In the next place, the public revenue for the quarter ending 1st
October, 1847, is £1,500,000 less than it was in the corresponding
quarter of the preceding year, which itself was below the corresponding
quarter in 1845. Here then is an ascertained falling off of £1,500,000
a quarter, or SIX MILLIONS A-YEAR, in a revenue not exceeding
£52,000,000 of net income, and of which upwards of a half is absorbed
in paying the dividends on the public debt. There is no reason to hope
for an amendment in the next or the succeeding quarter; happy if there
is not a still greater falling off. This is, be it observed, in the
thirty-second year of peace, when in amity with all the world, and
when the war income-tax, producing £5,200,000 a-year, is added to the
national income! But for that grinding war-addition, laid on to meet
the disasters of the Affghanistaun expedition, and kept on to conceal
the deficiency of income produced by Sir R. Peel's free trade measures,
the deficiency _would be above £11,000,000 a-year_. And this occurs
just after a proper and suitable thanksgiving for an uncommonly fine
harvest; when all the world is at peace; five years after Sir R. Peel's
tariff in 1842, which was to add so much to our foreign trade; three
years after the act of 1844, which was to impose the requisite checks
on imprudent speculation; and eighteen months after the adoption of
general free trade, and the abolition of the corn laws by the act of
July 1846, by which the commerce and revenue of the country were to be
so much improved!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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