per cent.

The reduction would amount, to the consumer, to about 1s. 3d. per bottle on French wines, and on the other wines he had named to about 1s. per bottle, and this he did not consider too much when he considered how the consumption had decreased by the operation of the present high duties. In Ireland, the falling off in the consumption had been much greater than in England, and for the same reason. He could not believe that the Irish had become less hospitable, or that the characteristic trait of the Irish country gentlemen was effaced; nor should he wish to have it lost. There were some things which, undoubtedly, he would wish to see changed in that country, but the goodnatured hospitality and openheartedness of its inhabitants he would wish to remain unaltered. But he could assure honourable gentlemen from that country, that he had no wish to controul those hospitable feelings, if in the reduction of duties he stopped short of the amount paid in the years 1801 and 1802. Taking the whole of the consumption in both countries to be increased to what it was in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803, he calculated the loss which the revenue would sustain would amount to 230,000l. The next branch of revenue which he should bring under the consideration of the committee, was one of vast importance, not merely as it referred to the consumption of the article, but as a reduction of the duty on it had reference to another most important subject he meant the prevention of smuggling. This practice, which had of late been carried to an amazing extent, he considered as one of

the greatest of our domestic evils. The smuggler haunted us in every place to which we could turn-in our own bays, creeks, ports, and rivers, he was ever on the watch, to distribute his contraband goods. The palace of the noble, the cottage of the peasant, were alike exposed to his visits. He seduced all-he held out temptations to all, which he believed few in any rank in society were found to resist. We had penalties without number to repress his illegal traffic, but they were found useless. We had coercive acts, one heaped on another, to check his career, but they were ineffectual, for the laws enacting high duties still remained unaltered. What, then, was the remedy? Why, as the law enacting duties was the cause-let it be altered, and the effect would, in part at least, be removed. He said in part, because he knew, that while any duty existed, it would be impossible wholly to repress the smuggler; but by diminishing the prospect of great gains, they would take away the greatest incentive to his daring enterprise. The house had tried the experiment in Ireland and Scotland in the reduction of the duty on Irish and Scotch spirits, and it had succeeded. Why not make the same attempt in this country? He had been told, when those measures were in progress, that they would produce a greater evil than that which they proposed to remedythat the people would all get drunk, and that it would be impossible to check them in this practice, except by high duties. The result had proved the fallacy of those forebodings. What was there which should lead the com

mittee to suppose that the same effect might not be produced in this country? He contended, that every principle of justice, every feeling of duty, every sense of humanity, called on them to adopt a course which would tend to suppress a vice attended with such evil consequences. He would not say that they would do this all at once. He had begged, when pressed on this subject, to be let alone; he had said, "Do not ride a willing horse to death," he was in the course, and if allowed to take his own way he would arrive in due time at the desired goal. He had said it was tried in Ireland and Scotland with effect; but when they drove the smuggler from the north, he moved-(he was going to make a reflection, but he would refrain from it)—he came with great sagacity to the south. When the law was relaxed at one side of the border, the smuggler removed to the other. This rendered it necessary to make some change in the law. This was what he had to propose, and he would say that it was necessary, and that they would never be able to effect the purpose which they had in view, unless they appointed in England the same system of law as now existed in Ireland upon this subject. Every body knew, that though the distiller began by making raw spirit, it could not be sold as raw spirit: it therefore went to the rectifier, who mixed with it some compound or other to give it a flavour; and when it was thus mixed, he gave it out to the consumer as gin. Whisky, which was the first extract, was not allowed to be sold in England: he could not say whether the people of England

did or did not like gin better; but this he would say, that the system of law which prohibited it from being sold in England, and allowed it to be sold in Ireland and Scotland, could not be right; and that the only way for preventing them continuing in the wrong, was to assimilate the practice in England to that in the two sister countries. He defended this alteration of the system which he had pointed out -not by saying that it would lead to the extinction of gin, for that it would not do, as the rectifier would be entitled to compound it as before, but by stating, that it would enable the manufacturer of spirits in England to make whisky, and the manufacturers in Scotland and Ireland to import it into England without being liable to the penalties which they had now to pay, if they were discovered carrying on such an illicit traffic. He recollected that the honourable member for Aberdeen, who seemed to have hoisted the standard of smuggling in that house, had once boasted before them, that notwithstanding the penalties which were attached to the introduction of Scotch whisky into England, he was never without a glass of excellent Scotch whisky in his house. The honourable member might, in future, have his cellar full of it without danger; and he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) took the first opportunity of congratulating him upon it with the sincerest pleasure. But these alterations would not be sufficient without some reduction of the duty. He was aware that many individuals would object to the reduction of duties upon spirits. It might be said, that it was not politic to render ardent spirit too

cheap.

cheap. Ee it so. It was smuggled, however, at present; and smuggled in such quantities from Scotland into the northern counties as to make it cheap there, just as it was smuggled from Holland and France in such quantities as to make it cheap also in the southern counties. The reduction in the duty would, by lowering the price of the article, diminish the temptation to smuggle it, and would thus bring under the dominion of the excise much spirit which now escaped it. He did not, however, think it advisable to carry the duty so low in England as it had been carried in Ireland and Scotland. The duty in Ireland and Scotland had been fixed at 2s., because it was deemed essential to put an end to an evil which had risen to a great height in that country. That evil had never been so great in England as it had been in the remote parts of Ireland and Scotland. He therefore could not bring himself to deem it advisable to reduce the duties in England to so low a rate as that to which they had been reduced in Ireland and Scotland. The reduction of duty on British spirits which he intended to propose was this--that whereas 10s. 6d. per gallon was now the duty on all British spirits, no matter whether they were distilled from malt or grain, it should only be 5s. per gallon on all spirits distilled from malt, but 6s. per gallon on all distilled from grain. He saw from the very significant shake of the head which the honourable member for Norwich had just given him, that he heard this intelligence with feelings of horror. The honourable member, perhaps, thought that he was going to in

volve the country in one general indiscriminating state of drunkenness. He could assure the hon. member, that if he had the slightest idea that the alteration he proposed was calculated to produce such an effect, he would be the last man in the world to propose it.

There were, however, two evils before them-drunkenness and smuggling: one of them they must choose; and he believed that the only mode of escaping from the other would be by adopting the proposition which he had brought under their notice. As incident to this reduction of the duty on British spirits, he proposed to reduce the duty on rum, and to permit whisky to be made from grain in the different parts of our colonial possessions. That duty was now 10s. 6d. per gallon, at proof. He proposed to reduce it to Ss. per gallon. He thought that he should not be considered as dealing unfairly with those who had an interest in the colonies in making them pay such a duty, when he said that the manufacturer of spirits from grain in England had difficulties to contend with which did not apply to the manufacturers in the colonies. The manufacturer of spirits in England bought his grain at that artificial price which was given to it in the market by the corn laws. It would, therefore, be unfair to place the same charge upon him which was placed upon a manufacturer who did not labour under the same embarrassment; and he had in consequence determined not to reduce the duty on rum lower than 8s. per gallon. There was one point acceded to the manufacturer of rum which he ought not to omit in this place.

It

It was this-that if he distilled in the colonies raw spirit, as whisky, he should be allowed to bring it here, and should be permitted either to send it to the rectifier, to have it converted into gin, or to sell it as whisky, if he so thought proper. He mentioned this circumstance, because he had been much pressed to allow rum to be converted into whisky, by being rectified. Now, he would meet this alteration half way: he could not go farther, because it was impossible to say how far the present alteration might work, and it was not right to turn every thing topsy-turvy on mere speculation. He really was afraid, that if the house allowed rum to be rectified in this manner, the revenue would suffer a greater loss than it ought to sustain. Without entering further into details on the subject, he should assume the loss which the revenue would thus sustain at 750,000l. It would have been necessary for him to have assumed it at a much larger sum, had he not been confident that he should replace much of the loss which would be thus sustained by the increased quantity of spirits which would come under the excise, in lieu of those which were formerly imported from Scotland and Ireland, and illicitly imported from Holland and France. The hon. member for Norwich would see from this statement, that he was not going to reduce the price of British spirits to the alarming degree which he had seemed to anticipate. There was another article, small in amount, local in consumption, but in the view which he had taken of the subject, of peculiar importance, on which he intended to propose

1825.

a reduction of duty-that was cider. He could not expect that gentlemen not connected with the cider counties should feel any great interest on this point. But in those parts of England where cider was manufactured, he must inform them that the gaols were filled with persons who had violated the law on this subject—that a great portion of the persons thus incarcerated were females, and that the present duty was the source of every evil which prevailed among that population. He therefore conceived that he should not appear to be doing any thing wrong, when he applied to the violation of the cider duties a similar remedy to that which he had applied to the other kinds of smuggling which he had described. In reducing the cider duties from 30s. per hogshead to 15s. he should not reduce the revenue more than 15,000l.-[Hear, hear, and a laugh-in the midst of which a member exclaimed, “ Why not reduce the whole ?"]-He had no objection to reduce it to 10s., and then he should not reduce the revenue more than 20,000l. He would tell the house, why he had proposed to reduce it only 15s. It was because the parties most interested in the question had chosen that sum for themselves. Fix, however, the duty at 10s. in future, and they would rid six counties of England of an evil which was of no slight importance. For, though it was local, its tendency was to propagate itself in every direction. Smuggling was increased by it; what profits one man upon one occasion was deemed likely to profit another man upon another; and thus every man was disposed to evade the law, when

he could do it with any advantage to his own interest. It was owing to these practices, that we were now surrounded by a brazen wall of coast-guard, and were obliged to employ a petty navy to protect us from the assaults and depredations of smugglers. Smugglers were planted by hundreds in our soil; and any thing which cut a branch off from this evil root was an object well deserving of public attention. The committee would observe that he had hitherto confined himself to the duties which he proposed to repeal on hemp, wine, spirits, and cider; but after the numerous petitions which had been presented to the house, many of which had been that day brought forward, and had elicited from several members sentiments favourable to the object of the petitioners, he felt it incumbent on him to satisfy the house that the course which he proposed to take with regard to the assessed taxes was one of which the petitioners ought not to complain, as he had consulted their interest in the general interest of the whole community. He thought that no man would deny this position-that it was impossible to confer a benefit on the community by the extinction of a great moral evil, without conferring a benefit on all classes of it, from the highest down to the very lowest. He was sure that if the petitioners would only bring their minds to reflect upon those enlightened principles, on the application of which the prosperity of nations depended, and would only look at the subject with reference to the general good, and without any regard for their own private advantages, they would approve the course he was going

to pursue, and would confess that it was calculated to create a great moral improvement in the mass of their countrymen. If among the petitioners there were men of distinguished rank and station-and his hon. friend, the member for Surrey, had told them that the petition from Lambeth was signed by men of that description-he would make his appeal to them, and would ask them whether, when they brought themselves to look at look at the complicated evils which smuggling brought upon the country, they would permit their personal considerations to weigh in the balance against the great improvements which his measure was calculated to promote ? If among them, he repeated, there were men of rank and station, he should blush for them he would blush for the rank they held in society, if they hesitated a moment between their private good and the public advantage. He should say to them, "Whilst you are entertaining a doubt which of the two you ought to choose, "Incipit ipsorum contra vos stare parentum "Nobilitas, claramque facem præferre pu

dendis."

He would say to them, that if they looked to their own petty interests, and did not consider the paramount interests of the empire, they were acting a part unworthy of themselves and their ancestors, and were forfeiting that high character which had always hitherto been supposed to belong to the class of English gentlemen. That was the language he would address to all those persons of rank and station on whom the assessed taxes pressed; and to the less exalted persons on whom they fell, he would say that most of them were ex

posed