The Sun.
London, England, 1854-03-17 00:00:00

We are now on the eve, almost on the morning,
of a war, and our brave sailors, and ere long our
brave soldiers, may any day be clearing or form-
ing for action. None can say how soon the lives
of our noble fellows may hang upon the direction
of a Russian shot, and the result of an important
battle depend upon one of those unforeseen cir-
cumstances, which minds like those of CESAR
himself and the first NAPOLEON attributed
to fate, but which we, with all rever-
ence and absolute freedom from superstition,
assign to PROVIDENCE. Our sailors in this
agree with us. Whatever their somewhat
boisterous vices, cold scepticism is not one of them.
That is the creed of a life spent among a machi-
nery which fosters an unnatural reliance cn human
skill. JACK, who has spent all his life amid ele-
ments which baffie all human calculation, is a firm
believer in the GOD who made him ; he likes to
quit harbour with the prayers of the Church; and
OD the midnight watch he has visitations of thought-
fulness which those who see him rampant on shore
would hardly believe. Roughly, too, as he can look
upon a Russian line-of-battle-ship, and recklessly as
he will dare a whole crew of knouted serfs at the
command to board, he has a tender place in his
JOHN BULL'S heart, and can use his weather-
worn sleeve to dash away a tear at some thoughts
of "the land, and those in it, he left behind him."
And, in the awful moments before the murderous
artillery begin to play on either side, when all is
ready, and the word of command alone wanting ;
and still more in the moments when,
wounded and fainting, perhaps, he hopes no
longer to revisit the home of his heart—at these
times he needs and prizes the hope that the GOD
of heaven is his friend.
Should he not know, then, that he goes into
this most righteous war, not only with HEAVEN'S
approval of his cause, but with his country's spe-
cial prayers to the LORD OF Hosts, to bless him in
the day of battle ? We have " kept our powder
dry"—we have used every means human skill, indus-
try, and foresight can think of ; we have provided
our warriors by land and by sea with the best
commissariat, and the most efficient medical aid ;
but, as we observed on Saturday, "the commence-
ment of a great war is not the appropriate time
for boasting or for exultation." No ; we have
rather to invoke solemnly the aid of that AL-
MIGHTY PROVIDENCE which will not ultinia;;ely for-
sake the trustful and the brave, though it may per-
mit occurrences which teach us our dependence.
We think we saw some question put to the Go-
vernment in one of the Houses of Parliament
respecting a day of humiliation and prayer.
Humiliation, as it is commonly understood, ap-
pears to us very inappropriate ; unless, indeed,
we confessed our sins in conniving at the past
wickedness of Russia, in Poland, Hungary, Cir-
cassia, indeed everywhere along a frontier built
up with the murdered liberties of free countries.
Otherwise, while it would ill become us to boast be-
fore the MOST HIGH, never before, not even when
Lord EXHOUTH bombarded Algerine pirates, have we
been engaged in a more righteous cause—one in
which, without a tinge of cant or hypocrisy, we
can take up Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S prayer, " May
HEAVEN defend the right!" Would it be unbe-
coming for Government to give the hint that a day
of prayer be appointed for the success of our arms ?
Christians of every denomination throughout Great
Britain would heartily and devoutly respond to it.
Thousands of hearts at home would be fervent on
behalf of brothers and husbands abroad, in whose
risks they are anxiously concerned ; and the
intelligence would rejoice the hearts of our
brave men as it reached them, that their
whole fatherland, by its spontaneous supplications,
had invoked for them the benediction of the GOD
OF BATTLES. We shall not have gone to heaven
before having done our utmost both to preserve
peace and to prepare for war. To have done so
previously would have been to incur justly the
rebuke which Lord PALMERSTON addressed to the
Edinburgh clergymen--not to do it now, might
equally argue both an overweening self-reliance,
and a neglect of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, which is not
right in itself, and which we might hereafter have
occasion to deplore.

The opposition of the Government to Mr.
FAGAN'S motion on Ministers' Money may be
characterised in a sentence. They defended the
worst exaction, of the worst establishment in
Europe, by the worst of arguments. After what
such a statesman as MACKINTOSH, such a historian
as MACAULAY, and such a poet as MOORE have said
or sung, to prove the Irish Establishment, as an
establishment, the most indefensible piece of reli-
gious tyranny in the world, is quite superfluous.
After the confessions of all parties as to the odious-
ness of a tax, first levied under an Act passed in
the godly and charitable times of CHARLES ll.
levied only upon eight large and chiefly Roman
Catholic towns—levied to pay the Ministers
of the Church who now revel, with little or no-
thing to do, in the endowments once belonging to
these very Catholics—the levy amounting, more-
over, to only 15,0001. per annum--after this it
were equally a work of supererogation to denounce
the tax itself. And then again, the absurd, the
childish argument by which it was defended—the
inviolability of Church property !---the inviola-
bility of an annual and hateful tax ; of a tax
the aboliton of which, even without a substitute,
no one would miss on the death of the present
recipients !—if this tax be inviolable property,
so is the Corporation coal tax in London, and
all the other most abhorred imposts of that anti-
quated body. As Sir JA.NIES MACKINTOSH long
ago observed, Church property has none of the
characteristics of private property ; it is purely
national, and has been and can be, dealt with by
the nation as it sees fit. Like the Annuity Tax
in Edinburgh, and Church Rates throughout
En ;laud, except that a vestry cau refuse the lat-

do not regret that there has been a more speedy
fulfilment of our predictions than even we our-
selves had contemplated. Looking on a Property
and Income Tax, equitably apportioned and fairly
levied, as the best possible tax for the community,
considering that its extinction would not merely
retard, but altogether prevent, the further develop-
ment of " free trade," or " unrestricted com-
petition,"

" The rose by any name will smell as sweet,"
and removing the burdens that unduly press on
industry, we rejoice at the early and unequivo-
cal evidence of the fallacy of the hopes so boldly
held forth by the Minister, and so credulously
indulged in by the people. Were it otherwise,
we could not hope to get rid of in toto, or even ma-
terially reduce, the tax on prudence, in the shape
of the stamps on fire, life, or marine insurances,
all of which, more especially the former, have
been decidedly condemned by public opinion.
We could not hope to get rid of the impedi-
ment to knowledge, which prevents the publica-
tion of cheap and wholesome food for the popular
mind, nor to remove the other innumerable evils
incidental to the heavy duties on paper—we
could not hope to adopt the judicious suggestions
of Mr. OLIVEIRA. for reducing the duties on the
light wines of France, by which the habits of
intemperance so deplorably prevalent in certain
districts, the evil which has been styled the
" English vice," may be gradually diminished
and ultimately removed, while the bonds, by
which we are united to our faithful and effi-
cient ally may be drawn closer and materially
strengthened. We cannot hope to remove the
stain of confiscation from our fiscal code by the
removal of the hop duties, or hope to see the
labourer drinking sound wholesome home-brewed
beer, made of untaxed malt, in the presence of
his family, and by the domestic hearth, in the
place of quaffing adulterated and drugged potions
in beer-shops, where bad habits may be engendered
and crime concocted. None of these blessings
can be hoped for if the Income and Property
Tax be extinguished, and extinguished it must
be unless rendered more equitable. Let fiscal
reformers, then, make a determined exertion. An
opportunity has very unexpectedly been offered,
which should not be wasted or misapplied. If a
vigorous and determined resistance be offered—if
honourable gentlemen act at all up to their pro-
fessions, Mr. GLADSTONE Must yield, and there
will be unalloyed joy and gratification throughout
the entire country.