FINANCIAL REFORM 837 
no revenue, were swept awayl. So far as the effects on A.D, 1778 
the revenue of the country were concerned, Peel’s anticipations ~~ 
were at length fully justified’. Under the reduced rates trade 
trade revived, and the income obtained from this branch of need 
taxation did mot eventually suffer. From the increased 
volume of trade, Government was able to levy at low rates an 
income which was practically equivalent to the sums which 
had been obtained under the high tariffs which had so in- 
juriously affected our trade. The success which attended this 
change in policy was admirably summarised by Mr Gladstone 
in justification of the still greater changes which he carried 
through? “I wish, however, Sir, to show more particularly 
the connection that subsists between commercial reforms, as 
affecting trade and industry, and the power to pay the high 
taxes you have imposed. These two subjects are inseparably 
locked the one in the other. You shall have the demonstra- 
tion in figures. I again ask you for a moment to attend with 
me to the experience of two periods. I take the ten years 
from 1832, the crisis of the Reform Bill, down to 1841, during 
which our commercial legislation was, upon the whole, 
stationary; and I take the twelve years from 1842 to 1853, 
within the circuit of which are comprehended the beneficial 
changes that Parliament has made. In the ten years from 
1832 to 1841 this was the state of things: —You imposed of 
Customs and Excise duties £2,067,000, and you remitted 
£3,385.000. exhibiting a balance remitted over and above 
what you imposed of £1,317,000, or at the rate of no more 
than £131.000 a year. Now observe the effect on the state 
t Northcote, Twenty Years, p. 66. This wholesale reduction of tariffs, though 
welcomed by the manufacturers, was not universally approved. Those who relied 
on commercial treaties as means of opening or of securing foreign markets were 
somewhat alarmed, as we removed one by one charges which might have formed 
the basis of negotiation with other countries. 
2% He had said: “I have a firm confidence, that such is the buoyancy of the 
consumptive powers of this country, that we may hope ultimately to realize 
increased revenue from diminished taxation on articles of consnmption.” 
8 Hansard, vx1. 437. 
8 A principle which cannot be traced in Peel’s financial measures underlay 
those of Mr Gladstone, who was more completely swayed by Cobden. (See p. 840 
n. 1, below.) It was Gladstone's effort to relieve the masses of the people a8 con- 
sumers, and the mercantile and manufacturing capitalists. In pursuing this object 
he and his followers have deliberately granted this relief at the expense of the 
landed interest, by the extension of the succession duties in 1853. and the death 
dAnties in 1804