The Sun.
London, England, 1856-12-22 00:00:00

our taste, we must honestly confess, was the cha-
racteristic-fashion in which_ Sir HOU3T_QN in his
turn, alluded to the warlike spirit of our mercan-
tile population upon great emergencies—when he
said—" England, generally speaking, was a com-
mercialnation, unlike those who made war their glory
and occupation : but when the row began they shut
their shops." As ill luck would have it, however,
in the latest instance of a row of this kind—on
taking the shutters down again, we have had to
make rather a considerable haul upon the till.
Without very much of the compensation spoken of
so boastfully by Sir ARCHIBALD -at any rate
on the part of the great national ser-
vice ! Nevertheless—if the Royal Navy did
just next to nothing during the late struggle,
either through lack of a foe, or through lack of a
way to ferret that skulking foe out—we have still a
matchless maritime force, and gallant tars enough
and to spare—not the least gallant among these
our gallant tars being the honoured Guest of
Greenock on Friday evening, Admiral Sir Hous-
TON STEWART, the newly appointed Commander-
in-Chief of the British war-ships in the American
waters.

" Too late !" "Too late 1" says the Times.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer made April fools
of you in the spring, and fools you must continue
till April, 1858. " Better late than never," we
reply. We bargained for sixteenpence in the
pound, as we understood, till April, 1857. If
we pay it afterwards we deserve the cap and bolls.
But we shall certainly try which is master—we
or GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS. If he be not
ready to make his Income Tax bearable, we know
who is. We have the consolation so freely prof-
fered to disappointed lovers, and with all due
respect for the Edinburgh Reviewer, if he does
not review the tax to our satisfaction, we had
much rather have BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Esq., and
an amended tax, than Sir GEORGE and his intoler-
able weight with him. We are so mercenary that
the dowry of a lighter, better adjusted tax would
console us for all the charms of our present love.
We advertise the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
therefore, that he is to have an agitation whisk
all the blandest suggestions of the Times, and all
his own pressing necessities, and all the heavy
metal of his discourses, can never put down. The
Income Tax was " lynched" at the close of the
long war ; it was " lynched," at least the aug-
mentation of it was, when Sir CHARLES WOOD
tried it on. If Sir GEORGE desires to witness
another repetition of the ceremony let him perse-
vere. We can guarantee him the treat. Should
he not like it when he sees it, he can either walk
out of his tax or his office, as suits his convenience.
We can assure him of the people's entire indiffer-
ence on that score.

How long is the period of Fiscal gestation, or
incubation to last ? We are told the amount "is
necessary for the Chancellor of the Exchequer's
financial arrangements." We wonder who told our
contemporary so ? We suppose there is but one
person who fully knows the stage of development
which the embryo budget has reached. Has he
told the delicate fact to a professional gentleman
whose assistance may be desirable in the hour of
the Chancellor's sorrow ! We have all known
new fiscal " arrangements" adjusted in a few
weeks, a month or two at most ; and we fancy
that if Sir GEORGE be put on his mettle he can
have an alternative ready is no long time. We
take another anti a very common view of " neces•
sity," to wit, that it is the mother of invention ;
and perhaps there is hardly a class of officials who
more need such an aid to invention than mediocre
Chancellors of the Exchequer—gentlemen of the
COaNEWALL LEWIS and CHARLES WOOD class.
Their hereditary sin is to repose at ease on any tax
the people will let them have in quiet ; there they
lie—you would think them paralytics—upon it
till—like persons we have seen in the street at the
approach of the police,—so they, at the approach
of an indignant people,—quietly take up their
traps and walk off.
But, after all, we shall have a few millions more
of national debt. So bs it then. We prefer that
to paying elevenpence in the pound more Income
Tax in 1858 than we were fated to bear by Mr.
GLADSTONE'S Act of June, 1853. According to
that Act next year we were to have paid but five-
pence in the pound, and to have paid that amount
till 1860, and not, as the Times erroneously states,
till "April, 1858, unless the tax be revived by
another war." Now that differeuce between five-
pence and sixteenpence we, like the " premature
agitators" at publio meetings, cannot endure in
patience, though only for another year. We re-
gard that elevenpenee in the pound as an odious
swindle. We meant to pay it one year after the
war. We decline to pay it any longer. The
Minister played with loaded dice when he intro-
duced the cheating word " ratification" into his
Act ; 'and, as in the late SIDEBOTTONI case, we re-
fuse to honour a bill, even if we have accepted it,
when it was drawn by one who had taken us in.
ii/e knew when he could get the ratification ; we
did not. We confounded it with signing the
Articles of Peace. When first challenged by him
as to our debt, we stood amazed at the cunning
of the trick. One year's debt for fair play was
then becoming due. We thought only of meeting
that, and half overlooked the other ; but now the
other bill is becoming due, like Mr. SIDEBOTTOM,
we bethink ourselves. Having paid prodigiously
to the reckless wasters of our money for two or
three years, we scan the bill a little closely—we
remember that it was got by a Treasury trick—
we repudiate the transaction--let the sharper
bring an action against the tax-payers if he please
—we will meet him in the House. We ask, is
not this the sentiment of every honest English-
man ?

As to the inherent unfairness of the Income
Tax, we might refer our readers, if need
could be, to the elaborate picture of its
injustice to every individual drawn by the Times
itself. It wore utterly unreasonable to sup-
pose that a whole country would consent to be
squeezed in that way to save trouble to any
Heaven-born Chancellor whatever. Every one
feels that he is wronged somewhere. Every one,
besides the amount of money, has something to
resent. This is about the worst that can be said
for any tax. Let Manchester grumble as it likes,
no Custom-house or Excise duty ever levied has
created such a deep feeling of wrong as the Income
Tax. The very man who pays on his exact in-
come is wronged, because others do not. Better
far submit to a little enhanced price for some
luxury, to a direct tax for a dog, or a carriage, a
something not absolutely necessary, to anything,
rather than to living thus under an Income-tax har-
row all our lives, and one with teeth, too, more
than three times their proper length, if Sir G. C.
LEWIS is to have his way. There is one unmiti-
gated evil in an Income Tax not half enough
noticed. The clerk with 1001. or 1501. a-year may
just pay his way, and look decent in the count-
ing-house or the church—if he have no family. If
he have many, or if he have half-a-dozen children,
he is almost a beggared man—indefinitely poorer
than the other. Yet he must pay the ruinous
tax—to him absolutely ruinous. He has no
means of economising. If luxuries only are taxed,
hard though it may be, he can do without them.