Sitting of 2 June 1871

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILL—Report—Benefices Resignation* [111–174].

ADULTERATION OF TEA.—QUESTION.
LORD EUSTACE CECILasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether, in regard to a large quantity of adulterated tea lately allowed to pass through the Custom House, and so thrown upon the London market, any regulations exist which make it the duty of Custom House officers to examine and detain all suspected goods in bond; and, if not, whether he will take steps to issue such regulations, so that some check may be put to a practice which inevitably leads to an open breach of the Law?
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, in reply, that no regulations of the kind alluded to were in force, nor was there any law upon which such regulations could be founded. If he were asked whether he thought it desirable to endeavour to persuade Parliament to make such a law, he should say, so far as his own opinion went, that it was not; because, if they were to give the Customs the power of checking all the adulterations which took place, they

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would thus make the service more unpopular than it was at present. It appeared to him that checks on adulteration ought, like taxes, to be made as light as possible; and he also thought that the best period for stopping adulteration was when the article was exposed for sale, and not in the earlier stages.

LAW OF EXTRADITION.—QUESTION.
MR. BOURKEasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether any communication has been received by Her Majesty's Government from the French Government upon the subject of extradition; and, if so, whether he will inform the House of the nature of such communication, and of the reply which Her Majesty's Government have given or are about to give to that communication?
MR. BRUCE: Sir, no communication whatever of the sort referred to in the Question of the hon. Gentleman has been received by Her Majesty's Government.

FRANCE—STATE OF PARIS.

  QUESTION.
  MR. LOCKEasked the First Lord of the Treasury, or, in his absence, the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether insurgents are still being shot without trial by the Versailles Government; and, whether Her Majesty's Government have made any, and, if so, what remonstrance to the French authorities as to their execution of persons without trial?
  VISCOUNT ENFIELD: Sir, Her Majesty's Government have no further information with respect to the first part of my hon. and learned Friend's Question than that contained in the usual channels of information to the public, and, with regard to the latter portion of the Question, I believe that no communication on the subject has been addressed to the French Government.

SUPPLY.
Order for Committee read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."

THE NATIONAL DEBT.—RESOLUTION.
MR. WHITEsaid, that he wished to make a Motion condemning the policy of increasing the income tax to feed a sinking fund, and, accordingly, he would beg leave to introduce to the notice of the House the following Resolution:—
"That in the opinion of this House it is inexpedient to make provision for the reduction of the National Debt by an annual charge upon the Imperial Revenue until a considerable diminution has been made in the Customs and Excise Duties now levied upon articles of domestic consumption."
On the 4th ult., when he had seconded the Motion of the hon. Member for Finsbury (Mr. W. M. Torrens) in Committee of Ways and Means, the Prime Minister remarked—
"Do you mean to say that your care is only for the present, and that you would leave posterity to shift for itself? If so, say so plainly. Have the courage of your opinions, and lay on the Table of the House a proposal embodying your intentions."
Having the courage of his opinions, he accepted the challenge of the right hon. Gentleman, and on the very next day gave notice of the present Motion. In reply to the question whether posterity should be left to shift for itself, he ventured to think that posterity would shift much better for itself than did the present generation, otherwise the system of national education just inaugurated would prove to be a miserable failure, and he was of opinion that nine-tenths of the maladies which afflicted our political and social constitution arose not from national selfishness nor indifference, but from national ignorance. The plague of pauperism; the equitable adjustment of Imperial and local taxation; the relations of capital and labour; fertile lands in abundance in our Colonies, yet vast masses unemployed at home: these and other perplexing social problems would, in a condition of higher intelligence, assuredly solve themselves; and he did not believe that the future Medical Officer of the Privy Council would report that one-fifth of our population could not, owing to scanty earnings, sustain themselves in good health. He did not believe that in the next century the extraordinary disparity between the longevity of the working classes and that of the well-to-do-classes, even in the Valley of the Thames, would be as startling as it was now; neither did he think that infant mortality, the shame of the

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present, would be the opprobrium of the next generation; nor that the future Earl of Derby would be able, as the present possessor of that title did only yesterday, to point out that one-third of the population of Liverpool, or some 150,000 persons, consisted of families living in a single room under conditions necessarily unhealthy and not consistent with decency. On the 18th of last month the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer informed the House, in reply to a Question he (Mr. White) put, that the total amount of Terminable Annuities existing on the 31st of March, 1871, was £4,559,380, of which amount £1,739,096 might be taken as interest, and £2,820,284 as principal applied to the redemption of the capital. The amount of Debt in a perpetual Three per Cent Stock, which those Annuities might be said to represent, was £57,969,885. Before coming to the question of the old sinking fund, he wished to refer to the recent scheme for the reduction of the National Debt. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his last Financial Statement, had taken credit for reducing the Debt by £10,468,728 between April 1st, 1868, and March 31st, 1871; but from an explanatory Return laid on the Table of the House a few days ago, he (Mr. White) gathered that of that sum £4,000,000 consisted of capital transferred from the Court of Chancery to the National Debt Commissioners, and another £2,000,000 of capital transferred from the Court of Bankruptcy, making together £6,000,000. The £4,000,000 consisted of money unclaimed, and securities purchased with surplus interest placed out for the benefit and better security of the suitors of the Court of Chancery; and the £2,000,000 arose from certain investments by the Bankruptcy Court as a banker—at its own risk—of cash belonging to bankrupt estates and of unclaimed dividends before August 6th, 1861. Therefore, the transfer of those £6,000,000 was nothing more or less than a book debt, and, of course liable to any claim that might hereafter be substantiated by the parties interested in the funds of those two Courts; and that fact ought to have been plainly indicated on the face of the Return. That Return, moreover, conveyed a very erroneous impression, because to call such an appropriation as that a reduction of the National Debt was a misnomer
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or misapplication of terms; for, irrespective of the contingent liabilities just mentioned, the salaries and expenses of the Courts of Chancery and of Bankruptcy, which were formerly paid out of the funds handed over to the National Debt Commissioners, were now placed on the Consolidated Fund or on the Civil Service Estimates. The total Vote for the expenses of those two Courts in the Estimates of this year was £261,319; and if the whole of that sum was before defrayed by those Courts, then it could not be deniedt hat a surreptitious sinking fund to that amount had been created. At any rate, the straightforward course would have been to state not only the credit but also the debit side of that financial operation. Again, he wished to refer to a popular delusion fostered by our present financial system. The public saw it announced, as it was last autumn, for instance, in The London Gazette, that the sum of £1,308,405 was, under the Sinking Fund Act, available during the quarter for the reduction of the National Debt, that sum being one-fourth of the surplus Revenue of the preceding twelvemonths, and the public believed that such reduction would be effected, whereas only part of that total was thus used, £500,000 of it having been really appropriated to repay the advances of the Bank. The utter absurdity of that sinking fund scheme would be acknowledged if it were remembered that from 1829 to the end of 1869, while the sums issued ostensibly for the reduction of the Debt had reached £48,000,000, no less than £21,000,000 were never so applied, but were absorbed in taking up deficiency bills or repaying Bank advances. Besides, how stood the case with regard to that sinking fund imposture — for he could call it by no other name—during the last 21 years? From the 5th of January, 1850, to the 31st of March, 1871, while there was £31,705,000 of surplus income, the amount of the deficiences was £42,903,000; so that by their sinking fund operations during the last 21 years, they had incurred a balance of deficiency of £11,198,000, and had actually added £10,250,000 to the National Debt, as was admitted by the Prime Minister in the debate on the 4th ult. Mr. Pitt's sinking fund system, than which nothing could be more delusive, was once deemed a masterpiece of financial wisdom; but with regard to the present ostensible,

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but unreal, appropriation, under the Sinking Fund Act, of one-fourth of each accruing annual surplus to the reduction of the National Debt, he must admit that the present Government did not originate but inherited that bad system. He might remark that the principal of our present National Debt was two-fifths more than the amount of capital advanced, and that the total amount of the Government Stocks created between the years 1793 and 1816 was £773,685,839. The cash actually received by the Exchequer, however, only amounted to £493,608,261. As an illustration of the mode in which the Debt had been incurred, he might mention that in 1798, £200 of Three per Cent Stock, and a Long Annuity of 4s. 11 d., was given for £100 received, and in 1815, at the close of the French War, £174 of Three per Cent Stock and £10 in the Four per Cent Stock was given for every £100 received. Hence, as has been shown by the late Mr. M'Culloch, we were now paying £6,000,000 or £7,000,000 a-year more as interest on the National Debt than we should have had to pay had the same sum been borrowed at the current rate of interest, and funded without any increase of the capital of the Stocks created, as then might have been done. In order to prove the diminishing burden of the National Debt owing to the increase in the resources of the country, he (Mr. White) would quote a recent work by Mr. Dudley Baxter, in which it was stated that in the year 1869 the whole charge per head upon the population in respect of the National Debt was only 15 s. 9d., whereas in 1815 it had been 34 s. 8d. As a further illustration of the greater ability of the country to bear the burden of the National Debt, he showed that whereas the whole private income of the country amounted to about £350,000,000 in 1815, it was now estimated at fully £880,000,000. Thus the total amount of the National Debt was not now equal to more than one year's income of the whole nation. The relative magnitude of the Debt of this country, as compared with that of other nations, had also greatly diminished, inasmuch as while our Debt in 1815 was greater by one-half than the aggregate National Debts of all other countries, it did not now amount to more than one-fifth of the total, including the National Debts of America and Japan.
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As evidence of the increasing ability of the population to pay the interest upon our Debt, he pointed out that whereas 30 years ago an income tax of a penny in the pound only produced £750,000, now it produced £1,500,120. Under these circumstances, therefore, although he could not agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) that the National Debt was a mere fleabite, still it was evident that in succeeding years the resources of the country would have increased so as greatly to alleviate the pressure it now occasioned. It was on this ground, therefore, that he protested against the income tax—a tax obnoxious because unjustly assessed—being augmented at the rate of 50 per cent, in order to enable the Chancellor of the Exchequer to invest yearly some £2,800,000 of income at 3¼ per cent towards a sinking fund by which the Debt might be paid off. In his opinion it would be much better to allow the money to fructify in the pockets of the people. Upon this point he entirely agreed with what had been said by Mr. Laing, a former Secretary to the Treasury—namely, that it was absurd to take 30 s. at 5 per cent in order to invest 20 s. at 3¼ per cent. That Gentleman had rightly put those figures, by calculating that to every pound taken by the tax collector a large percentage must be added for interference with trade, curtailment of employment and consumption, and other indirect consequences. It had been said that if an individual were bound to pay off his debts, a nation was equally bound to do so; but the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when speaking this Session on the Motion of the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Candlish) had pointed out that the comparison of public and private policy did not hold good, because the expenditure of a nation was in some degree fixed, while the Revenue might be increased or diminished, whereas, while the income of an individual was generally fixed, his expenditure might be controlled. The annual sum of £2,820,284, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had appropriated towards paying off the National Debt, would have enabled him to have reduced the sugar duties one-half, or to have totally abolished the duty on tea; or even £888,679 of that sum would have enabled him to have abolished the entire

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duty on coffee, currants, raisins, chicory, cocoa, figs, prunes, and plums. Had that sum been appropriated to the reduction of the malt duty, that duty might have been reduced one-half. The right hon. Gentleman, in reply to the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Bass) on the 11th of May, told the House that, while direct taxation contributed but 25½ per cent, indirect taxation contributed 60½ per cent to the income of the country, which, for reasons he did not then propose to give, he regarded as being an under estimate of the amount of our indirect taxation. Out of the £70,000,000 of our national Revenue, £40,000,000 was derived—and mainly from the poorer classes—from tea, sugar, coffee, spirits, malt, tobacco, and from licences for manufacturing and vending the same, which was £13,000,000 more than the whole amount required to pay the interest of the National Debt and the Terminable Annuities. There never was a greater delusion than the notion entertained by some persons that the working classes were comparatively exempt from taxation, and that nearly the whole of the taxes levied in this country were paid by the middle or richer classes. He had taken the trouble to ascertain the present duties on the average cost of articles in bond, and he found that the duty on tea was 40 per cent; sugar, 20 per cent; coffee, 43 per cent; currants, 28 per cent; raisins, 23 per cent; tobacco, that was to say common tobacco used by working people, 500 to 600 per cent; cigars, 41 per cent; spirits, other than brandy, from 350 to 694 per cent. And whilst a poor man who indulged in a bottle of "Gladstone," which cost 1s., paid a duty of 2d. on that bottle, a rich man paid only the same amount of duty on a bottle of "Chateau Margaux," which cost as many shillings as "Gladstone" cost pence. Thus they still maintained a large and permanent taxation upon articles of import and of native growth which were mixed up with, and were essential to, the comfort of every cottager's family in the kingdom. Such a system never was and never would be just, because it fell most heavily on those who were least able to bear it. In fact, under their system, property paid too little and poverty too much. In 1852 Colonel Thompson—and no better authority could be quoted, said in that House that the poorer classes
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paid 10 or 11 times more than their proper proportion as compared with the richer classes. That ratio happily did not now hold, but he thought it was demonstrable that a man with a wife and three children, earning 25 s. per week, paid on the average quite equal to a 10 per cent, or 2s. in the pound, income tax on the necessaries of life. He (Mr. White) said necessaries of life, because tea, coffee, and sugar had become necessaries of English life, as by our Poor Laws those articles of domestic consumption now formed part of the pauper dietary of our unions. As illustrative of the incidence of indirect taxation on the poorer classes, he would take the case of a man with a wife and three children earning 25 s. a week. Assuming that he spent but 2s. 4d. a week in tea, coffee, and sugar, he would actually pay in the shape of duty, 19 s. 6d. per annum, and if thereto be added the profits on those duties by the vendors, he had no hesitation in saying that in the case of such a man, with an income of £65 a-year, he was mulcted to the full amount of a fourpenny income tax. He thought this fact well worthy of consideration. To show the increase in the price of an article following the imposition of a duty, he might mention that when Sir George Lewis placed an additional duty of a penny on coffee, every poor man who wanted to purchase an ounce had to pay an extra farthing—for there was no smaller currency—or four times the amount of that new duty. And it should be borne in mind that for one who buys coffee by the pound, there are a hundred who buy it by the ounce in many parts of this Metropolis. In conclusion, he would beg to ask, who could accurately estimate how much our present heavy taxation checked the national industry, how much it curtailed production and lessened employment and profits? It should never be forgotten that of our total Revenue of £70,000,000, fully £50,000,000 were annually raised from Customs, Excise, and other imposts bearing upon the trade, the industry, and the subsistence of the people. In the face of the facts he had adduced, he ventured to think that, having regard to the present and also to the future, it was not expedient to make provision for the reduction of the National Debt by means of taxation levied upon articles in general consumption by the industrial classes

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of this country, and, should his Resolution be negatived, he hoped he would be forgiven if he avowed that he failed to discover the present or future advantages of our sinking fund system, which he held to be a specimen of what Lord Bacon called "sinister and crooked wisdom." The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Resolution of which he had given Notice.
Amendment proposed,
To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, it is inexpedient to make provision for the reduction of the National Debt by an annual charge upon the Imperial Revenue until a considerable diminution has been made in the Customs and Excise Duties now levied upon articles of domestic consumption,"—(Mr. James White,)
—instead thereof.
Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
SIR DAVID SALOMONSsaid, he thought the House was indebted to his hon. Friend the Member for Brighton (Mr. White) for the industry he had shown in getting together the figures he had quoted. It was always difficult, without previous notice of the exact line intended to be taken, to prepare figures to counteract the figures that might be brought into the discussion; but having for many years of his life had his attention directed to figures, and to the subject not only of our own National Debt but the debts of foreign countries also, he wished to say a few words on the speech of his hon. Friend, who, he (Sir David Salomons) thought, had made a speech which would have come more fittingly as a reply to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Budget, than in support of the Amendment which he had moved. There was one point which his hon. Friend had not touched on, and that was the high credit we enjoyed in the money markets of the world. Why were our Funds now at 93? Because it had always been the great care of Parliament to be most scrupulous in everything that concerned our National Debt; and when we incurred that debt it was always with the determination that we should adopt every fair measure that presented itself for its reduction; that in time of prosperity we should husband our resources with that object; and that the public mind and the mind
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of Parliament should be constantly directed to it. In dealing with this subject it was not for us to proclaim to the world what a wealthy nation we should some day be and to leave everything to the future. Every nation was liable to contingencies, and what we should aim at was that in the maintenance of our financial system the National Debt should rather be diminished than increased, so that our successors should not be able to say that we had done nothing to reduce the burden of the Debt. An observation had been made in an American paper which was very àpropos, as showing not what we thought of ourselves, but what was said of us in connection with this matter of National Debt by a friendly nation, which had a right to speak, seeing how much it had already done to reduce a heavy debt. It might be said that the United States, having incurred a great debt in the Civil War, had taxed themselves heavily and reduced the debt in order to show the world what a great people they were. But if any nation had a right to count on futurity it was the United States, and he remembered hearing his hon. Friend the Member for Brighton say that the United States might presume to do anything on account of their vast uncultivated lands. The passage to which he had just alluded was the following: — The New York Times said—
"The history of nations has no more astonishing financial record than that which the Treasury at Washington has been able to issue on the 1st of May. Only to think of coming out of a stupendous war, prosecuted under financial difficulties which treason at home and widespread distrust abroad constantly aggravated to the last hour of wicked rebellion, with a debt of 2,755,000,000 dollars, and of reducing it in six years, of peace to be sure, but not altogether free from domestic trouble, 505,000,000 dollars, and lessening the burden of annual interest in the same time 38,000,000 dollars per annum! Great Britain came out of her great wars in 1815, and, after taking five or six years to settle up its accounts, found herself with a public debt of over 400,000,000 of dollars—say £800,000,000 sterling, which immense total in the intervening half-century, 1820 to 1871, has scarcely been perceptibly reduced."
Now, we ought not to be open to a taunt of that kind, nor, indeed, was it quite true that our Debt had not been reduced, for no notice had been taken of the termination of the Long Annuities. At present the Debt was about £800,000,000, including the Annuities, which he hoped

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would be allowed to run on until 1885, when they would disappear, and then our National Debt might be looked upon as reduced to about £720,000,000 of funded debt with a corresponding reduction of taxation for the annuities which will have expired. Parliament having made a contract with the public creditor that a part of our funded debt should be turned into annuities to expire in 1885, was bound to adhere to that contract. No one could contemplate the number of 30,000,000 of souls which formed the actual population of this country without being deeply grateful to the Almighty for the many advantages we enjoyed, and if it were said that we could not now afford to pay the £2,000,000 in question in order to enable us to endeavour now to reduce our Debt, it would surely be virtually putting off its reduction to the Greek Kalends. As a commercial country we ought to take a more practical view of our position. It would be highly impolitic and undesirable to adopt the course recommended by his hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, and the House could do nothing better in support of the public credit of the Empire than to negative the Amendment of his hon. Friend.
SIR TOLLEMACHE SINCLAIRthen rose to move the Amendment of which he had given Notice—
"That in addition to the suspension of the Sinking Fund or Terminable Annuities, the taxation ought to be re-adjusted, so that all the taxes on the necessaries of life, including tea, sugar, and coffee, should be immediately abolished."
MR. SPEAKERintimated that the hon. Member could not move an Amendment upon the Amendment of the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. White).
SIR TOLLEMACHE SINCLAIRobserved, that as he was unable to move his Amendment, he wished to say a few words on that of the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. White), and on the remarks which had just fallen from the hon. Baronet the Member for Greenwich (Sir David Salomons). The hon. Baronet had alluded to the fact that the funds were now at 93; but in 1852, it should be remembered, that they were really above par; and he did not think that it would be an unsound proceeding to suspend the operation of the sinking fund. The income tax, when first imposed, produced £750,000 at the rate of one penny. At present, the same rate produced
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£1,500,000; and, as compared with property, the Debt in 1871 was exactly half what it was in 1846, and there was every reason to hope and believe that the prosperity of the country would continue, and that in the course of another 20 years the income tax, instead of producing £1,500,000, would produce £3,000,000. He therefore considered the House would be justified in withholding for the present the payment of these Terminable Annuities. With respect to the taxes on the necessaries of life, there was a strong feeling that they ought to be repealed, inasmuch as they were taxes on production. He agreed with the hon. Member for Brighton that these taxes were equal to £1 a-year on each family. Taking a man's income at £50, these taxes amounted to 2 per cent, which made all the difference in production in competition with other nations; but, while it was only a tax of 2 per cent on the man's wages, it was from 10 to 15 per cent on the poor widow, who was only earning a scanty livelihood. As the Representative of a county constituency whose interests were bound up with real property, he could not be suspected of any political motive in advocating this question; but he had for many years taken a great interest in the working classes, and had had many opportunities of judging of the effect of the taxes on the necessaries of life; and, in his opinion, nothing could be done which would more tend to diminish drunkenness and to add to the welfare of the working classes than the remission of these taxes. It might be objected that this was not the proper time or opportunity for bringing forward a question of this kind. But he maintained that the time was singularly opportune in one or two respects. Only last year the taxes on corn, tea, coffee, and sugar, amounted to £10,000,000 sterling; but, owing to the policy of the present Liberal Government, the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been enabled to take off £3,500,000 from the tea, coffee, and corn duties, and it was much easier to deal with the £6,800,000 now remaining, than with the amount at which the duties stood before; and, next year, they were told that the re-payments on account of the Abyssinian War would cease, and that a larger sum would be required for the carrying out of the Army Regulation

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Bill, so that Parliament would be in a worse position for meeting this proposal next year than they were in at present. If it were true that the manual-labour classes of the country actually paid their fair share of taxation, and no more—which he entirely denied—he should still be in favour of removing taxes on necessaries, which pressed so heavily on women and children, and re-adjusting them on the shoulders of men who were much better able to bear them; and he would have no great objection to see the difference made up by adding to the taxes on malt and beer, and to make the taxes on all alcoholic liquors proportionate to their alcoholic strength. He did not wish to increase the duty on beer—he should even think that an unnecessary and a wrong policy—but so strongly did he feel the injustice of these taxes on the necessaries of life, that if there were no other way of arranging the matter, he would transfer these taxes to beer, or some other commodity used by the working classes. A great many of those who advocated the remission of these taxes on the necessaries of life, advocated also the repeal of all indirect taxation; but he contended that nothing would tend more to prevent the destruction of these large sources of revenue than the repeal of these taxes on necessaries. It was because the taxes on the necessaries of life were so unjust and oppressive upon the working classes, that they risked the whole cause of indirect taxation, and he would be prepared to accept the repeal of those taxes as a final settlement of the question between direct and indirect taxation. He would not be inclined to remit the taxes on spirits, tobacco, wine, or beer, for they were taxes which were voluntarily imposed by the people upon themselves. Some people contended that the taxes upon tea, sugar, and coffee were not taxes upon necessaries of life; but that objection was sufficiently met by the fact that tea, coffee, and sugar were universally given in every workhouse in the United Kingdom, which showed that those commodities were considered by medical men, and also by the taxpayers, to be necessaries, and not luxuries. Now, a "free breakfast table," as it had been called, would cost nominally £6,800,000; but the recuperative power of the Revenue would reduce that amount to £4,500,000 at least, and that balance
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might be met in various ways. In the first place, it might be met by suspending the Sinking Fund or Terminable Annuities, and by a slight re-adjustment of the licence duty on dealers in spirits and tobacco; or it might also be made good without even suspending any portion of the Terminable Annuities. The duty on tobacco was now 3s. 2¼d. per pound, and on cigars 5s. per pound; but if the tobacco duty were raised to 4s. and the cigar duty to 8s., that would bring in £1,500,000. It was said that such a change might lead to smuggling; but the same objection was urged against the raising of the spirit duty, and yet that objection was not verified by the result, and the duty on cigars in some of our Colonies was 5s. per pound, and in a large country like New Zealand, with a long coast line, it would be much more difficult to prevent smuggling than in England or Ireland. Another means of making up the deficiency would be by the re-adjustment of publicans' licences on spirits and tobacco according to rental. At present, a publican rented at £10 paid a £5 licence, and he could not see why a publican rented at £200 should not pay £100 for his licence, but as a matter of fact he only paid £17; and, in connection with this subject, he could not see the least reason why clubs should be exempted from the duty of taking out a licence. Then, again, the licence duty on grocers was at present of a prohibitory character; for while a publican rented at £10 paid a licence duty of £5, a grocer was taxed £28 for selling the same quantities of the same commodity, which was a monstrous injustice and a premium upon the publican as against the grocer, and by putting the grocer upon the same footing as the publican, they would do what was right for the grocer and for the interests of the public, and they would diminish drunkenness and make the solution of the licensing question very much easier. He estimated that the increase from this re-adjustment of the licensing duty would amount to £1,500,000, as the expenses of collection would be materially decreased, and a much larger sum would be derived from taxing grocers at the same rates as publicans. There was still another source from which this deficiency might be met, for it was said that the French Government meant to give notice of their intention to abrogate the Treaty with England,

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and in that case, it would be fair and right to raise the duty on wine to the same rate, in proportion to alcoholic strength, as the duty on spirits, and he could see no reason why wine, the beverage of the rich, should be taxed more lightly than spirits, the beverage of the poor. The amount of alcoholic strength should be taken as the standard for taxation, and by that means £2,000,000 would be added to the Revenue. In addition to the means he had already stated, another 1d. might be added to the income tax, thus making up the whole deficiency. It was objected that an addition of a penny to the income tax would be oppressive to the lower middle class with incomes up to £200 a-year; but with the deduction of £60 from their taxable income, their quota of tax on the extra penny would only be 11 s. 8d., and they would save four times as much as that by the remission of the taxes on the breakfast table. Up to incomes of perhaps £1,000 or £2,000 a-year, any person accustomed to having a large household would find that the additional penny of income tax would be more than re-couped in the saving of the tea and sugar duties, and this arrangement would, therefore, benefit every man in proportion to his poverty and the number of his family. The incomes of the income tax paying class amounted to about £400,000,000 a-year, while the incomes of the manual-labour class had been variously estimated by eminent authorities at from £200,000,000 to £400,000,000 sterling; taking them at £300,000,000, however, it would be found that while the income tax-paying class paid about £60,000,000 a-year in taxes, including local taxation, the manual-labour class paid about £30,000,000; but the manual-labour class really paid, in addition, a considerable share of local taxation of the country, and the reduction of the tea and sugar duties might be made without disturbing the equilibrium of the taxation of the two classes. Another advantage gained by removing these duties would be found in the stimulus given to the production of beet-root sugar in this country, where there were many places well adapted for producing it, but where it never would be produced so long as these taxes and the Excise duties remained as they were. The operation of the present differential duties on sugar was most injurious, encouraging the lazy, unprofitable, and
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old-fashioned mode of cultivation, and some better plan ought to be adopted. Then the removal of the tea duties would increase our trade with China, which was one of our best customers; while the remission of the coffee duties would do the same thing in regard to Ceylon and other places. It was said that if we had "a free breakfast table," the manual-labour class would only spend more on spirits and tobacco; but it should be remembered that there were 1,000,000 widows in the kingdom and several million children, who did not smoke or drink, and they would derive immense benefit from such an alteration. Many people found fault with the working classes for their want of thrift, their drunkenness, and their other vices; but from his experience in the East-end of London and among the poorer classes of his own neighbourhood, he had the highest opinion of their moral virtues, and, considering the trials to which they were exposed, he thought they had nothing to fear in a comparison with the rich. If there were a larger amount of drunkenness among the lower than among the upper classes, that was only a recent matter; for many hon. Gentlemen could remember the time when drunkenness was at least as prevalent among the upper as among the lower classes. Again, he was of opinion that increase of drunkenness had been due very much to the neglect of Parliament, who had allowed our present abominable licensing system to go on for so long, and permitted magistrates to license publichouses, in some localities at the rate of one for every 40 or 50 of the population, while in other districts they only allowed one for every 1,000 or 2,000 of population; and, for his own part, he very much regretted that the Army Regulation Bill had not been sacrificed instead of the Licensing Bill in this year's "massacre of the innocents." Another reason for the faults of the working classes was their want of education; and although this country had had the example of Scotland for 200 years before her, it was not until last year that any large educational scheme was carried out in England. As to the alleged want of thrift among the working classes, he had been astonished at the returns of the benefit societies, which showed what enormous sums the working classes saved in proportion to their

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means. He did not believe that the upper classes saved anything like as much in proportion. In conclusion, if he wanted a higher authority for what he had stated, he found it in the Sacred Volume, where it was stated how difficult it was not for the poor man, but for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. The working classes owed deep thanks to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for having so materially reduced the taxes on the necessaries of life, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would go further in the same direction, and then at the close of his career he might apply to himself the noble words which Sir Robert Peel applied to himself on a similar occasion—
"It may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of goodwill in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice."—[3 Hansard, Ixxxvii. 1055.]
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER*: The hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton (Mr. White) moves in substance that it is expedient to arrest the payment of the National Debt in order to reduce considerably the taxes paid by the working classes on sugar, tea, and coffee. It is a large subject, quite sufficient in itself to occupy the attention of the House, and that must be my excuse for not following the remarks of the hon. Baronet the Member for Caithness (Sir Tollemache Sinclair) in detail. It appears, however, that the hon. Baronet contemplates our surrendering £6,800,000 of Revenue, making up this amount from two sources—by a penny income tax besides the additional 2d. just imposed, and by means of what he calls the recuperative power of taxation. Now, I gather that the hon. Baronet is a strong advocate of temperance; but if he takes off the taxes on tea, sugar, and all those necessaries of life on which the working classes now pay, and expects that taxation will be recuperative, in what way does he suppose that the working classes will then contribute to the Revenue? Why, they can do so only by adding more to that which is too much already—they will buy more beer and more spirits.
SIR TOLLEMACHE SINCLAIRsaid, he had attempted to show that if the taxation was not fair as between
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the manual-labour class and the income tax-paying class, the tax on beer might perhaps be augmented to a rate more commensurate with its alcoholic strength.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I do not think the hon. Baronet has met the point I have raised. If the taxes on tea, coffee, and sugar were removed, the recuperative power of taxation could only be shown if the working classes consumed more beer and more spirits and more tobacco, for in no other way could they contribute to the Revenue. I turn now to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton, who has accepted the challenge of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, but I think has scarcely done justice to his theme. His Motion being in substance a comparison of the relative advantages of a further remission of taxation in favour of the working classes, and the repayment of a portion of the National Debt, it devolved on him not merely to show that a hardship is now inflicted on the working classes, but to make a comparison between the relative advantages to them and to the rest of the community of the remission of taxes to them, and the payment of Debt, and this he has entirely failed to do. He has carefully avoided the subject of the advantages and disadvantages of paying off the National Debt. It is easy to say that these taxes bear hardly on the poor. Of course they bear hardly on the poor, as taxation bears hardly upon all classes. It is easy also to say that if you take so much money from the payment of Debt, you will have so much left with which to make a remission of taxes in favour of the poorer classes. But what the hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton failed to show was that, weighing the two things in a fair and impartial balance, it was for the interest of the nation that the payment of Debt, at the moderate rate at which it is now proceeding, should be arrested, and the funds thereby acquired should be appropriated in remitting these taxes. The hon. Member did not therefore satisfy the conditions he undertook to satisfy in the Motion he put down. I will endeavour, so far as I can, to answer, not so much the speech which he has made, as the speech which I think he ought to have made, and which should have put forward all the arguments against paying off the National

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Debt out of taxation which have been put forward, for instance, by Mr. Laing, formerly in this House, and more lately in a letter he has written to the newspapers. As the matter has been much canvassed, I shall state why I think on the other hand that, happy as we should all be to lighten the taxes on labour, it is still more important not to relax our efforts in reducing the National Debt. The subject is of enormous importance, and though I rather gather that the House is not in favour of the Motion of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton, it is my duty, not having before trespassed at very great length upon the House in treating this subject, to ask their attention now for some little time while I give the reasons which induce me to believe that the outcry for intermitting the payment of the National Debt is not one which should ever succeed. I begin with a few general propositions respecting the Debt. And first I may point out that the payment of the National Debt is often treated as if the country were for the first time called upon to bear the burden of the outlay when it pays off the Debt. That is an entire mistake. The country has already spent the money. The National Debt is mainly held in the United Kingdom, and when the expenditure was incurred which was met by this Debt, that expenditure was made out of the wealth of the United Kingdom. The question is not as to the principle, which is gone, but as to adjusting the burden of its repayment between the persons inhabiting this kingdom. Now, the wealth of the kingdom consists of the wealth of the permanent residents in the kingdom. At present the general taxpayer is bound to pay annuities to the fundholders representing those who originally lent the money, and can also go into the market and buy up their rights. Should such a transaction occur it would, no doubt, transfer money from one part of the community to another, or rather from the community considered as a whole to certain smaller classes of the community who hold these securities against the Government. The effect, therefore, would be merely a transfer of money from one portion of the community to the other. The nation would be made neither richer nor poorer by the operation. One portion would receive, instead of the annuity, the value of the
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annuity; the other, paying the value of the annuity, would acquire the privilege of no longer paying the annuity. It would be a perfect equivalent on both sides. It would be different, of course, if the main part of the Debt were held out of the country. But as it is the resources of the country remain the same, neither more nor less. Now, what analogy can we take to guide us in this matter? In private life, when a prudent man is in debt, he sets himself to work to pay it off. He considers that, as a general rule, the best investment he can have for his money is its appropriation in the payment of his debts. But in private life that rule is not without exceptions. If he has only distant relations, and if his income is not more than enough to meet his wants, he may consider it unnecessary to burden himself with the payment of debt for the benefit of those for whom he has no particular regard or affection. Again, he may have his money invested at so high a rate that it would be a considerable loss of income to take his money from those investments and apply it to the payment of debt on which he may be paying only a low interest. But these two conditions do not apply to the State. The State ought to be looked at as a whole. We ought to look at it as one great undying corporation, of which we are all members, and to the life of which there is no probable termination, like an animal of enormous longevity—an antediluvian patriarch. Therefore, the considerations that apply to individuals do not apply to the State. It is not for distant relatives, but for the nation as a whole, that we are acting in this matter; and we are bound to consider its interests in a manner very different from that in which a private individual is bound to consider the interests of a remote heir. As regards investment, no Government ought ever to be trusted to speculate with public money, and there is no absolute security against speculation that I know of, after money has once been raised, except investment in our own public securities. There is a solidarity between the whole of the individuals composing the nation at one time and those who have formed and will form it from the first to the last of its career which nothing can dissolve or break, and we ought not to regard this matter from the point of view of our own present

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individual interests; but we ought to think and act for the nation, for whom we are for the moment trustees, soon to be replaced by others who will come after us.
Having stated these considerations, I would now point out to the House the advantages that would result, speaking generally, from the payment of a considerable portion of our Debt. One clear advantage would be that we should raise the value of our Debt in the market, so that if we were ever again called upon to borrow we should do so on better terms. The hon. Baronet the Member for Caithness (Sir Tollemache Sinclair) has pointed out that the Debt is now much lower in price than it was some years ago, and doubtless that is true; but the cause of its now being lower is not a matter that we should regret in itself, because it arises from an enormous extension of the sources of investment, for there are now many more means open for the lucrative employment of money than there were 30 years ago. These means have naturally competed with our Debt and drawn the money elsewhere; but if we were to pay off a considerable portion of the Debt, there is always a certain quantity of money that would wish to find its way into that very best of all possible securities which our Debt affords. If, therefore, we could make a sensible reduction in that Debt we should certainly increase the competition for it and raise its value; and if that operation were carried on with spirit and success, it might be continued up to a point at which we need not despair, even after a considerable amount had been paid off, of seeing that Debt again at par. Looking to the competition which now exists, it is not likely to be done while our Debt is at its present enormous amount, but supposing that it was diminished by a considerable portion, I think it very possible that the competition of persons who think it more desirable to have their money in perfect security rather than at a high rate of interest, might raise the Debt to par; and raising and maintaining the Debt at par is the only way to give the nation the relief of a reduction of interest. Then there is another point of enormous importance. It has been argued that there is no occasion to pay the Debt, because, as the hon. Baronet said, it will pay itself.
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Unfortunately, however, Debt does not pay itself. If the mere growth of wealth and population really paid the Debt, that would remove one of my greatest objections to leaving it at its present amount, without making any effort to pay it off. But the Debt remains by the supposition a constant quantity, and relative increase of wealth implies the possibility of relative diminution. That argument assumes that we are to count on perpetual and uninterrupted prosperity, and that we are not to expect a time when we shall again be called upon to borrow, or when we may find ourselves in difficulties. Nothing could be more foolish than such a dream as that. I suppose that no country ever had a fairer or brighter prospect of peace, tranquillity, and prosperity than England had when Mr. Pitt concluded his Commercial Treaty with France in 1785. We had settled our differences with America; we were at peace with all the world; the steam engine had just begun to assert its power; we had made a Commercial Treaty with France, and everything seemed as if we were entering on an era of prosperity. Yet we were on the eve of a war which was by far the most dangerous, the most difficult, and the most expensive in the history of all the long wars we ever went through, and one which left us a legacy that our latest posterity is not likely to forget. Therefore, there is no more foolish presumption than that we need not attempt the reduction of our Debt because we shall outgrow it. We are bound to consider that we live in an age when our destiny is not under our own control. The very agglomeration of mankind into large States by the adoption of the federal principle to a greater extent than has hitherto prevailed is in itself a source of danger. It is no longer a combination of various Powers which we have to dread—a combination which might be broken up, owing to their discordant interests or by the dexterity of diplomatists; but we have now single Powers of such magnitude and force that any one of the three or four that could be named might put this country to the necessity of incurring very heavy expense and serious danger. It must also be considered that there is always a point up to which a country can borrow with facility, if its credit is good. There is another point at which

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it can borrow at enormous sacrifices and with great difficulty, and then at last there comes a point at which it can no longer borrow at all. Take the present case of France, which is now called upon to make an enormous effort to borrow in order to pay the tribute which Prussia demands, and to meet her own expenses in consequence of the war she waged against Prussia, the civil war which followed, and the losses which she has sustained. It may be, and I dare say it is so, that France will be able to borrow this money; but think with how much greater facility, and on how much better terms, she would have been able to borrow it if she had not begun with £550,000,000 of Debt. How came £350,000,000 of that Debt to be incurred? Mainly by adopting the kind of policy of which the hon. Baronet has spoken. In a time of peace, abundance, and prosperity, instead of balancing her revenue and expenditure, instead of carefully avoiding an increase of her liabilities, she went on with a deficit from year to year, no doubt thinking that "to-morrow shall be as to-day, and even more abundant." That is a warning which this country cannot too much lay to heart. It is our duty to reflect that we may be called upon to make immense sacrifices, and that we should be ill able to make them unless we diminish our immense mass of Debt. I will also venture to say that the power of every country to maintain peace—which I take to be the desire of us all—depends mainly on the opinion that is held of it by foreign nations; and there is nothing so likely to give a favourable opinion of this country, of its strength, its prudence, its wealth, its foresight, of all that makes a nation respected and feared, as the fact that now, in the fulness of our prosperity, we do not allow ourselves to be enervated or relaxed by the ease of too fortunate times, but that we look, forward carefully and prudently to a time—and we know not how near it may be—when the present condition of things may change, and when we may be called upon, as we have been in the course of our history, to contend for our very existence. It must be remembered that we in England are not wont to put things on mere abstract grounds. I appeal to the traditionary policy of England in this matter. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton asks us
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to suspend the payment of our Debt, and in doing so he asks us to violate all the traditions which have prevailed in England since this country has had a Debt. Our Debt began in the reign of William and Mary, and for a long time the contracting of it was always accompanied by some provision for a sinking fund in order to pay it off. The words "Sinking Fund" have now an evil reputation, and the fashion is to sneer at the idea. But there are two kinds of sinking funds, against one of which too much evil cannot be said. Any complicated device which seeks to persuade people that they can pay off their Debt by any other means than that of providing a large excess of revenue over expenditure is vain, and all those devices which amused and deluded our ancestors have now been thoroughly exploded. But there is a sinking fund of another kind—one which aims at laying hold of the excess of revenue over expenditure, and devoting it to the payment of Debt, and that is one against which there is nothing to say, except that it may be confiscated to meet the wants of a profligate Minister. That objection is entirely obviated by depriving it of the nature of a fund, and reducing it to a yearly payment devoted as soon as raised to the payment of Debt, in fact to a Terminable Annuity. From the Peace of 1815 to the present time we have never ceased to have Terminable Annuities in the nature of a sinking fund, by which not only the interest of the Debt has been paid, but capital has also been sunk or absorbed. The traditionary policy of England is to have some contrivance of the kind, and it has gone on ever since the Peace of 1815, when the Debt of this country amounted—according to Mr. Dudley Baxter—to £902,000,000. From that time to the present we have paid off £177,000,000, but we have re-incurred £77,000,000, of which £20,000,000 was for the liberation of the slaves; £34,000,000 was for the Crimean War, and another considerable sum was on account of the Irish Famine. At the present moment our Debt, including the capital represented in Terminable Annuities, stands at £796,000,000, and I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton whether he thinks that this country would have done more wisely if it had refrained

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from paying off that £177,000,000? Would the working classes, for whom he feels so much sympathy, have been in a better position if this country had been saddled with that amount of Debt, which would not have been paid off if his policy had been followed? It seems to me that no persons have a greater interest in the reduction of the Debt than the working classes themselves. I would just notice, in passing, two remarks that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton has made about me. He spoke of my having been "un-candid," though I did not intend to be so, with regard to the Return as to the £10,000,000 of Debt which I stated had been cancelled during these years, and he says I ought to have gone into detail on the subject. In making a financial statement there is hardly any limit to the detail into which one might go, but such speeches always draw themselves out to a sufficient length without importing anything that can be helped. This Return, relating to the quantity of Debt cancelled, is made out exactly in the terms in which it was asked for. It is quite true that you take about £4,000,000 from Chancery, and £2,000,000 from Bankruptcy, but it is also true that that amount of Debt has been cancelled; and therefore the statement of the fact could not be avoided. Nor is it the case that the money so apapplied to reduce the Debt is the money out of which the salaries in Chancery are paid, for they are paid from another source. It is to the Fee Fund of the Court of Chancery that we looked for paying the Chancery salaries; but that Fee Fund is now paid into the Exchequer, and the salaries are placed on the Consolidated Fund. No doubt we have given a book Debt bearing no interest for the amount now used in buying up and cancelling Stock; but it is not the less true that we have cancelled £6,000,000 of Stock from sources which we shall never have to replenish. According to the Return, the Debt has been reduced in the years referred to by £17,000,000; but from that amount must be deducted £7,000,000 of Debt incurred for the Telegraphs. The Telegraphs, however, not only pay interest, but are beginning to furnish a sinking fund, which will abolish, in course of time, the capital of that Debt. Consequently, that item does not burden
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the country in any way. I have had nothing to do in drawing up or "cooking" the Return in question, or I should have been justified in taking more credit to myself. That is what I have to say with respect to the National Debt; and now I come to the alternative suggested by the hon. Member, that in preference to continuing the paying off of the National Debt we should reduce the duties on articles consumed by the poor—such as tea, sugar, coffee, cocoa, but not tobacco. The hon. Gentleman talked of the severe pressure upon the poor of having the necessaries of life taxed, but the expression "necessaries of life" is a mere question of words. One portion of society considers as necessaries of life articles which another portion does not think so. I do not object to the hon. Gentleman calling tea and sugar necessaries of life, but the mere calling them so does not make them so in the sense used in taxation. What is meant in reference to taxation by the phrase "necessaries of life" are the things required for the support of life. The shilling duty on corn amounted to a tax, in regard to wheat and the cereals entering into the composition of bread, of 2½ per cent on the bread of the poor; and when we hear so much of the hardship of a 2½ per cent income tax, it cannot be thought, I think, an unworthy act to have taken off the 2½ per cent tax on corn, which was in the strictest sense a tax on the necessaries of life. The hon. Gentleman considers that the duties on tea and sugar should be taken off altogether, as being necessaries of life, but that the poor should continue to pay the duties on stimulants and on tobacco. Such a course of proceeding would be tantamount to declaring that those of the working men who had no taste, or but little taste for stimulants, should pay no taxes, or be but slightly taxed. Nothing could be more dangerous than such a doctrine. As the electoral suffrage is now settled, the householders of the country have an influential voice in electing those who are to make laws for the country, and if it were made optional for them only to be taxed according as they consumed certain luxuries, the effect would be that you would have one set of persons empowered to impose taxes, while another set of persons would have to pay them.

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The poorer classes would tax the rich, while they themselves would be exempt from the burden of taxation. An inhabitant of New York once complained of the course pursued by the inhabitants of New York in electing persons who spent millions of the money of the city without having anything to show for it, and added that if they elected honest persons the money would be more beneficially expended. The person to whom this observation was addressed replied—"What is it to us? It is you who pay, and not we." The same would be the case here if the proposition of the hon. Member should be adopted; for then a privileged class would be created, and you would not have the only satisfactory check on their mode of imposing taxation. The adoption of such a proposition would also have prejudicial effect on the capital and resources of the country to an extent that can scarcely be conceived. If you are going to destroy all indirect taxation, where are the resources to come from to enable you to meet the requisite payments on account of the Debt, and to provide for the necessary expenditure of the country? It would hardly be possible to have a revenue sufficiently elastic to meet the burden of the public necessities. The Debt would remain, but the sources from which it is paid would be absolutely exhausted. If the tea and sugar duties were abolished, would any man believe that any Government would be able, even in the case of an extreme and pressing necessity, to re-impose them, and, if not, would not that by so much strike at the power of the country to meet the exigencies which a great nation like this is continually subject to? The result would be that, whenever any great demand had to be made on the resources of the country, it must be made by direct taxation, and that up to a point making it most oppressive to those who had to pay the taxation, and a greater evil also to the poorer classes than if they had to pay a certain portion of the amount required. If you try to carry direct taxation beyond certain limits, capital will make wings for itself and fly away. The idea seems to be based on the popular delusion that labour and capital are antagonistic. What is the great advantage of capital to a country? It is not the opulence of the few people who are nominally the
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owners of it, and can enjoy but a certain portion, but it is the fund out of which the great mass of the people are maintained. Therefore nothing could be more impolitic than to drive capital out of the country by any heavy system of taxation; and it would be far better for the interest of the working classes themselves that they should continue to pay a moderate duty on the quasi necessaries of life than that that credit by which this country alone exists, in its artificial state of society, should be destroyed.
I think I have shown the House very strong, indeed insuperable, reasons why this country should not give up the duty of reducing the National Debt; and I trust it will never allow itself to be persuaded to break down the system deliberately sanctioned by Parliament when the necessity for doing so is not urgent and overwhelming. It is very easy to sneer at these Terminable Annuities, and to say that it is only the Chancellor of the Exchequer lending to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In one sense, that is the case. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, as borrower, is the representative of the people of this country; as lender, he is only one of the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt, lending the money of the savings banks on security given to them. If you interrupt the system of Terminable Annuities you tamper, in a manner most injurious to the rights of the public creditor, with the security on which the money of the savings banks has been lent. I am satisfied that no more grievous injury could be done to our credit than to take advantage of the fact that we are trustees of the money of the savings banks, in order to withhold from them the payment we have deliberately covenanted to give, in order to apply it to the Ways and Means of the year. As I read the Savings Bank Acts, the depositors have no security but the Stocks in which their funds are invested. There is no book debt, as in the cases of Chancery and Bankruptcy, to make up the possible deficiency. It makes no difference when you take the money, which you are bound to pay the depositors, and apply it to your own use, whether you do it through the intervention of a trustee, or directly, as in the case of ordinary life annuities—you may call it a change of security—I call

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it a misappropriation of the funds of a public debtor for the use of his creditor. You may call it a change of security—I call it a default in paying what is legally and justly due. Having, therefore, shown that there are excellent reasons why, taking the nation in a corporate capacity as a whole, we should go on paying off the National Debt, and having also shown that there are good and substantial reasons why we should not wholly relieve the working classes from taxation. I should now like, if the House will allow me, to say a few words on another aspect of this subject, on which I have collected some statistics, which I am persuaded will be found to be not without interest, and the effect of which will be to exhibit the most remarkable evidence of national prosperity which the world ever saw. For this purpose I take three periods in the present century—1825, 1850, and 1870–1—and apply certain tests of public prosperity to these different periods. The total amount of funded and unfunded Debt was, in 1825, £809,831,468; in 1850, £787,029,162; and, in 1870–1, £737,400,237. The total payments for interest, &c, of Debt, including Terminable Annuities, were, in 1825, only 10 years after the war was over, £30,205,268; in 1850, £28,297,583; and, in 1870–1, £26,826,436. So that at this period, when we are invited to stop our payment of Debt and apply the money to the reduction of taxation or to the service of the year, we are actually paying nearly £4,000,000 annually less for the charge of the Debt than in 1825. I must beg the House to bear that in mind, because it will show how different was the position of the country in 1825, and how much more heavily this burden bore upon it then than it would do now. The population in 1825 was 22,281,000; in 1850, 27,523,000; and, in 1870–1, 31,437,000. So that when the population was 22,281,000 we were paying £30,205,268 as the annual charge of the Debt; and now that the population is 31,437,000 we are paying only £26,826,436; and yet that is called a burden too heavy to be borne. The Revenue raised by taxation, direct and indirect, including the Post Office, Telegraph, and other payments into the Exchequer, fees in the Courts of Justice, &c., which cannot fairly be called taxation, being payments for which service
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is rendered, and miscellaneous receipts which are in the nature of a repayment; deducting these, the Revenue raised by taxation was, in 1825, £54,869,654; in 1850, £54,079,243; and, in 1870–1, £60,472,114. The population had increased 9,000,000 since 1825, while the Revenue raised by taxation had increased in the same period by only £6,000,000. Dividing the amount of taxaton by the number of the population, we get the rate calculated per head. The rate of taxation per head—that is, under that particular class of revenue, not on the whole, was—in 1825, £2 9s. 3d.; in 1850, £1 19 s. 3d.; and in 1870, £1 18 s. 5½d. The receipts other than revenue raised by taxation were—in 1825, £4,893,396; in 1850, £3,440,727; and in 1870–1, £9,473,106,—so that these receipts are double what they were in 1825, and almost three times as much as they were in 1850; while it should be recollected that these payments may be said to cost the public nothing, being payments for service received. I now come to the consumption of the country; and, first, I take beer. The number of barrels consumed by the people of this country (England only) in 1825 was 7,995,973; in 1850, in the United Kingdom, 15,303,767; and in 1870–1, 25,889,743; and the consumption of each individual was, in 1825, in England, ·358, or about one-third of a barrel; in 1850, in the United Kingdom, ·556, or about one-half of a barrel; and in 1870–1, ·823, or four-fifths of a barrel. I now take the article spirits. The number of gallons of homemade spirits consumed in this country in 1825 was 18,928,342; in 1850, 23,862,585; and in 1870–1,22,961,125, being a slight reduction, as the House will observe, on the consumption of 1850; but the devil loses nothing by that, because it is well made up by the consumption of foreign spirits. The quantity of foreign and colonial spirits consumed in 1825 was 1,317,671 gallons; in 1850, 2,229,063; and in 1870–1, 8,439,385 gallons; so that the consumption in 1870–1, adding foreign, colonial, and home spirits together, was considerably larger than that of 1850. The individual consumption of home-made spirits in 1825 was ·849 of a gallon; in 1850, ·867; and in 1870–1, ·730; and of foreign and colonial, in 1825, ·059; in 1850, ·081; and in 1870–1, ·268 of a gallon

1465
for each man, woman, and child in the country. If I take tobacco, the figures are still more remarkable. In 1825 the tobacco consumed was 16,832,826 lbs; in 1850, 27,553,236 lbs; and in 1870–1, 41,371,507 lbs. The income tax produced per penny, in 1850, £867,880; and in 1870–1, £1,520,000. The house tax yielded, in 1852, £727,026, and 1870–1, £1,129,125. The official value of the imports was, in 1825, £37,408,279; they had risen in 1850 to £105,874,607; and in 1871, the real value of the imports was £303,257,493, nearly trebling themselves in 20 years. The exports were in 1825 (official value), £58,935,252; in 1850 they had risen to £190,089,643, and the real value is now £244,080,577. The shipping inwards represented, in 1825, 3,102,730 tons; in 1850, 7,100,476 tons; and in 1870–1, 18,113,364 tons. The shipping outwards represented, in 1825, 2,699,514 tons; in 1850, 7,404,588 tons; and in 1870–1, 18,526,818 tons. That, Sir, is my account rendered of the state of the country. Then we are told we are so oppressed by taxation that we must give up the hope of strengthening the hands of the country and improving our financial prospects by continuing the very moderate reduction of Debt.
MR. SPENCER WALPOLEsaid, he must beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon; but had the right hon. Gentleman any statement of the estimated increase of the income of the country?
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: No, not exactly; but Mr. Dudley Baxter estimates it at £860,000,000, or about £60,000,000 more than the amount of the Debt. Such, then, being the state of the case, can it be said that penury, want of resources, want of means, are so very pressing as to force us to give up that system we have so long adopted for the payment of the Debt? The question remains, supposing it granted to me—and it can hardly be denied that it is for the interest of the nation that that system should be continued—the next question is, what is the interest, not of the nation, but of this generation? Is their interest really separate from that of the nation? Have we a right to say that, posterity having done nothing for us, we should do nothing for them? Have we a right to say that we have abundance, and are likely to enjoy abundance for the rest of our lives, and therefore
1466
we decline to put ourselves to inconvenience for the sake of those who are to come after us, no matter whether it is our duty to do so or not? The history of this country should be a sufficient answer to that. You say the country is prosperous, but that prosperity did not come of itself. It is the result of a long course of self-denial, which has not been equalled, certainly not been excelled, in the history of the world. All that we now enjoy is the fruit of the incredible toiling of countless generations, and is it to be said we are to come in for this rich inheritance and do nothing for our children? During the great war with France our ancestors were as prodigal of their money as their blood, at a time when money was far less abundant than it is now; they never thought, especially during the latter part of the war, of the pressure upon them, but were always ready, not only to bear their own charges, but to furnish to our foreign allies subsidies whenever they were wanted. Are we, then, in this period of prosperity, the like of which the world has never seen, to say we will do nothing for posterity? As Horace taught—
"Non his juventus orta parentibus
Infecit æquor sanguine Punice."
It will not be believed that we are the children of the men of Trafalgar and Waterloo if we satisfy ourselves with merely looking after our individual interests, simply because it is easier than to provide for the future welfare of our country, if we suffer ourselves to be persuaded to sit down in luxury—English luxury, as it is now called in France—and do nothing whatever in the spirit of those who expended their blood and treasure to earn for us this prosperity and tranquillity which we now enjoy. In France, the idol of the nation is glory, and a miserable idol it is; but a worse idol than that is the individualism and selfishness which lead a man not to consider public questions with respect to the community of which he is a member, or the interests of his fellow-men, but to confine himself within himself, and if he sees his way clear to pass his own life in tranquillity and ease, to be content to let others shift for themselves. That is the danger of this time. The sinews of public morality and public duty are relaxed when people encourage a policy of selfishness. We have always

1467
been in the habit of saying that, although France fought for glory, England fought for duty; and duty has been the mainspring of everything we have done, the agency that has raised this country to its present height. But if this is so, how must we regard those who say—"I have none but myself to think of; I care nothing for those who come after me; I happen to belong to a country which has been toiled for by past generations; I will enjoy to the full all the privileges that toiling has earned for me, and I will contribute nothing whatever to the common stock; I will not make a single sacrifice, or forego a single pleasure, in order to strengthen the country in the way in which she needs strengthening for the sake of posterity?" I beg pardon of the House for having taken up so much of its time; but I thought it necessary, as the unworthy representative of the financial policy of the Government, to make this protest against the feeling that seems to be gaining ground—that all we have to do is to make things easy for the present, and disregard alike those who came before us and those who come after us. That is not the way in which it came to be written, Sic fortis Etruria crevit; and if England is to maintain her position among the nations, it will be by following different counsel from that suggested by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Brighton.
MR. W. FOWLERsaid, he heartily agreed with the general views of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and although perfectly willing to pay far heavier taxes than were levied at present, if by so doing the National Debt could be reduced, he objected to a system of payment of Debt by Terminable Annuities, because the advantage resulting from that payment was not felt by those who made the payment, but by the taxpayer of the future. If Debt were paid off, the taxpayer who reduced the Debt should have the satisfaction of reducing the interest on Debt to be borne by him. In the case of America, which had been instanced, a reduction of £10,000,000 of Debt was followed by an immediate reduction of interest; but under the system of Terminable Annuities, those who this year paid an additional 2d. on the income tax would not get a single farthing benefit unless they chanced to
1468
live until 1885. It was no exaggeration to say that before 1885 the country would have saved an amount equal to the whole of the capital of the National Debt, and, under such circumstances, would be far better able to pay the interest on the Debt than it was at present. That was no argument against payment of Debt, but against deferring the advantages resulting from that payment. The proper way to pay Debt was to make provision in each Budget to cancel Stock. The only argument urged against this proposal was that the House was not to be trusted, and would invariably prefer to reduce taxation to paying Debt. Was there any justification for saying that the House of Commons was made up of a parcel of fools, who, being unable to trust themselves, were obliged to go through the "hocus pocus" of a system of Terminable Annuities? He objected to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's views respecting the contract the nation was supposed to have entered into. The nation had contracted with itself, and there was no reason for saying it could not contract from year to year. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said the savings banks depositors had not the security of the nation for the money, but only the security of the Terminable Annuities. If he looked at the Act he would find he was in error; and if he were not it was high time the Act was amended, that the savings banks depositors should have the security of the nation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had spoken of the contingencies of the future; but there was equal possibility that the future would be characterized by prosperity as by misfortune, and the chances were in favour of the presumption that the people of 1885 would be far richer than the people of the present. In opposition to the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. White), he would prefer to reduce the Debt even to double the extent it was being reduced at present; but he protested against a system by which those who reduced the Debt did not get an immediate benefit from such reduction.
MR. SINCLAIR AYTOUNsaid, he should support the Motion of the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. White), and would point out that his hon. Friend's arguments were directed, not against the reduction of the National Debt, but

1469
against the carrying on of that process by funds supplied from indirect taxation, such as the Customs and Excise. He wished to call attention to some of the hon. Member's statistics. The hon. Member had taken the case of a working man whose income amounted to £65 per annum. He supposed that that working man, with a wife and two or three children, would expend 2s. 4d. per week in taxes, which would amount to £6 1s. 4d. per annum. In another portion of his speech the hon. Member stated that this same artificer paid an amount in the shape of taxes which might be considered equal to 2s. in the pound of income tax.
MR. WHITE: No, not that man.
MR. SINCLAIR AYTOUN: Another man?
MR. WHITE: Yes.
MR. SINCLAIR AYTOUN: Who was that other man?
MR. WHITE: I must explain. I stated, with reference to the individual whose case I had assumed, that 2s. 4d. was equal to him to 4d. in the pound of income tax: but I believe if we went through the whole category of the consumption of the working classes, it would be found that the working class, as a class, paid what was equivalent to 2s. in the pound to Government.
MR. SINCLAIR AYTOUNreplied that he had misunderstood the hon. Member, who had taken the case of an artificer whose income was £65 a-year, and stated that the amount paid by that artificer to Government was equal to 2s. 4d. per week. [Mr. WHITE: Not to him.] Very well; that showed how difficult it was to enter into this question of statistics in a general discussion. The hon. Member had stated that such a man and his family spent 2s. 4d. a-week in taxes, and then he stated that artificers in general would spend a sum equal to 10 per cent of their income; but he had not taken the same standard in both cases, and that showed the difficulty of discussing such subjects in that House without having the figures before them. The hon. Member would better promote the object in view by moving for Returns to find out the taxation of the different classes of the community. He had seen statements made by societies whose object was to obtain a repeal of direct taxes which seemed to him to be entirely irreconcilable with
1470
the facts which came under the notice of everybody. He wished to make one remark in reference to a statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman had stated that if we redeemed the Terminable Annuities we should be breaking faith with the deposits in the savings banks; but nothing could be more entirely inconsistent with the fact. When the First Lord of the Treasury introduced the scheme for converting the Debt into Terminable Annuities, he stated that whether there was a profit or a loss on the investment, we still owed them the money they had deposited. There could not be a doubt that the security of the depositors in the savings banks was entirely independent of the mode in which the money was invested.
MR. RYLANDSappealed to his hon. Friend the Member for Brighton (Mr. White) not to divide the House on the question.
MR. WHITEsaid, he would withdraw his Motion.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

ARMY—SUPPLY OF POWDER.

  MOTION FOR A PAPER.
  COLONEL BERESFORD, in rising to call the attention of the House to the insufficient supply of R.L.G., Pellet, and Pebble Powder, and to move an Address for Copies of the Report of Colonel Campbell (the Superintendent of the Royal Gun Factories), as to experiments made with the 35-ton Gun with ordinary and with pebble powder; and of the Chief Superintendent of Waltham Abbey (Colonel Younghusband's Report), dated the 4th day of March 1869, said, that in February last he had placed a similar Notice on the Paper, but shortly afterwards the subject had been brought forward in "another place;" but in consequence of the unsatisfactory reply which had been given to the noble Earl (the Earl of Carnarvon), who had there introduced the subject, he had placed the present Motion on the Papers of that House. He would give the House a short history of the manufacture of gunpowder for some time back. About 1825 there were three Royal gunpowder manufactories in this kingdom—namely, at Waltham Abbey and Faversham in England, and Balincollig in Ireland. About that period the idea seemed to have got

  1471
  abroad that there was a prospect of a durable peace, and it was canvassed whether it was not desirable to dispose of one or more of these factories. Under the auspices of Lord Liverpool's Government, Faversham and Balincollig were sold in 1828, at a nominal price. The result of the course taken was, that in 1840 the supply of gunpowder was so sensibly diminished that it was found necessary to resort to private manufacturers in order to get a supply, and contracts were accordingly entered into for getting an annual supply of powder. This system of contracts had been carried on ever since in a very partial and imperfect manner. When the Russian War broke out in 1854, the stock of serviceable gunpowder had been reduced to 125,000 barrels; and here he might be allowed to refer to a Report on the Table of the House, in which that quantity was alluded to as if it were the proper stock that ought to be on hand. But that Report did not point out, as he contended it ought, that the quality was of a very inferior description. In consequence of the outbreak of the Crimean War large contracts were entered into with manufacturers in this country, in Prussia, in France, and also in America; but one contract had been cancelled at a cost of £20,000, and a large quantity of foreign powder had been sold at a loss of 50 per cent. In 1866 a Committee on Gunpowder recommended the introduction of pellet powder. In 1867 that recommendation was confirmed and adopted, and the Secretary of State for War for that year sent instructions to the factory at Waltham Abbey to prepare machinery for the manufacture of this powder. An interval of two years had occurred before anything had been done, not in consequence of any discussion going on, but because the machinery could not be made to manufacture pellet powder. In 1869 the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War referred the whole question of the best sorts of powder to a carefully selected Committee of experts, and that Committee on Explosives reported, in 1870, in favour of the adoption of pebble powder for all rifled guns and guns over 7-inch calibre. The Committee stated, in their Report, that the L.G. and R.L.G. powder was well worthy of the reputation it had obtained on the Continent. They spoke
  1472
  of pellet powder as far more moderate, and of pebble powder as decidedly a milder form of powder. In 1870 pebble powder was adopted as the proper powder for rifled guns. The estimate for 1870–71, for the purchase of powder from private manufacturers which had been reduced in 1868 from 15,000 to 9,000 barrels, was still further reduced to 5,000, and the expenses of the factory at Waltham Abbey also dropped. Waltham Abbey, under Ministerial direction, had been subject to chronic changes, such as those which had taken place during the Crimean War, when it was worked both day and night, Sundays included. In 1869 the Surveyor General of Ordnance had entirely suspended the manufacture of powder at Waltham Abbey; and, again last year the right hon. Gentleman ordered the manufacture of powder at any cost. Now, there had been a great deal of well-founded alarm in the public mind as to the inadequacy of the supply of powder, notwithstanding statements which had been made calculated to mislead the public. He (Colonel Beresford) would, therefore, endeavour to put the subject as plainly before the House and the public as he possibly could. At the end of 1869 they had 6,500 guns, of which 800 were rifled guns; and there were 1,000 guns either manufactured, or being manufactured, on the improved rifle principle. According to Colonel Younghusband's Report, while 17,000 barrels of pellet powder were stated to be necessary, the stock in hand was nil, and the stock of L.G. was nearly 100,000 barrels more than was required. In 1868 the stock of powder amounted to 410,000 barrels, and in 1870 to about 300,000 barrels, and the latter quantity had been diminished since 1870. But four-fifths of that quantity of 300,000 barrels was L.G. powder, which had accumulated since the Crimean War, and was mainly obsolete, and not fit for rifled guns. Moreover, the stock of powder at Waltham Abbey was not in keeping with our annual expenditure. The consumption of powder in times of peace was 36,000 barrels a-year, and the consumption in time of war was 80,000 barrels. During the Crimean War the consumption had been 81,000 or 82,000 barrels in each year. In 1868 they ought to have had 260,000 barrels of pellet and R.L.G. powder, whereas there were only 70,000 barrels of

  1473
  R.L.G. and no pellet powder, and at the present time they required a minimum of 200,000 barrels for the rifled guns. The House should remember that smooth-bore guns had gone out of fashion, and the charges of powder had been enormously increased, so that powder was much more rapidly consumed. For instance, the large 35-ton gun itself consumed one barrel a time each charge. The noble Lord in "another place" (Lord Northbrook), in replying to the Question which had been put to him, did not state what the consumption of powder was, and he had omitted also to state what the powder in stock consisted of. He (Colonel Beresford) had shown that the consumption was 80,000 barrels a-year, and he wished to repeat that four-fifths of the powder in store consisted of powder which had been condemned, and could not be used for our rifled guns. The noble Lord had called to his rescue on that occasion Colonel Campbell, who was Superintendent of the Royal Gun Factory at Woolwich, and Colonel Campbell had had the boldness to report—in the teeth of the Report of the Explosives Committee, and after the subject had been considered for something like two years—against the use of pebble powder; but when the House considered that pebble powder was so superior to other powder, that the velocity of a shot was increased 100 feet in a second of time, with a diminished strain on the gun, they could form their opinion of the value of Colonel Campbell's Report. He wished next to direct one or two remarks to the right hon. Gentleman the Surveyor General of Ordnance, and to state that in spite of the pressing necessity pointed out in the Report of Colonel Younghusband for an adequate supply of powder, the manufacture of powder had been entirely suspended at Waltham Abbey in 1869, at a time when war was considered imminent. And on what ground had that suspension taken place? That the superior powder would develop itself? Well, that superior powder had developed itself. He could not understand why the manufacture had been stopped, unless it was to carry out those doctrines of retrenchment which were now costing the country such a large sum of money. The right hon. Gentleman had stated in his Report that the L.G. powder was for all purposes practically as good as R.L.G.;
  1474
  but that opinion was in direct opposition to the Chief Superintendent of the factory, in his Report of March, 1869. Further, the Report of Colonel Younghusband did not advocate the increase of the store, and recommended that L.G. powder should be exchanged for 20,000 barrels of R.L.G., in proportion of three barrels to one, which surely showed the difference in value of L.G. and R.L.G. powder. Again, it was stated in the Report that there was no pellet powder on hand.
  SIR HENRY STORKSasked what document the hon. and gallant Member was reading from?
  COLONEL BERESFORD: From a Report made by the Controller General himself, in February, 1871.
  SIR HENRY STORKSsaid, that he was not aware of having made any such Report.
  COLONEL BERESFORDsaid, in that case, he would not quote any further from the Report. He believed, however, that he had satisfied the House that the supply of powder necessary for a particular class of guns was totally inadequate for their requirements; and, whatever the differences of opinion as to what was the best sort of powder, he maintained that the Government should have gone on manufacturing the best powder known at the time, instead of leaving the country in such a dilemma as they had done. His own opinion was, that the country should not be left in the hands of private manufacturers, and that they should have public factories capable of making 50,000 barrels a-year. He wished to make a remark or two as to the application of the five years' service rule to the Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent of the large manufacturing establishments at Woolwich, Enfield, and Waltham. It was owing to the break-down in our military system during the Crimean War, that it was determined that it was not desirable to maintain the system of continuing officers at their posts so long that they should become unable to do their work. It was also observed that the then existing system gave rise to jobbery and favouritism, and it was, in his opinion, properly determined that Staff appointments should terminate at the end of five years. This rule, however, should not have been applied to these large factories, which employed several thousands

  1475
  of men at a cost of £2,000,000 a-year. The duties of the principal officers in these factories were not military at all; they were purely technical duties, and it was perfectly obvious that the Government factories should be treated upon the same principle as private establishments were treated. The Chief Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent of these factories were, no doubt, officers in the artillery; but they were responsible for the expenditure of money, and for the way in which the work was carried out. They were, however, to be treated in precisely the same way as Staff officers, whose duties were purely military. He did not think that that was a reasonable mode of proceeding. He was quite sure that if any private establishment changed its principal man once every five years those establishments would very shortly come to grief. These officers to whom he had referred would require a considerable period of time before they could become well informed as to their duties, and surely they should not be sent to the right-about just when their knowledge and ability were beginning to tell in favour of the establishments that they were connected with. Upon these grounds he appealed to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War to relax the "hard-and-fast line" in favour of these particular officers. He was informed that the Deputy Superintendent at Waltham Abbey (Captain Smith) had just been sent away. He had written a very able book upon the manufacture of gunpowder, which, was so important and scientific a work it had been printed and published by order of the Secretary of State for War, and surely it was not wise to send such a man away, when it was well known that there would be a great pressure upon the department for a considerable period. In conclusion, he begged leave to move for the Address of which he had given Notice.
  MAJOR ARBUTHNOT, in rising to second the Motion, said, he must contend that the recklessness of the Government in suspending the manufacture of gunpowder in deference to what he believed to be an unwisely economical policy, and in the teeth of the official protests of authorized and recognized authorities upon such subjects, would have seriously impaired our strength if they had been called upon some six months since to
  1476
  enter upon a war. He did not know what the quantity they had in store six months ago was, but one month ago, instead of having 300,000 barrels in store, which was the amount they always ought to have in times of peace, according to the best authorities on those subjects, they had only 281,327 barrels there. It was said that it was undesirable to spend money upon the manufacture of gunpowder until the best kind had been determined upon; but the same reason would apply to the manufacture of weapons of all kinds, and might even be urged against teaching their soldiers their drill, for it was always possible that a better system than the one now existing might be discovered. The second excuse urged by the Government was, that there is a large supply of L.G. powder in store, and that it is quite "good enough for all practical purposes" He did not say that L.G. powder was a bad powder, but it was bad compared with R.L.G., just as that was bad compared with pebble, and as L.G. was good compared with that which was manufactured in Abyssinia by Theodore. It was self-evident that they ought to increase either the dimensions of their one manufactory, or to establish another; and that they had to decide at once what was to be the class of gunpowder which they were to manufacture and to lay in a store of. For himself, he was convinced that it would be inexpedient at once to commence laying in a store of pebble powder. It was said it did not suit the 35-ton gun; but what powder did? He was told by those who had witnessed recent experiments that if the calibre of the gun was increased to 12 inches there was every probability of the powder suiting it far better. At any rate, pebble powder had been found successful in the case of guns firing charges ranging from 20 lbs to 85 lbs of powder; and there was no doubt that a greater increased velocity was obtained with less strain with this than with any other powder. For instance, with a 12-inch gun, R.L.G. attained a velocity of 1,168 feet per second as against 1,297 feet attained by pebble powder, being an increase of 129. With a 10-inch gun, the figures were 1,280 against 1,364; increase, 84. With a 9-inch gun, they were 1,338 against 1,420; increase, 82. With an 8-inch gun, they were 1,330 against 1,413; showing an increase of 83. With a 7-inch gun, they were 1,435

  1477
  against 1,525; increase, 90. These figures, he contended, would amply justify the rapid manufacture of this powder. In conclusion, he begged leave to second the Motion of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Southwark (Colonel Beresford).
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, that She will be graciously pleased to give directions that there be laid before this House, Copy of the Report of Colonel Campbell (the Superintendent of the Royal Gun Factories) as to experiments made with the 35-ton Gun with ordinary and with pebble powder; and of the Chief Superintendent of Waltham Abbey (Colonel Younghusband's) Report, dated the 4th day of March, 1869,"—(Colonel Beresford,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  SIR HENRY STORKSsaid, there would be no objection to produce the Papers moved for; and he was also glad of the opportunity to offer some explanations on a subject on which there had occurred some misunderstanding, not to say mis-statements, last autumn. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Southwark (Colonel Beresford) had stated pretty accurately the qualities of powder we had; but the Report he had quoted was one made by the Director of Artillery, which was lent by himself (Sir Henry Storks) to the hon. and gallant Gentleman for perusal, but which it was afterwards thought inexpedient to lay on the Table of the House, although there was nothing in it which he was not prepared to stand by. With regard to the qualities of gunpowder, L.G. powder was used for all smooth-bore ordnance, for field guns, and for rifled heavy guns of the minor calibres. Until lately it was supposed to be more violent in its action, and more destructive in its effects than the R.L.G.; but that had not been proved to be the case. It gave rather a less initial velocity than R.L.G. with equal charges, and it was, therefore, to that extent inferior; but for practical purposes, and for rifled guns of the minor calibres, not designed for great penetration, there was really nothing to choose between the two. The manufacture of R.L.G. powder had been stopped for some time, and although it was at present used for heavy rifled guns of large
  1478
  calibre, yet it would be gradually superseded by pebble powder, always supposing that, in experiments, it came up to the required standard of excellence; and here he must say it was his duty to give a few of the progressive stages which occurred in the manufacture of pellet and pebble powder. It was in August, 1866, that a Special Committee recommended the introduction of powder in the form of pellets three-quarters of an inch in diameter, made in moulds by hydraulic pressure, specimens of which he exhibited; but the Committee recommended further experiments to determine the size, hardness, and density of the pellet. It was provisionally adopted in 1867 for all charges of 50 lbs and upwards. In 1867 the Ordnance Select Committee were still dubious of the advantages of this new powder, and were disinclined to its introduction in the form then adopted. Colonel Campbell, Superintendent of the Royal Gunpowder Factory, considered that the introduction of it would be premature. In 1868 orders were given for the erection of machinery to manufacture it, which was to cost £1,380. In the meantime, small supplies of pellet powder were used for experimental purposes; and Colonel Young husband went abroad, to report on the manufacture of it in Russia and Prussia. Colonel Campbell, believing that pellet powder strained the guns as much as R.L.G. powder, thought it his duty to protest against the use of the larger charges of pellet powder. Altogether, the experiments as they progressed gave reason for the belief that pellet powder would shortly be superseded by powder of a superior kind, and in September, 1869, its manufacture was stopped. In February, 1870, a Special Committee on Explosives recommended a new powder called pebble powder, which was sanctioned for provisional adoption; and, after a series of elaborate and scientific experiments had been made, the Committee reported that pebble powder was capable of producing a muzzle velocity equal to that of service powder, with a reduced strain on the gun. Steps were then at once taken to ascertain the best mode of making it at Waltham Abbey, and orders were given that its manufacture should proceed. In August, 1870, a quantity was also ordered from the trade at the ordinary price, and in February last a further contract was

  1479
  made for an additional supply. The Waltham Abbey Mills had found no peculiar difficulty in the manufacture of pebble powder, and had turned out 4,600 barrels of it between the 31st of March, 1870, and the 31st of March, 1871. So much as to the qualities of those different gunpowders, of which the stock in hand of various kinds on the 31st of March last amounted to a total of 379,401 barrels. The hon. and gallant Member had referred to what he called the suspension of the manufacture of gunpowder in 1869; but the manufacture was not then really stopped, although the quantity produced was diminished; but the fact was, that doubts had then been raised as to the efficiency of pellet powder, which were shortly afterwards confirmed, and the quantity of R.L.G. powder was reduced, because they had a considerable quantity of L.G. powder in hand, which was not deemed so materially inferior to R.L.G. powder as to warrant an undue production of the latter. It was calculated that the total quantity of R.L.G. powder that would be used during the next twelvemonths, according to the authorized allowance for practice and for experiments, would be about as follows:—By the Navy, 4,716 barrels, and by the Royal Artillery about 750 barrels, making together a total of 5,466 barrels; and, therefore, it could not be said that their stock of that powder was not sufficient for all practical purposes and for a reserve, amounting as it did to 85,450 barrels. Owing to the different foreign stations which had been militarily—he would not say abandoned, but reduced, the quantity of ammunition kept there would also be reduced. As to the manufacture of pebble powder for the future, the Estimates for the present year provided for 27,500 barrels; and it was intended that the only cannon powder manufactured this year should be pebble powder. It was proposed to supply five iron-clad ships immediately with the new powder, and gradually to extend it to all our other ships and land batteries as the supplies came in. At the same time, although no doubt the pebble powder was better as regarded the strain on the guns than the R.L.G. or the L.G. powder, still it had been found that there were very remarkable discrepancies in the application of it. The Report of Colonel Campbell
  1480
  proved this fact, and showed that, even in regard to this description of powder, it was advisable and even necessary to proceed with considerable prudence and caution, in order that they might secure the right powder after all. Nothing could be worse economy than to lay in excessive supplies, particularly of gunpowder, which, as had been observed, did not improve by keeping like port wine, and which might become obsolete and useless like the pellet powder. The cause of the diminution of their gunpowder in 1869 had been referred to, and he therefore wished to state that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War had given him positive instructions on no account to diminish the supply of any article from motives of economy which could in future years create increased expenditure. To those instructions he had rigidly adhered; and he had no hesitation in saying that the reduction of gunpowder effected in 1869 by his orders was made solely with a view of taking care that they did not order a large quantity of powder which might become obsolete; and even at that time their supply was approximately 343,831 barrels, not reckoning the powder then in possession of the Royal Navy. He did not, therefore, think the department over which he presided could be fairly accused of not providing adequately for the public wants; and he was sure that if they had unfortunately been involved in war, they would have had ample means at their disposal to produce any quantity of powder which might have been required, while the Government would also have had great assistance from the trade. In the course of the present year, Waltham Abbey Mills would produce 16,500 barrels of pebble powder, and 6,000 barrels of R.L.G.—a quantity equal to 28,000 barrels of common powder. It had been computed that the trade of this country could produce 59,000 barrels of powder in a year, in the event of so large a quantity being required. Under these circumstances the country might rest assured that the stock of powder in hand was amply sufficient for any emergency that could arise. He had no objection to produce the Papers that had been moved for, and he would take care in the event of the hon. and gallant Member withdrawing his Motion, that they should be laid upon the Table.
  Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present—
  COLONEL BERESFORDexplained. He did not say that Colonel Campbell had reported against the pellet powder, but against the pebble powder.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

VETERINARY DEPARTMENT OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL.

  MOTION FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE.
  MR. C. S. READrose to call attention to the operation of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act and the recent Orders relating to Foreign Stock, and to move for a Select Committee to inquire into the cost, constitution, and working of the Veterinary Department of the Privy Council. Since he had given Notice of his Motion, he had slightly altered its terms in consequence of the evidence given before the Sanitary Commissioners, and also in consequence of the Returns moved for in February last by the right hon. Baronet the Member for North Staffordshire (Sir Charles Adderley) not having been presented to the House. He begged, in the first place, to offer an apology to Dr. Williams for having spoken of him as the secretary instead of the director of a defunct company, and to state his belief that he was a well-educated gentleman who was well fitted to hold his present post, although he had received no special training for it. In August, 1865, the present Veterinary Department of the Privy Council was established under the name of the Cattle Plague Department, and Dr. Williams was appointed secretary to it. In its earlier days that Department was renowned for its expensiveness and for its injustice in attempting to kill the cattle of the farmers without awarding them any compensation. In the same year Dr. Williams was replaced by Colonel Harness, and the business that the Department had to get through then was very heavy, there being 5,000 or 6,000 cases of cattle plague weekly at that time. At the end of the year 1866, Colonel Harness was promoted to some other office, and Dr. Williams, who had been quietly shelved in the sinecure berth of medical adviser to this office at £600 a-year; again became
  1482
  the secretary of the Department. For the next two or three years the office had very little to do, and of the 1,500 letters a-day which Mr. Helps stated were received then, nearly 1,000 contained nil Returns from inspectors. The Cattle Plague Report, which he knew had been nearly completed in 1867, was not presented to that House until 1870, by which time it had lost all interest, people having then almost forgotten the existence of the cattle plague. During that period, a few cases of compensation had to be determined by the Department, but an immense amount of trouble was occasioned by the difficulty of forcing a small modicum of justice from it. A certain number of statistical papers had been prepared by the Department, at his (Mr. C. S. Read's) suggestion, for the use of the Metropolitan Cattle Market Committee which sat in 1868, and since then the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act had been passed, and it might now be taken that the Department was a permanent Government office. Although it had been officially stated that the Department was not to be regarded as a permanent one, it appeared that within the last few months the secretary and three or four of the clerks in it had been placed upon the permanent civil list, with, he supposed, a claim to pension and to compensation in the event of their office being abolished. What had the office done for the country? If they asked the meaning of an Act of Parliament, they were invariably told it was not the business of the Department to interpret Acts of Parliament. If they asked for an opinion relating to their Orders, which were issued from time to time, they got the most indefinite and unsatisfactory reply; and if they asked for advice they seldom got it. Not a single suggestion had emanated from them as to the best means of getting rid of or curing disease. Not a single piece of preventive advice had been given, and the office seemed only to know of the existence of two words—"isolation" and "slaughter." Now, though the barbarous pole-axe might be considered good against the cattle plague, he (Mr. C. S. Read) thought that in cases of slighter diseases it was undignified to resort to it, and against the scientific spirit of the age in which they lived. They had published only one Report, and that Report was incubating for three

  1483
  years before it was produced. The Department could not be regarded as of any value as a veterinary department; it was simply a rule-of-thumb police office, with red tape Orders, and no end of schedules, with the maximum of inconvenience inflicted upon the owners of the stock, and the minimum of good results. The duties of the Department were now only to collect statistics of the metropolitan market; but they were published weekly by the clerk of the market in all the newspapers; to take notice of the importation of foreign cattle which was recorded by the Custom House and the Board of Trade; and during the last few weeks this Department had undertaken the inspection of landing foreign stock. So that the credit of keeping out the rinderpest was due to the Custom House, and not to this department of the Privy Council. A clause was inserted in the Act to compel Returns being made of the number of foreign cattle suffering from disease when landed, and which had to be killed. The number averaged from 10 to 20 a month, and the work was not sufficient to occupy a clerk more than one day a-week; and with regard to defining the ports at which cattle were to be landed, that was done by extra assistance employed for that purpose. The department had to send out forms to the local authorities relative to pleuro-pneumonia, foot-and-mouth disease, and scab—and they did it to perfection, if inundating the inspectors with forms was any criterion. They were printed in all kinds of colours, blue, red, and green, and the inspector had to make triplicate Returns whether disease existed or not in the district. And when they were sent to the head Department they did not appear to be totalled, because when he moved for Returns on a former occasion, a most imperfect table was the result. The Reports of the condition of foreign districts as to the state of the health, of the stock were occasionally forwarded to the Department, but they were never published. A small staff of veterinary surgeons and others were employed for the purpose of reporting on the transfer of animals by land and sea; and he was informed, though he could scarcely credit it, that the Law Officer of the Crown was paid £1,000 a-year for drawing up the necessary Orders in Council. The correspondence, exclusive of Returns, must be very little, because
  1484
  the letters during this easy-going time did not average more than 12 a-day. Last evening they voted in Committee £12,000 towards the expenses of this Department, which, exclusive of law, stationery, and printing, had cost something like £75,000, or about £100,000 in all. The secretary was stated in the Estimates to receive £800 a-year, but a foot-note would show that he really received £1,000, £200 additional being given him for "personal allowance." The chief clerk, who a short time since had been in the receipt of £200, rising by £20 a-year, had made a sudden jump to £600. He was a very good fellow, who had married a relative of his (Mr. C. S. Read's), and he was glad he had so comfortable a berth, and hoped he would keep it. In all, there were 46 persons in the office; but a man like Professor Simonds, with 8 or 10 clerks, would perform the work better than at present, and the Department would receive greater confidence of the public and the veterinary profession than they now enjoyed. The Department for Public Health in the Privy Council Office was presided over by a gentleman with six assistants, and it was surprising that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not put his hand on the Department in question, and saved £5,000 or £6,000 per annum, and, at the same time, improved its efficiency. The right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council had, by introducing the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, instead of passing a strict sanitary law applying to the importation of cattle, made a double-thumb-screw for himself. The farmers of this country soon gave it a turn, but he appeared to take little notice of it; but, on the other hand, the butchers of the North and the foreign salesmen formed a powerful body, and they certainly had wrung something from him. The other day a number of those gentlemen called upon the right hon. Gentleman and asked him why he allowed the importation of foreign cattle at Thames Haven, and then their being taken 35 miles through the rich grazing land of Essex, and refused them being landed at Hull and taken 55 miles into Leeds? He did not know what answer the right hon. Gentleman gave to them; but he had no doubt he satisfied them, though he (Mr. C. S. Read) would have found some difficulty in justifying the

  1485
  Thames Haven Order. Many persons could not understand why the foot-and-mouth disease was included in this Act, and he undertook to say that if Professor Simonds had been asked he would not have advised it; but it was no doubt inserted at the instance of the Veterinary Department, or that office would have been at an end before this time. As soon as the Cattle Diseases Act was passed tons of forms were sent out by the Department to the different inspectors accompanied by books full of instructions; but they did not take the trouble, and they had not the courtesy, to tell the local authorities what they had done. For some four weeks the veterinary surgeons in Norfolk worked away and incurred expense in searching for cases of foot-and-mouth disease; but to this day they had never been paid, for the first act of the Quarter Sessions was to cancel their appointments and to send them for their remuneration to the Department that had given the instructions. He did not think lightly of the foot-and-mouth disease; on the contrary, he never wished to see it again, and Professor Gamgee said, in 1868, that they would keep clear of it unless they had it imported afresh from abroad. In 1869, however, although it was known the foot-and-mouth disease was prevalent on the Continent, the Orders were relaxed with regard to the importation of sheep, and the consequence was that the disease again spread like wildfire over the country. In Norfolk, 9 out of every 10 head of stock had it, and as it was computed there were 120,000 head of cattle in the county, and that the loss was at least £1 per head; the farmers of that county lost £120,000 by that attack. He did not agree with Mr. Mill, and those philosophers who told them that farmers recouped themselves by the high price of meat, because it was a fact that farmers would rather have moderate prices and healthy stock than high prices and diseased stock. He advocated, when the Bill was before the House, the introduction of very sharp and stringent home regulations; but he did so on the understanding that foreign cattle should be killed at the outports. The farmers were ready to submit to any restrictions, provided they were protected from the probability of foreign diseases. On the 10th of February, in Norfolk, of a herd of 40 cattle, six were attacked with pleuro-pneumonia.
  1486
  They were separated from the rest. They all recovered except one, and that one had an attack of chronic pleuro-pneumonia which lasted until the end of May. The owner had exhausted his hay and roots, and was not allowed to move his stock because his farm was an infected spot. That one bullock in consequence cost the county a large sum. He would not die, he would not recover, and the owner would not kill him, and the inspector having to visit him every week had to be paid for his time and his mileage. But foreign stock might and did mix with diseased animals on the other side. He said so because in May there were two cases of pleuro-pneumonia in different ships, and so advanced was the disease that the authorities had the carcases of the animals destroyed. A recent Order said the stock from Holland might come over here, and after 12 hours' quarantine might go over the whole country. His right hon. Friend might say that since the relaxation of the Orders there had been an immense importation from Holland. But the reason was because Holland was suffering from a cold spring, the farmers there had no hay, and therefore they were sending over here a large quantity of store stock. His right hon. Friend might say that he had appointed an inspector at the other side of the water; but the inspector could not detect infection in its incubation, and he contended it was cruel to our farmers that they should not be allowed to remove a bullock attacked with pleuro-pneumonia until after the expiration of 30 days, and that foreigners should be able to remove theirs after 12 hours' quarantine. His right hon. Friend had said the other day that Holland was free from disease, meaning, no doubt, the cattle plague, for he could not have meant pleuro-pneumonia. In North Holland alone, from the 19th of March to the 22nd of April, 45 cattle died of this last disease, 206 affected by it were killed, 138 recovered, and 94 were left ill, making a total of 483 in that small Province, from which we were to receive our Dutch cows and store stock. Mr. Kilby, of Yorkshire, had sent out 4,000 circulars to the principal agriculturists of this country, asking for their experiences of the loss of stock during the last 30 years, and had also applied to some gentlemen in Wales and Scotland. He found that in some of the

  1487
  Northern districts of Scotland, and the remote counties of Wales, they had no case whatever of foot-and-mouth disease or of pleuro-pneumonia. Did not that show most distinctly that these were foreign diseases, because there was the same atmosphere in one part of the country as in another, and the cattle received, if anything, more severe treatment in those remote districts? In the breeding counties, Mr. Kilby found that the losses were 25 per cent from lung disease, and 33 per cent from foot-and-mouth disease; while in the grazing counties the losses were—from lung disease 90, and from foot-and-mouth disease 78 per cent, or 168 per cent in all, showing that it was by the transit and mixing of cattle these dangerous diseases were propagated. In 1868 we had 3,769,000 cattle, worth about £56,000,000 Well, the losses in 30 years amounted to £83,000,000, or nearly once and a-half the worth of the whole stock in 1868. So that a man in England during the last 30 years who had 20 head of stock lost the value of one every twelve months. As regarded Norfolk, that was considerably under the mark, and his own (Mr. C. S. Read's) losses had been very much more. Now, for the sake of 184,000 head of stock—which was the average importation of the last four years—we exposed 9,000,000 of cattle in this country to foreign diseases; and for 560,000 head of sheep—the average importation of the last four years—we exposed 34,000,000 of our sheep to foreign disorders. The consequence was that the price of meat to the consumers had been increased. Whatever might be the case with corn, the consumers of meat in this country had to look to the home supplies. According to the agricultural and official Returns of the Board of Trade, the total home supplies of meat for the years 1867, 1868, 1869, and 1870, were 4,856,922 tons, or on an average per year 1,214,230 tons. The foreign supplies for the same period were—of live stock 56,210 tons, and of dead meat almost exactly the same amount, or 56,724 tons. The percentage of the home supply, therefore, was 91½ as against 4¼ of live stock and 4½ of dead meat from foreign countries. He could not understand why Belgium, where no cattle plague existed, was scheduled, and why the right hon. Gentleman, on the other hand, allowed the direct importation of
  1488
  cattle from Russia. The other day a cargo of beasts came direct from a Russian port whence the plague was imported in 1865. It came to the Victoria Docks, and after 12 hours the beasts were sent to the Metropolitan Cattle Market. They mixed with foreign sheep both at the railway station and in the market, and although he might be told the latter were not allowed to leave the market alive, he was sure they sometimes did so. Another cargo of beasts came from Hamburg; but they were imported from Russia through Germany. They arrived with some sheep at Brown's Wharf, and those very sheep went into the Provinces. The right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council had extemporized a temporary water-side market, and Mr. Odams, who spent £12,000 in fitting it up, had not been very well used by the authorities. He provided a very good and sufficient place, and when more accommodation was wanted he was asked whether he would provide it. Mr. Odams thereupon spent £1,200 more in making sheds, &c.; but in a fortnight the Order was rescinded, and the whole of the stock for which this accommodation had been provided was allowed to go to the Metropolitan Cattle Market. The state of the foreign cattle market which was to arise at Dead Man's Wharf would, he trusted, receive the attention of his right hon. Friend. The Corporation of London, after doing little or nothing hitherto, had now built a wall to separate 20 acres of land from the Victualling Yard, Deptford. If, however, the new market were not ready by January 1st, 1872, the Corporation would lose the monopoly of the market, and he hoped his right hon. Friend would insist on the Corporation keeping to their part of the bargain. He wished the right hon. Gentleman had kept to the temporary market, and withdrawn the cordon, so that the inhabitants of Brighton and other places might have the advantage of coming to London and buying their stock. The House ought to encourage the carriage of dead meat for the sake not only of economy, but humanity; and it was a shame and disgrace to a civilized country that such slaughter-houses as those we had in London should exist. A dead sheep might be sent into Staffordshire for 10 d., and from London to Manchester for 1s. a-head, including the skin

  1489
  and offal. Even lamb—that most perishable and delicate meat—he had himself been sending this week to the London market. He believed that instead of an hon. Member of that House going bawling about the country and calling for economy, it was far better to put his finger in that House upon some item of extravagant expenditure with which he might be acquainted. He trusted that the House would grant the inquiry for which he asked. It need only be a short one. Three or four sittings of the Committee would be sufficient either to prove or disprove the case. The hon. Member concluded by moving for the Select Committee of which he had given Notice.
  COLONEL CORBETT, in seconding the Amendment, said, he could endorse two statement made by his hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. C. S. Read). The first was, that a veterinary surgeon ought to be at the head of this Department of the Privy Council; and the next was that the foot-and-mouth disease ought not to have been included in the Act. The question of cattle plague contagion was one of equal importance to the consumer and producer. He believed that if the losses sustained by the diseases of imported cattle were ascertained, it would be found that the price of meat had been raised in consequence 1d. per pound to the consumer. He knew that, as a breeder of cattle, he would rather sell at 2d. per pound less than receive the present high prices, and must say it was the exceedingly small stock of cattle in the country which kept up the price; and that nothing but getting rid of the disease would bring down the price of meat to its normal state. Foreign cattle should be killed at waterside markets, and store cattle should be kept out altogether; while as to the 12 hours' quarantine, it was of no use at all. He could confirm what his hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk had said as to the cattle in Wales being free from disease; and he (Colonel Corbett), too, was of opinion that if no disease were imported he believed their cattle would be entirely free from disease.
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the cost, constitution, and working of the Veterinary
  1490
  Department of the Privy Council,"—(Mr. Clare Read,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  MR. JACOB BRIGHTsaid, the hon. Gentleman the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. C. S. Read) had made a severe attack on the Veterinary Department of the Privy Council; but he (Mr. Bright) was not concerned in defending the Privy Council, and was of opinion that every Department of State realized considerable advantages from being attacked. The hon. Member complained very much that the British farmer suffered from the Cattle Diseases Bill, and that he could not remove his cattle from one place to another. Now, he (Mr. Bright) would assist him or anyone else in removing unnecessary restrictions; but when the farmer came to the general question of the importation of cattle, he (Mr. Bright) differed from him in toto. The hon. Member would have all cattle coming into this country slaughtered at the ship's side. That would make a very considerable difference in the amount of cattle imported. There was not a greater risk of importing disease than of spreading it by the removal of cattle. The hon. Member said that only 10 per cent of our meat came from abroad, and that for this quantity it was not well to risk the health of all the cattle in the country. But 10 per cent was a large proportion; it was the whole consumption in the country for five or six weeks in the year, and the quantity was sufficient to materially affect the price in the market. The hon. Member also spoke of the position of the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council as being most uncomfortable: granted. The strength of the agriculturists in that House was enormous; but there was another strength outside the House. Many deputations from the large towns had waited upon the right hon. Gentleman with reference to this subject, and, to a certain extent, the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that these deputations were promoted by the butchers was true; but that circumstance only proved that, in the opinion of the butchers, the restrictions upon the importation of cattle very much diminished the number of cattle for

  1491
  slaughter, and therefore injured their business. What they wanted was to have more meat to sell, and to his mind, it was a most significant fact that the butchers were the men to take up this question. That they would be more and more supported by the public at large he felt convinced would be the case in consequence of the high price of meat. The deputation which recently came up to town, and which he had accompanied in their visit to the right hon. Gentleman, stated that, as it was legal to bring foreign cattle to London through an agricultural district of 40 miles in extent, it was only right that Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and other large towns should enjoy the same privilege. They were told that the cordon around London prevented cattle from leaving London; but they proposed to meet the difficulty by having the cattle brought into large towns killed at slaughter-houses within those towns. There might be some difficulties in the way; but many gentlemen who were conversant with the subject declared it to be quite possible to import cattle on those terms without introducing disease. If the Department felt themselves unable to grant the terms asked, the next thing that these large towns would ask for would be to have free trade permitted with every non-infected country, subject to the best inspection which could be supplied by the Government. The tendency of meat to rise in price went to show that the people of the country grew faster than the cattle, and if that were so the question of these restrictions would have to be discussed hand-in-hand with the Game Laws; for if they were to have great restrictions placed upon the importation of cattle they ought to reduce their game preserving, and so increase their own power of breeding and feeding cattle at home. He hoped the Vice President would bear in mind that there was throughout the country a demand for a greater liberty of importation. Coming from Cheshire, he knew the great burdens that had been cast on town populations in consequence of the cattle plague, and while those people were as anxious as the hon. Member for South Norfolk to prevent the spread of disease, they also desired to obtain that animal food which was to them a necessary of life. If restrictions were carried too far, the result would be that
  1492
  at some time they would be wholly abolished.
  MR. BEACHsaid, he could understand that the inhabitants of towns were anxious for the removal of restrictions on the importation of cattle, because they believed that that step would enable them to obtain their meat on cheaper terms; but it should be remembered that the present price of meat was not entirely owing to the restrictions on the importation of animals, since of the present meat supply 91½ per cent was derived from home sources, 4¼ per cent was the flesh of animals that were imported alive, and the remaining 4¼ per cent was imported dead meat. Those who were interested in this matter did not desire to impose any restrictions beyond those that were absolutely necessary; but they asked that, whenever there was any suspicion of disease, the animals imported should be slaughtered at the port at which they arrived, and such a step they considered necessary as a safeguard. In his opinion, the increased price of meat was chiefly owing to the fact that during the last two seasons, in consequence of the excessive drought, there had not been a good supply of that food which home stock required for their sustenance.
  Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present. House counted, and 40 Members being found present,
  MR. BEACH, resuming, said, that in the county to which he belonged, for several years there had existed a committee, upon which he had been engaged, to prevent the importation of cattle from one county to another, and a cordon had been drawn which imposed restrictions which were at one time relaxed; but it was found necessary to re-impose them as a measure of self-defence; and the local authorities only asked that their acts should not be invalidated by its being permitted to import without restriction cattle which came from countries where it was known that disease had prevailed to an alarming extent.
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, that although the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. C. S. Read) had made a severe attack on the Department with which he was connected, he did not regret that the subject had been brought before the House, although he could not admit that

  1493
  his hon. Friend had made out a case for a Committee of Inquiry, the appointment of which would imply some degree of censure. A complaint had been made that the Department was needlessly costly, and that a greater number of clerks were employed than was necessary. Now that was a great mistake. During the time that he had held his present position he had never heard any complaint that the Department had not sufficient to do with respect to the cattle plague. With regard to Dr. Williams, the permanent head of the Department, he could only say that he never met with any official more desirous of discharging his duty, or better qualified to do so, and he had always found that gentleman of the greatest possible service. Very shortly after his own appointment as Vice President, the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act was passed, and a considerable staff was necessary to work it effectively. The Department had two things to consider—first, what could be done to prevent the spread of foreign disease; and, secondly, what could be done to prevent the spread of home disease. The first of these duties the Government did attempt to carry out with regard to the cattle plague and with regard to the sheep-pox, but no attempt was made to check the spread of home disease. Any attempt to fulfil such an object compelled the Department to have a large and responsible staff, for the interference with foreign imports was one of the most serious duties that could be imposed on a Government, and when it became the duty of the Government to put restrictions on a trade concerning the main part of the food of the people, it was essential to have a responsible and intelligent staff, capable of giving good advice and of obtaining all necessary information from day to day as to the spread of disease both at home and abroad. With regard to the attempt to prevent the spread of home disease, that was a new duty, and the size of the staff was consequent on the attempt. The number of local authorities in the country was 404; there were 1,180 inspectors in England and Wales alone; and the Department was daily brought into communication with these local authorities. The Department, like all other Departments of the Government, did not attempt to interpret the law, because they had no legal power to do so; and if they did attempt it they might only mislead those
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  who applied to them; but cases constantly went before them, and the correspondence they carried on was really enormous. He did not suppose that his hon. Friend's objection was that the Office had nothing to do, but rather that what was done had better have been left undone, and that the policy they had adopted, and the Orders they had issued, were the real grounds of offence. His (Mr. Forster's), position was a rather unpleasant one, being, as it were, between two fires; but perhaps it would have been still more unpleasant if he had had a pressure from one side, which he ought to have resisted, with no pressure from the other side to anable him to resist it. It was his duty to consider what was intended by the Legislature when the Act was passed, and how he could best serve the country by carrying out that Act; and he could honestly state that he had simply and solely endeavoured, irrespective of Parliamentary strength on one side or the other, to consider how the Act ought really to be carried out. But they did not prevent the full and fair consideration of the different interests involved. With regard to the foreign importations, the principle upon which the Act was passed was, that there should be such restrictions upon the import of foreign cattle as would prevent the spread of disease. His hon. Friend had spoken of the advisability of having all cattle slaughtered at the port of landing; but when the Act was passed the feeling of the House was decidedly against that, and the principle adopted was that only such cattle as were considered dangerous should be slaughtered at the port of landing. When the Act was passed, the Department scheduled such countries as were considered dangerous; considering those countries dangerous from which there was a possibility of importing animals infected either with cattle plague or with the sheep-pox. The countries scheduled were Germany, Holland, Russia, Belgium, and the Eastern Provinces; and they were scheduled not so much because the Government were afraid of importing cattle reared in those countries, but because they had no security that those countries would not be the means of transmitting really dangerous cattle from the Eastern Steppes, from the borders of Poland, from the Principalities, and from Russia. The only countries left open for some time were

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  France, Spain, Portugal, and Denmark. But then came the late war, which obliged the Government to increase the restrictive orders very much, and to shut out France as well as the other countries; to have German cattle slaughtered on the north side of London, instead of sending them to the metropolitan market; and to prohibit importation from France and Belgium. These Orders, for which the Department deserved some credit, could not have been issued unless the Office had had a responsible department to give information as to the facts of the case; and as the Orders necessarily raised the price of food, nothing but a feeling of necessity induced the Office to issue them. The war, as far as Germany was concerned, was now entirely over, and that circumstance had enabled the Office to put Germany back again into the position in which it stood before the war. In the next place it was thought—and this he believed was the real cause of offence to his hon. Friend—that the time had arrived when Dutch cattle might be safely introduced. Last year the import of Dutch cattle was somewhere about 70,000 or 80,000, and of German cattle somewhere about 50,000 or 60,000 and for some time past there had been no cattle plague in Holland, the restrictions to prevent its spreading in that country being well devised; but as there was a danger that Steppe cattle might come through Rotterdam, the Dutch Government were told, when they asked that the restrictions on the import of Dutch cattle into this country might be taken off, that there was risk in allowing cattle to be imported from Rotterdam, and the result was that the Dutch passed a law prohibiting the import of sheep and cattle into Holland, and promising to give notice before the law was changed. When that law had been in operation for two or three months, Her Majesty's Government took off the restriction from Dutch cattle, which they had not felt justified in taking off before they found that the new Dutch law was successfully carried out, inasmuch as the cattle plague was raging around Holland, and in Belgium and France. It might be argued that the Government seemed only to have considered it their duty to keep off the cattle plague and sheep-pox, and that they had not thought it necessary to take precautions against the spread of
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  pleuro-pneumonia, and the foot-and-mouth disease. But pleuro-pneumonia, though dangerous, was not so dangerous as the cattle plague, and it was, moreover, a disease already in the country, there being scarcely a county in England in which it was not prevalent; and it was too much to say that all Dutch cattle should be slaughtered on landing, because in Holland, as in England, pleuro-pneumonia was to be found. No doubt there should be stringent regulations with regard to inspection, and that no animals should be allowed to be introduced into this country which came with pleuro-pneumonia. And what were the regulations? The regulations with regard to pleuro-pneumonia were that if in any ship coming from Holland, or any foreign country, there was any animal affected with the disease, not merely the animal should be killed, but the whole cargo should be slaughtered at once, and not allowed to go to the metropolitan market or into the interior. Foreign cattle, therefore, were liable to even more stringent regulations than home cattle, because there was no power under the Act to slaughter a whole herd at home because one of the animals suffered from pleuro-pneumonia. That was going as far as he thought they were justified in going. It was rather remarkable that soon after this Order three cases of pleuro-pneumonia had occurred in two cargoes from Holland. The Dutch Government were immediately communicated with on the subject, and told they should take the greatest precautions to prevent the recurrence of such cases. They had taken the greatest possible precautions, and he believed they had been effectual. The regulations enforced were of the most stringent character. No cattle were allowed to be shipped without previous examination by veterinary surgeons—to be conducted between sunrise and sunset. The General Steam Navigation Company had also taken up the subject, and it was their interest to see that the regulations were strictly enforced; for the trade in cattle between Holland and this country was a most important one. Still, he did not think they were justified in restricting the Dutch trade in cattle on account of Holland being in the same position as this country with regard to pleuro-pneumonia; while the regulations in

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  force did practically prevent pleuro-pneumonia being introduced by Dutch animals. Then, on the other hand, he was urged by his hon. Friend the Member for Manchester (Mr. Jacob Bright) to let in the German cattle for the benefit of the large towns as we did the Dutch, under certain regulations. And the hon. Member had referred to Thames Haven, as an instance of the feasibility of complying with his wishes. But the position of Thames Haven was widely different from that of Hull, and it would be exceedingly difficult to draw a cordon round those large towns, to give the same security as existed in London. Nevertheless, he thought the representations made by the deputation to which his hon. Friend had alluded deserved the most careful consideration of the Government, and he acknowledged he had postponed a final decision on that subject, expecting the arrival of Earl De Grey within two or three days, when he should be glad to have his counsel and assistance in the matter. In the meantime, he was glad to find that the representations of the hon. Member appeared to have found favour with his hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk. [Mr. C. S. READ: No, no!] At all events, his hon. Friend did not seem to think any great danger would result from the adoption of the suggestion. Now, with reference to home diseases, his hon. Friend seemed to think that all their efforts to check them had been useless. But there had not yet been time fully to test the value of their regulations. He did not think that in a couple of years they could gain statistics that could be of very much value with regard to such a difficult matter as the spread of disease among the cattle of this country. It had taken some weeks or months before the local authorities could thoroughly work the Act, for in some places there had been a strenuous endeavour to carry it out; in others, there had been apathy and opposition. So far as they could get any information, it was very much in favour of the working of the Act. There had been in 26 weeks ending March 6, 1870, 775 outbreaks of pleuro-pneumonia, and in the corresponding weeks of 1871 the outbreaks were only 514. Of the 47 divisions in England and Wales there were 16, in which during six months of 1869–70 the outbreaks had been 603;
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  and in the corresponding period of 1870–71 the outbreaks were only 379. In 15 others there was a diminution, and a considerable diminution. There was only one county in which there had been an increase—from 104 to 112, and that was the county of Norfolk, where there had been more opposition to the carrying out of the Act than in any other county. In fact, it was not till November, 1869, that any inspector had been appointed there, and nine were then appointed for the county and two for the boroughs. Suffolk had 42 inspectors, selected from the police; the decrease of the disease there had been greater than in Norfolk, and the expense of working had been less—£253, as compared with £841, the cost of working Norfolk. It was found that inspectors taken from the police, assisted by one or two veterinary officers, answered better than a large staff of veterinary inspectors. His hon. Friend alluded to the way Mr. Odams was treated in regard to the waterside market. But he had never been asked to supply the market. He found it to his advantage to do so, and he made all provisions in the most entire understanding from the Office and himself that the arrangement would be temporary. As to not giving him information beforehand, the fault rested with him (Mr. Forster); for he always directed Dr. Williams to let no Orders be known until they appeared in The Gazette. He thought no case had been made out against the Department, and his opinion in regard to the Act was that the cost entailed was worth while being incurred. The foot-and-mouth disease was a great difficulty; but he thought it had now been brought into a position in which the counties did act. Having been left to their own discretion, 30 out of 40 had imposed more stringent regulations than the Act required, which proved that they preferred dealing with the foot-and-mouth disease themselves. The Return which had been asked for had not yet been received; but it would be laid on the Table of the House as soon as possible.
  MR. G. BENTINCKsaid, had the question been one of party, the House would have been crowded; but now that a question involving the character of the food and the well-being of the people was before them, he believed there were not 40 hon. Members present—a fact

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  which would not be a little curious were the history of debates written.
  Whereupon—
  Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members not being present,
  House adjourned at a quarter before Eleven o'clock till Monday next.