The Express.
London, England, 1852-12-11 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

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LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11.

WHATEVER minor differences may prevail among
members of the Opposition about the manifold detail.
of the Tory Budget, a general conviction is enter-
tained of the prudence and propriety of dealing
with the proposed new items of taxation
before allowing any question of remissions to
be proceeded with. The precedent of 1842—quoted
by Mr. GLADBTONE in the preliminary discussion of
last night—illustrates aptly the sound principle on
which Sir ROBERT PEEL dealt with the subject.
When about to propose large redactions in the tariff,
that wise and cautions statesman asked the House of
Commons, in the first instance, to vote an additional
tax of 5,000,000/. in the shape of an impost on income
and property. There was then a deficit in the
Exchequer of about half that sum. To provide for
that deficit was the first duty of Parliament,
and to its performance ho therefore addressed
himself; and until the new resources specified were
granted him, Sir ROBERT PEEL positively refused to
take a single step in the direction of remissions. In
ostentatious imitation of this circumspect policy, Mr.
Disitaeu, when leading the Tory opposition, ob-
jected to the repeal of the window tax, because a
select committee had been named to investigate the
details of the income tax, and because the report
of that committee might be in favour of
its reduction, which might induce the House
of Commons to modify or abolish it, and thus
create anew a deficit in the Exchequer. Yet in the
face of all this, the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER
coolly proposes now to take off two millions and a
half on malt, and 400,9001. on tea, while lie pro-
poses to make sure only of 1,000,000!. additional by
the extended house duty. This is a truly character-
istic specimen of the man, and of the utter incapacity
of Lord 1)1SEBY to control or guide his first lieutenant
who seems to have practically assumed the right of
dragging his thoughtless chief and his submissive
colleagues over hill and dale, brake, marsh, and briar,
as the humour prompts him.
Into committee of ways and means on the doubled
and extended house duty, the house have, however,
gone; and when they are to get out of it
nobody seems very distinctly to ace. The speeches
of last night express in some measure the state
of opinion out of doors as to the comparative de-
merits of the financial scheme. Where there are so
many errors and knack's, it is not wonderful that
the clamour slintild he loud and vivid, and this more
than anything else marks its genuine carnestuems and
intensity. If the Ministers understood or synipa•
thised with the people whom they pretend to govern,
they would know that no deep or formidable current
of discontent ever had its rise in any other way.
Artificial streams run smooth and clear in their
appointed channel; the gash from a checked torrent

is often turbid and irregular; but who is able to
withstand it?

Toryism has evoked a spirit of suspicion among
the people at large, by the rash betrayal of its pur-
pose as regards taxation, which will not speedily be
laid again. On all sides men are waking from
the dream of security into which the
triumph of Free Trade had lulled them of late
years, and they ask one another, is the whole
battle then to be fought over again P Cheap
food we have, it is true, and the tricksters who rule
us say they do not mean to meddle with its conti-
nuance. But of what value is cheap food if we are
to pay annual fines and penalties fur its possession
to the extent of millions sterling ? Are we never
to have done with the rapacity of class domina-
tion ? Arc we never to be secure against these
fraudulent attempts to re-open the old account?
These are awkward questions to summon up to every
lip in the throng of industry and the resting places
where labour pauses to take breath. The answer
and the only answer will speedily suggest itsel:
The populations of the towns will be driven as one
man to the conviction, that for their industry there
can be no surety while the lauded oligarchy retain
their too lung tolerated sway. Did Parliameut not
consist of two Houses of Landlords, we should never
have heard of a project like that of Mr. DtsaALLI.
And we are persuaded that, should ho succeed in
committing the Lower House to a precipitate sanc-
tion of any one of his items of Compensation, the
first step will have been taken towards the coin-
monument of an agitation of which no man can
foresee the end.

Little progress was made last night. Few of the
leading men on either side have yet expressed their
opinion ; and it is probable that the dismisniun will
not terminate on Monday. So much the better for
the cause of truth and justice. Each day that in-
tervenes will inevitably develop new forme of re-
sistance to tho needless and oppressive imposition.
Throughout the country public meetings will have
' assembled to petition against the infliction, and to
sustain the representatives of the people who are
mindful of the high trust reposed in them. It is
likely that the present Parliament may not be of
very long duration; and treachery or tergiversation
on a question like that now pending will not be easily
forgotten or forgiven.

SIR BENJAMIN HALL, at the meeting at Maryle-
bone on Thursday evening, showed very clearly that
the tendency of the alteration in the house tax was
to set town against country, and country against
town. The "compensation" to the landed interest
is to be paid from a fund, towards which the land-
lords contribute comparatively nothing, and
tants of towns almost everything. The great feature
of the rural districts--" the country"--is, that the
houses are either mansions or cottages. The mansions
arc invariably underrated, and the cottages are nearly
all valued below 10!. a year. Many of the vast palaces
of the nobility are rated considerably lower than
shops in Oxford street or the Strand. A com-
parison of the rating of Burleigh or Blenheim
with that of a house of business in Cornhill would
show pretty clearly the relative estimation in a Lich
Mr. DISRAELI holds Dukes and Marqui-ca on the
one hand, and traders on the other, as objects of
taxation. The towns and town districts arc not slow
in recording their sense of the injustice under which
they suffer. A great meeting, from which hundreds
were excluded from want of room, has been
held in the pariah of Marylebone. In addi-
tion to the two Members several of the pa-
rishioners spoke, and gave some admirable illus-
trations of the unjust incidence of the tax in
question. These illustrations are doubly valuable
and interesting, as coming from practical men, who
are able in their own persons to put their fingers
upon the very spot where the shoe is likely to
pinch. At St. Pancras a meeting has been held,
where 2,000 persons crowded into the Vestry-hall.
Here, again, the feeling was unanimous against
allowing the CEIANCELLOR to tax the towns in order
that he may buy off the opposition of the agricultu-
rists whom he has deluded. Similar meetings, all
crowded, are being held in various parts of the coun-
try; and the result of the whole appears to be, that
if Mr. Dilemma must pay a price for his position,
he must look for funds elsewhere than from the
class of persons whose only crime is, that they get
their living in town instead of in the country. In
the House of Commons, last night, Mr. WILLIAMS
asserted that the operation of the tax on the consti-
tuency which he represented would be to render
some thousands liable to house tax who had before
been untouched by the impost. lie stated, at the
same time, that the highest authority in Lambeth had
calculated that in that parish alone 2,000 electors
would be disfranchised.

Mr. DISRAELI himself has remarked that you may
make any tax odious by making it unjust.
That he has acted upon this maxim himself
in his proposition with respect to the house tax,
there can be no shadow of doubt. The nation had
begun to recognise the principle of dlr.,. taxation.
The valid opposition to the income tax, from the
time when it was laid on by Sir Hosea? PEEL, has
been founded not upon any serious iniquity in the
tax itself, but upon the alleged unfairness of the
manner in which it was imposed. It is the same
with the house tax. When that impost was substi-
tuted for the window tax, it met with but little op-
position. Objections on matters of detail were made, as
in the ease of the income tax, but the objections
went no further. If there were inequalities and
injustice in the mode of assessment, people trusted to
time for their removaL This was a very dangerous
state of the public mind for a CHANCELLOR of the
EXCHEQUER who does not hesitate to avow Protec-
tionist predilections, although he does not dare to
legislate upon them. If it were once thoroughly
recognised that the publio revenue had better be
raised by direct taxation than by a system of protec-
tive duties, all hope of Protection would be goec for
ever. To prevent this the plan would be to
levy direct imposts in such a manner as
to create a disgust against this mode of
taxation io the minds of the taxpayers. Show them
direct taxation in its most repulsive form. Extend
it to the poorest classes. Let its operation be such
as to narrow the franchise. Let it fall heavily on
one class and not at all on another. Let the very
rich pay nothing at all. Do everything you can to
excite suspicion and disgust on the subject of the tax
and the end may be gained. It will then be easy for
Tories to say :—" See what you have lost by giving up
" indirect taxation. Even suppose that in days long
" past your loaf was rather leen, you seldom
" noticed it ; if you did pay a little more for it,
" you did not feel it. But the taxgatherer was
" kept from your door. You were favoured mortals
"in those days." It is not at all improbable that
the CHANCELLOR may hope to have an opportunity
of enacting a part like this. If the Liberals in the
house are true to their duty,—and do not suffer them-
selves to be bullied by threats of resignation into
compliance with a tax which is not only unjust, but
may lead to the most dangerous political conse-
quences,—they may prevent this result. If they do
nut they will hereafter have heavy work on hand.