The Sun.
London, England, 1870-04-12 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, APRIL 12, 1870

SHARE LIST.

RAILWAYS-ORDINARY SHARES AND STOCKS

Closing Business
Paid. Name. Quotations, done.
St Bristol and Exeter lOO 77 78
St Caledonian 100 771 79
St Cambrian
20 Cornwall all 21 3}
St Dublin and Belfast Junction 100 ... .. .
St Dun, Prth, aud Aber. June 100 70 72
20 East London. all 4 6
20 Do
'
20 Dolo
St. Glasgow and S.Western 100 111 113
St Great Eastern lOO 371 39 401 1
St Do East Anglian, No. `L., 100 61 71 61
St Great North of Scotland 100 15 16
St Great Northern 100 114 115
St Do A 100 119 1191
St Do 11
St Gt. So. and West (Ireland) 100 98 100
St Great Western - Cousolid 100 681 691 691
St Do South Wales 100 68 70
St Do West Midland—Oxford 100 44 45
St Da do Newport 100 36 38
St Lancashire and Yorkshire 100 1251 1271 1281
St Loud, Bright'n, and S Coast 100 43 431 461 1
St Lond, Chatham, and Dover 100 141 151
St Do Metrop Extension A 100 9 11
St Loudon and North Westeru 100 1231 1231 1251 61
St Loudon and South Western 100 881 89/ 891
St Mauch, Shef, aud Lincolnsh 100 51 511
St Do New. issued at £5O dis 30 .... ...
St Metropolitan lOO 791 80 781
St. Do Preferred... lOO ••• •••
St Do Deferred 100 ••• •O•
10 Do Redeemable
St Metropolitan District 100 37 38
St Midland lOO 1241 125 126
St Do Birmingham and Derbyloo 92 94
St North British. lOO 34 35
St Do Edin, Perth, and Dunde 100 13 15
St North Eastern—Berwick 100 1261 1271 1351 41
St Do Leeds 100 841 851
St Do York
St Do Stockton and Darlingtia 100 176 180 18l
St North London 100 116 118
10 Do New, 1868 6.1 11 1
St North Staffordshire 100 59 61.
St North and So. Wost. Junct 100 102 105
St Rhymney lOO 52 54
St Shropshire Union.. 100 62 63
St South Devon 100 46 48
St South Eastern 100 761 771 771
St Do Preferred ,..100 1091 1101
St Do Deferred 100 41 411
St Staines, Wok'ham, St Wok'g. all 121 131 •
St Taff Vale
10 Do C 6 3 6
St Waterford and Cent.. Ireland 100 ... ...
10 Waterloo and Whitehall

MISCELLANEOUS.

10 Anglo-Mexican Mint
25 Australian Agricultural 2oi 16 17
25 Austn Mort Land and Fin, L d pr
10 Baugparah Tea Estate, Lim all 3 5
10 Berlin Water Works, Lim
5 Bombay Gas, Limited all 5 of
5 Ditto, New 4 pr pm
50 British American Land

20 British Indian Tea, Limited all 21 31
27 Canada Company all 78 80 78
20 Ceylon Company, Limited lO 4 3d
20 Ditto, A shares
25 City of London Real Prop, LlO 7 6d
30 City of Milan Improvment L all 4 5
50 City Offices, Limited
50 Colonial, Limited 2O ld pr
50 Commercial Union (Asso)
10 Com of African March, L
20 Continental Union Gas, L
25 Copper Miners of England,
Pref 71 per cent all 5 7
100 Corp of London Bonds, 1877,
41 per cent all
100 Ditto, 1879, 4A par cent
100 Ditto, 1882, 4i per cent
10 Credit Fonc o England, L all 21 31
50 Credit Fonc of Mauritius, L 10 21 lid
St Crystal Palace
St Do, Preference lOO 94 99
St Do, 6 per cent Perp Debentloo 108 113
50 E India Land Credit & Fin L 7 5 4d

32 Ebbw Vale 27+ 101 10d
100 Egypt 9 p et Viceroy's Loan
gua by Egyptian Gov all 100+ 101+ 100+
20 Egyptian Corn and Trading L 4113
3 Engiish and Austr Copper, L 2+ I
15 Eng and Foreign Credit 7+ 4 3d
10 European Gas all 17 18
10 Do, new...
6 Fairbairn Engineering 5 ld p
20 Fore-street Warehouse. L 13 31 41p
100 Foreign and Col Gov Trust
and Loan 6 per et Bonds all 97 96
10 Gen Credit and Discount, L 71 I Id
15 General Steam Navigation l4 29 31
50 Home and Col Marine Ins, L 5 14 p
20 Hudson's Bay (Governor and
Co. of Adventurers of Eng
trading into) all 12 124
50 Imperial Contiuen!al Gas 431 131 130
50 India Rub, Telg Works, L 45 57 59
10 International Fivan Soc, L 5 11 11d
20 Italian Irrigation Canal, Cav all 41 4/
1.00 Ditto, 6 per cat Bonds, rod all •
1870.. 63 65 6!1
10 Land Securities, Limited 5 2 ld
25 London African Trading— 10
50 Lond Financial Assoc, Lim 3O 18 174 11
4 Load Gen Omnibus, Limd
50 Loud & Glasg Eugiu, Limd 25 18 itid
20 London and Prov Marine
St Madras Irrig & Canal, guar 100
spc by India Gov lOO 103 105
50 Merchant Shipping, Limtd all 32 37
10 Natal Land and Col Co., Lim all 31 44
25 National Discount Co, Lim 5 11} 11
10 National Steamship, Limd all 131 141
1 Nerbudda Coal &In Ld 6s 6d f 1
10 New Consolidated Dis Ld
5 New Quebrada, Limited 4112 41 4fd
25 N Zealand Ln & Mere, &c 2+ + ip
25 N Zealand Trust & In, Ld 5 1/ Ifp
10 North Assam Tea, Limited 7 7 5d
10 Do, B all d
St N British Austral, Limited 100 60 70
50 'N British & Mercan lusnce 64 23 23+
25 Ocean Marine insurance 5 15 16p
5 Oriental Gas, Limited
5 Do, New
10 Otago & South Invest, Ld 2 fit fp
5 Ottoman Gas, Limited all 2 21
St. Peel Riv Lnd & Min, Lim lOO 31 33
50 Peninslr & Oriental Steam all 43 45 42+
50 Do., New, 1867 lO :3.1 2j4
50 Rhymney Iron .... all 27 281
15 Do, New all 84 al
25 Rio Janeiro City Itn., Lmtd all 191 201
20 Rio Janeiro Gas, Limited
100 Royal Mail Steam 6O 52 51
St. Scot Aus Invest, Limited lOO
20 Societe General de l'Empire
Ottoman 8 2+ 31
25 South Australian Land
20 Tel Construe & Maintenance
(lim and redaced) all 36 361 37
20 Thames & Mers Mn Ins, L 2 2+ 24p
St. Tobacco (Ital 6p c Loan) all 86 88
.10 Trust and Agency of Austra-
lasia, (Limited)
20 Tr &LnCoof Up Canada 5 t ip
50 Union Marine Liverpool, Ld 5 6 61p
20 Union Steam Ship, Ld
15 United Dis Corpora, Lmtd ... 6 2 ld
20 Quiver Mar (Ins), Lmtd 5 41 Sip
10 Upper Assam Tea, Lmtd ... all 1 1
30 Van Diemen's Land ...... 28+ 7 9
100 Viceroy of Egypt Mort Ln. all 851 861 84+
50 Warrant Finance, Limited 12 8 6d
50 WI & P Steam, Limited ... 20 4 3d

SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.

THE BUDGET.

The Times thinks the return of the income tax to a
fourpenny rate—it seemed that an appreciable section of
the House did not know its present rate—and the reduc-
tion of the sugar duties by one-half are proposals recom-
mending themselves to everyone. Sugar is an article, as
Mr. Lowe observed, found not only on the breakfast
table, but also on dinner, tea, supper, and even after-
supper tables. The most noticeable point about this
alteration is that whereas six years since, when
the sugar duties were last under discussion, we
were dinned with " jaggery," " melado," and the
advocates of a uniform duty, the principle of classifi-
cation remains unimpeached. The reduction of the sugar
duties involves a sacrifice of £2,350,000 of revenue. A
penny income tax has grown to £1,250,000. The abolition.
and reduction of minor duties will cause with these
changes a total diminution of revenue of £3,996,000 leaving
an estimated surplus of £331,000. So, at least, Mr. Lowe
said, but his figures can only be reconciled by supposing
that he here omitted the additional £150,000 of the
gun duty, and that the real surplus is £481,000.
There can be no doubt the Budget thus sketched
will receive the hearty approbation of enlightened
opinion. It is based on the just principle of making
all members of the community contribute to the support
of common burdens, and if it lacks the brilliant surprises
of last year, which could not, indeed, be repeated, and
hews an unexpected want of courage in dealing with the
permanent question of the National Debt, its broad out-
lines are faithful to the policy of true statesmanship, and
it is fitted to maintain that elasticity of the national
revenue which is the cause of its own most agreeable
features.

The Standard pronounces that Mr. Lowe's speech
was, even for a Budget speech, unusually tedious, He
had, moreover, the misfortune to rise in a House already
fatigued and rendered impatient by an unexpected discus-
sion on the proposed erection of a railway station opposite
to the Mansion House and by a long series of ques-
,tions." Following, without Mr. Gladstone's skill, the
example set by Mr. Gladstone, he"kept to the last the
only thing which any one cared to hear—the amount
of surplus and the manner in which he proposed to
dispose of it. But he occupied the first hour, not
as his chief used to do, with philosophical disquisition, or
with those wonderful efforts of rhetoric which, from 1860
to 1866, so often contrived to render arithmetic
itself amusing, and made Mr. Gladstone's budgets the
very fairy tales of finance, but with a minute and tedious
explanation of the details of expenditure and revenue
for the past year, as compared first with the expendi-
ture and revenue of 1868-69, then with the esti-
mates of April last. He went into every single
item, and explained its increase or diminution, its
excess over or reduction from the estimate. Altogether
the Budget is likely to be a popular one in the towns. The
rural population will feel that their interests have, as
usual, been wholly overlooked ; as usual,. they will see
that they must wait for the return of financial relief till a
Conservative Minister, at the head of a working majority,
has the opportunity of bringing forward a Budget whose
success does not depend upon the forbearance of his
opponents.

The most interesting portion of a financial statement,
says the Post, is that in which the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer explains the manner in which he will dispose of
his surplus, and on Monday evening the House of Com-
mons was more than ordinarily anxious to learn in what
way Mr. Lowe would apply the considerable surplus at
his disposal. But no one was surprised to find that his
financial policy for the forthcoming year was based on the
established principle that direct and indirect taxation
must go hand in hand, and that no class of the public
is entitled to absolute immunity from burdens which
in justice ought to be shared by all. It is, as Mr. Lowe
`observed, the duty of a Financial Minister to make every
one feel a little uneasy. Acting in accordance with this
principle, but at the same time recognising what well
may be regarded as prior claims, and having regard
to the expediency of abolishing imposts which
are vexatious without being productive, Mr.
Lowe told how he proposed to use his surplus.
On striking a balance between the remissions and the
available surplus it will be found that Mr. Lowe has still
upwards of £330,000 to meet unexpected contingencies.
Of the diminution in the income tax nothing need be said,
but probably never was so great, or at the same time so
necessary, a remission effected in an indirect tax as that
which Mr. Lowe has had the courage to propose in thus
dealing with the sugar- duty.

The Pall Mall Gazette considers that Mr. Lowe ap-
peared to most advantage in the discussion of the pro-
posals to which he could give no countenance. For the
time the House of Commons was to him as one vast
deputation, successively urging the paying off of the
National Debt and the relief of the sufferings now in-
flicted on brewers. Mr. Lowe is not singular in his dis-
belief in the inability of the latter to get the cost of their
licenses out of their customers. The quality of beer is
not, unfortunately, so stationary as this complaint would
seem to imply. To the project of devoting all future sur-
pluses to the paying off of the National Debt Mr. Lowe
was distantly civil. It is a project which must recom-
mend itself to everyone who is not charged with the
responsibility of carrying it out. But to a prudent
Finance Minister, it will always have two fatal faults.
In the first place, it would destroy that salutary equalisa-
tion of forces by which one claimant for remission of
taxes is made to answer another; and in the second
best
it would deprive the Government of one of their
best pleas for resisting wasteful expenditure. A man
asks for money to be laid out on this or .that object; the
Government remind him that it can only be found at the
expense of his favourite crotchet; and, added Mr. Lowe,
with a keen sense of past success in this line, "he goes
away rebuked."

The Telegraph declares that the second budget of Mr.
Lowe is not less striking in its simplicity than his
first was in its surprises. Having a nett disposable
surplus of £4,297,000, he gives remissions of taxation
amounting to £3,966,000, leaving himself with a margin
of £331,000 against the issue of the current year.. And
how does he distribute the relief to the tax-payer repre-
sented by these four millions sterling ? The answer,
in its broad features, was distinctly stated
beforehand in our columns on Saturday week.
The Income-tax is brought back to the ante-
Abyssinian figure of 4d. in the pound, involving a reduc-
tion of £1,250,000 ; half of the sugar duties is swept
away, causing a reduction of £2,350,000 ; while a crowd of
little vexatious burthens are abolished, and one or two im-
ortant modifications are effected, at a gross cost to the
-Revenue of some £350,000. Such, taking its main out-
outlines, is the Budget of 1870 ; as much disappointing
over-sanguine anticipations as the Budget of 1869 disap-
pointed gloomy apprehensions.
- -

- -
The Daily News observes that Mr. Lowe is the most fortu-
nate of Chancellors of the Exchequer. In his first year
of office, that which has just expired, he secured a surplus
which enabled him not only to well nigh pay off the
balance of the debt created by the Abyssinian war, but
to abolish the corn and fire insurance duties, and take a
penny off the income-tax. On Monday night he was able
to announce that in the year 1870-71 he would have a sur-
plus of £4,337,000, and that nearly the whole of this
amount would be applied in the reduction of ' taxation.
Mr. Lowe expatiated, with just pride, on the
flplendid results shewn by the figure of his
-Budget to have been achieved by that policy
of economy to which he and his colleagues
have been true through evil report and good report. Our
revenue is now the largest raised since the last three
years of the French war ; the pfunded debt stands at
the lowest point it has reached within living memory, and
Mr. Lowe is keeping an eye on the funded debgtsthem,eawciedandnaocveeles
not yet despair of some day lessening. its vast proportions.
The actual gain by plans
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