ONE:On the 21st of March a Committee which had been appointed early in the Session to inquire into the public income and expenditure, and to suggest what might in future be calculated on as the clear revenue, presented its report through Mr. Grenville, their chairman. On the 29th, Pitt, in a Committee of the whole House, entered upon the subject, and detailed the particulars of a plan to diminish progressively and steadily the further debt. It appeared from the report of the select Committee that there was, at present, a clear surplus revenue of nine hundred thousand pounds sterling, and that this surplus could, without any great additional burthen to the public, be made a million per annum. This he declared to be an unexpected state of financial vigour after so long and unfortunate a war. The plan which he proposed was to pay two hundred and fifty thousand pounds quarterly into the hands of Commissioners appointed for the purpose to purchase stock to that amount, which was under par, or to pay stock above par, and thus cancel so much debt. In addition to this, the annuities for lives, or for limited terms, would gradually cancel another portion. All dividends arising from such purchases were to be similarly applied. Pitt calculated that by this process, and by the compound interest on the savings to the revenue by it, in twenty-eight years no less than four millions sterling per annum of surplus revenue would be similarly applied, or employed for the exigencies of the State. By this halcyon process he contemplated the eventual extinction of that enormous debt, to pay the mere interest of which every nerve had been stretched, and every resource nearly exhausted. In a delightful state of self-gratulation, Pitt declared that he was happy to say that all this was readily accomplishable; that we had nothing to fear, except one thingthe possibility of any Minister in need violating this fund. Had the original Sinking Fund, he said, been kept sacred, we should have had now very little debt. To prevent the recurrence of this fatal facility of Ministers laying their hands on this Fund, he proposed to place it in the hands of Commissioners, and he declared that "no Minister could ever have the confidence to come down to that House and desire the repeal of so beneficial a law, which tended so directly to relieve the people from their burthens." He added that he felt that he had by this measure "raised a firm column, upon which he was proud to flatter himself that his name might be inscribed." He said not a word about the name of Dr. Price being inscribed there, to whom the whole merit of the scheme belonged; he never once mentioned his name at all. On his own part, Dr. Price complained not of this, but that he had submitted three schemes to Pitt, and that he had chosen the worst.
THREE:At the commencement of the Session a notice of a motion of want of confidence in the Ministry was given by Sir John Yarde Buller. He assigned as reasons for bringing forward the motion the disturbed and unsatisfactory state of the country, which he ascribed to the system of popular agitation, "nurtured and fostered," as he alleged, by the Ministers during the preceding two years. After a debate of four consecutive nights the motion was rejected by 308 votes to 287. The division was fairly satisfactory, and another source of gratification to the Ministry was the passing of the Irish Municipal Bill, which became law in spite of a characteristic protest from Bishop Phillpotts, who regarded the measure "as a deliberate and wilful abandonment of the cause of true religion which had provoked the justice of Almighty God and given too much reason to apprehend the visitation of Divine vengeance for this presumptuous act of national disobedience." In this Session Sir Robert Peel at last terminated the scandals connected with election committees by a plan which authorised the Speaker to appoint a general committee of elections, with the duty of selecting election committees to try each particular[471] case. Sir Francis Baring's Budget was a considerable improvement upon those of his indifferent predecessor, Mr. Spring-Rice, whose careless finance had produced no less than four successive deficits. He acknowledged a deficit of 850,000, and asked for a vote of credit. He further imposed an additional tax of 4d. a gallon on spirits, increased the customs and excise by 5 per cent., and the assessed taxes by 10 per cent.
THREE: