e deficiency by indirect taxation; the other was
to reduce the customs duties by substituting as far as possible an
excise duty. Walpole would have desired something like free-trade as
regarded the introduction of food and the raw materials of manufacture.
Let these be got into the country as easily and freely as possible was
his principle, and then let us see afterwards how we can adjust the
excise duties so as to produce the largest amount of revenue with the
smallest injury to the interest of the consumer, and with the minimum
of waste. His design was that the necessaries of life and the raw
materials of manufacture should remain as nearly as possible untaxed,
and that the revenue of the country should be collected from land and
from luxuries. We do not mean to say that the plans which Walpole
presented to the country were faithful in all their details to these
central ideas. One scheme at least which he laid before Parliament was
positively at variance with the main principles which he had long been
trying to establish. But in considering the whole controversy between
him and his opponents, the reader may take it for granted that such
were the principles by which his financial policy was inspired. He had
been moving quietly in this direction for some time. He had removed
the import duties from tea, coffee, and chocolate, and made them
subject to inland or excise duties. In 1732 he revived the salt tax.
The Bill which was introduced on February 9, 1732, to accomplish this
object, met with a strong opposition in both Houses of Parliament.
Walpole's speech in introducing the motion for the revival of the tax
contained a very clear statement of his financial creed. "Where every
man contributes a small share, a great sum may be raised for the public
service without any man's being sensible of what he pays; whereas a
small sum raised upon a few, lies heavy upon each particular man, and
is the more grievous in that it is unjust; for where {313} the benefit
is mutual, the expense ought to be in common." [Sidenote:
1732--Opposition alarm] The general principle is unassailable; but
Walpole seems to us to have been quite wrong in his application of it
to such an impost as the salt tax. "Of all the taxes I ever could
think of," he argued, "there is not one more general, nor one less
felt, than that of the duty upon salt." He described it as a "tax that
every man in the nation contributes to according to his circumstanc