order that the House might have an op- having decided against their opinions, they portunity of ascertaining the policy of the are prepared to accept that altered policy Government. The Parliament is now as- which the circumstances of the times resembled for that purpose. I pledged my- quire. self, if an opportunity offered, to bring Sir, the hon. and learned Member for forward measures which I think the altered Wolverhampton says that the duties of a circumstances of the country require. Minister are merely nominal. I can only Previous to my election I communicated express a hope that if he is to be a memfrankly my views to my constituents by ber of the Government that is to be, he telling them, as I always have done, that may not be disappointed as to the amount the assimilation of our financial to our com- of toil he will have to undergo. I am sure mercial system would ultimately prove the he will not be disappointed in the assistpolicy by which general contentment would ance which he expects to receive from the be given to the country. I am ready to permanent civil servants of this country. fulfil this last pledge; and the measures I am the last man to refrain from doing which the Government has prepared would justice to the permanent civil servants have been brought forward but for this- of this country. Their devotion to the I must call it-vexatious Motion. Those public service is, I think, one of the measures are founded on the assumption most beautiful features of our social that unrestricted competition, or, to use system. They have not public fame, but the more popular phrase, free trade, is the they have the appreciation of those whom principle of our commercial system. These they support and assist. But, Sir, even measures have been concerted with my with that support, I can unaffectedly say Colleagues, and have received their unani- that the toil and responsibility which in mous support, and there is no reason, ex- these days devolve upon men holding office, cept the hon. and learned Member's Motion, could not be borne by any set of men who why I should not at this moment be offer- were not sustained by a feeling of selfing them to the consideration of the House. respect and the fair confidence of ParIn proceeding to discharge our duty as a liament. I say it for myself, and in the Government, we are met by Resolutions name and on behalf of my Colleagues, that which involve more important considera- we neither seek to be, nor will we be, Ministions than the fall of an Administration. ters on sufferance. We took upon ourselves You are about to establish a precedent which may destroy a Government-an affair which, perhaps, you may deem of as little moment as it appears to be thought by the hon. and learned Member for Wolverhampton; but you will establish a precedent that will destroy more than the one Government whose cause I am pleading before the House and the country to-night. How have we met these Resolutions? Seeing that I have announced my intention to make my financial statement only two nights hence, I might-and I am sure the feeling of the country, and perhaps of this House, would have supported me in doing so-have moved the previous question. I would not move it. I am satisfied that in giving our friends throughout the country an opportunity of vindicating their opinions in a constitutional manner, we have contributed to the permanent welfare and contentment of the country. I, for one, have received my reward, as all my Colleagues have done, in the assurances of our friends on this side of the House, and throughout the country, that they feel we have done for them all that men of honour could be called upon to do, and that the country the reins of Government without inquiring whether the late Parliament was hostile to our general policy or not; but we took them at the general desire of the House of Commons and of the country. We met the difficulties of our position fairly, and administered the Government of the country to the best of our ability, applying ourselves diligently and assiduously to the affairs that were brought under our consideration till such time as there had been an appeal to the country. But whatever were the exigencies of the case then, in the old Parliament, we neither desire nor will we submit in the new to carry on the Government under any indulgence which is foreign to the spirit of the British constitution. Sir, I believe I have now said all that is necessary for me to address to the House, and I am content here to leave the case of the Government. I have placed before the House, very imperfectly I can easily conceive, the whole of that case. The subject is somewhat large, and I have endeavoured to be as succinct as circumstances required and would allow. If I had only personal feelings to consider, I should sit down; but I think, without vanity, and speaking in the name of the Government, that there is, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves placed, a sense of duty which may justify us in looking beyond personal considerations. We believe that we have a policy which will conduce to the welfare, content, and prosperity of the country. I hope it is not an unworthy ambition to desire to have an opportunity of submitting that policy to Parliament. But I am told that that is not to be the case. Now, although I have too much respect for this House to condescend to advocate the cause of a Government, yet I will say something on behalf of a policy. I will not, therefore, without a struggle, consent to yield to an attack so unfair as that to which we are subjected. I will not believe, remembering that this is a new Parliament, that those who have entered it for the first time have already, in their consciences, recorded their opinions. On the contrary, I believe that they will listen to the spirit and to the justice of the plea which I put before them to-night. It is to those new Members-a third of the House-on whichever side of the House they may sit, that I appeal with confidence. They have just entered, many of them after much longing, upon that scene to which they have looked forward with so much earnestness, suspense, and interest. I doubt not they are animated with a noble ambition, and that many of them will hereafter realise their loftiest aspirations. I can only say, from the bottom of my heart, that I wish that, on whatever benches they may sit, their most sanguine hopes may not be disappointed. Whatever adds to the intelligence, eloquence, and knowledge of the House, adds also to its aggregate influence; and the interests of all are bound up in cherishing and maintaining the moral and intellectual predominance of the House of Commons. To those new Members, therefore, I now appeal. I appeal to the generous and the young. And I ask them to pause now that they are at last arrived on the threshold of the Senate of their country, and not become the tools and the victims of exhausted factions and obsolete politics. I move the following Amend ment: the condition and increase the comforts of the Question proposed-"That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question." MR. BRIGHT: Sir, I have listened with that interest in which the whole House has joined to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I expected when he rose that he would have made at least some attempt to answer the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. C. Villiers). I cannot conceive that the right hon. Gentleman lost sight unintentionally of the point of my hon. Friend's speech, and of the real question now in dispute between the Government and my hon. Friend. If the right hon. Gentleman avoided entering into the question which has been introduced to the notice of the House, I may at least be justified, I think, in avoiding a large portion of his speech. I shall, therefore, in the first place, call attention to only one or two points which the right hon. Gentleman urged. right hon. Gentleman wished to make it appear that he was now a member of a Free Trade Government, and that he acted with the Free Trade party, and yet repeatedly during his speech, and within six sentences of its conclusion, he spoke of the body with which he was now associated as still the Protectionist party. The right hon. Gentleman said, moreover, that he took no steps in the direction of unsettling the settlement of 1846 since that period. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to forget that in 1850 he voted in favour of a Resolution to the following effect: The "That the whole House resolve itself into Committee of the whole House, for the purpose of taking into consideration the Acts relating to the importation of Foreign Corn.” This was a Motion made by a Gentleman who was not now a Member of the House, but one whom the right hon. Gentleman seduced from this side of the House by mers, and by promises which have not been speaking of what he would do for the farfulfilled-I allude to the late Member for West Gloucestershire (Mr. Grantley BerkeMore than that, the right hon. "To leave out from the word That' to the end of the Question, in order to add the words this House acknowledges, with satisfaction, that the cheapness of provisions, occasioned by recent Legislation, has mainly contributed to improve ley). Gentleman endeavoured to persuade the House that with regard to sugar and shipping he was as blameless as on the question of corn, and that if any one was culpable at all in regard to sugar, no one was more so than the noble Lord the head of the late Government. But the right hon. Gentleman seemed to forget that his right hon. Colleague the Secretary for the Colonies (Sir J. Pakington) incessantly endeavoured to unsettle the first settlement of that question in 1847. The right hon. Gentleman also appeared to forget-or else sought to conceal from the House, that another of his right hon. Colleagues, whom I see opposite, the right hon. Gentleman the Governor of our Indian possessions[Laughter.] I speak advisedly when I say Governor, for I recollect that a predecessor of the right hon. Gentleman, Sir John Hobhouse, now Lord Broughton, when President of the Board of Control, admitted, in answer to a question of mine in Committee, that he was the Ruler of India, and that he was responsible for its Government. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Herries) gave notice of a Motion respecting the Navigation Laws; he felt, I believe, the insecurity of his position, and, necessitated by the successive taunts of the hon. Member for Stoke-upon-Trent (Mr. J. L. Ricardo), he was induced to bring forward his Motion; but he was so disconcerted at the reception it met with, that he did not ask the House to go to a division. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, following in his usual adroit manner, fixed upon the conduct of the noble Lord (Lord J. Rus-fore the country at the recent electionsell) and two or three of his colleagues, in order to divert attention from the real subject at issue. I am afraid that the noble Lord and some of his colleagues have been too long in this House to be perfectly consistent. But I could show the House that, however bad may have been the course of the noble Lord, that of the right hon. Gentleman was not a bit better. But I will not enter upon these questions now, for that before the House is too important in the eyes of the country to be disposed of by recriminations between the members of the late and the present Government. My hon. Friend (Mr. C. Villiers) could with perfect honesty say that he could not be actuated by factious motives in bringing this subject forward, for he brought it forward fifteen years ago, and probably no public man suffered more in his political associations and prospects than my hon. Friend suffered, by his undeviating advocacy of what to him at least seemed a great and sacred question. My hon. Friend is therefore precisely the man to bring this question forward; and every person must admit that he is harmonious in the position he occupies to-night, when measured by the position which he always occupied on this question. The Government were asked last February and March what course they intended to pursue; and the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer said he meant to appeal to the country. Well, the country has been appealed to, and the right hon. Gentleman has given us to understand that the Government had not done much to promote the cause of protection in the country. They did not do so to much extent in the boroughs, but they did 30 most assiduously in the counties, and if the House would give me its attention, I could show that there is scarcely a single county in which the electors did not vote almost exclusively on the protectionist principle. The Resolutions before the House are submitted for our deliberate consideration, and while I am ready to admit that that of the right hon. Gentleman is far in advance of any proposition which he ever made to this House in any part of his former political career, that of my hon. Friend (Mr. C. Villiers) involves something which, though it may be inconvenient to the party opposite, contains that which is precisely for the interest of the country, and upon which, I will prove, the country expects we should come to a definitive decision. Suppose the two Resolutions to be placed be that of my hon. Friend, who declares the advantage which the country has derived from free-trade, but declares, especially of the measure of 1846, which established the free admission of foreign corn, that it was a "wise, just, and beneficial" one, and that of the right hon. Gentleman-if the whole country, man, woman and child, were polled with respect to that particular passage of the Resolution, would there not be an enormous and overwhelming majority—a majority of nine to one throughout the whole country, in favour of the Resolution of my hon. Friend? Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. E. C. Egerton), who seconded the Address, would sit for that free-trade borough unless he admitted that the Act of 1846 was a wise, just, and beneficial measure. The Parliament of 1846 was of opinion that it was a wise, just, and beneficial 416 measure. Is there any Member who voted | right hon. Gentleman must not suppose for that Bill in 1846, the noble Lord the that the House is so exceedingly simple as Member for Tiverton (Viscount Palmer- to think that he, penitent though now he ston), or any other, who did not, and does not, believe that, under all circumstances, the measure was a wise, just, and beneficial measure. And if there were any who had doubts then, is it possible, after the experience of the last six years, that they could have any doubt at present? The Parliament of 1847 came to the same conclusion as the Parliament of 1846, and during the whole course of its existence it resisted the unsettling of that just, wise, and beneficial measure. And now the Parliament of 1852, called together under a Protectionist Government for Protectionist they were when they went to the hustings, whatever they are now-this present Parliament, as admitted by the right hon. Gentleman himself, has decided that the result of our recent legislation has been beneficial to the great bulk of the working classes of the country. Now, when Parliament is going to pronounce its final verdict on the question of free trade, I should have thought that my hon. Friend (Mr. C. Villiers), who for fifteen years has been the consistent leader of the free-trade question in Parliament, should be the person to draw up the terms of that verdict, and not one like the right hon. Gentleman, who had been a Protectionist during the whole period of his career. Some persons say-1 speak rather of what is said in private-that the Resolutions are much the same, and that it is only a dispute about words. Well, if it is only a dispute about the words to be adopted, if feelings are to be consulted, if claims are to be considered and advice to be taken, surely the advice and recommendation of the long-devoted Friend of the question should be taken in preference to those of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But the words of the two Resolutions are not the same: the principles are not the same; the cause, the intent, the whole matter is not the same, and I will show the House wherein they differ. The Resolution of my hon. Friend establishes a principle: that of the right hon. Gentleman merely a fact. The one proclaims the benefit of free-trade to the whole country and the whole world, and says that our experience must make us appreciate it more and more: the other leaves everything to hazard; it refers to certain injustice to be righted, to certain interests to be compensated to any amount which Parliament may be induced to give. The appears to be, is a man to be wholly trusted which I will not refer to; but there is one and Legacy Duty, which certainly was not point which the right hon. Gentleman has a duty upon land or real property. The constantly asserted in this House which it other taxes, including the Income Tax is necessary to notice, and here I cannot and the Post Office revenue, made the help observing how amazing it is that total amount to 31,538,000l. Coming whatever assertions the right hon. Gentle down to 1816 I see how far these taxes man makes-however untrue they may be were repealed, and I find that of Cus-they are speedily taken up and circu- toms there were 52,000l. repealed. Exlated throughout the country. The right cise, 2,863,000l., and of other taxes, hon. Gentleman and his party constantly 14,631,000l., making a total of 17,546,000l. endeavoured to make it appear, either Now no man can show me from these that the Corn Law was originally granted accounts-and I can go more into detail to the landlords to compensate them for if it is necessary-that any single tax was the special burdens which were imposed laid upon land or on the landowner as a upon them in the taxation of the country; landowner; but if he examine them proor otherwise it was for the purpose of pre-perly, he will find that all interests were paring the landlords to endure some spe- included in the imposition of these taxes, cial burdens which the enactment of the and that none were excluded from the Corn Law would enable them to bear. benefits which may have resulted from Nothing, in fact, was too silly, and nothing the repealing of taxation. To a certain too unlikely, that the Government did not extent all were gainers, and none were offer, and the landlords greedily feed upon, excluded. From this enumeration I exat the hustings. But neither the right clude the Probate and Legacy duties, hon. Gentleman nor any of his friends which stand by themselves. I come next ever offered one single fact, figure, or to the question of the poor-rate, which quotation in proof of the statement which the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor he made. I do not recollect ever having of the Exchequer has referred to, and I found in the debate of 1815 on the Corn find that from 1812 to 1813 the average Laws one single word that led to the con- poor-rate of the year, calculated by the clusion that the Corn Law was then grant- two preceding years, was 8,688,000l.; ed to the landowners to compensate them whereas in 1843 and 1844 the average for any exclusive burdens that they bore. poor-rate was only 6,878,000l.; so that, I have never heard since even of any Chan-in point of fact, in 1843 and 1844 the cellor of the Exchequer imposing any tax upon the landed portion of the community for the burdens they had to endure, or that the landed interest was well able to bear all their share of the taxation because they had the protection of the Corn Laws. Now, with regard to that point, I will just for a moment lay two or three figures before the House, not, however, that I wish to trouble them with any lengthened statistics on this occasion, for we have got far beyond the statistics of this question, except those of the division which the House is to come to at the close of the present discussion. Well, then, from 1801 to 1815, a period when this country was fighting against French principles, the taxes imposed-I take my figures from the Progress of the Nation, the work of my late lamented friend Mr. Porter, were 13,500,000l.; but it is not to be seen at all from any records that we have that any of these taxes were especially laid upon land. The amount of Customs duties was 7,381,000l., the Excise 10,702,000l., the Stamps 1,104,000l., which included the Probate VOL. CXXIII. [THIRD SERIES.] average poor-rates of this country were less by 1,810,000l. than they were in 1812-13. And then, if we take also the enormous increase in property since that period, and the value of land, and the accumulation of railways, we shall find that the poor-rates comparatively are an insignificant burden upon land. In fact, they are not half the burden on the landowner or the farmer that they were in 1812-13. With regard to the Legacy and Probate Duty, I regret the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not here, but I see the right hon. Secretary for the Home Department in his place, and no doubt he is fully cognisant of the changes which he proposes to make with regard to the Legacy and Probate Duty. I find that it has been charged from 1797 to 1845 upon more than 1,339,000,000l. of personal property; whereas the whole of the land that is freehold land, which is the character of most of the land in this country, has been entirely free from this charge. The Probate and Legacy Duty during the period up to 1845, that is, forty-nine years, was upwards P |