London, Tuesday, April 19, 1853 

The Commission which met last week to examine into the state 
of mind of Feargus O’Connor, late M.P. for Nottingham, returned 
the following verdict: 

“We find that Mr. Feargus O’Connor has been insane since the 10th of June, 
1852, without any lucid intervals.” * 

As a political character O’Connor had outlived himself already 
in 1848. His strength was broken, his mission fulfilled, and unable 
to master the proletarian movement organised by himself, he had 
grown almost a hindrance to it. If historical impartiality oblige me 
not to conceal this circumstance, it also obliges me in justice to the 
fallen man, to lay before the same public, the judgment given on 
O’Connor, by Ernest Jones, in The People’s Paper: 

‘Here was a man who broke away from rank, wealth, and station; who threw 
up a lucrative and successful practice; who dissipated a large fortune, not in private 
self-denial, but in political self-sacrifice; who made himself an eternal exile from 
his own country, where he owned broad acres and represented one of its largest 
Counties; who was hated by his family because he loved the human race; whose 
every act was devotion to the people; and who ends almost destitute after a career 
of unexampled labor.... There is his life. Now look at his work: At a time of utter 
prostration, of disunion, doubt and misery, he gathered the millions of this country 
together, as men had never yet been gathered. O’Connell rallied the Irish, but it 
was with the help of the priests; Mazzini roused the Italians, but nobles and traders 
were on his side; Kossuth gathered the Hungarians, but Senates and armies were at 
his back; and both the Hungarians and Italians were burning against a foreign 
conqueror. But O’Connor, without noble, priest or trader, rallied and upheld one 
downtrodden class against them all! without even the leverage of national feeling to 

unite them! La Fayette had the merchants, Lamartine had the shopkeepers. 
O’Connor had the people! But the people in the nineteenth century, in 
Constitutional England, are the weakest of all. He taught them how to become the 
strongest.” 

Last week was a week of defeats for the Coalition Cabinet. It 
met for the first time with a Coalition Opposition. On Tuesday the 
12th inst., Mr. Butt moved to maintain for the Irish soldiers the 
Asylum of Kilmainham Hospital. The Secretary at War* opposed 
the motion; but it was carried against the Government by 198 
against 131. On this occasion it was beaten by a Coalition of the 
Irish Brigade with the Conservative Opposition. On the follow- 
ing Thursday it was defeated by a Coalition of the Conservatives 
and the Manchester School.** Mr. Milner Gibson having brought 
in his yearly motion for the abolition of the “Taxes on 
Knowledge,” the repeal of the Advertisement Duty was voted,” 
notwithstanding the protestations of Gladstone, Russell and 
Sidney. They lost, by 200 against 169. Bright, Gibson and 
MacGregor voted side by side with Disraeli, Pakington, etc., and 
Mr. Cobden made the formal declaration, “That he accepted the 
assistance of Mr. Disraeli and his friends with all his heart.”” But 
by far the greatest defeat the Government has sustained was 
brought upon it, not by a division in the House, but by an act of 
its Own. 

Of the Kossuth rocket affair full particulars will already have 
reached the readers of the Tribune, but in order to prove that the 
whole of it was a premeditated affair between Palmerston and the 
Foreign Powers, it is merely necessary to state what his own official 
journal, The Morning Post, contains with regard to the occurrence: 

“The promptitude and vigilance of the course adopted by Government will give 

confidence to those foreign powers who have doubted the efficacy of our laws in 
repressing mischief among our troublesome guests.” 

This business will have its serious consequences for the Coalition 
Ministry. Already, and this is of great significance, it has demasked 
old Palmerston’s revolutionary dandyism. Even his most credulous 
but honest admirer, The Morning Advertiser, openly disavows him. 
Palmerston’s star began to pale at the time when he bestowed his 
sympathies on the hero of the 2d December and of the plain of 

4 The Morning Post, April 18, 1853.— Ed. 

Satory; it has vanished, since he became professedly an “Austrian 
Minister.” *° But, the mission of the Coalition Ministry is precisely 
the demoralization of all the current talents and renommées of the 
old Oligarchy. And this problem it is resolving with an admirable 
perseverance. Should Palmerston’s Ministry survive this catas- 
trophe, then he may indeed, with a slight alteration of the saying 
of Francis I, jocosely proclaim “Nothing is lost except honor.’”* 

I come now to the event of the day—Mr. Gladstone’s budget — 
laid before the House of Commons in its yesterday’s sitting, in a 
speech which occupied no less than five hours.” It is a Coalition 
Budget, elaborated in an encyclopedical manner, exceedingly fitted 
for an article in Ersch & Gruber’s voluminous Dictionary of Arts and 
Sciences. You know that the era of encyclopedists arrives always 
when facts have become bulky, and genius remains proportionably 
small. 

In every budget the principal question is the relation between 
income and expenditure, the balance in the shape of a surplus or 
a deficiency prescribing the general conditions of either a 
relaxation or an increase to be established in the taxation of the 
country. Mr. Disraeli had estimated the revenue for the year 
1852-53 at £52,325,000, and the expenditure at £51,163,000. Now, 
Mr. Gladstone informs us that the actual revenue has been 
£53,089,000, and the real expenditure only £50,782,000. These 
figures show an actual surplus of income over expenditure 
amounting to £2,460,000. Thus far, Mr. Gladstone would seem to 
have improved Mr. Disraeli. The latter could only boast of a 
surplus of £1,600,000; Gladstone comes with a saving of 
£2,460,000. Unfortunately, unlike Disraeli’s surplus, that of Mr. 
Gladstone, on nearer examination, dwindles down to the moderate 
amount of £700,000, the millions having already found their way 
out of his pocket by various votes of the House of Commons and 
other extraordinary expenditure; and, as Mr. Gladstone cautiously 

adds: 

“It must be remembered that £215,000, out of the £700,000, is derived from 
occasional and not permanent sources of income.” 

Then, the only basis of operations left to Mr. Gladstone is a 
surplus of £485,000. Accordingly any proposed remission of old 

taxes beyond this amount has to be balanced by the umposuer of 
new ones. 

Mr. Gladstone opened his speech with the “question brilante” of 
the Income Tax. He said that it was possible to part with that tax 
at once, but that the Government were not prepared to 
recommend its immediate abandonment. The first thing to which 
he called attention was, that “we draw from this tax £5,500,000.” 
Next he attempted a “brilliant” vindication of the effects of this 
tax, on the history of which he expended a good deal of breath. 

“The Income Tax,” he remarked, “has served in a time of vital struggle to 
enable you to raise the income of the country above its expenditure for war and 
civil government.... If you do not destroy the efficacy of this engine, it affords you 
the means, should unhappily hostilities again break out, of at once raising your 
army to 300, 000 men, and your fleet to 100,000, with all your esabishments in 
proportion.” 

Further Mr. Gladstone observed, that the Income Tax had not 
only served in carrying on the Anti-Jacobin war, but also the free- 
trade policy of Sir Robert Peel. After this apologetic introduction 
we are suddenly startled by the announcement that “the Income 
Tax is full of irregularities.” In fact, Mr. Gladstone admits, that in 
order to preserve the tax, it must be reconstructed so as to avoid 
its present inequalities; but that in order to remove these 
inequalities, you must break up the whole set. Strangely con- 
tradicting himself, he is afterwards at great pains to show that 
there exist no such inequalities at all, and that they are merely 
imaginary. As to the question of realized and precarious incomes, 
he reduces it to a question of “land and of trade,” and tries to 
persuade people, through some awkward calculations, that land 
actually pays 9d. in the pound, while trade only pays 7d. He then 
adds: 

“that the assessment on land and houses does not depend on the returns of the 
owners, whereas in trade the returns of income are made by the holders 
themselves, and in many cases in a fraudulent manner.” 

With regard to fundholders, Mr. Gladstone asserts that. 
to tax the capitalised value of their income, would be a gross 
breach of the public faith. Any distinction, in short, between 
realized or precarious income, as proposed by Mr. Disraeli, is flatly 
rejected by Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand he is ready to 
extend the Income Tax to Ireland, and an income above £100, 
the limit of its area having hitherto been at £150 a year. Quite 
inconsistently, however, with his just pronounced doctrine, that “it 
is impossible to distinguish between the respective value of 

intelligence, labor and property, and to represent these relations 
in arithmetical results,” he proposes to subject incomes between 
£100 and £150 to a rate of only 5d. in the pound. Lastly, in order 
to reconcile his admiration for the Income Tax, with the avowed 
necessity of its abolition, Mr. Gladstone proposes 

“to renew the tax for two years, from April, 1853, at 7d. in the pound; for two 
years more, from April, 1855, at the rate of 6d. in the pound; and for three years 
more, from April, 1857, at the rate of 5d. in the pound; under which proposal the 
tax would expire on 5th April, 1860.” 

Having thus conferred, what he imagines to be a boon, [on] the 
landed aristocracy and the fundholders, by his refusal to 
acknowledge the principle of distinction between realized and 
precarious incomes, Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, is careful 
to hold out a similar bait to the Manchester School by the 
adjustment of the legacy duty, extending it to all kinds of 
property, but declining to deal with the probates. 

“I have no doubt,” he remarked, “that this tax, if adjusted by the House, will 
add £500,000 more to our permanent means in 1853-54; will add £700,000 more 
in 1854-55; £400,000 in 1855-56; and £400,000 more in 1856-57; making a 
total addition to the permanent means of the country of £2,000,000.” 

Respecting Scotland, Mr. Gladstone proposed, that 1/ should be 
added to the present Spirits’ Duty of 3/8 (the gain would be 
£318,000), and also an increased impost on the licenses of 
tea-dealers, brewers, maltsters, tobacco-manufacturers and dealers, 
and soap-boilers. 

The whole amount of the increased taxes available for the year 
1853-’54 would thus be: 

Upon the Income “Tas iss cs. cisetacisese secsied evans dissieiwenoawsaatas £ 295,000 
Upon the Degacy. Ditty: Sised cacthsass iasyscincesteesencivnedadeveptones 500,000 
US poe Sth a os Fibsec os Sesn saan d vk epadstbawsecpisdennoynencadstneeaivantceas 436,000 
WI POW -LACENSES i pa5 ses donc ocun se Siiesnaue haveiaanneiee aeteedes xtepesis ee 113,000 

OLA coated cteaabcuntegigatesenacee iagutited ass atuhaaeepetaeouites £1,344,000 

Which with the surplus of ......l ccc ee cceseceeeeessseeeeeesenenees 805,000 

Would give us for the remission of taxes a sum 
AMOUNTING £0 aii ede a eee eG £ 2,149,000 

Now, what are the propositions of Mr. Gladstone with respect to 
the remission of old taxes? I shall restrain myself, of course, from 
entering too deeply into this labyrinth. It cannot be fathomed in a 

moment. Accordingly I shall touch merely on the principal points, 
which are: 

1. The abolition of the duty on Soap, the gross amount of which is actually 
£1,397,000. 

2. Gradual reduction of the duties on Tea, when the descent from 9/2 "4 to 1/ 
is to be brought about in about three years. 

3. Remission of the duties upon a large number of minor articles. 

4. Relaxation of the £4,000,000 owed by Ireland in the shape of Consolidated 
Annuities. 

5. Reduction of the Attorney’s Certificate Duty by one-half, according to the 
motion ef Lord R.Grosvenor, which abolished the whole. 

6. Reduction of the Advertisement Duty to /6, according to the motion of Mr. 
Gibson (the House having, however, already noted its entire abolition). 

Lastly: 

7. Abolition of the Stamp Duty on Newspaper Supplements (a huge ptece de 
höchstens* for The Times, the only paper issuing Supplements). 

These are, in short, the principal features of the budget which 
Mr. Gladstone has been hatching now for more than four months. 
The debate in the House of Commons, fixed for Monday next, 
will afford me the opportunity of further commenting upon that 
coalition product. 

Written on April 19, 1853 Reproduced from the newspaper 

Tribune, No. 3758, May 3, 1853 

Signed: Karl Marx