TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR GLADSTONE'S SUPPLEMENTARY BUDGET.
MILGLADSTONE'S Supplementary Budget is the first great success of the Liberal Government, and it is not every Chancellor of the Exchequer who could achieve a great success, when proposing in June to add a penny more than had been demanded in March, to the Income-tax of the year. At the same time, there has hardly ever been a Chancellor of the Exchequer who would have conceived the idea, in a mere supplementary Budget, of abolishing such a tax as the malt- tax, and replacing it by one which will fall solely on the consumers of malt liquors ; which will set the farmers at liberty for the first time to grow poor barley for malting purposes as freely as they have hitherto produced the best barley for those purposes ; and which will abolish almost all the objectionable restrictions on the manufacture of malt liquor, and even in the opinion of Mr. Bass, enable its manu- facturers to reduce its price by nearly one-third,—or, what is even better, to improve its quality in the same degree without increasing its price at all. No Chancellor of the Exchequer, except Mr. Gladstone, would have conceived so bold a project in opening out to the House a mere supplementary Budget. The effect will be to make the farmers more than ever sure that they have not done ill in welcoming the Liberals to power ; to do more than all the Agricultural Commissions in the world to relieve English agriculture from the pressure of American competition ; and to increase the permanent revenue of the country, at the cost of a single year's penny on the income-tax, by £350,000 a year, without any disadvantage to the trade concerned, and with great advantage to the con- sumers of malt liquor. Nor is this the sole fruit of Mr. Glad- stone's Supplementary Budget. By the power he takes to reduce the duties on foreign wines, he will in all probability secure for Great Britain the renewal of the old commercial treaty with France, as well as concessions from Spain and Portugal which will increase our commerce with those coun- tries. We have not another financier in this kingdom who could have accomplished all this in a supplemen- tary Budget, and accomplished it with such ease and such universal confidence in the prudence of his decision. The Tory gentlemen who had been painfully glorifying to their constituents the wisdom of the Tory Government in granting an Agricultural Commission, in order to find out what the newspapers have found out long ago, are obviously embarrassed to find the Liberal chief ready to confer on those constituents a far greater boon than any they had contemplated, and this too while the monster Commission is still in the throes of its rather unhopeful labour. Mr. Chaplin, with a curiously dra- matic infelicity, of which, of course' he did not then see the force, had been clumsily quizzing Mr. Gladstone, before the Supplementary Budget was explained, on the scorn with which he had treated the appointment of the Commission,—in other words, the attempt to trifle with Free-trade implied in the concession by the Tory Government of such a Commission, to speakers who had not veiled their own desire to return to Protection. Mr. Gladstone had, of course, replied that his expressions of scorn were not intended for the mere collection of facts entrusted to the Commission, but solely for the right given to it to make recommendations which, as the promoters hoped, might reopen the question of Free- trade. But the real reply to Mr. Chaplin's heavy raillery was the Budget speech which followed. There Mr. Gladstone showed how easy it would have been for Tory statesmen with a mind, to have done something effectual, instead of setting on foot a gigantic inquiry, born of illusions and destined at best only to dispel those illusions. But the Tory statesmen of the last Government had no mind for either principles or details. They were afraid themselves to trifle with economic principles, though they encouraged those of their followers who did so, by granting their requests. They were afraid to grapple with details, and therefore failed to anticipate this great relief to Agriculture, which Mr. Glad- stone's vigilant eye had recognised as possible. Now they will try in vain "to comfort their dejected train." Ulysses' bow -was in their hands, and they had the first chance to draw it. But they had not the courage and the strength. The owner of the bow has drawn it for himself, and the result is a curious mixture of surprise and remorse among the Tory chiefs, of surprise and gratitude among the Tory followers. The wind is effectually taken out of the Tory sails. The Liberal Govern- meat has done more for the tenant-farmers, not only in relation to game, but in relation to malt, than the Tories had ever dared. to do for themselves.
For ourselves, we heartily rejoice in the Budget, in spite of the unwelcome addition of a penny to the Income-tax which. nobody ever enjoys. This journal, almost alone amongst. Liberal journals, has for very many years back treated the malt, duty as in principle indefensible, and the claim of the farmers. to have this interference with the production of cheap malt for other purposes than those of the brewing trade abolished, an a just claim. When the Liberal chiefs formerly told us that this was impossible, we were unable to see the impossibility.. When the Liberal borough Members twitted the Farmers with desiring a relief to their own interest which_ would have been fatal to the revenue of the coun- try, we always defended the farmers, and denounced the injustice of expecting them to approve the application of the principles of Free-trade to manufactures, when no attempt was, made to give them also the full benefit of the same principles.. And now, at last, the great Liberal leader has avowed himself of the same mind. He finds the practical difficulties which once. stood in the way of this great change so much diminished by the rapid dwindling of private breweries, that he is not afraid. to grapple with them ; while, on the other -hand, he fends thm practical difficulties of the English farmer's present position so much enhanced by the competition of American agriculture, that he is afraid to delay any longer the complete emancipa- tion of our farmers from the straight-waistcoat of revenue re- strictions. It is a great act of justice, long delayed, but one which it is certainly some credit to the Liberals to be the first to perform, when "the Farmers' Friends,"—who took office with a surplus of six millions to dispose of, who held office for six years, and who heard the cry of distress which went up last year from the tenant-farmers all over the land,—had not had the mind or the heart to conceive it.
Mr. Gladstone is never more happy and elastic than when he deals with finance. The speech of Thursday night, though brimful of what in any other man's mouth would have been extremely dry detail, was as interesting and lively a speech as if Mr. Gladstone had been proposing to take off a penny of Income-tax, instead of to add one on. And no wonder,—when, though he proposed to add to our taxation, he proposed. so essentially to diminish some of our burdens. Nothing could be livelier than his contrast between the lugubrious anticipations of the paper-makers when it was proposed. to take off the duty on paper, and the result. Pre- viously, rags had been the object of a sort of idolatry, of which the British paper-maker was the leader. The scarcity of rags was the one subject on which he was always eloquent. He held that when the paperduty should have been taken off, the rags of the world would so rise in price that the paper would not get itself made at any remunerative cost. The paper duty was taken off, and new materials for paper vere so quickly found, that now "those who wish to sell their rags, sell them, and those who wish to keep them, keep them." So, as Mr. Glad- stone hopes, it will be when we have taken off the restric- tions on the manufacture of malt. New processes for malting will be discovered. New uses for malt Will be found. And. one more illustration will be given of the advantage of free- dom, and the disadvantage of artificially encouraging special modes of production. The last rag of Protection in this country will be sacrificed, without any -of that extravagant regret which was once felt in sacrificing rags of any kind to the onward march of Free-trade.
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