duced a budget. Semi-ironic cheers met his semi-ironic
expression of an expectation that he would be asked the question: what
had become of the calculations of 1853? The succession duty proved a
woeful disappointment, and instead of producing two million pounds,
produced only six hundred thousand. A similar but greater
disappointment, we must recollect, owing mainly to a singular
miscalculation as to the income-tax, had marked Peel's memorable budget
of 1842, which landed him in a deficiency of nearly two and a quarter
millions, instead of a surplus of half a million.[295] Of the
disappointment in his own case, Mr. Gladstone when the time came
propounded an explanation, only moderately conclusive. I need not
discuss it, for as everybody knows, the effective reason why the
income-tax could not be removed was the heavy charge created by the
Crimean war. What is more to the point in estimating the finance of
1853, is its effect in enabling us to meet the strain of the war. It was
this finance that, continuing the work begun by Peel, made the country
in 1859 richer by more than sixteen per cent, than it had been in 1853.
It was this finance, that by clinching the open questions that enveloped
the income-tax, and setting it upon a defensible foundation while it
lasted, bore us through the struggle. Unluckily, in demonstrating the
perils of meddling with the structure of the tax, in showing its power
and simplicity, the chancellor was at the same time providing the
easiest means, if not also the most direct incentive, to that policy of
expenditure--it rose from fifty to seventy millions between 1853 and
1859--which was one of the most fatal obstacles to the foremost aims of
his political life. It was twenty years from now, as my readers will
see, before the effort, now foreshadowed, to exclude the income-tax from
the ordinary sources of national revenue, reached its dramatic close.

FOOTNOTES:

[284] A curious parliamentary incident occurred. The original proposal
was to reduce the duty from eighteen-pence to sixpence. A motion to
repeal it altogether was rejected by ten. Then a motion was made to
substitute zero for sixpence in the clause. The Speaker ruled that this
reversal of the previous vote was not out of order, and it was carried
by nine.

[285] Some may place first the Act of 1833 making real estate liable for
simple contract debts.

[286] Mrs. Simpson's _Many Memories_, p. 237.

[287] For paper on Irish income