THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, it is rumoured, a few days since,
received a deputation of schoolboys home for the holidays, and other
young gentlemen delegated to him with a petition that he would propose a
bill for the repeal of the duty now demanded for permission to carry a
gun.
The foreboy of the memorialists, Master SMITHERS, in an address premised
with "Please Sir," informed the Right Honourable Gentleman of the object
of their application. He, and those other fellows, considered the
gun-tax an awfully hard impost, he might say imposition--out of
school-hours. It denied them a recreation they particularly wanted to
enjoy in the holidays, namely, shooting, which was fun for them as good
as for Members of Parliament. Shooting was shooting, whether you shot
sparrows or grouse. But ten bob duty was more than poor fellows could
afford.
[Illustration: Revolvers.]
JACKSON, Junior, asked why, if the tax on firearms was intended to
prevent a chap from carrying a gun, it wasn't charged just the same upon
pistols? You couldn't look into a daily paper hardly without seeing an
account of a murder committed, or somebody or other shot, or shooting
himself by accident, with a revolver, or the revolver going off on its
own accord, and killing its owner or someone else. Cads and roughs
almost all of them carried revolvers, and so it was that burglars went
about shooting policemen. If every revolver had to be loaded with a
licence, or the firearm-duty were enforced for all firearms, it would
save no end of lives. But if that didn't signify, and everybody was to
be free to carry a revolver, what use was there in what you might call
fining a fellow for leave to carry a gun?
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER said that his young friends appeared to
him to have made out a very good case, not so much for the repeal of the
gun-duty as for its extension, if necessary, or at any rate its
enforcement, as regarded revolvers, upon which the existing duty might
require to be increased to an amount which would effectually limit the
possession of those dangerous weapons. Meantime he would consult his
colleagues, who, he was assured, would give this question their most
serious consideration.
The young gentlemen then gave three groans for the CHANCELLOR of the
EXCHEQUER, and bolted.
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