year's service as quarter-master, (one of the most comfortable stations an old sailor can fill) gets removed from the conn, when eye-sight and hearing begin to fail, and is put in the gunner's crew, to drag on as long as he can make a cartridge, or a wad, or point a quarter-deck or cabin breeching; till the doctor at last, weary of attempting to cure old rheumatic complaints, and desirous of lessening the number on the sick list, applies to have him invalided; that is, dismissed from the service, with the privilege of tottering clear of a pressgang for the remainder of his life. Suppose him to be certain of Greenwich, (which he is not, for it is a matter of favour, and not of right,) age, or incurable infirmities, are the qualifications which must entitle him to it. Such a prospect may indeed afford him consolation when those evils are coming on, but it can hardly be regarded as hope: hope should be of the nature of joy; and if we would encourage men to enter thé service, the reward of their service should be certain, and the time when they may claim it definite, and not too distant. Their discharge they should be entitled to at the end of the first term of seven years; with the second term, an increase of pay should commence; a second increase at the end of the fourteen years, and at the expira. tion of one-and-twenty, full pay for life; and an honorary distinction if they chose to serve longer, from year to year.

Oh that statesmen would but feel and understand how much more easy it is to lead men to their duty by hope, than to deter them from evil by fear! The system which is here recommended offers the surest mode of gradually abolishing those punishments which are disgraceful to

VOL. III. PART 1.

our nature; a forfeiture of time, in proportion to the offence, would be far more effectual than the brutal and brutalizing lash. Honorary rewards also should be held out for good conduct; they would operate as strongly upon the men as they do now upon the officers. An individual, Alexander Davison, distributed medals to all who had been in the battle of Aboukir; and we have known instances wherein it has been one of the last requests of dying seaman, that that medal should be carefully transmitted to his friends. It is the worst of all policies to degrade men, and to make them feel that they are degraded; teach them to know their moral and religious duties,. which, by means of that system for which Great Britain is indebted to Dr Bell, will now be done; teach them to respect themselves, cherish in them the sense of honour and of justice, and martial law may give place to a practice more congenial to the nature of an Englishman, and the laws of England. Trial by jury may take its place; and thus that tyranny, by which most mutinies are provoked, would be prevented. Put men upon their honour and their conscience, and if a comrade be guilty, there is no fear that they will pronounce him innocent for the sake of screening him from

nishment.

pu

self possessed makes him imperious, while the weight makes him anxious and fretful: he harasses the men for want of that method and self-confidence which nothing but experience can give, and thinks by severity to force respect. Men of good heart and good understanding outgrow this, and perceive their error; but it is a perilous stage through which they pass, and sometimes, before the captain has acquired experience, the crew have become desperate. We could instance an officer, in whom, when time had ripened him, the elements of firmness and gentleness were mixed in such perfect union, that no man was ever more perfectly or more justly beloved by those under his command; but he had been trusted with command too young, and the remembrance of the severities which he had then exercised, and of their consequences, troubled him on his deathbed. But examples of a different nature might be cited; men might be named who have shewn themselves incapable of shame or remorse, and whose unendurable tyranny has sometimes proved fatal to others, and sometimes to themselves. Persons acquainted with the navy will recollect one case of shipwreck, where the captain is vehemently suspected to have perished, either because some of his crew seized that opportunity of avenging themselves, or because none of them would stretch out a hand to save him. And in a case of capture, (how recent or how remote is of no consequence) the crew of a king's ship are reported to have fired without ball, in order that they might be made prisoners, and thus delivered from the oppression under which they had neither remedy nor hope.

It is true, that tyranny and oppression are provided against by martial law, but these offences are not in their nature so definite as mutiny, neither are they, nor can they be punished with the same severity, even if there were or could be the same disposition to punish them. Had it not been for a mere accident, Captain Lake would have received no other punishment than a private reprimand, for an act which nothing but accident prevented from being murder. Other instances might be given, but the invidious labour may well be spared, where the object is not to declaim against evils which have existed or may exist, but to shew by what means they may be prevented. The system of limited service, increase of pay in proportion to length of time, with a discharge, upon full pay for life at the expiration of one-and-twenty years after the age of twenty, seems to afford those means. Were that system thorough. ly established in the army and navy, volunteers would never be wanting for either; and when it was known that men might retire from the service of their country at any time after the age of one-and-forty, with a certain and comfortable provision for life, no other bounty would be required to tempt them into the service. Calculate the chances of life and of war, and it will be found that no great additional expence would be incurred by thus giving the bounty at the end of the term instead of the beginning; but if an additional yearly million were necessary, it would be well bestowed, and a hearth-tax or poll-tax for such a purpose would be cheerfully paid by the people of Great Britain.

2

THE charges upon Ireland for the year were 3,974,000l., interest and sinking fund upon the public debt; 6,614,0001., the quota of the supplies; and 541,0001. for treasury bills charged on aids of the year, making a total of 11,129,0001. The ways and means to cover these charges were the annual revenue, estimated at 5,000,000l., a loan of 5,400,0001. British, equal to 5,849,000l. Irish currency, and 311,000l. surplus of the consolidated fund, leaving an excess above the charges of May 30. 31,000l. In bringing forward these estimates, Mr Foster said, "that he felt justified in taking the revenue of Ireland at five millions, large as that sum was, because in the preceding year it had increased half a million. It was indeed true, that in that year it had been only four millions and a half; but then, owing to peculiar circumstances, the distilleries had fallen a million short, producing only two hundred thousand pounds instead of twelve hundred. But to compensate in some degree for this defalcation in the excise, there was an increase in the customs on rum

and foreign spirits, amounting to one half more than at any former period. The loan was unquestionably of such

an extent, that he wished it could have been avoided; but it was better to have recourse to it, than, under existing circumstances, to load a country like Ireland with so great an amount of new taxes. The sum necessary to be provided in the present year was but 331,2691.; and though the charge upon the revenue had increased, yet the revenue had increased in a higher proportion. The export of linen had decreased 400,000l., but that deficiency had been made up for by an increase upon different other articles. Hides and skins, and linen and worsted yarn, had decreased in the exports, a proof of the increa sing prosperity of the country, when the raw materials were kept to be manufactured in it. The export corn had never been so large as last year. The ways and means which he proposed were 35,0001., by a penny upon the postage of every letter, thus assimilating the post-office charges of Ireland to those of Great Bri tain; 70,000l., by equalizing in like manner the duties on tea, excepting however an allowance of 3 per cent. to indemnify the Irish dealers for the expence of coming to London for their tea; and by a duty upon currants and raisins, which might be ta

of

ken at 10,0001.; 30,0001. by equalizing the stamp duties, and by raising the duty on advertisements, which in this country was three shillings, in Ireland, two; 100,0001. by an additional 12 guineas per ton on Port and Spanish wines, and 18 guineas on French wines; 18,0001. by a regulation relative to stowage, and 85,0001. by an addition of 50 per cent. to the window tax, which would even then be less than what was paid in Scotland. The sum of these ways and means would be 338,000l., leaving a surplus above what was fully sufficient for the sinking fund and interest of the year's debt of 67317.”

Sir J. Newport reminded Mr Foster of the old remark, that in financial arithmetic two and two did not always make four. "The increase in postage, he thought, would diminish the correspondence in Ireland, and thus lessen, rather than augment, the revenue. The stamp duty was already so much eluded, that it did not produce one tenth of what it ought; to augment it was to give a higher premium for defrauding the revenue. The advertisement duty would defeat its own ends; two thirds of the business of the country was already done by hand-bills, in consequence of the existing duties, and this practice would consequently now become more general. The last increase on wine had produced an astonishing loss of revenue, and the same effects were now to be expected; the window tax, though houses with only seven windows were to be exempted, would still be a heavy burden on persons living in towns, and small shop-keepers." Having said thus much, he pointed out what might have been, and what might be, made available for public purposes, before new burdens were laid on the people. "The renewal of the bank charter

might have been granted at a rate which would have produced a fund for the service of the country,-instead of which it was given away almost gratis, for the loan of one million at as high a rate of interest as it would have been left to individuals, and for a small alteration in the management. A sum greater than at present might be received out of the duties on wrought iron imported from England. The 10 per cent. custom duty ought to produce 53,0001. ; instead of that, by some mismanagement, it only produced 17,000l. There was also a great balance remaining due from dead and dismissed collectors; and knowing that many of these sums might be easily recovered, and applied to the public use before new taxes were devised, he could only impute their long outstanding to the remissness of the agents and solicitors employed."

year, that

Mr Foster admitted this his opinion respecting the distilleries in Ireland had March 1. been erroneous. "The increase of illicit distillation," he said, "had been prodigiously great since the prohibition of distillation from wheat, farmers encouraging the illicit trade in order to procure a market for their produce. În 1807, the quantity of spirits distilled by the open distilleries was six millions of gallons, and the revenue 1,230,0001., while last year it had scarcely been one fourth of that quantity ;-the whole intermediate quantity had been supplied by illicit distillation. A radical change, therefore, in the system of revenue was necessary. When he came into office, he found the system on which he had since acted in full force; it was on a wise principle, and went to encourage large stills as the means of inducing parties possessed of ex

tensive capitals to enter the trade; but however good the principle, it had failed, and the illicit traffic was carried on by small stills to an almost incredible extent. To surmount this evil, small legal stills must be encouraged all over the country, by discontinuing the bounty to the large ones. He acknowledged that there were some grounds for the complaints of the Irish distiller of the fluctuation of the revenue laws, and he said that he would endeavour to obviate similar complaints in the future, by granting licences for thirty years, which would give stability to speculation, instead of for one year, as had hitherto been the practice. He proposed also to reduce the duties from 5s. 8d. per gallon to half a crown; there would be a risk of diminution in the first year, but this measure would destroy the illicit trade, and then the sum paid the government by the legal distiller would much more than counterbalance the lower rate of duty. He would also simplify the law, by abolishing the existing distinctions and drawbacks on the quantity of malt or spirits, and simply charging 2s. 6d. per gallon on the quantity distilled. And to avoid the increased expence of collecting the revenue, he proposed to have this duty collected by the collectors of hearth rates and assessed taxes, without the intervention of the excise. His object was to pass a law beneficial to Ireland; revenue was not his sole object, though from his situation it might be thought so; and he would gladly listen to suggestions from every side of the house, without thinking of party, or difference of feelings on other points. By the proposed system, the morals of the people, which were so injured by those illicit stills, would be improved, and the laws,

which were now contemned, would, by being enforced, become more respected. A dangerous class of persons also would be put down,-those who, without the cognizance of, and unknown to the magistrates, kept houses for the sale of spirits illegally distilled, under whose roofs had originated many of the evils which had lately so much afflicted Ireland.”

Sir J. Newport said, "he accorded most cordially with Mr Foster's proposed measures, which went, in fact, to do what he himself had for the last four years pressed upon the consideration of the house. But the plan which, on his best attention to the subject, he had ever thought most advisable, was to adopt the system of licence; that was, to charge a certain duty monthly upon the capacity of the still, and leave it open to the trader to make more of it by his exertions, if he could. The measure of employing the collectors of hearth rates, and assessed taxes, he was convinced, would never answer; those taxes were not too well collected now, and by adding another duty to the collectors' task, the revenue would suffer still more." Mr Foster replied, that "these collectors were released from their present duty during the six winter months, when the distilleries were most employed; and that the system of survey was better than that of license, which indeed was rendered impossible by the Union: for the allowance of countervailing duties between England and Ireland could never be carried into effect, when it could not be ascertained what was the incumbrance on the spirits of Ireland." Mr Parnell supported the license system; "It had been tried," he said, "with great success in Scotland, and though of late departed from, it was not given up till it had