The Sun.
London, England, 1851-05-26 00:00:00

eb-Jentatt 2ltz

LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 26, 1851.

More than three weeks have elapsed since the
Nestor of Reform carried his amendment limiting the
duration of the property and income-tax to a single
year. The object of that amendment was not to get
rid of the impost as a source of revenue. On the
contrary, the Hon. Gentleman clearly and distinctly
explained his views, which were strongly in favour of
direct taxation. He, however, objected to the un-
equal and inequitable mode of assessment, and the
injustice of levying the same rate of charge
upon terminable and perpetual annuities, and
upon fluctuating and varying incomes from trades
ai.d professions, as upon fixed incomes from real pro-
perty, and he desired that a searching investigation
should be institived into the entire system, in order
that it might be ascertained whether the evils so
loudly and so justly complained of might not be
greatly modified, or altogether removed. His pur-
pose was unequivocally explained in the motion it-
self; there could be no doubt or difficulty in the
question. Lord Joax RussELL acknowledged his
defeat, and declared that the Government was pre-
pared to agree that there should be a fair cad full in-
quiry upon the subject. The appointment of a Com-
mittee was carded without a division in the following
week. If due diligence had been used, that Com-
mittee might not only have been nominated, but its
labours might have beon nearly concluded ere this
time. Nothing, however, has been done. Three
weeks have been wasted in the most important part
of the session, and fiscal reformers conceived that the
promised and anxiously-looked-for investigation had
been postponed sine die, and that the CHANCELLOR of
the ExcasoLuzz had succeeded in shelving the topic
for the remainder of the year.
At length, however, we find some appearance of
activity. Mr. Hume has given notice for to-morrow
evening of the nomination of the Select Committee-
We know not whether Sir CHARLES WOOD has sig-
nified his assent to the selection, or whether we shall
witness a repetition of manmuvres and divisions simi-
lar to those which took place on the nomination of
the Committee on the commercial crisis of 1847.
The Right Hon. Baronet then boldly and unblush-
ingly avowed his very peculiar opinions respecting
the composition of such bodies. He declared that a
Minister must be mad if he consented to the appoint-
ment of a Committee, unless perfectly certain as to
the nature of their report. He seemed to think that
the sole purpose of such an inquiry was to strengthen
the hands of the Ministers for the time being, and to
diminish the responsibility that might devolve upon
them if they adopted a bold and manly course, with-
out previously obtaining the sanction of such a tri-
bunal.

We ven►ure, however, to assert that the community
in general entertain very different views on the sub-
ject, and that nothing could more completely destroy
the slender reputation still remaining to the Govern-
ment than any attempt to cushion the inquiry, or to
pack the jury who are to decide on the matter at
Lord JOHN RUSSELL has given a promise as
suit mn as any that could have fallen from the lips of
a public man He has declared that, " bowleg to the
opinion of the House, the last thing he should think of
doing would be evading an inquiry which he had
agreed to have in.tituted." We look to the Noble

Lord for the unconditional rede ption of that pledp.
It is itcp.-2rative upo❑ him, if he entertain any regard
for his own character, to control the vagar►r.s of hit

colleague, and to prevent him from di-plsyicg any
ri-gree of Parliainentary strategy on the occasion.
Far better that there should be uo inquiry than that
its result should b 3 a forgone conclusion, that
the people should feel that they have
been defrauded, or that they should be
compelled to protest against a verdict returned
against the weight of evideoce. No sophistry can
satisfy those who for nine successive years have been
unsparingly victimised that the equal taxation of all
descriptions of income, no matter from what sources
derived, is just or equitable. An artist or author,
barrister or physician, does not enjoy his income by

as sure a tenure as the fundholder, who can reckon

with perfect certainty on the receipt of his demands
to the very hour. Tne merchant, trader, or EMU-

facturer may be disappointed in his reasonable ex-
pectations : his anticipated projects may be converted
into serious, aye, ruinous loses. But the fortunate
proprietor of well circumstanced chief rents will have
nothing to fear. He may disregard the fluctuations
of the money market ; whatever may happen his in-
come will be safe. The act of PROVIDEN E

may in a moment deprive those chargeable
under Schedule D of the experience and energy that

constituted their chief, if not their only capital. Their
families may be lLft without provision, and, if at all

prudent, a large proportion of their receipts should
Theshouid
be devoted to guard against such contingencies.
tax-gatherer, however, interposes, and by his unrea-
sonable demands prevents the prudent act. He carries
off the money that should have gone to the insurance
°floe ; and the impoverished and unprotected family
too late lament, nut the improvidence of their de-
parted parent, but the injustice and impolicy of the
law that has consigned them to poverty and destitu-
tion. It will depend on the decision of the Com-
mittee to be appointed to-morrow whether such
things shall be of frequent, aye, of every day occur-
rence. We therefore emphatically call upon the in-
dependent Members to be in their places during
the nomination, so as to prevent any unfair selection,
and any further unnecessary procrastination ; so
that a fairly constituted Committee may be enabled to
enter on their important duties within the present
week.

Elaewbere, in this evening's impression of our jour-
nal, we publish a communication of considerable
interest relating to the graveyard question, trans-
mitted to us by a very intelligent and well-informed
' correspondent. From his observations it will he ob-
served what little progress has been made up to the
present moment in regard to the organ intiou of any-
thing like a regular system of extramural interment.
All cry and little wool is unfortunately a saying that
holds good in this as in so many other instances were
the slightst reform is preferable to the noisiest agi •
tation. During fifteen years the evil of promiscuous
and unrestricted burial within the metropili!an bills
of mortality
haw bcen proclaimed with an enip' basis
that defied indifferepcp, and f,r a considerable time
we may aver that the truth of that assertion has been
very generally recognized and appreciated. Scarcely an
individual, we believe, throughout the whole country

LON DON,

can now be discovered so callous or so ignorant as to
advocate the perp-tuation of a custom which all alike
know full well to be pregnant with influences so per-
nicious to morality, so prejudicial to religion, so
strangely in violation of the sanci.y of the grave and
the solemnity of dissolution. Thanks to the nume-
rous promoters of inquiry into the subject, the grim
reality has been long undo ked. Th.nks especially to
one energetic and self-sacrificing reformer who, by per-
sonal researches of the moat loathsome nature and of
the most indefatigable frequency, laid before the
public eye the whole of these detestable abominations.
Pepuhr intelligence has extended so far by this time
upon the subject that it is scarcely necessary to remind
anyone of the man alluded to, by giving the name of
GEORGE ALFRED WALKER, a name deservedly regarded
by the community with sentiments of sincere and re-
spectful thankfulness. Repeatedly as we have found
occasion to revive to public remembrance the mate-
rials he has mastered so thoroughly, we yet un-
happily discover that his endeavours, and those co-
operative efforts made by ourselves and some few
other members of the Fourth Estate, have until now
proved to all intents and purposes unavailing, in spite
moreover of the fact that a Bill pretending to force the
desired changes has been carried through both
Houses of the Imperial Parliament. Those who have
scrutinized our conduct in regard to this enactment
will bear in recollection the circumstance that from
its outset we protested against the Bill in question
being hailed as a boon by the less discerning and the
more enthusiastic. 'We eharacterised it, in short, as
little better than a sham and a delusion, a specious
pretext for thrusting more power than ever upon an
establishment already overladen with authority, and
a flimsy pretence of good such as through its instru-
mentality could never be realized. Gladly should
we have recognized the falsification of our predictions
as to the measure; such satisfaction, however, has un-
fortunately been altogether denied to us—the Act
proving in every particular little less than a dead
letter.

Interments still take place in the very midst of our
metropolis. London with its two millions of inhabit-
ants augmented by an extraordinary influx of foreign
and provincial visitors, is still rendered daily more
insalubrious and pestilential by the laying of new
sources of nuisance in the fetid soil of our city grave-
yards. Within a stone's throw of the spot where we
are writing these very words, holes are being dug
from time to time in the rank earth surrounding the
churches in and contiguous to the Strand, and those
living in the vicinity have the air they breathe perpe-
tually more or less poisoned by the exhalations reek-
ing from the dead men's flesh. &Inember, these
things are occurring diurnally in some part or other
of the capital, the Metropolitan Interments Act to the
cur' trary nevarthekss notwithstanding. Surely it
is time that something should be effected in the way
of a wholesome innovation, now that we see the
Sanitary Commissioners at Gwydyr House so habitu-
ally remiss io abstaining from all interference, when
we discover such incori iudiff,rence in the
course pursued by the Government, and perceive, in
addition to all this, the inefficiency of the advance
movement made with so much noise end parade by
the upper and the lower branches of the national Le-
gisLaure. Wnat is wanting is a practical and com-
prehensive innovation. We want the total and imme-
diate closing of the intramural buryiug-grounds; not
a partial closing of them, but one, we repeat, total
and immediate. We want the simultaneous opening
of one or more cemeteries capable of containing the
dead for many years to come, and situated at a
sufficient distance from the capital to render impos-
sible the infection by this means of its atmosphere.
In order to secure these advantages it will be requi-
site to fix upon a site very different iu nearly every
respect from the majority of those hitherto sug-
gested. Among all the various localities suggested
as yet, there is but one which appears to us to com-
bine within itself the requirements here specified.
We mean that of Woking, in the county of Surrey.
For the purpose of enabling all who may be solicitous
to examine themselves the merits of the spot named,
we would most earnestly direct their attention to a
pamphlet* recently compiled by one of the most sin-
cere advocates of the scheme of extramual interments,
a pamphlet in which the project of opening a grand
metropolitan cemetery at the place just men-
tioned is fully discussed and clearly explained.
Its pages will testify that the projected Necropolis
possesses advantages more numerous and important
than those of our eight London cemeteries
all put together—namely, Brompton Cemetery,
Mensal-green Cemetery, Highgate Cemetery, Abney
Park Cemetery, Victoria Cemetery, Tower Hamlets
Cemetery, Nunhead Cemetery, and Norwood Ceme

tery. Although removed two or three miles beyond
Oatlands, the Woking burial spot, the National Mau-

soleum, as it has been designated by its projectors,
would still be accessible from the metropolis by means
of the South-Western Railway. From•the testimony
of Sir RICHARD BROUN we will this evening extract
but one brief passage, but a passage, we conceive,
strangely significant :—" Fifty thousand bodies," says
he, "might be interred yearly in the Necropolis for
three centuries and a half, without disturbing the re-

mains of even the humblest individual that shall ever
kind sepulture within its walls." Couple with this
flet the consideration that the ground it incapable of
cultivation, and consequently all the better for the
purposes of sepulture, and we cannot but think that
the community at large 'oust be impressed with a sense
chat here a'. least is a scheme entitled to the fullest
hnd the most dispassionate investigation.
+ " Synopsis of ant L9ndo❑ N, cropolis and N,,tional
NLiusol, Ilia at %Yoking, in the County of Surrey." IS).
the Hon Sir Richard Bruun, Bart. Bvo,, pp. 48. Lot.-
Jun: Tielawney Sauudeis, 1851.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris journals of Saturday
and of yesterday.
On Friday there was a very animated discussion in
the Assembly, on the occasion of the verification of
the election of General DURRIET for the Department
of the Landes. M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN took the op-
portunity of indulging in a violent attack on the
Minister of the Interior, for having improperly inter-
fered in this election by transmitting a telegraphic
dispatch to the Prefect, desiring hiaa to afford all
possible support to the candidate, who was opposed to
the repeal of the Electoral Law of the 31st May ; M.
Limns FAUCHER, who is not the mildest tem-
pered man in the world, retorted in strong
language, and a regular scene was the conic •
quence. Ultimately, a vote of censure, which
M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN had proposed on the
Minister, was rejected by 372 to 233. The most im-
portant event of the discussion was an announcement
on the part of M. Banocne that the Cabinet bad de-
termined to uphold the electoral law of the 314 May,
an announcement which may be taken as an authori-
tative declaration that the Elysie is no longer fa-
vourable to universal suffrage.
The Siècle pretends to be able to affirm that, not-
withstanding the declaration of M. BAROCHS, in the
name of the Cabinet, that the Government bid taken
the electoral law of the 31st May as its drapau, the
PRESIDENT continues to disapprove of the restricted
Suffrage Bill, and desires to see it repealed.
The key to the enigma was, however, fur-
nished on Friday evening, when the club
of the Rue des Pyramides resolved, on
the motion of M. DE MONTALEMBERT, to support
a partial revision of the Constitution, that is to say,
the alteration of that portion of the Constitution
only that prohibits the re-election of the PRESIDENT.
It is evident, therefore, that the PRESIDENT has given
up the cause of universal suffrage (to which alone he
owes his present position) in order to purchase the
support of M. DB MONTALEMBERT, and the parti•
pretre who, in return have sacrificed what they have
hitherto termed " the sacred cause of Legitimacy" to
secure the aid of the PRESIDENT in their crusade
agai

nst the cause of civil and religious liberty. In
the Committee on M. Moan's proposition, relating
to the reception of revioion petitions, I'lM. Dil
BROGUE and MONTALEMBEET more than hinted that
th.'y were prepared to have recourse to a soup
or eta to secure the prolongaticn of the PRESIDESiT
powers.

On Saturday, the discussion of the law for the
regulation of the National Guard, gave ride to a
series of se,-nes as disorderly as those of the day pre-
ceding. M. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE attacked the
Bid and its authors iu moat tineneusured term?, and
proposed an amendment, which alter u stormy dis-
cussion was rejected by 416 to 224. The old Legi-
ticnatist General GEAMitioNT then proposed an amend-
ment, which, it adopttd, would hsve been tantrunoutit
to a clis,,olution of the National Guards, and in pro
pu-ing it gave uttk ranee to those f,elii,gs of contempt
zind hatred wish which the old nobb sse revwrd the
bourgeoisie, this brought up M. LEON FACCHUR,
wliu offended the National Guard, and declatrd that
had it not been for their services in June, 1848, the
army could not have saved Paris. General Cloult-