The Sun.
London, England, 1856-11-29 00:00:00

sVIGII WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

THIS DAY—Morn. 41 min. aft. 2—Evening 56 min. aft. 2
Ta-Mousow—Morn.l3 min. aft. 3—Evening 32 min. aft. 3

THE WEATHER—SUN OFFICE, NOVEMBER 29.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADS.
4 4—highest since noon yesterday.
31—lowest this morning and during the night.
37—this day at noon.

RAROMETEB, 29-78—rising.
WIND, N.N.W.—Light, with fine frosty weather. Last
night was the first real frost this season in Landon, being
one degree below freezing point.

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our "Stony adversary"—void and empty from
any drachm of mercy—only retorts, "Is it so nomi-

nited in the bond ?"

But now for the peripateia—for using which
word, being a Greek one, we must, it seems, if
in Scotland, pay the penalty of drinking a glass

of whisky—an unlooked-for adviser comes to
judgment. We have a Court of Equity, to

which every Chancellor of the Exchequer has
been compelled either to submit, or to get into a
very unenviable "Chancery." A sort of Californian
vigilance committee ; which put to rights un-
manageable or overreaching statesmen, when they

have tried it on too far. And a preliminary sit-
ting of the court has already taken place at the
London Tavern. Greater men than Sir G. C.

Lzwis have quailed before it, when they wished

to continue an Income Tax after a war ; and nine

pence out of the sixteenpenoe is unquestionably

a war tax. All over the country the extortionate
amount of the tax, aided by the insulting extor-
tions of those who get a doubled percentage on
our sufferings, is pushing Sir CORNEWALL LEWIS
into the court of public opinion as expressed at
public meetings, and we earnestly hope that, in
the coming session, he will have to down and
beg mercy of the people to save his fivepenny tax
from next spring to 1860. His cunning bond,
and his SHYLOOK interpretation of it, will have
done the service of keeping detestation of an In-

come Tax to the boiling point.
Let an income Tax henceforth be a war tax.
Let us not for ever be jilted out of its cessation.
All the members of the Peace Society ought to
join this demand. Nothing could better serve
their purpose than that a declaration of war
should insure a revival of the detested Income
Tax. And we, on.the other hand, do not want
the country to go to war for any object for which
it would not be prepared to make present sacri-
fices. We only contend, as we have before con-
tended, that we might have made a much larger
loan, and ought then to have listened to no terms
which did not saddle Russia with the eharges of
the war she had provoked ; that, and that only,
would have insured her good behaviour for half a
century. We need, however, a pecuniary re-
source fur a war, as well as a standing
army and a navy. That resource is natu-
rally an Income Tax. Let our enemies know
that we have always this tax in reserve. Let
Customs, Excise, Jrc,, supply bur ordinary in-
come—our immense trade makes this easy enough ;
and let all the tyrants abroad remember that
England endured an Income Tax of some seven
per cent. rather than see a CZAR tread Turkey
under his feet, and that she will endure it again
rather than see the villanies of Hungary and
Poland repeated.
While on the subject of an Income Tax, we have
a remark to make on the fraud of charging alike
all incomes, whether they be derived from per-
manent or from'precarious sources. Mr. GLAD-
STONE, by his five hours' speech in 1853, easily
persuaded a weary and willing house of landlords
that the assessment ought to be the same on their
rents guaranteed by land which cannot run away,
and on an income which might vanish before the year
was out, and took a malicious pleasure in holding
up to contempt the honest proposal of his predecessor
and rival. The proofs and illustrations of the
injustice of equal charge on income from different
sources are almost innumerable, but one strikes
us just now as very strong, and we have not seen
it adverted to. Suppose a tradesman clears 10
per cent. on his capital, and a landlord or fund-
holder but 3 per cent. Obviously the 3 per cent.
expresses the value of secure property, as com-
pared with 10 per cent., which expresses the risk
of trade investment. The extra 7 per cent. ob-
tained by the tradesman is the remuneration for
the hazard to which he puts his capital. He
cannot safely spend it all ; he must strengthen
his business with part of it, and perhaps with
another part insure his life ; while he may in a
year lose the whole. Why not, then, assess all
incomes on the principle that all should pay on
the secure income from capital which we
may call three per cent. ? A thousand pounds
capital invested in the Funds or in land, or in
trade, would then all pay alike. Of course Mr.
GLADSTONE could invent ten thousand difficulties
about the impossibility of ascertaining a trades-
man's capital—not so difficult a thing after all.
This, however, does not touch the force of the
illustration. It is clearly infamous that a trades-
man or professional man should pay, not only for
the income which he might safely receive from
his capital, but also on that which is not so pro-
perly income as the premium on the risk he incurs.
It is all the harder on him, because to the
extent to which lie spends the extra seven per
cent. he pays taxes by consuming taxable commo-
dities ; while the landlord's capital is, by seven
per cent., a less profitable source of revenue to
the State. Turn the thing which way we will,
an equal Income Tax is a monstrous injustice.
As unjust in principle at fivepence in the pound
as at five shillings ; but by the SHYLOOK bond
the injustice would be multiplied by more than
three till 1860.
ng

Erith protests against the Thames in its vicinity
being converted into an elongated cesspool for the
reception of all the filth of the Metropolis. The
inhabitants would have proved themselves insane
had they done otherwise. The common instinct
of self-preservation and the legitimate claims of
the owners of property alike called for the steps
the local authorities, parochial and. otherwise,
have on behalf of their fellow-townsmen taken in
the matter. Already having great cause of com-
plaint it was something too much to expect they
should be quiet, with the prospect of so monstrous f
an aggravation of the evil they have to con-
tend against before them. It was bad enough
to have the noble stream that flows be-
fore their doors rendered turbid and unpleasant,
by excremental refuse, to have it converted into
a thick slimy puddle, ebbing and. flowing inces-
santly in view, to the disgust of sight and smell,
and the serious deterioration of life and property
would be intolerable. It can occasion no sur-
prise, therefore, but must be regarded. as a sub-
ject of congratulation that Lord PALMERSTON
should be appealed to by a deputation from Erith
and another from Gravesend to have the great
metropolit&n sewerage question taken into further
consideration, so as to arrive at a solution wor-
thy of its importance, and by which justics will
be done to all parties.
We have spoken of the question as. relates relates to
the inhabitants of Erith and the banks of the
Thames beyond the metropolitan area. This,
however, is but an imperfect dealing with it.
The inhabitants of the metropolis have
a deep interest in the question being
duly considered and a correct solution being
arrived at. The object they have immediately in
view—viz., riddance of the sewage, and a conse-
quent amelioration of the conditions pertaining to
metropolitan salubrity—we firmly believe would
not be attained by a discharge at Erith. This
may, at the first blush, be deemed a matter of
opinion by some ; but all must confess that in a
pecuniary or financial point of view such dis-
charge would involve, and that before long, a
, , wholly unnecessary expenditure. The growth of