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ter sarcasms against the whole tribe of pen- | medical advice, to the sea-baths of Debbeand-ink men and politicians. He found also some distraction in the vice of gambling, for which, under Buonaparte, and indeed down to the reign of Louis Philippe, every public facility was afforded to all classes in the French capital. Such distractions could only have assisted the process of mental and bodily decay, which was further promoted by an accident. An English garrison without a horse-race is scarcely a thing in rerum naturâ. Blücher, attending one of these festivities at St. Cloud, fell heavily horse and man over a rope which he was too blind to perceive in his path, and it is said that the effects of this fall were perceptible in some very curious forms of hallucination, such as extort a smile even from those who are contem plating the melancholy spectacle of the ruin of a noble mind.

The attractions of Paris were insufficient to overcome his aversion for its inhabitants His head-quarters were for the most part established at St. Cloud, and occasionally transferred to Rambouillet and Chartres. The arrangement of the conditions of the peace of Paris afforded him the opportunity, of which he gladly availed himself, even before its final signature, to depart for Prussia. His farewell address to the army bore date the 31st of October, 1815. The retiring forces began their march, but before Blücher himself crossed the frontier, hearing of some further diplomatic difficulties, he took upon himself to halt them as suddenly and peremptorily as if they had been a regiment on parade. The confusion produced by this parting act of authority was excessive, and was only put an end to by positive orders from Paris. Blücher reached Aix-la-Chapelle in a broken state of health on November 20, the day on which the peace was signed. Hence, with frequent delays, and Larassed by the noisy demonstrations of re pect with which he was everywhere received, he slowly made his way to Berlin.

The light seemed burning to the socket, but it was destined still to shine, though with enfeebled and tremulous lustre, some four years longer. He resided chiefly at Kriblowitz, in Silesia, on an estate with which, in 1814, he had been rewarded by the King, but paid occasional visits to Breslau and Berlin. A journey, dictated by

d'y envoyer des gardes, &c., ce que je fais. Je crois qu'ils ne s'ar éteront que quelques heures à Bondy, et qu'ils arriver ce soir.

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'WELLINGTON.'

'Le Maréchal Prince Blücher.'

ran, afforded him an occasion to visit the place of his birth, Rostock, where he recognized and received with touching amiability some surviving acquaintances of his earliest youth. Hamburgh and Altona were also gratified by glimpses of the veteran. He passed on his route the churchyard of Ottensen, in which repose the ashes of Klopstock. He had been personally acquainted with the poet, and as he passed he uncovered his grey head, a soldier's tribute of respect to the German muse, which his early patron Frederick the Great would have sneered at. He also vi sited Klopstock's widow, who opened on the occasion a bottle of tokay, which her husband thirty years before had charged her to reserve for some occasion of singular joy and festivity. These little incidents have their value. Napoleon's esteem for Ossian, and Blücher's for the poem of the Messiah,' remind us of the veneration for female chastity which has been attributed to the King of Beasts. Of the honours showered upon him from all quarters, sovereigns, burgomasters, and municipalities, it is unnecessary to speak.

6

We have elsewhere mentioned that Blucher was a nervous and fluent writer; his intimates also asserted that he was born an orator. At the festive meetings of the table, in which, when his health allowed him, he delighted to the last, he was Nestorian in his harangues and narrations, but failure of memory as to the order of dates made the latter very confused. He never failed to do justice to the participation of Gueisenau in all his greater military exploits. On one occasion he puzzled the society by gravely announcing his intention of kissing his own head; he solved the riddle by rising and embracing that of Gneisenau. This was an exploit which his English comrade in arms could not imitate. His last illness came upon him in September, 1819, at Kriblowitz. His death-bed was attended by the King, and he died calm and resigned in the arms of his faithful aide-de-camp Nostitz.

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Robert Peel's Administration. London, on its retirement towards the close of 1830 1842.

3. Guilty or Not Guilty? being an Inquest on the Conservative Parliament and Ministry. pp. 14. London and Plymouth, pp. 36.

IT is a

-after not quite three years' tenure of office-having during that time repealed nearly 4,000,000l. of taxes, in addition to more than 30,000,000l. which had been repealed since the war-having reduced the capital of the national debt by 20,000,000l. common saying that 'desperate and the annual charge by 1,000,000.-left diseases require desperate remedies;' and to their successors a surplus revenue of near the deplorable state of commercial distress three millions (2,913,6731.). This surplus and financial embarrassment, under which Lord Melbourne's ministry gradually the Conservative ministers were called to changed to a deficit by the double operation office, would, we are satisfied, have recon- of increasing expenditure and diminishing ciled the country to even stronger measures revenue, and in the last year of their sway than they have found it necessary to adopt. the addition made to the public debt by the But we do not rest our humble approbation accumulation of successive annual deficits of Sir Robert Peel's policy on any such amounted to the enormous sum of 7,500,extreme grounds. The administrative af- 0007., with an ascertained further deficiency fairs of a great country-except under the for the then current year ending April, immediate avalanche of a revolution-can 1842, of 2,350,000l., and for the year endseldom be called desperate; and even when, ing April, 1843, of 2,470,0007. exclusive of as towards the close of the Melbourne ad- the expenses of the wars in the East, estiministration, they most nearly approach that mated at sums that would increase the auhopeless state, they require not a wild kill-nual deficiency to near four millions. The or-cure treatment, but, on the contrary, increased caution, a cooler circumspection, and an adherence to principle the more rigid as the temptation to depart from it becomes stronger. It was, we presume, with these views that Sir Robert Peel contemplated the difficulties of his situation, and by them he seems to have been guided in the choice of his remedies-bold but not adventurous-extensive without being extravagant-developing rather than altering the existing system, and endeavouring to direct, by the lights of experience, the new tendencies and impulses of these active and go-a-head times. The details of these measures we shall consider hereafter, but we must, at the outset, bear our testimony to the great, statesmanlike, and, in its main features, novel principle, on which the system has been framed. We do not say that the details are novelties-the elements of any human work, material or moral, must be common to all men-the architect of St. Paul's and the mason of the Mansion-house employed similar stones and tools: the difference between one artist or one statesman and another, is in the skill and genius which direct the combination; and in this view we venture to pronounce Sir Robert Peel's budget to be as striking for the novelty of its principle as for the admirable simplicity of its structure, and, as we believe, for the ultimate convenience and efficiency of its practical working.

In order to put this in its full light we must give a short summary of the case which Sir Robert Peel had to deal with.

The Duke of Wellington's administration,

deficiency of the current year could only be met by funding it; but how was an annual deficiency of near four millions to be supplied? The Whigs had paralysed or drained up all the ordinary sources of taxation-first they had made impolitic reductions, and then they had imposed inefficient substitutes-they had for instance, destroyed, instead of modifying (as they might advantageously to all interests have done) the postage revenue, and threw away, as a mere sop to a small but urgent clique of their Radical partisans, a million and a half of the fairest, most equal, and least onerous of all taxation. Then, on the other hand, they imposed 5 per cent. on the Customs and Excise, which was a notable failure, producing, instead of 1,895,000, as estimated, only 206,000.- about per cent. instead of 5 per cent.; and at the very time when they made this unhappy attempt to increase the revenue by raising the duty on every article of the tariff 5 per cent., they and their partisans were preaching two contrary doctrines-one, that the best mode of raising an immediate revenue was by lowering the tariff!—and the other, that the state of the country required a great remission of the revenue derived from import duties. And these jumbled doctrines they next year affected to make the foundation of what they called a budget

but which was in truth the most ridiculous and the most disgraceful abortion that was ever generated between party spite and ministerial incapacity--ridiculous, because no man believed that it could, or was even meant to, meet the pressing difficulty

-and disgraceful, because it was a fraudu- | ficulties, will you have recourse to the miseralent device to embarrass the future admin-ble expedient of loans? I cannot propose such istration, at the risk-nay, at the positive a measure. . . . I trust that I may, with almost sacrifice of great national interests, to the universal consent, abandon the idea of supplying maintenance of which these very men were, the deficiency by the scheme of contracting fresh loans. by the strongest declarations, individually'If, then, it is necessary for me to have fresh pledged. But what cared they --they taxation, shall I lay it upon articles of subsistence knew their ministerial days were numbered-upon those articles which may appear to some --that, for causes entirely distinct from their financial difficulties, they must soon give way to the Conservatives; and the whole policy of their two last years was narrowed to the miserable hope of embarrassing their successors, and of creating a feeling in the country against any of the modes by which it seemed possible to retrieve our finances. With a system thus partly repudiated-partly paralysed-part- I ly exhausted-and wholly disorganised-I how,' they fondly asked themselves, how, in the face of doctrines so popular as those we have been inculcating on the public mind, is a new ministry to raise four millions of new taxes?'

Sir Robert Peel asked himself the same question, and found in his own good sense and courage, and in the concurrence and confidence of his Cabinet, the Parliament, and the Country, an answer which the Whigs had not contemplated. He prudently began, as he stated in his speech of the 11th March, by examining the more obvious resources; and he boldly and honestly exposed all the difficulties which that examination revealed.

'Shall we pursue the system on which we have been acting of late years? Shall we, in a time of peace, have resort to the miserable expedient of loans? Shall we try a re-issue of exchequer bills? Shall we resort to the savings-banks? Shall we have recourse to any of

these plans, which are neither more nor less

than permanent additions to our debt?

We have to supply a deficiency of upwards of 5,000,0007. upon two years. Is there a prospect, by ordinary means, of retrieving the loss?

Can you calculate, do you anticipate, a possibility of reducing the amount of our next year's expenditure? I do not anticipate that such can be the case. Is this an occasional or a casual deficiency, and for which you can easily provide? Is it a deficiency for the present year only? It is not. This deficiency has existed for the last seven or eight years. It is not an occasional deficiency. In 1838 the deficiency was 1,428,0007.; in 1839 it was 430,0007.; in 1840 it was 1,457,000Z.; in 1841 it amounted to 1,851,000l.; in 1842 it amounted to 2,334,000l.: the amount of the deficiency in the five years was 7,500,000l. To that I add the estimated deficiency for 1843-2,570,000l.; making in all, for the six years, a deficiency of 10,070,000l.

After the proof I have given that our financial embarrassments are not mere occasional dif

superfluities, but which are now become almost the necessaries of life? I cannot consent to increase the taxation upon articles of subsistence consumed by the great body of the labouring portion of the community. I do think that you have had conclusive proof [in the failure of the 5 per cent. on the Excise and Customs] that you have arrived at the limits of profitable taxation on articles of subsistence.

Is it possible, then, to resort to other means? Shall I revive old taxes now abolished? Shall

take the duties of the post-office, for instance? will not say-speaking with that caution with which I am sometimes taunted, but which, nevertheless, I find very useful-I will not say that the post-office ought not to be a source of revenue. I will not say that it may not fairly become a means of taxation: but I say this, I do believe the late measure has not yet had its advantages that result from it, that I do not full trial; and that I am so sensible of the many think that in the present year it is advisable that we should change it. . . . Shall I revive taxes which were levied on great articles of consumption, and which were very productive?— shall I revive the taxes on salt, on leather, on wool? I do not know but, in respect to leather, that the reduction of that tax took place without, public benefit; I fear that the full amount of the advantage did not go to the consumer... I fear that, in this instance, you reduced a duty which benefited monopolists. But the question is not now whether we shall reduce an existing tax; it is whether we shall revive duties which have been done away with, and in the abolition of which various compacts and commercial arrangements have taken place.'

After showing by some details the impolicy and bad faith he might, we think, have said the impossibility-of reviving taxes lately repealed, he proceeded to notice the various objects of new taxation which had been suggested-some impolitic, as weighing upon new industry, such as on railroads and gas-lights-others simply ridiculous, as on forte-pianos and um

brellas.

trum of lowering the tariff as a source of He then exposed the Whig nosimmediate revenue-and he showed (as the Quarterly Review, No. cxxxv, had done, and as everybody who ever thought on the subject must know) that the improvement of the revenue by a reduction of duty must be in most cases a doubtful, and in all a slow process, and wholly inadequate to meet the present emergency; and this obvious truth he illustrated by some remarkable ex amples drawn, partly from the great experi

ment of reduction made by Lord Liver-, right. We have been told by some who pool's government in 1825, partly from some affect an air of authority that an income tax more recent alterations. On wine, for in- is essentially and exclusively a war tax. stance, the duty was lowered from 9s 14d. We beg leave to ask why it should be so? to 4s. 24d. the gallon-the revenue fell im and in what code that dogma is written? mediately 800,000/ a-year, and has never Lord Brougham, the powerful and victoriyet recovered itself; and wine we should ous adversary of the attempt to continue the have, à priori, thought to be the very most former Income Tax after the war, holds no promising article for such an experiment. such doctrine; but, on the contrary, in a So of tobacco; so of sugar; so of hemp; series of very able and argumentative Resso even of newspapers, on which the reduc-olutions which he offered to the House of tion was so great, that, coupled with the growing taste for newspaper reading, a different result might have been anticipated. Coffee indeed was in some degree an exception to the general failure-yet it was three years before the duty even on coffee recovered its former amount; and we need hardly observe that an article which, like coffee, is introduced into habitual consump. tion as a substitute for other food is an exceptional case, and would be an unsafe guide for a general system.

Lords on the 17th of March last, he places the proposition of the tax and his own acquiescence in it on their true grounds :—

That a direct tax on income ought never to be resorted to, unless in some great emergency of public affairs, when an extraordinary expenditure may become unavoidable for a time, or in which can be sustained by no other means.' some pressure upon the finances of the country

The principle of an Income Tax is thisthat in great emergencies, which in an esWhile the prospect of any adequate re-pecial degree endanger property, it is just lief by the ordinary processes of taxation and natural to ask property to make special was thus hopeless, the general emergency exertions to protect itself. Hitherto such had become more pressing increased ex- emergencies had arisen only in war-but penses-growing commercial embarrass- ten years of Whig misrule, during what ment-aggravated distress of the labouring Lord Palmerston called Peace, had brought classes-want of work, and consequently the public revenue and public credit into a want of food-discontent-sedition, almost insurrection! It is indeed a master-mind that could see its way through such difficulties, and a master hand that could control them--nay, that could make the very difficulties themselves equipoise, as it were, and correct one another-and could by a skilful adaptation bring them to contribute, each its quota, to an enlarged and general system for the security of public credit and the development of national resources.

The first object, the basis of the whole operation, was to find means of equalizing the Revenue with the Expenditure. This an Income Tax was certain to do, and it was nearly as certain that nothing else would remission of taxes had failed-increase of taxes had failed-per centage on taxes had failed ;* and not only failed, but had failed under circumstances that forbad a repetition of such experiments. In this position Sir Robert Peel did not shrink from the deep responsibility and supposed unpopularity of an Income Tax; he formed a juster estimate of the honesty as well as the ability of the country-he knew that it could, and he believed that it would, make any exertion necessary for the maintenance of public credit, and he was, every way,

*The per centage on the Assessed Taxes laid on

by Mr. Baring, in 1840, had not failed, as we shall more particularly notice; but everything else had.

more serious and pressing jeopardy than
our most gigantic War had done. We had
had for six or seven years a growing and
accumulating deficit a word which was
unknown to our language, as the thing was
to our finances, till Lord Melbourne's min-
istry-a deficit larger than that which had
occasioned the first Revolution in France-
a deficit which those who caused it had
abandoned all hope of reducing—a deficit,
in short, which if not extirpated would, like
a cancer, have eaten into the vitals of every
species of property. Every species of
danger and in the cure.
property was therefore interested in the
We were engaged
-to say nothing of Affghanistan and Chi-
na-in a WAR against national bankruptcy,
and therefore Sir Robert Peel was, even in
the narrowest view of the case, sufficiently
justified in calling up the only effectual aid
which circumstances had left the country.

But he had higher views in proposing his Income Tax than those which would have sufficed for mere justification. Public credit was indeed his first and most pressing object-but he saw there were other great interests whose claims on his attention and sympathy were very urgent, and to which, if possible, some relief should be immediately afforded. We shall not here pause to inquire whether the prodigious extension of our Manufactures ought

to be, on abstract consideration, matter of occasions are rare in which they can be, by regret or satisfaction-whether, if we were any administrative measures, even imperfounding a Utopia, we should have wished fectly relieved; and we do not remember so large a proportion of our national any instance in which such a relief was strength and our social existence to be im- generally and systematically attempted. plicated in enterprises so essentially fluctu-It remained for Sir Robert Peel to take ating and precarious-whether the vast and advantage of a circumstance, to the common rapid accession of wealth which these en-eye, so inauspicious as a great financial terprises produce be not counterbalanced difficulty, to endeavour to afford some relief by the sudden and extensive distress which to those social and commercial embarrassevery fluctuation of seasons, markets, and ments: any minister might have thought even fashion, is certain to inflict on a popu- of meeting the deficit by an Income Tax, lation factitiously created by these manu- though few would have had the courage to factures, and which cannot exist without have attempted it; but to propose and them.* These may be interesting ques-apply it as Sir Robert Peel has done-to tions for the speculative philosopher, but pay our debts, and at the same time inthe practical statesman must deal with the crease our capital-to escape from imminent existing facts. We might on moral and bankruptcy and to create by the same effort social grounds prefer, and feel it our duty a surplus for the alleviation of distress, for to encourage, an agricultural rather than a the encouragement of industry, and for manufacturing population-but our present sowing with a liberal hand the seeds of lot is cast---we must take it as it is, and reviving prosperity and of future wealthabide the consequences of a system which, this is what we pronounce to be a happy wisely or unwisely, we have created, and novelty in the annals of finance. May the gradually swelled to its present gigantic ultimate success be answerable to so original proportions. and so noble a conception!

See, then, besides the mere financial financial The public approbation and parliamentary embarrassment-what a variety and mag- support which enabled Sir Robert Peel to nitude of other difficulties were afloat. carry this great measure do honour to the Trade, and particularly manufacturing national character; for, contrary to the trade, was low and languishing-the de- usual course of things, the burden was most clared value of the exports of cotton cheerfully accepted by those on whom it manufactures had fallen off one million was expected to fall with the greatest in the last year. In 1840 they were severity. The leaders of the Opposition 17,000,000, in 1841 only 16,000,000l. had at first determined to support the The financial, and consequently the com- measure, but they soon and suddenly mercial, affairs of our great partner in trade, changed their course, and every possible the United States, were deeply disordered, impediment to its progress was conjured and re-acted powerfully on our markets. up-in Parliament, the warfare of vexation France, Belgium, and Germany, were and delay, adjourned debates, discussions closing their doors against our industry-on petitions, and bye-battles on every prethus enhancing, though to their own ulti-tence-out of Parliament, harangues, promate cost, the immediate distress of our cessions, placards, and every other device manufacturing masses. The Poor-Rates of agitation. No effort was omitted to exhad been for the last four years rapidly in- cite the middle orders against a tax which creasing, and threatened, after overwhelm- was, they were told, a peculiar hardship ing the town districts, to invade-by rates on them. But in vain; the honesty and in aid-the rural ones. For much-for the good sense of the people rendered abortive greater part of such evils no Government the incendiary efforts of their would-becan be responsible-it can neither wholly leaders; and the sound and practical view prevent nor effectually cure them, and the of the case taken in Lord Brougham's Resolutions had undoubtedly a considerable * Dr. Holland, of Sheffield, has, in a scries of effect upon reasonable men of all sides. in a very striking way the concomitant progress of But peculiar credit is due to the majorities manufacturing wealth and popular distress. The of the House of Lords and Commons, and great mill-owners are so unscrupulous as to charge to the great Conservative party throughout this distress to the account of the Aristocracy, the the country; for it cannot be denied that it Government, the state of the Law, nd especially the Corn-law. Dr. Holland, on the contrary, proves appeared, at first sight, that, in the new that it is produced by the millocracy—that is, by the adjustment of the general burden, the overgrowth of the manufacturing system; and that it is one of the inevitable accompaniments, if in- property of the country, and particularly the deed it be not the main source, of the prosperity of landed property, which constitutes the most prominent strength of the Conservative

letters, under the title of The Millocrat,' exhibited

the millocrats themselves.

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