TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE THING THAT LOOMED IN THE FUTURE. Tan Chancellor of the Exchequer is not the first genius by a great many who has learned that it is easier to conjure up the most mar- vellous castle in the air than to construct the humblest edifice of brick and mortar. He must have succeeded to an unusual degree in passing off his own sleight-of-hand upon himself, if he did not i
recognize in his five-hours speech of Friday sennight a ludicrous disproportion between his promises and his performance, scarcely equalled since his Semitic kinsman startled the streets of Cairo with the soul-thrilling cry, "In the name of the Prophet, figs !" The financial statement then propounded. to the House of Com- mons had been for months heralded as the inauguration of a new financial sera. Its author, like the great prophet of his nation, had retired to the mount of mystery, and after days and nights of pro- digious incubation—while his readtionary followers were dancing and performing their barbaric rites round the rustic animal that typified their unconcealed longings for the flesh-pots they had lost —came forth at last from the mystic obscurity in which he had shrouded himself ; and brought down with him the laws, which were to guide us, emancipated from the Egypt of Protection, in our perilous path to the Promised Land of Unrestricted Competition. The war of classes was to be terminated, interests unduly affected by "recent legislation" were to be conciliated, everybody was to be satisfied, and no one was to be discontented, except perhaps a few manufacturers, always eager to escape their share of public burdens, and a few Whigs, vexed in their aristo- cratic souls at the ease with which a real genius solved the prob- lems that no calculus of theirs was powerful enough to attempt. No fabled splendour of palaced city in the unexplored centre of Africa ever more wofully contrasted with the traveller's sad ex- perience of the mud huts of the real Timbuctoo, than these glori- ous visions looming in the distance were belied by the disclosures of last week. And it would be as absurd to criticize the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer's statement without giving first mention to this discrepancy between the ideal and the actual, as it would be unfair to an ordinary Chancellor of the Exchequer to complain of his scheme because it merely suggested a few changes, in which good, bad, and indifferent, were blended in the average proportion of works of mere human ingenuity. -
The true peculiarity of Mr. Disraeli's budget is the singular success with which he has selected the main tax to be remitted, and the means by Which he proposes to compensate the revenue for the deficiency that will be thus created._ remitting half of the Malt-tax, at a loss to the revenue of two millions and a half, he gives up a tax so peculiarly involved with a system of artificial regulations, as to make it doubtful whether by far the greater part of the immense revenue sacrificed will not go into the pocket of the few manufacturers of beer, rather than to the benefit of the producer of barley or of the consumer of beer. On the other hand, in retaining half the tax, he retains all the Excise machinery, the working of which has been a main cause of offence against the tax, and the expense of which will now be doubled in proportion to the revenue collected. He has not even the apology of anything like an unanimous desire on the part of the agricultural interest to be relieved from this tax; • though, of course, they will have no overpowering objection to try what advantage they may obtain from the relief. Thus the community is charged two mil- lions and a half for a very uncertain benefit to any but a few al- ready over-favoured individuals. But, however doubtful the ad- vantage of this remission to the class to whom it is held out as a boon, or to the community who are soothed by a prospect of cheap beer, there can be no mistake as to the incidence or vexation of the burden by which the loss to the revenue is to be mainly com- pensated. There is, be it remembered, no scientific objection to a House-tax of double the present amount, and no reason in the world why it should not be extended to houses of between 10/. and 201. But when a burden of this amount and of this area is imposed, the nation must be convinced that the benefit of the corresponding remission is unequivocal, and at least as extensive as the new impost. Not for an uncertain advantage, and that mainly to a class, ought the community to submit to such an ex- tension of the amount and area of any tax, however just in prin- ciple. But Mr. Disraeli must have been " dazed " by his intense lueu- brations—must have taken the specks of his own thick-coming fancies for objects of real existence—to have dreamt for a moment of combining with this extension of a doubled House-tax, to a class of people unaccustomed even to the single exaction, a simulta- neous extension of the Income-tax to about the same class. We very much underrate the tax-paying endurance of the smaller tradesmen, clerks, and artisans of our towns, if this treble in- fliction—an extended Income-tax with a House-tax at once ex- tended and doubled—be not found too much. It may or may not be true that the class of persons inhabiting houses between 101. and 201., and possessing incomes between 1001. and 150/. a year, or property producing between 501. and 150/. a year, pay at present
small a proportion of the taxes • but a politician ought to know the people for whom he proposes to legislate, too well to imagine that they are likely to submit patiently to such a sudden accumulation of the* burdens —especially, as we said before, for an uncertain, ad- vantage to a Class of the community hitherto unduly considered in legislation, as no one can deny the agricultural class to have been till recent years.
The single advantage which is offered to the new classes brought under direct taxation is the gradual reduction of the Tea-duties. This is a very proper step, and one which, if not purchased too dear, these classes would be thankful for. But perhaps they will think that they have a right to the reduction of the Tea-duties to such a point as shall raise the revenue derived from consumption to its highest amount ; and it would really be difficult to deny the claim on the ground of either policy or financial science. Till that point be reached, the reduction of these duties is the simplest matter of sound policy, and not a word of substitution should be uttered, or listened to.
In proposing a partial reconstruction of the Income-tax on the distinction between incomes derived from permanent and from un- certain sources, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken upon his own responsibility to out short the deliberations of the Select Committee, which has now been sitting for two years, and the renewal of which was anticipated with a view to a final decision. By substituting for their verdict an opinion of his own—or at least an opinion likely to catch a passing popularity from the classes assessed at the lower rate—he has done his best to render the labours of the Committee of no effect, and to rob the country of any benefit that might have been derived from the final sum- ming-up of so eminent a body of men, of whom he was himself one. His proposal undoubtedly modifies an existing anomaly ; but it does so by the roughest guess-work, and at the expense of admit- ting a questionable principle; while,, if adopted, it will be urged henceforward as a bar against reopening the question for a more thoroughly equitable and scientific settlement. His single opinion is not equal to the weight it is made by himself to carry; and the eminent financiers and political economists who sat upon the Committee, and gave evidence before it, ought not to have been put out of court in this summary way. Still more obviously objectionable is the proposal to tax the farmers on an income rated at one-third of their rent. To say no- thing of the absurdity of exempting farmers from the necessity imposed upon other tradesmen, advantageous besides as it is to themselves, of keeping accounts and taking stock annually, it leaves out of consideration the varying amounts of capital required to farm soils of various fertility, and therefore of various rent. The consequence will be, that the farmers of soils of low capacity, employing larger proportions of capital for the same number of acres, will pay less Income-tax than the farmers of high soils : and this is the more unfair, -that whateter advantage may accrue to the farmers from the reduction of the Malt-tax will be con- fined to the farmers of the low soils on which barley is grown. It is yet subjudice, whether Mr. Disraeli has not committed him- self to a breach of public faith, in dealing with the incomes of the national creditor on terms less favourable than with incomes derived from all other modes of investment except land. Nor has the limita- tion of the Irish Income-tax to funded property received the sanc- tion of any support than can lend it weight, or render its passing into law in the least degree probable. It is moreover liable to the very ugly suspicion of having been proposed not in good faith, but simply. in order to throw the odium of proposing the inclusion of the Irish landowners upon the Opposition, and so to foster an already existing division. The relief of the shipping interest from burdens admitted to be Unjust even under the Navigation-laws, is a measure that will re- ceive universal support, and is to be received as a tardy reparation of an acknowledged wrong, rather than as a novel budget arrangement. A main obstacle to this relief has hitherto been the Duke of Wel- lington, who objected to any interference with the Trinity House or the Cinque Ports : his death would have removed the difficulty from any Administration. Still, to Mr. Disraeli the execution.of the measure will be due • and the merit is the more necessary to him from the favourable contrast it presents to the coolly con- temptuous manner in which, by a crafty mystification of facts and figures, he endeavoured to persuade the House that the West In- dian interest had no longer any well-grounded cause for complaint or lamentation. Did he remember Lord George Bentinekus oft-. quoted words in reference to this interest, " We are not Privy Councillors, and cannot desert our principles " ? But now we are. Privy Councillors, and tout cela est change. And can any one fail to see that this treatment of the West Indians is only on a par with his treatment of his other late clients ? Smilingly he de- molished the phantom-fabric of wrongs and grievances on which he had been so often eloquently pathetic,—a fabric which, whether château en Espagne or not, he has managed to convert into a very comfortable mansion for his own uses : smilingly he dismisses the shipowners with a boon of about sixpence per ton for the whole shipping of the United Kingdom : smilingly he reminds the farmer that poor-rates are less now than In '48, (though the forgot to say that in '46, the sad year of repeal, they were no: higher than now,) and quietly pooh-poohs his own pet scheme of nationalizing local burdens. Who does not see at a glance the character of the man—the unreality of his political professions, the scandalous absence of those convictions that lend a double lustre to talent, and make even ignorance and bigotry re- spectable by comparison ? .
" Unrestricted competition " was the standard to which the finan- cial policy of this country was to be brought up—the agency by which the wrongs inflicted by "recent legislation" were to be redressed : and when any more definite indication of the new science was revealed, it was to the alteration of the incidence of local taxation that the admirers of the "veiled prophet" of Buck- inghamshire were taught to direct their hopes and aspirations. Not an item of the Budget tends to one or the other. The Malt- sax—no onesided remnant of a Protective system, but a simple excise-duty, wise or unwise—never prevented unrestricted competi- tion, and its diminution will not promote it. The Tea-duties-raise the price of tea; but competition in the tea-trade is as unrestricted as if there were no duties. The Income-tax and the House-tax neither increase nor lessen competition. On the other hand, local taxation remains precisely as it was. In a word, nothing has been done that was promised, and what is attempted isifor the most part, singularly unoriginal, unproductive, or impolitic. This budget, however, with the details on which we have briefly commented, is to be accepted or rejected—no hands less sacred than those of its author are to touch it. We wait with some curiosity to 'see whether the House of Commons, with its array of financiers scientific and practical, will *Submit to this tone from one who is in his first apprenticeship to a new profession. The pre- tension is the less tolerable that no principle runs through this budget—that there is no interdependence between its parts, except so far as the repeal of one tax creates a deficit, and the imposition of another is expected to supply the vacuum which the Treasury abhors. It is to be hoped that at any rate the House will take care that this vacuum be not created, till an agreement can be come to at least on the general principle of the imposts proposed as com- pensation; and if it consult its own dignity, it will discuss item by item, accept what it finds good, reject what is bad, and amend what is faulty. Even if Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues take sulks, we think they have shown too much attachment to the Treasury-bench to alarm the country with any prospect of the loss of their invaluable services.
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