ONE:The duties on bricks and tiles were opposed, as affecting brick-makers rather than the public, because stones and slates were not included. These duties were, however, carried, and the Bill passed; but great discontent arising regarding the duties on coals and on licences to deal in excisable commodities, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was obliged to produce a supplementary Budget, and, after withdrawing these, to lay others on the sale of ale, gold and silver plate, the exportation of lead, and postage of letters, at the same time limiting the privilege of franking. It was high time that the latter practice were put under regulation, for the privilege was enormously abused. Till this time, a simple signature of a member of Parliament, without name of the post town whence it was sent, or date, freed a letter all over the kingdom. Many persons had whole quires of these signatures, and letters were also addressed to numbers of places where they did not reside, so that, by an arrangement easily understood, the persons they were really meant for received them post-free. The loss to Government by this dishonest system was calculated at one hundred and seventy thousand pounds a year. By the present plan, no member was to permit any letter to be addressed to him except at the place where he actually was; and he was required, in writing a frank, to give the name of the post town where he wrote it, with the dates of day and year, and to himself write the whole address.
TWO:The silence, cut by the nervous whispering of the children, became unendurable. "Are you very uneasy about them?" Mrs. Kirby asked.Before this great measure had passed, Pitt had introduced his Budget. On the 30th of June he made his financial statement. He said that the resources of the country were in a very burthened and disordered state; but that was not his work, but the work of his predecessors. The outstanding arrears, owing to the late war, were already ascertained to amount at least to fourteen million pounds. These operated very injuriously on the public credit, being at a discount of from fifteen to twenty per cent.; and that without greatly[308] affecting the public securities, he should not be able to find more than six million six hundred thousand six hundred pounds of them at once. To meet the interest, he proposed to raise taxes to the amount of nine hundred thousand pounds a year. The impostssome entirely new, and some augmentedwere on hats, ribbons, gauzes, coals, saddle and pleasure horses, printed linens and calicoes, candles, paper, and hackney coaches; licences to deal in excisable commodities, bricks, and tiles; licences for shooting game.
FORE:
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