"If a horse for which the duty has been paid should be prevented from running during the year ending the 5th of April 1859, the money will be returned on the receipt being given up to me. "If a horse for which the assessed tax has been charged as a riding horse becomes liable to the race horse duty during the year, the owner will be relieved from the assessed tax on producing the receipt for the race horse duty to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. "Horses running for farmers' and yeomanry plates, or for prizes confined to regular hunters not in a training stable, will not be charged the race horse duty for such race, provided such horses are charged the assessed tax duty as riding horses." GAME CERTIFICATES, IRELAND. This duty, trifling as it is in amount, is the cause of much trouble and correspondence, besides numerous prosecutions, the cost of which falls upon the Revenue. We find it no easy task to reconcile the views which we entertain of our duty as guardians of the Revenue with those of the Irish landholders, who look upon us as the appointed guardians of their game. GAME CERTIFICATES, IRELAND. Beer and Spirit Licences: attempts to limit the num The remaining duties of Excise scarcely call for any remarks in addition to those made in our First Report; though we may be permitted to point out that the evils which are there noticed as existing in the system of ber. beer and spirit licences remain uncorrected. Whenever it may appear right to your Lordships to submit to Parliament a measure for amending that system, we trust that no attempt may be made to restrict the number of licensed houses, either by any arbitrary rule, or by conferring on the magistrates large discretionary powers. We are not left to conjecture to foretell the results of all such attempts to enforce temperance in the lower classes. Glasgow and Edinburgh, since the passing of the Act of 1853, have furnished abundant evidence that it is not by such means as these that the habits of a population can be changed, and that the restrictions in force have increased the evils which they STAMP DUTIES. were intended to remedy, by bringing into existence innumerable unlicensed spirit shops, with all their attendant train of demoralizing influences. In Edinburgh the number of prosecutions by this department for the sale of spirits without licence has increased from 8 in 1853 to 21 in 1857, and in Glasgow in the same period from 2 to 22. To these must be added a very large number which have recently been instituted by the police authorities independently of us, principally against the keepers of so called club houses and temperance hotels. STAMP DUTIES. GROSS RECEIPT in the Years ended the 31st March 1857 In stamp duties during the past year the alterations in the law have been but trifling, and (excepting in the case of the legacy and succession duties) the points to which our attention has been called, comparatively few and unimportant. fees. The system of collecting fees in Courts of Justice by Probate and means of stamps has been extended to the new Courts Divorce Court of Probate and of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, not without occasioning some trouble at first, owing to the delay of the officers of those Courts in settling the Tables of Fees, so that it became physically impossible for us to prepare the proper dies and plates before the opening of the Courts. We mention this not to throw any blame upon the persons charged with that duty, but to draw attention to a matter which it is always necessary to bear in mind when additional stamp duties are imposed. stamps. Your Lordships are probably not aware that Messrs. Time required Delarue, who make the plates for the adhesive draft and to prepare new foreign bill stamps, cannot undertake with certainty to produce a new plate in less than two months, and although dies for embossed stamps can be made more speedily, Mr. Halfhide, our engraver, would require a notice of two or three weeks to enable him to execute an order in a satisfactory manner. The efficiency of our stamping department continues to be maintained, and to keep pace with the demands of the public, through the watchfulness and inventive ingenuity of Mr. Edwin Hill. His most recent addition to our machinery, a contrivance for fixing the blue paper and metal guard on parchment, is a substitute for two operations in different departments and the labour of three men. This small improvement effects a saving of 300l. a year. stamped envelopes. After much consideration of the security supposed New issue of to be afforded by the threaded paper for postage envelopes, we have come to the conclusion that it is not essential for the protection of the Revenue, and as the introduction of the threads appears to militate against the adoption of a better kind of paper than that now in use, we intend to dispense with them altogether. At present we are endeavouring to ascertain what descriptions of paper and what sizes and shapes of envelopes will be most generally acceptable, and we have issued a considerable number for the purpose of experiment. PROBATE, AND PROBATE, LEGACY, AND SUCCESSION DUTY. AN ACCOUNT of the AMOUNT of PROBATE DUTY, and LEGACY and SUCCESSION DUTY, received in the Years ended 31st March 1857 and 1858. Legacy and succession duty accounts to be kept separate in future. According to the estimates which were made last year of the probable receipt from legacy and succession duty, there should have been an increase of 150,000/ from that source. We are unable to offer any satisfactory explanation of the causes which may have interfered with the progress naturally to be expected in this tax. It must not, however, be supposed that we have passed over this apparent anomaly without using every means in our power to ascertain whether it arises out of some temporary and exceptional state of things or is to be taken as an indication that the produce of the legacy and succession duties has reached its maximum; whether it is owing to some unusual falling off in legacy duty, or entirely to deficiency in succession duty; or, finally, whether both duties have been less productive than in former years; and if so, in what proportion each of them is deficient. But none of these questions have we been able to solve, the blending of the receipts from the two duties in all our accounts being a complete bar to our inquiries. The importance, not to say the necessity, of keeping these accounts distinct has thus been brought home to us in the most forcible manner; and we have made such arrangements as will, we hope, enable us in future to present them separately to your Lordships with sufficient accuracy for all statistical purposes. ciency in re The Controller of Legacy Duties attributes the Conjectured deficiency to three causes: first, to the remission of causes of defiduties legally payable; secondly, to the high value of ceipt. money during the latter part of the year; thirdly, to pending litigation of questions under the Succession Duty Act; but he is not able to state the extent to which each of these supposed agencies has interrupted the collection of the Revenue. The value of money has fallen since the Controller's statement was made, and the immediate increase in our receipts proves that he was correct in attributing some influence to the pressure upon the money market; but that cause has for some time been removed, and cannot have affected the accounts of the last quarter. Pending litigation and remission of duties by your Lordships' authority are not sufficient, in our opinion, to account for such a deficiency as exists in the succession duty, supposing it to be that duty, and not the legacy duty, which falls short of our expectations. We have some observations to offer both on the subject of litigation and of remission of duties. Litigation under the Succession Duty Act has indeed Litigatio. been most unscrupulous and incessant; and we cannot but think that in many instances it has been engaged in as a means of postponing the payment of duties rather than with any hope of ultimately defeating our claims. Certain it is that the most extravagant objections have been raised and persisted in, even after the judginent of a Court condemning them as untenable, and in the face of the most positive evidence of the intentions of the Legislature. Thus, after the decision of Vice-Chancellor Kindersley, in the case of Wilcox v. Smith, upon a point which it was painful to see submitted to a Court of Justice as one of doubt, we nevertheless had to contend against the very same objection in the case of Lord Middleton, and to obtain a decision in the Court of Exchequer before we could enforce a settlement of the Crown's claim. Yet this was a case in which there was in reality so little room for difference of opinion that the Attorney-General was not called upon to address the Court on the part of the Crown, and in which all the learned Judges stated that there could not be the slightest doubt of the meaning of the Act. "We are called upon," said |