The Sun.
London, England, 1835-08-15 00:00:00

(Ebt ..../Tax,.

LONDON,
SATURDAY EVENING. AUGUST 15, 1835.

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER brought forward
his Budget last night. Financial speeches, abounding, as
they must do, with the thorny details of arithmetic, are of
necessity dry and uninteresting—almost, in fact, beyond the
pale of eloquence. All, therefore, that we ought in reason
to expect from a gentleman placed in the situation of Mr.
SPRING RICE is a clear, intelligible, and faithful account of
the resources of the country, drawn from the experience of
the past year, and a statement of the probable amount and
proposed appropriation of the national income for the year
to come. Assuming this as a fair estimate of the task
which devolves upon a Finance Minister, we may say that
Mr. S. RICE acquitted himself with a creditable degree of
ability. Upon the whole, the caposi: is highly satisfactory.
The state of the account at the end of the financial year-
-sth April, 1835—sheaved a balance of 835,0001. in favour of
the country. It is still more gratifying to learn that a con-
siderable addition has been made to this balance during the
last quarter, the surplus, calculating from the sth July,
1834, to sth July, 1835, being 1,205,0001. All this we
say is very satisfactory, and we are bound to say,
by
.no means overstated. We think, indeed, that the Right
Hon. Gentleman has proceeded with a very extraordinary
degree of caution in his calculations. For instance, in
framing his estimate of the productiveness of certain
branches of' revenue, which arc .in a rapid state of
improvement, he has taken the average of the last three
years as the probable rate for the ensuing year, which is the
same thing in effect as anticipating a very considerable de-
cline. Thus in cotton wool, the consumption of that
article in 1833 was 284,460,000 lbs. ; in 1834,
297,007,0001bs ; and, in 1835, 320,210,0001b5. Mr. S. RieF.
takes the average of the three years, viz., 310,000,000 lbs.
as the consumption of the year ending April, 1836. So also
with regard to Coffee and Vegetable Oil, the consumption
of which latter article increased last s ear from 1,487,000
gallons to 2,077,000 gallons. We may, therefore, safely
assume that the actual will exceed the estimated amount
of Revenue.
We now come to the appropriation of the surplus, and
here we arc constrained to say that the Right Hon. Gen-
tleman's arrangements have greatly disappointed us. The
interest due on the West India compensation grant is
stated to absorb the greater portion of the 835,0001.,
leaving lbr the remission of taxes about 200,0001. Now,
we assert that the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER
was bound in honour, as well as good policy, to apply
this stun, as far as it would go to the remission of the
Stamp Duty on Newspapers. He has given distinct pledges
that at least a portion of this impolitic and unpopular tax
should be taken off, and now, when a favourable oppor-
tunity for fulfilling his promises occurs, these promises
are forgotten. Such conduct might be expected from a Sir
ROGER GLlasLF—i❑ Mr. SPRING RICE it is inexcusable,
and will, in all probability, meet with its appropriate reward
in the alienation of the public confidence. It is a lame.ex•.

ease to sa), as l►e has done, that as the state of the revenue
vtould not allow him to take off the whole tax, therefore it
• was better to take off no part of it. He might at least
have shewn his good will to 'the PLUS, which he has so
ften professed to have at heart, and if he did not please
every one—if be made no new friends--he would at all
rots have lost none of his old ones.

The House of Lords aimed anather deadly blow last
night at, the Corporation Reform Bill, by agreeing to Lord
LYsnm- as-r's amendment to the fifteenth clause, which as
originally framed, adopted the principle of equal eligibility
to the town-councils, but which, as now amended, altoge-
ther destroys that principle, by disqualifying, at the very
least, five-sixths of the municipal electors. Such is the
spirit in which their Lordships legislate for the middle
classes ! Such the respect they pay to their earnest and
of-trepeated supplications ! It clatters little now what fur-
ther alterations they make in the Bill, for as respects effi-
ciency, it is already, to all intents and purposes, a dead
letter. It was once liberal, it is now exclusive. It was
once tolerant, it is now intolerant. In fact, it is
no more the same measure that it was when it
entered the aristocratic slaughter-house, than the
mutilated corpse is like the entire liVing body. Of course
we cannot accept such a miserable abortion. The sub-
'stan.ce is ours by right, and we must not put up with the
sbado;v as an equivalent. We must insist on our debt

1 1:en;-4- paid in full, not by instalments,.
.yire trust Ministers
will be Ilrm on this point.; and -tliat the 1-I'Ouse of Com-
mons will second them with all their energies. The le
we know will, as they have already Shown ; and as they
will show, in a .sfill more significant manner, ere another
week has elapsed. The Political unions are rot dead, but
sleeping ; and we greatly mistake the character of our
brother Reformers, if last night's proceedings in the House
of Lords do not call them into instant action. Indeed
there is no other way left by which we can obtain justice-
, Their Lordships are not to be reached by argument or
supplication. They are petition proof, and to be assailed
only by Constitutional agitation. This then must be our
club, and when their Lordships see that we wield it with
Herculean energy; when they see that we are inflexible ,
above all, when they see that we are unanimous, then—but
not. till then—will they consent to relax their present suffoca-
ting grasp on the Municipal Reform Bill. As for Mr.
HumennEr's proposition, which he put forth yesterday at
the Southwark meeting, that we ought to accept the mea-
sure as the Lords gave it us, and next Session make an
effort to get more ;,---sitch a suggestion ought not to be suf-
fered to weigh one instant with the people, for what is it
but a mean compromise between ' justice and injustice—a
sort of tacit acknowledgment that we are exacting more
than is, at present;, our due ? Now we have either a right
to Corporation Reform,- or we have not. If we have not,
then let us give way, and say nothing more about the mat-
ter ; but if we haVe, then let us insist on having it in all
its efficiency. To act on any other principle ; to accept
one half when the whole is due, and to trust to the Chap-
ter of Accidents for the remainder, is not only to parade
our own vacillation and imbecility, but to betray the cause

of justice.

pAs we were going to Press, we received a letter from
a Correspondent at ~Edinburgh, with a report of the pro-
ceedings at a Great Public Meeting held in that city on
Wednesday, in favour of the Municipal Reform Bill. The
Meeting was called by the Lord Provost in compliance
with a numerously and respectably signed requisition. It
was attended by upwards of twelve hundred gentlemen,
the LORD PROVOST in the Chair. Several resolutions in
favour of the Bill were proposed and carried unanimously,
and a petition prepared, which in the course of a few hours
received the signatures of the gentlemen assembled. It
was to have been forwarded this day to the LORD ADVO-
CATE, and through him, for presentation in the House of
Lords.

We entreat the attention of his MAJESTY'S Government
to the subject of the letter of our Dublin Correspondent,
inserted in another column, respecting the appointment of
a Private Secretary to his Excellency the Loan-LIEUTE-
NANT of IRELAND. Was Ireland not distracted by poli-
tical and religious dissensions—were the GovernMent not
beset with the most determined enemies, who are prepared
to commit any enormity which offers a prospect of destroy-
ing it, or neutralizing its measures—and were we not per-
suaded that the existence of the present Government is ne-
cessary to the preservation of public order and tranquillity
throughout the Kingdom, we should not consider ourselves
warranted in offering any suggestions to the Earl of
MULGRAVE on the appointment of his official Secretary.
But our knowledge of the many dangers that threaten
the present Ministry, and our zeal in the support of a
Cabinet which, we believe, aims only at the promotion
of the national welfare, will not permit us to stand upon
any ceremony, when it becomes our duty to apprise it of any
unforeseen peril. .
No Government can stand against a powerful opposition
prepared to supersede it, unless it can rely upon the fidelity
of its organs and subordinates in every department. What-
ever document passes through a ptiblic office, must of ne-
cessity be tinged with the feelings of those who officiate in
Hence not only secresy but political bias is absolutely
rupiirbs.-1 in all who minister to the official duties of a Go-
vernment.- ;Where this is not the case the Government must
be weak, divide,l. and distrustful of itself. Where the
subordinates hold ito: the same political opinions as
the principals, on all L.l(l'ng questions, the senti-
ments• of the principals will be :..etrayed not only to their
h other that jea-
enemies, but so misrepresented to eti:
lousies and distrusts will arise, which, in the end, will lead
either to the dismemberment or the breaking up of the
Administration.
Now it is notorious that one of the great oversights of
the Whigs, in taking office in 1830, was retaining the Tory
clerks in all the subordinate departments of the Govern-
ment. They feared to exasperate the Opposition in both
Houses of Parliament, and the consequence was, that the
contents of every document which passed through the hands
of the clerks were known to the Tories long before they
could be officially communicated, to the SOVEREIGN or
the country. This gave the Tories powerful advantages
of which they still continue to avail themselves. The be-
trayal of the Government's confidence has enabled them to
neutralize the effect of some of the most salutary measures
proposed by Ministers ; and what is still more important,
to adopt schemes by which others were strangled before
they had reached a maturity which would have justified
their authors in laying them before the public. With
respect to the Colonies matters were still worse—but of
this more on a future occasion.

In the present state of public feeling in Ireland, it is
absolutely necessary for the preservation of the national
tranquillity, that all persons employed in Government offices
should belong to no faction whatever. That country is justly
exasperated against the Orangemen. The Orange faction
is the avowed enemy, not only of the Roman Catholic po-
pulation, but of the Government ; therefore the appoint-
ment of any gentleman professing such principles, to the
Private Secretaryship of the LORD LIEUTENANT,
will not only peril the stability of the Goverpmcnt,
by the betrayal of its confidence, but cause its liberal
professions to be distrusted, and itself to be des-
pised by the great bulk of the Irish people. Lord WI.-
GRAVE cannot be too much on his guard against the insinua-
tions of the old Orange and Corporation hacks that now
throng every corner of the castle. The race of the Sings,
the SWANS, and the Pitch-cap BERESFORDS, is not
yet extinct in thoirish metropolis. The Castle must be
cleared of them before the Irish Government can hope to
obtain the confidence of the Irish people. At present the
Castle is a den of Anti-Catholic rancour, in which the voice
of liberty finds no echo. The great error of all past liberal
Administrations—Governments really intending the good
of Ireland—consisted in retaining those officials at the Cas-
tle whom they found there on their accession to office. A
false Sympathy was excited in favour of men who were at
first regaided as mere machines, but who in a few months
never failed to poison the mi►:ds of the highest
functionaries against the Catholic inhabitants.
This unforturiately needs no illustration. All coramuni-
cations intended to convey a right impression of the state of
public feeling in the country were suppressed before
reaching the Lords Lieutenant, and only those forwarded
which tended to sanction and promote the views of the
faction who virtually domineered over the Government and
the country.

Our correspondent mention, go name of a Gentleman
whom the Orangemen have already been graciously pleased
to nominate to the office of Private Secretary to the LORD
LIEUTENANT. We know nothing personally of that indivi-
dual, but the claims of any one so nominated cannot be
too scrupulously examined. Our great object is to
impress on the Government, that for its own sake and the
sake of Ireland, it is bound to get rid of every subordinate
that is not prepared to co-operate with it in reforming the
Institutions of that country. The same ought to be done
here ; but as a necessity equally imperative does not. exist
in England as in Ireland—as in this country clerks are not
members of Orange Lodges, nor banded together against
the extension of civil rights to their fellow-subjects—the
Government can afford to make changes so gradually as to
occasion the least possible loss to individuals. But in Ire-
land the evil must be dealt with after quite another fashion.
The blow must be struck at once, and so vigorously as to
overthrow the whole system. This will give confidence to
the people, strength to the Government, and peace to the
country.

German Papers of the latest dates have been received.
They state that the Congress of Sovereigns will meet at
Toplitz on the 20th of September. They also bring ad-
vices from Zurich to the 2d instant, by which we learn that
the Swiss frontier has been strictly guarded, to prevent the
entrance into the States of any of the French political re-