The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-21 00:00:00

Prairie], in the seventh year of the French Republic
—that is, on May 25, 1799—the Directory imposed
a surcharge, or additional tax, on every mortgage
registration stamp of the tenth part of a franc. This
impost, yielding about 26,000,000 francs, or a little
more than a million sterling, was imposed for a sin-
gle year ; but, alas ! how short-lived is man, and
what tremendous vitality, denied to frames of flesh
and blood, is inherent in the very nature of a tax !
The East has seen kingdoms and monarchies suc-
ceed each other without working any considerable
change in the position of the ryot or the zemindar,
and Greece, after her successful revolution, still
groans under that most intolerable of all iniquities,
the Turkish Land Tax. Even so it proved with
this innocent decime. Brought into existence only
for a year, it has outlived the Consulate, sur-
vived the Empire, witnessed the brief glories of the
first Restoration, the terrible drama of the Hundred
Days, the reigns of the brothers of Louis XVI., the
Republican Monarchy of the House of Orleans, the
Republic itself, and the restoration of the Empire.
Yet even this most vivacious tax, which seemed des-
tined to endure through every vicissitude of war,
peace, and revolution, has fallen at last, at the
mature age of sixty-five years, under the happy in-
fluence of the present Emperor. We do not feel
that we know enough of the real state of the revenue
of France to offer any very highflown congratula-
tion on the presert event. The taking off a tax is
by no means necessarily equivalent to a correspond-
ing reduction of charge, and it may possibly be that
the sum thus apparently remitted to the taxpayer
is destined to appear again in a less intelligible
form. The reduction, however, is said to be ocea-
sioned by a generous emulation existing between
the Emperor of the French and our own Chancellor
of the Exchequer. The spectacle that England has
lately afforded of a great nation which, having
.re-
duced its tariff to the utmost simplicity, is applying
the resources economised in time of peace towards
paying off the burdens incurred in time of war, has,
we are told, excited the emulation of the French
Government, and prompted them to this salutary
change. No one can doubt that the repeal of so
burdensome a tax must be highly beneficial to
French industry. At any rate, the money is better
employed than in the expensive folly of warlike
armaments or remote expeditions. The money
returns to the community to increase its resources,
instead of being dissipated in pandering to its vanity
or its ambition. It is a good beginning, and it
only rests with the Government of France to erect
a glorious superstructure on the foundation so
happily laid. The money that is retrenched from
military and naval armaments, although its destina-
tion is obscure, is the truest life of commerce and the
strongest nerve of industry. Such remissions enable
a nation to bear fresh burdens until taxes which are
the terror and dread of one generation are scarcely
felt at all by its succsesor. Let France calmly con-
sider what she has gained by her lavish expendi-
ture of blood and treasure during the sixty-five
years over which this tax has been levied. France
has carried her victorious standards to nearly every
capital in Europe ; she has given by far the most
splendid examples of enterprise and endurance that
modern history affords; she has fought the greatest
battles, gained the most glorious victories, con-
ducted the grandest sieges, and performed the
longest marches which history records. She has
impoverished and reduced to the lowest state of
misery every country in turn on which devolved
the grievous burden of feeding her victorious bat-
talions. History has no parallel to the miseries she
has suffered and inflicted, epic has nothing grander
than her exploits, tragedy nothing sadder than her
reverses. We have endeavoured to describe the
sacrifices she has made—unrivalled, unequalled, un-
approached in the annals of the v. [le d. What nas
resulted from them? What has France to show as
the product of all her victories and all her 6-lories ?
At first she fought for opinion, and fought so ieng
that she herself became the victim to the very des-
potism which she designed to extirpate. Then she
fought for Empire, and with so much success that
she taught the vanquished nations her own arts of
conquest, and brought them back upon her in an
irresistible flood which carried all before it. W:th
commerce ruined, with crippled manufactures, with
the manhood of a who'e generation offered up to the
Moloch of aggressive war, she found herself after
20 years restricted within toe same narrow limits as
those from which she went forth to conquer and to
stay. Since then, merely to keep up the military
spirit of her population, she has buried in the sands
of Algeria hundreds of thousands of men whose
arms might have cleared her forests, drained her
marshes, and embanked her rivers, but whose bones
are bleaching in the inhospitable deserts which it
was her glorious folly to conquer and to annex.
Is it not enough ? Is it not time that a nation
so richly endowed with all the qualities and talents
which decorate and adorn civil life should rest from
these vain and exhausting labours, and exchange
the pursuit of ambition for the search after happi-
ness ? To France alone of all nations of the earth
this choice is absolutely free and unconstrained.
England must watch the proceedings of other na-
tions, and endeavour to keep her fleet on a scale
which may be sufficient to counteract the force of
their combined navies. Every other country must
proportion its force to the military power of France.
France alone is mistress of her own armaments.
She can reduce them without fear of invasion or in-
sult; she cannot increase them without disturbing
the equilibrium of the whole world. We trust that
the taste for reduction in taxation will increase
among our neighbours. Among us it has grown
upon what it feeds on, and becomes the surest gua-
rantee of peace. When France had acquired the
same tastes the world may sleep at eti:l for the
greatest of its dangers have passed away.
POST.—As we have already stated, Garibaldi in
all probability, though the final decision is not yet
taken, leaves London to- morrow, and England early
in the ensuing week. He returns to Caprera in the
Duke of Sutherland's yacht, and the noble duke will
accompany his distinguished guest. The letters we
published yesterday have sufficiently and satisfac-
torily accounted for the interruption of arrange-
ments in which the country at large was interested;
and the statements made in both Houses of Parlia-
ment, by Lord Palmerston and by Lord Clarendon,
have entirely dissipated the wholly unfounded and
manifestly absurd rumours which attributed the
unexpected determination of the General's visit to
foreign interference. The plain and simple truth is
that Garibaldi has done what we most of us have,
at some period of our lives, been compelled, however
reluctantly, to do. He has yielded to the advice of
his eminent medical adviser; but it is due to Mr.
Fergusson to say that, though he has only acted as
we hope every surgeon in a like case would have
acted, the firmness and professional decision he has
displayed redound very much to his honour. It
would have been a cause of deep grief to the friends
and admirers of Garibaldi, not only here but
throughout the wcrld, if his health, regard for
which was understood to be the main object of the
visit he has paid us, had suffered from the continued
excitement a prolonged tour iu the provinces would
have committed him to, The General himself, as
we can readily understand, was most desirous to
gratify the English people, and to acknowledge in
ahnedh ina s
twhiesierl y
care allowed ofwo
re d a
lifehis es
person their spontaneous and hearty welcome. But
friendsprecious
etiheienekpef for
aid is
session of the country he delivered, those friends
have courageously witnessed to the strength and
sincerity of their friendship. it was suggested that,
after an interval of repose, the Genera'. might pro-
ceed to a few of the principal towns from which he
had accepted invitations ; but the selection would
have been attended with considerable difficulty ;
and there can be. no doubt that, on the whole, it
was most expecnent to make the mutual sacrifice
complete. The reception that awaited Garibaldi in
the country was one which he would have been
delighted to receive, and which the people of Eng-
land were, as their disappointment abundantly
testifies, eager to offer to exceedingly him. Still,
in the midst of universal regret, it will, we believe,
be
confessed that the pleasure: which embraced a
risk it was painful to contemplate would have been
too dearly purchased, With reference to the little
ebullition of factious malevolence and narrow-minded
suspicion which for some hours excited the astonish-
ment and indignation of this metropolis, much as
Englishmen must deplore the absence of self-respect
it evidenced, and offensive as it was to make the
name of our honoured guest the pretext for political