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

LONDON, FRIDAY, APRIL 9, 1869.

In a Budget, as in a black-cap pudding, all the
plums settle down at the bottom like a luscious sedi-
ment. It was thus last night with Mr. LOWE'S maiden
statement as a Financier, precisely as it has been more
or less with the financial statements of all his
various predecessors. Once produced, however, and
turned out for the inspection and enjoyment of those
for whom it has been especially prepared—the Budget
appears before us with the relative position of its
ingredients reversed, the plums then quite naturally
coming to the top. Our satisfaction, like that of
JACK HORNER, the hero of the nursery song, is there-
upon, of course, to pick them out one by one without
any needless delay whatever in so doing. This time
the plums of the Budget are happily very plentiful,
and are therefore very apparent. The proposed re-
missions of taxation exceed three millions sterling.
They altogether amount to £3,060,000, of which the
remissions upon the present year alone will come to
£2,940,000. First of all, there is to be a reduction
of a penny in the pound on the income tax.
And, as every penny under this head, speaking in
round numbers, is calculated as producing about a
million, there is a corresponding remission then of
somewhere about £1,000,000. The One Shilling
duty on corn is to be got rid of—showing a diminution
there of very nearly another million, or, in other
words, of £900,000. From Midsummer next the duty
on Fire Insurance is to be altogether abolished.
The little peddling tax upon hair powder, producing
annually not a thousand pounds (£925 a year), is to
be swept away as a ludicrous anachronism. The
post-horse duty of £5 is also to be abolished, as a
matter relating to a simply obsolete institution. So
likewise are the licenses for selling tea. The
trumpery tax upon armorial bearings, seeing that
it cannot be got rid of at once altogether, is to be, as
though in retaliation, increased, in some cases to a
guinea, in others to two guineas. Exceptional
and differential duties in regard to the taxes
on locomotion are to be altogether abolished,
a uniform rate being levied instead. All stage car-
riages, for example, will be paid on just as any
others. The hack cab, instead of paying an annual
duty of £l9 or £l6 will, according to this more
equitable arrangement pay, as the case may
be, either £2 25., or £3 3s. Every two-
wheeled carriage will be charged at a uniform
rate of 155., if under three hundredweight—the
same rate of 153. being applicable to four-wheelers
if drawn by ponies. Instead of the horse-
dealer's
license costing, as now, £27, it will
amount to no more henceforth than £l2 10s. A
duty of 15s. 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 £3,060,000. 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 £442,000. 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 he 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, the one with the military, the
other with the naval estimates—Mr. 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, thoagh 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, an 1 by the sweep-
ing away altogether, from this next Alidsturnmer, 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 lowtariff 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 needlegaly denied to the public,'