The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-22 00:00:00

into Committee—one after another negatived with-
out a division. Mr. GLADSTONE, like the Ancient
Mariner, " hath his will." We may listen wist-
fully to that alluring bassoon of a reduction—here
to 3d., there to id.—but after " beating our breast,"
like "the marriage guest," we—needs must pay. The
Budget consequently is un fait accompli—it is no
longer painfully hypothetical.
Among other great facts, there is this one
clearly before the country by this time that
during the half-year now ensuing all those who
have incomes—[it matters nothing whether
they are precarious incomes or permanent in-
comes]—all those, without distinction, who pos-
sess incomes above £l5O per annum, derivable
from land, derivable from the funds, derivable from
trade, or derivable from their intellectual labours
in the learned professions, will be taxed to the
tune of ls. ld. in the pound—while those who have
incomes below £l5O per annum will be assessed at
the rate of Bd. in the pound at the behest of Mr.
GLADSTONE, and for his convenience in his capacity
as Chancellor of her Majesty's Exchequer. There
was before this a pretty general impression abroad
among the right hon. gentleman's fellow-citizens
that the country had been " sold" in a moment of
petulance by the House of Commons to the Coalition.
Hitherto "at what cost" may have been, to a certain
extent, purely conjectural. The precise amount of
that cost, however, is now becoming, bit by bit,
tolerably obvious. Conspicuous now, at any rate,
among other items in the long, growing, and already
formidable account, there is clearly before us,
not merely as a threat, but as a veritable and deplor-
able fact, this nominally almost doubling, this vir-
tually more than doubling, of that income-tax which
Mr. BRIGHT last evening solemnly and deliberately
pronounced to be a tax as hateful as ever a tax has
been to the people ! That is the price which is now

(just to begin with) to be paid by the country for
the magnificent boon of the Coalition—for the rare
and enviable privilege of being governed by half a-
dozen of the Whigs, by four or five undoubtedly
clever, but certainly besides that, most crotchetty
and impracticable Peelites, amalgamated as nearly
as possible for the time being (without, however,
the faintest prospect of ever being assimilated), by
a due admixture with those neutral-tinted nonde-

scripts among our administrators known as
thoroughgoing Palmerstonians! For the happiness
and consolation of having the destinies of the
country " driven to glory," not precisely
upon a triumphal car, but upon what
the member for Cork county the other
day facetiously designated the Omnibus of

the Coalition ! An omnibus, according to Mr.
VINCENT SCULLY'S notion of it—pretty tightly
packed with its full complement inside ! An om-
nibus, moreover, having that experienced political
Jehu the noble viscount the Member for Tiverton
upon the box-seat, holding in his mouth the imme-
morial straw (to be thrown up every now and then
with a chuckle, to show which way the wind blows)
—and in the cunning grasp of his hands the old,
well-worn, sinewy, weather-beaten reins of Govern-
ment ! Perched behind, upon his bracket, as Con-
ductor, that nattiest little man for a Cad, the noble
lord the Member for the City of London—so placed,
probably, as far as possible from the reins of Govern-
ment, because of his ill-omened reputation hitherto,
for upsetting the Coach, now expanded into the
Omnibus of the Administration. Seated on the
knife-board on the roof, the subordinate outsiders
(those not having a seat in the Cabinet), people
requiring upon every possible opportunity some
sort of a lift in any sort of a situation—the brick-
batted elect of Calne, for example, late the ditto
ditto rejected of Kidderminster. For the glory of
having this bran new vehicle of the Coalition Om-
nibus started afresh upon the Road of Reform—to
go up-hill or down-dale, anyhow or everyhow, to
the right or to the left, just as any moment may
suggest—is most advisable under the circum-
stances—without the patent safety-drag of any
known principle good, bad, or indifferent ! For
these and many other similar advantages accruing
from the venture we have to pay down instanter 13d.
in the pound to the gentleman who carries the way-
bill, and who brooks no delay whatever either
in the extent or the manner of the payment.
Not merely has it been now rendered matter of
certainty to us after the proceedings in the House
of Commons last evening that we are in return for
the blessing of the Coalition, to pay 13d. in the
pound during this next half-year upon our incomes,
but it is rendered, at the same time, matter of absolute
uncertainty to us how much longer we may—now
that we have ensured to ourselves this same blessing of
the Coalition—how much longer (a few days, weeks,
or months) we may preserve, as the guiding prin-
ciple of our foreign policy, what was indubita-
bly the guiding principle of that policy under the
Derbyites—Neutrality !

The massacre of the innocents, it may be ob-
served, has already commenced in the lower House
of Parliament. The permaturity, and at the same
time the extraordinary case of their destruction,
can only be regarded as in some degree comparable
to certain similar effects observable now-a-days in
actual warfare—effects attributable in the latter
instance to the astounding improvements made in
fire-arms and especially in field artillery. Some-
thing in its way quite analogous, quite as
terribly destructive as those dreadful little,
easily-limbered, brass, rifled cannon of pre-
cision -which dealt such' dire destruction around
them among the serried ranks of the Aus-
trians at Magenta and Solferino—something in its
way worse than the needle-guns, deadlier than the
thud of the Mink bullet, or the plash of NORTON'S
liquid fire, or the whirr of the flying missiles of
death discharged at invisible distances by the ord-
nance of Sir WILLIAM ARMSTRONG—something
actually worse than all this is now brought to
bear upon the unfortunate Innocents in the
way of sweeping, instantaneous, wholesale destruc-
tion. It is a simple contrivance, too---a purely Whig
contrivance in the first instance—one now:eagerly
enough adopted by the Coalition Government. It
is simply the ready weapon of procrastination.
The signal for the measure is the utterance of the
simple watch words, Next Year. They have a won-
derful efficacy. They sweep difficulties away at
once as -with a besom of destruction. Even the
Peelite Chancellor of the Exchequer has adopted
the system—his Budget this session is ac.
cordingly no more than a mere stop-gap
or make-shift. He warns us in the very act of
making it, that his real Financial Statement will be
brought before the house—next year. We are
getting tired to death of the phrase. Next year !
It is to us:moderns what the Greek Kalends:were of
old. Even the hon. member for Birmingham,
though himself not breathing a ministerial atmos-
phere, appears to be infected by the prevailing and
pervading influence—his attempt at the modifica-
tion of the injustice of the equal assessment of the In-
come-tax upon all incomes indiscriminately, whether
permanent or precarious, he postpones, until next
year shall have again brought the matter under
Legislative consideration. It is no wonder, then,
that the Bills, now fluttering feebly through the
House, are brought down by twos and by threes-
-whizz ! bang !—as if in preparation for the grouse
shooting of August, and the partridge shoot-