The Sun.
London, England, 1862-10-04 00:00:00

THE SUN.
LONDON, SATURDAY, OCT. 4, 1862.

We all remember how thunderstruck was Man-
chester with the defection of Mr. WILSON from
Manchester free-trade doctrines. When he got to
India as her Finance Minister there was one thing
which must be done. He must make ends meet.
He urged the Government to cut down every pos-
sible expense, but after all he could not frame an
estimate which did not leave him with a large de-
ficit. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to
make every export and import, that would do it,
yield revenue. Even Manchester could not be
exempted ; not less than ten per cent. was ruth-
lessly clapped on to her piece goods as an import
duty, by the great free-trade man of figures. But
the worst was that the late editor of the .Economist
seemed to have forgotten his principles. India had
herself a cotton spinning and weaving interest.
There was not only the vast native weaving in-
dustry in numberless cottages and villages, with
bamboo looms making piece goods of hand-spun
cotton, but manufactories like those of Manches-
ter herself were beginning to rise, and here,
therefore, was the unparalleled case of a free-trader
imposing a duty on the foreign article while the
domestic one escaped the tax. It was a clear 10
per cent. of protection.
Mr. LAING has been able somewhat to better the
case. He reduced the duty to five per cent. Still
Manchester is all at ease. She forms, therefore, an
association, one not quite so formidable as the Old
League, to abolish the Indian Cotton Laws. They
are clearly, to the extent to which they go, as
opposed to Free-trade principles as the Corn-laws
themselves. Mr. LAING confesses that Bombay
is a manufacturing rival not to be despised.
Hardly anything but the price of coals is against
her. At Bombay, notwithstanding the rise in
wages, the current wage for the month does not
exceed a week's wages in Manchester. Bombay
saves also the double freight of sending the raw
material to Liverpool, and bringing the manu-
factured goods thence. India feels the disadvan-
tage of having few trained hands, compared with
an old seat of the manufacture, like Manchester,
but that is a disadvantage lessened by the erection
f every
new
mill. Thug, the Lancashire mann-
fuare threatened with the creation of rival
factories,tr
which, like those of Massachusetts, will
have been in great part created by a hostile duty,
o eeer 5
sufficient itself to give a fair profit.
Even
Mr.
LAIN
G,
lut
GL however, could give Manches-
ter gentlemen small consolation. He had, as a
statesman, not only
Manchester, but all India to
A
think of, and India,just now, could not dispense with
the duty. The loss of half a million from the cotton
duties might have to be followed by the loss of the
duties on other imports, since the manufacturers of
hardware and other goods could hardly be
per-
suaded to regard cotton as having a better claim to
exemption than their own manufactures. Thus
' '
the whole customs revenue of two millions might
be at stake. Now, direct taxation, the only pos-
sible substitute, is—and how justly !---so obnoxious
to the natives, that the Government cannot venture
to take any step which will lessen its power to ful-
fil its promise, and to drop the present low income
tax, at the end of three years. The Indians are
quite right. They prefer a customs duty, hardly
felt, to an inquisitive, oppressive tax, which mulcts
the most unequal incomes with equal, or rather
with inverse, severity. It is, too, in practice, the
most extravagant of taxes. But for its existence,
we should never have been saddled with as extra
ten millions a year on that purely unproductive
outlay, the army and navy. We should have been
spared official panics, and got more out of twenty
millions than we now do for fifty. The income tax
is the grand temptation of a " national-greatness"
minister—of a minister who thinks more of Shoe-
buryness, Spithead forts, and iron sides, than of the
prosperity of the mi •
ddle classes. We hope India
will teach both Mr. GT A,,,
--ee
-ToNE and Lord PAL-
MERSTON a lesson, for which every clerk on a
hundred a-year and upwards will warmly thank
them.

Manchester reminded Mr. LAINQ of the cost of