TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BUDGET AND THE NATIONAL MEANS.
Mn. GLiDsToNE's Budget is the simplest on record ; and for that very reason it seems to have been at first generally misunderstood. People could not believe in anything Gladstoman, so complete without complexity. It was characterized by a great Journal, even while praising it, as akin to " an elaborate piece of rhe- torical engineering." It is, nevertheless, the plainest possible plain sailing. If Mr. Gladstone were as terse as he is eloquent, he might have put the whole of his plan, and the reasons for it, in some such terms as these.
" You the nation have chosen to get into debt to the amount of 4,867,0001., in excess even of the income of 63,340,0001. you are giving me to pay it with. It must be paid off this year. I know you to be naturally averse to new taxes, and honourably opposed to fresh debts. I observe also that your own resources are largely on the increase, and that you can well afford to pay your debt at once. I accordingly request you to enable me to do so on the approaching day for collecting the next Income-tax. I would have you pay it on the nail. I will have no driblets. Cash up,
pay it down like a i man, and have done with it. It will come to 4d. in the pound on all incomes above 1501. per annum; and 2d. on all below it and above 1001. This is all I ask, and it will nearly set us straight. If you don't like it, and dread a repetition of the dose, be less extravagant for the future, and diminish your expenditure. I impose no new tax : but as short credits and prompt payments are to be the order of the day, I shall reduce by six weeks the eighteen weeks' credit with which I find Maltsters favoured above all mankind ; this will bring in the small balance still requisite to complete the sum you owe."
Such, we believe, is in substance precisely what the Chancellor of the Exchequer means. How this mode of meeting a present deficit can have been tortured as it has into a most ingenious de- vice for escaping from the dilemma into which his prophecies of 1853 are supposod to have involved him, or what he has done, or what events have done, to liken him to " King Canute," passes our comprehension. He did not declare in 1853 that the tide of expenditure could not exceed the growth of the revenue. But in anticipating that this growth would be such as under all ordinary circumstances to cover our expenditure, and to complete the gra- dual extinction of the Income-tax next year, he has been more than borne out by the event, as we shall presently show.
As regards the Income-tax we said at the time, (23d April 1853,) when commenting on Mr. Gladstone's masterly financial speech of that week-
" He admitted that it [the Income-tax] could not be retained as a per- manent item in our system of taxation ; but that its proper use is a reserve foi great occasions when the presence of overwhelming danger or the pros- pect of overbalancing advantage, induces those persons upon whom such a tax presses heavily, to bear the temporary infliction with patriotic re- signation. * * * Should a renewal of the Income-tax be desirable at any _future time, this speech of his will have helped to mould a public opinion of a very different tone, and one far more accurately informed than that which has hitherto prevailed in the function, limits, and general cha- racter of such a tax."
This was an abstract of the tone and gist of the remarkable speech by which Mr. Gladstone is now judged; and from the terms of which he is under no kind of necessity to escape. It is impossible that events can have more exactly presented the nodus for which he defended recourse to an Income-tax. His view of the contingent value of this talisman of the Exche- quer, was fully endorsed by Mr. Disraeli last year ; who said in the debate of 19th April— "Is it not of the highest importance, I would ask, that the Sovereign of tags. country should, notwithstanding the immense revenue which is an- nuglly raised to support the vast establishments of this country, be able, with the concurrence of her Parliament, to touch at any time, as it were by a spnm, a source of revenue which in an hour of great emergency would yield 20,000,0001. or 25,000,0001. sterling."
It is the peculiar use of an assessment on incomes that a single sum for a ngle emergency can be raised, unlike other taxes, without deraing the basis of commercial dealings. It can, whilst any income-tax is running, also be collected without new trouble or additional machinery, and at very slight extra cost. It is ler one of these single levies that Mr. Gladstone has, pro re nata, Ktnuched the wring." Recurrence at this crisis to it,—so far from having the remotest tendency to defeat the extinction of i
the Income-tax next yew, as settled in 1853, or to increase its stated periodioa amount, i is manifest that the levy of the extra fourpence, by leaving all ogler germs of revenue free, has a directly opposite effect. It in fact protects the fund from which taxes spring. It is, however, demonstrable that an extra in- direct tax on any consumable article tends to its greater adultera- tion. The moment this happens,—in addition to the extra price paid by the consumer for extra tax, which is paid on the genuine part of the article sold him, and which finds its way into the Exche- quer,—he is also made to pay extra on the adulterated part of the article, no diver of which ever reaches the revenue. Whether therefore Mr. Gladstone, peradventure, foresees a sounder publics judgment on this vexed question, or whether he feels the proba- bility of farther emergencies, and has therefore limited himself, as he has greatly done, both in act and speech, to the require- ments of the current year—we approve his caution and respect his reticence. He has met a fiscal difficulty with an effectual mea- sure which forfeits no personal pledge and violates no fiscal prin- ciple: and he has done so, not only in the promptest and cheapest
way, but under circumstances which we can briefly show direst the decisiveness of the operation of all hardships to the nation. The nation was never better able to bear its burdens : and though this is no reason for incurring them, it is a consolatory fact when we are under the necessity of bearing them. Discarding those clouds and fringes of figures which usually perplex statistics, here are some rather fuller evidences than Mr. Gladstone adduced of the almost plethoric prosperity to which Free Trade has raised us.
We will begin with the growth of our revenue during the last ten years, when the remission of the protective system first took effect, and that under a system which materially lowered the in- direct taxes of the country. The gross revenue of the United Kingdom has increased from 58,000,0001. in 1848 to 66,800,0001. in 1858, being an increase of 15.1 per cent. In the same period, Customs increased in the greater ratio of 18.7 per cent. The official value of our imports increased by 51.9, and of our exports by no less than 109.0 per cent ; while the declared or real value of the latter increased by 98.1 per cent. The number of our registered vessels in 1848 was 32,988, and last year it amounted to 37,659.
These are perfectly unanswerable proofs of the vast progress, not of a hotbed competitive trade, but of substantially produotive commerce. No less remarkable are the following striking proofs of the steady growth of property as indicated by the Income-tax, irrespectively of the fluctuations of its amount. The real pro- perty on which the tax under Schedule A is assessed has increased from 1850 to 1858 by 16.7 per cent ; while the profits of trades and professions (Schedule D) have increased by no less than 42.8 per cent. These two schedules comprise nearly the whole of the assessible income and property, which, being 229,000,0001. in 1850, now exceeds 275,000,000/. ! The inclusion, however, in 1853 of incomes between 1001. and 1501. per annum, in some degree, though not very materially, reduces this ratio of increase. The progress of welfare is fully corroborated by the decrease of crimes usually resulting from depression, but still more by the diminution of pauperism. The demand for labour is greater, and the supply less, while wages proportionately rise.
We may therefore well afford to restore our Navy to its former efficiency, and pay the extra fourpences without grumbling, which we have chiefly incurred by not doing it in proper time.
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