The Sun.
London, England, 1856-12-20 00:00:00

NS 'e speak for the hard-working clerks, the small

tr adesmen, the country clergymen, medical prac-
titioners, and comparatively briefless barristers,
wl to earn from 1001. to 5001. a year, and who,
be, tween the indispensable obligations of maintain-
ing a respectable position, making some slender
pre vision for the future maintenance of their
families, and possibly of liquidating old incum-
br'uices, are driven to their wits' end to make
bol ii ends meet. These are the classes who possess
our• sympathies, who are grievously wronged by
the inquisitorial and searching investigation into
their most secret affairs, and the stringent man-
ner in which the tax is levied. We have pro-
claimed our principle fearlessly. A judiciously
apportioned Property Tax is the best of all others
for the country. It is alike just and politic ; but
mere income arising from a man's own unassisted
exertions should be totally exempted. Industry
should be altogether liberated from its bonds. It
is by no means difficult to show how this desidera-
tum may be accomplished. It is by no means a
task of extraordinary difficulty, nor requiring a
very brilliant genius in the Financial Minister.

Great as is the start whioh the United States
have gained, there are two elements of future
prosperity for Canada which the great mongrel
Confederation wants. The Union is a Slave
Republic, and has a Protectionist policy. Canada
is a nation of freemen, and her trade is free.

Hitherto Canada has worked in fetters. That
nest for aristocratic incompetence,, the Colonial-
office, was her bane, as it was of all the colonies.
The motto of its seal might well have been,
/Vihil tetigit quod non ornavit, Ignorance, dis-
trust, intermeddling, perpetual provocation, had
well nigh alienated the most loyal of populations.
All that, however, has happily passed away.
We believe that now every Colonial Minister,
whatever his politics, sincerely desires to gratify
the colonies in everything ; and only to advise in
such purely Imperial concerns that the colonists
would recognise the desirableness of the mother
country having a voice in the arrangement. No
Tory Minister here would dream of aiding a Tory
minority in Canada, and no Whig Minister would
move a straw to hinder its becoming the majo-
rity. The colony is politically as free as it likes
to be. It prefers a President, by whom it is
politically connected with the mother country of
nearly all civilised freedom : and all the rest is
in its own hand—it can get " the Charter" and
its Five Points made law if it wishes.

Canada, therefore, is free. The States are not.
Three millions of human beings degrade the
Union by working its soil beneath the lash, and
by occupying in its markets the same position
which horses, cattle, and pigs do here. What
should we think to see one-eighth of our popula-
tion working in deeper ignominy than ticket-of-
leave men ? One person in every eight forced by
law to labour without wages ; forced to live on such
food as his gaoler, or master, sees fit to furnish ;
kunted by bloodhounds if he ventured to leave
his unrequited toil ; flogged, imprisoned, and
half-killed when caught ? Yet this is the condition
of Washington's Republic ! This is the precious
heir-loom handed down to BUCHANAN ! This is
The Union so belauded by the successors of WIL-
LIAM PENN ! The Union to preserve which, as
they imagined, the Pennsylvanians at the late
election acted, unworthily indeed of the PENN of
popular belief, but just worthily of the PENN of
MACAULAY. From Maine, all along the boundary
of our territory, to Wisconsin, perhaps to Oregon,
the slave remains a slave; but the magic line
of British rule once pasiAed, he becomes a
freeman.

One day, if there be reality in moral principles,
this hideous pollution will be the political and
social ruin of the States. There is no alternative.
Religion and humanity will either, as with us, make
any requisite sacrifice to the Moloch and Mammon
partnership of slaveholders, or some catastrophe
will consign the great Slave Republic to the con-
dition of all nations of which slavery was the basis
of the State. There is something ennobling to a
country when a noble principle is the boast of
every peasant. This is felt in Canada. Every
citizen there is proud of the difference between
himself and the Yankee. The latter may be very
'cute ; nay boast of the 4th of July, and of the
War of
,Independence ; but the Canadian can point
to the negro, who has just leaped with convulsive
joy on the shore of liberty, and remind the citizen
of the "Union" of kidnappers that not one inch of
his country can restore his birthright to man.
The citizens of Britain and her colonies must ever
be a nobler race:politically than citizens whose con-
sciences are burdened with the guilt of praetising
or abetting slavery. We believe intelligent Ameri-
cans aro perceiving this. Opposition to the Sonth
was not, in the late election, the high-toned love
of freedom, which abolished slavery in the British
possessions ; it was little more than hatred of
Southern domination. Even this was better than
Pennsylvanian truckling ; but it is not to be men-
tioned with the nobler spirit which is mould-
ing the future of Canada.
Canada, moreover, doss what America does
not : she buys in the cheapest market and sells in
the dearest. She does not pay 30 per cent. more
for her commodities to bolster up some half bank-
rupt cotton mills or iron manufacturers which
could not otherwise pay their way at all. The
whole community are not taxed to protect the
indolence or cupidity of a few. Judge HALIBUR-
TON tells us in his interesting address at the Man-
chester Athenaeum, which appeared in The Sun
of yesterday, that all their articles of consumption
are literally English ; from the bowl in which the
new-born babe is washed, and the flannel in which
he is placed, to the coffin-plate which at last tells
his name and age, and the shovel which throws
the earth upon it. They have the sense to know
that their raw produce will purchase these things
cheaper than their hands could make them.
JONATHAN, 'cute as he is, taxes luxuries and
necessaries alike. Canada knows better. America
• will, of course, be driven by circumstances to un-
restricted competition. Her over-full exchequer
will repeal, at least gradually, her absurd tariff.
But while she is afflicting herself in the style of
France, Austria, or Russia, Canada is taking the
full benefit of the wholesome laws of nature, and
her commerce will advance proportionally in com-
parison with that of the States. Her new rail-
roads have opened the far West to winter as well
as summer communication with England ; and
nothing is wanting but a full stream of emigra-
tion. This mush soon be largely swelled. The
superiority of the country for the adventurous and
aspiring men will be generally known ; and a real
New England will in time occupy the most vigo•
rous portion of the American continent, a country
one quarter larger than all Europe.
But here, as the Judge reminds us, the great
question arises, of the nature of. the connection
between the two countries. Already the popula-
tion outnumbers that of Scotland ; but Canada
retains to England the general relation which
Scotland and Ireland had before the Union. It
has its own Parliament, and its own Viceregal
Representative, but no representation in the Im-
perial Parliament. This, in fact, is the relation
of all the important colonies to the mother coun-
try. How long it will last, and how it will ter-