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

—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 bo 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 such 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, bui
for years. The money laid out now wil'
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 (Vscrimination. It
goads those who struggle for a decent livelihood,
and leaves property untaxed in its Aue propor-
tion. Property is a realisation, while• Income
is uncertain and varying in its acqussition.
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-
'use 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 bench—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

£4,499,636 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
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"—yclept 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 PLUTARCH'S " Lives," C_ESAR'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 medio 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
our 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 P
Merely the idle talk of a jokemaster ! Merely the
humorous absurdities of a Parliamentary wag t
For,
after all, there is manifestly nothing soexeaensy-
sively ridiculous in any race or any class, in
land or under any circumstances, looking to it in
earnest 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 for-
::ridable 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
in the midst of the flying bullets of the Bour
bon army and the Revolutionists. A very
unheroic spectacle in the eyes of Sir
ROBERT PEEL, very probably, that young
civilian with his rattan in the streets of
Paris! Yet
lyric, ,I T A Q
scarcely surprising, nk°,
not other this, than ARMAND CARREL,
of whom the Iaten—ort,,,TRANGFORD penned an im-
passionedunworthy of TYRT-EUS. It is
however, that Sir ROBERT