I have shown you that if you grant us the
taxes which we ask, to the moderate amount of L2,500,000 in the whole,
much less than that sum for the present year, you, or the Parliament
which may be in existence in 1860, will be in the condition, if it shall
so think fit, to part with the income tax."
Sir, I scarcely dare to look at the clock, shamefully reminding me, as
it must, how long, how shamelessly, I have trespassed on the time of the
committee. All I can say in apology is that I have endeavored to keep
closely to the topics which I had before me--
--immensum spatiis confecimus aequor,
Et jam tempus equum fumantia solvere colla.
"These are the proposals of the Government. They may be approved or they
may be condemned, but I have at least this full and undoubting
confidence, that it will on all hands be admitted that we have not
sought to evade the difficulties of our position; that we have not
concealed those difficulties, either from ourselves or from others; that
we have not attempted to counteract them by narrow or flimsy expedients;
that we have prepared plans which, if you will adopt them, will go some
way to close up many vexed financial questions--questions such as, if
not now settled, may be attended with public inconvenience, and even
with public danger, in future years and under less favorable
circumstances; that we have endeavored, in the plans we have now
submitted to you, to make the path of our successors in future years not
more arduous but more easy; and I may be permitted to add that, while we
have sought to do justice, by the changes we propose in taxation, to
intelligence and skill as compared with property--while we have sought
to do justice to the great laboring community of England by furthering
their relief from indirect taxation, we have not been guided by any
desire to put one class against another.
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