1798.

VIOLENT OPPOSITION OF THE WHIGS.

77

stage is practically considered as conclusive. When the resolutions of this committee are confirmed on the report, the new duties are levied, or the repealed taxes are discontinued without waiting for the Act of Parliament which formally ratifies the resolution of the House. But when it became known that a larger sum than had ever been raised within the year was to be collected by increasing the taxes on houses, windows, and shops, as well as on carriages, horses, and servants, loud murmurs went forth from the principal cities and towns in the kingdom. The inhabitants of Westminster, always foremost in every political movement, called upon Fox to return to his place in Parliament, and denounce the odious impost. Sheridan also appeared in his place on the day appointed for the second reading of the Bill. The leader of opposition attacked the scheme in unmeasured terms, and the minority increased from fifteen to fifty. Pitt became uneasy. He had treated with contemptuous indifference the well-argued objections of Tierney, Hobhouse, and others, in the committee; but now he admitted, with unwonted candour and moderation, that many of the objections were well founded, and that, without extensive modifications, the measure would be oppressive to the industry of the country. Some modifications were accordingly introduced in the committee on the Bill; but, so far from mitigating the Opposition, the minority increased to seventy-five on the third reading. Pitt himself became, for the time, the most unpopular man in the kingdom. On the day set apart for a national thanksgiving on account of the naval victories, when the King and the two Houses of Parliament went in procession to St. Paul's, the Prime Minister was forced to take refuge from the angry populace in Doctors' Commons, and was conducted home in the evening by a troop of City Light Horse. These demonstrations, however, were but temporary, and indicated no desire to shrink

78

REDUCTION OF THE LAND TAX. CH. XXXVII.

from the efforts which were necessary for the honour and safety of the nation. A few months after Pitt had been hooted through the City, the commercial and trading classes, which had complained of the burden of taxation, eagerly came forward at a suggestion from one of the minister's most devoted friends, and subscribed sums amounting to more than two millions in contributions varying from a guinea to thousands of pounds.* The immediate apprehension of invasion, and not any desire to prosecute the war, prompted this prodigious addition to a taxation hitherto unparalleled.

Another proposal, which added much to Mr. Pitt's reputation as a financier, was his plan for the redemption of the Land Tax. This ancient impost, which belonged to the primitive form of taxation, when land was the principal source of the public revenue, had varied for the last century from one shilling to four shillings in the pound. The tax had remained at the maximum during later years, and the minister proposed to make it perpetual at this rate on the original valuation of 1693, giving the landowner the power of redemption at twenty years' purchase, payable in three per cent. stock. Taking the stock at the price of the day, which was about fifty, it followed that, by this arrangement, the public would benefit to the extent of one-fifth; and assuming the whole amount to be redeemed, the land-tax of two millions

The idea originated with the Speaker. The greater part of this noble free-will offering was contributed by the commercial and trading classes. The Bank headed the subscriptions with two hundred thousand pounds. Among other donations of equal amount Mr. Peel (the father of the minister), a calico printer at Bury, put down ten thousand pounds, as the sub

scription of his firm. When he told his senior partner, Mr. Yates, not without some misgiving, what he had done, the answer was, 'You might as well have made it twenty thousand, while you were about it.'-LORD STANHOPE'S Life of Pitt, vol. iii. p. 92. The munificence which characterises the merchants and manufacturers of this country has never been duly appreciated.

1798.

IMPOSITION OF NEW TAXES.

79

would be converted into revenue yielding two millions four hundred thousand pounds. The arrangement was not less beneficial to the landholders than to the public; for the value of land being about thirty years' purchase, it enabled them to redeem what was really a rent-charge at little more than two-thirds of its value. The proprietors, indeed, raised a faint voice. against the perpetuation of the tax at its maximum, as a measure of confiscation; but many availed themselves of terms so advantageous. The effect of the measure was to strengthen public credit, and inspire new confidence in the resources of the minister. The probability of invasion, in the spring of 1798, was again considered so imminent as to call for prompt and extraordinary prepa- invasion. rations. A supplementary budget was, therefore, opened in the month of April, in order to provide for the interest of eight and a quarter per cent. upon a new loan of three millions. Taxes on salt, on tea, and on armorial bearings, were proposed, and readily assented to. The modifications of his original scheme of trebling the assessed taxes, having reduced the minister's estimate from seven millions to four millions and a half, the deficiency was made up by other imposts; the most remarkable of which was a scale of export and import duties.

Prospect of

The demonstrations and menaces of the French

Government still continued. An army Defence of the had been organised, called the army of country. England, and distributed along the French coast, as if in readiness for embarkation. A flotilla of flatbottomed boats was ostensibly announced as in preparation, to transport this army across the Channel. The bankers of Paris were assembled to subscribe to a loan, to be secured on English property, which was to become the prize of the invaders. Such gasconade did not indicate any serious intention to undertake an enterprise so desperate as an invasion

80

MEASURES IN ANTICIPATION OF CH. XXXVII.

of this island; but a contemptuous neglect of all preparation for defence on the part of Great Britain might have exposed the country to insult, and even temporary disaster. Accordingly, a royal message to Parliament, immediately after Christmas, announced that orders had been issued to call out and embody a portion of the militia.* A Bill was subsequently introduced, to indemnify persons whose property might be sacrificed in the event of an invasion. A Bill for manning the navy was passed through all its stages in one day. This extraordinary proceeding, though not without precedent, seemed to be an unnecessary departure from the practice of the House. Tierney, without objecting to the policy of the measure, questioned the necessity of pushing it forward with such irregular precipitation; and, considering that the object of the Bill was to extend the odious power of impressment, it was not unreasonable, in the absence of any immediate dread of invasion, to pause a little before enlarging a mode of manning the navy, which experience has shown to be as bad as it is barbarous.† But Pitt, assuming the air of a dictator, would not brook any opposition, and charged Tierney with a desire to obstruct the defence of the country. Tierney, instead of flinging back this wanton insult, more properly appealed to the chair for protection. The Speaker, instead of vindicating the freedom of debate, by instantly calling upon Pitt to retract an imputation, which, whether just or unjust, was a clear breach of plain parliamentary law, made an evasive response, conveying a timid suggestion

* In 1799.

† Lord Clarence Paget, the Secretary to the Admiralty, in opening the Navy Estimates of 1859, stated, on the authority of an Admiralty return, that, in the last three years of the impressment system (which ended in

1813), three thousand able-bodied seamen were constantly employed on shore to press twenty-nine thousand six hundred and five, of whom twenty-seven thousand three hundred deserted.-HANSARD'S Debates, 154, p. 909.

1798.

A FOREIGN INVASION.

81

to the overbearing minister, that he should explain away the language he had used. Pitt said something which was accepted as an explanation; but reference having been afterwards made, in the course of the debate, to this supposed explanation, Pitt denied that he had given any explanation at all. I gave no explanation,' he said, because I wished to abide by the words I had used.'* The Speaker remained silent; and thus the dignity and the privilege of the House of Commons were laid prostrate at the feet of one too arrogant member. Tierney, failing to obtain from the House the redress to which he was entitled, had recourse to the alternative which the manners of the time approved. A meeting took place between the Prime Minister and the political opponent whom he had insulted. The parties exchanged shots, happily without effect, and the seconds declared the law of honour to be satisfied.

The Government persevered with varying fortune in the policy of putting down freedom of State prosecuopinion in the press and on the platform

tions.

by the extreme rigour of the law. Numerous minor prosecutions followed the great trials of 1794-5. The trial of Stone for high treason, in 1796, resulted in an acquittal. One Crossfield, a surgeon in the navy, and three other persons, were arraigned in the same year on a charge of a conspiracy to take away the King's life by means of a poisoned arrow blown through a tube. This was much ridiculed at the time under the name of the 'Pop-gun Plot;' and it turned out to be little more than an idle story. Crossfield was acquitted, and the other prisoners were consequently discharged. Gale Jones, a well known and active agent of the Corresponding Society, was prosecuted to conviction for a seditious speech at Birmingham. O'Coigley, an Irish priest, with

* Dean Pellew's Life of Lord Sidmouth, vol. i. p. 200.
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VOL. IV.