moved, "That the order of the day, for the House to resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider of the Act 54 Geo. 3, c. 87, to grant duties of excise on certain sorts of glass made in Ireland, and to grant and allow certain countervailing duties and drawbacks in respect thereof, be now read;" and the same being read,

said, he took that occasion to call the attention of the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland to a subject of great importance, which he had mentioned in the course of the last session. He adverted to the propriety of consolidating the revenues of England and Ireland. He thought it would be a measure of great importance and corresponding benefit. As the two countries were one, their revenues ought to be united.

. I apprehend, Sir, that the hon. gentleman has rather introduced the mention of this subject, with a view of calling the attention of his Majesty's government generally, than for the purpose of taking any proceeding now. My opinions are not unknown to the hon. gentleman; they were expressed strongly in the last committee, of which be was chairman; and on two of the occasions when it was my duty to submit to parliament a view of our financial situation, I stated my belief of the necessity of coming to such an arrangement; that belief, Sir, has been formed, not only from a conviction of the inadequacy of our means to meet (for any continued time) the separate charge of our expenditure under the present system, but I have a strong opinion also of the advantages which would result from the exercise of the control over our departments, which would be strengthened by such a consolidation. I am aware, Sir, that some extraordinary exertion will be necessary to meet the public exigency. I desire not to anticipate such discussions. With respect to any proceeding now, the hon. gentleman will feel that we should come to it unprepared. In the absence of the representatives for Ireland, particularly of some of those who take a leading part on questions connected with this important subject, it would be impossible to take any step; more especially in the absence of my noble friend, the Secretary of State for foreign affairs, who is so peculiarly qualified to assist in such deliberations, and whose experience in matters of Irish finance, the former committees, as the hon. gentleman will recollect, had frequent opportunities of appreciating.

On the House resolving itself into the committee on the Irish Glass Duties,

said, it would be in the recollection of the committee, that he had, in the last session of parliament, recommended hat a duty, equivalent to that existing in Great Britain, should be imposed on glass manufactured in Ireland, and a countervailing duty necessarily resulting on the same article imported from this country. It was rather an extension than a new measure of excise. There had previously been an excise on glass in Ireland, not, however, embracing those branches of the manufacture which were to be affected by the Act he referred to. He had now to explain to the House, the ground upon which he was about to propose the repeal of that Act. A period of one month from the passing of that Act, had been allowed before the duty was to take effect. Previously to any motion being made in parliament of such duty, he was aware that a large stock had been imported into Ireland; the British manufacturer deriving a considerable, and he would say, indeed, an unfair advantage, in the amount of duty, which he drew back on tending his manufacture into that country. Owing to that circumstance, a greater supply than the annual consumption was in store there, even before the 5th of January in this year. A still greater quantity was imported in the month that intervened between the passing of the Act and its coming into operation. Not satisfied with the profit which would have resulted to them from the stock previously on hand, the proprietors raised the price on the public as high as if the duty had been paid. He, perhaps, was not called on to state what he understood to be the quantity in Ireland. It was sufficient, he presumed, as a ground for his motion, that a duty which he had calculated upon as productive, must for a considerable time be unproductive; while the public were charged to the full extent to which they would have been subjected, if the revenue had received the benefit that he had hoped. Whatever observation might fall upon him, he felt that he owed an equal duty to the public and the crown; and he should deem himself acting a most unmanly part, if, rather than rescind a measure which he had himself recommended to parliament, he were to leave the people of Ireland subjected to a heavy taxation, without a corresponding benefit resulting to the state. The necessities of the times were at present sufficiently urgent. He trusted he should be able to provide against the importers sustaining any loss of which they could fairly complain. He would recommend the payment of the duty in all cases where the high countervailing duty had been charged; the amount he could state to be very inconsiderable. It would be incumbent on him to provide also for repayments, where a greater ad valorem duty had been charged on account of the increase in value of the article, which was estimated at the price it then bore; and if, along with that, a facility of re-export were given, he apprehended that he should have done all which they had a right to expect; while it would not be difficult to prove that they had, by the law under which they drew back the duty, as well as in the profit on the stock previously in Ireland, even under the circumstances of this repeal, not a disadvantageous speculation. He concluded by moving, that the chairman should move, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to repeal the Irish Glass Duty Act."

could not possibly entertain any objection to the repeal of an act, which, in conjunction with the similar act respecting timber, had (although he was persuaded the hon. gentleman, in proposing it, had not apprehended such a consequence) been so injurious, that the best title which could have been given to it, would have been, "an Act to prevent further improvement in Ireland." The adoption of such a measure by parliament, arose from the practice of putting off bills to a period of the session so late, as not to allow sufficient time to those whose interests were affected to point out their evil tendency, and he trusted this example would deter his Majesty's ministers from similar conduct in future. The right hon. gentleman had said, that the price of glass in Ireland had been doubled by this act. It had not been merely doubled; it had been trebled! There was one extraordinary circumstance which he felt it his duty to notice. The operation of the act in question was fixed at one calendar month after its passing. Having been passed on the 14th of July, its operation, therefore, was to commence on the 14th of August. By a subsequent act, however, passed on the 25th of July, the clause postponing the operation of the first act to the 14th of August was done away, and it was directed that the act should operate from the 6th of July; that was eight days before, instead of a month after, it had passed! He did not wish to make any harsh observations on this proceeding, but it certainly was one of a very extraordinary nature.

confirmed the statement of the right hon. gentleman who had just spoken, and added, that he understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland had written to the officers of the customs in Ireland, subsequently to the passing of the Act of the 14th of July, telling them that another bill was in progress through parliament, by which the duty was to be imposed from the 6th of July, and directing in consequence, that no glass should be allowed to land without the payment of the duty. The dealers in glass were, in his opinion, entitled to great consideration; for unquestionably they would not have imported the quantity which they had done, except on the faith of the first Act.

censured warmly the want of skill which had been manifested on this occasion by the Irish Treasury.

said, he should ill deserve the liberality and candour which the two hon. members who had followed him had displayed, if he could suffer himself to be provoked, by the asperity of those animadversions which had fallen from the hon. baronet who spoke last, into any acrimony of retort; he was anxious to stand well in the opinion even of that hon. baronet. In the last session of parliament certain Acts were prepared, imposing excise duties in Ireland; and, as was the practice in the Excise Acts, the duties were not to take place under them until one month after the passing of the acts. At the time when this Act was prepared, he was prevented by indisposition from attending his duty in the House; and having given directions that the time for the excise acts coming into operation should be after an interval of one month, it had escaped the recollection of the person who was professionally employed to prepare the Bills, that the principal duty under this act, though obviously one of excise, was the countervailing custom duty which was to be levied on importation. It must be observed, that it was in fact necessary to impose a countervailing duty on the importation of any article imported into Ireland from Great Britain, on which any internal duty had been imposed. The Bill had passed through the Commons, and was in progress through the other House; it had arrived, indeed, nearly at the last stage, when he was apprized that it contained a clause that the duties were not to take effect till one month after the passing of the Act; whereas they ought, according to the usual practice in acts relating to the customs, have taken place from the date of the Resolutions of the committee on which the Bill was founded. The committee would recollect, that at the period to which he was alluding, considerable delays had taken place in the parliamentary proceedings, which it was not necessary to recapitulate; but a clause had been introduced in another Bill, to correct the error, and to direct that the duties should commence from the 5th of July, the period from which the other duties took their date. As to any unfairness towards the British manufacturer, he disclaimed it. The clause alluded to had been brought in, and had received the sanction of the House of Commons, at least, before the Glass Excise Bill had received the royal assent. He believed that it was on the same day under the opinion of the law officers in Ireland. It was deemed, however, impossible to extract the custom duty previously to the internal excise duty being in operation; in that opinion he acquiesced; even if it had been a doubtful one, he should have acquiesced equally, as he felt that the merchant should always have any benefit of which the law had not distinctly deprived him. He might be charged with repealing this entire measure, and censured as giving up what might be afterwards introductive. It was his duty, however, to protect the public from extortion. He begged pardon of the hon. baronet, who spoke last, for the expression. The hon. baronet would surely admit, that from him the monopolist did not deserve much consideration. He would prefer calling on the public, when it was necessary, to supply this deficiency; and if he had to recur to a similar duty hereafter, it should not be for the exclusive benefit of the English importer. He hoped that the committee, and all impartial men, would be of opinion, that he had taken a fair and candid course. The hon. baronet had alluded to a letter, written by him to the officers of the customs in Ireland, while the second Bill was in progress: upon this point he was desirous of giving a distinct explanation. Whether, in the mass of correspondence that passed through his office, he had written such a letter with his own hand, he did not now recollect; but the retrospective clause being introduced into the second Bill, he thought it his duty not to write, or cause to be written, a letter, such as the hon. baronet supposed, to the officers of the customs, unwarrantably stating, as the hon. baronet had accused him of doing, that the Bill would pass. He certainly should not have been guilty of such presumption (although, being a Bill of supply acceded to by the Commons, it might not have been too bold a prediction), but to apprize them, that a Bill with such a clause was in progress, in order that they might take the necessary steps for carrying the Act into execution when passed, and surcharging such goods as might have been imported between the date of the Resolutions and the passing of the Act: this was the nature of the letter, which he conceived he was not only authorized, but which it was his bounden duty to write. In point of fact, he believed that, before that letter arrived in Dublin, or could be acted upon, the royal assent had been signified to the Act.—The hon. baronet had stated, that when the English manufacturers conceived themselves to be aggrieved, they applied to the government of England, and that justice was immediately done, which was not the case in Ireland. He was not conscious that any delay had taken place. He could assure the hon. baronet, that no representation had been waited for from England to entitle the English manufacturers to that attention from the Irish treasury to which they had a right; and what was the fact? It was from the Irish Treasury that a compliance with their application had been granted. It was only by their lordships that it could be given. Nay, more, on inquiry being made by the lords of the Treasury of England, and a recommendation of the case of some merchants of Newcastle he believed it had been, our answer was, that the subject had been considered, and the prayer of their representation already complied with. The hon. baronet seemed to think that he was inconsistent, when he said that this Act had not been productive, and at the same time proposed to repay duties levied under it. He should have stated it, that the produce had been inconsiderable to the Treasury, for it had not been unproductive to the speculators:—the sum to be repaid was very small, not exceeding 5,000l. Irish; as the importation, after the Act took effect, was very trifling. The hon. baronet alluded to remuneration to the importers; he (Mr. Fitzgerald) should be able to satisfy the House, that the persons who claimed it had already derived very considerable advantage, both from what they had sold in Ireland, and from the drawback of a greater duty than they paid. Was the hon. baronet aware of the profit which this drawback yielded? It would be for the English Excise to look to this part of the question. With respect to what had been said upon the subject of other duties on wood, &c. he should have some observations to make when they came to the committee upon that subject.

repeated his hope, that this occurrence would warn his Majesty's ministers against putting off bills to the month of July, a period when it was too late to ascertain whether or not they were such as ought to be passed.

, referring to what the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Ponsonby) had said, with respect to the impropriety of putting off the public business till July, begged to observe, he could not comprehend why it should be done worse in that month than in April or May, if, by shortening the session, it became necessary then to do it in a hurry. Did the right hon. gentleman think they were more likely to blunder in July—sitting in the dog-days—than at any other time? Did he mean to say parliament ought to cease to legislate in April or May, and only continue to sit to correct the blunders previously made?

said, he must have a happy knack of mis-stating what he meant to say, or the learned gentleman had one of misunderstanding him. He would advise him to look at the almanack, before he again set down the dog-days for July; as, if he looked into that very useful work, with which he was so well acquainted, he would find they did not begin till August. What he had meant to say was, that the public business ought not to be deferred, when the minister had got his supplies, till the season was so far advanced, that the House was but thinly attended.

could not help differing from the right hon. gentleman, when he set down the dog-days for August. He did not know how this point was settled in Dublin, but they commenced on the 3rd of July, according to the almanack he had in his pocket. If, therefore, the Dog-star had any thing to do with this in question, his influence might be supposed to be felt in July rather than August. He could not see, for his part, that the business of the House would be likely to be disposed of with less hurry from shortening the session.

After a few words from Mr. Peel and Mr. C. Smith, the motion was agreed to: the House resumed, and leave was given to bring in the Bill.

said, he rose in pursuance of the notice he had given upon the former day, to propose a modification of the Act of last session, as far as it related to the duty upon deals imported into Ireland. It was not his intention to propose any alteration in the duty upon timber. He should, with the permission of the committee, explain the nature of what he conceived to be a misunderstanding which had taken place upon the subject. He should first mention, that before he left Dublin, he had a communication with the chairman of a meeting which had been held to consider of the duties imposed in the last session. The meeting, however, was of persons concerned in the building trade. The gentleman to whom he had alluded, had, with great candour, informed him of the course which the petitioners meant to pursue, and had indeed communicated the petition which it was intended to lay before parliament. He (Mr. Fitzgerald) did not feel himself authorized to acquaint that gentleman of the steps which he proposed to take respecting the glass duties, because he felt that it would be necessary previously to communicate with his right hon. friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer for England, as to the permission for the re-entry into England of the glass exported to Ireland, to which, if the merchant desired it, he hoped there would be no objection made by the English excise. He had other reasons also for abstaining from that communication; but he did undertake to propose a modification of the duty upon deals, with which modification he hoped that the importers of deals would be satisfied. The object which he had in view in the various taxes, whether internal or external, which he proposed last session, was in consonance with what he conceived to be his duty, namely, to equalise, as far as possible, the revenue of Ireland to that of Great Britain, not only in the duties, when they could be made equal, but in the practice of the collection of the revenue, and in the mode in which the duty was taken. He was induced to make that attempt, because Ireland was necessarily called upon, not only on that occasion, but during the whole time that he had held his present office, to make greater pecuniary sacrifices and exertions, far beyond any that had before been required in the way of taxation, Those gentlemen who had turned their attention to the nature of the revenue of Ireland, must be aware, that the limits of taxation there were extremely narrow; the sources left untouched could scarcely now be named; and if the course he had taken of equalizing duties, had not of itself been the only general measure that could be resorted to, there remained no alternative but those great and obnoxious burthens which he had yet avoided to impose. It was under this impression that he had proposed those duties of which parliament had unanimously approved. The task he had to perform had been an unpopular and ungrateful one. He could only assure the committee, that he had never had an anxiety that did not proceed from a desire to reconcile to his public duty, that duty of his office which some one must perform, with the endeavours to avert from his country, burthens which, from the state of her commercial means, owing to causes which, if there had been more representatives of Ireland present in the committee, every man of them could speak of feelingly, he feared she would be long unable to bear. But with regard to the duty of timber, great misunderstanding had gone abroad. It had been erroneously stated, that the duty had been increased 1,000 per cent.: the fact was, that before the Act now under consideration took effect, timber was comparatively free from duty in Ireland. The fair way of considering the subject, was to compare the amount of the duty with the price of the article. It was his duty to make every inquiry upon the subject; he had ascertained that the duty amounted to about one third of the price of the article. The price of Swedish timber in Ireland was about 9l. 10s. and Memel 10l. 10s. per load; so that the additional duty amounted to about 30 per cent. upon its price. It was true that there was a considerable sensation in Ireland respecting these duties, and he did not deny that there was some stagnation in the building trade; but the committee knew that the imposition of new duties almost always produced similar effects in the trades which they affected. In finance it was always admitted, that an estimate was not to be considered as fallacious, if the produce of a duty the first year fell short of the expected sum. For it was the result of all new duties, to affect the consumption of the article to which the duty was applied. In point of fact, it had happened during some years. He dared to say, the greater part of the five years antecedent to imposition of these duties, when our intercourse with the north of Europe was interrupted by the war, the price of timber in Ireland was considerably higher than it was now, inclusive of the new duty. The timber that sold then for 12l. per ton, now sold for 10l. 10s. Memel timber, all deals too, were higher at those periods than their present price—even so high as 90l. for the large Swedish deals. He admitted that it arose when our intercourse had been suspended. But what were they now? In the schedule which he adopted, he had adhered to the schedule as enacted in Great Britain: there was in this no variation of the duty from deals of 8 feet long to those of 20 feet. He was aware that considerable difficulties upon the point had arisen, in cases where shipments had been made in the Norwegian and Swedish ports, in ignorance, not so much of the duty, but of the alterations of those dimensions on which the duty was charged: in such cases, the Treasury had, upon their own responsibility, directed, and he hoped that parliament would think that they had done rightly, as it was for the relief of the subject, a modification of the import duty, by substituting a graduated scale, and charging the duty upon the entire contents of timber in deals of the intermediate descriptions. It was his object to continue by law that graduated scale: it might be desirable, too, to sanction the act of the Treasury which had taken place, though he must observe, that the order had nothing to say to reduction of duties; on the contrary, under it had been charged all classes, with a full duty in proportion to their content of timber. There only remained one or two topics upon which he wished to say a few words. One of the objects of laying a high duty upon timber imported from the north of Europe, was to encourage importation from our north American colonies; but under the present circumstances, he might depart from that principle in some degree; a supply from our American colonies could not be contemplated for some time, except on unfavourable terms, in consequence of the expense of freight and insurance. There were two points, however, on which he would not conceal his opinion, that, high as the rates were, they would be found insufficient to protect our colonial trade, that must be benefitted hereafter, if the duties on European timber be still further advanced. The import of timber from British America increased, during the late war and the continental decree, from 4 or 500 tons, to 4,500 tons. In the year 1809, the import was 7,325 tons; in the last year only 1,682 tons; while that from the north of Europe was 23,000 tons. He threw out these observations now, because hereafter he might be compelled, by a sense of duty, to act upon this view of the question: it was on this view that the British schedule was formed. The advantages of the shipping interest also were not to be forgotten, as from the colonies, imports could only be made in British built ships; these, however, were mixed with great considerations of policy, which he was not called upon to discuss now. He was not unaware that there was still, according to this modified schedule, a disparity between the duties on deals and on timber; the difference, however, was in favour of the deals, which the right hon. gentleman opposite had alluded to, as being the principal import into Ireland; and it was, in fact, that which affected the general mass of consumers the most. Mr. Fitzgerald said, that he was not aware that he had any thing further to trouble the committee with; they would recollect that one-third of the total duty would necessarily cease, whenever the duties of Great Britain, making one-third of the British duty, should determine. He thanked the committee for the attention with which he had been favoured, and concluded with moving the first resolution.

was desirous of modifying the duties, but required time to determine on the merits of the scale proposed.

The resolution was agreed to, the House resumed, and the report of the committee was ordered to be received to-morrow.

wished to know whether it was the object of the Resolutions of the right hon. gentleman to give an extension to any of the present war taxes?

stated, that none of the Resolutions would have the effect of giving any such extension. They would merely allow his Majesty's government to apply some of the taxes granted for 1814, not yet received, towards the public service.

said, he should be glad to know from the right hon. gentleman, whether he had yet any doubt remaining that the property tax expired on the 5th of April next?

said, although it was not his wish to express what his sentiments were as to the construction of the Property-tax Act, yet he would say, that it most obviously bore the construction which the hon. gentleman put on it.

, If the right hon. gentleman would only state what his own construction of the Act was, it would be a great satisfaction to the public.

The Resolutions were then agreed to.