The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-01 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, ocr. 1, 1863.

Upon the whole the Revenue Returns for the
Quarter may be pronounced satisfactory. Remem-
bering the long continuance of the American War,
which has shut out from us, for so protracted an
interval, the customary supply of cotton required
for so large a branch of our manufactures—these
tables, showing that in spite of the American War,
in spite of this sudden, and almost total, and fright-
fully protracted continuance of one yearly cotton
supplies ,has in no conspicuous way injuriously
affected our commerce, cannot bat be followed with
a sense of grateful exultation. There is no doubt
rather disagreeably noticeable, almost at the first
glance, a large apparent decrease in the Revenue of
the Quarter. A decrease large, that is, coelpara-
tively. A decrease, however, that is, as we have
stated merely apparent—because one arising purely
and simply from the double reduction made by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer in his last Budget :
here by the diminution of the duty upon tea, here
by the dropping of a proportion of that burdensome
tax upon income and property, every penny in the
pound, of which represents upwards of £1,000,000
sterling, wrung from the earnings of the whole ag-
gregate of our busy toiling population ! Hence,
and solely because of this reduction upon the income
tax, and upon the tea duty, the more notable dimi-
nutions referred to in the total Revenue of the
Quarter. Notwithstanding which—notwithstanding
the decrease in the proceeds of the Property Tax
upon the Quarter to the extent of £lOB,OOO, and the
decrease under the Customs Returns up on the
Quarter to the extent of £329,000, mainly attri-
butable to the remission of duty upon tea—notwith-
standing that decrease upon:the Quarter under these
two heads to the tune (together) of .£437,000—there
is yet manifest this most gratifying consideration,
viz , that while there is a slight deficit discernable
upon the last Quarter, and a yet slighter one upon
the last Half-year, there is very,nearly a good round
million in the way of surplus upon the whole Year,
or, to be plain, a net increase upon the year to the
extent of exactly £808,842. There is but little doubt
of it, altogether, in point of fact, that we have small
reason for solicitude of any kind in regard to our
financial position—even in very despite of this
-woeful civil war in North America, a war
that by necessity, of course, so very seriously
(but, thank Heaven, as our financial tables continue
to Show for our consolation, not disastrously) affects
our manufactures. We should have still less reason
for anxiety in reference to those highly elaborated
but smoothly working contrivances by which the
balance is maintained in our complex fiscal
and financial arrangements accordingly as they
ate modified by the annual influence of the Budget
"—were it not for the remembrance that, in the
person of the gifted man who is now entrusted
with the responsibilities devolving upon England's
Chancellor of the Exchequer, we have, besides the
l
unquestionable
the great Orator,
the ripe Scholarilli of Genius,
the loyal Minister, the patriotic
Administrator.-
most rash, a most dangerous,
and a most eccentric Experimentalist as a Finan-
cier. Of that there can be no further doubt what-
ever. This last 3.eara,
Budget—if there ever was a
the
doubt of any kind, of even flimsiest kind,
upon the subject—set that doubt at rest
at once and for ever : in
the mina and
conscience, that is, of everyone but a rigid par-
tisan of the Government-. mr
• GLapsToNe,
escapades of last year were too flagrant, in truth,
of their kind to be very readily forgo'
ttn The
proposed tax un on charities,
proposed club tax, the
the whimsey here, and the crotchet there, juggled
before the House by that ambidexterous rhori-
him], as cleverly but about as distressingly (merely
to witness even) as the flashing to and fro of the:
heltdezen daggers tossed froth hand to hand by
RAMMO-SAMMEE—who can think of these even
now without a qualm of discomfort at the prospect
next spring of another and kindred performance?
Fantastic crotchets and whimsies in the way of
experimental-floance—(still in this like those
glittering daggers of Rasing-SammEE)--that
the conjuror himself might swallow but
that the spectators could not! Swept aside as
hardly lees perilous than they were beyond any doubt