Part 23
Every proposal to reduce taxation is sure to be popular,—we are equally sure that the present reductions are exceedingly dangerous. It is one thing to cut down expenditure—and this, we conceive, was what the Conservatives last year urged upon the Government: it is quite another thing to dispense with a real surplus, to resign ourselves to a past deficit, and prepare for ourselves a new one. The errors of Mr Gladstone’s previous Budgets now begin to weigh heavy upon the national fortunes. The abandonment of the paper-duties has rendered our present financial position one of no ordinary embarrassment. Had these duties still been in operation, the present reductions of taxation, so desirable in themselves, and so repeatedly called for by the Conservative party, could have been effected without any risk. As it is, we think the financial position of the country eminently unsatisfactory and unsafe. Not only must we experience a deficit in the year 1864–5, but we are totally unprepared for any untoward contingencies in the present year. The peace of Europe (if peace it may be called) is obviously insecure; hostilities seem impending between this country and Japan; and our relations with the Federal States of North America are such as, unhappily, and from no fault of ours, to render the occurrence of war between the two countries a contingency which cannot entirely be overlooked. But if any exceptional expenditure be forced upon us, how are we to meet it? Under Mr Gladstone’s management, the taxation of the country has been so concentrated upon a few articles of universal consumption, and the duty upon some of those commodities (such as spirits) has been so obviously carried to the highest possible point, that to increase the revenue from its present sources would be extremely difficult and unpopular. We cannot reimpose the old duties on wines, silks, gloves, and other articles embraced in the French treaty, for in respect to these we have sold our freedom of taxation to a foreign power. The paper duties are irretrievably abandoned; for, however impolitic may have been the abolition of those duties in times like the present, their reimposition would be a great hardship and injustice to the manufacturers who have made new arrangements in accordance with the abolition. A few months hence the same will be the case with the Tea-duties. _A large increase of the Income-tax_, and an issue of Exchequer bonds, are the only means by which we can hope to make head against an emergency. The surplus is merely nominal—the balances in the Exchequer cannot be further reduced,—and even the issue of Exchequer bonds can be resorted to only to a small extent, in consequence of Mr Gladstone’s repeated postponement of paying off, as they fell due, the amounts already in circulation. Over the term of Mr Gladstone’s present financial administration, as over his previous one, the country will yet have to write the words, so damnatory of the reputation of a statesman, _Improvidus futuri_. In the present aspect of affairs, we begin to think anew of his Budgets before the Crimean War; and we can only hope that the year 1864 will not be like 1854, and that the country will not find itself again in straits and embarrassments like those which proved wellnigh overwhelming ten years ago.
_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._
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Footnote 1:
‘Prehistoric Man; Researches into the Origin of Civilisation in the Old and the New World.’ By Daniel Wilson, LL. D., Professor of History and English Literature in University College, Toronto; Author of the ‘Archæology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland,’ &c. Macmillan & Co., Cambridge.
Footnote 2:
There is one instance of a fragment of human bone found in company with these flints, but we have heard doubts thrown on the nature of this fragment.
Footnote 3:
‘The Life of General Sir Howard Douglas, Bart, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., F.R.S., D.C.L. From his Notes, Conversations, and Correspondence.’ By S. W. Fullom. John Murray, London.
Footnote 4:
Fact.
Footnote 5:
Heldreich (author of ‘An Essay on the Useful Plants of Greece’) finds it in a single oak forest in Elis.
Footnote 6:
According to the prevalent opinion: the high authority of Decandolle is the other way; he believes it indigenous in the South of Europe generally; but the contrary evidence is very strong.
Footnote 7:
It was noted as something semi-prodigious that a palm-tree took root at Rome, in the temple of Jupiter, on the Capitol, during the war with Perseus; and another in the pavement of Augustus’s house on the Palatine.—Ampère, ‘L’Histoire Romaine à Rome.’
Footnote 8:
Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861, 1862. Washington.
Footnote 9:
The _Times_ itself takes this view. After stating that “no one doubts that Australia, like India, China, and other countries, has contributed to the prosperity of our trade by developing its own resources, pastoral, metallic, or otherwise,” it makes this important admission: “It is also true that Australia and California, by increasing enormously the quantity of gold in the world, have diminished its value; so that, _even if the wealth of the country had not increased, its amount, as represented in gold_ [_i. e._ its value in money] _would certainly have been larger_.” This alteration in the value of money since 1853 is the main explanation of the fact which seems to Mr Gladstone “so strange as to be almost incredible,” but which he coolly attributes to “the legislation of Parliament setting free the industry and intelligence of the British people.” This, he says, is “the real and new cause that has been in operation,” and which has so marvellously increased the wealth of the country 20 per cent in eight years! But if this were the case, surely he need not cut his estimates so fine. A nation that has grown so enormously rich in a few years’ time could well afford to keep a good balance at its banker’s—_i. e._, in the Exchequer.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.