House of Commons when, on the 26th of February, he brought his plan under its notice. He contended that military expenditure had caused the increase of £10,000,000, which he desired to reduce. Therefore he moved that the expenditure under this head be diminished with all practicable speed. The insular position of England was itself a sure defence against her enemies.
JOHN BRIGHT (1857).
Provided she did not interfere recklessly with foreign nations, she had less to fear in 1849 than in 1835. Why, then, should the military and naval expenditure of 1835 be exceeded? Vast sums of money, too, were spent on the Colonies. Here also a reduction might be effected, for the English taxpayer got no more food from the Colonies than the foreign one did. At this period it was evident that Mr. Cobden had not put to the test the sound maxim that “trade follows the flag.” The answer of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was that in 1835, to the expenditure of which Mr. Cobden wanted to revert, no adequate provision had been made for the true wants of the country; and that, since then, many things had happened to increase expenditure unavoidably. The introduction of steam into the Navy was an illustration of these changes. Moreover, the Government had reduced expenditure by about a million and a half sterling—and that was surely a pledge of their earnestness as financial reformers.
The Tories put Mr. Herries forward to attack both parties. He blamed Ministers for encouraging the financial reformers, and denounced Mr. Cobden for the violence of his speeches out of doors on the subject. The policy of the Tories was to demand that expenditure should not be lessened, whilst there was ground for anxiety as to foreign affairs. One of their arguments was an odd one. It was that, as the revenue was still maintained in spite of the repeal of vast sums of taxation, there was no ground for pretending that retrenchment was necessary because the people felt that taxation was pressing hard on them. They did not seem to see that this was either an argument in favour of raising revenue without imposing any taxes at all—which was a reductio ad absurdum—or an argument to show that reductions of taxation still left Government with enough money in hand to defend the interests of the country, which was virtually an admission that Mr. Cobden’s plan, if tried, could do no harm. The Free Traders made a bid for the rural vote by arguing that, if the landed interest wanted the relief which the Protectionists promised them, they ought to vote for the reduction in expenditure, which would enable Parliament to grant that relief. Mr. Cobden’s first scheme of Financial Reform was rejected by a vote of 275 to 78. But this did not allay the uneasiness of the public, who began to fret over the extraordinary delay that took place in the production of the Budget. It was not till the 29th of June that Sir Charles Wood made his financial statement to the House. It was not a cheering one. The expenditure, which was £53,287,110, had exceeded the Ministerial estimate by £1,219,379, and it exceeded the revenue of the year by £269,378. Of course, by excluding unexpected outlays on Irish distress, Canadian emigration, &c., a more favourable state of accounts could be shown; but, as the excluded money had been spent, there was really no reason for ignoring it. For the coming year his estimated expenditure, he said, would be £52,157,696, and his estimated receipts would yield, he hoped, a surplus over that of £94,304. Sir Charles Wood’s strongest points were that every effort would be made to keep current expenditure within current income, and that instead of using small surpluses to remit small sums of taxation, they would be kept as the nucleus of large surpluses, for the reduction of large amounts of taxation. The Radicals and Financial Reformers were not satisfied with Sir Charles Wood’s long list of objectionable taxes that had been removed. In spite of all that, expenditure increased—and what was worse, there was a steady increase in permanent burdens on the revenue, in the shape of charges for the Public Debt. Mr. Hume demanded that Excise be done away with, and that the example of Sir James Graham, who reduced the expenses of the Admiralty by £1,200,000, be followed. Mr. Milner Gibson attacked the paper duty, the newspaper stamp duty, and the tax on advertisements, as taxes on knowledge; and he cited the petition of the Messrs. Chambers of Edinburgh, who declared that the paper duty had stopped the continuance of a work for the humbler classes which they were bringing out, and of which there had been a sale of 80,000 copies. Everybody wanted some special duty repealed, either that on hops, bricks, soap, beer, malt, tea, or timber. The Budget was felt to be unsatisfactory, for, as Mr. Cobden said, it made the two ends barely meet. At the close of the Session (20th of July) Mr. Herries supplemented this discussion by starting another question—that of raising some portion of the supplies of the State by a fixed duty on corn. The Protectionists argued that Sir Charles Wood’s estimates were too sanguine, and that more taxes must be imposed on the people, unless a small duty were put on foreign corn. This was not to be a protective duty, but one merely for revenue purposes, and as such surely it was justifiable. It would be only a tax on food in name; in fact, the defence of the proposal was like the Irish vagrant’s apology for the existence of her baby—“Please, sir, it’s only a very little one.” Of course the Free Traders sprang upon Mr. Herries with great glee. The Tories were going round the country promising the farmers Protection. But when they came to the House of Commons all they ventured to ask for was a small fixed duty on corn, which was to be levied not for protective but for revenue purposes. The position was an awkward one for Mr. Herries. Either his small fixed duty did or did not raise the price of corn. If it did, he was deceiving the House of Commons. If it did not, he was deceiving his clients among the farmers. His move was obviously one for putting heart into a desponding faction.
It has been said that Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright had come to the conclusion that, side by side with the agitation for retrenchment, there should be pressed forward that for Parliamentary Reform. Accordingly, Mr. Hume introduced his motion for Parliamentary Reform in the House of Commons on the 4th of June, demanding Household Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, Triennial Parliaments, and something approaching to equal electoral districts. The opposition of the Whigs, who argued that reform was unnecessary because many good measures had been passed by Parliament, and that to extend the franchise would endanger the Monarchy, induced the House to reject the motion by a vote of 268 to 82.
But a topic far more interesting to the Queen, whose speciality is Foreign Policy, was brought under the notice of the House of Commons by Mr. Cobden a few days after Mr. Hume’s motion was disposed of. He suggested a plan whereby wars might cease, and civilised nations might compose their quarrels by Arbitration. On the 12th of June Cobden moved an Address to the Crown, praying that Foreign Powers might be invited to concur in treaties binding them to accept Arbitration in settling their disputes with each other. The Government did not openly resist the motion. They got rid of it by putting up Lord Palmerston to move the “previous question;” but the tone of the debate showed that, though the House was dubious about the practicability of Mr. Cobden’s plan, it had been profoundly impressed with his reasoning.
