is "ill done," and when this matter is the will be undone." I. know not what may be the verdict. of the House of Commons upon this tax, placed on the poorest of the people; but it is my belief that there is a feeling in this country, deep-seated and spreading, which condemns the Government that the people are dissatisfied and disappointed with the manner in which it has mismanaged their affairs, and that they condemn wasted and misused the great majority you for the way in which you have with which they had entrusted you. Amendment proposed "On Second Reading of Finance Bill, to move, That this House declines to impose Customs duties upon grain, flour, and other articles of the first necessity for the food of the people.'"-(Sir William Harcourt.) united Opposition in the country, and of that echo its result. A very remarkable election has taken place. Various people will give their own interpretations to the cause of it. I observe that the unfortunate candidate-I desire to say nothing hard of him; he is an old friend of mine, who once was a very good Liberal; he is a belated convert to the Unionist camp; but he had chosen a bad time-an unlucky moment. At the declaration of the poll, he said he could not understand or explain the cause of the change, or why the constituency had changed its mind. There is one explanation I would suggest to him, and that is because he had changed his mind, and the constituency changed its mind also. I will tell him, in all good feeling, that the explanation of his failure upon that occasion is that he put his money on the wrong horse, that he backed a sinking cause, and gave his support to a discredited administration. He would have done better, in my opinion, to have stuck to his old colours. But I should like very much to hear the explanation of it from a neighbouring town. Oldham is *(3.48) SIR M. HICKS BEACH: not very far from Bury. The Mem- There is a singular contrast between ber for Oldham might tell us something the course which has been taken about it-proximus ardet. I should like by the official Opposition in regard. to hear from him whether this tax is one to the Budget of the present year of the results of that Tory democracy of and that which the same Gentlemen which he is the hereditary representative in this House. Is this his conception of the model finance of the Government of which he is a constant and ardent supporter? I should like to know whether this is a sample of their social progress; whether it is what is called the Birming ham programme of social reform. You promised old-age pensions. This is the sort of pension that you offer to the aged to people who can no longer work. They ask you for bread and you give them a corn tax. Do you call that social reform? Is this a war gift which you are going to bestow upon the widows and children, who have little enough to live upon? We are very well content with the issue as it very well content with the issue as it stands. Whatever happens upon this division, at all events the country will know who are for and who are against a tax upon the bread of the people. It was hailed on its introduction with a vociferous shout of "well done." There has come back a strange echo from Tory Lancashire, and took only a year ago. On that occasion the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton stood forward as their spokesman. He moved a reasoned Amendment to the Second Reading of the Finance Bill. That Amendment expressed a policy. He stated that he and those on whose behalf he spoke were ready to make adequate provision for the naval and military requirements of the Empire; and in his speech he added that he approved of the main reason for the Budget, which was the expenditure on the war, that he would be behind no one in his support of necessary expenditure on the Navy, and that, although he thought in regard to the Army and education that we might get better value for our money, yet he would pay more to India towards the cost of the Army maintained for her defence and would spend more on education. That was the policy which the right hon. Gentleman What is it we are being treated to tonight? put forward in behalf of the Opposition. Throughout the whole speech of the right hon. Gentleman for West Monmouth there. has not been the faintest recognition of the fact that we are face to face with an expenditure a necessary expenditurefor which this House is bound to provide. Sir, I think in his heart the right hon. Gentleman agrees entirely with what was said only the other day by the Leader of the Opposition in this House, who told his followers that it was time to stop the process of widening the basis of expenditure, and that a check must be put on the wild schemes of the Government for military and naval extension. That is the view now adopted by the official Opposition. They will give us no support in obtaining the means for the necessary expenditure on the war in South Africa. Not one word in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman testified to his recognition of that necessity. *SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I certainly intended to say, which is the fact, that I and all my friends have voted all the supplies. from taxation enough to meet the expenditure of the year, that I have imposed too much on our successors by borrowing more largely than hon. Gentlemen opposite thought was justified by the occasion. That has been the complaint. But, after all, as a Return recently placed on the Table shows, I have provided from the revenue of this country in the course of four years no less than £74,000,000 out of a war expenditure of £228,000,000. Although I admit that that is not as large a proportion as was provided at the time of the Crimean War, yet surely hon. Gentlemen must consider that the larger the cost of the war, the less it is possible to provide the whole of it from the taxation of the year, and the more justified you are in imposing a certain portion of it on posterity. But this complaint is a curious preface to opposition to the taxation I propose on the ground that it is placed on the masses of the population of this country. What is the argument on which the complaint is based? Why, surely, that it is necessary that the electorate, who govern this country, should realise what *SIR M. HICKS BEACH: But what the expenditure on war or in preparations is the use of voting supplies if you for war involves; and that they should propose Amendments to the Budget be made to realise it by not putwhich ignore altogether the necessities ting the whole burden of this war, of expenditure, and which, if carried, and the preparations for war, on the would certainly put an end to the future. What is the suggestion of the Government and the Budget at once. right hon. Gentleman' It is to put The right hon. Gentleman's sentiments it on the millionaires. Do you supare very well known. He would have pose the masses of the population of allowed Boer supremacy to be established this country will care how much you in South Africa; he would cut down spend in war, or in preparation for war, the necessary expenditure of this if you make the millionaires pay the country on the Navy, and, with regard whole of it? There were some very wise to the Army, I am certain that he words, in my humble opinion, used by would stint the cost that is required the right hon. Gentleman the Member to secure its efficiency. That is the for the Montrose Burghs on this subject policy of the right hon. Gentleman. last year. He saidThe right hon. Gentleman thinks that he can run this Empire on the cheap. Our Empire, no doubt, is costly to maintain, to develop, and to defend; but there is one obstacle to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. It is that the nation would not support it, and the nation recorded that verdict unmistakably at the last general election. What has been the complaint often made of my action in regard to the financial policy of this country? I have been told, over and <ver again that I have failed to provide Sir M. Hicks Beach. "I cannot conceive a great Empire existing under more dangerous conditions than if a great army of electors is to decide on questions of peace or war or great issues of policy without it being brought home to them clearly and directly what the effects of their acts and decisions will be." I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman from the Member for West Monmouth. As I am always being twitted with the finance of the Crimean War, let me remind the House what the finance of the Crimean War was. Were the masses exempted from taxation for the purposes of the war by such Chancellors of the they are now, than anything I propose in the taxation now under consideration by the House? we Well, I think I have shown that if we are to go back to the precedent of the Crimean War in our fiscal arrangements, if we are to revert to the last time that this country was face to face with an abnormal expenditure for for war, are bound to impose in our Budget some additional taxation on the masses as well as on the wealthier classes of the country. Then the question is. What shall that taxation be? That was the point to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton devoted a great deal of his speech the other night, and to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth also alluded this afternoon. I do not think I need dwell on the possibilities, although they have been suggested, of direct taxation on the masses of the population. It has been suggested that we should lower the limit of exemption from income tax from £160 to £100. I am glad to see that the right hon. Member for West Monmouth shakes his head at that sugof gestion. If you did, you would tax, perhaps, the most necessitous class in the country, and the collection would be so difficult that you would add little to your revenue by the change. It has been suggested, too, that we should lower the limit of house duty from £20 to £10. cities live so largely in houses of such Why, Sir, the very poor in our great Exchequer as Mr. Gladstone and Sir George Cornwall Lewis, who surely cannot be charged with indifference to the burdens of the people? What was the taxation proposed in the year of the greatest expenditure on the Crimean war, viz., 1855-6? At that time the income tax rose to 1s. 4d. in the £, a penny more than I propose this year. But the death duties, allowing for the increase in the wealth of the country since that time, are double the burden at the present time on the class which pays direct taxation compared with what they were then. Then, other direct taxation has increased since those days to a considerable extent. In 1855-6 the direct taxpayers of this country bore 414 per cent. of the total amount raised in taxation. Last year they bore 52-3 per cent. In the former year direct taxation amounted to 19s. 8d. per head of the population; last year it amounted to 32s. 11d. As to indirect taxation, anyone who looks back to the tariff of 1855 will find it crowded with articles since removed from it; some of them returning a very small amount revenue, but other articles, such timber and paper, returning a considerable amount of revenue indeed. When the right hon. Gentleman told us today that Mr. Gladstone objected to the permanent continuation of the corn duty, and that he took the first opportunity of removing it, I was reminded that in the year 1866, after the statements made in 1864, which the right hon. Gentleman has quoted from Mr. Gladstone, that the corn duty should not be a permanent tax, Mr. Gladstone preferred to remove not merely the duty on timber but the extra duty on bottled wines as compared with wines in casks, in place of touching the corn duty. I have stated something of the indirect taxation of 1855; but what was the taxation then on articles of food? There was the corn duty which we seek to reimpose; there was a duty of 5s. a cwt. on butter, which is gone; tea which is now taxed at 6d. on the lb., was then taxed at 1s. 9d. on the lb.; sugar, now taxed at 4s. 2d. a cwt. was then taxed at 20s. a cwt. Was not that a far higher charge on the working classes, who were infinitely less able to bear taxation in those days than as very year. a valuation that to impose such a something like 20 per cent. of its value, necessary has been the condition of the revenue from beer for the past few years? Be tween 1895 and 1900 the revenue from beer, without any increase of taxation, increased by more than £1,500,000. In 1900 we increased the duty, with the result, of course, of an addition to the revenue. But the increase in the yield of the duty was checked, and the increase in the consumption of beer was checked to so large an extent that, in the two years following 1900, the consumption fell off by no less than one million barrels. I do not say that this was entirely due to the increase of the tax. It may have been due partly to other causes, but I will venture to say that to obtain anything like the £2,500,000 from beer which I desire to obtain from indirect taxation in this Budget you would have to impose, as a matter of calculation, at least 2s. a barrel ou beer; and, when you had imposed it, you would never get your revenue, because the result of it would be that both the brewer and the retailer would have to increase the price to the consumer, and the consumption would largely fall off, to the serious injury of the revenue. Now I turn to tobacco. The tobacco revenue, as anybody who has attempted to deal with it will know and I have suffered from it myself is a revenue of a very ticklish kind. There are some facts in the history of the tobacco revenue to which, perhaps, I may very shortly call the attention of the Sir M. Hicks Beach. House. Between the years 1870 and revenue. A £2,500,000 more from tobacco you would tobacco at 3d. an I now come to the particular tax to which the right hon. Gentleman objects. That tax is a very small tax upon the value of the article on which it is imposed. The real test of the burden imposed by a tax is the amount the consumption is decreased by its imposition. But will any one think of suggesting for a moment that the consumption of corn or flour or bread in this country will be decreased by the imposition of 3d. per cwt. on corn? The idea is absurd. The right hon. Gentleman asks who will pay the tax; and he refers to the recent rise in the price of corn and bread. Of course there has been, within the last few weeks, a rise in the price of corn. There always is a rise in the price of corn when stocks are low in the spring of the year; and I suppose if it had been possible for me to impose this duty after harvest, when stocks were large, or during harvest, when anticipations were favourable, there probably been. amount of money from indirect taxation a rise by bakers in the price of bread as for the purposes of the expenditure of if it were not only a general, but almost the country; and it would be abso- a universal rise. It is nothing of the lutely useless for me-it would be worse kind. I have obtained information on than useless, it would be deceiving Parlia- this point from the thirty largest cities ment--if I made proposals for increasing in this country, including the Metropolis, the revenue which, however popular or up to the 5th May. There has been no plausible they might be at the moment, general rise in the price of bread in Lonin my heart I knew would not tend to don; there has been a rise in the price of secure the money. bread by a good many bakers in London, but a general rise in price there has not And out of the other twenty-nine cities I find that in nineteen there has been no rise in price at all, in nine there has been a rise of d. on the quartern loaf, and in one there has been actually a decrease in price since 1st March. But any one who has paid any attention to the price of bread will know that it is extremely difficult to found an argument on ordinary bakers' prices, because the price of bread varies in the most extraordinary way in different towns and villages, and even in different streets of the same town. Therefore I have obtained what I think is something more reliable that statistics of bakers, and that is statistics from co-operative societies all over Great Britain. Even a co-operative society may, I am told, be sometimes influenced in fixing the price of bread by think generally it may be argued that -well, political considerations. But I co-operative societies will not raise the price of bread before it is necessary, but that they will raise it if they find it necessary to do so. I have obtained returns from as many as 284 co-operative societies in Great Britain, and I find that out of those only thirty-two have raised the price of bread by d. the quartern loaf. I find that in the north, east, north-midland, west-midland, and south-eastern districts of England there has been no rise at all in the cooperative price of bread, nor has there been in Scotland. In London, in Lancashire, and Cheshire, in the south-midland and the south-western districts of England, there has been an average rise in the co-operative price of bread of d. the quartern loaf. When the right hon. Gentleman talks of the price of bread as if it were a question almost of starvation prices at the present moment, I can tell him this, that out of all these societies the mean co-operative price of bread throughout the United Kingdom would have been no rise at all. But corn has been rising quite irrespective of the duty for weeks past. It has risen in America where the duty could have no effect whatever. It has risen because stocks are low. And when people complain to me, as they have complained, of the high price of maize in particular, anybody who looks back at the records of the market and sees that the American crop of maize last year was hardly more than half what it was in the previous year, and that, as a result, from November until May this year we only imported from America 800,000 quarters of maize, as compared with 11,355,000 quarters in the same period last year, will see what the reason is for the present rise in the price of maize. But even so, at present wheat is only the same price as it was, within a little, in March, 1901, and flour on May 5th in Mark Lane was almost exactly the same price as it was on that date a year ago. Of course the right hon. Gentleman says this is a bread tax, and he refers to |