The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-16 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY 16, 1862.

The country will not lose sight of Mr. GLAD-
STONE'S assertion, that if we could do with sixty-
five millions for our annual expenditure, we might
give up the Income-tax altogether. The sugges-
i on of the requisite retrenchment will surely set
many minds to work. Is it impracticable ? We have
a strong
suspicion that, under a vigorously econo-
mical Administration, the thing
might be done.
We see in our Indian
Empire what a happy
finan-
cial result has followed from dealing
vigorously
with the army, where it must be much more needed
than at home. Tax after tax is dropping away,
and the Income-tax itself down to two per cent.,
and levied only on the higher class of incomes.
Can nothing similar be done here ? No one asks
that the Empire should be weakened, but every
one now asks two thiegs—one, that we should not
waste our resources in such sheer mismanagement,
as Lord CLARENCE PAGET exposed so vigorously
when out of office ; and as Mr. COBDEN
illustrates so unanswerably in his " Three
Panics ;" the other, that we should not be
superfluously strong. If two thirds of our present
army and navy are an ample defence, the country
will, after all, think that another third is, as Mr.
DISRAELI said, supported not for moral influence,
but for moral terror. It cannot be denied that if
we merely made our island-home unassailable,
uuz
influence would be very great, as great as we need
wish, in the councils of the nations. Let our
colonits do a little more for themselves ; let our
peace establishment be equal to meeting that now
almost impossible thing—a surprise; and then, let
war come when it would, a very short time, indeed,
would turn out such a naval and military force as
none would attack with impunity.
But Mr. GLADSTONE'S fencing with Mr. HUB-
BARD suggests a second way of dispensing with
the Income-tax. Ingenious enough were the illus-
trations by which he sought to take off the edge
of Mr. HUBBARD'S main proposal. Mr. GLAD-
STONE knew that the distinction between preca-

rious and permanent incomes is undeniable. He
knew that the former could not bear the taxation
which the latter could ; and notwithstanding all
his ingenuity, and the necessities of his official
position, he could but confess that he retained his
opinion uttered nine years ago. That is, that even at
sevenpence in the pound, the Income-tax could not
be justified as a permanent part of the national reve-
nue, and that it was, of course, much less justifiable
at ninepence. With Mr. GLADSTONE'S scrupulous
conscientiousness he finds it now, as he found it
then, impossible to resist the evidence of its being
one of the most unequal, unjust taxes in existence,
and adapted only to great emergencies.
But we beg to suggest to Mr. GLADSTONE that
besides retrenchment, economy we should rather
say, of our expenditure, he has the resource of
honestly equalising our taxation. He wants five
millions in taxation ; if we get that, he says, we
might then dispense with the ten millions income
tax. He relies on the expenditure on taxed arti-
cles of consumption for recouping the rest, and
we have no doubt he is right. But if our aristocracy
will not give him economy, he should offer them
equality of taxation, which would either bring
them to their senses, or throw the burdens with
which they saddled the nation, equally on the
shoulders of the high and the humble. Five mil-
lions would soon be made by placing aristocratic
and plebeian taxation on a level. Thus, there is—
Firstly. The Legacy and Succession Duties.
These are calculated at so low a rate for real pro-
perty, for vast estates that go from father to son, to
maintain family, not national greatness, that if real
and other property were dealt with equally we
should have two minima there.
'Secondly. Probate Duties. Real property does
not pay these at all, It is one of the most unjust
and cruel differences between class and class which
our taxation now makes. At least two millions
would be provided by equalisation here.
Thirdly. There is the Land-tax. The assessment
has not been revised since the time of WILLIAM 111.
Landlords are actually paying on a value of their
property which has multiplied in many cases several
times over. It is not easy to say what the gain of
a fair assessment would be to the revenue, one or
two millions certainly.
Fourthly. It is not often noticed, but the fire
insurance duty is a duty in favour of the landed
aristocracy entirely. The possessors of all other
property are obliged to insure it against damage by
fire. Land cannot be damaged by fire; but that is
no reason why, like combustible property, it should
not pay the same tax of three shillings per cent. on
its value; that is, if the other kind of property pays
it. The amount would indeed be large, but not more
than fair. An estate worth XlOO,OOO would pay £l5O
a-year, and could afford it, as well as the manufac-
turers who insured one hundred thousand pounds'
worth of combustible property. Indeed, the land-
lords would still have the advantage, because they
would be spared an office premium in addition.
Probably not less than two or three millions would
come in from this source. As the matter stands,
the landed aristocracy gain every way ; for, besides
the self-exemption of land, they have exempted the
produce of their land. Farming stock pays no fire

insurance duty.
We will not, however, enlarge farther on the
subject at present. We only repeat that, if Mr.
GLADSTONE'S colleagues cannot economise down to
the sixty-five millions, which would save us the
ten millions income tax, he ought to ask them to
raise the other five millions by abolishing class
taxation.

A tempting cluster of cotton balls has just now
been dangled before the watering mouths of the
cotton growers of Jamaica by his Excellency Go-
v vs. uur DAD.Ltwo. Tho prospect held out to view
thereby is certainly as appetising and exhilarating
in its way as a game of cherry-bob could be to a
group of fruit-loving children. The good fortune
extended at no more (as it were) than arm's
length by Governor DARLING before the Jamaica
Cotton Company—is tolerably certain, we take it,
to be jumped at. And if the Company do but en-
deavour " with a will" to seize the gifts already
seemingly at this moment all but within their
reach—a perfectly new and far brighter Future
than any yet imagined will open up at once before
our home manufacturers. Abundant supplies of
the raw material—in that contingency—will have
a fair and reasonable chance enough of being
always accessible through the industry of our
own colonists. Cotton, the produce of free labour
upon the soil of our dominions, will—supposing
we are really not now grasping at a shadow—
rapidly spring up elsewhere than under the culture
of the poor African slaves, herded together for that
purpose in the tropical fields of the Confederates.
It appears simply that there has recently been
forwarded to the Jamaica Cotton Company a copy
of a certain Lecture recently delivered in what is
still, for courtesy's sake, called the United States,
by Mr. KENDAL, a cotton planter, in the northern
part of Maryland. The individual who has had
the consideration to transmit this remarkable docu-
ment--for remarkable it will soon enough be re-
cognised to be—being no other than his Excellency
Governor DARLING, the Governor of Jamaica.
Upon an examination of the argument put forth
by the lecturer in the paper thus brought via
Jamaica, under the notice of observant English-
men here at home, it appears that the whole pur-
port of it is to describe the Tree Cotton popularly
known as "Peruvian" but, botanically, as gosaypium
arborium. The trunk of the plant or tree itself
averaging a diameter of eight inches and an alti-
tude to the topmost twigs of some twenty feet
altogether. The pamphleteer, or rather the
lecturer we should say, further tells us in regard to
this cotton tree called tho ,i Ppruvian," that the
fruit or balls when arrived at a state of maturity
are about double the size of the ordinary herbacious
plant, looked to generally speaking for the bulk of
the cotton crops—twice the size, that is, of those
borne by the latter, wherever those shrubs approach
the colder latitudes. Yet though so much larger
these balls of the Peruvian contain a fibre that is
still firm, while the length of the staple is increased.
We are informed, moreover, in reference to the
Peruvian cotton tree, that " It is propagated either
from seed or cuttings,
an apple or peach orchard, and
and may
tbhee plantedfield
e roeuptp
eads
with cereals until the tree occupies the land." And
that
textensive English cotton-
" A sample of this cotton
pronounces it to be of excellent
hfuarsthbeeernit shownis r related
rttoeodn
oat
and the
descantingpeculiari-
ties
ofter describingfurathrbeorrlm
itself,
(inner of its
;leant particulars that ought to
.. r upon
no ft thhpemgojsrseypi
important
be born borne
cultivation, in
tmheinAdmienricraensPleeCtutr7;l;o; on to main.
tain that the culture of the tree by free labour,
that is ,in the colder climates for which this
cotton tree is found to be suitable, is likely,
if but properly conducted, to prove exceed-
ingly profitable. Wherever maize can be
grown, he insists, the Peruvian Cotton Tree
can be grown also—remuneratively ! Nay, this
experienced cotton planter, in the northern Farr
of Maryland, taking occasion to contrast the Cost
of free labour in the Federal States, with the
cost of slave labour in the Confederate States,
estimates that " the latter, including interest of