The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-02 00:00:00

to :fleet deficiency of regular income ; and though
we think it plain that the income of the country is
growing at a rate which would soon repay it, we
may sympathise with his reluctance while we think
he ought to overcome it ;—but there is a better
alternative, one which would completely meet the
difficulty—Equalisation of the Probate as well as
the Legacy duties. We know the very mention of
such a thing is treason, or ludicrous folly, accord-
ing to the degree of security felt by the class who
thus set themselves against other classes more than
JOHN BRIGHT can set other classes against them.
Viscount WILLIAMS will be jeered, and JOHN
BRIGHT frowned upon, but the fact remains, that
the class which claims exemption from tolls and
the horse duty claims also exemption from the yet
more important probate duty. The farm horse is
untaxed ; if sold to a tradesman or manufacturer
the next day it pays duty. The horse draws
a load of guano, or oilcake, or other manure
through a toll-gate, it pays no toll ; but if it
takes coal to the manufacturer's engine, toll must
be paid. This may not, however unjust an exemp-
tion for the manufacturers of food, throw on the
manufacturers of all other articles any very heavy
additional burden.

Not so, however, the probate duty. If paid on
landed property, as it is on all other property, it
would not amount to less than two millions per
annum—probably to much more ; and, as a million
a-year means just one penny in the pound income-
tax, it is easy to see how much the pablic gene-
rally must pay to make good the taxes from which
our landlord-legislators so unjustly relieve them-
selves. Will the country consent to have the
income-tax doubled, or even to have any new tax
inflicted, when by merely equalising the taxation of
all classes—by not suffering taxation to be any
longer a battle-field between class and class—the
wants of the State can be fairly met ? The
landed-gentry are favoured also in the legacy duty
which they do pay. If all inequalities were
thoroughly removed, we think it likely that we
might get through the year without additional
taxes at all. There seems no reason to fear that
the increased revenue of next year will not be as
great as that of the present one ; indeed, were we
disposed to prophesy, we should predict from the
sound character of our trade that it would be
greater; and though the equalised probate duties
would not take full effect at once, they would
begin immediately to yield something, and be a
foundation on which any small advances might be
accepted, without causing the slightest fluctuation
in the public securities.
We warn Mr. GLADSTONE, therefore, and all
his colleagues—including Mr. GIBSON not less
than the others—that if a renewed Income-tax, or
any new tax is talked of at all, we shall commence
war to the knife in favour of fiscal equality for all
classes. Landed property is now exempt from a
charge borne by all other property. Mr. GLAD-
STONE, we acknowledge, did to his credit abolish
a part of this exemption—we only demand that he
perfect his work. He mitigated the amount of in-
justice inflicted by the Income-tax by gradually
lowering its rate, and sentencing it to extinction
next year. He lessened, also, the amount of unjust
exemption of landlords' property by his succession
duty—he must now remove all injustice by letting
the Income-tax die its appointed death, and re-
moving the unrighteous exemption of real pro-
perty from probate duty.