The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-01 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 1, 1866.

better quality than that brewed for home consump-
tion. As for the hops, the only remaining ingre-
dient, our rigorous censor finds that the quantity
brewed with a quarter of malt costs, on a fair aver-
age, 6s. Bd. So that the conclusion which he
arrives at on the authority of the Excise
is that " the malt duty being 2d. the gallon, the
barley, malting, brewing, &c., 4d. the gallon, and
assuming there were no duty upon malt and nothing
to pay for licences, then the cost price of all sold
retail at 6d. the quart would be sd. the gallon,
or lid. per quart." A little further on he
puts the case still more strongly and suc-
cinctly. " The Government obtain from
this sixpenny ale id. tax, and by the system adopted
the price is augmented 4d. ; that which otherwise
would be 2d., on being taxed id. is not raised to 2d.,
but to 6d." Certainly if these figures are actually
founded on existing facts, their " inexorable logic"
points strongly against the continuance of the
malt tax in its present form.
Every one knows that between the brewer and
the licensed victualler, and the builder, and the
landlord, more than a fair trade profit has to be
made out of beer sold retail. No sooner, says Mr.
SMEE, is a house completed and a licence obtained,
than the builder at once largely augments the value.
The capitalist buying it charges more rent than if
it were used for any other trade. The licence com-
mands a premium, so that the licensed victuallers
themselves declare that they have sunk sums vary-
ing from £5OO to £lO,OOO, to the enormous aggre-
gate of £50,000,000. Then thebrewer, whose capital
is locked up in the purchase of public houses, charges
high to get remunerating profits, and the publican
who does not find the ld. a quart profit which he
gets sufficiently rapid to repay him for the money
sunk, takes to the easy and comfortable method
of increasing his revenue by adding " saccharine
matter, water, and salt." It is well if nothing less
innocent forms part of the questionable beverage.
The great perplexity of the question still re-
mains to be considered, and it is one which the
Chancellor of the Exchequer is not likely to let
us forget. The malt tax brings in about six mil-
lions a year to the national exchequer, and how-
ever attractive the total removal of the impost
may appear, it would not be very easy to sur-
render that amount. Mr. S3IEE suggests as
a remedy that the duty should be levied
not on the malt, but on the liquid, the
same as in France, by which means " the adulterated
beer and malt made from improper materials will
be taxed the same as the genuine, and be made to
pay the duty it now altogether escapes." This tax
is one halfpenny per gallon. We would have the
retailer pay once a month on the quantity of beer he
has sold during the four weeks, when " the ale will
be 2id. the quart instead of 6d., and the porter 2d.
instead of 4d., and the revenue will be nearly the
same as at present." how far this plan would work,
and whether it would answer the purpose, we leave
our financiers to consider; but, at any rate,
something might be done by the reduc-
tion of the malt tax, say one-third. The
heavy losses of the agriculturists during the past
year give them a claim on the Chancellor of the
Exchequer's consideration which he is not likely to
be allowed to overlook ; and if it is once generally
believed that other interests are affected by the tax
there will be no rest until a chang,,e is made. The great
difficulty is to obtain some security that the profit
derived from the lightening of the tax will
not find its way into the pockets of the landowner,
the brewer, and the licensed victualler. If the
rights of the question were more widely understood
there would be less fear of fraud and imposition,
and Mr. SMEE has done good service in collecting
facts and figures which, so long as they remain
undisproved, are unanswerable arguments.

CORRESPONDENCE FROM PARIS.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

PARIS, Wednesday Evening.
The Monitcur to-day publishes some of the long
despatches between France and the United States
upon the subject of Mexico, but I do not see in
them any important fact which is not already
known.

The following is all that the ilioniteur contains in
regard to Spain. In the provinces of Barcelona
and Tarragona the insurgents have almost entirely
disappeared. There was no longer any doubt in
Catalonia that in a few days the country will be
entirely tranquil.
The Siècle says, in reference to the most recent
of these despatches :—" The French Government is
actuated by the same sympathies as the Government
of the United States. It establishes a distinction
I between the right of war which it has adopted, and
the principle of intervention, for which it professes
the same doctrine as the United States. \% ithout
ambition, without any other thought than that of
protecting French interests, France will recall the
-e_veditionary corps as soon as it can with dignity
for herself and safety for the people." The yellow-
book, containing the documents in question, con-
sisis of 226 pages. The documents amount to 120.
A woman of 32 years, named Jeanne Leveque,
has been tried before the Court of Assize, at Nantez,
for the murder and mutilation of a male child to
which she gave birth. It was proved that she
boiled the body in some soap suds, and then cut it
into small pieces, thrusting them into a barrel of
vinegar. She admitted the fact of having given
birth to the child, and, indeed, indicated the spot
where the mutilated remains were found. She,
however, persisted that the child was dead when
born. Various experiments were made with the
remains by medical men with the view, if possible,
to ascertain whether the child had ever breathed.
The jury found the prisoner guilty, but with " ex-
tenuating circumstances," and she was sentenced
to hard labour for 20 years. I cannot ascertain'
from the evidence one single extenuating circum-
stance, but French juries are very clever in dis-
covering them. Perhaps one extenuating circum-
stance was that the woman endeavoured to preserve
at least a portion of the child by putting it into
vinegar.

M. L. Reveliene, formerly a deputy for the Loire
Inferieure, and one of the editors of the Univers,
has just died at Paris in his 91st year.
A young actress, Blanche S _ , has commit-
ted suicide, not exactly for love, but for money, at
least that was her explanation, for she left upon the
table a piece of paper on which was written, " I
poison myself because my lover cannot keep me
any longer." She was the mistress of a gentleman
who told her the other day that in consequence of
reverses he could not afford to give her so much as
he had done. Blanche passed Sunday night with
her lover, and partook of supper, as it is stated,
with a very good appetite, but in the course of
the night he was awoke by her groans, when
she soon expired. She had swallowed a large
dose of mercury (corrosive sublimate), and died in
great agony. While the doctor who was called
in was attending to his patient the gentleman in-
flicted a serious wound upon himself with a knife
which was on the supper-table.

In addition to the blue and yellow books, two
other important documents have been presented to
the Chamber of Deputies--the project of law for
the supplementary credits of 1866. These docu-
ments were—the ordinary budget, 8,531,183 f. ;
extraordinary budget, 76,276,005 f.
It is stated that the iron-clad frigate the Huescard,
built in England for the Peruvian Government, and
which recently sailed from Plymouth for Brest, is
to be detained in the latter port until the differences
between Spain and Peru are settled, of which there
now appears to be some prospect.

There were some incidents in the career of the
late Prefect of Police (Gisquet) which I think will
interest your readers. He was born of poor and