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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 882
1
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
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would have given up the whole of the export duties, including the cinnamon duty, entirely ?—At that time.
4533. The interval between the time at which the Government did give up the export duties, leaving 4d. a lb. upon the cinnamon, and the time at which you would have given up the whole of the export duties, including the cinnamon duty, was four months ?--Yes, but that four months was a very material period; for this reason, I had suggested the road ordinance, and that was to have come into operation on the 1st January, 1849. But that would have been no relief to the revenue, and would have done
no good till it came into operation.
4534. Would your views have been met if this ordi- nance, instead of coming into operation on the 1st Sep- tember, 1848, had come into operation on the 31st of December, 18487-Yes, with that alteration, the cinna- mon duty being abolished, and my other measure having been fairly carried out.
4535. As far as regards the export duties, had the Government consented to abandon the cinnamon duty altogether, and to make their ordinance take effect upon the 31st December, 1848, it would have met your views? -Yes.
4586. Therefore, your views were even more in favour of giving up the export duties than those upon which the Government actually acted ?—I told the Committee last that I saw no particular reason for giving up the 24 per cent., because nobody felt it. I adhere to that view I can see no good reason for maintaining the duty of 25 per cent., and giving up the 21 per cent.
year,
now.
The
passage above extracted from his last minute is then read to him by Mr. Hawes, who asks
4538. Can you reconcile that with the opinion you have just stated, that the 24 per cent. was no hardship, and that the duty to that amount upon exports need not then have been repealed?—It must be borne in mind by the Committee, for whom this minute was written. We were waro in the Council that the duties were to be repealed.
I was not going to raise abstract questions for the purpose of getting up discussions. There was not a person in the Council, for whom alone that was written, who did not know that these duties were to be repealed.
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4539. Mr. Gladstone.-As I understand you, the expe- diency of the repeal was not in question before you The question was never raised before us.
4540. Mr. Hawes.-Will you allow me to call your attention to the words of the minute, "Both at the com- mencement and throughout these discussions we have never doubted the expediency of the entire abolition of the export duties.** 1 take it that is not an abstract, but a practical question. Was or was not the Council unani-
mous upon the repeal of the export duties ?—Yes.
4541. Mr. Gladstone. -- Was not the word “we,” meant to express your own opinion, or the sense of the body of the Council ?—The sense of the body of the Council, including my own as a member of that Council. As I
Evidence, 1850.
Evidence, 1850.
never mised any discussion upon it, I had no right to say that I dissented, nor do I say so.
Now, if Mr. Wodehouse's evidence in 1849 was in conflict with his minutes, and they were then before the Committee, as he supposed they were
(I did not know they were not), it ought to have been in the power of the Under Secretary of State to have examined me upon any single paragraph contained in them, and I am willing to abide by every word which is in them, and every word which I said last year. 4543 (1850.) But, notwithstanding that Mr. Wodehouse was not cross-examined by his minutes until nearly a year after his original evidence, which he was then required to reconcile with them, so that he had no opportunity of explaining, or, if necessary, of quali- fying his statements as they were made, it is sub- mitted that no inconsistency whatever is shown between this evidence and his minutes, or, indeed, any other established fact in the case. His evi- dence might with truth have gone farther than it did, for all he said before the Committee was, "I
am not at all certain that I would have given up the export duties at that time," and did not add that he had ever given any official expression to this dissent; whereas his last minute is a very strong expression of such dissent, and a very " certain" one too. Of course the whole minute is to be read together; when in his "one effort more" to conciliate his opponents, he says, "Both at the commencement and throughout these discussions,
we have never doubted the expediency of the entire abolition of the export duties, including that upon cinnamon, and all our efforts have had for their object the provision of an equivalent amount of revenue from other sources," and afterwards pro- poses that "no alteration of the export duties should take place during 1848," and there is interposed between these passages a reference to the unforeseen difficulty in providing the "equiva- lent revenue," and to the circumstance that this discovery led to the development of different views, some looking "to postponement of the abolition of the ordinary export duties," and he then raises a question of “expediency," which, up to that time, he says, “we have never doubted, "what inconsis- tency is there between Mr. Wodehouse's sets and his statements? Mr.Wodehouse had agreed with hig colleagues that the general export duties should go (though he did not consider them a very grievous