The Sun.
London, England, 1853-04-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF

JOURNALS,

THE TIMES AND THE GOVERNMENT.
(From the Morning Herald.)
A discreditable sort of scuffle is going on in France
just now, touching the sale of one of the principal Pari-
sian newspapers. But what is this to the transaction
which is being carried on under our own eyes, in the
open, flagrant, undeniable prostitution of the foremost
London journal ; which is seen to deny and recant its
own principles, so far as it has any, and to support the
very opposite, in return for an enormous money-consi-
deration, remitted to it out of the Imperial Treasury ?
It is now little more than four months since the Times
newspaper wrote the following sentences :
" Such are the leading features of the new income tax
arrangement ; and although we think that in fairness a
greater difference should have been established between the
rates of taxation, still we give Mr. Disraeli credit for the
recognition of a sound principle, which, once introduced,
will render subsequent modifications easy. For many
years the red-tapists have denied either the justice of the
distinction, or the possibility of carrying it out in practice,
if the principle had been allowed. The Chancellor of the
Exchequer has admitted its justice, and is at least about
to test the possibility of carrying it out. He deserves all
commendation for the course he has pursued, and we may
congratulate him upon it the more heartily, that we have
been long struggling to obtain the result--struggling as
men will struggle when they know that the truth of the
principle they advocate will one day or another be acknow-
ledged. The thought strikes one over and over again, how
easy it would have been for the Whigs to do all this, and
to have gained a better hold on the respect and affection of
the country. But no—the self-satisfaction of a coterie was
too strong for the suggestions of sound policy, or the dic-
tates of justice."
Still later, on the 30th of December, the same paper
again recurred to the subject in the following terms :
" Thus, then, it appears that whatever ministry may
succeed to power, or whoever may administer the financial
department of Government, the claims of the sufferers
under the present unjust system of levying the income tax
can no longer be resisted. The principal saving clause in
Mr. Disraeli's Budget was his proposition for remedying in
a rough manner the inequalities of the present method of
levy. He did not. merely sigh over the injustice of the tax
and then do his utmost to perpetuate it, but he acknow-
ledged it, and endeavoured to introduce a practical mitiga-
tion. We presume that the great bulk of those gentlemen
who supported the late Government in the House of Com-
mons were prepared to vote in favour of their leader's
proposition fora modification of the income tax. At least
the members of Lord Derby's Cabinet are bound to give
their assistance to any future minister who may endeavour
to carry out their own views. When we turn to the other
great division of the house, we find as a fact, which has
been proved by the result of many parliamentary contests,
that the leading popular members who represent the feel-
ings and opinions of the great town constituencies have
always raised their voices against the present unjust system
of assessment under the income tax acts. The only dissen-
tients are the red-tapists, who see no further back than
yesterday and no further forward than to-morrow.
" But, now that the battle is fought and won—now that
we can very clearly discern that the sacrifice is no longer
needed—we ask that the unequal burden may at length be
removed from our shoulders. We have now purposely for-
borne to repeat, for the thousandth time, the arguments
which demonstrate the injustice of the present system.
They are as familiar to our readers as to ourselves ; they
are even acknowledged by the opponents of all propositions
fora review of the obnoxious tax. Even we admit that it
is impossible to have direct taxation without a certain
leaven of injustice. We only say, since injustice there
must be, let us have as little of it as possible.
Here we had, only the other day, loud vaunts of what
the Times had done—its struggles for a just principle,
its victory, and the final decision of the question in its
favour.

December, however, has passed away, and April suc-
ceeds. A new Chancellor of the Exchequer follows Mr.
Disraeli, and a new budget has to be opened. What be-
comes of the Times, and of its victory, now ?
Mr. Gladstone, in his speech of Monday last, trampled
upon a dozen of the boasted leaders of the Times—tore
them to atoms, and kicked them right and left.
The vaunted triumph, obtained under Mr. Disraeli, is
gone in a moment. The object for which the Times
professed to labour so earnestly, all through October and
November past, is now utterly frustrated : its "justice"
is declared to be injustice ; and that which it main-
tained to be "inevitable" is definitively denied—not for
an hour or a year only, but utterly and for ever.
How does the Times bear its disappointment ? Had
it ever been in earnest about the thing, it would have
been angry. Eut it never was in earnest, and accord-
ingly it eats the leek with the, most edifying and lamb-
like meekness. It not only accepts the new budget,
with the unmitigated income tax, calmly; but it even
declares the whole scheme to be a token of the special
favour of Heaven I
But is it possible that truckling so low and mean as
this can be submitted to in the full gaze of the British
public ? Is there no disguise, no pretext for submitting
to what was declared, only in December last, to be
gross injustice ? Yes, one wretched pretext, one bare-
faced sham, is attempted, under cover of which the
Times hopes to escape from utter contempt. It is said
that the-budget atones for the continuance of the unal-
tered income tax by promising its entire remission at the
end of seven years.
But who can be deluded by such a plea as this ? Did
any one ever imagine for a moment that the perpetuity
of the income tax was going to be proclaimed ?
Always, whenever that tax is named in Parliament,
its temporary character is invariably asserted. Sir
Robert Peel, when first proposing the tax, in 1842, de-
scribed it as intended to meet a present emergency ; and
asked for its enactment for only three years. Again
and again excuses have been found for renewing the
term of three years, or, sometimes, of renewing it for
one year only ; but in all cases, its speedy discontinu-
ance has been spoken of as near at hand.
No Chancellor of the Exchequer could have ven-
tured to take any other line than this. All the world
knew that Mr. Gladstone was only going to ask the
house to give one more short term to this tax. Some
expected it to be three years, some five. But when Mr.
Gladstone asks Parliament to renew a tax which has
already lived through eleven years, for seven years more,
he gives the clearest proof that he means nothing like its
discontinuance. In 1860 the tax will have lasted con-
tinuously for eighteen years. Will any man then ven-
ture to rise in Parliament and talk about the tax as a
temporary one ? A temporary impost, and yet lasting,
in time of peace, for nearly twenty years ! The idea is
simply absurd.
But, to return to the Times. This paper, after assert-
ing the gross injustice of the present income tax, and the
certainty of its immediate improvement, sees its efforts
all laughed at, and its demands treated with contempt.
Yet it kisses the hand which smites it ; and pronounces
a budget of injustice to be a token of the special favour
of Heaven. Why is all this ? The answer is obvious,
and it is one on which there can be no dispute.
Simultaneously with this celestial budget, there comes
forth an announcement that one particular remission
will take place in the stamp duties, of a character which
will benefit the Times newspaper largely, and which will
benefit scarcely any other creature. As the remission of
the stamp duty on advertising supplements had never
been asked or desired, there can be no mistake as to the
origin and cause of this singular step. It was a gratui-
tous gift to the Times—a gift which has been variously
estimated at 15,0001., 25,0001., and even at 40,0001.
a-year. The extasy of the Times with a budget thus
granted by the "special favour of Heaven," is now in-
telligible enough. But what are we to think of the
transaction generally ? A Minister would hesitate for a
long time before he ventured to give a newspaper a sum
of 100,0001. out of the Treasury, as the price of its sup-
port of the Government at a particular crisis. How is
it, then, that he can so coolly grant a boon which is
equal to ten times the capital of 100,0001., to a news-
paper whose views were known to be opposed to his
own, but who, on being promised such a gift, is instantly
converted to the belief that what it before pronounced to
be grossly unjust is, in fact, the very perfection of jus-
tice ? Will not such a boon and such a conversion, hap-
pening simultaneously, go down to posterity branded
with the indignant reproaches of some future Macaulay,
as proving that England in the nineteenth century, in
spite of its pretences to superior purity, could rival the ,
days of Walpole in grossness of corruption, and eclipse
the practices of America in the "management of the
press ?