The Express.
London, England, 1851-03-20 00:00:00

Vie ,JPrpregilii.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
dcertteements latentled :or The Es ores.," London IFeenlee paper,
mum he e: the Othcc, to, houeate•etreet, by Two o'clock ow t►e
day of pub,ication,

lIIGH WATER. AT LONDON BRIDGE.
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LONDOIS; THURSD-43; MARCH 20.

Ir cannot be said that either public opinion or the
press will have had much immediate influents: upon the
budget, which thee]lasemion of the ExeitEuutm is
prepared to promulgate the instant that the floodgates
of religious oratory are closed in parliament. Since
the ministry ran aground, the press has been silent
an matters of finance; and the public has, from
a similar cause, been despairingly quiet, the
citizens of the metropolis alone keeping up
some show of agitation against the window-
tax and the duties on knowledge. Little, in fact,
is hoped from a budget reconsidered and patched up
in a hurry, in a year which has been declared a
blank one for public business, when not a single par-
liamentary committee is sitting, and not one question
of public import allowed to progress.
All that appears certain is, that the window tax
must he dealt with. And here let us revert to the
great original sin of Sir CHARLES Woos and of the
government, owing to which they lost credit, and
tell. There is no department of public policy in which
it is at once more necessary or inure facile to guide pub-
lic opinion than in matters of finance. These mterests
with the public are so seatterel and disjointed, •
and the experience relative to them so little con-
centrated, that the statesman in possession of the
office of Chancellor of the Exchequer is almost alone
enabled to form a judgment and a scheme, in which
the requirements of the country are combined with
its resources, its necessities with its desires. Differ-
rut interests may agitate, and different interests may,
front time to time, preponderate. But people and
classes in this country, however clamorous each to be
relieved of its peculiar burden, have shown them-
selves in general most forbeurant and open to reason.
The duty of the minister is, in truth, to instruct
the people in these great and important points, to
take a comprehensive view and have a fixed policy
himself, instead of, as hoe been the case of late,
running to conciliate that party which happened to
have the last greatest majority in a parliamentary
division, and making the remission of taxation a
mere subject of parliamentary mummery, rather
than one of national policy and. justice.
To judge of the motives of the CHANCELLOR of the
EXCHEQUER in drawing up his budget we can but con-
clude that, alarmed by the division on the window
tax last year, he had determined that flinging this
over would be the most fitting sacrifice to allay the
storm lf, however, it had been his original pur-
pose to make but a very slight remission, he should
have prepared the pliblic mind for it either by
raising no hopes or by maintaining a rigid silence.
Instead of this the journal, which evidently received
the confidence of the ministry, was allowed to an-
nounce a long time beforehand that the window tax
was to be given up. ]lopes were thus raised, as-
surances thus given, so that when the budget,
which merely nibbled at the window tax,
was brought forward, it occasioned a blast of dis-
appointment which literally blew Sir CHARLES
Wool, out of the water. Bad as his budget was,
he may thank the Times for its being so fatal to him.
Ills organ, the Times, it was which excited the
expectation that the obnoxious tax would be abolished;
and as a just retribution, the Times afterwards acted
the part of executioner, to carry into effect the po-
pular sentence on the minister.
What Sir CHARLES WOOD should have done was nut
to have touched any portion of the scheme of direct
taxation, without reconsidering the whole. Un-
doubtedly we should have a parliamentary committee
for this especial pumose. But unfortunately all coin-
. mittees are precluded this session, and though one may
be appointed next session, a year must elapse ere the
public has the result of its labours. Then a dissolution
will probably intervene • whilst no cabinet is power-
ful or fixed enough to Seal with the subject. So
that, in truth, the great question of the revisal and
prop ortionment of direct taxation may yet require a
considerable time to solve.
What is required for the present is a temporary
measure, not prejudging any great principle, and
giving relief where it is with reason expected; I
yet without throwing any obstacle in the way of
a complete re-adjustment of direct taxation, when
information shall have been complete on the subject,
and the political mind made up as to its bearings
and proportions. A complete abolition of the window-
tax, and the substitution for it of a tax of sixpence
in the pound on the rent of houses has been pro-
posed, as likely to give to the Exchequer at least one
million of the amount produced by the window-tax.
The advantage of this is, that it might be levied on
all houses, and the owners of 101. hoases, who would
not find five shillings in the year any exorbitant
tax. Though mentioning these amongst the plans
suggested, we by no means retract the opinion that
nine-tenths of the burden of a house tax will full on
those included in Schedule 1) of the income tax,
being the earners and turners of money ; the classes
of profession and business, who congregate in cities,
that are under high rents, and would pay the house
tax instead of the red owners of property.
A temporary measure is all, however, that can be
expected from a ricketty ministry and a distracted
parliament. And if the retention of a trifling house
tax would enable the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHE-
QUER to give relief in other quarters, whether in taxes
on knowledge, or in those on trade, there are few who
would not submit to the inconvenience. But the
general revision of taxation, and especially the full
consideration of the distribution of direct taxation,
should be a thing agreed upon and understood.
Another portion of the budget that should be pre-
sented to the country without dissimulation or leger-
demain, is the burden of the debt, and the mode of
dealing with it. Sir CIRRLES Wool), the other
day, told the English people that within the last 20
years they had borrowed 35 millions, and only re-
paid eight of them, leaving altogether out of sight
the fact, that in that period, 40 millions
have been paid for the conversion of the
permanent debt into terminable annuities. The
debt, which exceeded 30 millions in 1819, is now
but 28 millions : 000,000 i. falls in in 1851 by the re-
duction of the Three-and-a-Quarter per Ccttnetelsiaoolln:ohoouneredt
are annuities
Annoiticono liwvhetschto Lhpeitaemtoountts6oof ato
of 2,200,0001. In 1807 the interest of the debt will
not exceed 24 millions, should we borrow no more.
We might expect, therefore, from a Chancellor
of the Exchequer a fair and fixed plan for dealing
with the debt, and for gradually converting it, or the
greater portion of it, into terminable annuities.
First of all, it might be laid down as a rule,
that the yearly sums saved by the falling in
of annuities, or by the diminution of the
rate of interest, should be applied to the fur-

ther conversion of stock into annuities. And
this, with the application of a small surplus to the
same purpose, would render the incubus of the debt
less formidable. But the moment has not yet come
for such appropriation of a surplus. For as long as
there is a branch of customs or excise duty, by lower-
ing the rate of which no permanent diminution of
the revenue is likely to take place, notwithstanding
the alleviation to the consumer, the first duty of a
' minister in dealing with surplus revenue is to apply
it in this way. For it is far more profitable to the
nation than a diminution of the debt. There must
be a term to such experiments, and a fiscal system
may be attained that no longer allows room for
them. Then will he the time for applying a surplus
to the extinction of the debt. Meantime, we may
comfort ourselves with the reflection that we are really
reducing the debt, the representations of the CHAN
eurott and of the Times to the contrary having
been mere deception.

THE debate of Monday and Tuesday incontestably
establishes the danger—that the court of Rome, and
the Pope of Roue, and the church of Rome have ob-
tained a power of doing mischief in this country ;
that England is now liable to be perplexed, and dis-
turbed, and excited by all those mixed questions of
religion and politics by which the repose of France,
and Prussia, and Belgium has been perplexed and
disturbed ; that we arc likely to have the canon law,
synodical action—as priestly combination and
aggression are now-a-days termed,—the monastic
system, and the Index Expurgatorius, all in full
swing in this protestant country.
And we have, we arc told, no power, or right, or
logical authority, to prevent this hurley-burley of
priesteraft coming in upon us, because we have re-
cognised the existence of religious liberty. We
cannot, it is contended, hinder the Poet,. from par-
celling out our country into Roman dioceses respon-
sible to him, nn Italian potentate, or restrict a
Roman cardinal from " governing" our English
counties in obedience to foreign instructions and to
foreign law, because in 1829 we admitted our con-
stituencies to return to parliament Roman catholic
members, if so aminded.
So that religious liberty in England. by this train
of reasoning, necessarily and irresistibly involves an
abnegation on the part of the English sovereign and
parliament of the power to resist any act of external
aggression on English independence, if it only be
made in the name and on behalf of a church which,
recognises as its head a sovereign pontiff at Rome,'
propped lip in the Vatican by f'rench bayonets.l
"Which," as Mr. GEORGE BowYER would, in his'
pedantry say, "is absurd."
But this is only a part, and a small part, too, of
the danger disclosed by these two niehts' debate.
The speeches of Mr. ROUNDELL PALMER, Mr. CARD-
WELL, and Mr. SIDNEY lIF.RDERY disclose another
and a new and perhaps a greater risk. Fur these
able and influential and cautious gentlemen, whilst in
words repudiating all sympathy with the court and
the church of ltome, in argument adopt its interpre-
tation of the meaning of religious liberty, and support
its practical application of that liberty ; in order that
they may be able hereafter to claim for the church
of England that immunity from state control, that
freedom of internal action, that synodical power,
and that complete overthrow of the royal supmnuity,
in matters ecclesiastical, which Cardinal Wisestxx
demands for the church of Rome. And how
that which is given to the Roman can he refused to
the English church passes all logical comprehension.
Here then we have in the Commons House of
Parliament an identity of design and a community
of purpose evinced, nay, almost avowed, between
the ultramontane members of the church of Rome
and the Romish members of the church of England.
Here, too, under the deceitful banner of religious
liberty, we have a public fraternisation between the
ambitious church of Rome and the disorder of the
church of England, the design and purpose of which
is an augmentation of the power of priestcraft : under
two diffinent asps eta, it is true, but each inimical to
that freedom of thought and exercise of private judg-
ment which from the Reformation .down to the
advent of' PUSEY and of NEWMAN were the glory of
England, bat which are now loudly, boldly, and
audaciously proclaimed to be its shame.
! This comes of fostering, and encouraging, and
paltering with such monstrous ecclesiastical figments
and fables as apostolical succession, as church autho-
-Irity, as the sacramental system, as a sacrificial and me-
I dititorial priestluxxl. By the support and succour which
our bishops have given to these engines of sacerdotal
craft, they have raised a spirit which nothing but the
most determined and resolute popular demonstration
can quell, and which, as Lord ASHLEY significantly
said, the oldest amongst us may not live to see laid,
—which threatens to invade our families and to dis-
turb society, as already it has broken in upon the
bonds of political parties.
This is a painful discussion, a distressing contro-
versy ; but it is an unavoidable and a needful one.
It is one forced upon the protestants and the liberals
of the empire. lo shrink from it is to submit to a
revolution in our whole religious and political sys-
tem—it is to give the sanction of liberalism to
sacerdotalism—to surrender the bulwarks of reli-
gious liberty—to yield, without a blow, the
distinctive character of the English people. Hitherto
in England the Roman Catholic church has been
an English organisation, looking to the Pore as its
spiritual hood. But admit as lawful and reasonable
the aggression Cardinal Wisestss bus encouraged
the Pnee to make, and the Roman catholic commu-
nion in England become a foreign organisation,
looking forward to the reconquest of this country by
the court of Rome. This may be, and is a Quixotic
enterprise; but grant that it is one which the POPE
has a right to enter on, with the anus he has
assumed, and by the agency lie has devised, and,
England becomes a prey to all the strife
and discoid, to all the intrigues and ester;
nal influence that the whole Roman catholic I
world, that all the great absolutist powers, that the
most insidious ecclesiastical organisation which ever
aimed at universal dominion, can bring to bear on'
our country. Reject under the pretence of reli-
gious liberty Lord Joust Itesseu.'s bill, and, by the,
rejection, Rome receives a letter of license in this
realm. Adopt it, and the Roman catholic church
in England will retain all the freedom that the
ex-
ercise
of the
of itsfaistlibte and demandcaiitv vur oo withouttrtof the disturbing
pi.turobpe
ilig the
repose
With such a prospect before them, and in the
face of such a parliamentary union as that we'
have referred to, it is not surprising that
the most serious alarm should be enter-
tained by the representatives of the leading or-
thodox religious bodies in this metropolis; and it
is natural that, in their alarm, they should for awhile
consent to overlook their denominational differences
of opinion, and come together, take counsel of each
other, offer to each other the hand of friendship and
of union, and resolve to make both a common and a
separate demonstration against the common enemy.
Accordingly, on Tuesday, under Lord ASIH.F.Y*S aus-
pices, a body of churchmen who act with that noble
lord, met in this spirit some of the representatives
of the four great divisions of the protestant
Nonconformists, and agreed on making au appeal
to the protestant feeling and principle of' the coun-
try; content, under present circumstances, to take
Lord JOHN RUSSELL s measure as the minimum of
national resistance to this foreign insult and ag-
gression, but resolved, if that be rejected, to demand
larger protection for their common faith ; and a sub-
committee was then appointed to organise a great
aggregate meeting and a series of denominational
meetings in favour of the measure now before par-
liament.

Thus, then, an opportunity will be afforded to the
country of indicating whether any change of opinion
has occurred in the public mind since it spoke out so
intelligibly and distinctly a few months ago; whether
it adopts or rejects the tractarian interpretation
given by Mr. MANDELL PALMER and Mr. SIDNEY
ERBERT to religious liberty ; whether it is willing
to accept the policy indicated and represented by
Lord ABERDEEN and Sir JAMES GRAHAM; whether
it desires with Lord STANLEY to postpone, until an
indefinite inquiry is over, legWation ; or, whether it
will "come at once to the succour" of Queen Vic-
TORTS and her prerogative, attacked and insulted by
Cardinal WISEMAN, and defended and vindicated by
Lord JOHN RUSSELL and Lord PALMERSTON.
For such an agitation we should under a leas im-
minent emergency have little taste ; hut forced upon
us by Roman catholic ambition and tractarian co-
operation, it shall have the best support this journal
can give it, if conducted with tolerance, and in that
large and comprehensive spirit which can effectually
repel insult without in the least shackling opinion.