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would have others do unto you," is, in the end, as applicable to the practical business and commerce of life, as it is to a Christian morality. We do not know any one cause which has contributed more to this good understanding among the productive classes, than the meeting in Parliament of, generally speaking, a set of more practical representatives in the Reformed House than met before. There are seen sitting side by side the representative of cloth, as honest and as open in his opinions as the representative of corn. With that sort of familiar good humour, coupled with a certain degree of playfulness, which prevails generally among the members of the House of Commons,-we see them comparing notes of the welfare of each of the classes it is their province to represent. When two practical men come together, whose interest is for the public rather than for self-and who are honest and open in the avowal of their opinions, we may be sure of a candour from each to each in the discussion of the subject, which must produce good results in the minds of both. Mutually convinced of the close connexion between the apparently separate interests which they represent, they enlarge the scope of their view, and arrange their petty differences by a friendly compromise.

matters;

The public is not to judge of the Reformed House of Commons in matters of trade exactly by what passed in the first Session. The great predominant feeling of that Session was an overweening confidence in the Ministry which had accomplished the passing of the Reform Bill. A very different spirit manifested itself in the second Session in commercial when that confidence was weakened, by their pursuing no course to relieve the national distress; unless a perseverance in those rigid schemes which had, as we have shewn, only aggravated the desolation on every side, can be called an attempt to relieve distress. Mr. Maxwell obtained his Committee to enquire into the Petitions of the Hand-loom Weavers for Local Boards of trade, in opposition to the Ministers, to the annuitants, the large capitalists and the most rigid economists. Most valuable evidence was in consequence obtained both from manufacturers and weavers ;-evidence which will go far we think (from the glance we have had of it) to disabuse the public mind of many evil prepossessions, and to set right with each other the land and the labour of the country. There were other instances of the same kind of feeling in the last Session, which do not immediately occur to us. But that which does occur to us, and will occur to others also most forcibly, is this-that if the feeling for the productive classes be so improved in the second Session,

it will be still better in the third. And what may not the productive classes hope from another election? The last election was carried (with a few exceptions) by a sort of coup de main, by a loud huzza about reform; a candidate had only to say he was a reformer, or voted for reform in the previous Parliament; scarcely any other question was put to him. The majority of the people had a sort of fancy that reform and relief were words of pretty nearly the same meaning. So in fact they ought to have been ; but have they proved so? We have no quarrel with reform;-but we have a shrewd guess that at least the word relief will be added to it in the cry at another election.

No party (and it mainly consists of fixed annuitants and men interested in low prices) voted so strenuously out and out, thick and thin for the Reform Bill, as the rigid political economists,-the philosophers. No party, thank God, has been so disappointed with the reformed Parliament. In the House, before it was reformed, they were the great oracles of trade; the remainder of the House had not much practical knowledge of commercial matters, and were fairly outtalked and outwitted by a sort of metaphysical jargon which passed current in those days for absolute wisdom. The metaphysical gentlemen had the vanity to expect that they would have as tractable a school and as pliant disciples as they had previously had. They were wofully mistaken. Their high sounding and little profiting words had not then to fall upon half so many fixed annuitants' ears as before; but upon such as, when they heard, had the power to understand, and to know also that what appeared so exquisitely beautiful in theory, (not to say convenient to the parties who proposed it) was absolute ruin in practice to the productive classes. All the members, therefore, who prefer the solid comfort and employment of the whole population to the fanciful notions of economy, are supposed to be very dull fellows, either ignorant shopkeepers, or sleepy country gentlemen, or poets who think

Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise.

And these gentlemen, who only care about the comfort of those whom they represent, are wholly unworthy to sit on the same benches in the same House with philosophers! Well, we shall see how the benches will be next occupied; we are sanguine of better things, because we have confidence in the sterling good sense of the industrious classes when once they are induced to think.

In the debate on the Liverpool petition for free trade, presented by his colleague last Session, Lord Sandon made some short, but as pithy and as truly wise, observations on the subject of trade as we ever remember to have seen; we are sorry we have not the

report of them before us. They were, however, remarkably pertinent to this disappointment of the rigid economists, and were in effect, That it was erroneous to suppose that, where representation was the most accurate, (i. e. where the interests and feelings of the community were the most faithfully transferred to Parliament by the representatives) theoretical notions and a doubtful philosophy would receive the sanction of the legislature; this could only happen when there was an imperfect representation, which gave undue weight to the arguments of such as might have a totally counter interest to that of the productive classes. The more closely, his Lordship said, you represent the wishes of the people, the more you will consider local interests and abstain from sacrificing them to any theoretical general principle. We entirely agree with Lord Sandon in this; and on this conviction are based our confidence and strong hope. God grant that the productive classes be only true to themselves and all may yet be right! We have shown that what the philosophers have done to lower wages, profits, and prices, has given no relief to distress. We may shortly turn to something that will be more salutary than the over-population, over-production, emigration, free trade, and reciprocity schemes! all, all, let our readers remember, and let them ponder on this truth again and again, all of them mere blinds to cajole an honest and industrious people into putting up with the gross injustice of Peel's Bill.

IRELAND.

a.

POOR LAWS FOR IRELAND, A MEASURE OF JUSTICE TO ENGLAND, OF HUMANITY TO THE PEOPLE OF BOTH ISLANDS, AND OF

SELF PRESERVATION TO THE EMPIRE.

No. 1.

THE Compulsory assessment of a provision for the relief of the sick, impotent, and unemployed poor in England, and the absence of a similar enactment in Ireland, is one of the most melancholy instances of partial and defective legislation which can be found in the annals of jurisprudence. That the rate-payers of this country should so long have patiently born the immigration of myriads of pauper labourers from the sister island, with a redundancy of labour and a heavily increasing assessment at home, is indeed a fact highly creditable to the splendid liberality of the British public; a time has however arrived, when a feeling of generosity, however laudable in itself, must give place to the instinctive duty of self-preservation; a duty which is happily connected with no selfish ideas, but which in its fulfil

ment embraces the amelioration of the condition of the poor and destitute in Ireland, as well as in England. It requires but little foresight to perceive that a brief interval will elapse before the poor laws of the older civilized state must be abolished, or the enactment of an improved system be decreed for Ireland, or the importation of Irish paupers into England be totally prohibited. If one county in Great Britain were devoid of any provision for the destitute poor, and that its population annually augmented in an almost incredible manner, would not the neighbouring county, with an existing surplus labour and a heavy rate of assessment for the support of the unemployed population,—would not that neighbouring county speedily have a rapid extension of pauperism, and be forced by dire necessity to prevent the immigration of its neighbours, or insist on the Legislature compelling them to sup. port their own poor? The parallel stands good between the two islands as shall be shewn in an early number. ERINENSIS.

TAXATION.-No. II.

TAXES WHICH DESTROY THE MORALS OF THE PEOPLE, OR INJURE THEIR Health.

Malt.-National character is mainly formed by the influence of climate, food and drink ; the latter exercising a most important part in the formation of the corporeal frame, and through that on the mental and moral qualities. That this is not a mere visionary doctrine will be seen by contrasting the characters of the English with the Irish, the Germans with the French, and the Dutch with the Portuguese. Among the English, Germans and Dutch we find the most extensive consumers of malt liquors; and among the Irish, French and Portuguese the consumers of ardent spirits, or thin, acid wines; the one proverbial for patience in labour, perseverance in purpose, and unwearied generosity of character, with hale constitutions, sturdy dispositions, and a phlegmatic temperament, (these characteristics were strongly marked of yore in the brave English yeoman;) the other quick in resolve and hasty in execution, but without sufficient endurance; sharp constitutions, volatile dispositions, and a sanguine temperament. That these peculiarities are governed by the beverage used as well as by food and climate, will be shown on another occasion; suffice it here to say, that good malt liquor, taken in moderation, is one of the most wholesome drinks which a nation can be addicted to, the saccharine principle of the barley, combined with the bitter quality of the hops, rendering it nutritious and tonic in the highest degree; it is there

fore to be lamented that its consumption 1828 should ever have been checked by the fiscal exactions of the state.

From the earliest ages malt liquors have been the favourite beverage of Britons; one hundred and fifty years ago the tax-gatherer stepped in to arrest the consumption of one of the most valuable products of our own soil, and his baneful influence has ever since continued; indeed, during more than an entire century, notwithstanding the augmented population of England, the consumption of malt was not only stationary, but actually retrograding. The tax on malt was first imposed in England by the 7th Money Act, William III. Parliament I. Session 2, at the rate of 6d. per bushel, or 4s. per quarter; the duty stole on from time to time, until in 1787, it reached to 10s. 6d. per quarter; in 1791 to 12s. 6d. in 1802 to 18s. 8d.; and in 1804 to 38s. 8d.; at which monstrous rate it continued until 1817. The consequences are thus seen at intervals of a century.

25,099,336

1829 1830

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1831

105,946,127

Thus, on the four last years, there was a decrease of nearly twelve million bushels as compared with four years of the last century! Scotland exhibits equally disastrous results of the effects of taxation-one return will suffice:

1802
1821

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Decrease 832,381 Increase 2s. 11d. Subsequent years afford similar results.

Ireland is even worse than Scotland. In 1792 the tax per barrel on malt in Ireland was 2s. 6d. ; raised in 1795 to 3s. 3d.-in 1796 to 5s. 3d.-in 1799 to 6s.-in 1801 to 6s. 6d., by which time the consumption of

Malt consumed in England and Wales at two malt had decreased from 1,284,378 barrels

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Qrs.

Decreased consumption 359,224 Mait per head. Gals. Population, first period, 5,500,000 41 do. second do. 12,000,000

Decrease per head

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to 173,900 barrels ! What a striking instance of the effects of taxation !-In 1831, the 3,542,000 consumption of malt in Ireland was less than that of 1792 to the extent of 3,129,370 3,182,776 bushels! But it is not merely the amount of taxation levied that affects the price and consumption; the vexatious manner in which the duty has been levied has doubled (and trebled sometimes) the price to the buyer. The excise regulations compel the barley to be spread on the floor in a certain mannerto be wetted in a cistern, and in a certain quantity-then to be taken out of the cistern at a certain time, all which restrictions, owing to the various sorts of barley, are very frequently fatal to the quality of the article produced. Thus, though a quarter of barley might be converted without cost into a quarter of malt, owing to the swelling process, yet its natural price of 20s. or 25s is thus raised to 40s., and then 20s. 8d. tax is levied. Nor are these the only evils; the tax falls on different places unequally, the quantity of malt consumed in the United Kingdom in 1831 being

The decrease thus exhibited is very remarkable, and the consequences to the agriculture of the country most disastrous; but let us look at another and more recent period. The following is the official return of the quantity of malt consumed in England at two periods of eighteen years each, from,

Bushels.

1784-1801, 459,640,568 1814-1831, 392,980,839

Tax per bush.
s. d. s. d.
1 0-1 2
27-4 4

Decrease, 66,659,729 Increase, 1 7-3 2

One more illustration will suffice to prove whether the assertion of Sir Henry Parnell is correct, namely, that "the duty of 208. per quarter (it is 20s. 8d.) on malt is not one that can be justly objected to as too high."

Malt consumed in England.

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lay, and frequently previous turnip cultivation, to render them at all productive. Hence, the tax on malt, so far as it checks the consumption of barley, throws those soils out of cultivation which employ the most labour, require the most skill, and which have been reclaimed, as it were, at the greatest expense to the owner.

Now, allowing the consumption of malt in the United Kingdom to be 33,000,000 bushels, and giving ten bushels to every hogshead of beer, the quantity of beer which each individual would have would be little more than one pint per week! Were the tax taken off malt, we might safely calculate on the consumption rising to seven pints aweek, which, requiring 231,000,000 bushels of malt annually, would set afloat, in one ingredient of the beer alone, a capital of £39,600,000 annually at the rate of 4s. a bushel for the extra amount of malt consumed, independent of its effects on the health of the people in weaning them from the use of ardent spirits, contracted in consequence of their beer being so bad and so dear. Indeed, it is no exaggeration (as it could be proved by the writer in detail) to say, that the total abolition of the tax on malt would give circulation to a capital of full fifty millions sterling per annum ! But the moral effects resulting from the repeal now advocated would be incalculably far greater than the pecuniary. What has raised England,-a small island in the Atlantic, to the lofty station she holds among the kingdoms of the earth? Has it not been the industry, skill and moral integrity of her sons? of her people at large ?-a people who are now sinking into an abyss of misery and vice, which hopeless, abject poverty inevitably engenders? The farmer's labourer no longer sits at the frugal but cheerful board in his master's house. If unmarried he hies, with his diminishing pittance of pay, to the village gin-shop, and being without advantage in possessing a good character, and without a friend in a superior condition of life, station, or age, he is driven, as it were, by necessity into the company of the idle and profligate of the hamlet; and in one night of beastly intoxication, the hard-wrought earnings of the week have vanished. It was not thus so when the farmer made his own malt, brewed his own ale, and housed his agricultural servants, who looked to him as a friend, and gloried in the boast of having lived as man and boy under the same roof for half a century.

It is not, however, a mere agricultural question, it is one which affects the condition of the whole of the labouring poor of the United Kingdom, the taxation on malt liquor having contributed more than any

The manner in which the price of malt has been enhanced, as taxation rose, is thus evinced in the Greenwich Hospital returns, which show the

other measure to demoralize the poor and beget a desire for gin,† which it is lamentable to think, will scarcely be eradicated from the existing generation: some taxes (as will be subsequently shown) press on the industry, others on the comforts, others on the luxuries of the mass of the people, but the tax on malt liquors has struck a deadly blow at temperance and social order-themain springs of society and the only real strength (under the guidance of Divine Providence) of a nation.

England may go on extending her cotton and woollen manufactures over the face of the habitable globe, while her famishing infants are doomed to suffer the horrors of a slavery which no civilized or uncivilized country ever before witnessed; her lands may be covered with rail roads and machinery, and her warehouses overflowing with merchandise,-towers, and temples, and palaces may adorn her cities, and a glittering splendour surround the throne,-but if, in the midst of all these indications of national wealth, her people are becoming every day more and more unsettled, more impoverished, more dissolute, then, indeed, her very symbols of prosperity are but the gildings which adorn the sepulchre to conceal the rottenness which is within. M.

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The number of malsters has also considerably decreased since 1792.

the United Kingdom (independent of illicit distil+ The quantity of home made spirits consumed in lation) is, for England 8,000,000 gallons, Ireland 9,000,000. and Scotland 6,000,000 gallons; total people in gin and whiskey alone, during the last 23,000,000 gallons. The money laid out by the twenty years, is computed at £400,000,000! Fourfifths of all the crime committed in the country is

under the influence of liquor. During the past year,

32,636 persons were taken into custody for drunkenness alone, by the Metropolitan Police, not including assaults, or more serious offences, and excluding the suburbs. £5,000,000 of the poor rates is owing to gin-drinking. Of 140 inmates of a London workhouse, 105 were brought directly thither by dram-drinking, and the remainder traced their misfortunes to the same; and of 495 lunatic patients, 257 lost their reason by drunkenness. What a sea of wickedness is the nation now plunged into!

are, let us first ascertain exactly our real predicament. Some of us, and those not the most stupid, have fancied for some years that all was not right—" that there was something rotten in our State;" that we were not so comfortable, so happy, nor so wealthy as we used to be; nor even sharing that decent degree of competence which our old and honoured ancestors had enjoyed for many past generations. We, therefore, thought that as people had got an itch for reform, a slight change could do us no harm; for when things look as if they would get no better in the way they are going on, it is not uncommon to expect that, as a calm may brew a storm, a storm may by chance brew a calm; and so many of us cried out for reform. We should never have thought about reform, if we could have got a decent livelihood: we don't trouble our heads about politics when times are good; but when it comes to this that it is all we can do to scrape a rent together, without any profit at all for ourselves, for five or six years following each other; when instead of times mending, they get worse, and it is more than we can do to scrape together half a rent, and the other half is for another five or six years to be paid by selling our stock before its time, and huddling our grain to market, all of us, at one time, just to meet the rent day, and then it fetches scarcely anything; when to pay every thing we have to pay, we are obliged to take to market two loads of corn instead of one, and even those nobody is anxious to buy: we, then, though we are no great bawlers or brawlers, think it time to look about us.

So when this Reform Bill passed, and thanks to my Lord Chandos, we got (all of us who paid £50 a year rent), a vote a piece; feeling rather queerish in our affairs, some of us (not, indeed, half or a quarter so many as should have done), hesitated before we would promise our votes: and when at last we thought we had found a gentleman that would give us a good word and a helping hand in Parliament, we told him "Now, mind, we are not well off, as some people say, who never saw or knew anything of us; and who very likely are the best off, when we are the worst off; but, remember, we are very ill off; we have been paying out, and had nothing coming in, on an average, for the last 15 years; and if this reform, which has given us votes, mean any thing, it means that the gentlemen we vote for should do all they can, both by their voices and their votes, to lift us up out of this slough of despond into which we are sunk."

Then the first Reformed Parliament met, and those members, whom we had been thus careful to choose, voted for an enquiry into the cause of our distress. But our governors

said "No, no!" we will have no cause's looked into; effects can very easily come without causes, and so you shall look only into the effects. In other words, they said to the ruined farmers and manufacturers, to the grass-growing-in-the-dockyard-shipowners, to the unemployed labourers, "you may be distressed, (though it is not our business to think you are), we will enquire into that: we may be mistaken as to your being in distress or not ;-but of this we cannot be mistaken, the thing is as clear as the sun at noon day, that even if you be distressed nothing has caused your distress; it has come out of nothing, as the world came out of chaos: you silly bees, don't you know, when you find all your honey gone from the hive, that it all went away of itself, and if you (i. e. you who have survived the taking it away), are foolish enough to begin thinking why it has gone, are not you quite sure that the sun has power to melt a great many things, and that it may have melted away your honey, as well as other substances? be satisfied then that these things must happen; you see how useless it is to enquire into the cause why you are distressed! you know the sun will melt things, and we can't hinder it."

This was a cunning attempt to shew that a natural cause (not to be prevented by human means), had occasioned the evil; instead of a violent artificial one, which might have been prevented, or remedied if not prevented. If all this was not said, it was very like it to say, that the only thing which rational men charged as being the real cause of the general distress should not be enquired into, or altered, even although half the living men of the day were dead men the next morning in consequence. And it was still more like it to say, (which they did a few years before,) that we grew too good crops, and that that brought all our misery upon us. Here, to be sure, the sun was the cause of our distress with a vengeance!

However, after Parliament had refused enquiry into the causes of our distress, they told us that our representatives might, as. a matter of amusement and curiosity, ascertain if there really were any distress. One would have imagined that a man must have been living in the moon, or, at least, in Greenland, surfeiting himself on train-oil and saw-dust, not to have known the fact of distress without a Parliamentary enquiry into it. It could only be as a matter of amusement that this enquiry took place; for (to speak in sober sadness), men in the common affairs of life, or even philosophers in their scientific researches, never attempt a remedy without at least searching for the cause of the evil they have to remedy. Once on a time, indeed, there was a three legged stool which tumbled down minute

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