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

WATES AT LONDON BRIDGE.

TEIER DAY—Mona. 53 min. aft. 7—Evening 24 rain. aft. 8
TII-MoP.Bow—Morn. 57 min. aft. B—Evening 26 min. aft. 9

THE WEATHER—Sum OFFICE, DECEMBER 20.
THERMOMETER, IN TER SHAM
47—highest slue noon yesterday.
47—lowest this morning and during the night.
49 —this day at noon.
BAROMETER, 30.51.
WIND, W.N.W.—Light, with dull, hazy weather.

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L)NDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 185 e.

The Times wishes the People patiently to en- ,
dure the iniquitous Income Tax for another year.
It says—" In our:own sober judgment it is rather
too late to commence a movement against a one-
year's tax which has stood the ordeal of a Session,
and which the nation has acquiesced in without
much remonstrance for nearly nine months." It
adds—" On the Eve of 1857, and for one year
only, there is so little hope of any result, that
we feel it to be mere loss of power and time to
attempt it. The amount of the tax is necessary
to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's financial
arrangements, and when every sixpence of
it has been paid in the late war will still
have left the addition of many millions to
the National Debt, and, consequently, of
many hundred thousands to our annual
outgoings. Nor is this a time to be stinting the
Treasury !" Now, we earnestly and emphatically
protest against this " dilatory plea." We have
seen too much of the evil consequences of shelving
a subject on which the popular enthusiasm has
been thoroughly aroused. We say to the People,
" Agitate ! Agitate 1 ! Agitate !! r Redouble
your exertions. Send up indignant protests from
every town and village from every district
throughout the length and breadth of the land.
Unsparingly expose the gross fraud of continuing
the burden longer than the time for which it
was granted by Parliament and sanctioned by,
the People. Explain the palpable injustice
of placing in the same category, and charging at
the same rate, the hardly acquired and precarious
earnings of industry, and the proceeds of carefully
selected investments of accumulated and realised
property. Show all these matters plainly forth,
multiply petitions, and call on your representa-
tives to support them, and Sir G. C. LEWIS must
yield, even as Sir CHARLES WOOD yielded before
a similar pressure. The impost will be consider-
ably modified ; and although it may not be ren-
dered perfectly equitable, there will be so great
an approximation thereto that the nation will be
contented to bear the burden patiently and sub-
missively.

There is not, so far as we have seen, the slightest
desire "to stint the Treasury." Every legitimate
demand will be cheerfully responded to. But we
are not children. We shall not tolerate deception
or foul play in any form. Let Sir G. C. LEWIS
come forward honourably and manfully. Let him
open his budget distinctly ; showing the supplies
that are required, and the ways and means by
which they may be obtained. Let the whole
question of Income Tax be fully discussed, and he
will have no cause to regret the result. His evil
counsellors are those who recommend a " Fabian,"
policy—who fancy that by vexatious procrastina-
tion he can wear out the spirit of the Eng-
lish people. The necessary funds will be
provided ; the national establishments main-
tained in full efficiency ; and every public
liability promptly and unhesitatingly discharged.
But we cannot listen to the plea of necessity when
it runs counter to the demands of honesty and
good faith. We do not wish to see a Cabinet
Minister putting forward a whining appeal more
becoming a pickpocket awaiting his sentence in a
court of justice.

The great excitement already manifested, the
numerous and influential meetings held, the firm
but temperate expression of public opinion, has
alarmed the Times, and the clique of which it is
the representative. Had it been otherwise it
would not have offered such insidious advice, or
endeavoured to postpone the evil day. Despite
its positive assertions, we declare unhesitatingly
that the Income Tax will not die a natural
death in April, 1858. It is too convenient an
instrument to be dispensed with by any Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer. From listening to
similar arguments in 1853 we have been saddled
with the incubus ever since. Had the People
then persevered in the spirit and with the zeal
and energy in which they entered on the contest,
it would long since have been placed on a just
and substantial foundation, and each man would
have contributed fairly and according to his means
to the national exigences. But the Times, which
following sed longo intervallo, the popular opinion,
had proved the palpable unfairness of the !w-
-eaned " equal apportionment," grasped at the de-
ceitful and hypocritical professions of Mr. GLAD-
"ONE. It expatiated on the blessings of the gradual
reduction and ultimate extinction of the tax. In
vain we uplifted a warning voice. The CERBERIIS
was drugged by the medicated sop, so dexterously
administered. The object was attained, and the
iniquitous •
impost was continued without change,
or modification, for five years longer, in place of
three years, the longest term previously granted.A similar attempt
Will now be made. Th e article
in the Times
shadows forth the naturo a the tac-
tics about to be adopted. But if the p eople be
only true to themselves the trick will be signally
and decisively defeated,
and itsi:
roe:like, oess rs will
have bitter cause to deplore the
experi-
ment on public credulity.

The Times clearly, albeit
. that can eon imandnoconaciousiy,
it tdicates
the class for which it writes,
its sympathies. It says--" The tax:-aa• therer
comes and takes 501. or 1001. out of L yon at once,
just what you had destined for a trip to 33x18 hton
'
or Master TOMM Alas, Y'S schooling !"
0 speak
to others. To those to whom the pure whole-
some sea-breezes are hermetically Sealed
__who
must be contented to see their "Master • Tom-
MIES " receiving the plainest elements of corn.
mercial education, such as will qualify hin to as-
sist the domestic Exchequer, to enlarge ti Le " res
angusta, domi," and the earliest moment tha he can
be qualified for entering on "The Battle of Life."

We speak for the hard-working clerks, the small

tradesmen, the country clergymen, medical prac-
titioners, and comparatively briefless barristers,
who earn from 1001. to 5001. a year, and who,
between the indispensable obligations of maintain-
ing a respectable position, making some slender
provision for the future maintenance of their
families, and possibly of liquidating old incum-
brances, are driven to their wits' end to make
both 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 in 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. Thai
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,
Nihil 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 homes, 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 ;
hunted 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
MA.CAULAY. 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 passed, 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 tho 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 ; may 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 practising
or abetting slavery. We believe intelligent Ameri-
cans are perceiving this. Opposition to the South
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, does 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 purcha:se 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 must 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-