4 MAY 1844, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE great annual exposition of our financial state, the Budget, has been presented to Parliament ; comprising also some little reduc- tion of taxation, and the foretaste of an important modification of the Sugar-duties. As a money account it is gratifying : the past financial year witnessed a gross surplus of revenue over ex- penditure of more than 4,000,0001., or, after paying the deficiency on the previous year, 2,400,0001.; and making other deductions, there is an available surplus of 1,900,000/. The skill or prescience of Ministers in estimating their resources and the productive powers of' the taxes under an improving state of trade is impugned, and justly ; but, luckily, the error is all on the right side : the estimate of the revenue fell short of the actual yield by 2,700,0001.; the estimate of the expenditure exceeded the actual payment by 650,0001. Possibly the improved financial policy of Government may, by conducing to these results, have helped to falsify their own predictions ; good fortune must have done more ; but an error is easily overlooked when the disappointment is only pleasant. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is not over head and ears in debt to the Bank for current cash ; and he talks boldly of being independent of that convenient yet burdensome ally. There is advantage as well as novelty in this sound state of affairs ; witness the recent operation on the Funded Debt, by which a very consi- derable annual saving of interest has been made—and more may be effected in the same direction by means of overflowing coffers. The Budget, as far as it goes, justifies the policy of 1842; the re- venue, especially the Customs revenue, has improved, and might seem to warrant an extension of it. Mr. Gour.nuas, however, only ventures on a very small and very timid observance of the prin- ciples then laid down, with reduction or abolition of duty on flint- glass, currants, woo], and some other minor matters. The wool- duty is well got rid of; but its abolition provokes new hostility to the impolitic duty on cotton. The sacrifice to Free Trade is small; but, small as it is, the movement is kept up.

Although announced with the Budget, the Sugar-duties form a separate, a more momentous, and more doubtful question. A t present, foreign sugar is virtually prohibited by the excessive differential duty; British Plantation sugar paying a duty of 25s. 3d. the hun- 'dredweight, Foreign of 66s. 2d. When the Whigs proposed to di- minish the difference, the Tories pleaded the injustice to the West Indies of taking away their slaves and then exposing them to com- petition with countries still possessing slave-labour. The question of sugar-duties thus became one of party : the Whigs were pledged to consult the interest of the British consumer, the Tories to pro- tect the West Indies in the "great experiment" of Emancipation; and, beating the Whigs on that question, the Tories turned them out of office. The British consumer, however, has a vote at elec- tions, and other influences of weight with any Administration ; and it is discreet to propitiate him. Ministers now endeavour to do so without a glaring breach of consistency, by means of a middle term : the tax on Colonial sugar is left untouched, so is that on Foreign sugar the produce of slave-countries, but the impost on Foreign sugar the produce of free labour is reduced to a differential duty of 10s. the hundredweight as compared with the charge on British sugar. Thus, then, our repeated warning to the West Indians that their claims could not stand against English political exigencies, has come true : the first blow has been struck, one large mass of the protective sugar-duties is struck off; and the ultimate change is actually beginning, while the West Indians are almost as unprepared for it as ever. To keep up the production in our Sugar-colonies, it was necessary to substitute for compulsion of labour abundance of labour : tardily the colonists imbibed that opi- nion, and urged it, though without sufficient unanimity and vigour, on the Government. Lord STANLEY conceded emigration from Africa,—with such limits, however, as to geographical sources, and

such languid aid, that the practical results are almost nullified. Emigration from India, too, has been allowed—conditionally, and with months of official delay. In short, labour is nearly as deficient as ever in the West Indies; practically, it is almost impossible to increase the amount, under present regulations ; and in November next the colonists are to be exposed to competition with foreign coun- tries. Only with " free " countries, say Ministers : but if we admit all the free-grown sugar to our market, the more of slave-grown must

be brought to Europe ; and in this way the West Indians are ex-

posed to competition even with slave-countries. The benefit to the English consumer is distant and problematical, for it is not clear that any great quantity of free-grown sugar will come in : yet

the detriment to the West Indies is great and instant, for we know that the bare announcement by Mr. GOULBURN on Monday last

has already had the effect of checking the investment of money in West Indian speculation. The colonists were too long remiss ; but what is to be said of the Colonial Minister who decrees a revo- lution of this kind without a single preliminary step effectually taken to prepare for it ?

The recall of Lord ELLENBOROUGII by the East India Directors has been the subject of much speculation, and of a characteristic avowal on the part of the Duke of WELLINGTON; who declared that the acts of the Governor-General had his thorough approval, and that he held the recall to be a proceeding of the grossest in- discretion. Lord ELLENBOROUG II'S success as an amateur General has quite won the veteran's heart, and he can perceive no ill equal to the removal of the man that played with armies so well. The Duke of WELLINGTON, ever straightforward, has outlived that period of life when men are very solicitous about what will be thought of them, and he speaks without stint. Cautious Sir Rouser PEEL behaves in an opposite fashion, and questions fail to draw from him any explicit assertion of opinion. The Duke even reserved all reasons for his opinion ; so that no one knows why he thinks the East India Directors so indiscreet, nor yet why Lord ELLENBONOUGII is recalled. His unpopularity with the officials in India, his re- trenchments, his aggressive policy, and other reasons, have been- guessed at. It says little that his unpopularity was diminishing ; still less, that he was resting after the second game of aggression, for the Directors could not well have stopped him in the midst of a game. Whatever the reason, Government and the Directors are quite at issue upon it ; and it is from the merchant-princes of Leadenhall Street that the PEEL-WELLINGTON Ministry has as yet received its severest and most mortifying check. Some measures of special domestic reform have been before Par- liament. The most important, and the successful one, is a bill in- troduced by Lord COTTEN!! M, altogether to abolish imprison- ment for debt at any stage ; consolidating and assimilating the bankrupt and insolvent law, enabling the debtor to obtain an effectual discharge from his liabilities on an honest cession of his goods, and a creditor to compel the debtor to make that cession; thus giving to either party the power of taking the initiative. Fraudulent debts—that is, as we understand it, the obtaining goods for which the purchaser cannot and does not mean to pay, under the false pretence of contracting a " debt " for them—will be an offence for trial before a jury and for substantive punishment as a fraud, apart from the question of mere debt. The measure is another step to- wards that " free trade" in credit which would be the really sound system. The laws of debtor and creditor act as a protection to improvidence on both sides : relying on the law to back him, the vender scarcely considers his customer's means of payment, extent of purchases, or personal character—expecting to supply by process of law his own want of caution : the purchaser thus attains a spurious credit, which under a system of purely personal reliance would be beyond his reach ; and if improvident, he measures his purchases not by his own means but the vender's confidence. If the law refused to furnish a guarantee to the dealer, except as against positive fraud, credit would come to be tried by the only . efficient tests, substantial means and honest name. Mr. MILES, acting under the patronage of Sir JAMES GRAHAM, some time back introduced a bill to consolidate and amend the laws relating to master and servant. The bill appears really to have carried out its professed objects ; but it was precisely one of those instances in which inadequate improvement is worse than none. A negligent servant may now be fined and imprisoned on the prosecu- tion of his master, though the servant has no redress against a bad master except the civil claim for wages. In many respects that law is becoming obsolete. The new law proposed to mitigate the severity to be shown to the servant, and to extend his powers of redress ; but it newly extended the stringent law to job-work, and it failed to put the master and servant on a perfect equality as be- fore the law. It would have been less unjust than the old law, but still unjust ; and, gifted with some kind of revived youth, the new injustice seemed likely to last. Mr. THOMAS DUNCOMBE has suc- ceeded in throwing out the bill ; one of his good services to the working-classes. The subject must be more thoroughly investi-

gated and more explicitly discussed before the next attempt at reform.

Mr. Fox MAULE has made an effort to relieve Scotch Universities from the oaths exacted from Professors, now liable to be converted by the adherents of the Established Church to a weapon of assault on the Seceders. There is not only an injustice in excluding such large portions of the Scotch people from lay offices in the Universities on account of their religious tenets, but the rigorous enforcement of the oaths binds the Universities to the fate of the "Residuary Church," which has not the most brilliant of prospects before it. It is unjust to Dissenters in Scotland, and impolitic as respects the welfare of the learned bodies. Ministers advanced the most feeble of excuses for not complying,—the treaty of Union, the chance that Town-Councils enjoying patronage might prefer Dis- senters, and other pleas, the sum and substance of which is that they thought it most prudent not to meddle with the question. That might be well enough if the question did not clamour for settlement : but Ministers defer dealing with this second aspect of the Nonintrusion schism, though their concurrence in Lord ABER- DEEN'S Bill committed them to attempt a thorough settlement.