The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-08 00:00:00

'THE SUN, s 'LONDON, TITES9AN EVENING, g, 1862.

to this moment trembling under the apprehension
that she may elude the little Monitor, and make a
deadly raid on the chipping of the great river. At
Fort Monroe they are also fearing lest she should
sally forth. and, de spite its artillery, destroy the
transport flotilla which has brought down
the army from Waohington, and the wooden
ships of war, tot). Cannot APCLELLAN
destroy this nest of danigers ? Can he not land on
the west of the fort, seize the town of Suffolk, but
a few miles off, on a railwaY, or march direct on the
dockyard from the shore ? It may seem presumptu-
ous in us, at this distance; and knowing the loca-
lities only from maps, to prescribe to Northern
generals—but all things show the military impor-
tance of the navy yard. The seizure of it by the
Virginians, its destruction, as far as practicable, by
the Federals when they found they could not help
it, and the use which has since been made of it by
the South, would all seem to show that it is the
first place the Federals should attack when they
can bring sufficient force to bear upon it. From the
sea they
be equallyeycouldn trostdog
onitl,anlandwards.
butdw airtsdefences could
hardly
We leave, however, one army congregating at
Fort Monroe, and another pounding away at Island
No. 10 on the Mississippi, which has already held
out for a fortnight, and glance a moment at the
politicians. Their progress is far from satisfac-
tory. The universal tax bill incurs as might have
been expected, universal censure. The cry raised so
vehemently a little while ago—,, Tax us"—seems
very much like the confessi3ns of frailty we all
are so ready to make, while we resent an individual
charge. When it is seen that nothing can be eaten,
drunk, or used indeed at all without first paying
a tax, Northern patriots begin to be disatisfled,
and the general dissatisfaction emboldens to com-
plaint. Hence while Congress is endeavouring to
weld and hammer the details of the bill into working
shape, Mr. Secretary CHASE is preparing another,
simpler in its details, which is intended to super-
sede it. Financially, at present the vast expendi-
ture of the Federal Government is sustained by the
issue of inconvertible paper.

As to the slavery question, it fares but poorly in
Congress. To the world-wide disgrace of the
American Goveanment, the little territory called
Columbia, over which the power of Congress is
uncontrolled, remains to this day a slave State !
A bill on the subject is before the Houses, but it
can make no way. The capital of republican govern-
ment refuses to be anything but a slave city ! And
now, while slavery is imperilling the Union, and
while the representatives of slave States are but
a small minority indeed, Congress yet hesitates to
declare its own littla territory—Free soil. The
PRESIDENT'S Compensation Resolution—proffering
pecuniary co-operation from the Federal Govern-
ment towards emancipation of the slaves, and in-
tended practically for the Border States—also
cannot quite get through the Senate. It will, we
hope, do so ; but at present it has only obtained a
favourable report from the Judiciary Committee of
the Senate. The great problem to be solved is this
—to end the war, and, much more, to insure a per-
manent Union when it is ended, slavery must be
gat rid of; but how is this to be done when-Ist,
the Southerns all cling to' the abomination as a
virtue; and when, 2dly, the whole North dislikes
free negroes, Never in history was a great crime
its own retribution, more obviously, than in the pun-
ishment new suffered by the Pharoahs of the North
and the South for their refusal to let the African
go free.

Mr. DISRAELI, last night, indulged the House of
Commons with one of his most brilliant, humorous,
and sarcastic invectives. The right honourable
gentleman spoke for two or three hours—the re-
port of his oration, if given in full, would occupy
four or five columns at least—the close of each
telling sentence was greeted alternately with ring-
ing cheers and with roars of laughter. And yet—
when all is said and done, when all is reported and
printed, when the cheers of the Opposition have
died away, and when they have all of them laughed
to their very heart's content—nothing at all comes
of it ! Absolutely nothing. There is no amend-
ment moved by the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer
with a view to converting—somehow or another—
into a pleasant little surplus the awkward little
no-surplus, the almost inevitable deficit with which
Mr. GLADSTONE finds himself compelled to begin
the new financial year. Mr. DISRAELI'S speech of
last evening is undoubtedly a witty speech.
Throughout it—there is not a moment's question of
this—he " has our MICHAEL CASSIO on the hip,"
and (as the saying is, too, and here literally) " with
a vengeance." For example, who is there amongst
us all—no matter how great admirers we may be
of Mr. GLADSTONE'S resplendent abilities as a
financier, and of his unrivalled genius as a rhetori-
cian—who is there amongst us all, Free Traders
though we be to the back-bone, advocates though
we are of financial as well as of political advance
in the way of judicious reforms, and of search-
ing and comprehensive retrenchments—who is there
amongst us all who can for a moment gainsay the 1
accuracy of any one of Mr. DISRAELI'S statements
here following? That the year of the French
Treaty, for example, left us with a deficiency of
£2,558,000 ! That the year of the abolished
Paper Duty, and of the dropped penny
on the Income-tax, resulted in a deficiency
of £1,164,000 ! That during those two financial
years last past, the year 1860-61 and the year
1861-62 other excesses of expenditure have been
brought to light to the comparatively trifling
additional amount of little over a quarter of a
million, of just £278,000! That altogether dur- ,
ing those two years, years during which, as Mr.
DISRAELI wickedly reminded the House, the present
Chancellor of the Exchquer had remained perfectly
master of the situation there had been a combined
deficit—in only two years, remember—of just as
nearly as possible £4,000,000! Of, in point of fact,
precisely one pound sterling short of it. A united
deficit of £3,999,0001 Well—granted all this. We
will meet the discomfort fully and unflinchingly face
to face. We will candidly weigh the late financial
doings of our gifted Chancellor of the
' Exchequer during 1860.61, and again during
1861-62—against that combined deficiency of
£4,000,000. Nay, we will follow Mr. GLADSTONE'S
formidable critic further in his argument, we will
throw into the same scale with these last two years'
deficit of £4,000,000, Mr. GLADSTONE'S temera-
rious anticipation of the national resources by a
further sum of £3,500,000 ! We will put the two
together, and will follow the direction of the ac-
cusing finger with which Mr. DISRAELI points to
this excess of expenditure over revenue dining
these two years, amounting collectively, he
takes a dreadful joy in reminding us, to the awful
sum of £7,500,000. Yet even then one
can't help remembering what the Leader of the
Opposition almost appears to lose sight of,
while laying bare these melancholy particulars
(known, by the way, already) of deficit upon de-
ficit, of resources forestalled again and again—
one can't for the life of one help remembering
too that simultaneously with these doings of Mr.
GLADSTONE upon the one hand, he has certainly
contrived upon the other—To open the flood-gates
of Commerce between England and France by
meaps of Mr. COBDEN'S Commercial Treaty ! To

drop within one year (1861-6`,) a penny of that
most odious of all the taxes, he taxes upon In-
comes, thereby relieving the Winn within each
subsequent financial year of, t the very lowest
computation, a round million Finally, he has
contrived again during the vey twelvemonth in
which the last wholesome remission was made
—he has boldly contrive!, by sweeping
away the whole of the paler duties, to re-
lieve the people of this counry from a burthen
of taxation annually amountiig to the sum of
£1,300,000. So that if we mint needs look at the
dark side of the picture, we mut at least, in simple
justice, lock also at the brightside of it. And cer-
tainly when we do—we seeas plainly as we can
see anything, that Mr. GLIDsToNE gives us a
Quid pro Quo. Besides which, it ought in reason
to be borne in mind at the sane moment, that while
there has during these las; two years been these
successive deficiencies, for )xample, in one of
£1,164,000, and in the othe of even £2,558,000,
there have been a positive dicrease in our annual
burdens, in the way of taxation, to the tune (within
the last year alone) of £2,400000. A remission of
taxes that we shall all have occasion henceforth
annually to rejoice in—amointing to £2,400,000
And all the while the resources, and therefore with
these resources the revenue aso of the country, can-
not by possibility fail to be ncreasingly benefitted
hereafter in all time to cone (so long as the two
countries maintain their present position of supre-
macy in Christendom) through the development of
the beneficent influences already beginning to be
exercised by the new Comnercial Treaty between
France and England.

When the applause and laughter which greeted
the brilliant and effective speech of the witty
Leader of the Opposition last evening in the House
of Commons had been entirely exhausted, when the
right hon. gentleman had resumed his seat amidst
the readily comprehensible cheers of his delighted
supporters—and of a House altogether exhilarated
by the radiant oratorical display it had just been
witnessing—it was impossible not to recognise at
once the futility of all thesa telling, and some of
them really damaging„ sarcasms, in the plain and
simple fact that they just led to absolutely Nothing.
Not a whisper of an amendment to be moved in
Committee by the Bight Hon. Leader of the
Opposition ! Not a hint of anything in the
faintest degree approaching what must surely
have been inevitable, as a matter of
duty, as a mere matter of course, if not one of
these apparently (every one of them) overwhelming
arguments were to be taken cum grano sails—
namely, a vote of want of confidence in her
MAJESTY'S Government. No. The upshot of it
all merely is this, that Mr. DISRAELI makes as
brilliant a speech as Le has delivered for many a
long day. His shaft flies—winged with eloquence,
glittering with sarcasn, pointed with wit—but it
falls blunted to the ground upon striking—even
this despised Budget ! And when we lift it up and
scrutinise it more closely, we find there is absolutely
no barb to it ; there is no barb of resolute " pur-
pose," steeped in the poison of a malicious " deter-
mination." The Leader of the Opposition has for
once fulfilled his intention when he has rallied his
Parliamentary forces around him to witness one of
his most brilliant displays as a sarcastic debater—
and at least to embitter the triumphs of his con-
fronting antagonist by the poignancy of his own
ridicule.

It is gratifying to notice that even France feels
compelled, for very shame, to move against the
Papal brigands. But a fortnight ago General
GOTON is reported to have reviewed some 5,000 of
these agents of ANTONELLI and FRANCIS 11., who,
after the review, broke up into small parties ; their
arms were despatched separately ; and they them-
selves made their way by mountain paths into Nea-
politan territory to find those leaders, who would
guide them to murder and plunder in the most
helpless villages. As soon as troops approach, these
wretches post off into the territory of his Holiness,
where, of course, they are safe. A large number
also were known to be plotting maritime descents
in Sicily and on the mainland, and they even pro-
posed to use the French port of Marseilles for their
attacks on the country of the EMPEROR'S neigh-
bour. The Italian Government was, however, well
prepared for them.
Yesterday, however, we had, so far as France is
concerned, better news. The French troops them-
selves are represented to have attacked the band of
the notorious robber and murderer CHIAVONI, to
have dispersed the men, and destroyed their huts.
They also intercepted a convoy of provisions sent
to the brigands. We can only hope that they will
have orders utterly to exterminate these scoundrels.
Although they are the licensed plunderers of
FRANCIS 11. and the POPE, they deserve no more
mercy than pirates at sea. Indeed, while France
assumes the military occupation of the residuary
States of the Church, by the law of nations she is
answerable for all military inroads from those of
neighbouring States. The French EMPEROR has
too long played this suspicious game. People have
come to doubt whether a NAPOLEON at Naples be
not his object. He must, therefore, either quit
Rome at once, or put down the brigands of the
Vatican.

It is but justice to the Spanish Government to
correct a mistake into which we -were led by earlier
Spanish papers. Later ones inform us that the
Government has behaved very differently from the
priests in regard to the prisoners in whom Sir
ROBERT PEEL and Lord CLARENDON have shown
so much interest. We stated on the first authority
that, on appeal to a higher court, their sentence of
seven years' labour in the galleys had been increased
to eleven years. Later journals inform us that
this was what the prosecutor, at the instigation of
the priests, demanded. Also that he demanded
banishment as their ultimate punishment, because
they were " guilty of apostacy in continuing Pro-
testants"—sentence to the galleys he demanded, for
their " trying to subvert the Roman Catholic reli-
gion in the country, by the propagation of Pro-
testant ideas." We are happy to learn now, how-
ever, from Spanish sources that " The Government
at Madrid have sent down orders to the Audiencia,'
in case they find the prisoners guilty, and sentence
them to punishment, to send up immediately to
Madrid a statement of the case, and for the prisoners
not to bo removed to the galleys until the
will of the Government be known. Some time
must still elapse before anything positive can be
known, as the prisoners have both to be defended
n writing Lad verbally ; but we may hope that the
meaning cf this order from Madrid is that the in-
ten the Spanish Government are favourable
tothese i
poor men."
ton sof
What Lord PALMERSTON said in the House of
Commons proves to be true to the letter. Both the
Spanish Prime Minister and the Duc DE MONT-
PENSIEit showed a spirit the reverse of that of the
Priest; Ho, as our readers have seen, has the best
portion of the Spanish Press; and in Franco it ap-
pears that M. THOUVENEL and M. Gutzur have
each taken
a deep and active interest in the matter.
But Priesteraft is just now the curse not only of
Spain, Italy bleeds beneath it, and even England
feels it at her popular elections. ngland

The
Duchess de Staepeole and Count de Stae-
poole have arrived at the London Hotel from Paris.

LATEST NEWS.

MADRID, APRIL 7.

The Governinnnt has a.ifain deco red that nothing
will change its firm determination to abstain from
any demonstration prejudicial to the independence
of Mexico.

MINISTERIAL CRISIS IN NOVA SCOTIA.
HALIFAX, MARcH 24.

A Ministerial crisis has been caused by the Oppo-
sition moving for a retrenchment of public salaries
instead of increased taxation.

The Ministers, however, gained a majority of

two.
The Opposition has demanded what course the
Government intends to take.
Mr. Howe, the Premier, gave an evasive reply.

BERLIN, APRIL 7.
The semi-official Allgenzeine Preussische (Stern)
Zeitung of to-day says :
"We learn that on the 10th inst., by order of
his Majesty, and in conformity with the views of
the Minister of War, a commission, composed of the
highest Generals in the service, will meet to con-
sider the possibility of effecting a further reduction
of the military budget. The President of the
Ministry and the Minister of War will take part in
the discussions.

" General Wrangel is to preside over the corn-

mission."

The same journal also states :

"We understand that not only the budget of
1862 will be laid before the Chamber in greater
detail than hitherto, but that the items of the bud-
get of 1863 in detail will also be submitted to the
Deputies, to obviate the inconvenience of the pre-
sent arrangement Mt, by t 1 Chamber tit 3 well as
by the Government.
" We believe, also, that no bills for new taxes
will be submitted to the approaching meeting of
the Chambers, but that the Government, on the
contrary, will endeavour, by economy, to provide
that, from July next, the increase of the income
tax by 25 per cent. shall no longer be required.
"Bills bearing, upon principles of importance will
not be brought before the Chambers during the sum-
mer session.

"Several bills upon changes in the tariff may be
expected.

"It is the intention of the Government to propose
extensive alleviations in the interests of the working
classes, bearing upon the price of the most necessary
articles of provisions, and including the total re-
peal of the taxes upon corn, and a considerable re-
auction of the import dues upon rice, cattle, and
meat. For the same reason a diminution of the
taxes on mining products may be expected, to con-
sist of a reduction of 1 per cent. annually for the
next three years, in order to support the iron trade
of Prussia against foreign competition,
" A bill will also be brought in to lower the
rate of postage upon letters circulating within the
country.
"A proposal is also under discussion to increase
the price of salt to its former rate, for the purpose of
raising a fund which shall be devoted to the aug-
mentation of the Prussian fleet."