Of all this strong language Walpole took little account. {316} He meant to propose his scheme, he said, when the proper time should come, and he did not doubt but that honorable members would find it something very different from the vague and monstrous project of which they had been told. In any case he meant to propose it. [Sidenote: 1733--Walpole's scheme] Accordingly, on Wednesday, March 7, 1733, Walpole moved that the House should on that day week resolve itself into a committee "to consider of the most proper methods for the better security and improvement of the duties and revenues already charged upon and payable from tobacco and wines." On the day appointed, Wednesday, March 14th, the House went into committee accordingly, and Walpole expounded his scheme. It was simply a plan to deal with the duties on wines and tobacco, and Walpole protested that his views and purposes were confined altogether to these two branches of the revenue, and that such a thing as a scheme for a general excise had never entered into his head, "nor, for what I know, into the head of any man I am acquainted with." There was in the mind of the English people then a vague horror of all excise laws and excise officers, and the whole opposition to Walpole's scheme in and out of the House of Commons was maintained by an appeal to that common feeling. Walpole's resolutions with regard to the tobacco trade were taken first and separately. It will soon be seen that the resolutions concerning the duties on wine were destined never to be discussed at all. What Walpole proposed to do in regard to tobacco was to make the customs duty very small and to increase the excise duty; to establish bonded warehouses for the storing of the tobacco imported into this country and meant to be exported again or sold here for home consumption; thus to encourage and facilitate the importation; to get rid of many of the dishonest practices which injured the fair dealer and defrauded the revenue; to put a stop to smuggling; to benefit at once the grower, the manufacturer, the consumer, and the revenue. We need not relate at great length and in minute detail the history of these resolutions {317} and of the debates on them in the House of Commons. But it may be pointed out that, wild and absurd as were the outcries of the Patriots, there yet was good reason for their apprehension of a growing scheme to substitute excise for land-tax or poll-tax or customs. Walpole was, as we know, a firm believer in the advantages of indirect taxation, and of the introduction, as freely as possible, of all raw materials for manufacture, and all articles useful for the food of a nation. He was a free-trader before his time, and he saw that in certain cases there was immense advantage to the consumer and to the revenue in allowing articles to be imported under as light a duty as possible, and then putting an excise duty on their distribution here.