is impracticable and illusory; and, without adequate benefit to the
consumer, tends so greatly to impair the revenue as to render the
removal of the Income and Property Tax at the end of three years
extremely uncertain and improbable." The amendment was rejected by 236
votes to 142. In the debate the following Speech was made.

Sir, if the question now at issue were merely a financial or a
commercial question, I should be unwilling to offer myself to your
notice: for I am well aware that there are, both on your right and on
your left hand, many gentlemen far more deeply versed in financial and
commercial science than myself; and I should think that I discharged
my duty better by listening to them than by assuming the office of
a teacher. But, Sir, the question on which we are at issue with Her
Majesty's Ministers is neither a financial nor a commercial question.
I do not understand it to be disputed that, if we were to pronounce our
decision with reference merely to fiscal and mercantile considerations,
we should at once adopt the plan recommended by my noble friend. Indeed
the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade (Mr Gladstone.), has distinctly admitted this. He says that
the Ministers of the Crown call upon us to sacrifice great pecuniary
advantages and great commercial facilities, for the purpose of
maintaining a moral principle. Neither in any former debate nor in
the debate of this night has any person ventured to deny that, both as
respects the public purse and as respects the interests of trade,
the course recommended by my noble friend is preferable to the course
recommended by the Government.

The objections to my noble friend's amendment, then, are purely moral
objections. We lie, it seems, under a moral obligation to make a
distinction between the produce of free labour and the produce of slave
labour. Now I should be very unwilling to incur the imputation of being
indifferent to moral obligations. I do, however, think that it is in
my power to show strong reasons for believing that the moral obligation
pleaded by the Ministers has no existence. If there be no such moral
obligation, then, as it is conceded on the other side that all fiscal
and commercial arguments are on the side of my noble friend, it follows
that we ought to adopt his amendment.

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade, has said that the Government does not pretend to act