Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1860-02-13 00:00:00

soldiers has been suspended. Thus, notwith-
standing all his recent expressions of confidence
in the immediate approach of an era of peaceful
industry for France and for Europe, Louis
Napoleon seems still "to act on the determination
to be ready for war on a day's, notice.
In another column of our present sheet will be
found the commercial treaty with France at full
length. No one can study it, we think, without
coming to the conclusion that all its present
advantages are on the side of the French ; and
that whatever benefits we are to derive from it
are quite prospective, and, it is to be feared, very
precarious also. France, it is evident, will begin
immediately to be benefitted by its operation ; and
for this, its concessions, such as they are, to
England, are not to take effect for some eighteen
months to come. The document well deserves,
and must secure, a careful examination.
The Commercial Treaty and the Budget are of
course the . staple subjects of the day with the
London press as they will be, of necessity, also
with the whole press of the country. The Liberal
portion of the press, of course, has received them
with acclamation, while the Conservative portion
gravely, and not unjustly, we think, demurs.
One thing, however, which the 7'imes very forcibly
points out mny well make us all pause, ere we
commit ourse tvis to such a project as that which has
just been orn:..i to the House of Commons. "No
doubt," .as well observed, "it is rather hard to
be told at the same time when we are asked to
:spend a million and odd in peace-offerings,
that we are to continue to pay just as many
Millions- as ever for warlike preparations,"—
and warlike preparations, too, against the very
power to which we are called upon to sacrifice so
much in " peace offerings." Well does our con-
temporary ask-, Against whom are all those
screw-ling i s and screw-frigates, and swarming gun-
boats built For whose special benefit is it that
we are building great factories and turning out
Armstrong guns with as much velocity as our
great-grandfathers made tenpenny nails ? There
can be no possible use in eluding manifest truth.
All this is directed against the danger we appre-
hend from France. Who else is there that we
should fear ?" So that the fact is, the very
moment we are trying to buy friendship, we are
paying the cost and enduring all the evils of
enmity !
The pretext will scarcely, we think, go down
with the people of England, plausible though it
may seem, which some of the Liberal journals are
putting forth, that, while " all the more agreeable
provisions of the budget will, of necessity, be per-
manent, its obnoxious requirements may terminate
with the ensuing year, since it is in the power of
Parliament to remove the ten millions of taxation
now to be imposed by retrenching expenditure.'
Who can say that it is in the power of Parlia-
ment to do anything of the kind? Retrench-
ment is, no doubt, a very good thing, where it is
practicable, and where it can be practised with-
out injury to the interests of the country. But
there is a retrenchment which is penny wise and
pound foolish, and of which the country has
already had too much. No, we may depend upon
it that the Income-tax, even upon incomes under
£l5O a year, will not " terminate with the ensu-
ing year," or With many ensuing years to come,
whatever experiments may be made in the way
of retrenching the expenditure.

One of our Liberal contemporaries has well
exposed the fallacy of the ballot-mongers in the
House of Commons, the other night, in pretend-
ing that the ballot would have put a stop to the
bribery at Gloucester and Wakefield. It had
been alleged, it seems, that could the discussion of
Thursday night have been delayed for a few days,
petitions from those places, signed by thousands
of the electors, would have assured the house that
the ballot was the only remedy for the moral
disease under which they were labouring. Well
does the writer we refer to, reply to this by ob-
serving that " this must mean either that they
want to be relieved from the temptation to sell
their votes, by being placed in circumstances
where no purchaser can trust them, or that they
want to sell their votes without a chance of being
again detected and exposed.? But can those who
' have been open to bribery have any wish for such
relief ? Is it not much more likely that they do
indeed " want to sell their votes without a chance
of being again detected and exposed ?" It does
not require, one would think, much knowledge of
human nature, under the influence of political
corruption, to decide such a question as this.
Among the honourable members who urged the
propriety of allowing sufficient time for the con-
sideration of the Budget before they were to
proceed to its discussion, was Mr. Horsfall, who
said he would not then venture to express any
opinion upon the important proposal which had
been brought under the notice of the house by
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but would wait
until there had been opportunity for its due
consideration.

THERE are so many intricate questions involved
in the financial statement of the CHANCELLOR of
the EXCHEQUER, on Friday night, that one can
scarcely be expected to arrive at any very definite
conclusion on the subject, without time for mature
consideration ; and, indeed, it is under this im-
pression that the House of Commons has wisely
resolved to postpone the discussion of it for some
days, to enable honourable members'to exercise a
deliberate
judgment upon
-its merits, and at the
same time to afford the country at large an
opportunity of forming and expressing its
opinion. But looking at the statement as it
presents itself prominently, however superficially,
to one's view, there is nothing it that we can
yet discover to mitigate, in any material degree,
the apprehension already entertained of its specu-
lative nature, or of its questionable character, as

regards some of the great industrial interests of I
the country, and, indeed, as respects our national
welfare and prosperity generally. The cozy of
the commercial treaty with France, with which
the country had been familiar for some days,
appears upon the whole to have been a correct
one. It is a treaty that involves a sacrifice to
the revenue of upwards of a million of pounds
sterling. Now, in the first place, this sacrifice
will affect a large proportion of our industrial
interests, if it does not also more or less seriously
interfere, indirectly at least, with all our great
social and political interests ; and. in the next
place, it is a concession to one in whom but little
reliance can be placed as to his really amicable
intentions towards a nation, to which his own
people may ever and anon incite him to assume
a hostile position. Nor are we to receive in
return for this any egzivalent advantage in our
commercial relations with France for a period of
about eighteen months,—and who knows what
may happen in that time,--what advan-
tage may be taken of our situation, occasioned
by this concession,—what opportunity may be
seized upon to turn against ourselves the very bene-
fits we have designed to confer upon them ? Then
there is involved in it all another, great sacrifice.
The revenue that is to be given _up to France
cannot be dispensed with. True, it is but a I
portion of several remissions of duties and taxa-
tions, most of which may seriously derange our
present industrial and fiscal system. But the
upshot of it all is, that the country is to be
saddled with an Income-tax of ten pence in the
pound on incomes of £l5O and upwards, and
of seven pence in the pound on those under that
amount. So that the great body of the people
will now groan under the infliction of an
Income-tax. Whether or not there is to be a
minimum of income by which the tax is to be
limited, we are not yet informed. The statement
is, that all incomes under £l5O a-year are to be
taxed at the rate of seven pence in the pound.
And we ask those numerous classes who have
incomes ranging from £5O to £l5O, includ-
ing, as they do, so many thousands of clerks'
warehousemen, shopmen, mechanics, and
others, what compensation will a reduction on
any French articles afford them for a tax of
seven pence in the pound upon their often
precarious incomes
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCIIEQUER calls all
this " the result of commercial reforms on behalf
of the mass of the people ; and not alone on their
behalf, but on behalf of every class, on behalf of
the throne and the institutions of the-country,"—
holding out the hope that " by such a course they
would be scattering the greatest blessings among
the people ; because they would not be giving
mere mechanical helps to enable men to do that
which they should do for themselves, but they
would be providing for them a field for their
labour, and bo appealing to their sense and
responsibility without impairing their self-depen-
dence." Certainly, such results as these, could
they be realised, would more than justify the
experiment that it is proposed to try ; but we
must confess that, for our part, we cannot partici-
pate in any such sanguine hope as that which the
right honourable gentleman has expressed,
with the view of conciliating popular support.
It is an experiment which, upon the face of
it, hazards, too perilously, our own national
interests ; and if it were to be tried
at all, either with France or any other country,
but more especially with France, common
prudence would seem to dictate that it should be
done with much more caution and much more
deliberation than it is now proposed to be done.
We do not deny that there are several popular
elements in this financial scheme. The proposal
to abolish entirely and immediately the duties
upon butter, cheese, oranges, onions,eggs, nutmegs,
pepper, and divers other articles of extensive con-
sumption, is very likely to captivate the popular
'mind. But the greatest effort of all, ad cap-
.tandum vulgus, perhaps, is the proposed remission
of the excise duty on paper. Now, we ourselves
are especially interested in such a remission of
duty. It would make a difference to us, in the
business concerns of this paper, of several hundred
pounds a year. And we have been among the
foremost of those who have advocated such a
r
.rforuolgm'ehtt we would rather not accept it
Ince,
ameplarmiaodrbnniieees sardsatiueotednhh conditions as those proposed. It may
be quite true, that a partial evil is universal good;
but does it not often, occur, that the reverse of
this apothegm is equally true? The remission
of the paper duty, we repeat, would relieve the
cheap press of a very serious burden, and be a direct
advantage, therefore, to its proprietors. Still, if
it is but part of a system, and that a small one,
which will operate generally, as we fear this of
the CHANCELLOR of the EXCFIEQUER's is calculated
to do, to the depression of our national interests'
permanent advantage, even to those w
more immediately affects.
revenue not tto bu ef
no such partial remission of dhuitcyh,cinancbonenhooofonitainoinyt
There is one consideration w
total result of the revenue
the expenditureletoiftnthoet
overlooked.
Mr. GLADSTONE chewed, would
would have
£1,625,000, had things continued as they were,
bych
l and Parliamentsepru
vi s
itohnes past
a sessiongr great
a t
measure,t to meet
zawnnai
di he
expenditure,
ut:he senns:.r newpus
surplus
Theru
sfiern,p, al
hun
es c
ia
acknowledged,nl
favour scheme,
o f oughtthe
been the result " of the liberal and wise provisions
Parliamentb eyefa year."
underr.g.' to
tt
ht
en, a
Conservative Administration. To Mr. Ms-
RAW, as the predecessor of the present CHAN-
CELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, surely some credit is
die—we humbly think a great deal—for such
results as those which have so justly received
arodt
ntwhu
eeorsfee,