Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/182

166 commercial freedom. The evidence, in particular, of Mr. J. D. Hume, 'a gentleman whose loss' Sir Robert Peel 'is sure we must all sincerely deplore'—is especially interesting. It reads like that of a man who had learned to detest most cordially the system in whose administration he had grown grey (he had been forty-nine years at the Customs and at the Board of Trade)—who had long been disgusted and indignant at its injustice, absurdity, wastefulness, and suicidal policy—had bitterly felt his impotence to redress abuses of which every month's additional experience had more clearly shown him the mischievous and destructive qualities—and was delighted, at last, in having an opportunity of throwing off official reserve, and coming out publicly to speak his mind. The labours of this Import Duties Committee form a peculiarly interesting epoch in the history of the free-trade question. Their report was first unheeded, then ridiculed, then angrily denounced. But afterwards it began to be quoted as an authority; and it is already sufficiently clear that its doctrines are eventually destined for the statute-book. It made a "groove" in which the course of our future commercial legislation must inevitably flow. The whig Budget of 1841, was the first fruits of the principles now for the first time placed authoritatively on record before Parliament and the public. Since its rejection we have had two new tariffs more or less leavened with these principles. The very men whom the 'interests' combined to lift into power, expressly for the defence of their monopolies, had no choice but to accept the doctrines of free trade, and of common sense, as heir looms of office.

"The one great principle brought out most distinctly by the Import Duties Committee of 1840—set in the boldest relief by their report, and still more by the official witnesses they examined, and since become thoroughly familiar to the public mind, though yet waiting for its legislative recognition—is the broad generic difference between two sorts of taxes, which have been from time immemorial jumbled together in our tariff, and confirmed by popular ignorance or heedlessness, but are in reality as opposite in their respective natures as light and darkness:—viz., taxes for revenue and taxes for protection; taxes paid into the exchequer in direct money disbursements, and taxes paid to particular individual classes, in the shape of an artificially enhanced price of the commodities in which those individuals or classes deal; in other words, public taxes and private taxes. The difference—rather, the contrariety—between these two sorts of taxes was now brought plainly out before the public eye, in a way intelligible to every child of average capacity, and illustrated with ample variety of practical detail. It was shown that the British Custom House, though nominally one establishment, performs in fact two functions that are not only distinct but contradictory—levying money directly and openly for the public service of the