THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



425 



used ; to that the tatio would boou show a most gratifying 

 improvement. 



Now, whatever the duty, the upper and middle classes con- 

 sumed about the same quantity of malt liquors per year, so 

 that this diminished consumption was caused almost entirely 

 by the inability of the poorer classes to pay the enhanced price 

 which the high duty created. They were compelled to pur- 

 chase tea, coffee, and other foreign productions, and to forego 

 the use of the national beverage, or if they ventured to indulge 

 in what they could not brew at home, they were driven to the 

 tap-rooms of public-houses or to the low beer-houses, which it 

 was well kuown were the resort of the most dissolute and de- 

 bauched members of society. And when once the man had 

 formed a habit of mixing with such company and frequenting 

 such places, his self-respect was destroyed and his wife and 

 family were forgotten and defrauded, his children grew up to 

 be inmates of workhouses or prisons, and that happy home, 

 where but for this tax he might have enjoyed his pint of home- 

 brewed beer with his family, became a scene of misery, desti- 

 tution, and moral and eternal ruin. It was a well-known fact 

 that beer always had been, and he believed always would be, 

 the national beverage. It was a good old Saxon drink, and 

 they would find it mentioned in the history of England as 

 being drunk in the halls of the great in very early times. It 

 was originally imported from Germany, a country in which 

 beer had always taken a high place as an article of general use. 

 But suppose the poor man, instead of going to the ale-house 

 for his beer, should send there for it, and drink it at home, let 

 them see how the malt-tax enhanced the price of it. Take 

 the average value of a quarter of barley at 32s., the effect of 

 the tax would be as follows : — 



£ 3, d. 



One quarter of barley 1 12 



Malt-duty 118 



2 13 8 

 Maltster's profit 10 per cent 5 4 



Bre 



2 19 

 iwer's profit 10 per cent 6 



Publi 



3 5 



lican's profit 10 per cent 6 6 



£3 11 6 

 Being an enhancement of 120 per cent, beyond the price at 

 which, but for the tax, it might be purchased. When the duty 

 was low the custom was for every labourer to take his keg of 

 table beer to his work ; but this was now never seen, except 

 at the begiuniug of harvest. And how much more good ale 

 would the farmers give their labourers, when their labour was 

 unusually toilsome, but for the high price of malt ! They had, 

 no doubt, often grieved to see their men, covered with perspi- 

 ration, run to a pond in the harvest-field, and drink like beasts 

 from it. And was it not also injurious to their masters that, 

 for want of a sufficiency of this nutritious beverage, their 

 men became so soon exhausted, and unable to get through 

 that fair amount of labour they wished to do? Thirdly, 

 Its disadvantage to the public at large. It led, iu the 

 first place, to great adulteration in the beer sold to the 

 public, and whether that adulteration was practised by 

 the brewer or the retai'er, whether it consisted in the use of 

 sugar, molasses, or some more deleterious articles, he of course 

 did not know; but it had been publicly stated, and never con- 



tradicted, that whereas in 1799 the London brewers consumed 

 700,000 quarters more malt than they did in 1830, in the 

 latter year they produced a million barrels more beer than in 

 the former one. He must leave such a fact for the brewers 

 themselves to settle, but he asked such of them as were iu the 

 habit of drinking a glass of good home-brewed beer whether 

 much of that sold to them was not nauseous in the extreme. 

 The duties on tea and coffee had been reduced, and the result 

 was a large and increasing consumption ; and why, in the 

 case of the malt-tax, should no reduction be given ? In the 

 caae of the paper- duty they had been told that it restricted the 

 progress of a great branch of domestic industry ; and how 

 much more strongly did this apply to the manufacture of 

 malt ? the absurd excise-restrictions preventing any improve- 

 ment in the mode of making it, and creating impedimenta 

 to its being made at all during one-half of the year. 

 In concluding his address, Mr. Haward asked his hearers 

 whether the movement now on foot against this obnoxious im- 

 post was to be a mere spasmodic cry, or a well-sustained and 

 continued agitation. He read an extract from the Halesworth 

 Times of that day, showing that, were the farmers united in 

 their efforts, the reduction of the tax must assuredly follow. 

 He quoted a letter which he had a few days before received 

 from Mr. Ball, M.P., of which the following is an extract: — 

 " Every trade is contending against the budget but agricul- 

 ture. We suffer from our own indifference. I wish your 

 friends in Suffolk may do something. I receive petitions 

 from all parties save farmers : from ourselves none ! So we 

 perish." Let them look at how the opponents of the window- 

 duty proceeded. They felt the tax was unjust, and they 

 never ceased to denounce it until it was repealed. Then there 

 was the glass-duty, which was got rid of by constant and 

 energetic agitation. And how were the corn-laws repealed ? 

 Why by a body of men who felt their injustice banding them- 

 selves together in opposition to them. They felt their cause 

 was a just one, and they took a strenuous and decided course 

 of agitation, until their circulation of nine millions of publica- 

 tions, and their appeals to what was right, extorted from a 

 Conservative ministry and a Conservative parliament such a 

 measure of commercial emancipation as had never before been 

 passed since England was a nation. And let them now look 

 at the paper-duty. For eleven long years had its opponents 

 been steadily at work opposing its impolicy and unfairness, 

 and now it was to be for ever abolished. Had farmers 

 stuck to the malt-tax half so well as the interests he 

 had named, depend upon it, if it had not been before 

 now altogether put an end to, it would at least have 

 been very materially reduced. It was apathy that ruined 

 the British farmer. He himself was a subscriber to the Anti- 

 Corn-Law League, but he expected that in agitating for free 

 trade in corn he was agitating for free trade in other things. 

 He quoted a speech made iu 1839 by Mr. C. P. Villiers, a 

 member of the present Government, who said in the House 

 of Commons, "Would the landed interest be willing, if the 

 malt tax were taken off, to release the couutry from the tax on 

 csrn ? For of this he was sure, that all those who were now 

 injured by the existence of the corn laws would be ready (nay 

 be anxious) to get rid of it (the malt tax). By acceding to 

 these terms the produce of the malt tax would be lost to the 

 revenue no doubt. Four millions and a-half is a small sum 

 indeed, compared with what might be raited through the me- 

 dium of taxation, if the energy of the country is allowed its 

 full and natural play." Sir James Graham said, " He 

 was convinced that, if they repealed the corn laws 

 the malt tax would not survive a single year, and why 

 should the farmers be prevented from growing beet-root 

 sugar and tobacco?" And the great Sir Robert Peel 

 declared, " As a farmer to the free traders, let me grow 

 my own tobacco, let me manufacture and consume my own 

 malt untaxed. If the articles I raise and sell are to be exempt 

 from protection, let the articles I buy be exempt also." 

 He wished to ask, how had these declarations been fulfilled? 

 Did farmers without reason complain of unfair treatment ? 

 The remedy for this injustice was in the farmers' own hands, 

 if they thought fit to use it. Let them send to Parliament 

 men of business, who would work for them in season and out 

 of season. He held in his hand the division list on the last 

 motion on the malt tax. The motion was made by Mr. Ball, 

 on the 12th of July, 1853, and its object was to allow the 

 British farmers to malt their own barley for their own con- 



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