As to the late peace, some observations concerning which had given such offence to the right honourable colonel, he should still deny that it had been either a necessary, or a great and glorious peace; and contend, that in the relative state of this kingdom, at the time, compared with the state of other powers, we had a right to expect a much more advantageous treaty. If, however, the peace had been great and glorious, those who remained in office, and enjoyed a share in making it, had divided the rewards of it in a manner singularly striking. For themselves they had taken places and emoluments, and left the person, who was supposed to have been the principal negotiator of it, in full póssession of all the encomiums which the warmth of his panegyrists could bestow. But" ease and praise," said Mr. Fox, are the true objects of genuine ambition. These they have liberally bestowed on the noble lord (Lansdown); these substantial recompences, these solid honours, have they nobly secured to him, in his favourite retirement, in his sequestered happiness, in rustic peace, and undisturbed repose! For themselves, on the contrary, have they not reserved all the cares, the anxieties, the fatigues, the solicitations - and the emoluments of office? Generous partition ! - substantial fame for their patron; mere official reward for themselves! It is the extreme of absurdity to imagine, on party considerations, that the carrying the proposed amendment can prove an object of the slightest estimation. Who can conceive that either I or my friends will be one step nearer the acquisition of office or of power, whether the Duke of Richmond's fortification plan succeeds or fails? If defeating the minister, even in points which he has unequivocally supported to the utmost of his power, could have served us in a party light, how comes it that, notwithstanding the numerous defeats which he has endured, he continues unshaken, and even more firm than ever? Has the complete failure of the Irish propositions in the least affected him as a minister? Did his shameful defeat in the question of the Westminster scrutiny either prejudice him, or serve me, in a ministerial light? Did his abandonment of the cotton tax take an atom from his consequence? The fact is, he is a minister who thrives by defeat, and flourishes by disappointment. The country gentlemen oppose him upon one occasion, only to give him more strength upon another; he is beaten by them upon one subject, only to be assisted by them in a succeeding one; if he falls by the landed interest to-day, he is sure to rise by them to-morrow with added energy and recruited vigour. In conclusion, he must beg leave to remind the House, that the right honourable gentleman had, as usual, availed himself of his machinery in his opening speech. He had drawn into his argument the American war, and the coalition. He was a little surprised that the poor India bill had escaped. Those topics, however, the right honourable gentleman might bring forward as often as he thought proper. No part of his conduct was he ashamed of; and although clamour, artfully raised, and industriously kept alive, might for a while put a false and injurious construction upon it, time would dissipate the cloud of prejudice, and convince all men how egregiously they had been duped and deluded. And here he should avow, that he retained all his great party principles upon constitutional questions; and that it was this circumstance which formed the line between him and the right honourable gentleman. I stand, said Mr. Fox, upon this great principle. I say that the people of England have a right to control the executive power, by the interference of their representatives in this House of parliament. The right honourable gentleman maintains the contrary. He is the cause of our political enmity; to this I adhere; to this I pledge myself, and upon this ground I mean to vote for the amendment. After a long discussion of the subject, the House divided on the original motion, as moved by Mr. Pitt: Tellers. YEAS {Mr. Steel. Taylor} 169-NOES Tellers. Capt. Macbride} 169. The numbers being equal, Mr. Speaker Cornwall said, that although he should have wished to have stated at large his reasons for the opinion he had formed on the question, yet, after so long a debate, he had too much respect for the House to take up any more of their time; and therefore declared himself with the noes. So it passed in the negative. Mr. Fox then said, that the motions which his right honourable friend, Mr. Burke, was to have made on the ceding day, for papers relative to Mr. Hastings, could not be made before Wednesday; on which day they probably would be made by his right honourable friend, who was then prevented by illness from attending his duty in that House-a fortunate circumstance for the right honourable the Speaker, as it had given him an opportunity, which he otherwise would not have had, of gaining immortal honours, by his casting vote upon the subject of fortifications. THE MOTION FOR THE REPEAL OF THE SHOP Tax. March 2. HE House having resolved itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider of the several petitions which had been presented praying for the repeal of the shop tax, Sir Watkin Lewes moved, “That the chairman be directed to move the House, that leave be given to bring in a bill to repeal an act passed during the last session of parliament, entitled, An act for granting certain duties on shops within Great Britain." The motion was supported by Aldermen Sawbridge, Newnham, Townshend, Hammet, and Watson, Sir Joseph Mawbey, Mr. Thomson, Mr. Drake, Sir Gregory Page Turner, and Mr. Fox; and opposed by Sir Edward Astley, Mr. Loveden, Mr. Powys, Mr. W. Stanhope, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Grigsby. In reply to Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox said, that the right honourable gentleman might rest assured that he admitted, without even the slightest exception, the justice of his arguments in favour of the necessity of perpetually endeavouring to introduce whatever might tend to improve the national revenue, and of refusing - unless the most unanswerable reasons could justify a contrary procedure to relinquish a tax, from the produce of which a considerable sum might be looked for. So fully was he persuaded that his sentiments became not only every minister, but every member of that House, and so deeply was he, at the same time, convinced, that, in matters of taxation, the unpopularity of any particular impost ought not to be the reason for its being abandoned, that much as he professed of respect for his constituents of Westminster, and still more, as he felt of regard and reverence for those whom he considered as his first constituents, the people at large, whose interests he held himself bound to watch over, and, as far as in him lay, to protect and defend within those walls; yet, notwithstanding the numerous petitions on the table, and notwithstand ng the instructions which he had received from those whom he immediately represented, and their known wishes, he made no scruple to declare, that he would have supported the right honourable gentleman in resisting a motion for the repeal of the shop tax, had he not been fully convinced that the tax was radically bad; that it was founded in the grossest partiality and injustice; and that no modification whatever, much less the sort of modification proposed by the right honourable gentleman, could cure its defects, or render it fit to be endured. The motion for its repeal should, therefore, have his firm support, and in giving his vote for a repeal of the act in toto, he hoped he should not be considered as an enemy to the revenue. When the tax had been originally proposed, he objected to it, and then declared, that, though the right honourable gentleman chose to call it a shop tax, it was in fact an additional house tax, partially applied to houses, of which shops made a part. That was, undoubtedly, the state of the case, and consequently it was not the first, but the second shop tax; for the tax on houses had operated partially, and to the disadvantage of shopkeepers; inasmuch as shopkeepers, compared to all other descriptions of householders, paid by far the highest rents of any persons in the kingdom. To lay a new burden on the shoulders of that description of people, who were too heavily burdened before, was oppressive and unjust; and that, therefore, were there no other, was a strong reason, and indeed it ought to operate as an unanswerable one with the committee, for agreeing to the motion for a repeal of the act. -The right honourable gentleman had put the case, if houses were to rise in rent considerably all over the kingdom some years hence, what would then be the situation of shopkeepers, and would they have any reason to complain that they paid higher rents than they did at present? If the right honourable gentleman meant merely, that if money grew cheaper, and all sorts of property fetched a larger proportion of money in price proportionably, in that case things would just remain in the situation in which they stood at present; but if the right honourable gentleman meant (and so indeed he must mean, if he meant any thing) that the houses of shopkeepers only were at any given period to be raised in their rents all over the kingdom, he had then very fairly described the additional tax in question, because that tax operating upon shopkeepers only, did what the right honourable gentleman had stated: it raised the rents and swelled the capitals of shopkeepers' houses all over the kingdom, at the same time that it raised the rents of no other houses. How extreme was the injustice of selecting that useful body of people, the shopkeepers, as objects not only of separate and distinct, but of oppressive and unjust taxation! With regard to the two points, which the right honourable gentleman had laboured so much to establish, namely, that the tax was not personal, and that it might be laid on the consumer by the shopkeeper who paid it in the first instance, both those positions must he deny in the most unequivocal manner, and declare that the tax was a direct personal tax on the shopkeeper, and that it was utterly impossible for him to repay himself by laying it on the consumer, without putting the public not merely to five times the charge of it, (as an honourable member had stated to have been the case in regard to the duty imposed on wine some years since), but to forty, or perhaps one hundred times the charge. On this occasion, he must beg leave to remind the committee, that nothing could be more easy than to ascertain exactly to what the sum of additional duty per hogshead upon wine came, and what would prove the amount of that duty when divided into gallons, and from gallons into bottles. If, then, in a case so easy, obvious, and intelligible, the retail dealer had barefacedly charged the public five times as much for every bottle as he paid to the exchequer, what an advantage must not be unavoidably made where the distribution of the tax was privately laid on a variety of small articles! In fact, the consumer, if he paid the tax at all, must imperceptibly and insensibly, even to the shopkeeper, pay it over and over and over again; but he defied the right honourable gentleman to prove that any shopkeeper either had, or could charge it to the consumer. Being therefore undoubtedly a personal tax, he should advise the right honourable gentleman, in this instance at least, to give way, and offer some tax, less exceptionable, in its stead; in short, the tax was so radically bad, that no modification could cure its defects. The right honourable gentleman, in the greater part of his argument, had endeavoured to prove that the tax was not personal, and that it must find its level, and fall on the consumer. If this were true, what was there to recommend his modifications? The right honourable gentleman had stated that he would take off and modify the portion of the tax to be paid by all shopkeepers who lived in houses at less rents than twenty and twenty-five pounds, which would considerably lighten the load, and exonerate the shopkeeper. Would it? Of what would it exonerate him? Of the money paid by the consumer! For if the consumer was to pay the whole of the tax, the consumer would be exonerated by the modification proposed, and not the shopkeeper. In like manner, the generous and compassionate bounty of the right honourable gentleman, in fact, amounted to nothing; because if the consumer really paid the tax, the poor shopkeeper, who was not to pay towards the tax, if he was excused the payment of parochial taxes, was excused from paying that which, according to the right honourable gentleman's argument, was to come out of the pocket of another. The right honourable gentleman had thought proper to hazard the remark, that the tax would, no doubt, find its level; but that the shopkeepers had not yet found out how to make its distribution. This was an extraordinary thing to say of men, the daily business of whose lives was to lay out large sums |