s, or some fourteen millions more than in
1853. This was not the act only of the government. The opposition halloed
them on; and the country, seized with a peculiar panic, was in a humour
even more lavish than the opposition.

My view was, and I stated it, that we ought to provide for this
expenditure in a due proportion between direct and indirect taxes. I
showed that this proportion had not been observed; that we had continued
to levy large amounts of war tax on tea and sugar, and had returned to the
scale of 1853 for income. I proposed to provide the necessary sums chiefly
by an increase of income-tax. But neither then (in July 1859), nor for
nearly two and a half years before, had I ever (to my knowledge) presumed
to speak of any one as bound to abolish the income-tax or to remit the
additional duties on tea and sugar.

I fully expect from _you_ the admission that as to these measures I could
not in the altered circumstances be bound absolutely to the remissions.
But you say I was bound to give them a preference over all other
remissions. Nowhere I believe can one word to this effect be extracted
from any speech of mine. I found in 1860 that all the reforming
legislation, which had achieved such vast results, had been suspended for
seven years. We were then raising by duties doomed in 1853, from twelve to
thirteen millions. It would in my opinion have been no less than monstrous
on my part to recognise the preferences you claim for these particular
duties. All of them indeed would have been reliefs, even the income-tax
which is I think proved to be the least relief of any. But, though
reliefs, they were hardly reforms; and experience had shown us that
reforms were in fact double and treble reliefs. I may be wrong, but it is
my opinion and I found it on experience, that the prospect of the removal
of the three collectively (income, tea extra, and sugar extra) being in
any case very remote, it is less remote with than without the reforming
measures of the last and (I hope I may add) of the present year. Had the
expenditure of 1853 been resumed, there would notwithstanding the Russian
war have been, in my opinion, room for all these three things. 1.
Abolition of income-tax by or near 1860; 2. remission of increases on tea
and sugar within the same time; 3. the prosecution of the commercial
reforms.

It may be said that having set my face against an excess of expenditure I
ought to have considered that a holy war, and