The Express.
London, England, 1853-01-20 00:00:00

TO CORILESPONDIJITIS.

♦ ...me retttes .f " Tbe espreue.'• eseudatne the ohne eveeiree
ti.mete." to pablohod cowl Tuesday as 4 relay oight. le taw
M pow-
ft ee.•u.u•tatteled fee "no ?Tr too,"taelea Erwin peen,
et the 10116011, lu, Uourene.etner. by Two Vika► ea 1N
448 of ribliffotka.

HIGH WATNK AT LONDON BILIDOK.
Ton —llorouig. Ind 4. Ationess. les. 41..
--Aftegamm. 111. WI&

LONDON, TIICRSDAY, JANUARY 20.

TUE attention of Lord JO UN ItrssEtt has not, it
would seem, been directed in vain to the revival of
the .tfrican Slave Trade from Cuba. The Admiralty,
we understand, have, on his lordship's instructions
as Foreign Secretary, issued orders for the despatch
of some SA ift steamers to the coasts of that island,
to see V 4 bother it be not possible to check in the com-
mencement the renewal of the infamous traffic in
human beings, and at all events to show the Court
of Madrid the sense which England entertains of the
scandalous manner in which the Spanish colonial
authorities disregard the dictates of humanity and
the obligations of treaties. Driven from Brazil, the
great slave-dealing capitalists for a time sought
repose in Europe. Da SA, CARNEIRO, Nerro, and
FoxszcA carried their illgotten wealth to Por-
tugal, and the persons whom its former colony
had rejected—Portugal has ennobled! DE Ss
has been created the Baron of VILLA NOVA
DO MINIM, ANGELO CiIINEIRO Viscount LOURES;
and on Narro was conferred the Cross of the
Order of Noma Senbora do Conceicao. Whether
these particular individuals have returned to their
old habits and practices we know not; but certain it
is that for some time past arrangements have been
made in Cuba by persons of great experience and
capital to fill up by fresh importations from
unhappy Africa the void which Cholera had
made in the slave population of that island. The
first evidence of this movement was seen in the ship-
yards of Baltimore and other American ports.
Thence were despatched, not to Havannah, but to the
minor and less frequented ports of Cuba, clippers such
as only can hope to escape the vigilance of our cruisers.
These met with a ready sale in the island. The
Spanish authorities closed their eyes to these
significant preparations, and rejected as imper-
tinence all proffered information on the sub-
ject. It thus became only too evident that the
present Captain General was ready to wink at—per-
haps to profit by—the traffic. The fittings for these
ships were despatched in other vessels, and from
other countries, to the coast of Africa, there to be
transferred to the clippers as opportunity served.
And the hope is that, sailing light and unequipped
from Cuba, the clippers will elude the provisions of
the treaties under which, when equipped, they may
be seized.

It is to arrest this iniquitous scheme in its first
outburst that the Admiralty now orders additional
steamers to the coast of Cuba. And though we have
never, as our readers know, been favourable to the
large expenditure that has for so many years been
going on along the western and eastern coasts of
Africa, we are not about to take any objections to
this temporary reinforcement of the Cuban
squadron. For, off the coasts of that island
a check, it is possible, may be given to
what it is quite impossible effectually to
repress on the two shores of the great African
peninsula; and it is not consistent either with the
honour, or the past exertions, of England, for her
government when so near, as it was anticipated, the
triumph of her anti-slave trade policy, to regard
with indifference or indolence these monstrous pro.
oeedings of the planters and government of Cuba.
Better even that the" Lone Star" of America should
revolutionise Cuba; that the authority of the Court
of Madrid should be expelled from its most valuable
remaining colony—than that it should be allowed to
renew in all its ancient abominations the out-
rages on Africa. And this, it is to be hoped, Lord
Jolts Russr.u., and his forthcoming successor, the
Earl of CLARENDON, will plainly tell the Court of
Madrid. The British nation and government can take
no interest in the retention of Cuba by Spain, whilst
Spain refuses to do, which recent experience has de-
monstrated she can easily do--suppress and termi-
nate the slave trade in that island. It is useless
longer to argue or to remonstrate with such a court
as that of Madrid ; for reason and remonstrance, it
is now indispensable to substitute a determination
that cannot be disregarded.
Unlike Brazil, Cuba is a compact and well-orger
wised country; unlike the Brazilian, the Cuban go-
vernment has always been. and still is, a strong,
powerful, and despotic government; unlike Brazil,
Oak has a police, an army, and a :oast
Larto enforce its policy; and yet Brazil, far
favourably situated in all these 'aspects than
Cubs, has terminated the Slave Trade. It is idle
trifling, therefore, to say that the Court of Madrid
cannot, if it have the disposition and the resolution,
achieve what Brazil has accomplished. But it his
sot the disposition. It is by Cuba, and the means
of corruption it furnishes, that the Court of Madrid
is able to carry on that system of domestic misgovern-
ment which is the curse and blight of Spain. It was
ander the vigorous and free constitutional system of
&PARTE= that the African Slave Trade was for a
while suppressed in Cuba ; and until constitutional
government be again restored, our cruisers may
cheek, but they will not be able to terminate, this
infancies trifle, unless the Court of Madrid is
brought to its senses, and taught that treaties may
sot be wrecked like the hopes of bondholders.
Approving, then, of this step as a temporary
measure, Lords Joan RUSSELL and CLARENDON
main go further, if they desire to be permanently
successful ; and attack the Slave Trade, where It
really
d.reoeives its impetus—in the camarilla of
Madri

We published on Tuesday a highly interestingg
paper on the Income Tax, read at the Statistical
Society. Profits derivable from various kinds
at property, or the investment of capital in
various ways, an only with Moses be said to be
the same when the anew& et the ems are propor-
tionable to them oldie saw. Iserms may be said
to be the interest @dig his investment i and,
though two imam is a ghee year may be identi-
cal, the value of tbs investment may obviously be
widely dissimilar. Taking the convene aspect of
the question, two aged saes may manifestly be
so invested as to passe wifely dissimilar incomes.
The essence of the illikestissi is than A bill
of *Tammy* foe a thourrail pees& Irwin two
months to run, bears a incest lateral from a bill
of exchange for stamina pounds at twelve months,
and to quietism the gist would convict any banker's
clerk ofer ssersdrincirsele. Yet this ab-
surdity hastier, se Dr. Ass justly points out,
is presit is done by the present income tax.
It refuses to discriminate between the various values
out of which incomes nominally the same are de-
rived. And resting on the blind and unmeaning
rile that one man's three hundred a year is as
as another's, it takes sersupence in the pound from
both, and its advocates exclaim " What can possibly
be fairer?" Of times advocates the most prominent
amongst the members of the Statistical Society
appears to have been Lord OVERSTONE. His lordship
has the repute of being a clever man, and has
certainly been a successful one. He has climbed to
the top of the golden mountain, and looking some-
what superciliously over the plains below, declares
that the varied inequalities of its surface and condi-
tion 'mar to him but specks undeserving of any
particular notice, or of bein; marked upon the
pyramid map of a statesman. Things must be taken
in the bulk, says his lordship, and fiscal provisions
must be general. Minor disparities there may be,
but they don't much matter after all. Not much to
men like Lord OVEUTONE. But they do to many
thousands of thinking and struggling, intelligent and
useful men, into whose heads the clear conviction has
entered that they are not fairly dealt with, and that
somebody else in the community pays so much lees
beam* they pay so much more than their just and
fair share of the national barthens. The mere reite-
ration of the doctrinaire dogma that it is just to tax
all kinds of income equally, will do nothing
towards settling the question. Neither will the
attempt to confuse all plain and real distinctions sp
pertaining to every day life appease the just discon-

tent which already beleaguers this monstrous system
of injustice and is sworn to effect its overthrow.
What, for instance, can Lord OvrastoNE mean by
saying that all indirect as well as all direct taxes are
trupon income ? The contrary is palpably
. Indirect taxes are charges upon expendi-
ture. That is their speelal merit the gem in the
WM et the snake that has insidiously coiled
itself Mmad every limb of the national indus-
try. The plea in defence of any expenditure tax has
always been that in a grater or less degree it is op-
tional. All tales for instance on articles of super-
fluity or luxury are confessedly optional in the
highest degree. When a man pays them he
taxes himself ; servants and carnage., horses
and dogs, are in poiut of fact rated according
to their supposed degree of superfluousness ;
taxes on sugar and tea have in processor time ceased
to be taxes on luxuries, and have become imposts on
the necessaries of life. In other words, they have
gradually lost their original character and have
acquired • new one. They have ceased to a great
extent to be optional or self-imposed burthens, and
have become unavoidable ones, and this is the reason
why politicians of every sect and shade have come
to agree that they ought to be brought down to the
lowest possible point that the revenue can afford; in
other words, they have virtually become as much
taxes on income as on expenditure. But of the
majority of indirect taxes nothing of the kind can
accurately be said. Wine, tobacco, ardent spirits, &c ,
still retain their place in the optional category,
and have the distinction drawn by public elu-
sion between them and the indispensable though
imported articles of subsistence we have already
named. It is the magnitude moreover of the change
we are adverting to From optional to unavoidable
taxation in matters like tea, sugar, coffee, tallow, and
soap, that forms the ground tor wholly exempting
certain large classes from payment of income-tax ;
the incomes of the humbler industrial classes are
taxed so much the more in proportion by way of
venoms duties than the incomes of the higher
classes,that it was argued by Sir ROBERT PEEL and all
who have followed him, that it would hardly be fair
to include them under the property tax in schedule
D. We are not now defending the particular line of
the exemption just drawn, but we think it is clear
that the arbitrary maxim laid down by Lord OVER..
STONE and the rigid school of economists to which
he seems to belong, of taking so much per
cent, from every man's income without re-
gard to any of the circumstances of his
condition, fails utterly at the very outset. Pretend-
ing to be peculiarly practical, it proves to be inef-
fably, emphatically the reverse ; indefensible on close
examination in point of theory, and unworkable in
point of practice.
It grows daily more obvious that if direct taxation
is to be permanently maintained amongst us, the
blundering injustice of the present system of schedules
must forthwith be dealt with. Imposed in 1841 as
a temporary expedient to meet a casual deficit, the
gross inequalities of the income tax were excused by
Sir ROBERT PEEL on the same grounds as they had
been before defended by Mr. Prrr, namely, that of
necessity. As a tax in time of war, or one to meet a
deficiency in the Exchequer, the impost was sub-
mitted to, but with a surplus revenue men's minds
are in a very different mood, and it is neither
the part of policy or justice to disregard
such a state of feeling. We have seen the readiness
of great parties to seize hold of any source of popular
dissatisfaction to make it their own, as an element of
political capital, and to apply it to uses at first un-
foreseen, and perhaps unintended. In a season of
commercial activity and generally diffused comfort,
the vie inertia is always on tho side of Government,
and aids in the indefinite postponement of financial,
as well as of all other reforms. Year after year this
has been felt with reference to the unredressed wrong
committed by an absurd and inequitable law of
direct taxation. Yet even in the quiet and pese-
perous times through which we have passed,
and mire progress has been made. The publii!tilliS
has gradually been formed by discussion in Parliament
and in the press ; and thus it happened that when
the late Administration came to make up their
Budget, they eagerly adopted the idea of proposing
a re-adjustment of the classification copied by P.
from Pirr, and retained, without any modification
worthy of notice, by Sir CHARLES WOOD. In thus
attempting to meet the wants and wishes of grad
classes of the community, the late CHANCELLOR of the
EXCHEQUER did no little to redeem the other falls
into which he was perhaps rather driven by the
and dulness of his incapable colleagues tbaa
by any illusion of his own. His repeellem mem&
ing the Income-tax and the duties upon Tea Goad
not save Derbyite finance from condemnation ; but
they extorted cordial acknowledgments of approval
from Mr. DISRAELI'S warmest antagonists among
the independent section of the Liberals, whose
leaders will doubtless continue to insist upon some
steps being taken during the coming session to esta-
blish the distinction between permanent and fiuctuse
ting incomes.

The Governor of the Falkland Islands has
just sent home despatches announcing that guano
has been discovered in large quantities in those
islands. The climate there being less dry than at
Lobos, the guano is not of equal value to the Peru.
ma product ; but there seems to be no doubt that
this discovery in the Falkland Islands will prove to
be one of great value, both in a trading and an agri-
cultural sense.

FRANCE.

(BY SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH.)
PLOY OVA OWN. COMILISPONDINT.
PARIS, THVISILILT.

The bureau of the Senate, that of the Legislative
Body, and the Council of State, will meet on Satur-
day, at noon, at the Tuileries, in order to receive
from the Emperor a communication respecting his
marriage•

PARIS, WIDNISDAT EYINING.
"An extraordinary ' run' has been made to-day
on the Bourse. All the efforts, official and semi-
official, that have been made of late, have been un-
able to prevent the occurrence to-day of decidedly
the most serious decline in the Rentes, Bank Stock,
Railway Shares, and all other securities that has
recently taken place. Fora day or two past, the efforts
made by agents and others who were believed to
have been indemnified for the settlement in the
highest quarters, preserved the closing quotations
from very great substantial depression, as com-
Wawith the published rates of the previous day.
iesmorning, however, an irrepressible desire tol
realise every description of stock took possession of
lauldcts ; wad the approach of the settlement, com-
bined with disbelief in the assertions relating to the
declared intention of the Imperial government not to
interfere with investments, have caused a fall of
more than two per cent. within two hours, in the
French funds. After considerable efforts, and many
heavy purchases on government account, the Three
per Cents. fell, not even gradually, but at once sud-
denly and irredeemably, one franc and eighty-live
centimes, and the Four-and-a-Half per Cents. de-
clined one franc sixty eentimes ; the former closing
at 77f. 90c., and the latter at 103 f. 50c."

One of the causes of the excitement on the Bourse
is a report that the Emperor, against the advice
of his ministers, has positively determined to marry
Mademoiselle Montijo. Incredible as this may
appear, the fast wee generally believed, and I
have beard it confidently stated that the civil part of
the marriage ceremony has been actually performed.
It has long been rumoured that his Majesty was
deeply in love with this beautiful young lady, and
it is now said that she, following the example of
Anne Boleyn under similar circumstances, refused
to listen to his advances, except upon one
condition, with so much firmness, that the
imperial lover, despairing of success at less cost, has
offered to share his crown with the object of his af-
fections. It was never supposed that a men so cold
and calculating as Louis Napoleon would have made
a love match. The belief that he has been capable
of such a coup de tete has given a violent shock to
public confidence, and the fall in the funds, as your
telegraphic despatches will inform you, has been the
heaviest that has ever occurred on any day since the
map d'etat.
It is understood to be the settled intention of the
government to build the new transatlantic steamers
tp such a manner as that, in case of need, they may
Lbe used as vessels of war. Should this scheme be