The Sun.
London, England, 1870-02-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TEE PUBLIC JOITIIIIALS.

The limes remarks on the suggestions of the last 1
amateur Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Patterson, of
Liverpool. Mr. Patterson proposing to abolish all Customs
Duties save those on wines, spirits, and tobacco does no
pore than repeat the cry of a " Free Breakfast Table."
Re would have no duties on tea, on sugar, or on coffee.
Consider the effect of adopting this proposal on the great
Mt of Englishmen below the limit of the Income tax, or,
A all events, as receivers of weekly wages, escaping
the burden of it. Such men pay nothing in respect of
Assessed Taxes, they rarely feel the pressure of Stamp
Duties, they are not liable to be mulcted in respect of
Succession Duties or Legacy Duties, and, in truth, they
would feel the needs of the Exchequer only through the
duties on beer, spirits, and tobacco. Those among them
who do not smoke and who abstain from all intoxicating
drinks would escape these, and would be exempt from
tny recognisable pressure of taxation. Such a practical
conclusion a ould, in our judgment, be most unjust
,nd most dangerous. The circumstance that Mr.
Bright, who first suggested the cry for a " Free
Breakfast Table," has become a Cabinet Minister
nakes it only the more necessary for him to be explicit in
deprecating the consummation he advocated. Mr. Lowe
will have a pleasant surplus in April, and he may be
trusted to distribute it properly. The tariff may not im-
properly be relieved of the fruit duties, since it is certain
the classes contributing to them will remain taxed as
consumers of tea, coffee, and sugar. The licence duties
're open to considerable revision, and some pro-
fitless yet onerous items might be dropped alto-
gether. The Chancellor cf the Exchequer frankly
explained last year his objections to somo of
,he assessed taxes he yet felt himself obliged to retain.
the payers of income tax will look to him for a reduction
)f the rate of that burden, and, as we are persuaded, will
sot look in vain. But, as we have said, we may leave Mr.
~owe to discharge his own work, and we may leave Mr
atterson to discover the error of his reasoning, onlyremark-
:ng that, even if his view were correct that the increased
Jonsumption of beer, spirits, and tobacco would make up
for all he cuts away, the result would, we should think, be
far from satisfactory even to himself.

The Standard thinks tkat the visit of the Duke of
Edinburgh to the capital of India has created an iwpres-
sion upon the minds of the native subjects of her Majesty
such as the local authorities themselves confessed to have
surpassed all previous expectation. Fortunate as the
reign of Lord Mayo has been in all respects, perhaps there
is no event connected with it which Hindoo and Mahom-
medan will recal hereafter with greater satisfaction than
the gorgeous reception which has been accorded to a Prince
of the Royal blood—in their eyes a Prince of India
no less than of England. We have heard a great deal of
late about justice to India, and boons to the natives ; but
we doubt whether anything we have done for the country
It least since the substitution of a living and palpable ruler
for that perplexing abstraction, the East India Company,
has been so universally popular among the hundred and
fifty millions of our Indian fellow-subjects, as the sending
to them a real Prince of our Royal House. We venture to
say that no act of Imperial authority has tended so much
to produce a good feeling in the breasts of the Indian
people, or to advance the British raj in the estimation of
the native princes and chiefs, as this of the visit of the
Duke of Edinburgh, and no man could have performed
his part in it more admirably than Lord Mayo has done.
uoyalty, in an English sense, wo can hardly expect
from the natives of India. They are and ever must be
aliens to the British sentiment and strangers to
our national genius. Thus wo cannot hope that the visit
of a Royal Prince will affect them as it does our own kin-
dred in Australia or in Canada. But there is no reason
Nhy the natives should not be brought to take a personal
pride in all that surrounds the office and administers to
the glory of htr who is Queen of India as well as Queen of
'England,

The Pall Mall Gazette, in referring to M. 011ivier's
recent circular on the French press, asks who ever said a
thing without seeming to say it so happily as a French
journalist 2 Of all the functions which the Minister of
Justice must wish in times like these to keep in his own
hands, one would have said that the determination when
to prosecute a newspaper would have been the first. There
is no harm in M. 011ivier's laying down the lines of his
future policy in this matter ; indeed, we are willing to
admit that an unmistakable declaration that the sub-
stitution of parliamentary for personal Government
involves no licence to revolution may have been urgently
called for. But at all events M. 011ivier might have re-
served to himself the power of pronouncing on each indi-
vidual case as it came before him. He need not have
handed it over to agents who have not been appointed by
himself, and who have been trained in the traditions
of the very system over whose ruins the Ministry
has mounted to office. Rather it would have been
expected that he would have limited the action of
these official by every lawful expedient, and that his
object would have been to ensure, as far as possible,
that no journal should be prosecuted until he had himself
gone into the facts. As it is, he may at any moment find
himseif saddled with prosecutions which he sees to be inel:-
pedient, and have to choose between going on with them
against his own judgment and abandoning them at a
aacrifice of prestige. Instead of sending a circular to his
subordinates in a body, M. 011ivier had better have waited
until the necessity arose, and then communicated with
the proper official by a telegram in cypher.

Fully recognising the primary and paramount impor-
tance of the Irish land measure, the nation, nevertheless
—as we have already declared—says the Telegraph,
expects, desires, and demands a National Education Bill.
Further, it wishes that this bill should be introduced and
conducted with all the force and gravity of a Cabinet
question ; and we thoroughly believe that it will be well
satisfied upon both these points by the announcement
which will shortly be made to Parliament in her
Majesty's name. Where there is a will there is a
way; and no man sits in the Commons, we should
think, who has not by this time a hearty goodwill and an
unfeigned desire to provide for the education of the
people by a lasting, far-reaching, and earnest plan of
national instruction. And if such is the real state of the
case, we say that all obstacles are at once reduced to an
affair of simple arrangement. Given that ardour for
deeds in the matter of popular education which both
parties in the State have been exhibiting in words,
and what remains to forbid the necessary time
for the discussion and passing of an adequate bill ?
What the Government, speaking for the country, resolves
to have done, the Legislative Chamber will do ; the
courage of the Cabinet can make the Commons bold;
its energy will force the laggards to activity ; its estimate
of the popular force behind it will be accepted by its
opponents. There is ample room upon the standard which
it carries for two more inscriptions besides that of
" Justice to the Irish Tenant : " we look to read
upon it., when the Lord Chancellor raises it on
Tuesday next, " Education for Every British
and " The National Universities for the Nation."
It will be noble, indeed, when the session is over, to stand
back and see these great questions of the Irish Land, the
University Tests, and the instruction of the people all hap-
pily arranged. To resolve upon that magnificent legisla-
tive trilogy will be to achieve it. The opposing forces are
shadows, not substance; the obstacles are such as vanish
when they are Approached. The time, the circumstances,
the spirit of the people, and the state of parties, all enjoin
audacitys and constrain to great things.

Thef'Dai/Y News believes the public will be interested in
hoaxing that the landowners and agriculturists of the
pltasant county of Dorset are taking into consideration
?Jr. Stanhope's report to the Royal Commission on the
Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture. At
a meeting held in Dorohester, on Saturday, it was ren-
4ered abundantly evident that Mr. Stanhope's report had
held as 'tweye the mirror up to nature," and
enabled thole attonialled Sonthrons to see themselves as
others see th99l Of course the report met with no flat-
tering acknewle4gment. Mr. Stanhope's photographic art
was, of course, resealed, as foolish faithfulness in por-
traiture is wont to be. There was a wonderful simplicity
in the manger in which the meeting dealt with the whole
question. The landowners and farmers' friends who met
to reav,nre each other, and to declare to one anothat that
they wore not quite so bad as they had been painted, quite
forgot the French proverb, " Qui s'exeuse s'aecusel
/In the North, manufacturers have emancipated the
agricultural labourer, and the competition of the great
towns has supplied the place of that competition which
the farmers will never willingly enter into with one
another. In th 3 South, the new stimulus to the agricul-
tural mind must be given by education. Look at this
Dorset la),ourer, and you need not wonder that his wages
are low. lie is, as Lord Ashley says, " broad shouldered
and stiff-backed," but he is gaunt and clumsy in arpear-
an ;;e, and slow and heavy in movement. His heavy " s'ioon,''
thick with the dirt of many seasons, and heavy with hobnails
and tips, cause him to drag his feet as ho walks. He is as
heavy in mind as in clothing. Talk of emigration and he
thinks of transportation; of removal to some more pros.
porous parts of England and he fears removal from. his.
parish. You can hardly help such a man, whose condaion
is the result of ages of neglect. The improvement must
begin with the rising generation; and as the children,:are
educated, as their enemies are awakened, and their facuffi©s
aroused and trained, the whole agriculturalpopulation fwill
feel the impulse, and we sjzall not need "a regimental rays-
tern in every village tp teach an educated people to lake
care 9141amiclyel.