PITT’S PLAN OF FINANCIAL REFORM.
Encouraged by his success and increased popularity, on the 26th of February, Pitt introduced a plan for consolidating the various duties upon articles in the customs and excise, so as to convert them into single duties upon each article, and thereby get rid of multiplied grievances to the people, and of a perplexing confusion of accounts, and wasting expenses of collection to the government, an operation by which the revenue would gain about £20,000 per annum. At the same time Pitt proposed to lower the duties on foreign spirits, with a view of annihilating the smuggling trade, which he stated amounted to 4,000,000 of gallons annually; whilst that which was legally imported and paid duty did not exceed the sixth part of that quantity. The whole of Pitt’s plan obtained a large majority in both houses; the leading members of opposition expressing their approbation of it, as well as the clearness and perspicuity with which it had been unfolded. On a subsequent day, the 29th of April, when Pitt opened his budget, he informed the house that the state of the revenue would enable him to provide for all services of the current year, and apply the stated surplus to a sinking-fund, without the necessity of any loan or new tax. Fox and Sheridan contended that the finances were not in so prosperous a condition as he had represented; and after specifying certain supposed errors and fallacies, they called on the minister to supply the alleged deficiency by the imposition of new taxes. Pitt, however, defended his own estimates; contending that it was his duty to render, by every possible means, the taxes already established more productive, rather than increase the burdens of the people. In following out this judicious line of policy, he afterwards proposed a measure for enabling the board of treasury to divide the country into districts, and to farm the duty on post-horses, the greater part of which was now lost to the exchequer by collusion between innkeepers and collectors. To make it certain that the revenue would not suffer by this experiment, he suggested that the tax for each district should be put up at the highest point it had ever reached. This was opposed as contrary to the principles of the constitution, and as tending to oppression, like that exercised in France, where the taxes were generally farmed. Pitt, however, defended the measure by the analogy of turnpike-tolls and cross-posts, and by showing that the oppression alluded to arose, not from the system of farming, but from an arbitrary form of government, which naturally led to oppressive modes of collection. The bill passed the commons by a large majority, and was carried in the upper house without a division.