The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-05 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 1862.

Now that the first surprise at the half ludicrous
termination of the six resolutions' debate is over,
we can look a little more calmly at its character
and probable result. We are inclined to think the
country will not be altogether dissatisfied with the
termination: We should of course have liked, very
much, a thorough and competent investigation of
the whole subject of our financial policy—a subject
wholly shirked by our wary Premier. We should
have liked the increased expenditure amendment
of Mr. Coerpvrru, and the income-tax abolition of
Mr. WALPOLE, and all the intermediate phases of
finance, to have been thoroughly discussed, and a
little more light to have been thrown, had it been
in any one's power, on our financial prospects, and
on the means by which safe retrenchments could
be :made. The country, after what Mr. GLADSTONE,
as well as Mr. DISRAELI and the recreant spokes.
man for Monday's Conservative meeting, has said,
are naturally interested in the very serious question
—Are we paying .C 3 15s. per cent. on our incomes
for objects unimportant to us, or through wasteful
mismanagement and needless haste in pursuit
of those objects? Every clerk, every clergyman,
every one living on limited fixed incomes, every
small tradesman, every farmer, and thousands with
larger incomes too, are anxiously asking the ques-
tion—Does patriotism really require my submis-
sion to this most grinding and inquisitorial of
taxes ? On this subject the lower stratum of the
middle classes feels more acutely than it is in the
power of wealthier men to conceive—but all feel it
more or less. Our direct extra armament rates, as
represented by the income-tax, equal at least our
direct local rates. And Lord PALMERSTON can
hardly be surprised that, when his own Finance
Minister, and Lord DERBY'S meeting of Monday,
gave no obscure hints that these doubled rates
might be halved, those who have enough to do to
satisfy the overseer should feel exceedingly desirous
to get rid of the quarterly calls of the income-tax
collector.
The first impression would be that Lord PAL-
MERSTON would insist on more rampant expenditure
than
ever. His triumph seemed so complete, rout-
ing his first antagonist by compelling Tory forces
to muster under his banner, and ultimately discom-
fiting next, Tories, Irishmen, and Independent
Liberals, all together, that we might suppose he
would take a new lease of expenditure. We hardly
think, however, such will be the case. He must
be far too awake not to see that high expendi-
ture
is, even to him, a rock
ahead. He
knows that casual resources and Exche-
quer balances
no
discontent when
can be usedlonger. He
knows that even a
penny in the pound
more
income-tax would excite deep
people are rather looking for its rapid diminution.
He will hardly venture on any more of his oft
refuted stories of French naval armaments rival_
ling ours, to create a panic. He cannot well expect
the Customs and Excise another year to maintain
their productiveness, when the millions employed
on the cotton manufacture can hardly earn enough
to maintain life. The Income-tax itself must, in
the actual state tra
of de, fall off considerably under
Schedule D. Lord PALMERSTON must be well
aware of these broad financial facts, he is aware
too of the use which will be made of them if he do
not adapt his expenditure to them, and we are
therefore inclined to think he Will make a vigorous
effort to redress the balance of revenue and expen-
diture by some efficient economies. We need not
say he will have willing coadjutors in his own
Cabinet ! He will thus in all probability save Mr.
DISRAELI the unpleasant task of bidding again for
office in 1863.
But why, after all, did Mr. WALPOLE and the
more timid of the Tories dissent from Mr. _Ms-
? Why did the former suggest to Mr.
DISRAELI an appeal to the sympathy of any
gentleman of the turf yesterday, whose horse, with
which he expected to win, turned out a bolter ?
We apprehend there are two very clear reasons.
These timid men knew that a majority for the
WALPOLE amendment might eas •
easily be carried, if
the Tories, Irish, and Independents, stood arm ;,

—_,-----
but some of the Tories themselves—Sir WILLIAM I
HEATBCOTE for instance—were not prepared to
turn out Lord PALMERSTON yet. More then that,
a ~ penal dissolution" impended, and the case for
the Tories would not have been the clearest: Lord
DERBY on the Friday had done his best to avoid
co»amitting himself. He only wished for retrench-
ment—had an impression that reductions might be
made, would not say they could, and tried to ex-
plain away Mr. DISRAELI'S " bloated armaments,"
though Mr. DISRAELI himself would not do it.
But worst of all the more timid Tories know that
the country has not the slightest confidence in Mr.
DISRAELI'S power to carry his professed followers
with him, while it utterly detests his foreign policy.
To Englishmen Mr. DISRAELI'S foreign policy is
synynomous with extra petting of Austria, with
tender pity for the expelled Italian Dukes, with
the temporal despotism of the Pope, with opposi-
tion to Italian unity and liberty. We believe that
the clerk on £lOO a-year, while he pays his income
tax with a sigh over the painful deprivations it
necessitates—would yet rather pay it, than help to
curse Italy with Mr. DISRAELI'S policy.

With the financial state of the nation now
broadly brought before him, we believe the country
may hope well from Lord PALMERSTON. It has
no faith whatever in Tory sincerity—it loathes
their foreign policy and their truckling to Irish
priests for votes, and unless the Premier be singu-
larly wanting in tact he has an opportunity
offered him which will not soon recur, of out-
bidding the Tories by commencing the work in
earnest which they only talked of as a bid for
office. The game is now in his hands—he knows the
state of the country—and the next Tory retrench-
ment biddings ought to find him well prepared.
We should not, however, be surprised to Bnd some
of the Tories turning round next session and
blaming Lord PALMERSTON for not spending
enough. This economy fit of theirs is a fit merely.

The effect of recent discussions about the relative
numerical strength of the iron fleets of France and
England will go very far, we should imagine, to
enforce the argument put forth recently by Mr.
COBDEN in the last, and perhaps the best, of all his
political pamphlets. Facts are stubborn things
proverbially. They have certainly proved so in
the present instance. What with the revelation of
them on Tuesday evening, now by the right hon.
member for Bucks, now by the hon. member for
Rochdale, the flagrant misstatements (put forth
too upon such high authority !) about our Impe•
rial neighbour having thirty-six iron ships already
to oppose to our twenty-five—fades out, melts into
thin air, evaporates, and vanishes like the veriest
bubble of a canard blown by the lips of the
most unveracious gobemouche living ! And
yet the utterer of this base coin, the
forger of this flimsy note of Elegance on
the Bank of Credulity, was one who certainly ought
to have known better. Speaking precipitately, we
suppose, in an unfortunate moment of hallucination,
he sets down what is simply " intended" to be done
in France as a thing actually accomplished. As cer-
tainly as Rome was not built in a day—iron ships
are not constructed in a year. They are not to be
manufactured anywhere, even here in England with
all our skill and all our appliances, and all our expe•
rience, in a way so very off-hand. Adequate time for
the performance of the labour is as essential in
regard to these iron ships, as the money that is to
pay for their construction, or the very material out
of which they are constructed. And so, it comes to
our knowledge, not by any means as a matter
of surprise, that two, or three, or even
four years are necessarily consumed in the fabrica-
tion of one of these formidable iron war vessels.
Accepting at once all as actually done that has ever
been merely spoken of across the Channel, there in
the EMPEROR'S antechamber, in the Minister's cabi-
net, in the official bureaux and the dockyards—the
Prime Minister himself has massed together in the
lump—the iron ships that are ordered, the iron
ships that have been built, and the iron ships that
are merely in course of building ! And not only
has a huge error been thus blunderers into, but—
Mr. COBDEN blurts the simple truth out—Lord
PALMERSTON has talked, almost " awfully,"
certainly ore rotundo, about these French
iron ships numbering already thus in all
THIRTY-SIX to our five-and-twenty ! When—
as the hon. gentleman the member for Rochdale
tells us bluntly—several of the iron structures thus
spoken of big-mouthed by the English Premier as
" ships," are really and truly no ships at all ! Some
of these Mr. COBDEN amused the House on Tuesday
by intimating are actually at this moment in a
warehouse over yonder in France—having been
constructed so as to take to pieces and put together
again : these portable iron boats being in point of
fact designed not for deep sea navigation, but for
the tranquil waters of the Lake Garda! Yet has
there been an attempt made " to fright the isle from
its propriety," by contrasting our own twenty-six
iron ships with these thirty-six French iron ships.
Thirty-six !—some of them being only now in pro-
cess of construction—some being simply in nubibus
or only ordered to be built--several (if the bull is
allowable) of those already built being, we repeat
upon Mr. COBDEN'S authority, no ships at all, but
merely little boats that would hardly live through
a gale upon the broad ocean.

If only the hon. member for Rochdale were taken
frankly at his word, meaning in respect to his
negotiating between the Governments of France and
England, some modification in their present labours
(at any rate, we will say) towards the massing
together of "bloated armaments." Casually and
seriocomically though the intimation was thrown
out by Mr. COBDEN on Tuesday—it was neverthe-
less a distinct assurance enough that he, Mr.
COBDEN, would really, in good faith, pledge him-
self to carry out such a negotiation supposing he
were ever entrusted with it. And our own serious
conviction in the matter is that, supposing he were
entrusted with the conduct of such an enterprise, he
would carry it out triumphantly. Is it impracticable P
If so—this long boasted entente cordials must lack
tl almost
rose—must
s mr everything ng in the way of genuine cordiality.
It cannot actually be so very sound at heart.
" C"cealment " of some kind—like the canker in
"feed on its damask cheek."
Might
it not span
altogether supposing the effort proved a failure
might it not, we are tempted
to ask, be
advantageous to make the endea-
vour ? An endeavour suggested more than
once during the last few years by the right
hon. member for Bucks, and now formally and
impressively endorsed With the approval and even
Of the hon, member
nrartehivoeenr t hveelreys s that we cannot
earnest commend
efoffrort R
(oac h draelseu.
lt
for an instant seriously imagine, particularly
if the negotiator were a man of the tact and
discretion of Mr. COBDEN), the very failure of the
effort would be so far advantageous that it would

instanter put us seriously on the alert as to the

designs of a neighbour so mysteriously bent upon
advancing, in spite of "chronic deficits," towards
those bugbears of the leaders of the Opposition,
bloated armaments." Heartily rejoiced—who can
doubt it ?—would be both. France and England if
any colourable excuse could be but found for their
both simultaneously desisting from their pre-
SQI4 costly and Cyclopean labc.Rirg 0 developing the
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