With all these multiform difficulties the new minister grappled with
unflinching courage, and with conspicuous success. Peace was preserved
abroad, and financial prosperity was restored at home. Into the details
of his measures devised for this last-mentioned object, though the
leading features of his administration, and those on which his fame
chiefly rests, it would be beside the purpose of the present work to
enter. It is sufficient to say here that, in the spirit of Pitt's great
financial reform of 1787, he revised the whole of the import duties of
our commercial tariff, especially reducing the duties on raw
material;[261] making up the deficiency so caused by an income tax,
which he described as a temporary imposition, since he doubted not that
the great increase of lawful trade, which would be the consequence of
the reduction of duties, would soon enable the revenue to dispense with
a tax to the objections of which he was not blind. In recommending this
great change to the House, he laid down as the soundest maxim of
financial legislation, in which "all were now agreed, the principle that
we should buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest," a
doctrine which, when more fully carried out, as it was sure to be, led
almost inevitably to the great measure for which his administration is
most celebrated, the repeal of the Corn-laws.
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