FORE:In the course of his speech Lord John Russell stated that he had made inquiry with respect to the amount of relief afforded to wandering mendicants, and the result was that in most cases a shilling an acre was paid by farmers in the year, and he calculated that it amounted on the whole to perhaps 1,000,000 a year. Among those thus relieved, he said, the number of impostors must be enormous. It was not proposed, however, to prohibit vagrancy until the whole of the workhouses should be built and ready for the reception of the destitute. A lengthened discussion then took place in reference to the proposed measure, in which Mr. Shaw, Mr. O'Connell, Lord Howick, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, and other members took part. The Bill was read a first time, and on the 25th of April, 1837, Lord John Russell moved the second reading, when the debate was adjourned till the 1st of May. Notwithstanding a good deal of hostile discussion the second reading was carried without a division. On the 9th of May the House went into committee on the Bill. Twenty clauses were passed with only two unimportant divisions. The introduction of a settlement clause was rejected by a majority of 120 to 68. The vagrancy clauses were postponed for future consideration. The committee had got to the sixtieth clause on the 7th of June, when the king's illness became so serious that his recovery was highly improbable, and the business of Parliament was consequently suspended. He died on the 20th of June, and on the 17th of July Parliament was prorogued, so that there was an end for the present to the Irish Poor Relief Bill, and all the other measures then before Parliament.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:Before this, however, the financial statement for the year had been made, and for awhile the Corn Law question was suspended for the country to recover from its astonishment at finding in the Minister of the Conservative party one of the boldest reformers of our tariff who had ever occupied the Ministerial benches. But yesterday his position had appeared one of the greatest difficulty, in which a cautious hold upon the established sources of revenue, with some well-balanced proposals for additional taxes, was all that could be expected. He had not the good fortune of Mr. Goulburn or Lord Althorp in having a surplus to dispose of. The Whig Government had bequeathed to their successors a deficit, which had been increasing from year to year, with a revenue falling off even in the face of new taxes. How[488] was the deficit to be met was the question which filled the mouths of public men; a question which was answered by the famous financial statement of Sir Robert Peel on the 11th of March. After showing that the deficiency for the coming year would be little short of 2,500,000, and that this deficiency might be expected to be considerably augmented by the position of affairs in India and China, the Minister declared that he would not consent to resort to the miserable expedient of continual loans. He declared that he would not attempt to impose burdens upon the labouring classes, and that if he did, recent experience had shown that they would be defeated. In fact, the country had arrived at the limits of taxation upon articles of consumption. After ridiculing the various suggestions of people who were constantly sending him projects for taxes on pianofortes, umbrellas, and other articles, accompanied with claims of very large percentages upon the proceeds, he acknowledged the principle laid down by financiers that increased revenue may be obtained by taking off the taxes which pressed upon industry, but declared that the first effect was always a diminution in revenue, and that time was found necessary to restore the amount. In these circumstances, he stated what the measure was which, under a deep conviction of its necessity, he was prepared to propose, and which, he was persuaded, would benefit the country, not only in her pecuniary interests, but in her security and character. His scheme was this: he proposed, for a period to be limited, an income tax of not more than 3 per cent., from which he would exempt all incomes under 150, and in which he would include not only landed but funded property. Sir Robert Peel calculated that the tax would yield 3,350,000 a year, a sum which, with an addition to the spirit duties in Ireland, and an export duty of 4s. on coals, would not only cover the existing deficiency, but enable him to remit indirect taxes to the amount of 1,200,000. The sliding scale had brought little credit to the Minister, and the income tax was in its nature an unpopular measure; but the proposal to reduce the custom duties on 750 out of the 1,200 articles in the tariffto remove prohibitions altogether (in itself a vast concession to Free Trade doctrines)to reduce the duties on raw materials of manufactures to five per cent. or lessto keep the duties on articles partially manufactured under twelve per cent., and on articles wholly manufactured under twenty per cent., was a scheme which excited general admiration. The measure was, indeed, contested by the Whig Opposition at every stage. The preliminary resolutions were debated for eight nights. There were many of Sir Robert Peel's old supporters who looked on the financial plan with distrust, as being founded, in a great measure, avowedly on those principles of political economy which they had been accustomed to sneer at; but, in truth, it was not unfavourable to the interests of their party. We have already seen that the new taxat least, if a temporary onewas calculated to impose a far greater burden upon the manufacturing and moneyed class than upon the landowners; in fact, by exempting incomes under 150 a year, and assessing land only upon its net rental, the burden was imposed almost entirely upon that middle class which was the especial object of the dislike of Tories of the more advanced kind. At the same time, by cheapening articles of general consumption, the Minister did something towards securing popularity among the working classes, who, as exemplified in the Chartist agitation, were not always disposed to take part against the landowners. The Income Tax Bill passed, after considerable opposition in the Commons. An amendment proposed by Lord John Russell was rejected by a vote of 302 to 202, and another amendment, proposing the reading of the Bill on that day six months, having been thrown out on the 18th of April by a vote of 285 to 188, the third reading was carried by a majority of 130 on the 30th of May. No debate took place in the Lords until the third reading, when the Bill passed by a majority of 71.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:DEATH OF WOLFE. (After the Painting by Benjamin West, P.R.A.)[152]
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:The Irish delegates described the condition of Ireland as most deplorable. They said that the Government interest, through the landed aristocracy, was omnipotent; that the manufacturers were unemployed; that an infamous coalition had taken place between the Irish Opposition and Ministry; that the Catholics had been bought up so that all parties might combine to crush Reform; that the United Irishmen were everywhere persecuted, and that one of them had only just escaped from a six months' imprisonment.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:
FORE:On the 10th of May the second Congress met at Philadelphia. The delegates had everywhere been easily elected, and Franklin, having arrived on the 5th of May in Philadelphia, was in time to be added to the number already chosen there. The battle of Lexington had heated the blood of the delegates, and they assembled in no very pacific mood. They assumed the name of the Congress of the United Colonies, and rejected with contempt the poor conciliatory Bill of Lord North, as it had already been deservedly treated by the provincial Assemblies. They immediately issued a proclamation prohibiting the export of provisions to any British colony or fishery still continuing in obedience to Great Britain; or any supply to the British army in Massachusetts Bay, or the negotiation of any bill drawn by a British officer. Congress ordered the military force of the colonies to be placed on an efficient footing. They called into existence a body of men, besides the provincial militia, to be maintained by the United Colonies, and to be called continental troops, which distinction must be kept in mind during the whole war. They then made a most admirable choice of a commander-in-chief in the person of Colonel George Washington.
FORE:During the Session of 1764 Grenville imposed several duties on American articles of export, if imported direct from the French, Dutch, and Spanish West Indies. The Americans did not dispute the right of the mother country to impose such duties on the trade of the empire in any quarter; but these imposts, seeing the object of them, were not the less galling. But Grenville did not stop there; he stated, at the time of passing these duties, that it was probable that Government would charge certain stamp duties in America. This was creating a sore place and immediately striking it. The infatuated Minister was contemplating an act of the nature of which neither he nor his colleagues had any conception.
FORE:
FORE:A number of satires and other poems appeared at this time which deserve only a mere mention. These are "The Pursuits of Literature," by Thomas James Mathias; "Anticipation," by Richard Tickell, being an anticipation of the king's Speech, and the debates of Parliament; "An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers," by Mason, under the assumed name of Malcolm Macgregor; "The Rolliad," also a political satire, in 1785. To this succeeded "Probationary Odes," from the same party. These were eclipsed by the publications of Dr. John Wolcot, under the name of Peter Pindar, who for twenty years kept the public laughing by his witty and reckless effusions, in which the king especially was most unmercifully ridiculed. Wolcot had the merit of discovering Opie, the painter, as a sawyer in the neighbourhood of Truro, and pushing him forward by his praises. Of the Royal Academicians he was a relentless enemy, and to them addressed several odes, of the most caustic and damaging kind. Later on came the inimitable poems of the "Anti-Jacobin," written by Canning, Hookham Frere, and others, among which it is sufficient to recall the "Needy Knife-grinder," and the satires on the Addington Administration. But now there came a voice from Scotland that filled with envy the crowd of second-rate poets of London, and marked the dawn of a new era. A simple but sturdy peasantwith no education but such as is extended to every child in every rural parish of Scotland; "following the plough along the mountain side," laboriously sowing and reaping and foddering neat; instead of haunting drawing-rooms in bob-tailed coat and kid gloves, dancing on the barn-floor, or hob-nobbing with his rustic chums at the next pot-houseset up a song of youth, of passion, of liberty and equality, so clear, so sonorous, so ringing with the clarion tones of genius and truth, that all Britain, north and south, stood still in wonder, and the most brazen vendor of empty words and impudent pretensions to intellectual power owned the voice of the master, and was for a moment still. This master of song was Robert Burns (b. 1759; d. 1796). Need we say more? Need we speak of the exquisite beauty of the "Cotter's Saturday Night"?of the fun of "Tam o' Shanter"?of the satiric drollery of his laughter at antiquarian and other pretenders?of the scathing sarcasms on sectarian cant in "Holy Willie's Prayer," and a dozen other things?of the spirit of love and the spirit of liberty welling[186] up in his heart in a hundred living songs?of the law of man's independence and dignity stamped on the page of eternal memory in the few words"A man's a man for a' that"? Are not these things written in the book of human consciousness, all the world over? Do not his fellow-countrymen sing them and shout them in every climate under heaven? At the time when they appeared the poems of Robert Burns clearly showed that true poetry was not altogether extinct, and effectually put an end to that fatal rage of imitation of the artificial school of Johnson and Pope which then prevailed.
