OF PULAR LITERATURE Science and Arts. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. No. 261. SATURDAY, JANUARY 1, 1859. THE NATIONAL CHRISTMAS BILL. NOTHING is so brilliant or so popular as lavish expenditure; nothing is so mean or so unpopular as the collection of income. The eminent dust-contractor, the repulsive bone-boiler, the extensive rag-merchant, are very different people in the eyes of the world when spending the income which they make, than when making the income which they spend. As is the individual, so is the nation; and the Right Honourable the Chancellor of the Exchequer is no exception to the rule. Figures and financial records are dull things-that has been settled long ago. All aldermen are fat, all misers are lean, all authors are bad men of business, and all statists are heavy-heavy as lead. The national balance-sheet is periodically presented to the averted gaze of a liberal tax-paying public, and consigned to the limbo of unmitigated bores. There is nothing amusing about it; it has not even the merit of full information, it is so wonderfully concentrated and condensed; figured, but not figurative, and dry as the remainder-biscuit after a voyagethe voyage of Vasco de Gama. It is a great bore to the Treasury to have to make it up, and they are determined that the House of Commons shall suffer for its impertinent curiosity. Why cannot money be voted and spent without any record? What is bookkeeping? a thing only known in vulgar trade. What is double entry?-double trouble. Look at Lord Vellum-there is a real gentleman, if you like. Happy the man who has the good-fortune to be his steward. 'Spwend what you like,' says his lordship; 'but, for Gawd's sake, don't bother me with these horwid bills!' Noble, aristocratic creature, why cannot the whole country follow his illustrious example? Short reckonings make long friends? Pshaw! A nation of soap-boilers! PRICE 1d. in where Treasury angels fear to tread, and discourse, like a dull dog, as he is, upon the facts and beauties of the public balance-sheet. Income and expenditure, then, in round numbers, for the year ending March the thirty-first, Eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, discarding the balances in hand, were each about seventy millions. First, I will take the expenditure, or what the nation spent; as our national, like our individual expenses, are often incurred in advance of our income. I will go to the heroic-the brilliant side of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, before I turn to his mean and repulsive side. I will look at the noble prodigal scattering his money broadcast among a gaping, admiring crowd, before I trace that money to the rifled till of a chandler's shop. We are a great nation, for we govern, or attempt to govern, one-half of the world; we are a wonderful nation, for we tax the child's hummingtop for the sinews of our greatness. Seventy millions being spent, it is required to know how. First comes the interest and management of the National Debt, which reaches nearly twentynine millions; then the army and navy charge, amounting to twenty-three millions and a half. This is divided into land-forces, works and stores, and embodied militia-thirteen millions; leaving the difference of ten millions and a half for one year's navy. Thirdly, there is a little group of nearly five millions, which may be labelled as being miscellaneous. The compensation to the King of Denmark for the Sound dues, over one million; the whole produce of the paper-duty swept away at a blow. There is the Persian expedition, which absorbs nearly a million; the expenses of the late war with China, reaching L.591,000; redeemed Exchequer bonds, exactly two millions; and the sinking-fund of the war-loan, one quarter of a million sterling. Fourthly, comes a large group, which ranges itself under the head of There is instinct, if not talent, in these Treasury Civil Expenditure, swallowing the very considerable opinions and policy. Make figures acceptable and sum of thirteen millions and a half. Then we come popular, make the details of public finance-espe- to another group, headed Law and Justice, which costs cially the details of the national income-familiar the country upwards of three millions. This sum to every peasant and liberal tax-payer in the land, and money-questions in politics would no longer be the easy butt of ridicule which they are at present. Will this financial millennium ever come? Our national expenditure has increased by an annual twenty millions, compared with the expenditure of twenty years ago. Our great and noble country spends more in government every year than the United States with a greater extent of country, and an equal population; and it is considered a defunct absurdity to inquire why. Let a literary fool rush VOL. XI. is divided among England, Scotland, and Ireland; the first taking just upon two millions, the second nearly a quarter of a million, and Ireland just over L.900,000. The next item of expenditure we arrive at is that of Education, Science, and Art, which absorb rather over one million. Then we reach the group of Diplomatic, Colonial, and Consular Services, rather over half a million, one-third, consisting of diplomatic salaries and pensions in most parts of the world, being paid out of the Consolidated Fund. Then we come to Superannuations and Charities, which reach nearly a quarter of a million. The next group we reach is headed Special and Temporary Objects; they cover a very wide field, and absorb L.600,000. Then we are presented with the Civil List, a sum of nearly L.400,000, appropriated out of the Consolidated Fund, for the consumption of majesty and majesty's household. Next to this item comes the group of Annuities and Pensions, extending to L.300,000 only, but consisting of details somewhat more interesting and unexpected than usual-of annuities to the royal family, pensions for naval and military services, civil services and judicial services, hereditary pensions to the Duke of Marlborough, heirs of the Duke of Schomberg, and moiety of Earl of Bath's pension, servants of George III., and Queens Charlotte and Caroline, pensions formerly on Civil List, trustees of Knipe and Hamilton, and their children; in Ireland, loss of emoluments by the Union, officers of the late Irish Treasury, retired officers of justice, and pensions formerly on Civil List. The next group of items is headed Interest on Loans, Secret Service, &c., and its total expenditure is nearly L.200,000. There are Interest and Sinking Fund on Greek Loan, the same on Russian-Dutch Loan, commissioners of Greenwich Hospital, Secret Service, formerly charged on Civil List; Receivergeneral Duchy of Lancaster, in lieu of prisage and butlerage of wines; Receiver-general Duchy of Cornwall, compensation for loss of duties on the coinage of tin, and compensation for loss of offices in connection with the same. Then comes the Miscellaneous Expenditure, consisting of civil contingencies and the marriage of the Princess Royal, amounting together to nearly L.150,000. The list is concluded with the Expenditure from Crown-lands, which consumes in salaries, allowances, pensions, payments, and office-fees, nearly the same amount as the civil contingencies. So much for the brilliant, heroic expenditure side of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and now let me turn to the other side-the side which produces the fund that pays for all this diplomacy, liberality, pensioning, and government. There is as much difference between the two as there is between the great dust-contractor riding in state in Rotten Row, and the same dust-contractor sitting in his mean, black, dirty counting-house. Great dukes, lords, and marquises who sit in palaces or mansions, condescending to receive pensions, and nourishing a contempt for the vulgar followers of trade, forget that what they take so hungrily from the national financial caldron has, first of all, been thrown in by tallow, eggs, or cheese. That noble army of young gentlemen, old gentlemen, and gentlemen's gentlemen, who sit all day in government castles of indolence, forget that they are feeding upon those vices of their countrymen-the wholesale consumption of tobacco, brandy, and rum. With a stagnation of trade and an increase of sobriety, away goes the fund which pays a host of salaries that are pensions, and another host of pensions that are not salaries, and never have been. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, leaving the dazzling halls of expenditure, and entering the money-grubbing precincts of the national income-shop, presents the productive public with nine divisions of taxation, from which he collects the necessary sum of nearly seventy millions. I will first take the Stamps, which produce seven millions and a half. There are the Admiralty stamps, bankers' notes, bills of exchange, cards and dice, Chancery fund, civil bill fund, composition for duties on bills and notes, deeds and other instruments, divorce and matrimonial causes stamps, gold and silver plate, insurance, fire and marine, judgments registry fund, law-fund, legacies and successions, licences and certificates, medicines, newspapers and supplements, penalties and costs recovered, Probate Court stamps, probates of wills and letters of administration, receipts and drafts, and miscellaneous. Next comes the land-tax, which produces nearly two millions upon inhabited houses, and lands and tenements. Then follow the assessed taxes, which produce about one million and a quarter. They are divided into armorial bearings, carriages, dogs, game-duty, hair-powder, horse-dealers, horses, servants, additional 10 per centum, and penalties and cost recovered. The next on my list is the Post-office, which produces three millions. There are postage collected, postage-stamps, commission on money-orders, and miscellaneous receipts. Then come the Crown-lands, which, from, rents, sales of old material and timber, and fees, produce about L.400,000. Then there is a group of receipts headed Miscellaneous, producing upwards of one million and a half, and consisting of contribution from East India Company, ditto on offices and pensions, ditto towards merchant seamen's pensions, conscience-money, fees of public officers, income of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Gazettes, king of the Belgian's trustees, savings on grants of parliament and over-issues repaid, superannuation abatements, premium and interest on Exchequer bills sold, small branches of hereditary revenue, unclaimed dividends, various casual receipts, and produce from sales of old naval, military, and civil stores. Then we go to the Property and Income Tax, the backbone of direct taxation, which always produces a million for every penny in the pound imposed. This reaches, in this case, nearly eleven millions and a half. Then we pass to the great group of Excise duties, which produce nearly eighteen millions, by all kinds of annoying, oppressive, and injurious interference with trade. There are hackneycarriages' duty, ditto stage-carriages, game certificates, hops, licences, malt, paper, race-horses, railways, spirits, law-costs recovered, fines and forfeitures, sums received from contributions to late Scotch Excise Corporation Fund, and miscellaneous. Finally, we come to the greatest group of all-the Customs' duties, which produce upwards of twenty-three and a quarter millions, or one-third of the national income. Here it is, in the tariff, that the mean and protective side of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is most clearly seen. The eleven millions of income-tax is produced at a cost of about 2 per centum; the twenty-three millions of customs' duties is subject to a drawback of five times that amount. 'Every tax,' says Adam Smith, 'ought to be so contrived as both to take out and keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible above what it brings into the public treasury of the state.' No,' says the Right Honourable the Chancellor of the Exchequer; 'I will rather take my stand upon our great dramatist: "He that is robbed, not knowing what is stolen, let him not know it, and he is not robbed at all."' The income-tax is a bold, open-daylight highwayman, who risks his life fairly for his gain. The customs' duties are midnight, petty thieves, who make up their income, bit by bit, in holes and corners, without risk. The articles, large and small, which produce income in the British tariff, are four hundred and sixty in number. Twenty-one articles out of these four hundred and sixty produce nearly twenty-two millions and three-quarters sterling of revenue, leaving the small balance of over half a million to be made up by four hundred and thirty-nine articles. I will enumerate this little productive army of twentyone. Butter brings one hundred thousand pounds; coffee, nearly half a million; corn, meal, and flour the same; currants, nearly a quarter of a million; |