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

(accomplished rhetorician of his age is altogether
precluded, in point of fact, from attempting any-
thing approaching even to a moderate display of
his great gifts of oratory, by the mere multiplicity
of the facts and figures which he has perforce to
enumerate and to classify with all the lucidity and
adroitness at his command—and this, not in his capa-
city as a master of debate, but as a skilled and prac-
tised Financier. Mr. GLADSTONE has perhaps never
acquitted himself, under these ordinarily bewildering
circumstances, with more consummate ability than
he did last evening. Listening to his melodious
voice overnight during all the hours that flitted by
whilst he explained the scheme of his new Budget, it
was, as a display of inimitable dexterity, agility, and
adroitness, like watching the rise and fall, hither
and thither, to and fro, of the glittering golden

loballs, thrown up singly and in shavers, and kept
in perpetual circulation, by one of thOse Flying
Jugglers, whirled upon a barebacked steed round
and round the arena of an equestrian amphitheatre.
Only once throughout the whole of his ex-
traordinary performance did our intellectual
Juggler fail to keep up the ball to every
one's satisfaction. And, already, by the casual
tumble of that misthrown bauble of 12s. 6d. nas so
effectually has there been worn away the flimsy
gilding from its surface, that we can hardly look
for its being permanently stored up for the next
year to come among the more costly items returned
to that great National Coffer, which is the official
juggling box of our Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Whether in retrospect or in anticipation the
financial survey taken by Mr. GLADSTONE yester-
day—now of the past twelvemonth, now of the
twelvemonth to come—was alike admirable both
for its lucidity and its comprehensiveness. He
found himself for once in that delightful and
enviable position for a Financier, when he can look
back upon the past year without a qualm, and
when he can look forward to the year immediately
about to ensue without one moment's trepidation.
Whithersoever he turned his glance, the view before
him, as a whole, was in the highest degree satisfac-
tory. It is remembered, of course, that Mr. GLAD-
sToNet3 estimated expenditure for the last year was
not to have exceeded £69,875,000—that estimated
expenditure being subsequently increased, however,
by supplementary grants, to the tune of £1,499,000
to a total estimated expenditure of £71,374,000.
It has eventually been seen, and that by necessity
only very recently, that the actual expenditure of
last year not having exceeded the sum in all of
£70,838,000—it follows that after all it was £536,000
less than the total estimated expenditure. Com-
pared with the year 1860-61, the expenditure of
which was £72,504,000, the decrease in 1861-62
was, consequently, £1,666,000. And the revenue
of the past year having amounted to £69,674,000,
there was left, of course., a deficiency of revenue to
meet the expenditure of £1,164,000. Deducting
p which BIM from, the amount of the supplemental
grants, £1,199,000, there resulted, as the Chancel-
lor of the Exchequer reminded the House yesterday,
A surplus of £335,000. A wonderful consideration
all this, beyond a doubt, if it be borne in mind that
within the year, leaving results of this kind before
us, we had deliberately foregone three im-
portant sources of revenue, thereby bring to
us within that single year a round sum of
£2,637,000. Upon this, however, we have our-
selves in these very columns within the last few
days commented at some length—drawing our own
conclusions from a careful analysis of the revenue
tables for the year and quarter last past—conclusions
in all important particulars fully corroborated by
what we must, of course, admit to be, the far more
minute and far more accurate analysis of the
revenue and expenditure for 1861-1862, as placed
before the House last evening by the Chancellor of
the Exchequer.

Turning his attention afterwards to the estimated
expenditure and the estimated income for the finan-
cial year now commencing, Mr. GLADSTONE set down
the former for the coming year, 1862-1863, at
£70,040,000, and the latter at £70,190,000. So that,
by this showing, there would remain aclear estimated
net surplus (if everything were left as it is) of just
£150,000. Not a large surplus certainly—but still
a surplus. It is in his mode of dealing with this
estimated surplus of £150,000, that lies the very
marrow of the new Budget. Shall any new
taxes be proposed ? Shall any old ones be abo-
lished P And, in either case—which ? There
are different interests, of course, always clamouring
for an exceptional consideration, at the hands of
the Government. There are, among others, demands
for the reduction of the Spirit Duties, an alteration
of S agar Duties, the Malt Credits, the minor charges
upon Imports and Exports, the Wine Duties, and
the Duty on Hops. All these interests, all these j
conflicting demands, to say nothing of many minor
ones unnamed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
Weighs very carefully and conscientiously in the
balance of his judgment. His ultimate deci- '•
sion, in regard to them -, all, he Carefully 1
and categorically announced yesterday, in what con-
stituted the very heart of his Financial Statement.
Having before him, then, this little estimated sur- '
plus of 1:150,000—Mr. GLADSTONE proposes to
reduce the now' complicated scales of the Wine
Duties to the simplicity of Two—one above, the
other below twenty-six degrees of spirit ! Mr.
GLADSTONE proposes, moreover-0 word of ioy to
the Agricultural Mind—to abolish the Hop Duties !
Finally, and while we areyet exulting in the exhila-
ration
of the
,pleasant run our Minister of Final(ce
has been giving us up hill and down dale through all
this forest of figures—there comes upon us all of a
sudden, like a horrid stitch in the side—that mise-
rable little compensative 12s. 6d.in the way of private
brewing licenses! Never was there in its way a more
ludicrous anti-climax. The House fairly groaned
as though it had been in labour, instead of the Bud-
get, when eat of that parturient mountain there
popped at last this ridiculous little mouse ! The
supplementary licenses to publicans previously
spoken of by Mr. GLADSTONE as among his arrange-
ments—supplementary spirit licenses designed for
the supplying of fairs—had given one the notion
before then of a sufficiently questionable ad-
vantage in the shape of a so-called improvement.
But the project of the private brewing license
for the sum of 12s. 6d.—just fairly beat every.
thing. Here it is, we cannot but think, that
Mr. GLADSTONE'S otherwise, wo repeat, really
admirable Budget, admits of a very judicious revi-
sion. And earnestly do we hope that, in regard to
this one particular at least, the House will deter-
mine in Committee to revise it. From his new
scale of the Wine Duties, Mr. GLADSTONE antici-
pates gaining within the year £15,800, while by
the substitution of the private brewing and sup-
plementary publicans' ' licenses for the old Hop
Duties,henceforth to he abolished, he expects to lose
within the year about £45,000. So that, striking
the balance at the end of these ingenious calcula-
-418, he
closes his scheme of a Budget for 1862-
1803
with an estimated loss of very.nearly £30,000
sterling.
requisite
Further 'space and time, of course, aro
fora more minute examination of these
projects new financial -
of the CHANCELLOR of the
EXCHEQUER, But
dy we can appreciate the
alrea
true value of the Budg
et laid by him before the ,
Douse of Commons last pu, laid,
petty •
N lalng—reTnembering as
Awing licenses for
its solitary . flaw the

private houses, and as its distinguishing merit the
total abolition at last of the old vexatious Duties

upon Hops.

Along the whole line between the Northern and
Southern armies in America, the great struggle now
is either at its height, or the troops on both sides
are marching and moving for real conflict. It is
not easy, at any time, to convey a clear notion of
military movements to readers who have not
a map either in their memories, or before their
eyes ; and it is said that no one thoroughly com-
prehends a battle who has not, at least, seen the
field on which it was fought. Yet we have all of
us by this time probably become proficients enough
in American geography to follow the principal
movements of the Federals and Confederates
They are becoming now of daily increasing inte-
rest ; indeed, while we write, the news of a great
victory or a great defeat of the North may be on its
way to Queensiown, and may materially alter what
must now stand as the last description. The South
is calling up its troops from the defence df the Gulf
of Mexico, to do what it can on the Missiesippi for
the salvation of New Orleans, and,North and South
seem to be marching to the attack and defence of
Norfolk Navy-yard, and of Richmond.
Let the reader begin his survey in the great Bay
of Chesapeake—let him take his stand on Fort
Monroe, which he will remember that the Federals
have held firmly from the beginning. Across
Hampton Roads, southwards, he sees the Creek on
which stands the Confederate Navy Yard, and to
which the Merrimac has retired for the present—
the little Monitor lying on the watch for her. To
his right he sees the large estuary of Jo.race Rivcr
coming down from Richmond and the North West
of Virginia. Behind him are three large estuaries
of rivers running parallel to that of James' River,
and, like it, pouring their contents into Bay of
Chesapeake ; they are the York River, the Rappa-
hannock, and, lastly, the Potomac itself. We men-
tion them because the rivers, and the long penin-
sulas between their roughly-parallel streams, seem
likely to become the seat of severe conflicts. Mr.
RUSSELL even gives what he conjectures to be
the probable mode in which the Federals will use
the peninsula between the James and the York
Rivers for a direct attack on Richmond.

It is this district, then, which is likely to be-
come the locality of the grand struggle in Vir-
ginia. Manassas, in front of Washington, is aban-
doned. But Manassas is not the best or direct
military road to Richmond. And Washington
being no longer threatened, M'CLELLAN seems to
intend commencing operations lower doivn the
Potomac. From Acquia Creek the rail runs direct
to Richmond, and the distance from the river is
much less. But whether he will operate from
thence, or from Fort Monroe along the peninsula
between the rivers James and YOrk, or from both,
remains to be seen. When the last accounts
arrived his movements looked like an advance from
the east on Richmond, and the Confederates were
massing their troops in the same part, and leaving
the line of the Rappahannock, the next river to the
Potomac, on which they were at first to have taken
their stand. Thus, as I%I`4ELLAN seems to be
under a political necessity of fighting ; as the
Southerners are under the necessity of defending
Richmond, and the Norfolk navy yard too ; and as
their forces in that part are still numerous, it seems
scarcely possible that the decisive battle of which
M'CLELLAN speaks in his proclamation should be
long evaded. It will surely be a battle fiercely
fought.

In the centre of the line between the two hostile
parties of the country, from Western Virginia and
all through Kentucky there is nothing important
doing. FREAIONT is again intrusted with a com-
mand, that of the army. in Western Virginia. But
when we come to the Missisippi, we find both
parties again putting forth all their strength,
and the conflict raging on both sides of the
river. The great Border Slave State of
Missouri, is now quite cleared of rebels, by
the victories which have driven them, even some
way into Arkansas, and by the evacuation of New
Madrid ; the last place was left quite in a panic,
guns, stores, and ammunition, of the greatest value
in the South, being all left behind. At the moment
when the last telegram reached Halifax the Con-
federate troops were making a determined stand on
a strongly-fortified island lower down; the means
of resistance in men and guns seemed to be great,
but the Federals appeared to be having the best of
it, having silenced one battery at that time, and
dismounted a gnn on the island. The Confederates
appear, however, to be mustering the scattered
remnants of their forces in Tennessee : and BEAU-
REGARD, speaking from Jackson, a town in that
State not far from the Mississippi, calls on the
Governor of Louisiana to send him 5,000 men, and
proclaims that he will accept all recruits who offer
[ themselves for ninety days. He therefore looks
forward to some months' work yet. There must
also be a large body of troops somewhere in
Southern Tennessee awaiting or facing General
I GRANT; the reassembled remains of those whom he
drove from Fort Donnelson and Nashville, increased
by those who have been called away from the de-
fence of Pensacola, on the Gulf of Mexico.
Those who will trouble themselves to peruse
this sketch will see that, while the North is
victorious in actual conflict in the West,
and though it is superior in numbers and
equipment on the Potomac, still, as has been so
often observed, if the South be really- determined,
its subjugation will yet be no easy task. Wherever
they get them from, the Southerns find both email
arms of some kind and a good supply of artillery.
Their numbers in the field appear to be only second
to those of the North, and the country must be
infinitely easier to defend, than for a foe to invade,
bringing his supplies wit) him. How far the
resistance to the North is the work of politicans or
the inspiration of the people, we have at present
but scanty means of knowing. The rooted aversion
of the North to the poor negroes has immensely
increased the difficulty of its task. The negroes,
with too good reason, believe that coloured freemen
among Northerns have a lot but few degrees better
than that of slaves in the better parts of the South.
The President's resolutions on the purchase of negro
freedom may gain the Border States for the North,
though at the first mention of the subject their
representatives do not like it ; but, on the whole,
the negroes aro a great help in the war, leaving the
whites free to fight. Should therefore the spirit of
the South be really unconquerable, even now the
issue would be difficult to foresee.

We shall all agree that, for a Minister, the Duke
of SOMERSET'S speech last night was a candid one.
He, properly enough, showed with what limitations
the lesson taught us by the Monitor must be taken.
We readily admit all these—the Monitor does lie so
low in the water—our readers saw that yesterday
—that the shot of the Merrimac might well pass
over her, as the shot of the huge Spanish man-of-
war did over the smaller vessel of Lord DUNDONALD.
But the shot did not all pass over her ; for the turret
was handsomely battered, and that was probably the
only part really aimed at by the Merrimac. It is
certain, a!so, that the Merrimac did not silence
Fort Monroe, probably could not, if she had tried.,
But that was little to the vurpooe, The point is, 1