In the year 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 Pounds. £60,318,272 52,882,156 64,038,686 63,048,496 62,604,533 62,150,526 the excise taxes, the stamp taxes, | the two next years. Indeed, more the taxes on the land, the taxes than three millions additional was upon our letters; and, in short, all received in each of those years. the ordinary taxes that we pay; When we come to the year 1822, and, observe, that the working you see there is a small falling people pay the larger part of the off; but, in that year, part of the whole. These taxes amounted, salt-tax was taken off. The whole then, for the following years, as of the salt-tax used to yield follows:about a million and a half.Now, then, pray look at the years 1823 and 1824. You will find them less than the year 1822; and this is owing to the taking off of the salt-tax, which tax was in force in 1822; cr, at any rate, had only been partly taken off. So that, you see, that the year of I have added the year 1823 "prosperity," 1824, yielded less and the year 1824, for a reason than the terrible year 1822. If, which you will presently see. At indeed, we reckon the salt-tax present, pay attention to the first taken off, the year 1824 yielded four years only. You will re- about 600,000 pounds more than member what has been said above, the year 1822. But, what is about the poverty, misery, and in- 600,000 pounds upon 63,000,000? tolerable embarrassment of these Let us now take another view of four years. You will remember, this matter. It is said, that the that the embarrassments went on proof of national prosperity, the increasing; that the distress, the proof of the comfort of the people; ruin, the suffering of every sort, the proof that they are happy, got to be greater and greater, consists in the keeping up of the from the beginning of 1819 to EXCISE collections. The doc1822. You will remember that trine is, that, in proportion that the distress of the landlords and the government collects money on the farmers was so great in 1822, the excise-duties; in proportion that in numerous instances, men that the sum is great, the people refused to take farms rent free; are happy! It is held that these because the taxes were greater excise-duties, being collected than they would be able to pay upon beer, spirits, tobacco, and without paying any rent at all. other things, which BoroughLook, then, at the amount of the mongers choose to regard as luxtaxes received in those four years! uries to the working people; in You see, that the taxes continued proportion as these things yield a to increase with the increase of great tax, in that same proportion the distress. But, you must be the people must be living luxuritold, that in the year 1819, new ously. Now, then, look at the taxes, to the estimated amount of following figures; bear in mind three millions a year were laid that only three millions of new on. Accordingly, you see the ad-taxes were laid on in 1819; bear ditional three millions received in in mind the embarrassments, the 1822. Years. 1819 1820 1821 1822. Pounds. 27,955,810 .28,298,733 .28,912,985 28,190,948 Mr. ruin, the misery that went on I have referred; and you must be steadily increasing from the be-assured that I should not dare to ginning of 1819 to the end of make this statement from these 1822; bear this in mind ; and then accounts if it were not true. bear in mind that, in the following The last table that I have intable, I leave out the three mil-serted relates solely to the EXlions of new taxes, supposing them CISE-duties. I have inserted all to have been laid upon the them for the four years. For the excise, which was not the case. four years of increasing embarI take off the three millions of rassment, poverty and misery. new taxes, I leave the taxes as The paper-money came tumbling they were in 1819; and then I out the next year, that is to say, show you, that, instead of taxes in 1823; so that, in this year, falling off, the amount of them prosperity was coming again. In was actually augmented from the 1324, prosperity was completely beginning of 1819 to the end of come. The king, in opening the Parliament in February 1824, congratulated the hereditary legislators and the faithful Commons, that agriculture was recovering from its depression, and that it was recovering by the steady operation of natural_causes. Will any one, after this, believe FREDERICK ROBINSON, that a keeping up in the taxes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and especially in the EXCISE- in the same month of February, taxes, is a proof of the happiness 1824, congratulated the aboveof the people and the prosperity mentioned noble and honorable of the country? You, my friends, persons, that the country was in will not be cheated thus, at any a state of unexampled prosperity, rate. You know well, how flou- that it was in a state of great rishing and happy the nation was happiness, and that the Parlia said to be in 1818. You know ment had the "delightful satiswell that Peel's Bill was passed "faction of looking round upon in 1819. You know that the de-"the face of a joyous country, cline began immediately; and "smiling in plenty, receiving you know that, in 1822, calicoes" comfort and prosperity diswere as cheap as dirt, wheat" pensed upon it from the ancient fetched only about four shillings" portals of a constitutional moa bushel upon an average through-"narchy"! It was in February out the kingdom, and that all was 1824, that this wise man described ruin and beggary; yet you now the country as being in this state see, that the Government did not of prosperity. Now, then, let us grow poor; that it grew rich on see how much the Government the contrary; that its taxes aug-collected from the excise in those mented, instead of declining; and two years: you will bear in mind, that the proof of this is to be found in the annual finance accounts to which Years. 1823.. 1824 Pounds. 28,032,231 .27,779,302 So that these two years of won- above facts before them with one derful prosperity do not equal the hand, and hold a broom-stick in two last years of bankruptcy and the other. You are to be treated misery by 1,292,400 pounds, un-in a different manner. You have less you add the salt tax; and you understood all about the debt and are not to add the whole of that the paper-money for many years; tax, because, to a certainty, part not a young weaver amongst you, of the money formerly laid out in who is turned of twenty-one, who that tax, would be laid out in the is not more fit to make laws than purchase of other taxable commo- the Lord Charleses are. Had I to dities. It appears, then, wholly deal with them, in the present inundeniable that, upon the suppo-stance, I should no more think of sition that these accounts be true; that argument that I am about to upon the supposition that they be have the honour to address to you, not a tissue of abominable false- than I should think of addressing hoods, here is proof positive, that it to the pigs in my sty. This is the Government can collect, be- by no means affectation: I am cause for a series of years it has col-perfectly sincere in all I say: I lected, as great a sum in taxes, in declare that I should no more times of general ruin and misery, think of addressing this argument as in times of general prosperity. to any of them, than I should And, it is clear, that as long as the think of addressing it to the pigs Government has physical force to that I mean to kill next Christmas. compel people to pay the taxes that it imposes, it need not, as far as concerns its revenue, care a straw whether the landlord receive rents or not. The great cause of error, in this case, is, that men take it for granted, that the whole of the community have their due share and proportion of the exciseable But now, my good friends of commodities; that every man and Blackburn, though we have this woman, has, at all times, a due strong, and, indeed, incontroverti-proportion of all that is consumed; ble argument of experience, I like and that, therefore, the whole better that sort of proof, and that amount of the consumption is the sort of conviction, which arise out criterion of the comfort and hapof reasons springing from my own piness of the people, and of the mind. I am always better satis-consequent prosperity of the nafied, when it appears to me, from reasoning, that the thing must be so, than when it appears to me, from any thing that I see or hear, that the thing is so. My eyes or my ears may deceive me; but reason can never err: treat it fairly, and it never will deceive you. Let us, then, my friends, consult reason upon this subject. If I were addressing myself to Boroughmongers, or any of their stupid tribes, I should lay the tion. If the premises were true, there might be something in the conclusion; but the premises are wholly false; and as mischievous a falsehood it is as ever was sucked down by a credulous people. So far from every person in the community enjoying a due share of the articles consumed, it is notorious, that, during the four years above-mentioned, hundreds of thousands were upon the point of starving, and thousands actually starved; and that, too, while the These newspaper fellows forget quantity of exciseable commodi- this operation of the system; or ties consumed was actually in- else, brutes as they are, and as creasing. How did this happen, that Baines, there, is at Leeds; then? Why, an unequal distri- brutes as they are, we should not bution of the exciseable commo-hear them talking such nonsense dities took place; those things about the "Quarter's Revenue." which ought to have been con- I have, upon some former occasumed by the landlord, the farmer, sion, put the case somewhat in the merchant, the manufacturer, this manner: suppose me to be a the weaver, the labourer; those landlord, with a clear estate yieldthings which ought to have been ing me five hundred pounds a consumed by them, were con- year in rent. Suppose me to pay, sumed by the placeman, the pen-out of this, a hundred pounds a sioner, the sinecure-man, the Jew, year to the Government in tax on the jobber, the army-people, the wine. Suppose the Government navy-people, the police-people, to make such a change in the vaand all the bands that feed upon lue of money as would take from the taxes, and all the Quakers me the means of buying one sinand other monopolizers, and all gle drop of wine for the future. their footmen and girls, and under- Suppose there to be a thundering strappers, and devilish creatures army, thundering dead-weight, a of every description; and per- Debt still more thundering; and haps one single wretch employed suppose the annuities and pay of in polishing a Quaker's boots, or all these not to be at all diminishwaiting upon the old sly dog's ed in point of nominal value: All wench, really consumed, in the the people belonging to these year 1822, as much of exciseable bands would have, amongst them, commodities as half-a-dozen poor that ability to purchase wine, labourers and half-a-dozen poor which ability I had lost. Conseweavers all put together. The newspaper brutes forget all about this: that Taylor, there, of the Manchester Guardian," for instance, and that Cunliff, of Bolton; these fellows, for instance, never think about the operations of the taxing system, and the monopolizing system, which takes the beer, the wine, the spirits, the sugar, the tea, the tobacco, the soap, and the candles, and many other things from the weaver or the labourer, and gives them to this Quaker's scrub and pimp, and makes the rogue as fat as a hog and as greasy as a butcher, while the poor weavers and the poor labourers are skin and bone. quently, the same quantity of wine would be consumed: I should consume none, it is true; but these people would consume more than they consumed before; so that there would be no diminution in the consumption, and, consequently, there would be no diminution in the tax upon wine. I will suppose myself to be a man (I hope God will forgive me for being so even in supposition) sucking up a pension out of the country. I will suppose that my pension is a hundred pounds a year. The Government makes a change in the value of the money: they make such a change that I can now buy twice as much bread and cloth and meat as I could buy something or other that is done to before for my hundred pounds a the nation, may cause the means year. What do I do now? Why of consuming exciseable comI take a little wine, which I did not do before; I use more heer, spirits and tobacco; I burn candle a little more freely; I use dearer tea, and more of it; I put another lump of sugar in my cup. In short, the Government gets seven or eight pounds out of me for taxes more than it did before, in a year. But, what effect has the same operation of raising the value of money, upon my poor neighbour, the manufacturer over the way It makes him a great deal poorer than he was before; he, poor devil, is obliged to leave off wine, and to curtail his quantity of tea, sugar, beer and tobacco he is almost brought to the fulfilment of his Pittite promise; namely, to give up his last shilling and his last shirt. The Government does not, therefore, get so much taxes from him as it did before; but it gets from me more than it got before: it loses nothing upon the whole, though it has plunged my poor neighbour into misery and : modities; or, rather, taxable commodities, to pass from a class or description of persons, which class is less prone to consume taxable commodities than another class into whose hands those means of consumption might be conveyed. For instance, suppose a weaver's family at Blackburn to be receiving thirty shillings a week for their work: to a certainty the Government will receive, in one shape or another, in beertax, in candle-tax, in tea-tax, in sugar-tax, in soap-tax, in tobaccotax, in pepper-tax, in tax upon the cotton-gown, in window-tax; in one shape or another, the Government will, to a certainty, receive a good ten shillings out of these thirty, every week. Comes a panic; next come all sorts of laws to change the value of money, and to throw every thing into confusion; to make the soldier's thirteen pence a-week buy twice as much bread and meat as it bought before; to make the fundholder's thirty shillings worth twice what it But, not only does not an in- was: but now, here; suppose crease in the consumption of ex- there to be a flashy fundholder ciseable commodities indicate an keeping a gig, a girl, and a guinincrease of happiness and pros-guette; his money that he gets out perity amongst a people; not only of the funds is worth twice as does it never indicate this; but, it much as it was before. The poor indicates, sometimes; it always weaver is reduced down to five may indicate, and it frequently shillings a-week, in place of thirty, does indicate, precisely the con- and this fundholder, or some such trary; that is to say, an increase fellow, gets the twenty; or, he of consumption of exciseable com- gets the means equal to the twenty, modities may, and frequently does, in addition to the means that he indicate an increase in the ruin, had before. And what does he the misery, the oppressions do with the money? Not as the amongst the people at large; be- weaver did, lay a large part of it cause, the acts of the Government, out in meat and bread and cloth the laws, political measures, and fuel; but he lays the whole ruin. |