[14] Mr. Goschen based his case on the fact that Local Government was a chaos of areas, rating, and authorities. He proposed (1), that each parish should have an elected chairman who, aided but not controlled by it, should be the rating authority; (2), that county rates should be levied by a financial board, half being elected by justices and half by parish chairmen; (3), that a new department of State or Local Government Board should be created to supervise local finance and administration; (4), that rates should be split between occupier and owner, and levied on all exempted property, such as Crown property, charitable property, moneys, and game; (5), that the house duty (£1,200,000 a year) should be surrendered to the local ratepayers.
[15] His estimated expenditure was £72,308,000, and his estimated revenue £69,595,000 on the existing basis of taxation, and without any new duties.
[16] There was to be a halfpenny stamp on boxes of wooden matches, and a penny stamp on boxes of wax matches or fusees. It was expected that these duties would yield £550,000 the first year. Mr. Lowe invented a motto for the stamp—ex luce lucellum (“out of light a little profit”)—a classical pun, which, however, did not reconcile the people to his proposals.
[17] Mr. Lowe desirous of not putting more than 1-1/4d. in the £ on the income-tax, proposed to calculate it at 10s. 8d. per cent. This novel method of calculating the tax, which was not necessary when the round sum of 2d. in the £ was adopted, was unpopular because it was puzzling.
[18] Letters and Journals of W. Stanley Jevons, p. 252.
[19] The British Commissioners were Earl de Grey, whose services on the Commission were rewarded by his elevation to the Marquisate of Ripon, Sir Stafford Northcote, Mr. Montagu Bernard, and two distinguished Canadians.
[20] One arbitrator was to be chosen by the Queen and one by the President of the United States. The three others were to be nominated by the King of Italy, the President of the Swiss Republic, and the Emperor of Brazil.
[21] Lord Russell, however, took a personal rather than a Party view of the question. He could not forget that he was individually responsible for the occurrences and acrimonious despatches that had embittered Americans against England.
[22] “Not an inch of our territory, and not a stone of our fortresses.”
[23] Bismarck’s personal opinion of the terms of peace was that Germany asked too much or took too little. She should have either left France her territory, thereby depriving her of an incitement to revenge, or she should have broken and crushed her so utterly, that she must have been paralysed for a century. As it was, in spite of the heavy war-indemnity which Germany exacted, France in fifteen years recovered herself sufficiently to render her antagonism formidable, and as a standing inducement to a war of revenge, she had ever before her eyes the hope of recovering Alsace, Lorraine, and her lost fortresses.