The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-05 00:00:00

THE SUN, 'LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, MAY 5, 1863

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

HERALD.—Mr. Gladstone was taught a severe
lesson last night—that he should not outrage the
feelings and the judgment of the country. Of course,
every sensible man both in the House of Commons
and out of it was prepared to admit new taxes to stop
the inconvenient gaps caused by the remissions of the
Budget. But who dreamed of a tax on our public
charities ? What man or god could invent so bold
and so rash a design ? The Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer here must have been stricken with a strange
furor. Original in eccentricity, in this instance he
entirely outstripped any of his former sallies. To
stop short at £lOO a-year, to spare the mechanic
in full work, and yet tax him when sfilicted with
disease or the recipientof relief if out of employment,
was the most extraordinary fiscal rhapsody ever
conceived or spoken. Ireland is a poor country,
and Ireland's poverty was considered on the impo-
sition of the first income tax. But Ireland is now
poorer than ever. She is not only to pay the im-
post, but by the novel creation of our Finance
Minister her numerous dependents on charity were
to relieve a flourishing British commerce from a few
petty restrictions. The proposal was not only ab-
surd ; it was enormously cruel, and it fled in the
face of all our preconceived notions of benevolence
in this country. The universal desire was to en-
courage the spirit of chafity ; but here was a scheme
to render it unpopular, to treat it as a luxury, to tax
it, and thus to render it scarce and dear. No won•
der "that men of all orders should have protested
against so singular an innovation. Churchmen, Dis-
senters, and Catholics were united here. The funds
at the disposal of the wealthiest of our charities are
not too large for their pressing calls. Many of the
poorer and struggling institutions from year to year
require continual aid by subscriptions to enable them
to live at all. It has been abundantly shown in the
House of Commons and in the columns of this jour-
nal, and elsewhere, that the real sufferers by the tax
would have been either the very poor and suffering
or those persons glad to avail themselves of the aid
of our benevolent foundations for themselves or
children. It was preposterous to assert that the
tax was a general one, and would not affect indivi
dual interests. As to what may be termed the
argument of symmetry—the imposition of the
tax all around—that stands in the teeth of the
known exceptions made in the incidence of
this impost. It was never designed to tax
all alike. Policy as well as necessity counsels the
removal of direct taxes from the ;shoulders of the
poor man. He could ill bear to hand over hard
cash at so much in the pound on his dole of wages
to a rigorous collector. Being by far the largest con-
sumer he pays most in indirect taxation. He there-
fore merits exemption and favour. How can we use
the symmetrical plea here, in the midst of a whole-
some exception ? But the entire proposal was forced,
unjust, and oppressive, and struck at every prin.
ciple of an income tax, which pre supposes distinc-
tions. Happily vee,bave got rid of this. anomaly.
The House of Commons, in this instance as in other
of late, has done its duty to.the public. But what
can the Government urge now in defence of a
scheme thus formally condemned and reprobated by
so many of its regular supporters ? To continue to
hold office in the face of so many defeats, and these
concerning questions of magnitude and moment, is
to perpetuate administration on sufferance. The
tenure of the Government may depend on the popu-
larity of one man—but when this involves the re-
jection of paramount measures like that of last
night and the motion of Sir J. Trelawny on church
rates—questions, in one instance supported by the
Prime Minister and most of his colleagues, and in
the other by the entire Cabinet—it may fairly be
held that the Ministry stands condemned by the
voice of the House of Commons, and ought not to
take refuge in the known public sentiments of fa-
vour entertained towards the venerable Premier.
Mr. Gladstone, at all events, has had his full share
of defeat. If he is indispensable to the Cabinet this
only shows of what unsound elements the Govern-
ment is composed. The discredit reflected on the
Chancellor of the Exchequer affects the entire Ad-
ministration. Nor should it be speedily forgotten
that whatever signs of economy the Government
has recently displayed are advantages borrowed
from • the pertinacious counsels and plans of the
Opposition. To Mr. Disraeli and his friends the
merit of retrenchment, and a consequent remission
of taxation, is unquestionably due. Mr. Gladstone
and his colleagues in office have tamely imitated the
vigorous programme chalked out by the right hon.
member for Buckinghamshire. The blow of last
night, therefore, descends the more heavily, because
it is not lightened by reductions emanating in
truth and spirit from the Ministry.
POST.—There can be little doubt of the fact which
was admitted in the House of Commons the other
night that the British people were, at the beginning
of the struggle in America, for the most part in
favour of the success of the Federal Government,
Writers like Be Toqueville and the Hon. A. C.
Murray and others had, it is true, predicted the dis-
ruption of the Union, and the formation of several
confederacies out of the disjecta nzembra of the ex-
ploded central power. But Europe in general, and
England in particular, had noticed with wonder,
and, we believe, also with real satisfaction, the
growth of a power on the North American Conti-
nent, which, though sometimes inclined to be trou •
blesome to its neighbours, nevertheless fulfilled all
the main purposes for which Governments exist--
developing the resources of a country of vast extent
washed by two oceans; penetrated also by rivers,
compared with which the Rhine and the Thames
are mere rivulets, and where an enterprising race
combining the characteristics of most of the nation-
alities of the Old World had collected around them
most of the material comforts of life, if they failed
in reaching the highest standards of cEuropean
civilisation and refinement. The Irish peasant and
the political refugee, and hosts of others, fled from
the crowded countries of the Continent to this land
of promise, where all men were free and equal at
least in theory, and where no despots or tyrannical
aristocracies were permitted to blight the prospects
or mar the happiness of the people. Whether they
all realised their dreams of liberty and of success
is best known to themselves. European Govern-
ments and peoples could certainly have no object in
desiring the downfall of a State with which they
were all more or less intimately connected by the
ties of race, religion, and commerce. Statesmen
trained under the old monarchies of Europe may have
noted from time to time a gradual but certain deterio-
ration in the quality of American rulers and diploma-
tists as compared with that which they exhibited
when Geo. 111. was Ring—when Franklin received
the acknowledgment of the independence of his
country from his former Sovereign while wearing
that famous snuff-coloured coat in which he had
borne the fierce invectives of Wedderburn, as well
as subsequently helped to instruct the salons of
Paris in the doctrine of human equality, thereby
paving the way for the first French Revolution ;
but most undoubtedly the prevailing feeling in this
country when hostilities began was in favour of
the integrity of the Federal Government, for few
people at that time could see clearly behind the
veil which had partially concealed the growing in-
compatibility for union between North and South,
and the terrible wrath which the Southerners had
for years been nursing against the New England
States. All these things are now pretty well
known here. England had the deepest interests in
desiring a continuance of Fedei al rule over the
whole country, for the great cotton trade of the
North, and the welfare—perhaps the existence—of
half a million of operatives in Laecashire were
bound up with this question, not even to allude to
the subjects of our revenue being injuriously
affected by our ceasing to receive Southern cotton,
or the contingency of a war arising between our-
selves and the Washington Government. As the
contest proceeded, it was observed that the advo-
cates of the Union as it was shifted their grounds
for coercing the South according to their geogra-
phical position ; and amid much antagonism of
opinion between President Lincoln and his Minis-
ters on the one hand, and the supporters of the
Union east, west, and north on the other, it be-
came patent to all impartial observers that the
Federals were fighting for power, empire, and for
the exclusive management of Southern commerce,
and Americans themselves saw that if the South
succeeded in gaining its independence, the West
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ld
her fairest and most fertilei provinces.
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no w°
Hundreds of thousands of men were summoned to
field in hot haste; the expenditure was as
wasteful as the corru io
resources of itnraePrise n was barefaced,. and the
haps for centuries at a rate y anticipated per-
nished Napoleon I. or even Ich would have asto-
great pat. The
sudden exigencies of war req the
• turing an immediate
supply of officers, these in many instances were
summoned
rs fr,om the workshop of the artisan, from
greengroce and from desks of co -
country at The stone fleet sunk at the entrance of
Charleston harbour was no doubt intended to seal
up that rebellious city for ever from all access to

the sea, and transform it in time into another lyre
or Carthage; and this experiment, worthy of the
freest and most intelligent
people on the, face of the
earth, would no doubt have been tried on other
Southern harbours had not the great Powers of
Eunpe remonstrated against such practices. Gen.
Butler's conduct at New Orleans to men, women,
and children, and his arbitrary manner of dealing
with property, will be remembered both there and
throughout the South and the world for many a long
year to come, and his name transmitted as synony-
mous with deeds unmanly and infamous. General
MiNiell's cold-blooded massacre of ten Confederate
citizens of Palmyra, in Missouri, for the supposed
crime, of murdering, or causing to disappear, an old
man called Allsman, but who still lives and reigns
in his former home, will survive in the recollections
of mankind as long as the murder of the Duke
D'Enghien shall be recorded in history. During
, and munitions of war
the progress of the war, the Federals, though sup
plied with men, money without stint, have not 'hitherto been able either
to scotch or kill this snake of rebellion ; and it
still continues to rear its head aloft in a menacing
manner towards its foes.