The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-01 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, JANUARY 1, 1863.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-THREE opens
before us propitiously. Even the Revenue Tables,
when we come to !cook into them, appear to be, on
the whole, highly satisfactory. Notwithstanding
the gloom, and doubt, and stagnation incidental
to the year that has just now passed away, the
Balance Sheet of the Nation for that year tells a
welcome tale to us all in many particulars. If it is
borne in mind how many millions sterling have
had to be docked from the wealth of this industrial
country during 1862, in artisan's wages and in the
manufactured products of their skill—ordinarily
exercised harmoniously with the agencies of ma-
chinery—it is something surprising to find that in
spite of all this glaring deficiency, in spite of this
wide-spread and long-sustained interruption of one
of our most important trades, the net increase upon
1862 (the Year of the Cotton Famine) exceeds by
two round millions and very nearly a half million
into the bargain, the net increase of its immediate
predecessor ! Sixty-One, in that one particular,
was good, but Sixty-Two proves to be better—the
net increase upon the latter, as compared with the
net increase upon the former, amounting precisely
•to £2,302,578. In other words, it should be said
that, whereas the gross produce of the revenue
reached upon the New Year's-eve of 1861 the sum
of £68,603,851, it attained yesterday a total of no
less than £70,996,429. This, notwithstanding a
dropping down in the Excise returns from
£18,161,000 (as it was at the close of 1861 on the
31st day of December) to (what it proved to be yes-
terday) £17,534,000. Otherwise, a falling-of in
the duties—by reason of a diminution in the con-
sumption of spirits—to the amount of exactly
£626,000. It is in the Excise Department
Alone, however, that the Returns exhibit any
appreciable diminution whatever. In all the other
departments is a slight noticeable increase—that is
to say, in Customs, Stamps, Taxes, Property Tax,
Post-office, Crown Lands, and Miscellaneous. In
each and all of these there is moderate but appre-
ciable improvement. The Post-office increase we
take now as really and truly a matter of course.
It is in one sense inevitable. As it lives, so by ne-
cessity it grows. What it will come tr: eventually
—who shall say ? To conject-are any limit might
baffle even, we Bl3olll'l conceive, the imagination of
Sir IIowLAND 'Am. This last twelvemonth, but
lust -..0w dead and gone, has given a ripe plum to
the great letter-carrying institution of St. Martin's-
le-Urand, in addition to its revenue of the year
preceding. At the termination of 1861 the Post-
office returns amounted to exactly £3,500,000.
Yesterday they turned out to be precisely
£lOO,OOO more, or to a nicety £3,600000 The
Customs again—notwithstanding all the draw-
backs of 1862 in regard both to the extent of
our imports and of our exports—has declined be-
tween the last two New Year's Days from an aggre-
gate of £23,774,000, as those returns were at the
end of 1861, to £24,036,000, as they were yester-
day. Again, the Stamps show a rise of a little
over £300,000—having yielded £8,488,170 the year
before last, and during this year £8,913,945. The
Taxes (so called by an odd particularity as if none
of the other returns upon the tables came under
the head of that unwelcome noun " of multitude,
signifying nAny !") The Taxes par excellence are,
as nearly as could reasonably have been looked for,
equipoised at the end of the last two Decembers—
X 3,119,000 in 1861, £3,148,000 in 1862 ; or £29,000
to the good! Notwithstanding the drop of a penny,
the Property-tax will be seen to have expanded
in its productiveness from 9,962,000, or close upon
£10,000,000 sterling, to £11,104,000. Even the
Crown Lands show a slight advance in their re-
turns—namely, from having been £223,479 in 1861,
becoming this last year £298,521. Finally, there
is noticeable under the head of Miscellaneous an
expansion from £1,306,202 to £2,361,962. Every-
thing considered by no means an unsatisfactory
Balance-Sheet for the Chancellor of the Exchequer
to lay before the nation justafter Christmas. Only—
that the bloom is taken off the ripe plumspoured forth
so abundantly from the seven cornucopian--by the
circumstance of their being littered amongst a yet
more affluent outpouring of Bills perpetually re-
quiring payment. If only the returns for the year
—extending as they do to £7o,ooo,ooo—were not
counterbalanced so very heavily by an equivalent
in the shape of our annual national expenditure!
A different tale, however, will have to be told
now upon that head by the right hon. gentleman
the Chancellor of Her Majesty's Exchequer. A
new leaf is about to he turned over at the
Treasury. That everybody knows already
to have
been resolved upon by her Majesty's ministers. It
is their only chance indeed of remaining in office.
There it is that the screw has been put on effec-
tually—namely, in regard to their selfish fears as
to the possibility of being summarily dismissed
from office by a combination between the powerful
Conservative Opposition and the chiefs of the in-