The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-20 00:00:00

treaty stand the test of impartial inquiry. We can-
not.hope for more, and ought not to shrink from less.
Let there be justice done, 'without favour or
affection. We will even go further : let the
French have the benefit of the doubt, for
we can afford it, and will not grudge a make-
weight for the sake of good fellowship and
genial friendship. But we will not consent
to be bullied and then sneered at for our foolish
good nature. If short accounts make long friends,
fair play is best for all and will be found to last the
longer, with no heart-burning as a! consequence.
Let the treaty then be discussed on its ovt n merits
and the Budget afterwards.
Now, as regards the Income Tax, which has been
so often and so justly objected to, how is it that
Mr. GLADSTONE did not look into its working
enormity of pressure, and discriminate between
fixed and precarious incomes ? It is clear that he
intended to resort to this abominable impost,
and yet he shunned the opportunity of
being just. Is that statesmanlike? Is it politically
honest? Is it not pandering to the rich at the
expense of the poor ? Why has he not had re-
course to a property tax and equalised other duties,
so as that property should pay for its protection.
Want of time or opportunity is no answer. We
believe Mr. GLADSTONE to be personally honest,
as honest as honest can be ; but we condemn the
Chancellor of the Exchequer as being too bad as
Mr. GLADSTONE is,' perhaps,7not so good as he
might be.

While on this odious tax we may point the
Chancellor of the Exchequer's attention to a plan
for raising a larger amount by an income tax
on fairly graduated principles, which we copy
from a contemporary. Let him try it for this year
by way of a beginning, and if he must continue the
tax hereafter it will not be so justly objected to.

O those deputations ! They are the peculiar
infliction, horror, bugbear, and incubus of your
unfortunate Administrator. They haunt him like
remorse. They dog his footsteps like the memories
of an evil conscience. They are to him what the
slave was in the chariot of PHILIP of Macedon—
reminding him in the very hour of his ovation of
his political mortality. They are the death's heads
—" grinning horribly a ghastly grin"--at the feast
of power, taking the flavour out of the dishes, the
perfume from the flowers, and the bloom off the
fruits of office, served up in the otherwise appetising
and delectable banquet of Government.

If there is one social nuisance abhorred with an
especial abhorrence by each one amongst us—with-
out a single dissentient voice to breathe a syllable
in its favour in the way of extenuation : it is that
nuisance of nuisances, that arch bore of bores
known generaicily as " a man with a grievance."
We all know him. His name, indeed, like that
of another, is Legion. He has so very much to say
for himself, and it is sach a dismal story at the
best. Perhaps the most felicitous type we have of
the class in fiction is the one sketched by the re-
morseless pen of Mr. THACKERAY. To the
readers of " Vanity Fair " the mere mention
of poor old Mr. SEDLEY after his downfall
will conjure up again the familiar effigy.
We are there again with honest DOBBIN, in the
back parlour of the little public•house in the City
—fairly caught by the button-hole—with that de-
plorable object confronting us—the man with a
grievance He has got the crumpled packet of
dirty letters out of his pocket in a twinkling—the
string is in his mouth—he is selecting " the one"
for our inspection, first of all, just to begin with.
There is the dreadful perspective of all the others
that have to follow—with the spoken, lachrymose

running commentary !
Well, what the man with the grievance is to the
individual in private life—in public life the depu-
tation is to the Administrator. But with this
difference—that the infliction in the latter instance
is far worse, inasmuch as it is not simply a man,
but a cluster of men, representing a whole class or
multitude—a cluster of men headed by a spokesman
carefully primed for the occasion in regard to a
grievance, the enforcement of which upon the
attention of the unhappy Minister has been duly
and deliberately preconcerted. And, grouped
round the prominent figure of the spokesman, come
the rest of the members of the Deputation—bearing
a resemblance less to the old classic Chorus than to
those skirmishers, "outside the conversation," in
the refractory ward of the Workhouse at White-
chapel, described with so much humour by Mr.
CIIARLES DICKENS in the last number (the second
number) of the " Uncommercial Traveller," in All
the Year Round. Supporters of the speakers,
who themselves take no further part in the
discussion than might be expressed by saying that
they italicise with a murmur, or punctuate with
an exclamation !

And certainly on Saturday afternoon Ministers
—at least three or four of the Ministers—had a
veritable surfeit of these Deputations ! There was
a deputation of licensed victuallers, who had an
interview at the India-office with Sir CHARLES
WooD, as her MAJESTY'S Secretary of State, for
the affairs of Hindostan ! Though what possible
connexion there may be between the licensed
victuallers and our Asiatic empire—is a problematic
thought left entirely to the wildness of vague con-
jecture. It probably expresses only the sub-
division of labours forced upon the mem-
bers of the Cabinet by the extraordinary throng-
ing and crowding of these attendant deputations.
However this may be—there was Sir CHARLES
WOOD on Saturday at the India House face to
face with this deputation of licensed victuallers.
Then there was a deputation on the part the
Dublin wine merchants, who " had it out" in a
pleasant interview with Mr. LAING, as Secretary
to the Treasury. - Besides which the Right Hon.
MILNER GIBSON, as President of the Board of Trade,
received at the Board of Trude, with all befitting
gravity, and in due succession—a deputation from
the Liverpool Shipowners' Association, and another
deputation which was this time a deputation of
paper manufacturers. The last-mentioned appears
to have been the most resolute and the most out-
spoken of them all; for, not content with saying
their say at the Board of Trade, in the presence
and hearing of the right hon. the President of the
said Bond, they proceeded at once to the official
residence of Mr. GLADSTONE in Downing-street,
and there enjoyed the luxury of talking the mat-
ter of their grievance all over again with
the Right Hon. the Chancellor of the Exche-
(per. And here we may complete the dread-
ful catalogue of these Saturday deputations by enu-
merating those which actually waited in the course
of the afternoon upon thzt unfortunate administrator.
Besides the particularly resolute deputation last
mentioned, then—Mr. GLADSTONE had the delight
of re
trade_ng by one—a deputation from the
distillery
statiocers of Loa deputationnden_ail from
London—and
distinct
the
in etdewphoutaletisoae
deputations
upon resolutions 10, 11, and 12 of the proposed
Budget—from Edinburgh and Leith, from Glasgow,
from Liverp001, from
mHcuol
Cork,
,k
,fraonndi
Bristol, from Dublin, from
from Aberdeen !. Could net some humane member
frame a bill analogous to Martin's Act in its bene-