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

L').:;DON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1856

Diplomacy has many varied tracks for achiev-
ing its objects. The more devious the better, as
being the less likely to attract observation. Rus-
sia is master of the craft. She has numerous dis-
guises, and can put strange machinery in motion,
making use of strange and unthought-of instru-
ments. At present her great anxiety is to ob-
tain a renewal of the Conferences, with a view of
shuffling out of the solemn engagements which
she deliberately and joyfully entered into last
March. She fancies that if she could procure a
meeting of the Congress, per fas aut nefas, that
the difficulties respecting Bolgrad and the Isle cf
Serpents would be arranged in a highly satisfac-
tory manner. So far as she is concerned, that
laving already secured a majority of votes, as
we recently pointed out, the decision would
be but a foregone conclusion, which would
bring the parties concerned to the utmost shame,
and Russia most of all, although of a character
to which she is utterly insensible.
From these facts some light is thrown on the
conduct of Prussia in reference to Neuchatel.
Every one knows that the good CLINIOT will do
anything to serve his Imperial nephew—that there
is no slough too deep, no puddle too dirty for
him to wade through provided it can serve or
or gratify the AUTOCRAT, and will not entail either
risk or expenditure on himself. As to political
reputation, that is a matter of profound indiffer-
ence. His conduct during the late War has dis-
posed of that, and we look on any further dirty
work that may be required at his hands, in the
same light as the philosophical " conveyancer, "
who comforted himself with the thought that it

was just as good " to be hanged for a sheep as for
a lamb.*

A suitable occasion arose for giving the nations
of Europe another taste of his quality. By means
which we shall not now attempt to characterise
but certainly not springing from any geographical
affinity—she obtained some claim connected with
the Swiss canton. She was its " protector"—
GOD save the mark !—but only while it required
no assistance ; for, in the days of the first NA-
POLEON, it was seized on, and conferred as an
appendage on Marshal BERTEIER. Whatever
might formerly have been said on the subject every
matter was set at rest in 1848, when the Govern-
ment was settled on a solid foundation ; and
FREDERICK WILHELM, having fully acquiesced in
the arrangement which deprived him of a nomi-
nal claim to what was at best a damnosa her6ditas,
must be held to have waived any title to that
which was to all intents and purposes an integral
Imember of the Swiss Confederation.

Recently a few fanatics set up the standard of
revolt, which was speedily and decisively put
down ; there was some bloodshed, and a few pri-
soners taken, who became amenable to the laws
for their misconduct. It may be very well that
such should be treated leniently. In fact, such a
ridiculous farce could not be changed into a
tragedy with any degree of consistency. But
Prussia, actuated no doubt by adequate private
considerations, has thought proper to demand the
immediate liberation in a very haughty manner,
and in a tone that if recognised must at once
overthrow the independence, not merely of
Neuchatel, but of the entire Confederation.
The untenable claim could not, of course, be recog-
nised ; the Confederation unanimously and un-
hesitatingly rejected the demand. The Angel of
Peace will not, however, bring the matter to a
mortal arbitrament. No ! that is no part of his
game. Ile demands a conference for the purpose
of deciding on his rights, and which can, of course,
deal with the Bessarabian frontier difficulty and
other " vexed questions," in which Russia is
interested. It cannot be denied that this is a deep
move on the political board, but, the design being
transparent, the other Governments can easily
repel the attack, and checkmate the players who
have deliberately adopted such a ruse.

SHYLOCK and his bond—nothing else can one
think of, when he thinks of Sir G. C. LEWIS and
his Income Tax. We no more dreamed of two
years doubled, or rather trebled, Income Tax
after the war than ANTONIO did of paying BASSI.
NIO'S debt with his pound of flesh. From April,
1857, we ought by Mr. GLADSTONea Seven
Years' Act to pay but FIVEI'ENCE in the pound
till 1860. By Sir GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS'S
cunningly-worded bond, we are to pay SIXTEEN-
PENCE in the pound till April, 1858. Here is
the bond-18th Victoria, cap. 20—" twopence
additional—sixteenpence in all, to be paid on all
incomes above 150/. per annum, to commence in
April sth, 1855, and to continue till April
6th, after a clear twelvemonth from the ratifi-
cation of a definitive Treaty of Peace." Nothing
in the world here about two years ; about a
twelvemonth there is. But two years I who
thought of it In the spring of 1855 we all
isupposed
twopeowl ewraestnoothathveen atamkeunc l,h a
n odnwgeer
meant
banotf
to take it, and to take also something better than
a miserable strip of Bessarabia something
worthy of France, and something
that would Ehnavglean:i and
lenced Czars for a generation
to come. We never thought of getting the peace
concluded just before the 6th of April, and not
of it till afterwards.
says our SHYLOCa, is one
getting the " ratification"
f What you thought,
thing, and what the bond says is another ; is it
not " ratification" in the bond ? Alas there it
is ; we poor Antonios cannot deny it. We
may be
almost in a passion to lad ourselves so fast
in &MOCK'S hands, and ready to kick the
collectors, who are by this time sharping their
knives for next year, oat of the parish ; but ther,,,'%,
the accursed bond—and there's the QuErat's seal
and we cannot "rail it from the bond." Iva
of no use our storming with rage—so we humbly
ask again, " Was not, Sir CORNEWALL, thq, intent
of the bond an honest year after the war ?" biAt,

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

nated in the bond ?"

But now for the peripateia—for using which
word, being a Greek one, we must, it seems, it
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.
LEWIS have quailed before it, when they wished
to continue an Income Tax after a war ; and nine-
pence out of the sixteenpence 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 CoiNnwALL Lnwis
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 Sinmotit 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-
floes. 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 for 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, ac., supply our 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 CzAst 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 Tai, 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, bnt 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 hasard to which he puts his capital. He
eannot 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
eapital 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 he 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.
is unjust in principle at fivepence in the pound
as at five shillings ; but by the SHYLOEK bond
the injustice would be multiplied by more than
three till 1860.

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
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
metropolitan sewerage question taken into further
consideration, so as to arrive at a solution wor-
thy of its importance, and by which justice will
be done to all parties.

We have spoken of the question as it 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-
qw.mt 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

London is at once so rapid and steady that in a
quarter of a century we may reasonably look to
find Erith included in the metropolitan boun-
daries. At all events the sewage will have to be
carried on to the sea then at a much greater ex-
pense than it can be carried now. Why not have
the work done at once, when a saving both of
health and pocket may be effected by doing so ?
There are, however, other motives which of
themselves might suffice to convince the people of
London of the propriety of conveying the sewage
to sea when they are about getting rid of it. In
alluding to the sanitary aspect of the question we
have purposely refrained from calling attention to
the effects likely to be produced by loading the
effluvium of the marshes, along which the foetid
puddle will ebb and flow, with additional poison.
With the like design we have not adverted to the
opportunity at present offered to drain the marsh
land, and thereby to a large extent get rid of the
fogs which are so annoying and prejudicial in busi-
ness and to the general health and comfort. There
are things which ought not to be overlooked in
the consideration of a great sanitary question like
that of- the sewerage, though there is too much
reason to believe they have been so. How would
future annalists describe the men who, in carry-
ing out a costly sanitary undertaking, not only
poisoned the atmosphere of a beautiful village
and several towns, but actually failed in securing
the object they had in view, and neglected a
splendid opportunity to get rid of a nuisance
which perennially, for hours together, envelopes
three millions or more of people in a pall of thick
and disease-bearing darkness t We leave the
reader to imagine here—for us to de so might be
offensive.

Possibly it may be urged, " Tou are overload-
ing an already burdened question with your sug-
gestions, and making that impossible which now
with difficulty can be accomplished." Not a bit
of it. There is not a suggestion which we have
made at first or second hand but is compatible
with—we may say, more or less essential to—the
cheapest possible effective scheme. The sewage, if
not now, will in a few years have to be carried to
Sea Reach. New it can be done at a great saving
of expense. Sir MORTON Pnro is at hand ready to
undertake the task on the most favourable terms.
Now the owners of marsh land are prepared to aid
us in getting rid of our fogs by contributing
towards its drainage into the metropolitan tunnel,
and the population down the river are ready to
do what may reasonably be required. And now,
it may be presumed, we have a Government fairly
disposed to do its duty, and lend the
aid it is morally bound to render. Now
much danger to hezalth and destruction of
property, and an incalculable amount of
law expenditure, looming in the distance, may be
prevented. Is it possible there should be a con-
currence of such favourable circumstances for the
best possible solution of this much-vexed question,
whether in a sanitary, moral, or a pecuniary
point of view ? We believe not, and in urging
on all parties a long pull, a strong pull, and a
pull altogether, we by no means debar our-
selves from adding, in the words of Sir MORTON
PET°, which will be met with in his
letter to the Metropolitan Board, " This
great subject should be grasped with a de-
termination so to treat it that the works executed
should be sufficient for all time, and able to meet
the contingency of any future increase of the
metropolis ; and any little delay at the present
moment in coining to your determination would be
far more than counterbalanced by the right con•
elusion being arrived at."

The perpetrator of one of the most extraordi-
nary and harrowing murders on record was yes-
terday convicted, after a calm and deliberate
investigation. JOSEPH JENKINS, or rather
ROBERT MARLEY, had every possible assistance
that he could desire. The services of an able and
indefatigable advocate were obtained through the
kindness of the Sheriffs, and it is only right to say
that Mr. SLEIGH made the best of a hopeless cause.
The defence rested on twe points—the only argu-
ments that could possibly be put forward. The
Ist was one of mistaken identity. The 2d, that
the death was not occasioned by the fearful blows
inflicted on the unfortunate man ; but might,
from the symptoms, be the result of old disease on
the lungs, and neither produced nor accelerated
by the assault. The jury, however, unhesitatingly
returned the only verdict which they could give
in accordance with the solemn oath they had
taken, and the murderer has been sentenced to
the extreme penalty of the law, without the
slightest hope of remission being held out by the
presiding Judge.

It is indeed a terrible reflection that in the
very heart of the metropolis, almost within call
of the head-quarters of the Metropolitan Police,
and at a time when the streets were crowded
with passengers, a faithful servant could be
stricken down, and that but for the bravery and
determination of a mere boy the assassin would
have escaped the penal consequences of this out-
rage. That MARLEY had accomplibes, that there
were " accessories before the fact," who had de-
liberately planned the entire transaction, seems
certain. The three persons congregated about
the shop door, who told the boy LIRIGO that it
was only a man quarrelling with his wife, were
clearly the "covering party ;" while their more
determined companion was the active assailant,
whose bratal onslaught should disable or kill the
victim until the work of plunder was effected. Had
LERI6O accepted the solution, and passed on his
way, all would have been safe, and the terrible
event would have been shrouded in mystery.
Happily fer the ends of justice he was not so
easily satisfied. He returned to the door, and
saw the blows inflicted with the deadly instru-
ment. The covering party dispersed when they
saw an unexpected witness to the crime, and
unfortunately there is as yet no clue to lead to
their discovery, although sufficient information may
yet be obtained. LERIGO, however, kept his eye
on the chief offender. He called to the people
about—" There he goes, won't you secure him ;"
but the police were not there, and it was nobody's
business. LERIGO still pursued, and never lost
sight of him until he went to the passage leading
to Palace-yard, and there he was captured by
ALLEN, who little thought he was seizing ,the
murderer of his brother-in-law. Under such
circumstances there could be no possible doubt.
He was captured with the red hand—the marks
of his offence palpable on his person. There
could, then, be no doubt as to his identity, and
that the blows inflicted were the cause of his
death was equally indisputable. Few, then, can
sympathise with the offender, save those opposed
to capital punishment in every instance. If ever
the penalty of death might fairly be inflicted it is
in such a case.
But what san we think of the state of society
when such an outrage could be deliberately planned
and carried out with a reasonable expectation of
the escape of the criminal. The accessories
must have felt that the explanation It is
only a man quarrelling with his wife " would
be received as satisfactory, and that the
inquirers would pass on their way without
dreaming of interference in such a matter. When