72

ATTENTION GIVEN TO COAL.

which began in the second half of the seventeenth century.1 A store of force which could not be replenished, a hoard accumulated in times when Britain was not known to man or shaped into its present dimensions, was kept from waste and bungling by the ignorance which precluded the search. When at last demanded for the smelting of ores, and for the generation of steam, the combustible mineral drew men of genius to vie with one another in making arrangements for its extraction and transport. But the men of low cunning, the practical men of commerce, and the empirics of finance, did their worst to thwart the engineers. For three-quarters of a century, down to the age of Reform, the British consumers of coal were taxed to the advantage of foreign consumers; and the manufacturers of the greatest manufacturing place, London, were taxed for the benefit of their fellow-subjects resident in other parts of the kingdom.

The owners, or the lessees, of the Tyne coal pits agreed in the year 1771 to 'limit the vend,' that is, the sale, not generally, but in the London trade. Every member of the society was allowed to sell to Londoners a fraction of the whole vend proportional to the amount of his rent, buildings, engines, and shafts. It was worth a man's while, for the sake of a greater share in the London trade, to pay rent for pits that were not in use, and to build cottages for imaginary workmen. He sold 'round coal,' or big

1 Edward I., whom historians esteem the strongest and wisest of kings, forbade the burning of coal as a nuisance; his proclamation was not obeyed.

MODES OF SELLING COAL.

73

lumps; every big lump was broken into small lumps by the middleman, that it might take more room, because the retailers sold it by measure. The first buyer increased his commodity in the ratio of nine to seven and a half; each succeeding holder broke it into smaller bits; the Mayor and Corporation of London, by ancient privilege, enjoyed the honour of measuring the bags in dock, and kept back threepence out of the eightpence paid to the 'meters' or measurers of every chaldron.' To sell by weight was as much against the grain of the English mind as the use of a wheelbarrow is abhorred by a Spaniard. In June 1814, coal which cost on the Tyne fourteen shillings cost on the Thames forty-four shillings, of which seven shillings and sixpence were tax. Whilst the charges were increasing under the handling of dealers, the original extractor was burning the smaller fragments and paying for the damage done by the smoke to adjacent farms; but he did not burn all that the London merchant rejected. What was called 'nut coal,' too small to suit the Londoners, but big enough to feed the furnaces of manufacturers and metallurgists, was sold at a very low price to foreigners, who were thus placed at an advantage over Englishmen ; and on this export no duty was charged by the vigilant Custom House which busied itself in discriminating between the duties charged on Wales and Ireland, regions favoured at the expense of London. When canals. began to bring coal to London from a midland county, a differential duty was levied in favour of the canals,

74

THE RESULTS OF WHIG BUDGET.

although the Legislature was generally nervous about anything that threatened navigation on salt water.1

Of these absurdities the Whig Budget left not a little. But it abolished the tax paid to the Exchequer in all parts of the kingdom on coal carried by sea, allowing the London Corporation to levy a tax on all coal brought within the range of its privilege either by sea or by land; and it charged all that was sent out of the kingdom four shillings a ton. Great waste continued, for the limitation of the vend subsisted fourteen years longer; but sale by weight began at once, and it may be charitably hoped that the London householders got the benefit of the wholesale reduction, which was, in 1845, a fall from fourteen to eight shillings on the Tyne, from forty-four to seventeen shillings and sixpence on the Thames.

The export duty was no doubt recommended to the legislators not merely because it supplied ways and means in a simple way, but on the ground that it kept at home part of the forces requisite for the production of commodities. In this second view it would be ranked with such measures as were in vogue for hindering the exportation of machines, and even the emigration of artizans. On purely fiscal grounds it was a convenient tax. But the growth of colonies, and the use of steam in navigation, involved by degrees a plain necessity for unshackling the export of fuel, and it would have been hard to discriminate

1 The low price of 'nut coal' is stated as three shillings a ton-that is, one shilling less than the London tax levied after the year 1824; but it is not stated that the whole cost to foreigners was invariable.

between cargoes of coal shipped to foreign ports for the use of British subjects and cargoes destined ultimately for the consumption of strangers. As a temporary measure it seems to have been satisfactory, and its renewal is not impossible.

The last detail of the Budget that need be mentioned was the import duty set on raw cotton. This material had never been the plaything of fussy Ministers. No one had taxed one bale of cotton more than another because of its coming from one country and not from another. It had paid 6 per cent. on its declared value. It was now taxed by weight, without regard to variation of quality. The tax was brought down in debate from a penny to five-eighths of a penny on the pound weight. As no trouble was taken by the Custom House officers to do more than weigh and count the bales, a supply of about half a million sterling was for some little time raised every year with little expense in collection and little delay of business. When Manchester, the first of cotton-spinning towns, became more powerful by being represented in the Commons, there was little grumbling against the impost, and the money got by it helped to ease greater or more perceptible grievances. But it was against theory; Lord Althorp himself owned that it was an heretical tax; it stood long enough to swell the triumph of his abler successor in fiscal progress.

His first Budget, maimed as it was, might be on the whole considered praiseworthy. In a time of doubt and trouble he attempted to carry out the doctrines

76

INTRODUCTION OF REFORM BILL.

of economy, or correct trade policy, with more earnestness than the liberal Tories had shown under the auspices of Mr. Huskisson in a year of cheerfulness and of easy government. He ascertained and proved that it was not feasible to compete with the Wellington financiers in curtailing expenses. He embodied in his plan as much reform as was at the time called for by any set of reformers.

XXIX.

THE discussion of taxes took up many hours of the one session enjoyed by King William's first House of Commons; but such interest as the nation took in it at first languished before it was completed. In vain did the ill-wishers rejoice at the discomfiture, which they overstated, of the innovating finance minister. If he fell back from a bold advance, and looked as if he were retreating to the old lines, the retrograde movement was covered by the advance of Lord John Russell, who, within the fourth week after the commencement of public business, brought forward his first Bill for the Reform of the People's Representation.

From the first of March, 1831, to the seventh of June, 1832, this measure so engaged men's minds that they ceased to think about taxes, except when they were provoked into a threat that they would pay no tax at all. And not only was financial policy disregarded, but the hazardous action of the French in the Netherlands, and the consequent liability of