1874.] TROUBLES WITH THE SURPLUS. 59 of the address, and to distrust the great financial policy till they see what it is." In this letter, by the way (January 25, 1874), Sir Stafford alludes to a paragraph in Mr Gladstone's address, "which appears darkly to encourage the Home Rulers." To return to his troubles with the surplus. "Could we possibly expect to be allowed to retain such a surplus as that?" he asks, pathetically. "Supposing that you reduced the income-tax by one-half, and gave the £550,000 to local taxation, you would still have £1,000,000 surplus. Would not even this be too large, and should we not have an ugly rush at it?" Should they sweep away some of the Excise licences? Should they abandon the sugar duty? The alternatives appeared to be abolishing the income-tax, or deciding against, or postponing, the abolition of the income-tax, reducing it to twopence, giving large grants in aid of local taxation, and repealing the sugar tax. But divers other schemes were selected and rejected. Sir Stafford maintained that " for any of these measures suggested, it is important that we should shake off that absurd maxim as to the simultaneous decrease of direct and indirect taxation." But he believed that, when adding taxation, "you ought not to place it upon the income-tax only; but you ought to accompany it with some call upon 1 Sir Stafford was by no means of opinion that democratic taxation, relieving the less wealthy classes, would lead to a readiness to make war. "If there were to be a real war ferment at any time, I should be sorry to trust to such a sedative as the threat of doubling the sugar duties would be." The English democracy, at least, is by no means likely to be belligerent and pugnacious, as far as foreign countries go. indirect taxation." Through this period of incubating his first Budget, he "felt like a chess-player studying an important move, and seeing new combinations at every turn." It is needless to fatigue the reader with all the combinations. The result was made public in the Budget speech of April 16, 1874. Sir Stafford congratulated the late Government very heartily on their economical and satisfactory management of the war in Ashantee. He defended Mr Gladstone against the charge, brought, of course, by the Tories, of having been too sanguine in his Estimates. "Instead of being too sanguine, he has been within the mark." The receipts from Customs and Excise had exceeded expectation. The public had been drinking enormously, for these were "good times." But he very strongly disliked this particular symptom of prosperity. If temperance and abstinence were only to increase, though the revenue from spirits would fall, "I venture to say that the amount of wealth such a change would bring to the nation would utterly throw into the shade the amount of revenue that is now derived from the spirit duty." Unhappily any fall in the tide of gin and whisky seems to be due to poverty rather than happier dispositions. Pleasant as it was to see the "consuming power" of the public increased, he had already been obliged to listen to prophecies of evil. The coming of the lean kine had already been predicted—the slackening of employment, the fall in consumption, had been foreseen. Expenditure must still be kept down. Still, there was the surplus of more than 1 Budget speech, April 3, 1879. five millions. Some might say that a country which had a debt could never really have a surplus. He could not agree with them, but the reduction of the debt was always one of his main ideas. He proposed for this year to reduce it by terminable annuities with the £450,000 of interest on advances at his disposal, using for this purpose the balance of Post-office Savings Banks' money. As to the whole surplus, apart from the £450,000 of interest, he first touched on local taxation without approaching the whole subject, as the Government was new in office. But, having a surplus, he determined to relieve local taxation. Lunatics were to receive a contribution from the Consolidated Fund—namely, four shillings a-week a-head to the Unions for each lunatic in their asylums. Lunatics in Ireland had already been selected by Mr Gladstone for the receipt of benevolence out of the funds of the Irish Church, so Mr Gladstone might be expected to approve of this expenditure. To the police he assigned £600,000. Then, advancing to the income-tax, he admitted, like one of Shakespeare's clowns talking of his mistress, that "she hath more faults than hairs," but also "more wealth than faults." So he took one penny off the income-tax. More than half the surplus was now "frittered away," exclusive of what went to the reduction of the debt; and he next proposed to abolish the sugar duties. As a source of revenue they "do more harm than good upon the whole.” As to the competition in sugar refining with France and other Powers, he could not rely on treaties, but " upon the sense of its own interest which a foreign nation has in not wasting its money upon subsidies to its refiners." But foreign nations do not understand "their own interest" as England does; England, it may be permitted to interpolate, has quite peculiar ideas of her own interest. The sugar duties went for £2,000,000. I think it was on this occasion that a Liberal critic, in private talk, quoted about Sir Stafford what Steerforth said when financing a certain entertainment, "You're going it, young Copperfield." He "went it" still further, for he had still a surplus of £942,000. He would not touch malt, beer, nor railways, no, nor dogs, but he made a present to horses, a present of £480,000. And that was how he frittered away his surplus. A Liberal critic remarks that this was the Liberal Budget watered down to the standard of Conservative finance," and adds that Mr Gladstone's successor could only "muddle it away," the surplus, that is. He says, too, that Mr Gladstone "had proposed to abolish the income-tax as well as the sugar duties." But this very critic we have quoted as agreeing (more or less) with Mr Chamberlain and with the Opposition, that Mr Gladstone's proposal was a "huge bribe," his address "the meanest public document which has ever, in like circumstances, proceeded from a statesman of the first rank." 1 He had agreed to the extent of saying that Mr Chamberlain's remarks were a shrewd and on the whole a correct summary of the Address, but not entirely fair to Mr Gladstone." The unfairness appears to have lain in supposing 1 Clayden's England under Lord Beaconsfield, pp. 17, 68, 69. 1874.] THE STORY OF CAMBUSCAN BOLD." 63 that the promises of Mr Gladstone were made for mere electioneering purposes. That may answer the moral charges of Mr Gladstone's critics, but it leaves the practical question untouched. Could Mr Gladstone have completed "the story of Cambuscan bold"? And if not, what was the harm in Sir Stafford's less romantic performance? Was the "opportunity" really there, the opportunity which was "muddled away"? Even supposing that a heaven-born Minister could have escaped the Eastern troubles and the Zulu affair, could he have retained Fortune as his minion. "Fortune is Pistol's foe,' and the bad times, already looming, would have come, whoever was at the helm, and the income-tax could not have been slain except to rise again. As to the frittering away of the magnificent surplus, Sir Stafford spoke at Liverpool (January 25, 1877). He said the magnificent surplus was "got up to a certain extent by putting off a great many claims and charges which would ultimately have had to be met." It was as if a man should decline to spend money on his estate in repairs, leaving them as Sir Pitt Crawley left his lodgekeeper's roof, windows, and walls. The navy had been treated by the late Government as Sir Pitt treated Mrs Lock's cottage. "They had not only put off a great many things which it was absolutely necessary to do—the repairing of ships, for instance, and many other matters of that kind; ... but they had entered into large schemes and made large promises with reference to the army and educational reform, and other things which necessarily en VOL. II. E |