The sham amendment on the Budget moved brMr. W. H.
Smith, in the interest of Sir Massey Lopes, has occupied two nights of the time of Parliament during this week, but was negatived without a division at the close. It was a motion appa- rently intended to elicit a general exposition of policy from the Government on the subject of direct taxation, "as well imperial as local," but it was used as an occasion for airing all the financial grievances of the House, from Mr. Smith's own dolorous prog- nostics of falling revenue to Mr. Massey's polemic against the Income Tax. Mr. Lowe's speech was very emphatic and rather "wicked ;" he declared that so far from the Budget not being his own, it was his own, and he was "proud of it," and meant "to stand by it." As for the allegation that sugar would be no cheaper for the reduction of duty, that was all moonshine, and
"there was nothing about which so many lies were told as about sugar." The last time the sugar duty was reduced by one- half, the consumption of raw sugar was increased by 17 per cent. and of refined sugar by 47 per cent., and the same policy would in the present year be followed by like results. Mr. Lowe asserted that the real meaning of Mr. Smith's resolution was, first, that it was quite right to take id. off the income-tax ; next, that some other direct tax should be diminished or taken off ; lastly, that local rates should be relieved out of the Imperial Exchequer, and all before indirect taxation is touched ; in other words, a treble remission for the rich is to precede any remission at all for the poor. This, said Mr. Lowe, was to reverse the proceeding of Robin Hood, and to strip the poor to feed the rich.
