of the country, and was also aware that any long continuance of financial disorder in any country must be looked upon as the precursor of financial revolution; but still he did not see, that the difficulty in the present case was sufficient to justify them in having recourse to a tax on property. In reference to the argument of the hon. Member for Winchester, it had certainly somewhat surprised him to hear the hon. Member advocate an antiquated principle, which he thought had long since exploded —namely, the necessity of propping up declining trades by means of artificial protection, the more especially as the right hon. Baronet had abandoned that principle in the proposed tariff. The grounds which had been urged by the Government, as showing the necessity for this extraordinary measure of taxation, were any thing but satisfactory, and appeared to have been the result of after consideration; for it would be remembered, that the right hon. Baronet had stated at the commencement of the Session, that he was prepared with the details of his scheme, but that he did not think it politic at that time to state them; yet now the necessity for such an extraordinary financial scheme was grounded in a great measure, upon the recent disasters in India, the news of which had only been received within the last few weeks. He was of opinion, that without having recourse to an Income-tax, measures might have been devised for maintaining the efficiency of our arms abroad, and of meeting all the financial exigencies of the country; and here he could not help contrasting the budget of the right hon. Baronet with that which had been proposed by the late Government last year, the adoption of which would, he was firmly persuaded, by increasing our commerce with other parts of the world, have improved our domestic industry, and thus, without any extraordinary burden being imposed upon the people, the difficulties of the country would have been provided for. Admitting all the advantages likely to arise from the improved tariff of the right hon. Baronet, he thought, nevertheless, that he should be paying too high a price for it by adopting the Income-tax, and he therefore felt his duty to vote against it. A petition, signed by 700 persons at Sheffield, had been sent to him deprecating the measure as an additional pressure upon them at a period of extraordinary and long-endured distress, and calling on him and his hon. Colleague to express their opinion to the House.

Viscount Sandon

could not help feeling surprised at the attempt which was now made by hon. Gentlemen to call again into existence that ricketty bantling, which, under the name of a financial measure, was last Session crushed and consigned to the tomb amidst the laughter of the House and the derision of the country. He was surprised, he repeated, to see a scheme now referred to with such confidence, and self-complacence which, on a former occasion, the House of Parliament had condemned as ill-judged and inefficient—a verdict since confirmed by the country, and further confirmed by the approbation which had been accorded to a portion, at least, of other and different measures. In his opinion, the condemnation which was last year pronounced was not sufficiently strong, for though, as a measure of commercial reform, the plan of the late Government might admit of dispute, it was, as a budget question, perfectly ridiculous. He would take, then, their propositions with regard to corn, sugar, and timber. Now, under the plan of the late Government, if the harvest were good, no additional revenue would be derived from corn, for in that case none would be imported from abroad; and if the harvest were bad, no revenue would be derived from it; for, in that case, prices would become so high that, in all probability, the fixed duty would be taken off. So that in neither case could any certain amount of revenue be relied upon for corn. Looking, again, to the sugar proposition, and taking it as a mere budget question, the revenue expected would depend on elements altogether uncertain—namely, the extent to which foreign sugar, on which a higher duty was paid, would displace the produce of our own colonies, on which a lower duty is paid. It was utterly impossible for any one to prognosticate the relative amounts of low and more highly taxed sugar that would be imported under the duties proposed by the late Government, or the extent to which the sugar of the East and West Indies would have been displaced by that of Cuba, Brazil, and other foreign countries. Again, with regard to timber, the financial result of the measure proposed last year depended on the extent to which the measure of the late Government would have had the effect of displacing the Canadian by the Baltic timber, a calculation which it was impossible to make with any certainty of the result. Besides, according to the late Government's own Governor-general in Canada, it could not be called into operation immediately, and therefore could not supply the existing and pressing deficiency in the revenues of the year. Thus, in the whole of the three measures, the budget then proposed was utterly inefficient for its purposes, every element in it was totally uncertain, and yet were these measures now to be called forth from the tomb to which they had been consigned, and should an attempt be made to galvanise as it were the dead carcase into existence, at a time when the difficulties to be encountered were admitted by all parties to be greater than those that existed last year? These measures were admitted to be insufficient for the exigencies of the present time, but they were still it seems to be proposed as a substitute, in part, for the bold and comprehensive plan of the right hon. Baronet. They were to be propped up by vague and general allusions to a great mass of other taxes which had been repealed since the conclusion of the war, as if recourse must be had to the revival of some of them to supply the deficiency. But to which of them would Gentlemen opposite drive the country? Would they, in order to revive a languishing trade, increase the Customs' duties? Did they contemplate with a view to increase the comforts of the people, an augmentation of the Excise duties? Would they increase the taxes on beer, on soap, or on glass? What, he asked, could they propose which would interfere less with trade than the Income-tax? Not Customs—not Excise. What then? Assessed taxes. Were not these taxes far more burdensome to mercantile men, professional men, and tradesmen, than the tax proposed by the present Government? The necessity of keeping up a certain appearance compelled these classes to become liable to the assessed taxes to an extent frequently beyond their means. These, too, were taxes which they must pay, whether they made profits or not. The banker or merchant could not lessen his establishment—he could not give up his country seat, or house at the West End, and retire to a smaller habitation. The physician must keep his decent house, his servants, and his carriage, whether he were successful in his profession or not; and so on with many other professions and trades. A great deal had been said about the inequality of an Income-tax; but the assessed taxes pressed with much greater inequality upon commerce and manufactures than the Income-tax, and they were burdensome to these classes in a degree which the Income-tax could in no way be charged with. Hon. Gentlemen on the other side had done everything in their power to make the Income-tax unpopular, but they had failed. The trumpet they had sounded elicited, at best, a very uncertain sound. The hon. Member for Salford acknowledged, that, though many persons in Manchester were opposed to the Income-tax—the number was not near as great as had been alleged, and the hon. Member further admitted that the petition which had been presented by the noble Lord (Lord Francis Egerton) represented a very large portion of the inhabitants of that place. Let them look to the real feeling that existed amongst the commercial classes. In the great commercial town which he represented, a person had drawn up a petition against the Income-tax, which was placed in the Exchange, and was read and re-read during five or six hours, but not a single signature was affixed to it. This fact was alluded to even by the Whig papers in Liverpool, and admitted as not a little remarkable. Now, the mercantile men in Liverpool must surely be allowed to know something of their own interest, and of the interests of trade; and, for the sake of the advantages which would be derived from the whole scheme of the right hon. Baronet, they were willing to submit to the undoubted inconveniences of the inquisitorial nature of an Income-tax. Even these inconveniences would be greatly mitigated by the option given to the tax-payer of referring to a special commissioner, instead of having his affairs investigated by his neighbour, and by the power of compounding for the term of three years. Considering the depression which existed in trade for the last three years, it probably would not be a bad bargain to make a composition founded on the profits of these years. Attempts were making to throw additional difficulties in the way of the Government, by endeavouring to under-estimate the difficulties that had arisen. The talk about peace or war was mere pedantry. If they came to the technicality of the case, they were at war—they were at war in India and in China; if they came to the substance, they were in a great emergency. It had been well said in that House that there were emergencies in peace as well as in war, and they might be as great in the one case as the other. It was ridiculous, and unworthy of men of common sense, not to say statesmen, to estimate the loss of the brave men who had perished in Caboul by pounds, shillings, and pence. When they were told that no more than 10,000 or 12,000 lives were lost in Caboul, and that that number could be provided for so many thousand pounds, was it possible for any man to have missed the consideration of the effect which that loss would have in shaking the moral impression as to British power throughout the whole of Asia. The 10,000 men so lost could not be replaced by 10,000 others. If lost in victory they would have removed the necessity of employing 100,000 men afterwards. But when lost in defeat they could not be replaced by 10,000, or 20,000, or 30,000. How utterly unstatesmanlike, then, was it, what miserable fallacy, to estimate the loss by the mere expense per head at which the men lost could be replaced. They were told, indeed, that the disasters in Affghanistan were only an Indian affair, and had nothing to do with English finance. But if the war was engaged in for European objects, was there not a fair claim upon this country? Would any one say, that that war had not been entered on with a view mainly to European policy? It was surely a question with regard to India, whether that country should bear the whole of the expenses of the Affghan war. Perhaps, however, we were only to lend our credit, but even in that case it was obvious that Parliament ought to secure to Government an ample and well-filled Exchequer, on which the world might see that they might satisfactorily rely. At any rate we had the whole expenses of the war in China on our hands; and absurd, iniquitous, and unjust, as he (Lord Sandon) held that war to be, he was afraid it must now be carried on; and who should tell him that the strong feeling existing throughout Asia (independently of that freemasonry of Islamism which had been referred to on a previous evening) would not cause the resistance offered by the Emperor of China to be greatly affected by the disasters in Caboul? Who could tell the new disasters that would thus arise? If the effect were felt in Burmah, in Cochin China, and the conterminous countries, could any one tell that the difficulties in China would not be immediately and enormously increased by the late calamity? A great and wise commander, one too who had served his country in the East as well as in the West, had declared that he was unwilling to trust the interests of the empire to little wars. These wars could not be starved—they could not be carried on on a little scale. Once engaged in the war in China, much as he regretted it, it must be carried on, and it would inevitably cause a very heavy charge to fall on this country. But should the future difficulties and disasters be not so great as there was cause to fear, and if it turned out that they would not require the entire sum which would be derived from the Income-tax, that tax would be still amply compensated for by the opportunity it gave the Government of relieving the commerce and ma- nufactures of the country. And should it be found that the necessary expenses of the country did not continue so far to exceed the ordinary sources of revenue, he trusted that the power thus placed in the hands of Government would be employed by it, in making still further reductions in the burdens upon trade and commerce, so as to more than compensate for this temporary tax. He said temporary, for he hoped it would not be permanent, as it-did involve inconveniencies not agreeable to the feelings of Englishmen. But the country would not object to submit to an inconvenience, when a great and important object was to be attained. Attempts had been made to paint, with all the force of impassioned eloquence, the inconveniences which an Income-tax would inflict upon men of science and genius dependent upon the exertion of their intellect. Now it may, certainly, be inconvenient to a man of science, with an Income of 2001. or 300l. a year, to pay 6l. or 9l. towards this tax, and he (Lord Sandon) much regretted it; but it was not destruction or starvation to him to do so, as had been represented. It might be, it was, an inconvenience, but let them not be told that it would drive him to the workhouse, or deprive his children of their education? He would be glad if the undoubted inequalities orgrievances could be rectified; but he acquiesced in the concurrent opinion of all those, at either side of the House, who had attentively considered this species of taxation, that it should be viewed as a whole, and that they should not descend to minute particularities. It should be remembered, that the per centage of taxation proposed was not very large. It was 3 and not 10 per cent, and that, too, cotemporaneously with considerable measures of relief in other directions. He had, no doubt that the expense of living would be materially diminished by these measures to those especially whose all went to provide the necessaries of life—to persons with small incomes, the very persons, on whom the Income-tax would most press. Then, with respect to the relief that would be given to manufactures by the tariff of his right hon. Friend: that relief was infinitely better appreciated in the manufacturing districts than it was in the House of Commons. For while the manufacturing constituencies, who would have to bear the burden of the Income-tax, either hailed the plan of the right hon. Baronet, or said nothing on the subject, their representatives were busy in that House, and elsewhere, in decrying it, and predicting all manner of misfortune. He believed, that the manufacturing and commercial interests of the country anticipated very great relief from the tariff of his right hon. Friend; and, moreover, that they felt the greatest confidence in the Government. He could have wished some parts altered, as perhaps they would be, in committee, and other parts omitted, in the details of that great mea. sure; but it was utterly impossible not to perceive, at a glance, that it was one every way worthy of his right hon. Friend's reputation; and not to remember that, at its first proposition, there was a most eloquent acquiescence in it on the other side of the House. On that occasion, there was no opposition to the plan of his right hon. Friend; on the contrary, it was cheered occasionally by hon. Gentlemen now adverse to it; and still more, it was held up by the organs of the party, next day, as a great boon to the country—a wise and a just measure. The Morning Chronicle received it at first with great applause, and the other organs of the party echoed that sentiment. But after a few days had elapsed, and hon. Gentlemen had had time to take counsel together, and to consider that an Income-tax must surely be an odious thing, and, that at any rate it would not fail to be unpopular sooner or later, the result was a furious protest against that tax which had so recently been praised, as a bold and comprehensive measure, worthy of the occasion, and the Minister who produced it. The country organs of the party, however, did not take the cue so quickly; for, notwithstanding railroads and steam-engines, the country was not as yet so completely controlled by the metropolis as, perhaps, hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House would wish; and the organs in Lancashire and Yorkshire were going on in the same strain of laudation as the Morning Chronicle had commenced with, hailing the proposition of the Prime Minister, and extolling its effects, long after the metropolitan organs of the party had began to condemn it. That an Income-tax would be popular, he (Lord Sandon) was not prepared to contend, for what tax, he would ask, was ever popular? But he did contend, that it had been and would be received by all men of sense in the country as the best that could be imposed in the present exigency and he believed, that it would be considered as tolerable by all men of every class and condition, from the consciousness that it was only imposed for a fixed and definite period. These were the reasons that induced him to give cot a reluctant acquiescence, but a hearty and cordial support to the plan of his right hon. Friend. There was only one other point that he should touch on, and as that was in some degree personal to himself, he hoped for the forbearance of the House while he dealt with it very briefly. Hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House were in the habit of treating the opposition made to the noble Lord's proposition respecting sugar as a political movement; and they had on more than one occasion stigmatised the conduct of hon. Gentlemen on his (Lord Sandon's)side of the House as hypocritical, for the part they had taken in regard to the question. If they were hypocrites, then they were so in common with the Lushingtons, the Buxtons, the Hoares, the Gurneys, and others, of the same opinion, who had also opposed the proposition of the noble Lord on the same grounds, and if such was to be the designation of his (Lord Sandon's) conduct in reference to that subject, then in such company he was proud to accept it. The only argument, however, urged by hon. Gentlemen opposite was, that while hon. Gentlemen on his side of the House took slave produce of other descriptions, they refused sugar. But he (Lord Sandon) had never for a moment pretended, nor did those hon. Gentlemen who voted against the proposition of the noble Lord on that occasion ever contend, that there should not be a trade in slave-grown articles. It was impossible to act on such a principle. The question must be taken by itself. The country had made a great experiment in emancipating the slaves; and he (Lord Sandon), and those who then acted with him, and he concluded even Gentlemen opposite ardently wished the example of that experiment to be followed by other countries. But what was the best way to induce the planters of Brazil, and Cuba, and Martinique, and Gaudaloupe to follow the noble example set them by this country? It was to prove to them that a free negro population could raise sugar in as great quantities and equally as cheap as slaves. Our continuing to admit cotton, coffee, and tobacco being slave-grown did not at all affect the success of that great experiment. The article of sugar was the great test of success, and it was by that test that France, Spain, and Brazil would judge of the experiment. If it failed in the hands of England they would not try the experiment; but by a little forbearance on our parts, a little encouragement in the supply of additional free labour, he (Lord Sandon) had no doubt, that it would be proved that a free black population could carry on the manufacture of sugar quite as well, to say the least of it, as a population of slaves. That was the ground of the opposition that had been given to the proposition of the noble Lord, and not any abstract horror at slave-grown articles on the part of hon. Gentlemen who opposed it. It was an experiment for a specific object, and it was hoped, that by means of its success, the acquiescence of slave-holding powers would be obtained for negro emancipation. At any rate we should not, by giving new and better markets, be counteracting our own efforts for putting down the trade in slaves. The consumer had lost nothing by the refusal to admit foreign sugar, nor had the revenue, for the supply of sugar had been equal to what was then predicted, the price had been moderate, and the difference in point of revenue did not amount to 40l. That this humane experiment was not a mere theory was satisfactorily proved, for a memorial had been addressed to the Captain-general of Cuba by the planters of that island in favour of slave emancipation, on the very ground of the commercial hostility of England to slavery and slave-grown sugar. Such a ground was the only one that could be successful with the planters of Cuba and the Brazils; and, in so far the experiment promised to be successful. The noble Lord concluded by apologising to the House for detaining them so long.

Sir Charles Napier

said, that if he believed the exigencies of the country required a property-tax, an income-tax, or both, or any other tax ever so burdensome, the right hon. Baronet should have his support; but the noble Lord, the Member for London, and the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, had told them that if the last House of Commons had approved of their budget there would have been no necessity whatever for a property-tax. In ad- dition to that, the noble Lord stated the other night, rather late it was true, that if they would also give a legacy duty upon real property, that that, together with the sugar duty, an 8s. duty on corn, and the timber duty, would be amply sufficient to carry on the Government of the country. The noble Lord certainly did come forward at rather a late hour with his measures; but why so? Because he knew full well that the whole agricultural interest was against him; that the colonial interest was against him; that the Canadian interest was against him; and therefore he knew full well that had he come forward earlier he still would have fallen: and with the assistance of the right hon. Baronet opposite, the noble Lord certainly did fall. What was the reason that the right hon. Baronet himself did not bring forward the same budget? If he had brought forward an 8s. duty on corn, the sugar duty, and the duty on timber, he would have been deserted by those very men who now supported him. He did not think the right hon. Baronet would obtain so much by his own measures as he would have done by the measures he had just mentioned. By corn, he did not believe any great amount of revenue would be got. Corn would remain in bond, as long as that was for the advantage of the owners, as it had remained before, and when the price rose, the bonded corn would come into consumption at a shilling duty. Before the farmer would have the opportunity to bring his corn to market, the speculator would have gained his money, which would be sent out of the country instead of being paid into the Exchequer, and by the high price the poor would be left to starve. He did not believe that the sliding-scale of the right hon. Baronet would assist the Government of this country, while he believed an 8s. duty would have been a sufficient protection for the agriculturists and extremely beneficial to the revenue. The hon. Member for Durham (Mr. Liddell) had said, taking off the prohibition duty on live cattle and also upon meat, ought not to excite the fears of the agriculturists, as it would do them no damage. He was not of that opinion. He was himself in a small way a grazier and an agriculturist also, and he was of opinion that on taking off these duties, establishments would be set on the opposite side of the channel, in consequence of a prohibitory duty being to be imposed upon oil cake. [Sir R. Peel: "No, no."] He begged the Tight hon. Baronet's pardon; he certainly had not read the whole of the tariff, but it had been so communicated to him. [Sir R. Peel: That point has been corrected.] If so, then that part of his argument fell to the ground. Still he believed that establishments would be set up on the opposite coast for fatting cattle, and that great quantities of fat cattle would be introduced into this country, and most certainly great quantities of meat. To that, however, he did not object. He should give his support to that part of the measure, and to every other part of the right hon. Baronet's proposition which was calculated to do good to the consumers of this country. With respect to the timber duty, he must say he perfectly coincided with the right hon. Baronet. It was melancholy to see the trade that was carried on between Liverpool and America, where not one British-built merchant ship was employed. He therefore thought the right hon. Baronet was perfectly right in lowering the duty on Canadian and foreign timber, and only wished that the right hon. Baronet would go still further, and reduce yet lower the duty on Baltic timber. It was hard to force the consumer to use a bad article when he could be supplied with a better one from another part of the world. He was not disposed to look upon the disaster which had taken place in India in a light point of view. He viewed it as fraught with more importance to this-country, than any event that had occurred during the time he had ever had the opportunity of observing events, or during the whole period of his own service, except the mutiny at Portsmouth, and the mutiny at the Nore. He had met with disasters at Monte Video, he had met with disasters in Egypt, he had met with disasters at Corunna, and he had met with disasters at New Orleans, and he had met naval disasters in contending against America, but looking at all the circumstances of the case, he did conscientiously believe that the disasters in India were more fraught with danger than any of the disasters he had alluded to, or anything that had yet happened to this country. He trusted that while the right hon. Baronet was sending out troops to India to redress those disasters, he would remember the words of the Duke of Wellington, which had been so often quoted, that Eng- land could not afford to carry on in that country a little war. The words "little war" was very often applied to the policy of the late Government, but he must remind the right hon. Baronet that in all the little wars which the late Government had engaged in, they had always been thoroughly and perfectly successful, with the exception of the little war in China. He was not disposed to make any comments upon that little war, but he certainly thought that, if a little more powder and a little less ink had been used in China in the first instance, the right hon. Baronet would not now have been obliged to send out a large force to that country. He would not say to the right hon. Baronet, "Starve the war in China;" but he hoped the war would be confined in a certain degree to naval operations. He would recommend to the right hon. Baronet to take possession of some of the most important ports of that country, and keep possession of them. That would be a mode of proceeding much less dangerous than any expedition into the interior of China, by which an opportunity would be given to the people to inflict disasters upon us more serious, perhaps, than those which had recently taken place in India. By confining the war to naval operations it would give the right hon. Baronet an opportunity of carrying on a vigorous war, but at the same time, a successful war, in that country. If it were possible for the two great parties in this country who were continually contending, the one to keep in place, and the other to get in, could make some compromise together, the country would be much better governed than it now was. If the right hon. Baronet had taken an 8s. duty on corn, had altered the sugar duties, and imposed a legacy duty, he would have been able, with a tax of 2 per cent, on property, and 1 per cent. on income, to raise a sufficient sum to carry the country through its present exigencies. Nevertheless, if that could not be done, he hoped no further obstruction would be offered to the introduction of the bill, because he was thoroughly sensible that it would be better for the country to draw these discussions to a close. He would not detain the House any longer, and if he had said anything that might be considered useful, he should not regret having troubled the House for the length of time he had occupied it.

Mr. Trotter

said, that he had the utmost confidence in the proposition of the right hon. Baronet, which he thought fully justified by the wars in which this country was now engaged, which were fraught with the utmost danger, and must necessarily be attended with considerable expense. In his opinion, so long as the present dynasty remained on the throne of China it would be very difficult to establish peace on fair and equitable terms. He would not detain the House by alluding at any length to the unfortunate occurrences which had taken place in India, but he would just take the liberty of stating the opinion of a gentleman, a near relative, who had resided at Candahar for about thirty years. That gentleman said it was foretold that when we had conquered the country, then our difficulties would commence. This conquest had been a millstone about our necks, and if we were to regain our position, the expense must be enormous. It was most extraordinary that this insurrection should have taken place to such an extent, and yet that our authorities on the spot should have been apparently unprepared for it. He believed that the distressed slate of trade would be alleviated by the plan of the right hon. Baronet, and that a sufficient surplus of income would remain to meet the exigencies of the country. He should vote for the Income-tax from an honest conviction that it was the best measure that could be brought forward, and that it was in conformity with the opinions of his constituents. A meeting was held at Guildford, last week, called by the party mainly instrumental in returning the present Members for the borough, for the purpose of addressing her Majesty and the House of Lords against the Income-tax. The meeting was numerously attended, and the result was, that the meeting resolved to thank her Majesty for her generous offer to bear the burden of the Income-tax equally with her subjects; and another resolution was passed to the effect, that under the present circumstances of the country they conceived that the property and Income-tax, as proposed by Sir Robert Peel, was the very best measure that could be propounded. In supporting the proposition of the right hon. Baronet, he was not only acting in conformity with his own sentiments, but with the wishes of the inhabitants of the principal town in the county which he represented.

Mr. O'Connell

If the proposal before the House were one to impose upon Ireland new burdens, I should, as one of the representatives of the country, have demanded as a right the opportunity of delivering my sentiments upon it. Perhaps, I shall not be considered as trespassing upon the time of the House if, when the matter of debate is exclusively confined to this country, I should raise my humble voice, as I am prepared to give my decided vote, in favour of justice to England. I have arrived at the conclusion, that you have proposed, in bringing forward an Income-tax, to do that which is unjust to the people of this country, and therefore am I bound to give to such a proposal all the opposition in my power. I say distinctly an Income-tax; because, if a property-tax had been proposed, no man would be more ready to vote for it than I should be. My opinion goes, perhaps, to an extravagant length on that point. I think that property, and property alone, should be subject to taxation, and that as the State maintains large establishments, and incurs a large expenditure, for the protection, so should property pay in proportion to the degree and extent of protection it received; that the resources of labour—that the production of labour ought not to be taxed, until it assumed the shape of fixed capital. I am not, then, to be supposed as arguing against a property-tax when I oppose an Income-tax. I approve of the one, I condemn the other; and I mean to confine my arguments against the latter in as short a compass as I possibly can. My first argument against the Income-tax I derive from hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House, namely, that before you have an Income-tax you must have a case of urgent necessity—you must make out a case of stringent necessity to justify you in imposing it. I think that concession does not go as far as it ought; but taking it as much as has been granted, or it is worth, on that point, I say, and I insist, that the necessity has not been made out. The case of necessity has to rest upon a double assumption. First, there is the want of money—next, the want of means of supplying the want of money. What then is your want of money? Two millions and a half a-year, or five millions for two years. Have you, then, no other mode but this of making up that (which, considering the wealth and greatness of England, I must call) paltry deficiency. Judging from the language of the hon. Member who has just sat down, it is hardly worth speaking of. You want only that; and how are you to supply it? Is it necessary to resort to an Income-tax to supply so small a deficiency? I cannot believe that the necessity exists, until you have tried other means, and have failed. You have heard the noble Lord the Member for Liverpool talk of sugar and timber; you have heard him talk of the revenue upon these articles as not productive. He spoke of them as not being likely to be productive. Why, there are not two articles of consumption that are more certain than those of timber and sugar. They are articles of prime necessity. It required the weight of the powerful intellect of the noble Lord to prove that these articles must be nonproductive. You must have the practical demonstration, that the revenue that would be raised from these two articles alone would not supply the deficiency of the two millions and a half. You should first make the experiment. Why not make that experiment before you come to this? Why not try that tax that has been often spoken of, that is, the legacy duty upon landed property? Why do you not do that, as you have upon the bequests of personal fortune? An instance has occurred within the last few days of a Nobleman; he left a million in money; that was directly taxed. The same Nobleman left a hundred thousand a-year landed property, and not a shilling of that was taxed. Ought that to be? Or, above all, ought that landed property to be taxed before you resort to an Income-tax? The people of England will probably discover that it is not right that there should be a perfectly distinct class not subjected to the same burden with others; that when mere money is subjected to taxation, the landed interest ought not to be dispensed with; that it, too, should be exposed to a similar burden. That is a source of income you ought to try—that is a species of taxation you ought to have resort to before you attempt an Income-tax. You ought to equalize landed property with mere pecuniary property. Doing this would be in reality justice and fair play; and, till you have tried that experiment, you ought not to talk of an Income-tax. What are the five millions you speak of put down for two years? You boast of the great amount of taxes that you have takes off. You say, that you have already taken away not only seventeen millions of an Income-tax, but that, with others, you have reduced the taxes by 24,000,000l.— that you took off taxes to the amount of 24,000,000l. per year. Am I not safe, then, in saying that you will find resources amongst the taxes that you have taken off? Having taken off 24,000,000l., how is it possible that you can show, that amongst these taxes you cannot find what will give you a supply for two millions and a half a year? There must be amongst all these something to supply the deficiency, and I am not bound to show you which. It is sufficient for me to say, that the restoration of one-sixth would take away every pretext that you have for laying on the Income-tax. As it seems to me, you make out no case for the necessity of an Income-tax. You have abundant resources, according to your own showing, which you may bring into operation before you come to this tax. For my part, I never will consent to an Income-tax, short of the country being in a state of real war. I think that it ought to be a war tax. I do not think, however, that it should be called for now, even after the horrible events that have occurred in our eastern dominions. The war there, surely the noble Lord has exaggerated I hope, though he described, I fear, but too truly the peril. It may be considered as making against my argument to admit the peril that there is in that war; but then it is no such war as that in which you ought to have resort to the Income-tax; because you have already shown that it was for a different kind of war you first assented to this tax. The noble Lord, indeed, talked of statesmanlike conduct. Now, it seems to me to be not very statesmanlike conduct to give expression to the fearful suggestions that he has done; for the doing so by him cannot but add enormously to the peril that really exists. It was said by some one, I think by Lord Brougham, at one time, that England was bound in recognizances to the amount of eight hundred millions to keep the peace. It is a sentiment that I have often heard repeated by Mr. Hume, and whose voice I hope soon to hear again within the walls of this House. It is a sentiment that is heard frequently repeated abroad. The knowledge of it is a source of weakness to you. It takes away from that authoritative tone which England might otherwise employ towards the other nations of the earth. The eight hundred millions of your debt are considered by your bitterest enemies as a weapon which they can use for your weakness. Is it wise, then, at such a moment as this to make your weakness still more palpable, by giving so fearful and so desponding a picture of the dangers that threaten you in India and in China? I think not. I think you ought not to do any such thing; and that, though you state that you have suffered much, yet you should rather be disposed to show your resources than exhibit your weakness. I think so, and I think, too, that this is not, beyond all others, the occasion when you should have pursued such a line of conduct. Are you so safe with Russia? Have you no peril of a real war with Russia? Are you secure of France? I know that you have praised the King of the French. I have heard him lauded and be-praised here, so that good taste (and I am not very fastidious) has been outraged by their gross exaggerations. I have heard M. Guizot, too, spoken of here as the perfection of ministers; and I have, though by no means bound to do so, blushed for Englishmen when I heard the praises of the man. And yet you are not safe with France. No; there are perils there. You are not secure with the lauded King of the French. I am quite justified in saying that with him you cannot be secure. You have, then, perils before you. You have, too, great perils with America. [Cheers.] I understand these cheers. It is part of my argument. You have, then, greater perils on the part of America, because, as I believe, you are right—perfectly right— in the quarrel. Upon the right of search, I think that the paper of Lord Aberdeen proves the matter to demonstration, as I understood it. In the matter of the Creole you are undoubtedly right, but then you have to fear American pride and resentment; you have to dread that disposition to animosity which men are most ready to evince when they are most in the wrong. Shall 1 be told that these are perils for which you should be prepared? Yes, and I am arguing that you should not have an Income-tax until the exigency of the time requires it. I wish to show you that you ought to hoard up your Income-tax as a weapon to be held in terrorem over your enemies. You should have hoarded it up for the exigencies of war, to which you might threaten to resort in case of necessity. Your capacity to encounter your enemies should be this—your power at any time to resort to an Income-tax. It would be felt by your foes as your power to encounter their armies. In former wars you raised seventeen millions per annum with an Income-tax. You should be able to say that England can, if requisite, raise twenty millions per annum—that which would represent five hundred millions of francs. It is your weapon of defence, and do not throw it away. [Hear, hear.] Smile or sneer, if you please; but still listen to that which is said to you. At present you listen but to the voice of party. You bring this on amid all the fervour of party zeal. Consult, I say, your own interests and your own judgments, and seek not for a triumph which can only serve a party purpose. You may now enjoy such a triumph; but when this tax is laid on, when the burden comes to be felt, when it is in operation upon the intelligent classes, on those who have but a life annuity, on those who have but a precarious income—when the tax comes into operation, and is felt by those, do you think that the knowledge that it was laid on when there was no necessity for it, when it was not required, when that knowledge is coupled with the injustice of the thing itself, do you not think that you will make many formidable enemies for yourselves, and that a cry will be raised, which has only to be repeated, and that once was so loud that even an unreforrned Parliament could not make head against it. Recollect what you are doing. You are laying down the surest means of arraying against yourselves all the active talent of the nation—the rising lawyers—the rising physicians-the skilful clerks, whose superior talents enable them to obtain larger salaries. All these —all the activity, intelligence, and talent, you are placing in hostility to yourselves. This you are doing with those suited to be the most formidable leaders of public opinion that can possibly be imagined. Should these proceed in a course which may make men disgusted with the Income-tax when the real necessity for its use may arise? Why now throw away a weapon from which you may derive at a future time such advantages, and when the opinion entertained respecting it may be beyond the reality of its power? If you keep it in your armoury, you will be the stronger, perhaps, for the struggle, be. cause its powers are unknown. I oppose it, then, because you have not shown the necessity for it; but assuming the neces- sity, then I oppose it, because there are other resources sufficient to meet that necessity on which you may rely. 1 oppose it because of its vexatious nature, of the inquisitorial powers it confers, of gratifying animosity in some, of idle curiosity in others, and in all of a mode of disposing of men's property that ought to be unknown in a free country. First, a man must satisfy the surveyor, and then the inspector—I am now talking of the provisions of the former bill—then there must be an appeal to the additional commissioners, and finally to the general commissioners. These are provisions of the former act. They authorize the inspection of books. In every case they can require statements—they can demand an account of profits and losses—they can reject it— they are entitled to take the checks of a merchant—to take his books—to stop his business—and there was no appeal to a judge or a jury; but all was to be decided despotically. He hoped that many of these things would be altered; but in the very nature of the thing, there must remain many matters in the machinery that must be productive of the greatest mischief and vexation. Was this then, the species of tax that the House should regard as indispensable to introduce into the country now, and when you are threatened with a period, which I hope may never come, but for which it certainly ought to be postponed—namely, a state of actual war—for a period, when the country might be in danger; when one and all might regard the safety of the State as in peril? It is for such a period, I maintain, that you ought to keep it, and not throw it away, by exposing the country to all its horrors at the present moment. I object to the Income-tax as unnecessary. I object to it as not justified by any necessity short of war. The necessity you have not been able to show—the necessity has not arisen. I object to it now, as it ought to be reserved for a state of war. I object to it as unjustifiable. And, lastly, I object to it as the perpetration of arrant and gross injustice. What injustice, I ask, can be so great as that an unfortunate clerk with 300l. a year, who is dependent, perhaps, upon the caprice of his employer, upon his health, and whom an accident in the office might disable from earning a hilling, should be called upon to pay this tax? A man such as that is placed upon an equality with the owner of a fee- simple property. If that man died, his family would be left without a provision, while the owner of the fee-simple estate, if he died, must leave that which would be equal to 9,000l., or a fair sum to subsist upon. You tax the one as much as you do the other. You may call that justice if you please; but, in the name of common sense, I denounce it as an arrant and gross injustice. Is there, then, no injustice in a man disclosing the amount of his income? Is there no injustice in forcing a man to be an instrument in doing himself the wrong of charging himself with possessing more than he really owned? These, Sir, are reasons that convince me I ought to oppose this law. I oppose it as an Income-tax—not as it may be mixed up as a portion of a property-tax. I confess that I have an additional reason for opposing it—that it is to maintain the landed aristocracy—that it is a struggle to keep up their rents; for it has been candidly admitted that rents ought to be maintained. It is to maintain the landed interests in the possession of their high rents that you do this. And why should you not do so? Are they not your masters, and able to displace you if you dare to offend them? The legislation is for one class; and there is no mitigation in any way for the horrors of the bread-tax, as they existed. For my part, I am for an equality of free-trade. I am for no bastard, or left-handed free trade. Have first a free-trade in corn, and then let others have all the advantage in other things of an absolute free-trade.

Lord Eliot

commenced by observing, that the apology with which the right hon. and learned Gentleman had commenced his speech was, in his judgment, quite unnecessary. He hoped it never would be thought requisite for any hon. Member to offer to the House an apology for taking an active part in the immediate concerns of a different branch of the empire from that with which he was connected. He should not follow the right hon. and learned Gentleman through the whole course of the observations he had just addressed to the House. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had contended, that other means than those proposed by her Majesty's Government ought to be adopted to supply the deficiency in the revenue which was admitted on all hands to exist, and the right hon. and learned Gentlemen admitted, that some further aid was necessary from the taxes repealed since the end of the war, but he had studiously abstained from pointing out that tax from which the deficiency ought to be supplied. True, he had touched upon one single point—namely, the probate duty, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman bad forgotten the statement on that subject read by his right hon. Friend. If he wanted an argument to confirm the view he had taken of the policy of the scheme proposed by his right hon. Friend (Sir R. Peel), he could find it in the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had drawn a frightful picture of the dangers with which he seemed to think this country was environed; and it certainly appeared to him somewhat extraordinary, that after exhibiting such a picture, the right hon. and learned Gentleman should deprecate the preparations to meet those dangers made by his right hon. Friend. He conceived, that looking at the situation in which this country was placed, she would be better able to encounter the perils with which she was said to be surrounded when her credit was good from having a large surplus revenue. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had alluded to the character and the operation of the Income-tax. Now, he hoped and believed, that his right hon. Friend was prepared by the machinery of the present measure to obviate and remove many of the objections urged against the former law. He, therefore, asked the House what was the present stage of the bill—it was on the bringing up the report of the resolutions on which the bill was to be founded; and would it not be better and more opportune to discuss these points when the bill with the machinery it provided was before the House? The hon. Member for Leeds had adverted to a meeting lately held in that town to petition against this tax. He would ask that hon. Member what tax there was in existence to petition against which, a meeting might not be convened? All admitted, that additional taxes were necessary in the existing state of things, and he had not heard a single tax suggested to which no objection could be made. He might be permitted, on this occasion, very shortly to advert to a matter personal to himself. He had been made the subject of some misrepresentation in the county he had the honour to represent, and the hon. and learned Member for Liskeard, last night alluded, though not personally to him (Lord Eliot), to those county Members who at the last general election had concurred in holding up the budget of the noble Lord, the Member for the city of London, to the reprobation of the constituent bodies. It was true he had condemned the budget of the noble Lord, and he did so still. He had objected to a fixed duty on corn, as not calculated to benefit the consumer, and in that view he was borne out by facts and figures. He had also contended, that a fixed duty would not operate beneficially for the producer, because, under it he would not, in time of scarcity, be able to maintain his price. That was admitted by the noble Lord himself. He had exhorted his constituents to resist the proposition of the noble Lord, and that they concurred in his views was proved by their having sent him to that House as the opponent of the corn bill of the noble Lord. It had been said, that the farmers were not prepared for any material change or alteration. Now, on the hustings, he had been asked by an hon. Baronet, formerly a Member of that House—he alluded to Sir William Moles-worth, what he would do if any material alteration was proposed by Sir R. Peel. His answer had been, that he abided by the sliding-scale, but that he did not possess the requisite knowledge to decide what alterations ought to be made in the details of the Corn-laws; but he would not support any plan which did not meet with the general acceptance of the agricultural body. Now, he would ask the House, whether this measure had not met with the acceptance of the agricultural body? He had, however, to meet a double argument; first, the right hon. and learned Member for Dublin talked of legislating for class interests, and then other hon. Members held, that he had been inconsistent, and had sacrificed the interests of his constituents. Surely these two arguments were wholly incompatible. He had always maintained, that a certain rational protection ought to be afforded to the British farmer, whom he did not believe to be anxious to maintain exorbitant prices- But when he was taunted with having deceived his constituents, he trusted he did not overvalue the position in which he was placed, when he said, that though it was of little importance whether he held a situation under Government or not, still embarked in the fortunes of the Government, he felt he should not be justified on light grounds in leaving office; but, after the question had been opened, he had con-suited with his leading influential supporters in the county he had the honour to represent, and told them, that if they thought he had deceived them, he would abandon his seat and go to a fresh election. They one and all had replied, that his conduct in supporting the proposition of Sir Robert Peel was not inconsistent with any declaration he had made, and that he had not been guilty of deceit or delusion. As to the tariff, on most of the articles he was unable to give a definite opinion. He was bound to admit, that as to some of the articles considerable alarm existed in the minds of some of his constituents; he had received representations to that effect. He did not concur with them; he believed that the evils to be anticipated were greatly exaggerated. He alluded particularly to the importation of cattle and meat. The best information which he had received led him to suspect there was no cause to expect any great importation or such prices as materially to depress the markets of the kingdom. His right hon. Friend would be able to show this conclusively in the statement which he would make to the House. As to the Income-tax itself, he did not think it necessary to address the House many Observations upon it. Hon. Gentlemen had talked of assessed taxes, but they would Weigh unequally and perhaps more oppressively on the middle classes. Before so many objections were made to the inquisitorial nature of the tax, it would have been as well to have waited to see the machinery by which the right hon. Baronet proposed to carry the tax into effect. He could not but express his gratification, that the right hon. Baronet had been able to draw from Ireland that which was its just proportion of the tax, without proposing sensibly to add to its taxation. He should ever have in view the wealth and prosperity of that portion of the empire.

Mr. Hawes

observed, that the argument of the noble Lord was quite inconsistent with that of the first Lord of the Treasury; for while the one said there would be no large importation of foreign meat or cattle in consequence of the tariff, the other declared that the relaxation produced by it Would cause a saving to each family equal to the amount of the Income-tax imposed. Leaving this point, the hon. Gentleman proceeded to say, that there were two distinct plans under their consideration, One was a Property-tax, and one Was an Income-tax. The latter had been adopted, and much as it might be denied, it was a tax that pressed upon the poor; for although it was pretended that this system of taxation did not affect the labourer, yet it did depress the active and productive capital of the country, and so it did injure the labourer. He had good authority for stating that there was a great distinction between a Property-tax and an Income-tax. The opinion of Mr. Huskisson had been already referred to, and he would not again quote it; but Mr. Huskisson's opinion, so late as the year 1830, was adverse to an Income-tax and in favour of a property-tax. There were authorities, and clear authorities, which drew the distinction; and sure he was, that an Income-tax would directly affect the fund out of which the labourer was paid, and so would effect more injury to the workmen than what were deemed indirect taxes On the 5th December, 1798, the then Sir Francis Baring made a powerful and convincing argument on the difference between an income and a property-tax. He said: A learned gentleman had made some distinction between a tax upon income and a tax upon capital. With regard to income, he seemed to think there could be no evasion. In some measure, the learned gentleman might be right; but, with regard to trade, he certainly was in the wrong: for in commerce the bill would be liable to evasions and frauds without end. A man might have a large income in trade, and yet his property could not be ascertained. Even could it be come at, there were occasions when it should not be touched. There was nothing which should have a stronger claim on the protection of Government than creative talents in mercantile pursuits. Where industry was engaged in accumulating property, it should be encouraged, not cramped nor dispirited. The industrious and enterprising should be protected; at least, he should not be molested whilst engaged in producing a capital. When it was produced, then let it be taxed; but, while he is engaged in the pursuit, no inspector should pry into his affairs. That was the opinion before the bill had been tried, when the principle was under discussion, and the whole of the debate showed that it was not anticipated that the tax would endure beyond the time of the great pressing emergency. The plan now proposed by the right hon. Gentleman was not only at total variance with that proposed by the late Government, but it appeared also to be in direct violation of the principles which his own party had laid down previous to the dissolution of the late Parliament, and he referred to this discrepancy because he thought the country had the greatest interest in the consistency of a large party. He recollected perfectly well that the noble Lord, the Member for North Lancashire, in a speech which he delivered only so short a time since as last June, stated the grounds on which the dissolution was about to take place. In the course of that speech he was guilty of an irregularity which gave the noble Lord a better opportunity of declaring his opinion, and the public had a right to try the plan now proposed by the expectations which the noble Lord and his party had then raised. The hon. Member for Lambeth (said the noble Lord) told us this evening that an appeal is about to be made to the public, not on any general or undefined question—not to decide whether this or that man shall be at the head of the Government—but simply on this distinct question—whether or not the country will do away with the corn monopoly, which is the cause of various other monopolies [Mr. Hawes; Not the corn only]. Well, then, according to the hon. Member, Ministers are about to appeal to the country for the purpose of inducing the constituencies to return such a House of Commons as will effectually put down all those great interests of the country which they are pleased to call monopolies, of which interests that of the landowners and agriculturists is, in their mind, the first, the greatest, and the most atrocious. The question is fairly put by the hon. Member for Lambeth; and it is the question on which Government are about to dissolve Parliament. He would now ask whether the noble Lord and his Colleagues had maintained these monopolies, or had abandoned them; had the corn monopoly been maintained? Had he maintained the monopoly of the provision laws? He had declined to touch the sugar monopoly, but why did he decline to touch that monopoly when they touched the others? The great difference between the plan proposed by the present Government and that brought forward by the late Ministers was, that the late Government thought they should be able to obtain sufficient revenue by grappling with great monopolies, whilst the present Government had thought it part of their duty to maintain those monopolies, and at the same time to impose great additional taxation upon the country. It appeared to him that if they sought to obtain an increased revenue they were bound in the first place to take up those articles on which there were high duties. If they had removed the monopolies on those articles they might then have entered fairly upon the general question of free-trade, they might then have justly exposed the English labourers to competition with foreigners, which would be most unjust without the change. They maintained, however, a high price for corn; and although they altered the tariff, according to the noble Lord the Member for Cornwall's (Lord Eliot) own admission, there would be no sensible diminution in the price of other articles of food. The present Government, then, exposed the labourers of this country to direct competition with the labourers of other countries, without enabling the English labourers to obtain their food at the cheapest rate. He acknowledged that the amended tariff would contribute to the advantage of the trade of this country; the step which had been taken was a step in the right direction, but towards the great mass of the people of this country it was an act of injustice, which would not long permit the right hon. Gentleman to maintain the corn monopoly, and the other monopolies he now shielded. The Income-tax would create much discontent, and that discontent would be directed against those monopolies of a much more serious character than any article included in the proposed tariff. The noble Lord the Member for North Lancashire had said that the corn-bill of the noble Lord on that side of the House (Lord John Russell) had been scouted. But by whom had it been scouted? It had been scouted by the counties, and by the Members returned by the landlords, who were the real rulers according to the noble Lord's own view. For when they talked of the county representation, they must recollect the noble Lord's own declaration, that to know who would be the county Member, it was only necessary to cast up the numbers of the lauded proprietors on one side, and on the other, in each county, and then they could easily decide what would be the character of the representatives. By them the Corn-law of the late Government had been rejected. The farmers now, however, entertained somewhat different opinions. He had received accounts of agricultural meetings. One had taken place at Harleston, in Norfolk or Suffolk, where the farmers had declared that they preferred a fixed duty. They agreed to a petition, they adopted his noble Friend's plan, and they rejected the Income-tax and the tariff on cattle proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman held out his sliding-scale and his Corn-bill; he held out his tariff and his Income-tax. What did the noble Lord (Lord J. Russell) say? He hoped by a tax of 8s. upon corn, and by a reduction of the timber duties, and by an alteration of the sugar duties, to produce an ample revenue. His right hon. Friend the late Chancellor of the Exchequer had reserved to himself the right to issue Exchequer bills, to make up a temporary deficiency; but he believed that if the reduction proposed were made upon the great articles of consumption, they would be able to go on without making any addition to the taxation of the country. He thought that if the farmers had now the two plans before them, and began again, they would see some advantages in the 8s. duty over the plan of the right hon. Gentleman; and that if they went back to the constituencies the noble Lord would have the preference which, on the last occasion, was offered to the right hon. Gentleman. One reason which the right hon. Gentleman had found for his Income-tax was in the proposed reduction of the tariff. He very much questioned whether the evil of an Income-tax was not a full equivalent for any reduction of the duties in the tariff. Were there, however, no other sources from which the Government could obtain a revenue? The noble Lord near him had adopted the manly and the straightforward course; he had departed from the plan of Mr. Tierney, and the plan pursued last year, of opposing everything and proposing nothing. The noble Lord's conduct was the very reverse of the Opposition of last year; for the noble Lord had taken the bold and manly course—he had proposed another plan, and he had shown how he would be able to apply his principles in practice. But must they resort to an increase of taxation?—and were they forced to take the Income-tax proposed by the right hon. Gentleman? We were even now paying off 2,000,000l. a-year of the national debt. ["Where, where."] He would show them where. He saw the hon. Gentleman, the Secretary for the Treasury (Mr. G. Clerk) present, who was well acquainted with those details, and he would refer him to a parliamentary paper laid on the Table of the House, on the 22nd June, 1841, by Mr. More O'Ferrall, the then Secretary of the Treasury, which had not been alluded to in these discussions. From this paper it appeared, that between the year 1831 and the year 1841 we had paid off 22,600,000l. of the national debt, and that we were going on to pay off the debt after the same rate. The whole amount of public debt in 1831, funded and unfunded, both as to capital and charge, supposing the terminable annuities to be converted into equivalent perpetual annuities, was 838,548,903l., In the year 1841 it had fallen to 815,957,936l., making a difference of 22,591,967l. He defied his hon. Friend, the Member for the City of London, to contradict that statement; and he defied him to show that we were not going on paying in the same proportion. And were they to be told that there was such an emergency that nothing but the imposition of an Income-tax would enable us to supply our wants, and put the country into a proper state of defence? For himself, he never would consent to the imposition of this tax, whilst there was such a surplus revenue to be applied to the reduction of the national debt. Then the right hon. Gentleman referred to other sources of taxation which he had refused to adopt, and there was one point that fell from him relative to the taxes on consumption, to which he would call the particular attention of the House. The right hon. Gentleman appeared extremely doubtful whether he would be able to obtain an immediate increase of revenue by reducing the duty upon articles of large consumption. He did not anticipate that he would be furnished within the year with sufficient funds from such a source. He wished that the right hon. Gentleman had more confidence in the increase of revenue from a great reduction in the price of articles of large consumption. A paper which he held in his hand would show at once how great an increase of consumption took place in an article of large consumption, when there was a reduction in the price. He had taken the price and quantity of corn sold in markets making returns to corn-inspectors in the first thirteen weeks of every year from 1829, the first after the Corn-bill came into operation, down to 1842, the present year, and he had taken the whole period, that he might not be accused of selecting any particular year, and he found such a regular indication of a rise and fall of consumption from a rise and fall in price, that if it were a barometer to register the different weights of the atmosphere, the change should not be more certain. In the first thirteen weeks of the year 1829, the quantity sold was 514,470 quarters, and the average price was 74s. 11d.; in 1830 the quantity increased to 905,701 quarters, the price having fallen to58s. A4.; in 1831 the quantity fell to 691,448 quarters, for the price rose to 72s. 1d.; in 1832 the quantity increased to 805,492 quarters, the price having declined to 59s. 4d.

	Qrs.		s.	d.
In 1833 the quantity sold was	844,293,	the price	52	8
1834	847,396		48	4
1835	977,135		40	5
1836	1,076,128		41	7
1837	929,559		57	1
1838	977,263		55	4
1839	610,035		74	6
1840	975,981		66	6
1841	949,156		62	2
1842	703,892		60	6

From the year 1829 to the year 1842, with every fall of price, there had been a clear augmentation of consumption; as regularly as the price fell, the quantity consumed was increased. Here was a fair indication of what would be the effect of reduction in articles of great consumption. He, therefore, complained of the measures of the present Government; they shut the door to the advantages which would have followed the proposals of the noble Lord on that (the Opposition) side of the House; that they deprived the people of the reduction of duties which would have augmented commerce and flung the people back upon those great monopolies, which did so much injury to trade. As to the Income-tax itself, he would look upon it only as founded in inconvenience and injustice. There was not one Member who had spoken on either side of the House who did not admit its impolicy and its injustice. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Winchester himself admitted its impolicy. Did the hon. Gentleman admit that the tax upon skill and talent should be the same as the tax upon permanent property? Then he must lose all hope of converting the hon. Gentleman. He would have thought that 100l. derived from talent was not of the same value as 100/. permanent income derived from land—yet both were taxed the same. The fee-simple in land, and the income which depended upon property, and that which came from professional skill, were placed on the same terms, and that was one of the inequalities on account of which he more particularly objected to this tax. There was a circumstance which had come to his knowledge, as to the mode of assessment under the old system, which would illustrate not only its injustice but its inequality. Two parties largely engaged in trade lived in the same place; one returned no income, and the other actually paid 400/. a year tax. The party who returned no income was summoned before the commissioners, who said, "We know we cannot punish you for not making any return, but you must pay your tax." The answer was, "I have made no profits, and I intend to pay no tax." The commissioners said," Why, your neighbour, who is in the same trade, pays a tax of 400l. a year, your house is as good as his, and you are apparently a man of fortune; how is it then, that you return no income?" The reply was, "I return no income, it is true, although I admit I live in the same way as my neighbour who pays 400l. a year, because I have landed property, for which I pay in another place, and I do not care who knows that I make no profit, but my neighbour who pays 400l. a year tax, has nothing but his business. I do not mind about my situation being known; but if he did not pay a large tax, the world would soon know that he was making no profits, and he would be a ruined man." Did either party rely on the oath of secresy? No, they knew they were dealing with a board, from which it was likely the amount of the income would leak out; the one having no profits, paid 400l. a year, because having no property, a knowledge that he made no profits might materially injure him; he could place no reliance upon the board, he felt no security that the truth would not escape. But the other, who was doing nothing also, paid not a farthing; he had property elsewhere, be could set the commissioners at defiance, and did not care who knew his affairs. Another objection which he had to this tax was, that he thought it would place her Majesty's Government in a situation to pursue whatever course of policy they pleased, because it had a tendency to encourage war, to increase expense, and to place the country at the feet of the minister of the day. When it became known in the country there would be no popular feeling in its favour. He was aware that when he said that the tax was not now unpopular, it might be assumed from the quiet of the people; but when he had the authority of the noble Lord the Secretary for Ireland (Lord Eliot) for saying that cheap living would not reach the majority of the people, he was sure that many would feel acutely the disadvantage of the prospect of an Income-tax. The result, then, to sum up, was, that her Majesty's Ministers were determined to maintain untouched the great protected interests of the country. They made a change with respect to the timber duties alone; in the very interest which was least able to resist a change was that change permitted to tale place. He admitted the advantage of the proposed alteration. He knew as well the benefit of cheap timber as hon. Gentlemen opposite; he was willing to accept the boon, but he was not willing to impose upon the people an Income-tax to gain the benefit, especially as there were many other sources from which the deficiency might be supplied. Then the noble Lord on that side of the House had proposed to put the great interests of the country upon a fair footing—he had proposed to place the Corn-laws on a footing approximating to a free-trade, he had proposed to reduce the duty on sugar, and to change the duty upon timber: he had dealt boldly and fairly with all the great interests in the country. He had done what he was bound to attempt, for they ought to attack the strong before they touched the weak. This was the great distinction between the plans of the two Governments, it was the great distinction which had ever marked the two great parties in the state. The one was ever identified with popular interests, as clearly as the other was identified with monopolies and with protection. He knew not how the feeling of the country, said to be in favour of this measure, had been discovered. He had heard it said that the provincial press was not so much against the Government proposals as were the London journals. But he had looked at the writings of the provincial press, and he could not find one paper that had supported the Income-tax. They said that they would support the tariff— they said also that they would support a property tax; but when they came to mention the Income-tax, they said they were sure that in the House some important alterations would take place, and that if this were done they were upon the whole willing to accept the Government proposals. He would ask them whence did the Income-tax derive its support? Did their leading paper in London—did that journal which had done more for their party than all their speeches put together —did the Times support the Income-tax? Could they tell him of one interest that agreed to it? Let him warn them in time. If they did not take care, Schedule D would be knocked clean out of the bill, and they would be fixed with the property tax. Directly the popular indignation was raised against Schedule D, the people would raise the question of a graduated property tax, and then would come the consequences of their party policy and their party divisions. They had chosen to reject the measures of the noble Lord— they were in great danger of being saddled with a property tax; he believed that it would be saddled on them, and he for one would not regret if such a tax were visited upon them as the just reward of their party tergiversation.

Lord Eliot

explained that he had not said that the importation of foreign cattle would not affect the price of food in this country; but what he had said was, that he believed the fear of the agriculturists as to the amount likely to be brought in to be much exaggerated.

Sir J. Graham

did not know that he should have thought it necessary to trouble the House with any observations in this debate, but for the pointed manner in which the noble Lord the Member for the City of London had expressed his surprise that he should have remained silent. The noble Lord had paid him the compliment of singling him out as one whose bounden duty it was to address the House, but notwithstanding the undeniable ability which signalized the speech of the hon. Member for Liskeard, he had felt perfectly willing to rest the case of the Government upon the speeches that had been already delivered by his Colleagues, while he was not willing lightly to prolong this debate, when delay at the preliminary stage of the measure, was exceedingly injurious to great public interests. Testimony to that effect had been borne last night by the hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. Masterman); and again most distinctly this evening by his noble Friend the Member for Liverpool. That such was its effect was not dissembled by the hon. Members for Hull, one of whom was on the Opposition side; and it had also been acknowledged by the hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Aldam), in what he must characterize as a first speech of considerable promise. The hon. Member for Liskeard had remarked upon the absence of any strong indication of public feeling as to the measure of the Government, and the same truth had been conceded still more expressly by the hon. Member for Lambeth. Both admitted that any opposition of a successful character to that measure was now hopeless; but at the same time they looked forward to a renewal of that opposition at a future time, when the evils which they said would attend the collection of the tax came to be experienced: and the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. F. Maule), who had been so anxious before Easter for the postponement of these discussions, that he might have an opportunity of visiting his constituents and hear their opinion upon the Income-tax, would no doubt tell the House that he had come to the same conclusion. The right hon. Gentleman had now had that opportunity. [Mr. Maule: You have misrepresented what I said.] The right hon. Gentleman would have an opportunity of explaining and of stating what had occurred. But he had been told that the right hon. Gentleman did visit the city of Perth, and that very distinct opinions were immediately expressed to the right hon. Gentleman as to the measures of her Majesty's Government. The right hon. Gentleman was informed that if he called a private meeting of his friends upon the subject, even then he would find himself in a considerable minority. But if he called a public meeting in the open air in the Inch of Perth, the "unhappy budget of the late Government" (to Use his noble Friend's expression), as contrasted with that of her Majesty's present Government, would be again scouted, as it had been at the general election, and that the measures of her Majesty's Government would be hailed with satisfaction by an overwhelming majority of the people of Perth. That was the sort of confirmation he expected to hear from the right hon. Gentleman of what had already been admitted by those on the same side. It had been acknowledged by the hon. Member for Salford, with the greatest frankness, that hon. Members had partaken in the wish of the right hon. Gentleman, that the discussions should not be brought to a close until after Easter, in order that public feeling might, in the mean time, express itself. He, too, had visited his constituents, and he, too, disavowed all hope of any immediate successful opposition in Manchester. To be sure, he talked of the apathy that prevailed; but he could not understand the sort of apathy that allowed of a petition in favour of the measure being signed by 24,000 of the principal inhabitants. No public meeting had been assembled in that great centre of manufacturing industry. [Mr. Brotherton: Yes, yes, there was.] Oh! a meeting of the town-council. [Mr. Brotherton: A meeting in the town-hall and on the exchange.] But he had yet to learn that there had been any meeting in Stephenson square, or that a majority of persons whose incomes were under 150/. per annum were dissatisfied with the measure, or looked upon it in any other light than as a special benefit. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Lambeth, following in the train of the hon. Member for Liskeard, had been pleased to observe upon what he called the glaring inconsistencies in the arguments on that (the Ministerial) side. The hon. Member for Liskeard had set forth those alleged inconsistencies in his own peculiar way. He said," If we call the tax inquisitorial, we are met with the cry of 'China!' If we call it unjust, the answer is ' Affghanistan.' "Your arguments are inconsistent. One says that the tariff will be inoperative, as in fact a mere delusion, while others hold out the greatest expectation that we should find a compensation for the Income-tax in the reduced prices of articles of consumption." The hon. Member for Lambeth had quite misunderstood, and had misrepresented, unintentionally no doubt, what had fallen from the noble Lord the Secretary for Ireland. The hon. Member said that the noble Lord had declared that all apprehensions with respect to the tariff, so far as any alteration in the scale of duties affecting provisions went, were unavailing. His noble Friend, as he had understood him, both when he made his original speech, and in the explanation which he had given, had affirmed nothing of the kind. His noble Friend had said that the apprehension was, that the effect of the alteration of the duties would be a ruinous reduction to the producers of articles of the nature of provisions, but he had said that that apprehension would prove to be groundless; but the noble Lord never intended to say that the removal of prohibitory duties upon articles of first necessity would be entirely inoperative, and that no reduction of price would be effected. For his own part, he said that the Government had exercised both prudence and wisdom in yielding to the necessities of the times, and to the wants of the rapidly increasing population of this country. They had taken effective measures gradually to reduce the price of corn, of wheat, and of the articles of first necessity, and he said that the time had arrived when it was indispensably necessary that this should be proportionably added to the supply of labour. Again, the great improvements in machinery had decreased the demand for labour (he alluded to the immediate effect of machinery, not its ultimate operation), and at the same time reduced its value, and he contended that the time had therefore arrived when the Legislature ought, not hastily, because that would only aggravate the evil by leading to a further displacement of labour, but prudently and cautiously, to effect a simultaneous reduction in the duties on articles of the first necessity. That had been the object with which the Government measures had been framed, and he believed that they would succeed in attaining it. He was persuaded that the working classes clearly understood this, and that it was a fixed and rooted belief with them that this tariff, taken in conjunction with the scheme of taxation, was one calculated to promote the great interests of the people and of the great bulk of the community. On those grounds it had received his support, and on that ground he would not fear to appeal to the country on the measure. Returning, however, to the charge of inconsistency, he must say that it appeared to him that the great inconsistency was on the other side. Some (and the right hon. Lord Mayor of Dublin in particular) said that the Income-tax was entirely a war-tax. It was asserted also in that resolution of the noble Lord (Lord John Russell) in these words:— That it has hitherto been considered a financial reserve of the nation in the time of war; Which clearly pointed to this being a war-tax only. But what were the opinions of some other hon. Gentlemen opposite upon this subject? First, there were the right hon. and the hon. Members for Coventry. The right hon. Gentleman, formerly a Member of the Administration of Lord Melbourne (Mr. E. Ellice), strongly opposed this view. He said,— Prove to me that this tax is necessary, and it is, in my opinion, equally applicable whether in time of peace or of war. He did not rely on the authority of the right hon. Gentleman, but he must say that it did not appear to him to be consistent in the Members of the late Government to say that the Income-tax was only a tax for a period of war. The noble Lord, the Member for the city of London, and the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton (Viscount Palmerston) were parties to a resolution moved by Viscount Althorp as an amendment to a motion for the repeal of the house-tax, in which it was laid down that if that tax was repealed in time of peace, there was no objection in point of principle to an Income-tax, or a property-tax. It was impossible, at all events, for the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton, to say, that this was a war-tax only. He (Sir James Graham) remembered the active part which that noble Lord had taken in 1816, in endeavouring to maintain a property-tax at the end of the war —when the treaty of peace was signed—when the assertion was, that it was inconsistent with good faith that it should be any longer retained, and all those who objected to the Income-tax, on the ground that it was a tax applicable only to a time of war, he begged to refer to the triumphant arguments used by the noble Lord upon that occasion—arguments which he had enforced, not only by his speech alone, but by his vote—a course which he was sure the noble Lord would, on the present occasion, be prepared again to vindicate. There was also a marvellous difference of opinion on the benches opposite with regard to the limber duties. The two hon. Members for Coventry here differed materially. The one said, a more wise proposal than that of the Government could not have been made, while the other was of opinion that it could not but be considered as a bad measure. But it might be said, that the hon. Member for Coventry, who had spoken in favour of the Ministerial plan with regard to the timber duties, as being a concession to commercial men, and likely to be a great source of naval strength, might be uninformed on the latter point; but what said the hon. and gallant Member for Marylebone? Why, he had pronounced a glowing defence of the measure, on the ground of the effect it would have on our naval strength. But this measure, which some hon. Gentlemen opposite so much objected to, was the very same plan that was proposed by Lord Grey's Government, and yet one which, in the very plenitude of the power of that Administration, they had not even ventured to take the sense of Parliament upon. They voluntarily abandoned it. What were the arguments used at the time against the proposal? Why, it was said that you ought not to raise revenue by taxing a prime necessary, one which the humble fisherman required for his boat, and the peasant for his cottage, and that it was unjust and impolitic to raise unfairly the price of any article of that kind. Such were the arguments used then against the plan, and the Administration voluntarily abandoned it. Again, it had been proposed to substitute a legacy duty upon real property for the Income-tax, and the right hon. the Lord Mayor of Dublin had joined with the hon. Member for Ipswich in calling for that as a substitute. But that very proposal had been made, and had been resisted by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom he now saw doing him the honour of taking notes, and who, he supposed, was about to answer him. He felt assured that the right hon. Gentleman would inform them that he was opposed to the principle of such a legacy duty—and opposed, too, for the excellent reasons which he himself assigned in 1840. Then corn, as a source of revenue, had been absolutely disclaimed by every hon. Member opposite, except the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton, and he had proposed a fixed duty as a source of revenue, and not of protection. Lord Melbourne, however, when questioned on the subject, said, that he disclaimed altogether the proposed fixed duty of 8s. as a fiscal impost, and positively alleged that it was intended for protection. After that, how could hon. Gentlemen talk of inconsistency on that (the Ministerial) side of the House? It was quite clear that hon. Gentlemen opposite were united only in the opposition to the proposals of her Majesty's Government, and that if they had to deal with the present deficiency in the revenue various would be the means which they would suggest for meeting it. The hon. Member for Guildford, in addressing the House last night, had dwelt on the flourishing state of the finances of India, and had rather tauntd his right hon. Friend with having exaggerated the difficulties of the Indian revenue, as one of the reasons which had naturally led her Majesty's Government to provide more ample resources to meet the deficiency of revenue generally. It was never asserted by his right hon. Friend that it was the duty of the British Parliament to supply the immediate means of making up the deficiency in the Indian revenue; but he did state the very important fact, that Lord Auckland at the commencement of his administration in India had in the Indian revenue a surplus of about 1,500,000l.: that year by year that surplus had not only been diminished, but that there had been, as in this country, a growing and progressive deficiency; that a debt had been incurred during the last four years of about 7,000,000l.; and that at the present moment the expenditure exceeded the income by a sum nearly similar to that with which they had to deal in this country, namely, 2,500,000l. His right hon. Friend did point out to the House that it might be necessary that the credit of Great Britain should be brought to the aid of the Indian deficiency; and he put it to the House whether, if the necessity should arise, it was not the duty of a provident Government to provide for an accumulating debt or engagements to meet that debt, and thereby sustain the credit, and, by sustaining the credit, support the strength of both countries. To that extent only had his right hon. Friend put the case of India, as it was his duty in stating the whole of the financial difficulties with which they had to contend. The hon. Member for Liskeard had thought fit to taunt him with the withdrawal of a notice which he gave in 1839 respecting the commencement of the war on the western frontier of India. Now, he had no difficulty whatever in stating to the House the reason which induced him to withdraw that notice. He certainly had felt, and nothing had occurred to shake his opinion, that the entire conception of that expedition was improvident; and although that opinion was sustained by the highest authority in this country—a remarkable coincidence of authority—yet when the information reached him, that this measure was contemplated, he had reason almost simultaneously to know that solemn engagements had been entered into by the executive Government with native princes, that the honour of the British nation was committed to their fulfilment, and that British arms were about to be used. He therefore felt, that as any motion on the subject supported in that House by a large party might have the effect of embarrassing the Indian Government in the execution of those engagements, it was not for the public good that he should press the motion of which he had given notice, and upon those grounds, and those alone, had he withdrawn it. The hon. Member for Liskeard charged the members of Lord Grey's Government with having consented to the remission of the House-tax. But at that time they had a large surplus revenue, and it remained for the successors of Lord Grey, with a deficiency of two or three years' standing, and an expenditure exceeding the income, not to tread in his footsteps, but to remit, under those circumstances, a productive impost of 1,500,000l. He should much prefer the accusation of inconsistency which had been directed against him to the charge of being guilty of what he must say was an act of the greatest imprudence, of sacrificing so productive a revenue as that to the popular clamour of the moment. The hon. Member for Liskeard, taking up the metaphor of the hon. Member for Nottinghamshire, talked of a will made by Lord Melbourne's Government in behalf of the country at large, to which the present Government, as executors, were bound to administer. Allow him first to observe, that in order to make an honest will you must dispose only of your own, property—a fact not the less important in the present instance, considering that the death-bed scene of the testators was much prolonged, that their approaching dissolution was clearly foreseen, that their dying agonies were much protracted, and that a greater tenacity of life had never been exhibited after all strength and power of action had long departed. But now what were the bona notabilia? The hon. Member for Liskeard said "Catholic Emancipation and the repeal of the Test Acts." But were these the property of the testators? He thought they belonged to the Government of the Duke of Wellington and of his right hon. Friend. Was it really come to this—that in the absence of all property of your own you bequeath that of your neighbours? ["Oh!"] What! Catholic emancipation not the act of his right hon. Friend? Well, they claimed the Test Acts. But did Lord Melbourne's Government claim reform, the abolition of slavery, and municipal reform? These, he maintained, were the property of Lord Grey. He distinctly said so. But he would tell them what was entirely their own. There was the China war, which, as far as he could see, it would be exceedingly difficult to conduct with advantage or close with honour. Then there was the rupture in our alliance with France, which was the keystone of the foreign policy of Lord Grey's Government. There was also the smouldering embers of a Canadian rebellion, the unsettled state of the "Caroline," Mr. M'Leod's trial, the right of search, and the boundary question. These were the bequests which they had left to the present Government. This was a sketch of their policy abroad. What was it at home? A five years deficiency, a growing accumulating deficiency, with 1,500,000l. of productive revenue prodigally and imprudently sacrificed in one year, and then in a vain endeavour to bolster up this flagrant mistake, and hesitating to deal with property, they attempted to impose 5 per cent. additional on all customs and excise, thus increasing the price of all articles of consumption to the great body of the people, and 10 per cent. additional on assessed taxes. Their 5 per cents., so far from producing an increase, left the deficiency greater than it was before, and their 10 per cent. went a very slight way indeed to reduce it. At that late hour of the night he would not go into the questions of corn and sugar. They could not deny that the sense of the country had been taken upon the 8s. duty, that it had been condemned by two Parliaments, that it had been twice tried, and found wanting. The opinion of the country was therefore decidedly opposed to a fixed duly of 8s. upon corn. Then as regarded sugar, it had been proved to demonstration that under the measure of the late Government, without any reduction of the duty upon colonial sugar, and a reduction such as they proposed upon foreign sugar, the price to the consumer would not, as admitted by the noble Lord, have been reduced more than one halfpenny in the pound, while it would not have yielded more to the revenue than was obtained under the existing law. As a financial measure, therefore, the sugar bill of the late Government would have been a failure, while their corn bill had avowedly been brought forward, not for the purposes of revenue, but protection. He had already expressed his opinion upon the question of the timber duties. As stated by the hon. Member for Lambeth; the question at issue was thus brought to a very narrow point. It was, in the first place, admitted that the supplies in the time of peace must be raised within the year, and in the next, that the expenditure at present could not be reduced. He had heard no one contend that in the present state of affairs in China, in India, and in Europe, it would be prudent to reduce the estimates of the year—at least, the estimates for the army and navy had been voted without any attempt to reduce them. Well, the period had arrived by universal assent when loans could not be raised with safety in time of peace. Such was the doctrine of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Portsmouth; and the noble Lord the Member for London, when there was only a deficiency of 1,000,000l., said,— That not to meet such a deficiency by a vigorous effort of taxation was inconsistent wish the credit of the country, disgraceful in the eyes of Europe, and fatal to our position amongst the civilised nations of the world. Another important admission made by those who advocated the budget of last year, and adverted to more than once by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Taunton was, that even though a considerable increase of revenue should be obtained from their proposed alteration in the corn and timber duties, that still there would remain a deficiency, which it would be necessary to meet by direct taxation. By universal, or at least very nearly universal consent, then, they had arrived at a point when taxes must be imposed. The noble Lord the Member for London, and the Lord Mayor of Dublin, following the example, pointed distinctly to various sources from which a revenue might be derived; but then it was either to be done by the reimposition of taxes that had been remitted, or by having recourse to an additional per centage on the assessed taxes. Now, let them see what were the most productive of those taxes which had been remitted, and then he should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman who was about to address the House to specify which of those taxes on articles of consumption he would recommend to be reimposed—whether on beer, malt, leather, candles, soap, printed cottons, or coals carried coastwise? He should like to know whether it was to one of them, or to all of them, that the noble Lord in his resolution alluded. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would inform the House upon this point. Suppose, however, they proposed to take an additional per centage on the assessed taxes. Let him observe, that there are many objections to the imposition of such a tax. Could there be any security that they would fall equally on all, according to their respective incomes? On the contrary, the rich miser would escape, from the mode of life which he adopted, and the rich man who lived on luxuries would go abroad, where he could enjoy himself as readily as at home, and get altogether away from the operation of the tax. Others, also, who found it convenient to reside at home, would avoid the operation of the tax by reducing their establishments, and thus escaping from its burdens. He would not weary the House with going further into the consideration of those points which had already been so much discussed. The question then was, whether the deficiency was not so great in amount, and that it had been so permanent in its duration, as well as that the state of our affairs were not so urgent in various parts of the world, as to render it imperatively necessary to adopt the tax proposed by his right hon. Friend. This was the strict point for the consideration of the House, and every hon. Gentleman could easily record his opinion. Her Majesty's Government asked for the calm and deliberate opinion of the House on this subject. The conclusion which they had come to, after the most deliberate consideration, had been opposed by Gentlemen opposite. Her Majesty's Ministers had calmly and carefully passed in review the affairs of this great community, and after every consideration that they had been enabled to give to the matters before them, they stood there unanimous in opinion that the state of the nation required the adoption of the measures which they had proposed. The proposition which had now been submitted to them was founded on reasons perfectly satisfactory to her Majesty's Government. Whatever objections hon. Gentlemen opposite might raise to the proposition itself, or to the reasons which had been assigned for its adoption, he was satisfied that no charge could be raised against the motives which had actuated them in making it. Talk of the popularity of a Government proposing an Income-tax!—he had never heard of such a thing. The Government had had the courage to propose a tax which immediately touched the rich and the powerful; and which, sparing those of smaller fortune, touched those interests directly which had long been in possession of political power. They might have displeased, in the first instance, some of their supporters by this and other measures which they had brought forward, but he must say that they had received support from such a disinterested body of supporters, that they had met with no vehement opposition from those who did not exactly agree in their measures, and he felt assured that, on reflection on the state of the country, even those who did not warmly support them would not disapprove of the result at which the Government had arrived. They felt that they had a serious duty to discharge to the country. In the propositions which they had made to the House, they had endeavoured to relieve the distress which pressed very heavily on the industry of the country, and at the same time to relieve the finances of the country from the difficulties which surrounded them. The responsibility of adopting or rejecting these measures now rested with the Parliament and the country. Ministers were quite satisfied that the measures they proposed were prudent, they believed them to be indispensably necessary. They had not lightly proposed them; they would not timidly abandon them, and it only remained for the House to determine whether they should be adopted. The House might be assured Ministers would not shrink from their proposition as from an appropriation clause. There would be no Jamaica Bill resignation. That which they believed to be right they would manfully maintain, and they placed their reliance for support in our present financial measures on the wisdom of the Parliament, and on the patriotic spirit and virtue of the nation.

Mr. F. T. Baring,

in rising to answer some of the observations which had fallen from the right hon. Member for Dorchester, could not help expressing his surprise, that the right hon. Gentleman, as a Minister of the Crown, should have been induced to describe the situation of the country in the manner in which he had. The right hon. Gentleman, in reference to the China war, bad said, that it was— One that we could not carry on with success, and that we could not retreat from with honour—that our Indian empire was staggering under the blow which it had received— that a revolt was smouldering in Canada. And that the Government had all the difficulties of the American negotiation to deal with. Such was the description which the right hon. Baronet gave of the state of the country at the present time with the view of justifying the imposition of the Income-tax. In looking over the debates in that House, which took place when the Income-tax was first proposed, nothing could be more striking than the difference of the conduct and language of Mr. Pitt for that now employed. At that time, there was the mutiny at the Nore, almost a revolution in Ireland, and the country was engaged in one of the greatest wars that she had ever to contend with in Europe. When he heard the language from the right hon. Gentleman as to the state of the country almost make men sink within themselves, he could not help contrasting it with the different state of things which existed at the period he had just alluded to; that period of difficulty, when to use Mr. Pitt's staple words, the hearts of men sunk within them—the circumstances of the country were indeed different at the two periods—and in taking the present time, and contrasting it with the former, he missed all the great calamities under which Mr. Pitt spoke, and, above all, he missed that calm temper which actuated him, and the mighty spirit which he manifested to meet the difficulties he and the country had to contend with. When the present deplorable state of the empire was alluded to, he might remind the right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel), and perhaps the noble Lord, the Member for North Lancashire, who sat next to him, would do so also—of the state of the nation, when he abandoned the reins of office on a former occasion. He well recollected, how extremely eloquent the noble Lord once was in stating the difficulties of the country when Lord Grey assumed the post of First Minister of the Crown. Something the noble Lord then said about the burnings in the agricultural counties — something about the King's being unable to pass through the city unmolested—something about the difficulties which had been left to Lord Grey as a legacy by the former Government. But he was not anxious to refer back to such recollections. They had not been, however, uncalled for. The speech of the right hon. Baronet, the Home Secretary, rendered the contrast natural. And referring to that speech, he might allude to the tone of triumph with which the right hon. Gentleman had adverted to the course of the Opposition on those measures being developed, and to the lack of agitation on the subject among the people out of doors; There was one argument on this point used by the right hon. Baronet, which he did not think it right to pass over, as he considered it coming from a Minister as a most unfortunate appeal, couched in most unfortunate language. The right hon. Baronet had said, he should like to see meetings, at which parties having incomes under 150l. a year, would be brought to oppose a system of finance which, according to his view, did not at all tax the people, whilst it gave them the benefit of a reduction in the price of provisions. No one could be so blind as not to see from this remark that the observation of the hon. and learned Gentleman, the Member for Bath, had not been made without some cause. That hon. Member had told the House, that the right hon. Baronet had so sagaciously arranged his plan as to cut from under their feet all public expression of feeling on the part of the poorer classes of society. Now, he admitted that when an arrangement was held out which was said not to touch those parties, but, on the other hand, was described as giving them an essential benefit—he admitted, that in such a case, they were making an excellent bid for that which formerly had been styled the '' physical force" of England. But how long the bargain might continue — how long they could keep to a union they were so anxious to seek—was a question liable to more doubt; and he was of opinion, that even if their present experiment in this respect did succeed, an agitation would spring up, which would result in their being obliged to modify their proposition, or else to give up their scheme of an Income-tax altogether. He knew perfectly well that that agitation would not be immediate, but it was, nevertheless, by no means difficult to foresee that the moment the scheme came into operation, the opposition to it on the part of the shopkeepers and the industrious classes would be so strong that they must either give up the tax altogether or else so modify its clauses as to exempt incomes, and lay the burden on property alone. In the course of his speech the right hon. Baronet opposite had also referred to the inconvenience attending delay in the settlement of this question. Now, he had no doubt that much inconvenience arose from the non-adjustment of the points in the tariff which the Government proposed to alter. But if any notion existed that these debates interfered with the settlement of that tariff, he would take leave to remind those who entertained such an idea, that the table of the new scale of duties in its amended and complete form had only been laid on the Table yesterday, and that there had not yet been time even to circulate the document through the country. He did not refer to this point with a view to attach any blame to the Government. He thought it was quite right to give ample time for the consideration of the new propositions, but he adverted to the matter with a view to answer those who attributed the delay to that side of the House, and affected to lay on the Opposition all the responsibility of the inconvenience which ensued. As he was referring to the tariff, he would take that opportunity of speaking on some of its particular points; and first of all, he must state, that he was not inclined to rate that measure at the high value set on it by some, but that he was disposed to set the most value on those alterations which appeared to be the least popular with hon. Members on the other side. In saying this, however, he must be understood as not under-rating the benefits which some of the alterations would confer; and although the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government had certainly no right to look to him for support or assistance, yet he would find him as anxious as any Member on his side of the House to assist in carrying out the principle on which the alterations seemed to be based. Now, with regard to the timber-duties. The right hon. Gentleman, the Secretary for the Home Department, thought fit in the course of his observations to blame him for the measure which he had on a former occasion proposed with respect to these duties. He would by no means underrate the value of any reduction of duty proposed to be made upon this great article, but all questions of reduction of duty were matters of comparison. If he had to deal with the question, he would prefer reducing the duty on Baltic timber, so as to give a difference as proposed in the present tariff, at the same time leaving the duty on Canadian timber the same in amount as it was at present. By the pro- posed plan it was admitted that a loss of 600,000l. would result—a sum which he considered it would be much better to save for the purpose of appropriating it to the general interests of the country. As regards the present scheme, and the one proposed last year, let. the House consider the difference between the two plans. By the course which he intended to pursue, he would gain 600,000l. to the country, whilst by the plan of the right hon. Baronet it would incur a loss to the same amount. The sum which he would thus secure would be raised without imposing any additional charge upon the consumer. Comparing the two propositions, it would be seen there was a difference of 1,200,000l., a sum amounting to about one-third of what was proposed to be raised by the Income-tax, The right hon. Baronet the Secretary for the Home department had told them that his plan for the reduction of the duties on timber had been brought forward under the Administration of Lord Grey, which was abandoned as untenable, without a division. What Lord Althorp had stated on the occasion referred to by the right hon. Baronet as his reason for abandoning the proposition was, that in consequence of a great change, making a loss of revenue of the timber-duties, the alteration, with other measures, was proposed to meet the deficiency; but circumstances having subsequently occurred to induce the Government to abandon the change, the timber scale as then proposed, was abandoned. The measure, therefore, was not abandoned as being untenable, but because the money was no longer wanted. It was, not, however, on the scale subsequently proposed by him, that the Government of Lord Grey was defeated, but on the general question of the timber duties. Certainly the great zeal for the reduction of the timber duties was not then so strong among the Gentlemen opposite, as not to leave the Government of that day in a minority on the general question, which was thrown out by those who now supported the proposition of the right hon. Baronet. The Government of Lord Grey proposed an adjournment of the question, and upon that proposition they were beaten. They were not beaten on a proposition like his, but on the general question of the reduction of duties by those who now supported the reduction proposed by the present Government. The right hen. Baronet proposed, as compared with his plan, to relinquish 1,200,000l.; and stated, that he expected to be able to repeal the Income-tax for three, or even for five years. Was there not an inconsistency in this mode of proceeding? The right hon. Baronet, in his budget speech, had declared, that it was fallacious to suppose, that by reducing duties any additional revenue could be obtained, and had several examples to prove this opinion, yet he now proposed to take off 1,200,000l. from a productive tax; and, by some magic—by some calculation more sanguine than any that had ever entered into his mind, an increase of income was expected. The right hon. Gentleman proposed a reduction of duties amounting to 1,200,000l., and he then told them that in three years this would increase the revenue by 3,600,000l., or three times as much, and he calculated that in three or five years the Income-tax would be repealed. He was thought sanguine enough in calculating the amount of revenue which would accrue from the reduction of duties; but, the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government went far beyond him. In the speech of the right hon. Baronet for the Home Department, it was to be observed, that the argument drawn from the financial state of India had been almost abandoned, and, indeed, after the statement made last night by the hon. Member for Guildford, it would not be an easy task to maintain the Ministerial proposition on that ground. It surely could not be urged that a deficiency of 2,500,000l. in the revenue of India could form any ground for resorting to such an emergency measure as an Income-tax, when it was shown by the hon. Member that in fifteen years there had occurred a deficiency of 18,000,000l. in the revenue of India; that in 1839 there was also a large deficiency of upwards of 13,000,000l.; but these deficiencies had never been thought a sufficient motive for England to interfere, or adduced as a reason why an Income-tax should be fixed upon the people of this country. He was not surprised, therefore, that the right hon. Baronet, the Secretary for the Home Department, had not dwelt with any emphasis upon that argument. He viewed this question merely on its financial bearings, but he hoped in stating these, that he should not be considered as either undervaluing-, nor not feeling for the calamities which had occurred in India. He trusted, that hon. Gentlemen opposite would not on that ground deny him his share of the feelings of an Englishman. The right hon. Baronet had carefully avoided all reference to the statements of the hon. Member for Lambeth. He concurred with the views of his hon. Friend and did not think that there was any difficulty on that point, and it was with no little surprise that he heard the ironical cheer of the hon. Member for Lincolnshire when the statement was made. The hon. Member for Lincoln, not content with giving the country a Corn-bill, had accused the late Government with saddling the public with a debt of 41,000,000l. during its administration. He held in his hand a paper which contained an account of the state of the national debt from 1831 to 1841. He found, that the capital of the debt, without reference to annuities, had been increased in those ten years, including the West India loan, by the amount of 4,000,000l. only, instead of 41,000,000l. But that was not the fair way of calculating the true state of the debt. If you wished to arrive at the real state of the debt of the country, you were bound in justice to consider the value of the terminable annuities; unless you did this, you could not ascertain your true financial position. Taking in this element the real increase of the debt from 1835 to 1841, including the West India loan, was only 8,500,000l. The late Government had had to provide a sum of 20,000,000l., as compensation to the proprietors of the slaves; and the right hon. Gentleman opposite must allow him to say, that if he would not give that Government the credit of emancipating the slaves, it was not fair to set against them the 20,000,000l. of debt which that measure had obliged them to incur. If the West India loan were left out of the calculation, so far from there having been an increase, there was a diminution of the national debt to the amount of 13,000,000l., in the period which elapsed from 1835 to 1841, when the account was made up. That, he believed to be the real state of the debt. A sinking fund was now at work to the amount of 2,500,000l. a year, silently, it was true, but efficiently. It was evident, that if you changed a permanent annuity of 100l. a year into a terminable annuity of 150l. or 200l. a year, the 50l. or 100l. you paid for the purpose of making the annuity terminable, was in reality a sinking fund—every man of common sense must see that. The sum which we Were now paying on account of terminable annuities to extinguish part, of the debt ultimately, was 2,500,000l. per annum. That was not to fee lost sight of in forming an estimate of those financial difficulties which were said to be the real ground for imposing an Income-tax. So for from thinking that his noble Friend had shrunk from the question, as hon. Gentlemen opposite imputed to him. he thought his noble Friend had taken that fair and manly course which he called on the right hon. Gentleman opposite to pursue on a former occasion. He told the right hon. Gentleman at that time, when bringing forward his financial plan last year as a Member of the late Government, that he did not ask for the particular taxes which they would propose, but for an explanation of the financial policy which they intended to pursue. What answer did he then obtain from the right hon. Baronet the Member for Dorchester? The right hon. Baronet said, "He wants to peep into our cards, and see our hands;" yet the right hon. Baronet now asked him to state on what articles of consumption he would consent that a tax should be im-, posed. After the answer which be had got from the right hon. Baronet on the occasion to which he referred, he must say, that to put such a question required considerable powers of forgetfulness. With respect to the proposal of a legacy duty on real property the right hon. Baronet opposite and other Gentlemen had appealed to his opinion, as expressed in 1840. Now, he would say at once, that if he had changed his opinion, especially on a financial question, he would be perfectly ready to own it fairly and candidly. The fairest of all changes of opinion was a change on a question of taxation, for that which was perfectly right one day might be perfectly wrong another. He was represented to have said, that the principle of such a tax was wrong. Now, he could not find that any principle was contained in the arguments made in his speech in 1840. He had never entertained an objection to this tax on principle. The objection he had made was to the details; he thought, that such a tax would be unequal in its operation, If he had used the word "principle," it was with reference to the objections which were urged at the time when the proposition was submitted to the House. Perhaps he might be permitted shortly to state the objections he had then brought, against the tax. He had said, that the deficiency then existing arose mainly from. the reduction of the Post-office duties, and that he did not think it fair by levying a legacy duty on landed property, to lay the. whole burden of making up the deficiency on the agricultural interest, which derived comparatively much less benefit from lowering the rates of postage. He had also stated in 1840, in answer to his hon. Friend, Mr. Hume, that it was a mistake to suppose, that the present legacy-duty did not touch landed property in any degree, and that his hon. Friend was not aware of the sources from which the duty was derived. He distinctly stated at that time, that the great landed properties were to a certain extent subjected to taxation in consequence of the legacy duty. He held these opinions still; and he would maintain that a certain amount of the duty now levied fell on the agricultural interest. He did not consider the tax to be so unjust as hon. Gentlemen on his side contended, nor had he ever held, that when it was absolutely necessary to raise a great amount of revenue, a Chancellor of the Exchequer might not fairly and legitimately resort to a legacy duty, combined with other taxes. The right hon. Gentleman opposite had remarked, that objections might be made to any tax, because all taxes had their inconveniences. He perfectly agreed in that opinion; any one who had been connected with the Treasury must know that all taxes were open to great objections. But he called on the House not to be led away by this argument, but to form their judgments from experience. They had made trial of the various taxes, and the means of comparing one with another in their operation. Let them see which tax was preferable, with reference to the manner in which it affected the people as well as to its productiveness. Compare the effects of the property-tax with those of the assessed taxes, and those of taxes on consumption. Be asked the House to observe what was the result of the proposal to continue the Income-tax in 1816, and of what tax the people of England first called for the reduction? That was the best criterion for determining the question. It was not matter of argument, but of experience, and that was the best ground to which they could appeal. In 1816, the agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing classes exclaimed unanimously against it, and demanded that, before all the rest, it should be repealed. When, therefore, reference was made to the results of the tax, he would point to history and experience, and cite the statements and opinions of individuals respecting the tax made at that time. Let the House look to the great petition presented in that Session against the tax from the city of London. This was an event of no inconsiderable importance in the history of the tax. Never had such a meeting ssembled in the city of London as that at which this petition was agreed to. On a former occasion he had taken the liberty of reading it to the House, as containing in itself all the arguments which could be used against an Income-tax. His hon. and learned Friend, the Member for Liskeard, had been ridiculed for expressing an opinion, that one of the results of imposing a tax of this nature might be seriously to affect the security of the public funds. He must say he participated in that apprehension; and this was no new opinion of his—he had always entertained it. He believed, with respect to the funds in this country, there was a general well-founded sense of security and good faith. Indeed, he felt they were as secure as anything in the nature of human affairs could well be, and if this tax were repealed after a certain time, he believed there would be exhibited in all quarters, and among every class of the community, an anxious desire to replace our finances on the most sound and wholesome basis. It was undoubtedly with great delight and satisfaction, that he heard nowhere a single word of a breach of national faith, but rather a determination expressed upon all sides, whatever their general opinions might be, to maintain the credit and uphold the character of the country. At the same time he did not exaggerate the evil that he foresaw might arise when he said there might be times of distraction or temporary delusion, when the House might be run in upon with reference to this tax; and he did not think it wise, he did not think it secure, he did not think it the part of a great statesman, to make so large a portion of the fund necessary for the security of the empire and good faith of the country to depend upon that tax which experience had shown was the least secure and most unpopular ever imposed in this country.

Mr. Ferrand

assured hon. Gentlemen opposite he was perfectly prepared to divide, and he would not long detain the House—indeed he would not have obtruded himself upon their attention at all, but he had a message to deliver to the right hon. Baronet in their presence. He was glad that hon. Gentlemen opposite were at last beginning to throw off that cloak in which they had lately enveloped themselves. It was certainly somewhat remarkable that the working classes were now never once mentioned on the other side. When Parliament had just assembled they heard, night after night, hon. Members opposite declare their readiness to bear any burdens that might be placed on their own shoulders, provided only that the working classes were relieved. Night after night, they stood up and called upon the right hon. Baronet to bring forward measures calculated to benefit the poor industrious labouring classes, assuring him, in that case, of their cordial assistance and support. Did not the hon. Member for Manchester assert, that 100 families in that town were dying for want of food? Did not the hon. Member for Bolton assert, that men were living there on food picked from the dunghill? Yes, they demanded of the right hon. Baronet food for the people. He said, he would give them food; but he should have time to prepare his measures; and until he could bring them fairly before the House of Commons, he told them as Englishmen and Christians, to go into the country and raise subscriptions for the relief of the poor. The right hon. Baronet returned to that House and proposed measures so great and so extensive, that they were staggered when they heard them announced. When they were propounded Gentlemen opposite saw their game was up, for, as the right hon. Gentleman who had just addressed the House said, "the middling and industrious classes had united in support of the right hon. Baronet's scheme." Hon. Gentlemen last Session demanded free-trade from the right hon. Baronet, and declared that no trading interest in the country wished for any protection. Had he not then fairly met their demands? Had he not brought forward the tariff? Yes, he had given food to the poor, if they would only let him hand it out to them. He had given a sop to stay their howlings for free-trade. But those who before were so loud and so bold in presenting petitions in their demands for free-trade, might now be seen night after night silently approaching the Table of that House with their appeals from shoemakers, straw-plat manufacturers, and other interests, imploring that protection which they formerly scouted. What more could the right hon. Baronet do than he had done? Never a statesman stood forward in so noble and manly a way under such circumstances. He had reduced the price of oatmeal in the north 10s. a load, and butchers' meat 2d. per pound. Would not that give relief to the poor? Why, there was one universal shout amongst working classes in Yorkshire and Lancashire of "God bless Sir Robert Peel." By their factious opposition in that House, hon. Gentlemen hoped to gain time in order that during the Easter holidays they might have the opportunity of appealing to the working classes against the right hon. Baronet's propositions. They did go down, but they did not dare to call together the working classes—hon. Gentlemen opposite went to their own constituents—those whom they had represented as advocates of free-trade; but they came back with petitions for protecting duties. He had heard a great deal said about the landed proprietors not paying their just share of public burdens; he maintained, on the contrary, that the landed interest would be taxed by the measures at the rate of from 15 to 20 per cent. Were not the landed proprietors of England coming forward in the most noble manner to support the right hon. Gentleman, and assist him in his measures for the relief of the poor? But when hon. Gentlemen opposite were called upon to pay their share they protested against it. Where was the opposition to the Income-tax? It was concentrated on the benches opposite. Had the noble Lord (Lord J. Russell) ventured to go into the City of London and call a meeting on this subject—had he, once the idol of the people, having twice in ten years been carried into power upon their shoulders, dared to appeal to a public meeting of the merchants and trades people who were his constituents, he would, with their sanction, have stood in a very different position from that which he now occupied, backed as he was in his present course only by the opinion of a bole and corner meeting of the Reform Club. Gentlemen opposite asked what the right hon. Baronet had done for the working classes; the country knew what he proposed; but what had they themselves done? What had the manufacturers, the free-trade Anti-Corn-law League gentlemen done? Had they fulfilled their engagement to assist the Government in carrying those measures, that might be brought forward calculated to relieve the labouring poor? No; but, on the contrary, as the measures of the right hon. Baronet reduced in price the prime necessaries of life, the manufacturers in the North have reduced the wages of the operatives. He asserted this as a positive fact; the wages of the working classes in the manufacturing districts had been reduced by the Anti-Corn-law League manufacturers 15 and 20 per cent. —nay, these parties openly declared on 'Change, and in the market-place, that to whatever extent Sir R. Peel's bill should relieve the necessities of the working classes they would reduce their wages. Would it be denied in that House? The leading metropolitan organ of the Conservatives had been referred to in the course of the evening; what said the leading organ of hon. Gentlemen opposite upon this subject? What but this—if an Income-tax were laid on the manufacturers, it should be taken from the wages of the working classes? Not only had their organ asserted this, but the manufacturers themselves had begun to carry it out. The hon. Member concluded by saying, "My chief motive in addressing the House was, that I might deliver a message to the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government from the working classes from those men who carried you to power, but now they have got the right hon. Baronet at the head of affairs; and, in spite of all your machinations, they will keep him there."

Lord Worsley

said, that he did not consider the right hon. Baronet was justified in throwing away 600,000l. of revenue, and then proposing an Income-tax. With respect to the resolution of his noble Friend, the Member for London, as it appeared to involve the principle of a fixed duty on corn, he could not vote for it; but, at the same time, he could not give his support to the right hon. Baronet on this proposition.

Colonel Sibthorp

said, if he mistook not, the noble Lord who had just spoken, intended to divide against his right hon. Friend at the head of the Government. Now, he could only say, that he had that evening met the noble Lord in a room up stairs, and had read him a private, and he hoped, a kind lecture on the course he should pursue, but he was sorry to find it had had so little effect.

The House divided on the question, that the words proposed to be left out stand part of the question;—Ayes 308; Noes 202;—Majority 106.

List of the AYES.
Acland, Sir T.D.	Christmas, W.
Acland, T. D.	Christopher, R. A.
A'Court, Capt.	Chute, W. L. W.
Ackers, J.	Clayton, R. R.
Acton, Col.	Clerk, Sir G.
Adare, Visct.	Clive, hon. R. H.
Adderley, C. B.	Cochrane, A.
Alford, Visct.	Cockburn, rt. hn. SirG.
Allix, J. P.	Codrington, C. W.
Antrobus, E.	Collett, W. R.
Arbuthnott, hon. H.	Colvile, C. R.
Archdall, M.	Compton, H. C.
Arkwright, G.	Conolly, Col.
Ashley, Lord	Coote, Sir C.H.
Astell, W.	Corry, rt. hon. H.
Attwood,J.	Courtenay, Visct.
Attwood, M.	Cripps, W.
Bagot, hon. W.	Damer, hon. Col.
Bailey, J.	Darby, G.
Bailey, J., jun.	Dawnay, hon. W. H.
Baillie, Col.	Denison, E. B.
Baillie, H.J.	Dickinson, F. II.
Baird, W.	Dodd, G.
Baldwin, B.	Douglas, Sir H.
Balfour, J. M.	Douglas, Sir C. E.
Baring, hon. W. B.	Douglas, J. D. S.
Barrington, Visct.	Douro, Marquess of
Baskerville, T. B. M.	Dowdeswell, W.
Bateson, Sir R.	Drummond, H. H.
Beckett, W.	Duffield, T.
Bell, M.	Dugdale. W. S.
Beresford, Capt.	Duncombe, hon. A.
Beresford, Major	Du Pre, C. G.
Bernard, Visct.	East, J. B.
Blackburne, J. I.	Eaton, R. J.
Blackstone, W. S.	Egerton, W. T.
Blake, M. J.	Egerton, Sir P.
Blakemore, R.	Egerton, Lord F.
Bodkin, W. H.	Eliot, Lord
Boldero, H. G.	Emlyn, Visct.
Borthwick, P.	Escott, B.
Botfield, B.	Estcourt, T. G. B.
Bradshaw, J.	Farnham, E. B.
Bramston, T. W.	Fellowes, E.
Broadley, H.	Feilden, W.
Broadwood, H.	Ferrand, W. B.
Brooke, Sir A. B.	Filmer, Sir E.
Brownrigg, J. S,	Fitzroy, Capt.
Bruce, Lord E.	Fitzroy, hon. H.
Buck, L. W.	Fleming, J. W.
Buckley, E.	Follet, Sir W. W.
Buller, Sir J, Y.	Forbes, W.
Bunbury, T.	Forester, hn. G. C. W.
Burrell, Sir C. M.	Fuller, A. E.
Burroughes, H. N.	Gaskell, J. Milnes
Campbell, Sir H.	Gladstone, rt.hn.W E,
Campbell, A.	Godson, R.
Carnegie, hon. Capt.	Gordon, hn. Capt.
Chapman, A.	Gore, M.
Charteris, hon. F.	Gore, W. O.
Chelsea, Visct.	Gore, W. R. O.
Chetwode, Sir J.	Goring, C.
Cholmondeley, hn. H.	Goulburn, rt. hon. H.

Graham, rt. hn. Sir J,	Lygon, hon. General
Greenall, P.	Mackenzie, T.
Greene, T.	Mackenzie, W. F.
Grimsditch, T.	Mackinnon, W. A.
Grimston, Visct.	Maclean, D.
Grogan, E.	Mc Geachy, F. A.
Hale, R. B.	Mahon, Visct.
Halford, H.	Mainwaring, T.
Hamilton, C. J. B.	Manners, Lord C. S.
Hamilton, W. J.	Manners, Lord J.
Hamilton, Lord C.	March, Earl of
Hampden, R.	Marsham, Visct.
Hanmer, Sir J.	Martyn, C. C.
Harcourt, G. G.	Marton, G.
Hardinge, rt.hn.Sir H.	Master, T. W. C.
Hardy, J.	Masterman, J.
Hawkes, T.	Maunsell, T. P.
Hayes, Sir E.	Meynell, Capt.
Heathcoate, Sir W.	Miles, P. W. S.
Heneage, G. H. W.	Miles, W.
Henley, J. W.	Milnes, R. M.
Hepburn, Sir T. B.	Mitchell, T. A.
Herbert, hon. S.	Mordaunt, Sir J.
Hill, Sir R.	Morgan, O.
Hillsborough, Earl of	Mundy, E. M.
Hinde, J. H.	Neeld, J.
Hodgson, F.	Neeld, J.
Hodgson, R.	Neville, R,
Hogg, J. W.	Newry, Visct.
Houldsworth, T.	Nicholl, rt. hn. J.
Holmes, hon. W. A'C.	Norreys, Lord
Hope, hon. C.	Northland, Visct.
Hope, A.	O'Brien, A. S.
Hornby, J.	O'Brien, W. S.
Ingestre, Visct.	Ossulston, Lord
Inglis, Sir R. H.	Owen, Sir J.
Irton, S.	Packe, C. W.
Irving, J.	Paget, Lord W.
Jackson, J. D.	Pakington, J. S.
James, Sir W, C.	Palmer, R.
Jermyn, Earl	Patten, J. W.
Jocelyn, Visct.	Peel, rt. hon. Sir R.
Johnson, W. G.	Pemberton, T.
Johnstone, Sir J.	Pigot, Sir R.
Johnstone, H.	Planta, rt. hon. J.
Jolliffe, Sir W. G. H.	Plumptre, J. P.
Jones, Capt.	Polhill, F.
Kemble, H.	Pollington, Visct.
Knatchbull, right hon. Sir E.	Pollock, Sir F.
	Praed, W. T.
Knight, H. G.	Price, R.
Knight, F. W.	Pringle, A.
Knightley, Sir C.	Pusey, P.
Law, hon. C. E.	Rashleigh, W.
Lawson, A.	Reade, W. M.
Legh.G. C.	Reid, Sir J. R.
Leicester, Earl of	Repton, G. W. J.
Lennox Lord A.	Richards, R
Liddell, hon. H. T.	Rolleston, Col.
Lincoln, Earl of	Rose rt. hon. Sir G.
Lindsay, H. H.	Round.C. G.
Lockhart, W.	Round, J.
Long, W.	Rushbrooke, Col.
Lopes, Sir R.	Russell, C.
Lowther, J. H.	Russell, J. D. W.
Lowther, hon. Col.	Ryder, hon. G. D.
Lyall, G.	Sanderson, R.

Sandon, Visct.	Trotter, J.
Scarlett, hon. R. C.	Turnor, C.
Seymour, Sir H. B.	Tyrell, Sir J. T.
Sheppard, T.	Vere, Sir C. B.
Shirley, E. P.	Verner, Col.
Sibthorp, Col.	Vernon, G. H.
Smith, A.	Vivian, J. E.
Smythe, hon. G.	Vyvyian, Sir R. R.
Smollett, A.	Waddington, H. S.
Somerset, Lord G.	Walsh, Sir J. B.
Somerton, Visct.	Welby, G. E.
Sotheron, T. H. S.	Whitmore, T. C.
Stanley, Lord	Wilbraham, hn. R. B.
Stewart, J.	Wodehouse, E.
Stuart, H.	Wood, Col.
Sturt, H. C.	Wood, Col. T.
Sutton, hon. H. M.	Worsley, Lord
Taylor, J. A.	Wortley, hn. J. S.
Tennent,J. E.	Wyndham, Col.
Thesiger, F.	Wynn, Sir W. W.
Thompson, Mr. Ald.	Yorke, hn. E. T.
Thornhill, G.	Young, J.
Tollemache, J.	Young, Sir W.
Trench, Sir F. W.	TELLERS.
Trevor, hon. G. R.	Fremantle, Sir T.
Trollope, Sir J.	Baring, H.

List of the NOES.
Aglionby, H. A.	Dalrymple, Capt.
Ainsworth, P.	Dashwood, G. H.
Aldam, W	Denison, J. E.
Archbold, R.	Dennistoun, J.
Bannerman, A.	Divett, E.
Barclay, D.	Duff, J.
Baring, rt. hon. F. T.	Duke, Sir G.
Bell, J.	Duncan, Visct.
Berkeley, hon. Capt.	Duncan, G.
Berkeley, hn. H. F.	Duncombe, T.
Bernal, Capt.	Dundas, Admiral
Blewitt, R. J.	Dundas, F.
Bodkin, J. J.	Dundas, D.
Bowring, Dr.	Dundas, hn. J. C.
Bridgeman, H.	Easthope, Sir J.
Brocklehurst, J.	Ebrington, Visct.
Brotherton, J.	Ellice, E.
Bryan, G.	Ellis, W.
Bulkeley, Sir R. B. W.	Elphinstone, H.
Buller, C.	Evans, W.
Buller, E.	Ewart, W.
Busfeild, W.	Ferguson, Col.
Byng, G.	Fielden, J.
Carew, hon. R. S.	Fitzroy, Lord C.
Cave, hon. R.O.	Forster, M.
Cavendish, hn. C. C.	Fox, C. R.
Cavendish, hn. G. H.	Gill, T.
Chapman, B.	Gordon, Lord F.
Childers, J. W.	Gore, hon. R.
Clay, Sir W.	Granger, T. C.
Clements, Visct.	Grattan, H.
Clive, E. B.	Grey, rt. hn. Sir G.
Cobden, R.	Guest, Sir J.
Colebrooke, Sir T. E.	Hall, Sir B.
Collins, W.	Harris, J. Q.
Cowper, hn. W. F.	Hastie, A.
Craig, W. G.	Hatton, Capt. V.
Curteis, H. B.	Hawes, B.
Dalmeny, Lord	Hay, Sir A. L.

Hayter, W. G.	rower, J.
Heathcoat, J.	Protheroe, E.
Heneage, E.	Pulsford, R.
Hobhouse, rt. hn. SirJ.	Ramsbottom, J.
Holdsworth, J.	Rawdon, Col.
Howard, hn. C. W. G.	Redington, T. N.
Howard, hn. J. K.	Rice, E. R.
Howard, Lord	Roche, Sir D.
Howard, hn. E. G. G.	Roche, E. B.
Howard, P. H.	Rumbold, C. E.
Howard, hn. H.	Rundle, J.
Howick, Visct.	Russell, Lord J.
Humphery, Mr. Ald.	Russell, Lord E.
Hutt, W.	Rutherfurd, A.
James, W.	Scholefield, J.
Johnston, A.	Scrope, G. P.
Labouchere, rt. hn. H.	Seale, Sir J. H.
Langston, J. H.	Sheil, rt. hon. R. L.
Langton, W. G.	Smith, B.
Leader, J. T.	Smith, J. A.
Lemon, Sir C.	Somers, J. P.
Listowel, Earl of	Somerville, Sir W. M.
Loch, J.	Standish, C.
Macaulay.rt.hn.T.B.	Stanley, hon. W. O.
McTaggart, Sir J.	Stansfield, W. R. C.
Maher, V.	Stanton, W. H.
Mangles, R. D.	Staunton, Sir G. T.
Majoribanks, S.	Stewart, P. M.
Marshall, W.	Stuart, Lord J.
Marsland, H.	Stuart, W. V.
Martin, J.	Strickland, Sir G.
Maule, rt. hn. F.	Strutt, E.
Mitcalfe, H.	Tancred, H. W.
Morris, D.	Thornely, T.
Morrison, General	Towneley, J.
Morrison, J.	Traill, G.
Mostyn, hn. E. M. L.	Troubridge, Sir E. T.
Murphy, F. S.	Tuite, H. M.
Murray, A.	Turner, E.
Napier, Sir C.	Villiers, hon. C.
Norreys, Sir D. J.	Villiers, F.
O'Brien, C.	Vivian, hon. Major
O'Brien, J.	Vivian, J. H.
O'Connell, D.	Vivian, hon. Capt.
O'Connell, M. J.	Wakley, T.
O'Connell, J.	Walker, R.
Ogle, S. C. H.	Wall, C. B.
Ord, W.	Wallace, R.
Oswald, J.	Ward, H. G.
Paget, Col.	Wason, R.
Paget, Lord A.	Wawn, J. T.
Palmerston, Visct.	White, S.
Parker, J.	Wilde, Sir T.
Pechell, Capt.	Williams, W.
Pendarves, E. W. W.	Wilshere, W.
Philips, G. R.	Winnington, Sir T. E,
Philipps, Sir R. B. P.	Wood, B.
Philips, M.	Wood. C.
Phillpotts,J.	Wood, G. W.
Pinney, W.	Wrightson, W. B.
Plumridge, Capt.
Ponsonby, hnC.F.A.C.	TELLERS.
Ponsonby, hn. J. G.	Tufnell, H.
Powell, C.	Hill, Lord M.

Non Official.
Paired off.
AYES.	NOES.
Alexander, N.	O'Ferrall, R. M.
Ashley, hn. H.	Dawson, hon. T. V.
Bentinck, Lord G.	Etwall, R.
Bruen, Col.	French, F.
Burdett, Sir F.	Butler, Col.
Cardwell, E.	Watson, W. H.
Cartwright, W. N.	Smith, V.
Castlereagh, Lord	Fleetwood, Sir H.
Cole, hon. A.	Howard, Sir R.
Copeland, W. T.	Christie, W. D.
D'Israeli, B.	Browne, D.
Duncombe, hon. O.	Hindley, C.
Eastnor, Lord	Hollond, R.
Ffolliot, J.	Greenaway, C.
Forman, T. S.	Colborne,hn. W.N.R.
Granby, Marquess	Bernal, R.
Grant, Sir A. C.	Heron, Sir R.
Gregory, W. H.	Fitzwilliam.hn. G. W.
Hughes, B.	Pigot, rt. hn. D. R.
Kelburne, Lord	Berkeley, C.
Kerrison, Sir E.	Layard, Capt.
Litton, E.	Drax, J. S. W. S. C.
Murray, G. S.	Browne, R. D.
Palmer, G.	Barnard, E. G.
Peel, Col.	Byng, rt. hn. G. S.
Pennant, hon. D.	Leveson, Lord
Powell, Col.	White, L.
Rous, hon. Capt.	Anson, Col.
Scott, hon. F.	Jardine, W
Shaw, F.	White, H.
Shirley, E. J.	Surrey, Lord
Smyth, Sir G. H.	Acheson, Lord
Stanley, E.	Horsman.E.
Tollemache, hon. F.	Brodie, W. B.
Tomline, G.	Sombre, D.
Vesey, hon. T.	Shelburne, Lord
Williams, T. P.	Gibson, T. M.
Wynne, C. W.	Wood, Sir M.

Absent.
AYES.
Bagge, W.	Jones, J.
Bankes, G.	Kerr, D.
Barneby, J.	Kirk, P.
Benett, J.	Martin, C. W.
Bruce, C.	Morgan, C. R.
Clements, Col.	Rae, Sir W.
Cresswell, B.	Ramsay, W. R.
Dick, Q.	Taylor, Capt. T. E.
Hamilton, J. H.	Wilmot, Sir E.
Henniker, Lord	Wyndham, W.
Hotham, Lord
NOES
Armstrong, Sir A.	Currie, R.
Bellew, R. M.	Denison, W. J.
Berkeley, hn. G.	D'Eyncourt,rt.hn.C.T
Blake, M.	Ellice, rt. hon. E.
Blake, Sir V.	Esmonde, Sir T.
Bowes, J.	Ferguson, Sir R. A.
Callaghan, D.	Grovesnor, Lord R.
Cayley, E. S.	Heathcote, G. J.
Crawford, W. S.	Hoskins, K.

Jervis. J.	Roebuck, J. A.
Johnson, General	Scott, R.
Lambton, H.	Seymour, Lord
Larpent, Sir G.	Stock, Dr.
M'Namara, Major	Talbot, C. R.
Martin, T. B.	Vane, Lord H.
Muntz, G. F.	Wemyss, Capt.
O'Connell, M.	Westenra, hon. J.
O'Conor Don	Westenra, hon. H.
Rennie, G.	Wigney, J. N.
Ricardo, L.	York, R.

Analysis of the Division.
Voted, Tellers included.—	Ayes	310
Voted, Tellers included.—	Noes	204
Paired			76
Absent		Ayes	21
Absent tellers included.—	Noes	40
Speaker			1
Vacant seats, &c— Meath, Cardigan, Thetford, Southampton, Montrose, Shropshire (.Lord Newport not taken his seat)	6
Total	658

RECAPITULATION.
	For the Motion.	Against the Motion.	Majority
For	Against.
ENGLAND—
Counties	108	8	100	—
Boroughs	134	125	9	—
Universities	4	—	—	—

Report brought up—on the question that it be read,

Mr. W. Williams

moved, that the resolution be re-committed, with a view to submit the following amendment:— That it is the opinion of this committee, that towards raising the supply granted to her Majesty, and for the reducing as much as may be practicable, the duty now payable on malt, sugar, and tea, there shall be charged annually the several rates and duties following, that is to say, for, and in respect of every annuity, pension, stipend, dividend, or salary, payable out of the public revenue of the United Kingdom of the annual amount of 150l. to 300l., for every 20s., 6d.; of 300l. to 500l. for every 20s., 1s.; of 500l. to 750l., for every 20s., 1s. 6d.; of 750l. to 1,000, for every 20s., 2s.; of 1,000l., to 1,500l., for every 20s., 3s.; of 1,500l. and upwards, for every 20s., 4s. on the value thereof for and in respect of all land, tenements, hereditaments, and real property of every description, there shall be charged to every person on coming into possession thereof by inheritance or bequest, a duty equal in amount to the probate and legacy duty now payable on personal property.

Amendment negatived.

Dr. Elphinstone

said, that he also had an amendment to submit to the House, and he hoped that hon. Members would do him the justice to believe, that he did not then address them from any factious motive. He wished to move an adjournment, for at that late hour he was unwilling to detain them by bringing on a debate.

Lord R. Grosvenor

wished to know If the report were once received, whether it would be in the power of any hon. Member of that House to propose an increase of the tax in certain cases.

Sir R. Peel

said, he wished to bring in the bill as speedily as possible. Tomorrow he should have no right of precedence. His noble Friend, the Member for South Lancashire had a resolution to propose respecting the presentation of petitions, to which the House would naturally desire to give some attention. On Friday the army estimates and the mutiny bill would come before the House. The hon. Gentleman, the Member for Lewes, might bring forward his proposition as an abstract resolution. It might be necessary, perhaps, that it should be brought forward in a committee of Ways and Means, and to that there would probably be no objection. He had no wish to produce any delay; with respect to such a resolution delay would be no matter of convenience to him; but the point on which he did feel anxious was, that the preliminary proceeding regarding the Income-tax should be brought to a close, for this amongst other reasons, that the public were very desirous of learning what was to be the machinery of the bill, and until the bill was introduced he could not gratify that just and natural curiosity.

Lord J. Russell

said, he would add his wish to that of the right hon. Baronet, that the hon. Member for Lewes would give way, so as to enable the right hon. Baronet to carry his bill through its preliminary stage. The request of the right hon. Baronet was founded in fairness to the House and justice to the public; and for the same reasons that he wished the hon. Member to refrain from pressing his motion, he should himself not think it necessary to take the sense of the House upon the question, that the resolution be agreed to; because there would be sufficient opportunity hereafter, on the first reading of the bill, to effect that object. A great deal of discussion must necessarily follow the introduction of the bill, and the hon. Member would not be deprived of a fair chance of bringing his motion respecting a duty on legacies and succession to real estates before the House.

Dr. Elphinstone

would postpone his motion.

Motion postponed.

On the question being again put,

Lord R. Grosvenor

said; Sir, I stated upon a former evening that I thought income preferable to expenditure, as a basis of taxation, and therefore, now, although I agreed in the former part of my noble Friend's resolution, I abstained from voting, because I could not concur in the latter part without affirming that this country ought never to have recourse to an income-tax, except under circumstances similar to those in which this country was placed in 1798 and 1806. I dissent from the measure proposed by her Majesty's Government, because it makes no distinction either as to the source from whence income is derived, or its amount, but subjects income of every description, high, low, casual and permanent, to the same fixed impost. Although I am perfectly aware of the difficulties which accompany any attempt to modify the inequality of this measure, I do not consider them insuperable. I do not see why a graduated scale should not be as well applied to the tax upon income, as to the ten millions and a half of direct taxes already imposed; I allude to the stamps, probate-duty, window-duty, and assessed-taxes. I therefore suggest the adoption of the following scale:—

	per cent.
Incomes above 2,000l. derived from all sources	£4	0	0
Incomes above 1,000l. and les than 2,000l	3	0	0
Incomes above 500l. and less than 1,000l. derived from property	2	10	0
Incomes above 500l. and less than 1,000l. derived from casual sources	2	0	0
Incomes above 150l. and less than 500l. derived from property	2	0	0
Incomes above 150l. and less than 500l. derived from casual sources	1	10	0

If her Majesty's Government will not admit of any modification of the avowed inequality of the tax, I fear I shall be compelled to vote against it.

Sir R. Peel

thanked the hon. Members for not at this moment pressing the motions of which they had given notice on the attention of the House. He had no doubt but that a public advantage would result from the adoption of that course. With reference to the propositions of the noble Lord (Lord Ft. Grosvenor) he would observe, that he objected to the principle of a graduated Income-tax.

Lord J. Russell

wished to say one word. He thought that if the principle of a graduated Income-tax were acted upon, the just regulation of property would be interfered with. It was in conformity with the principles of English law that there should be an uniformity in taxation; that all should be taxed alike. This was in direct opposition to the principle laid down by the noble Lord in his motion.

Lord R. Grosvenor

In order to vindicate myself from the charge of having proposed a dangerous precedent, I may be allowed to read a passage from Dr. Tomline, Bishop of Lincoln, the biographer of Mr. Pitt, who will scarcely be accused of holding extreme opinions, When commenting on the Income-tax, as proposed by Mr. Pitt, he makes the following remarks: — It might reasonably be objected to the plan that it made its maximum of contribution begin at too low a rate of income, and that, on that account, it lost much of its character of equality. For instance, to take the maximum duty from a roan of 200l. a-year would deprive him, not of luxuries, for such he could hardly be said to have the means of enjoying, but of many of the comforts, if not the necessaries of life, whereas the deduction from an income of 20,000l. would produce no such alteration, it would only reduce some few articles of luxury, or curtail the means of accumulation. It is probable, however, that Mr. Pitt was aware that such a proposal would prove destructive of his whole plan, by the opposition it would excite, and he was too good a politician to sacrifice 3 great public advantage, by a doubtful attempt to obtain one still greater. I beg also to add, that in Mr. Pitt's own hill there was a graduated scale of taxation for all incomes between 60l, and 200l.

Mr. Wakley

wished to ask the right hon. Baronet whether there would be any opportunity during the progress of the bill for any hon. Gentleman to propose the substitution of a. graduated tax—that was, up to the proposed amount of sevenpence in the pound?

Sir R. Peel

apprehended that it would be perfectly competent for any hon Gentleman to propose such an amendment; in fact, he intended to do so himself in the case of the Scotch tenant, assimilating his case to that of the English tenant.

Lord J. Russell

wished to know when the right hon. Baronet proposed to take the first reading of his bill,

Sir R. Peel

The first thing on Monday,

Lord J. Russell

intimated that the most convenient time to proceed with the tariff, would be after the second reading of the Income-tax Bill.

Sir R. Peel

said, that as soon as he found the House disposed to carry the Income-tax, he would proceed with the tariff. It would be impossible for him to venture on the tariff till he had an assurance that the Income-tax would pass. Of this, however, from the evident feeling of the House, fee entertained no doubt. He would proceed with the tariff after the second reading of the Income-tax, or, at all events, after the bill had been committed. He did not anticipate any vexatious opposition.

Mr. Labouchere

had listened to the avowal of the right hon. Baronet with sincere regret. He was sorry to find the right hon. Baronet determined on allowing the all-important question of the tariff to be postponed, in order to discuss the less urgent question of the Income-tax He hoped that the House and the country would now understand that the delay was not attributable to those on his side of the House. He thought the right hon. Baronet might, without any difficulty, have postponed further discussion on the Income-tax, and have proceeded with the tariff—in the progress of which he thought, considering the state of the country, not a single week—not a day's delay ought to be suffered to interpose. He was confident that the commercial part of the community would think that he was but doing his duty in endeavouring to prevent all unnecessary delay on the present occasion.

Sir R. Peel

was sure that hon. Gentlemen could not entertain any apprehensions respecting the fate of the tariff. He felt certain that the right hon. Gentleman would not suspect him of an intention of passing the Income-tax and then delaying the tariff. So great an interest did he fee} in the main principles of that measure, that he should feel just as much bound in honour to relinquish office in consequence of a defeat on the tariff, as on the Income-tax. He must say, he looked upon it as a matter of the highest importance to proceed with the discussion without interruption, It was not as though the tariff could be carried or rejected by one discussion. It must necessarily be for some time under discussion, and he entertained a strong confidence, that when he came to his statement of the tariff, he should be able to remove many of those objections entertained both by agriculturists and manufacturers. He did not pretend to say, that no reductions were to be made; but he thought he should be able to show, that the result of the whole would be a great advantage to the community in general. He did, however, protest against any alteration by which the Income-tax would be under discussion one day, and the tariff the next. He thought such a course calculated to lead to nothing but inconvenience and confusion. He had only two days in the week at his disposal, and he, therefore, proposed to take Monday for the first reading, and, if possible, Friday for the second, He was aware, that the noble Lord would persist in taking the sense of the House on these occasions, but still he thought the debates had been prolonged to such an extent, that the House must feel, that the subject was exhausted. He thought the fever of excitement was not quite so high as some hon. Gentlemen imagined. He would proceed as speedily as possible with the Income tax, and then, without saying that he required that act should previously pass, but as soon as he had sufficiently ascertained the sense of the House on the subject, he would proceed at once with the tariff. He would say, that he would not allow any other business to interfere with the progress of the tariff He hoped he would be then able to relieve the apprehensions which were now entertained against many parts of it. With respect to manufacturers, although he reduced the duty upon many articles of foreign manufacture, he hoped to show, that no great injury could accrue to any party interested in the matter.

Mr. Labouchere

said, that nothing was further from his intention than to express anything but his entire sincerity in the right hon. Baronet's determination to stand to each and all of the propositions which he had brought forward. He could not avoid repeating the expression of his regret, that the tariff was not to be brought forward as soon as he, as well as the country, had expected. He thought that the delay of the Income-tax was nothing in importance to the delay of the tariff.

Mr. Wason

trusted, that the right hon. Baronet would keep the Income-tax in this House until the tariff was passed.

Resolutions read and agreed to, as follows; and two bills were ordered to be brought in, to carry them into effect. 1. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Committee, that, towards raising the Supply granted to her Majesty, there be charged annually during a term to be limited, the several Rates and Duties following, that is to say:— For and in respect of the Property in any Lands, Tenements, or Hereditaments, and for and in respect of every Annuity, Pension, or Stipend, payable by her Majesty, or out of the Public Revenue of the United Kingdom; and for and in respect of all Interest of Money, Annuities, Dividends, and Shares of Annuities payable to any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate, companies or societies, whether corporate or not corporate; and for and in respect of the annual profits or gains arising or accruing to any person or persons whatever, resident in Great Britain, from any kind of Property whatever, whether situate in Great Britain or elsewhere, or from any Annuities, Allowances, or Stipends, or from any Profession, Trade, or Vocation, whether the same shall be respectively exercised in Great Britain or elsewhere; and for and in respect of the annual profits or gains arising and accruing to any person or persons not resident within Great Britain, from any Property whatever in Great Britain, or from any Trade, Profession, or Vocation, exercised in Great Britain; for every twenty shillings of the annual value or amount thereof seven pence For and in respect of the Occupation of any Lands, Tenements, or Hereditaments (other than a dwelling-house occupied by a tenant distinct from a farm of lands), for every twenty shillings of the annual value there of three pence halfpenny 2. Resolved, That, towards raising the Supply granted to her Majesty, in lieu of the several Stamp Duties now payable in Ireland, there shall be charged, levied, collected, or paid, in Ireland, upon and in respect of every deed, writing, or other written or, printed instrument, or in respect of any legacy, or succession to personal estate upon intestacy, or in respect to any other matter or thing, the like amount or rate of Stamp Duty as is now payable in Great Britain.

House adjourned.