The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-16 00:00:00

,UST.

THE .REPEAL OF THE PAPER DUTIES.

(From the Times.)

It is a thousand pities that genius and fancy
have no influence over the common rules of arith-
metic. What a comfort it would be if we could
transport ourselves for good and all into that poetic
world where there is always a rich old uncle in the
fifth act or the third volume, where the high-
spirited, noble-minded, money-despising hero has
not to scrape and hoard and do mean things, but
can exercise without a restraint all the promptings
of his generous heart! How many a noble idea
perishes for lack of that sordid, base, contemptible
lucre ! In the poetic world our men of genius can
happily create wealth more easily than they can
create ideas ; but in the real world we almost

always see them balancing some antithesis, with a
bulky intellect at one end and an empty purse at
the other. Those hard logical laws of arithmetic
will hold their own. Goldsmith could make every-
body comfortable at the Wakefield Vicarage, but
he could not clear off that matter-of-fact milk score.
Messinger could give a fortune to Wellborn, but he
could not pay his own reckoning at the Mermaid.
Poor Otway could change the fortunes of Venice
at his will, but he could not contrive to keep 'Aim-
self from starving. Want of means does not check
our genius, limit our aspirations, curb our imagina-
tion, or even bridle our desires, for nothing is so
exuberant as the imagination of a beggar, but, un-
happily, it altogether prevents our reducing those
magnificent dreams into realities. Thus it has
been with poets and orators of all ages, and thus
it just now is, as we observe from a report which
we publish this morning, with Mr. John Bright.
It is a little matter of £1,400,000 which just now
makes the difficulty against which Mr. Bright is
surging in eloquence, and which he is seeking to
crush, and powder, and annihilate by explosions of
wrath. Mr. Bright has an idea, not, perhaps, very
original or very special, for it has long since been
public property, and we all entertain it with a
greater or lesser degree of impatience and enthu-
siasm. With Mr. Bright the enthusiasm is very
strong indeed. With him the repeal of the Paper
Duties is connected with the success of his nearest
desires. No one knows what he has not done for

this, or what he does not expect from this, or how
much he has not restrained himself for this, or how
much his mind has not been softened towards the
present Ministry for this. At last he is entering
upon full fruition ; when, lo! Lord Derby comes
upon him, just as Goldsmith's landlady might have
come in at the half-finished !est chapter among the
happy Primroses, and presents that terrible score.
Lord Derby insists it cannot be done. He declares
that if Mr. Bright could pay for poetic justice with
poetic money it would be all very well ; but that
when it is to be paid for by hard prosaic cash it is
necessary to see whether the nation can afford it.
Here is the position. Mr. Bright has very nearly
run his fox to a standstill ' • the creature's brush
already hangs dank upon the ground ' • one more
fence, one more field, and the vermin is chopped up.
Just at this vexatious moment appears Lord Derby
at the hedge, and, pitchfork in hand, and
in the character of the true British farmer,
warns Mr. Bright to move off, and not to ride over
his young tfixes. Mr. Bright, as everybody who
knows him will anticipate, instead of drawing rein,
goes right at him, with what result is yet to be
seen.

There was, last night, an indignation meeting at
St. Martin's-hall, and when Lord Derby reads the
names of the inflaentiaLmen there assembled surely
he will repent in sack loth and ashes. Sergeant
Parry was in the chair. Mr. Bright and Mr. Lea-
tham, and seven other M.P.'s, with two paper-
makers, were recognisable upon the platform. The
body of the hall was full of her Majesty's lieges,
who were all gathered together from those who pass
about twilight through the thoroughfares of
Covent-garden. Such was the assembly. The ob-
ject was, as the placards outside made loown, to
terrify the Lords from any interference with the
Paper Duties Bill. There were not many bankers,
not many merchants, not many professional men,
not, perhaps, very many tradesmen, possibly not a
great many. ratepayers. But, then, there were ths
platform eleven—the St. Martin's-hall eleven
against all England. They were not exactly the
class of minds which have bent all England to their
following in other days, but they were very earnest.
When the chairman promised the meeting to use
" his mildest and most temperate language," he could
find nothing in his mind more dovelike than that " the
House of Lords was an obvious anomaly among the
institutions of a free country." Mr. Bright, con-
fessing once more that he did not know where to find
or how to get hold of the British Constitution,
proceeded to lecture his audience upon it; and to
deny the right of the House of Lords to negative
this bill, and to assert its moral responsibility for
all the losses that may be sustained by some of Mr.
Bright's friends who had speculated upon their
allowing it to pass. We quite agree with Mr.
Bright,—not that there is anything " impudent
and insolent" in the conduct of the House of Lords

if they should refuse to repeal a tax, but that this
is not a thing to be lightly done. We are afraid,
however, if the Lords can make out to the satisfac-
tion of the public that without this tax we shall
not be able to pay our way, the honest sober-going
folk who make Parliaments will be inclined to say
the Lords are right, and that the tax ought not to
ba repealed, and shake their heads at Mr. Bright's
magnificent periods about " a million is as nothing
compared with the inestimable blessings," &c, All
this is very well, but millions are millions, and
Jove will not annihilate space and time even to
make Mr. Bright happy.
When we read these proceedings we are almost
tempted to ask whether it can be that Mr. Bright
does really wish the repeal of these Paper Duties.
Is it possible that his intellect can be so small, with
a power of expression so great, as not to perceive
that he is pursuing the only course which could
prevent the accomplishment of what he desires ?
With moderate and temperate proceedings there can
be no doubt that these Paper Duties must go. No
class, as we believe, now wishes permanently to re-
tain them. They must come off; the sooner the
better, for the state of transition is, as the Emperor
of the French reminds his people, always a stage of
suffering. %Ve hope the House of Peers will not

interfere with the repeal of the Paper Duties, but
that they have the constitutional right to reject or
pass any bill presented to them we cannot doubt.
Mr. Bright, it seems, proposes to frighten the Lords
by denying their right, and he carries out his pro-
ject by calling together a roomfull of London mob,
and setting up a gentleman to tell them that the
House of Peers is an anomaly in a free country,
and that " if it venture to usurp any of the privi-
leges of the House of Commons or of the people, the
days of hereditary legislation are numbered.' Mr.
Bright, in his own address, uses a somewhat more
mitigated form of language, but it is scarcely less
insulting. Now, we tremble when we see such
allies as these acting for us. If we thought that
either we ourselves or Mr. Bright were so entirely
free from all interest in this matter as to make it
decent to put pressure upon the House of Lords—
which, as we have often said, we do not think—we
should still believe it a most impolitic course to adopt.
There is no strong public opinion behind us to sus-
tain such a pressure. Look at the House of Com-
mons, with its majority of 10, and even that narrow
victory a party vote to keep the Ministers in their
places. There is no fuel in the country for a
paper duties' agitation to the extent of frightening
the peers. Moreover, English gentlemen do not
like to have these experiments tried upon them.
Our chief reliance is that Lord Derby and his
friends may have too much contempt for this
miserable rushlight conflagration to resent it. But
we entreat Mr. Bright to let us have this boon, now
we are so near to it. He has made Parliamentary
Reform next to impossible ; another of these St.
Martin's-hall fire-damps, and he will have done the
same good office for the paper duties' repeal.

(From the Horning Herald.)
Last night the ears of the metropolitan democracy
were tickled by an address from Mr. Bright on the
" usurpation proposed by Lord Derby to the House
of Lords, in the retention of the tax on paper inde-
pendent (sic) of the House of Commons and the
Crown." Mr. Sergeant Parry was in the chair,
and the assembly was of course all that could be
desired for the proper discussion of the constitu-
tional privileg,es of the Peers. The threatened op-
position of the Lords to the repeal of the paper duty
was denounced as derogatory to the dignity of the
Crown, subversive of the privileges of the House of
Commons and of the rights of the people, and calcu-
lated to impair the authority of the House of Lords.
Judged by its own printed propositions nothing
could be more promising than the objects of the
meeting. Respect for the Crown, for the Commons,
and for the Lords, was apparently the mainspring
of its action. So far from being hostile to an heredi-
tary peerage, it assembled in order to preserve its
authority; so far from cherishing any feeling of op-
position to the Crown, it was resolute in assertine,
its prerogative. Its obvious intention, according
to the programme, was to reconcile the rights of
the three estates and to avert collision,—above all,
to protect the Lords from the evil consequences that
might result if they presumed to become an active
portion of the Legislature. However, if the intent
was pacific, Mr. Bright disappointed it. St. Mar-
tin's Hall is not very far from St. Stephen's, but it
is quite far enough to admit of a complete change"
of character in the member for Birmingham—and
last night this gentleman let loose the pent-up
torrent of his indignation, and fairly surpassed his
ordinary efforts of abuse and slander upon that one
stumbling-block in his path—the hereditary House
of Peers.
Mr. Bright is boiling Over with indignation be-

cause the House of Lords are determined to chec
Mr. Gladstone in his career of reckless improvi-
dence. All his arguments in favour of the abolition
of the tax on paper were thrown away, because the
House of Lords generally, we doubt not, shares the
opinion which Lord Derby has expressed, " that
the impost is objectionable in principle and in•prac
tice." But there is every probability that two-third
of the peers would say the same of the war duties
on tea and sugar in a time of peace, and scarcely a
peer could be found who would not speak out still
more strongly against the income tax. Mr. Bright,
with an unfairness which has become his charac-
teristic, purposely omits to notice the real motives
en which the opposition of Lord Derby and
Lord Monteagle is founded ; and with an
effrontery for which journalism can scarcely find
a fitting epithet, persists in imputing it to a sordid
desire on the part of the aristocracy to prevent the
political education of the people. Now, we should
like Mr. Bright to answer this question : which.
does more for the instruction of the masses—the
order to which he belongs, or the aristocracy which
he abuses ? As to the term political instruction, in.
the sense in which it is interpreted by Mr. Bright
and his organ, we confess the masses are quite as
well without it. But if, as we believe, the dissemi-
nation of sound and useful information be the best
groundwork of the instruction .ich shall fit a man
to take his part in that sphere of political life to
which he is called, then we hesitate not to say that
for one earnest mover of Mr. Bright's class we will
find fifty in the class against which he endeavours
to excite popular passion. Those who live in glass
houses should not throw stones. Mr. Bright's
boasted efforts for the elevation of the masses con-
trasts but sadly.with his absence on the Dyers and
Bleachers Bill, with his resistance to the Ten Hours
Bill, and with the present movement of his own
operatives. Let him cast out the mote from his
own eye before he so readily and wilfully misinter-
prets the motives of his neighbours.
Mr. Bright was stimulated last night by three or
four considerations. If the paper duty goes Mr. Glad-
stone goes with it, and with Mr. Gladstone vanish
those enancial schemes enunciated at Liverpool, and
faintly shadowed forth in the Badget of 1860. 'But
there is a possibility that the Cabinet itself will not
survive the blow: Rumour asserts that more than
one member of the Cabinet is looking forward to
a verdict from the Upper House which they are
powerless to give, and that, with the rejection of
the Paper Duty Bill, the Coalition Cabinet itself
will receive its quietus. We do not so lightly esti-
mate Whig tenacity. But the reflection has evi-
dently forced itself on Mr. Bright's mind, or he
would not have involved himself in so gross a mis-
statement as to represent Lord Derby's guiding
principle a desire for pace, or have so far trifled
with the convictions of his audience as to declare
that the accession of this nobleman to power would
probably involve the country in a war in less than
twelve months. Twelve months Why, if Mr.
Bright does not know it, the nation knows, that it
is not safe under the present Ministry, and in front
of the surging tide of complications now advancing
on us, for twelve weeks, But the question is not
for the decision of l‘lr. Bright or the meeting at St.
Martin's Hall. The Lords have to discuss a bill
sent up to them in due course by the Commons, and
they will decide without regard to the eventualities
which Mr. Bright suggests. Nobody can honestly
accuse Lord Monteagle or Lord Overstone of a de-
sire to overthrow the Whig Ministry; and indeed
the defeat of the bill by the Lords cannot be con-
strued as a censure which should render office un-
tenable by its proposers. It may suit Mr. Bright
and Mr. Gladstone to leek forward to the Exchequer
in a hopeless state of bankruptcy. But it is plainly
the duty of the Lords to protect the country against
the ruin that is threatened ; and from the perform.
ante of that duty the wrath of Mr. Bright will not
frigl.ten them.
We are told that the House of Lords his no right
to meddle with the question, and that in presuming
to interfere it encroaches upon the prerogative of the
Crown as well as the privileges•of the Commons.
Now, in the first place, it requires a powerful stretch
of imagination to perceive that the prerogative of
the Crown is at all affected. The assent of the
Crown has yet to be given ; and for the Lords to
refuse their assent to tho remission of an impost
can be, in sober reality, no greater encroachment
on the Crown's nights than to reject a Reform Bill
announced from the throne. But the pretended'
violation of the privileges of the Commons is equally
illusory. This is not a supply bill. it is not a
proposition of the Lords to raise additional taxation.
The tax is already imposed, and the Lords only
exercise their constitutional right in rejecting the
bill proposing its remission i❑ face of the serious
deficiency which is looming in the future. On one
noint, however, we must plainly contradict Mr.
-Bright. He states that the House of Peers has not
exercised such a right as it now claims for 200
years. Now he has evidently referred to Lord Derby's
sp.gech in 1853 on the Succession Duty, and we will
recall his attention to the same speech. It is true
Lord Derby's precedent was not a question of re-
jecting, but of amending, a money bill; but this
fact supplies us at once with an a fortiori argument,
for the bill to which the noble lord referred was a
money bill, and it was actually amended, not
simply rejected, by the Upper House

"lie I.membered one instance of which he had
been reminded in the course of that day by a noble
lord who entertained a very strong objection to the
principle of this bill, but who was absent on account
of a domestic calamity. That noble lord, when he
filled the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, had
introduced a bill, as a measure in his budget, for
the purpose of varying and altering the stamp du-
ties. An amendment was made in their lordships'
house, materially affecting the character of that
bill with regard to the budget. The bill so amended
was sent down to the Commons ; the other house,
it was true, did not assent to it, or accept their lord-
ships' alterations ; but, though technically they
did not do so, they moved that the bill, as amended,
should be laid aside ; they then suspended the
standings orders, and reintroduced a bill totidem
verbis , the same as the amended bill which had
been sent down to them ; aud, having passed it
through all its stages, sent it up as a new bill to
their lordships, and beitig passed in the shape so
sent, became in due course the law of the land."
In the course of the same debate the Earl of
Aberdeen alluded to another precedent in the year
1826, when the Lords introduced amendments in.
Mr. Canning's corn bill, which the Commons ac-
cepted. Precedent, therefore, is against Mr. Bright,
and reason is still more so. It is absurd enough to
suppose that the House of Lords is to sit idle and
make no protest against the extravagance of the
Chancellor:of the Exchequer, merely because Mr.
Bright chooses to term the measure a money bill
but it is still more unreasonable to grant the House
of Lords the power of discussion, and to acknow-
ledge its legislative functions, and at the same time
deny its right to reject a bill which has only been
carried by a haphazard majority of nine in the
Lower House.