The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-04-01 00:00:00

mously recommend the House to adopt it for I
ratification. This will doubtless take place to-
morrow, as the object is already on the list for the
business of that day- . Prussia will pay her quota
in 40 half-yearly payments of 121,731 k thalers
etch (XIB 260), retaining to herself the right at any
suture time that it may he convenient to pay up the
r m iinins instalments in advance; the first pay-
m fits will amount, with interest on the outstanding
bshm to about 240,000 thalers each. Small as this
half yearly sum is, compared to the advantages
rained to Prussia by the abolition of the Sound
Dues, the revenues of the State will not be burdened
be an addition of more than three-fifths of it, or
about 144,000 thalers yearly, inasmuch at the State
has always been in the habit of allowing its own
subjects a drawback of 2i per cent. to be deducted
from all import duties in the Baltic ports, as a
sort of palliation of the burden of the Sound dues,
and has also paid on salt alone, of which it has the
monopoly, on an average of the last eleven years,
11,000 thalers a year for Sound dues. These two
sums of 11,000 duty on salt, and 85,000 drawback
on import duties must therefore be first deducted
from ihe 7240,000 thalers before one can appreciate
the extra burden which the redemption of the
S )und Dues imposes on the revenue, and that too
only for twenty years.
I have already recorded some time back that
this Ministry was left in a minority on the subject
of the proposed new law of divorce, the day after
our owe ministers found themselves in a similar
s -lam on the Chinese affair. The Prussian Ministry
1-)
has, however, had another defeat on Friday, when
one of its most important financial projects,
that for a new duty on all houses and buildings,
was rejected by the large majority of 241 against
73, This defeat by no means finds an equivalent
in a success it gained 'yesterday, viz , in passing
its bill for raising the duty on salt from 12 thalers
per cask of 4 cwt up to 15 thalers, at which it
formerly stood, for not only was the favourable
majority in this latter case very small, viz , only 14,
while the adverse majority in the other case was 108,
but also the increase of the duty on salt is very
unpopular here. The debates in the two Houses of
the Diet have gained considerably in interest of
late for those who take. any interest at all in Prus-
sia, from the circumstance that the necessity of
remedying two evils, the ineffectiveness of the army
and the wretched pay of the civil officials, has driven
the Government to seek for increased revenue by
the introduction of new taxes, and thus stirred the
Houses and the nation out of their political apathy,
which they gloss over in general with the untrans
lateable euphemism of Gentiiolichkiet.
It turns out not to have been the Prince of
Prussia who so narrowly escaped an upset from his
carriage at Remagen last week, but his son, Prince
Friedrich Wilhelm. The accident also was very
much less dangerous than the first descriptions
gave us to understand, inasmneh as only the pole
of the carriage was driven against the side of a
house, and only the horses received a shock—
inasmuch as the young Prince and his compasi
had already jumped out. On passing through
Berlin a few days afterwards, the young Prince found
time, immediately after his arrival, to inspect the
progress of the works at the Palace, which is
being got ready for him and his future bride The
mild weather that preceded Christmas admitted
of the bricklayers working till late every evening
by lamp and torchlight, which frequently produced
a very fanciful and grotesque effect ; but since the
frost first set in it has so pertinaciouslyyetarned,
after a very short absence, that the works have
only just been resumed..