XLI.

1842.

CHAP. there are few of the payers of the tax who will concur in that opinion, yet none can deny that a reduction of at least 50 per cent in the cost of living had been made by the monetary changes that he had introduced, which imperatively called for a corresponding reduction in the burdens with which their articles of consumption were affected.

57.

It might have been

an exten

sion of the

Currency.

This leads to a very curious reflection. The financial situation of the nation had become so serious, and the deeasily ob- ficit so alarming, that it had overturned one Administration, and forced an entire change of commercial policy on another. The nation was steeped in misery, and indirect taxation had reached its limits; yet foreign affairs had become so threatening that a great increase of the national armaments had become indispensable. The whole experience and talent of the Legislature were taxed to the uttermost to discover a remedy for these manifold evils, and none could be thought of but recurring, in a period of profound European peace, to the grinding tax heretofore reserved as a last resource for the exigencies and dangers of war. Yet was the remedy easy, cheap, certain, injurious to no one, profitable to all. Nothing was required but to send a letter from the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Governors of the Bank of England, authorising the notes issued on securities to be raised from £14,000,000 to £21,000,000. Instantly despondency would have been succeeded by hope, poverty by comfort, compulsory idleness by willing industry, financial embarrassment by an overflowing treasury. Nothing but to confess a gigantic error was awanting to repair boundless calamities, to restore happiness to a suffering realm. But to have done so required, in some, the magnanimous confession of former mistakes; in others, a surrender of, to them, a most profitable usurpation; in all, a close attention to a subject of universal interest, and but very partial comprehension. The proof of this,

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1842.

however, is now decisive. Sir Robert Peel's subsequent CHAP. change in 1844, without his designing it, induced such an extension of the currency as was required, though on the most perilous footing, and two years of prosperity, followed by a frightful commercial crisis, ensued. Nature gave a lasting extension on a solid foundation, by opening her reserves of gold in 1851, and unbroken prosperity has been the consequence.

58.

tax was

For the same reason the income-tax must be regarded, generally speaking, as a wise and just measure at the time The incomeit was imposed. The necessity for it was as great as when justifiable. first proposed by Mr Pitt; and the wars in Affghanistan and China, if less dangerous, were hardly less costly than those which had been waged with European potentates. The currency system had all turned to the advantage of realised property; the Times, the great advocate for that system, boasted in the pride of its heart that it had made a sovereign worth two sovereigns. This, though a little exaggerated, was in the main true; but as the monied interest had thus largely benefited by a system under which every other interest had essentially suffered, nothing could be more just than that it should bear the burden of the increased taxation, which that very system had rendered irrecoverable from all the other classes of the community. In a word, the monetary system was a class system of legislation designed for the benefit of the rich, and which had ended in ruining the poor; and it had now led to its natural and just result, that of rendering class taxation unavoidable if the public revenue was to be upheld and national bankruptcy averted.

made the

But for the very same reason, the injustice of levying 59. the tax at the same rate upon the wages of labour or But this the income of annuitants, as upon incomes derived from tax on perland or realised capital, was not merely to oppress dustry by taxing a perishable at the same rate as durable income, but to subject it to the still farther

in

ishable incomes more

comes mor a

unjust.

CHAP. injustice of making the sufferers under class legislation XLI. pay at the same rate as those enriched by it-those

1842.

60.

this injus

committed.

whose incomes had been halved, as those which had been doubled by recent changes. The injustice of the double burden thus imposed upon the industrious classes was so obvious, that, had it been widespread, it must have been speedily abrogated. But it was not widespread, and therefore it was continued, and still continues. The whole persons assessed under Schedule D-that is, the professional class in Great Britain-were only 143,000, a mere trifle among 27,000,000, then forming the population of the British Islands. This handful of men were not the rich bankers or capitalists whose voice is always listened to with respect by Government; they were for the most part hard-working citizens, too few to inspire terror by their numbers, too poor to command influence by their riches.

The vast majority who escaped the tax because their Reasons of incomes were below the line when it began, gave themtice being selves no sort of disquiet about an injustice by which they were not affected, and rather rejoiced at a burden on others which might be the means of cheapening commodities; the holders of realised wealth in secret beheld with satisfaction the burden imposed in such a manner upon the industrious classes as might lessen its pressure on themselves. Thus crushed by the weight of capital, the industrious classes remained oppressed with an injustice which probably never would have been thought of but in a country subjected to class government, nor continued but in one ruled by its influences. The Ministers, assailed by arguments to which they could make no reply, contented themselves with observing that the whole income-tax was an injustice, but that such were the practical difficulties involved in the question that they could not see their way to a more equitable distribution of its burden ;—the usual answer when Government is pressed with a request which they cannot assign any reason for not granting, but which

XLI.

1842.

they are resolved, for some undivulged reason, not to CHAP. concede. It is remarkable that, while this injustice has been perpetrated and continued for fifteen years, in a country boasting all the blessings of representative institutions, in despotic Denmark the property-tax has been arranged in so different a manner, that the only question is whether it is not unduly favourable to the middle and industrious classes.*

61.

heroic

on the

ter.

If Sir R. Peel was sincere in his appeal to the holders of property to submit to a temporary burden in order to Peel's extricate the nation from the financial embarrassments in conduct which it had become involved, he himself gave the no- Afghanis blest proof that he was prepared to act upon the prin- tan disas ciples which he recommended to others. On the very night (11th March) when he pronounced that eloquent appeal, he had received the accounts of the death of Sir W. Macnaghten, and the Affghanistan disaster. Veiling with heroic courage his knowledge of the calamity under a calm exterior and a serene visage, he addressed the assembly as if nothing had occurred to break the even tenor of his way, instead of intelligence having been received of the greatest disaster in British annals. The mournful events, however, could not long be concealed, and such was the anxiety of the public for information as to their details, that almost every night, for some weeks after, he was besieged with questions in the House from persons who had relatives involved in the frightful ruin. To all these questions he answered with the kindness of a father, and the resignation of a Christian; and when the moment for decision arrived, and he required openly to face the calamity and adopt measures to

* "In Denmark the property-tax is on a graduated scale in proportion to the amount of the income enjoyed by the persons taxed, from whatever source derived. It may well be doubted whether this is not confiscation of the fortunes above the line where the heavier burden begins. But the curious thing is, that in the popular community the injustice perpetrated was on the middle class; in the despotic monarchy on the nobility and rich."-DOUBLEDAY'S Life oj Peel, ii. 347.

XLI.

1842.

CHAP. meet it, he acted with the consistency of an old Roman. He openly admitted the magnitude of the disaster which had been sustained, but stated that Government were resolved to meet it in a worthy spirit, and that every effort would be made to restore victory to the British standards. This intrepid announcement was received with loud cheers from both sides of the House; reinforcements to a large extent were sent out to the armies in India, so as to raise the British forces there to 45,000 men; and Europe, after a disaster had been sustained, which it was generally supposed, and perhaps hoped, had 1 Parl. Deb. finally destroyed the British power in India, beheld with astonishment preparations making to elevate it to an unprecedented pitch of grandeur.1

lxii. 83,

307.

62.

Lord Maright Bill.

hon's Copy

Almost unnoticed amidst the multitude of important objects which in this session crowd upon the attention, a bill was brought forward, calculated in the end to work a great and durable change on the national mind and fortunes. This was the COPYRIGHT BILL, brought forward by Lord Mahon (now Earl Stanhope), which this year was sanctioned by both Houses, and passed into law. The right of authors to the property of the written expression of their thoughts, not recognised by the common law of England when published, was the creature of statute, and by the celebrated Act of Queen Anne had been limited Act 1710. to fourteen years, with the addition of fourteen more if

the author survived the first. This strange distinction, which in the case of works of standard merit likely to be prized by posterity, and therefore valuable to the author's family, made so great a difference in the advantages accruing to them according as he survived or did not survive a certain arbitrary time, had long been felt as unjust. It had not escaped observation, too, that the effect of limiting the copyright of authors to so short a period, had been to direct original thought and genius to works of transient popularity rather than durable utility. Impressed with these ideas, the accomplished Mr Serjeant