The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-13 00:00:00

removed, or that French paper should pay a duty
here. French sellers of rags have a right also to
demand this of their imperial master.
But the grand error of the Budget, the one which
ought to prove fatal to it, in its present form, is the
additional attack on income, parallel with the
sparing of property. We refer, of course, to the
Legacy and Probate duties. Granted that bills
incurred must be paid, and that, if necessary, even
an income tax must pay them ;—granted that our
hugely increased expenditure since 1853 exonerates
Mr. GLADSTONE from censure for his failure to
abolish the tax this year, in accordance with his
own proposal seven years ago yet nothing
can excuse resorting to the barbarous de-
vice of an equal income tax, but the fact
of all other taxes having been first equitably
adjusted. Now, the iniquitously unjust inequality
lof the legacy and probate duties is matter of noto-
riety. Mr. GLADSTONE had himself to confess that
his own succ6,fiion duty did not produce half what
it ought; in other words, the rate of duty, not
being the same as that on oi,her property, it pro-
duced so much less. Why should riot the eucces-
sion duty to £l,OOO a year from land be the same
as that from £l,OOO in the fands or from any other
source ? But not only is the legacy duty on real
property shamefully law compared with that on other
property, but real property is exempt from probate
altogether ! Welwrite without a fresh examination
of the details, but from former investigations we
have reason to believe that if real property paid
probate duty, and a legacy duty equal to that on
personal property, this alone might cut down the
tenpenny tax to fivepence; and reduction of expen-
diture, and increased revenue from Customs, stamps,
&c., would in a year or two have abolished the
other fivepence.
There is one man in the House of Commons to
whom the country looks, and justly so, to demand
justice for it in regard to these taxes. JOHN
BRIGHT has the ear of the house, has the
power, as much as Mr. GLADSTONE, to
put a strong case in a strong light, and
JOHN BRIGHT has spoken boldly in public on the
subject. It is a taunt against him by his adversaries
that he is bold enough in the Free Trade Hall or
the Town Hall, but gentle as a dove, when face to
face with the aristocracy in the House of Commons.
Now, if ever, he has an opportunity to hurl
back the taunt upon his antagonists. He has
done two things as a legislator—two thoroughly
right things —he has proposed a pro-
perty tax in place of an income tax, and
he has exposed in the most withering style the in-
equalities and unrighteousness of the present Legacy
and Probate Duties. Let him now come forward
and redeem in the house the pledges thus publicly
given out of it. It cannot be deemed factious oppo-
sition—he need not ask Mr. GLADSTONE to give up
a penny:of the sum demanded for the year ensuing ;
but he is bound to ask him to raise the money in
a way simply honest to all parties.
Mr. GLADSTONE as well as Mr. BRIGHT has
acknowledged also the injustice of the income tax
in regard to taxing equally incomes of such dif-
ferent value, as those derived from property, and
those earned by the labour of the brain or the
hands. Mr. BRIGHT has spared no terms of de-
nunciation in diminishing the odiousness of an in-
come tax. Is it then too much to expect that one
should demand on behalf of the country, that legacy
and probate duties, be equalized, and to that extent
the income tax reduced, and for Mr. GLADSTONE to
concede the point. If Mr. BRIGHT will take this
course he will stand higher than ever with the
nation. If he do not sustain his consistency he
must sink lower. We hope he will not disappoint
his friends.

Several days of breathless suspense and profound

uncertainty must now elapse before the House of
Commons can enter upon the discussion of the
varied, numerous, and important propositions sub-
mitted to it on Friday evening by the Chancellor
of the Exchequer. During the course of this pre-
sent week every one of those propositions will be
weighed and scrutinized—separately and together
—in the councils of a powerful Opposition. On
Wednesday afternoon there will be a meeting of
Lord DERBY'S supporters. Until then each of the
Cosiservative members will deliberate the matter in
his own judgment independently. Not until the
middle of the week will the Parliamentary tactics
of the Opposition be unfolded even to its own
view by the leaders of that Opposition. Possibly
not until the middle of the week will those
tactics be decided upon. At any rate on Wednes-
day afternoon, and not earlier, the great party act-
ing under the chieftainship of Lord DERBY and Mr.
DISRAELI will hear from [the lips of those leaders
what is precisely the course which it is deemed best
shall be pursued in regard to the BUDGET and the
Treaty by her MAJESTY'S Opposition. Neither in
all this, nor yet in a single syllable that fell froni
the mouth of any one of the occupants of the front
bench of the Opposition can we recognise indications
of reprehensible party-spirit or of reckless precipi-
tation. The circumstances are in themselves too
grave in truth to admit of either the one
or the other—of an overweening eagerness to
seize at all risks upon a party triumph, or of
a rash determination at all hazards to jump at some
wished-for conclusion—whether in the inner coun-
cils of a group of conscientious statesmen, or in the
throng of three hundred patriotic English gen-
tlemen. The very solicitude evinced at once by
the Leader of the Opposition, immediately upon
the close of Mr. GLAD3TONE'S elaborate and bril-
liant exposition both of the Commercial Treatyand
the Financial Statement, the desire which was
then instantaneously expressed by Mr. DISRAELI
to obtain at least a fortnight's delay after the oral
delivery of the Budget by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer and the manual laying of, the Treaty
upon the table of the House by the Foreign Sec-
retary, ere the Commons should •be called
upon to discuss the Treaty and Budget toge-
ther—certainly manifested quite plainly a calm
and dispassionate recognition of the impori-
tance of both, on the side of the Opposition.
It argued, at any rate, no unfair anxiety to hasten
the discussion. Judging from these and other im-
portant antecedents, the country has reason to rely,
at the very least, upon this—that whatever course
be taken by the Opposition, eventually, in regard
to the Treaty and the Budget, will be adopted
conscientiously, with an eyo rather to patriotic
than to-any mere party considerations, a course in
every way decided upon only after the most mature
and deliberate consideration.

The BUDGET, as a development of FrQe-
trade in England—the TREATY, as a develop-
ment of Free-trade in the. direction of Ef)a.nce,
cannot, of course, when so regarded, cannot,,
by any possibility, when viewed as such=
namely, as distinct devehipments of the Free-trade,
system, and of Free-trade principles, be regarded
otherwise by us than as most acceptable. It is
only when we come to those eighteen months in
the Treaty—when (but not until when) advan-
tages are to be reciprocated by France—that we the'-
gin to wince at our bargain, that we begin with a
qualm of hesitation to turn over the dubious docu-
f
ment..s !est as we make a-wry face after swallowing
so many of the sacchexineingredients in the mingled