1848.] AN UNPOPULAR BUDGET. 351 the loss of the protection which differential duties on foreign sugar had given them in the English market, took up their case at this inopportune moment with more warmth than prudence. He moved for and obtained the appointment of a Committee to inquire into their grievances. In June the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, brought forward a proposal to advance £200,000—ultimately the sum was fixed at £170,000-for the purpose of helping planters to get coolie labour. Lord John Russell subsequently announced further concessions. He refused to exclude slave-grown sugar from the English market. He, however, proposed to reduce the duty on colonial sugar, leaving ordinary foreign sugar at its existing rate. But he applied to both colonial sugar and certain varieties of foreign sugar a descending scale of reduction, which would in 1855 end in equalising them, though up to that period a slight advantage would be given to the colonial sugar. The philanthropists attacked the scheme because they demanded the total exclusion of slave-grown sugars. Some Free Traders like Mr. Hume attacked it, because they thought the true remedy lay in letting the colonists have more freedom in importing labour, and in managing their own affairs. A painful scene took place during these debates between Lord George Bentinck and Lord John Russell. Lord George declared in violent language that Mr. Hawes, UnderSecretary for the Colonies, had suppressed a despatch which threw light on colonial distress. Lord John Russell jeered at his antagonist's connection with the turf, where alone, he said, such tricks were common. Mr. Disraeli retorted by saying that for his services in detecting a turf fraud Lord George Bentinck had been thanked by a Committee, the chairman of which was the Duke of Bedford, Lord John Russell's brother. During this wrangling the House of Commons was converted into a bear-garden, and members roared and hooted at each other as if they were maniacs. The Government carried their proposal only by a majority of fifteen, and this, together with loss of prestige from bad management and clumsy Parliamentary tactics, further weakened the Cabinet in the eyes of the public. Even the Queen began to think she might soon have to send for Lord Stanley, for it was only Sir Robert Peel's support that kept the Administration alive. The financial statement of the Government, which was made, not by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir C. Wood), but by Lord John Russell himself, early in the year, had been disappointing. He estimated a deficit of £2,141,209, and he said it must be met either by increasing taxation, or reducing the cost of the Army and Navy. But the agitation which had been raised by the Duke of Wellington about the defenceless state of the country drove the Ministry to increase the military and naval estimate by £358,000, in addition to which Lord John Russell decided to take a Militia vote of £150,000. He proposed, therefore, to continue the Income Tax, which was to expire in April, 1849, for five years, raising it from 7d. to 1s. in the pound. The duties on copper ore, equal to £41,000, were to be remitted, which would leave a surplus of £113,000 on the Estimates. Never did a Budget raise such a storm of opposition. Were Ministers mad, asked Mr. Hume, that they proposed to increase taxation during a time of commercial distress and seething political discontent? He and Mr. Cobden demanded, like all the Radicals, a reduction of armaments to meet the estimated deficit on the Budget. All the Protectionists, of course, fell upon the Ministry, crying, "Behold the fatal results of Free Trade!" and demanding the substitution of indirect taxation, or import duties, instead of an increased Income Taxa tax which, said they, they would never have permitted Sir Robert Peel to impose, had it had not been understood that it was to be only a temporary one. Sir Charles Wood in a few days offered to refer the Estimates to Select and Secret Committees, a proposition violently attacked, as tending to relieve Ministers of their constitutional responsibility, and permit Committees of the House to encroach on the true functions of the Executive. Then the country rose as one man against the Budget, and members were threatened with the loss of their seats if they voted for an increased Income Tax. On the 28th of February Sir Charles Wood accordingly brought in an amended Budget. He would continue the existing Income Tax for five, or, if the House decided, for three years; but for two years, to meet a deficit which he thought was temporary, he proposed to add 5 per cent. to it. This still further irritated the country, whose ideas on taxation the Government utterly ignored. The working classes scoffed at the House which fretted over the addition of sevenpence in the pound on the tax on their incomes, when they paid twice. as many shillings in the pound on the great staples of their consumption. The middle classes complained that Ministers paid no heed to their demand that a distinction be made between permanent and precarious incomes, and for the adjustment of the tax to the means and substance of the taxpayer. Meantime the Select Committee on the Estimates were reducing them. On the 25th of August Sir C. Wood stated to the House that the Committee had so adjusted revenue and expenditure that there would only be a deficit of £292,305 to meet. To that he had to add the extraordinary expenditure of the year, incurred on account of the Caffre War, together with sums for relieving fresh distress in Ireland, which brought the total deficit to be met to £2,031,226. This sum the Government proposed to borrow in the open market. After some protests from the Radicals against increasing the floating debt in time of peace, and against the refusal of the Government to reduce establishments, the Ministry carried their point. But the Cobdenites taunted them with Sir Robert Peel's remark, that he would not attempt to govern the country unless he could equalise its expenditure and its revenue. Parliament in 1848 was tolerably free from discussions on the interminable Irish question. But Mr. Smith O'Brien, the leader of the Irish Party of Action, was in earnest, and his followers were full of enthusiasm for Irish nationality. Lord Clarendon had attempted to conciliate the priesthood, 1848.] BILL AGAINST IRISH SEDITIOUS CLUBS. 353 but he had failed; and the Executive in Dublin sought for increased power to maintain order in Ireland. Hence a Bill aimed at seditious clubs was brought forward by the Government. It empowered the Lord-Lieutenant to arrest and detain any person whom he suspected of conspiring against the Queen's Government-in other words, it was proposed to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. The Bill passed rapidly through all its stages, even Radicals * It is interesting to record that Lord Brougham, in the House of Lords on the 21st of July, 1848, read a letter in which the writer said that Mr. O'Connell had, in conversation, suggested, three weeks before Sir R. Peel's Coercion Act was passed, that a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act would be preferable, as it "would cure and not irritate." Mr. O'Connell further stated that he would support Peel in pursuing that policy, provided the Minister would pledge himself to introduce the measures of relief and justice to Ireland which he had so often promised. like Mr. Hume voting for it, reluctantly, as a hateful incident in our Irish policy. They, however, warned the Ministry that they must lose no time in bringing in remedial measures, dealing with the Franchise, the Church, the Grand Jury laws, and Municipal Institutions in Ireland. On the 26th of July the Bill was passed through the Upper House. A few days afterwards Mr. Sharman Crawford, previous to the House of Commons going into Committee of Supply, moved that the distracted condition of Ireland demanded the constant attention of Parliament, and said that if he carried his motion he would follow it up with one which Lord John Russell had moved in 1844, referring the subject of Irish grievances to a Select Committee. He complained of the delays in remedial legislation; but Lord John Russell, though conciliatory, opposed the motion on the plea that it would be better to proceed gradually with the work of reform in Ireland, than to burden the House with the impossible task Mr. Crawford would impose on it. It was in this debate that Mr. Bernal Osborne complained that Ireland was governed, like a Crown Colony, with "a mock Sovereign, a Brummagen Court, and a pinchbeck Executive," and recommended the abolition of the Viceroyalty, the government of Ireland by a fourth Secretary of State, occasional sessions of the British Parliament in Dublin, and an annual visit of the Queen and Court to her Irish dominions. Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, also suggested that the Government would not be averse from modifying the position of the Established Church in Ireland, and there seemed to be in the minds of Ministers a disposition to seek, in a scheme of "concurrent endowment,' a solution of the Irish problem. Mr. Crawford's motion was rejected by a vote of 100 to 24. On the 24th of February the Lord Chancellor introduced the Irish Encumbered Estates Act. The measure provided for the swift and easy sale and transfer-voluntary or compulsory under an order of the Court of Chancery -of estates whose owners could not pay off their mortgages and had no capital to improve them. The mistake lay in selling along with the estates, which were the landlords', the improvements which, as a rule, were made by the tenants, and which in equity, and by the custom of land tenure in Ireland, belonged to the latter. The measure was therefore pregnant with evils which had to be dealt with subsequently by the Land Acts with which Mr. Gladstone's name will be permanently associated. What was the effect of the Chartist rising on Parliament? It bulks but slightly in the proceedings of the Legislature. On the 10th of April Mr. Feargus O'Connor presented to the House of Commons a petition signed by 5,706,000 persons in favour of the "six points of the Charter"—namely, Vote by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, Manhood Suffrage, Equal Electoral Districts, Abolition of Property Qualification for Members of Parliament, and Payment of Members. He moved that it be read by the clerk. The first sheet was taken up and the prayer read, whereupon the messengers of the Horse 1848.] THE CHARTIST PETITION. 355 gathered up the five great masses of parchment of which the petition consisted, and rolled it to the table. On the 13th Mr. Thornley, on behalf of the Select Committee on Petitions, reported that the Chartist petition weighed not five tons, as was alleged, but 5 cwts., and that it contained only 1,975,496 signatures, and not 5,706,000, as Mr. O'Connor had stated. Among these appeared the names of the Queen as "Victoria Rex," the Duke of Wellington, K.G., Sir Robert Peel, and names that were no names, such as "No Cheese," "Pugnose," "Flatnose," and the like, so that doubts as to the authenticity of the document might be fairly raised. Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Cripps exchanged pungent personalities over this discovery, and when Mr. O'Connor left the House, the Speaker, fearing a duel might be the result of the quarrel, induced Mr. Cripps to withdraw his imputations on Mr. O'Connor's honesty. Lord John Russell then moved that Mr. O'Connor be arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms. The offender, on being brought to the bar, gave explanations which brought the scene to an end. On the 7th of April Sir George Grey brought in the Crown Government Security Bill, which was a device of Lord Campbell's for reducing the offences created by the Act of 1796 from treason to felony, and for extending it to Ireland, where, as the law then stood, it was impossible to punish a revolutionary movement, except by treating it as treason or misdemeanour. This gave a deathblow to the odious statutory crime termed "constructive treason," substituting, as Lord Campbell says in his Journal, a plain, easy, popular method by which incipient traitors may be prosecuted as felons, and transported beyond the seas." In one of the debates on this Bill, Mr. Smith O'Brien, while professing his loyalty to the Queen, declared he was not loyal to the Government or to the Imperial Parliament, and would do what he could to overthrow the one and dissever the other. He lashed the House into fury by his references to his intrigues with the leaders of the French Revolution, and by menacing England with the hostility of the Republics of France and America. Campbell's Bill may be described as one to degrade "the spouters of stale sedition," as Mr. Disraeli once called them, to the level of vulgar criminals in the eyes of the people. A Bill enabling the Home Secretary on his responsibility to compel the departure of aliens visiting the country not from the usual motives of business and pleasure was denounced by the Radicals, led by Sir W. Molesworth, as "analogous in principle to the famous law of Suspected Persons of the 17th of September, 1793, one of the nost accursed laws of the Reign of Terror." Lord John Russell was taunted with having opposed a similar provision which disfigured the Aliens Act in his maiden speech in 1814, and Mr. David Urquhart amused the House by quoting Leviticus xxiv. 22 and Numbers ix. 14 against the proposal. It was, however, carried in both Houses. It was felt at this time that the House of Commons was not equal to the task of social legislation. A large Party, under the leadership of Mr. Joseph |