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LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, APRIL 25, 1853.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

bers will feel disposed to look upon this proposed
new schedule of Customs duties as a thing of course
to be passed and settled upon some brief explana-
tion of a single principle or statement of practical
convenience expected to result; but this is not
the way in which the taxation of this country
ought to be regulated, and least, of all so
on the present occasion, when a main ground
for relieving many articles from taxation is
that the amount realised by the duty upon them
individually is small—as if a Customs duty on imp
ported goods were a separate tax laid upon each
article, and not a general duty levied upon what is
brought to market as merchandise, and passed
through the Custom-house for the purpose, with-
out reference to whether the cargo be what is called
an assorted one, consisting of a thousand strange
articles, which have never come before, and may
never come again, or be of. one commodity shipped
in bulk.

. .
tude of his gelierosity towards the Times, afford to
dispense with 50,0001. or 60,0001. yearly revenue,
he affects to be so hard driven -to make both ends
meet that he • cannot afford to part with all the
160,0001. revenue derived from the advertisement
duty. He is, he tells us; necessitated to oppose
the entire abolition of the advertisement duty from
financial considerations. He must retain at least
one-third of the amount —that is, one six Pence out
of the eighteenpencd.
Mr. Gladstone would never have dreamt of offer-
ing the Times a direct bribe for the support of his
Budget, or for its advocacy of any other measure,
in the success of which he might take a special in-
terest. Nor oa. the
,principle of giving the worst
of all characters his due, do we suppose our con-
temporary would accept a direct bribe, even if the
right hon. gentleman were so far to forget himself
as to offer it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer
is not the man to manage matters in any such
clumsy manner as that. He has hit on the right
sort of thing. He knows the Times full well. He
comprehends the genius of that journal. A more
ingenious device to accomplish his purpose could
not have been resorted to. He has purchased all
the support which the Times can give his financial
measures, and that journal is doing its best to get
him through his difficulties. ..
We presume the Chancellor of the Exchequer
does not take it for granted, •that the support of
the Times is to be given either to- him, m an indi-
vidual Minister, or to the Administration of which
he is a member, after the Budget has been carried.
We mistake the character of the right hon. gen-
tleman for shrewdness, and have over-estimated
his acquaintance with the journal whose services
he has bought, if he labours under any such im-
pression. He will find himself at fault if he has
any such notion. The Times is under no such mis-
conception. That journal does not regard the
future support of the Ministry in general, or any
measure of Mr. Gladstone in particular, as part of
the: bargain. That is not in the bond. Not at any
rate, according to the Times' reading of it.
Mr. Gladstone may, on the contrary, rest as-
sured that once the Times has received the amount
of the boon beyond the chance of recal, it will take
an early opportunity of turning round, and; for the
purpose of making a parade of pretended inde-
pendence, assail the right hon. gentleman and
his colleagues in the Cabinet, with unwonted fuly.
The moment the Budget has either been carried or
rejected, the Times will regard the compact as at
an end. It will consider that it has given all the
consideration-which it engaged to give for the abo-
lition of the stamp on supplements, and that it is
again free to return to its old habit of assailing all
and everybody. Mr. Gladstone has made a bad
bargain for his colleagues, should they remain in
office after the Budget has• been disposed of. The
Times will have no mercy on them after the terms
of the compact have been fulfilled.
The very fact of Mr. Gladstone having had re-
course to this discreditable expedient to purchase
the support of the Times, implied a consciousness
that his Budget was not such as would command
the approval of the country. Had the right hon.
gentleman felt satisfied in his own mind of the in-
trinsic merits of his measure, he would have had
confidence in its adoption by the house. In that
case it would not have been necessary to give a re-
taining fee to the Times, or to any other journal.
The hostility of the Thun.derer to a good measure
never yet has prevailed, and never will. The
honest part of the press would have given its
prompt and cordial support to an unexceptionable
Budget. And there would have been so strong an
expression of public feeling in its favour as would
have carried it triumphantly through the house.
But Mr. Gladstone evidently had no faith from the
first in his own financial scheme. He manifestly
anticipated an unwelcome reception to it by the
public, and has sought to neutralise that hostility
by a dishonourable bargain with the Times. Mr.
Gladstone never committed a greater error since
his first appearance on the stage of public life, and
before many months have passed away—very pro-
bably before many weeks have elapsed—the right
hon. gentleman will be convinced of the gigantic
mistake he has made. By putting the Times in a
position to acquire greater power and influence in
the country, he will find that he has only put into
the hands of our contemporary a lash wherewith
to scourge his own back. And most certainly
there will be a poetic justice which all must ad-
mire, should the right honourable gentleman be
the first to receive a practical proof of the in-
creased power for castigating those who have in-
incurred its displeasure, which, by this act of gross
and glaring favouritism, he has conferred on our
contemporary.

THE INCOME TAX.

(From the Morning Advertiser.)
When Lord John Russell made his unlucky mo-
tion on the income tax, he confessed its injustice,
declared that the ministers were incapable of reme-
dying it, and ended by proposing to add 2 per cent.
to the rate. The house barely tolerated his speech
and unanimously scouted the motion. Outside it
was said with much truth, that he had accused
the ministry, of which he formed a part, of ina-
bility and knavery in the same breath, and had
requested the house to allow them to enlarge the
injustice, and make it more conspicuous. No one
seemed to put the common sense question, why do
we pay men so many thousands a year who prefer
to do wrong, and are unable to do right ; and why
trust such people with any public business at all ?
The affairs of a nation are larger, but they are not
more difficult, than those of an attorney's office,
or a merchant's counting-house, where people who
are otherewise unfit for the place are discharged on
the spot, or choosing the unjust, are handed to the
policeman. Mr. Gladstone has given us the second
edition of Lord, John Russell. The statesman who
declared that little wisdom was required to govern
the world, formed his opinion from past and per-
sonal experience. The insuperable difficulty of
distinguishing between the precarious incomes of
professional and commercial men, and the rents of
land and houses, do not exist in the thing, but in
the men who prepare budgets. They belong to the
classes who are always favoured at the expense of
the industrious, skilful, and enterprising, among
whom no miraculous number of them have ever
been found. They stave off as long as they can,
what must inevitably come at last, that the land of
the country must, after its holiday of two centuries
return to its natural destination, and sustain, if not
as originally it did, the whole, but the chief bur-
den of supporting that Government by which its
holders are pretected and kept in possession. We
must now all bear equitable shares in taxation,
and whenever that principle •is admitted, funded
and real property of every description will be rated
in its just proportion.
The pretended difficulty has been solved a hun-
dred times in this and other journals, and in pam-
phlets, which cannot be enumerated. There is not
a knotty point in it. A river flows through our
neighbour's ground, and supplies him daily with
fish : our little garden cannot be watered unless
it rain. Is there no difference, and if there be,
who is so ignorant or stupid that he cannot estimate
the respective values of the two properties ? Why,
what Lord John Russell and Mr. Gladstone say
they cannot do, would be accomplished in half an
hour by an actuary's pupil of a year's standing.
Suppose, for the sake of familiar example, two
men of the age of 44 years, of whom one enjoys
50,0001. a year in the rent of real property, or his'
hold on the funded taxes, and the other, by dint
of study or labour, acquires a variable income,
which never exceeds the five hundredth part of
that sum. What is more easy to comprehend, than
the difference which this every day reality presents?
The value or expectation of life at all ages has been
accurately calculated for two centuries in every
country of Europe, and is daily and hourly acted
upon by insurance offices. Now freehold estates
often sell for 30 years' purchase ; but any other
term will serve for illustration. Apply this prin-
ciple to 2001. a year in certain and unchanging
rents, and let the chargeable income of a trade or
profession be estimated at the same amount. We
shall now have one invariable rate of taxation, and
thus one difficulty is gone, but the changeable and
the unchangeable income cannot be both valued at
thirty years' purchase. In nine cases out of ten
the latter is not worth three years'. We question
much whether it would ever be saleable, while for
the other the desire is universal. The yearly worth
of the land is 5 per cent., and more. At 44 years
the most general computation of the expectation of
life is 21 years. At 30 years' purchase the owner
of 2001. a year in rent would receive 3,074/. ; but
let the annuity of 2001. be sold at 21 years' pur-
chase, and he will get only 2,5641. Here we have
a real difference, and a mode of dealing with it
which has been in use among men of business and
the world time out of mind. The former should
not be taxed at less than 5 per cent., simply because
that it is true and market value. If the latter be
taxed at 2i per cent. it will be taxed one-fourth
more than it ought to be, for it would find no mar-
ket.

The main question of this night's debate is, how-
ever, of wide enough bearing to enlist all our
readers in the class of those personally concerned
in the issue, so as to deserve at present our exdu-
sife notice.

Mr. Gladstone has told the house that he looks
upon it to be impossible to assess this income tax
fairly upon the different classes at present subjected
to its influence. He lias given reasons irrefragable
for not adopting any of the schemes for this pur-
pose that have been put forth by actuaries and em-
pirics, and the conclusion he comes to is, that be-
cause it cannot be justly apportioned, it never
ought to be made a permanent item of the nation's
Budget. He asks Parliament, therefore, to con-
tinue the tax with a sliding-scale of decrement for
seven years, that is to 1660, when the Long An-
nuities will fall in, and leave available, as a sub-
stitute, some two or tbrw., million of aimual
revenue now applied to their payment, thus holding
out the prospect of the tax being then entirely dis-
pensed with.
Now,this would be very well if the public
could be brought to give implicit credit to a
Chancellor of Exchequer's promise of the prospec-
tive abandonment of any tax.; but, unfortunately,
in respect especially to this income tax, we have
had the experience of no less than four renewals,
notwithstanding that the tax was originally asked
by Sir Robert Peel as a temporary expedient for
three years. This prospect of getting rid of the'
tax in 1860 is something like what they call in the
East " a bill upon Paradise." It is a cheque
upon futurity which may or may not be hon-
oured when the time comes, according to the
circumstances or disposition of the bank to which
it may then be presented. This prospective, be-
nefit, however, is all that is held out to the public
as the inducement to submit, for seven more years,
to what is admitted to be an iniquitous tax, and
to bear, without murmur, further burthensome
imposts besides.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer makes much of
the relief granted to various classes by several of
his changes in the customs, excise, and assessed
taxes ; and some of these, doubtless, are just, and
wise, and beneficial. They must, however, and in
the committee they no doubt will, be examined in
detail. Let us confine ourselves first to 'his new
burthens. He subjects incomes from 100/. to 1501.
per annum to his income tax, from which they have
hitherto been unwisely exempted, and he tells the
clerks and small annuitants, who have to submit to
this mulct, that they can now better than ever bear
the impost, since they will get their tea and soap
cheaper, and may so make up for what they will
have to pay in hard cash out of their income.
Again, the Chancellor of the Exchequer subjects
Ireland to this tax, and very justly so.
But the unjustifiable part of the proposed method
of dealing with the income tax is the admitted bear-
ing of the measure upon the landed interest, and on
all who derive their income from land. The tax being
levied-
on the gross rent, and not self-assessed as
upon other incomes, is de'clared by Mr. Gladstone
to be equivalent to 9d. in the pound on those who
derive theirineomes from land, whereas other classes
pay only 6d. But the landed gentryare to have their
equivalent in a reduction of the assessed taxes on
horses and dogs. This is trifling with them, for these
taxes are but a small item, and will have been com-
pounded for in all cases where the rate would have
been onerous. The Chancellor of the Exchequer,
however, leaving this class subject to their tax, which
he rates at ninepence in the pound, has 'selected
them especially for a new and 'very grievous impost
in the shape of legacy and probate duty. This, be
it observed, is a tax payable on successions that
will impose the necessity of a forced sale or mort-
gage of part of every estate at each succession, with
all the costs and law charges of transfer. There is
no doubt that good arguments 'exist for subjecting
real property to the same taxation upon death-
successions as personal property invested in the
Three per Cents. or other stocks. The only rea-
son that we ever heard alleged for the distinction
is, that a heavy tax like ten per cent. on the gross
value, which is the legacy duty paid by a stranger
or distant relation, must necessarily involve a
forced sale of part of the property, which, in the
case of land, cannot be effected with the same
facility as the sale of stocks, so that, if enforced,
the tax would in course of time break up every
estate in the country. On this account the taxa-
tion of land, instead of being levied upon these
successions, has been raised in the shape of a heavy
stamp upon every mortgage, or sale, or lease, while
the transfer of personality is free of duty, and
entails no law expenses. Thus, both descriptions
of property have been considered to be placed
nearly on a par. Now, the Chancellor of the
-Exchequer proposes to lay the legacy and
probate duty upon landed property, without
relieving it of one iota of the taxation or law
charges to which it is subject, in the shape
of stamps and deeds upon every sale, mortgage,
lease, arc. ; and :this at the very time that he de-
clares the conviction that landholders are paying
ninepence in the pound ?compulsory income tax,
while other classes pay only sixpence. This speci-
men of Exchequers justice will, we doubt not, be
prominently put forward in the debate of this
evening. It requires only to be stated in order`to
make its impression, and, unless the Chancellor of
the Exchequer makes some modification of his
Budget to remove this palpable feature of injustice,
we think it very likely that the entire Budget will
be wrecked on this ground. A Peelite and a Free-
trader should have been particularly cautious not
to give to his first Budget the appearance of un-
merited harshness and ill-treatment of the class
which has looked upon free trade as the source of
its injuries and declared ruin.

Thus this mighty difficulty is dispelled with the
breath of a little common sense. The next of these
marvellously invented difficulties concerns ascer-
taining the age of the tradesman, lawyer, parson,
and author, four classes of infinitely more import-
ance and value to the world at large than the land
grubber. How is this to be done By precisely
the same means that have hitherto been taken to
ascertain the amount of income which is liable to
pay the income tax. It must be had from the very
same return to the tax gatherer, which has hereto-
fore only stated the income. ,
By this means, a tax of 5 per cent. upon all in-
come from lands, houses, funds, and other fixed
property, and 2 per cent. or less upon precarious
profits from personal exertion, would place a larger
sum at the disposal of Government than it has
hitherto raised in the shape of an income tax. It
will have the rare character of being v voucher for
the honesty of its imposers, but that may not be
deemed a recommendation. It may be objected
that false returns will be given of the age. No
doubt cases of that kind will occur. The fault is
inseperable from every plan which makes the payer
of a tax his own chooser, to a certain extent, of
what he will pay. The Government is already,
and must ever be, at the discretion and honour of
the contributors of taxes of this nature. Two re-
turns of the income tax and the number of persons
paying for different incomes, from 1501. to 50,0001.
a year, and upwards, are before us. They are the
years 1846 and 1847, and the gross amount is nearly
the same, or 51 millions, but there is a difference
in the classes and number of persons for which
births and immigrations will not account.
In 1846, there were 111,599 payers, and in 1847
they had increased to 147,664, exceeding the former
by 36,065. Allowing for neglect, mistakes, and
oversight, the Government must have been de-
frauded by not less than 33 or 34,000 false re-
turns. Now, the value of the property rated to
the income tax is stated thus, and the sums it
should yield at 3i per cent. are annexed:—
£ Interest on Tax.
Ownership 94,810,599
Occupation 43,145,786
Profits or Gain 64,344,835

WHOLESALE POISONING 1N " CONSECRATED

GROUND."

" Thou shalt do no murder," says the clergyman
every Sunday, repeating the commandment. All under
the church in which he speaks are vaults crammed to
the ceiling with putrefying corpses : another is, perhaps,
at that moment waiting to take its place among the dead
and deadly inhabitants of mother church's great store-
house of disease.

" The prayers of this congregation are desired for
two persons dangerously ill," says the clergyman. One
is a man in the last stage of typhus fever. He lives
in a house abutting on the "Church's Holy Ground."
This "holy ground ' is made up of the most tremen-
dious ingredients. That old garden of Attains, which
grew nothing but poisons, was an Eden of innocence
when compared to it. This garden that the church
cultivates, has for its soil mouldering coffins and
putrefying flesh ; its flowers are pestilence—the sexton
tends them by carefully digging and stirring up the
filthy ground. He had been shovelling about the
dead with unusual energy, and the man now dying of
fever breathed the polluted air than which arsenic
could not be more fatal. The other sick person,
about to leave this world, has lately been a mother ;
she had been to be churched, and in her delicate state
the fumes of the charnel-house below, reeking through
the cracks in the church floor, had blown upon her
as with the breath of an evil spirit, kindling up a
disease no medicine can cure. The clergyman ascends
the pulpit, talks of the uncertainty of life, the mysteri-
ous ways of Providence in shortening its duration ; but
he does not say a word about the duty of obeying God's
physical laws or the sin of neglecting them ; it never
strikes him that every one of his order who does not
strenuously protest against poisoning the living with his
"holy ground" is an accessary to murder, and will 'be
held guilty of no small share of the deaths that spring
from it. His service over, he visits the parents of a sick,
puny child—here again he has nothing to talk about but
the mystery of baptismal regeneration and supervenient
grace. He counsels the mother to bow meekly to thechas-
tening rod, and ascribes to Providence the sickness of her
child. He does not care about " carnal learning," or
the parish doctor could tell him that it is by a mur-
derous violation of the laws of Providence in keeping
up the abomination of his " holy ground" that this poor
child is afflicted, and that thousands are growing up
consumptive and scrofulous, a burden to themselves, a
grief to their friends, and an expense to the public, be-
cause his order has not done their duty and made the
metropolis ring with the duty of obedience to divine
physical law, wilfully to continue sinning against which
is a most serious breach of divine moral law. In fact,
with few exceptions—and all honour to them—the
clergy, with the bishops at their head, have been ever
the great stumbling blocks to this branch of sanitary re-
form. The people sicken and die—what matter ?—the
fees come in ! " Thy money perish with thee," would
have been the rebuke of a Christian apostle. Our
Church is very apostolic, but such rebukes are not
given.
The Surveyor of the Commissioner of City Sewers
tells the corporation that within the city the over-
crowded burial-grounds are made still more pestilential
by about 1,810 burials a-year. The Board of Health
published a cholera map of the metropolis ; the south
side of the river is ominously distinguished by an im-
mense smudge of blue, deepening in tint in proportion
to the mortality of the district. In the darkest spots the
Church's " holy ground " is still at full work cultivating
typhus fever with diabolical industry.
We have had months of rain saturating these " con-
secrated" spots with moisture, and soon may come
weeks of intense heat. Here will he a time for the
Church's horticulture ! The best medical authorities
tell us that if heat should come on, and we continue
digging and stirring up our graveyards for fresh inter-
ments, that we must have a season of fearful pes-
tilence—it may be cholera—it may be typhus—but
death will be busy reaping the Church's crop. Under
these circumstances, Mr. G. A. Walker is again pa-
triotically circulating notes of warning, and here and
there a solitary graveyard yields to his attacks but at
the slow rate we are progressing, another teeming har-
vest of plague and pestilence will be gathered in before
the trade of cultivating disease is stopped by our Legis-
lature. Thousands of lives and hundreds of
thousands
of pounds might be saved by timely action. Upol
who can stir in this movement, and who do not stn air, al
heavy load of blame shall rest, and chiefly upon that
part of the clergy who remain dumb dogs and will not
bark to secure the safety of their flocks. Let them
reflect upon these things the next time they utter the
words "Thou shalt do no murder."—From, tire Atlas of
Saturday.

THE TIMES' BRIBE-NEWSPAPER SUPPLE-

£202,301,210 £7,080,540

MENTS.

The tax in 1846 produced, instead of seven mil-
lions, no more than 5,603,4481., besides engender-
ing feelings of intense hostility in occupants and
other unfairly-taxed payers against the favoured
classes. That feeling ought always to be discou-
raged by a prudent Government, which certainly
ought to be wiser than those classes. It proves to
us that many false returns were made, and that
consequently the present is an immoral system in
promoting fraud. There can be but little deception,
and that not of much consequence, in obliging
people to return their age. If the owners are taxed
5 per cent., which is the market rate of the value
of their property when sold, the Government would
have 4,740,530/. ; and if the two others were taxed
2 per cent., which is more than they are worth, the
whole produce would be 6,890,3421., or 7,035,2471.
at 3 per cent., which would be as unfair as the pro-
posal to continue to excuse a few wealthy families
from paying their just proportion at the expense of
all the more useful members of the community, of
those, too, without whom there would be no Eng-
lish nation.

(From the Morning Advertiser.)
Mr. Milner Gibson, in his very able and lumi-
nous speech, when introducing his motion last year
in favour of the abolition of taxes on knowledge,
repeatedly declared, in the hearing of a full house,
that in the course of a few years, should matters
continue as they were, there would be no morning
papers except the Morning Advertiser and the
Times. We refer to the words of the right hon.
gentleman—words from which no member of the
Legislature expressed dissent—for the purpose of
showing, were that necessary, that in holding up
to condemnation the conduct of Mr. Gladstone, in
conferring a marked favour on the Times, we are
not speaking from any considerations which imme-
diately affect this journal. We speak on behalf of,
our struggling contemporaries, not our own. If
any favour were to be shown at all by the Govern-
ment to the daily press, it ought to have been to
those journals which are the weakest, and, conse-
quently, needed it the
on invests him, is most. Mr. Gladstone
thinks, or at least acts, differently. He is for
crushing those papers which are struggling, and
for giving greater strength to a journal which is
much too powerful already. A Minister of the
Crown who can make so objectionable a use of the
influence with which his position
wholly unworthy of thatppsition . A Minister has
no right to evince favouritism with regard to public
journals. Or, if he will have his favourite paper,
and his peculiar friendship for its proprietors, he
has, at least, no right to shower the patronage of
Government on that journal, to the serious injury
of all other papers. Mini•
sters ought, on the con-
trary, as Ministers, to encourage, by all the means
in their power, every legi▪ timate commercial enter-
prise.
But if the Chancellor of the Exchequer be inac-
cessible to considerations of this nature, there are
other considerations which ought to satisfy him of
the inexpediency of the notorious favouritism which
he is showing to the Times. By abolishing the
duty on newspaper supplements, the right hon.
gentleman gives up about 50,0001. of revenue per
annum. For the sake of conferring a favour on
the plain language, putting 20,0001.
or intor in
its pocket every. year, our present
chanoT.
o
of the Exchequer will also deprive ser-
vantscellor
of the means of getting situations through
advertisements in the public journals. He. 'will
also deprive trade of all the benefit which a liberal
amount of advertising never fails to produce to it.
And yet, though Mr. Gladstone can, in the plem-

We have only attempted to indicate the easy
mode of dealing with factitious difficulties when
placed in the hands of competent persons. The
rates are debateable subjects, but the amounts under
a just Government would be about what we have
indicated. A minister and a general who talk of
difficulties are not fit for their offices.

( From the Morning Post. )
To-night the House will sit to pass judgment and
sentence on Mr. Gladstone's Budget. There. are
sceovnesridaleip.aotiinonts
of
ff
theit which
andse serious
o uv
we
notice them because there are important princi▪
ples
House well
of Commons,
involved which we should be sorry to see adopted
without full 2-gument and consideration. The
Chancellor of Vie Exchequer, in the resolutions
which he has placed on the notice paper, has gi▪
ven
precedence to the changes he! proposes in the tariff
of Custom duties, but he has told the House that
he shall take the first vote upon the Property and
Income Tax. It is well that lie has made this ar-
rangement, for there are so many questions involved
in his proposed revision of the Customs tariff, that
we doubt if the House could come properly to a
vote upon that part of the scheme without consir
dering. .separat.ely, at least, each class of articles ;
but if it did. its duty, it would decide upon every
individual item of proposed new duty, which would
occupy at least a week in settling this one head of
the Budget. We dare say that many hon. mom"

In a case submitted on Friday to the Tribunal of
Commerce, it was again decided that a Frenchman can-
not
proceed against an Englishman, resident in France,
on bills of exchange given by him to another Englishman
in England, when such bills have not, before coming due,
been passed to the Frenchman in the regular course of
business.—Galignani.