The Sun.
London, England, 1853-04-14 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, APRIL 14, 1853.

most wretched and illogical, as well as one-sided
and class-interest, speech we ever had the misfor-
tune to read. We transferred at the time the
able and triumphant critique upon it of a weekly
contemporary to our columns, and need not re-
enter into details just now ; but the upshot is
that Mr. GLADSTONE refused, by a set of argu-
ments little better than transparent* falsifications
or fallacies, to impose the same Legacy and Pro-
bate Duties on the property of the aristocracy as
are imposed on the property of the middle classes,
and that, notwithstanding, this simple equity would
enable him to do away with the Income Tax
altogether ! He openly refused to accept five or
six. millions a-year which the landlords escape en-
tirely, and indirectly more than justified charging
precarious incomes, we should say, full two mil-

_
lions too much to the Income Tax ; that is, as we
remarked at the outset, he upheld financial pro-
tection for the aristocracy to the amount of at
least six or seven millions yearly. _ _ _

Now, we do think the country would do wisely
to let such a CHANCELLOR, of the EXCHEQUER know
that it will not be trifled with. The most honest

thinkers freely speak out, that precarious incomes,
earned by the sweat of the head or the hands, are
no fit subject for taxation at all ; but all men, of
any pretensions to humanity, equity, and common
sense, demand at least that they shall be assessed
at a much lower rate. Mr. GLADSTONE, we take
it, if some of his colleagues have not a little more
sympathy with flesh and blood than he has, and
require him to deal with his fellow-mortals as men
and not as mathematical abstractions, will face out
the whole country, that 1501. from land, and 1501.
dependent on life and health, and a hundred
things beside, ought to be taxed alike. It is the
fault of the country if he be allowed to do this.
Let him not, however, presume, because the nation
may wait quietly till it hears what he has to say.
Traitorship to justice on the Income Tax will con-
jure up a storm whioh will certainly scatter far
and wide the feebly coherent materials of the pre-
sent Cabinet.
Not less stir ought to be made on the Legacy
and Probate Duties. Equalisation of these we
indeed conceive to be the key of fiscal ameliora-
tion. With five or six millions at the very least
secured, either the hateful and inquisitorial Income
Tax might be clean swept away, or all of those
baneful Excise duties, and taxes on knowledge
which so cramp manufacture, and hinder popular
education might be abolished—leaving, besides, a
handsome margin towards banishing the last rem-
nants of protection from our Tariff. We confess to '
have but little patience with the Minister who can
shamelessly defend such a monster abuse as the
exemption of real property from the duties in
question. The execrated Corn Laws were only
worse in their amount ; in point of favouritism
they could not be worse. Take a sample of these
landlord arrangements. These "farmers' friends"
have arranged that the value of a farmer's lease,
including outlay on improvements, his stock, crops,
implements of husbandry, furniture, and even
wearing apparel, must pay both duties, while the
owner of the land pays nothing. Houses built
on building leases pay both duties on their full
value, but the ground landlords pay nothing.
Houses, while they remain in the leaseholder's
hands, pay both duties ; as soon as the lease is out,
the immensely enriched landlord pays neither duty.
Land sold on lease at a pepper-corn rent, although
as good as freehold, pays both duties —it not
being an aristocratic tenure. Houses built by a
landlord on his own estate pay neither. Even
real property which is bequeathed to be sold,

though it pays Legacy Duty on the proceeds, pays
no Probate Duty, which averages nearly
as much as the Legacy Duty. This is
but a sample of the inexcusable one-
sidedness of these taxes—of the broad palpable
injustice, the rectification of which would immor-
talise the Coalition Budget, or any other, and re-
lieve the country so prodigiously, with hardly
the shadow of inconvenience to any one. For,
be it carefully borne in mind that, as we have
always maintained, a better tax than a tax on
successions to property cannot be. There is al-
ways money to pay it. It is money, too, for
which the recipients have neither toiled nor spun,
and they can well spare it. It is merely sacrificing
a part, as it were, of a lucky windfall. How differ-
ent to the demand of the Income-tax gatherer on the
exhausted, mortal, and precarious energies of the
professional man and tradesman ! An equitable,
not to be evaded, and adequate tax on what is
annually left by those who "rest from their la-
bours," might relieve, from some of their most
harassing imposts, those who yet " bear the heat
and toil of the day." Let the country remember,

and let the House of Commons be aware the coun-
try will remember, that Mr. BENJAMIN DISRAELI
has proposed a measure of Income-tax justice, and
as good as promised the greater boon of Legacy
and Probate Duty justice, and Mr. WILLIAM
EWART GLADSTONE may have to pay dear for it
if he superciliously ignore the really good part
of his predecessor's proposals.

Accounts from Melbourne vary so much that it
behoves all future immigrants to supply them-
selves, before starting from England for Australia,
with really reliable and authentic information.
Long ago the movement across the ocean to the
new world ought to have been immediately directed
by her MAJESTY'S Administration. The conse-
quence of the non-interference of our rulers
hitherto in this matter, we believe to have been,
in several instances, most disastrous. Exertions
should at length be adventured upon to prevent,
if possible, the repetition of these very avoidable
misfortunes. It would appear that perhaps the
most notable evil experienced by our fellow-coun-
' trymen on their arrival on the shores of the new
colony, is that of finding an extraordinary diffi-
culty in obtaining anything like a decent place of
habitation. Melbourne, especially, has been so
overrun with intended diggers and their families,
that the dwellings there have proved insufficient
to afford them accommodation. Crowds have been
consequently compelled to seek shelter under the
brambles, and under cart-tilts, and under temporary
sheds, and in tents, which have sprung up in all di-
rections, transforming the suburbs of the town into
an enormous encampment. Hence, and from the
unexpected inclemency of the weather, and the
now undeniable insalubrity of the climate, the
mortality has turned out to be alarming contrary
to all anticipation. WILLIAM HowITT has written
home, indeed, from a spot well known in those
quarters as the Ovens Diggings, informing his
friends, and through them the people of the
United Kingdom, that unfortunates there are
everywhere attacked by diseases too often fatal,
such as dysentery, cramp, influenza, and rheu-
matism. An assurance by no means surprising,
when we remember the discomfort to which these
poor wanderers are repeatedly subjected in a land
where the days are alternately remarkable for
broiling heat and for perfectly deluging thunder-
storms. Together with these sources of bodily
ailment must be borne in mind the severity of the
toil incurred by men wholly unaccustomed to
such continual and laborious exertions. As a
contributor to the Household Words of CHARLES
DroxreNs forcefully observed some time since, in a
rather discouraging paper descriptive of one of the
gold-fields, the work incumbent upon the diggers is
of a kind only to be gone through, without ill conse-
quences, by a navvy or a coalheaver. Yet, as-
suredly, we all of us know well enough that the
majority of those who have flocked across the
ocean to the southern El Dorado, has consisted by
no means of navvies and coalheavers. Rather
have they been respectable members of the middle-
class of society, habituated more to quill driving
than to the use of the spade and the mattock.
Gentlemen of education, who have striven vainly
to obtain at home any description of rational
employment, discouraged by frequent failure in
England they have hastened eagerly to break up
new ground (literally) in Australia. After scraping,
together enough money to purchase a moderate out-
fit, and to pay their passage in some sailing vessel
or steam-packet, they have disembarked at Mel-
bourne with scarcely sixpence left in their pockets,
with the humblest lodgings already occupied, with
provisions selling at an enormous price, and with
a terrible stretch of country between them and the
place of their destination. It must be recollected
that the Ovens Diggings already mentkned axe