The Sun.
London, England, 1833-03-27 00:00:00

*Ult•

LONDON,
WEDNESDAY EVENING, MARCH 27, 1833.

The rich last night obtained another triumph over
the poor; those who tax again decided that they
would bear no portion of the burden of the taxed;
those who revel in all the luxuries of wealth, to
whom money is as dirt, again resolved that the
struggling tradesman, the pinched employde, the
miserable artizan, to each and all of whom a few
pounds, more or less, in their year's income, makes
all the difference between the enjoyment of comfort
and the bare possession of the merest necessaries of
life, shall continue to struggle—,hall continue to be
pinched—shall continue to feel their close contact with
ruin and continue to pay the enormous burden of
taxation imposed upon them by a Parliament which
the law has declared did not represent them.
Mr. ROBINSON'S motion of last night, to the fate
of which we allude, was for the appointment of a
Select Committee to consider and revise our exist-
ing taxation, with a view to a repeal of those
burdens which press most heavily on productive
industry, and the substitution of an equitable
tax on property in lieu thereof; but the House
of Commons decided, or rather a fraction
of the House, as we shall presently see,
decided that it would not even consider of such
an equitable tax. " The blatant beast," had so
lung borne the cuffs and kicks its masters had
been in the habit of bestowing upon it, that it
seemed to be thought a pity it should not bear
them a little longer.

The usual grounds upon which a motion for a
Committee of Inquiry is resisted are, either
that the public care nothing of the matter,
though abstractedly right, that the proposi-
tion of the Mover does not apply to a pressing
or practical grievance, or does not suggest a practi-
cal remedy. But none of these objections apply to
the motion which was last night before the House,
and none of them did Lord ALTHORF, or any other
person who opposed it, have the conscience very
strenuously to urge. Indeed his Lordship is placed,
as well as many of his colleagues, in rather a deli-
cate situation. At the close of the war, he, and
other men of property, all the life and for-
tune men—all who felt that it was more
agreeable to be in the receipt of taxes
them the payment of them, called out lustily for the
removal of the property tax, and removed it was
accordingly amidst the acclamations of liberals and
place-expecters and place-holders of all
kinds. In a short time the industrious classes began
to feel that it was they upon whom the pressure of
taxation was mole immediately brought to bear, and
as that began to be more and more manifest, the
Opposition cried out about the matter, and by
1830, when Mr. POULETT THOMSON'S motion was
made for a revision of taxation, precisely upon
the same grounds urged last night by Mr. ROBINSON,
for the appointment of his Committee, Lord AL.
THORP, Mr. C. GRANT, and others joined him. A
few short months afterwards these gentlemen came
into power. It had taken fifteen years to win his
Lordship and his friends over to the opinion, that it
was not jest to place so enormous a share of the
burdens of the country upon the industrious classes.
It has, alas! only taken them two years to be con-
vinced that it is right that a tradesman, who leaves his
children 5,0001., made by industry, should know that
it will have the honour of contributing to the main-
tenance of the laws, and the support of the State, whilst
the Duke of BEDFORD dying and leaving his son
1,0001. per day has no such thought upon his mind,
—it has, we say, only taken him two years to be
convinced of the justice of this ; but let us hear the
grounds of his conviction :—" Was not a man at
liberty to change his mind on conviction ? He had
proved the sincerity of his belief of 1830 by bring-

ing forward as his first financial measure a proposi-
tion which amounted, to a certain extent, to a corn-
mutation of existing taxes by means of a property
tax. His experience of the reception of that propo-
sition did not lead him to believe that it would be
palatable to Parliament to adopt any such measure.
—(Hear, and laughter.)"

We should be in some doubt es to whether the
laugh was at or with his Lordship, did not the result
of the debate let us into the secret. We presume
his Lordship alludes to the proposition he made
with respect to the timber duties; but, good
Heavens I did not he and all his friends com-
plain at the time that he was then defeated by
a vile coalition of two interested factions, and yet
he calls this a proof that a proposition which he still
admits has justice for its basis, for he said that
" it was just that every man should pay in pro-
portion to his property; if such a system could
be invented and carried into eff ct, it might
be thought the perfection of taxation,"—thus
admitting, we say, the justice of that which Mr.
ROBINSON proposes to inquire after, he tells the
Reformed House of Commons that it is no
better than its corrupt predecessor, and would not
think a just proposition palatable. Perhaps his
Lordship may refer to the proposition he made for
imposing a tax on the transfer of funded property,
but to call this an equitable commutation of taxes
fot a property tax, would be as absurdly farcical as
any thing we can imagine; for, what was it, 'n
point of fact, but a following up of the very system
of partiality to the land-owners, which forms the
whole gist of the complaint made against the present
system of taxation. You must have been counting
largely, my Lord ALTHORP, not only upon the happy
ignorance, or whatever worse concomitant of selfish-
ness you may have had in yonr mind's eye, when
endeavouring to persuade men that it was better to
tax others than themselves--and perhaps not too
largely—but also upon that of the parties out
of doors who were affected by your measure,
when you made this triumphant allusion to its fai-
lure. How did Mr. ROBINsON describe the property
tax he wished to see imposed ? He said, " From the
operation of the property tax, which he should ap-
prove of, no species of property would be excepted.
It should extend to land, to the funds, to mortgages,
to insurance companies, and other similar bodies.
All the realized property of the country should
be brought within the range of a fair and equi-
table taxation." Have you tried the temper of
a reformed House of Commons with respect to such
a tax as this, my Lord ? Why, even with the sup-
port of most of the avowed enemies of popular
rights, you had only a majority of sixty-six. What
do you think was the cause of the absence of nearly
half the House ? Were not four-fifths of those who
absented themselves, either ashamed to support
you, or afraid to oppose the motion ? With respect
to those who were ashamed, we say nothing;
for we doubt not that when you yourself
are ready to acknowledge the pressure of the
necessity which is driving us to the adoption
of a more equitable distribution of the public bur-
dens, they will support you and were now only de-
terred from opposing you on account of the feeling
of general confidence they have in your intentions ;
but with respect to those who were with you in
their hearts, but feared too much the day of reckon-
ing with their constituents to show it, we trust those
constituents will let them know that their fears were
just, and will hold that their refusal to fight deserves
the same punishment as desertion to the enemy.
All who are not with us are against us in
this matter, and we entreat all who desire
the repeal of the tax on the poor man's malt,
the tax on the poor man's hops, the tax on the
tradesman's house and windows, the tax on paper,
the tax on soap, the tax on starch, the tax on
tea, the tax on sugar, and the taxes on
industry of all kinds,—we entreat, we say, all who
have petitioned for the reduction of those taxes, all
who desire their reduction, and a fair share of the
burdens of the State to be borne by the rich, to
bear in mind that they sre not reduced solely because
a score of men whom they have intrusted with their
confidence have betrayed them. Let them be
marked—let them not be trusted ; all who cannot
bring proofs of absence on account of illness, are
enemies. No lip liberality must content the elec-
tors; let them merely recollect that the tax-gatherer
and exciseman might never have been seen in their
houses had their representatives done their duty. We
shall close these lengthened remarks by quoting a
sentence from the very sensible speech of Mr. WAL-
TER. That gentleman said "he conceived, then,
upon every ground, affecting as well the popularity
of the King's Government, as the character of the
Reformed Parliament and the feelings of the whole
constituency by which it had been elected, that the
present motion ought to command the assent of his
Majesty's Ministers, and of the House of Commons.
The question was one which went home to the com-
mon sense of every order of men in the nation. It was
eminently a practical subject : there was no-
thing speculative, nothing fanciful, nothing Uto-
' plan in it." It was, indeed, a practical m• -
ti at that was submitted to the House, and that
we must suppose, in the absence of all other rea-
sons, was the cause of its failare, at any rate of the
Conservatives opposing it, and the mock friends of
the people deserting it.

A morning contemporary in the interest of the
Dutch Government states that a proposal has been
made by M. DEDEL to Lord PALMERSTON and
Prince TALLEYRAND, to which an answer is to be
returned this day. In an official sense this state-
ment is correct. A long note has been prepared,
and will this day, or to-morrow at the latest, be
delivered to M. DIIDEL ; but it is important to
state, and we do so on undoubted authority,—tha,
the answer of Lord PALMERSTON and Prince TAL-
LEYRAND has been already communicated verbally
to the Dutch Plenipotentiary.

The proposal of the King of HOLLAND was, like
all the proposals which preceded it, a mere contri-
vance to gain time. Instead of expressing his rea-
diness to treat with Great Britain and France, and
naming the bases upon which he would negotiate,
he proposes that the embargo upon Dutch shipping
shall be removed, offering in return to take off the
prohibition against the entry of British and French
ships into Dutch ports; and, these points having
been conceded, his MAJESTY is willing to treat with
the Five Powers (not with the British and French
Cabinets) for a definitive arrangement of the Bel-
gian question, an armistice for a limited time being
agreed to with a full understanding that he is to
have the power of recommencing hostilitieq, if he
pleases, the very day after the expiration of the
armistice. There
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