Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 327, January, 1843. Various
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The next step in Sir Robert Peel's bold and comprehensive policy, was to devise some method of recruiting forthwith its languishing vital energies—to rescue its financial concerns from the desperate condition in which he found them. With an immediate and perspective increase of expenditure that was perfectly frightful—in the meditation and actual prosecution of vast but useless enterprises—of foreign interference and aggrandizement, to secure a little longer continuance of popular favour, they deliberately destroyed a principal source of revenue, by the reduction of the postage duties, in defiance of the repeated protests and warnings of Sir Robert Peel, when in Opposition. They had, in fact, brought matters to such a pitch, as to render it almost impossible for even "a heaven-born minister" to conduct the affairs of the nation, with safety and honour, without inflicting grievous disappointment and sufferings, and incurring thereby a degree of obloquy fatal to any Ministry. They seemed, in fact, to imagine, as they went on, that the day of reckoning could never arrive, because they had resolved to stave it off from time to time, however near it approached, by a series of desperate expedients, really destructive of the national prosperity, but provocative of what served their purposes, viz. temporary popular enthusiasm. What cruelty! what profligacy! what madness! And all under the flag on which were inscribed "Peace! Retrenchment! Reform!" Acting on the salutary maxim, that the knowledge of the disease is half the cure, Sir Robert Peel resolved to lay before the nation the whole truth, however appalling. Listen to the following pregnant sentences which he addressed to the House of Commons, within a few moments after he had risen to develope his financial policy, we mean on the 11th of March 1842:—"It is sometimes necessary, on the occasion of financial statements of this kind, to maintain great reserve, and to speak with great caution. A due regard for the public interest, may impose on a Minister the duty of only partially disclosing matters of importance. But I am hampered by no fetters of official duty. I mean to lay before you the truth—the unexaggerated truth, but to conceal nothing. I do this, because in great financial difficulties, the first step towards improvement is to look those difficulties boldly in the face. This is true of individuals—it is true also of nations. There can be no hope of improvement or of recovery, if you consent to conceal from yourselves the real difficulties with which you have to contend."2 There was no gainsaying the facts which, amidst an agitated and breathless silence, he proceeded to detail with dreadful clearness and brevity; and out of which the question instantly sprung into the minds of every one—are we not on the very verge of national insolvency? He proceeded to demonstrate that his predecessors had exhausted every device which their financial ingenuity could suggest, down to their last supposed master-stroke, the addition of 10 per cent to the assessed taxes—thus adding very nearly the last straw which was to break the camel's back—the last peculiarly cruel pressure on the lower orders.
"Shall we persevere," he continued, "in the system on which we have been acting for the last five years? Shall we, in time of peace, have recourse to the miserable expedient of continued loans? Shall we try issues of Exchequer bills? Shall we resort to Savings' banks?—in short, to any of those expedients which, call them by what name you please, are neither more nor less than a permanent addition to the public debt? We have a deficiency of nearly L.5,000,000 in the last two years: is there a prospect of reduced expenditure? Without entering into details, but looking at your extended empire, at the demands which are made for the protection of your commerce, and the general state of the world, and calling to mind the intelligence which has lately reached us," [from Affghanistan,] "can you anticipate for the year after the next, the possibility, consistent with the honour and safety of this country, of greatly reducing the public expenses? I am forced to say, I cannot calculate on that.... Is the deficiency I have mentioned a casual deficiency? Sir, it is not; it has existed for the last seven or eight years. At the close of 1838, the deficiency was L.1,428,000; of 1839, L.430,000; of 1840, L.1,457,000; of 1841, L.1,851,000. I estimate that the deficiency of 1842 will be L.2,334,030; and that of 1843, L.2,570,000; making an aggregate deficiency, in six years, of L.10,072,000! ... With this proof that it is not with an occasional or casual deficiency that we have to deal, will you, I ask, have recourse to the miserable expedient of continued loans? It is impossible that I could be a party to a proceeding which, I should think, might perhaps have been justifiable at first, before you knew exactly the nature of your revenue and expenditure; but with these facts before me, I should think I were degrading the situation which I hold, if I could consent to such a paltry expedient as this. I can hardly think that Parliament will adopt a different view. I can hardly think that you, who inherit the debt contracted by your predecessors—when, having a revenue, they reduced the charges of the post-office, and inserted in the preamble of the bill a declaration that the reduction of the revenue should be made good by increased taxation—will now refuse to make it good. The effort having been made, but the effort having failed, that pledge is still unredeemed. I advised you not to give that pledge; but if you regard the pledges of your predecessors, it is for you now to redeem them.... I apprehend that, with almost universal acquiescence, I may abandon the idea of supplying the deficiency by the miserable desire of fresh loans, of an issue of Exchequer bills. Shall I, then, if I must resort to taxation, levy it upon the articles of consumption, which constitute, in truth, almost all the necessaries of life? I cannot consent to any proposal for increasing taxation on the great articles of consumption by the labouring classes
2
Hansard, vol. lxi. col. 423.