The Sun.
London, England, 1853-04-23 00:00:00

TIMES" BUDGET.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE SUN.
SlR,—Unwillingness to appear jealous of a contem-
porary's good luck, or as he has expressed it, of " the
high favour of Heaven," very naturally softened your
criticisms upon that discreditable item in the budget,
the paltering with the advertisement duties, and the
remission of the stamp duty on advertising supplements.
Your readers are, however, fettered by no such delicacy,
and I trust you will insert the observations of one of
them, which occurred to his mind quite independently
of any remarks of yours.
It must be confessed that the Times has borne its
honours as meekly as could be expected. It very wisely
attributed the great boon conferred upon it, not to any
financial reasons; not to any consideration of advertisers,
though Mr. Gladstone was fain to suggest them ; not to
any desire to disseminate knowledge, the dogged deter-
mination to continue the stamp on news supplements
precluded that—but to a special Providence, which willed
that the wealthiest of journals should be wealthier still.
How could the favoured journal, "bathing in bliss,"
and suffused with gladness and gratitude—how could it
but feel that Heaven had smiled indeed ? It savours of
impiety to attribute vast and unexpected blessings to
mere human agency. Then a poor elector, the other
day, sitting between two canvassers, was asked if the
contents of a bit of paper lying near him would do,—
and on opening it found a 51. note, he exclaimed "stun-
ning ; " and no doubt such is the feeling and the reply
of the Times, " while it commends the Budget in mea-
sure," and Mr. Gladstone without measure. Indeed,
the thing is so gracefully managed, that were the leading
journal to be as firm as heretofore on the two
great questions it has so ably discussed—lncome Tax
Reform, and- the Rights of India—every reader be-
gin to tax it with ingratitude. Such kindly compro-
mises between what is due to its own dignity and to Mr.
Gladstone's " rare favour" as its article of Wednesday on
the Income Tax are felt by every one to be just the
thing. What can a newspaper emancipated from Supple-
ment duty do 1
GL.—Feci ex servo ut eases libertuF, mihi
Propterea quod serviebas liberaliter ;
Quod habui summum pretium, persolvis tibi.
memoria habeo. muto factum.
GAUDEO.
No, the Times must not, for decency's sake, henceforth
thwart the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Coalition
Ministry, nor, indeed, the ministry of which he is so
essential a part. it is Mr. Gladstone himself on whom
the whole blame must lie. And heavy altogether that
blame must lie. There is first the open and undignified
bribery. Nothing done by the Derby Ministry tran-
scends this. If they seduced electors to their side,
it was, at least, secretly. • W. B.'s. Morgan and safe
man had a darkened room, and Mr. Brown not a very cheer-
ful one under the Carlton Club-house ; but Mr. Gladstone
seduces the press openly " and in the face of the sun."
The Sun hints at 40,0001. I had taken the trouble to
calculate a little, and it turned out thus—that Id. on
40,000 supplements, amounted to 83/. 6s. Bd. per day,
to 5001. per week, and of course to 26,0001. per annum!
The double supplements now would amount to 4,0001. or
5,000/. more, and if they appear daily, as may well be
anticipated, the Gladstone bonus will be about 52,000/.
per annum in addition to profit on the advertisements !
This, however, is but a very defective illustra-
tion of the jobbery of the thing. These supplements are to
go post free. The Post-office is to be burdened with
this huge bulk—paying nothing, of course, in consider-
ation of the sixpence still paid on each advertisment.
paper containing nothing but taxed matter ought to go
free. Well, how does the account stand for the Heavenly
Chancellor ? Taking up a chance halfpenny supplement
or two, I find they contain, on an average, 800 adver-
tisements, and 800 sixpences make 400 shillings, and 400
shillings make 201. That is what the Post-office and
Mr. Gladstone get for carrying 40,000 halfpenny
supplements to the Times all over the country.
Now for the halfpenny stamp. 40,000 halfpence make
20,000 pence ; these make 1,6665. Bd., and this sum,
according to Cocker, comes to 83/. 6s. Bd. Deduct the
201. paid for the advertisements, and the Government
loses daily by this transaction 631. 6s. Bd., or 380/.
weekly, or 19,760/. yearly ; and if the supplements be,
as they most likely will, always double, then Mr. Glad-
stone proposes that the Post-office should carry the
Times' supplements at a clear loss of 39,520/. We say
clear loss, because the only plea now left for the penny
stamp is, that it is an equivalent for postage.
Mr. Gladstone, though, to be sure, no one believes him,
declares himself not opposed to the free circulation of
political news. How this is compatible with, first,
emancipating advertising supplements from stamps ;
secondly, continuing the stamp on news supplements;
thirdly, bringing in a bill to make the penny stamp tax
more stringent than at present—we at least cannot per-
ceive. Clearly Mr. Gladstone and the majority of his
colleagues are bitter enemies of cheap political knowledge.
It is not to be wondered at. The fewer who know of
such doings as the one before us the better for the doer.
Mr. Gladstone is the last man to be ignorant of what
every one of your readers knows, and what Mr. Cobden
reminded him of in the house, that the Times is the only
paper which publishes such supplements. His wish, how-
ever, was, not that they should overflow into other
journals, but that the immense mass of them should
flow in the present channel ; and his reason for wishing
that is plainly because he meant to make that
channel his own. Abolition of the duty, and re-
taining the stamp on supplements, or abolishing
the penny stamp entirely, would have thrown myriads
of advertisements into channels of political information
too numerous to be laid under obligation to the " high
favour of Heaven."
There seems to me, too, a bit of quiet spite in it to the
Manchester men. They have been labouring most dili-
gently in their vocation of freeing the Press from all
restrictions, especially to free- news from the penny
stamp. They have wanted to increase immensely the
circulation of other daily journals, and to create a penny
Press for the rural districts. They most wickedly carried,
by the aid of a late Chancellor, a motion for the entire
repeal of the advertisement duty. "There," says Mr. Glad-
stone, " take that for your pains—l'll teach you to set up po-
litical papers for rustics ; I'll teach you to give the other
daily papers a lift. Take that for it—l'll keep to my plan ;
I'll lower the duty enough to get a host of advertisements
for one journal. I'll take the stamp not off news, but
off advertising supplements ; and l'll sacrifice as much
to one journal in stamps as the remaining duty on ad-
vertisements will come to. Another time, gentlemen,
please not to anticipate my Budget." It really looks as
if he preferred throwing away some fifty or sixty thousand
pounds upon the Times, to giving the whole community and
the whole press the benefit of cheaper advertisements.
One inconsistency, moreover, remains as glaring as ever.
The column-long advertisements still pay the same duty
as the three or four lines of the poor servant girl or foot-
man. The worst inequality of all is not rectified.
Well, we do not deny that Mr. Gladstone is wise
in his generation. Many old statesmen before him
have known the advantage of " putting the pad-
lock on the mind." A noted one of antiquity bribed
the great oracle of Greece ; the oracle which sent its
leaders in hexameters over the whole then civilised
world. An orator was not wanting, however, to tell
the people of Greece that the Priestess Philippised, and
no doubt orators and journalists here will be ready
enough to coin a verb from the proper name of an
English statesman, and to apply it to the leading jour-
nal. We beg, meantime, to suggest to Mr. Gladstone
a new motto for his heraldic shield—Tempora mutantur
It will record the leading feat of his Chancellorship.

THE INCOME TAX.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SigN.

Sin,—Agreeing as I cordially do with the principles
of " Anglicus," would you allow me to suggest that he
hardly expresses his own wishes in advocating the abo-
lition of schedule D. In fact, schedule D includes a
vast deal of realised property invested in Bank, Railway,
and other stock. The part which relates to precarious
incomes would seem only to raise about half a million,
so that the apparent loss to the revenue would not be so
great as is supposed ;, but, in fact, there need be no loss
if the affair is properly managed. But schedule Bis
equally obnoxious as it affects industrial incomes, and
this is not a class matter at all, but one involving na-
tional honesty, and the constitution of society.
In fact, Sir, there are two different kinds of income

•
in this country, one only of which is a proper subject of
direct taxation--income derived without exertion from
capital, and income derived by exertion, which is, in
fact, part of the working expenses by which capital
is made profitable. Is it not absurd to tax not only
the proceeds and increase of capital, but also to tax
the means by which capital is made productive at all.
It is clogging the wheels of enterprise and industry to
do so, and, in fact, falling doubly on the capitalist-,,
though, to escape a present payment, he shuts his eyes
to the ultimate loss.
_ _

Sir, it has been suggested that, at any rate, instead of
the Chancellor of the Exchequer taking the backward
step of taxing incomes from 1001. to 1501., that he should
raise the same amount of money by allowing no exemp-
tions under schedule A and C, and on railway and other
stocks, which may be called realised property. This
would, at any rate, be thought an improvement, and
prevent many evasions, and great trouble and expense
in collection. May I beg the favour of your allowing
the suggestion to be made public, and perhaps some one
will take it up. If the income tax was thus carried for
one or two years, it would not be worse than before,
and by the time of its lapse, no Minister, it is to be
hoped, will dare propose it in its present state. A pro-
perty tax it must become if it is to be permanent, and
the country is to flourish and be fit for honest men to
live in it.—l am, Sir, your obedient servant,

The Panama Railroad, a most stupendous work, con-
sidering the excessively swampy nature of the country
over which it has been carried, has been completed as
far as Barbacoas (on the Chagres River), 26 miles dis-
tant from its terminus at .Aspinwall, on the Island of
Manzanillo, in Limon or Navy Bay ; the remaining por-
tion, from Barbacoas to Panama, 23 miles, has been
commenced ; at present, goods and passengers, after
leaving the railroad, are transferred to canoes, which are
poled up the river amidst numerous shoals, and against
rapids to Gorgona, in the dry, or Cruces, in the rainy
season; and from either of these places they are con-
veyed by mules to Panama, 21 'or 24 miles distant, over
a road (so called), the difficulties, obstructions and dangers
of which baffie description.—Cullen's Darien.
BURFORD'S PANORAMA, LEICESTER-SQUARE. - Their
Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales, Prince Alfred,
and the Princesses Royal Alice, Helena, and Louisa,
M attended b
Ry Colonel Grey, Lady Caroline Barrington,
adame owland, and Mr. Gibbs, honoured Mr.
Burford's panoranaas of Granada and the Alhambra,
Nineveh, and the Bernese Alps, with their presence
yesterday, and expressed themselves highly gratified
with the pictures. •

vertise,

(From the Morning Advertiser.)
In adverting, yesterday, to the ingenious device
resortedp to by Mr. Gladstone to purchase indirectly the
Tames support of himself and the Ministry of which
he is
a member, we promised to return to the subject. A
more discreditable piece of work was never done by any
Minister, than that which the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer has undertaken to perform in this affair. No
one for a moment doubts that the sole reason which has
induced him to propose the abolition of the stamp on
supplements to newspapers is to curry favour with the
Times. And, as if determined to make assurance doubly
sure that the Times, and the Times alone, should enjoy
the benefit of that abolition, he provides that the stamp
be only dispensed with where the supplements consist
exclusively of advertisements. Now, all the country
papers, without an exception, which were in the habit
of publishing supplements, invariably devoted a large
portion of those supplements to literature and to general
intelligence. They know that the bulk of their adver
tising patrons would not be satisfied if their advertise-
ments were inserted in the supplement, and consequently
they were obliged to publish a large proportion of these
announcements in the body of the paper. The conse-
quence has been, that they never had a sufficient num-
ber of adVertisements to fill a supplement, without intel-
ligence or literary matter.
But by this indecent pandering on the part of Mr.
Gladstone to the pecuniary interests of the Times, the
proprietors of provincial journals in the habit of pub-
lishing supplements, will henceforth be compelled either
not to publish any supplements at all, or to pay the
. stamp duty as at present. The Tones escape en-
tirely any such payment. With its large influx of adver-
tisements, it will be able at all times to escape the half-
penny stamp on the single sheet supplements, by
devoting the whole of it'to advertisements. Nor will it
have any difficulty in escaping the penny stamp when it
is thought desirable to publish a double supplement. It
has only to keep back a portion of its advertisements for
two or three days, to ensure a sufficiently great accumu-
lation of them to fill every part of a double sheet.
To see a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and one of the
most distinguished Ministers of the Crown, thus deliber-
ately playing into the hands of one public journal,
with
the manifest view of thereby indirectly purchasing its
support—and that journal, too, notoriously the most
unprincipled ever known in• the annals of the newspaper
press—is at once one of the most undignified and un-
seemly acts which a Minister of the Crown ever
descended to perform.
The Times has already shown how distinct has been
the understanding between Mr. Gladstone and itself in
this discreditable affair. With the same disgraceful dis-
regard of public principle and consistency which it is
ever so prompt to display when it has a private purpose
to serve, the Times, which hitherto, for months in suc-
cession, exhausted all its affluent vocabulary of invective
and denunciation in holding up to public condemnation
the iniquity and oppression of subjecting persons sub-
sisting on precarious incomes, to the same amount of
income tax as those whose means are derived from fixed
sources,—now turns round, and lauds to the echo a
budget which is based on the principle of not making any
difference between precarious and fixed incomes, and
which is to be perpetuated for seven years, We will
not ask whether inconsistency equally gross, and tergi-
versation equally glaring, were ever before exhibited,
because they have been exhibited a hundred times over
in the columns of the same journal ; but we do again
say, for the credit of our statesmen, that no man occupy-
ing a seat at the Cabinet Council ever performed a more
unworthy act than Mr. Gladstone has done, in the
plenitude of his anxiety to obtain the support of the
Times.

If this ignoble practice of pandering to that profli-
gate journal by persons high in public office, is to be
carried on much longer, the consequences to the country
will become of a very serious kind. The Times will
virtually become the great governing power in England.
Downing-street will no longer be the seat of the actual
Government. Printing-house-square will become the
seat of political power. Public affairs will be adminis-
tered in Puddledock. The editor of the Times will
virtually be the Prime Minister of this country. Lord
Aberdeen will only be so in name. And when the Times
has thus indirectly become the dictator of the course
which Ministere must adopt, we eau be at no loss to
infer the sort of administration of affairs to which the
country will have to submit.
The slavish feelings with which the Times is regarded
by the members of the Government, are everywhere
visible. It was only on Thursday last that Mr. James
Wilson, one of the Secretaries of the Treasury, made
repeated reference in his three hours' speech on Customs
reform, to the Morning Advertiser ; but for fear of
offending the Times, the hon. gentleman spoke of this
journal simply as. "a portion of the daily press." Within
the last few weeks we have published several articles im-
pugning the conduct of the Board of Customs. These
articles excited so much attention among the members of
that Board, owing to the gravity of the charges we pre-
ferred, and the minuteness of the information of which
we showed ourselves to be possessed, that the Customs
department felt bound to take notice of them. The
Secretary of the Board wrote two letters to us on the
subject, both of which we published, following them up
by the production of new inculpatory matter. To these
articles Mr. James Wilson felt it necessary to refer in
his speech in the House of Commons, but for fear of in-
curring the displeasure of the Times, the hon. gentleman
carefully abstained from mentioning the Morning Ad-
rby name. Could anything be more unworthy of
..ie members of a Ministry than to see them thus openly
-
bowing down, with the most abject servility, at the
, •

shrine of a public journal, and that the most mendacious
and most unprincipled paper which ever emanated
from the press of this or of any other country ?
The course which Mr. Gladstone means to pursue,
if permitted by Parliament, in reference to the Stamp
duty on newspaper supplements, ia calculated to give