Commons Sitting of 21 July 1859

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—2° Ecclesiastical Commission; Consolidated Fund (£7,000,000); Pawnbrokers; Universities (Scotland).
3° Cambridge University Commission (Continuance); Criminal Justice Middlesex (Assistant Judge).

PUBLIC-HOUSES ACT (SCOTLAND).

  QUESTION,
  SIR WILLIAM SCOTTsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Commission for Inquiry into the Public-houses Act for Scotland is to be conducted in private, and, if so, what are the reasons that necessitate its being so conducted?
  SIR GEORGE LEWISsaid, he had communicated with the Commissioners on the subject, and he had received a written explanation from the Secretary, he had also had an interview with Sir George Clerk, the Chairman of the Commission. He understood that the Commissioners had come to no Resolution on the subject, but they had under consideration such arrangements as would be most conducive to the ends of the inquiry. On the one hand, they had to consider the interruption and expense
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  which would be occasioned by the attendance of any large number of the public; and on the other, the desire which prevailed in Glasgow for the admission of the public; they would, however, he trusted, come to such a decision as would be most likely to facilitate the inquiry.
  SIR EDWARD COLEBROOKEinquired whether the evidence would be reported from time to time so as to enable parties to apply to the statements made?
  SIR GEORGE LEWISsaid, it was impossible to say when the inquiry would be likely to terminate, as it had not as yet been commenced. It was proposed at present to admit the reporters and all properly appointed persons; but the public would receive due notice of the final arrangements come to.

SMITHFIELD MARKET.

  QUESTION.
  MR. KER SEYMERsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to adopt so much of the Site of Smith field Market as reverts to the Crown for the enjoyment and recreation of the public? From the Report of the Commission of 1856 he inferred that there is some dispute as to whether a certain portion of the ground belonged to the Crown, and he wished to know whether any steps have been taken to bring that question to a decision.
  SIR GEORGE LEWISsaid, that the question had remained unsettled for a long and inconvenient period of time, and it was very desirable that it should be settled. A correspondence bad taken place between the Treasury and the City with respect to the rights of the Crown over a portion of the Site, and he was able to state that the City had prepared a plan by which a considerable portion of the Site—the chief portion in fact—over which the claim of the Crown extended, would be dedicated to the enjoyment and recreation of the public. The plan also involved a portion of the ground belonging to the city.
  MR. KER SEYMER: Does that plan include a Dead-meat Market.
  SIR GEORGE LEWISsaid, the plan in question involved a portion of the ground belonging to the City, and also a small portion of the site belonging to the Crown, which would be used as a Dead-meat Market.

IRON STEAM FRIGATE.

  QUESTION.
  MR. HUNTsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty at what date the iron steam frigate contracted for by the Admiralty with the Thames Iron Company is to be delivered by that Company?
  LORD CLARENCE PAGETsaid, that the iron steam frigate now building was, by the terms of the contract, to be launched in eleven months from the date of the contract, and completed for sea, with the exception of the masting, in three months afterwards.

OMNIBUS REGULATIONS AT HYDE PARK CORNER.—QUESTION.
MR. BRADYsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been directed to certain statements to the effect that the Police have directions not to allow Omnibus Conductors to take up passengers in front of Apsley House.
SIR GEORGE LEWISin reply, read the explanation furnished to him by the Chief Commissioner of Police on the subject, which stated that the regulations to prevent obstructions at Hyde Park Corner were printed in July, 1858, and that they directed that no omnibus or cab should stop on the north side of the road between St. George's Hospital and Hamilton Place. By an order of June 17 in the present year the order was so far relaxed as to allow cabs to stop to set down or to take up fares in front of the railings of Apsley House. It was necessary to enforce that regulation to order to prevent obstructions to the traffic at that point, and consequently accidents. Similar regulations were made at Cumberland Gate and other crowded parts of the metropolis. There was no intention whatever to interfere with the convenience of individuals, but the regulations in question were adopted for the general advantage and security of the public.

PUBLIC MONIES.—QUESTION.
MR. RIDLEYsaid, he wished to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to take any steps during the present Session to carry out the Recommendations of the Select Committee on Public monies, and more particularly with reference to the appointment of an annual Committee of
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this House to inquire into the expenditure of the monies voted by Parliament.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERreplied, that it was not the intention of the Government to attempt during the present Session to take any measures for carrying into effect the recommendations of the Committee on Public Monies, but this decision did not arise from any disapproval of those recommendations, and more especially of the suggestion that a Committee should be appointed to inquire into the expenditure of monies voted by Parliament. He thought the adoption of that recommendation was, in fact, almost necessary to complete the discharge of the functions of the House of Commons with respect to the expenditure of public money; but he believed that it would not have been practicable at the time the Government acceded to office to appoint such a Committee with advantage, because the state of the previous arrangements in the various departments were not sufficiently advanced to enable the Committee to undertake the duties which would devolve upon them.

THE BARRACKS AT TRINIDAD.

  QUESTION.
  SIR DE LACY EVANSsaid, he rose to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the detachment of the 41st Regiment, which suffered so severely from sickness while quarted in the principal Barrack at Trinidad, has been withdrawn from that Colony; and whether that Barrack, which has been repeatedly reported as situated in an extremely unhealthy locality, has been finally ordered to be discontinued for the quartering of troops.
  MR. SIDNEY HERBERTsaid, the detachment of the 41st which had suffered so severely at, Trinidad had been relieved, but of course that measure did not effect any improvement in a sanitary point of view, for one force was merely substituted for another. The right hon. and gallant Member who preceded him in office (General Peel) sent a detailed series of very minute queries to Trinidad with reference to the state of the barracks, but no reply to them had yet been received. In the meantime, he had written to Trinidad to ascertain what sites were available to which the men could at once be removed, and what healthy sites could be obtained for the erection of new barracks. He had also requested to be informed whether the present barracks could be sold to advantage,

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  for he was sure the House would he of opinion that if the site of the barracks now used was so unhealthy that no improvement could be anticipated, the best plan would be to sacrifice them at once.

PRINTING OF THE ESTIMATES.

  QUESTION.
  MR. DARBY GRIFFITHsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury when Class 7 of the Estimates will be printed, and also why the Estimates were not all printed and presented together, in order that Members may be aware what business may be expected to come on during the Session?
  MR. LAINGsaid, he hoped that Class 7 of the Estimates would be in the hands of Members on Wednesday next. The reason why all the Estimates are not printed together appeared to him to be obvious. Some of the Miscellaneous Estimates, for example, embraced subjects of great variety, and involved matters of general detail. Those were necessarily kept back to the latest moment for consideration, and perhaps alteration. It would be a waste of valuable time if they delayed proceeding with one class of Estimates until the whole were ready.

ELECTION COMMITTEES.

  QUESTION.
  MR. PEACOCKsaid, he would beg to ask the Chairman of the Committee of Selection what course they propose to take with regard to Election Committees?
  SIR FRANCIS BARINGsaid, that considering the probable length of the Session and the state of public business, the General Committee of Elections thought it was not advisable to proceed further than they on that day proposed to go in fixing Election Committees. To prevent any mistake he could inform the House that Election Committees had been struck that day from panel No. 1. Another Committee would be struck to-morrow from the same panel. On the 26th and 27th July panel No. 2 would be taken, and Election Committees would be struck. On the 1st and 2nd August further Election Committees would be struck (cries of "From which panel?") He could only say that the Gentlemen who were placed on panels No. 4 and No. 5 might make themselves comfortable with the assurance that they would not be called upon to act in the present Session.

CHURCH RATES BILL.

  QUESTION.
  SIR JOHN TRELAWNYsaid, he wished to inquire if the Government were disposed to give a day for the discussion upon his Bill for the repeal of church rates?
  SIR GEORGE LEWISsaid, the Government would have no objection to appoint a morning sitting on Tuesday, to commence at twelve o'clock, for the purpose.
  SIR JOHN TRELAWNYsaid, that arrangement would be quite satisfactory.

SUPPLY.
On the Motion for going into a Committee of Ways and Means,
ELECTION COMMITTEES.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  LORD ELCHOsaid, that before the Speaker left the Chair he wished to advert to what had fallen from the right hon. Baronet the Chairman of the Committee of Selection. The right hon. Gentleman had assured Members on panels 4 and 5 that they need not be under any alarm that they would be required to act on Election Committees this Session. He (Lord Elcho) could not help thinking that the same assurance might be given to the Gentlemen on panels 1, 2, and 3. He made the suggestion quite disinterestedly, as he was on panel 5, but he thought that no public good would arise from having Election Committees sitting before the separation of Parliament this Session. If he were rightly informed, there was no immediate necessity for them, and no expense would be saved by having them sitting before the prorogation. When Members were asked to take an oath to do justice in these election petitions, he doubted whether they could conscientiously say they would weigh the evidence cautiously and attentively when the Thames was in its present state, and the thermomoter 99° in the shade. The sitting of the Committees this Session might give rise to great inconvenience; for, supposing any of them had not finished its labours when the House rose, it would cease to sit. There was an impression abroad that they could sit during the recess; but he believed that was not the case, for if there happened to be a refractory witness, rendering an order of the Speaker and the presence of the Sergeant-

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  at-Arms necessary, neither of them would be present to discharge their functions. He therefore humbly threw out the suggestion which he had made. ["Move, move !"] If it were the pleasure of the House, he would be ready to move that all the Election Committees be postponed; but he believed he could not do so without giving notice of the Motion. He would therefore now give notice that he would again call the attention of the House to this subject to-morrow.
  SIR FRANCIS BARINGsaid, that perhaps the noble Lord would allow him to suggest that before he made his Motion he would read the Act of Parliament.
  MR. G. W. HOPE, as one of the Members of the House whose return was petitioned against, protested against the suggestion of the noble Lord. The Committee in his (Mr. Hope's) case was appointed; inquiries had been made which induced him to believe that there was no good foundation for the petition, and he and other hon. Members in his position ought not to be kept in suspense.

REFORM OF THE CORPORATION OF LONDON BILL. OBSERVATIONS.
SIR JOHN SHELLEYappealed to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Home Department not to proceed with the Bill at the morning sitting fixed for tomorrow. Surely the right hon. Gentleman was not prepared to say that the subject would not keep for another month after the many postponements which it had already undergone. He (Sir John Shelley) and other metropolitan Members had strong objections to the Bill, and this was not the period of the Session at which it could be satisfactorily discussed. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would not thrust it down the throats of hon. Members at the close of the Session.
SIR GEORGE LEWISsaid, he could assure his hon. Friend that he had no wish to thrust the Bill down the throats of the House. The Bill had been postponed for many years, and he was not prepared to say that it might not be postponed for another year; but when his hon. Friend spoke of a month's delay being of no importance, it was right the House should understand that if the Bill were not considered this Session there was no probability of its being considered till after next Easter. The Bill had not emanated from the present or the
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late Government, but had in substance come from a Select Committee of that House to which the Bill of last year had been referred. If the House thought it was not desirable to have morning sittings, or to enter on the consideration of any Bill of magnitude this Session, he was quite ready to defer to the wish of the House; but it must be understood that the Government did not shrink from their duty or from the labours which the performance of that duty involved.
MR. W. WILLIAMSwished to say a word or two on this subject.
MR. E. P. BOUVERIErose to order. He believed it was out of order on the Motion for going into a Committee of Ways and Means to raise a discussion on a Bill of a totally distinct character.
MR. SPEAKER: It certainly would be out of order to discuss the merits of the Bill; but I understood the Secretary of State from the Home Department to rather invite the opinion of the House on the question of the postponement of the Bill.
MR. W. WILLIAMSbelieved that the postponement of the Bill would disappoint no one anxious to see an honest reform of the Corporation. Indeed it would be no disappointment if such a measure as that proposed by the Government was never proposed at all. The Bill was completely at variance with the Report of the Select Committee.
MR. AYRTONwas sure that the Liberal Members would give a certificate to the right hon. Gentleman that he had been very anxious to slip the Bill through at the end of the Session, but that his intention had been frustrated by them.

FINANCIAL POLICY OF THE LATE GOVERNMENT.—OBSERVATIONS.
MR. DISRAELI:—Sir,before you leave the chair I wish to make one or two observations on the present financial condition of the country, which it will be more convenient, perhaps, that I should make now than when we are in Committee. It is scarcely necessary for me to advert to the conduct of the national finances by the late Government, and to the condition in which we left them, because the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has stated generally, what took place under our Administration with respect to the finances, so fairly that I am not disposed in any way to question his statement,

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being quite sure that if in one rather important particular he conveyed a wrong impression to the House he did so entirely through inadvertence. I may, however, remind the House that when we acceded to office, and it became my duty to state on the part of the Government the position in which we found the finances, and the ways and means by which we proposed to meet the national expenditure, the country had scarcely recovered from one of the most severe monetary and in some degree commercial convulsions that it had ever experienced. Indeed, if we were to take the amount of commercial disaster as a test of the commercial distress and difficulty, what happened two years ago was one of the severest trials that the commercial classes have experienced in our time. It was under those circumstances that I was called upon to state to Parliament our financial condition, and to propose ways and means to the House at the commencement of the year 1858. The House will remember that there was, on that occasion, a deficit of something about £4,000,000 which we had to encounter. That deficit was met by a proposition on the part of the late Government that we should put an end to an artificial sinking fund which had been instituted some time before, and that we should not pay off £2,000,000 of Exchequer bonds which were becoming due. Those Exchequer bonds and that sinking fund formed the greatest part of the deficit which we had to face; and it was the opinion of the late Government that it was not desirable, perhaps not desirable at any moment, but certainly not desirable at a moment of commercial suffering, to make any great increase in the taxation of the country in order to redeem debt. It was, I think I may say, the unanimous opinion of Parliament that we took a right course on that occasion. It was the opinion of Parliament that it would not be wise, the country being then in a state of considerable distress, to lay on £4,000,000 of new taxes in order to maintain an artificial sinking fund and pay off £2,000,000 of Exchequer bonds. I do not think it is necessary for me to vindicate the course we took on that occasion. It has never been objected to in this House; but, on the contrary, has been unanimously approved of here. All the attacks that have been made on it have been made out of this House; and made no doubt in the same spirit and with the same machinery as the attacks on those
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other parts of the policy of the late Government which time has already vindicated. The deficit of £4,000,000 would to a certain but much smaller degree have been increased by the reduction of the income tax from 7d. to 5d. in that year. That reduction had been provided for by law, and in the course of the year would have effected a decrease in the revenue to the amount of £1,000,000. Her Majesty's Government were of opinion that it would be most unwise to interfere with that natural and legal reduction of the income tax. They thought there were social and political reasons which should influence them in that decision, as well as fiscal and financial ones. It appeared to them to be a matter of the greatest importance that the general understanding which prevailed between Parliament and the country that the income tax was to be gradually reduced, and at a certain period to terminate, was one the spirit of which, if not the letter, should be observed; and that we could not count on the country rallying round the Government in any emergency, when a great and unexpected claim was made on them, if, on the first occasion which presented itself, they found the Minister anxious to relieve himself of an engagement which Parliament had entered into with respect to that tax. I think that this course, also, was unanimously approved of by this House and the country. And although there may have been some who considered that, under all the circumstances that course was too hazardous, I think I may appeal to the state of things under the financial management of the late Government as a proof that—irrespective of social and political considerations, and looking only to financial considerations—the policy we pursued in respect of that tax was, even in a financial view, profitable and ultimately beneficial.
It was supposed, then, by the late Government that we should have to encounter in the year 1859–60, in consequence of the policy which we recommended Parliament to adopt, a deficit of probably not less than £3,000,000. We should first have to meet another £2,000,000 of Exchequer bonds; and then we should have to encounter a deficit of £1,000,000, being the second half of the reduction of the income tax from 7d. to 5d., only one-half of that reduction having come within the year 1858–9. Let me ask now, how have the expectations held out by the late Government with respect to the finances of the country been

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realized by the event? Sir, we paid these £2,000,000 of Exchequer bonds out of the balances in the Exchequer. And here let me refer to the error which the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to me to labour under when he assumed the other night that it was not the intention of the late Government to pay these £2,000,000 out of the balances in the Exchequer, but that we would have made some other arrangement had it not been for the political and Parliamentary disturbance which led to the recent dissolution. That is not the case. It was always the intention of the late Government to pay these £2,000,000 out of those balances. We found the balances in a strong state, and we increased then-strength by calling for that second £1,000,000 of the loan which we were entitled to receive under the financial arrangement sanctioned by the House in 1858. Had we not contemplated paying these £2,000,000 of Exchequer bonds out of the balances, we should not have called on the Bank to pay us that second moiety of the loan, but would have allowed that portion of the public debt to be extinguished. But we called for that second £1,000,000 in order that we might meet those£2,000,000 of Exchequer bonds and that we should not be under the necessity of postponing their payment. How, then, were we to meet the rest of the contempated deficiency. Well, Sir, we had anticipated that we should meet it by a surplus of revenue over the year's income as we had estimated it. I had estimated the revenue as something slightly under, in round numbers, £64,000,000. I do not think it necessary to vindicate the calculation of the Government in respect of every item of that estimate. When at the commencement of the financial year, you have to offer an estimate to the House of the resources of the country it never has been expected that every one of those items must realize exactly the sum named in the estimate, because they must, after all, to a great extent be hypothetical. All you have to expect from the person who has the management of your finances is that his estimate should on the whole prove adequate to the occasion, and that the sum realized should not generally fall short of the sum offered to the consideration of the House. With every care, an estimate of revenue which takes a whole year to accrue, must vary from any human calculation; but if you find that the result equals or exceeds the sum
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which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has held out as that which the country might expect, I think you must admit that in that respect at least he has done his duty. Now, what happened in the year 1858–9 for which the late Government are responsible? Our estimate was under £64,000,000; we received £65,500,000; an excess over the estimate of £1,500,000. That excess would have furnished us with resources to meet the decline in the revenue occasioned by the second £1,000,000 of the reduction of the income tax, and have also left a sufficient surplus. It has no doubt been stated that that surplus of £1,500,000 was not so general a one as could he desired, because it was in a great measure furnished under the head "Miscellaneous," a portion of the revenue on which we cannot place general reliance. That is perfectly true. It was foreseen by Her Majesty's late Government. At the end of the year, after the third quarter, when it became my duty to consider generally our finances, and prepare for the exposition which was to take place at the commencement of April, we deducted the whole of the "Miscellaneous" from the actual surplus, which left the actual surplus at a sum varying from £800,000 to £1,000,000. We then made arrangements, which, partly by the extension of the 1d. stamp to a variety of instruments referred to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other night, and partly by the reduction of some expenditure, would leave an amply sufficient balance in the Exchequer. That is a general view of the probable condition of the Exchequer at the beginning of this financial year had it not been for the occurrence of events of great political importance. Under those circumstances I think I may claim for the late Government that their financial policy was sound in principle and prudent in administration. This is my answer to those who for a considerable time have alarmed the country by statements that the finances of the nation have been conducted upon a hand-to-mouth system—that they had been managed in a slovenly manner, and that our successors would find our Exchequer in a most perilous and difficult position. On the contrary. Sir, nothing we did in the arrangement of our national engagements was done without the concurrence, the unanimous concurrence, of the House of Commons; and I think that the course of events has completely vindicated the policy which we pursued, and which the House of Commons sanctioned. We

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did not waste our resources in maintaining an artificial sinking fund; but after the great disasters of November 1857, by the measures we adopted we avoided pressing upon an industrious people smarting under a great disaster.
Sir, I have already mentioned that at the commencement of the year political events of a grave nature occurred which entirely changed the aspect of affairs and the position of the Government with respect to the finances. It became necessary, very early in the year, that a great increase should be made in the Estimates for the navy; and not only a great present increase, because we had to contemplate circumstances which might possibly occur to render necessary a still further increase in the navy and a great addition to our military expenditure. The House is perfectly aware of what was the reason of the course we took, and also of the occurrences in Europe. Is there one on either side of the House that can blame the Government for the policy which they recommended the House to adopt? Is there any one in the country who can blame the late Government? On the contrary, I believe, with very slight exceptions, the conduct of that Government has received general approbation; and no one questions, although it resulted no doubt in a deficiency of between £4,000,000 and £5,000,000, that this was an expenditure called for by the interests of the country—by the highest interests of the country—and that no man worthy of the position of a Minister, no man worthy the name of a Minister, could have shown himself in the House who, at such a moment, was not prepared to make the necessary arrangements for the crisis which at the beginning of the year seemed fast approaching. Now, Sir, our successors have had to meet the difficulties from which we should not have shrunk, and of which, of course, we are conscious. What I have said I have said in vindication of our conduct; and I hope the House will so far think I have not said it at too great length. They must remember that this is the only time that, on the part of myself and my colleagues, I have noticed those continuous and false attacks made on our financial administration by those who influence public opinion.
Perfectly aware of the difficulties of the position of the right hon. Gentleman who has succeeded me, and anxious on this subject as I am, and as I apprehend every Gentleman in this House is
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to give a fair and can did support to the present Administration, let us contemplate the course he recommends us to take. Now, Sir, I will, in the first place, say that to the decision at which the Government has arrived of dealing with this deficiency by taxation, and not by raising a loan, I give an unqualified approbation. I do not mean to say that there are not occasions in which, even in times of peace, recourse may be had to a loan. Everyone knows that such emergencies may arise—but they must be emergencies; and only twice in the experience of the generation that I am addressing have such great emergencies arisen. I am not prepared broadly to lay down that even the question of national defences, which I understand is to be brought before the House, is not one of these exceptions. I give no opinion on the present occasion on so wide a subject, which requires the most careful investigation and the closest reflection. But I say that there was nothing in the expenditure incurred by the late Government, and sanctioned and entirely approved by their successors—there was nothing in the nature and amount to justify recourse to a loan. Its amount, though considerable, was not of that largeness which in this country is generally associated with sums raised in that manner. Treating it as £5,000,000 to use around number, we must recollect that there had been a reduction of taxation to the amount of £2,000,000, only within a year and a half; and I think the wisdom of the step that was then taken is made manifest by the position in which we now find ourselves, and in the course the Chancellor of the Exchequer has recommended us to adopt. Great as may be the objections to his proposition, and great as may be the difficulties he may have to encounter, every one of us feels what an advantage it is to him that in making to us this proposition he applies to a people who must feel that the Government of the country on this subject of the income tax has already and at considerable hazard maintained its faith. The reduction of the income tax from 7d. in the pound to 5d. was an act which put the country in good humour, and made them feel that this financial weapon was one which the Government of the country was not inclined to have recourse to except under extraordinary circumstances—except under emergency. Now, Sir, admitting that she Government are perfectly justified in the course they have taken, and approving of

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their determination not to have recourse to a loan when the expenditure which we have to defray is one which, I think, the country ought at all times to be able, when necessary, to meet in times of peace without borrowing, I would ask the House to consider the mode in which this taxation is to be raised. I would first, however, observe that totally irrespective of the bad financial policy of raising unnecessarily, in times of peace, money by loans, I can imagine nothing more impolitic, as regards the opinion of Europe of our position, than that, at the first moment of pressure, when an amount of £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 is required to place the armaments of the country in a proper state, to make it appear that this powerful and wealthy country is unable to defray such an expenditure without resorting to extraordinary measures. A loan under present circumstances must have produced a very bad effect, and must very much have influenced the opinion of the world as to our spirit and resources. Therefore, totally irrespective of the financial impolicy of a loan, I say nothing could have been more impolitic as regards the notions of foreign Powers, than having recourse to such a means of raising money. But now, Sir, as to the means by which these taxes are to be raised, The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has proposed two measures. There are two sources from which his Ways and Means are to be derived. With regard to the third Resolution, which we shall very soon have before us—that, I mean, which relates to the malt credit—I will not make any remark at present further than saying that I think it would have been as well, when the right hon. Gentleman was taking so considerable a step, and was dealing with a credit which is recognized by Acts of Parliament, that he should have endeavoured to attain a greater result. The right hon. Gentleman may look forward to dealing yet further with this source of supply; but if that be the case I think it is a reason why a greater result might have been obtained at the present moment. No doubt some inconvenience if not injury must be occasioned by the change; and considering the opposition and prejudices to which it will naturally give rise, I think it is a question whether the right hon. Gentleman might not now have obtained a greater result than the £750,000 which he expects from his proposal. But passing that over, I come to the means by which the right
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hon. Gentleman contemplates obtaining no less a sum than £4,000,000. Now, Sir, I think it very unfortunate that at this time, with the year 1860 so near at hand, the right hon. Gentleman should have been forced to deal with the income tax. But I admit, and admit it freely, that under all the circumstances of the case—though I could contemplate that the adoption of that tax to a less extent was possible—the right hon. Gentleman was forced to adopt that tax to a very considerable extent as a means of supply; and if that he the case I do not think it is for the House—approving of the general policy and acknowledging the necessity of the right hon. Gentleman—I do not think it is for the House to split straws as to the particular amount he is to raise. So far, therefore, as that point is concerned, I should not object to the amount of the tax which the right hon. Gentleman has proposed. But, Sir, in so doing, I cannot refrain from expressing my opinion that all those arguments which have been offered to the House before, and even recently, against the property and income tax becoming a permanent source of our revenue are not in any way invalidated by the concession which the House may choose to make in this emergency. The property and the income tax is, according to the opinion of the House, to be retained for emergencies. We all admit that we are now going to deal with circumstances which are not of an ordinary character, and I, in agreeing, so far as my opinion and influence go, to the proposition of the Government, not only see no reason to change the opinion with respect to the tax which I have always expressed, but I do not recognize that this proposition, if acceded to, at all interferes with that settlement of 1860 to which we have always looked forward. But, Sir, although I am prepared to support the proposition of the Government on principle, I confess I should be greatly inclined in practice to modify it. I was not at all persuaded by any of the observations which fell from the right hon. Gentleman—I have not been influenced by the further consideration which I have given to the subject, nor by the information which has reached me from many quarters, and from the representatives of many classes—that the mode in which the right hon. Gentleman means to levy this special income tax, namely, in the course of six months, instead of spreading it over the year, is one that is at all necessary. That it is

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an arrangement against which many grave objections may be offered I think the right hon. Gentleman himself will hardly deny. It certainly adds to the severity of the pressure generally; it in some particular instances accomplishes positive injustice; and, thirdly, it is not only highly inconvenient, but in some cases may prove absolutely impracticable. I will not trouble the House now, because the Committee will be rather the occasion for that, by giving instances, but they are numerous and they are varied, and I will answer for this, that the more discussion goes on, and the more this proposition is before the country, the more numerous will be the objections and the more precise will be the cases of individual injustice and injury. If that general description of the objections to this arrangement be a just one, I cannot see why the right hon. Gentleman should insist on retaining that portion of his scheme. What we want to do is this—that these £4,000,000 shall not be added, either in whole or in part, to our permanent incumbrances, but shall be defrayed out of the taxes of the country. If the House is in that mood, as I believe it is, it can give the right hon. Gentleman a first-rate security; and I cannot understand that any Chancellor of the Exchequer, much less one of the resources of the right hon. Gentleman, with first-rate securities for raising £4,000,000, will not be able to obtain the accommodation that he requires without visiting with unnecessary severity and annoyance the great body of the taxpayers. I should, therefore—although I trust it may be unnecessary—feel inclined, when we get into the Committee, to move an Amendment which will consist in the omission of the last two lines and a half of the first Resolution, which would render this vexatious arrangement nugatory, and at the same time give the right hon. Gentleman all the resources he desires.
Now, Sir, I have touched on the conduct of the finances by the late Government, and I have, I hope, not underrated the difficulties which the propositions made by Her Majesty's Government present. I offer it as much support as I think financial schemes have a right to expect. All such plans are open to criticism; modifications are sometimes offered, and occasionally accepted. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will accept this. I am not offering any opposition to what is called direct taxation. I have no desire to diminish the amount of direct taxa-
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tion which at present exists in our financial scheme, but that it may take a form less unjust and inconvenient. I have long believed that it was possible to raise the same amount of direct taxation as is raised at present, without having recourse to an income tax, the objections to which never can be cured, but which objections are never felt at a moment of public emergency, when you appeal, and rightly appeal, to the higher feelings of the country. Therefore in times of war, or even in warlike times though not times of war, this is an instrument which a Chancellor of the Exchequer may always appeal to with confidence; which adds greatly, if not abused, to the influence of this country with foreign countries, and is, in fact, as important to this country as her fleets and her armies. The consciousness that this country can by a single tax, if necessary, at a moment raise a sum as great as those loans which despotic monarchs raise with so much difficulty at a high rate of interest—the knowledge that we can by a single Vote in the Ways and Means of the year give to our Sovereign as much as the loans raised to sanction invasion and aggression abroad, is one of the great facts which influence the minds of nations and Cabinets, and is a source of strength to England which is incalculable. Now that is one of the reasons why you should not fritter away these means of recruiting your Treasury; and although there may be occasions when you should appeal to the income tax—at times of great commercial change, or to enable us to effect some important fiscal reform, the House ought not to encourage the introduction of the income tax as an habitual feature of the financial scheme, and they should take every means consistently with sound finance that there shall be a weapon in our armoury not used for trifling and common purposes.
Sir, having touched on these two points, there is one other, before I sit down, to which I feel it my duty to call the attention of the House, and that is the general condition of our finances. The right hon. Gentleman has had some difficulty to encounter this year. The prospect of next year, under ordinary circumstances, is more perplexing; and the financial position of this country in a time of peace is one which ought not to be passed over without notice. We are now raising a revenue of nearly £70,000,000 per annum in time of peace. There is no country that can go on raising £70,000,000

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per annum in time of peace with impunity. England cannot, and if England cannot no country can. Then how are we to meet this great and growing evil? It is useless to throw the blame upon the Government, of whatever party it may be formed. There are no persons so interested in the economical administration of the country as the Government of the day, of whatever party it is formed. The struggle against expenditure is always a struggle between the Government and the public, or between the Government and public events. The position of a Minister is much more easy and much more agreeable when he has not to lay on taxes; and there is nothing which has led so much to the destruction of Governments and to the injury of parties as having to deal with the state of national finance in periods of confusion or deficit. Therefore we shall do nothing by making declamatory speeches, either in this House or in the country, and by enforcing what is called an economical administration, unless we ourselves take the question in hand and see how far we may assist the Government in that great and absolutely necessary result. Now, Sir, a great deal is said about the expenditure of the civil service of this country, and I hear sometimes that we are to obtain great results from reducing the Civil Service Estimates. I look Upon that as quite delusive. The civil Government of this country, on the whole, is an economical Government, and if you analyze the expenditure for the civil service in the Estimates you will find that it is an expenditure really for the advantage, the welfare, and the advancement of the great body of the people. The administration of justice, the education of the people, and the health of the people, are the three great sources of expenditure. It may be, and is, no doubt, true that some of the principles upon which these measures are founded, and changes recommended, may be exaggerated in their application. There may be, and is, no doubt, in the administration some expenditure that might be avoided. Here and there a job may be detected, but if you look to the main objects and the main results, what are they? You have an expenditure to ensure order, to ensure the education, and to ensure the health of the people. Why, those are the three great sources of public wealth: an educated, an orderly, and, above all, a healthy people—these are three of the principal sources of public wealth; and if we in a moment of
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difficulty make war upon this expenditure for civil service, and reduce the machinery which occasions these three great items for these three great ends, we really are making war on the civilization of England; we are making war on that progress which every one of us is so fond of appealing to, and so ready to assert. Therefore, Sir, I hold, that although these Civil Service Estimates, as all Estimates, should be prepared with great care, and revised with great strictness, this is not the source from which we can obtain that relief and those Ways and Means for which the country languishes. Now, Sir, let us approach the great source of expenditure in this country. The Military Estimates are enormously increased. If we are to follow the advice of some, I may say even of many, in this House and in the country, they would be further increased to a great extent. Vast as is the expenditure, we are still told that the defences of this country are most imperfect. Vast as have been the preparations we are still told that the honour of England is not safe, and that it becomes us to make still further exertions—that our fleets must be increased—that our armies should be increased, and that other means should be taken which should render the position of the country more satisfactory. Then what are the Ways and Means by which you are to encounter this? You have great difficulty in meeting the burdens which are now necessary for you to bear—How are you to encounter that future prospect which is so frequently held out to you of further expenditure for your armaments and for your defences? Now, Sir, I have once or twice, or oftener, and I am afraid even to weariness, endeavoured to impress on this House that when you come to public expenditure on a great scale, expenditure depends upon policy. When we who sit in this House dilate upon the expenditure of the country and deplore the waste of our resources, and then call upon the Ministry to reduce the expenditure and to administer with more ability the Ways and Means placed at its command—when we do this we are in fact doing nothing. The Ministry only maintains that expenditure on the whole which the policy of the country demands, and you are responsible for that policy. Now, Sir, what is the policy of this country at this moment? And what are our prospects? If you want reduction of expenditure you must look to your policy, and at this moment there are two points of policy which you

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must not neglect if you are sincere in your determination that this country shall not be involved in financial perplexities from which it will require the greatest sacrifices to rescue it. There are two points of policy pressing upon us at this moment, upon which it becomes both Houses of Parliament to fix their eye closely, and to require from those who are responsible for the administration of our affairs precise views and accurate knowledge. A little while ago—not more than two months—a European war seemed to be impending, and a most sanguinary struggle in one European country had commenced. But that war has terminated in a manner most unexpected, and even at this moment the House has scarcely recovered from the surprise with which they received the news that a struggle which some thought might have lasted for years had suddenly closed. Now, we took no part in the transactions which led to that war. It was the policy of the late Government, under these circumstances, to maintain a strict and an impartial neutrality. That was misrepresented at the time, but the country has, I believe, already done us justice in that respect. Although, from some of the speeches that were delivered from this side of the House during the last debate at which I had the honour to assist from the benches opposite, it was supposed that our successors were on the eve of pursuing a policy of a very different character—altough it was to instal a policy of a very different character that the change of Government took place—yet no sooner were the new Government in office than I had the satisfaction of hearing, and both sides of the House had the satisfaction of hearing, that they intended to follow the footsteps, as to foreign affairs, which had been traced by their predecessors. Well, Sir, that was a satisfactory statement, and circumstances and events have since occurred of such importance, and with such rapidity, as to add immensely to the value of that statement. There has been an armistice which produced a peace, which is welcomed by every one, not only with the interest and satisfaction which peace always produces, but in this country I think with still greater satisfaction because we were not at all mixed up with the commencement of the struggle, and are not in any way responsible for its conclusion. Now, I hear that there is a prospect of a Congress, or Conference as it has been called; and that that Congress or Conference is to be attended by the neutral
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Powers. Sir, the moment those Powers attend that Congress or Conference they cease to be neutral. The moment those neutral Powers attend that Congress or Conference not only do they cease to be neutral, but they become responsible alike for the past and the present. I make no criticism upon the peace which has been arrived at. The Emperor of the French was denounced a few months ago because he would make war. The Emperor of the French is now denounced because he will make peace. But let us look to the position of England with reference to the startling transaction at Villafranca. Two things have happened. First of all we have a peace; and I am not prepared to treat that peace with the contemptuousness which some persons have already exhibited for it. I believe peace to be a great blessing. I believe that there is no country in the world that benefits more by peace than England; though, materially speaking, peace is more necessary to every country in Europe than it is to England. Well, then, we have gained this great result; and it has already given an impulse to our commerce and stimulated the enterprise of our citizens. That is a great blessing. But if I look to the political and diplomatic considerations connected with this peace, what do I see? I find, not only that we have peace, but that we have a peace settled without disturbing that political equilibrium which England has always declared to be one of her main objects. Is that no slight matter to us? I say, therefore, viewing the startling events that have occurred in Italy from an English point of view, that both because they give us peace and because they give us a peace which respects that balance of power for which we ourselves have lavished such millions of treasure and such thousands of lives, we, as Englishmen, ought to look upon the transaction with satisfaction. All the fruits of it which are satisfactory we reap, and we are not in any way responsible for anything connected with it which others may deem unsatisfactory. Will you thrust yourselves, then, into a business with which you have no connection, and in relation to which, you stand in a good position? Will you thrust your selves into it from pure public vanity—merely that you may be able to say that England has had a hand in the settlement of the world? Some of those settlements rise like exhalations and disappear like exhalations. Will you quit the

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vantage ground that you now occupy, and for such mean and vain objects will you force yourselves into Congresses and Conferences? Will you enter into engagements which may produce only confusion to this country, which may involve you in proceedings most injurious to your resources, and from which you may only reap disorder and distress? Why, Sir, in 1815, when you had the Congress of Vienna, England could not refuse to send representatives to that assembly. England had taken too great a part and too active a part for a series of years to shrink from the responsibility of her own conduct. But what were the engagements that you entered into at the Congress of Vienna? Why you entered into engagements at the Congress of Vienna which the British Minister, when he went to that Congress, never contemplated; and if it had been known beforehand that he would have placed his signature to them an alarmed and indignant House of Commons would have prevented him from repairing to that august assembly. Why, by the great Treaty of Vienna you have guaranteed her Saxon provinces to Prussia. It was by an accident, it was by the representation of an urgent necessity at that Congress, that England was entrapped, I may say, into one of the most solemn and unqualified covenants that a country ever entered into. We are told now by those who place such a construction upon the conduct of our allies, even of those who have been faithful to us, that the next war is to be a war against Prussia. How will you stand if there is a war between any great Power and Prussia, with this guarantee in existence, which you entered into at the Congress of Vienna? And now, if we send Ministers to Congresses and Conferences—I do not care where they meet, whether at Zurich or Paris—what do you send them to do? Either to do nothing, when they will be only symbols of your insignificance; or to enter into engagements which must involve you in increased expenditure and increased responsibility. If you had thought proper to join in the struggle for the freedom of Italy—if you had been involved in the war yourselves—you could not, as men of honour—you could not, as a community possessing self-respect—refuse to attend the Congress which was to wind up the results of your own energy and interference; you could not shrink from the responsibility. But when—be it by good fortune as some think, or by sound
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policy as I maintain—your councils have saved you from this interference, and have saved you from this responsibility, are you at the last moment, from some weak feeling, some ebullition of disappointed vanity, to be entrapped into attending this Congress or Conference; and are you there to enter into arrangements and engagements which must lead you to an increased peril to these finances which already require your strictest criticism and most careful administration. Here is one point of policy which will influence your expenditure, and to which I pray the House to give their most earnest consideration. Now, let us see if there is not one possibly of still greater importance connected with these public transactions, and with the finances of the country, which this House will be wanting in their duty to their constituents and the country if they neglect. We have this peace before us, and I maintain that the arrangement, such as we know of it, inasmuch as it gives us peace, and gives us a peace founded upon the existing equilibrium of power, is one that ought to be satisfactory to Englishmen and English statesmen. I know there are persons who will be dissatisfied. I know that even in this country, and in other countries certainly, there are men—honest and honourable men undoubtedly—but who take upon public affairs so exaggerated a view, and one so ill-founded, that they cannot believe that in transactions of this kind men are at all influenced by considerations of common sense. I know that there are persons who are disappointed. I know there are persons who had expected that the Emperor of the French—a Roman Catholic prince, the first Child of the Church, and exercising—by consent, to a large degree no doubt, of the people—an arbitrary and a despotic sway—was about to establish in Italy the Protestant religion and the British constitution. You cannot argue with men who entertain such delusions; but these are men who to a certain extent influence public opinion, and it has often been through such views that countries have been involved in war. Now, we we are to view this plan as it relates to Englishmen, to England, and to English interests. I maintain that the arrangement is one that, on the whole, is entitled to our respect—that an arrangement which gives us peace, and gives us peace founded on no disturbance of the political balance of power, is one that we ought to welcome—if not with enthusiasm, at least with re-

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spect. I am told, indeed, that this peace is to be disapproved of—and I have heard that it is disapproved of by English statesmen, because—singular reason—the Emperor of the French has not realized the programme with which he commenced the war. I should like to know whoever did realize on peace the purpose for which he commenced war. Compare the manifesto of any state or country—I care not what the form of its government; it may even be the United States of America—compare the original manifesto upon which the war was declared—the avowed purpose for which war was waged—with the final pacification, and I defy you to bring an instance in which the objects of the war have been fully or even in a great degree realized. Take the late war with Russia. I remember hearing the noble Lord the Prime Minister himself announce that he was most disappointed at the peace to which he himself had acceded. Did he not send a special Minister to Paris in order to oppose the arrangements which were proposed by some of his allies, and which, he said, were in direct violation of the objects of the war? From the very time that peace was concluded with Russia, did we not hear, not only in England, but in almost every country, constant lamentations that it was a war waged for a great purpose, which was only partially accomplished. I do not blame the peace that was made with Russia. I supported that peace. I think it was wise to have peace with Russia, and I think that certain objects were attained which were of public benefit; but that any one, much more a Minister of State, should impugn the conduct of one who was still our ally, because he had entered into a peace which does not entirely agree with his programme, is, to my mind, one of the most unaccountable and inconceivable of incidents. Between the manifesto that declares war and the articles of peace that are signed a great many important events occur, which enlighten the mind, which mature the experience, and instruct the action of those who are carrying on the war; and a great deal happened between the manifesto of Milan and the articles of peace at Villafranca, which I should have thought might have modified the views and taught some lessons to the most arrogant conqueror and the most determined invader. And because a Prince takes a wise and moderate view of affairs and makes a peace, which I hope and believe has the elements of being a perma-
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nent one, is he to be held up as a Prince whom no one can trust, because he has not, when he signed the articles of peace, done that which no State or Potentate ever yet did—realized the programme which he published before he declared war? Now, Sir, upon our conduct in this respect entirely depends the financial condition of this country. I give credit to the Princes who signed those articles of peace, for the motives which induced them to agree to that peace, and for the peace to which they have agreed. I hope and I believe it may be permanent. But let us do our best to make it permanent. It is a peace which is favourable to the traditionary policy of England and it is alike our duty and our interest to cherish and maintain it. We ought not to encourage those maligners, who have not English interests, who have not a traditionary policy to maintain, to destroy that which those interests and the interests of humanity alike require. Giving these Princes and potentates credit for sincerity, what should be the course of the English Government? What is that second point of policy to which I would direct the attention of the House and which it is our duty at this moment earnestly to impress upon the Government as the line of policy they should follow? If we are to have peace—if peace has been signed by one of the greatest actors in the war, on the ground that he shrank from the responsibility of a general war—if those articles at Villafranca are animated by a sincere spirit—and I will believe they are so animated, what is the course for England? Not to go to Congresses and Conferences in fine dresses and ribands, to enjoy the petty vanity of settling the fate of petty Princes. No; but to go to your great Ally the Emperor of the French; give him credit for the motives which have animated and influenced him, and say, "If you are in favour of peace—if, at a great hazard to the mere reputation of the hour you have terminated this war, join with us in securing that peace by the only mode by which peace can be secured. Revive and restore, and even increase, the good feeling which once existed—which I hope still exists between the two countries of England and France—prove by the diminution of your armaments, that you are sincerely anxious, as we believe you are, for the peace of Europe and of the world, and we will join you in a spirit of reciprocal confidence—and animating alike the industry of both nations, thus achieve conquests

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far more valuable than Lombardy, far more valuable than those wild dreams of a regeneration ever promised but never accomplished." Have we not great advantages at this moment for accomplishing such a policy? Have we not a Government whose boast it is that they possess the confidence of the French Emperor? We were told that it was entirely owing to the absence of some of those distinguished Statesmen opposite from the Treasury bench, that Italy was involved in war; that, had they been in power, the Emperor of the French would never have taken a single step without consulting them; that so unbounded was the confidence that existed between those eminent Statesmen and that illustrious Prince that, except such slight matters as signing the articles of peace there is hardly any subject upon which he would not have previously taken their advice. Well, Sir, here is a good opportunity for the noble Lord at the head of the Government to prove the influence of the English Government, and to act a great part in Europe. Instead of going to Congresses and Conferences for petty objects, in which England has no interest, but which may involve England in great disaster, let the noble Lord prove to the world that England is a Power that possesses and exercises a great influence, especially with France, by accomplishing that which is much more important than formal articles of peace; by bringing about that which will put an end for ever to the doubts on the sincerity of Princes; which will speak to every cabin and cottage in both countries as well as to the Houses of Parliament and places of high resort; which will prove to the national conviction of the great countries of Europe that peace is the policy of their rulers. Let us terminate this disastrous system of rival expenditure and mutually agree, with no hypocrisy, but in a manner and under circumstances which can admit of no doubt—by a reduction of armaments—that peace is really our policy. Then, Sir, the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer may look forward with no apprehension to his next budget, and England may then actually witness the termination of the income tax.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER:—Sir, as the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken has addressed himself in so considerable a portion of his speech to matters immediately connected
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with my department, I hope it will not be thought unbecoming of me to avail myself of this opportunity of making some remarks to the House. I will confine myself, in the first instance, to those matters which are immediately connected with finance; and in order not unduly to trespass on the time of the House, I will begin by dismissing from consideration all that portion of the right hon. Gentleman's speech touching finance which is retrospective, and which aimed at a justification of the financial measures of the late Government. No imputation has been cast on them in any of the proposals of the present Government, or in any of the remarks with which those proposals have been accompanied. I do not wish to give an opinion on the statements of the right hon. Gentleman; but I confess I was not able to follow his figures. When he spoke of a surplus revenue of £1,500,000, I must confess it was a surplus of a description new to me, and, as far as I know, to financial computation. The only surplus I know of worthy of discussion, and especially of a retrospective discussion, is the surplus of income over expenditure. But the surplus of the right hon. Gentleman on which he dwelt at some length with paternal fondness, as proving the soundness of the finance of the late Administration, was not that, but simply the surplus of actual income over estimated income. That is all very well, as far as it goes, to prove that the right hon. Gentleman made up his estimates of the income of the year with perfect propriety and according to ordinary rules; but it is of very little value with reference to determining the actual financial condition of the country, which depends upon relations not between real and the previously conjectured income, but between money you have actually got, and money you have spent or have undertaken to spend. And here has been a rather considerable difference; for, while what I may-call the fancy surplus of the right hon. Gentleman was £1,500,000, the actual surplus of income over expenditure for the past year was only £800,000, or about a moiety of his estimate. I only make that remark to elucidate what I conceive to be the true state of the facts. I enter into no charges or imputations whatever on the Estimates of the right hon. Gentleman, and I pass to those matters which are before the House for their consideration. It 13, however, my duty to thank the right hon. Gentleman for the generous and

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can did spirit in which he has discussed the financial proposals of the Government. I rejoice to hear him express so strongly his objection, as a general, but of course not an inflexible rule, to a resort to anything in the nature of a loan under such circumstances as the present, and I trust we shall have a unanimous concurrence among all Parliamentary authorities upon that important subject. I have nothing whatever to complain of in any portion of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks; but it is my duty to state my views broadly in respect to some of the suggestions he has made. If I understand him rightly, he approves of our proposing to raise the deficiency by means of new taxes; he considers that the income tax ought to be a main source of supply, and approving the principles, he declines in a statesmanlike spirit to enter into the question, whether minor sources of supply might have been brought in aid; but, admitting the substance of our proposals, and granting them a favourable and candid reception, he at the same time reserves to himself the right, and almost declares his intention, to propose a modification in what he calls the mode we have adopted of levying the income tax. I should be very sorry, indeed, to quarrel with the right hon. Gentleman, or with any Member of this House, upon a mere matter of form, or only of technical importance, and especially with reference to anything that could be justly described by such a phrase as that of the "mode of levying the tax;" but when we look to the truth of the case I cannot but see—and I think the right hon. Gentleman himself will see—that what he describes as the mode of levying the tax is, in fact, the whole question, whether you are to borrow or not, and whether you are to have the tax or not. The right hon. Gentleman says, the six months levy of the tax will cause cases of injustice, and that the levy of the tax will be impracticable. Now, with regard to the impracticability of levying the tax, I ask the House to place its confidence in those able heads of the Revenue Department without whose assurance I should not have ventured to stir one step with regard to the proposal I have made. They assure me that there is no impracticability in the mode of levying the tax. The levy of an income tax is, indeed, attended with many great and frequently insurmountable difficulties—difficulties that cannot be wholly surmounted—but none of which will be cither rendered insuperable
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or aggravated by the measure I have proposed. Then with regard to the question of injustice I cannot admit that any injustice will be done. I maintain that the House of Commons is just as much entitled to tax the country, if it thinks fit, in respect to six months of every man's profits as in respect to twelve months of those profits. If, indeed, you say, "We are going to impose a tax for a year, but we shall require everybody to pay up for the first six months," undoubtedly it may be objected that where there is a change of interests the in-coming persons may be relieved at the expense of their predecessors; but that is not a true representation of this proposal, because, although from the necessity of the case, arising from the mode of charging the tax, you must in almost all cases go upon an annual assessment, the real substance and meaning of the proposal is that the additional 4d. will be levied on, and virtually in respect of, the first six months of the financial year. There can therefore be no injustice whatever with regard to the relations between those who may he occupiers of property, or holders of annuities, as to any succession of interests that may take place. If I understood the right hon. Gentleman correctly, he would modify the proposal by omitting the last two lines and-a-half of the first Resolution; and the effect of that alteration would be to impose the tax, not upon the first half-year, but upon the entire year, and to throw the receipt of the last half of the tax into the year 1860–61, thereby making it part of the Ways and Means, not of the current year, but of the next year. Of course, if that were done, the question arises how is the gap to be filled between the time when you want your money and the time when it comes in. The answer is that the gap must be filled by borrowing. You are then to borrow in one form or another. I presume the right hon. Gentleman thinks that what he has suggested in this respect is consistent with what he has said upon the subject of loans. He has said that to go to the money-lender, especially for such a sum as £5,000,000, would, under the circumstances, be a course unworthy of the country: but he now proposes, if I understand him, to go to the money-lender for £2,000,000, under circumstances, in my opinion, the most objectionable in every practical point of view. Whatever you do, at any rate, do not lay new burdens and new financial difficulties upon I860. We have

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done enough already in that respect; and I think no prudent man who takes ever so slight a view of the present condition of this country would feel disposed to become responsible for charging the financial operations of that year with additional difficulties in order to procure present and momentary relief. I have not yet had an opportunity—and I don't know when that opportunity may occur—of stating fully to the House the view which I am disposed to take, upon clear conviction, of the constantly increasing difficulties in the financial condition of this country. The matter is too serious to attempt to open it in a crude or partial manner. The right hon. Gentleman opposite has treated it, I think, too summarily, and has not adequately measured the increasing gravity of the case. He thinks, in the first place, as respects our peace expenditure, that its progress has been natural and legitimate, and he also evidently considers that that progress is a normal progress and is likely to continue and ought to continue. I cannot agree with him in that respect, and I will state broadly my reasons for the difference. It is perfectly true that there is a great expansion of social wants and of social demands which entail increasing calls upon the public purse; but it is also true that up to the year 1853—the last year before the Russian war—you had that same expansion of wants and demands going on. Of course, it had not then advanced so far, but you had a similar growth of new wants and demands continually leading to new expenditure. Up to that period, however, you had practically, by your wise thrift and economy, been able to meet those wants and demands, and 1853 presented scarcely a perceptible increase in the public expenditure, the increase over the expenditure of the country ten or fifteen years before being perfectly trifling, though I will not venture to state it from memory. But what has been the state of things since 1853? It is useless to blink the fact that not merely within the circle of the public departments and of Cabinets, but throughout the country at large, and within the precincts of this House—the guardians of the purse of the people—the spirit of public economy has been relaxed; charges upon the public funds of every kind have been admitted from time to time upon slight examination; every man's petition and prayer for this or that expenditure has been conceded with a facility which I do
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not hesitate to say you have only to continue for some five or ten years longer in order to bring the finances of the country into a state of absolute confusion, and to drive this House to the alternative either of imposing permanently the severest taxes at their highest standard upon the people, or of purchasing an ignominious repose—a repose which must soon be broken by loud calls for change—by the practice of annually borrowing to meet your expenditure. I demur, therefore, entirely to the doctrine of the right hon. Gentleman that this growth of the civil expenditure is a thing natural, legitimate, normal, and proportioned to the state and condition of the country. I do not say that it can now be kept down to the same standard as before 1853. I do not undertake to enter at this moment upon the consideration of this item or of that; but I do say there is one thing essential, and it is that the country and the House of Commons should return to the temper and spirit which ruled with respect to public expenditure chiefly, I think, from the period of the first Government of the Duke of Wellington, most eminently after the Reform Bill, to the great honour of that measure, and which upon the whole continued to direct the proceedings of Governments and to be satisfactory to the nation, until about the epoch I have named, namely, the outbreak of the Russian war. I will mention to the House, without going into details, some of the matters which they have in prospect. We are not now dealing with the tremendous question of the national armaments—we are not touching on these vast Estimates; but great as the increase of your Civil Estimates is, it is small in comparison with what it will be unless this House determine to lay a strong hand on the system. There is a question about to be put to-night with regard to harbours of refuge, when we are to act on the Report of a Committee on that subject. I think that Committee has recommended a public expenditure of about £2,500,000, and a public advance of about one million and a quarter; and as I believe it would be moderate in all cases of harbours of refuge to say that the cost, when they come to be executed, is at least double that which was estimated, I think I may fairly multiply by two the sums I have given, and then the figures will stand £5,000,000 of public expenditure, and £2,500,000 of public advances. Then you are going to rebuild the public offices; and on what scale? How much are they to

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cost? Will you be satisfied if they cost as little as these Houses in which we sit? You have yet done nothing for the National Gallery; but it is agreed on all hands that a structure ought to be raised, and that the site ought to be enlarged at very great expense in order to erect upon it an edifice worthy of the country. You bought six years ago the valuable site of Burlington House; but it still remains to cover that site with buildings proportioned to the purposes for which it was acquired. We come next to our old friends the packet and telegraph contracts. At the present moment your packet Estimate is about £1,000,000, and you not merely abandon all profit out of that portion of your postal service, but of this £1,000,000 you pay £600,000 of hard money out of the public purse. Is this all? I will tell the House the state in which I found this matter on coming into office. The practice, as is well known, has been for the Government to take the management of these subjects into their own bauds, to frame contracts, and then make them known to Parliament when the demand is made for money to pay them. I am not now speaking either in praise or blame, but merely describing the system. The consequence of that is that at all periods there are of course a certain number of what may be called pending contracts. What does the House suppose was the gross amount of those pending contracts on our accession to office? Why, Sir, I found that the pending contracts—the contracts that had been more or less entertained by the Government, but which had not yet received the definitive or substantial sanction of Parliament—involved guarantees very nearly to the sum of £600,000 a year. Now, I cannot admit to the right hon. Gentleman that his Estimate is a rational or sober one, when in this state of things he speaks with such calm satisfaction of the growth of the expenditure for the civil service. But I pass on from the Civil Service Estimates, which the right hon. Gentleman thinks require no manipulation whatever, to the other stubborn customers that we have to deal with, namely, the estimates for our naval and military establishments. And here, on the contrary, I must say, I think the right hon. Gentleman is somewhat sanguine. It appears that there is nothing in the world necessary to be done but that the present Government should have the good sense to follow, de verbo in verbum, the measures marked out for them by their predecessors
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in reference to their foreign policy. As soon as they guide their policy by that standard, all our difficulties will disappear, and we need not despair that even the income tax itself will disappear in 1860. I must confess that it seems to me a very sanguine mood has taken curious possession of the right hon. Gentleman's mind. I do not believe that such great and magical results are to be attained; and still less, I am bound to say, do I believe they are to be attained by that close and rigid law of imitation which he wishes to prescribe for my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The right hon. Gentleman is rather hard on the present Government, and in this he follows the example of another right hon. Gentleman who sits opposite, as well as of my noble Friend the Member for Haddington, in the very broad assertions they have made with respect to the perfect wisdom and success of the measures taken by the late Government in reference to the recent complications of Europe. The right hon. Gentleman says those measures have been vindicated by time. It is not my duty to pursue in detail this portion of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks. At the same time I may, perhaps, be permitted to observe, that considering the range of those remarks, and the extent of topics they introduce, which carry a mere journeyman Chancellor of the Exchequer like myself entirely out of his true regions, and require much higher flights than he can hope to reach, it might have been more convenient if the right hon. Gentleman had taken a more suitable opportunity, and one chosen after due notice to the House, for advancing these principles of his high policy, than a discussion on the finances. He tells us he is glad to hear that the new Government intend to walk in the footsteps of the old. As a very humble Member of the new Government, I will state frankly the impression made on me by a most careful study of all the documents supplied to us in order that we might estimate the policy of the late Government on Italian affairs. Sir, those documents have left on my mind the clearest conviction that Lord Malmesbury addressed himself to his task in the spirit of an English gentleman and a lover of peace. But having stated that much with respect to the aim that he invariably had in view, and to the spirit of justice in which he sought to attain that aim, I must beg leave, as to everything that goes beyond, respectfully

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to remain silent; and unless we are called upon and required to discuss seriatim the prudence of the measures which were taken, I simply say, "Do not compel me by your admissions to subscribe to that which I cannot admit, and be content to receive from my noble Friend the liberal and fair appreciation he has expressed of the objects and aims of Lord Malmesbury. Do not endeavour, by continual vaunts and flourishes of their perfect wisdom and success, to leave us only the alternative of entering on the invidious task of dissection, or else of appearing by our silence to assent to what is not compatible with our honest convictions." As I have said, the right hon. Gentleman has really gone much beyond me on these lofty subjects; although certainly it cannot on the whole but be of use to the Government to hear the sentiments he has frankly declared on prospective questions, provided only it is not at once assumed from our silence that we approve or are bound to follow them. I shall not enter into conflict with the right hon. Gentleman on any part of what he has said, but will frankly echo so much of it as I can; and with regard to that which I cannot frankly echo I shall endeavour to express myself with due reserve. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken strongly, and sought earnestly to impress on the present Government, the duty of studying—to revive, as he said at one time, to preserve, as I think he said at another—and if possible to strengthen that sentiment of friendship and alliance which has long prevailed between this country and France. We shall certainly omit no instance of showing by frankness and confidence our desire to maintain that which I may at this moment venture to say has become in peaceful times, and in all such times as we hope to see, a law of the foreign policy of England. The right hon. Gentleman also says, "require a diminution of your armaments." And I am sure I do not go beyond my duty, nor belie in any respect the sentiments of my colleagues, when I express the opinion that the moment the state of Europe admits of bringing to that most wholesome and salutary test the pacific arrangements which upon paper have been made, that moment it will be the duty of the English Government to spare no effort in that direction. Sir, beyond that I cannot entirely go with the right hon. Gentleman either in his history or his doctrine. He declares that there is going to be a Congress, and he
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says that any man who advises that England should enter this Congress will—irrespective of any particular conditions or suppositions as to its constitution—betray his duty; that all neutral Powers will become responsible if they act in a Congress not for certain definite objects which are disapproved by the right hon. Gentleman, but in any Congress that may be held in the present state of Europe. But, why this sweeping and alarming, this terrific denunciation of all Congresses, and that too, by the right hon. Gentleman? Only three months, four months, and five months ago, Lord Malmesbury had no rest day or night in discharging despatches and telegrams to all points quicker than any of the new Artillery will discharge cannon balls and bullets, all recommending, enforcing, adjusting, and re-adjusting plans for the bringing about, if possible, by hook or by crook, the meeting of a Congress. We ought to be enlightened and illuminated by the declarations of opinion by the right hon. Gentleman, but I confess I do not gain so much benefit from them when I find such wholesale denunciations at the present moment of that which a few months ago the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues were labouring with all their might to promote. I should like to have these opinions in some sort of reciprocal adjustment before I can tell what advantage for the governance of our practical proceedings I can derive from his authority. He has entered into a discussion of the peace, upon which I shall pronounce no opinion further than to say that I am not prepared to subscribe to the rather sanguine doctrine which the right hon. Gentleman laid down when he said that the terms had been dictated by a wise and moderate view of affairs, and that he hopes and believes—not only hopes but believes—that the peace has in itself the elements of permanence. Sir, this may be so; but I confess that I would rather reserve my judgment to be assisted hereafter by the light of events than at the present moment and in the present state of Europe pledge myself, as the right hon. Gentleman has done, to a definite and distinct approbation of the terms of that peace. The right hon. Gentleman complains that fault is found with the peace because it does not fulfil the programme which preceded the war, and he says that peace never does fulfil the programme of the war. Sir, that version of history is entirely new to me. The right hon. Gentleman not only pro-

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pounds the doctrine, but he illustrates it with an instance. He says, "Go to the case of the Russian war, and you will find that the peace which closed it did not fulfil the programme." But where was the programme of the Russian war? If the programme of the Russian war was to be found in the ardent expectations of heated minds, no doubt the peace did not fulfil that programme. But we are not now speaking of the opinion of individuals; we are speaking of the authentic manifestoes of Sovereigns; and if you will turn to the manifesto in which the Sovereign of England declared her views upon the outbreak of the Russian war—I have not had an opportunity of seeing it since the right hon. Gentleman spoke, but I speak confidently from recollection—you will find that the peace fulfilled, and more than fulfilled, what was defined and described in that manifesto. It is not necessary to enter at length into detail, but I may mention three points. There was not in that manifesto any mention, as an object of the war, of the destruction and prohibition of the naval arsenal at Sebastopol; there was not in that manifesto any declaration that the Russian fleet in the Black Sea must cease to exist; there was not in that manifesto any declaration that Russia must make a cession of territory in the Danubian Principalities; and yet all these objects, as well as all that was described in the manifesto, were obtained by the peace made in 1856. Why, Sir, there is a stronger case still. Was not the programme fulfilled in the case of the great Revolutionary War? I am not going to enter into any discussion of that gigantic question, but, undoubtedly, the first programme of those who went into the war with the most extreme views was the restoration of the Bourbons. The programme of Mr. Pitt did not go so far; all that he wanted was security against France. And when you came to the end of the war, you not only had security against France, but you had the Bourbons restored to Paris, and restored in the form which was most flattering, at all events, to the victors, the authors of the programme—the overpowering pressure of foreign armies. I really do not know why the right hon. Gentleman should seek to pledge us to the adoption of such very strong doctrines with respect to the entrance into a Congress, and with respect to the character of the peace—matters upon which, as far as I know or am aware, the information
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of the Government is at present imperfect information, and with respect to which, therefore, we think it right to observe a greater degree of reserve at least, if not of caution and circumspection, than the right hon. Gentleman has done in making this very early declaration of his opinions. Upon one point more I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman—namely, his adjuration that we should do our best to make it permanent. Let him impress upon the Government, let him impress upon the House, let him impress upon the people with all his power and authority, the duty of studying by caution and moderation, in word as well as in deed, the duty of striving to make peace permanent in Europe. In that object I am convinced he will find that he has the hearty and cordial co-operation of Her Majesty's advisers. But with respect to the process, the means, and the measures which they are to adopt, agreeing with him in regard to the end, they must claim for themselves full liberty of choice; and they must also decline to deliver a conclusive judgment upon subjects of such vast importance until they have the advantages of more extended light and greater knowledge than the circumstances of the present day and moment can afford them.
MR. BRIGHT: I am not sorry that I had the opportunity of hearing the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer before I was permitted to address the House. I am sure the House will understand me when I say that I have listened to large portions of his speech and of that of his predecessor in office with great satisfaction. As far as the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli) is concerned, I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Mr. Cobden), myself, and others who have generally acted with us may consider him a convert to the views which we have very often expressed in this House. I recollect that Sir Robert Peel on one occasion made a speech of very much the same tenor, and hon. Gentlemen opposite charged him with being a convert to our views. I believe that any man of intellect and genius who may lead that party to which the right hon. Gentleman belongs, and none other can lead it with any success, will, as time rolls on, more and more adopt those principles of political economy and of foreign policy which we have felt it our duty to propound to the House and the country. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Mem-

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ber for Bucks, and, in fact, also, that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was a speech upon two subjects, the first part being devoted to finance and the second to the question of foreign 'policy; and perhaps the House will allow me to make a few observations in the same order. The budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer has, I think, met with general satisfaction—at least with as much satisfaction as generally falls to the lot of unpleasant propositions of this nature; but I may say for myself that whatever approbation of it I have to express arises from the fact that it is a proposition confined to a single year, and that the right hon. Gentleman himself has suggested to the House that next year it will be necessary to take a general and more comprehensive review of the whole question of our finances and taxation. I shall, if the House will permit me, state one or two reasons why I feel particular satisfaction at the temporary nature of the plan which the right hon. Gentleman has proposed. I believe that, notwithstanding all that Chancellors of the Exchequer may say with regard to the advantages of the income tax, it is as hateful as ever it has been to the people, and I believe it to be hateful chiefly because it is unjust. I shall not now enter into the question which has been so often debated, whether the tax ought to continue to be levied at the same rate upon fixed and precarious incomes, because I think that, whatever we may say, every one feels that that is a fixed injustice and a fixed wrong which it is utterly impossible that you should ever work out of the minds of the people of this country by whom the tax is paid. Just before coming into the House I had in the lobby an interview with some gentlemen who have come up to town to protest against the continuance of this injustice. I made this answer to their representations:—"I agree with you entirely. I think the tax odious beyond all others that I know of, and odious beyond all others, because it is unjust beyond all others; and I will never consent that in its present shape it should be made a permanent tax. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes it for one year, under an emergency which some people suppose to have arisen. Therefore, I am obliged to consent to it this year; but if I am here next year, and any proposition is made for its continuance in its present shape, it shall receive no countenance from me." But there is another
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ground on which I should have to object to this tax, and at which I will now only just hint. It is not a pleasant view of the case for hon. Gentlemen opposite or for those whom they chiefly represent. When the time comes I am prepared to show that the income tax presses upon all capital employed in shops or manufactures with double the weight that it does upon that which is employed strictly in the cultivation of the land. I am sure that hon. Gentlemen opposite will see the injustice in one particular—namely, that farmers in England, if I am not mistaken, pay on a rate of income calculated upon half their rent, while farmers in Scotland pay only upon an income calculated upon one-third of their rent. I know no reason for differences of that kind. I do not think they should exist. You may tolerate them for a single year—we can tolerate a great deal if we think it necessary to maintain the honour or interests of the country, or even for the convenience of Parliament at times—but you cannot tolerate them as parts of a permanent settlement of a question of taxation. There is another ground upon which I should wholly object to the course which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is taking if he was making his arrangement for more than a year, and in adverting to this I must call his attention to measures of great importance, which were much boasted of at the time, and to which he prevailed upon Parliament to assent in the year 1853. I hold that, whatever be our taxes—let us have £50,000,000, or £70,000,000, or £100,000,000 a year—and I know not but we may live to see taxation grow up to £100,000,000 a year as heedlessly as we have seen it grow up to £70,000,000—whatever be the amount of our taxes, let us endeavour to do honestly by our countrymen; not pressing the poor, whether our taxes be heavy or light in the main; laying them on with a stronger and more resolute hand upon property, but in dealing with property, dealing just as honestly with its owners as we should deal with the poorest subjects of the realm. I take the taxes on successions of every kind—probate duty, legacy duty, and the tax levied under the Act of 1853—to be strictly in their nature all property taxes. They are taxes which are collected or intended to be collected as part of every man's possessions and property which change hands on the death of their owner. Those who are poor—those whose means are nothing—of whom there are un-

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fortunately many in this country—who make no wills, for whom no one takes out letters of administration, who have nothing to leave as a fortune or a little property to their children, are not directly interested in this matter; but all other classes of society are directly interested in it; and I say that, whether a man be employed in manufactures or have property in land, in the Funds, or in stocks and shares of any kind, he has a fair right to appeal to this House that in the imposition of taxes of this nature there should be the most just regard that is possible for the interests of all those whom the law is intended to affect. I shall tell the House in a few words of what I complain, and what I shall move next year before anything be done to re-impose the income tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his budget speech of 1853, where he introduced that not very welcome guest to hon. Members opposite, the succession-tax, adverted to the probate duty, which he said ought fairly to be levied upon all kinds of property, and not confined to one description alone. The hon. Member for Lambeth (Mr. W. Williams) has brought that duty repeatedly before the House, and has shown that £40,000,000 or £50,000,000, if not more, have been paid into the Exchequer by taxes upon probates and legacies, all of which have been collected by taxes on personal property, from which real and freehold property has been entirely exempted. I do not believe that any hon. Gentleman on the opposite side of the House feels that there ought to be this gross inequality. The probate duty in 1858 raised to the Exchequer a sum of £1,338,000, and next Session I shall ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer why it is not extended, as it ought to be, to all property which passes by death from one owner to another. It was curious to observe that the right hon. Gentleman in his speech the other night—it was not quite so long as one he made before, but it was none the worse for that—did not refer to what was said to be the greatest effort of his financial genius., In 1853 everybody said there never was such a Chancellor of the Exchequer. He persuaded the country gentlemen to pass a Bill which inflicted upon them, as they allege, the very same succession duty as the law imposed upon personal property. What did the right hon. Gentleman say upon that occasion? He calculated that in the following year, 1854, the succession-tax would produce £500,000 to the Exchequer; in 1855 an additional
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£700,000; in 1856 an additional£400,000; and in 1857 an additional 400,000. It will thus be seen that he anticipated the annual produce of this tax to amount in 1857 to £2,000,000. If his calculation had turned out to be correct, the succession duty would have yielded up to the present time no less a sum than £9,300,000. What has been the actual result? I cannot give the exact figures, because the Board of Inland Revenue say they cannot separate that which has been received from the succession tax of 1853 from that which has been received from the old legacy duty. But, adopting the mode which was pursued by the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other night, I can inform the House that the legacy duty in 1852, before the succession-tax came into existence, produced £1,380,000, whereas the legacy and succession duties combined yielded in 1859 the sum of £2,211,000, being an increase of £831,000. From that sum, however, I must deduct the increase of the ancient legacy duty in the interval between 1853 and 1859, and I ought also to deduct something, but unfortunately I have no means of ascertaining what, for that description of property which the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1853 called rateable property, and which he withdrew from the legacy duty, and put under the succession-tax at a much smaller amount. Passing that by, however, and deducting only £50,000 for the increase of the old legacy duty, I find that the succession-tax, from which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected two years ago to receive £2,000,000 a year, brought in last year no more than £781,000. How came the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he that understands his business so well, to make so grievous a mistake as this? I shall tell the House how it was. It is an odd thing that he could make such a mistake, but it is still more odd how any one could be taken in by such a mistake when made. The tax was not what it pretended to be; it was not a succession-tax upon the value of property passing from one person to another, but something very different; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, while he undertook to adjust a great inequality, established another just as great and as offensive. I do not blame him for what he did; perhaps it was all he could do at the time; but surely he was deficient in acuteness when he supposed that his new tax would in 1857 produce £2,000,000, whereas in 1859 it yielded only £781,000? How the tax has been so unproductive is easily ex-

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plained. If a man dies and leaves £10,000, which is in the Funds, or in the North-Western Railway, or in ships, or in machinery, or employed in trade—what is done in reference to that £10,000? I will take the case of the 10 per cent duty—that is where there is no kindred; £10,000 left by one man to another, where there is no relationship, would have to pay a tax of £1,000 to the Exchequer. But, supposing the £10,000 were invested in land, or in that rateable property which is the new distinction that the right hon. Gentleman establishes, what would be the result? Take two men, one twenty-two and the other eighty years of age. You would find that the Inland Revenue Board would turn to a table, which would say the man of eighty has a life worth three or four years only, and the man of twenty-two has a life worth twenty or twenty-five years; and they would then take the £10,000 and multiply it by the number of years supposed to remain to the young man and to the old man, and thus come to the sum which each would have to pay. I was fortunate enough to have a small property left to to me by a person of whom I had no knowledge. I never saw him. He was an old gentleman, a great friend of peace, and opposed to the Russian war, and seeing that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale and myself were very strenuous in our opposition to that war, he did what was in his power to make us some compensation. I think I sold the property for £1,400 or £1,500: and when I came to pay my legacy duty—that is, the succession tax—I was greatly astonished at the small sum I had to pay. My age was taken; an estimate of the annual value of the property was made; and I was told that I had to pay something like £40 or £50. If the property had been in the Funds, or invested in any of the other modes to which I have referred, I should have had to pay £140 at least. Take the case of an hon. Gentleman on this side of the House who has been more fortunate than myself. A property worth £32,000 was left to him by a person who was not a blood relation. If it had been in the Funds, or in ships, or in railways, or employed in trade, the succession duty would have amounted to £3,200. What did he pay? He is not an old man—younger probably than the average of Members in this House—and yet, upon the property being valued and a calculation made of the number of years he had to live, he
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found that he had to pay, rot £3,200, but £700. Is it consistent with fairness—with our personal honour—for, after all, that is a quality which enters into these questions—with our duty to the public, that we, sitting here as a representative body, should take one class of property, the most solid and durable, attracting to it the most of social and political advantages, having in it the greatest certainty of accumulation and improvement from the general improvement in the condition of the people, and charge it to the extent of £700, while at the same time we impose £3,200 upon another class of property not more valuable and far more fleeting in its character? I think the reason why I should object to a permanent re-imposition of the income tax will now be obvious to the House. I should object to it with all the force I am capable of until the taxes which now exist are put on a satisfactory and honest footing, so that every man and every description of property may be called upon by the State in its just proportion to support the burdens and the necessities of the State. I do not intend beyond this to refer to the proposition which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made. I have only now referred to it that I may lay the ground for the course which I shall take in another Session of Parliament, if this question comes before the House again; and I believe that that course will be sanctioned by a large number of Members here, and will meet with almost unanimous approval from all the honest men who are taxpayers in the kingdom. But this question of the mode of levying taxes is apart from a very serious question referred to by the right hon. Gentleman—that of our growing and frightful expenditure. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said, and very justly, that up to 1853 in the great departments of the expenditure there had been no great increase for many years. I confess that, although I have been protesting Session after Session against this growing expenditure, I was not fully aware of the enormous increase which has taken place until I compared the present year with 1853 and some preceding years. I find that in 1853, on the Estimate of the right hon. Gentleman, the expenditure was only £50,782,000, while the expenditure in the current year is £69,207,000. The House must bear in mind that that would be somewhat an unfair picture, because since 1853 there has been a sum of money charged to the

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expenditure which formerly went in the collection of the revenue. Making every allowance, however for the £4,740,000 which is disposed of in this way, the expenditure has positively increased in the interval by £13,685,000. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli) was not, I think, quite correct in his statement respecting the Miscellaneous Estimates; but there can be no doubt that the great and serious item in our outgoings is that of armaments, and I find that the military and naval expenditure of the country has risen from £17,000,000 in 1853 to upwards of £26,000,000 in 1860. Now, I should like to ask the House two or three quiet, serious questions, on this matter. The hon. Member sitting here just now (Sir Charles Napier), who commanded the Baltic fleet, and who represents the Borough of Southwark, has left his place, and I am very sorry for it, because I should have liked to ask him two or three questions. Does the House believe that we are now more or less safe than we were in 1853 from a foreign war, and particularly from an invasion of this country? We have men—the right hon. Gentleman has referred to them—who are afflicted with a periodical panic. There is no complaint, I believe, so incurable as that. One fit begets another, and every fit seems so to enfeeble the constitution of the patient that each succeeding attack becomes more alarming than the last. We have two or three newspapers in this city which appear to suffer in this way. One, which is supposed to represent a particular trading interest, pours forth from day to day, from week to week, from month to month—I know not at whose instigation, I know not if at the instigation of any man save the editor—the most foolish, but the most bitter invectives against the French Government, and by that means against the French nation. I say against the French nation, because I hold that, no matter whether we approve the Government now existing in France or not, if we had such a Government, and some foreign nation through its press were constantly insulting that Government, we should take not a small portion of those insults to ourselves, and we should become proportionately irritated against that nation. Take another paper, The Times, which, unfortunately and untruly, is believed on the Continent to represent the opinions of the English people. Who is there on that paper—let him stand forward if there be such a man—who has a bitter
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personal animosity against the Emperor of the French? Day after day, every form into which the English language can be pressed is made use of for the purpose of stirring up the bitterest animosity between two of the greatest nations on the face of the earth. Have these men published letters from Italy in vain? Have they told us of acres of bloody and mangled human bodies over which guns have been dragged and cavalry have galloped—have they told us of such scenes until a shudder has passed, I may almost say, through universal human nature—and yet have they not learnt for one single moment to restrain that animosity which, if it continues many months longer will place it beyond the power of this or any Government to prevent our being embroiled in a war with France? And it is not only the hon. Gentleman the Member for Southwark and such as he, it is not only the editors of newspapers, who suffer from and create these panics; but go into another and what is generally supposed to be a higher place, and what do you find there? Why, you hear some aged Peer turning back as it were to the convictions and the facts of his early youth, and delivering speeches which might have been somewhat in character with the barbarism of sixty years ago, but which are very unfit for our time and for our opinions. We find another Peer ["Order!"]—another Gentleman, then—making a speech. I believe I am transgressing by the mention of certain things which are too sacred for allusion here; but really I do not want to go into detail and point to persons in connection with this matter. What I say is, that throughout Europe every intelligent man who reads speeches of that character, whether made in this House or in another place, can only arrive at one conclusion, thoroughly false as I believe in my conscience it would be—namely, that these persons represent a very large amount of public opinion in this country, and that we have forgotten the disasters and the ruin entailed by the great Revolutionary War of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has spoken, and are ready to engage in another conflict of equal duration and equal cost in blood and treasure, with a result as utterly bootless to England and to Europe. Look at our position with regard to France at this moment. We have a war just over. I do not know that I use the exact words of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, but I agree with him that there can be no peace in Italy between those two great

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Powers which can compare for evil with the war which that peace has terminated. When I read of peace being concluded, I felt as though I could breathe more freely since the species to which I belong was no longer engaged in the fiend-like destruction of its fellow-creatures. What do we now find in the manifesto of the Emperor of the French just received in this country. He says he discovered—I am not now using his exact words—that he was making war against the mind of Europe. That is a most important and valuable admission, and I only wish the Emperor had found this out three or six months ago. He says, further, that the war was assuming dimensions with which the interests which France had in the struggle were not commensurate. I am surprised that a man reputed to be so acute did not perceive that he would be exposed to this great danger before he entered upon the war. But the two admissions made in this remarkable and memorable address prove to me that the suspicions which have been so studiously raised in this country as to the future objects of the Emperor of the French are altogether unfounded. I do not believe it possible for either the Emperor of the French or the Emperor of Austria to have returned home with all those scenes of horror, such as we have read of, flitting before their eyes, and I hope before their consciences, and to be now prepared to enter into another struggle—least of all a struggle with a nation like ours, containing 30,000,000 of united people, the most powerful, the richest, and, all things considered, perhaps the best satisfied with their Government of any nation in Europe. Besides this, have they not learnt something from the improvements effected in weapons of warfare, and the increased destructiveness of life of which those weapons are now capable? They see now how costly war is in money, how destructive in human life. Success in war no longer depends on those circumstances that formerly decided it. Soldiers used to look down on trade, and machine-making was, with them, a despised craft. No stars or garters, no ribbons or baubles bedecked the makers and workers of machinery. But what is war becoming now? It depends, not as heretofore, on individual bravery, on the power of a man's nerves, the keenness of his eye, the strength of his body, or the power of his soul, if one may so speak; but it is a mere mechanical mode of slaughtering your fellow men. This sort of thing can-
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not last. The whole thing will break down by its own weight. Its costliness, its destructiveness, its savagery will break it down; and it remains but for some Government—I pray that it may be ours !—to set the great example to Europe of proposing a mutual reduction of armaments. Our policy in past times—and the right hon. Gentleman did not go so far into this question as I could have wished—has been one of perpetual meddling, with perpetually no result except evil. We have maintained great armaments, not, I sincerely believe, because we wanted to conquer or to annex any territory in Europe, but in order that whenever anything happens in Europe we may negotiate, intervene, advise, do something or other becoming what is called the dignity of this great country. Do not you suppose this is precisely the language of the French Emperor at this moment? The Emperor of the French builds great fleets because you build great fleets; and then you build greater fleets because he builds great fleets. What does France want with great fleets? Precisely that which you have always wanted with yours. If there be any disturbance between any countries in Europe do you not think it would be beneath the dignity of France not to take a part in it, and, taking a part in it, not to take a part with that influence and success which becomes a great country like France? And, therefore, without wishing any more than England wishes to make conquests or to annex territory, France wishes to have great influence in Europe because it suits its dignity, and will add to the glory and historical renown of its Emperor. Well, now, that is exactly the position in which we are, and we have no more right to blame the Emperor of the French than he has a right to blame us. We are both very silly, and I hope, from what I have heard to-night, that at last we on this side the water are beginning to find that out. Now I shall not go into the question whether we are really going to be invaded. I am told that so much has been said about it that the French really believe we are making this outcry to cover our designs of invading them. I saw a letter in one of the newspapers this morning in which it is stated that from Dunkirk to some other town there are mounds and fortifications and guns all ready, though concealed from the eye by grassy banks, to repress and to frustrate our designs. Recollect that the French Government went into the Russian war because they were anxious to

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associate themselves with the foreign policy of England. Subsequently they went into another war with us with a more distant nation—they went into the war with China. They took part with the noble Viscount now at the head of the Government in the interference which he promoted in Italy with regard to Naples some two or three years ago. It appears to me, that looking at it from every point of view, reading the newspapers, and hearing what everybody has to say, if there be one thing which is more distinctly marked in the policy of the Emperor of the French since his accession to the throne of France than another, it is his perpetual anxiety, by every means which is consistent with his own safety, and with the interests as he believes of France, to ally himself with England and with the foreign policy of England. Well, if that be so, why should we perpetually create these suspicions, and generate in the minds of the people, nine-tenths of whom have small opportunity of ascertaining the facts, alarms which give colour and justification to this enormous increase of our armaments, of which we have heard such loud complaints from both sides of that table to-night? I shall not go into the question of this Conference. At the first view my opinion would go very much with the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Disraeli). I doubt very much—indeed, I ought to say, I do not doubt, but I feel sure—that if England is to go into the Conference merely to put its name to documents which are of no advantage to Italy, which do not engage the sympathies of this nation, England had much better have nothing to do with it. But there is another course which I should like to recommend to the noble lord who now holds the seals of the Foreign Office. I cannot believe that Frenchmen in matters of this nature are so very different from ourselves as some people wish to teach us. I do believe that the 36,000,000Frenchmen engaged in all the honest occupations of their country, as our people are engaged here, are as anxious for perpetual peace with England as the most intelligent and Christian Englishman can be for a perpetual peace with France. I believe, too, because I am convinced that it is his wisest course and his truest interest, that the Emperor of the French is also anxious to remain at peace with this country, and the people in France are utterly amazed and lost in bewilderment when they see the course taken by the press, and by certain Statesmen in this
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country. Well, with that belief what would I do if I were in that responsible position?—for which, however, I know that I am thought to be altogether unfit—but if I were sitting on that bench and were in the position of the noble Lord, I would try to emancipate myself from those old, ragged, worthless, and bloody traditions which are found in every piegonhole and almost on every document in the Foreign Office. I would emancipate myself from all that, and I would approach the French nation and the French Government in what I would call a sensible, a moral, and a Christian spirit. I do not say that I would send a special envoy to Paris to sue for peace. I would not commission Lord Cowley to make a great demonstration of what he was about to do; but I would make this offer to the French Government, and I would make it with a frankness that could not be misunderstood; if it were accepted on the other side it would be received with enthusiasm in England, and would be marked as the commencement of a new era in Europe. I would say to the French Government, "We are but twenty miles apart, the trade between us is nothing like what it ought to be, considering the population in the two countries, their vast increase of productive power and their great wealth. We have certain things on this side, which now bar the intercourse between the two nations. We have some remaining duties which are of no consequence either to the revenue or to protection, which everybody has given up here, but they still interrupt the trade between you and us. We will reconsider these and remove them. We have also an extraordinarily heavy duty upon one of the greatest products of the soil of France—upon the light wines of your country." The Chancellor of the Exchequer, and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman opposite, may start at once, and say that involves £1,500,000 or £1,200,000. Why, the right hon. Gentleman talked of the national debt being a flea-bite. What is £1,200,000—what is £1,500,000, if it be so much as that—what is £2,000,000 for the abolition of the wine duties or their reduction to a very low scale if by such an offer as this we should enable him to do that which he is most anxious to do. The only persons whom the French Emperor cannot cope with are the monopolists of his own country. If he could offer to his nation 30,000,000 of the English people has customers, would not that

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give him an irresistible power to make changes in the French tariff which would be as advantageous to us as they would be to his own country. I do believe that if that were honestly done, done without any diplomatic finesse, and without obstacles being attached to it that would make its acceptance impossible, it would bring about a state of things which history would pronounce to be glorious. The tone taken tonight by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire and by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will find a response to the country. I am not accustomed to compliment the noble Lord at the head of the Government. I have always denounced the policy which I thought wrong, but which, I have no doubt, the noble Lord thought was best calculated to promote the interests of the country. I believe he was mistaken, and that he was importing into this century the politics of the last; but I do not think it would be possible to select a Minister who could better carry out a policy which would be most just to France, and most beneficial to ourselves, than the noble Lord. Blood shines more, and attracts the vision of man, more than beneficent measures. But the glory of such measures is far more lasting, and that glory the noble Lord can achieve. I live among the people. I know their toils and their sorrows, and I see their pauperism—for little better than pauperism is the lot of vast numbers of our countrymen from their cradles to their graves. It is for them I speak; for them I give my time in this assembly; and it is in heartfelt sorrow for their sufferings I pray that some statesman may take the steps which I have indicated. Those who establish such a state of things between France and England will do much to promote the future prosperity of those two great nations, and will show that eighteen hundred years of Christian professions are at length to be compensated for by something like Christian practice.
LORD JOHN RUSSELL: I wish only to add a few words to what has been said, and principally to observe how fully I concur with the hon. Member for Birmingham in the sentiments which he has expressed. I confess that I have seen with pain the attempt that has been made to induce a feeling in this country against the Sovereign, and, I must say, against the people of France—attempts which can only produce on their part a feeling of animosity
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against the people of this country. I do not wish to enter into the question as to the general origin of wars; but looking back to the wars which have taken place between great nations that they have been less the consequence of ambition—less owing to disputed claims to territory—than of some particular feeling of insult or animosity, sedulously encouraged, and aggravated into that feeling of pride which belongs to a great nation, until trifling occurrences have produced war, which under other circumstances would have been passed over or explained away by diplomatic correspondence. It is therefore that I feel with my hon. Friend that there is something dangerous, not in the present disposition of the Emperor of the French or in the present disposition of the French people towards this country, but in the constant endeavours made to excite in the people of this country jealousy or alarm as to some deep plot laid against our peace and security. That fear is readily imbibed. The people are urged to prepare to defend themselves when there is no cause, and I must say that bad as are wars of ambition, wars of panic are equally bad. I believe, as my hon. Friend says, that whatever reproaches may be cast upon the Emperor of the French as to various questions of his domestic and foreign policy, yet that as regards this country—and I have often repeated it—he has been a faithful ally to us; and I believe also that upon any great question which may arise his wish is to obtain the concurrence and the approbation of the people of this country. I believe he highly estimates the good sense and intelligence of this country. He duly estimates our power, and sets a great value upon the opinions which we entertain. What must be the effect, then, of this continual invective and declamation to the people of this country to "arm—arm,"—as if an invasion were certainly to be expected? Such being my feeling towards the Emperor of the French, it is another question as to what we shall do with respect to armaments and those other matters to which my hon. Friend has referred. Eleven years ago, in the reign of Louis Philippe—a most peaceful Sovereign—I remember saying that we must not omit to take notice that a great change had taken place in the means of war; that that upon which we had hitherto relied—namely, the uncertainty of the winds and waves, and the difficulty of crossing the Channel, were no longer any protection to us, and that

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consequently our defensive preparations must be changed in character and augmented in proportion. In saying that, I meant no offence to Louis Philippe, the then ruler of France. In saying so now, I mean no offence to the present ruler. I merely say that as a nation, however desirous we may be for peace, however anxious we may be to avoid war, yet, that as one of the great nations of the world, whose interference is constantly invoked, and who must be consulted, we must be prepared to play our part. I do not say whether it is wise or not to enter into every Congress or Conference. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that for this country to enter into a Conference merely to set her seal to terms which this country does not approve, would be most unbecoming and most fatal to our character. On the other hand, if there is in Europe, and especially in one kingdom of Europe, a feeling of dissatisfaction and alarm; if this feeling continues every day to increase; if it is likely, if still further excited, to lead to a war, or to that which is the most fatal of all wars, civil war; and if the influence of England can allay those feelings, and make the peace concluded more solid and more satisfactory,—then I say it would not be unbecoming in England to confer with the other Powers of Europe with that object in view, and with the honest intention of endeavouring to effect it. My hon. Friend says that we should make some proposition to France as regards the duty upon French wines. As far as the Emperor of France is concerned, he has always been anxious to diminish these protective duties, which are, I believe, far more injurious to the people and industry of France than to any other nation. But I remember a Statesman not attached to the French Emperor—a Statesman belonging to another order of things—saying,"Whatever I may think in other respects, no reproach can be cast upon the present Emperor of the French upon the subject of Free Trade. Everything that it is possible of the ruler of a country to do he has done; if he endeavoured to go further he would merely be defeating his own objects, which are as liberal as can be." For this reason I should be very loath to enter into any sort of correspondence or discussion with the French Government which should induce that party, not very numerous in this country, but still very powerful and numerous in France—I mean the Protectionists—to say, "Our Government has been bargaining away our
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industry and the fruits of our toil in order to obtain some advantage for England," I remember this question being brought forward thirteen years ago by the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Ricardo). It was at that time opposed by Sir Robert Peel, who was then an advocate for reciprocity; but a short time afterwards he became a convert to the opinion that the true course was to admit foreign goods without any sort of stipulation for reciprocity; that it was most advantageous to us to leave it to other countries to follow our example when they were convinced that it was a measure with no selfish benefit to us, but was as good for them as for ourselves. The benefit conferred by a free trade between two nations is mutual: so far from being a bargain in which one party gains and the other loses, both parties gain. I should therefore be sorry that this question should be made the subject of a diplomatic correspondence. I believe it will be promoted by the Emperor of the French as far as the progress of public opinion in France will permit him. I do not think that I have anything further to add, but to say that I have heard with great pleasure the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham. I trust that neither what has passed in another place, nor what passes from day to day in the shape of invective, will raise any feelings of jealousy with regard to any foreign Power, but that the Government will always be able to point to the representatives of the English people in this House as in favour of the maintenance of the peace throughout the world. As regards other nations I see no disposition to infringe upon our rights, and I trust we shall be able to remain at peace with all the world.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: Sir, most of the questions referred to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be more fitly considered when the House has gone into Committee; but I cannot be silent after hearing from the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) a statement that has been made more than once, but which is quite erroneous. The right hon. Gentleman repeated to-night what was said by the late Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the other night, and as to which I did not think worth while to trouble the House. It was this—that I said, when this Government was formed, they had nothing better to do than to follow the footsteps of the late Government

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with regard to foreign policy. I said no such thing. What I said was, that on the question of neutrality in the war—on the question whether England should take part in the hostilities then going on—I entirely approved the course which the late Government had taken, and in that respect was determined to pursue the course which the late Government had commenced, and which was in accordance with the opinions and interests of the country. But I am so far from pronouncing unqualified approval of the foreign policy of the late Government, as that statement would imply, that I believe I gave offence to the late Government by condemning their foreign policy as far as regarded the manner in which they had endeavoured to prevent the war from breaking out. That which I stated repeatedly, and which I repeat now as my own individual conviction is, that had the late Government employed the means which were in their power, and which I contend they ought to have employed, they might have prevented the rupture between France and Austria. That was my opinion; that is my opinion still. I have no doubt that they had the best intentions, and the papers they have produced show that to the extent of their ability they carried out their intentions. But I say that they failed, and they failed from not understanding and seeing in what direction their exertions ought to have been applied. I speak thus from what is known to all the world—from the language used by the Government in both Houses of Parliament as to the question at issue. It was encouraging to Austria; it was defiance to France. The whole meaning of the language of the late Government was this:—war is impending, and if it break out England may be drawn into the contest; and it is plain from their language that the side on which they imagined England would be drawn into the contest was the side of Austria. Their notion was that to prevent war they ought to threaten France. The result shows, that if they had taken the other line, and by firm and friendly advice dissuaded Austria from the course which she took, the war might have been prevented. I think it necessary to say this, because here and in other places it is stated with a flourish of drums and trumpets that I have stated that we have nothing to do but to follow the path of the late Government as regards their foreign policy, and I think it due to myself to set myself right
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on that point. The right hon. Gentleman deprecates in the strongest manner this country engaging in a Congress or Conference on the present state of affairs in Italy. It is, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out, a most extraordinary doctrine on the part of a Government which not longer than the moment immediately preceding the commencement of the war used every effort to persuade the Powers of Europe to go into a Congress, of which this country must have been a member. And what, I should like to know, would have been the object of that Congress? The right hon. Gentleman says, "Do not go into a Congress or a Conference, because you may be involved in engagements and undertake responsibilities which may be an embarrassment to this country." For what purpose, I ask, would the Congress have assembled which the late Government so earnestly recommended, unless it was to enter into certain engagements to which this country would have been a party? If the object was not to obtain some engagement that neither France nor Austria should interfere by force of arms in the internal affairs of Italy—if that, as everybody understood, was not the main purpose, I should like to know for what purpose the late Government urged the assembling of a Congress, and what was the object the Congress was to obtain with a view to the preservation of peace? My right hon. Friend has reminded the right hon. Gentleman that wars have sometimes—and in recent periods too—realized the objects for which they were undertaken. He has pointed out that, especially with regard to the Russian war, more was accomplished by the treaty of peace than was contemplated as possible at the moment when hostilities commenced. But with regard to that war I must set the hon. Member for Birmingham right. When he represents that England urged France into that war he should recollect how the war commenced. It arose out of disputes between France and Russia with regard to the Holy Places in the Levant, and therefore it was a dispute between France and Russia which brought us into that war.
MR. BRIGHT: I did not say that England urged France into that war. I said that at the last France would have been glad to accept the arrangement proposed by Russia, and that France went into the war because she did not wish to be disassociated from the foreign policy of Eng-

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land. I did not say that England urged France into that war.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: It would be idle to go into a discussion of exact words. But as the question has been raised as to the interposition of this country in the affairs of other States, and the impression has very often prevailed in the public mind that the interposition of this country has been either causeless or mischievous, I wish to remind the House of several occasions upon which that interposition has been exerted, and I would point out to the House that the results have been favourable to the interests and happiness of the country with regard to which we interfered. England interposed with regard to the affairs of Greece; and what has been the result? Why the result has been that Greece, established as an independent country, has now the benefit of a constitution; and although there are circumstances connected with the Government of Greece which we do not entirely approve, yet, comparing the state of Greece now with what it was at the period when our interposition took place, it is impossible to deny that the people of Greece are happier and more prosperous than they were in their former condition. We interposed in the affairs of Belgium; and what has been the result? Why the result is, that the Belgian people are as well governed, as prosperous, as happy, as loyal, and as attached to their Government as any nation on earth. We interposed in the affairs of Portugal; and what has been the result? Why the result has been that instead of Portugal having a despotic Government, full of abuses, Portugal has now a Parliamentary constitution somewhat resembling our own, and is making great progress in everything connected with the internal happiness and welfare of the people. We interposed in the affairs of Spain; and what has been the result? The result of that is, that instead of Spain being, as it was in the preceding period, alternately under an arbitrary and despotic Government and a chaos of revolution, she now enjoys a Parliamentary constitution, and Spain is also happy and contented, and making rapid advances in internal prosperity. We interfered also with regard to the slave trade; and I am happy to say that the result of our interference has been that millions of Africans—I say deliberately, millions of Africans—owe to our interference exemption from the greatest possible of calamities. I speak of the numbers who of late
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years have escaped, and of the numbers who in time to come will escape being sent over to Brazil and all the horrors of slavery. I say then it is not enough simply to condemn the course of the English Government because they exert the influence of England upon matters relating to foreign countries. You must see what the result may be, and if by interference a beneficial result has been obtained, instead of condemning the Government, it appears to me you ought to acknowledge that the Government make a proper exercise of the influence which belongs to us as a great country. The right hon. Gentleman made a very eloquent discourse on the calamities of war. Everybody agrees about that, but it should be remembered that, altering a word of the poet, "Peace has its miseries as well as war;" and that whatever calamities have fallen on a part of Italy in consequence of the war which has just terminated, the miseries which the Italians have suffered through peace for a great number of years are matters of no light consideration, and ought not to be viewed as if belonging to a condition which it was a crime to disturb. I hope that the peace which is now made will not carry with it a repetition or continuance of those evils. But depend upon it that those who do not attach sufficient importance to the miseries which the Italian nation has sustained by misgovernment for a great number of years past show that they are not fully acquainted with the matter upon which they are prepared to express an opinion. My noble Friend stated that whether we should be parties to a Conference or not was a matter still under consideration and would depend upon circumstances. But undoubtedly no Government of this country would recommend that England should be a party to a Congress simply to register the edicts—simply to register the arrangements made by other parties, without the previous consent and concurrence of England in them. We may enter into a Conference for the purpose of improving arrangements not finally concluded and still open for consideration; but it is no part of England's duty to make herself simply the recording agent of transactions in which she has had no part or voice. No doubt, as has been stated, the recent improvements of mechanical science connected with the operations of war may apparently have added to the bloodshed with which war is attended. But I believe that if you look back to the casualties in

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battles in former and in less remote periods you will find that comparing the number of men engaged the loss of life is about the same, and that, for instance, at Borodino and Leipsic the loss of life and casualties on the two sides, in proportion to the numbers engaged, were quite equal to the losses and casualties in recent battles. Indeed, recent events rather lead me to believe that the improvements in the methods of destruction will tend, as was the case through the introduction of gunpowder, to diminish rather than to increase the carnage which attends great battles. I quite concur with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bucks and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham in that which they have stated as to the result which is likely to be produced by that tone of hostility—for it amounts, more or less, to that—which is but too often adopted in this country towards the Emperor of the French and the nation which he governs. We have no right, I contend, and certainly it is not to our interest, to constitute ourselves the censors of the manner in which any foreign Sovereign may rule the nation of which he happens to be at the head, so long as that nation is satisfied with the mode in which its affairs are administered. Our business simply is to look upon the acts of a Sovereign who is in alliance with us with reference to the manner in which the duties of that alliance are performed; and I feel assured that nobody can fairly refuse to acknowledge, with my noble Friend the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, that the Emperor of the French has been the faithful and true ally of England, both in times of peace and of war; and that we have every reason to regard him as a monarch who feels personally, and upon system, desirous to cement and perpetuate the alliance which subsists between his country and our own. That such a feeling exists is, however, I admit, no good reason why we should not place ourselves in a state of defence. A great nation like England, with so much wealth to protect, and so many interests in every part of the world to secure, has no right to rely for her safety on the mere forbearance of other powerful States. It is not even fair towards them that we should be content to occupy a position of undefended weakness, when we take into account all those questions which must from time to time arise between different countries in which conflicting interests are at work, which may he complicated by passion and prejudice, and in dealing with which
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we can scarcely expect that foreign nations should, out of forbearance and friendship towards us, abstain from giving effect to that superior power which our negligence in providing adequate means of defence may confer upon them so far as we are concerned. There is nothing, therefore, I maintain, at all inconsistent with a desire upon our part that the alliance between England and France should endure in our making every provision which may be deemed requisite for the purpose of placing this country in such a position as that she need be under no apprehension of being attacked by any neighbouring or more powerful State. To take that course is, I feel assured, a policy not more becoming the dignity of the nation itself, than it is in accordance with a sincere wish to maintain friendly relations with other Powers. I would also remind those whose eyes are directed chiefly to France in connection with this subject, that there is also another great country (Russia) whose daily endeavour is to restore and increase her fleet in the Baltic. We must recollect that the course of events is such that it is not one Power only with which we might be brought into collision, but that there are possible complications of affairs which might lead to a conflict between England and more than one foreign nation. While, however, I make these remarks, I quite concur with those who think that nothing can be so adverse to the interests of the country—I may add, nothing more inconsistent with the dictates of common sense—than that we should, in the same breath, proclaim to the world that our shores are undefended, and use language calculated to irritate and provoke that Power from which hostilities are said to be expected, and which it is declared we are altogether unable to resist. I deny our inability to resist any Power whatever; but if our position were even such as some persons seem disposed to believe, that very circumstance, I maintain, tends only to aggravate the folly of those expressions which I am sorry to say I see so frequently in print, to which I hear utterance given, and which can have no other effect than to exasperate the public feeling of the two countries. It would not be in accordance with human nature that, after a long course of rivalry between England and France, there should not lurk in some portion of the population of both nations certain remembrances and resentments connected with a state of things

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which has happily now ceased to exist. I am, however, strongly of opinion that we ought, instead of agitating those resentments, to endeavour to bury them in oblivion, and to turn the attention of the inhabitants of each country respectively to those interests which we have in common, and which are calculated to form a bond of union between us. I concur with my noble Friend near me in thinking that it is not expedient that England should enter into a treaty of commerce with any foreign State founded upon mutual arrangements of tarif. The country to which a proposal to enter into a treaty of that description is made very naturally supposes that some advantage is sought to be gained by those from whom the offer emanates. The wise course to pursue in such matters is to make for your own advantage such a diminution in your Customs' duties as you may deem calculated to promote your own interests. When foreign States perceive that you act simply from a conviction of the good which you expect to arise to yourselves from such a proceeding, and find that your policy has tended to the increase of your prosperity, and has added to your revenue and your commerce, they will, in all probability, be more likely to imitate your example than if you were to ask them to surrender an advantage which they imagine they possess. In discussing this subject with one of the Ministers of Trade of a former French Government I told him that if I were to consult simply the interests of England I should advise him to keep up the high duty on iron, inasmuch as so long as the price of iron in France was high the agriculture of the country would suffer and its machinery be impaired, while we should gain by the adoption of a policy of high prohibitive duties. I said also that so long as they imposed a high duty on the importation of our coal the article would be dearer, and that, so far from the interests of England being deeply involved in the maintenance of those large protective duties, we ought perhaps rather to urge upon France the propriety of keeping her prohibitory arrangements. But we know, also, that nothing which any one nation can do in the way of diminishing duties can be of advantage to her without also being of benefit to those countries with whom she trades. There cannot, therefore, on the ground of general principle, be any difference of opinion between Her Majesty's Government and the hon. Member for Birmingham. The only question between us
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is as to the mode in which the object which we seek should be obtained.
MR. BRIGHT, in explanation, said, he had made no proposal for entering into a treaty of commerce; but, in referring to the reduction of the wine duties, he stated that one of the benefits arising from it would be the promotion of increased intercourse between England and France, and that this could not fail of having a great effect on the relations of the two countries. With respect to treaties of commerce his views and those of the noble Lord were identical.
MR. SEYMOUR FITZGERALDsaid, it had not been his intention to offer to the House any observations on the present occasion, nor should he have done so but that some remarks had in the course of their speeches fallen from the two noble Lords opposite to which he was anxious to allude. The present discussion had turned in a great measure on the subject of foreign affairs, and he supposed it was the nature of the subject that had induced the two noble Lords to make such a display of their diplomatic skill. Indeed, three distinguished members of the Government had risen to address the House, partly, as it would appear, to attack the policy of the late Government, and partly to explain the meaning of a phrase which had fallen from the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton a few days ago, when he had stated that his foreign policy was the same as that which had been pursued by his predecessors in office. Now, it could not, he thought, fail to strike hon. Members that a very convenient opportunity would have been presented to the noble Lords to whom he alluded to make their comments on the policy of the late Government, if the Motion of which the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho) had given notice had been allowed to come on. When, however, it was proposed to proceed with that Motion, the noble Lord the Member for London declared it to be his conviction that it would be inconvenient to the public service that such a discussion should take place. The Motion was one, he should remind the House, which had distinct reference to the conduct of the late Government, and it was framed by the noble Lord who was its author because he thought it an act of justice and he deemed it to be his duty as an independent Member of Parliament to ask the House of Commons to pronounce a decision as to the policy which the Earl of Malmesbury had pursued. A debate up-

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on such a point would probably not have been very convenient to the Government. An appeal was accordingly made by the noble Lord the Member for London to the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire not to bring forward his Resolution; and having thus got rid of a discussion in which the policy of the late Government might have been fairly placed before the House and the country, and, as he believed, fully vindicated, the noble Lords opposite and their colleague, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, seized a bye-time, a mere incidental opportunity, like this, when the subject could not possibly be adequately discussed—to impugn the policy of the late Government, and to contend that that of the Administration to which they themselves belong differed from it in many material respects. Be that, however, as it might, the noble Lord who had just spoken was quite in error in saying that all that he had stated on a former occasion in reference to the subject was, that he should adopt the same policy as was pursued by the late Government with regard to the maintenance of a strict neutrality. If the debate on the Motion of the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire had been permitted to proceed it would have been found that the accord between the policy of the noble Lord and that of the late Government was much more complete than he had that evening presumed to contend was really the case. The noble Lord, in discussing the conduct of the late Government, had taken upon himself to inform the House that the late Government ought not only to have adopted the principle of neutrality, but he said they ought to have held such and such language towards Austria and France, thus pointing out distinctly the policy which he himself would have pursued; but if the question could be fairly gone into, it would be found that the language which the noble Lord indicated as that which it was desirable should have been held towards France and Austria was not only in spirit, but almost in the very letter, that which the late Government had used in addressing the Governments of Austria and France. There was one part of the speech of both noble Lords which he owned had filled him with anxiety. He did not think that any one could have listened to this debate without feeling satisfied that the two noble Lords had made up their minds to go into a Congress. They might say that this was still under consideration, and
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that they wanted further information. But hon. Members must feel convinced that if they could get into a Congress they would. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had, however, made an observation which had been taken up by both noble Lords, that the Members of the late Government could not complain of the present Government being desirous to go into a Congress, when the late Government themselves proposed to go into a Congress in which the various Powers of Europe were to take part. It was true that the late Government had proposed to go into Congress, but that was before a war and in order to prevent war. The circumstances were totally different, and he could not conceive the least analogy between the two cases. With reference to the Congress now in question, this was clear, that the Government must either go into Congress to alter the existing terms proposed for peace, or to accept them. If they were to go into Congress to alter the terms of peace, he wanted to know in whose interests were they thus to enter into Congress? He could not forget that the noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston) had once declared that he should not be content until the Austrians were driven out of Italy. Was that the spirit in which Her Majesty's Government were going into the Congress? Was the policy of neutrality thus to be lost which the late Government had originated before public opinion had declared itself, which they afterwards pursued, and which met with the approbation of the country? It was impossible to enter into Congress with that spirit and not to forfeit the position of neutrality which the country had declared should be the policy of England. The noble Lord had enumerated some occasions in which this country had interfered, and where our interference had been productive of good. The proper policy for this country to pursue was a single-hearted English policy, and it was not because good might have flowed to the subjects of a foreign Power from our interference that it was just to adopt a policy of interference. The noble Lord had enumerated some instances in which our interference had been productive of good results; but he had omitted others which he (Mr. FitzGerald) would venture to call to mind in which our interference had been productive of anything but good results. He did not know what good had followed, for example, from the noble Lord's interference in the affairs of Naples. On the contrary, when the

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affair of the Cagliari occupied public attention, the withdrawal of our Ambassador from Naples was found to be a great injury to the public service. There was another instance in which the noble Lord had interfered with the whole force of this country to gain some petty compensation for a man who pretended to be a British subject, but that interference was exercised in a manner which was no ways calculated to raise us among the nations. But the most remarkable instance of interference was that originated by the Government of which the noble Lord was a Member, which sent Lord Minto from one end of Italy to the other stirring up revolution, making promises that were never fulfilled, and leading the population of Italy to make sacrifices and incur dangers in anticipation of results which they never obtained. The noble Lord also interfered in Italy in 1848, when he refused terms of accommodation which were eleven years afterwards insufficiently obtained by the States of the north of Italy, after all those years of additional suffering, and after a sanguinary war. He trusted that some further opportunity would be allowed to the House for discussing this policy of a Congress. The present Session of Parliament was rapidly drawing to a close, and he trusted that there would be no objection to the production of the papers up to the time of signing the armistice. It would also be the duty of the Government before they went into Congress to take the earliest opportunity of explaining to the House their intentions, and to give such information as would enable Parliament to decide whether the opinions they had formed were really right and just. He could conceive nothing more embarrassing or more likely to lead, if not to hostilities, at least to estrangement with other Powers than this Congress. The late Government proposed a Congress months ago to prevent war. That war had occurred; England had had nothing to do with either the war or the peace, and the worst course she could take would be to accept the responsibility of peace, with which she had hitherto had nothing to do. If they were to go into Congress merely to make arrangements on the existing bases of peace, there would be some danger; but if these bases were to be materially altered, the Government were throwing aside their character of neutrality, and were embarking upon a still more dangerous course, which would result in a plentiful crop of embarrassment, disunion, dis-
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sension, and estrangement from other Powers. If these results should follow, the country, when Parliament met again, would hold the noble Lords fully responsible for all the evils that might take place.
SIR HARRY VERNEYthought that the only way in which the war might have been prevented would have been if Lord Malmesbury had from the first protested against Austrian misgovernment in Italy. This country could not pursue a policy of non-interference, and he believed that the House would never desire to see such a policy adopted.
MR. WHITESIDEsaid, that the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down contended that the policy of England was to obtain good government for other countries. He was sorry to say that there was a good deal of bad government everywhere; and if that policy of interference were indeed to be the policy of the Government, and if the hon. Gentleman were the faithful expositer of the noble Lord, he was afraid we were about to embark upon troubled waters. There was no principle of the law of nations which would justify our interference in the government of other countries, whether those governments were bad or good. He had never heard a sensible man speak of the war between France and Austria who did not say that from New Year's-day, when the Emperor addressed the Austrian Ambassador, it was the intention of France to interfere with the affairs of Italy. That speech bore a singular analogy to the speech of the First Emperor to Lord Whitworth, and from that time forth some interference in the affairs of Italy was expected in France. It would be necessary for the House to have before it the documents to show what were the terms of peace lately agreed upon. And then would arise the question, whether the terms of peace now obtained, after ten years of suffering, were not inferior in utility to Italy, to the terms of peace proposed to Lord Palmerston ten years ago, and refused by the noble Lord because Venice was not made a free State, and because an Austrian Archduke was to govern the smaller States?
COLONEL SYKESsaid, he entirely concurred in the proposition of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to raise the extra sum he now required on property. There must always be two modes of raising the revenue, direct and indirect, and the latter affected the bulk of the people more than the former. The right hon. Gentleman the

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Member for Bucks had characterized the increased disbursements in various departments as a necessary consequence of the advancement of civilization in the country. If that opinion were accepted and acted upon there would be no limit to the demands that would be made upon the public purse. It had been represented that the chief increase in our expenditure had been caused by the enormous expansion of our naval and military departments. But that was not the fact, for he found from a statement which he held in his hand that there had been an increase in every department since 1835, and not so great a percentage increase in the military and naval as in other departments. In that year the outlay for the army was £7,000,000, and now it was £11,000,000, an increase of 55 per cent. The expenditure for the navy had advanced from £4,200,000 in 1835 to £12,680,000 in the present year, or an increase of 198 per cent. Grants and miscellaneous services, which in 1835 were £182,497, were now £808,844, or an increase of 342 per cent. In salaries and public departments there had been an increase of 139 per cent in the same period, the respective amounts being £591,000 and £1,413,495. For law and justice the outlay in 1835 was £494,000, and it had now swollen to £2,544,650, being an increase of 414 per cent. For education, science, and art, which no doubt did indicate the progress of civilization, the sum voted had increased from £135,190 in 1835 to £1,328,453, being an increase of 883 per cent. In the colonial and consular departments the increase had been only 49 per cent, and this was owing to the Colonies being permitted self-government. For special and temporary objects the outlay had increased from £269,000 to £677,000 last year, being an increase of 181 per cent. If our expenditure were to go on increasing for the next twenty-five years in the same ratio of increase as for the last twent-five years, a period must arrive when a financial disaster must ensue. At present the whole annual cost of our national debt was £28,000,000, while the produce of our Customs' duties was only £24,000,000; and it must be remembered that those Customs' duties increased greatly the cost of articles consumed by the poor. We had hitherto maintained our superiority by the aid of machinery, but now foreigners were generally adopting machinery; besides which labour was cheaper abroad than
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with us, so that competition must become stronger from year to year. It was therefore primarily incumbent upon us to diminish as much as possible our expenditure, for if matters progressed much longer as they had been going on since 1835, he believed there would be witnessed in this country a financial disaster that would alter our position in Europe.
MR. W. H. LEATHAMasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he contemplated this Session any extension of the system of penny stamps on bankers' cheques, so as to do away with the exemption at present enjoyed by persons who presented their own cheques for payment.
MR. HORSFALLsaid, he did not intend to oppose the grant of money which the Chancellor of the Exchequer required, be-cause he felt the force of the right hon. Gentleman's appeal to the patriotism of the House; still he thought that a gentleman of his ingenuity and experience could have devised some measure for raising the sum required which would not have pressed so heavily as the extra income tax would do on a certain class of persons in the country. He spoke of those who had to depend on incomes derived from professional sources and others with incomes varying from £150 to £500 per annum. The proposition of the right hon. Gentleman was in effect this: that 6½d. in the pound should be paid for the first six months of this year and 2½d. in the pound on the other six months. Now, he (Mr. Horsfall) should have been glad if the right hon. Gentleman had been satisfied with levying an additional 2d. instead of 4d. It was not for him to name what additional taxes might have been imposed, but he could not help thinking that some might have been laid on which would not have pressed so heavily as the extra income tax. Again, he believed that there might have been made certain reductions in the Estimates, although he felt inclined to make every allowance for the difficulties in which the right hon. Gentleman had found himself surrounded when called so suddenly to office. He hoped that before they met in another Session the right hon. Gentleman would direct his attention to the charges for the Miscellaneous and Civil Services, because he (Mr. Horsfall) believed that there might be a great saving effected if the Customs and Excise departments were united. If that were so, the saving in the expenditure of the country would be immense, and would be a source

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of satisfaction to the mercantile interests of the country. He most cordially concurred in voting the money for the service of the country which had been asked for by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Had the amount been double that which was now asked for, the House and the country would support him in granting it for the national defences.
Motion agreed to.

WAYS AND MEANS.

  CONSIDERED IN COMMITTEE.
  (In the Committee.)
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER moved the first Resolution. In reference to the question addressed to him by the hon. Member (Mr. Leatham) upon the subject of the penny stamp on bankers' cheques, the right hon. Gentleman said that it was not his intention to do anything precipitately in the matter. The reason why he hesitated in proceeding with it this year was, that a question which had arisen respecting letters passing between country bankers and their correspondents in London required previous consideration; and he should not like to proceed without taking ample time to ascertain what would best promote the public interest. As far as he knew the feeling was in favour of removing the exemption which was now enjoyed by the drawer of cheques when he himself was also the payee.
  Motion made and Question proposed,—
  "That, towards raising the Supply granted to Her Majesty, in addition to the Rates and Duties granted and now chargeable under the Act passed in the 16th and 17th years of Her Majesty's reign, chapter 34, for granting to Her Majesty Duties on profits arising from property, professions, trades, and offices, there shall be charged, collected, and paid for and in respect of all property, profits, and gains, charged or chargeable under the said Act, either by assessment, contract of composition, or otherwise, the following additional Rates and Duties, that is to say: upon any assessment made on the annual value or amount of any property, profits, or gains (except property, profits, and gains chargeable under Schedule (B) of the said Act), the additional Rate or Duty of four pence for every twenty shillings of the annual value or amount of all such property, profits, and gains, respectively; and for in respect of the occupation of lands, tenements, hereditaments, and heritages, chargeable under Schedule (B) of the said Act, the additional Rate or Duty of two pence in England, and of one penny halfpenny in Scotland and Ireland respectively, for every twenty shillings of the annual value thereof, and such additional Rates and Duties respectively shall be collected and paid with and over and above the first moiety of the Duties assessed or charged under the said Act."
  SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBYsaid, that though the House had had the pleasure of listening to a very able debate which embraced a vast range of subjects, yet the real question before them was, whether it was absolutely necessary to impose this addition of 4d. in the pound on the income tax. He had given notice of two Amendments to the Resolution, because he had some objection to it as it at present stood. The Committee must bear in mind that the income tax was essentially an odious and unjust tax—that it was so in the opinion of the universal public, and that nothing could make it fair or just. In former years, when the then existing income tax expired, a distinguished orator of the House of Commons proposed that the Act of Parliament which had imposed it should be publicly burned by the least respected functionary in the country. Now, in his opinion, a strong case ought to be made out before they imposed an additional tax of 4d. in the pound, and the onus probandi lay with the Government. But not only did he object to the amount of the tax, he also objected to the mode in which it was proposed to be levied—namely, by raising the whole sum in the first half-year. One point respecting which, he particularly desired information was the grounds upon which the right hon. Gentleman proposed to levy the whole tax in October next upon what was termed the Long Annuities, which expired on the 5th of January next. He had selected these long annuities as a type of the difficulty of applying the income tax to all precarious incomes; and how could the right hon. Gentleman with justice take 8d. in the pound from the long annuitants in October, when in January the long annuities would have ceased to exist? But returning to the first points to which he had adverted, he would ask what necessity there was for raising a sum of £4,000,000 by additional taxation at the present time? They had heard a great deal in the course of the debate about the enormous increase in the amount of the public expenditure, and the late Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to be of opinion that the reduction of that expenditure could not he hoped for unless a particular line of foreign policy was pursued. He (Sir H. Willoughby) did not exactly entertain the same view, for he thought, putting aside altogether the question of military expenditure, that the House might exercise some vigilance with regard to the extravagant Civil Service Estimates.

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  Those Estimates had been assented to this Session with very little discussion. On one night seventy-six grants of public money were passed, and some hon. Members were not even furnished with the papers which would have enabled them to determine whether or not there was ground for objecting to those Votes. He admitted that the House was placed in some difficulty with regard to the present Estimates which, having been prepared by a Government which did not propose them, and were now proposed by a Government which did not prepare them, belonged to nobody; but the only manner in, which it seemed possible for them to curtail an extravagant expenditure was by not granting larger supplies in Committee of Ways and Means than was really and necessarily required. Was it necessary that those who now paid income tax to the amount of £5,000,000 annually should be called upon to contribute to the Exchequer £4,000,000 more, and that in the first six months after the extension of the tax? For some years past the revenue of the country had been underestimated. The actual revenue in 1856 exceeded by £700,000, in 1857 by 1,513,000, and in 1858 by £1,500,000, the amounts at which it had been estimated by the Chancellors of the Exchequer. The revenue last year was £65,500,000. On what ground, then, did the right hon. Gentleman estimate the income of the ensuing year at only 64,340,000? There might, of course, be reasons for expecting some reduction in the public income; but he thought also, that a countervailing increase might be anticipated from the two items of taxation resorted to by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, the effects of which had not yet been developed. He thought that, under the circumstances, it was quite enough to make an addition to the income tax of £3,000,000, and if the revenue was then insufficient to meet the expenditure, the deficit might be provided from some other source. Why, for instance, should not a duty be imposed upon the property of deceased persons beyond the amount of £1,000,000? He regarded the imposition of an income tax upon long annuitants, and upon persons whose income was precarious, as a tax not upon income but upon capital, and therefore amounting to some extent to a confiscation of property. The hon. Baronet concluded by moving, as an Amendment, that the additional rate of income tax should be 3d. instead of 4d. in the pound.
  MR. POLLARD-URQUHARTthought that, on a fair consideration of the public finances, it would be seen that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had adopted the best mode of meeting the present difficulty. The hon. Baronet had said, that former Chancellors of the Exchequer had been in the habit of under-estimating the national income; but that was, at all events, a fault on the right side, for whatever balance there might be in the Exchequer at the end of the year was carried to the credit of the public in the following year, and, therefore, tended to reduce taxation—the Chancellor of the Exchequer might have borrowed the amount he required, or might have raised it by indirect taxation; but he thought he had adopted the most prudent course in resorting to a tax which only imposed a little self-denial, and self-restraint upon those who were called upon to pay it, while the borrowing of £4,000,000 would have occasioned a drain upon the capital of the country. The case of the poor clerk with £100 a year had been dwelt upon; but surely it was better that such a man should pay a moderate income tax than be made to contribute in the shape of heavier duties on the articles he consumed.
  MR. SPOONERsaid, be wished to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he meant to make any alteration this year in reference to the stamps on bankers' cheques? He was also anxious to know whether the right hon. Gentleman proposed that a tenant whose occupation would expire at Michaelmas should pay the whole of the additional income tax, and that his successor should altogether escape that charge, or whether he intended to apportion it between the incoming and the outgoing tenant?
  MR. W. WILLIAMSexpressed a hope that if the increased income tax was to extend to incomes of £100, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would introduce a clause in the Bill to exempt the wages of working men, on whom the impost was a great oppression. If the right hon. Gentleman did not do so he should feel it his duty to bring the subject before the House.
  MR. ROEBUCKasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, before he answered the hon. Member's question, to state what difference there was, in regard to the question of imposing this tax, between a man who drove a quill all day—whether what he received was called wages or salary—and a roan who drove a plane.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that he should require a certain sum for the service of the year it was very difficult for the House to refuse the amount. It was indeed true that it sometimes happened that the revenue exceeded the Estimate, but it would be dangerous to speculate on such a result. If they wished to make ends meet they must, there fore, be prepared to vote the whole 4d. of increase on the income tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, had not quite done justice to the criticisms offered as to the mode in which the tax was to be raised. No doubt Parliament could impose any tax on the people that it thought fit; but the sound rule was to obtain the maximum of revenue with the minimum of hardship to the taxpayer, and that principle had hardly been observed in the manner in which this tax was to be levied. The addition of 4d. to the present 5d. was in itself a hardship, but the evil was aggravated by requiring a man to pay it when one-third of the year had already expired, and his expenditure had not been regulated by the knowledge that he would be called upon for such a contribution to the State. A further difficulty was created when they made him pay in one year what he had hitherto paid in two years, and the pressure to which he would be put was certain to produce a good deal of anxiety and confusion. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said that he would not have proposed this arrangement unless he had been assured by the heads of the Revenue Department that there would be no practical difficulty in carrying it out. Now, if the heads of that department were now satisfied with such a proposal, they must have very recently changed their opinion; because when the subject was discussed a few months ago they thought its working would be attended with serious embarrassment. How were they to deal with persons who had annuities to pay out of their incomes? Were they to deduct the whole tax from the first payment of the annuity, or to spread it over the different quarterly payments? If the former, the annuitant might die before the year was out, and then more having been deducted from the annuity than ought to have been, there would be a question whether the executors of the deceased ought not to be reimbursed for a part of the tax. The case of the Long Annuities would present a somewhat similar difficulty, as the annuitant would have to pay
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  a whole year's tax, though he did not receive a whole year's income. There would also be a difficulty with regard to dividends from public companies, which in one half-year might be very large and in the other little or nothing at all. In this case two halves did not make a whole. If these things were unavoidable, of course we must submit to them; but he did not think that they were. He could not agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that deferring the payment of the income tax till the usual period would throw an additional burden upon the year 1860, because if money had to be borrowed to be repaid, then there would be the proceeds of this tax with which to repay it. The right hon. Gentleman dealt very differently with the maltsters and the income tax payers. The maltsters' payments were anticipated by six weeks, and for that they were allowed 4 per cent discount; the income tax payers had their payments anticipated by six months, and they were allowed no discount at all. He did not say that the tax would work absolute injustice, but he was far from thinking that it was the wisest arrangement that could be made. He thought it would have been wiser to take more of the malt credit and to leave the payment of the income tax to the usual period.
  MR. FRANK CROSSLEYsaid, he felt inclined to think that the House had in reality very little control over the expenditure, for during the last six years it had scarcely succeeded in striking off one Vote per annum. The cost of our armaments was most enormous, amounting to £26,000,000, and of the amount charged for the army not more than £3,750,000 was charged on account of wages paid to the men. Austria employed four times as many soldiers as this country, and he wanted to know why the money of this country could not be employed as economically as that of Austria. A great portion of the charge for the navy went for the non-effective service. He thought more value ought to be obtained for the money expended. With regard to the question of the income tax the right hon. Gentleman in 1853 showed the great difficulty of making a difference between incomes arising from professions and trades and incomes arising from property, and certainly nobody could make out a case better than the right hon. Gentleman, and he was afraid there was no chance of beating him out of his argument. The expenditure

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  was indeed so great that it was quite hopeless to expect to sec the end of the income tax, or some other direct tax in lieu of it, and therefore it behoved the House to take the matter up and see if they could not draw some distinction between fixed and precarious incomes. He believed it would be possible to levy a tax on all realized property, whether consisting of land, houses, mills, railway and banking shares, &c., and thus get rid of the income tax altogether. Although there might be some difficulty with regard to the details of such a tax, he did not believe it would be nearly so objectionable in principle as the income tax.
  MR. HUBBARDexpressed his disappointment that the only means the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer could find to extricate himself from the financial difficulty of the day was by an aggravated use of that obnoxious and most mischievous impost—an unreformed income tax. As it appeared to him that the whole fiscal policy of this country tended to shift the burden of our imposts from indirect to direct taxation, it was the more important that this mode of taxation should be subjected by the House to such a severe scrutiny as would make it as equitable in operation as any other tax that could be devised. It was humiliating to the Government to find that they made such large use of a system of taxation, the injustice of which there was not a man among them that was not ready to admit. This arose either from a want of science or a disregard of justice, neither of which was he willing to ascribe to his right hon. Friend who at the present time had charge of the finances of the country. But he rose more immediately for the purpose of calling attention to the case of the holders of long and terminable annuities. The amount of those annuities he believed to be correctly stated at £2,000,000, and when the annuitants were paid their dividends for the present year the House would have seen the last of them. Those annuities, in fact, represented an old debt which the Government of the day incurred many years ago for the purpose of meeting a national emergency—the last instalment of which would be paid off in the course of the present year. He believed he was correct in stating that 98 parts out of 100 of this payment represented capital rather than interest; and he held that Government had no more right to diminish the capital of those annuities than they were at liberty
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  to diminish the capital of Exchequer bills or Exchequer bonds. He said it with a full conviction of its truth, that there was no more morality in the Government of England diminishing the capital of this debt by their income tax than there was in the operations of some of the Transatlantic states which had notoriously made a settlement with their creditors by a forced composition. This was a transaction which, on the Exchange, or in Mincing Lane, would be called a compounding of credit, and he called upon the House to pause before they sanctioned a measure so discreditable in a commercial point of view. If they gave their consent to the imposition of this tax as proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, they would levy an additional tax of £1 13 s. 4d. in the £100 of these annuities, making in the whole £2 14 s. 2d. taken from the public creditor. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that there were £2,000,000 of these Long Annuities, but about one-half had been paid off, leaving only £1,000,000 remaining to be paid of the debt, and yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer just managed to resuscitate this tax, and make it retrospective, so as to inflict the whole twelve months charge upon the unfortunate holders of these annuities. Nothing on earth could be said in favour of such a measure except that it was a necessity, or that it was difficult to dissever these Long Annuities from the ordinary annuities. It might be said that the holders of these annuities were mostly large capitalists, corporations, or banks of great wealth; but would the Committee accept the doctrine, that whilst they refrained from oppressing the poor man they might rob the rich? Such a system would discourage the accumulation of capital, which constituted the strength of the country, and undermine the confidence of the public creditor; and would moreover seriously embarrass all the future endeavours of Chancellors of the Exchequer in this country when they again resorted to the public market for the purpose of negotiating loans. He concurred in the spirit of what had been said by the hon. Baronet (Sir H. Willoughby), and was delighted to support his proposition to relieve this portion of the public debt from an unfair burden.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: This discussion, although not a long one, has covered a considerable breadth of ground, and included a variety of questions besides the one raised by the

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  hon. Baronet the Member for Evesham. The hon. Baronet has asked me, as a point of fact how the Long Annuities will be taxed. My answer is that they will be taxed in respect of the half-yearly payment like other public securities which are payable half-yearly. I believe that the case is entirely analogous to that of any other annuitant or fund holder who feels the burden of the tax, although the burden is greater of course in proportion to the shortness of the duration of the annuity. I think, however, it will not be convenient that we should now discuss the case of the Long Annuities. It is by no means a novel one to this House and the difficulty which it involves is a difficulty inherent in the nature of the income tax. I will, therefore, address myself first to the Motion of the hon. Baronet, who proposes to reduce the sum of 4d. in the pound to 3d.; and this he does on this distinct ground, that Chancellors of the Exchequer, as he says, have an inveterate habit of underestimating the income of the country; ergo, that I have done so; and that therefore we might safely add £1,000,000 to the estimate I have given, and cut down the Ways and Means by that amount. Now, I am bound to say the hon. Baronet has omitted from his view two very essential particulars, which determine its whole merits. It is not true that there is a systematic habit on the part of Chancellors of the Exchequer of under-estimating the financial receipts of the country. The Estimates of income are formed, so far as I know, mainly and almost exclusively according to the deliberate judgment of the beads of the Revenue Departments. I never, but once, presented an estimate of income to this House that I bad not received from or prepared with the assistance of the heads of the Revenue Departments and that was of a comparatively small sum as to which there was no precedent to guide them. I believe the practice of those gentlemen is on all occasions to make the estimates with perfect bonâ fides; but it is impossible for them to make them in such a way as that they shall anticipate all the vicissitudes of the year. The hon. Baronet has said that for three years the revenue has been under-estimated—once by £700,000 and twice by £1,500,000—and that may be true. But on the other side I may quote a memorable case in which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Portsmouth (Sir Francis Baring) was concerned. In 1840 he presented to
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  the House an estimate of the revenue of the country; but, when the day of reckoning came and we had to compare the actual with the estimated receipts, we found the revenue had fallen short of the estimate by, if I recollect rightly, something like £2,000,000. The right hon. Baronet was much criticized on account of that shortcoming; but in point of fact he was not in any manner to blame. You are dependent upon the harvest, upon peace, upon commercial prosperity, upon the crops of sugar, upon the supplies of tea, upon the state of the vine, and upon a great multitude of other particulars for the bringing up of your revenue, with respect to which it is impossible to form a perfectly accurate estimate beforehand. The practice of the heads of the Revenue Departments has been to form as full an estimate as they could consistently with tolerable safety; and, that being so, I submit to the House that it would be unwise to break in upon a practice which has now been long established, and which is maintained without distinction of person or party—namely, the practice of framing as accurate an estimate as possible of the probable yield of the revenue, always taking care to be on the safe side. So far from wishing to under-estimate the resources of the country, since I came into office I have asked the heads of the Customs and Excise to reconsider their estimates, and see whether, in consequence of the lapse of time, they could make any additions to them. The result of that inquest on my part has been that certain small additions have been made to the estimates both in the Customs and in the Excise, because matters have been going on well. Under these circumstances, I entirely dispute the proposition of the hon. Baronet, that it would be a safe practice for Parliament to assume that, although the heads of the Revenue Departments and Chancellors of the Exchequer may not mean anything wrong or fraudulent, yet that Parliament might venture to add a million or two to their estimates. But the hon. Baronet has overlooked another point—namely, that the expenditure of the year is as apt to exceed the estimate as the revenue. He quotes the excess of revenue over the estimates of last year; but forgets that the expenditure also exceeded the estimate, so much so, indeed, that although the actual revenue exceeded the estimate by £1,500,000, yet it exceeded the expenditure by only £800,000. What has been

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  done with that £800,000? So much of it as was available under the law has been applied, not to the extinction of permanent debt, but to the redemption of deficiency bills. It is quite obvious, moreover, that you cannot reckon upon a continuance of those favourable circumstances which may have distinguished the last year; and, upon the whole, I maintain that the House of Commons would entirely depart from the rules upon which it has always acted if it wore to dispute estimates which are framed by disinterested and impartial persons, and which hitherto have been well borne out by the facts. Upon that ground, and because it is impossible, especially at the present time, to say absolutely that the expenditure shall be kept within the specified limits, I think the hon. Baronet will see that his proposition cannot be sustained. Various other points have been mentioned in the course of this debate. I have been asked whether I intend to bring in a Bill with respect to drafts or cheques. The only reply I can give to that question is, that I shall not bring in a Bill without giving the House ample notice of my intention to do so, nor until I have satisfied myself as to the precise terms in which such a measure ought to be couched. I have also been asked by the hon. Member for North Warwickshire, what will be the case of the tenant who holds his farm from Lady Day to Michaelmas, and who then quits it. My answer is that the tenant referred to will have held his farm for the six months in the present year in which the additional income tax takes effect, and that he will consequently be liable to pay it. But I ought to say here that there is some misapprehension with respect to the period at which the additional income tax will be paid. There is no undue or extraordinary suddenness in the demand which will be made. In 1854, the House, before we went to war with Russia, did the very thing which we now seek to do. The income tax, which was then 7d. in the pound, was doubled for the first half of the year. It is true that, before the new law took effect, the House had reason to double the tax for the second half of the year also, but the alteration was made in precisely the same manner as upon the present occasion, the only difference being that whereas the demand laid upon the taxpayer for the first half of the year was 7d. in the pound, now it is only 6½d. The hon. Member for Lambeth has put to me a very formidable question. He first asked
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  whether we would exempt the class of persons having incomes under £150 a year, and then, receding from that demand, and falling back upon something which he thinks so excessively mild that it is hardly possible for any one to refuse it, he appealed to us to exempt workmen's wages when they are paid in weekly amounts. If the hon. Member were responsible for the carrying of an income tax Bill he would find, when he proposed that every man who had his income paid to him by the year should be liable, but that those, on the other hand, who were paid by the week, although their incomes might be larger should not be liable, that all those persons who would be left subject to the tax would contrive to have their incomes paid to them by the week, and that, moreover, it would be a perfect hopeless task to endeavour to pursuade the House to draw a distinction at once unsound in principle and injurious, not to say dangerous, in practice. It is not true that a workman who has £100 a year derived from weekly wages is a poorer man than the clerk or other person who derives a similar income from the labour of his brains; on the contrary, it would be more true to say, though I do not assert it, that a workman with £100 or £120 a year is richer than the man who, living by the work of his brain, has only the same amount of income. I trust, therefore, that my hon. Friend will not press his demand. I do not know that I should follow the late Secretary to the Treasury over the ground which he has traversed, because the question raised by the Amendment before the Committee is not connected with his remarks. He has spoken of what he calls the mode of payment. The real question, however, is not the mode of payment, but whether a certain sum of money shall be raised within the year 1859–60 which is wanted to meet the demands of 1859–60, or whether a portion of the wants of 1859–60 shall be provided for out of the taxes payable in 1860–61. When the right hon. Baronet tells me that I shall not be laying a burden on 1861 by postponing the payment of the additional income tax, I beg to ask him whether I shall not be laying a burden upon that year if, when I arrive at the 31st of March, 1860, and have to pro pose the Ways and Means for the year 1860–61, circumstances compel me to make a demand upon the taxpayer for the purposes of 1859–60? It would, no doubt,

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  be very agreeable to postpone the additional tax, as it would be more agreeable still to borrow the money outright; but the question is, what principle will the House adopt? Will it, or will it not supply the wants of the year out of the taxes of the year? That is the question which must now be decided. I trust that, for the reasons I have stated, the hon. Baronet the Member for Evesham will not persist in his Motion for reducing the additional tax from 4d. to 3d., unless he can show us how we may reduce the expenditure for the year. If he can do so no one will rejoice more than myself; but if not, do not let him, by vague speculations as to the increasing prosperity of the country, endeavour to persuade the House to refuse those Supplies which are absolutely necessary to maintain the public credit.
  MR. T. BARINGobserved, that the allusion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the manner in which the increased income tax was levied previous to the Russian war was very unfortunate, and might lead to the suspicion that he intended to pursue the course adopted upon that occasion—namely, making an addition to the income tax in the second as well as in the first half of the year. Did he propose now to levy an additional 4d. in the pound to be paid in the first six months, with the view of proposing an additional 4d. payable in the following six months? If that were the case it was not fair treatment of the House. He was surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman propound the doctrine that the income of the year should always meet the expenditure of the year, because in 1854, when he filled the office which he now occupied, he did not hesitate to borrow in anticipation of the incoming revenue. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer came upon the taxpayer all at once, when he did not expect it, and told him he must pay in the first six months what was only due at the end of the year. If he wanted to make an income tax more obnoxious to the public than ever it had been, he could not have taken a more certain mode of effecting his object. He stated that he took this course because he did not want to draw upon his balance with the Bank of England, and because he wished to avoid borrowing on an income of which he was perfectly assured. But why did he thus press unduly on the taxpayer, by taking him suddenly in the way he proposed, when it could be of no possible advantage to the country? He must
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  say he could not understand on what principle the right hon. Gentleman had adopted his present plan, except with the view of having another 4d. before the year had expired.
  MR. DISRAELI: As bearing upon the Motion of the hon. Baronet the Member for Evesham, and also upon the course taken by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in so far as respects the estimates both of income and expenditure, I would refer to the case of that particular estimate which the right hon. Gentleman noticed so fully in the course of this evening. In the observations I made to-night, I spoke of a surplus of £1,500,000 in the estimate which I made last year. The right hon. Gentleman in his speech said he knew nothing of this surplus of £1,500,000—spoke of it as a fancied surplus—and observed that at the conclusion of the year we found that the actual surplus of income over expenditure was only £800,000. Now, the facts of this case furnish, I think, a complete answer to the Motion of the hon. Member for Evesham, as well as to the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. What happened after the financial statement of 1858 was made? Two demands were made upon the Government, neither of which could have been foreseen, one arising from some remaining payments for the Russian war, and the other on account of the war with China. The amount of these was certainly not much less than £800,000, and thus reduced the surplus to the amount which the right hon. Gentleman had described. I am sure the hon. Baronet the Member for Evesham must feel that a Chancellor of the Exchequer, with no documents before him to lead him to expect that a claim for the Russian war would arise, could not take such expenditure into account in his estimates, and that therefore in all such cases a wide margin must be taken, otherwise a fallacious estimate of revenue will often be the consequence. But this is also, as I have said, an answer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because these demands for the China and Russian wars could again arise, and the surplus of £1,500,000 in my estimate was a bonâ fide surplus in calculating the resources of the ensuing year. It will be obvious from what I have said that I cannot support the Motion of the hon. Member for Evesham. But perhaps I may be permitted to say a word or two on the point which I noticed at the commencement of the evening, and which has been so strongly

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  objected to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—I mean the mode in which the tax should be levied. The question appears to me to lie in a nutshell. I did not lay any undue stress on the hardships that will accrue to the taxpayers by the course taken by the right hon. Gentleman. I knew that it may be distressing in its pressure on the holders of Long and Terminable Annuities; but I know that the House, in considering the question of the income tax on occasions like the present, cannot lay any great stress on cases like these. Injustice has always been committed on the feeble interest represented by the terminable annuitants, but has baffled all who have been responsible for the management of affairs in this country to be able to alleviate their position or meet their case; and I do not believe that at almost the last moment of their existence it would be possible or advisable to enter into any exceptional legislation with reference to them. My objections to the plan of the right hon. Gentleman mainly rest on this—that you are aggravating to all the taxpayers the severity of a tax, already objectionable, beyond the necessities of the case. You ought to make the levy of this tax fall as lightly as you can on the taxpayer; but you are doing what you can to increase the grievance and the burden of it. All the principal arguments of the Chancellor of the Exchequer appear to me to terminate in one fallacy. The fallacy is, that the right hon. Gentleman regards the proposition I have thrown out for his consideration as a proposal for borrowing money. I totally deny it. The money that will be paid will be paid out of the revenue of the year, and there will be nothing in it practically of the character of a loan. The Committee, as I assume, wishing to act on sound principles of finance, and being of opinion that this demand on the resources of the country, great and grievous as it undoubtedly is, should be defrayed out of the revenue of the country, their object must be to get it defrayed in a manner least burdensome to the taxpayers. When we ask the right hon. Gentleman to distribute this tax over the year we give him the best possible security to enable him to raise the sum of £4,000,000 for the public service, and it depends on his own adroitness and skill how he will best do it. The mode we propose is strictly analagous to that which he himself introduced—namely, the mode of raising money by
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  Exchequer bonds. It is only necessary that there should be an arrangement between him and the Bank to enable him to raise that in the first six months which will be paid out of the revenue of the country in twelve months. The Bank of England must have fallen greatly in character and resources in the short time that has elapsed since I had transactions with her if any impediments to a satisfactory arrangement of this transaction is thrown in the way from that quarter. It is not desirable that money should be borrowed, if by borrowing is understood to be an increasing of the debt of the country. I entirely repudiate such a notion; but it is my opinion that the sum should be raised out of the revenue of the country, and that the burdens on the country should not be increased; but there is no objection that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have a power given to him to raise the sum he requires, on the condition that he raises it in the most easy and least burdensome manner for the taxpayer. We indicate the mode which would be the least burdensome to the people, by pointing out the precise course which the right hon. Gentleman has previously adopted himself. We say that the country and the Bank of England, which assisted him before, are equally prepared now to assist him in the accomplishment of his object, by giving him all the funds necessary for the public service, in a manner the least burdensome to the community at large.
  Motion made, and Question,—
  "That, towards raising the Supply granted to Her Majesty, in addition to the Rates and Duties granted and now chargeable under the Act passed in the 16th and 17th years of Her Majesty's reign, chapter 34, for granting to Her Majesty Duties on profits arising from property, professions, trades, and offices, there shall be charged, collected, and paid, for and in respect of all property, profits, and gains, charged or chargeable under the said Act, either by assessment, contract of composition, or otherwise, the following additional Rates and Duties, that is to say: upon any assessment made on the annual value or amount of any property, profits, or gains (except property, profits, and gains chargeable under Schedule (B) of the said Act), the additional Rate or Duty of three pence for every twenty shillings of the annual value or amount of all such property, profits, and gains, respectively,"—
  put and negatived.
  SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBY SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBY moved, pursuant to notice, in line 16, after the word "thereof," to insert "and for every one pound of dividend on the Long An-

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  nuities, expiring in January, 1860, one farthing in the pound." He wished to raise the distinction involved in his Amendment for the consideration of the Committee. He understood the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) to say that in this matter of the Long Annuities the House of Commons had for so long a time practised an injustice it was too late now to remedy it. Now, that in his opinion was anything but a strong argument. The injustice, however, had never been so flagrant as at that moment, and he could not believe that the Committee, if they really understood the question, would vote against it. The question in substance was this—were they prepared to make the dividend of £1 pay precisely as much as if it were of the value of £33, which was the value of a perpetual annuity? Did the right hon. Gentleman mean to charge the dividend to be paid in October with 4d. additional tax? If so, to what was it attached? It could not attach to that which was to come, for there was no dividend to be paid in next April. The Long Annuities would cease to exist in three months from October next. Well, then, it must attach to the other principle—they should go back and touch retrospectively the payment already paid and discharged. They must do one thing or the other if they rejected his proposition.
  Amendment proposed,
  "In line 16, after the word 'thereof, to insert the words 'and for every one pound of dividend on the Long Annuities expiring in January 1800, one farthing in the pound.'"
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, that the question now raised was one of the difficulties inherent in a uniform income tax. It was true that if the tax could be recast and re-adjusted an exact standard might be set up by which the value of every annuity ought to be reckoned. But such a scheme of income tax differed altogether from that now before the Committee. The existing impost was a uniform tax which entirely declined to take cognizance of any return of capital in the form of income. Income was the sole test which it recognized, and every one who chose to have his capital returned to him in the form of income, which was the case of every annuitant for life or a term of years, knew that he did so subject to any tax which Parliament might impose. Were this Motion to be adopted it would lead to inextricable confusion, and the Com-
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  mittee would find themselves entangled in a hundred other cases, some even stronger than that on which the hon. Baronet insisted. The question had been fully considered by the House of Commons when the present Home Secretary was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in 1842, when the income tax was first imposed. At the latter period Mr. Ricardo brought the subject under notice, and moved a Resolution akin in principle to that of the hon. Baronet; but the House decided against it and in favour of the present arrangement by 252 to 117. He was sorry that any inequality should exist, but he was sure that it would be most impolitic, and not agreeable to justice, to adopt the Motion.
  MR. HUBBARDsaid, that the annuities referred to which were charged with the rate of 8d. had not a year to run; and with respect to them, therefore, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be resuscitating a past payment in order to make it liable.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, that the case of the long annuitant would exactly correspond with that of the fundholder.
  SIR WILLIAM JOLLIFFEsaid, that the Committee did not understand from the right hon. Gentleman whether the tax was prospective or retrospective. With regard to these Long Annuities, it seemed to be retrospective, and levied, in fact, upon a past dividend, for they would not be in existence during the last three months of the year.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he did not understand what the hon. Baronet meant by a retrospective tax. In one sense this tax was certainly retrospective, because it was levied in respect of a term which commenced on the 1st of April, whereas this was the 21st of July. But the same might be said of most of the Income Tax Acts passed in this country. The first passed was on the 22nd of June, 1842, and was therefore retrospective in precisely the same sense. The tax, however, was not levied on the year's but on the half-year's income.
  MR. WALPOLEsaid, it was clear that you could not, as regarded the new income tax, draw a distinction between the old and the new one, and if you subjected the Long Annuities to the tax, the argument went to show that as they expired in 1860, they ought only to be charged at the rate of 3d. in the pound. But the right hon. Gentleman said that the mode of levying

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  the tax proposed was consistent with justice
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I only said that it would not be just to adopt the Amendment.
  MR. WALPOLEwas glad to hear that, because they would not be precluded from that point in the consideration of the income tax next year; and if it was reimposed it must be rearranged, so as to make some difference between fluctuating and fixed incomes.
  SIR JOHN TROLLOPEconfessed he did vote for the income tax of former years; but he would suggest that the nature of these propositions was somewhat different to the present. They had now no guarantee whatever that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not come again within the year for another 4d. additional. He considered that to levy the whole addition in one payment was most unjust and would be received with great dissatisfaction by the people.
  After a few words from Mr. MALINS and Mr. BARROW,
  Question "That those words be there inserted," put, and negatived.
  MR. DISRAELIthen proposed the omission of the last sentence of the Resolution, which provides that the whole addition shall be paid with the first moiety of the tax. He had assented to the raising of the sum of £4,000,000 by the addition to the income tax; but he objected to making the whole payable in the first six months. He proposed that it should be distributed over the whole twelve months.
  Amendment proposed, in line 16, to leave out from the word "thereof," to the end of the proposed Resolution.
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the proposed Resolution."
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I regret that the right hon. Gentleman has made this Motion, for, though he says he assents to the raising of £4,000,000 for the necessities of the year, by this addition to the income tax, in fact, he does not assent to it. The Ways and Means of the year are the moneys paid in the year, and taxes which are granted by Parliament to be paid in a future year, whatever else they may be, are not Ways and Means of the year. The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. T. Baring) says I ought to be content with getting £2,000,000 this year, and £2,000,000 in 1860–61, because in 1854 I proposed to the House of
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  Commons to raise money by Exchequer bonds in anticipation of half-a-year's income tax and malt tax which could not be raised in the financial year. My answer to that is twofold. In 1854 we asked the House to impose £12,000,000 of new taxes, but would it have been the same thing to ask for £12,000,000 of new taxes within the year as it is to ask for £4,000,000? I could not help myself then, for it would have been impossible to get the £12,000,000 of new taxes within the year. My second reason is, that we have had a great deal of experience since 1854—quite enough to show that that was not a desirable experiment. The language held by the Government in 1854 was that the war might cease before the £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 of additional taxes came in, and that then, as these war taxes came in, they might be applied to the redemption of the war bonds. The war did cease while the money was outstanding; it came in, but Parliament did not chose to recognize it as applicable to the Exchequer bonds. It applied £2,000,000 of it to that purpose, but the rest went into the regular Ways and Means of the year. The right hon. Gentleman says that the outstanding income tax will be a first-rate security to borrow on, but that is not the question. It is whether we shall provide for the necessities of the year within the year. The proposition of the right hon. Gentleman may be more popular with the country, inasmuch as his proposal, like many other proposals made in this House, is for the convenience of the present at the expense of the future. I must say this to the right hon. Gentleman and to the Committee—and I entreat the Committee to listen to my words, because they are words full of meaning—the proposal which we have made is that which we deem to be the smallest required by the state of the public interests and the demands upon the public exchequer. I have already pointed out to you to-night some of the demands that are coming upon us, including a sum of £600,000 a year for packets and telegraphs, which have not been sanctioned by Parliament. But I must tell you that there is more in reserve—that there are other questions of finance not at the present moment so matured as to enable me to declare definitively the views of the Government with respect to them, but upon which, before many days elapse, they will perhaps be prepared to announce their views. It has been our absolute duty to

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  take into account those exigencies that will shortly have to be explained to you, and the consideration of those exigencies enters essentially into the nature of the proposal which I am now making. It is not my desire to use any reserve with the Committee, and I hope the Committee will be disposed to negative the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman, if not upon general grounds, yet upon this ground, that as a responsible Minister of the Crown I give you the assurance that you have not yet measured, that you cannot yet measure, the demands that are coming upon you in connection with the wants of the empire. I hope that upon that ground the Committee will be disposed to give us that provision for the wants of the year which we have asked. The question raised by the right hon. Gentleman need not, so far as he is concerned, be finally decided to-night. This Resolution, inasmuch as it asks for an increase of taxation, must be moved in Committee, in order that I may bring in a Bill framed upon it; but the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman, which would reduce taxation, may be moved in any of the stages of the Bill; and I would suggest to him that he would better consult the public interest and the demands of the public service by postponing the trial of this question until the Bill should have been introduced. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks fit to adopt that suggestion we shall of course be prepared to consult his convenience in affording him an opportunity of bringing forward this question; but if, on the other hand, he should persist with his Motion, I can only once more recall the attention of the Committee to the words I have used, and used with a full knowledge and a very deep sense of the responsibility under which they were uttered.
  MR. THOMAS BARINGsaid, he wished to set himself right with the right hon. Gentleman and the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman had charged his right hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire with wishing to borrow money, and to borrow it in the most objectionable form, and he had referred to the course pursued by the right hon. Gentleman in the year 1854, for the purpose of showing that he had himself in that year carried the principle in dispute further than was at that moment suggested by his right hon. Friend. If the right hon. Gentleman meant to say that such was the state of the country, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government that it was important they should have the
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  money within six months, he for one should not oppose the proposition of the Government. But the right hon. Gentleman was quite aware that although the whole of the money should not be received within the six months, such arrangements could be made as would render the second portion of the additional income tax available for every purpose of this year's expenditure. The right hon. Gentleman knew as well as he (Mr. Baring) did that in past times revenue to come had been made available for existing purposes by means of an arrangement with the Bank of England, and that arrangement might again be adopted. He feared that the right hon. Gentleman's observations indicated a foregone conclusion to put on another 4d. in next February or March. With regard to the application for £600,000 for contract it was in the power of Parliament to refuse them if it thought proper.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, he did not see how it would be possible to levy this tax on the Consols, one half year of which was already past and gone, the next half year not being payable till January next. The effect would be that the holders of Consols would only pay half the tax. However, if the money must be got in within the year, the House could not do otherwise than agree to the proposal. However inconvenient the proceeding might be, still, if the Government really wanted the money within the financial year, he would not refuse it them, although money to be received in the next financial year could be made applicable by Exchequer bills. The right hon. Gentleman's words certainly held out a very alarming prospect of something looming in the distance.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, with reference to a remark of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Huntingdon, denied that he had any "foregone conclusion" as to the taxes that must be imposed next year. It was his official duty to labour to keep down the expenditure as much as he could. That was a very unhopeful task just now, and he should not he able to succeed in it without help from both sides of the House. He would always urge the House as far as possible to meet the burdens of the day in the day.
  MR. DISRAELI: This question has, in consequence of the observations made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, assumed a very different and a very serious Commons its present and prospective posi-

  243
  aspect. I confess I was never more surprised than when I listened to those observations. I will not dwell for a moment upon the passing allusion to contracts and guarantees amounting to £600,000 per annum. We all know very well that contracts are in the power of the Government. We all know very well that no Government would enter into any contract on which there was any probability of their being called upon to make good their guarantee. The allusion of the right hon. Gentleman to contracts and guarantees was, I think, mere Parliamentary adroitness on his part. But the right hon. Gentleman has made other communications to the House, which appear to me to be of a very serious character. I have always thought that, however disagreeable might be the information which the Chancellor of the Exchequer might have to impart to a Committee of Ways and Means or to a Committee of Supply, there was at least this compensation—that the truth and the whole truth was placed before the House. I did apprehend, after the Budget which was opened the other night, that we did clearly understand the depth and extent of the liabilities of the country. I thought that under these circumstances we were proceeding to consider with candour and in no hostile spirit the propositions which the Government have brought forward. But I collect from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that it is the unenviable position of the Committee of Ways and Means—for the first time certainly in my memory—not to have been made fully acquainted by the Minister with the full extent of the liabilities of the country. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has addressed the Committee in words of mysterious import. I want to know what are these liabilities that have not been explained? I want to know what are the engagements that have not been expressed? I think it is the right of the Committee of Ways and Means to be informed—if not to-night at least before it decides on the legislation proposed by the Government—of the nature, character and extent of these liabilities. It is a mere mockery and delusion to consult the Committee of Ways and Means, if, after having given a statement our best, and, I may say, dispassionate consideration, the Minister particularly responsible for the administration of the Finances tells us, "You have formed a rash and precitate opinion; it is true I made, a few nights ago, as you thought, a full and complete
  244
  statement of the condition of the finances of the country, of the responsibilities of the nation, and of the engagements of the Government. But you are mistaken. I wish to treat you without reserve, but there are certain high interests that prevent me from communicating to you the whole truth." I admit the force of the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman, and I cannot take the responsibility of asking the Committee to take a particular course while they are acting in the dark. They ought at once to be put in possession of the information which would enable them completely to understand their position. After the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, if I wave on the present occasion the proposition I have submitted to the House, I do think it is due to the Committee and to the House that in the interval between this evening and the time when the House must pronounce its opinion upon the measures proposed by the Government, the right hon. Gentleman should enter into a full revelation to the House of those mysterious financial engagements and responsibilities which he has hinted. As to the policy of the Government in other matters, we may be told, as we have often been told before, that foreign politics are matters above the ken and comprehension of a mere House of Commons; diplomacy may not deign to reveal its intricacies to the country; but in matters of finance and taxation, that touch the purse and hearth of every family in the kingdom, in those at least the Chancellor of the Exchequer will condescend to enter into a complete and sincere explanation.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: The right hon. Gentleman has given in the course of his animated speech what I suppose he thinks a correct version of something that had fallen previously from me. He says that I have professed—and he even went the length of putting words into my mouth—that I had made a full and complete statement of the coming financial exigencies of the empire. That is what I understand the right hon. Gentleman to state. But even on this very night I stated as plainly as I could, in following the right hon. Gentleman, that such was the state into which the public finances had been brought—very much by the practice of making prospective engagements which has been a growing evil for several years—I stated then that, even with regard to English finances, it was not in my power to convey fully to the House of

  245
  tion. But there are other questions than those of English finance—questions which we must have specially in view. But the right hon. Gentleman says, it is my absolute duty to communicate to the House of Commons everything which hears upon the question of finance. The right hon. Gentleman has been sixteen months in office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, whereas I have only been in the office for one month, and yet he expects me to give him a clear and comprehensive statement of our financial position. But the right hon. Gentleman ought to know that it takes some time to learn what are the financial exigencies of the empire; for unless I am mistaken, a proposition was made by the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member describing a considerable deficit, amounting to £7,000,000, in the Indian treasury. There, at any rate, was a clear statement; but scarcely had that statement gone forth to the world when the right hon. Gentleman, who was in full possession of the exact state of the case, and of everything which could hear upon it, in conformity with the constitutional doctrine which the right hon. Gentleman is always ready to preach when he sits upon the Opposition benches, comes to the House and tells us that that sum is far from complete, and that an additional sum of £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 will be necessary. As to the interests and considerations of high political significance to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred—if I conveyed to the Committee an idea that it was owing to political causes that any covert demands were about to be made, I can only beg pardon of the Committee and of the right hon. Gentleman. If I conveyed that meaning, I had not the slightest intention of doing so. But with regard to the public finances, I recognize as strongly as the right hon. Gentleman the duty and advantage of bringing fully to the notice of the House everything within the knowledge of the Minister. But my power of communicating that information is limited by my own knowledge. When we are connected with a worldwide empire, when demands come in upon us day by day, it is only after some lapse of time they reach such a maturity as to enable us to make them the subject of an intelligible statement. I submit, therefore, to the right hon. Gentleman that the high constitutional doctrine he applies to the Chancellor of the Exchequer is limited, like all human things, by the restrictions of time and
  246
  place. Subject to these restrictions, it is my desire to make a full statement to the House of Commons at the earliest moment. The right hon. Gentleman is entirely at liberty to postpone the question he wishes to raise, till he is in possession of all the knowledge he requires. I hope I have vindicated myself from the charge of having surreptitiously kept anything from the knowledge of the House that ought to have been communicated—a charge that I think ought not to have been made from any quarter, still less by the right hon. Gentleman.
  MR. DEEDESfelt called upon to consider what was the best course to follow. It seemed to him that they stood in this position. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made a statement the other night showing a deficiency of £4,000,000, which must be made up in some way or other, and he proposed that the deficiency should be made up by income tax. He (Mr. Deedes) wished to see the time when they might look at the whole taxation of the country with a view to putting it on a sound and substantial footing; and if they threw impediments in the way of those who had executive duties to carry out this would probably be deferred to a later period than they desired. However tempting the proposition made against the proposals of the Government might be he felt bound to resist it, because he should be throwing away a chance. In matters of this kind they were justified in throwing on the Exchequer the responsibility of the mode in which they should raise the Ways and Means.
  Resolved—
  Provided always, That where any dividends, interest, or other profits or gains becoming due or payable half-yearly, are assessed or charged half-yearly with the Rate or Duty under the said Act, there shall be charged upon the first assessment or charge which shall be hereafter made on such dividends, interest, profits, and gains, the additional Rate or Duty of eight pence for every twenty shillings of the half-yearly amount thereof; and where any profits or gains becoming due or payable quarterly are assessed or charged quarterly with the Rate or Duty under the said Act, there shall be charged upon the first two quarterly assessments or charges respectively which shall be hereafter made on such last-mentioned profits and gains, the additional Rate or Duty of eight pence for every twenty shillings of the quarterly amount of such last-mentioned profits and gains; and the said additional Rates and Duties charged in such half-yearly and quarterly assessments respectively shall be collected and paid with and over and above the Rates and Duties assessed or charged therein respectively under the said Act.
  The following Resolution was then put—
  "That towards raising the Supply granted to Her Majesty, the time limited for payment of the Duty of Excise on Malt by every Malster or Maker of Malt, who shall have given security by bond in the manner directed by the Act passed in that behalf in respect of all Malt begun to be made on or after the first day of October 1859, shall be twelve weeks in lieu of eighteen weeks after the making of such Account or Return of Duty as in the said Act is mentioned."
  MR. PULLERsaid, the alteration would vitiate the sureties and render necessary new bonds in every case. As it would be the doom of the small maltsters, and would throw the whole trade into confusion, he doubted whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer's expectations would be realized.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, it must be admitted that if ever the system of malt credits was to be modified at all, it could not be modified more gently than was now proposed. It was proposed to reduce the credit only by six weeks, and to allow discount in respect of those six weeks, in consideration of the late period at which the financial statement was made. A strong intimation had even been thrown out from the other side that the maltsters ought to have been dealt with more stringently. He would examine into the matter of the bonds, but he did not anticipate any serious difficulty.
  SIR JOHN SHELLEYthought the Chancellor of the Exchequer had treated the maltsters too lightly, and hoped he would take the hopgrowers in hand.
  MR. DODSONremarked that the hop-growers were in quite a different position from the maltsters, and it would be unjust and impolitic to make them pay sooner. The maltster could always make malt, but the hop grower was not always sure of his crop of hops.
  Resolved, That, towards raising the Supply granted to Her Majesty, the time limited for payment of the Duty of Excise on Malt by every Maltster, or Maker of Malt, who shall have given security by bond in the manner directed by the Act passed in that behalf in respect of all Malt begun to be made on or after the first day of October 1859, shall be twelve weeks in lieu of eighteen weeks after the making of such Account or Return of Duty as in the said Act is mentioned.
  House resumed.
  Resolutions to be reported To-morrow.

SUPPLY—REPORT.
Report of Supply brought up.
On the Vote for Prisons.
SIR WILLIAM MILESsuggested that
248
the junior departments at Parkhurst should be kept for those children whom it was found impracticable to reclaim in the reformatories. He trusted that these reformatories would be extended throughout the country.
MR. NEWDEGATEasked whether the Government had any scheme in contemplation for the establishment of a penal colony to receive those convicts whose period of penal servitude was longer than was found compatible with their health in prison.
SIR GEORGE LEWISanswered in the negative.
Resolutions agreed to.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE. MIDDLESEX (ASSISTANT JUDGE) BILL:

  THIRD READING.
  Order for Third Reading read.
  MR. BOVILLexpressed a strong opinion that the Assistant Judge should not be allowed to practise as a barrister. He thought that Parliament ought to have determined the matter itself, instead of leaving it to the Middlesex magistrates. By so doing the object of the Bill might at any time be defeated.
  Bill read 3a, and passed.

ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. FREELANDcomplained that the interests of the church lessees had been completely ignored in the Bill, and moved the adjournment of the debate.
  SIR GEORGE LEWISsaid, that on coming into office he found a comprehensive measure, which he did not think it possible to carry this Session, and the present Bill was simply confined to matters as regarded which there would not be any controversy. He hoped therefore the hon. Gentleman would withdraw his Motion for adjourning the debate, so that the Bill might be read a second time. He would undertake to fix a day for the Committee sufficiently distant to allow of a full consideration of the Bill.
  MR. INGHAMdid not recognize the necessity for legislating on this subject at all during the present Session.
  MR. DEEDEStrusted his hon. Friend would not press his Motion for adjourn-

  249
  ment. The fears of hon. Members respecting the Bill were groundless. A strong feeling had been expressed that legislation on this subject should be divided into two parts, and that only those branches of the question as to which no controversy could arise should be included in the measure before the House. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners had every desire to afford opportunity for full discussion upon the general principle.
  MR. SELWYNhoped the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary would not press the Bill. Two of its clauses militated against the rights of cathedral churches, and involved the principle of centralization. He should support the Motion for adjournment.
  Motion made, and Question put, "That the Debate be now adjourned."
  The House divided:—Ayes 62; Noes 75: Majority 13.
  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read 2° and committed for Thursday next.

ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIEF ACT AMENDMENT BILL.

  BILL WITHDRAWN.
  Order for resuming adjourned Debate on Second Beading [12 July] read.
  SIR WILLIAM SOMERVILLE SIR WILLIAM SOMERVILLE moved that the Order of the day for resuming the adjourned debate on this Bill should be discharged as he had examined the Order-hook, and found it impossible to fix any day for continuing the debate.
  THE O'DONOGHOEsaid it would have been better not to have introduced the Bill at all than to withdraw it.
  LORD FERMOYdenounced the Bill as ill-constituted and ill-timed, and as a retrograde step in the direction of an effete system of legislation. It was a piece of Kip Van Winkle legislation, which came into existence after the necessities for it had long gone by. He did not object to the Chancellorship being thrown open to Roman Catholics, but then the office itself ought to be changed for the purpose, and made a secular office.
  MR. BRADY, whilst he was prepared to advocate the admission of Roman Catholics barristers to the highest honours of the profession, was opposed to the present Bill, which he considered as an attempt to bribe them.
  COLONEL DICKSON, who moved the adjournment of the debate on the former occasion, expressed a hope that the Govern-
  250
  ment had not given way in consequence of an influential deputation which had waited on them. If the Bill had been proceeded with it would have had his strenuous support.
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, the Bill was introduced by the right hon. Baronet (Sir W. Somerville) without any concert with the Government, and it was withdrawn without concert with them.
  SIR WILLIAM SOMERVILLErepeated that his only reason for withdrawing the measure was his conviction of the impossibility of carrying it this Session.
  MR. NEWDEGATEjustified the course he had previously taken of moving, as an Amendment, that the Bill be read a second time that day three months. Nothing was more calculated to rouse the Protestant feeling of the country than the measure in question.
  Order discharged. Bill withdrawn.

MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS BILL.

  COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read.
  House in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Clause 1,
  MR. NEWDEGATEhoped, that at that late period of the night (twenty minutes past one after midnight) the hon. Member for Sheffield would withdraw the Bill [Mr. HADFIELD refused.] He would then move that the Chairman report progress, and asked leave to sit again. - Motion made, and Question put, "That the Chairman do report progress and ask leave to sit again."
  The Committee divided: Ayes 20; Noes 56: Majority 36,
  MR. BANKS STANHOPE, observing that it was quite impossible that the Bill could be properly considered at that late hour, moved the adjournment of the debate.
  Motion made, and Question put, "That the Chairman do now leave the Chair."
  The Committee divided: Ayes 19; Noes 54: Majority 35.
  MR. STEUART MR. STEUART moved that the Chairman report progress.
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTONhoped that this course would not be persisted in after the declared opinion of the Committee. It was taking undue advantage of the rules of the House,
  MR. SPOONERreminded the noble Lord that he himself had expressed an opinion against taking an opposed measure at a late hour of the night.
  MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, he could not think it reasonable to proceed with this Bill under the circumstances.
  MR. HADFIELDthen proposed to postpone further progress in the measure till Wednesday.
  House resumed.
  Committee report progress.

STATE OF THE THAMES.

  COMMITTEE MOVED FOR.
  SIR MORTON PETO SIR MORTON PETO moved, that a Select Committee he appointed to inquire-into the causes of the present state of the Thames, and to suggest such remedies as may be deemed expedient for its improvement; but stated that he would far prefer that the Government would investigate the subject by a Commission.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,—
  "That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the causes of the present state of the Thames, and to suggest such remedies as may be deemed expedient for its improvement."
  MR. BLACKBURN MR. BLACKBURN moved the Adjournment of the House. It would be impossible at this period of the year that a decent investigation should take place.
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, the matter was gone into very deliberately last Session. The cause of the state of the Thames was the making of the river a common sewer, at the same time that the water companies were abstracting more and more water from the upper part of the river; and the proper remedy was already in the course of construction in the shape of the intercepting sewers. He hoped the Motion would not be pressed.
  MR. TITEsaid, the Metropolitan Board had already accomplished a portion of this remedy, and by next year considerable progress would be made.
  Motion made, and Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put and agreed to
  House adjourned accordingly at Two o'clock.