ADJOURNED DEBATE. SECOND NIGHT.

HC Deb 23 February 1860 vol 156 cc1573-660

Order read for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [21st February],— That this House, recognising the necessity of providing for the increased expenditure of the coming financial year, is of opinion that it is not expedient to add to the existing deficiency by diminishing the ordinary revenue, and is not prepared to disappoint the just expectations of the Country by re-imposing the Income-lax at an unnecessarily high rate.

Question again proposed.

Debate resumed

MR. HUBBARD

said, it had always appeared to him that the commercial policy adopted by this country should stand in one of two categories—either that the change proposed should be so obviously beneficial as to command adoption for our own interests; or if there were to be a Treaty, the concessions we made should find their counterpart and equivalent in engagements and concessions made by the other contracting party. Now if hon. Members carefully examined this French Treaty according to the first proposition, what were the features of it? They would find that on the part of England there were to be immediate reductions to the extent of one-half the duties upon two of the most important articles—wine and brandy—which were imported into this country from France, and there was to be an entire abolition of the duty upon several articles of minor importance. With the concessions thus made he was not disposed to quarrel in the abstract, nor in the event of our being able to make them as the result of superfluous revenue, or when the deficiency to which they would give rise could be supplied by the imposition of taxes as little onerous or as little inconvenient to the community as those which it was intended to remit. Now neither he nor any one could think that those remissions could be justified on the ground of our having a surplus revenue; while, when he came to the consideration of the taxes by which the proposed remissions were to be replaced, he failed to perceive that the substitutes submitted to the sanction of the House were in any way less objectionable than those from which we were to be relieved. He would, in the first place, with the permission of hon. Members, briefly call their attention to the consideration of the Treaty with France with reference to the question of equivalents. The concessions which it was proposed to make on the part of England might, no doubt, lead to a considerable increase of trade between the two countries, so far, at all events, as wine, brandy, and silks were concerned; but when we came to take into account the equivalent concessions which France engaged to make, he found that they consisted in replacing positive prohibitions by virtual prohibitions. Certain duties were specified, in- deed, but the duties, in the first instance, amounted to 30 per cent on the principal articles of our manufacture. He was, of course, aware that that 30 per cent was, after the lapse of a certain time, to be reduced to 25; but when, he would ask, was that concession to come into operation? Not, he found, until October, 1864. So that while the concessions which we engaged to make to France were to take immediate effect, the remissions which France was to make to us were only promises to take effect four years hence. Now without at all questioning the good faith of the Government of France, he must say that the promissory note at four years' date of any Ruler of so impulsive a people as the French was not what would be called in the City a discountable security. When he said that France made no immediate concessions, he had forgotten that concession which we had obtained by the 11th Article of the Treaty. That Article appeared to him when he had first read it to be a mistake of print. That Article recited that the two contracting Powers bound themseves to levy no duty on the export of coals; but it seemed simply ridiculous that France should engage to levy no duty on the export of coal, inasmuch as she had no coal to export; and therefore an engagement on the part of France of that kind was mere surplusage. But the matter was very different to us, for we had coal and did export it. We undertook not only not to prohibit the export of coal, but we engaged not to levy a duty upon the export of coal. Now he took that to be a most objectionable engagement. He wished to know upon what policy or upon what commercial principle the Government had undertaken never to levy an export duty upon coal. The subject was one to which the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs a few days ago alluded, and in doing so he observed that a tax of 2s. a ton on the export of coal had been at one time imposed by Sir Robert Peel, but that that statesman had subsequently deemed it expedient to relinquish the charge in consequence of the discontent the impost had occasioned. But why, he would ask, had it been so relinquished by Sir Robert Peel? Simply because it gave dissatisfaction to the coalowners, who had an interest in the export of coal. He (Mr. Hubbard) should, however, confidently appeal to the House to say whether the interests of a particular class should be allowed o operate, so as to prevent the Government from raising a not unimportant amount of revenue in a most legitimate manner. The noble Lord further proceeded to contend that, to impose a tax upon exports was opposed to the general policy of the country; but he (Mr. Hubbard) regretted to hear that stated, inasmuch as he was of opinion that a portion of the taxes of the State might very advantageously and very legitimately be raised in that manner. It was, however, he admitted, the fact that an export duty would be practicable in the case of comparatively few countries. Such exceptional facilities however did exist—the sulphur mines peculiar to the Two Sicilies enabled that country to tax the export of sulphur; the boundless plains of Russia, fertile in the production of grain, of cattle, and of sheep, justified her in raising a revenue by a duty on the export of grain, hides, and tallow. But how did England stand in that respect? She had been blessed by Providence with invaluable mines of coal, in which article no other country could compete with her, and which, he contended, were not only a great source of wealth to her own people, but which might very properly be made the subject on which to raise portions of the revenue of the country. Our export of coal was 6,000,000 tons, of which France took 1,250,000. It was very well for France to say to England, "Don't you levy an export duty on coal, and we promise to do the same;" but how any one could accept that as a fair bargain he could not understand. There was one part of the correspondence relating to the French Treaty which required some notice. It was a part of Lord John Russell's letter addressed to Lord Cowley and Mr. Cobden, which he would now read:— Adverting to the distinct nature and very much higher market value of French brandy, and more especially to the interests of the Exchequer, the Queen's Government consider 10s. per gallon to be the proper duty. If, nevertheless, you should find that by making a concession, even beyond what I have named, you can obtain from the Government of the Emperor satisfactory arrangements for early reduction of duty upon some important commodities, you are authorized to engage for the reduction of the duty on brandy to the same rate as that on British spirits brought from the Colonies—namely, 8s. 2d. per gallon. He should be glad to learn at the proper time what were the important concessions in the reduction of duties we had received from France in consideration of the reduction of the duty on French brandy from 10s per gallon—stated by Lord John Rus- sell to be the proper duty—to 8s. 2d. per gallon. The concessions made on the other side were no equivalent whatever for what we gave up on this side of the water. Passing from the consideration of the concessions on either side as equivalents—he wished dispassionately to consider what the concessions made by France were really worth in themselves. The extreme concession made by France was the imposition of a duty of 25 per cent at four years' date. It was a perfect mockery. If it was not itself prohibitory, he was very much mistaken. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had told them as much in his exposition of the Budget. He said that in 1811 linens were exported to France, but that the raising of the rate of duty in 1842 to a much higher rate, completely extinguished the trade. If 20 or 27 per cent extinguished the trade then, it would not revive it now. But they were told they should consider this Treaty as a step to more enlightened legislation on the other side of the water. He (Mr. Hubbard) was glad to hear of that prospect. That eminent liberator of trade, Mr. Cobden, it was said, should have the glory of bringing the French Emperor and nation to substitute for prohibition what, although it might be a virtual prohibition in terms, still held out some hope for the future. In that saying, however, was said all that could be said in favour of the Treaty. He certainly congratulated Mr. Cobden on the progress his Imperial pupil had made; and he congratulated his Imperial pupil on his progress; but he could not congratulate the English people on the result, which imposed on them an additional 2d. in the pound of income tax as the price of a lesson in political economy given by Mr. Cobden to the Emperor of the French. Could that eminent individual have been prevailed to lay down a large portion of his immense armament—one-third—and we had done the same, sweeping off £10,000,000 from our Estimates, and so relieved ourselves from the necessity of paying a sevenpenny, not to say a tenpenny income tax—that would, indeed, have been a gain to the country, and a triumph to Mr. Cobden. He should now turn from the remissions of duty specially connected with the trade of France, and come to those which, ex propria motu, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made on this side of the water. Many of those were very excellent in themselves, and some of them would contribute to the production of cheap plum-puddings. The duty was reduced on butter, eggs, nutmegs, raisins and currants, and also on timber, in respect of which the reduction was an important one. The Government reduce duties approaching £2,000,000 in virtue of the French Treaty: remove another£2,000,000 professedly in favour of English commerce; add these remissions to the previous deficiency, and then of necessity have new and weighty impositions to propose. The countervailing impositions, if the object were to challenge opposition, were, he admitted, most ingeniously contrived. He would first take the contract stamps. The House had never had a perfect explanation of what those were; but he took the proposal to be this—that every document which recorded a bargain between two parties, whether issued to them from an official broker, or resulting from the direct negotiation of two individuals, must be subject to this taxation. Did the right hon. Gentleman see how wide was the field over which this new taxation would extend? Take the case of mere brokers. The broker had a book in which he entered every sale he made; he then sent each of the two parties for whom he acted a copy of his entry: was each of those copies to be taxed? If so, it was not one document, but two, which were to be taxed in each transaction, and the tax was not to be a penny, but a two penny one. Then there were contracts made daily by letter between persons engaged in trade. Take the case of two parties living in different places—say Hull and London. The merchant in Hull wrote to his correspondent in London, saying that he would give a certain price for certain goods. The merchant in London wrote to say he would accept the offer. Those two letters, in law, constituted a contract. Were both to be taxed? If not taxed, what was the consequence? Some penalty, more or less grave, must attach to the neglect or accidental disuse of these penny stamps. Take, again, the case of a commercial traveller, who made a sale to a country shopkeeper, and entered a memorandum of that sale in his book. Was there to be a penny stamp plastered on to every such memorandum? Let them again consider the mode in which business is done at Manchester. The agent arranges transactions verbally between principals, no notes are passed, but an entry is made in his own book. Was that register of a bargain to be subject to a stamp? Take the case of Exchange brokers; their operations were of the most rapid and unformal character. At 'Change time you saw them running from one merchant to another, littering a few hurried words, and distributing small slips of paper marked by a few strokes of a pencil. Those slips were contracts for the negotiation of bills of exchange, the medium by which thousands and tens of thousands were being paid by one country to another. Were these slips to be stamped? Were the House to be called upon to check this vigour of trade, this life-like proceeding, by the imposition of the paltry tax of a penny? He could scarcely keep his patience at such a proposition. He confessed, as a merchant, he did not know whether he should not have to get all his letter-paper stamped, for he could not tell what might not be called a contract under the new law. It appeared to him that while in one respect they were taking the duty off paper they were putting it on in another form, and in one that must necessarily have a most disastrous effect on commerce. The proposed stamp on contracts would not only give rise to annoyance and litigation, but to much pecuniary loss, for if one of those contracts was produced in a court of law it would be valueless unless it bore a stamp. Under the proposed system a merchant of the highest repute might be ruined by the accidental omission of a penny stamp on the contract. An essential characteristic of the present day was the respect paid to the saving of time, as indicated by the millions spent in railways and electric telegraphs. Why, then, waste the time of the traders of the country by these petty impositions? It was not the amount but the time lost by this penny stamp that made him so hostile to it. Traders would not care about paying the penny in some other form; but they objected to have their business impeded and their risks increased by so vexatious and annoying a tax as a contract stamp. It would raise only £100,000, and for the sake of such a sum it was not necessary to harass the operations of trade throughont the length and breadth of the land. He came next to the proposed tax on dock warrants. Would this impost apply to delivery orders as well as to dock warrants?—because the two documents ran very much together. If it did, it would work in a very oppressive manner. When a ship arrived the merchant in the first instance made out a delivery order for the whole cargo. That order was lodged; and then warrants were taken out for either the whole or certain portions of the goods, as was most convenient. If this tax was imposed then, and then only—if it extended only to the first Act by which property of great value came into the possession of the importer, there would be some limit to it. But that was not the case. These delivery orders or primary warrants having been lodged, subsidiary warrants were taken out; and the process of subdivision went on until it re-resulted very frequently in a separate warrant for every individual package. Thus by this multiplication of warrants the tax would go on multiplying itself as the goods diminished in value, until its pressure became very aggravated. An impost of 3d., in the first instance, on a cargo of any commodity would be nothing; but when it came to be repeated on every small box or chest, it would prove very oppressive indeed. The tax, therefore, was one which, in the interests of trade, it was not expedient to establish. It was next proposed to levy a tax on the operations carried on in the bonded warehouses. Those operations were performed by the servants of the various dock companies, who, of course, made a charge upon their customers. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer now wished to make a charge for the services of the Customs' officer, who did nothing but look on while the work was being done. This tax would be most onerous in regard to some commodities; and as it was not regulated according to value, in certain cases it would absolutely absorb the entire margin of profit. Here again, therefore, he must suggest that the impost was not one that it was desirable to create. But a special charge of 1s. a package was also placed on removals from the bonded warehouses by the right hon. Gentleman's Budget. Thus, on a single chest of tea 1s. 4d. altogether would be charged for the services of the Customs' officers in looking on, and for the removal. This removal charge, he humbly submitted, was one that ought not to be levied at all, the Customs' authorities not rendering any real assistance in the operation. The proposed registration fee of 1d. on every package was equally objectionable. Any uniform charge of that kind would be utterly destructive of the importation of a great many small packages. It was no doubt most desirable that correct statistical information on the subject of our exports and imports should be obtained; but the object was one of public utility, and why should the merchant alone be called upon to pay for it? The Custom-house had already the machinery for ascertaining the value of everything that we imported and exported; and the collection of such statistics was for the advantage of the community in general,—not for the individual benefit of the merchant. There was not, therefore, a sufficient reason for the creation of a new impost for the purposes of registration. He now approached one of the most important parts of the Budget. It was to the income tax that the right hon. Gentleman looked for the principal means of filling up the chasm which his own remission of duties would create. No less than 3d. in the pound was to be added to the original income tax proposed by Sir Robert Peel, or 5d. more than the rate at which it would have stood but for this change in the right hon. Gentleman's policy. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said he wished to make his contemplated reductions of duty out of deference to the expectations of the public that the year 1800 would be an era marked by the relief it would afford the country from the pressure of its heavy fiscal burdens. The springs of industry were to be sensibly lightened. Very true; but what promise had been more distinctly held out to the people, or more cordially accepted by them—of what pledge had the fulfilment been more strongly insisted upon by the right hon. Gentleman himself—than that given for the total abolition of the income tax in 1860? If any promise was to be kept, let it be the chief promise. Let the Government keep that promise but for which they would never have had the income tax which now existed. The right hon. Gentleman had acknowledged the willingness with which the people bore their burdens. Indeed, he had said they might almost be accused—not of an ignorant "impatience," but rather of an ignorant "patience" of taxation. But why had they displayed such a temper? Why had they so patiently borne the income tax from year to year? Because the English people had believed the word of statesmen, because they had believed that that very year of the tax would be its last. Now, however, it was to be renewed, and renewed in an aggravated form, and not one word of hope to reconcile them to the grinding exaction. Every successive Chancellor of the Exchequer, every great statesman had declared the impost intolerable in time of peace; for that reason they had said, "Never mind looking into its imperfections; it is very difficult to meddle with at all; it answers very well for raising the supplies for war; bear it now and you will get rid of it next year." As it now stood the impost taxed fairly real property and dividends. But there its fairness stopped. It taxed the landowner on the money he laid out in repairs and agency; it taxed the householder on the necessary provision he made for the want of durability in his property; it taxed the annuitant, whether for life or for a term, not on his income, but on his capital. One single word had struck him as most inaccurate in the brilliant harangue of the right hon. Gentleman, remarkable as his diction usually was for its force and propriety. Speaking of the relief to be obtained from the falling in of Terminable Annuities, the right hon. Gentleman described it as a relief "in the payment of the interest on the national debt." He knew not whether any other hon. Gentleman noticed the phrase, but he confessed that when he heard it it went to his heart. He regretted that his right hon. Friend, fully couversant with the subject himself, should have used language which sanctioned a mischievous error respecting Terminable Annuities. In them we not only paid interest, but we repaid the capital of large sums of money borrowed by the Government of this country seventy or eighty years ago. If the sums which the right hon. Gentleman called interest, which had been paid year from year for the Long Annuities, were really only the interest upon the loans, then the conclusion was inevitable that we had never repaid the capital. But if the sums which had been paid yearly were repayments of capita], then the income tax had, in respect of the Long Annuities, been levied on capital. The income tax was a tax not only on the interest of the capital embarked in trade, but on the capital created by the industry, the labour, and the ingenuity of the trader; and the interest of that now capital would be taxed the very next year. But the present income tax had other defects. It did not tax equally, as between man and man, those who constituted the commercial and trading classes. Two men might each make in ten years £100,000, and one might have paid double the tax of the other, although—and this was most curious—both should have made their returns to Somerset House with perfect accuracy, and according to law. Did this seem inexplicable? Here was the solution of the riddle. One man returned his profits and paid his tax upon £10,000 made year by year. The other returned his profits alternately £5,000, £25,000, and nil. For the more productive year he only pays the tax upon the average of three years—£10,000. For the year in which £5,000 were made he only pays on £5,000, and for the worst year he pays nothing. Now was this a satisfactory system to retain on the statute book? If Ministers had been as anxious to improve as they had been to impose the income tax he did not believe it would have remained in its present imperfect and unjust condition. Unfortunately, however, it was one of those subjects upon which party spirit produced an evil effect, for, if one Government proposed to retain the income tax, it was of course opposed on the other side; and if one party attempted to divest the income tax of its chief defects, the attempt was resisted by their opponents. Thus, from the party spirit which prevailed the income tax was allowed to remain in its present imperfect condition, which made it an absolute disgrace to the intelligence of the age. He could never believe that in a country like this it was indispensable to raise the revenue by means of machinery that had been condemned by statesman after statesman for its imperfections and its inequalities. Passing from the methods proposed to supply the deficiencies about to be created he would next consider the probable effects of the Budget—a Budget which some had declared to be second only to the great Budget of Sir Robert Peel. Some persons appeared to anticipate wonderful results, and the hon. Member for Montrose (Mr. Baxter) had declared it would give a great impetus to our trade, especially with France. He (Mr. Hubbard) had no doubt that some increase in trade of wine, brandy, and silks would take place; but he would remind the House that it was not for the reduction of duties upon wines, spirits, and silks that Sir Robert Peel's policy had become so famous. Sir Robert Peel's Budget stood upon different grounds; his glory was that he emancipated the industry of the country from inconvenient restrictions, and that he created fresh markets for our manufactures by destroying the old corn laws. It had been said that the repeal of the corn laws had not had any appreciable effect in lowering the price of bread. He did not think that remark well founded; but if it were, still free trade in corn had attained its object, and had made bread dearer in other countries. It had, in fact, equalized the price of bread, and thus by making labour dearer abroad had enabled us to find markets for our manufactures which otherwise would not have been opened to us. If at the time we reduced the price of bread here, France, Germany, and other countries had been able to reduce it also, and thus cheapen their labour, so as to possess the same relative advantage over us, we should not have been able to obtain those new markets for our industry which were now open to us. Sir Robert Peel's mission had been a glorious and successful one. He removed the burdens which pressed upon the necessaries of life, and allowed raw products to enter freely from other countries, which enabled our manufacturers to enter upon a widely extended and successful career throughout the world. But the countries with which we found the largest trade and from which consequently we derived the greatest advantages, were not such as France. Our best customers were the United States, from whom we took millions worth of cotton, colonies like Australia and India, and some of the new countries in the East, to which we sent enormous supplies of Manchester and Birmingham goods. Such were the countries with whom we carried on a really profitable trade. Under the new Treaty we might have more claret, brandy, and silk—and he did not intend to depreciate the advantages of cheap clarets, brandies, and silks—but it was not by the encouragement of the consumption of such articles that the wealth of England could be increased. He was aware he might be told that such an opinion was opposed to the principles of free trade, but he considered that free trade and political economy should be tested by the rules of common sense and experience. If any hon. Member found his tenant drinking more brandy -and-water, his wife wearing more French silks, his son sporting more French gloves, would he consider them any the richer? They could not be, for they did not make anything that would enable them to pay for those enjoyments. So, in respect of our manufactures which we were to supply to France in return for wine and silks, the duty of thirty per cent would really be a prohibitory duty, which would prevent us from paying our debts with our goods. He was aware that the commercial was not the only consideration that could be brought to bear on the Treaty, but that there were political advantages assigned to the conclusion of the Treaty into which he was not disposed to enter. It might be most desirable on political grounds, but if it had been entered into as a treaty of amity, and a means of promoting friendship and goodwill between us and our neighbours, let us not seek to support it by alleging commercial advantages which were purely imaginary. He wished to refer to the financial condition of the country in 1860–61, as described by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman said the expenditure for the year would be £70,100,000. The ordinary revenue was £58,700,000; and assuming that the increased duties upon tea and sugar were maintained, there would still remain a deficiency of £9,700,000. The income tax at 10d. would reduce that deficiency to £828,000, which was to be met by anticipating the receipts on account of the malt and hop duties. He did not object to those receipts being called up, as he did not see why credit should be given to one class rather than another; but that did not constitute a source of revenue for the current year. There would still be a deficiency of £828,000 for the year 1861–2. The Chancellor of the Exchequer told them that he had abandoned all attempts to make provision for a term of years. He knew it was difficult, but he wished they had in 1860 a clearer and more hopeful prospect of the state of matters in 1862. It was impossible for any one not in possession of the information which was at the command of the Government to make satisfactory comments on future expenditure or revenue; but from the £70,672,000 which represented the whole available means of 1860–61 he would like to deduct the whole of the objectionable imposts to which he had referred, and 3d. in the pound of the income tax, while on the other hand he would maintain the whole of the duties which were to be remitted according to the Budget. Without being in the confidence of the Government there was no knowing how the deficiency might be provided for. But to impose more than 7d. in the pound of income tax would be a cruel disappointment, as the words of the Motion properly described it, to the just expectations of the country. With regard to the Treaty, as a matter of equivalent between the two countries it appeared to him to be thoroughly unjust: he thought the remission of duties most unwise, seeing that they were not made out of a redundant revenue, nor replaced by taxes of a less obnoxious character. He was not sufficiently inured to Parliamentaiy conflicts to be insensible to pain in offering any opposition to the measure which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had brought forward, no doubt with a single desire to promote the welfare of the country, but he did not feel himself justified in concealing from the House the opinion he entertained of the mischief and dangers of his policy; and he was desirous of protesting, solemnly protesting, against the aggravated imposition of the income tax, and the multiplication of trivial, but harassing and obstructing imposts, injurious to trade, but injurious not to trade only, but to the country, which, through the industry, intelligence, and enterprise of her traders, has acquired her widespread empire, her resistless power, and her unexampled prosperity.

MR. BAINES

, as representing one of the largest manufacturing constituencies in the kingdom, asked permission to state, very briefly, the opinions he had formed upon the great financial and commercial scheme laid before the House. He regretted to have to follow a gentleman of such high financial and commercial authority as the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Hubbard), whose authority, he also regretted to find, had been arrayed in condemnation of the measure before the House. But there was an authority higher, even in financial and commercial matters, than his—namely, the state of the public funds. Now he (Mr. Baines) observed that upon the first promulgation of the Budget and the Treaty, the funds experienced a rise, and that they experienced a second rise after the decisive division of last Monday; and as the opinion had gone on to prevail that the Budget and the Treaty would be carried by a large Parliamentary majority, so the funds had continued to advance. And it was not merely the funds of this country that had risen. Though we had been told that the Treaty was unpopular in France, there had been a most decided advance in the French funds also since its promulgation. He might also observe that the various Chambers of Commerce, and many public meetings in the largest manufacturing and commercial towns of the country, had expressed themselves as decidedly favourable to the great measure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He might further say that, upon the whole, it had received the decided support of the press. He believed it had the assent of a considerable majority of that House, and he trusted, therefore, that notwithstanding the boldness of the measure, it would be generally pronounced to be one, safe as it was comprehensive, and wise as it was bold. If he (Mr. Baines) mistook not, the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hubbard) had fallen into one or two errors, which he was sure could only have been unintentional. He understood him to say that the duties upon several articles of English manufacture would be raised, according to the new French tariff, to 30 per cent, although they were now admitted in some instances at lower rates. The hon. Gentleman could not have been in. the House, or he would have known that a statement had been made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer this very evening, which entirely negatived that supposition. It was not the fact that the duties upon English manufactures, which were now below 30 per cent, would be raised by the new tariff. The duties would not be raised, according to the opinion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, upon any article beyond what they were at present. This statement should at once allay the alarm felt by the flax spinners of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Looking at the comparative French tariff, the rates of duty there mentioned were the maximum rates; they were not the actual rates; but looking at the Treaty, it would be observed, from Article 13, that the ad valorem duties, fixed by the previous Article, were to be converted into specific duties, by a subsequent convention, to be concluded before the 1st July, 1860. So that, instead of English yarns and English goods being admitted into France at a duty of 30 per cent, there were several articles now admitted into France at a duty of 10, and even at 6 per cent, and the probability was that those duties would not be advanced, but would remain the same as they were now. When the subsequent convention came to be passed, it would establish no higher rate of duty upon any article exported from England into France than now existed. There was another misunderstanding into which the hon. Gentleman had fallen, of course most unintentionally. He stated that the cost of this French Treaty to England would be 2d. in the pound of the income tax. This was a great mistake. It would not be more than 1d. Although relief would be granted nominally to an amount approaching £2,000,000 a year, yet the loss to the taxation of England would be little more than £1,000,000, and £1,000,000 was 1d., and not 2d. of the income tax. And here he hoped he might be allowed to do an act of justice towards his hon. Friend the Member for Montrose (Mr. Baxter). The hon. Baronet the Member for Stamford (Sir S. Northcote), commenting upon what his hon. Friend had said, observed that he had stated that all the favourable remissions of taxation in the Budget and in the Treaty were to be purchased only by an advance of 1d. per pound in the income tax. This was an unintentional, but gross mistake. His hon. Friend (Mr. Baxter) was alluding to the French Treaty alone; and it was in reference to that alone that he said the advantages it conferred would be purchased by an increase in the income tax of 1d.; and in that he was strictly correct. The hon. Member for Buckingham had also remarked that the effect of the repeal of the corn laws, which he had justly styled a "glorious measure," was not merely to lower the price of bread in this country, but to raise the price of bread abroad. Now, he asked the hon. Gentleman to apply that argument to the future competition between England and France, and to the effect of the Treaty upon the manufactures of England. It would have the effect of equalizing the price of labour in England and France. It would have the same effect upon the price of labour that the repeal of the com laws had had upon the price of bread; and if it raised the price of labour in France, it would diminish the disadvantages under which the English manufacturers lay. It appeared to him that the objections of the hon. Member, though most candid, amounted, at the most, to a minute and microscopic criticism of a great plan. He was glad, however, to find that the hon. Gentleman candidly allowed that the principles of the Commercial Treaty were most just. As for himself (Mr. Baines), it was not upon any small grounds, but upon very great grounds, that he was prepared to give his assent to it. He would not, however, say he should give his unqualified assent to it, because there were points in it upon which he must reserve his approbation; but he gave his warmest support to it as a whole, because it was a great financial and commercial measure. The broad grounds upon which he supported it were these:—First of all, because it would complete the great system of free trade begun by earlier and most distinguished statesmen, and abolish all the shackles which now existed upon productive industry. The second reason which recommended it to his mind was, that in the taxes to be remitted regard was always paid to the interest of the consumer—that was to say, to the great bulk of the population. The third consideration which recommended it to him was, that it established new bonds of friendship and commercial intercourse between England and her nearest neighbour—thatcountry which, next to the United States of America, it would be most diastrous to us to be in hostilities with, and which might be most profitable and valuable to us through friendly commercial intercourse. The Treaty had been blamed, first because it was said it was a treaty of reciprocity, and next be-cause it did not include reciprocity. The first was an argumentum ad hominem addressed to Free-traders; the second was addressed to the fears of the Protectionists. It was, indeed, a treaty of reciprocity in one sense, inasmuch as both sides received benefits from it; but it was not a treaty of reciprocity in another sense—namely, it was not a higgling bargain for what the hon. Member called "equivalents." It did not pretend to take an exact measure of the value of the concessions to be made on each side. Why? Because the two countries were in totally different and, indeed, almost in opposite positions with regard to the great principles of free trade. England went further than France towards a perfect system of freedom of trade; but she did not concede nearly so much as France did. We had a very little advance to make to attain the full goal of perfect freedom. France had to reverse the policy of two hundred years, and had to begin her course. It would be the glory of the right hon. Gentleman to have laid this, the top-stone of the fabric of free trade, in this country; but it would be the glory of the Emperor Napoleon to have laid the foundation-stone of free trade in France. Thus there was an entire and absolute difference of circumstances in the two countries, which made it impossible that the Treaty should be an exchange of equivalents. It never professed to be, but it was, nevertheless, reciprocity in the best sense of the word, which made valuable concessions one to the other; and if we made fewer, we still went further in reaching the full point of free trade. And let the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer ever be remembered, "that all we gave to France we gave to ourselves at the same time." It was impossible to look at the comparative tariff without seeing what a mighty advance was made by France towards the total destruction of prohibition and the promotion of free trade. Let the House just hear the number of articles of the utmost commercial importance to this country, against which there was written the word "prohibited" in the existing tariff:—Pig iron of a certain description, prohibited; purified puddled iron under a certain weight—prohibited; forged iron in lamps—prohibited; cutlery, except articles charged as tools—prohibited; metal wares of cast iron, sheet iron, steel, zinc, and tin—prohibited; plated articles—prohibited; wollen yarns, manufactures of hair, of cotton, various kinds of lace—prohibited; manufactures of various kinds of silk—prohibited; manufactures of various kinds of cotton, prohibited; all kinds of woollen manufactures (with the exception of trimmings), cotton hosiery, fine stoneware, glass of various kinds—prohibited; ships and boats—prohibited; carriages—prohibited; cabinet ware—prohibited; manufactures of leather of all kinds, except pack-saddles—prohibited; refined sugar—prohibited; soap, except perfumed, and extracts from dye woods—prohibited. And this was not all. If the tariff were further examined it would be found that there were many of these articles, which were now admitted upon duties so enormous that even if 30 per cent were to be the fixed rate, which it was not, it would be a very great reduction. Take the article of iron. It 'would be found that bar iron was now charged from 54 to 79 per cent; machinery of various kinds, except steam engines, paid from 18 to 240 per cent. Taking woollen manufactures, it would be found that Brussels carpets paid from 42 to 60 per cent, and other kinds 43 per cent; earthenware varied from 48 to 235 per cent; kitchen ware was at the rate of 120 per cent; looking glasses from 21 to 195 per cent; and silvered glasses from 37 to 120 per cent. And so it was with many of our principal manufactures; so that the hon. Gentleman was labouring under a very great and grave misconception, if he imagined that upon the most important articles of English manufactures there was not an immense reduction of duties established by the Treaty. The hon. Gentleman had remarked upon the article of coal, and said he thought it would be almost suicidal for us to promote the ex- port of coal. He (Mr. Baines) should like to know what right we had to inflict such a restriction upon the industry of many of the most important and populous counties in England, Scotland, and Wales? Many of those counties were upon great coal-fields; and what right had we to put a restriction upon their industry by taxing their exports, when we did not tax other exports? What right had we, and what sense would there be in denying ourselves the great advantage of the export of these various articles to our railway and our shipping interests? There were objections made to it of two kinds—one was commercial, and the other political. The commercial objection was, that coal was a raw material of manufacture, and that by supplying it to our competitors, they would be enabled to compete with us upon more advantageous terms. He (Mr. Baines) would remind the House of a very striking analogy to this export of the article of coal. There was one article of which it was the rule of this country to prohibit the export for a period of 500 years, and it was a most important article of agricultural prodce. It was the article of English wool. Prom the time of Edward the First to the year 1824, the export of wool was absolutely prohibited; and such was the monstrous state of the law that persons who did export it were liable to mutilation, imprisonment, and even death, if they ran, as it was called, wool to the opposite coast. In 1824 the prohibition was entirely taken away, to the great advantage generally of the landed interest. He remembered the time when in Bradford, Leeds, and Halifax, it would have been thought something like high treason to repeal the prohibition, so important was it thought to be to the manufactures of those towns. "What had been the result? Why, one continued course of prosperity from that day to this, so that their manufactures were now much more flourishing and more extensive than they were before the period when the abolition of the prohibition took place. What would they say if every other country denied to them the raw material for their manufactures?" What would they say if the United States would not export them cotton; or if Saxony would not send them wool; or if Italy declined to supply them with silk? What would they say if every other country resolved to keep to themselves their own articles? They knew that by the adoption of that course of proceeding on the part of other countries the ma- nufacturing industry of England would be entirely destroyed. A great objection had been made to the export of coal to France, because it supplied the means of making war; but that was the strongest argument in his opinion in favour of the free exportation of coal from this country to France. If they could make the country they most apprehended as an enemy dependent upon them for the means of making war, they could bind over that country to keep the peace with them. It was scarcely necessary to remind the House of the great advantages which had arisen from the system of free trade, of which the Budget was to be the consummation. He reminded them of the enormous expansion of the products of industry which had taken place since the years 1842 and 1846. In the year 1842 the declared value of British and Irish manufactures exported, amounted to £47,381,000; in 1847, to £51,105,000; and in 1859, to £130,000,000. The export of those manufactures was last year nearly threefold the amount in 1842, and more than double the amount in 1847. He admitted that the whole of this increase might not be attribuable to free trade, but might be partly attributable to the supply of gold—to the development of their colonies—to the perfecting of their communications internal and oceanic—but he would say that, above all, the liberation of trade from the shackles upon it had contributed to bring about this great and enormous result. Let any Gentleman mention to him, if he could, one single article, which had been subjected to competition from a foreign article, and had suffered from the competition. He did not know of any article that had suffered, but, on the contrary, thought that the consumption of all had increased. Not one but all their branches of manufacture had greatly extended; and what hon. Gentlemen opposite thought was utterly impossible—wages had increased instead of diminishing, and every branch of trade flourished. But what was most remarkable was—that after the total abolition of the corn laws agriculture itself was in the highest state of prosperity it had ever known, the rents of the landlords were increased, and there was a large increase on the incomes of the farmers. The abolition of the paper duty was said to be a wanton throwing away of a source of income; but the fact was, the paper duty had become a duty utterly untenable in law and policy, and equally untenable according to the opinions of persons in and out of doors. There were commercial reasons, without number, for removing the duty on paper, because it was an article that entered into the consumption of every wholesale and retail trade in the country. It was known that when the trammels of the Excise were removed, the trade would receive an expansion from the freedom thus conferred much greater in value than the amount of duty taken off. And the manufacture would spring up to a degree of prosperity and activity that it had never before reached. It should be remembered that the paper duty was a tax upon the means of acquiring information at school, and on the correspondence of those who wished to keep up a communication with each other after leaving school. In fact, on various grounds the paper duty had become indefensible and untenable. The hon. Gentleman who spoke last contended that the income tax was not a pleasant tax, and that its imposition was attended with many inequalities. He (Mr. Baines) quite agreed with the hon. Gentleman that the income tax was far from being pleasant, and that it was attended with inequalities which he should like to see removed; but it should be remembered that the income tax was now retained for identically the same purposes for which it was originally imposed. It was retained to meet a deficiency in revenue, as it had been imposed to meet a deficiency in revenue. It was retained to liberate their industry, as it had been established, in the first instance, to liberate their industry. It could not, therefore, be said that there was any substantial difference between the conduct of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer in raising temporarily—as he hoped it would be temporarily—the income tax to 10d., and the conduct of Sir R. Peel, in proposing the income tax in 1842. He trusted that, as the Estimates laid on the table were of a temporary nature, the necessity for retaining the income tax would be of a temporary nature also. Was it not known that two millions of the Estimates were proposed for the purpose of replacing the Ordnance, in consequence of the modern improvements in ordnance and small arms, which rendered them more effective and precise than those that existed before? That, therefore, was an expense which was forced upon the Government and the country. He had heard with much pleasure the remarks of the Chancellor of the Exchequer about one of the alterations which he intended to propose in the Reso- lutions he had laid before the House. It had reference to a proposition to which he (Mr. Baines) felt the strongest objection. He meant the proposal to extend the licences for beer. It seemed to him that such an arrangement would have an evil effect on the morals of the country, and, greatly as he valued wealth, he rated the morals of the country more highly. If a measure were adopted that would indefiniflnitely increase the number of drinking-houses, under the guise of eating-houses, it would inflict a wound upon the morals of the country that no Budget would makeup. To licensing the article of wine he had much less objection, because the use of the light unintoxicating wines of France might be a positive advantage to the morals of the country. On the whole, he must give his warm and strong approbation to the great financial measure before them.

MR. BLACKBURN

said, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in developing his financial scheme, had declared that their choice lay between leaving impost duties as they were, and paying a 9d. income tax, or taking his plan and paying 9d. more. But was this the case? The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that a sum of £70,100,000 would be required for the expenses of the year. Of this amount £62,800,000 would be produced by the duties which it was intended to retain, and, with the hop and malt credits, would realize £64,290,000. An income-tax at the rate of 7d. in the pound would yield £5,930,000., which, added to the other items of revenue, would make £70,220,000, or an excess of £120,000 above the amount required by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman further stated that he had struck off £640,000 for the losses which would be sustained by the French Treaty this year; so that, if this scheme of reduction were not adopted, and the revenue were left in its natural channels, there would be a surplus of more than £700,000. Consequently, if they adopted the financial proposals which had been submitted to them, the advantages must be bought by an addition of 3d. to the income-tax. He for one admitted that free trade had proved beneficial to the country; it had been universally adopted by the House, and he was at a loss to understand why hon. Gentlemen on the other side—who, if he did not mistake, had sat opposite to Sir Robert Peel—should take credit exclusively for the advantages it had conferred. It might be worth while to pay an additional 3d. for free trade; but when they came to consider what was called the free trade part of the Budget, he held that the term so applied was a misnomer. Free trade, as he understood the phrase, consisted not in free imports and the abolition of Customs' duties, but in the removal of everything which afforded protection to native industry—in other words, that the consumer should not be required to pay anything to the producer beyond the legitimate cost of the article. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer could scarcely have been serious in maintaining that duties on brandy and wine were protective duties because they were drinks, and other drinks were made here; the same might as well be said of tea. We could grow neither winenor tea in this country. It was the same with brandy; though spirit—alcohol—was distilled in England, they could not produce brandy, and the duty on it was not a protective one. The same was the case with currants and other foreign fruits; they could not be grown in England. It was clear, then, that the reduction of duties that were protective only applied to the duties on manufactured articles, to the amount of £1,200,000. The genius of free trade required that they should sacrifice the constituents of the hon. Member for Coventry, in order to get ribands and other articles something cheaper at their expense; and to obtain this reduction of price twopence in the pound was laid on income, which would raise £1,500,000, or a surplus of £250,000 above the £1,200,000lostbytheremission of duties on manufactured articles. This was the price they had to pay for free trade in this particular. What was the other penny in the pound paid for? The £1,000,000 raised by this penny was paid to reduce the price of wine, and the other benefits supposed to he derived under the French Treaty. But it was not for the reduction of the price of wine and brandy solely. It was for something else—the benefit supposed to be gained to the manufacturers of this country, who would export more goods; and to the iron and coal masters, who would export more of their materials. Was that free trade? The great bulk of the nation was to pay additional taxes to buy this free trade for the advantage of the iron and coal masters, and the manufacturers of Manchester. This, he thought, was the very converse of free trade: in fact, they were falling into protection again by another and most extraordinary way. They were buying advantages for the producers and manufacturers. He did not grudge it them, if, in the natural course of things, the French Government chose to admit their coal, and iron, and goods, and they gained an extended market by the natural course of affairs, even if it raised the price of coal and iron at home. But the people were actually called on to pay more taxes to gain them this advantage. He perfectly agreed with the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Du Cane); they were to pay 3d. in the pound income tax for the purpose of buying an extended foreign market for a certain class of producers. He should certainly support the Amendment.

MR. MARSH

said, that the repeal of a duty was not to be taken as the measure of the reduction in price of the articles from which the duty was removed. The seller of the article must, of course, get a profit on the capital he has expended in paying the duty. This was shown palpably in the case of claret. By a comparison with the cost of a bottle of claret at Rotterdam with the cost of the same at Dovor, it appeared that the difference was owing to the high duties on wine, and not to any scarcity in the commodity. That difference was 3s. 6d. per bottle. The cause of this was, firstly, as he had said that the seller had to get a profit on the duty; and next, that in Amsterdam one hundred bottles of claret were sold for one bottle that was sold in England, and the trader could, therefore, sell it for a smaller profit. It was the same with sugar. The grocer was satisfied with ten per cent on that article, because he sold large quantities of it; but on articles less in demand, such as allspice, he charged 100 per cent and upwards. In cases where the duty was very high, the Chancellor of the Exchequer got some of the duty, but in many cases he got nothing. To show how the removal of duty increased the demand for an article, he would instance the case of India-rubber, which, when a duty was imposed upon it, was used only for rubbing out pencil marks; but, when Mr. Huskisson removed the duty, the trade in the article immediately took an extraordinary development in a very short period. He (Mr. Marsh) had no doubt that the consumption of the various articles from which it was proposed to remove the duties would be enormous in this country. Numbers of persons on the shores of the Mediterranean lived upon dates, and grew strong on them, and though he did not believe dates would ever become the sole article of food for Englishmen, he was satisfied that they would add largely to the food of this country. It was the same with figs, a cheap species of which, extensively used as food in the Mediterranean, could be obtained at 1d. per lb. As regarded wine, the consumption of that article had been checked and destroyed amongst whole classes by the duty. In Scotland and England wine was once generally drunk. In the time of Queen Elizabeth her maids of honour were allowed two bottles of claret a day. Habits had changed, and neither maids of honour nor any other maids had allowances of claret. Even in the last century, after a considerable duty had been placed upon it, the consumption was considerable, as might be seen in that amusing novel, Joseph Andrews, when the hero calls for his bottle of wine along with his bread. But the question to which he looked was not what people did formerly, but what they did now. He had been in colonies where wine was let in at a moderate duty, and he could bear testimony that it was largely consumed; while, at the same time, it contributed greatly to keep the working classes sober. At Gibraltar, the soldiers drank wine at £5 per pipe, or at the rate of 2½d. per bottle—and drank a great deal too much of it. That wine, Benecarlo, was, he thought, the wine that would be most generally consumed by the working classes in this country, as it was strong and rough but well-flavoured. With respect to the income tax, he considered it unjust as it was at present assessed, and he suggested that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should capitalize it, and tax the sum so produced. For instance, in the case of a professional man with £1,000 a year derived from his profession, he would have that income valued; and suppose it was valued at ten years' purchase, he would take the 10d. tax on the interest of the income so capitalized. That would give a tax on £300, or something more per annum, instead of on £1,000 as it stood at present, and would bring in more to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In fact, the tax was looked upon as unjust, and people would not pay it when it could possibly be avoided; and he believed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was systematically cheated out of half the real amount of the duty. One could not take up The Times without finding acknowledgments of conscience money, which amounted in the average, he believed, to £10 a day. Even if the income tax were lowered, a great deal of the money left in the pockets of the people would find its way into the Exchequer, in the shape of Excise duties, and so on. Another mine of wealth was the Miscellaneous Estimates, which had only sprung up within the last twenty years, and which did no good to the country. Moreover, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had already had a windfall from Spain, might have another from China, if there were no war with that country. The great point, however, was not to keep up our armaments. There could be no doubt that we were arming against France; and, therefore, if France could be induced to think more of peace and industry, and less of war and glory, it would be of the greatest advantage to England. The French people disliked the sea, and did not much like the army, as was proved by the fact that a substitute for the conscription cost £80, whereas, in any market town in England one could be had foils.; and if the people, therefore, once get it into their heads that industrial occupation was more profitable than soldiering, the conscription would cease to be popular, and would soon be at an end, and along with it would end large armies in France, and the necessity for large armies and large fleets in England. He hoped the House and the Conservative party would not oppose the Treaty, because, if what was now offered by France was not accepted, this country might never get another offer from the same quarter. He hoped also that other nations—America, Germany, Russia, and the nations on the shores of the Mediterranean—would follow the example of Franco; and he trusted to sec the day when every man in this country would have in his home the products and comforts of every soil for his enjoyment, and when the idea of Adam Smith and Mr. Pitt would be realized.

MR. HORSFALL

said, he had never felt greater difficulty in his life than in deciding how he should vote with regard to the Motion before the House. He confessed he would have preferred that the Motion should never have been brought forward, and that they should have gone into Committee upon the Budget at once, and discussed each feature of it upon its own merits. An hon. Gentleman who spoke early in the debate on the other side of the House, had taunted the hon. Gentleman who brought forward this Motion, because he said that he had adopted free-trade principles in deference to public opinion. He (Mr. Horsfall) thought that was an unfortunate observation, because at this moment those who were attempting to establish free trade in Prance knew that the Emperor was bowing to public opinion. It had become the policy of this country. It was therefore evidently the policy of this country to encourage free trade not only in France, but in every nation on the Continent. He would make but a single observation with reference to coal. He thought the hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Baines) rather misrepresented what fell from the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Hubbard). He did not take exception to the export altogether of coal, but merely stated that we ought not to prohibit ourselves from imposing a duty on it. He was quite aware that there were those who thought we ought to take power to prevent the export of coal in times of war. He (Mr. Horsfall) did not concur in that. He was not afraid of the mischiefs which some people thought would flow from an unlimited export of coal, for it was well known that coal could be procured in Belgium, Prussia, and in France itself; and although that coal was not so suitable as British coal for steaming purposes, although it might be procured at an additional cost, yet it would be used at any cost and under any difficulty, and would be found most effective for all practical purposes in case of war. He chiefly found fault with the Treaty on the ground that no reference whatever was made to the shipping of this country. He regretted that the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. W. S. Lindsay) had withdrawn his Motion upon that subject. Hon. Members, he was sure, had no conception of the extent of the foreign trade with Prance. For instance, in the year 1856–57 there were 415,000 bales of cotton exported from the United States to France; in 1857–58, 383,333 bales; in 1858–59, 440,000 bales; and in the year 1859–60, so far as it had gone, it would average above 500,000 bales, requiring, as the House might suppose, a very large amount of shipping. In confirmation of this, he found from the New York Cotton Circular that recent exports to Prance showed an excess over last year, and that a further considerable increase would soon be apparent, as there were on the 1st of the present month loading in the Southern ports 54 vessels against 13 last year. If this trade were carried on in French vessels, he could understand the indisposition of Prance to negotiate; but what was the fact? In an official document issued by the French Government during the last few days, the admission was to be found that nine-tenths of the shipping engaged in the trade between the United States and France, was American shipping. Why, then, should France hesitate to give the shipping of this country an equality with the shipping of the United States? Our vessels were now debarred by the differential duty. He was aware that there was great difference of opinion as to the operation of the 3rd Article of the Treaty, but the Treaty itself maintained the differential duties now in force, which made a difference in the article of cotton imported into France, for example, between American and English vessels of not less than a half-penny per lb., being as much as the whole freight. It was impossible for English vessels to compete with American under such circumstances. He should have liked to see in the correspondence which had been published relative to the Treaty some evidence that the representatives of Her Majesty's Government at Paris had made an effort to accomplish something for the shipping interest. He felt bound, however, to say, and it would be satisfactory to the shipping interest to know, that the noble Lord (Lord J. Russell) had been good enough to tell a deputation who had waited upon him that negotiations were going on with the French Government with a view to give relief to British shipping, which the noble Lord hoped would be attended with success. To show how these differential duties pressed upon the English shipowner, he would read a letter from an English captain who was at Mauritius with his ship. The writer said:— I am sorry to say I have no chance of any employment here. Freights are low, and only three or four ships loading for London. The James Livesey is one of them, and taking cargo at 17s. 6d. and 12s. 6d. The bulk of the sugar is shipping to France, and French vessels command as freight £3 10s. I have not decided yet where to go, but I suppose it must be back to Calcutta again. Now, the Mauritius was an English colony, and this was an instance of the disadvantage under which English shipping at present laboured. He wished now to say a few words upon the proposed spirit duties. In the correspondence between the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and our Plenipotentiaries at Paris the noble Lord said that "the lowest point to which for any British purpose Her Majesty's Government could propose to reduce the duty on brandy is 10s. per gallon." The noble Lord, however, gave them authority, if they saw that any adequate advantage could thereby be gained, to reduce the duty, to 8s. 2d. As they had agreed to the lower rate of duty, he presumed there must have been some adequate advantage offered. He wished, however, that it had been pointed out in the correspondence, for the difference between 8s. 2d. and 10s. would have made a material item in the revenue. The reduction of the duty on brandy from 15s. to 8s. 2d. involved a loss of £256,000. Now, an increase of duty on colonial spirits at 1s. 10d. would give £314,195; an increase of 2s. per gallon on British would give £2,321,261, and on brandy at 1s. 10d., assuming no increase of consumption, there would be a gain of £101,576. The equalization of the duties at 10s. would altogether give an increase to the revenue of £2,737,032. If, therefore, the noble Lord's suggestion of 10s. per gallon on French brandy had been carried out, and the duty upon colonial and home-made spirits had maintained the same proportion, the Government might have made a deduction of 2d. in the pound in the proposed income tax. He had always been, both publicly and privately, favourable to the repeal of the paper duty, but he should have been disposed to look for a surplus revenue before he proposed that abolition. He should be sorry if the paper duty were not soon taken off, but if its abolition had been deferred for a short time there would have been another £1,000,000 at the disposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who might then have proposed an income tax of 7d. instead of 10d. Such a proposition would, he believed, have received the assent of the country. The Chancellor of the Exchequer expected to gain £300,000 a year by his registration fee of 1d. per package on all goods exported and imported. Now, he had had access to documents and information which led him to a conclusion—and he believed it would be found correct—that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had greatly underestimated the revenue which this 1d. tax would produce. In the year 1858, a very depressed year for commerce, this small tax, instead of £300,000, would have produced £829,976. He had no doubt that in the present year, if trade were prosperous, this tax would realize above £1,000,000. He did not think this a fair tax, and he was assured that it would press most unequally and unjustly. One of his constituents wrote to tell him that a 1d. tax upon the cargo of one of his vessels would cost him £133. A soap boiler assured him that it would amount to a tax of £600 a year upon his trade. A gunpowder manufacturer stated that the tax would cost him £1,500 a year, while parties dealing in silk and other articles of great value would not pay, perhaps, more than £50. The tax was therefore unjust in principle. Here again, however, it gave him great pleasure to say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had received all the representations which he and others had made to him with the greatest courtesy and candour, and he had assured the parties interested that he desired to distribute the incidence of taxation in the most equitable manner. He trusted that when the clause came under discussion in Committee, hon. Members would be prepared to give a fair consideration to this tax. With regard to the Motion before the House, he regretted that he could not support it, notwithstanding the statements he had just made. If the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Du Cane) had confined his Resolution to the words—"That this House is not prepared to disappoint the just expectation of the country by largely increasing the income tax," he should have felt it his duty to vote for it; but he could not vote for a Resolution which would neutralize the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to sweep from the operation of the tariff so large a list of articles. Notwithstanding the predictions they had heard to-night, he felt convinced that the removal of these duties would give an impetus to trade, and conduce materially to the prosperity of the country.

MR. BYNG

said, that there was always this difficulty in discussing any abstract resolution, that in general the most objectionable parts of any great scheme, whether financial or otherwise, were selected for attack, while its counterbalancing advantages did not appear so conspicuous; those, therefore, who, like himself, intended to support the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would feel obliged on the present occasion to defend the retention and augmentation of the income tax, against which the, Motion of the hon. Member for North Essex was especially-directed. Much of that difficulty had been removed by the manly and candid manner in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had put forward the views on which his policy was founded, and also by the declaration of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, that he could not support a Resolution the effect of which would be to defeat those proposals. He was anxious not to be diverted by this Resolution from the great points at issue, but to take the Budget and the Treaty as forming portions of one general scheme; and looking at the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposals from that point of view, notwithstanding that he entertained objections to some of its details, he was prepared to support it. There were many of the points so ably touched upon by the hon. Member for Buckingham, which would no doubt require modification, but he would not be led away by any consideration of the details from a fair consideration of what he regarded as not only one of the most comprehensive, but also one of the most honestly-intentioned Budgets that ever a Chancellor of the Exchequer had had the good fortune to submit to Parliament and to the country. There were in this Budget four points worthy of attention. There was first the great advantage not only to this country but to France which would ensue from the entire removal of prohibitive duties. There was secondly a great simplification of the tariff, the articles included in which were reduced in number from 419 to 47 or 48—which was a wide step towards the improvement of our commercial legislation; and he believed that the advantages which France would derive from this measure would be extended to other nations, and that France was setting an example of free trade which would be followed by every country in Europe. There was, thirdly, the reduction of the wine duties, and though it could not be stated distinctly that in a certain number of years a certain relief would be enjoyed by commerce, yet the case of the Treaty of 1787 might serve as an example. In 1787 the imports of French wines into this country amounted to 75,969 gallons, and in 1792, being five years after the Treaty, they were increased to 723,820 gallons. Then, judging by the past, they should not be astray if they calculated upon a very great increase. He likewise approved of the abolition of the duty on paper; but at the same time he would admit that he thought that remission might have been postponed. But when he recollected the peculiar circumstances of the time—that a Resolution passed unanimously by this House had condemned that duty as unjust and impolitic—the increasing difficulty of defining what constituted paper and the infinite labour and vexation in levying the tax, he could not help thinking that though the Chancellor of the Exchequer might have postponed the remission of the impost, he had taken a wise and bold step, and one which the country at large would appreciate. Now, the remission of the duties which he had just mentioned, as well as of several others, being the advantage which the public would derive from the scheme of the Government; the next point to be considered was what price we should have to pay for the boon which we received. We were, in the first place, called upon to submit, not only to the continuance, but to an increase of the income tax; but in dealing with that question he could not help saying that there did not appear to him to be so much weight as some hon. Members might suppose in that portion of the Resolution of the hon. Member for Essex in which the proposal with respect to the income tax was said to be opposed to the just expectations of the country. He was of that opinion, because he could not fail to perceive that since the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke, in 1853, of a hope that the tax would by this time be extinct, circumstances more potent than even the Chancellor of the Exchequer had rendered the fulfilment of that hope impossible. It must also be borne in mind that in a speech which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bucks delivered when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1858, he declared that to assert that a compact had been entered into which was independent of all circumstances, would be wild and impossible; and that the House, having sanctioned a certain policy, they could not repeal the expenditure which that policy entailed, unless they repealed the policy itself. It was, indeed, quite evident, as the right hon. Gentleman went on to maintain, that the abolition or reduction of the income tax must in a great measure depend on the policy we pursued abroad, as regarded our relations with foreign powers—at home, with respect to our naval and military establishments. And so it was that the Government had been obliged, in deference to the almost unanimous voice of the country, to increase our armaments; not from any fear of foreign Powers—he believed the reason lay deeper. Successive Governments had been obliged to decrease the Estimates, and he believed that the country was not aware of the sums of money that were spent, or of the manner in which they had been spent. But in consequence of these reductions it followed that an absolute and imperative necessity had arisen of placing our armaments on a proper footing. But though the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not been able to redeem his promise, it should not be said that there was no hope held out to them; for though he believed that the extinction of the income tax was impossible, still he did hope, and would be prepared to maintain, that in future years it should be readjusted on an equitable foundation. The income tax had this advantage, that it had a fatal simplicity by which it might be increased at any time, and it would be a very desirable mode of supplying the revenue of the country if some scheme could be devised by which precarious incomes should not pay the same as real incomes. That was a great difficulty. It was a difficulty worthy of such a Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was a difficulty from which many might shrink. But the present Chancellor was a man of whom it might be said— Nil actum reputans dum quid superesset agendum. If the right hon. Gentleman continued to hold office for one more Session, and should have the opportunity of proposing another Budget, he (Mr. Byng) believed that this question would not escape from his consideration, and that the masterly genius which he displayed on all occasions would doubtless enable him to grapple with and overcome even those great difficulties which the question by its nature presented. With respect to the statement that the differential duties on shipping were not to be altered, because this was a treaty of trade and commerce and not of navigation, he did not know whether that might be satisfactory to those who were more conversant with the subject than he was; but as to the alarm and apprehension shown by some lest we should not be able to prevent the French from using our coals in their ships of war under the 11th Article of the Treaty, he thought that was completely disposed of by what had been said by the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs a few evenings ago, and by the opinion of the Lord Chancellor which the noble Lord quoted, to the effect that in the case of a war with France the provision with regard to coal would cease to operate. In respect to the question of reciprocity, they ought to remember that the French Emperor had enormous difficulties to contend with. His people were not impressed like ours with the advantages of a free-trade policy, though he (Mr. Byng) believed he had tried to carry out that policy, the advantages of which he had seen in this country, to the utmost of his power, and that he was thoroughly impressed with the conviction that it would contribute not only to the political, but to the material prosperity of his country. Believing that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, by his financial proposals, interwoven and mixed up as they were with a commercial treaty with a great neighbouring Power, was doing much to carry out and consolidate those great principles of free trade which the Ministerial side of the House had always advocated, and which Gentlemen opposite now admitted to be favourable to the interests of the country; believing that with respect to our foreign relations the great scheme before them was calculated to promote "peace on earth and good will to men;" and believing also, that it would do more to advance the prosperity of this country, the welfare and dignity of France, and the peace and happiness of the civilized world than the greatest schemes of territorial aggrandisement by force of arms could ac-accomplish, he would most cordially give his support to those proposals, reserving to himself the right to criticise, perhaps to oppose, some of the minor propositions when the proper time for doing so arrived.

MR. BEACH

said, he believed that the financial measures which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had brought before them in a speech of surpassing eloquence were founded on a basis more specious than solid, and that it would be found more difficult to work them out than had yet been anticipated. The main ground of the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman was the Commercial Treaty with France. He was willing to admit, with reference to the Treaty, that the highest credit was due to the French Emperor for the spirit he had displayed. It must be a subject of congratulation to civilized Europe that he had recognized the principle that commerce was better than conquest—that it was better to have peaceful intercourse with his neighbours than to fulminate Berlin and Milan decrees, and pursue the policy of the first Empire, which was directed towards the destruction of the commerce of England. He bad thereby given the best guarantees for the continuance of peace, and would earn for himself more durable laurels than those of the battle-field. There could be no doubt that the Articles of the Treaty would confer the most signal benefits on France; but if it was asked what we were to have in return, and when the matter was looked at from an English point of view, the case would be found to be very different. We were to have wines at a lower price; but was that a sufficient inducement to us to remit a large amount of taxation, and to enter into a compact of this nature? In his opinion, it was not. The best French wines would not be introduced to this country, but only their sour wines, neither congenial to the English palate nor consistent with the English climate. Among the articles to be introduced from France, he failed to discover one that would be of real substantial benefit to the humbler classes of the community. They were all articles of luxury. With regard to the article of coal, he thought it of the utmost importance that there should be a clear definition of the point whether it was a contraband of war or not. The most eminent jurists had disagreed upon the subject, and he thought the time had come when these differences of opinion should be brought to some definite conclusion. In the case of Franco going to war with some other nation, much embarrassment might arise from one nation taking a different view of the subject from another. With respect to the remission of duties now proposed, he would not venture to say that such remissions would not be beneficial if this were the proper time to make them; but such a remission should take place when there was a real, and not a theoretical, surplus to deal with. They were entitled, when so many remissions were proposed, to ask that the native producers of this country should receive some relief. The producers of malt and hops were entitled to some consideration, especially when it was remembered that the duties on these articles affected a drink which was an agreeable and pleasant one to the great majority of the population of this country. The foreign hop-growers had an advantage that the home producers had not. The former had the privilege of sending their hops to this country at any time that suited them, and, after paying the duty, bringing them to market; whereas our own hop-growers were compelled to pay the duty at a fixed period, which was now to be of briefer duration than before. To the abolition of the paper duty he had no objection; but there wore other Excise duties which pressed more heavily on industry. He held that their first duty was to remove the fetters that cramped the industry of the national producer; and he ventured to submit that when all these efforts were made to promote, encourage, and foster the industry of those abroad, British producers were really entitled to the favourable consideration of the Legislature. Our Estimates for several years had been growing larger and larger, and it was hopeless for any Member to rise and express any opinion as to their reduction; if he did, he was simply considered as impeding the useful progress of public business. He ventured, however, to hope that before next year Ministers would give a calm and candid consideration to the subject, and, by a searching inquiry into those articles upon which taxation could be advantageously reduced, and into those items of expenditure which might fairly be abolished, be enabled to submit lower Estimates than they unfortunately had to provide for this year. The revenue of the country was, fortunately, of an expansive character, but the expenditure had expanded far more. It had been said in this debate that, during the last ten years, the annual expenditure of the country had increased from the average of £52,000,000 to £70,000,000. This was an alarming fact for them to consider. It was, indeed, the opinion of the nation that a large armament must be kept up, not as against any other country, but simply for our own defence. If the system prevailed in other countries of accumulating vast and increasing armaments, it was neither fit nor proper that England should neglect hers; but he did hope that before next year a considerable reduction would be made, and that, as a consequence, there would be a permanent and beneficial diminution in the taxation. Meanwhile, however, he could not help expressing his opinion that it was not expedient, with an increased deficiency, to make the large reductions proposed in the present Budget; and, therefore, although there might be some points in it which he approved, he must give his sanction to the Amendment of the hon. Member for North Essex, considering that, if those articles of taxation were not flung away, there would be no necessity of returning to an increased rate or objectionable mode of taxation.

SIR FRANCIS BARING

said, that as he had for many years been accustomed to take a part in the financial discussions of the House, he felt bound on the present occasion to state frankly his opinions. In doing so he did not suppose that the views he was about to express would find much support on that (the Ministerial) side of the House; but, entertaining opinions which he would have expressed had the propositions now brought forward emanated from the Gentlemen on the other side, he felt it hardly fair or courageous to shrink from avowing them, however unpopular they might be. In the first place he wished to say that he considered this to be a Budget question. He had voted against the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli) to make it a question merely of treaty—they had to discuss the Chancellor of the Exchequer's propositions as a financial whole, the Treaty forming but a part, though a considerable part, of it. With regard to the Treaty, in the first place, he must admit he had never considered himself one of those advanced freetraders who objected on principle to any commercial treaty; he did not see why those who agreed to commercial treaties acted contrary to the principles of free trade. Our later policy had made commercial treaties extremely difficult; but there were two modes of attaining the same end—one, that we should not wait till foreign countries adopted a liberal policy, or punish ourselves while they were waiting and hesitating; but half a loaf being better than no bread, we at least should have free trade on our side, and a liberal tariff, though France refused. That was one course; but the object of it was, that we hoped by our example to induce foreign countries ultimately to come into our policy, so that there might be free trade and a liberal tariff on both sides. There was another course perfectly consistent with an anxiety to obtain free trade—to say, "It is quite true we may be punishing ourselves, but we shall sooner get our ultimate object, which is free trade on both sides, if we hang off for a certain time and negotiate." That was the course which we had been adopting in many cases before the late financial changes But he felt considerable difficulty in seeing how they could take half one course and half the other. He wished to exemplify the case. He had no objection that they should make a bargain with France, and obtain certain privileges in return for reducing duties on articles of French production or manufacture—the wine duties for instance. But while adopting one course with regard to France, why exclude the possibility of taking the same course with regard to Spain? If they went to Spain and said, "We are prepared to reduce the duties on French wines, and are going to do so by treaty, because France gives us certain privileges; if you do not do the same you will suffer." there never was a moment when it was more probable we should succeed than now in Spain. But unfortunately, while making a Commercial Treaty with France at the very same moment the Government sacrificed every possibility of making a Commercial Treaty with Spain. But it seemed almost impossible that gentlemen who had gone so far as the Government had done in the anti-reciprocity principle should turn round and try to get free trade by Commercial Treaties. What advantages did we obtain from this Commercial Treaty? He did not consider this question in a spirit hostile to free trade. He had not adopted free trade opinions because they were now popular; he entertained them before they were so. But he found it extremely difficult to consider the question of bargain and sale between nations; and as to whether the advantages obtained by France or ourselves were greater, hon. Gentlemen would entertain different opinions. Undoubtedly, his impression was that France had the best of the bargain. Let the House weigh what we had obtained. In that speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, of which, after what had been said, it would be almost impertinent in him to express admiration, the subject of wine formed a most important element; but in the letter which his noble Friend (Lord John Russell) had written, no doubt in communication with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it was frankly stated that the reductions proposed to be made were not in those articles which the Government thought so important as to call for immediate consideration. That admission was made. If, then, we effected these reductions, what were the objects we had in view? First, to enable the people to obtain cheap what they formerly had to pay dearly for; again, to produce a considerable increase of our own trade; and, last of all—no small advantage in the eyes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—the reduction was of a nature and in an article that the revenue would soon recover—that we should not lose money by the reductions made. Now, as to the first point, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was extremely eloquent on the blessing of wine to the poorer classes; but there seemed to be no due appreciation on the part of the people of the advantages which he held out. The greatest number of petitions—and they were very numerous—were from persons who prayed the House not to make the sale of this blessing too frequent; not to open it to general competition. Who ever heard of the country being prepared to petition that the sale of tea and sugar should not be made too frequent? One hon. Gentleman, indeed, who made a very amusing speech, spoke of the blessing of "black-strap;" but he could not find that there was a very general appreciation of "black-strap" in the community. On the contrary, the measure shadowed out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for making the sale of wine general had produced a greater number of adverse petitions than they would find in favour of the whole Budget. Next, did they believe that it would cause a very large increase of our trade? The right hon. Gentleman looked forward to getting rid of the consumption of what he had called "that wretched stuff, Cape wine." No doubt it would be a great advantage to secure a better article; but it should be remembered that Cape wine was paid for in articles of our own manufacture; and if it were got rid of, it would be replaced by so much French or Spanish wine. That might be quite consistent with the principles of free trade, and he did not quarrel with it; but do not let it be said that it would increase our manufactures. All they would do would be that, instead of sending their goods to the Cape, they would send them to France or Spain. But they were told that there was to be a large extension in the consumption of wine. It was very remarkable that in the course of his life he had heard that prophecy twice made, and as often falsified. The sanguine Lord Ripon made a considerable reduction in the wine duty. Unfortunately, however, his revenue did not recover in the way he had expected. The Government of Lord Althorp, of which he was himself a humble member, also made a large reduction on French wine. No great advantage was derived from that measure either. He held in his hand a Parliamentary Return, stating the amount of duty imposed on tea, coffee, sugar, wine, spirits, and malt, in 1820 and in 1860, together with the revenue raised from them at both those periods, and also showing the consumption of those articles per head of our population. From that paper he found that although the duty on sugar had been largely reduced, the revenue had more than righted itself. Instead of producing £3,900,000, as in 1820, it produced £5,936,000 in 1860; showing that the article of sugar answered the financial helm. If they reduced the duty upon it, they might be pretty sure, from experience, that in a certain time the Exchequer would be more than repaid for its sacrifice. With tea, again, the case was the same. After a considerable reduction of duty there was a very large augmentation of revenue. Coffee presented a still stronger illustration. An even greater remission of duty was made on that article, and the revenue had very considerably improved under the lower scale. Then came the question of foreign spirits. the duty on which it was now proposed to reduce. Well, the duty on foreign spirits had been greatly reduced, but the reduction had not been followed by the same results. There had been a fall in the revenue derived from French spirits, and a much larger fall in that derived from colonial spirits; and, on the whole, they did not find that they had been repaid in forty years for their reduction of duty. It was remarkable how stationary, both the consumption of wine and the revenue obtained from it, had been. There was a small increase in the revenue from French wine, the duty on which had been largely reduced—namely, from 13s. 9d. to 5s. 9d.; on Madeira, Rhenish, and other wines, there had been a fall in the revenue; on Cape wine a little increase. But, taking the whole of the wine duties together, although between 1820 and 1860 the duties had been twice reduced, principally on the foreign article, we had not yet recovered our loss of revenue. There had also been a reduction in the malt duty, though not a very large one, in proportion to the reductions made in other articles; and still there was a great increase in the amount of money it brought to the Exchequer. It was clear, then, that in selecting articles on which to make reductions of duty, they ought to look for those which would repay them fastest. This was not merely a money question. They should consult the tastes and the wishes of the people; and if they found that when they reduced the duties on certain articles without replacing their revenue, and when they reduced the duties on others, they obtained both an increased consumption and an increased revenue, it showed that the people in the one case did not care for the reduction, and that in the other they were very anxious for it. If, therefore, a Chancellor of the Exchequer desired either to serve the revenue, or to increase the comforts of the people, he could not hesitate about the duties which he ought to choose for remission. But it was said there were political reasons why we should accept French wine. In the first place, if such great blessings were to be derived from a Commercial Treaty with France, he felt inclined to ask, "Why don't you enter into Commercial Treaties with other countries." If they were to make friends with France at the expense of a million of their revenue—for it came to that—why couldn't they spend a small sum in making other friends on the Continent, where they had not too many? Let the Government, then, take a lesson from their own book, and apply their principles of friendship to the negotiation of Commercial Treaties with other States beside France. He quite admitted that this was not a mere fiscal question. And here he would take leave to express an opinion which, as coming from a private and independent Member of the House, had no weight or value whatever, except that which any hon. Gentleman might please to attach to it. He could view this question neither as a member of the present Government, nor as one who looked forward to the formation of a Government from the other side of the House. If, then, he was to consider this Treaty, not with reference to its financial but to its political bearings, he was bound to say that, looked at in that point of view, it did recommend itself to his approval. He had never joined in those attacks on the head of the French Government which had been too rife in this country, and he thought that that ruler had been somewhat hardly dealt with in the animadversions to which he was subjected at the time of the memorable Conspiracy to Murder Bill. He had never believed in the schemes for the invasion of this country which had been imputed to that Sovereign. Still, he could not help asking, "Why are we armed? On what grounds are we to make great sacrifices in preparations and fortifications?" They might, perhaps, derive a certain amount of advantage from the course pursued. But let them look at the other side of the ledger. Why were they to have so heavy an income tax? Because of their great Estimates. And why were their Estimates so great? Every foreign Government had a perfect right to pursue the policy which it believed to be the policy of its own country; at the same time, he did not feel much gratitude for having a sop of wine in place of a little "black strap," when he had to pay an aggravated income tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had acknowledged that the reason why we could not get rid of the income tax was, not because the revenue had not increased, but because of the enormous growth of the Estimates. No man more cordially desired than he did to see our relations with France wear the most friendly aspect; but at the present moment he was not tempted to be anxious for any intimate alliance with France, as far as her political conduct in Italy was concerned. His noble Friend (Lord John Russell) he hoped was satisfied with regard to the views of the French Government. The policy of England, however, was that Italy should be free, powerful, and independent; that Italy should be able to defend herself from the interference of foreign States. That was not only the policy of England, but it was also the interest of Europe; but as far as he could read its intentions he did not gather that that was the policy of the French Government. France seemed to think that if there should be formed in Italy such a central State as would be powerful she would be bound to look out for something which might be an equivalent and a protection to herself. That, he repeated, was not the policy of England. He should be sorry to see anything done by a commercial treaty or otherwise which should hold us out in the face of Europe as parties to transactions which he feared were likely to be carried out for the acquisition of territory in Italy. He now came to the proposed alterations in our tariff. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer had always entertained the opinion that it was of great advantage to get rid of the small articles which figured in our tariff, while his colleague who formerly filled the same office (Sir George Lewis) expressed a directly contrary opinion. He would leave them to settle their differences between themselves. It might be desirable to have as many strings to their bow as possible; but here it was not at all the question whether they reduced taxes on those small articles—the question was, whether they should transfer the duties paid on those articles to the mercantile transactions connected with them. However, after the speech of the hon. Member for Buckingham, who spoke so much to the point on that subject, it would be a waste of time to go over the ground again. He only hoped that, whatever might happen, they might not, under the notion of free trade, take such a mistaken step as to interfere with the freedom of the merchant's movements. No greater benefit could be conferred on the merchant of this country than by placing him in such a position that the freedom of his movements and the power of saving his time should not be unnecessarily restricted by Excise regulations. With regard to the remission of the paper duty, that, to his mind, was the best part of the Budget, He believed its remission would be a very great benefit, provided it could be made safely with reference to the revenue. Of all duties, so far as his experience went, those of Excise were the most inconvenient; because, let the Government be as liberal as they might to the trader, it was impossible to collect the necessary revenue without interfering with the operations of his trade. Though he did not join in all the hopes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, yet he was not inclined to ridicule his expectation that the extension of the paper manufacture might be realized, provided he could secure for the manufacturer a command over the raw material. The Chancellor of the Exchequer talked of coaches and other articles being made of paper; he (Sir Francis Baring) had read in a very amusing book lately published on Japan, that paper was a material which entered largely into almost all the Japanese manufactures, and that, in fact, the people there were to be seen walking about in great coats made of paper. But the main reason why he (Sir Francis Baring) rose was to call the attention of the House to the state in which the finances of the country would be left by the Budget. If they had a large surplus, or if they could look to a probable one, they might proceed in the direction they were invited to take more safely; but he wished earnestly to call the attention of the House to the position in which they would stand if this Budget were adopted. No objections were made to Sir Robert Peel's alterations in the tariff, except the ordinary ones always raised against free trade—but he would ask the House to recollect what were the objections made to the income tax when it was first imposed by Sir Robert Peel? The main objection was, that Sir Robert Peel proposed a tax of such a nature that it was impossible to maintain it in its then position as a permanent source of revenue, and he was told that he might pass it then, but that some time or other such a feeling would be raised against it in the country that he would have either to remedy its inequalities or abandon the revenue derived from it. The income tax then brought in far on to £7,000,000; it was now estimated to raise a sum approaching to £10,000,000; and he (Sir F. Baring) wished the House to consider whether they thought the revenue of the country would be safe with £10,000,000 of it resting on the income tax alone? Let the House go with him into the history of the income tax, and then judge whether they had not had from time to time the narrowest escape of losing the revenue derived from it. In 1842 the tax was originally proposed by Sir Robert Peel on a lease of three years. In 1845, when the honeymoon of free trade was going on, there was a renewal of it for another three years without much objection. In 1848 the Government of the day thought they might increase the tax, but they were obliged to abandon that intention. At that time, while the income tax was under discussion, the disturbances in France and Europe broke out, and if it had not been for that circumstance he did not believe, even with the promise of reduced Estimates and the speedy extinction of the tax, the Government would then have carried its renewal. In 1851 his right hon. Friend the then Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed another renewal of the tax for three years. Did he carry it? No; it was carried only for one year, the amendment to that effect being proposed, not by any Conservative, but by Joseph Hume, the honest apostle of free trade. Then, in 1852, came the Budget of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire, and the great struggle to which it gave rise. The right hon. Gentleman did not carry his Budget, and the House was obliged to continue the tax for one year. Then came the proposal of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1853. Did any one believe that the income tax would then have passed for seven years, if the expectation had not been then held out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that measures would be taken which would have the effect of getting rid of it altogether at the end of that period? Even with that expectation attached to the proposal he (Sir F. Baring) was surprised to see the facility with which it passed. He had recently refreshed his memory by reading the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1853. It was one of the ablest financial expositions on record; but then the Chancellor of the Exchequer was sailing on a different tack. His two Budgets differed, but his eloquence was the same. But what was his proposal now? It was to renew the income tax for not more than one year. Was that a safe proposal? Was that leaving the finances of the country in a safe position? He was not now taunting the Chancellor of the Exchequer with not redeeming the pledge given in 1853; but, although the right hon. Gentleman could not perform all he promised, he might still have trod in the path he then pointed out. Now, what was our financial position? He (Sir F. Baring) had had something to do with Budgets, but he never had more difficulty in making out what our future revenue would be than from the present financial scheme. He believed, however, that he had done so, and fairly; the result being that, taking our expenditure to be the same—and a man would be mad to expect any reduction in it at present—there would be in 1861–2 a deficit of £12,000,000, or, allowing for anything like a surplus, at least £12,500,000. Was that a desirable position? When Sir Robert Peel, the great exemplar whom they were all now copying, proposed his financial arrangements, did he throw the revenue into such jeopardy? He, indeed, took the income tax to cover a deficit; but he took it not for one, but for three years, until the revenue recovered itself, and he was therefore able to show that for three years, and not for twelve months merely, he had an ample surplus. That was not the case here. In 1861–2 there would be a deficit of at least £12,500,000. "Oh yes!" it might be said, "but if we have an impending deficit, we have at hand the taxes to meet it. We have nothing to do but to continue the income tax and maintain the war duties on tea and sugar. Well, but even that would not do. A 10d. income tax and the present duties on tea and sugar would still leave a deficit of, with any margin, from £2,000,000, to £2,500,000; and this amount must be raised by new taxation. It really seemed as though some persons thought that by far the most statesmanlike way of increasing the revenue was by increasing the deficit; and in case of need a 1s. income tax was spoken of—but even that, again, he feared would not be sufficient. Now, this was a formidable position, and he earnestly entreated hon. Gentlemen to consider it, and not rest contented with eloquent speeches about the blessings of free trade. What would happen if at the end of next year Parliament had a deficiency of £12,000,000 to meet? It was proper also to bear in mind a circumstance mentioned by the hon. Member for Stamford (Sir Stafford Northcote) in a remarkably good speech. The present House of Commons would not have to deal with this question. Even if it would have come before them, the Government ought to have looked forward, and to have placed the revenue of the country in some better position than they now proposed to leave it. But we should have not only a new Parliament but a new Constitution. Was it wise or statesmanlike, for anybody who remembered what the first Reformed Parliament was for some years, to bequeath to their successors a deficit of £12,000,000? He (Sir P. Baring) was as good a Reformer as most gentlemen there, and he hoped he should be insulting no one by what he was now saying. Probably it would not be his fate to appear in that House under a new constitution; but he would entreat hon. Gentlemen not to deal lightly with a question of such deep importance to our revenue and position as a nation. He was not one who supposed that England would ever "repudiate," or would deal otherwise than honestly with the national creditor. But no one could rely for a day or for an hour on what might be done under a new constitution by men carried away, perhaps, by some momentary excitement. No doubt the evil would be momentary only. No doubt the good sense and good feeling of the country would very soon set things right. Yes, but what would the nation suffer while things were wrong? Who, then, would think of such trifles as re- mitted duties on cheese and butter? Even that House had been guilty of acts which had occasioned great consternation in the commercial world; but the loss of our credit, the sacrifice of our character and position in the eyes of Europe, the loss also of our power to raise money when we required it, would be risked by such a momentary folly.

MR. BRIGHT

I hare listened with more than usual interest, but not with more than usual pleasure, to the speech of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Portsmouth. It has reminded us forcibly of the Budget speeches which those who were in the House twenty years ago were accustomed to listen to, and which some of us, who were not in the House, were accustomed to read. It seeems to me to be a speech which, whilst clinging very much to the past, is filled with an excess of doubt with regard to the future. Every part of it held up some hobgoblin to deter the House from pursuing the course which the experience of every one since 1842 has proved to be most wise. We were told what dreadful things were about to happen to the country, and how much we should disappoint many persons who are not here to. mix in these debates; but unfortunately for the right hon. Gentleman's propositions and his doubts, there is but one voice—there is but one opinion expressed—from one end of the kingdom to the other, with regard to the general propositions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has laid before us. And if this debate goes on, as I presume it will not go on, into one of the nights of next week, we shall have that apparition of a dissolving view which the right hon. Gentleman opposite, I recollect, once described in connection with a debate on a certain Indian despatch, and I believe there will at last be scarcely any one to vote with the mover of the Resolution now before the House. The Resolution itself is a very fair one and meets the whole question. It meets it more than any one would perhaps discover at the first reading of it. It says:— That this House recognizes the necessity of providing for the increased expenditure of the coming financial year—is of opinion that it is not expedient to add to the existing deficiency by diminishing the ordinary revenue—and is not prepared to disappoint the just expectations of the country by re-imposing the income tax at an unnecessarily high rate. Now, if that Resolution should be carried, it must of necessity be fatal, not only to the Commercial Treaty with France, but to the whole scheme of the Government. It insists upon that which is the great blot in the policy of the Government—namely, the large and scandalous expenditure—it resists the income tax at the amount proposed—it opposes all reduction of duties, whether of customs or of excise, and it refuses absolutely in point of fact to give effect to the Commercial Treaty with France. It is directly against everything but the expenditure. I do not complain of this at all. I thank the hon. Member for Essex for bringing the matter before the House and before the country in a form in which it could not be mistaken. He wishes to throw out the Budget—to reject the Treaty—to overthrow the Government. The result of the success of his Resolution must be, if not a dissolution of Parliament—a new Government and a new Budget—an increase of indirect taxes—taxes, I presume, upon imports—and, at the same time, an estrangement from France, which I think would be very unfortunate. The country has decided, with the unanimity that I expected it would when I heard the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I believe that Parliament will decide in accordance with the opinion of the country. Now I have some particular reasons for liking this Treaty with France. It has been the object of my most ardent wishes, and it is now the object of my most cherished affections. Not longer ago than in July last year, we had a discussion in this House upon the subject of the financial policy of Lord Derby's Government, introduced by a very remarkable speech from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire. The Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke after him, and I was permitted to address the House after them both. On that occasion I claimed the right hon. Gentleman opposite as a convert to the opinions long held, and so often advocated by the hon. Member for Rochdale and myself. I thought that the whole tenour of his speech was in favour of a better policy—better than his own Government had pursued—and better than any Government we generally have had even sitting on this side of the House—has pursued. On that occasion I took the liberty of urging the noble Lord at the head of the Government, and the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary, to attempt, if possible, to come to some arrangement with France, so that these two great coun- tries would be united together in the bonds of common interest by the exchange of their productions. If the House will permit me, I should like, though it may appear egotistical, to read an extract from that speech. I was advising the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary, rather I was telling him what I would very much like to do if it were possible to imagine myself in his place. I said:— 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 on one of the greatest products of the Boil of France—upon the light wines of your country.' The only persons whom, it is said, 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 as customers, would not that 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 or conditions 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. These are the observations or opinions which I ventured to offer to the House in July last year. It was not more than a week after those observations were made, that a communication was entered into between a distinguished person in France and my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale, with the view of discussing the possibility of carrying out the proposition I had suggested. This being so, the House will excuse me for feeling, perhaps, more than ordinary interest in the course which has been taken, and for feeling more satisfaction than I can express, that the Government has been able, by the liberality of the French Government, to come to an arrangement for the good of both countries, the extent of which it is absolutely impossible for any of us to calculate. I find very strong objections have been made to the course that has been taken. I am afraid that some of the real objections are kept in the back ground. I have been told by persons who seem to have a pedantic affection for free trade, but whose labours I never found united with mine when we were working for it, that this admirable Treaty is a violent infraction of the principle of free trade; but if any person had, in the year 1840, and from that to the year 1846, agreed to make a commercial treaty with this country, under which we were to abolish agricultural protection, or any other protection that existed, and that any country or that several countries should abolish theirs, is it to be supposed that the Anti-Corn-Law League, or any person in favour of free trade, would have shut their eyes to this great proposition of relief for this country? Would they not have accepted with enthusiasm a commercial treaty made for such a purpose at such a time? The noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs put it in a few words the other night, when he said he was in favour of commercial treaties that were in favour of free trade, but that he did not approve of commercial treaties that were not in favour of free trade. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate), in a speech the other night, said he regarded this Treaty as an act of submission to France, and he gave utterance to that sentiment in a manner almost tragic, so deeply did he feel the humiliation we were to endure. I have discovered that there are parties in France who say just the same thing, putting the degradation upon the French, and not upon us. I was offered liberty the other day to read a letter from a distinguished statesman, attached to the Orleanist party in France, in which the writer stated his regret that the French Government should make a treaty with England so humiliating to France, and which showed how vast were the sacrifices the Emperor of the French was willing to make for the purpose of having a strict alliance with England. Others, in this country, tell us that we are giving much more than we get. This is a thing which it is difficult to answer from a free-trade point of view; but if I could stand where the hon. Member for North Warwickshire stands, it would be very easy to answer it. And the hon. Member for Leeds to-night, in an able and eloquent speech, met that question. He showed that not only is the allegation not true, even from the hon. Gentleman's point of view, but that the reverse of it is true. If it be assumed, as Protectionists will assume, that whoever makes the greatest reductions makes the greatest concessions and sacrifices, I can demonstrate to the hon. Member, and to all who think with him, that on the face of the Treaty nothing is more clear than this, that with regard to concessions—I wish I had some other word—it does not meet my views at all to use it—the French make five times as many concessions to us as we make to them. Lot me be understood as speaking now as if I were a Protectionist; and if I do not speak with common fluency in that character, I may be forgiven. It will be admitted by every one that the only articles upon which we are making a present surrender of revenue that is of importance, are the articles of wine, brandy, and silk—wine and silk being the chief; but if the hon. Gentleman were a Frenchman, he would be positively appalled at the list of articles not less important than wine and silk, but most of them far more important, on which the French are making concessions to us. There are metals of all kinds, of which we export yearly, £17,479,000; machinery, of all kinds, of which we export yearly, £3,700,000; cutlery, of which we export yearly, £3, 826,000; cotton yarns, of which we export yearly, £9,465,000; cotton cloth, of which we export yearly, £37,640,000; linen yarns, of which we export yearly, 1,684,000; linen cloth, of which we export yearly, £4,302,000; earthenware, of which we export yearly, £1,313,000; woollen yarns, of which we export yearly, £3,080,000; woollen cloth, of which we export yearly, £12,032,000; leather, of which we export yearly, £1,359,000; making, together, the enormous sum of £95,280,000 sterling per annum. If the French, in place of an almost absolute prohibition of the whole of those articles, reduce the duties on them to a point from which, in all probability, a large trade will spring up, the hon. Member is too honest, too frank, and too intelligent to insist upon it, that wine and brandy and silk more than counterbalance those eleven articles I have enumerated. It is quite possible that he and others will say, what security is there that we shall have imports received from this country into France. There is this security, that there will be a maximum duty of 30 per cent for three years, and then a maximum duty of 25 per cent. And the maximum does not really mean that a maximum is to he maintained; in this case the reverse is meant. As stated in the Treaty, and as is the fact, the duties are to range from 10 to 30 per cent. There are some duties now under 30 per cent; but none of them will be increased. There is no intention on the part of the French Government to exert their right to keep them at 30 or at 25 per cent. But when the convention is framed, and when the whole arrangements are concluded, and the trade is opened under it. I am assured by the very best authority that the result, however good the Treaty may look, will be considerably better than the Treaty. When the Treaty is in operation the tariff of France, in regard to this country, will be in full as liberal as the tariff of the United States; and your own trade and navigation returns issued the other day, show that to the United States are exported in a year £22,600,000 worth of the produce of the manufacturers of this country. The French may not be able to consume so much as the Americans; but taking into consideration the facts that I have now stated, and the figures which no one can call in question, I think we are fairly permitted to come to the conclusion that the present trade with France, which is almost nil, will in the course of a few years swell to an amount which will enable it to take rank with some of our very best customers among the other nations of the globe. If I were to refer to one particular article of this list which I have read, the article of earthenware—I might observe that an hon. Gentleman who generally sits on that (the Opposition) side of the House, and votes with Gentlemen opposite, voted the other way on Monday night. Is there any mistake as to the opinion of his constituents? It is no use in plying him with arguments of party warfare; he knows what his constituents think, and, whatever may be the opinion of hon. Gentlemen opposite, his constituents are better judges of what can be done with the produce of the English potteries, than Gentlemen who know nothing of the question. But I have a right to claim the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire as a friend to this Treaty. There was a time when he was not the leader of a "great party." He was a giant then in another field. He vacated an elevated position there to assume one which is much more laborious. I know not that it is any more useful than that in which he laboured before. But in one of those very admirable books which the right hon. Gentleman wrote, partly for the instruction, and perhaps rather more for the amusement of his countrymen—he described the mode of living of an English nobleman of great wealth in Paris. He says:— Lord Monmouth's dinners at Paris were celebrated. It was generally agreed that they had no rival. Yet there were others who had as skilful cooks—others who, for equal purposes, were as profuse in their expenditure. What was the secret of his success? His Lordship's plates were always hot; whereas in Paris, in the best appointed houses, and at dinners, which, for costly materials and admirable art in preparation cannot be surpassed, the effect is considerably lessened by the fact that every person at dinner is served with a cold plate. The reason of a custom, or rather a necessity, which one would think a nation so celebrated for their gastronomic tastes, would better regulate, is that the French porcelain is so inferior, that it cannot endure the ordinary heat for dinner. Now the right hon. Gentleman, with an instinct which we cannot too much admire, breaks out into something like an exclamation. He sap, Now, if we only had that Treaty of Commerce with France, which has been so often on the point of completion, and the fabrics of our unrivalled potteries were given in exchange for their capital wines, the dinners of both nations would be improved; England would gain a delightful beverage, and the French, (for the first time in their lives), would dine off hot plates. And he concludes with an expression which I recommend to hisdevokd followers—"An unanswerable instance of the advantages to commercial reciprocity." Oneother of those horrid phamtoms which have been raised to alarm the country has been based—if a phantom can be based—upon the question of coal; and there is running in the minds of some hon. Members a notion that this country can do just whatever it likes at sea with regard to the question of contraband of war, and all those old subjects which have been so long matters of discussion among the nations of Europe. Now, last year, when the war in Italy was in progress, there was a discussion in the English papers, particularly in those of the party of which the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Newdegate) is a member, as to the propriety of declaring coal contraband of war. At that time hon. Gentlemen may recollect there was a statement in the papers that the French Government were building a great number of flat-bottomed boats which, it was said, were pretended to be wanted for the conveyance of coal, but were admirably adapted for landing soldiers on a sandy beach. But when these discussions wore going on, and a Government not very favourable to France was in power, and the French Government did build these flat-bottomed boats for the purpose of conveying coal to their arsenals, in case England should take the foolish step of preventing its export, at that time there arrived in the harbour of Marseilles two vessels from America laden with coal, as if to show that the question as to whether coal is contraband of war does not rest with England. This question of coal with reference to the Navy of France is a mere bagatelle. I do not know whether hon. Gentlemen have read the statements which have appeared in the papers during the last few days. In the year 1858, not more than 160,000 tons of coal were consumed in the entire navy of France, and the extra cost, if you did not allow a single ton to be exported, would not be more than from 6s. to 10s. perton. An extra cost of some £80,000 would not be much for a Government in the emergency of war, and, therefore, to raise this as an argument for not agreeing to the Treaty only shows how contracted must be the vision of the hon. Gentleman, how small his information, that he should suppose a great proposition like this could be impeded for a moment by an obstacle so small and so entirely unimportant. But another point which has been dwelt upon is, that everything that we concede is immediate, and everything that France concedes is in the future. Well, all I should say if I were a Frenchman is this, that it is a great pity that my Government does not follow the example of the English Government. Assuredly, if both countries have been greatly in error, that which soonest escapes from its error will gain the most, and it is clear that the Emperor of the French thinks that the policy of Fiance has up to this hour been wrong. He does not object to meet you on the 1st of July this year from any doubt that he has as to the course of policy which he is pursuing; but he knows that when these great changes are made, changes met by many prejudices and fears, that he is bound to move at such a pace as that public opinion to a large extent will go with him, in order that there may be a general acquiescence in the policy which he thinks it right to pursue. The hon. Gentleman opposite, I think, remarked upon our lending ourselves to be a convenience to the French Emperor, if we agreed to a Treaty which was not necessary to us, because we could do all by the reductions of our tariff, and we did this that we might escape the difficulties of discussions in the French Chambers. We are not responsible for the constitution of the French Cham- bers; it will be enough for us, bye and bye, when our own House is being reformed, to be responsible for that. But even in 1846, when the free-trade cause was triumphant in the country and in Parliament, Sir R. Peel, wisely so far probably as the fears and prejudices of a portion of the people were concerned, unwisely, I think, as regarded their real interest, delayed the total abolition of the corn laws for a period of three years. I voted against that proposition; but I do not blame him for it now, and I did not seriously blame him for it then. It was a concession which every Government is called upon to make in carrying out a policy of this nature. When we had the great measure of Political Reform it was passed amid menaces and violence; those who would not concede to argument had to concede to terror. When the corn law was repealed, you had an Irish famine, and you had what hon. Members described in such strong language as a great act of treason to a political party. An act of treason to them it might be, but it was an act of the most undoubted patriotism, so far as the interests of the country were concerned. Now in this country at that time there was a gentleman whose name, I think, was Mr. Chowler, who said very extravagant things, and who was encouraged by hon. Gentlemen opposite. He said that "the farmers had more horses than any other class in the country, and what was a better thing, that they knew how to ride them, and that they would rather march upon Manchester than upon Paris." Well, I hope that Mr. Chowler is now penitent and converted. But there are men of this class in France—the French Chowlers. They say that "this Treaty would have to be rent by cannon-shot," which expressed much the same thing, but rather in stronger language even than was used in this country. There are persons in France who attack the Treaty with less genius in support of a bad cause, but, perhaps, with more faith in it than the right hon. Gentleman opposite. And we might find out somebody, if we were as familiar with France as with England—somebody the exact parallel of the Member for North Warwickshire—somebody who gets up and uses the unintelligible statistics of the party. Now, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire did not, I think, behave with the frankness which he ought to have done in discussing the question of this Treaty. He described my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale as a secret negotiator, as if there were something not perfectly honourable and creditable in the course which my hon. Friend has taken. Now, negotiations between nations are not, so far as my reading enables me to judge, conducted in the market places. It is most desirable that these negotiations should, until they come to their final conclusion, be to a considerable extent unknown to the world. But if his negotiation was secret, it was at least successful, because I think never was a Treaty of equal magnitude, involving such vast interests, promising such great results, begun, continued, and ended, within the same space of time as this Treaty by my hon. Friend. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke in much more graceful language of him. He feels, indeed, as I do, and as I will undertake to say the great majority of the people of this country feel. He spoke of him as a benefactor to his country, though undecorated and unrewarded. Sir, he is undecorated so far as those stars and crosses go, which in the history of the world, I think, have been earned as often by baseness as by merit. But he is honoured by the confidence of two Governments, and he possesses the affections of the great body of the people of this country, and as for his reward, he is rich in the consciousness that his public life has been devoted to the public good; and in whatsoever part of the world is to be found intelligent humanity, there are hearts that are ready to bless the beneficence of the labour in which he has been employed. So much, Sir, for this Treaty. It seems a work of supererogation to speak in its favour after the stamp of public approbation which has been placed upon it; but I think it right to say thus much, because my hon. Friend, who has been the main negotiator of it on the part of this country, is not present, and I am unwilling to lose an opportunity of saying how much I feel myself indebted to him for the labour he has bestowed, and the success which has attended it. But this Treaty forms but a part of the general propositions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He proposes to sweep away—if I may so speak—that great nuisance—the complicated tariff, and he proposes to do what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Portsmouth highly approves of, if somebody else had not to pay for it—he proposes to abolish the hated Excise upon paper. If we are to try to discover how much of good there is in these propositions—and I believe from the course of the debate that the opinion that there is great good is growing amongst hon. Gentlemen opposite; I should like to ask you now, without reference to any party struggle, whether you do not think that a penny, twopence, or threepence, more in the pound upon the income tax is not too much to pay for the great good the country will receive from the changes that are proposed? [ Cries of "No, no!"from the Opposition, and Cheers from the Ministerial benches. Hon. Gentlemen opposite, or some of them, have always said "no, no," to all propositions of this kind, that have been made during the seventeen years that I have had a seat in this House. If you go back to 1842—and here I find I am in error, because on that occasion, I believe, hon. Gentlemen opposite did with some grumbling acquiesce in the course taken by their own Government—in that year the course taken by Sir Robert Peel was exactly that which is now taken by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer does not pretend to any originality in his scheme. It is enough for a Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he follows the best and greatest example that has gone before him. Sir Robert Peel came into office then with a deficit of £2,500,000 for the past year and for the coming year. I think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Portsmouth had been responsible for the finances of the country up to that period. I do not say this for the purpose of throwing anything like a slur upon the financial reputation of the right hon. Gentleman, because it is a melancholy, but a curious fact, so far as my observation has gone, than the Whig party has never yet produced a Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir Robert Peel found that deficiency. It was a chasm something like that which the right hon. Gentleman made us believe there was in the floor of the House, only it was not quite so wide or quite so deep, as that which he described. But what did Sir Robert Peel do? He did not add 5 or 10 per cent to the taxes, which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Portsmouth had done without success. No; and he did not say there will be a deeper chasm next year, and what dreadful things will happen if we only follow this up with some direct taxation. But what he did do was this? He made the chasm deeper and wider. He found it £2,500,000, and he reduced the duties of Customs on 750 articles, by which he lost £270,000. He reduced the duty on coffee, by which he lost for a time £170,000; he reduced the duty on timber, by which he lost for the time £600,000; he reduced the duty on stage coaches, by which he lost £100,000, and he abolished export duties to the amount of £70,000, altogether being an amount of reduction almost precisely that which is caused by the Commercial Treaty with Prance; and he made the chasm which was represented by £2,500,000 into one represented by £3,700,000. That is exactly the course which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is now taking. Sir Robert Peel proposed, with an amount of apology and apparent fear, which, when we read it at this moment, is laughable, showing he knew the material that sat behind him—he knew the party he was leading, and he travelled with them on at a snail's pace for an hour and a half by the clock before he brought them to this perilous avowal that they were to be asked to endure an income tax of 7d. in the pound. At that time Sir Robert Peel knew that income tax was so unpalatable to the great owners of property who had been our legislators that he proposed it only for a very short period, but I am not sure he thought that period would see its termination. He proposed it in a manner, too, that was by no means just, because I believe that he felt that a just income tax at that time, even with his great majority, would hardly have been passed through Parliament. Well, his income tax, instead of producing, as he expected, £3,700,000, produced about £5,000,000. The chasm was filled up, there was no deficiency, and the surplus, of course, enabled him to do other things. The income tax from that time has enabled us to do other things, some of which, I am sorry to say, Sir Robert Peel would much have regretted if he had lived, and some of which, had he been Minister, never would have been done. Now, at that time, hon. Gentlemen opposite supported Sir Robert Peel. You saw the chasm of £2,500,000 of deficit; you allowed him to take off £1,000,000 more, and make the chasm deeper and wider; you supported him in a proposition of 7d. income tax to fill it up, and you did that although it was opposed by a very large portion of the Members on this side of the House. Well, now, why is it you quarrel with the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the present Chancellor of the Exchequer? He was then one of your Ministers. He supported this plan, and you having confidence in Sir Robert Pee], and him, and the rest of his colleagues, agreed to it all. I am satisfied that, apart from the question of party, you cannot deny that that policy has been a wise one to the country—and a just one, especially, to the great body of the people who are not the possessors of wealth. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, asked your attention to one or two facts—facts so astounding that if in 1842 anybody had been willing to stake his reputation upon them by stating them to the House, he would have lost his reputation, and would have been considered little better than a madman. Your exports have doubled, and almost trebled since that time. As to labourers—and here I may appeal to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire—I recollect when driven to the last extremity for arguments, he used to say, I will rest the whole question of protection to the land upon the condition of the agricultural labourer. Is there a man on that side of the House who will deny for an instant that the condition of the agricultural labourer at this moment is better than he has ever known it? I believe since 1842 the advances of the labourer's wages—and when I speak of labourers I mean all the working classes of the country—the advance in their wages has been at the very lowest 20 per cent, and the steadiness, the continuity, and security of their labour has been increased by, at least, an equal amount. Look at your own farmers! You know they were charged with coming whining to the House for protection. They never come here now at all. Hon. Gentlemen, representing counties, do not move for Committees on agricultural distress. Your farmers are all busy at their farms, instead of coming to Parliament to ask for protection and very high prices to pay their rents, and your landowners—the most fortunate men in the whole world have survived that which threatened annihilation. You are now more prosperous in your abundance than ever you were. You have more enjoyment in what you possess, because you know the rest of your countrymen have more enjoyment than they had before. All that Providence, a stable Government, and an industrious people have showered upon you, is at this moment infinitely more secure than it was at the time when these measures were first propounded and had begun to be carried into legislative force by Parliament. Why will you not comprehend this? You do comprehend it. I have been told by Members of agricultural counties, and in the south and in the west, where free trade was most feared, and that with reference made specially to the hon. Member for Rochdale and myself, that we never did or proposed anything, and nobody else ever did or proposed anything for the agricultural interest that was so beneficial to them as the abolition of the corn laws. But, Sir, though I have spoken thus far in approbation of the Treat), and in approbation of the relaxation of the tariff, and the abolition of the excise duties upon paper, do not let it be understood for a moment that I am not sensible to the blots which there are—to that one great blot, at any rate, which there is in the statement which the right hon. Gentleman had to make to us the other night—a very foul blot which will tarnish the character of the Government, and which, I venture to promise them, if there be not something done to remedy it, will make their term of office not at all protracted—I will say, as I said before in another place, the frightful, scandalous expenditure. Now I shall have a word or two to say to the Government on this matter, because when I am giving, as I am anxious to give, my hearty support to their general scheme, it would be unjust to my own convictions and to the interests of the country if I, omitted to point out where I thought the Government was guilty of that which the whole country almost, now, and all, by-and-by, will loudly condemn. Now, I hear some Gentlemen say, £30,000,000, after all it is very cheap for the securing of the country. But, then, Gentlemen who have got the expenditure of the £30,000,000 are not a bit more secure than they were when it was £15,000,000. I have heard the first Lords of the Admiralty year after year,—and I must refer to more than half a dozen of them—year after year assure this House the defences were perfect, and the country was in an absolute state of security I always found the successor of the first Lord of the Admiralty unsaying all his predecessor had said, and assuring us, unless we paid more than a million additional, the aforesaid security would not be obtained. There are Gentlemen also equally simple-minded, who tell us this expenditure has no reference to France. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Disraeli) did not believe in the cry of invasion; but yet the right hon. Gentleman did not rise to protest against the amount of the Estimates proposed by the Government. He left the amount of the Estimates in the hands of the Government, but felt fully confident as to their raising the amount. I cannot help saying that the whole of this matter has reference to France, and, therefore, let us not disguise it from ourselves. I believe the whole cry to have been a huge imposture—to have been a huge lie palmed on the country. I believe there is not a particle of foundation for all the panic which has been raised by many persons out of doors, and I am sorry to say by not a few persons who have seats in this House. Now, in 1853, the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a famous speech, for which people have been twitting him because he does not do now what he hoped at that time he would be able to do. Now, people cannot have money in their pockets and spend it, and no country ever went to war, more especially this country, without incurring a fearful expenditure; and if they will indulge in this luxury they will find, as they have always done, it is a very expensive one. Since 1853 your naval and military expenses have been doubled. Let us exactly see our course—and I will not detain the House more than a minute or two,—our course with France since 1853. In 1853, during the Russian war, according to my belief, the blood of your countrymen was needlessly shed in the Crimea, At the same time, in the same conflict, the blood of the subjects of the Emperor of the French was shed, I believe, needlessly also. That war concluded, you negotiated with the Emperor of the French as your friend and ally in 1856. At the end of 1856, in concert with the Emperor of the French, you were acting on the Governments of Italy, especially on Naples, and you withdrew your Minister from the Court of Naples. In 1857, you were, by a course which I think most rash and most criminal—by your Minister and Plenipotentiary in the East—you were involved in a war with China. And at that time you received—I do not know whether you solicited—but you accepted the cordial assistance and concurrence of the Emperor of the French, and of the forces which he had in the East. Well, in 1860, or rather in 1859–60 you have by the unwisdom of another of your representatives in the East, apparently another war with the Chinese. And contrary to every principle of sound policy, contrary to the interests of England both here and there, you have again engaged with the Emperor of the French to conduct operations in China, and great English forces, and a great French force, are on their way together to the Chinese seas. So, from 1853 until now. through good and through evil generally, too often through evil, you have had a close alliance with the French Government, and now, in 1860, you negotiate a Treaty of the most important character, more important, I believe, to the future of the two countries than any other that was ever negotiated between France and England. What are the instructions, and I read only one sentence from them, which the noble Lord the Minister for Foreign Affairs wrote over to Paris, addressed to Lord Cowley and Mr. Cobden, he says, Its general tendency would be to lay broad and deep foundations in common interest, and in friendly intercourse, for the confirmation of the amicable relations that so happily exist between the two nations. Not that henceforth may exist, but that now so happily exist. What does the Treaty itself say? The very first introductory clause in the Treaty says this:— Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of great Britain and Ireland, and his Majesty the Emperor of the French, being equally animated with the desire to draw closer the ties of friendship which unite the two peoples, and wishing to improve and extend the relations of commerce between their respective dominions, have resolved to conclude a treaty for that purpose. Well, now, what can be the reason that with those instructions, with that Treaty ratified, with this perfect amity, with these more powerful than all past bonds for uniting not only the two Governments, but the two peoples—why is it we have this enormous increase of the Estimates? I say it is a wonderful inconsistency; it is altogether illogical, and somewhere or other there is a great hypocrisy—and that somebody is guilty of an immorality, the darkness of which I find myself at a loss to select words to describe. Now, if hon. Gentlemen opposite had fixed on this blot, if you could have had, shall I say, the patriotism—if the hon. Member for Essex could have moved a Resolution to this effect:—"That whereas Her Majesty's Government has recently concluded a Treaty of Commerce and amity with the Emperor of the French, therefore this House does not see the necessity for increasing the Estimates beyond £26,000,000, which were voted by Parliament last year"—if you had proposed a Resolution—for if £26,000,000 gives you no security, rely on it, £30,000,000 will not; it is not any power which is in money or oppressive taxes to secure you—if you could have proposed a Resolution like this, you would have come before the country with a character for a regard for economy and the interests of the common people, which, I say, you will not earn if you succeed with the Resolution you have submitted to the House. I should like to ask about this expenditure which I condemn, and which I think is an insult to the intelligence of Parliament and the country. Am I hostile to any interest in the country in speaking thus of this grievous extravagance? Am I supposed to be hostile to the interests of the Court? There is no rock on which so many dynasties have foundered, as the rock of reckless and needless expenditure. Am I supposed to be hostile to the interests of the aristocracy of the country? What has destroyed aristocracies more than the corruption engendered amongst them by the lavish expenditure of public money, and by the discontent which must be created amongst the people? Am I hostile to the services which swallow up for the most part these sums? The military service of the country should be the servant of the country; it should be the defender of its rights and its property; it should never be allowed to grow to an extent, and to be fed with such profusion—its appetite growing with what it feeds upon,—that it becomes not a blessing, but an evil of the first magnitude to the country. It may be that the Cabinet had hard work to make up its mind on the subject. I suspect so,—I know nothing, but having got the Treaty in one hand, and £30,000,000 of military expenditure in the other, there must be contending in the Cabinet two principles very adverse in character, and if that contention goes on for another year, we may promise ourselves another change amongst the Gentlemen who at present occupy seats on the Treasury Benches. But hon. Gentlemen have referred in language of apprehension to what the next Parliament may do. I am not much afraid what the next Parliament may do, or what the next Chancellor of the Exchequer may do. I shall be very glad if he is more economical—if he has recourse more fully to the principles of direct taxation, so far as he has already established it. But the £12,000,000 of income tax is not to come off unless by a reduction of Estimates. You cannot go back to the Excise and Customs. Let me tell right hon. Gentlemen who represent so much of the property of the country, henceforth it is written irrevocably that the vast expenses which you are incurring, not for the great body of the working people, for they seem very much alike in all the old countries in Europe, but if, as you suppose, for the defence of your property, then this vast expenditure must henceforward be charged to the property of the country. That expenditure and that income tax are inseparably bound up together, and the sooner people make up their minds to it the better. Let it not be supposed that I am speaking in favour of the income tax as' it now exists. I believe, with the hon. Member for Buckingham, whose speech I am sure the House listened to to-night with great pleasure, that the income tax, as now levied, is becoming intolerable. I judge of it, for one thing, by the number of letters which every day I receive from all parts of the country on the subject, and I dare say other Members receive as many as I do. I judge of it also from what I see in letters published in the columns of newspapers, and from what I hear from those among whom I mingle. I am in favour of the income tax, so far as it is a direct tax and a tax on means. I support it now, objectionable as it is, just as I supported it in past years, because we have this present compensation for it. But the time may come—it may come next year—I think it probably will come next year, if the Estimates be not largely reduced—it certainly will—when you will be placed in this difficulty, that you cannot dispense with the income tax, and the country will not tolerate it in the shape in which it has hitherto been levied. But now the question is not of the income tax, for nobody proposes its abolition this year. The question is between the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Resolution of the hon. Member for Essex. I am in favour of the proposition of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I speak the sentiments of my constituents—I believe all but, if not actually, universally—and the sentiments of every public assembly, so far as I have seen, which has been gathered together to consider the question throughout the country during the last ten days. This scheme is a great scheme: if it had not been for those thirty millions, what a scheme it might have been! I heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer treading on the thorny path of those thirty millions, and I did think that there must be, somehow or other, a conscience, which is not always a convenient partner for a Chancellor of the Exchequer. I thought if he had the power logically to carry out his own principles, the principles embodied in the Treaty and in the tariff, there would have been a much larger reduction of duties and a much greater relief afforded to all classes in the country. He spoke of the patience of the tax-payers. Do not try that patience too far. I would not ask you to be afraid of the people; I ask you only to be just to them and just to yourselves. It is not the poor man alone who suffers from injustice. He suffers now, and heavily too; but there is a suffering hereafter if history does not lie, that shall come upon the rich if they continue expenditure and taxation which are needlessly oppressive to the poor. I say, then, this scheme is a great scheme, and, therefore, I support it. It relieves industry by the removal of Customs' duties, and abolishes one of the very worst Excise imposts that ever crippled the industry of any portion of the people. It extends the hand of friendship, not to a Government only, but to a great nation across the Channel. Amid the much darkness of Europe it is a spot of light, and opens to humanity a prospect, Bright as the breaking East, as midday glorious. I think it a great measure of justice to England—a great measure of friendship to France; and I am convinced that, acting and working through the means of these two great nations, it will be found hereafter to be a great measure of mercy to mankind.

MR. WHITESIDE

Sir, there was one expression which dropped from the lips of the right hon. Member for Portsmouth which I am sure we all heard with regret, that in which he stated that he perhaps might not be in a future Parliament. I believe, notwithstanding the sneers in which the hon. Member for Birmingham has seen fit to indulge, that the character and conduct of the right hon. Gentleman, the good sense and sagacity shown in his opinions, and the moderation with which he urges them, entitle him to the respect both of his friends and his opponents. The hon. Member for Birmingham has given to the right hon. Gentleman's speech no reply. The opinions of a statesman of experience meet with no favour from the hon. Gentleman. The only impression made on the hon. Member for Birmingham in listening to the arguments of an opponent is wonder that a man can be found so irrational as to differ from him. The fears and hobgoblins that haunt the right hon. Gentleman are discussed by the hon. Member with a smile of contemptuous pity. He forgives the right hon. Baronet, because he says the Whig benches were never known to furnish a Chancellor of the Exchequer. That is the hon. Gentleman's courtesy towards a great party that has held a high position in this country, that has been led by men whose names are written in the history of England. But the hon. Gentleman has fallen into a mistake—if he will pardon me for pointing out a slight error in one who is generally so accurate. He says he will support a certain section of the administration. That is quite a mistake; it is they that support him, and he has not hesitated to announce that if they misbehave—that is to say, if they differ from him—he will dismiss them. How complimentary is this to statesmen who have long held office; especially how complimentary to the noble Viscount and the other eminent persons who assist him in the administration. But let the hon. Gentleman recollect that before now he has attempted to defeat the noble Viscount, and that in a fair fight on a former occasion he did not find that noble Lord a feeble antagonist. Parliament, he says, will agree in his views. Sir, that is the strongest argument against Parliamentary Reform that I ever heard, because if the House of Commons understands its duty, which is to watch the opinions as they may be expressed of the hon. Member for Birmingham, if they respond to all he says, no future Parliament could do his bidding more effectually and completely. Now, he means to insinuate that this is a question of which nothing is to be said but on one side, and that the best thing that could be done would be instantly to endorse every opinion he has uttered. And what was the style of his speech tonight? He informed us first, of what I was glad to hear, for I never heard them before—namely, the circumstances under which the negotiation, out of which this Treaty sprung up, was commenced. He has informed us that it all arose out of a speech he himself made. He read an extract from that speech, and I admit that it is worth hearing a second time. But having read that extract, with a modesty remarkable in him, he then pointed out how his Friend, Mr. Cohden, travelling on the Continent, and carrying that extract in his head, commenced in France a negotiation on his own account, and was then employed by Her Majesty's Ministers to effect the most glorious Treaty that was ever entered into between two great kingdoms. Now, the hon. Gentleman says, that as a Freetrader he supports this document as it stands, and expresses his astonishment that any one can be found to criticise it. Sir, some of the ablest men in this country, men of the soundest understanding, individuals who love their country as dearly as the hon. Gentleman can do, have ventured, not in a spirit of ill-will or animosity to France, but in the performance of their duty to their country, to point out the blemishes and defects to be found in that Treaty; and that, as they understand it, it is a Treaty, not of reciprocity, but of a one-sided and partial character. The hon. Gentleman has not done justice to his opponents. I have always heard that it was the custom of the great men of this country to put the arguments of their opponents more strongly than they had been put, in order that their replies might be more brilliant and decisive. But what has the hon. Gentleman said with reference to this transaction? He first gives us an account of the exports of England, and informs us of our great trade with America. Quite true. The hon. Member for Buckingham said the same thing to-night, and pointed out with all the good sense which a man thoroughly acquainted with his subject would evince, that such is our trade with America, and it would be idle to expect we could ever enjoy the same extent of trade with France. And I believe that is quite true. The hon. Gentleman then said that this Treaty was a master-piece of wisdom on the part of the French Government and a marvellous piece of liberality. And why? Because, he said, the duties on many articles were much higher than 30 per cent, but now, owing to the persuasive eloquence of Mr. Cobden, the Emperor of the French has reduced the duties to the moderate amount of 30 per cent for a given time, to be still further reduced to 25 per cent at a future time. Was he authorized to say that the great staple manufactures of England and Ireland could find an entrance to France under that scale of duties. Has he any right, in fair argument, to say that the duties will be less than that which the Emperor of the French has reserved to himself the right of making them? Has he any right to argue that they will be different from that which is expressed in the letter of the bond? I tell the hon. Gentleman I have been informed by gentlemen connected with the manufacturing interests, and as respectable as himself, that linen yarns from Ireland never could, with a duty of 30 per cent, gain an entrance into the kingdom of France. Nay, more—I have been informed that under that Treaty, so ingeniously contrived by Mr. Cobden, while under former circumstances a certain class of yarns, the duty upon which was paid by weight, could be admitted, they will now be excluded, while the finer and lighter descriptions cannot be admitted. Therefore, until we see the Convention which is to be laid on the table—until we know all the details of the measure which is to consummate that Treaty, and with which the hon. Gentleman appears to be perfectly acquainted—we shall not thoroughly understand the grandeur of the scheme propounded for our acceptance. Now, Sir, the hon. Gentleman not only spoke on behalf of the French Government, but on the part of the British Government. I saw the hon. Gentleman leave his seat and hold a brief consultation with Ministers of that section of the Cabinet upon which he smiles. No Member of the Cabinet has yet spoken in this debate; no Minister has yet indicated the policy of the Government of this country. But, somewhat unexpectedly, the hon. Member for Birmingham has undertaken the defence of a section of the Government, and of the French administration and government. Now, is he quite sure that this Treaty has been framed in accordance with the principles of free trade? Those gentlemen who write books and make speeches on the subject of free trade are a very peculiar race When you quote their books they say—"Oh, those are written to confute you, and not to bind us." When you quote their speeches, they say, free trade is an excellent thing; but if you allude to its theory, they charge you with the antiquated principles of Protection. But what is to be thought of a Free-trader who approves in general of Treaties of Commerce? Did the hon. Gentleman ever read the Motion made by Mr. Ricardo, when that eminent person, skilled in political economy, said—"We want trade, not Treaties of Commerce, for they are opposed to our principles;" and called upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day to carry out those principles and to reduce those duties in a very marked degree? Does the hon. Gentleman recollect the answer of the right hon. Gentleman the then Chancellor of the Exchequer to that appeal, when he told Mr. Ricardo that it was well the Government of England was not committed to such hands as his. Why, the very thing itself—a Treaty of Commerce—is a contradiction of your creed. Mr. M' Culloch has said it. But just let us look at this Treaty for a moment, and consider what the hon. Gentleman has told us. We find in it an Article relating to coal—an article concerning which the hon. Member has made merry. What is the nature of that Article? It is a contract between France and England, whereby England binds herself for a period of ten years not to place any duty on the export of coal. What is the effect of that Article? It strips this House of its legislative authority for that time, and this country of its power to deal with that article during the whole period of the Treaty. If the hon. Gentleman is right in his argument, what follows? A similar Treaty may be made with Portugal, with Spain, with Russia, and with every country in Europe. What becomes, then, of the principles of the creed which denounces such treaties on the ground that they fetter you. Now, Sir, with reference to the political effect of that Article: has it none? The hon. Member derides the antiquated notion of any articles being considered contraband of war. I have inquired into the opinions of French jurists upon this subject, and I will mention a significant fact. French writers held a few years ago that coal was contraband of war, but they now most suspiciously hold a different opinion, and say it is not contraband of war because it is wanted more for French consumption than for war. Then, Sir, the hon. Gentleman proceeded to inform us that of all the magnificent measures ever carried this was the most magnificent. Will he pardon me for saying that he has extended his researches but slightly into the history of Treaties of this kind if he holds that opinion. He has heard during this debate of the great Treaty of 1787, carried by Pitt. What was the character of that treaty? It was a treaty of navigation and of commerce. And why has it been eulogized by great writers on the subject of free trade? Because it was founded upon commercial reciprocity—because it secured no benefit to one country that was not enjoyed by the other, and, therefore, was equally beneficial to both. Can any one say that this Treaty is of a similar character? The hon. Gentleman cannot be of that opinion; and in discussing it fairly and freely, those gentlemen who sit here on this (the Opposition) bench are not deserting the duty they owe to their country, but performing it strictly and thoroughly. Then the hon. Gentleman says that the cost of coal to France would be very slight. That is not the question. He knows very well that the French coal is not fit for ships of war or for navigation, while the English coal is eminently so. [Mr. BRIGHT: No, no!] He says "No," but I say "Yes," and the French themselves say the same thing. The English coal is hard, and does not break into small particles. The fleet of the French Emperor, according to the accounts published of it, is to extend to 100 sail of the line, and the vessels of that fleet would lie like useless logs on the water unless they were supplied with a proper description of coal to navigate them. The hon Gentleman then says that the French Emperor has acted wisely, as I understand him, in effecting this Treaty without consulting the Legislative Chamber of France. [Mr. BRIGHT: Not so.] I understood the hon. Member to argue that the Legislative Chamber of France was of such a character that it was a wise policy on the part of the Emperor not to consult them.

MR. BRIGHT

No, indeed; I did not say anything about it.

MR. WHITESIDE

Well, he certainly cast no censure on the French Emperor for not consulting his Legislative Chamber. But, in my opinion, one of the greatest objections to the principle of this transaction is this—that a treaty of this kind ought to be what the hon. Gentleman has himself described it as—namely, a treaty between two nations, and which has the assent and cordial approbation of the people of each. It ought not to be effected by an absolute ruler without taking the advice or the consent of that portion of the people who are appointed to give either. It is one of the most unfortunate circumstances connected with this Treaty that such a chamber as France possesses, being a Legislative Chamber, has not had an opportunity of expressing its opinion upon this Treaty; and those who are the champions of a free and constitutional Government in other countries ought not to frown on the Senate, such as it may chance to be, which exists in another kingdom. But I have observed of the hon. Member for Birmingham that he is very well disposed towards absolute Powers, and has before now pronounced even panegyrics upon the Emperor of Russia and the Emperor of the French; has condemned those who ventured to impugn their aggressive policy, censured those who endeavoured to restrain their inordinate ambition; and has invariably shown rather an attachment to despotic power in foreign countries. I maintain his speeches in this House on the subject of Russia and of France were not speeches that were responded to by the English nation; and I think it is very remarkable to observe in the career of the hon. Gentleman that he seizes every opportunity of denouncing those who ventured to oppose the designs of Russia, or who have ventured to repress the ambition of the French Emperor. But, Sir, when he made his speech about Russia to-night, did he recollect that of the Cabinet—that celebrated Cabinet which drifted into a war with Russia—the present right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the shining ornament? Has he contemplated that that section of the Cabinet which he now befriends were Members of that unhappy Administration? Is he of opinion that they deserve censure for the part they took in that Russian war? And, as an economist, does he not know that the cheese-parings that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer sometimes recommends are mere trifles in comparison with the cost of that Russian war? If that war was wrong, then the gentlemen who conducted that war are entitled to and deserve the censure of the hon. Member for Birmingham. But I observe in the tone of the hon. Gentleman's speech something not creditable to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I observe that the hon. Member for Birmingham makes a distinction between the members of the Cabinet, and says there is a section consisting of Gentlemen sitting in that Cabinet who might be supposed to disapprove of war Estimates, to condemn the expense incurred in the defences of the country, and to hold an opposite opinion from that which they officially expressed. If I understood that rightly, as having been spoken by the hon. Member, I think he pronounced as severe a censure upon the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his friends as ever was pronounced by one public man upon another. If these expenses have not the right hon. Gentleman's cordial approval, if the policy of the Ministry is not his policy, if he does not in part assent to what they are doing in reference to the expenditure, military and naval, of the country, he ought to join with the hon. Member for Birmingham, and then what power could resist their united talents. The hon. Gentleman seems bent upon constructing a Ministry that shall be formed exactly conformable to his wishes; and he has intimated to the Whigs in this House, once constituting a formidable party, that the knell of their political doom is rung, and that they must no longer expect either his smile or his favour. I do not exactly comprehend what he meant by his dissertation on the corn laws, nor by his denunciation of the naval and military expenditure. Why is he not here when these Estimates are moved for? Why is he not here to perform the duty he owes to his constituents? Why is he not here to point out the extravagance, and to control and limit the expenditure he condemns so loudly in the lump? Why? because it is easier to make a speech condemning what is done by a Minister than to discharge the laborious and painful duty which a critical examination of that expenditure must impose on him, and to undertake a duty which he has never performed regarding them. I cannot understand the course the hon. Gentleman has taken. He has commanding eloquence, untiring energy, and he fears nobody; but why does he not grapple with the Minister who proposed these inordinate Estimates, and make a distinct proposition to the House and to the country? I believe that the hon. Member acts wisely and prudently, and that he suspects his proposition would not meet with the favour of the House, and that it would be sure to be dissented from by his countrymen. The hon. Gentleman condemned the war with China, and I agree with him on that subject. Mr. Cobden brought that question before the House in a spirit of fairness, and with an ability and power of argument that commanded the assent of those whom he addressed; but has the hon. Member failed to forget that he is supporting a Ministry that has now sent out another warlike expedition to China? Has he forgotten the Estimate of £850,000 that was delivered this morning as a beginning, a small beginning, for the expenses of another Chinese war, and all springing out of the policy of the chief of the present Administration, who placed that policy successfully, but as I think erroneously, on the country. Why does the hon. Gentleman, who abhors the principles of war, and who thinks this war with China barbarous and inhuman, not stand up in the House and bring the Minister to account for his conduct respecting it? The Chancellor of the Exchequer himself moved that Estimate. Why was not the hon. Member in the House? He has a taste for irony and an aptitude for ridicule, and he might have heard the master of rhetoric deliver a sentence that no human being could listen to with patience, namely—that powder and ball, and Armstrong guns, and 30,000 men, would be dispatched as messengers of peace to conciliate the Celestial Empire. Did the right hon. Gentleman imagine at the time he so represented this warlike expedition to the House, that is was in truth a message of peace and conciliation, and that the best way to conciliate an ill-used, oppressed, and injured people, was to adopt the policy pursued, and send out a mighty armament and troops to bombard and destroy the Celestial City? Why does the hon. Member for Birmingham not oppose that policy? He condemns the war in China, but by a strange inconsistency supports the Minister that makes war upon it, and passes a panegyric on the right hon. Gentleman who must have advised that war with China, who had the talent and the capacity to get us into it, but who wanted the talent and tact to get us out of it. What is the use of making vague speeches that terminate in nothing? There is no inconsistency in his own conduct, I admit, because he is in favour of peace and of peace Estimates. How does he reconcile the inconsistency of supporting a peace policy and war Estimates? They are irreconcilable. He told them the other night that if Gentlemen on the Conservative side of the House thought fit to carry out his views, that they might be sitting on the Treasury Bench, and that when those Gen- tlemen in the Ministry whose talents they all admired, and whose abilities no one would deny, ceased to be agreeable to him, they must shift places with their opponents. My private opinion is that the hon. Member for Birmingham overrates his power. He has warned us in the course of his discursive address, in which I think he showed more industry than originality, how a former Reform Bill was carried by violence and clamour. But is it not possible that another Reform Bill might be carried by the same means? When was it the hon. Gentleman conceived that distate for violent legislation, or clamorous appeals against the constituted authorities of the country, that he expressed to-night? I trust that the Reform Bill, when it comes, will not be carried by clamour, violence, or outrage, and that we shall have the pleasure of hearing the hon. Gentleman in a future Parliament condemn the Estimates and rise to reduce the expenditure of the country. The hon. Gentleman says he does not hate the aristocracy, and that on the whole he is no enemy to the aristocracy. Well, that is consolatory; it is an old institution of this country. I agree with him that an aristocracy that sustains itself by corruption—by a privileged abuse of its power—by a wasteful expenditure of the public money, ought to fall; but I believe the aristocracy of this country will stand, notwithstanding the assaults of the hon. Gentleman—that it will stand by reason of the useful services rendered by its Members in the other House of Parliament to their countrymen by unflinching patriotism and their exalted wisdom. The hon. Gentleman has not said much upon the merits of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his Budget; will he allow me to say a word, and to pay to that right hon. Gentleman a just compliment? I heard the right hon. Gentleman's speech on opening his Budget for four hours without once winking. I could not do more for Cicero; but, Sir, the light of reason dispelled the delusion and chased away the enchantment. When I considered the subject-matter of his speech, I was convinced against it by the inexorable logic of facts. The hon. Member for Coventry designated the Budget as an ambitious Budget; another hon. Member characterized it as an audacious Budget; and if I may express myself more modestly and measuredly, I would say it is a bold experiment on the country. The right hon. Gentleman spent the first hour of his speech in explaining, with painful particularity, the amount of his deficit. The right hon. Gentleman seems to me on certain occasions to represent himself in Parliament as an injured political economist, who is endeavouring, but in vain, to stem a torrent of wasteful expenditure perpetrated by a spendthrift Parliament. Having created and explained his deficit, he said if his policy were carried out you would have an overflowing exchequer; but it was necessary, he said, at the same time to point out the disturbing causes which exhausted our resources, and what are they? The Russian war, which he himself counselled and advised. I admit that the right hon. Gentleman has the talent to fill the Exchequer, but he has likewise the cleverness to empty it effectually. The Member for Birmingham, a man of sense, must know that a mistaken war will cost more than all the niggardly economy of half a century will save. Having moralized on the Russian war, he proceeded to inform us what were the disturbing causes which reduced his balances. I was asked by an East Indian whether the right hon. Gentleman had made in the House a speech about China, and whether he had stated that the expense would be half a million for the invasion of China. I said I thought he did. "Then," said my informant, "the Budget is a myth." He then asked me, "Did you ever hear of the war with Persia?" But I answered I knew nothing about it, and I think, in saying so, I speak the sense of nine-tenths of the House of Commons. It was a war carried on by the noble Viscount on his own account. Mr. Layard was so unlucky as on one occasion to ask the noble Viscount a question about the Persian war. He got an answer that brought down peals of laughter on the unfortunate interrogator, and the subject was never alluded to afterwards. But, said the questioner, are you aware what the bill was for the Persian war two millions, notwithstanding the short comparative distance of Persia from a country where arms, ammunition, and troops were? Well, said this Gentleman, you may be sure that if the war with China is a reality, and if the business is to be done, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to have fixed the cost, and modestly fixed it at four millions. The paper of this morning makes a beginning of £850,000—a figure which ought to recommend itself to the attention of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham. I appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether that is not a disturbing cause in his Budget, and I think he will leave the lucky Gentleman who succeeds him a deficit of twelve millions, as the hon. Member for Portsmouth said, including the indefinite expense of the Chinese war, combined with his lamentations that he could not give us a more generous Budget. Having pointed out his deficit, one would have supposed that the right hon. Gentleman would have exercised his marvellous ingenuity to show us how it might be supplied, but, instead of this, he proceeded with indefatigable industry to make still further and greater gaps in his revenue. Having explained what sum had to be paid, he went on simply to propose a double income tax. Now, if he wishes to know why we venture to oppose him on the Budget, I will tell him. My notion of the character of his speech was, that he sincerely regretted that the income tax was not greater, and that if he could he would make it more—not having the fear of the hon. Member for Birmingham before him, who, I remember, resolutely said last Session that if he were alive. he would, in the next Parliament, face and confront, and put down, the Minister who would presume to maintain that most odious of all taxes ever invented by statesmen. He has performed his threat, and kept his word. He is here to compliment the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the income tax. I think that a Gentleman whose ideas of political economy are so accurate and clear, has altered his own opinion, and that when the good time comes, and the new Parliament arrives, and the Whigs are scattered to the winds and their party shattered into fragments, that then the great system of direct taxation to which he had alluded would be carried out effectually by a brilliant triumvirate consisting of himself, the hon. Member for Rochdale, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now, what did the Chancellor of the Exchequer do when he made an hiatus in his revenue? He said, you must take away the duty on wine. Suppose there was no Treaty with France, still it might be said if you could reduce the duty on tea and sugar, paper and wine, you would. The right hon. Gentleman misunderstands the policy of Sir Robert Peel. That policy was not to dry up sources of revenue. His policy was to reduce the duty on consumable articles, expecting, and wisely so, that by a greater consump- tion the revenue would be increased? Now, what is the ground on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer ushered in his views? Was there anything more unfair or unsound than the analogy he presented to the House to induce it to adopt his proposal first of a 3s. and then of a 1s. duty on wines? "Wine," he said, "was said to be the rich man's luxury. The same was once said of tea, but it was reduced and became the poor man's necessary, and if you follow my advice the same consequences will follow." He put it very eloquently—but it was a brilliant fallacy. Consider the nature of the article, and the class of the consumers—consider the history of taxation in every country in Europe, and it would be seen that there never was a more unjust analogy. The Chancellor of the Exchequer asked why should not the article of tea be called a luxury as well; but the masterly authority of Adam Smith differs from him, for when he distinguishes, in his able work, articles which are necessaries from luxuries, he places the article of wine in the category of luxuries, and declares his opinion that it should be taxable as such. M'Culloch, in writing on taxation, is of the same opinion. All the authorities are against the right hon. Gentleman. The analogy he puts defeats his argument, namely, the great consumption of tea. I have looked through the whole of the returns, not merely in this country, but in Belgium and France, and the facts are just the converse. No more interesting paper can be read than the Report of the Commission of Inquiry sent from Paris in 1849 to examine into the cause why wine was not consumed more largely in Belgium after the differential duty in favour of French wines in that country. The question the Commissioners had before them was whether wine might not be largely consumed in Belgium, and what habits tended towards the consumption of that article. They investigated that subject with the acuteness for which Frenchmen are remarkable, and the result was that in exact proportion as you find tea, and cocoa, and coffee, and beer consumed by the masses, will you find wine consumed precisely in the opposite degree. So here likewise the same results will follow, and the writers on political economy pointed to that very fact. They constructed tables to prove, and to prove to demonstration, that the article of tea s unlimited in consumption; that tea may be consumed by the young, the old, the sick, the strong man and women; but that wine is to be put in an opposite category. Therefore, the analogy contended for by the right hon. Gentleman—namely, that wine would be consumed in the same way as tea was utterly unsound, and was contradicted by the very facts found recorded in the books to which I have referred. Now, what authority had he for showing that wine would greatly increase? Was it Sir Robert Peel, or was it Pitt? Why, Pitt raised the duty on wine, and at the time when the duty was the highest the consumption did not fall off, and he got the most money. What was the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman himself on the subject? Why, when I desire to answer the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I will appeal to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford. He has himself given the reason why the whole of his plan is impracticable. I will now read to you what the right hon. Gentleman himself said on the subject, and I never heard anything more satisfactory. Indeed, I should not be surprised if I induced the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw his Budget. The right hon. Gentleman in 1853 said:— I will first mention an article of importance in which we can make no change, and that article is wine. I refer to this tax, as it is a tax of peculiar susceptibility, and the cause of an agitation out of doors which is almost as perilous to the wine duties as certain climates are to the growth of wine itself; and because it is desirable that if the House and the Government think no change can be made in the duty, that opinion of the House and the Government should be clearly and intelligibly expressed. And he then said, as is customary with gentlemen of that school, there are three courses to take:— There are three plans, any one of which may be followed with regard to wines. One would be to reduce the duty to a low uniform duty of 1s. 6d. or 2s., or at most 2s. 6d. the gallon. Now, recollect the effect which also must attend the present scheme:— Now, you cannot do that unless you are prepared to sacrifice an amount of revenue for the first year of, at the very least, £700,000, besides an additional difficulty in regard to the drawback on stocks on hand. We have not heard what the drawback will be now. I think the answer of the right hon. Gentleman was a little vague on that subject— With respect to which, "he goes on," it is not impossible that the Government might form a sturdy Resolution, to which the House of Commons might be induced not to concur. But whether that be so or not, a loss to the revenue of £700,000 on the article of wine is very serious, and the importance of the change in connection with its cost will not, we think, advantageously bear a comparison with other objects which the Government have in hand. Another plan would be to fix a duty of several rates on wine of different values, somewhat resembling the duty on different qualities of sugar. But if that is attended with difficulty in the case of sugar, with how much greater difficulty would it be attended in that of wine? It has many recommendations certainly, and this among them, that it would admit low classes of wine at a smaller loss to the revenue. That is as good now as it was then. But the revenue departments will have the greatest difficulty in carrying out such a system. It would be complex in its operations; the wine trade, almost to a man, are opposed to it; and I cannot say that public opinion is so much in its favour as to induce us to attempt to carry it into effect. That being so, there is no choice for us but to say that, whatsoever be our opinion of the operation of the present wine duty, we are unable to propose any change in it, and we must pursue the third and only remaining plan—that is, to retain the existing duty. While we cannot propose any change in it at the present time, neither can we see any definite or early prospect of a change hereafter. Now I would ask the House whether that argument is not as good an argument now as then. Will you answer this question? Are you abolishing the wine duty from a sincere conviction that you are abolishing it wisely and safely; or are you abolishing the duty in consequence of the French Treaty, and nothing else? Why, when the wine merchants held their meeting, they stated that the plan of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was impracticable—that is, the alcoholic test. I happen to know a gentleman who went to Paris to see the way in which they test the alcoholic strength, and he said, "It will require a chemist to do it; the plan, for quick and ordinary business, is impracticable." Now, one word about the paper duty. This Treaty stated the fact, that French paper is to be introduced into this country; and in the same document the raw material from which they make paper is prohibited being exported to this country. Do you call that commercial reciprocity? It is commercial reciprocity on one side. While I hold that a treaty which gives reciprocal duties to be right, for that reason I hold this Treaty to be wrong. The right hon. Gentleman wound up his financial scheme in a short and summary manner—that is, by doubling the income tax. I will not enter into the character of that tax. I forgive the right hon. Gentleman many mistakes. I forgive him the result of the succession duty, as I consider he carried that measure with great ability; but his calculations, though elaborate and ingenious, were wrong. I do not censure him on that ground, but what I cannot understand, and what I never will submit to patiently and silently, is, to hear a gentleman of his attainments and his position inform me of the character of the income tax, and then tell me to double and to adopt it. I recollect one sentence of the right hon. Gentleman as to the whole policy of the income tax. It did him the highest honour, and I have never forgotten it since, and I will venture to say, if the right hon. Gentleman will resume his old position, and perhaps a higher position than he now holds, one independent of office, the representative of the learning, piety, and wisdom of the country, he would, I think, feel forcibly the appeal he made to Parliament in reference to that tax. No doubt the income tax has a great many recommendations as part of the permanent re-venue of the country, but there are also great objections against it. One is a moral objection, for I believe it does more than any other tax to demoralize and corrupt the people, not from the extent of its levy, not from the fault of those who levy it, but from the essential nature of the tax itself. Here, then, we have a statesman of the highest character informing us in the same speech in which he stated that he had studied the subject with the deepest and closest attention announcing that the income tax is the most demoralizing and corrupt of any. Having established that great truth—having shown that it is a demoralizing tax—that it changes the manly virtues of the Englishman into the opposite vices—makes him a deceitful, scheming, hypocritical, lying character; sometimes, it is true, exhibiting remorse and repentance by making restitution. If this tax is to be doubled, then, according to the right hon. Gentleman we are to double the immorality and double the corruption of the country. Now, Sir, I agree with him in that opinion, which he deliberately expressed. I believe, as he declared, that of all taxes the income tax is the most mischievous. He has given me no sufficient reason for now increasing its immorality and doubling its corruption, and, acting on the opinion he proclaimed, with all the fervour of conviction, I must say that I never will consent to the Chancellor of the Exchequer doubling a tax which is the most vicious in our system of taxation, which demoralizes and corrupts our country. How a Gentleman can call on the House of Commons to double that tax without holding out the slightest chance of amelioration, hut rather pointing to an increase and future addition to that tax, how he expects us to be convinced by such arguments passes my comprehension. It is a tax which corrupts society, and therefore I oppose it. I believe the wine duty ought not to be reduced, and therefore I object to its reduction. I believe the paper duty ought not now to be repealed, although, as the right hon. Member for Portsmouth says, it may hereafter most properly be reduced, but not now. I believe, according to the speeches of the right hon. Member for Carlisle and the right hon. Member for Kidderminster, some few years ago, that where a deficiency exists you ought not to draw bills on futurity and leave to another year all the confusion of the finances of the present which your impolicy may have created. For these reasons, I, for one, think that the Treaty requires to be reconsidered, and reconsidered in three or four important particulars, and that the Budget of the right hon. Gentleman, considering the circumstances of the country, is unwise and inexpedient, and ought to be resisted.

MR. CARDWELL

Sir, the lateness of the hour conspires with the admonition which the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman who has just spoken furnishes to warn me against any vague observations on general subjects. I shall, therefore, confine myself, in the course of the remarks which I am about to make, to that which is the legitimate question under the notice of the House. The Resolution which has been submitted to us by the hon. Member for Essex sets forth, I must admit, most candidly and fairly the policy of the party to which he belongs. He protests against the whole scheme of the Government, rather than raises objections to particular provisions. He calls upon the House in the most explicit manner, to reject the Treaty with France, and to give its assent to none of those great and important remissions of taxation which are proposed in the financial scheme of the Government. He does not seek, in short, to kidnap a single vote, but invites hon. Members to go with him into the lobby upon grounds the most intelligible and direct. Let us, then, clearly understand the position in which the country is placed. You are now called upon to provide the largest military Estimates which probably any legislative assembly was ever called upon to vote in a time of peace. This financial year is, moreover, rendered remarkable by the fact that there will be a large remission of the public burdens consequent on the falling in of the Long Annuities. Now how, let me ask, ought we, under these circumstances, to proceed? The hon. Member for Essex contends that the £2,000,000 and upwards which we gain by the remission I have just mentioned ought to be taken advantage of with the view of reducing the income tax. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the other hand, invites you to avail yourselves of this sum to enable you to pursue still further that great and beneficial policy from which such invaluable results have been experienced. But let me for a moment call your attention to the Estimates; and in doing so I may perhaps be permitted to say that I think the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has—considering those obligations under which he and his Colleagues were formerly placed by the hon. Member for Birmingham—displayed to-night the quality of political gratitude to but small advantage in commenting upon the lucid and brilliant speech which that hon. Member has addressed to the House. But to return to the subject of the Estimates; I am perfectly free to admit that I think great honour is due to the Government by which we have been preceded in office for having called upon Parliament to sanction an increase in our expenditure with the object of placing the honour and safety of the nation beyond dispute. And I feel assured that, whatever may be the success of political parties, and to whatever side the smiles of fortune may incline, the hon. Member for Birmingham will find, when he appeals to that public opinion which, he says, is the last resort, that there is no subject on which the people of this country are more unanimous than they are with respect to that which involves the maintenance of our naval and military services upon a footing calculated to secure the safety and honour of the country, unlimited and unmodified by mere financial considerations. Having those large Esti- mates, then, to provide, with the view of securing that object, and having a remission of over £2,000,000 on the public burdens owing to the falling in of the Long Annuities, next comes the question whether you are to adopt a policy of stationary finance, or to take another onward step in that policy of progressive finance to whose benefits we are each and all of us witnesses. Hon. Gentlemen opposite, indeed, desire that we should deal with other sources of revenue than those which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has fixed upon for the purpose of meeting our increased expenditure. They have, however, failed to inform us on what articles contributing to the comfort and enjoyment of the people at large additional taxation to supply the deficiency between our income and expenditure is to be raised. In 1852, the year preceding that in which the great increase in our Estimates took place, the revenue derived from those other sources to which hon. Gentlemen seem desirous particularly to draw our attention was £48,000,000. In the present year you have an increase of nearly £14,000,000 in your naval and military Estimates, as compared with 1852, for which you have to provide; and is the whole of that sum, let me ask, to be made up by the income tax? Why, if you take into account the produce of the income tax in 1582, as contrasted with its estimated amount for the present year, you will find that the additional sum raised by the tax is only £5,500,000. Whence, then, comes the remainder of the large increase that has taken place in your naval and military expenditure? From those other sources of revenue to which you refer. But, you will say, the argument on this head fails, because those other sources are not the subject of remission of taxation. The greater amount which is now raised from them is, then, the result of the increased prosperity of the people, and it is because you have increased the revenue from these sources without adding to the burdens of the community that we now call on you to take another step in the same direction. Since 1852, when the ordinary sources of revenue yielded £48,000,000, we have diminished by successive stages the Customs and Excise by more than one-third; and yet they produce more at the end than they did at the beginning. It is by the successive reimpositions of the income tax that this extraordinary relief has been obtained, and through the agency of the income tax you are now able to remove from the public shoulders a burden greater than the large increase that has taken place in the navy and military expenditure for which we have to provide. But the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down says, we are not taking another step in the course which Sir Robert Peel began. Sir Robert Peel, he says, understood the instrument with which he worked, and he adopted a plan by which when he removed taxes he added to the productiveness of the revenue. I forget whether the hon. and learned Gentleman was in Parliament at the time; but let me ask him whether he remembers when the duties on glass, cotton, wool, and a hundred other articles entirely disappeared from the Customs? When we repealed the duty on glass, bricks, soap, and other articles, and when we now propose to repeal the duty on paper, is it the doctrine of Gentlemen opposite that in no shape do we return the revenue to the Exchequer, because we cannot obtain it from those very articles themselves? Do you not increase the industry of the country? Do you not give more employment, and add to the wages of those employed; and, by stimulating consumption, add at the same time to the commerce of the country and to its revenue? The hon. and learned Gentleman appealed to Adam Smith. I do not know whether he is deep in the study of Adam Smith's works; but seventy years ago this doctrine was laid down in his book, that if you were to reduce the Customs' duties to a small number of articles in general consumption, you would find that the net results would not be diminished, and that your trade would be greatly increased. And so we have found during the last fifteen years, when step by step we have, through the agency and instrumentality of the income tax removed burdens, increased the means of industry, and added to the comforts and consuming power of the community. The policy we have pursued has conferred innumerable benefits on the country. It has trebled your foreign trade, added to the wealth of every part of the community, diminished the expenditure for pauperism and the returns of crime, and, indeed, produced almost every social benefit that the wisdom of the Legislature could confer. But we have heard to-night of the great importance of the foreign relations of the country. We have heard of the extensive trade that has under this enlightened policy been carried on with the United States of America. Since 1842, when this policy began, we have had frequent disputes with the United States, and it will be recollected that in 1846 there was a feeling of the deepest anxiety lest those disputes should involve us in the calamity of war with that country. In the year just passed we have had a misunderstanding with the United States, but no feeling of anxiety was felt by the public on the subject. Why? Because such had been the growth of commercial intercourse between the two nations in the interval—so strong were the commercial recognizances into which the two nations had entered—so great the securities they had mutually given for the maintenance of peace—that no man believed that any carelessness or neglect or want of wisdom on the part of either Government, or of both, could be the cause of war between them. If that has been the case with respect to the United States, what may we not anticipate from the present Commercial Treaty with France? Is there any commodity which France produces that we do not want or any that we produce that France does not want? Some gentlemen talked as if French wines were naturally hateful to the English constitution; but is there the slightest foundation for the idea that the produce of the one country can be injurious to the other, and can any good reason be shown why the population of the one country should not desire to enjoy the productions of the other? The two nations—the greatest and most highly civilized of the world, appear destined by natures to consume each other's produce. Yet our trade with France is not so great as with Holland or the Hans Towns. And why have we not a large trade with France? We had one once, but the Treaty which arose out of the national jealousy of France put an end to it, and in this respect was the most successful for its evil purpose of any that has ever been negotiated. David Hume, a hundred years ago, wrote in this strain respecting the trade that had been destroyed between the two countries?. He said— Our jealousy and hatred of France are without bounds. These passions and prejudices have raised innumerable barriers and obstructions in the way of commerce, and we are commonly accused of being the aggressors. What is the result? We have lost the French manufactures, and our woollen manufactures have been transferred to Spain and Portugal, where we pay a higher price for what we get. Every new vineyard in France formed to supply us with wine would necessitate the establishment of an equivalent manufacture to supply them with English goods. But that is not the view taken by Gentlemen opposite. They are such enthusiasts in free trade, these recent converts, that they will not allow you to introduce free trade through the agency of a treaty which would put an end to the protection that originated in a treaty. But the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite seemed to be horrified at the idea of free trade in France being introduced under the constitution of things now existing in that country, and even, as he seemed to think, in opposition to the constitution under which the French people lived. Suppose the French had reached that stage of progress when they are prepared, not to adopt free trade pure and simple, but only in the shape of a commercial treaty—why, if the conditions of the Treaty are favourable to us, and if it is a recommendation to France that the object should be carried out under the form of a treaty—why should we not be permitted to treat with them in that shape? We have had considerable difficulty in converting hon. Gentlemen opposite; after long years of exertion we have now satisfactorily accomplished that task; why then should not the Government be permitted to pursue with regard to the French that plan which will most recommend to their feelings the great objects of commercial freedom? Of one thing I can assure the hon. and learned Gentleman; when once a nation has begun to taste the benefits which freedom of commerce necessarily confers, their own experience will lead them to walk onward in the same course. Probably not twenty years will expire before the most determined opponent of these liberal measures now existing in France will be as cordial, as enthusiastic, a supporter of them as the hon. and learned Member himself. The hon. and learned Gentleman objected to have these commercial relations with France except in a perfectly constitutional manner; the right hon. Baronet the Member for Portsmouth (Sir F. Baring) objected to have them at all. The policy of the French in Italy did not please him, and therefore he did not see the use of making a commercial Treaty with them. On the other hand, Sir, I believe our policy should be to break down the barriers which have so long separated the two countries, by introducing the products of the one to the consumption of the other; and by so doing I feel assured we shall be conferring on mankind as well as on ourselves a benefit and a blessing second only to that which accompanied the downfall of Protection itself in this country. Sir, there were many points in the hon. and. learned Member's speech on which I should have liked to offer some observations, but already we have passed the hour at which it would have been possible to enter on those parts of the question. Before I conclude, however, I wish to say another word with regard to the case put by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Portsmouth. He looks with dismay at the future prospects if this financial scheme be carried; but he did not tell us in what way the dismay was to be remedied by the adoption of different counsels. If we have a large expenditure to meet—and no one more cordially than myself believes that, in the present circumstances of the country, it is absolutely necessary to incur that great expenditure—but if that great expenditure must be incurred, the ways and means must be provided. We have had an able speech to-night from a distinguished financial authority; he ended by landing us in a deficiency of £2,000,000, offering no suggestion as to how that should be supplied. Probably he would recommend an export duty on coal. The hon. Baronet the Member for Stamford had not solved the problem how the deficiency could be met without an addition of taxation. To what new tax did he refer?

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

None whatever. I took the Chancellor of the Exchequer's own figures.

MR. CARDWELL

SO far as I could make out, the hon. Gentleman did not tell us how the deficiency should be made up. The question simply turns on this,—how are the £2,000,000 the produce of the Long Annuities to be utilized? The Motion of the hon. Member for North Essex utilizes them by diminishing the income tax. The Government, on the other hand, says:—"Spend that sum of £2,000,000 in a mode which shall remove the pressure of £4,000,000 from the shoulders of the people; which shall unfetter industry; which shall stimulate trade; which shall promote the comfort of the people; which shall increase their powers of expenditure and lay the foundation of future additions to the resources of the Exchequer." There has now elapsed a considerable period during which no advance has been made in the work of commercial freedom. We have had the beneficent experience of the great experiment of former years. We have a more loyal and contented people, and the same produce of the Exchequer as before that great experiment was made. I say it is a narrow and short-sighted policy to renew the income tax, and pass no remedial measures for the benefit of the people. I say he who so proceeds is like that person who in the severity of winter and the pressure of distress shall consume his seed-corn. The man who now adopts the better policy, by which the temporary sacrifice of revenue, with an addition of corresponding amount, shall be made in order to produce increased resources for the future, is a wise husbandman who meets the temporary emergency by a temporary sacrifice, and commits to a fruitful soil that seed which he knows from former experience will speedily return to him in a large and an abundant harvest.

MR. NEWDEGATE moved the adjournment of the debate.

Debate further adjourned till To-morrow.

House adjourned at One o'clock.