These arguments produced a great effect. The Commons committee, though it adopted the principle of a rate in aid in a preliminary report, declined to agree to the maximum without receiving evidence. The Lords committee, by a large majority, refused to adopt the rate in aid. Twistleton, the head of the Poor Law Commission in Ireland, resigned his office from a disapproval of the measure. On the other hand, the ministry received help from a quarter to which they had more than once been indebted. In a great speech, in which he unfolded his whole ideas of Irish policy, Peel gave the support of his authority to the measure of the Government. There were two reasons, so he argued, why there was no injustice in imposing a special 6d. rate on all Ireland. In the first place, Ireland was exempt from the income-tax; in the next place, she had never repaid the sums which had been advanced to her years before for building workhouses.3 Ireland, therefore, which had thrown on the rest of the kingdom the burden of a debt incurred in her interests, and which had been relieved from direct taxation to which other portions of the kingdom were subject, might, without injustice, be compelled to contribute a rate in aid to support her own poor. If, indeed, the Irish preferred to make a serious effort to repay their debts, Peel added, amidst the laughter of the House, that he would be disposed to consider the propriety of exempting them from the rate in aid. If she made no such effort, he declared his determination to support the proposal of the ministry.+ Strengthened by the authority and the arguments of Peel, the ministry succeeded in carrying the measure by large. majorities in the Commons; 5 and the Lords, conscious of 1 See Lord Monteagle's analysis of the majority, Hansard, vol. cv. p. 303. Every independent peer, not an office-holder, voted against it. 2 Ibid., vol. civ. p. 476. 3 1,200,000 had been advanced, out of which only £36,000 had been repaid. 4 Ibid., vol. ciii. p. 183. Cf. Peel's speech on this occasion with his speech on the second reading of the bill, ibid., vol. civ. p. 87. 5 The Opposition met the proposal by an amendment to throw the rate on all property and income in Ireland above the value of £150. This was The Rate in Aid Bill passed. their inability to defeat it, and unwilling to risk the consequences of its rejection, had the good sense to stay away from their House and to allow it to pass.1 The prospect of its passage had in the meanwhile enabled the ministry to introduce a fresh measure of temporary relief. The £50,000 voted at the commencement of the session was already exhausted. In the middle of April it obtained authority to advance a further £100,000 towards the relief of distressed unions on the security of the rate in aid.2 to 75. Difference between Lords and Commons. So far the ministry had succeeded in carrying out its plan. On the 26th of April, after the Rate in Aid Bill had left the Commons, Russell introduced his other measure for the amendment of the Irish Poor Law. The most important provisions of the bill, as it was presented to and passed the Commons, were those which limited the rate in the electoral division of the union to 55., the rate in the union These clauses the Lords struck out by decisive majorities. Their action raised a curious issue. An amendment which struck a maximum rate out of the bill enabled an increased rate to be imposed on the ratepayer. It therefore imposed or authorised the imposition of additional taxation. No usage, however, is so clearly fixed as that which precludes the Lords from initiating any tax on the people. For more than two centuries the Lords have refrained from even amending a money bill, and have confined themselves to either accepting or rejecting the measure as a whole. Strictly speaking, therefore, the action of the Lords in amending the bill was an infraction of the privileges of the Commons, and was authoritatively declared to be so by the Speaker himself. On many defeated by 237 votes to 164. Hansard, vol. ciii. p. 314. A similar motion made afterwards for an income-tax (ibid., vol. civ. p. 474) was also defeated by 194 votes to 146. Ibid., p. 593. 1 The second reading in the Lords was only carried by 48 votes to 46. Ibid., vol. cv. p. 322. 2 Ibid., vol. civ. p. 467, 12 & 13 Vict. c. 25, sec. 4 The Act was to run for two years. questions, however, which indirectly dealt with local rates. the Commons had waived their privileges. They had done. so in the case of the Poor Law of 1834; in the case of the Irish Poor Law of 1838; in the case of the amended Irish Poor Law Act of 1847; and of the Irish Municipal Act of 1838; and Russell, quoting these precedents, proposed that the Commons should follow them, and not insist upon their privileges. His advice was adopted, and the minister proceeeded to recommend agreement with the Lords. course which he thus took undoubtedly facilitated the passage of the measure, but its passage in a shape which differed from that which it had originally worn. The maximum rate both in union and district disappeared, and was never afterwards revived.1 The The Com mous give way. In all probability the Commons more readily assented to waive their privileges on this occasion because few among them liked the principle which the Lords had rejected. They had surrendered their convictions to their party, and were not sorry for the opportunity which their leader afforded them of getting rid of a distasteful provision. In truth, it was no easy matter to prove to an ordinary country gentleman that, if it were impossible to fix a maximum for the poor rate in Wiltshire, it was indispensable to fix a maximum for it in Limerick. Yet something could be urged in favour of the Government plan. In many cases the landlords were irretrievably ruined. The only chance of relieving the district in which their property was situate lay in helping them to sell it to solvent capitalists. But no man in his senses would have bought an estate in Ireland which was liable to an indefinite poor rate for the support of a teeming population without food. The ministry, therefore, desired 1 For the original scheme, Hansard, vol. civ. p. 860; for the division in the Lords throwing out the maximum, ibid., vol. cvii. p. 393; for the debate on privilege, ibid., p. 1040. The Act is the 12 & 13 Vict. c. 104 The Act, as it passed, provided for the rearrangement of Unions, for emigration, for charging annuities, &c., secured on land with a portion of the poor rates, and for the exemption for seven years of improved land with an increased assessment in consequence of such improvements. to face the risks which a maximum poor rate involved, for the sake of creating confidence where there was no trust, and the Lords' amendments, however defensible they may have been, retarded probably to some extent the flow of capital into Ireland. 1 From the beginning to the end of the session the proceedings in the House of Commons had been little more than a series of debates on Irish subjects. Yet the longest sentence may have a parenthesis, and, in the intervals between these The Navi- discussions, the ministry found leisure to deal with gation Acts. one subject of vast importance. The nation had steadily resolved to secure free trade. Yet free trade is an empty term unless the vessels in which the trade is carried are also free; and for centuries the carrying trade had been regulated on principles of monopoly. From the time of the Plantagenets certain commodities could only be imported in English vessels manned by English seamen; from the time of the Tudors the coasting trade was reserved for Englishmen alone; and, from the time of the Commonwealth, all foreign ships without a licence were precluded from trading with the British plantations in America, and no commodities were allowed to be imported into England or Ireland from Asia, Africa, or America, except in English vessels of which the master and the greater number of the crew were English, or from Europe except in English vessels, or in vessels the property of the country or place from which the goods were brought. It was the habit of the Parliament of the Restoration to confirm the bad and to reject the good in the policy of the Commonwealth. By Acts of 1660 and Acts of 1662, the Restoration Parliament practically reimposed Cromwell's Navigation Laws. These laws, when they were originally framed, were dictated 1 In addition to the measures stated in the text, the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced a measure in May, advancing £300,000 for purposes of land improvement, and £200,000 for drainage (Hansard, vol. civ. p. 1260); and, towards the end of the session, he made a further grant of £500,000 for the purposes of the Galway and Athlone Railway, and of £150,000 for poor relief. Ibid., vol. cvii. pp. 50, 76. At the commencement of the session the ministry obtained the continuance of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act for a further period. Ibid., vol. cii. p. 306. by a jealousy of the Dutch. The Dutch have proved, on the whole, the most formidable rivals the British have ever encountered at sea; and in the seventeenth century they occasionally rode masters of the Channel, and threatened to absorb the whole carrying trade of the world. Any legislation seemed desirable which tended to deprive them of the advantages which they had thus secured. Nor can it be denied that high authorities may be quoted in support of the legislation which. was adopted. Adam Smith is the profoundest thinker on economical subjects that Britain has yet produced, and in a famous passage, after pointing out the many disadvantages. which the Navigation Laws inflicted on trade, he declared that, "as defence is of much more importance than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England." Mill in the nineteenth century endorsed Adam Smith's conclusions. "When the Navigation Laws were enacted," he wrote, "the Dutch, from their maritime skill and their low rate of profit at home, were able to carry for other nations, England included, at cheaper rates than those nations could carry for themselves; which placed all other nations at a great comparative disadvantage in obtaining experienced seamen for their ships of war. The Navigagation Laws, by which this deficiency was remedied, and at the same time a blow struck against the maritime power of a nation with which England was then frequently engaged in hostilities, were probably, though economically disadvantageous, politically expedient." It requires some courage to dissent from a conclusion which is supported by the authority of Adam Smith and Mill. Yet it may be doubted whether the Navigation Acts were ever attended with the effects which Adam Smith and Mill attributed to them. The causes which led to the development of British trade and the supremacy of the British at sea were probably quite other than the existence of a Navigation Act. "Navigation and naval power," wrote M'Culloch,3 "are the 1 Wealth of Nations, fifth edition, vol. ii. p. 195. 2 Political Economy, People's Edition, p. 555. |