The English duty, if reduced to 6d. per gallon (or 13fr. 75c. per hectolitre) for wines below 21 degrees of strength, that is to say, wines from 12 degrees (Gay-Lussac), will still present a system of customs duties rising to 50 per cent. on the average value of the produce taxed, and almost equal to the entire value which is now assigned. to it in the French departments where wine is produced on a great scale; in L'Hérault, for instance, and Les Charente, where the ordinary value of wine does not exceed 15fr. per hectolitre-that is, less than 7d. per gallon.

The lowering of the tax to 6d. would of itself throw open the British market to a great number of French wines to which it is at present absolutely closed. French production would, therefore, gain indisputably by this measure, while English consumers, being better supplied with this commodity, would find their hygienic conditions improved-a consideration which is not to be despised.

The interest of the two nations and of the two Governments is therefore plain. It demands that they should come to a common understanding on this subject.

Is it possible that fiscal necessities, or the fear of diminished returns, should deter Her Majesty's Government?

If we base our calculation on the receipts of the last few years, the diminution which might be caused in these returns ought not to be as much as 300,000l. What is such a sum as that to the resources of the United Kingdom, when the Budget was able, after 1874, to sustain all at once a diminution of 1,843,000l. by the complete extinction of the duty on sugars ?

We are quite willing to admit that the expenses of the wars in Zululand and in Afghanistan have inflicted a temporary blow on the elastic power of the English Budget, but we could not believe that it has come to this-that it is not able to support the temporary loss of from 300,000l. to 400,000l. from its receipts, and we have too much confidence in the financial resources of the present First Lord of the Treasury to believe that he will hesitate to exercise the power that, at his instance, has just been granted him by Parliament.

This diminution in the receipts would be essentially temporary, because the duty being only reduced and not extinguished, an infallible increase in the consumption would speedily make good the deficiency, and it would not be long before it was converted into a plus value for the benefit of the treasury.

The annual consignment of wines in cask sent from France into England amounts to hardly 5,502,500 gallons (250,000 hectolitres). It is not one third of the amount imported to the Swiss Confederation, whose population represents hardly the tenth part of that of England.

Making a proportional calculation of her wealth, her power, and her 31,000,000 of inhabitants, England is in a position to increase tenfold her consumption of wines, and there is no exaggeration in

foretelling that she is capable of reaching the figure of 175,000,000 to 200,000,000 of gallons.

If the statesmen who now govern England should fear, in consequence of the competition of wine, that a diminution of receipts might result from a diminished consumption of beer, they will have before them the example of France, Switzerland, and Germany, to calm their fears.

Their example, indeed, proves that when wine and beer are not burdened in an excessive manner, the consumption of these two drinks increases progressively pari passu, the substitution of the one for the other being essentially partial.

Besides, the beer, when taxed according to the proposals of the present Ministry at 2d. per gallon, will continue to enjoy, as against the wine, a virtually protective treatment, which looks like a survival of the past in England, which prides itself, and so justly, on being the mother-country of 'Free Trade.'

Most English beers show, indeed, an alcoholic strength almost equal to that of the common wines of France. The latter, therefore, will pay a tax three times as high as that on the native produce.

As for the notion that an increase in the consumption of wine would entail a corresponding diminution, more or less proportioned to it, in the consumption of alcoholic drinks properly so called, we need not entertain the idea for a moment. The facts that we have witnessed and the fiscal results in France leave no doubt on this point.

Notwithstanding the excessive duties which are imposed on alcohol, its consumption has never ceased to increase in a constant progression, parallel, so to speak, with that of wine, which has increased 100 per cent. in ten years.

In fine, there are no considerations of any real moment, whether political, international, or simply fiscal, such as to prevent the British Cabinet from exercising the power which has just been granted to it, of reducing by one half the prohibitive duty which excludes most of the wines of France from the English market.

By continuing the work commenced in 1860, Mr. Gladstone will prove that he is indeed the successor of Robert Peel and of Richard Cobden. He will receive the grateful applause of the Liberals of both countries.

These latter regret that the grandson of J. B. Say has been able but to sketch the outlines of this beneficial arrangement; they trust to the liberal mind of the leader of the English Cabinet to bring it to a good conclusion. We are firmly convinced that that eminent statesman will deem it a point of honour to justify the confidence reposed in him by the partisans of progress and freedom.tw

E. RAOUL DUVAL.

ก

P

THE HOUSE OF LORDS AND NATIONAL

INSURANCE.

6

We live in days of disillusions, and Numicius is not the only man who needs to learn that the secret of a certain sort of happiness consists in wondering at nothing. It is but a few months ago since a writer in this Review, discoursing on the proposal of National Compulsory Insurance (not altogether in a favourable sense), endeavoured to prove its error by prophesying its failure. It is inconceivable,' we were assured, 'that a statesman of the first class could be found to take the scheme in hand.' And yet, in the very first session after this confident assertion, the Earl of Carnarvon has introduced the subject by a most lucid and telling address in the House of Lords, delivered on the 4th of June last; and, instead of being received with utter scorn and dismissed with contemptuous derision, his lordship's views have been endorsed by several peers well informed on questions of the sort; and, if disputed by some others, seem to have been disputed only or chiefly on grounds of objection which do not apply to the proposal actually made.

I gladly avail myself of the opportunity of examining in the present paper the treatment which the subject received on the occasion I refer to, and of further considering some points in the controversy which subsequent expressions of opinion have made it desirable to handle. And, as the originator of the proposal, I cannot enter on this task without expressing my grateful sense, not only of the consideration shown to the subject by all who took part in the discussion brought on by Lord Carnarvon, but of the kindly and sympathetic interest taken in the question throughout the nation at large-an interest so unexpectedly warm and growing as to fill me with very confident hope, not merely in the eventual triumph of the proposal, of which (as is, I suppose, the nature of all projectors) I have never allowed myself to entertain the shadow of a doubt, but even of its proximate success, concerning which I rejoice to be able to-day to hold, and I believe with just reason, an immeasurably more favourable opinion than I did a year ago.

To praise a statesman of the eminence and ability of Lord Carnarvon would be presumption on my part in the first place, and

superfluous in the second, since I might be supposed ready to praise anyone who happened to agree with me, and everyone, right or wrong, who might forward the cause I have at heart by such an onward impetus as his lordship's discussion has given to National Insurance. But it is not a matter of course, but of simple justice, to say that Lord Carnarvon's address, so far as I have seen it reported, bore the stamp of true statesmanship in its evidence that he only brought forward a subject so important after fully making up his mind upon its many aspects, and thoroughly examining the terms of the proposal; that it is the first public utterance of any length upon the question, whether from friend or foe, in which I could find no misconception to correct and no syllable to alter; and that I regard his treatment of the subject as of the happiest omen, since it leads me to believe that a study as fair, as full, and as thoughtful as that which his lordship has given to the proposal will lead other thinkers to a conviction of its great social advantages as strong as that which prompted his lordship's most lucid, forcible, and interesting address.

Had the form of discussion permitted a reply, this article would have been unnecessary, since the vindication of the measure from the few objections offered would have been entirely safe in his skilful hands. This not being the case, I will reply to them here myself.

And, before entering on this task, I may be permitted to call attention to the progress of this question since I first mooted it in the number of this Review for November 1878.

I cannot say it was ever uncivilly treated. Its good intention was never impugned; and even those who only regarded it at best as a mere will-o'-the-wisp were ready to acknowledge that its light was rather a pretty contrast to the darkness of our growing pauperism. But it was visionary, Utopian, extravagant, fanciful, contrary to the spirit of English legislation, to the dicta of political economy, to the freedom of the race, to the logic of facts, to the possibilities of execution; nay, some went further, and scouted the scheme entirely, on the ground that compulsion in such a direction as I proposed was a suggestion quite as absurd to consider as its infliction would be a tyranny intolerable to undergo, and so wrong in principle and so impossible in practice as to make it inconceivable that any leading statesman could take the thing in hand.

Now I wish, in proof of the progress of the cause, to note that not one word of all this was echoed in the House of Lords in answer to Lord Carnarvon! And the objection supposed to lie at the root of all others—namely, the tyranny of compulsion (a tyranny so intolerable, we were told, as to be sufficient to create a revolution)-has so completely fallen out of view that in the most august assembly in the nation there was not found one single voice to name the vanished ghost, whose apparition was dissolved once and for ever, as a bugbear

to the study of this question, by showing that the compulsion required for national independence was far lighter and far fairer than that now submitted to, by all thrifty men, for the production and encouragement of national pauperisation.

And indeed the principle was accepted almost from the first, for which, as it was self-evident when propounded, I no more claim merit to myself than a lamplighter can claim for the brightness of the gas to which he puts a match. But, passing from the principle, which I rightly claimed from the first to be unassailable, objectors naturally enough fell upon the execution of the plan, and (on a very short examination in many cases) dismissed it with a verdict of disfavour, couched in the handy expression of its 'impracticability.'

A further noteworthy evidence of the swift advance of the idea in this direction is to be found in the fact that another leading statesman,' the Earl of Derby, three months before Lord Carnarvon's advocacy of the scheme, should have shattered the very foundation of that confident cry of impracticability by such an utterance as that at the great Conference on Thrift, convened by the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House, on the 12th of last March. He said, in regard to the alleged impracticability of National Insurance, I remember that thirty years ago the idea of compulsory education would have seemed quite as impracticable as that of compulsory insurance.' I venture to quote here my comment on these words:

These words, which the meeting received with vociferous cheers, filled me with a sense of grateful surprise. For the speaker, in his utterance, went further in support of my proposal than I had ventured to hope any leading statesman would have felt himself warranted in doing, at least for the next four or five years. They put the seal more or less to the record of my own experience, which shows that as at first the principle of the measure I proposed was plain, but its practicability obscure, now its practicability grows clear in proportion as public opinion becomes enlightened, and the question of practicability is really changing into a question of time.1

Such then, advanced still further by Lord Carnarvon's able advocacy, is the present state of this matter in the mind of the public; and neither warm friend nor gallant foe will begrudge me the satisfaction I must feel in being able to point to progress so striking of so great a cause in so short a time, and to call on the many who are zealous for its winning to thank God and take courage in pushing on the work.

I now turn to the Lords' debate. Earl Granville, as representing the Ministry, had but one answer to give. He admitted the importance of the subject, but could not state that the Government intended to bring forward at the present moment any scheme of the kind mentioned. It would be as strange that a Government just appointed, and overwhelmed with the charge of a number of burning questions,

1 From Fraser's Magazine for April 1880, p. 545.