The Sun.
London, England, 1848-12-25 00:00:00

T Itl SIT N,

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.

TlMES.—There is a passage in Mr. Cobden's letter
upon Financial Reform so exceedingly untrue and un-
fair thnt we must confess ourselves utterly at a loss how
to account for it. It is not consistent with Mr. Cobden's
gravity' and straightforwardness of character to suppose
that he is merely throwing out a challenge to provoke a
useful discussion. We can only suppose, therefore, that
in his exclusive devotion to one branch of economical
science, and in his subsequent ill-health and compara-
tive retirement, he has not given the particular subject
we refer to the benefit of his usual accuracy and research.
To save our readers the trouble of a reference, we will
give the passage in extenso
" I would not advise you to complicate your plan by
proposing any new imposts, to rouse the antagonism of
interested parties, or any modifications or substitutions
of existing taxes, to destroy that simplicity of object
which, above all things, is necessary to the success of a
pu'llic agitation. But there is one tax, from which
the dominant class in this country has exempted itself
for half a century, which exemption it would be dis-
graceful in the character .of the British people any
longer to tolerate—l mean the probate and legacy duty.
In the last year upwards of 2,000,000/. were paid into
the Exchequer by the heirs to personal property, con-
sisting mainly of the hard-earned accumulations of our
merchants, manufacturers, professional men, traders,
and mechanics; whilst the ducal domain, or the estate
of the great landed proprietor, passed untaxed from
the dead to the living. This year will be memorable
for having witnessed the destruction of the last re-
maining powers of feudalism in all the countries of the
continent, excepting Russia. But I know of no
privilege which the nobles of Prussia, Gallicia, or Hun-
gary have been compelled to surrender, as a tribute to
the enlightenment of this age, more unjust in principle
than that which is conferred upon our landed proprietors
in the statute passed by themselves, imposing duties ex-
clusively upon the inheritance of personal property.
Let us not boast of English freedom, or of equality
before the law, whilst this injustice remains. In what
form could aristocratic privilege assume a more offen-
sive and costly aspect than in that of a bold and palpable
exemption from taxation ? Ido not think that great
resistance will be offered to the equitable adjustment of
this tax, provided the people speak out as becomes them.
No living proprietor will be affected by the change ;
and the landowners are as as conscious as you or I that
these are not times for transmitting such a class of
privileges to posterity. I assume that the probate and
legacy duty upon real estate, entailed and unentailed,
will yield at a moderate estimete, 1,500,0001. By the
above plan you would have a disposable surplus revenue
of 11,500,000/.:—viz., ten'millions from the reduction of
expenditure, and a million and a half from the increased
produce of the probate and legacy duty."
Now, in the first place, it is a very gross mistake
to assert, as Mr. Cobden does hero, that all real pro-
perty enjoys this exemption. All leasehold pro-
perty is liable to the duty, so also are all freehold
estates directed by will to be sold and distributed in
money. Nearly all the property of the Church, of the
universities, and other corporations, is held for terms of
years. So also is the greater part of this metropolis,
and a considerable proportion of the house property and
other buildings throughout the whole kingdom. This
is important, as affecting not only the justice of the
charge brought against the "dominant dais," but also
the amount to be raised by doing away with the exemp-
tion. But, if it is not ignorance or haste, it is a scandalous
piece of dishonesty to pick out and parade before the pub-
lic one fact out of a hundred facts bearing on that large
and much disputed question, the burdens on land. The
taxation of this country, as affecting the different classes,
is a system of compensations. It is the growth of many
different ages and principles, for whenever it has been
necessary to increase taxation or to reduce it, it has been
found more easy to add a tax or take one away, than to
remodel and simplify the whole heterogeneous mass.
Mr. Cobden puts this quite out of the question. He
forgets, or chooses to forget, that real property is
under peculiar burdens and legal disadvantages. He
proclaims to millions of men that the landed pro-
prietors, making laws for themselves, have exempted
their own property from legacy and probate duty,
while they laid it on every other class ; as if they
had done this ceeteris paribus, as if they had no reason
whatever in justice or in convenience, but simply possess-
ing the power, employed it to their profit. Had they
been the good managers Mr. Cobden gives them credit
for, they would surely have taken care of themselves as
well as their children. The exemption from the legacy
and probate duty would only come into operation after
their death. They had not spared themselves in what
affects the living. The conveyance of landed property
burdened by much higher charges than the transfer of
personalty, as any one may ascertain for himself
by buying 1,000/. in Consols, and an estate of
that value in land. Of course it would be
very desirable to simplify and equalise all the
taxes on the assignment and transmission of property,
whether real or personal, whether during life or after
decease. An equal and just apportionment of these
burdens, without favour or preference to any description
of property, is the remedy which the nature of the case
requires. Mr. Cobden omits to inform the people of
England that real property pays more than six millions
a year to the relief of the poor; personal property, nil.
An estate with a clear rental of 1,0001. a year will often
pay 1501. or 2001. a year in poor-rates. A fundholder to
that amount need not pay a farthing, and it he lives
abroad, will not. The landowner, in the majority of in-
stances, pays tithes, which, even in their present form,
are a burden on the land, notwithstanding what is com-
monly urged as to the estate having been purchased or
inherited subject to the charge. They have the effect
of an unreedeemable mortgage, which is crippling
enough. The landowner also pays land-tax. In all
three instances it was the original principle of the tax
to charge it on personal as well as real property. Poor-
rates were originally charged upon stock in trade, and an
annual Act is required to exempt it. Every source of
profit, including domestic service, was once held liable
to tithe. Only as late as 1833 an Act was passed re-
pealing the " land-tax" on personal estates. Here, then,
are three burdens which our !ended proprietors, whom
Mr. Cobden charges with selfishness, jobbing; feudalism,
and we know not what, have permitted to remain and
increase upon land, while they have allowed personal
property entirely to escape. The county-rate
for prisons, bridges, and sometimes for roads ; for
sea defences, for the maintenance of banks and water-
courses; for those expensive novelties, bridewells, houses
of correction, and lunatic asylums; for the rural police,
and a great deal more, falls on land and other real pro-
perty, but does not touch personal property.. In a word,
all the public edifices, and all the local institutions of the
country, fall on real property; churches, workhouses,
prisons, asylums, bridges, and roads, are provided
gratis for the owners of personal property. Nor must
we forget highway rates pro bone publico ; nor the
expense of frequent surveys and valuations incident
to rates from land and other real property. Under
the auspices of the " dominant class," these burdens
have increased generation after generation, all
the time being exclusively laid upon real property.
If a father leaves to his son 3001. a year in the
funds, the son is mulcted of a year's income by the state.
Mr. Cobden calls this an extortion,—a feudal device,
worse than any relic of barbarism surrendered in this
happy year hy the nobles of Prussia, Gallicia, or Hun-
gary. He tells us the landed proprietors, being also a
majority of the Legislature, have taken care to exempt
their own property from this infliction. But have they
taken care of themselves? On the contrary, they have
been continually saddling their own property with the
discharge of national obligations, till, instead of paying a
year's income once in twenty-five or thirty years, they
pay land-tax, tithes, and rates amounting to a y
in-
come in three or four years. If Mr. Cobden will open
the question of burdens on real property, we should
imagine that landowners will be the first to thank him.
They have nothing to lose by the inquiry, either in re-
putation or pocket, if it be only fairly conducted.
POST.—It is our custom on Christmas Day to avoid
the ordinary topics of political controversy. We prefer
dwelling upon points which are more likely to evoke
feelings of kindness and good-will. The political world
is, more than any other,
" A world whose soil
Is rank with all unkindness."
It ought not to be. so; but it seems to be the penalty
which we must pay for a popular system of Government.
The political community. is a chaos of conflicting in-
terests and opposing opinions. Every one is seeking for
power, and no one is seeking for good. The impulses of
benevolence are left to the uses of the preacher or the
poet. The politician has some interest to promote—
some theory to establish—some victory to gain, with
which the purpose of making the people more happy or
less wretched than they are has, alas! nothing to do. In
our country, the amount of private benevolence is, thank
God, exceedingly great; but public life seems to shrink
from the recognition of those sentiments which are cer-
tainly of more importance to mankind than any progress
of political theory or any victory of political party—
" That independence Britons prize too high

Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie,
Here by the bonds of nature feebly held,
Minds combat minds, repelling and repelled."
We do not say the results of this are wholly bad. We
admit that political conflict upon important questions is
one of the noblest exercises of the human mind. We
have no wish for the dead uniformity of despotism; but
we find that political society in this country rushes into
the opposite extreme, and we lament to see that the pa-
rental duties of political government have fallen into
desuetude. The theories of freedom are, indeed, advo-
cated; but the tyrannies of circumstance are overlooked.
The Legislature may decree equal rights, but every one
who regards the actual circumstances of society must
see that the means of taking advantage of those rights
are very unequally distributed. When this is pointed
out to politicians, the ordinary reply is that such in-
equalities of power and circumstances are beyond the
province of political regulation, and must exist by the
natural constitution of man and society.
" How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!"
This is, no doubt, true as regards the direct and imme-
diate action of laws or edicts, but the general tendency
of them, not only upon the tone and temper of society,
but upon the circumstances which mainly contribute to
the comfort or discomfort of men's lives, is doubtless
very important, and might be more so. this were not
the case, the political discussions of the world would
cease to have that practical importance which we attri-
bute to them. It political discussions and legislative
regulations had little or no practical effect upon the cit.
cutnstances which depress or gladden the hearts of the
people, we should join the very numerous party of ladies
and gentlemen who think the chief use of a newspaper
is to inform them of the births, marriages, and deaths
which take place around them, and who regard
politics as an amusement or occupation of the upper
classes, with which they neither have nor ought to have
any concern. But we think very differently; and if po-
litics, instead of being a chaos of strife, were animated
by that spirit of affectionate regard for the people which

ought to be a characteristic of. Government, we should
gnd a more general sympathy with political discussion.
It would not be, its it is now, a dreaded and excluded
thing in all mixed society---a thing shunned as exaspe-
rating, or scoffed at as tedious and uninteresting. In the
present day, political discussion is not supported by those
high and exciting sentiments of patriotism which for-
merly belonged to it. It has assumed a lamentably low
and mercantile character, and too many have forgotten
the possibility of associating the language of polities with
the strongest emotions of the heart. How different in this
respect were the days of our boyhood!
" 0! who that shared them ever shall forget
The emotions of the spirit-rousing time,
Whe❑ breathless in the mart the couriers met,
Early and late, at evening and at prime;
When the loud cannon and the merry chime
Hailed news on news, as field on field was won;
When Hope, long doubtful soared at length sublime,
And our glad eyes, awake as day begun,
Watched Joy's broad banner rise to meet the rising sun.
" 0! these were hours when thrilling joy repaid
A long, long course of darkness, doubts, and fears!
The heart-sick faintness of the hope delayed
The waste, the woe, the bloodshed, and the tears
That tracked with terror twenty rolling years:
All was forgot in that blithe jubilee!
Her downcast eye even pale Affliction rears,
To sigh a thankful prayer, amid the flee
That hailed the Despot's fall, and peace and liberty."
Alas! what has become of that proud and grateful
spirit? Why is there now no lofty aspiration connected
with political events? Why is it that our politicians
speak only mercantile language, and that the high senti-
ment of patriotism has passed away from amongst us!
A clergyman, who travelled some years ago in the wilder
parts of the south of Ireland, with a companion who
spoke the native Irish, fell in with a peasant solitary in
his hut. The man said his family had all gone to
" watch mass," the day happening to be the eve of
Easter. The good clergyman began to question the
man concerning his notions of Good Friday, Easter
Day, and so on, but was shocked to find that the peasant
could not answer him a word, 'His companion, how-
ever, proposed to try the man in Irish, believing he
should have much better luck in that tongue—
" He did so, and it was quite surprising to see how
the man, as soon as the Irish was spoken, brightened up
in countenance, and I could perceive from the smile that
played on the face of my friend how he rejoiced in the
realisation of his prognostic. He began to translate for
me as follows t—l asked him—What was Good Friday?
It was on that day that the Lord of Mercy gave his life
for sinners, a hundred thousand blessings on him for
that.' What is watch Saturday? It was the day when
watch was kept over the holy, tomb' that held the incor-
ruptible body of my sweet Saviour.' Thus the man
gave, in Irish. clear and feeling answers to questions
concerning which, when addressed in English, he ap-
peared quite ignorant; and yet of common English
words and phrases he had the use; but, like most of his
countrymen in the south, his mind was groping in foreign
parts when conversing in English, and he only seemed to
think in Irish: Me one was 'the lanpaye of his commerce,
the other of his heart."
Our politicians of the present day seem to labour
under the name deficiency as that of the 'clergymen in
this anecdote. They are always speaking to the nation
in the language of commerce, and not in the language of
the heart. The result is that the people do not under-
stand them. If there were more sympathy and less sta-
tistics in the speeches of leading politicians, we should
not find so much bitterness in the hearts, and no mach
exasperation in the language of Chartists.' We. hope
there are other victories which the nation might gladly
celebrate as well as those which are achieved by the
effusion of human blood. In England there is a mighty field
to be won, a victory over multitudinous misery, a triumph
of humble comfort over abject penury.. Let it not be
thought that it is impossible. Let it not be supposed
that England has done its duty—that it has behaved
with proper feeling to the people in providing union
workhouses, where all is blank wretchedness, except to
the all-debased, Something better might be done for
the well-conducted poor than there is done by our exist-
ing system. Let us take instruction from a Whig isoet's
account of a poor-house :
" There, in one house, throughout their lives to be,
The pauper-palace, which they hate to see,
That giant-building, that high bounding wall,
Those baie worn walks, that lofty thund'ring hall !
That large loud clock which toll& each dreaded hour,
Those gates and locks, and all those signs of power
It is a prison with a milder name,
Which few inhabit without dread or shame.

Here the good pauper, losing all the praise
By worthy deeds acquired in better days, ,
Breathes a few months, then to his chamber led,
Expires, while strangers prattle round his bed."
Surely the heart of the English nation might devise
a plan more repressive of vicious profligate pauperism
than any which now exists, and more kind to those who
are des ruing but unfortunate. Glad should we be if
this high festival, devoted so generally in private life to
thoughts and deeds of charity, should suggest also
public men the firm determination to make the national
energies and resources of England more conducive to the
moral and social welfare of the indigent masses.