The Sun.
London, England, 1847-02-25 00:00:00

PUBLIC INCOME AND EXPEND'

TURE.

An account of the total amount of the public revenue
received into and expended from the Exchequer, and
the balances remaining at the close of each year from 1836
to 1846 inclusive, was ordered by the House of Commons to
be printed on the 19th instant.
It appears that in 1836 there was a surplus of income
amounting to 2,130,0921., after which year, up to 1843, when
Sir R. Peel's financial reforms had begun to take effet:t, there
was a regular annual deficiency of income, amounting alto-
gether to the sum of 10,188,6571.
Since 1843 there has Seen an equally regular surplus of
income, which at present amounts in the gross to the sum of
11,463,360/. ; so that the former deficiency is now completely
covered, and a balance left in favour of the Exchequer of
1,274,703/.
The total amount of income received into the Exchequer
during the past year, 1846, was 53,790,138 i., arid the total
expenditure therefrom, 50,943,830/., including 28,077,987/.
for the annual charge on the funded and unfunded debt;
2,736,8071. for other charges on the Consolidated Fund ;
16,864,697/. for the army, navy, and ordnance services; and
3,264,339/. for miscellaneous services, leaving a surplus of
income amounting to 2,846,3081. In 1845 the excess of in-
come was 3,817,642/., the receipts having amounted to
53,060,3544 and the expenditure to 49,242,7121.
The gross total estimated amount of the taxes repealed or
reduced during the above-mentioned decennial period is
10,042,414/. ; the principal items being pepper, sugar, paper,
spirits, licenses, newspaper stamps, postage, coffee, timber,
export duties, Customs duties, Irish spirits, marine in-
surances, cotton-wool, coals (export duty),'. glass, auctions,
corn, and provisions, tic.
The total amount of the new taxes concurrently imposed,
is 7,940,993/., the principal items being the income- tax,
which alone contributes 5,100,0001., and the increase of 5
per cent. on the Customs and Excise proposed in 1840 by
Mr. Baring.
The capital of the funded and unfunded debt now amounts
to 782,918,9841.—viz., 764,608,2841. for the funded, and
18,310,700/. for the unfunded, debt.
The balance in the Exchequer at the close of the year
(1846) amounted to the sum of 9,131,282/. Such are the
interesting particulars which have been gleaned from this
return.

UNIVERSITY REFORM.
(From the forthcoming Oxford 211a9ozine).

"As water, whether it be the dew of heaven or the springs
of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in the ground, ex-
cept it be collected into some receptacle, where it may by
union comfort and sustain itself; and, for that cause, the in-
dustry of man hath framed and made spring-heads, conduits,
cisterns, and pools; which men have accustomed likewise to
beautify and adorn with accomplishments of magnificence
and state, as well as of use and necessity. So knowledge,
whether it descend from divine inspiration or spring from
human sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it
were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and
places appointed, as Universities, Colleges, and Schools for
L the receipt and comforting the same."

The trusty squire of Don Quixote bad no misgivings what-
ever, touching his capacity for governing the island, which
the all-conquering knight of La Mancha was, in due course,
to confer upon him. In this respect worthy Sancho is no bad
representative of many hopeful and well-meaning men of
these days. They think reform is "as easy as lying" to the
liar. The best men are often most open to these delusions.
Honest themselves, and desirous of conforming everything
to the rule of right, they think, that it is only necessary to
show that an evil exists, in order to secure the application of
a remedy.
Experience, however, has shown how visionary such plea-
sant expectations are. Wrongs are rarely, perhaps never,
redressed by logic. Moral tbrce is not yet so irresistible as
amiable enthusiasts would have us hope and believe. If this
be so in respect to the reform of glaring and notorious evils,
much more is it so with the less obtrusive, but more dan-
gerous ills which affect the vitality of nations.
Injustice and exactions, which press upon the millions,
after being long endured and etruggled against, are thrown
off by convulsive throes and a dangerous crisis.
Wrongs which affect the moneyed interests, the commer-
cial enterprise of wealthy classes, are comparatively short-
lived. But evils against which the excited passions of the
wronged many, or the resentment of a powerful class cannot
be pointedly directed, are long-lived.
And of this class are the evils of our public schools and
universities. Parliament may be reformed, and being re-
formed, may be argued and coerced into the repeal of a law
hateful as the sanction cf a bread tax. University reform—
public and grammar-school reform, is quite a different mat-
ter. Amidst all the talk of " education," the meaning of
the word is not yet understood. What education can, and
what it cannot do for the moral elevation of a people is by no
means strictly defined. It is not yet felt, that the nation
cannot live on bread alone, or what is required for its perfect
development. It is not felt that both the heart and the brain
of the cation require nutriment in order to give vital force to
the body politic, and, that the mere husks of educational
forms are insufficient

But though there is not a distinct appreciation of what
education is, and what it is not, yet the continued dis-
cussion of the subject renders the present time most
favourable to a movement for university reform ; and a
well-constituted royal commi:sion would be hailed with de-
light. The public ear is open to any who shall address it in
clear tones, with lofty aims, with an appreciation of the diffi-
culties to be overcome, as well as the glorious object to be
attained.

The difficulties aro neither few nor small. The public
mind is but partially enlightened on the subject. A large
majority of our legislators view public schools and univer-
sities, through a false medium. They see the school or
university at which their youth was spent through an at-
mosphere of poetry. To them it is scarcely less than irre-
verence to think of defect either in the constitution or the
working of institutions which, by a mischievous delusive
figure, is personified to them as a mother.
Then there is little to be hoped for from within the
universities. It is not surprising that with possession, a
feeling of absolute, personal, exclusive right should grow up
in the minds of the few who hare, and the larger number who
expect to have, wealth, honours, and social distinctions under
this exclusive system.
There is also the further disadvantage, that the sense of
responsibility, political and religious(using the terms in their
largest sense and as almost synonymous), is deadened, if not
lost, in men who are associated as a privileged body : so that
it has come to be a proverb, that corporations have neither
bodies to be kicked, nor souls to be damned.
Yet, as we have said, the times are favourable to the great
and holy enterprise of making the universities and public
schoolsth the national'
and
dtiwtuotrioknins in truth and
working to
themire
preearfleitcyt-,
develop-
ment of
siAou greats olyf .t e
vir nationalpreparatoryitiiin a rn
recentin dwork.has
period beenthe done,herjci
taanr3l., that
iinstinctive
n a t
nnectoi
v e-
confidence of the nation in the universities has been broken
compelled trebjeeecntedc,omasp
bybel
ipainful
hraetv
once
lnactei o n
its. w
oTuflide nfaaitni onh a
vh
ea s
mon-
strous libel. The nation has been compelled to accept as a
fact, that for years the universities have been the seat of a
dangerous, and too successful conspiracy against the faith of
which they were supposed to be the bulwarks. Everywhere
throughout the land a newly-ordained graduate is received
with well-founded distrust ; all the while no correcting or
opposing influence is seen in operation; and the faithfulness
and tke power of academical rulers is alike doubted. The
conviction has spread that there is not health enough left in
the system to throw off the fatal and pervading taint. The
public is prepared to hear, and to assent to the declaration,
that the leprous house must be taken down.
This on purely religious grounds: but the idea'of univer-
sity reform must be both comprehensive and minute. Organic
principles must be broadly laid down, and all details be
worked out in accordance with them.
It cannot be suffered that statutes of founders, which
time may have repealed, should sometimes be held to be
binding by fellows of societies, and other times at their Ca-
price held to be naught, to the deadening of moral feeling,
mI t
ecraenno collection be , that e
anssstiecaadl
ao of
da nxiaitleerins iat),
tic
al e
scli.ols,
have a
carried
tohn foreseesttahbel
iashdmvaennttasg. e
porfotfehsse
„srieapiarcahtaeirssocoainetliteos which hold
remain un-
tenanted, even by the ghosts of the past. Revealed religion
and natural science cannot be for ever banished from Oxford.
The universities wait for reform. The intellect and the
piety, and the patriotism of the nation say, Reform ! and
there must, there will be reform, and perhaps the larger and
moreThecroemi
sp complete te
greatftT rbeingk deferred.to b e dce, a
o
cannot be that
men will be wanting for the glorious labour.
We
ncdanit afford to wait.

PROTIS/ONS FROM TRH UNITED STATES.—The
Oxford and Orphan, from New York, Richard Anderson
front Baltimore, Defence and Radius from Charleston, and
Larne from New Orleans, which were reported at Liverpool
on the 22d inst., bring 8,091 barrels of flour, 8,608 bags and
and 36,474 bushels of Indian corn, 2,108 barrels of Indian
corn meal, 657 tierces of rice, and 200 boxes of biscuit.
STOCK OF CORN IN DUBLIN.--So unusually large
is the stock of corn at present in the Custom-house Stores is
Dublin that no room exists for a further supply, nor can
there be any more warehoused there until a new loft in one
of the large stores, which is at prereat being erected, shall
have bees cocapletad.—Pilot.

auD