? with him as to the principle of the Com- | mutation tax. If it should prove that they did not, he must then declare that he had a strong objection indeed to the present Bill. What he understood to be the principle of the Commutation tax was this: to confine the import of tea into England to the Company, and to secure to them that monopoly, but to avoid encouraging a larger consumption of tea in England than had been usual before. He would not trouble the House with any arguments at that time, upon the extreme necessity, that the House should not be pledged to support the Company in an extension of their tea trade, over and above their monopoly of the import of the whole of the quantity usually consumed in England, previous to the passing of the Commutation tax.

Mr. Pitt agreed that the principle of the Commutation Act was to secure to the Company the sale of all the tea consumed in England; and also to raise as great a revenue upon tea, as was consistent with the plan of shutting out smugglers, and all other competitors: but whether the increase of the consumption of tea ought to be deemed an evil or not, would depend on a variety of collateral considerations. If it should be found that the demand for silver, with which tea was purchased, should increase, it should be inquired whether the demand for our manufactures with which the silver itself was purchased, did not increase also. In that case, the balance would still be on the side of this country; and provided the demand for manufactures and other exports of Great Britain kept pace with the increased demand for silver, for carrying on the tea trade, the increase of the consumption of tea ought not to be considered as an evil.

. The clause moved by Mr. Sheridan was negatived without a division.

Debate in the Lords on the Wine Excise Bill.] June 26. On the order of the day for the third reading of the Wine Excise Bill,

The Earl of Carlisle reprobated the principle of the Bill, contending that it was pregnant with the most alarming consequences to the liberty of the subject. He beseeched their lordships to examine the result, as well as the necessity, and to weigh in their minds whether the evil complained of was not much less than the remedy proposed. All increase of the ex

cise laws had been held in the highest degree of detestation by every man who respected the constitution of this country; and hence it was but a natural effect that the present Bill should cause a general and a very just alarm in the minds of the people. Indeed, they already had reason to be jealous of their privileges under the present system of government; they found the rights of their ancestors daily encroached upon; and every hour presented them with new plans to invade the best charter which a country ever enjoyed-the right of trial by jury. Pretences of suppressing evils (the common, hackneyed excuse for such innovations) were all that Government and their adherents had to support their approaches to this most unconstitutional system, which he should now oppose, and which he trusted the spirit of Englishmen would yet be able to repel. The arguments offered by those who supported the Bill were, the necessity of increasing the revenue without laying additional burthens upon the subject: but when any man of common sense came to examine the contents of that Bill, he would find no other motive but a multiplication of the patronage of the Crown by an enormous and sudden increase of excise officers. Was the real benefit of the revenue the object of the Bill, it would have struck at the root of the evil at once, by a duty upon the articles which decreased the importation, and not by an excise upon the wines. The liquor which adulterated the produce of Oporto and Spain, was what in this country came under the denomination of sweets, and without which it was impossible to make any composition resembling, either in taste or colour, what is known in this country by the appellation of Port wine. He was not wine-merchant enough to prove this, by the process of making and mixing, and therefore he had to lament that the rules of the House were found to be against hearing those who only could have made the matter evident to their lordships in all its particulars. It was certain that a visible decrease appeared upon the face of the Custom-house books, in the duties upon wine; but it was equally apparent, that this decrease was not entirely owing to the present mode of mixing sweets with the juice of the grape. In former days the people drank much more than they now do; and wine-taverns were much more frequented than at present. The arguments which chiefly met the Bill, were its

oppression, and unconstitutional tendency to effect that which could be done without | any such evils to be apprehended. A tax upon the sweets would answer all, nay more than the present Bill could ever perform. Hence it was evident that a multiplication of the excise laws, and an additional influence to government, by an increase of excisemen, were the main objects. The increase, when duly considered, was of a most alarming nature. It was not, as stated in another House, an increase of 160 officers; but of nearly 2,000. This was easily calculated. There were about 700 wholesale dealers, and about 10,000 retailers, who would all be affected by this Bill. To each of the principal merchants there must be one exciseman. These would make 700; and, upon an average, among the rest, there could not be less than 1,300. Hence it was clear, that 2,000 excisemen, armed with the most arbitrary, unconstitutional powers, were saddled upon the public, to effect that which could most evidently be done without their assistance. As to laying a duty upon sweets, it was nothing more than an additional impost upon raisins, a foreign commodity, and, in a great measure, a luxury. Upon the whole, such weighty reasons appeared for not extending the excise laws, and for preventing the present system of diminishing the right of trial by jury, that he should oppose the present Bill passing into a law.

man;

Viscount Townshend revered the principles of the constitution as much as any but he saw such an absolute necessity for endeavouring to increase the revenue, by preventing adulteration and smuggling, that he should give his hearty concurrence to the Bill. The manufacture of Port in this country had arisen to such a pitch, that there was no such thing as a drop of good wine to be had at any tavern, and scarcely at any merchant's cellar. This had induced him to import his own wine; which if he did not, he should be induced to countenance the smuggler, by endeavouring to have it that way; for there was not any safety in drinking the wretched trash vended under the denomination of Portugal wines. He had been in Portugal, and he could assure their lordships from connexions which he had there, that the utmost care was taken by the government in that country to have the best sent here; but that from the quantity of orders sent over, to have particular portions of brandy put to each hogshead, antecedent

to its exportation, they discovered that kind of adulteration to be for the purposes of intermixing it with the home-made wines of England, and thereby giving not only a bad character to the vintages of Oporto, but actually perverting a most wholesome, into a most destructive liquor. The experiment, therefore, seemed to him to have in view a benefit to the public health, as well as to the public purse; and as an amendment in the wine duty was long looked for, he was happy to see it come at last.

Lord Loughborough endeavoured to prove, that where the decrease in the duty on wines appeared, that decrease was owing in some measure to the increase of sweets. He went back as far as the year 1736, and averaged the duties for each ten years to the present time, proving that within the last ten years, the duties produced as much as within the former ten years, and the present half century was very little inferior to that which preceded it. He deduced, that in proportion as the duty on sweets was taken off, so did the duty on foreign wines decrease, which in itself was sufficient to prove, that the mixture with the sweets was the occasion of the revenue becoming less from the ports. His lordship compared the different periods, beginning with those ten years, which produced 17,000 tons of foreign wines, and comparing the decrease of about 700 tons in the next, with the increase of the sweets in that period of time. Nothing, he said, could be stronger proof of the justice of this calculation, than the evidence of the facts, as they came authenticated from the commissioners of the Customs, the testimony on record, that when the duty on sweets was high, the revenue on wine increased, and vice versa, when the duties were lowered on the home made, the foreign of course was found to yield less profit to the revenue. What he should therefore expect to have seen done from the result of those facts was, a new duty on sweets equal to that on Port, so that whichever was consumed the public should not lose in its revenue. As to the matter of good, and the effects of adulterated wines, they certainly, except so far as they affected the revenue, were not objects of national consideration. The health of the constitution was that which their lordships should most narrowly watch. They were the physicians by whose skill and advice that great object was to be

› preserved; and where their decision was called for in a most critical case, it was rather selfish to make their own ease and pleasure the first objects of consideration. When he mentioned that the health of the constitution was at stake, he begged their lordships to advert to the Bill upon their table; and there they would find, that all those evils which the wisdom, the prudence, and the patriotic principles of our ancestors, were so industrious to guard against in the multiplication of our excise laws, sprung up, and were cherished by the present Administration. He beseeched their lordships to consider, that the Bill would take away the right of trial by jury; and considering how that had been invaded of late, it behoved their lordships to look to the Bill with the most jealous eye; and they were the more loudly called upon to do so, because the excuse under which the present extension of the excise laws came recommended to Parliament, was frivolous and unwarrantable. The merchant was to be harassed by day and by night, with the most alarming penalties annexed to his transgressions; and yet it would be impossible to take an accurate account of his stock, so as to prevent fraud, if he had an inclination to adulterate or evade the duties. How was it possible to gauge wine? and therefore how could any argument place it on the footing of beer or spirits in respect to the excise? Beer was made in large vessels, where the officer could take an accurate survey, so as to be a check upon the whole of the stock taken by the excisemen in the cellars: but how was this to operate in the present case? It would be impossible for the numerous small parcels into which wine is divided for the purpose of sale, ever to become a check upon the survey of the casks, and vice versa, for the survey to become a check upon the bottles. Wine could not be dipped, because that would render it unfit for those palates, the nicety of which seemed so much the object of the Bill. The permits, however nicely guarded, could not prevent imposition, in sending out small quantities of wines, because when on draught, it would be impossible, at least in a tavern, to prevent it, and many tavern-keepers were wine-merchants. A range of wine in the wood, could not be disturbed, and tossed and tumbled about by excisemen; nor would it be possible for these persons to keep an accurate account of what was in each bin, and what was daily and hourly taken from them.

He begged the attention of their lordships to what he had to advance upon the justice of trial by jury in all revenue causes, to which he had been an ear-witness, on which he had been a judge, and at a time wherein he was, by virtue of his employment, an advocate, by his situation, on the subject of the revenue. During the course of those periodical progressions, he had made a constant remark, that in every case, one excepted, the jury did justice in the most strict manner, both in respect to the exciseman and the complainant. They always, in his eyes, appeared an honour to that institution, and a public record of the impolicy of ever departing from such a constitutional part of our legislative code of laws. He had had many opportunities of admiring this excellent part of our noble fabric of legislation, in the trials which were brought by action against the excise officers; and which legislation he never wished to see new-fangled in such a manner, as to prevent the injured subject from having proper redress from the insolent underlings of office. It was always a maxim with the jury, in cases of excise, to examine whether the officer had behaved rudely or not in the execution of his office, upon an information when it was wrong. If his conduct was insolent, and exceeded his authority, they punished him by damages accordingly; but if, on the contrary, they found that error in his information had caused him to transgress, and that he appeared in that transgression to behave with complaisance, and not to exercise insolence of office, then the jury found so much only as entitled the complainant to his costs, and to what was already deemed a reparation of his expenses-ten pounds or thereabouts. What, in the name of wonder, could therefore influence the present minister to depart from such a system, and by a new clause against the constitution to put it out of the power of either judge or jury to give costs more in amount than 2d.? Was this a proof of the patriotic principles on which the present ministers promised to conduct themselves? Was this their regard for the constitution? Was it by these means that they intended to continue themselves in power r? If it was, he might indeed bid a long farewell to the constitution. Trial by jury was the birth-right of an Englishman, and such was the nature of his disposition in former times, that he would not easily part with it. The learned lord