The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-13 00:00:00

11 tnina kTIUL

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1852.

We would not undervalue the services of her
MAJESTY'S Privy Council, not even of the eighteen
new Councillors from the " unworked diggings" of
Lord DERBY, recently added to the list. These latter
will doubtless bring some virgin gold to her MA-
JESTY'S intellectual treasury, and if there should be
much dross or matrix mixed with the precious metal,
assuredly in these days the art of refining is pretty,
well understood. We think, however, that her MA-
JESTY'S Public Council, is become of quite equal value,
probably in the eyes of Monarchy itself, certainly in
those of the public and of her MAJESTY'S Cabinet,
with her Privy Council. It is etiquette indeed for
the Solons composing a Government of the day, and
the ex-Solons who lately composed one, to seem not to
knew the discussions going on in the daily and better
weekly papers. It would not be quite the thing
for my Lord JOIIM RUSSELL, or my Lord DERBY to
answer in form a leader in the Times or the Morning
Pest, much less to avow that such unauthorised ad-
vice had effected a Cabinet decision. But such argu-
ments are taken up and replied to, not only by the
Hon. Member for -, when refuting the Hon.
Member for ; but even by the " Noble Duke
on the right" answering the " Noble Lord on his
left." Some dozen of her MAJESTY'S public council
(although their names appeared not in the Court
Ciroular) did, moreover, assuredly accompany Royalty
to Balmoral itself, and aided greatly both the PRE-
MIER and his Royal Mistress in their deliberations.
How perplexed would both have been without their
accustomed public advisers!

As to the sage of Hughenden Manor, we are per- '
fectly sure that he watches with anxious interest all
the leaders and letters which have lately occupied
public attention on the income-tax. Amply supplied
with information from the best "official sourcesi
and competent himself to no mean difficulty, he yet
finds is the papers of the day contributions by writers
suite his equals on this subject; he finds facts and
thoughte, which his, best officials ignore or overlook,
stated, developed, and argued on with power. He is
av„,ara, too, that this is all done by her MAJESTY'S
publis council. Its sittings are open to all concerned.
If he knows not what is debated and decided in this
open Cabinet, the public does, and a hundred lU.p.,s
will soon inform him.
What, indeed, can any reasonable statesman do,
unless thoroughly acquainted with the Times? Did
not the great Duke even make his greatest political
blunder through refusing to read aright the Times in
which he lived ? Without the Daily News how could
he hope to conduct the daily business of the empire ?
Even Locd PALMERSTON S official information was
generally a day at least too late ; and the latter,
when it did arrive, found the answers all
out and dried for transmission. Without
a Morn* Chronicle and Advertiser, the routine of
Downing-street must infallibly rock its inmates in
too protracted a slumber. The value of a Standard
is unquestioned amongst men of such tender moral
susceptibilities as politicians in office. What dese-
crations of antique, and almost forgotten, principles
might they not be guilty of without a friendly moni-
tor to remind them of the sacredness of Vested
Wrongs I Drawing nearer to ourselves, no one will
dog that a foreign Secretary ought to be well ac-

quainted with the whole Globe. What a figure has
even the veteran WEBSTER just cut, through his ig-
norance of Peruvian Islands ; and we can assure

Lord MALMESBURY that a great many Englishmen
think ho has much more; need to shu himself

up to study in his department, than has
Mr. BENJAMIN DISBAELI. The last rays of the
Great Luminary, we are confident, cannot be too
much prized. A climate where, however cloudy and
dubious the morning, the Evening Sun is always seen,
enjoys at least the most pleasing soothing light of
nature ; and every statesman knows that almost from
time immemorial The Sun has, with his evening rays,
expressed for him intelligence for which he must
otherwise have waited the long night through. But
a word about the light shed on everything by The
Sun, must be quite superfluous. Adverting to our
weekly coadjutors, too, it may well be feared that
without a Spectator some more deeds of special
darkness might escape publicity ; without an Econo-
mist we are quite sure they would get into far

worse scrapes with Messrs. COBDEN and BRIGHT, and

irritate Mr. Humz perhaps almost fatally : and with-
out an Examiner, not only our statesmen, but our
judges of all sorts, our courts of justice, and even our
juries, would often be far more right in their own

eyes, and wrong in those cf the public, than they

now are.

We of the Press have indeed been denominated the
Fourth Estate, and certainly no measure which an un •

questioned majority of our body has passed, has failed

ultimately to pass also the other three estates of the

realm; neither has any measure on which we have

put our veto, been able to escape a veto of the third

estate, whatever favour it may have had with the other
two. But probably the lesson bequeathed us by the

great man who has just left us, has disposed us to look
upon ourselves in a more courtly light. We wish to

remember that we are in her MAJESTY'S service. We
think her MAJESTY will own, that for loyalty to
her person, and for fidelity in giving advice, open at
the same time to herself, her Ministries, her Lords
and faithful Commons, and all her subjects too, she
has not a better servant in the realm than her Ma-
jesty's public council. Sometimes, indeed, when she
is supposed to be out of hearing, we quarrel rather
ly among ourselves (not more so, however, than
the literati did in learned Latin half a century ago);
and sometimes we lash pretty severely some of her
MAJESTY'S paid servants ; she may be assured, how-
ever, that this is done purely for her own sake. She
would otherwise find them utterly unmanageable.
Her MAJESTY may have thought that, because so
many Ministries of late have taken office, as they
have avowed in the Houses of Parliament, out of
genuine pity for her MAJESTY'S forlorn condition,
when all her servants have been seized with a resig-
❑ation fit—because one Ministry pitied her in a
petticoat quarrel, and u'iother in a militia fix, and the

like—that they cherish for hers special reverence and
kindness. We beg to assure her that, however loyal
and generous the sell-denying accepters of her offices
and her thousands a year, may be, we, who
would at her public command be happy to
render her any service gratuitously, we who
do labour to perform her such invaluable
service, requited only by our mens conscia recti,—
we are not only her cheapest, but her most service-
able servants. We make their service) if that be
possible) worth the money; and we beg to make one
bumble request to her M AJESTY, to ask one acknow-
ledgment of our services, that on the only occasion
on which she addresses her subjects—when rank and
nobility, male and female fashion and elegance are
crowding around her, when her Lords and faithful
Commons are on tiptoe to catch a sight
of the something which has been so long looming
in the future—that she would then, solemnly
:rom the throne, with the voice which interests 30
millions of her subjects, declare her obligations, and
the obligations of all her servants, to her MAJESTY'S
public council.
A specimen of one of its most important services is
now before our eyes. Letters and articles on the
income-tax. Mr. BABBAGE and the economists, en-
deavour to bewilder Mr. Ifuein and the actuaries.
rax each kind of income alike, says Mr. BABBAGE.
tax them according to their varied values, say the
actuaries. Tax 1001. a year over the counter, and
1001. a year from land alike, says Mr. B. Capitalize
them, say the actuaries, and the one pound will
sell for 20 years purchase, or 2,0001, the
other at most for not more than six or seven, that
is, at most 700/. Ought the two to pay alike ? Yes, says
Mr. 8., the shopkeeper's 1001., lasts, say, ten years,
and pays ten taxes. The landowner's lasts an endless
number of years, and pays perpetually. To this it is
answered, there is an evident fallacy somewhere.
You may compel the one man to pay the same annual
tax as the other, but no sophistry can convince him
that it is just for him to do it. The landowner in-
wardly boasts while he says it's all fair; the shop-
keeper is inwardly sure of being wronged, though a
senior wrangler may silence him, and a House of
landlords make him pay. But in our public council
all parties are pitted fairly against each
other, and an actuary shows conclusively
(see his letter in The Sun of Saturday)
that one fallacy at least is this—reckoning the two
incomes, as if they were both entirely incomes.
Whereas the 1001. a year from land, or Consols, is
purely income, leaving the capital quite untouched ;
while the income from any temporary source is com-
posed of income and capital too, inasmuch as it con-
sumes the capital itself in a certain ratio every year—
consumes it so completely that the capital vanishes
when the income ceases to the individual. We will
not enlarge, but leave Mr. DISEAELI, and each tax-
payer under schedules D and E to ponder this valu-
able suggestion. To us it seems pretty clear that
where the actuaries, men whose business lies, and
whose lives are spent in, the study of the values of
every kind of income, are unanimous on a question
like this, no honest legislators could hesitate to
prefer their guidance to that of theoretical
mathematicians, economists, none of the latter, more-
over, agreeing among themselves. Nay, it were even
conceivable that both may prove to be right. The
mathematician may determine almost mechanically
by his formula the work which a steam-engine and
its machinery will do, but we should take final counsel
with the head mechanic in the factory when one en-
gine was to be made. lie could tell us what it would
do, allowing for friction and other things, of which
the theorist has but vague conceptions. And possibly
the BABBAGES may be mathematically right, but
practically and socially wrong. The market value,
the thing known to the actuary, is without question
the only test of value for actual life. " A thing is
worth what it will sell for." If not taxed according
to what it will sell for, it is, therefore, not taxed ac-
cording to its worth.
Another circumstance, too, is pretty much over-
looked. We mean the increased trouble given to the
State by incomes from land and most fixed sources.
Nothing is more exposed than land and its produce
—nothing more the creature of law than the public
funds ; and if trade and business are dependent upon
public order, so is the cultivation of land. If the
tradesman's person needs the protection of the State,
so does that of the landlord; but that which is
already become property is open to the direct attacks
of every kind of fraud or violence. Not only
does the man who derives his income from realized
property enjoy a more valuable income, he also en-
joys one which needs more protection from the State.
He who has a hundred a year, and two thousand
pounds whenever he likes to sell it, ought to pay
more than he who has a hundred a year, with 5001.,
if he sells it now, and nothing to sell at all in
five years hence. The former also ought to pay
more, because he males annually more work for the
State, in insuring his property against fraud and
violence.

Bethlehem Hospital (or rather its governors, trea-
surer, matron, and medical officer), is now upon its
trial. Fifteen months ago, on complaints made be-
fore them, as to mismanagement of that lunatic asy-
lum, the metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy com-
menced an investigation, which has been reported at
length in some of the public journals, has ex-
cited much indignant comment, and has indis-
putably proved that the greatest abuses have
been allowed, by those
vrho were paid to
prevent it, to exist in the management of
the unhappy people confined and coerced there.
The health and the feelings f.,f the unfortunates in
Bethlehem appear to have been much uncared for. In
the heart of this metropolis what ought to have been a