The Sun.
London, England, 1831-02-14 00:00:00

kg up of the meeting; and Lord Althorp, in hi;
perplexing and pitiable situation, had only to re-
quuest the early attendance of the friends of Mini-
sters in the House of Commons this day, when he
hoped to be able to submit some new proposition to
Parliament. We hope the true friends of the
people, ;and those who alone understand the real in-
terests of the country, will not fail on their part to
give due attendance on this occasion. The prin-
ciples upon which the Administration of Earl Grey
have proceeded in framing their financial arrange-
ments are evidently the following :-
1. Blind attachment, or abject servility, to Foreign
Revolutionary Governments merely as such.
2. Enmity to the colonial interests of Great Britain.
3. A determination to violate public faith, as a prepa-
ratory step to sponging off the National Debt.

(1.) In the alteration of the wine duties we see an un-
eluivocal proof of the attachment and servility of Earl
Grey's Administration towarila the revolutionary Govern-
ment of France, for which indeed we were already pre-
pared by the previous language of that Minister and seve-
ral of his colleagues. Every consideration of policy,
justice, and humanity, requires that there should be a
permanent distinction of duty in favour of Portuguese in
comparison with French wine. The settled, and, so far
as has yet appeared, the unalterable policy of France, is
to impede and repel commercial intercourse with Eng-
land. That of Portugal has been, and is, to fester
and promote such intercourse. The wine of Portugal
is consumed by the middle classes principally, and by
the lower, fur medicinal purposes, almost exclusively,
while French wine is a luxury, the taste for which
is confined to the higher orders of society. The French
wines besides, for which there is any demand in Eng-
land, are originally more costly than Port wine, and
the nominal equality of duty which it is proposed to esta-
blish is therefore in reality unfair and unequal. All this
is so plain and reasonable, that Ministers cannot have over-
looked it. Their arrangement of the duties loudly he-
speaks a partiaity to France, for which no other reason
can be given than that which their uniform language war-
rants us in assigning, their infatuated fondness for every
thing that bears the name and impress of revolution. -
(4.) 4ntnity to the Colonies of Great Britain is evinced
ley equalizing, as it is falsely pretended, the duty upon
French and Portuguese wines with that which is the growth
of the Cape of Goop Hope. This equal duty is in truth
an ad valorem duty, twice as heavy upon Cape as that to
be imposed upon Portuguese, and at the very least three
times as heavy as that henceforth to be collected upon
French wines. It will at once annihilate this production
of one of oqr improving colonies, upon which, in the
firm faith of :Parliamentary protection, immense capi-
tals have been expended. The same spirit is displayed
towards Canada in the alteration of the duties upon timber,
the increased duties, he it remarked, upon an article of
raw produce, upon which much British industry is em-
ployed. This preposterous increase of duty displays in
very strong light the spirit by which the Administration is
actuated towards the colonial interest of Great Britain.
The increase of duty upon foreign timber is eleven per
cent. ; that upon the timber, the staple of a British colony,
is one hundred per cent,
(3.) That an ulterior object is in view in the limited
and partial inroad upon public faith proposed by the Chan-
e lior of the Exchequer is a supposition necessary to rescue
the Administration from the charge of folly and stupidity
altogether without example. Would any set of men
not absolute idiots, for the sake of 800,000/. a year
in a revenue of fifty millions, attempt to violate the
express terms of the solemn contracts embodied in an un-
v trying series of Acts of Parliament, which have been
made on behalf of the nation with the public creditor ?
Could any but an absolute idiot dream that it was worth
while io provide a substitute for the coal duty, by a mea-
sure of which the effect must at least be to agitate with
great and not chimerical alarm the possessors of pro-
perty amounting to eight hundred millions of money ?
Would any other than such a person have conceived
the insane project of attaining so insignificant an end,
by clogging with a tax the transfers of this immense
mass of property, the value of which, as estimated
both by Englishmen and foreigners, the facility of
transfer, has always bsen a most important element ?
Would any other have sought to relieve the burdened in-
dustry of the country, by a repeal of any taxes, however
objectionable, to the amount of 800,0001. a year, intend-
ing to supply the deficiency of revenue thus created by a
measure attended even with the risk of driving capital, the
means of employing industry, in large masses out of the
country, and of rendering the capital which remains less
effective, by disturbing the wholesome reciprocal action of
the mercantile and the money markets, and depriving
merchants of an easy mode of securing temporary invest-
ment ? This degree of idiotcy is far beyond the boundsof
rational superstition. A project of confiscation more ex-
tensive than they announce, the Ministers must have.
They could never, rash and incapable as they are, hays de-
termined to encounter consequences so fearful for an object
so small. This view of the subject is confirmed indeed by the
arguments they offer in support of this their initiatory pro.
ceeding. There is not one of these arguments that would not
serve as well to justify a tax of five, ten, twenty, or fifty per
cent.on the transfers cf funded property as the proposed.duty
of one-hell per cent. Their main argument, the precedent
of Mr. Pitt's income tax for instance, is silly and inap.
pliable, and would plainly go as far in vindication of a
transfer duty of 10/. as of ten shillings. Ce n'est que lc
premier ims qui coute. Let them establish their point
now, and all the rest will be easy enough. The income
tax affected the fundbolders; the legacy duty now touches
funded property, when it is tranferred in consequence of
death; but the important distinctions between both of
these and the present project is, that by the former the
fundholders are identified and amalgamated with all other
classes of proprietors in the kingdom, •and by the latter
they are singled out as a distinct and separate class ; that
the former was not, and the latter is, an express viola-
tion of the contract, which is the title of the fundholder to
the whole of his property.
The presentation of such a project by any Mis
nistry to the British House of Commons is in itself,
and independently of its success, a fatal wound to
the public credit of the nation, unless it be irnme.
diately healed by the ignominious dismissal from
office of its contrivers. In the proposed reduction
of taxes, that project which at first sight appears
most equitable and beneficial—we allude to the duty
on sea-borne coals—will on mature consideration be
seen to be open to serious objection, it is said that
the tax upon sea.borne coal is an unequal, oppres-
sive, and bad tax. Nobody doubts it. But does any
body doubt that there are many other taxes, the re-
peal of which would have afforded, at this period of
general distress, more general and beneficial relief?
The coal tax is a very old tax—so old that the rate
of wages and all the other important circumstances
of society in the districts upon which it operated,
were assimilated to it. The repeal of it is there.
fore to be considered less as the removal of an
unfair and unequal burden than as the grant of a
partial boon t© particular districts of the country.
Why, it may fairly be asked, when one part of the
country is crying out for relief as loudly as another,
should it be granted peculiarly and almost exclu-
siVely to the inhabitants of the southern division of
the kingdom ? Why should Middlesex and the adja,
cent counties be the special objects of Government
favour, while the counties of York, Lancaster, Nor-
thumberland, Durham, and Cumberland, are coMparn"
tively neglected? The repeal ofthe assessed taxes,of the
malt tax, of the hop duty, would have been wholly
free from this charge of partiality. One certain
effect of the repeal of the coal tax will be an un-
mixed evil—that of collecting an immense manu-
facturing population around the seat of Govern-
ment, and this to the prejudice of the present chief
scenes of manufacturing industry. Neither can it
be hoped that the public will derive from the re-
peal of this tax an advantage corresponding with the
sacrifice of revenue on the part of Government.
There is, and in the very nature of things there must
always be, a combination, tacit or express, an.lopg
the grunt coal:-owners, not a very numerous body, to
regulate the supply 4',0 as to keep the article at an
average price profitable to themselves. With this
power in their hands—a power which they do not
deny that they habitually exercise—it would be idle
to doubt that a consideral;le share of the tax remit-
ted by Government will go, not to relieve the pub-
lic, bat to swell the profits of the coal-owners.
1
When these various considerations are duly weighed,
we think it w!ll appear that the coal tax is not one
of the first, but one of the last, taxes which an
equitable and an enlightened Government would
have remitted.—Morning Post.
The nature of the discount on newspaper stamps,
which Lord Althorp proposes for the future to with-
hold, and the circumstances under which it origi7.
noted, being very imperfectly understood, it may not
be unnecessary to give some explanation to the pul?lie