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X.

1822.

March 13.

CHAP. followed by another defeat, on the motion of Lord Normanby for the reduction of one of the two joint Postmasters-general, which was only thrown out by a majority of 25, the numbers being 184 to 159. The same motion, put in a different form, was, in a subsequent period of the session, carried against Ministers by a majority of 15, the numbers being 216 to 201.

144. Great re

These disasters were sufficient to convince Ministers that, however ignorant they might be of the real source taxation in- of their difficulties, and however tenacious they might troduced by be of the monetary bill of 1819, the distresses of the

ductions of

Ministers.

May 24.

country had become such that relief, in some form or another, was indispensable; and that, if they would not give it in the form of measures calculated to raise the remuneration of industry, they must give it in the form of a reduction of its burdens. The effect of the shake they had received soon appeared in the financial measures which, in a subsequent period of the session, they brought forward. Although, in February, Lord Londonderry had declared that the retention of the salt-tax was indispensable to the upholding of the Sinking Fund to the level of £5,000,000, which the House had solemnly pledged itself, in 1819, to maintain inviolate, he was yet compelled to bring forward, on 24th May, a motion for its reduction from 15s. a bushel to 2s., which occasioned a loss to the revenue of £1,300,000 a-year. This was followed by a reduction of the war-tax on leather, which occasioned a further loss of £600,000 a-year. The tonnage-duty and Irish hearth-tax were also abandoned, which produced between them £400,000 yearly. These great reductions, amounting, with the annual malt-tax, which brought in £1,500,000 a-year, and which Government had announced their intention of abandoning at an early period of the session, amounted together to £3,500,000 a-year, being half a million more than the 1 Ante, c. amount of the new taxes, imposed in 1819, to keep up the Sinking Fund to £5,000,000 yearly. There can be

iv. 81.

X.

1822.

no doubt that the taxes thus removed were judiciously CHAP. selected, as they were those which bore most heavily on the labouring classes of the community; and still less that their distress had become such as to render a considerable reduction of the taxes pressing on them indispensable; for, measured in quarters of wheat, their true standard, the poor-rates of England were now twice as heavy as they had been in 1812.* But the necessity of removing these taxes, and thereby abandoning the very 12,147, foundation of the Sinking Fund, afforded the most deci- 148; Parl. sive evidence both how widespread the distress had be- 1407, 1413; come, and how entire a revolution it had already induced 496. in the financial system and policy of the country.1

1 Ann. Reg. 1822, 147,

Deb. vii.

Hughes, vi.

The budget was brought forward on 1st July, and 145. its leading feature was the reduction of the Sinking The budget. Fund from £13,000,000 to £7,500,000, by appropriating £5,500,000 to the current service of the year. This signal and calamitous departure from the form even of our former policy, in this vital particular, was sought to be justified by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on various grounds; but it was evident that it was imposed upon him by sheer necessity, and was a direct abandonment of the solemn resolution to maintain a real surplus of £5,000,000 over the expenditure, which Parliament had unanimously adopted only three years before; for, as the nominal Sinking Fund was reduced to half its former amount, it was plain that the real redemption of debt was virtually abandoned. The expenditure of the present year, however, as the great reduction of taxation made in the course of it had not taken effect, was nearly £5,000,000 below the income, leaving that sum appli

* POOR-RATES PAID IN MONEY AND QUARTERS OF WHEAT.

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-HUGHES, vi. 495. ALISON'S Europe, chap. cvi., Appendix.

X.

1822.

CHAP. cable to the diminution of debt-a striking and melancholy proof of what the resources of the country really were at this period, had the ruinous contraction of the currency not imposed upon the present and all future governments the necessity of remitting the indirect taxes, by which alone the Sinking Fund could be maintained. It is not surprising it was so. A hundred millions a-year 1 Ann. Reg, is not cut off from the remuneration of productive labour, 1822, 149, 151; Parl. in a country the source from which its entire wealth must 1414, 1434. be drawn, without producing lasting effects upon its financial situation and ultimate destiny.1*

Deb. vii.

146.

cents.

Two measures, the one of the most unquestionable, Reduction the other of very doubtful wisdom, were brought forof the 5 per ward during this session of Parliament, and carried into effect. The first of these was the reduction of the navy 5 per cents to 4 per cent. About £156,000,000 stood in this species of stock; consequently, any reduction in the interest payable on it was a very great relief to the national finances. The condition proposed to the holders was, that for every £100 of their existing stock they should be inscribed for £105 in a new stock bearing 4 per cent interest. Those who signified their dissent before 1st March 1823 were to be paid off. So high were the Funds, however, that those who took advantage of

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1822.

this were only 1373, and the stock they held amounted CHAP. to £2,605,978-not a fiftieth part of the entire stock; so that the measure was carried into execution with the most complete success. The entire saving to the nation, including that effected by a similar saving on the Irish 5 per cents, was no less than £1,230,000 a-year—a very great sum, and which affords the clearest proof of the justice of the observations made in a former work,* as to the impolicy of the system which Mr Pitt so long pursued, of borrowing the greater part of the public debt in the 3 instead of the 5 per cents; for if the whole debt Ann. Reg. 1822, 127, had been borrowed in the latter form, the reduction 129; Parl. effected in the annual interest this year would not have 666, 679. been £1,200,000, but above £6,000,000 sterling.1

1

Deb. vi.

tion of

Weight,

naval pen

The next great financial measure of the session, upon 147. which a more doubtful meed of praise must be bestowed, Equalisawas that, as it was commonly called, for the equalisation the Dead of the Dead Weight. This was a measure by which the and miliburden of the naval and military pensions, most justly tary and bestowed upon our gallant defenders during the late war, sions. was equalised for more than a generation to come, by being spread, at an equal amount, over the present and the future. This burden amounted to nearly £5,000,000 a-year; and although, as the annuitants expired, its amount would diminish, and at the end of forty or fifty years would be a mere trifle, yet that prospect proved but a poor resource to the present necessities of a needy Chancellor of the Exchequer. In these circumstances, when the difficulties of Government to make head against present exigencies were so great, the expedient was thought of, of granting a fixed annuity, for forty-five years certain, to parliamentary commissioners, who, in consideration of Ann. Reg. that, were to undertake the burden of the varying exist- 137. ing annuities.2 The effect of this, of course, was to dimi

Vide History of Europe, chap. xli. § 62. The difference of the interest paid in the 3 and the 5 per cents seldom exceeded a quarter per cent.-Ibid. chap. xli. § 64, note.

2

1822, 128,

CHAP. nish in a great degree the burden in the outset, and proportionally augment it in the end.

X.

1822. 148.

the mea

sure.

Government in the first instance received £4,900,000 Details of from the commissioners, and paid out only £2,800,000, thereby effecting a present saving of £2,100,000., But this was gained by authorising the commissioners to sell as much of the fixed sum of £2,800,000 a-year, which was directed to be paid to them out of the Consolidated Fund, as might be necessary to enable them to meet the excess of present payments over the income received; and of course it had the effect of rendering the dead weight as much heavier than it otherwise would have been at the close of the period, as it had been lightened at its commencement. This project received the sanction of both branches of the legislature, as did a supplementary measure throwing the burden of superannuated allowances on the holders of offices under Government, by stopping off their salaries a sum adequate to insuring for its amount, which effected a saving of £370,000 a-year. These two measures effected a reduction of present expenses to the amount of nearly £2,500,000 a-year, but, like the reduction of the 5 per cents, by increasing the burden of the nation in future times; for 1 Ann. Reg. the first, at this moment, is adding above £1,500,000 to 140; Parl. the annual charges of the nation above what it otherwise would have been; and the last has added seven millions by the 5 per bonus given to the holders of stock to the amount of the national debt.1

1822, 136,

Deb. vi.

754, 783,

vii. 739, 759.

Bill.

149.

Amid so many measures which attracted general attenImportant tion, and had become indispensable, from the necessitous Small Notes state of the public exchequer, one of the greatest importance was quietly introduced into the legislature. Ministers had not the manliness to confess they had been wrong in the course they had adopted in regard to the bill compelling cash payments in 1819, or perhaps they were aware that the influence of the monied interest in the House of Commons was too strong to render it possible for them

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