dually to raise the duty on spirits, but not to such a degree as to endanger the return of smuggling. He now proposed to raise the duty on spirits made in Ireland and Scotland, from 2s. 10d. a gallon to 3s. and on English spirits from 7s. per gallon to 8s. The amount of increased revenue which would be derived in the present year from this source, would probably be about 330,000l.; which, added to the surplus already mentioned, would give a surplus of somewhat more than 3,000,000l. The reduction of the revenue in the present year, by the abolition of the taxes on beer, leather, and cider, would be less than 1,000,000l. so that there would remain a clear surplus of about 2,000,000l. "There is, however," continued the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "something more than the revenue and the expenditure of the present year to be considered; we must also look to the probable effect of the reduction of taxation, not only in the present year, but in the following year, 1831, when the whole reduction of 3,400,000l. will come into effect. To meet this, or a great part of it, the House has many resources, and one of them is the reduction of the interest of the national debt. Looking to the state of the exchanges with foreign countries, to the great accumulation of capital, and to the diminished rate of interest in the public markets for all public and private securities, I cannot entertain a doubt, that the House has now the power, effectually and conveniently to reduce that part of the national debt which bears an interest of four per cent; and it is, therefore, my intention to propose to the House, to fix a time for giving notice, on some early day, of the terms on which it will VOL. LXXII. offer to the holders of the four per cents, a stock bearing a less annual interest. The reductions already made in the amount of expenditure, over which the government has any control, has been great; and the same active industry, and the same thorough and anxious desire to alleviate the burthens of the people, and to diminish all unnecessary expenses, will still be continued. The various departments of the government are engaged in an examination of the minutest kind into the expenditure of every branch of the public service, and I look to the result of that examination for the means of still further relieving the burthens of taxation. The government proposes to take this examination entirely on itself, confiding it to gentlemen connected with the government, but unconnected with the particular departments to which these inquiries are to be extended. I look to the consolidation of various departments of the public service, to a better and more economical mode of collecting the revenue than at present, as likely to place hereafter at the disposal of the government a great surplus revenue, which will enable us to reduce taxation still further. In the same manner, and to the same extent, the government proposes to empower a commission to deal with the whole of the colonial expenditure. We know, that it is not easy to find men conversant with all the details of this most extensive branch of the expenditure; but the task will probably be efficiently performed by men appointed by a government desirous of concealing no abuses, and of producing, by every practicable means, additional resources for the service of the country. On the subject of superannuation allowances, a regulation has been already [G] made. By the terms of a Treasury minute, passed in the course of last summer, every person hereafter accepting office under government, is required to submit to an annual reduction, according to the amount of his salary, which is to be formed into a fund, out of which the superannuation allowances are to be paid; and a bill will soon be introduced to authorize the appropriation of the produce of that fund, and to regulate the method by which it may be most beneficially managed for the advantage of individuals, and the relief of the public purse. There is another resource on which I rely with great confidence-I mean the augmentation which must necessarily take place in all the remaining branches of taxation, by a repeal of those taxes which have pressed on particular portions of industry and production. I think it is almost impossible to imagine that the malttax should not receive a great increase from the reduction of the duty on beer, and that the general stimulus, which generally results from the reduction of taxation, will have a most beneficial effect on every branch of industry which contributes, immediately or remotely, to the revenue.” Mr. Baring considered, that the right hon. gentleman was undoing what had been done by all his predecessors; and was declaring that all hopes of a surplus, applicable to the reduction of the public debt, were to be derived from some sanguine expectations of a future, though distant, improvement of the revenue. Were we to go on for ever without making an effort to get rid of the load which weighed down the energies of the country? Mr. Pitt, at the time he proposed the establishment of the Sinking Fund, declared, "that no minister would ever have the confidence to come down to the House and propose the repeal of a measure, the tendency of which was to relieve the people of their burthens;" he further declared, that to suffer "that fund at any time, or on any pretence, to be diverted from its proper object would be to ruin, defeat, and overturn the whole of his plan. He hoped, therefore, when the bill he should introduce should pass into a law, that House would hold itself solemnly pledged not to listen to a proposal for its repeal on any pretence whatever."+ Yet we had lived to see the time when a minister appeared in that House, and finally proposed to sweep away altogether the income laid by for its maintenance. He was convinced that means would and should have been found to support this fund; but if we were to adopt the policy expounded in the market-places, and obey the recommendations, and chime in with the prejudices, and act according to the political wisdom to be heard at Penenden Heath, or in the market-place of Chelmsford, the credit, the honour, the interests, and the power of this country must ultimately sink with the weakness which permitted the House to listen to such suggestions. The proposal to reduce the four per cents came with a very bad grace from the mouth of a minister who acknowledged that the hope of paying any portion of the debt was almost virtually abandoned; and although, if it suited him to hold property in the funds, his confidence in the good faith of the country, or the security of his debt, would not be diminished, he could * Hansard's Parl. Hist. vol. xxv. p. 1309. Ibid. 1322. not but repeat his opinion, that all there would be effected a saving of 1,700,000l. of interest, and a reduction of forty or fifty millions of capital; making the five per cent stock thus created irredeemable for fifty or sixty years. It was very true that to every contract there must be two parties; and it might happen that to such a conversion as that which the pamphlet recommended, the holder of four per cents would not be disposed to accede. Still he thought that it was a subject which well deserved the right hon. gentleman's attention. He was also of opinion that it might be advisable to follow, in this respect, the example of the French government, and to obtain from Parliament the power of taking any step of that kind, during the recess, which circumstances might seem to render expedient. The right hon. gentleman should have paused to see, whether the means of recurring prosperity were not likely to arise, before he took a step, the inevitable tendency of which was, to inflict a permanent evil, calculated hereafter to augment national distress. If the members would turn back to the debates on the financial system of the country in 1786,* they would see how invariably the public. distress had been exaggerated. The income of the country was at that period estimated at 15,000,000l., and its financial condition was then thought to be almost overwhelming. Mr. Pitt's words were, "To you do the public turn their eye, justly expecting, that from the trust you hold, you will think it your duty to make the most serious efforts in order to afford them the long-wished-forprospect of being relieved from Hansard's Parl. Hist. vol. xxv, p. 1294. an endless accumulation of taxes, under the burthen of which they are ready to sink." This 15,000,000l. was then deemed the insupportable weight, and it ought to be some consolation to us to know that the country speedily emerged from its desponding condition. Mr. Pitt, in the debate of 1786, went on to say, "Upon the deliberation of this day do they place all their hopes of a full return of prosperity, and that public security which will give confidence and vigour to those exertions in trade and commerce upon which the flourishing state of this country so much depends. Yet not only the public and this House, but other nations, look to the business of this day; for by the establishment of what is now proposed, our rank will be decided among the powers of Europe. To behold the country emerging from a most unfortunate war, which added such an accumulation to sums before immense, that it was the belief of surrounding nations, and of many among ourselves, that our powers must fail us, and we should not be able to bear up under it; to behold this nation, instead of despairing at its alarming condition, looking boldly its situation in the face, and establishing upon a permanent plan the means of relieving itself from all its encumbrances, must give such an idea of our resources, and of our spirit of exertion, as would astonish the nations around us, and enable us to regain that pre-eminence to which we were on many accounts so justly entitled." These were the words of Mr. Pitt, re-echoed by Mr. Fox, who, struck with the necessity of giving increased stability to the principle of security on which the public creditor relied, seemed to stifle on this occasion the eager spirit of party feeling which at that time excited the House of Commons, and exhibited a contrast to the degeneracy of the present times, when, within and without that House, no repugnance was shown to a total departure from those just and inflexible principles upon which Mr. Pitt mainly relied to conquer impending difficulties. On the contrary, Lord Althorp, Mr. Hume, and other members, approved highly of the exposé made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and only regretted that he had not carried the immediate reduction of taxation to a greater extent. Mr. Huskisson, too expressed his approbation, but added, that the gratification was not wholly unalloyed by such considerations as those to which Mr. Baring had alluded. The principal reduction promised by the government-that of the beer-duty, was not carried without great opposition. It was resisted by the brewers and publicans, whose monopoly it would break up; the latter complaining loudly of the deterioration to which the capital invested by them in the trade would necessarily be exposed, when every man, who could pay two guineas for a license, was to be entitled to open a public house. The landed interest, too, disliked it, for they would rather have seen the direct duty on malt repealed; and they spoke much of its deficiencies in not providing any system of control, to secure the proper conduct of publicans, such as existed under the present licensing system. It would convert England, they said, into one huge tippling-house, spreading throughout the country universal demoralization. On the second reading an attempt was made to throw out the bill, by Mr. Portman, one of the members for Dorsetshire, who moved that it should be read a second time that day six months; but only twenty-eight members voted for the motion. In the committee a stronger effort was made in favour of a clause proposed by Mr. Monck, member for Reading, to the effect of permitting the brewer to sell his beer on premises different from those on which it had been brewed. This, it was contended, was only an enlargement of the former permission to sell beer on the premises on which it had been brewed; it would not injure the object sought by the bill, in so far as protection against monopoly was concerned, while it would be beneficial to the interests of the existing dealers, whose interests were not to be unnecessarily neglected, after having vested their capital in the business, on the faith that the system would be continued on the footing of the act passed two years ago. The clause was opposed as being utterly inconsistent with the very principle of the bill. The effect of it would be to prevent competition; and the public, instead of receiving an improved commodity, would remain, in that respect, precisely as they were, with the additional disadvantage of having sacrificed a five-guinea license for a two-guinea one. It no doubt was true that the creation of competition would affect, to some extent, the capital invested in the trade; but that was no reason for sacrificing the public good to avoid a smaller inconvenience, to which every man engaging in any branch of trade was necessarily exposcd. But the brewers exaggerated their dangers. The measure went to extend the means of selling beer for the benefit of the humbler classes of the community. The old restrictions still continued to apply to those who sold beer with other exciseable articles, and the profit derived from dealing in these other articles was very considerable. And what had they to fear from competition, if they did their duty? Surely, if they sold an equally good article, it was more likely that the old houses would retain their customers, than that strangers should seduce them away. As to the public morals, they did not require the protection of the publicans and victuallers, and there was nothing in the present system to prevent immorality, while it acted the other way by encouraging the consumption of a poisonous liquid, called gin, and vested the magistrates with a great deal of absolute and capricious power. When the committee divided, the proposed clause was rejected by a majority of only twenty-five, the votes against it being 143, and those in its favour 118. On the third reading of the bill, during the progress of which its opponents had expressed in all shapes their great anxiety to prevent the lower orders from indulg ing in habits of intoxication, Mr. Batley move a clause to the effect of enforcing the statute of James 1st against "the odious crime of drunkenness." Mr. Brougham declared himself one of those who thought the general interests of morality were more consulted by permitting such clauses to slumber in the cells of the statute-book, than by having them enforced. What was the real meaning of the statute of James 1st? Why, that a penalty should be inflicted on any person who committed the odious and ungodly crime of |