THE FRENCH BUDGET. [From the Times, March 20.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 733, 11 August 1852, Page 4

THE FRENCH BUDGET. [From the Times, March 20.]

The Ruler of France could scarcely have given the world a more direct proof of his contempt for the legislative bodies his pwn Constitution has just called into existence, than by determining by decree the taxation and expenditure of the current year just ten days before the -commencement of what is derisorily termed the Legislative Session. It was imagined that the Assembly just elected by universal suffrage, though deprived of the power of making laws or publishing its speeches, might be employed to consider the provisions of the Budget, aud to give the formal assent of the nation to schemes affecting the property of the people and the credit of the State. But the secrecy and precipitation with which measures like the reduction of the Five per cents, and the "" budget of the year have been promulgated and enforced by the sole will and pleasure" of the Government, have already destroyed this last fiction of representative power. The taxes are imposed, the supplies raised, and the property of the nation disposed of under the general powers usurped by the Government ; and as it may be supposed that some limit will be placed upon this dictatorship after the meeting of the Senate and Legislative body, the interval still to elapse before the 29th March will be crowded with the hasty inventions of arbitrary power. In matters of finance especially there is a wide difference between the abrupt and indefinite edicts of despotic authority and the patient scrutiny and general consent that establishes' a law. The same act assumes a totally different cbaracter under the two forms of authority — for the former excited suspicions or apprehensions which shake public confidence ; and the latter places the new arrangements on the solid footing of the past. The one is revolution, the other law. Hence the reduciion of the" Five per Cents., though in itself a legal and even a desirable measure, has given a blow to the funded credit of France, because no one lenows where such measures may stop ; and the hardship is the more severely felt because, when the savings banks, suspended their payments after the revolution of 1848, the persons who bad deposited money in" those institutions were compelled by the State to receive rentes instead of cash. Tnus the number of small holders in the Five per Cent, stocks -was snddenly and enormously increased in 1848 ; yet these same persons are now compelled to submit to a reduction on the interest of the equivalent which they were forced to receive for their deposits, if they have not already taken advantage of the state of the market to dispose of it. Under a free Government the claims of these persons would have beeu duly. represented and considered; but now they are treated by Louis Napoleon in the funds almost as summarily as they were treated in the savings banks by the Provincial Government. The neur budget is open to the same objection. -JBy losing all publicity of discussion, and by evading the criticisms and objections of the Opposition, it looses its authority. We can only look upon it as a statement dressed up to meet the exigency of the moment, but in which we find no certain evidence of the resources or liabilities of the State. By a return to the old form of the Budgets of the Empire, which ~is now revived 'as a novelty, the budget is divided into two parts, so that what are termed "expenses of " order," but which mean in reality the expenses of. collection, and various other causes of outlay not directly profitable to the Government, are detached from what are called the charges and resources of the State. But this distinction ispurely arbitrary. The cost of collection is just as much a charge on the revenue as the cost of any other department of Government ; though' by this arrangement several charges that have hitherto figured in the French budgets ace nominally detached from it. In this", and in several other particulars, the language of the Report and the decree upon it is so* loose and vague that it is evidently intended to defeat a more precise investigation.- But considering what the financial conduct of France has now been for several years, both before and after 1848, -and considering that the present Government has surpassed all its predecessors io the. prodigality of its engagements and expenditure, with no real augmentation of its resources, we can place no faith* in the Ministerial assurance, that the revenue and the estimates will this year be balanced in favour of the Government. Such a result might possibly, have bee,n arrived at by a large reduction of the army, if, as was said, that had been seriously contemplated; but in fact, the army estimates present an augmentation of 7 millions, and the navy of 19. The former sum is supposed to be secretly destined to the creation of the future Imperial

Guard; and at -any rate the saving on the interest of tbe Five per Centst will be more than consumed by the expenses of the new Civil List and the luxury of a Court composed of men : wbose resources are exclusively derived from the public purse. A more definite subject of remarlc in this is the change "it introduces on some important of taxation. The salt duty, which was imprudently sacrificed to a whim oi the late Assembly, is not, reimposed, but tbe present low rate of duty is extended to the salt used in soda manufactories, and hitherto exempt. But a more remarkable change is that in the duties ou fermented liquors. At present the wines of France pay duly, under three forms. The first is a small duty on tbe transport of wine, w.hich enables the excise officer, or gauger, as he may be termed, to trace it from the hands of tbe grower to those of the consumers. The second is a duty paid on the entry of wines into towns, under the name of the octroi, of which tbe greater part goes to the borough or city rates, thelesser to the State. The third and' most considerable of these taxes is the duty on the retail sale of wine, which has been fixed since 1831 at the rate of 10 per cent, on the price. The first of these duties is of general application ; tbe second applies equally to dear and to cheap wines, and consequently falls most heavily on tbe latter, but only in towns of upwards of ,4,000 inhabitants ;' the third duty falls almost exclusively on tbe wineshops, or cabarets, in town and country, where the largest retail consumption iof wine takes place by. the people. The budget deals with these duties after a singular fashion. It maintains the first ; it reduces tbe second to one half ; but it increases the third by one half, and so arises the duty on fermented liquors sold by retail from 10 to 15 per c«nt. The whole operation will, it is estimated, increase tbe tax paid on spirituous liquors collectively, but it alters the proportion in which it is to be levied ; and, contrary to what*was commonly anticipated, it reduces tlie burden which presses most heavily on the middle classes, and considerably augments that on the consumption of the people. Tbe diminution of the octroi is, after ail, a change more apparent than real, for the same funds must be raised for local purposes by other means not there provided. But the retail duty is entirely paid by the working man. It has sometimes been sa]d that the strongest Government England ever witnessed would have difficulty in putting an extra halfpenny on a pot of beer ; and it will certainly be an extraordinary proof of tbe ascendancy of Louis Napoleon over the French people if he succeeds by his sole authority in reviving-one of the most unpopular taxes of the Restoration, braving the opposicion of the public-bouses throughout the country, and raising the duty on " liquor 50 per cent., without even the protest of increasing the revenue. The object of the Government is stated to be ~to discourage the retail trade of the publicbouses, and to encourage the domestic consumption of liquors purchased at wholesale prices in quantities exceeding 25 litres. As such it is a bold, and may be a useful, measure.; but one more calculated to injure the popularity of the Government with the masses we can hardly conceive. It abolishes the only financial concession ever made by Louis Philippe to popular clamour, when these duties were lowered in 1831 | from 15 per cent, to 10 ; and in reducing the burden of the octroi on liquois, payable on all alike, it jn reality transfers the same charge to the consumers by retail, wbo belong for the most part to the poorest class of society. The subject had for, some time past been under the investigation of a committee in the late Legislative Assembly, but we do not believe that any measure of so decided a character had been contemplated, or would have been attempted, by that body ; and usder the pretext of improving the morality of the Government to those indulgences which are not unfrequently mixed up with political sedition.