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 1850.] Resignation of Sir Robert Peel to his Death, 365 estimates for the year, as set forth by the Premier on the 1 8th of February, showed a deficit of more than ^2,000,000. To meet this it was proposed to raise the income tax from seven- pence to one shilling in the pound, or from three to five per cent, for the next two years. Cobden, Hume, and other Radicals, urged that the proper way out of the difficulty was not to increase taxation, but to reduce expenditure beginning now a systematic attempt, continued for many years, in favour of economy. The proposal to increase the income tax raised so violent an opposition that on the 28th of February the Chancellor of the Exchequer came down to the House with an amended budget, abandoning the unpopular increase. He could devise no other method of meeting the deficiency except the last resort of spendthrifts that of borrowing money to pay off debts. The scheme was laughed at, but there was no help for it, and it had to be accepted. This condemnation of their budget was not the only misfortune which befell ministers. They were known to be weak, and the Peers, as usual, took advantage of that fact to do as they liked with Liberal measures. The Jewish Disabilities Bill, to carry out the resolution passed in the autumn sitting, was read a second time in the House of Commons on the /th of February, by a majority of seventy-three ; and read a third time on the 4th of May, by a majority of sixty-one ; but it was thrown out by the Lords on the 2 5th of May, by a majority of thirty-five. Irish affairs took up a good deal of the session. Another Coercion Bill was passed, and the Incumbered Estates Act was intended to facilitate the transfer of land in the hope that the occupiers would be able, in some cases, to become the pur- chasers. It produced but little effect, because, founded on English notions, it only transferred the tenants' rights, as well as those of the old owners, to the new purchasers, and thus continued the greatest of all Irish grievances the practical forfeiture of the property of the occupier in the improvements which were morally his own. The session closed on the 5th of September. Immediately after the prorogation, an event occurred