..ebt gopectator," jebruarn 22nd 1 S3 1
THE BUDGET Its you continue the Income Tax unmodified, what do you give us for it? That is the question which Sir Charles Wood was expected to answer, but which he fails to answer satis- factorily in his Budget. The character of the Budget is teasing littleness. Sir Charles has a little surplus; but to make it go further in purchasing a little credit here and a little credit there, he divides it into several pieces, not one of which is worth having. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has a surplus of nearly f2,500,000, which he disposes of in this way: about a million towards the reduction of the National Debt , reduction of the Coffee-duty, the Foreign from 6d. per pound, the Colonial from 4d., both to the same level, 3d. (f176,000); reduction of the Timber-duty (f286,000); repeal of the duty on imported seeds (f 30,000); reduction of the present Window- tax by one-third (f700,000), and commutation into a House- tax. He also proposes to transfer part of the cost of pauper lunatics (f150,000) to the Consolidated Fund. Sir Charles's financial reform may be said to go no further than a sort of tampering, which must tantalize everybody and satisfy nobody. . . . A reduction of one-third in the Income Tax would have been valued by every taxpayer, whatever his political class.
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