that the view of the right hon. baronet might not be very correct, and entitled hereafter to consideration. But that was no argument for the income-tax at this moment; for surely it was a good principle that, before they voted money, they should know precisely what the scheme was to the maintenance of which it was to be applied. Before the right hon. baronet came to the House for money in aid of the Indian finances, surely he should inform them what he meant to do with it-when and where he meant to apply it. Therefore, he altogether put that matter out of sight in the consideration of this question, as having no concern whatever with the vote which they were called upon to grant.

He believed that he was right in saying that, since the war, exclusive of the income-tax, £22,000,000 of taxes had been taken off; and he thought that it might be taken for granted that even a greater sum than £22,000,000 would have been derived from those sources of taxation if the same taxes had still been in existence. But that tax which had been the last to be imposed, the first to be repealed, was that to which the right hon. baronet first had recourse for the purpose of relieving him from his difficulties. He believed that the right hon. baronet had other means of relief; he might have applied to sugar, an article upon which the late Government had rested considerable reliance.

And upon this point he must say that he thought that the memory of the right hon. baronet had played him false. The right hon. baronet had said on Friday, unless he had misunderstood what had fallen from him, and he could scarcely have done so, that he (Sir R. Peel) had never intended to say that the sugar scheme of the late Government would not have increased the revenue of the country; that he never dreamt of saying that these were not taxes a reduction of which would have produced an increased revenue. His memory, he owned, had led him to a different belief; and he had since referred to the printed report of the speech of the right hon. baronet, and that certainly confirmed him in his impression; and he believed that he might appeal to hon. gentlemen near him whether the report

was not a correct one. to have said—

The right hon. baronet was represented

There is another source of revenue, without adopting the process of exhaustion, and which was brought forward by the late Government, to which I find it my duty to advert. Shall I hope for increased revenue from diminished taxation? Yes, but before I apply myself to this subject, let me remind you of the extent of your difficulties. If it be proved that these difficulties are only occasional and casual, no man can have greater confidence in the soundness of the principle of a reduction of taxation; but having given the subject my fullest and fairest consideration, I think it would be a mere delusion, under present circumstances, to hope for a supply of our deficiencies from diminished taxation. As I said before, I have the firmest belief that the adoption of any such plan as that proposed by the late Government, or the adoption of any other plan for raising the necessary revenue of the country through diminished taxation, will not afford any immediate relief, or any resource on which we can count for the supply of the deficiency of the revenue. I have looked with considerable attention to the effect produced by the remission of taxes on articles of great consumption. I find, in some cases that elasticity which gives you, after a lapse of time, an increase of revenue; but that in almost every case-I believe in every case in which it does--the interval of time which elapses before even the same amount of revenue is received is very considerable.

He thought that his noble friend (Lord John Russell) had given an overwhelming answer to the argument of the right hon. baronet, and that the right hon. baronet might be taken to be fairly ashamed of his own words; for on Friday he did not appear to recognise them as having fallen from his lips. The right hon. baronet, on Friday, for the first time this session, if he recollected rightly, had returned again to the cry of last year, with regard to slavery; and the right hon. baronet had congratulated him upon his new-born zeal upon this subject; but when he knew that the proposition was for merely equalising the duty upon sugar grown by the free people of India with that grown by the slave population of the West Indies, and which had met with the opposition of the right hon. baronet when proposed by Mr. Whitmore, he could not but congratulate the right hon. baronet on his new-formed anxiety in favour of the negroes. But without going into the argument of last year-whether or not any scruples existed with regard to slave-grown sugar or coffee-how was it possible for him, under existing circumstances, to think that the object of the right hon. baronet was reasonable? and he must confess that it required a strong effort of charity to believe the right hon. baronet to be sincere. If he were to endeavour to find some

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reason why a reduction of the sugar-duties was not proposed as one of the means at least of meeting the existing deficiency, he thought that he could discover it in the fact that, when last year it was determined that the late Government should give way, no more convenient or more popular mode of securing that object presented itself than that which might be derived from the existing feeling in opposition to negro slavery; and therefore it was that resolutions had been submitted to the House, drawn in terms which condemned the proposition of the Government with regard to sugar, on the ground of philanthropy. The right hon. baronet had turned out the late Government; he had a majority which, upon that or any other point, would have secured the same end. An outery was raised, which, though in truth it was but the howl of an old slave-driver, succeeded at last; and the right hon. baronet having come into power after the vote of last year, he felt that his hands were tied that he could not bring on any measure which should have for its effect the reduction of those duties which he had before opposed on moral grounds, without exposing himself to the imputation of gross inconsistency.

For

It was in order to sustain the consistency of the right hon. baronet that the House was called upon to adopt, and the country to submit to, an income-tax. But when the right hon. baronet was unable to find any reasons for the income-tax, he made them. He pitched away the timber-duties at once. his own part, he believed that throwing away the timber-duties was a greater financial misfortune than the disasters in Affghanistan. The throwing away the timber-duties occasioned a loss of £600,000 per annum; he did not believe that £600,000 per annum would be imposed for more than a short time in consequence of what had taken place in India. But when the right hon. baronet had thrown away this large branch of the public revenue of the country, he must say that he thought that instead of saying that he was imposing an incometax for the purpose of supplying the deficiencies of the public service, it would have been more correct for him to assert that he had increased the deficit in order that he might have an

excuse for imposing the income-tax. These were the opinions which he held; he believed that this tax could be proved, and had been proved, to be one the imposition of which nothing but the greatest extremity could justify. He did not think that this country was in such a position of extremity; he thought that the right hon. baronet had exaggerated the financial difficulties of the country-that he had brought into this discussion matters which were not connected with it, which had nothing to do with it when he formed the plan which he had brought forward; that he had brought into it vague and mysterious hints of certain possible expenses which might be hereafter incurred, but of the nature of which he had not given the House the slightest notion; that he had given up the obvious means by which the position of our finances might have been improved; that he had enlarged the deficit by throwing away a source of revenue which would have materially tended to relieve the country from the difficulties in which it was placed; and, under these circumstances, he should only discharge his duty by giving his vote in favour of the motion of his noble friend.

CHARTISM.

MAY 3, 1842.

On Mr. T. Duncombe's Motion that the Petitioners for "the Charter" be heard at the Bar of the House.

I AM particularly desirous of saying a few words upon this question, because upon a former evening, when a discussion took place upon a motion of the hon. member for Rochdale (Mr. Sharman Crawford), I was prevented from being in my place by accidental circumstances. I know that the absence of some of the members of the late Government on that occasion was considered and spoken of as exhibiting in their minds an inattention to this subject, or a want of sympathy for the interests of the humbler classes of the people of this country. For myself, I can answer that I was compelled to absent myself on account of temporary indisposition; a noble friend of mine, to whose absence particular allusion was made, was prevented from attending the House by purely accidental circumstances; and no one member of the late Administration, I am persuaded, was withheld by any unworthy motives from stating his opinions upon this subject.

In the observations which I shall now make to the House, I shall attempt to imitate, as far as I can, the very proper temper of the speech of the right hon. baronet the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir James Graham); but, if I should be betrayed into the use of any expressions not entirely consistent with a calm view of the question, the House will attribute it to the warmth with which I view the subject generally, and no one who is acquainted with my feelings will attribute it to any want of kindness or of good-will towards those who have signed the petition which has been presented to the House. With regard to the motion which has been made, I cannot