The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-18 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 18, 1860.

—a delusion, and a sham ; and for the
belief in which we are to be taxed
with our eyes open that our pockets may the sooner
become emptied. But the tables may yet be turned
on the concoctors of such a palpable monstrosity
in the shape of such a treaty, and a Budget so
framed as to keep it in countenance.
If Mr. GLADSTONE will make suoh strange blun-
ders, and forego his own promises so solemnly
made with respect to the Income•tax—that it
was to cease and determine this year—
how can he now have the assurance
to break faith with the public by not
only re-imposing it in all its cruel enormity, but in
actually doubling it ? The attempt deserves not only
reprobation, but actual defeat. Why, if he must
needs want money to meet his demands for carry-
ing out his ill-concocted schemes, why does he not
have recourse to a LOAN, and so spread the pres-
sure over all ? The expense incurred in our naval
preparations—such as building new and the con-
version of old ships—is not for a day, but
for years. The money laid out now will
be returnable or prove good for many years
to come. The ships will last long, and so
save further expense to the country in time to
come. Why, then, should we of the present day
be saddled for the benefit of those who follow ? A
loan can be raised on moderate terms, and so relieve
the immediate pressure on the poor man, while the
interest will not be felt, being spread over time till
the loan be extinguished.
The Income Tax is as odious as it is oppressive.
It is unjust in its want of discrimination. It
goads those who struggle for a decent livelihood,
and leaves property untaxed in its due propor-
tion. Property is a realisation, while Income
is uncertain and varying in its acquisition.
Let Mr. GLADSTONE then have the courage to re-
vise his plans and make up what money he may
require by a national loan, and so endeavour to dif-
fuse general satisfaction.

After several hours had been consumed, last
evening in the House of Commons, in desultory and
discursive sharpshooting, directed against those full-
fledged birds of wisdom perched on the front Trea-
sury belhch—the House resolved itself into Commit-
tee, and the Secretary of State for War at length
brought up the heavy artillery of the Session in the
shape of the Army Estimates. After two of the
most important votes comprised within the compass
of these estimates had been (as a matter of course,
we might say) agreed to—namely, first of all, a
vote of 143,362 men for the army, exclusive of those
in Her MAJESTY'S Indian possessions, and a vote of
.£4,498,636 for pay and allowances for land forces
at home and abroad; again, exclusive of the monies
required for the like purposes in Her MAJESTY'S
Indian possessions—the Chairman reported pro-
gress, and so forth, the House closing its sitting
forty minutes after midnight, with a trifle of other
pro forma business.
Previously, however, the honourable and face-
tious baronet, the member for Tamworth, fired
off what might be called, for the nonce (we
won't say, for the nonsense of it), the feu de joie
of the discussion what your pyrotechnists
would term (pyrotechnically) the " bouquet"
of the evening. The success of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S
speech as a piece of broad humour is of course un-
deniable. To recognise this upon the instant, it is
only necessary to glance down the report of it,
when the hilarity caused by sentence after sentence,
and pleasantly recorded by the reporter in the
customary parentheses, will be found notified as
plentifully as plums are sown in a Christmas pud-
ding. And certainly, reading the mere letterpress,
we can't so very well wonder that the House should
be entirely quit of its gravity for a while
under so much good-humoured provocation to
laughter. Sir ROBERT throughout merely
aspired to be the farceur—he was obviously
doing nothing more serious than "poking
fun" at his listeners. With one hand he had the
Committee by the buttonhole, and with the other li
playfully touched it up somewhere in the region of
the midriff. It would be scarcely possible, we
should imagine, for the brow of the gravest big-
wig of them all to resist the disposition to un-
bend at the hon. baronet's allusions, let us say, to
the Rifle Corps of the Inns of Courts ! At his refer-
,
ence to the possible chance of an encounter between
the patriotic lawyers enrolled in that body of
volunteers and the Cuirasseers (let us suppose) of
the Imperial Guard ! At his enumeration
of the happily-named sergeant in it—" soon

to be made sergeant-major"—yelept Sergeant
PARRY ! and his kindred associates in the
corps, Dr. BALLS and (quoth Sir ROBERT) with
a ludicrous reminiscence of some former pleasantry
of his own of the same kind—" my old friend in
the matter of the Conspiracy Bill," even—Lawyer
BODKIN ! If one could effectually withstand the
hon. baronet's appeal to our risibility, in reference to
those busy bees of the Temple Gardens now rifling
the sweets out of the Volunteer Movement, when
he remarked, in a tone of mingled wonder
and expostulation—" They are deserting Am-
BROSE'S " Reports" and ". COKE upon LYT-
TLETON," for PLUTARCICS " Lives," CTSAR'S
" Commentaries," and " The Rifle and How
to use it"—it would be scarcely possible to resist
joining in the roars of laughter with which the
Commons yesterday greeted Sir ROBERT'S recom-
mendation to these forensic volunteers " to stay at
home and recollect the maxim, in meclio tutissimus
ibis, which," said he, "being freely translated, may
be interpreted to mean, You are a good deal safer
in the Middle Temple!" Certainly no one can,
seriously and with a grave face, quarrel with such
a depreciator as this of the volunteer move-
ment. At the same time, when we have laughed
oar laughter right out, enjoyinglY, when we
have wiped our eyes clear of the hilarious
moisture, and the droll speaker has said his
say and sat down again—what does it all mean
Merely the idle talk of a jokemaster ! Merely the
humorous absurdities of a Parliamentary wag
For, after all, there is manifestly nothing so exces-
sively ridiculous in any race or any class, in any
land or under any circumstances, looking to it in
earliest that their hearths and altars—that the
generous mother country, the grand old fatherland,
be at last, at the end of a period of monstrous and
inconceivable apathy, placed in a state of adequate
preparedness, of due defence against all evil possi-
bilities in the shape of invasion ! However
funny the notion may appear in the eyes
of Sir ROBERT PEEL, in the view of the
nation it is otherwise. There was nothing
outwardly very heroic in the appearance of a slim
young man buttoned up to the throat in a civilian's
frockcoat, and carrying in his hand no more f.or-
,aidable weapon than a slight cane little better
than a switch, as during three days of a certain
July he flitted here and there through the throng
the midst of the flying bullets of the Bour
bon
army and the Revolutionists. A very
unheroic spectacle in the eyes of Sii
ROBERT PEEL,with very probably, that young
civilian his rattan in the streets of
Paris! Yet, no other this, than ARMAND CARREL,
of whom the late Lord STRANGFORD penned an im•
not unworthy of TYRT2EUS. It is
passioned lylicr
scarcely surprising, however, that Sir ROBERT

should adopt (even in patriotism) nil admirari as
his motto—sauntering though the world, as he
seemingly does, Judging only from Appearances.
While he is joking, however, England is arming !
While the House of Commons laughs at his
drolleries, it is voting four millions and a half for
military pay and allowances ! Whatever derision
may be thrown upon the movement by a few pro-
fessional cynics like Lord MELVILLE, or an occa-
sional Parliamentary humourist like Sir ROBERT
PEEL, there is the fact that England has already
within the last few months mustered 80,000,
very nearly 100,000 rifle volunteers ! And
there is the additional fact that the House of Com-
mons evinces no apparently insuperable reluctance
to vote at the behest of Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT
£14,482,275 under the head simply of Army Esti-
mates—an amount in excess, by £1,982,600 of our
last year's military expenditure.

India is becoming a resort of investors, and for
the sake of both India and England this is a grati-
fying fact. It will not continue to be so unless it
be found to pay ; and if the investors are repaid,
the political advantage of our wealthier citizens,
having a pecuniary interest in the prosperity of
India, cannot be overrated. The Indian Minister's
speeches, and, above all, his financial statements,
will not then be made to empty benches. The gains
to be sought from shares in Indian railways, and
Indian canal and irrigation companies, will be
directly dependent on the traffic of the country,
and the wealth, not of a few over-gorged civil ser-
vants, but on that of the inhabitants generally.
With prosperity advancing amongst all classes,
and that prosperity obviously the result of connec-
tion with the governing country, and with an
ample revenue as the consequence, another mutiny
will be very unlikely: And, while contentment
among the people will ensure quietness, railways
will doubly enhance the:strength of an European
army. They will enable it to fix its quarters on
the healthy plateaux of the mountains ; and they
will yet convey troops a hundred miles more swiftly
and with less fatigue than they could formerly
march a fifth or even a tenth of the distance. It
is, therefore, matter for congratulation, that there
is every prospect of quite a new era opening
on India, in regard to the introduction of
English capital and enterprise into our
vast Eastern Empire. All Imperial Acts
notwithstanding, India has remained pretty much
the close preserve of the haughty and costly civil
service, who equally despised and dreaded men of
business. The service has, however, seen its best
days ; it nearly lost the country. The men of
business must now step in and complete its salva-
tion.

The home Government is opening its eyes to the
broad facts of the case, and the routinists in India
will be compelled to open their eyes also. Lord
STANLEY began the new system. He was not the
man, though he leaned strongly to old Indians as
counsellors, to overlook the necessity of a bona fide
opening of India to English energy and capital.
And we are happy to have now before us a minute
by Sir CHARLES TREVELYAN, "as President of the
Council of Madras, relative to the conditions under
which English enterprise and capital may best be
applied in aid of Government in developing the
resources of Madras in particular and India in
general." As it is printed by order of the House
of Commons, every one in every part of the king-
dom may obtain it for a trifle ; and, to those who
are interested in Indian investments, it will be a
paper of great interest. Sir CHARLES TREYELYAN
had no sooner arrived at Madras on his recent
appointment there than he upset with a stroke of
his pen the miserable Court-of-Chancery-like system
of endless waiting and copying, in duplicate and
triplicate, of which the late Sir CHARLES NAPIER
and every man of business has so long complained ;
and, to the utter consternation of the scribes
of the civil service, determined to transact
Indian business on the same common-sense
and timesaving plans by which English
business is carried on ; and we are pleased
to notice that this minute is written in the most
practical spirit and full of sympathy with the
great general object.
Our readers may remember that some time back
we described the proposed operations of the Indian
Canal and Irrigation Company, and strongly com-
mended the company's proposals to public and
Governmental notice. This company's scene of
operations lies, of course, in Sir CHARLES TREVE-
LYAN'S own province, and Lord STANLEY having
arranged terms with the company here, and re-
mitted the business to Sir CHARLES, he has
already taken active measures towards commencing
the parts of the work to be first attempted, and
speaks in the most decided terms as to the certain
results of the irrigation. " Our water-meadows on
the Exe," he says, "with the rivers and channels
for irrigation, and distributing sluices, give only
a faint idea of what may be done with the mon-
soon waters of the Deckan;" and he considers that
there is no doubt whatever of the possibility of
widely irrigating " these thirsty plains." He has
appointed on his part Colonel ARTHUR COTTON,
who has devoted his life to the subject, and to
whom the company equally looked, as the person
who shall make the selection of the work to be
done. We cordially wish this enterprising Eng-
lish company in India the success it so well
deserves, and seems certain to achieve, and hope
that it will be only the precursor of numerous fol

lowers.

In discussing the general question of carrying on
Indian works by the Government or by'private
companies, Sir CHARLES TREVELYAN assigns, as
might be expected, the most satisfactory reasons
for preferring private companies. The Govern-
ment superintendence of such railways as it has
guaranteed is of a very imperfect kind, and can
never equal that of private companies. He thinks
the guarantee system has been carried much too
far,though it was necessary at first, because Indian
works were strange to the capitalists of this

country.
But as regards navigation and irrigation com-
panies, he says there is no need whatever of gua-
rantees.workssoraorteo ppearyfe,ctthlyatuihi doei•stoodin
India.
They Sueh
are so
considers
the exigency to be of the
opposite kind. Govern-
ment should take its guarantees that if it surrenders
the public water to • a private company, it should
secure a countervailing public advantage—such, WD
suppose he means, as fixing a
.maximum rate of
supply to the public, or of profit to the
companie:.
The irrigation works constructed hitherto
by the
Government in India are, he says, not to be com-
pared with those of private individuals, and private
companies are much more effective instruments for
communicating English ideas than the Govern-
ment. And as to the sacrifice of contingent gain
by the Government, it is of no use to talk of that
unless the Government were prepared to do the
work. Its duty is to watch that the public derives
a fair advantage for the surrender of the public
waters.

NEW THEATRE ROYAL, ADELPHL—Her Royal
Highness the Euchess of Cambridge, the Princess Mary
and suite honoured the performance with their presence
this evening.
THE VOLUNTEERS.—The Duke of Cambridge,
Commander-in-Chief, has signified his intentit:n of pre-
siding at the dinner of the vounteer officers, to be given
on the ith of March.

LATEST NEW t;

The following telegrams have been received at
Mr. Reuter's office :

BERLIN, FEB. 17.

It is asserted that M. Thouvenel has forwarded a
despatch to the Marquis de Moustier, the French
Ambassador at Vienna, instructing him to remind
Austria of her promises concerning Venetia.

MADRID, FEE. 16.

Gen. Uhtarez has left for Tetuan. He is the
bearer of the conditions upon whish peace would
be granted by the Queen.
The Correspondencia Autografa believes that the
war with Morocco will continue,

The Duchess of Tetuan is about to leave for

Tetuan.

ROME, FEB. 14 (via MARSEILLES).

The new loan has been negctiated with Belgian
capitalists—the 3 per Cent. at 56, and the 5 per
Cent. at 93.

Nine hundred Bavarians, enlisted for the Papal
army, have arrived at Ancona; others are expected.
The Italian patriots in Spoleto, Ferri, Rieti, Jesi,
Perugia, Todi, Amelia, Narai, and another town
have sent 10,000 fr. to Garibaldi.
FERRARI, FRIDAY EVENING.

The , Governor Farini, arrived here to-day, and
was enthusiastically received by the inhabitants.
A general illumination has taken place, and a grand
ball has been given by the Marquis de Costabili.

BELGRADE, FEB. 17.

Prince Michael Obrenovich has forbidden his
house to the French Consul-General on account of
his offensive conduct.

INDIA.

BOMBAY, JAN. 26.

Shirtings, 811 b, sr. Ba. per piece. Exchange on
London, 2s. 11d. Money tighter. Cotton, 118 r.
to 121 r. per candy. Malwa opium, 1,305 r. to 1,310 r.
per chest. Discount 9 per cent. Copper sheathing,
72r. ; tile, 64r. to 64r. Ba. per cwt. ; 40's mule twist,
Br. 12a. to 9r. 2a. 7p. per bale. Markets generally
dull. nvights advanced to 40s. to 455.

INDIA AND CHINA.

By extraordinary express, in anticipation of the
Overland Mail, we have received our letters and
papers from India and China. The dates are—
Calcutta, Jan. 10 ; Hong Kong, Dec. 30.
The 43d Regiment of Light infantry leave for
Calcutta as soon as the 80th Regiment relieves
them. They (the 43d) are under orders for Madras,
and will probably be on the road by the 12th inst.
The following are extracts from an article in the
Calcutta Englishman :
A reference to our date will show that availing
ourselves, though at some cost to us, of the after
packet leaving Calcutta at two p m. this day, we
are enabled to give a day's later intelligence than
any other journal. Up to the time of going to
press we have no intelligence of the arrival of the
incoming mail steamer at Galle, which is now two
days overdue.
The first year of direct assumption of the Indian
empire by the Crown has closed, and it is no slight
mark of its value and its resources, that notwith-
standing the recent tremendous struggle for mere
existence, and in spite of one of the most inefficient
and obstructive Governments ever inflicted upon a
British territory, India has so far attained not
merely restored tranquillity, but prospects of pro-
gression. In our first despatches of the year now
passed we had to report that Oude was still
unsettled, that bodies of rebels, partly by fighting,
partly by bribes, were forcing their way into
Nepaul ; that Central India was still disturbed,
and bodies of rebels extant in Behar. The
Begum, the Nana, Tantia Topee, and other rebel
leaders were still at the head of large, though
demoralised and distressed forces. With the close
of the year has come the absolute close of the
campaign against the last of the rebels. By the
sword, by disease and want, and by gradual deser-
tion and escape, the last rabble of the vast mutin-
ous army have melted away. The Begum is still
at large, but altogether deserted, a powerless and
impoverished fugitive. Tantia Topee has been
hung. It is almost certain that the Nana died
miserably in the jungle, and the principal agents
and abettors in his atrocities are now undergoing
or waiting for their trials at the hands of our Com-
missioners ; and as it is unlikely that these are of
Major Barrow's stamp it is probable that the pri-
soners will meet the just reward of their ruffianism.
Oude is disarmed and tranquillised, and has
afforded the Viceroy a field for full display of the
"pomp and circumstance" of a triumphal progress.
Just now many of the loyal chiefs who have shared
among the honours of the Durbars are in mortal
fear lest the possible disclosures of Mummoo Khan
and others of our prisoners—their late dear friends,
should display the nature of their loyalty rather
too fully to be quite pleasant to them.
Having completed the destruction of the rebel
army, our Government contrived the dissolution of a
large portion of the European army who had so
nobly done that work. Not fewer than 10,000 men
have been sent home at great cost, to illustrate the
sound sense and admirable tact of Earl Canning, who
can exclaim with Coriolanus, " Alone I did it."
Perhaps Lord Clyde, who is about to follow the
malcontents to England, may enlighten the Viceroy's
friends in the Ministry how it was managed.
Having now no active internal enemies we have
breathing space to fit our contingent for the China
force. The Government have purchased two of the
old Peninsular and Oriental steamers, and are taking
up vessels for the despatch of every large force, in all
it is said some 15,000 troops- The Quartermaster-
General of the Forces has already gone in advance,
and we hope that this time the terrible losses caused
in the commencement of most of England's wars for
want of pre-arrangement may be avoided. Our latest
China advices bring us nothing new.