The Sun.
London, England, 1848-08-28 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, AUGUST 28, 1848,

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, on Friday
evening, attempted to justify the new loan for
200,0001. sterling, which he asked the House to
sanction, principally upon the ground that he had
in theearly part of the session proposed a temporary
increase of the income-tax from three to five per
cent. for a limited period of two years, which, if con-
ceded, would have realised 3,500,0001. or thereabouts
per annum, but that the proposal had not been re-
ceived with any favour by the House, and was
consequently abandoned. The result of this refusal
has been, that he is now obliged to create a perma-
nent addition to our national debt, to grant a new
mortgage upon the labour and the industry of our
children. We shall readily concede to Sir CHARLES
WOOD, that the only species of taxation which could
have been resorted to without occasioning a degree of
public excitement, that would have been highly pre-
judicial to the best interests of the country, was a direct
impost, and that it was not advisable to have recourse
to a permanent tax for the purpose of defraying a
temporary excess of expenditure. We must, however,
most emphatically deny the assertion of the Right
Hon. Bart., " that the House and the country were
not prepared to submit to increased taxation for a
short period."
There was undoubtedly the strongest objection,
both in and out of the Legislature, to provide
for estimates which it was believed were framed
upon extravagant calculations, and which might have
been very materially reduced without in any degree
diminishing the efficiency of our establishments,
or decreasing the national strength below that
which the ominous and lowering aspects of
the political horizon, both at home and
abroad rendered essential to the honour and
safety of the empire. That such an opinion was
well founded has been established on the clearest and
most unanswerable evidence, namely, that no less than
898,000/. has been struck off the various estimates
in consequence of the economy thus rendered neces •
sary.

It was not, however, a desire to enforce a strict
attention to that salutary economy which was so
urgently required by the country, that constituted
the sole or even the principal objection to the con-
templated increase of the income-tax. The country
would, we believe, have been prepared to make any
reasouablesacrifice that could have been demanded, and
to have raised the national income, at least, to an
equality with the national expenditure ; so that if the
enormous weight of our debt was not mitigated, it
:should not have been increased without the most ur-
gent necessity. But the Minister of Finance refused
to make any concession to the universal feeling of
the community ; he peremptorily declined to listen to

any modification of the unjust and iniquitous prin-
ciple of the Act. He insisted that the tax
should be equally levied upon every de-
scription of income, however obtained; that
the professional man, the merchant or the trader,
should contribute as largely upon the amount of his
precarious and hardly-earned profits as the lordly in-
heritor of wide-spread domains, or the wealthy fund-
holder—that income which was not worth four years'
purchase, and out of which a considerable portion
should ba set aside to snake provisions for a future
day, when shattered health or failing energies might
no longer permit unremitting toil, or when death
might snatch away the sole provider from his
helpless and almost destitute family, should contri-
bute as largely as realised property. This perti-

nacious and obstinate adherence to an impost
so unequal in operation, and so unjust in principle,
excited the strongest indignation. It the tax hau
been wanted it was too ridiculous to suppose
that it would have been remitted at th©
end of two years aye, or of ten years.
It was of too convenient a character to be easily
given up when once it had been in operation, and
there were too many indirect taxes unduly pressing
upon the energies and paralyzing the industry of the
nation, which should be got rid of the moment there
was any appearance of a surplus. If there was to be
any attempt to obtain a more equitable adjustment of
the tax it should have taken place at the moment.

The people felt this, and they spoke out boldly and
manfully. They did not, we again assert, object to
have an amount levied sufficient to defray all the
necessary expenditure of the country, but they most
properly refused to perpetuate a system founded on
the grossest injustice, the most unequal and partial
assessment.

Sir CHARLES WOOD must not suppose that he can
dictate to the House and country, or that he can, in a
fit of ill humour, because the Legislature refuses
to sanction the particular mode in which he desires

that the tax should be levied, abdicate the duties
of his office, and refuse to provide a substitute for the

rejected impost. So long as he continues in office be is
the public servant, and he must obey the wishes of
those by whom he is retained. We trust that he will
feel it to be his duty to bow to the general wishes of
the community, and that if his present demand be
complied with he may, at the very least, pledge himself
to bring forward at the very commencement of next
session a proposition for a more equitable apportion-
ment of the income-tax with reference to the actual
value of the property in respect of which it is
made.

Since the general election of 1847 there have been
in
a succession of supplemental contests
several
And
of the
boroughs and counties of the Unitedex
ii.i
these contests have, without one
ce
been i-
variably preceded by prolonged and Ipabtloorn inves-
tigations before Committees of the anusleou;
mons. Indeed we cannot but regard the legisCl:tirnve
emptiness of the present session of Parliament as very
easily explicable—first, on account of these tediousy
electioneering inquiries—secondly, in consequence of
the loquacity of the representatives and the heavy
discussions into which they have been seduced, by a
silly ambition to have their eloquence paraded in the
columns of the newspawa—thirdly, by reason of the