NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Budget as it was presented to the House of Commons by the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been destroyed—not more by the division than by the debate in which it was torn to pieces ; and Ministers fall with their financial policy. This result will have surprised nobody. Certainly not the Ministers ; whose failing con- fidence was betrayed in their reluctance to confront a direct judg- ment. Great ideas of extending Free-trade until it should embrace the virtues of Protection—of " harmonizing commerce and finance," of " reconciling town and country "—appeared a sufficient stock io set up a financial statesman ; but the author himself must have been filled with disappointment and mistrust when his materials and his invention, called upon to embody those ideas in a tangible shape, could devise no more adequate form than the Budget which has just been condemned. This would account for the unexplained postponement of the session ; for the mystifying assurances which obstructed the statement they heralded; and for the extraordinary length of the speech in which Mr. Disraeli disguised the measure that he ought to have elucidated. The Budget of " unrestricted competition." was most imposing while it was unknown, and it was kept so as long as possible.
But the House of Commons is not in the habit of treating the Budget like an Eleusinian mystery; and the leading Members set themselves to work to pull it to pieces with a right good will. One after another they exposed its weak points,—its lack of real prirrt eiple, its disguised "compensation," its transfer of tax from land to houses and humble townsfolk, its wasteful and profitless repeal of the Malt-tax to benefit only brewers, its wanton deficiency, its inconsistencies, its confusions of loan and annual revenue, its need- less interference, its unreality. Graham, Russell, Cobden, Wood, Goulburn, Osborne, Lowe, Gladstone, divided the duty of cut- ting up the scheme. Ministers had no force to encounter such antagonists. Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, indeed, maintained his literary reputation by a well-prepared thesis. Mr. Walpole threw into the conflict all his earnestness ; Sir John Pakington his Con- servative purpose ; Lord John Manners his amiable feeling—spe- cially lashed up ; Lord Jocelyn not all his fire. But from the mere recital of names it will be seen that the great balance of Parliamentary experience, debating power, and authority, lay on the side of the Opposition. Every speaker on that side be- stirred himself to remove some part of the Egyptian veil in which Mr. Disraeli had enveloped his scheme ; and by the end of the five-nights debate the tissue of his five-hours speech was quite torn off, the framework remaining exposed to view in ludicrous nakedness.
The current of the debate set so steadily against Ministers, that they endeavoured, perhaps not unnaturally, to accommodate their steering so as to save a total wreck. Thus they changed their po- sition many times. At first it was understood that they were to take a vote upon the whole plan. For the Chancellor of the Exchequer insisted upon its being treated as a whole. Subse- quently he preferred to take the vote as one upon the "vital prin- ciple,"—which was, he said, extension of the area of direct tax- ation ; leaving Members free to alter the parts at a subsequent stage. By degrees, he more and more abandoned the parts for future consideration, until at last it was discovered that the ques- tion before the Committee of Ways and Means consisted of a broken sentence. The practical absurdity was pointed out to the leader of the House of Commons ; but he endeavoured, with the aid of the Chairman of Committees, to urge the House into voting, as it was unconsciously betrayed into debating, that imperfect proposition. There was more than the reluctance to be absurd in the refusal to rote a preamble without its seciuel : Members hesitated to enter the dark path to which the Sybil invited them with such alarming
importunity, not knowing whither they might be led, nor to what untraceable steps they might be committed. That was not the only peculiarity attending the conduct of the debate while it was proceeding, and the strange part which was taken in it by a Minister in another place. Lord Derby, who had interfered in regard to Mr. Villiers's resolutions from his place in the House of Lords, now repeated that unusual intervention : he oftener than once threatened that an adverse decision of the Com- mons on Mr. Disraeli's Budget would involve " consequences," in the resignation of Ministers ; a threat which was actually con- veyed into the House of Commons while it was sitting, and which did not fail to make a " sensation." On the very night of the divi- sion, Lord Derby went so far as to hint in the House of Lords, that he would move the adjournment for the recess, and let their Lord- ships off for the holydays, "in the event of the resolution now before the House of Commons being sanctioned by the House that evening." All these manoeuvres, however, failed of success : the House of Commons insisted upon discussing the resolution as a whole, and the project as a whole ; it prolonged its final sitting several hours after midnight, in order to have the matter out fully ; and then, dividing on the proposition to altei the House- duties, it decided against that proposition of the Budget, by 305 to 286.
Free-trade has come out of the insidious invasion scatheless. The enemy has been in the fortress, but had not the capacity_ or purpose to keep it. Even the new issue borrowed by Mr. Disraeli from a small section of Liverpool Free-traders, to be used by him against the main body—direct as opposed to indirect taxation—hai not really been subjected to a decision. An attempt was made to treat the rejection of Mr. Disraeli's crude plan as identical with the rejection of direct taxation,—as though the advocates of that form of finance were bound to accept unjust and bad taxation because it happened to be direct ! What the House of Commons rejected was, not the principle of direct taxation, but Coningsby taxation, —a mere financial repartee. What next ? The first question in everybody's mouth was, will Ministers resign ? They had repeated the threat of doing so ; but if there is a disposition to render the seats of office vacant, it is all on their own side. Whatever individuals in the Opposition may have wished in their hearts, it is quite evident that there was no party movement to disturb the occupation of the Treasury-bench;
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and many would have gone so far in the desire to accommodate. Ministers, that they would even have voted the half-sentence of tile resolution rather than disturb them. BUt Milliliters ordered it otherwise. Lord Derby had said that he should "stand or fall" by the financial policy of Ministers. Just before the division, replying to an invitation to withdraw his Budget and amend it, as Mr. Pitt and Sir Charles Wood had done, Mr. Disraeli said, "I do not aspire to the fame of Mr. Pitt, but I will not submit to the degradation of others."
He did his best to render accommodation impossible. Perhaps he knew it to be so already. Lord Derby had long ago disgusted his followers by his indifference to office ; the ablest of his followers was then supposed to be the one not least chagrined at being thus debarred from a coveted opportunity. The opportunity has been attained—used, after a fashion ; and it is over! - The chief had accepted the situation without clear ideas ; has reaped nothing but vexation and discredit for his pains ; and is " done for." The game is up. The chief capitulates ; and the lieutenant, who would still hold out, cannot keep down a breast swelling with enraged dis- appointment. Minister of a season, his last hour is come, without anything achieved. History will have nothing to record of the administration of the English Calonne. It only remains for him to sell his political life as dearly as he may. Accordingly, he puts his back to the wall, and in a burst of that invective in which he is skilled and powerful, he compels history to record at least the most audacious and insolent speech ever flung at Parliament by a falling Minister ; cutting all round—braving his strongest opponents with taunts of reckless adroitness—applauding himself with undisguised arro- gance—turning upon his friends a withering scorn and mockery of their old faith, in payment for that shortcoming support which gave him his long-coveted opportunity only to waste it. At bay on the Treasury-bench, braving the whole House like a bravo de- tected and desperate, resolute to make his power felt if not recog- nized, he has scattered around him rancours that must make office impossible, though they may give opposition a relish.
_ And Lord Derby is off to Osborne—to advise Queen Victoria whom to " send for ' ?
