The Press. — London, England, 1854-12-02 00:00:00

\h., 4 1132 MR. GLADSTONE. Soon after the termination of the session, we pro mised that during the recess we would review Mr. GLADsTONE's severer operations as the Finance Minister of this great country, and we stated that as we proceeded we should ask each of our readers to put to himself, as a portion of the public, this plain question : " Are the finances of this empire in safe hands ?" The absorbing interest of the war, rendered doubtful in the issue of its first campaign in no small degree, as we have shown, by the obstinacy and incapacity of Mr. GLADSTONE, and the thrilling incidents of chivalrous deeds and of private sorrows with which it has been fraught, have prevented us as yet, from dealing with all the topics which we had marked out for comment. The near approach of another session, and another financial operation, compels us to select for observation this week the most appropriate of the remaining topics. We Rhall therefore, comment now upon the principle of Mr. GLADSTONE'S first Budget, and the representations under which he induced Parliament to assent to it. On the 18th of April, 1853, he proposed his first Budget. Atter the celebrated gladiatorial display of the 16th December, 1852, in which Mr. GLADSTONE obtained his triumph over Mr. DISRAELI, this Budget was looked for with no ordinary interest, and there can be no doubt that to Mr. GLADSTONE'S fame, as well as to his personal feelings, it was of para mount importance that this Budget should be favour ably received by a majority of the House. We need scarcely remind our readers that, while he extended the duration of the property and income ta±, without altering its admitted hardship and in justice, the principle of his Budget was to mark it as a temporary tax. He repeated this in his financial statement, and with emphatic earnestness calling it " the corner stone of his whole financial plan." And, in order to reconcile Parliament and the country to this unpopular tax in its most unpopular shape, he proposed large remissions of indirect taxation soap duties, 1,100,0001.; stamps, taxes, custom duties, including tea and various articles of consumption, amounting on the whole to no less a sum than 5,384,0001. ; while he added to the taxes upon land by the imposition of a succession duty, which he cal culated would ultimately bring in a revenue of 2,000,0001. a year. It is not our present purpose to discuss the policy of these financial propositions—our object is to point cut the principle of the Budget; and we repeat, in Mr. GLADSTONE'S own words, that by the remission of indirect taxation he hoped to bring about such a state of things as would admit of the property and income tax being parted with at the period, and in the manner, proposed by him, as a part, or rather as the cornek-stone, of his plan. Upon this representation Parliament was induced to accede to the measure, and Mr. GLADSTONE sue ceeded in his first Budget. Our charge against him is this :—That he proposed this Budget, and induced Parliament to sanction it, under false pretences. It was essentially a peace budget--remitting indirect taxation to the extent of five millions, and promising emphatically that the property and income tax should be abolished wholly in seven years. Let us see, then, how this charge is to be sus tained. The country and Parliament were deluded, we assert, by the specious promises of t he CHAN CELLOR of the ExCHEQUER. Peace and plenty were the happy harbingers of his Budget, and the gates of the Temple of Janus were sure to remain closed during the dynasty of ABERDEEN and GLADSToNt. Such were the anticipations of the public. They were my warranted, not only by the language of Mr. GLADSTONE'S speech, but by the nature and cha racter of his Budget. But let us intrude into the sanctuary of the CHAN --;ER, and what shall we find leading f Lord pains 'eLeTS ked the though ionths Budget attained, important iut Mr. the Ca the 1811 cilium& of the EXCHEQUER, and what shall we him studying there, as a leading member of I ABERDEEN'S Ministry ? We have taken some to go over the correspondence from St. Pei burgh and Constantinople, which had reached Cabinet before the day on which the financial s went was made. This correspondence, it is I observed, and the events to which it refers, the known to the Cabinet, Were then, and for me after, totally unknown to the public ; the Bt was carried, and Mr. GLADSTONE'S object atta long before the first blue book on this imp° subject was presented to Parliament. But GLADSTONE had before him, as a member of th blunt, previous to his financial statement of the April, DV, the letter of Vice-Consul CUNNINOB the Earl of CLARENDON, dated at Galatz, isat to 28th THE PRESS. SATURDAY, March, and received at the Foreign-office on the 15th April, in which he informs Lord CLA,RENDON " that fresh orders have been received in Bessarabia " to prepare for the passage of troops, and to get " waggons ready for the transport of baggage." "It " is said," he adds (and such appears to ba the case from the amount of preparation ordered) " that " two corps d'armee, upwards of 200,000 men, will " pass, and waggons are ordered for the 10Lh ay." He had likewise before him the letter of Consul YeastEs to Colonel ROSE, from Odessa, of March 2 2 , which is stated to have been received at the Foreign office on the 11th April, in which the Consul, after describing the assembling and hastening of large bodies of troops, as he considers, for the occupation of the Principalities, adds " great exertions continue " to be made by the Admiralty at Nicolaieff, and " Sebastopol to have everything that can swim, ready " for sea." We cannot ask our readers to follow us through this correspondence, but let any of them who may be so disposed peruse the paper iu Part I. of the Turkey correspondence presented last session, from No. 62, received at the Foreign-office on January 11, 1853, to No. 137, received on the 15th of April; and we venture to affirm that he will find in those documents, then before the Cabinet, abundant proofs that the peace of Europe was in imminent danger, and that the elements of a mighty struggle, in which Great Britain must inevitably be engaged, were fast col lecting. And that it was the duty, therefore, to the public and to himself, of an honest Finance Minister, on the 18th of April, 1853,—instead of proposing and propounding a peace budget, with actual remissions of taxation, which, under the real circumstances of the country, were most improper, and promised remissions which he must have known to be decep- tive—to have made vigorous preparations for war. We say, then, that with the knowledge at that time possessed by Mr. GLADSTONE of the designs and movements of the Russian autocrat—a knowledge possessed then by the Cabinet alone—it was a delusion upon the public to propose a budget founded upon the supposition that our peace was to be uninterupted. And we further say that after having resisted Mr. DISRAELI'S modification of the property and income tax in Dec., 1852, instead of dealing with its admitted difficulties when he came into power himself, he glossed over its inequalities and injustices, under the plea and pretext that it was to be got rid of in 1860 ; while he knew that events were in progress which in all probability would, or at least might, involve Great Britain in a struggle with one of the mightiest empires in Europe, and thereby perpetuate this unjust tax during the present generation. We adverted on a former occasion to the want of moral rectitude in political matters which charac tenses the party of which Mr. GLADSTONE is the the ornament. We are constrained to believe that to carry his first Budget through the House of Commons being his paramount object, he lost sight of the means by which that object was to be attained. Perhaps he even gloried in the ignorance of the House of Commons with regard to the real position of affairs and smiled at the simplicity with which his promise of exemption from property tax in 1800 was received. We give him every credit for having since co operated with Lord ABERDEEN in his efforts to preserve peace, and we are fully convinced that from his unwillingness to contemplate the possibility of war, he has been mentally and morally unable to make adequate provision for the present lamentable emergency. Well might the Czar felicitate himself on the ac cession of the Peelite Administration. Doubtless, in Mr. GLADSTONE'S Budget of April, 1853—even more than in Lord CLatEsnos's despatches—the Emperor detected then a settled intention on the part of the British Cabinet to let him have his own way; and doubtless, therefore, to Mr. GLArnaose, no less than to Lord ABERDEEN, are we justified in attributing the horrors and the costs of this war. Mr. GLADSTONE, on the meeting of Parliament, will have to propose another financial plan, involving necessarily increased taxation. On this occasion we have confined ourselves to his Budget of 1853, and showed that he obtained for it the sanction of Par liament under false pretences, which false pretences were calculated equally to mislead the British public and the Emperor of the RussiAs. We have heard it said, "if a man deceives you once, blame the de ceiver ; if again, blame yourself." Will the House of Commons trust Mr. GLADSTONE when he again „ te . I makes one of his brilliant, but deceptive, speeches to be THE UNITED STATES AND CUBA. THE New York Herald has recently informed us that the chief subject discussed at the late Con ference of American diplomatists held at Ostend was the conduct of Spain in heaping insults on the American flag. According to the representations of a certain portion of the American press, Spain will not let Jonathan rest; with her invincible armadas close at hand in the Gulf, she will have her own way, and persists in trampling upon the persecuted stars and stripes. It. seems that the " outrages" inflicted on Amerka by Spain are not only "atrocious," but " numerous," and to establish the truth of this assertion, the case of the Black Warrior is men tioned. Something has been heard of this before, and, if we remember correctly, 60,0001. was de manded for the detention of the vessel at Havannah for two or three days, on a charge of violating the regulations of the harbour. It may astonish the reader to learn that though more than a year has elapsed since then, this reparation has not yet been granted. At the time the requisition was made it was believed that England and France had jointly hinted that a refusal to comply with it would scarcely justify an invasion of Cuba; but now the New York journalist informs us these Powers "have materially modified their views." By what process the change was effected—whether the two Governments have been frightened by Dr. COTKAN, or whether they have been convinced by a few pithy and pertinent obser vations, similar to those which Mr. SAUNDERS em. bodied in several thousand folios, and addressed to the rulers of Switzerland—we are left to conjecture, but of the result of the conference we are duly in formed. It is a recommendation that negotiations should be immediately opened with Spain for the " voluntary " cession of Cuba to the United States, and that these peaceful measures should be sup ported by " the moral influence of the home squadron in the Gulf." That M. SOULE assisted at the con ference we need scarcely mention ; not only is the mild wisdom of this accomplished diplomatist ap parent in the substance of the resolution adopted, but also in the form recommended, which indicates familiarity with the customs of Spain. The beggar in " Gil Bias" humbly sued for alms, and backed his petition by the "moral influence " of a gun of pro digious length, with which he carefully covered the person of the Student of Salamanca. But we trust that America will neither resort to " Gil Bias" for precedents, nor to the councils of M. SouLE for guidance in her political career. She is the great offspring of a great parent, and the tone of her press in treating of the war now raging proves that her Cotmans do not speak her sentiments, but that she is proud of the source from which she sprung. And deeply as we deplore the unfortunate policy which has either " drifted" or precipitated us into this terrible contest, still more should we have occasion to do so if the existence of European war enabled the extreme Democrats in America to lure the Republic into a course which might endanger the amicable relations now happily subsisting be tween the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race, and which would assuredly destroy those feel ings of respect and esteem with which she is now regarded, but which would never be extended to a nation that availed herself of her strength to discard the considerations of justice, to violate the faith of treaties, and to trample on the rights of the weak. PRINCE ALBERT has given orders for a number of seal-skin coats, lined throughout with fur, one of which his Royal Highness, as Colonel of the Grena dier Guards, intends to present to every officer and man of that regiment previous to his leaving for the seat of war. AN ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH OFFICE is to be estab lished within the walls of Windsor Castle, in order that all messages at this important crisis may be instantly received by her Majesty and Prince Albert. A MONUMENT TO THE POET WORDSWORTH, from the chisel of Mr. Thrupp, has just been erected in Westminster Abbey. The statue is of white marble, and represents the author of the " Excursion " sitting in the open air, in a contemplative mood. Ile resting on a moss and ivy-mantled stone or knoll, with the greensward at his feet enamelled with flowers; the legs are crossed; his right hand and arm are wound gracefully round one knee; the left hand, with the fore finger slightly unfitted, is laid upon an open book, which the poet has just been reading ; and the eyes a e bent, in pensive admira ti n, upon the flowers at his feet. The conception is felicitous; the whole attitude of the figure is singu larly easy and graceful, and the sculptor has been equally happy in rendering the head and features of the deceased, with which the public are more or lets familiar. It has been placed in a niche of the Bap tistry, situated immediately on the right on entering by toe great western door , where, b y the way, it is exceedingly apt to be overlooked. As yet no inscrip tion appears upon the base of the monument. The statue is not habited in the modern costume. PROFESSOR WILSON, F.R.S.E., succeeds to the Chair of Agriculture in the University of Edinburgh, vacant by the retirement of Professor Low. Mr. Wilson is already well known from the public ap pointments he has held, one of the most important d successful of which was his commission to re- p an ort on the agricultural department of the New York Exhibition