Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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of financial relief made to the electors, but especially to that class of the electors who were known to be wavering in their allegiance. One portion of his election address consisted of a general and undefined promise to reduce duties and assist rates; but the part which at once and especially riveted the attention of the country by its conspicuous novelty and boldness was a definite pledge that if he won the election he would abolish the income-tax. This promise at once became the leading feature of the election. It was urged from a hundred Liberal platforms and in a hundred Liberal newspapers as the great reason why the income-tax-payers should support the ministry. Every elector of this class, as he went to the poll, was clearly informed that he had a direct personal money interest in the triumph of the Government.
It is true that the promise of Mr. Gladstone was qualified by the following vague passage in his election address: ‘I have said nothing to preclude the government from asking Parliament to consider, in conjunction with these great remissions, what moderate assistance could be had from judicious adjustments of existing taxes.’ It is true also, that in a later speech, being pressed with the impossibility of repealing the income-tax without imposing other taxation, he admitted that, in consideration of the repeal of the income-tax and the reduction of rates, ‘property ought in some shape and to some considerable and equitable extent to make some fair contribution towards the public burdens.’ But the nature and magnitude of this contribution, the form it was to take, and the area over which it was to be distributed, were never revealed up to the day of the election. Everything relating to it was left perfectly vague and shadowy. One point only was brought before the electors in clear, vivid, unmistakable relief. It was, that if Mr. Gladstone won the day the income-tax would cease. Such a promise, unaccompanied by any distinct statement of equivalent burdens to be imposed, could only have operated as a direct bribe addressed to that great section of the electorate whose growing alienation from the Government was the chief cause of the dissolution. No politician, I believe, seriously doubted that when Mr. Gladstone placed the abolition of the income-tax in the forefront of the battle, his object was to win the income-tax-payers to his side.
Some strictures that I ventured to make on this transaction in the former book elicited from Mr. Gladstone two articles of indignant defence.11 No one who judged solely from those skilful and plausible pages would imagine that any question of winning votes, or arresting a political defection, or gaining a party triumph, could have entered even distantly into his calculations. He was merely, he said, ‘consulting’ the nation ‘upon the exercise of its chief and primary right of giving or withholding taxes;’ upon ‘a great subject of financial readjustment.’ ‘The rights of the people,’ as he truly said, ‘in respect to taxation are older, higher, clearer than in respect to any other subject of government.’ He at the same time asserted that his censor ‘ought to have known, and to have stated, that with the proposal to repeal the income-tax came a proposal to reconstruct and enlarge the death duties. Direct taxation of a kind most vexatious to trade and industry was to be removed-direct taxation, the least of all unfavourable to trade and industry, … was to be imposed.’
The assertion so confidently made in this passage was simply untrue, and is a curious instance of the lapse of memory into which, by too hasty writing, its author has sometimes been betrayed. No proposal of this kind was made. Mr. Gladstone was obliged in his second article to confess that on this point his memory had betrayed him, and that his critic was right; but he at once changed his ground, and argued that it would have been exceedingly prejudicial to the public service if he had disclosed at the election the ‘readjustment’ of taxation which he had contemplated, as such a disclosure would have enabled the tax-payer to evade the coming burden. ‘The disclosure of the particulars of the plan would have been both wholly novel and in the highest degree mischievous to the public interest.’ It is, surely, sufficiently obvious to reply that this fact is a very conclusive argument against the propriety of throwing such a matter into an election programme. ‘The ancient right’ of the people to be consulted on adjustments of taxation can hardly be very valuable when the condition of the consultation is that the nature of the adjustment should be concealed. Stated fully to the electors, Mr. Gladstone's proposal would, according to his own showing, have defeated itself. Stated as it was stated, it amounted to little more than a naked promise, that if a certain class of voters would maintain the Government in power, they should be freed from a burdensome tax.
But Mr. Gladstone takes a much higher ground than that of mere apology, and assures us that his real motive in this transaction was ‘the fulfilment of a solemn duty.’ He considered the income-tax unjust, unequal, and demoralising; twenty-one years before he had formed part of a ministry which promised to abolish it. This pledge, after a long slumber, revived in its full vitality at the eve of the election, and he offered the electors ‘the payment of a debt of honour.’
I have little doubt that Mr. Gladstone succeeded in persuading himself that this mode of reasoning was legitimate, but the answer to it is very simple. It was perfectly open to him to have introduced into Parliament a Budget abolishing the income-tax and carrying out, after full exposition and discussion, such other financial arrangements as he deemed desirable. Had he pursued this usual and regular course, no shadow of blame or discredit could have been attached to him, and he would, very probably, have rendered a real service to the country. But it was a wholly different thing to throw a half-disclosed and fragmentary Budget before the constituencies at a general election, making the simple abolition of a specific tax the main ground for asking the votes of those who paid it. A Minister who, seeing the popularity of his Government visibly declining, determined to dissolve Parliament before introducing his Budget, and to make his election-cry a promise to abolish the chief direct tax paid by a great wavering body of electors, may have been actuated by no other object than ‘the fulfilment of a solemn duty.’ But in ordinary men such conduct would imply other motives; and such men undoubtedly co-operated with Mr. Gladstone in the struggle, and such men will, for their own purposes, follow his example. In my opinion, few worse examples could have been given, and the constituencies in defeating Mr. Gladstone at this election rendered no small service to political morality.
Another argument of a curiously ingenious and characteristic nature must be noticed. I had said that the meaning of Mr. Gladstone's address was, that if he won the day the income-tax would cease. The statement is literally and incontestably true; but Mr. Gladstone very dexterously met it by declaring that it is an entire misrepresentation and an evidence of extreme ignorance to describe the election as if it was fought on the issue of the income-tax. It was not a question of one party supporting and the other opposing the abolition. ‘This supposed historical fact is a pure historical fiction.’ Both parties promised the abolition, and both parties, therefore, stood on the same footing.
A few words of explanation will, I think, place this matter in its true light. When Mr. Gladstone issued his election address, Mr. Disraeli was evidently taken by surprise. He was much alarmed lest this novel and unprecedented course might produce a great wave of popularity, and sweep the main body of income-tax-payers into his rival's net. He, accordingly, promptly replied that he also was in favour of the abolition of the income-tax, and had always been opposed to it. This implied promise was thought by many good judges at the time to have been an exceedingly improper one; and I am in no way bound to defend it, though it is but justice to add that Mr. Disraeli stated that he was only in favour of the abolition in case the surplus was sufficiently large to make it possible without the imposition of fresh taxation.12 But surely it is mere sophistry to argue that the conduct of Mr. Disraeli affects the character of Mr. Gladstone's original address. Is it not perfectly notorious that the popularity which Mr. Gladstone's promise was expected to produce in this great wavering portion of the constituencies was the element of success on which his followers most confidently relied? Did they not, after Mr. Disraeli's reply, still urge (and with much reason) the special claim which Mr. Gladstone had established on the voters by forcing the question into the van, and also that he was much more competent than his rival to carry the proposal into effect? Is the fact that Mr. Gladstone's example was so speedily followed a proof that it was not pernicious, and was not likely to be contagious?
A much more serious argument is, that among the questions that have at different times been brought, with general consent, before the constituencies there have been many, such as the abolition of the corn laws, or local taxation, or economical reform,