The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-09 00:00:00

PAPER DUTY.

The chief measure which occupied the House of
Commons last night was the removal of the Excise
Duty upon Paper, and a narrow majority of nine
has saved the bill from perdition. There seemed
to be an impression in the house that the exigen-
cies of the public service are such that the money
required for the removal of this burden cannot
prudently be spared ; and, if the vote had been
given without any reference to the consequences
of defeating the Ministry upon a question of
finance, we much fear that we should not have to
congratulate the leaders of this agitation upon the
success of their long endeavours. Even yet there
is a certain degree of danger, lest the scanty cha-
racter of the majority should risk the safety of the
bill, in the Lords, where a defeat is not so certainly
fatal to a Government.
It has been under difficulties, then, that this bill
has been read a third time, and the obstruction in-
terposed by Sir Stafford Northcote has been put
aside. Although the subject is one upon which
we have for many years lost no opportunity of
putting in a modest word of hope, there is no topic
which iwe have of late approached with greater
reluctance. If we were not constrained by duty to
develope the arguments affecting each important
topic of the day, we would gladly leave this to
take its own course unquestioned. No sooner
do we publish a word upon this matter than
there is a darting and a shooting among all
the small fry of the waters, and every tiny
minnow rushes to the rescue, as though we
must be necessarily about to swallow the only
crumb that is available for its sustenance.
With admirable taste, and still more admirable
logic, we, the largest payers of paper duty in all
Britain, are, immediately we speak, vehemently
shouted at as interested in contemning or even in
refusing the hoped-for boon. Men in high position,
exuberant patriots, and patrons of exotic journals
denounce our lukewarm advocacy, as tainted by
the baseness of pecuniary greed. Unless we will
harangue quite up to their point, and declare that
the prime consideration of a Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer should be to float every stranding literary
speculation with public money, we are nought--
nay, we are worse than nought ; we are self-seek-
ing, and false, and are masked conspirators against
the pockets of depleted agitators. The other day
some one at a public meetirg had the impudence to
declare that the paper of the number of the Tinier
which laughed gently at the idea of reviving the
old village mills bore the watermark of a village
mill upon it. That " village mill" pays .£15,000
year in Excise duty ; but what then ? It is near
enough for the audience to which it was addressed,
and it was a fair specimen of the facts which these
tumultuous gentlemen, who unite the professions
of statesmen and literary adventurers, deal in. We
cannot hope to keep up with such allies as these.
Believing it to be the honest course for men in our
position to look upon this only as a public question,
we have felt obliged to treat it as subservient to
some other great national interests, and the removal
of the duty, although desirable, and fairly to be
agitated for, yet not to be demanded at all cost.
We resign, therefore, the chief honours of this
victory. We are but the Lafayette of this fiscal
change; let the laurels go to the Mirabeau and the
Denton. Already, however, it would appear that
the dreams which floated so rosy round the advent
of this glorious idea are dispersing. The Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer no longer talks of riding in
paper coaches. Country squires no longer hear in
their imagination the click clack of a magic paper-
mill, which in some sequestered glade was to grind
up all their poor-rates and double the rent of all the
bits of meadow land that are fit for accommodation
pastures. It is impossible to help thinking, with
Sir Stafford Northcote, that this is not exactly the
moment when the nation can part with £1,200,000
a-year without a longing look behind. We know
what we should have thought of ourselves if, con-
sidering our own interest, our own circulation, our
own profits, we had day by day importunately in-
sisted upon having this large sum sacrificed to us
and to our craft. What we have strenuously asked
for is a matter which requires no sacrifice of public
money, and which demanded nothing but common
foresight and commercial knowledge to have ob-
tained. We have asked only for a facility in obtain-
ing materials without which permission of free
manufacture is but a mockery. At this late hour
it is said the commissioners in Paris are negotiating
for this advantage, and that they give hopes of suc-
cess. If it should be obtained, we think we see our
way to draw some benefit for the public out
of this renunciation of an important revenue.
It is all, however, very vague while the Customs'
duty and the rag export duty remain unsettled.
Even those who were most eager for this reform
some weeks ago have come to think thus; and Mr.
Gladstone himself seemed to hint last night that,
but for the necessity of making good the conside-
ration for his teepenny income tax, he would have
paused upon this point of his Budget and felt his
ground again before he trod.

I - We hope we have manifested a decent degree of
reticence, and have not been greedy or selfish in
this matter. We may now, with a free conscience,
assume that the money, this £1,200,000, is gone.
Whither is it gone ? We have already said that it
shall not go into our pockets. We hope that the
gentry who have been so much more noisy than
ourselves will be as honest in the matter as we in-
tend to be. We hope that there may be no such
unedifyiNg spectacle as a crowd of regenerators of
the human race casting themselves upon this little
million like the fainting fugitives from Egypt into
the stream which Moses made to flow." We hope
that these men, who are so rich and so earnest,
who have so long sustained this good work, will
scorn to make a personal gain of the success of their
public efforts, and will give the public the whole
benefit of the reduction for which the public pays.
We trust there is no one in our craft of whom it
shall be said that when he cried aloud for the
public, he meant only himself; that there is no one
in modern days of whom it can be said, "not that
he cared fin. the poor, but because he carried th•
bag."—Times.

AN ESTIMATE OF RAJAH BROOKE.---As for his
place in his own country and its history, he is in himself a
marking incident in his century. We have in him one
more representative of an order of men who had seemed to
have passed away, while yet there is no retrograde cha-
racter about him and kis work. WQ have in the American
Filibuster not only a retrograde but a corrupted specimen
of the adventurer of the Middle Ages. Walker, in Nica-
ragua or in Mexico, is a base imitation of the old buccaneer.
Rajah Brooke bears no relation to such a specimen of de-
praved buccaneering. He gave himself to Sarawak, instead
of seizing Sarawak for himself. He did not grasp at the
reins of government, but put them into the hands of the
natives, and showed them how to guide their course. He
sacrificed his fortune for them, instead of extorting one
from them. It has been the world's wonder what sort of
Christians Cortez and his comrades supposed themselves to
be : and the world now sees what sort of a Christian a
Knight-Adventurer may be. For the sake of this spec-
tacle we may rejoice that that antique class has had 060
more Representative Man,—Once a Week.