The Sun.
London, England, 1841-12-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—Perverse practices breed perverse
doctrines. In France, where everythinc, has
been done by Governments (or prevented' from
being done), that everlasting meddling has
passed into system, and a whole school of eco-
nomists think centralisation the glory of their
country. Thus tyrannies become tenets; and
it is only in that shape they could survive
-the demolition of absolute power, and the rise
of the dynasty of public opinion. It is truly
lamentable that any piece of misgovernment,
which has but lasted long enough, is sure to have
created a whole legion of false opinions, which
palliate and protract the reign of abuses to which
they owe their birth. Popular doctrines of po-
litical economy in this country exhibit as many
absurd fallacies as those of France, from a si-
milar source. Our access to food, and our em-
ployment of capital, have been arbitrarily re-
stricted by law; our labour has been
crippled of its power, because robbed of its
returns, and our political economists have quietly
accepted the phenomena produced by this abo-
minably artificial condition of things, as if they
were quite in the course of nature, and incident to
all advanced communities. It is much as if a mouse,
which some scientific tormentor had placed in
the exhausted receiver of an air-pump, should
proceed to theorise (if mice theorised, or had
leisure for it Under such circumstances) on its
uncomfortable situation, and refer it to va-
rious general causes, which all mice are liable to
in an advanced state of society and civilisation ;
all the while, without the slightest reference to
the invisible process, which had deprived it of the
vital element, and must soon terminate its
existence. If there were two mice in the scrape,
and if one of them was a " practical" mouse,
he might discover that want of room was the
palpable and obvious evil of the situation, and
that want of air was a mere theoretical fantastic
delusion. The practical mouse might therefore
propose emigration of one of them ; and if the
practical mouse happened to be " Yorkshire,"
as well as "practical," he would propose that
he should emigrate for the relief of the other
who was left.
STANDARD.—The Leaguers seem to be dis-
posed to go the length of the French Commu-
nists, and, indeed, something more—a bar's
length beyond our neighbours. The Communists,
as far as we learn of them, ask no more than to
have all the land of the country confiscated,
with a view to an equal distribution among all the
people. This,. however,
,is a modest proposal
compared with that of the Leaguers. The latter,
speaking by their organ, the Morning Chronicle,
intimate an expectation that the agricultural class
shall pay all the taxes, i. e. that not merely shall
all the land, upon the plan of the Communists,
be virtually confiscated, but that the capital and
labour of landowners and farmers shall be con-
fiscated with it ; and the liberty of these serfs of
the soil, also, so far restrained that they must at
all risks make up the public expenditure. In
other words, the Leaguers require that more than
fifty millions of expenditure be paid out of about
thirty millions of rents of land, these rents being
subjected meanwhile to constant diminution by
the free import of foreign produce ; for the
proposed substitute of a land tribute for all
other taxes can in no way affect all the many
excellent arguments with which we are daily en-
tertained, to prove that increasing foreign im-
ports are absolutely necessary to support our ma-
nufacturing population. The project of paying
50 millions annually from a wasting fund, com-
mencing at about 30 millions, is one which we
respectfully submit to the attention of the
proprietors of 700 or 800 millions of stock.
It is for them to consider how their di-
vidends, amounting to 27 millions annually,
are to be provided for out of the 30 mil-
lions, after the army, navy, and other pub-
lic establishments are paid—establishments now
costing not much less than twenty millions. We
presume that the fundholders will not be well
satisfied to look for their interest to the minus
quantity. Let us, however, that we may not
be supposed to be trifling upon an imaginary
hypothesis, quote the very words of the or-
gan of the League :—" A heavy land-tax would
not be felt by industry, and laud is the fit-
test of all subjects for taxation. In all coun-
tries but England the greater part of the ex-
penses of government are thrown, and very
properly thrown, upon the land." The pro-
pounder of this doctrine does not explain why
land is " the fittest of all subjects of taxation."
For ourselves we think that, in the matter of taxa-
tion, there is a very remarkable agreement of
expediency and right, awl that the fittest subject
of taxation is always that ceom which taxes may
be most easily collected. The reference to other
countries would be of more value if we could find
that on the whole these other countries are
more happy; more free, or richer than ourselves,
or generally more prosperous; that the reverse
is the truth seems to be an argument in favour
of the English scheme, under which, though
land is heavily enough taxed, it does not
bear the whole of the public burthen. The main
question is, however, after all, the practicability
of the new agrarian, or rather Helot, plan, by
which the agriculturists are to be made the
slaves of the community—the Decurions of the
lower empire, compelled to pay in taxes more
than the value of all their possessions plus the
value of all their labour. We humbly
hold the opinion that the Leaguemen
themselves cannot make thirty, fifty, and
that, if they should succeed, which is
not very likely, in carrying their scheme into
execution, the fundholders must go to the
wall : m truth, from the first and throughout, the
fundholders have been the parties principally in
danger. Other clasSes, however, beside the
landholders and fundholders have, we submit, a
very considerable interest in a scheme for the
destruction of the chief purchasers and employers
throughout the country.

MONEY MARKET and CITY NEWS.
FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
TIMES.—From recent inquiries on • the sub-
ject, it appeals that the question of the duties
on confectionery is assuming a much more im-
portant aspect than it bore at first, that it is be-
ginning to be agitated in higher quarters than
the parties who first made their complaint, and
that from being a matter affecting the interests
of private individuals, it has become one of de-
cided national importance. At first the intro-
duction of sugar in a manufactured state, and
afterwards melting it down, was spoken of rather
as a contingency of the present state of the tariff
—as a fraud on- the revenue that might perhaps
take place in a few instances—but now it appears
that there are no boUnds to the injuries which the
existing anomaly may inflict On the revenue. So
little is done to the sugar to give it the appear-
ance of a manufactured article,. that there is not
the slightest difficulty in restoring it, so as to be
Perfectly fit for the use of the manufacturers
of British wines, and of an almost endless list
of trades in which sugar is employed,
and in which this article, paying scarcely
any duty, may be used, to,the utter exclusion of
that which contributes so materially to the reve-
nue. As for th,e means that have been adopted
to import sugar at 7s. 6d. instead of 24. s. per cwt.
(for such is the difference), in some instances a
few almonds pieced whole in the sugar, and with-
out the slightest alteration in the sugar itself
have been fbund sufficient to stamp the sugar as
an article of confectionery ; in others, a black
mass is produced by mixing sugar with charcoal,
which, when the sugar is melted, rises to the
surtlice, aiid can be removed immediately. The
ease with which this is effected is so great, that
the practice may end almost in the consumption
of foreign sugar alone ; for the whole expense_
of separating the sugar from the particles of
other matter is estimated at about 2s 6d. per
cwt., which, added to the 7s. 6d., makes but
lOs ; so that all chance of competition is taken
from the employers of raw sugar, which has
to pay 245.
Another point is, that there is every reason to
believe that foreign and not British, colonial
sugars are employed by the manufacturers of
the Channel Islands, for such is the state of the
law, that it seems they could import goods made
from Colonial sugar free of duty altogether, so
that the Payment even of this small duty of 7s.
6d. would seem to imply that foreign sugar is
employed. Indeed, the cheap rate at which
sugar can be made in Cuba and other slave-
holding countries would, of itself, render it ex-
tremely probable that a preference to foreign
sugar would be given in the Channel Islands,
above that Produced in our own colonies. Viewed
under these aspects, it will be seen that the
question assumes a most extensive bearing; for
not only does the admission -of the confectionery
at low rates injure the revenue by depriving it of
much of the duty on sugar, and the workmen,
by giving a premium to foreign labour, but it
also injures our East and West' Indian' posses-
sions, and holds forth an encouragement to slave
labour.
POST.—The Stock Markets were generally
worse to-day, and, although the quotations for
money accommodation have not exceeded from
4 to 5 per cent. on the security of English Stock,
loans were greedily accepted at the lower rate,
and this to the utmost possible extent. It was
reported, by way of accounting for the depres-
sion, that advices of an unfavourable nature had
been received from Paris, and that some fresh
difficulty had ar,sen on the American boundary