In consequence of his general reputation and also of this brilliant financial scheme, the first budget of Mr. Gladstone was waited for with intense interest. His first budget was introduced April 18, 1853. It was one of his greatest budgets, and for statesmanlike breadth of conception it has never been surpassed. In bringing it forward Mr. Gladstone spoke five hours, and during that length of time held the House spellbound. The speech was delivered with the greatest ease, and was perspicuity itself throughout. Even when dealing with the most abstruse financial detail his language flowed on without interruption, and he never paused for a word. "Here was an orator who could apply all the resources of a burnished rhetoric to the elucidation of figures; who could make pippins and cheese interesting and tea serious; who could sweep the widest horizon of the financial future and yet stoop to bestow the minutest attention on the microcosm of penny stamps and post-horses. The members on the floor and ladies in the gallery of the House listened attentively and showed no signs of weariness throughout." A contemporary awarded to him the palm for unsurpassed fluency and choice of diction, and says:
"The impression produced upon the minds of the crowded and brilliant assembly by Mr. Gladstone's evident mastery and grasp of the subject, was, that England had at length found a skillful financier, upon whom the mantle of Peel had descended. The cheering when the right honorable gentleman sat down was of the most enthusiastic and prolonged character, and his friends and colleagues hastened to tender him their warm congratulations upon the distinguished success he had achieved in his first budget."
The budget provided for the gradual reduction of the income tax to expire in 1860; for an increase in the duty on spirits; for the abolition of the soap duties; the reduction of the tax on cabs and hackney coaches; the introduction of the penny receipt stamp and the equalization of the assessed taxes on property. By these provisions it was proposed to make life easier and cheaper for large and numerous classes. The duty on 123 articles was abolished and the duty on 133 others reduced, the total relief amounting to $25,000,000. Mr. Gladstone gave a clear exposition of the income tax, which he declared was never intended to be permanent. It had been the last resort in times of national danger, and he could not consent to retain it as a part of the permanent and ordinary finances of the country. It was objectionable on account of its unequal incidence, of the harassing investigation into private affairs which it entailed and of the frauds to which it inevitably led.
The value of the reduction in the necessities of life proposed by Mr. Gladstone is seen from the following from a contemporary writer:
"The present budget, more than any other budget within our recollection, is a cupboard budget; otherwise, a poor man's budget. With certain very ugly features, the thing has altogether a good, hopeful aspect, together with very fair proportions. It is not given to any Chancellor of the Exchequer to make a budget fascinating as a fairy tale. Nevertheless, there are visions of wealth and comfort in the present budget that mightily recommend it to us. It seems to add color and fatness to the poor man's beef; to give flavor and richness to the poor man's plum-pudding. The budget is essentially a cupboard budget; and let the name of Gladstone be, for the time at least, musical at the poor man's fireside."
It unquestionably established Gladstone as the foremost financier of his day. Greville, in his "Memoirs," says of him: "He spoke for five hours; and by universal consent it was one of the grandest displays and most able financial statements that ever was heard in the House of Commons; a great scheme, boldly and skillfully and honestly devised, disdaining popular clamor and pressure from without, and the execution of its absolute perfection."
We reproduce some extracts from this important speech: "Depend upon it, when you come to close quarters with this subject, when you come to measure and test the respective relations of intelligence and labor and property in all their myriad and complex forms, and when you come to represent those relations in arithmetical results, you are undertaking an operation of which I should say it was beyond the power of man to conduct it with satisfaction, but which, at any rate, is an operation to which you ought not constantly to recur; for if, as my noble friend once said with universal applause, this country could not bear a revolution once a year, I will venture to say that it cannot bear a reconstruction of the income tax once a year.
"Whatever you do in regard to the income tax, you must be bold, you must be intelligible, you must be decisive. You must not palter with it. If you do, I have striven at least to point out as well as my feeble powers will permit, the almost desecration I would say, certainly the gross breach of duty to your country, of which you will be found guilty, in thus putting to hazard one of the most potent and effective among all its material resources. I believe it to be of vital importance, whether you keep this tax or whether you part with it, that you should either keep it or should leave it in a state in which it will be fit for service on an emergency, and that it will be impossible to do if you break up the basis of your income tax.
"If the Committee have followed me, they will understand that we found ourselves on the principle that the income-tax ought to be marked as a temporary measure; that the public feeling that relief should be given to intelligence and skill as compared with property ought to be met, and may be met with justice and with safety, in the manner we have pointed out; that the income tax in its operation ought to be mitigated by every rational means, compatible with its integrity; and, above all, that it should be associated in the last term of its existence, as it was in the first, with those remissions of indirect taxation which have so greatly redoubled to the profit of this country and have set so admirable an example—an example that has already in some quarters proved contagious to the other nations of the earth, These are the principles on which we stand, and these the figures. I have shown you that if you grant us the taxes which we ask, to the moderate amount of £2,500,000 in the whole, much less than that sum for the present year, you, or the Parliament which may be in existence in 1860, will be in the condition, if it shall so think fit, to part with the income tax."
Sir, I scarcely dare to look at the clock, shamefully reminding me, as it must, how long, how shamelessly, I have trespassed on the time of the committee. All I can say in apology is that I have endeavored to keep closely to the topics which I had before me—