The produce of the quarter's revenue gives woful falsification to
the first estimates of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and keeps up the credit of the commonplace aphorism that increased taxation is not always followed by increased returns. With an expenditure— in these retrenching:, reforming, ecereee..11 days—exceeding the income, the Finance Minister was oblige.: to adventure some plan for raising the necessary supplies; and as certain duties of the Customs and Excise produced last yea:. a given amount, he pro- ceeded to calculate that an additional five per cent, of taxation would bring its proportionate increase into the treasury. Without stopping to inquire which article would bear an increased taxation, and which was already overloaded—by this means nicely ad- justing the balance to the manufacturing wants and the consump- tion of the nation—an indiscriminate ieerease was put on all articles alike. This easy means of settling a difficult question
had the advantage of' qeickness in i‘s ilivour. The estimated revenue would Ello be inueb more ree,iily calculated by this wholesale mode of deaeg with the se".2ect ; and it' the con- sumers would but reealatc their purchases by the Chancellor of the Exche,aer's figuers. all svould be satisfactorily adjusted. Unluckily for this financial arrangenteet, tie people cannot be made te, 'bay the same quantity of dear articles. as of cheap; and so the Minister will be driven to devise some other scheme to make good the deficiency. Just tst this tinse, two documents have been published bearing on the revenue and the imports. One of' these might be sup- posed to be a mockery of the state of tile revenue, did it not appear in an official form in the Gazette. It is a notification that the Lords of the Treasury having cemeitied to the Commissioners for the Reduction of' the 1\:atikeed DC.: that the actual expendi- ture of the country for the year ende 1 in July last exceeded the revenue by nearly a million and a querteo the Commissioners do not intend to apply any sum on aceount el' the Sinking-fund It is well, perhaps, to be thus reminded or the almost forgotten fact, that there was once a time when the cxyess of revenue ss er ex- penditure permitted the application ta' ,:rlein monies for the re- duction of the National Debt, and th::; ::.t-re still exists a nominal Sinking-fund. The other documsnt is the report of the Com- mittee to inquire iato the Impert-de::es. 1 sh.e.vs that there are 1,150 different rates of duties cheese eble oe 1:me iemiuorted articles vjh which the Chancellor of the Fechseees dealt en : and that of those commodities 1,100 projese le:: than 400,0001, to the revenue.
