PARLIAMENTARY NOTES.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1219, 17 June 1872, Page 3

PARLIAMENTARY NOTES.

The session is now far advanced, but has not much completed frork to show. Mr Lowe anticipated the usual practice, and introduced his budget before Easter— a plain and sensible budget, which has excited no enthusiasm, and provoked but little criticism— safe and acceptable. Starting with a surplus of L 2,815,000, the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to take the 2d. off the income tax which was put on last year when the match tax was withdrawn, and to allow a deduction of LBO for necessary expenditure on all below L2OO. He will also reduce by onehalf the coffee and chicory duties — notwithstanding Sir John Lubbock's remark that "to hear some honorable members talk, one would suppose we were a nation of paupers, and that the great object of human existence,t|the highest aspiration of an enlightened people, was to drink the largest possible quantity of cheap tea. Since Easter, the Lord Chancellor has introduced a measure proposing to establish a Supreme Court of Appeal, to undertake the duties now discharged by the House of Lords and the Privy Council. Lord Kimberley has also brought into the Lords the Government proposal, much more moderate than that of last year, for the reform of thelicensiug system. In the Commons, the Ballot Bill creeps slowly through committee. Sir Massey Lopes obtained a large majority against the Government on a question of local taxation, on a resolution proposing to alter its incidence. He stated that the local taxation of the empire was L 40,000,000 a year, and he maintained that it was levied on barely one-seventh of the annual income of the country. The pressure of local taxes is one' of the great grievances of middle- class householders. There has been some little excitement among the working-class agitators of London about the Royal Parks and Gardens Bill, but it is now explained that it does not prohibit public meetings in the parks, though the conditions on which they are to be allowed have yet to be defined.