would say, that there were circumstances in the case of the Derwentwater family, which palliated, excused, nay, did every thing but justify, the treason committed by it. He was aware, that with respect to the Derwentwater estate, there were difficulties, which did not exist in the cases then before the House, as the former was appropriated for the support of Greenwich hospital; but he submitted to the consideration of the chancellor of the exchequer, whether some means might not be devised to extend the munificence of parliament to Lord Newburgh, to which he had as good a claim as those who were now about to enjoy it; the principle was equally applicable to all; and though he was convinced no partiality existed in the minds of those who patronised the present measure, still it would be more complete and free from cavil, if the English estates were restored as well as the Scots. He did not expect that any thing would be done in this session for Lord Newburgh; but he hoped the right honourable gentleman would turn the case of that noble lord in his mind, so as to be able to propose something on that head next year.

As this measure had for its object the relief of individuals, whose unequivocal attachment and loyalty to his present majesty and his family could not be supposed to be tainted or affected by the crimes of their ancestors, it met with the perfect approbation of

the commons.

COMMUTATION ACT.

August 10.

ON the 21st of June, Mr. Chancellor Pitt moved several reso

ap.

lutions, as the foundation of the act, since known by the name of the Commutation Act. He stated to the House, that the illicit trade of the country had of late increased to so alarming a height, as to endanger almost the very existence of several branches of the revenue, and more particularly that of tea. It had peared before the committee on smuggling, that only 5,500,000lb. weight of tea was sold annually by the East India company, whereas the annual consumption of the kingdom was supposed from good authority, to exceed twelve millions, so that the illicit trade in this article was more than double the legal. The only remedy he could devise for this evil was, to lower the duties on tea to so small an amount, as to make the profit on the illicit trade not adequate to the risk. It was well known, that in this trade the price of freight and insurance to the shore was about 25 per cent., and the insurance on the inland carriage about 10 per cent more.

L

The duty on tea, as it then stood, was about 50 per cent., so that the smuggler had an advantage over the fair dealer of 15 per cent., as the voyage from England to the continent might be easily repeated four or five times in the year; he therefore proposed to reduce the duty on tea to 12 per cent. As this regulation would cause a deficiency in the revenue of about 600,000l. per annum, he proposed to make good the same by an additional window tax, This tax, he said, would not be felt as an additional burthen, but ought to be considered as a commutation, and would in fact prove favourable to the subject: a house, for instance of nine windows, which would be rated at 10s. 6d. might be supposed to consume 7lb. of tea; the difference between the old duties on which, and the new duty proposed, might, at an average, amount to 11. 58. Iod. so that such a family would gain by the commutation 15s. 4d. But the principal benefit he expected from this measure was the absolute ruin of the smuggling trade, which, he said, subsisted almost entirely on the profit of their teas. Another benefit would be, the timely and necessary relief it would afford the East India company. By this regulation they would find a vent for thirteen, instead of five millions of pounds of tea, and would be enabled to take twenty more large ships into their service. The resolutions proposed by the chancellor of the exchequer were agreed to, in consequence of which he obtained leave to bring in the bill, which met with a warm opposition. On the 10th of August, upon a motion for taking the report from the committee on the bill into consideration,

Mr. Fox objected to the principle of the bill, as well as to many parts of its detail, because it was founded on a deception, and held that out as a commutation, which was no commutation whatever; on the contrary, it was taking off a tax upon a luxury, to lay a tax upon a necessary, and not only laying a tax on a necessary, but laying it in a way, at once partial, unequal, and oppressive, by making the poor pay for the rich, and taxing those that did not drink tea, in order to accommodate those who did, and to enable them to drink their tea at a cheaper rate. The bill, to have come before the public fairly, ought to have been divided, and brought in as two bills; the one, a bill declaring, that, for the better prevention of smuggling, parliament found it expedient to take off the subsisting high duties on teas, and in their stead to lay a duty of 121 per cent. only; and the other, a bill to lay certain additional duties on windows. Had the two bills been so brought in, they would have stood upon their separate principles, and might have been separately examined and dis cussed. There would then have been no fallacy, no deception, nor any ground for the objection he was now stating, namely, that the bill as it stood, tended to deceive and to mis lead; that it told the public it did one thing, while in fact it did another, directly the reverse of what it affected to do. The

new tax on windows, proposed by the present bill, was an exceeding heavy burden laid upon the public: he was far from saying that heavy burdens were not actually necessary: he knew they were, and however other gentlemen might think, he was convinced, that still heavier burdens were necessary and must be imposed before the country could be retrieved; but what he meant to contend for was, that when burdens were laid upon the people, there should never be practised the smallest attempt to deceive them; they should be dealt with honestly and openly, and not blinded as to the real nature of the tax, which undoubtedly they were on the present occasion, since windows had no more necessary relation to tea, than bricks, or hats, or horses, or any other of the objects selected for taxation this year.

From this remark, Mr. Fox proceeded to consider the bill as to its object; and he said upon this head, undoubtedly smuggling could not be prevented effectually by merely lowering the duty upon teas; spirits, as an honourable gentleman, a friend of his, had well remarked, were an article of smuggling equally necessary to be attended to, but no man could look at the idea of extending the principle of the bill to spirits, without feeling even more horror than they felt on the present occasion, because it was not to be borne, that men should be called on to pay a tax upon their houses for drinking spirits in them. Spirits, he observed, were a species of luxury still more than tea, and to tax all descriptions of men as the present bill did, in respect to the pretence that they might drink spirits in their houses if they chose it, was something too bad to be thought on for a moment. His grand objection to the principle of the bill was, that it was compulsory, and not optional. This was, to the highest degree, unjust and oppressive; and this it was that took from it the semblance as well as the reality of its being a commutation. As the commencement of a system of regulation of finance, it might have been unobjectionable, had it not been compulsory. If, for in stance, it had been enacted, that the occupiers of such houses as chose to drink tea were obliged to take out licenses annually, after a rate proportionable to the size of their houses, in that case it certainly would have been a commutation and an optional tax; and had persons convicted of drinking tea in their houses, without having taken out such a license, been subject to a heavy penalty, he should have thought it perfectly fair and perfectly reasonable. Such a system of regulation might have been afterwards followed by other licenses for wine, &c., but as the tax stood in the bill, the drinkers of tea and those who never drank tea, were confounded together; and in order to lighten the burdens which ought to have been borne by the

former, the latter were taxed, and the poor, who had been too much pressed upon already by the taxes of the year, were to be ground down, and severely oppressed. Tea, Mr. Fox said, was, of all commodities, one of the best objects of taxation, because the best possible recommendation of any tax was, that it would be equally beneficial, whether it proved productive or not. What he meant by this, was, that if the tax proved productive, it answered that way; and, if it did not, in that case the consumption was not sufficiently great to check the consumption of some other article, the manufacture or the growth of our own country, from which a revenue equally large, might be derived. If, notwithstanding that the duties hitherto paid on teas produced 900,000l. it was really wiser to raise that money in another way, we had not, he said, heretofore been so much obliged to the East India company, as had been thought; because that position being admitted, it followed, that without having recourse to the company, the same revenue might have been obtained at home upon our own houses, and our own windows. He took notice of the minister's readiness to concede on any point that concerned himself and his own opinion merely, and of his obstinacy in refusing to concede in the least, where the benefit of the East India company was the object. It had of late been the practice to cry up the great importance of the East India company, and to contend, that every thing ought to be sacrificed to the benefit of that company; he supposed, therefore, that as the present bill had, for one of its great objects, the assistance of the East India company, the minister, ready as he had been on a late occasion to concede his own opinion to clamour and to the arguments of opposition, would not on the present concede in the least, or consent to alter in any material respect, a bill equally unwarrantable in its principle and defective in the detail of its clauses. At times, he said, he had heard taxes for luxuries called for in his mind very idly, because many such taxes, however popular they might sound when proposed, would have tended to detriment the revenue by proving unproductive. He was not, therefore, for having the idea of taxing luxuries carried to the extent that some gentlemen wished, but when a tax was laid upon tea, which undoubtedly was a luxury, but a luxury so much in use, that it came near to be a necessary, and when that tax was so far efficient as to produce near a million yearly, he was not for abandoning that tax to lay a tax on an absolute necessary, which houses undoubtedly were. Nor was he quite so sure, that this tax upon windows would prove as productive as was expected, or that the old window tax would continue as efficient as it had been hitherto found to be. Let gentlemen remember, that when the window tax as it stood at that day, had been

last augmentedand regulated, many persons blocked up several of their windows, to avoid paying it; now a tax on windows, so much heavier was imposed, it was natural to expect that they would block up more, by which means, not only the efficiency and productiveness of the new tax would be checked, but the productiveness of the old window tax would be diminished.

Mr. Fox, after various arguments against the general principle and the probable operation of the bill, spoke to several of the clauses, and animaverted on the mode in which Mr. Rose had answered Mr. Eden's remarks. The general reply, he said, had been, "Oh, we shall bring up a clause for that," and this had been repeated several times, which was a pretty strong proof of the necessity of re-committing the bill. His right honourable friend had contended very wisely and ably, that if gentlemen having three houses were not to pay for more than two, that by a parity of argument, those who had two houses ought not to pay for more than one. This was undoubtedly fair reasoning, and the fact was, that if the present were a tax on houses, and were meant to be such, every house in the possession of any person ought to pay; if he had three, all three; if four, all four: on the contrary, if it was really designed as a mere substitute for the tea tax, in that case, only one house belonging to any gentleman ought to pay it, and that the house where he himself resided, as that would be the house undoubtedly in which tea would be drunk. He declared, the only reason that struck his mind, that could be urged against charging every house belonging to gentlemen who had several, was, that it was recollected the right honourable gentleman, in opening the proposition originally, had stated, that individuals would save by paying the tax instead of paying the high prices upon teas, and it was thought that after such a declaration, it would be too much to ask a gentleman to pay for four houses, for the privilege of drinking tea in one of them. He adverted to the question about minors and guardians, and said the honourable gentleman had not answered that, by asking whether the Duke of Bedford ought not to pay the tax? Undoubtedly he ought; but as the bill stood, the mischief was, that the Duke of Bedford and a minor of a certain description, who had a fortune, not only far inferior, but scarcely equal to his support, were to pay the same exactly. Mr. Fox dwelt on this for some time, and pointed out, that by the inaccuracy of wording one of the clauses, if a person possessed a thousand, or any great number of houses, let out to more than one family each, he had it in his power to pay the tax upon no more than two of them. He explained this, by shewing, that the bill stated, that where two houses were let to more than one family, the