THE BUDGET.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 263, 27 April 1860, Page 4

THE BUDGET.

(From the Times.)

The Chancellor of the Exchequer lias taken a line which we must admit to be admirably adapted to the temper of the British people. Brought to bay by pursuing events, by war and rumours of war, by finance's bandied about from one party to another, and by the consequent failure of his own high-wrought expectations seven years ago, he resolves not to be beaten, and turns upon the deficit which threatens to devour him. The Budget is that of a man who will make tlio success which has not come, and celebrate as a festival the occasion which fate would have turned into woe. Certainly, matters did seem very bad. It is true that, as Mr. Gladstone observes, this was to be a great year, a year of release. A rare and singular windfall of more than £2,000,000 a-year by the lapse of terminable annuities, concided with the lapse of war duties, including the income-tux. The jubilee had been forestalled, and all was ready for the festive occasion. Nay, fortune wa3 not uri-, propitious, for our own Spanish debt, so long despaired off, is actually paid. But the Russian war, the Chinese war, the immense increase of our armaments, as well as of our civil expenditure, and the failure of some expected revenue, have left us deficient for next year by near £10,000,000; Was their ever so hopeless a case ? Two years ago, when Mr. Disraeli was making things as pleasant as he could, it was passed'from.mouth to mouth that there would soonbeadeficiency of £6,000.000. It is. near £10,000,0007' Worst"of all, the minister to make it up is the very man who fixed the last hour of the income-tax, and ordained the future level of the tea and sugar duties. Never was there a worse case: no wonder the man to lead the forlorn hope was taken ill on the very eve, and seems slow to face the breach. But Mr. Gladstone had heard the voice which said-—

Tv ne cede malis; sed contra audentior ito. : If his case was very bad, he has corao out all the stronger. The hearts of his be3t friends failed as they thought of the niner-e'nny incometax, which dire necessity seemed to impose. Not so Mr. Gladstone.. Eloquent on other poiuts, on this he has acted. Making up for the shortness of his weapon by advancing a step on his foe, he lays on another penny, leaving us to find the reason why. But is not this in order to carry out at least one part of the fair vision, the further deliverance of the poor man's tea and sugar!, No such thing. The poor, too, must dare aud do something. This was a day of jubilee, aud of something more than rejoicing. It was to be a beginning of things, and it shall be. -jSo the " war duties":on tea and sugar shaHcontiuuo a year longer, as well as the in-come-tax,;, aud the year 1860, shall leave its ma/rk on future ages. It shall be known for the* commercial treaty which brought,us in foreign wines and spirits at a reasonable duty, which obliterated the last traces of protection fronf W'tlnff, *bich struck; off every item which was not a matter of revenue, or which was below the notice of the Custom-House, which at home abolished the paper duty, and

remitted tflarge part of the timber duties, besides a garniture of smaller remissions.

So wills the Chanoellor of the Exchequer, and all must admire the courage which has not the word *• impossible" in its vocabulary. The appeal is to our public spirit. Will we pay now and indefinitely tenpence in the pound, or near four per cent, on our incomes? Mr. Gladstone points out that under the operation of the income-tax income has continnally increased—schedule D vastly more than all the other schedules. The more it is pruned, the more income flourishes, and what we render up we still find in our sack's mouth, and more besides. True* perhaps, but the wonder is the man who says it. As he evidently could not stand on ninepence, he has pushed on to tenpence, for there is a power in momentum; He shows himself capable of more still, for Mr. Gladstone cannot refrain from dwelling a moment on the charms of a shilling duty—its succinctness of expression, its facility of calculation and its perfectly intelligible character. Of course, something ought to be done with this splendid shilling or franc, as it may be appropriately called, being chiefly an offering—a peace offering, shall we call it ?—to France. That is its chief destination. The introduction of foreign wines at a duty which shall admit the cheapest qualities Mr. Gladstone justly considers on/, epoch that, carries us back not ooly to the f early financial experiments of Pitt, but to th"c beginning of our long unhappy feud with our . neighbor at the Revolution of 1688. No doubt, | the experiment will be a financial success; but! whether it will alao be a great social change, and whether the lower, or even the middle ! classes, will ever^ take to foreign wines, is a question on which'we have now few materials for an answer. A virtual prohibition of cheap foreign wines for nearly two centuries disposes of the argument drawn irom existing tastes and habits. But there is no point of antiquarian statistics so certain and so prominent as that French and Spanish wines were once largely used by classes in this country to whom they are now uuknown. All the capabilities are one way, all the facts another. It is true that in the Mediterranean oountries there is wine enough to supply all the world; but will it, under any improved cultivation, aud manufacture, bear travelling and keeping, and suit palates habituated to high brandied port or Btrong beer ? The use of home made wines aud manufactured Cape wines shows a demand which cheap foreign wines will easily supply. But why need wo state the case of cheap, thin-bodied, foreign wines, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, only so recently as July 15,1856, did it so much more forcibly than we could do and with the inevitable conclusion as he then pronounced ex cathedra, that nothing but the stronger sor^s of wine would ever go down extensively in England ? We need only answer Mr. Gladstone's challenge of "Hansard" by referring our readers to a speech which exhausts all that can be said against this portion of his budget.

The restoration of cheap foreign wines to a country which for two centuries has regarded them with an almost religious aversiou would be of itself an event sufficient to make the required epoch. But this is not enough for the ardent financial geuius which sends out its regions from a beleaguered city for the conquest of the world. He wishes to make the year 1860 the very last of the whole protectionists dynasty. Protection expelled from palaces, has been lurking in comfortable corners, among people " without exception free-traders, but free-traders with exception," standing out each for his own little craft, and putting his protection on the revenue. A crowd of small manufactures and petty produce, from silk to eggs, are to be admitted duty free, and henceforth we must equal our neighbors if we should shut them out. This was only a question of time for when so many pay dearly for free trade it was out of the question that there should long be any favored classes. It is as well to seize this occasion for finishing the work. The long schedule of proposed remissions will tell its own tale. But Mr. Gladstone proposes to add a third great achievement to the memorable deeds of the year. He acceded at last to the long-urged demand for a remission of the paper duty. In this, as on the proposed abolition of the newspaper stamp, we are ouiselves much interested, and should probably be heard' with a degree of suspicion. There is however no one connected with popular literature—-that is, the reading of the middle and lower classes —who does not represent the paper duty as a serious, sometimes ruinous, burden upon trade. When we are paying over a million a year for the furtherance of education, it seems little less than ridiculous to extract mere than that from the sale of cheap literature. But shipbuilders and builders in general, are also to remember this year. We had omitted the coal owners, and the ironmasters, and all manufacturers of exclusively British commodities, who will benefit by the French side of the reformed tariff. This is not the whole of this inexhaustible budget, which reads more like half a dozen budgets railed into one than the solution of a simple difficulty. Mr. Gladstone proposes a diminishing scale ;for game certificates down to £1 for December—why not for the whole shooting season ? . He would also make eating houses talcs out. licensing conferring a right y>', sell wine and beer. This and minor alterations mark the prospective gaze with which Mr. Gladstone watches the rising of a new era. Should his budget be adopted wo wish it every success. May fifty thousand Dame Quicklys put his effigy over their doors, and supply capons and conserves, with cheap Canary, sherry, sack, Malaga, and even strong Oporto, to better customers.'than Sir John FalstafF, Bardolph, aud his suite ' ■