Note 305 — Chapter XIV · A HOPEFUL YEAR.

It is not generally known that the repeal of the shilling duty on corn, as indeed many of the ideas on which Mr. Lowe based his Budget were suggested to him by the late Mr. Stanley Jevons. “Having been consulted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer,” writes Mrs. Jevons, “as to the pressure of taxation upon different classes of the people, Mr. Jevons sent to him on the 13th of March a report which he had prepared with much care. The result of his inquiries was, that the artisan, with only a moderate use of beer and tobacco, was less heavily taxed than the classes above or below him, but that the labourer, if he only moderately indulged in stimulants, was rather the most heavily taxed of any class in proportion to his income. Mr. Jevons, therefore, recommended the repeal of the remaining duty of a shilling a quarter on corn, which he believed formed an appreciable burden of about one per cent. of income upon the very poorest class on the borders of pauperism.” Another proposal of Mr. Lowe’s for re-coining the gold currency, owing to the defective weight of the coins in circulation, was also suggested by Mr. Jevons.—See Letters and Journals of W. Stanley Jevons, edited by his Wife (Macmillan, 1886), pp. 245-248.