of the Malt Tax which would not come into operation until October, 1853, he put at £1,000,000; the reduction of the Tea Duty meant a deficiency of £400,000; the duty on hops would not affect the revenue of the coming year; the supplemental estimate would be £600,000, and the light dues £100,000. There was thus a deficiency of £2,100,000. How to choke that deficit was the question with which he had to grapple. He did not propose any new tax, but he asked the House to consider an old one, and apply to it the principles they had supported. The tax was the House Tax-a direct impost, and one remarkable for all the features by which direct taxation was distinguished. Its operation was now limited to houses of £20 a-year and upwards. He proposed to reduce the limitation to £10 a-year. At present private houses paid 9d. and shops 6d. in the pound; he proposed that the former should pay 1s. 6d. and the latter 1s. The amount of the tax would then be £150,000 a-year less than the window duty. He would have half-a-year's income tax-£2,500,000-to meet the extra expenditure of £2,100,000. In 1854-55 there would be a loss arising from the various remissions, which with £600,000 the increased estimates would make £3,587,000, while the ways and means would amount to £3,510,000.

Such were the leading features of the financial statement of December, 1853, which Mr. Disraeli put forward with two pleas in its favour-one that the Government had not proposed anything upon which it was not at once prepared to act; the other that, although only an instalment, it was introduced as a coherent part of a large and logical system of finance. I have thought it right to give the details of the Budget at some length for the simple reason that they are almost invariably

misrepresented, and that too in works the writers of which are certainly incapable of deliberately stating that which they know to be untrue. Thus, for example, I find it stated in Mr. Evelyn Ashley's "Life of Lord Palmerston," that "the principal features (of the Budget) were a reduction of the Malt Tax which created a large deficit and a doubling of the House Tax to supply the void. The farmers expecting something better, did not care about the reduction made in their favour, while the town folk did care very decidedly about the reduction made at their cost." Mr. Theodore Martin, again, in his "Life of the Prince Consort," says of the Budget that "its leading features were a reduction of the Malt Tax and of Excise and other duties estimated at two millions and a half, a fifty per cent. (sic) increase of the House Tax, and a fifty per cent. decrease in the Income Tax on farmers' profits." Was it by accident or by design, one is almost tempted to ask, that in two separate works by gentlemen of the Whig persuasion, published after Mr. Gladstone had made his famous reduction of the Tea duties, no notice is taken of the fact that had Lord Beaconsfield continued in office in 1852 all the reductions accomplished with so great a flourish of trumpets by the last Liberal Government would have taken effect twenty years before?

Looking back on this scheme by the light of the Whig budgets which had preceded it, no one can fail to be struck with its large and statesmanlike comprehensiveness. That largeness seems indeed to have almost appalled the exChancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Charles Wood) who piped out a piteous complaint of "the enormously complicated scheme. . . to which many and various objections might be

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raised, and all the parts of which so hung together that probably no one part could be settled separately." Accustomed as they were to financial legislation of the nibbling and niggling order-legislation which went on the principle of taking off one or two trumpery imposts and supplying their places with an additional penny on the Income Tax-the Opposition could not understand a scheme of finance which went upon the principle of making concessions to each of the interests which had suffered by recent legislation, and of providing for the deficiency thus created by a re-arrangement of the fiscal system. Only the Times seems to have recognised the true character of the Budget. In a leading article of the day following the financial statement, that journal remarked that its leading characteristics were "first that it was based on the principle of 'unrestricted competition' applying that principle not only to the acceptance of recent legislation, but also to the removal of existing restrictions and burdens of questionable utility and scarcely questionable injustice; secondly, the wide range of the proposed financial revision; lastly, its great boldness as exhibited in the unsparing hand with which some of our greatest common burdens are dealt with, and the confidence displayed in the growing prosperity and resources of the nation." Two days later the same journal admitted the principle that "by the consent of all financiers no tax is so fair as an inhabited house duty," and declared that the removal of the exemption of Irish land from the operation of the Income Tax "entitled the Chancellor of the Exchequer to all the support Parliament could give him."

The Opposition, however, speedily found flaws to lay hold

of. Mr. Gladstone made the notable discovery that to make any distinction between the income derived from property and the income derived from other sources, is a direct injustice to the owner of property; and in the case of the fund-holder, a breach of the public faith. Marylebone, through its member, Mr. Duncombe, protested vehemently against any increase of the House Tax; and before the House went into Committee, half the leading features of the Budget had been canvassed in an informal manner. When at last Committee was reached, the Budget, which Mr. Duncombe was pleased to describe as "preposterous," was criticised with a severity which even the blundering financial statements of 1848 had never encountered. The reduction of the Malt Tax was objected to because it would benefit not the farmers but the great brewers; the House Tax was not wanted; the reduction of the Tea duties would create a frightful loss of revenue, and the whole of the changes in the system of taxation would fall with cruel severity on the poor man-and especially on the poor Irish man. Such were the arguments which were repeated and re-repeated through many weary hours, until four o'clock in the morning of Thursday, the 16th of December. Just before the close of the debate, the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose to reply to some of the criticisms, to which during a four nights' debate his financial propositions had been subjected. He had been asked, he said, why he took credit amongst the Ways and Means of the year for £400,000 from the Exchequer Loan Fund? He did so because he intended to abolish that fund, which was simply a drain on the national resources and a method of wasting public money. Sir Charles Wood had accused him of wrongly esti mating the amount of loss to the revenue through the partial

remission of the Malt Tax in the approaching October. He went through his calculations again, and showed that the amount had been over rather than under-estimated. It had been said that he had falsely represented the Caffre war as at an end, and he quoted a despatch of General Cathcart to show that he was right, and that he had the authority of that distinguished officer for his assertion. "The war of rebellion," the General had written, "may now be considered at an end." Mr. Goulburn had expressed his belief that the concession to the Sugar Trade of refining in bond, would produce a heavy loss to the revenue. Mr. Disraeli replied by entering into calculations, which proved that no loss whatever was likely to accrue. Coming to the House Tax, he sketched rapidly the various parts of our colossal system of taxation, which had now to be accommodated to the new policy of 'unrestricted competition;' observed that the Government required some direct tax upon which to fix in order to carry out their project of financial reform, and retorted the charge of recklessness upon Sir Charles Wood-who had on one day proposed to double the Income and Property Tax, and on the next had come down to the House and announced that he had sufficient ways and means without it. In providing an amount of direct taxation for their purpose, the Government were guided by two principles-first, as regarded the Income Tax, to establish a distinction between realised and precarious incomes; and secondly, to enlarge the general basis of direct taxation. Believing that the House Tax was a reasonable, just and beneficial measure, and that it would supply the necessary amount of direct taxation, they had to decide upon which group of indirect taxes they should operate, and they came to the conclusion that they should act upon those articles which came into