The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-13 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, TUESDAY, MAY 13, 1862.

So we are to have not only a renewed Income-
tax, but a renewal of it almost without discussion.
take an fc. even of those who
or observed that for the first time the tremendous
Income-tax, under the infliction of which we
writhe quarterly, was to be mixed up with the
taxes which we may be said almost to eat and
drink without knowing of them. Yet so it is.
The reader in glancing at the Parliamentary de-
bates sees a heading, " Customs and Inland Re-
venue Bill ;" he looks perhaps at a few items hastily,
selecting, it may be, some article of consumption in
which he is interested, and then turns over to see
what is doing in America. It does not occur to
him that almost the only tax he feels painfully is
mixed up with " tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff."
Now we protest against this. Technically it may
be quite right and constitutional. Practically it
is wrong and unconstitutional. It has not been
done before ; it ought not, as we think we can
show, to be done now. We are aware of the
plea in justification. The Lords lately rejected a
money bill which was sent up in a separate form.
Mr. GLADSTONE triumphed over them last year in
regard to that very bill ; this year he desires to
complete their humiliation. He therefore

puts into one bill almost enough money

to pay the interest of the national debt,
and thus says to the Peers, touch it if you dare.
Now we never defended the rejection of the paper
duties repeal bill by the Peers, as, practically, a
constitutional act; but they have had their lesson on
that subject. We do not think they need to have
it repeated in another form, and to us the arrange-
ment seems something like that rather nu-English
proceeding, kicking a man down.
Hitherto the Income-tax has always been brought
forward in a separate act. Sir ROBERT PEEL, Mr.
GLADSTON
s great master, always adopted that
coarse. Those who have followed him have done

the same ; and the quarrel with the Lords was cor-

tainly no sufficient reason to depart from the prac-
tice,. The foundation of that practice we take to be,
that every tax, and everything else, indeed, of spe-
cial importance and peculiar character, should have
full and distinct consideration in the House of
Commons. The Income-tax is of this class. As a
peace tax it has an exceptional character, Mr.
GLADSTONE himself being our witness ; as a class
tax it is of a peculiar character, since it Singles out
one part of the community, and lays upon it a tax
which a far larger part does not pay. As a
tau involving essential injustice, incurable in_
justice, sucla injustice as makes it endurable
Only in emergencies, like war, or great financial
crises ani changes, Mr. GLADSTONE himself has
spoken with all the fervour of earnest conviction.
Such a tax, we repeat, ought not to be huddled up
with a list of duties on what may be regarded as
luxuries, though very common ones; and of which
not cvent tl:e washerwoman complains while elle
sips her tan, or the sailor when he buys his ounce
of tobacco. li

The income tax is a tax, of course, felt by all
payers, but we believe Mr. GLADSTONE'S class has
little idea of its
galling pressure on the lower divi-
bion of middle-class incoines—those who have the
tit nicA difficulty in maintaining the social appear-
uric?, they cannot bring thems?lves to forego, and
to whom the income tE.x is deprivation, of the sum.
tier trip for their family's health, or it may be
necessitates a change of dwelling, or a mortifying
economy in the family clothing bills, even the
education of children must often suffer. The large
direct deduction of •
ninepence from every pound of
the income of such person ; of £3 15s. from every
hundred pounds, is •
little less than the in-
flicting, we believe in
the majority of cases, of
direct pain. To this class, which is obliged to
economise in every Way to retain its social position,
the In come-tax does not permit an adj •
ustment of ex-
pen &titre to means. Of almost every other tax the
thrifty housekeeper can modify the -operation. If

the " saccharine" part of this FIVE AND TWENTY
MILLIONS bill bears hard on the family expenditure,

she can retrench a little in her dealings with the
grocer, without exposing herself to her neighbours,
and so of the rest. The Income-tax almost alone
demands the "pound of flesh," and holds the un-
fortunate clerk or• little struggling tradesman mer-
cilessly to "the bond."

The taxation alike of precarious and permanent
incomes, though often ingeniously defended by some
mathematicians, is repudiated by the instincts of
all who have to earn their livelihood by the sweat
of their brow, or of what lies behind their brows. No
subtlety can persuade any man, with an income of
£5OO from professional efforts or trade, that he can
afford £lB 15s. towards PAKINGTON investments
in what turns out to be a useless navy, as well as
the man, whose £5OO a .year is exposed to no casu-
alties from external causes, from his own sickness,
or in case of his death, to none which interfere
with its retention by his widow and family. There
is also the crying injustice of the difference in the
number of persons the same income has to support.
The £5OO may
have to maintain a bachelor at lodg-
ings, or a family of a dozen, with perhaps aged
parents in addition. It may be, in fact, the income of
such a number of persons that, if fairly apportioned
to each, no tax could be demanded at all. Yet this
unrighteous tax regards not the claims on the in-
come, nor its nature, but simply its amount. The old
income-tax did take notice of the size of the family,
and large families were exempt altogether.
But on the injustice of a tax which the slightest
examination shows to be, though nominally equal,
yet the most unequal of all,we need not enlarge now.
Enough if we have shown it to be so different from
other taxes that it ought never to be confounded
with them. All taxes must have a measure of in-
equality, but inequality is the distinctive character
of the income-tax; an inequality which marks it
out as the tax for occasions when necessity makes
everything just. Let it, therefore, be kept separate.
Let it bear the mark of a proscribed infliction
awaiting an early extinction. Let us not wish to
inflict a very ungentlemanly revenge on the Lords,
jumble up things which differ, to our own disad-
vantage. The country is becoming alive to the
extravagance of its expenditure, and it must not
hoodwink itself, merely to vex the House of Lords.
If we are compelled to censure the manner in
which the Government has dealt with the income

tax, we may express our pleasure in its giving up
the very objectionable licence for private brewing.
Happily the great brewers themselves did not wish
to retain it. The revenue to be collected from it
was quite insignificant; not a pretext remained'
therefore, for what would certainly have been felt
as a vexatious impost.

There is the very double of " SmELL/PuNarrs"
low in London. It is surely the unpolitest of
visitors from the politest of nations that has come
over to this country at the time of our Great Exhi-
bition in the person of M. ALFRED Ass—pshaw !
how do you pronounce his name ?—ASSOLANT.
Monsieur is here just now it appears in the charac-
ter of Special Correspondent to the Courrier du
Dimanche. He has evidently,in a manner avowedly,
never before been in this metropolis. The capital
itself is new to him—nay, with the capital, Eng-
land and the English people together. Yet he has
scarcely been a fortnight in London, and behold he
knows all about us! He does so of course by a sort
of divine intuition. He cannot possibly write
from the fullness of his knowledge, of his observa-
tions, of his experiences. He has not had time for

superficial. It requires a travellerwith"tire noir,. oi
courage and reticence of a Doctor CORRIGAN to
write a book about Athens after a stay of exactly
' ten days under the shadow of the violet-crowned
• Acropolis. But then the pleasant gossiping Irish
▪ physicianwithgiving has
ofjottedhis
thus
suchveryrecently
frivolous memoranda, mingled incongruously in a
sort of literary Notch-potch, or olla podrida, or lob-
scouse, with notes archeological, geographical,
topographical, meteorological, and all sorts of other
" cals" of a sesquipedalian kind, Not thus modest,
however, is M. ASSOLANT.
A fortnight's stay in London enables him to
pronounce his opinions ex cathedra not simply
upon the general effect, or defect, or however
else we may express it, of our public streets and
of our public buildings. With the instinctive pe-
netration of genius he has already fathomed
the depth of our national character. He knows
all about us, we repeat, from beginning to end—so-
cially, politically, religiously, morally—irreligiously
and immorally, we ought rather perhaps to have
said—and all this by a lynx-eyed scrutiny of us
within a period of less than a fortnight. /t is won-
derful l Talk of clairvoyance, of the force of mes-
meric influence, of any spirit-rapping medium you
may care to mention—bah ! it is nothing to M. Ass
—what a difficulty there is about his name, to be
sure—to M. ASSOLANT ! He, with his magical
linsight, can look England and the English, London
and the Londoners, through and through at a
glance. He can bring everything in a twinkling
under the microscopic lens of a judgment most
accurate, searching, and profound—and, what is
more, a judgment, it should be said, altogether
infallible in its enunciations. Holding, as he does,
a mirror so clear in the sheen of its pellucidity up
beforein
it,
us—we
cannot but marvel to see ourselves
reflected alas ! with such frightful exactness !
It is a mercy that these severe reflections of M. As-
SOLANT come to our knowledge in May, and not in
the month supposed byFrenchmen, of M. ASSOLANT'S
abounding in formation to be devoted here in England
uicide—viz., November. Other-
to the purposes of S
wise the consequences might have been dreadful,
nay, might have told very alarmingly on our bills of
mortality. A diametrically opposite surprise to
1 that given to NARCISSUS—coming abruptly upon
the weak nerves of poor old JOHN BULL, might just
possibly
have incited the old gentleman to take an
unpremeditated "header" out of sheer desperation.
That is, we repeat,
if he had chanced to catch this
first horrifying
1 liar s e oo
f sno
himself
,
M. ASSOLANT'S lgulei at in
good
hfeo sr
tt
ur enaemhas
it, in the flowery and refreshing month of May, but as
ill luck might have had it, in that grimly, blue-
devil month—as Tosi HOOD sings of it—when we
have—

"No flowers, no trees, no fruit, no bees,
No sun, no warmth—November!"

Here is something, by the way—just a choice
tid bit, selected from M. ASSOLANT'S correspon-
dence from London in the Courrier du Dirnanche
—a pleasant little summary of our national pecu-
liarities, that will form for JOHN BULL, good,
honest man, a capital theme for quiet and whole-
some meditation. "The Englishman," says M.
ASSOLANT
, with ingenious frankness—[he knows
so much about Englishmen, remember!—been
here actually a fortnight !]—" The Englishman is
brutal, and tbat is his chief defect. The English
workman is far inferior in appearance—and also
perhaps in heart—to the French workman. Those
one sees in the streets look soured and brutalised
by ceaseless and hopeless misery. In France the
workman is a man who esteenvi himself, and
'feels himself respected. He is poor, but
always