The calculated deficit will therefore amount to £3,263,781.
This is a lamentable enough exposition, more especially as it follows
upon a year of singular hardship and depression. Burdened as we are
already, both with state and with local burdens, we are now required
to submit to a further pressure: the credit of the nation must be
maintained, and in some way or other this additional impost must be
levied. And here we shall state, at once, that, all things considered,
we see no just grounds for charging Lord John Russell--or his
Chancellor of the Exchequer, who seems, on this occasion, to have been
superseded as incompetent--with any undue want of economy. An outcry
will, of course, be made by the furious and fatuous fanatics of the
League against the increase of the army and navy estimates, amounting
altogether to about £300,000. This charge, for reasons which we have
stated before, we believe to be just and reasonable, and it is
certainly nothing more than the situation of the country demands. But
supposing that not one additional shilling were to be laid out on the
strengthening of either service, there would still remain a sum of
nearly three millions to be provided for; and we have now to consider
the means by which that additional impost may be fairly and equitably
levied.
The system pursued of late years in this country, with regard to
revenue matters, has been cowardly, dangerous, and, in one instance at
least, deliberately deceptive. It has been cowardly, because ministers
have not chosen to abide by principles which they have acknowledged to
be just; but, on the contrary, for the sake of popularity and the
retention of power, they have invariably yielded to clamour, and
surrendered, one after another, many of the surest means of raising an
adequate revenue. All idea of reducing the amount of the national debt
has long since been abandoned. The moment any surplus appeared, some
minor tax was remitted. If the consumer did not gain thereby, as in
most instances has been the case, the ministry at least could claim
credit for their desire to remove burdens; and these reductions,
however profitless to the public, looked well in a financial
statement. It has been dangerous, because, as a natural consequence,
the remissions made in a prosperous year, when the revenue was full,
caused a corresponding defalcation in another when the scales had
turned against us. It is easy and popular to remove an existing tax;
but difficult and decidedly obnoxious to levy a new one. We had
gradually cut down our indirect taxation so far, that any further
reductions became impossible, without reverting to direct taxation,
which is the most grievous and oppressive, as it is usually the most
unequitable method of collecting a public revenue.
We were in this position when the great financial juggle of the age
was attempted; and, we are sorry to say, successfully carried through
by its schemer. The history of the imposition of the income-tax in
1842, must, hereafter, to the exclusion of all minor matters, be
considered the point upon which the posthumous reputation of Sir
Robert Peel will rest. No minister of this country ever assumed the
reins of office under auspices more favourable, if his practice had
been equal to his profession. In 1841--and the coincidence is
singular--the Whigs found themselves placed in nearly the same
financial difficulty as now. They had a deficit of about three
millions to provide for, and they fell in consequence. All eyes were
turned to Sir Robert Peel, whose prestige as a commercial minister was
then at its very height. He was at the head of a great, concentrated,
and enthusiastic party, whose chief fault was the consummate reliance
which they were disposed to place in their leader; and the destinies
of the nation were committed with extraordinary confidence into his
hands. He had but to dictate his course, and every one was ready to
obey. It was then that he came forward with the proposition of an
income and property tax--not, be it remarked, as a permanent measure,
but as the means of removing the temporary and pressing difficulty,
and of sustaining the revenue until the ordinary sources should
produce the necessary supply. It is needless, now, to recount the
process of persuasive rhetoric employed by the minister to ensure the
adoption of his scheme. The injustice of the tax was admitted; the
sacrifice lauded as an example of public patriotism; and that portion
of the community who were selected as the victims, so hugged, coaxed,
and wheedled, that it was almost beyond the power of human nature to
deny a boon which was implored in such terms of seducing endearment.
And, in truth, the scheme did involve a sacrifice; because it amounted
to nothing less than a partial confiscation of property. One class of
the community were to be directly taxed, whilst another was allowed to
go free. What was still worse, two of the united kingdoms were to be
subjected to a burden from which the third was altogether relieved. On
principle, the income-tax was indefensible, nor did Sir Robert Peel
attempt to place his measure so high. With much seeming candour he
anticipated all objections, and his scheme was carried on the faith of
its merely temporary endurance.
Instead of producing three millions, as was anticipated, the
income-tax returns amounted to considerably more than five; and, as
trade did revive, it was within the power of Sir Robert Peel to have
redeemed his pledge with honour, and to have relieved the class which
had been subjected, voluntarily, to this unusual burden, at the
termination of the first period of three years. It then, however,
appeared that the revenue so raised had been diverted from its proper
purpose. It was not used as the substitute for a temporary deficiency,
but as the means of making that deficiency absolutely permanent. More
indirect taxes were taken off, more duties repealed; so that, at the
end of three years, it was impossible to dispense with the income-tax.
In fact, the minister had broken his word. The horse, says Æsop, being
desirous to avenge himself on his old enemy the stag, allowed the man
to clap a saddle on his back, and to ride in pursuit. He had his
revenge, indeed, but the saddle has never been removed to the present
day. It would be well if, in this age, when prevarication and
disingenuity are so rife in high places, the fables of the shrewd
Phrygian were consulted more frequently, for the sake of the morals
which they convey.
Of all the gorgeous promises held out in 1842, and since repeated, not
only by ministers, but by the accredited organs of free-trade, not one
has been fulfilled. Instead of the Pactolus which was to flow in to
us, we find that the ordinary streams of commerce have shrunk
alarmingly in their channel: instead of being relieved from the
temporary income-tax, there is another deficit of three millions
staring us in the face. The statutory period of the income-tax expires
in April next: we are now asked to renew it for another period of five
years, and to augment it, for two of these years, from three to five
per cent. The income-tax, therefore, has changed its character. It is
no longer a voluntary grant, but has become part and parcel of our
national system of taxation. It is to be maintained and levied in
order to make up for the deficiencies occasioned by the late
commercial experiments; and Lord John Russell does not propose to
modify or alter its arrangements in any degree whatever. It is to be
drawn from the same class as before, with this difference, that
whereas we have hitherto paid seven-pence in the pound, we are now to
contribute a shilling.
This is, indeed, a most serious matter; and we shall look forward to
the financial debate with feelings of the greatest anxiety. This is no
ordinary crisis, and it must be met with corresponding fortitude and
promptness. A measure, admittedly unjust in its principle, is now to
be recognised as a law; and the faith which was plighted, a few years
ago, to the most important section of the community, is now to be
deliberately broken. Property is at last assailed, not covertly but
openly; and the worst anticipations of those who deprecated our
departure from the older system, are upon the eve of being realised.
Two considerations now arise, and each of them is of the utmost
importance. The first concerns the policy of this measure: the second
relates to its injustice. On both points we have a few words to say.
And first, as to its policy. A direct property or income-tax has
hitherto been considered and acknowledged by all governments of this
country as the very last which can be resorted to in cases of
extraordinary emergency. In the event of danger, of war or of
invasion, unusual imposts will be submitted to without a murmur: in
time of peace it has always been held as a principle, that the
ordinary expenditure should be met by the ordinary methods of
taxation; and these have been for the most part indirect. Of all our
sources of revenue, that derived from the customs, which has been most
tampered with, is the easiest of collection. It amounts to much more
than one-third of the whole, and in time of peace is capable of
contraction and of expansion. That is the mark at which the
free-traders have discharged the whole of their battery, and certainly
they have succeeded in effecting a notable reduction. In consequence,
we are now called upon in time of peace to submit to a war-tax, which
is in effect a sort of monetary conscription. By adopting it, we
sacrifice the power of falling back in any case of emergency upon a
strong existing reserve. It will be conceded on all hands, that in
time of war we cannot look to the customs and excise for any
additional support; and if we go on multiplying direct taxation in the
time of peace, to what source can we turn in the event of in
unforeseen emergency? This is perhaps the most mischievous result of
our adoption of the free-trade doctrines, because it leaves us utterly
fettered, at the moment when freedom of action is most necessary for
the safety of the whole state. We are extremely glad that on this
point we are corroborated by the opinions of Mr Francis Baring,
formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Melbourne
administration, whose clear and forcible denunciation of the proposed
financial policy must have been listened to by his former colleagues
with feelings of considerable shame. "At a time," said Mr Baring,
"when we talk of preparing our defences, I deeply regret that we
should be throwing away that which is the most powerful financial
weapon in our whole armoury in the case of a war. If you now lay on a
tax of five per cent, in case of a war to what source of taxation
would you turn? Do you think you could raise the income-tax above five
per cent? or are you prepared, at a time when you shall be in
difficulty and distress, to have recourse to the taxes on customs and
excise which you have so lavishly thrown away? I opposed the
income-tax at its first introduction, because I thought it a dangerous
course to accumulate in direct taxation any very large amount of
taxation of a different kind." With these sentiments we entirely
coincide; nor could such a tax, we venture to say, have been
originally imposed, unless it had been broadly and explicitly stated
that it was only temporary in its duration. At every step we encounter
the effects of Sir Robert Peel's indefensible and cruel want of
candour. Had he acted in that noble and upright spirit which has
characterised British statesmen of a former age, we should have been
spared that distress and difficulty; but he chose to prefer the
crooked path to the straight one; he hatched and harboured commercial
designs which he did not dare to impart to his colleagues, and he
asked the support of a large body of the community on the strength of
representations which he never intended to fulfil. It is not
surprising that Lord John Russell should adopt without hesitation the
legacy of his predecessor, and attempt to profit by the income-tax
when he has the machinery ready to his hand. But we warn the people of
this country--we warn those who were betrayed into yielding by
specious promises, but who now find to their cost that they in reality
are to become the bearers of the burden of the state--we warn them
that the same game will be continued, and that, if they consent to
this augmentation, it will not be by any means the last. If the
proposals of the ministry should unfortunately be adopted, and if once
more the defalcation in the national revenue should be made good--if
trade again revives, and a surplus is exhibited in the balance sheet,
more indirect taxes will be repealed, more tampering with our ordinary
revenue be resorted to; free-trade will progress as it has begun,
crippling our native industry, destroying our means, and sacrificing
the British labourer even in the home market to the foreigner, until
the defalcation again arises, and another attack is made directly upon
property. When that time shall arrive--and unless prompt resistance is
now made, we do not think it is far distant--the limits of taxation
will have been reached. It will be no longer possible to go on. The
lesser confiscation will give way to the greater, and the sponge be
propounded as the remedy.
But the second point--that of the injustice of this measure--is most
glaring, and demands immediate attention. Opposed as we are to the
substitution of direct for indirect taxation, we can yet understand
the motives of a minister who comes forward with a distinct and
equable plan for an entire remodelment of the system. We believe that
no such scheme can possibly be reduced to practice; and that, if
attempted, it would prove utterly obnoxious and subversive of the
national interest: we think that it would be unwise, but at the same
time it might not be unjust as between man and man in the community.
There is a certain burden to be borne by the whole of the nation, and
the great problem is, to find out how every man can be made to
contribute his proper share. Laws are framed and institutions founded
for the protection of property and person; and, strictly speaking,
every one is bound to bear the expense according to his means. The
only effectual method which has ever yet been discovered for securing
this, is the system of indirect taxation. By that system each man
contributes to the revenue in proportion to the amount of taxed
articles which he consumes. Wealth, in the aggregate, superinduces
luxury, and the higher classes pay proportionably for the increased
comforts they enjoy. Such were the principles of indirect taxation
before Sir Robert Peel began to alter it, and even yet many of the
original features remain. But we cannot recognise in his tariffs any
thing of a consistent plan. That foreign luxuries, which cannot be
produced in this country, should be brought in at as low a rate of
duty as the state of the revenue will allow, is admitted on all hands.
Wine, for example, which is no product of ours, is a case in point.
But when we find him deliberately fostering foreign industry at the
expense of home manufactures--reducing or abolishing the duties upon
such articles as ornamental glass, boots, gloves, or made-up fancy
silks, which, from their natures, are consumed by the higher classes
only, our belief in his sagacity vanishes. The time is fast
approaching when the artisan will feel severely the effects of that
departure from our older system, which regarded home industry with
peculiar favour, and refused to sacrifice it for the sake of
increasing the yearly amount of our imports. Every curtailed or
superseded branch of employment in this overpeopled country is a
national loss and a misfortune.
Direct taxation might be accepted as a substitute if it only could be
adequately enforced. This, however, we know to be impossible. The
expense of collection below a certain limit would entirely swallow up
the profit; and besides, it is clearly beyond the power of human
ingenuity to ascertain, with any thing like accuracy, the means of the
whole population. The only approximation to the direct system which
has ever been suggested, is through a regulated house-tax; but even
that would fail in accomplishing its end, and the inequality would
still prevail. Direct taxation is liable to infinite abuse. It is
odious and inquisitorial in its nature, and no minister has been bold
enough to propound a plan for making it supersede the other.
If, therefore, this income-tax, palmed upon us through fraudulent
representation, and now proposed as perpetual on the plea of pressing
emergency, is to be continued for ever, it will be necessary for us to
consider how far it is levied on those benefited by the removal of
indirect taxes--how far it applies to all classes--and whether it is
one-sided and unjust, or fair and equitable, in its operation. Before
we consent to an impost which must affect us and our children, it is
well that we should thoroughly understand the nature of the obligation
we undertake. The income-tax was originally proposed to supply the
loss of revenue sustained in consequence of an over-reduction of the
indirect taxes; and as a matter of equity it follows, that the
supplies should be drawn, though in a different form, from the same
portion of the community.
Is this the case? Can any man venture to say that the income-tax, as
we have known it for the last five years, has been borne with equal
fairness by all classes of the community? Is it not, on the contrary,
the most unequal, the most unjust, and the most oppressive tax that
ever yet was levied? We hardly believe that on this point there can be
any difference of opinion: and we shall now proceed to notice the
separate considerations upon which our decided and determined
hostility to the measure is based.
By exempting from taxation all incomes below £150, a glaring act of
injustice is committed. There is no reason whatever why that amount
should be fixed upon as the lowest point--why the tradesman, clerk, or
rising professional man, who barely clears that amount of profit,
should be made to pay permanently for the others who are not so
industrious or so fortunate. It is not, however, difficult to
understand why Sir Robert Peel, in proposing the tax as a mere
temporary relief, should have been cautious to avoid any agitation of
the masses on a question so vitally important to their well-being, had
justice been the foundation of his plan. He probably thought that, by
exempting that portion of the middle classes whose incomes did not
reach the above amount, he would at all events secure their
neutrality, and perhaps purchase their support in any subsequent
attempt to render the tax perpetual. This view is fortified by the
exposition contained in the famous Elbing letter, and though we may
admire the ingenuity of the scheme, we cannot commend it for morality.
If this tax is to be continued and augmented, we are in justice
entitled to demand that it shall be carried down to the very lowest
point at which the amount of revenue drawn may exceed the cost of
collection. In 1798, according to Mr Porter, "an income tax was
imposed at the rate of ten per cent upon all incomes amounting to £200
and upwards, with diminishing rates upon smaller incomes, down to £60
per annum, below which rate the tax was not to apply." If we are to
persevere in this unwholesome style of taxation, there is no reason
whatever why some such arrangement as the above should not be adopted.
It is contrary to the constitution of a free country, that any class
should be selected as the subjects of isolated taxation, and doubly so
when the selection is made for the almost avowed purpose of relieving
some other class from the impost. Equal laws and equal rights can only
be maintained where there is a proper equality of burdens; and if it
be difficult to arrange the scale, as it undoubtedly is, the
difficulty must be met by those who propose to substitute this
unconstitutional mode of taxation for that which applied equally to
all classes of the community. Why should each and all of us, who
subsist by our own industry, and who are ready to pay our own share of
the national expenditure, be forced in addition to pay the quota of
others whose incomes do not amount to £150? Surely, there is less
difference in position between the man who clears £140 a-year by his
trade, and another whose gross profits amount to £155, than between
the latter and the possessor of a revenue of £10,000 per annum? And
yet, the two last are to be charged five per cent on their incomes,
whilst the other, who has the sense to moderate his industry, is to be
entitled to escape scot-free!
Another monstrous hardship of the income-tax is its pressure upon
professional men, and upon those whose incomes are precarious. No
distinction is made by the act of 1842, between profits accruing from
realised property, and those which are entirely the product of
individual and personal exertion; and yet, in every point of view,
there is a vast difference between the parties so situated. The man
who derives an income of £1000 a-year from landed property, or from
the funds, is in a far better position than the divine, the lawyer,
the physician, or the military officer, whose incomes perish with
their persons. That most pressing duty of life, the necessity of
laying by Some provision for a rising family, is in the one case
already fulfilled--in the other it is urgent; and yet no distinction
whatever is made between the two. The professional man is compelled
year after year to lay aside a large portion of his income, for the
sake of securing, by insurance or otherwise, the means of subsistence
for his family in the case of sudden death. He may not be able to
spend one half of his apparent income, and yet no deduction is
allowed on this account. He must pay for burdens not his own, and for
ministerial folly in which he was no participator, an amount equal to
that which is levied from the fund-holder or the man of acres, in the
full knowledge that, when he dies, his capital is buried with him,
whilst that of the other class remains tangible and available by
inheritance. This is another ground upon which we decidedly object to
the continuance and augmentation of the income-tax.
But the worst and most intolerable feature of the whole remains
behind. Unjustly apportioned as this tax undoubtedly is among
ourselves, the total exemption of Ireland from its operation is a
matter which cannot fail to excite throughout Great Britain a feeling
of universal and bitter indignation. Ireland, as we all know, is
already exempted from several of our heaviest burdens: she is by far
the greatest pensioner of the public purse; and the charities and
bounties which have been so indiscriminately lavished upon her, are
beyond all bounds disproportionate either to her wants or her
gratitude. But when it is seriously proposed to make this tax--which
is a class one--permanent, and to exempt from its operation all
persons of property and income in Ireland, it is full time that we
should speak out boldly, and declare, that at all hazards we shall not
submit to so gross and flagrant an injustice. This is no time for
puerile remonstrance. We have already borne and suffered more than we
are able to endure; and we must not permit ourselves to be sacrificed,
in order that Lord John Russell may command the Irish votes; we must
not be impoverished, in order to give a new impetus to the cause of
turbulence and sedition. In particular, let us impress upon our
representatives, that this is a matter in which Scotland is vitally
concerned. We have submitted very tamely and quietly to much neglect,
and to a good deal of palpable injustice; we have abstained from
making that outcry which the notorious neglect, by each succeeding
government, of our institutions and foundations rendered almost a
national duty. We have allowed ourselves, though the poorer country of
the two, to be taxed on the same scale with England; but we cannot,
and must not, be silent sufferers under this crowning act of
oppression. Ireland must not be permitted any longer to benefit by our
patience and our thrift. On this part of the subject, Lord John
Russell is peculiarly weak. He feels, and by implication admits, the
impropriety of the Irish exemption; and he took refuge from the
derisive cheering of the House in some general, but useless axioms, to
the effect that the prosperity of Ireland involved the prosperity of
the United Kingdom. All we can say upon that topic is, that if the
well-being of Britain depends upon the exertions and tranquillity of
Ireland, our existence as a great empire at the present day may be
counted as the most stupendous of modern miracles. But this, even in
the most favourable point of view, affords no argument at all. We
presume it is admitted, that the prosperity of Scotland has something
to do with the welfare of the United Kingdom; but are we on that
account entitled to demand that the people of England shall bear at
least one half of our proper fiscal burdens? The pretext is so flimsy,
that we wonder how any prime minister could find courage to state it
in his place. This is avowedly not a tax which is to affect the
working or pauper population: it does not wring the pence from the
hands of the peasant. It spares all incomes under £150; and are we now
to be deliberately told, when this impost is sought to be made
permanent, that the lawyers, physicians, and tradesmen of Dublin are
to be exempted from an assessment, occasioned by a general defalcation
of the revenue, to the gross injury of their professional brethren who
have the misfortune to reside in Edinburgh? But we go a great deal
further than this. We say, that if exemption is to be given to the
Irish landlords, a stronger case for the same immunity may be
preferred in behalf of the landowners throughout the greater part of
Scotland. The cruel suppression of the kelp manufacture has long ago
reduced a vast portion of the population located in the Western
Highlands and Islands to a state of pauperism. Poor-rates have been
enormously increased; and the failure of the potato-crop was felt in
those districts at least as severely as in Ireland. Very scanty indeed
was the relief doled out by government here, at the time when large
supplies were forced into the turbulent island; the burden of
maintaining the poor was thrown upon our proprietors; and their reward
is to be an augmented income-tax of five per cent, whilst the Irish,
as usual, are to go free! Really, when we consider this matter in its
broad and open bearing, the injustice appears so enormous, that we can
hardly bring ourselves to believe that it is seriously intended to
perpetrate it. At all events our course is clear. There can be no
party distinctions in such a matter as this. Whatever difference of
opinion may exist as to the policy of continuing the income-tax, there
can be none as to the propriety of its just and equal distribution
throughout the empire. The voice of Scotland must be heard upon this
point, and loudly too, else our fragmentary representation is nothing
more than a shadow and a dream. We trust that both the counties and
the towns will bestir themselves to oppose this meditated act of
spoliation; and by a ready and united resistance, compel the ministry
to remember that higher and weightier considerations than the command
of some Irish votes are involved in a question so momentous and so
vital to the whole community.
Indeed, if the income-tax is really to become permanent, it must be
placed upon an entirely different basis, and undergo a thorough
revision. It cannot be suffered to pass in that light and easy manner
which Lord John Russell seems to contemplate. His former colleague, Mr
Baring, feels this, and does not hesitate to say it. We quote from his
remarks upon the subject:--"It might be very well in times of great
difficulty, or in time of war, to do that under the pressing necessity
of the circumstances, which they were prepared to justify solely on
the grounds of such necessity, but which would not be justifiable
without it. When, then, they proposed for two or three years to lay on
an income-tax in time of war, they might not be very nice in seeing
that the tax pressed equally on all classes; but when they came to
raise all income-tax of five per cent, and made it part of the
permanent system of taxation, he thought they were bound to make it a
more equable and fair tax than it was at present. He alluded to the
different manner in which the tax pressed upon incomes derived from
property, and from those which depended on the exertions of
individuals. He did not think this tax, as it was at present imposed,
could long stand the test of fair reasoning." It may be very well for
the premier to state, with Whig glibness, that "we propose, therefore,
to take the tax exactly as it has been imposed in late years--on the
same principles on which it was proposed and defended by Mr Pitt, on
the principles on which it was increased by Lord Grenville and Lord
Lansdowne." He is utterly wrong, both in his history and in his
inference. The present tax is, in its most important features,
defencible upon no principle that ever was enunciated before; and he
is mistaken if he supposes that the British nation will consider a
permanent impost in the same light as one which was merely temporary.
We maintain that the measure, as a whole, is in the highest degree
dangerous and unconstitutional; but if we are compelled to submit to
it as the product of wild and reckless experiment, it is absolutely
necessary that it should be reconstructed in accordance to the
dictates of justice. The late act was neither so framed nor
administered. Upon what principle, we should like to know, is the
English landed proprietor assessed upon a rental from which all
parochial and other burdens are deducted, whilst in Scotland the
landlord is charged upon the gross amount? The Englishman is entitled
to deduction of poor, county, highway, church, and police rates;
whilst the Scotchman is very coolly handed over to the tender mercies
of the commissioners under schedule A, and assessed to the uttermost
farthing! This is but one instance of the inequality which pervades
the act of 1842; and although it might have been passed over without
much notice in a scheme of taxation which was only to last for a
limited time, it must not be suffered to remain unaltered when a
permanent burden is to be laid upon our aching shoulders. This
country, far more than Ireland, stands in need of a national
association to watch over and protect its interests.
We shall not venture to anticipate the reception of this most
deplorable financial statement when it is fully brought before
parliament. We fully agree with Mr Osborne, who said that, "had there
been a regularly organised Opposition, such a statement would never
have been made. In such a case, the fact of a minister under present
circumstances calling for an increase in taxation, would have signed
the deathwarrant of his cabinet. The present ministry, he believed,
would be the most unpopular and the most unfortunate who had ever sat
within these walls." Hard language this certainly, when addressed to
the prophets of unbounded prosperity following in the wake of
free-trade, but not more hard than true. Commercial distress,
unexampled bankruptcy, money at a minimum rate of eight per cent,
ruined colonies, and a war-tax made permanent and augmented, have been
the first-fruits of that glorious measure which was absolutely to
swamp us with an inundation of unexampled riches! How much further, we
may ask, is it proposed to carry the experiment? Are the navigation
laws to be repealed by a ministry which acknowledges the necessity of
increasing our armaments? Which interest is next to suffer?
"Who else must be let blood--who else is rank?"
What other reductions are to be made--what further filching from the
customs effected, in order that, in another year or two, a fresh
direct demand may be made upon an isolated class of the community? We
have read over every part of Lord John Russell's financial statement
with the utmost attention; and, fully satisfied as we are that the
deficiency in the balance must be made good, we have arrived at the
conclusion that the proposed measures are upon no account whatever
justifiable. Are the Whigs sincere in their belief that the free-trade
experiment will prosper? If they are, why do they seek to make this
income-tax permanent?--why do they ask for five years as the shortest
nominal term? "Give us a fair time for the experiment!" shouts the
free-trader whenever he is reminded of the utter failure of his
scheme. But what is to be considered as a fair time? Are we to be
taxed directly, and exorbitantly, for five years, in the hope that
when these are over some ray of our former sunshine may revisit us? or
are we to wait in patience, with a revenue yearly dwindling, until
reciprocity shall arrive for the benefit of a future generation? The
effects of the potato failure are now over, railway speculation has
subsided, nothing stands in the way of free-trade to prevent us from
participating in all its blessings. If the ministry have confidence in
it, as they have over and over again professed to have, why do they
seek more than the prolongation of the present tax for another year?
They know why. In their hearts they are thoroughly aware, that they
have been led astray by a phantom; or rather, that they have fostered
a gross delusion for the mean purpose of obtaining power, and the tone
which they are now compelled to assume sufficiently proves it. There
is no vaunting this time--no gay and golden prophecy. All is black and
dreary before them; and they are trembling at the account which they
will be forced to render to the country. Weak in purpose, they have
not the courage to confess their former folly; to own that they have
been misled by the dangerous example of their predecessor; and that,
by deserting the older financial system which regulated the affairs of
this country, they are plunging the nation into unheard-of
difficulties, and preparing for themselves an early, and certainly an
inglorious fall.
Unhappy indeed is their position, for even the most discreditable
section of their allies is upon the eve of desertion. Mr Cobden of
course is frantic at the idea of the smallest addition to our
armaments. He wants the country party to join with him in a crusade
against the army and navy, and is kind enough to propose a coalition.
There is very small chance of the gentlemen of England being found in
any such dubious company. Betrayed as they have been, they form not
only a compact party, but they have high and patriotic principles from
which nothing will induce them to swerve; and they can well afford to
wait the time when the country, writhing under misgovernment, shall
demand the restitution of those principles through which it rose to
greatness, and by abandoning which, it has perilled its prosperity and
its power. They have no aspirations after office, merely for its sake.
Those who have left them, and deserted their early faith at the
bidding of a shifty leader, may now, perhaps, be mourning their folly,
when they see the precarious tenure of the Whigs, and the disgust
which they are universally exciting. The time is rapidly approaching
when the eyes of the people will be opened; and when, by deliberately
contrasting their present deplorable state with the prosperity which
they formerly enjoyed, they will arrive at the conclusion that they
have grossly erred in giving any credence to the doctrines of
fanatical demagogues, or in consenting to the schemes of their
abettors. In patience, but in confidence, let us abide the time. No
man knows better than Mr Cobden in which direction the popular opinion
is likely to set. He has had his period for delusion, and it is now
nearly over. He is pleased to state that it is impossible in any way
to recur to our older system; that even if we should be convinced of
the falsity of the move, it is in vain to retract it; that nothing
remains but a general attack upon the existing institutions of the
country. Such language is rather ominous of the sponge, but the moral
of it is unmistakable. It is Fagin's system. Once get a boy to pick a
pocket, and he must go on until his career terminates at the gallows.
There can be no relapse to honesty. Such an idea, to borrow Mr
Cobden's own elegant phraseology, "is all sham and fudge!" Once let a
woman lapse from virtue, and repentance becomes impossible; she must
pursue her destiny till she dies in a garret or the hospital. These
may be Mr Cobden's opinions, but they are not ours, and neither do we
believe that they have received the sanction of the country. He seems
at the present moment, to judge from the tone of his harangues, in the
same state of excitement as the sailor, who, when the vessel is in
danger, insists upon breaking open the spirit-room. He is determined
to have free-trade for ever, let the experiment cost what it may.
One thing, however, is remarkable, and that is, that even Mr Cobden
seems to have lost faith in the efficacy of his former nostrums.
Neither at Manchester nor in the House of Commons does he attempt to
explain the unaccountable absence of the vast benefits which he
proposed to confer upon the nation. Probably he is wise in abstaining
from any explanation which may draw attention to this subject. His
attempt to get up a false alarm on the score of increased
establishments, is not without adroitness, especially at the present
time: but after all, it is a mere prolongation of his existence; he
cannot hope to escape the penalty which is common to all false
prophets--that of standing before his dupes in the character of a
detected impostor.
However this matter may end, we have all a duty to perform. Those who
think with us will do it fearlessly and frankly: without faction, but
also without the compromise of a single principle. They will support
the independence and the credit of the country from motives which Mr
Cobden cannot understand, and which the leaders of the Whig party have
not the courage or the manliness to avow.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Archaic spelling and variations in spelling and hyphenation have been
retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.