The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-26 00:00:00

Vat-wing

LONDON, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1849.

The injustice and inequality of our fiscal system is
palpable to every one who directs his attention to the
subject. The heaviest burdens are imposed upon
those least able to sustain them. The hardworking
operative, whose only capital is his labour, is com-
pelled to devote a considerable portion of his scanty
eareings towards the support of the national estab-
lishments and the liquidation of the national debt.
If we consider the Customs tariff, we find that cheap
and inferior articles imported for the use of the poorer
clasies are taxed to the same extent as the best quali-
ties of, perhaps, ten times their intrinsic value. The
just and equitable principle of ad valorem duties is
excluded. It is said, indeed, that it would occasion
some inconvenience and trouble to the Custom-house
officers, and hold out temptations to fraud, and that,
therefore, it is more expedient to have fixed and equal
import duties. But is there no fraud upon the
miserable sempstress, whose bohea, originally
worth 4d. per pound, is taxed 2s. 24,,
or about 800 per cent, on its value,
while the finest gunpowder or the highest flavoured
pekoe that smokes on the breakfast-table of the no-
bility pays only the same 2s. 2id, per pound, or
about 60 per cent. on its value.
The same inequality is perceptible throughout the
entire system. It is no less conspicuous in the direct
than in the indirect imposts. Every description of
income is taxed alike, without reference to the source
from whence it is derived or the manner in which it
may be obtained :—The professional man, who toils
to earn a decent maiLtenance for himself and
family, whose income is of a very precarious
character, dependent on his continued health, ability,
and a variety of other contingencies, who must set
aside a considerable portion thereof to provide for a
period when he may be unable to obtain employment,
and also for premiums of insurance, that some provi-
sion may be made for his family when the father and
provider is removed by death, must pay as large a
per tentage on that income as the fundholder
on his dividends from Consols—the enter-
prising merchant, who views the danger of
losing his entire capital, and who, besides providing
for future days, should apply a portion of his
profits to guard against bad debts and losses on other
transactions, must contribute as large a proportion of
those profits, without any deduction or drawback
being allowed, as the wealthy landowner out of the
rents of his broad acres—the prudent tradesman
who isittends closely to his shop, as much as the
mortgagee, who receives his interest without trouble
or risk. In other words, incomes not worth two
years'.-purchase, which would not be considered
a marketable security if a temporary loan
should be required, must contribute as largely as an
income 'arising from accumulated and realised pro-
perty, worth twenty-eight or thirty years' purchase.
The disproportion is almost as conspicuous as that of
the same duty being levied on the bohea of the
washerwoman and the hyson of the peeress.
The feeling in favour of great and comprehensive
measures of fiscal and financial reform has spread
throughout the entire nation. The eyes of the middle
and hUmbler classes—of those who constituted the spe-
cial constables of the 10t14 of April last—of those who
atipresent bear the pressure of taxation, are at length
opened to the iniquities of the present system. They
have determined that the national revenue shall
henceforward be collected fairly and equitably, and
that it shall be distributed economically. They will
nJ longer sanction or tolerate the profligate and
wasteful expenditure or the gross jobbing which have
been so ably exposed in all their naked enormity by
the valuable labours of the Liverpool Financial
Reform Association, and the other influential so-
cieties that have sprung up in so many
districts. They have been taught by the proceedings
of the Atiti-Corn-lavv League bow such reforms are
to be attained, such victories achieved. It is by
peaceful and constitutional agitation—by sound
reason and unanswerable arguments. Truth is on
their side, and they must be successful if they use
their power wisely and discreetly.
The Honourable Member for the West Riding of

If from the preliminary flourish of trumpets of the
reactionary press, we may judge of the object of the
motion for tapers relating to the bombardment of
Messina, of which Mr. BANYES has given notice for
to-morrow night that object is to set up the testi-
mony of General FILANGERI, Prince of Satriano,
on the subject of the alleged cruelties committed
during the course of that bombardment, against the
testimony of Admirals PARKER and BAUDIN, and to
endeavour to make it appear that the mere general
denial of the accused General FILANGERI, as con,
taine,d in his letter to Mr. TEMPLE and in his speech
in the Neapolitan Chamber of Peers, is a sufficient
answer to the specific charges which have been
brought against him, but of which he has not taken
the least notice either in his letter or in his speech ;
albeit it is only by condescending to particular
charges that a general charge, such as that brought
against the Prince of SATRIANO, can be either sustained
or refuted. The general charge is, that the military
operations carried on against Messina in the month
of September last by the Neapolitan troops,
under the command iiof General FILANGERI, were
conducted with a "ferocity and brutality of which
history offers no example." This charge is supported
by the evidence of Admiral Sir WILLIAM PARKER
(who, in his dispatch to Lord NAPIER, uses the very
words we have quoted) and of Admiral BAUDIN, who
were present during the whole of those operations,
corroborated by the evidence of those who brought
forward specific charges, to not one of which spe-
cific charges so brought forward has General FILAN-
GERI ventured to give a specific denial. He has
contented himself with giving a general denial to
the generel charge.
In his letter to Mr. TEMPI.; of the Ist Feb. 1849,
he says—

"I am unable to approach that part of your Excel-
lency's dispatch which refers to the conduct of my troops
at Messina, without the deepest regret that your Excel-
lency should have been induced to make so unqualified
an assertion relating to their conduct as you have thought
it right to do, without, in the opinion of the undersigned,
being in possession of satisfactory evidence on the sub
ject. M. de Rayneval, in his note to Prince Cariati of
the 10th September, attributes these barbarities, as your
Excellency is pleased to call them, to both parties; but
your Excellency has thought it becoming, through
Prince Cariati, to address to myself, as charged by his
Majesty with the affairs of Sicily, a distinct accusation
that the soldiers I have the honour to command had not
conducted hostilities according to the usual practice of
civilized nations; and your Excellency has added, that
bad the attack been solely directed against armed oppo-
nents, instead of being equally aimed at the extermina-
tion of the unresisting and helpless inhabitants, her Ma •
jesty's naval commanders would probably have preserved
their neutral position. These charges coming from your
Excellency, carry with them a degree of gravity which
they would not possess if proceeding from other sources,
and I felicitate myself that very shortly an opportunity
will be given to me, in my place as a Peer in Parliament,
of distinctly showing the world, and your Excellency in
particular, that the error in which your Excellency has
tallen is as serious as the accusation you direct against
my officers and soldiers is unfounded. I shall content
myself, therefore, on this occasion, by asserting to your
Excellency, that the Neapolitan orces under my com-
mand would be unworthy of the name of soldiers if such
had been their conduct, and your Excellency will, doubt-
less, believe, that after a service of 40 years, and some
experience of the duties devolving on a commander, I
4111 incapable oc permitting the atrocities which have been
by some persons communicated to your Excellency wit ti
so much industrious calumny."

A few days afterwards General FILANGERI gave
his promised explanation in the Chamber of Peers,
_ _

and his denial is couched in the following termg::
" The pretended acts of unheard-of cruelty with the
commission of which the Neapolitan troops have been
reproached, are, alas ! contained in the catalogue of
acts committed in all wars, acts cf which I myself
have been witness on the fields of battle of Austerlitz
and of Jena, at the sieges of Burgos and Saragossa,
where I had the honour to command in the glorious
ranks of the French army." lie then proceeds to
describe the operations of the Neapolitan army, which
ended in the capture of Messina, and alludes generally
to the horrible cruelties which he alleges the inhabi-

tants of Messina committed on his suldiers, which
general accusation can of course be only met by a
general denial. From his description of those opera-

:ions it appears—
" The troops had to fight the it way for two mile.
through convents, country houses, and gardens,

fortified against them; the walls loopholed,the windows
stuffed with mattraases, the very roofs pierced for the
rifle. There were barricades protected by deep fosses,
and numerous artillery in every street of the city and its
suburbs. Their foe was everywhere invisible but deadly,
and mines exploded under their feet. They could not
advance a step without dislodging from the houses, con-
verted into fortresses, not the peaceable inhabitants, but
the enemy. At such a time the Neapolitans conld do
nothing but fight. Neither leisure nor safety allowed of
any wanton act. To iloiter, to disperse, to leave th-
ranks, was to die. In an obstinate fight which lasted
near thirty hours, and in which the royal forces lost 46
officers and 1,023 men, the soldier bad too much to do
to employ himself in acts of brutal and useless cruelty."
As a proof of the perpetration of the alleged cruel-
ties by the Messinese, he says--" In penetrating into
the city the Neapolitans recognised the dead bodies
of their comrades horribly mutilated." Row does
this tally with his previous statement ? If his troops
were fired on from every Window and every roof,
if every house was pierced with loopholes from which
every
andery
an incessant shower of bullets was kept up upon the
Neapolitan troops,
if numerousvomig fire artillery
r ea
nd smoke
street were constantly
vomiting
shot, if mines were constantly exploding under their
feet, surely the cloud of smoke must hav2 been so
the Neapolitan troops to have recognised the muti-
lated dead bodies of their comrades, more especially
dense as to have rendered it physically impossible for
when we are told, that "to loiter, to disperse, or to
leave the ranks was to die." It is manifestly im•

possible that both statements can be true. Leaving
General FILANQERI and his supporters to reccncile
these conflicting statements as best they may, let us

proceed to consider the defence which he has offered.

He does not venture explicitly to deny that acts of
atrocious cruelty were committed, but hz. says that
the cruelties committed at Messina were not greater
than those committed at Austerlitz, at Jena, at
Burgos, and at Saragossa. Austerlitz and Jena were

pitched battles, fought in the open country between
regular troops; there cannot, therefore, be any
analogy :lit•tween Austerlitz or Jena and Messina;
INLBurgos and Saragossa are cases in point. At
PM-- places atrocities were committed by the be-
ers on the helpless, and, until the Commence-

Yorkshire will this evening snhmit to the House of ment of atrocities; nnresis'iT'v
Comm .‘xpoZen(.y Of taking steps L, 'lit,th 3t ttthosP
Burgc,, and at S
reduce the annual expenditure, with all prat from lie general concurrence of 411 11,-, hi ,t-
-ticable speed, to an amount not exceeding rians of the Peninsular war, and from the concurrent
the sum, which within the last fourteen tstimony of all the officers, English, German, Spanish,
years has been proved to be sufficient for the main- and Portuguese engaged in that war) hostilities were
tenance of the security, honour, and dignity of the not conducted according to the practice of civilized
nation. He has thus raised the banner of economy nations, and by adopting the precedents of Burgos
and retrenchment, and has inscribed thereon " The and Saragossa, as applicable to the case of Messina,
Expenditure of 1835," in accordance with the pledge General FILANGERI in fact pleads guilty to the whole
contained in his well-known budget of the 18th charge. As well might a man, arraigned on a charge
December last. Although we do not believe that of murder, plead the precedents of TaunTELL and
reductions to that extent are immediately practicable, COURVOISIER as a justification.
for the reasons we have repeatedly set forth, we It is worthy of remark, that throughout his de-
must acknowledge the valuable results of the agita- fence General FILANGERI has most artfully made it
tion, which has already led to many important appear that it is against his soldiers, rather than
reductions, and which will undoubtedly produce fur- against himself, that these charges have been made;
ther fruits. But great as may be the present saving, and that the accusation against him is merely that he
there can be no guarantee for its permanence, no real permitted the perpetration of atrocities ; whereas the
relief to the industrious classes, until the system of real charge is that he not only permitted but ordered
indirect taxation is altogether abolished, until our the perpetration of the greater number of these atro-
trade is indeed free and unrestricted in the most ex- cities, as will appear from a consideration of the
tensive signification of the phrase. When our ports specific charges brought against him—charges
are freely opened to the navies of the world, when which, if untrue, are easily disproved, but
the produce of other lands may be freely to no one of which has General FILANGERI ven-
brought to our shores without let or hindrance, tured to give a specific denial. The first charge is,
to be exchanged for our own manufactures, that after the city of Messina had surrendered to the
when no duties are levied either for the purposes of Neapolitans, and after the white flag had been hoisted,
protection or of revenue—then, indeed, we shall have the bombardment was wantonly continued for eight
given the best security for the maintenance of uni- hours until the city was utterly destroyed. To
versal peace and tranquillity, and our armaments may this specific accusation General FILANGERI does not
be reduced, and that materially. venture any specific denial. Will his advocates in
The Liverpool Association bas exhibited a thorough this country venture to do for General FILANGERI
knowledge of this great fact. Much as economy is that which he has not ventured to do for himself?
to be desired, a sound system of taxation i 3 even more We may judge of the effects of the bombardment
essential. Why, however, should either object be from the following proclamation issued by General
lest sight of for a moment ? May we not at the same FILANGERI'S own officer on the 12th September :
time endeavour to effect an alteration in the mode " NO. 19.—PROCLAMATION OF THE SYNDIC OF MESSINA.
as well as in the amount of taxation. The questions " Whereas the Syndic of this town is charged with
providing lodgings for the troops, and whereas there are
are intimately connected together, and may be simul
onl a small number of disposable hab, most
taneously agitated. The eloquent speeches at the themy having been burned or destroyed, the Synitationsdic requires of
late monthly meeting of the Liverpool Association all citizens who are absent, and whose houses are closed,
were all directed to fiscal as well as to economical to re-enter Use town, or to direct trustworthy persons to
reforms. The society has elicited the strongest evi-
open the houses, and to aid in the fulfilment of this im-
portant part of the King's service.
dente that there is " a very great force of public " The Syndic reckons on the readiness of all good
opinion in favour of direct taxation," and they will citizens to obey his appeal, and hopes that they will not
not abandon the greatest and most important of the
force him to have recourse to rigorous measures.
objects for which the Association was formed, and Messina," The Syndicl2,,
"Marquis DE CASSIBILE.
Sept.
for the attainment of which it has laboured so zeal Is it true, aye or no, that the bombardment was
ously and indefatigably. continued for eight hours after the surrender of
the city ? Will the defenders of General FILANGERI
join issue on this point ? To one other charge, and
to one other charge only, will we allude for the
present, a charge which General FILIANGERI has not
ventured to deny, and the truth of which is corrobo-
rated by the manner in which his defenders in this
country have distorted it in order to be able to give it
the appearance of a denial. A writer who has de-
clared himself openly the advocate of the King o;
NAPLES, in describing the charges brought against
General FILANGERI, to which his defence is alleged
to be a triumphant answer, speaks of "the lame, the
sick, and the infirm taken from the hospitals and
butchered." This is very much like swearing by the
card; the real accusation is that " the wounded
were burnt in the hospital of which they (the
Neapolitans) shut the doors." This is not the charge
of an anonymous writer recklessly brought forward
to round a period ; it is a grave accusation delibe-
rately made by M. AMARI, Member of the Sicilian
Parliament, in his work entitled "La Sicile et Les
Bourbons," published during the present year in Paris.
The words of M. Amax' are, " Les blesses furent
brulis dans r Hopital dont on ferma les porter." Such
a specific charge, so supported, ought, if unfounded,
to have been at least specifically denied. It has not
been denied, and therefore the conclusion is that no
denial can be given to it. Again, we ask the de-
fenders of General FILANGERI to join issue—ls it,
true, aye or no, that the wounded were burned in
the hospitals, the doors of which were closed by the
troops of FILANGERI ? Is it or is it not according to
the usual practice of civilised nations to burn the
wounded in the hospitals ? Upon the answers to
these questions we are willing to rest the whole of the
Messina controversy.

On the forenoon of the 26th of February, 1848,
the Provisional Government appeared before the
people on the esplanade in front of the Hotel de Ville,
and M. DE LASIARTINE in their name declared
s' Royalty is abolished I The Republic is pro-
claimed !" To-day is the anniversary of that memor-
able occurrence. In the interval of twelve months,
how rapid have been the vicissitudes of Princes !
how vast has been the progress of Democracy ! A
merely cursory glance over the dominions of the Eu-
ropean Continent will show that the greatest poet and
the greatest prose-writer of the last generation were
both of them prophetic ; and that although BERON
came not from CUMWS, nor CHATEAURRIAND from
Aropios, their pages afford as keen a view into futu-
rity as ever did the leaves of the Pagan Sybil. One
of these men asserted that kings' days were coming to
an end. The other maintained that the regeneration of
society, politically, socially, and intellectually, was no
longer chimerical ; that it depended for its development
neither upon the paradoxes of ROUSSEAU nor upon the
fanaticism of ROBESPIERRE ; but that it had become
a necessity which mankind would, of its own accord,
accomplish. They were laughed at for their prophe-
cies —and yGt those prophecies are already beholding
their fulfilment. The assertions of Byaori and of
CIIATEAUBRIAND are receiving the corroboration of
events even before the first half of the nineteenth
century has been completed. A brief enumeration of
some of the most conspicuous of those events will be
sufficient to prove at once the glorious and irresistible
advancement of democratic ideas and the twofold
accuracy of the English bard and the French ro-
mancist.

Since the Republic of France was proclaimed by
LAMARTINI on the 26th of last February, kings
and nations have experienced the force of the prin-
ciples which were then announced and accepted by
the Parisians.
A Republic has been proclaimed at 'Venice : and
the glories of that Sidon of the Adriatic have seemed
to revive in the exhumation of its independence.
A Republic has been proclaimed at Rome : and
men have already begun to anticipate the liberties
which were once the prerogatives of the citizens of
that great capital.

A Republic has been proclaimed at Florence : and
the recollections which surrounded the ancient build-
ings, the galleries, and libraries of the Tuscan metro-
polis, are again calling to mind the days when CELLINI
and DA VINCI flourished under the municipal admi-
nistration of the Mamcfs.

Hungary has risen in arms under BEM and Kos-
to reconquer her nationality from the hands of
her German oppressors. Nor are their heroic efforts
yet terminated, although opposed by the colossal army
of WINDISCHGRATZ and the barbarian cohorts of
JELLACHICH.

Sicily has declared her determination to enjoy the
rights and blessings of her insular independence :
and, although up to the present time the patriotic
wishes of RUGGIERO SETTIMO have to a considerable
extent been thwarted, it is certain that the con-
stitutional privileges of the Sicilians will be
rescued in the end from the grasp of the
tyrannical Bourbon. The cruelties inflicted upon
the unfortunate population of Messina during the late
warfare—cruelties which are indisputable, notwith-
standing the quibbles of FILANGERI—WiII recoil upon
the execrable and execrated SOVEREIGN of the Nea-
politans in the final emancipation of the country of
ARCHIMEDES and THEOCRITUS.
Bavaria has compelled an old and contemptible vo-
luptuary to resign the crown which he had degraded
by his licentiousness; and has elevated to the throne
a Prince free from his vices, and less pledged to the
continuance of a system which years have rendered
not only pernicious, but absolutely impracticable.
Austria has, by a succession of revolutions, hurled
AIETTERNICH from authority, and driven FERDINAND to
abdication : and, by so doing, the inhabitants of Vienna
have liberated themselves from the incubus of a faineant
Emperor, whose imbecility had been rendered a curse
to the multitude by the devices of an absolutist states-
man.

Prussia has only been baulked of her renovation
through the treachery of her Monarch, who, after
making the circuit of political tergiversation, has re-
turned to his old attitude as a counter-revolutionist.

Sardinia has prevented the possibility of any retro-
gresion on the part of the KING, who, as Prince of
CARIGNAN°, revealed such an extraordinary aptitude
for apostacy; and she has done this by forcing upon

nePirfrince

the con,&tent, an

m

GIOTIE

:;witzrlAnii, no ion,4.c

ry I^p.'rl, 1

distra,:!..ed by contonik:ns

respecting the Sonderhund, has watched with sym-
pathizing► eagerness the progress of occurrences, on
the one side among Germans, and on the other among
the Italians, and would willingly have afforded that
shelter to BLum which she was more fortunate in
bestowing upon MAzzINI.

Denmark, while fighting for that province of which
she must otherwise have been despoiled, bas been
vigorously, though almost imperceptibly, maturing
her crude but generously-conceived constitution.

Naples has revealed by the atrocities perpetrated in
her streets by the soldiers and the lazzareni that the
will of a nation can only be rendered subservient to
that of a despot through the medium of the bloodiest
catastrophes.

Spain has, in like manner, testified by her recent
history that arbitrary government produces not only
disgrace in the capital, but insurrectionary outbreaks
in the provinces.

On either side of the great continent—as if to pre-
serve the equilibrium of Europe--as if to give to ci-
vilization the equipoise of barbarity—England, the
most free, and Russia, the most despotic, of all
the powers of the earth, have remained impassive
spectators of the strife and commotions which have
raged between them.
Is there not, we ask, in these marvellous deeds
which have been accomplished in the European do-
minions, ample reason for our exultation at the pro-
gress of democracy, since the With of last February ?
Have we not sufficient subject for rejoicing in those
remarkable triumphs of the popular cause ? And who
shall say that, compared with the Absolutists, the

Democrats have not evinced a singular union of
leniency, virtue, and self-denial ? With a few la-
mentable exceptions—exceptions ever to be deplored
by all true lovers of freedom—how pure has not
the cause of Democracy emerged from the strug-
gle when contrasted with the relentless, malignant,
and bloodstained cause of Absolutism 1 While the
one has been covered with ineffaceable infamy by the
cruelties of JELLACUICIS, by the massacres of WIN..
DISCHGRATZ, by the spoliations of RADETZKY, by the
treachery of FREDERICK WILHELM, by the corrup-
tions of the QUEEN-MOTHER at Madrid, and by the
superhuman butcheries of the reigning SOVEREIGN of
Naples—the other has, in all but a few melancholy
and miserable instances, preserved the dignity of its
character untarnished by a crime. It was thus that
France becams a Republic without a crime, that
Venice became a Republic without a crime, that
Hungary declared its independence without a
crime, and that the Danes and the Spaniards
have drawn their swords against the enemies of their
free nationality without rendering themselves objects
of execration to the rest of the civilized world.
Such has been the fate of Absolutism and such the
progress of Democracy since—one year ago—royalty
in France was declared to be abolished by the voice
of LAMARTINE.