The Sun.
London, England, 1854-08-10 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1854.

The Parliamentary Session now on the eve of
its close can only be compared to the twofold
military and maritime Campaign now necessarily
fast drawing towards a conclusion. They are
both—Session and Campaign—distinguished by
failure and fruitlessness. The Session is remark-
able for its abandoned measures. The Campaign
for its postponement of warlike operations. In
regard to each, there are glaring defalcations. In
reference to the Campaign, no attack on Cronstadt
and St. Petersburg, none upon the Crimea and
Sebastopol. In reference to the Session; no New
Reform Bill, no Oaths Bill, no Education Bill, no
diminution, but instead of that an increase, and
an enormous increase too, in the gross annual
amount of national expenditure. Instead of being
unable to continue its economic retrenchments, in-
deed, the country has been required to be more
than ever lavish in disbursing its superfluous cash
to the tune every year, while the war lasts, of
at least 10,000,0001. additional. Its exchequer
is fairly in the rut of extravagance—" spinning
down the groove," not of change, but of perpetually
increasing liability, leading down lower and lower
into the depths of a thriftless squandering. England
would appear, moreover, to have entered upon this
path per fas et nefas. Its continuance in it yet
awhile is no longer optional, but a need simply
compulsory. Nowhere are discoverable tokens of
any chance of the popular extrication from this
abyss of involvement—except by a yet more un-
stinted and. open-handed expenditure. Otherwise
—vestigia nulla retrorsum. The annual increase
of taxation to the amount of 10,000,0001. ster-
ling can only be removed, as a supplementary
burthen upon the country, by a generous applica-
tion of it to the purposes of the great war upon
the promotion of which the empire has adventured
—and by a readiness on the part of its citizens to
submit to any sacrifices that may yet further be
required for the purpose of forwarding those in-
terests and of vindicating those principles of
honour which, in every such crisis of a nation,
are known to be absolutely identical. At critical
junctures like the present, indeed—reason tells
us plainly enough that the true economy is alone
discoverable in a timely display of munificence.
It is not, consequently, because 10,000,0001.
have been added to the annual taxation of the
United Kingdom within the past few months,
that, therefore, we are disposed to look with
chagrin upon the session of 1854, regarding the
record of its proceedings with mingled sentiments
of pain and disappointment. Neither is it simply
because one of the most unjust taxes every -im-
posed upon a nation—the notorious and unpopular
Income Tax—has been blunderingly doubled, with-
out any effort being made to bring about the ad-
vantage of its more equitable distribution. It is
rather because, with the doubled Income Tax and
the increase of annual taxation by the sum of no
less than 10,000,0001. sterling, we have had—in-
ternally, in peace, no reforms—externally, in war,
no events conducive to the restoration of the
world's tranquillity.
Abandoned measures, ne-
glected schemes of improvement, postponed plans
of change for the better
—such are the par-
ticulars furnished this session
for the future
Legislature.
historian of the British
While
as to the war itself—the
war wruch is the
excuse for all these shortcoming--wha
t have we
to record but reviews, and balls, and banquets
the courtly incidents inaugurative nowadays of
ri
frittered away in reconnoit •
campaigns ng; and
blockades, and councils leading only to procrasti-
nation.
So that the Droll of the Press of Eng-
land can say with truth, in the August of 1854,
that the allied forces have no doubt " taken the
field," but that that is all they have taken ! As
the session closes in we must console ourselves as
best we may, for the abandonment of Reform, by
the doubling of the Income Tax, and solace our-
selves over the unusually wholesale Massacre of the
Innocents, by remembering that the Guilty also
have fallen iu the general butchery. As the cam-
paign lengthens out, we may soften our regrets
over the waning autumn and the approaching
winter, by the thought that the harvest in Eng-
land and France gives promise of unexpected
abundance—forgetting, if we can, the loss of the
Tiger, and the disaster at Sinope, and the exploit
-of the Russian Vla.dilnir.

Excepting in reference to the cordiality of the