Note 64 — Chapter XIX · THE CONSERVATIVE REACTION.

It was unjustly said that Mr. Gladstone offered to abolish the Income Tax as an electoral bribe. The fact was that he was under a recorded pledge to Parliament to take off the Income Tax when the finances admitted of its repeal. That was the condition on which he had been allowed to impose it when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1853. As the vast majority of the electors were not Income Tax payers, the proposal could not possibly be an effective electoral bribe.