The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-03 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—There are many agreeable sensations to
be felt by the man who succeeds rather suddenly and
unexpectedly to a fine estate. He is raised in his own
opinion and in that of his neighbours far above the
position which he formerly occupied. He is neither
stronger, nor wiser, nor handsomer, nor better ; but
he fills a larger apace in the eyes of others and in
his own. The laws on which the world is conducted
would, however, be signally reversed in his favour if
this brilliant position were not attended with very
notable drawbacks. He has a great deal more busi •
ness to do ; and amid the subtleties of lawyers, the
claims of mortgages, the reports of architects and
estate agents, and the grumbling of tenants, may
sometimes regret his modest chambers at the Temple
and his three-shilling dinner at his club. But per-
haps the greatest tribulation which he has to endure
is, that all the world believe themselves to be in a
position to give him advice. To pay off his mort-
gages, to borrow money for draining, to alter the old
house, to pull it down, to add to it, to buy more land
or to sell some that he has, to cut down his trees or
to plant new ones, to make a lake or to fill up the
lake that he has got, these and a hundred similar
admonitions are sure to be volunteered for his bene-
fit. Very similar to Chia is the case of Italy. She
has come into her estate at last, after having been
kept out of it nearly 400 years. She is, in conse-
quence—we will not say the best, but certainly the
most advised country in Europe. There is nobody
who has managed his own affairs so ill that he feels
disqualified to offer an opinion on the management
of the affairs of Italy. Everybody knows exactly
what she ought to do—to centralise, to decentralise,
to reform, to readjust, to put down, to raise up, to
undo the evils of frier centuries in as many years, to
work without tools, and to make bricks without
straw. But after all the admonition which has been
lavished on Italy, the one point upon which advice
was really most required, and upon which neglect
will be most fatal, has been altogether neglected.
Errors of all other kinds are retrievable; but neither
liberty, good government, progress, nor self-respect is
long possible with low credit and disordered finances.
We have no right to expect from Italy that which
no nation has ever yet attained—the art of making
cheap wars and economical revolutions. These are
discoveries reserved doubtless for a more advanced
period of the history of the world, for we have cer-
tainly made no approach to them hitherto ; but,
nevertheless, the expenditure of Italy is not justi-
fied by her present resources. She has for the last
five years been getting into debt at the rate of
£16,000,000 a year. A loan of £40,000,000 ster-
ling cleared off the extra expenses of war and revo-
lution up to the end of the year 1861, and left a
surplus of 14,000,000 f. remaining. Here, then, we
might reasonably have expected that a new point of
departure would be taken, and that if an equilibrium
between Income and Expenditure could not at once
be reached, at any rate a considerable advance
would be made towards it. Such anticipations have
been grievously disappointed. The expenditure of
1862 exceeds the income by about £14,000,000 ster-
ling, or one-third of the whole, and this does not
appear to be result of any falling off of income, but
simply of the enormous scale of the expenditure.
The revenue has risen, but the expenditure has
much more than kept pace with it. We cannot,
however, doubt that the revenues of Italy admit of
very great augmentation. They appear to be as yet
collected in the most inartificial manner. The taxa-
tion of the different States so lately united is left
pretty much as it was before the union, a source in
itself of infinite trouble and confusion. The tariff
is far too high ; the duties vary from 10 to 50 per
cent., and are therefore higher than, according to
our experience, can possibly be collected. That
is the conclusion in this country, which has
no land frontier and is surrounded by a stormy
ocean. What must it be •in Italy w;th the
canton of Ticino penetrating into her Northern
plains, with France, S wiezeriand, and Austria on
her frontiers, with a long sea coast and a short and
easy passage to so many islands and continental
States ? Her free ports are of course nests of
smugglers. There is one one way to spoil their
trade—by a reduction of the tariff; but that is
exactly the one remedy which no Italian financier
has yet ventured to take. Of course such a step
could only be made effectual by submitting at first
to a considerable reduction of revenue, and that re-
duction nobody seems willing to undertake. Im-
perfect as the collection of the revenue is, the ex-
penses of the collection amount to 25 per cent. of
the whole. The employes of Government being for
the first time expected to be honest, have justly re-
ceived as an equivalent for this new virtue an in-
crease of salary, which for the moment is a heavy
additional expense. The army, of course, cannot be
reduced. £4,000,000 a year are spent on public
works, which are greatly needed, not merely to de-
velope the industry but to complete the political
unity of the country. So we suppose the Govern-
ment will go on, whatever political economy may
say to the contrary, with taxes on wine, oil, and
meat, and monopolies of salt and tobacco. The
Italian Finance Minister anticipates an equilibrium
between income and expenditure as early as the
year 1867. It is a sanguine estimate. The true key
to sound finance is economy. Unanswerable reasons
can no doubt be given why not a single franc of the
expenditure of 974,000,000 francs, or £39,000,000
sterling should be retrenched. It is always so ; it
was so in India till the necessity of retrenchment
became undeniable. Then all sorts of impossibilities
were accomplished with an ease, a celerity, and
success which must have a little surprised those
who had spent their lives in demonstrating them.
So will it be with Italy. Once let the nation
firmly grasp the idea that domestic financial em-
barrassment is a more pressing danger, and more
certain cause of ruin than foreign conquest or occu-
pation, and things which are new impossible will
suddenly become easy. We venture to predict that
there will be no balance of Italian finance till the
taxation is put on a sound footing, and the only
way to that consummation is to be found through
economies leading to a surplus, instead of de-
ficits ending in heavy loans, to be con-
tracted successively on harder and harder terms.
We have a good right to be heard on this
question, for, with the exception of Prussia,
we are the only considerable State in the civilised
world which is able to live within its income,
and to do something towards the reduction of the
principal of its debt. France, boundless as are
her resources, and rapid as is the development of
her industry, cannot raise her expenditure by
taxation. She astonished Europe a little while
ago by a deficit of £40,000,000 in a time of peace.
So signal a misfortune gave rise to all sorts of
good resolutions, but the resolutions have resolved
themselves into nothing, and France is said to be

on the eve of contracting a loan. Austria, by a
course of just the same extravagance as Italy, by
a systematic annual deficit, has been dragged
down to a deplorable financial position, which
she is but just beginning to retrieve. Russia is on
the verge of bankruptcy, which the first threat
of the European war she has provoked would
convert into a reality. Portugal has just been
borrowing; and Spain, after so many years of
bitter experience, cannot prevail upon herself to
take her place among honest nations by recog-
nising the debts she has contracted. Turkey is
busy concocting a surplus to gild over a return to
old habits of extravagance ; and America is mort-
gaging her splendid destiny in order the more
completely and speedily to accomplish her present
eestruction. Such is the financial aspect of the
civilised world at this moment; let not Italy find
in it that consolation which we are apt to derive
from the discovery that our neighbours are as
foolish as ourselves, but let her rather reflect that
the test of good government is not its external
form, but the welfare of its subjects, and that it her
revolution is only to terminate in bankruptcy, it
was scarcely worth making.
HERALD.—" L' Anglegerre recule sur t.ute la
ligne." That is the way in which a journalist in
Paris speaks of the latest efforts of English diplo-
macy in the unhappy Polish question. The latest
dispatch of Lord Ituesell to the Russian Court does
indeed involve a retreat along the whole line. Lord
Napier has handed to Prince Gortschakoff a letter
which is described as conciliatory both in contents
and form. So far from being ready to endorse by
overt action the indiscretions of Blairgowrie, our
Foreign Minister is terrified by the effect which has
been produced by that unfortunate speech, at the
inferences which have been universally drawn from
it. He has given up all idea of declaring that the
Treaty of 1815 is null and void, of proclaiming that
Russia has forfeited her right to Poland. The
common sense of the public, the comments of the
press, reminded him that by such a declaration he
would be doing more harm to the cause of Poland
than to that of Russia; he would be cutting away
the ground from beneath his feet,depriving himself
of the only possible right that he could have to in-
terfere with authority, the right implied in the
treaty which in a manner placed Poland under the
protection and guarantee of Europe. So Lord
Russell, who may fairly be suspected of having in-
tended to indite a dispatch in this suicidal and self-
sacrificing spirit—for, if words have any meaning,
his declaration in Scotland came to as much—,
veered round, was better advised, and took up a
more prudent line. This last dispatch will be
found, we believe, to be the essence of all that is
mild and conciliatory. When it appeared doubtful
whether Russia would be able to subjugate the
insurgent Poles, the tone of Lord Russell'sassed
re-
monstrance was high and arrogant. It
that England and France were the
thenatural legitimate
controllers of the eff4rs of
arbiters of peace and war, the umpires between
arbitrary Governments and their
Ituigia was iq a great dilliCuttY* The