The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-09 00:00:00

amount to no more henceforth than £l2 lOs.

duty of 158. will have to be paid upon every man
servant. Ending where we began, the remission of
taxes, through Mr. LowE's maiden Budget, will
amount altogether to £3,030,003. Notwithstanding
which, after balancing his prospective estimate of re-
venue against his prospective estimate of expenditure,
in regard to the financial year just commencing,
namely, between April, 1869, and April, 1870, he
calculates upon a surplus of £-142,000. All this, of
course, bearing in mind that the Abyssinian expedition
had to be considered apart and duly accounted for,
without confusing all the complex figures and tables
of the Budget as a whole. The aggregate cost of
that Expedition, Mr. LOWE sets down as amounting
altogether, as nearly as possible, to £9,000,000. That
is, of course, calculating everything in regard to it,
or considering past, present, and future, altogether. So
far as the Abyssinian Expedition affects present and
future arrangements, the principal matter of interest
for us in regard to it is this, that the sum required
to discharge the amount borrowed being £1,600,000,
making with the Exchequer Bonds discounted a
total of over £4,000,000, will be just met by the esti-
mated surplus upon the financial year now commenc-
ing. Obviously the Chancellor of the Exchequer is
mainly indebted for the ground upon which Le is en-
abled to stand so securely—he is mainly if not entirely
indebted to his two right hon. colleagues the Secre-
tary of State for War and the First Lord of
the Admiralty. Thanks to what he very naturally
eulogizes as their heroic efforts and conspicuous abi-
lities in dealing, tha one with the military, the
other with the naval estimates-111r. CARDWELL
has ensured to the nation a reduction of
£1,226,000 upon the army, while Mr. CHILDERS
has ensured a very nearly equal reduction, amount-
ing in fact to £1,160,000 upon the navy. As to the
other items noticeable in the last statement of ac-
counts issued from the Treasury, we took those
ourselves into consideration only very recently. To
descant upon them now therefore would be altogether
superfluous. Chiefly of interest to us all at the pre•
sent moment in regard to Mr. LOWE'S First Budget
is this remembrance—that it leads directly to the re-
mission of over three millions sterling, accomplishing
this, among other lesser, though still most accept-
able, arrangements, the particulars of which we
have here already enumerated, by the abolition of the
shilling duty on corn, by the remission of a penny
in the pound on the Income-tax, and by the sweep-
ing away altogether, from this next Midsummer, of
the intolerable duty hitherto levied upon fire in-
surance.

THE Post Office, although on the whole an
admirable institution, has in one respect taken up a
position which can be likened only to the fable of the
dog in the manger. It claims the full privileges of
its monopoly ; it will allow no other body of carriers
to outbid it, even though the public may gain by the
competition ; and yet it lingers sadly in the wake of
progress. A company which undertook to distribute
printed matter at a low rate in the metropolis was
speedily suppressed; but the Post Office itself will not
adopt a low tariff even when it might do so with perfect
safety. A reduced rate for the carriage and delivery
of newspapers has long been urgently needed. The
advantages of such a change are obvious. It is not
a newspaper proprietors', but a public ques-
tion ; facilities already exist by means of the
railways and the newsagents for the transmission of
printed matter, but the convenience and rapidity of
postal delivery are needlessly denied to the public,