The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-18 00:00:00

ture, and with a revenue system simple in itself and
moderate and just in its incidence, we are bound
to consider the mitigation of permanent burdens
before conferring boons on the present generation.
The debate of last night, even more than the
division at its close, must convince the advo-
cates of the abolition of the malt duty bow im-
possible it is that their end can be accomplished,
but the discussion will not be in vain if they learn
from it what can be done. It was scarcely neces-
sary for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to defend
the revenue from the attack made upon it ; the
good sense of the House came to its rescue, and re-
jected Sir Fitzroy Kelly's motion by a majority of
eighty-five. The result would probably have been
the same had Mr. Mill not spoken, but there can
be no doubt that his arguments, heard for the first
time in ParliaMent, will sink into the minds of his
Hearers, and make future agitation for the uncon-
ditional repeal of the Malt Duty more hopeless.
than ever. Any proposal, howeVer, for the trans-
formation of the tax, which, not effecting its net
produce, offers a way of escape from the evils now
alleged to be incidental to it, will at all times re-
ceive full consideration from the Chancellor of the
Exchequer and the House of Commons. Beer is
not an " evangelizing power," but there is no reason
why the making of Malt should be interfered with,
except for the purpose of maintaining the revenue.
Let Mr. Read mature his plans in full confidence
that they will be accepted if they prove to be feasible.
'But the produce of the tax cannot be given up, and
justice requires that it shall in some way continue
to be levied on the consumers of beer. The main-
tenance of a surplus, and its application to the re-
duction of the Debt, are not the crotchets of soli-
tary thinkers ; recent events have to some extent
lessened the danger of competition to which
English labour and English capital seemed at
one time destined to be speedily exposed, but
the danger is postponed, and not averted. We
have been often told of late " to be wise, and to be
wise in time," and the advice could not be better
applied than by determining that now, when our
superiority is unquestioned and our advantages un-
diminished, we will make it an object of legislation
to reduce the burdens which an unthrifty and un-
just policy would leave undiminished to our suc-
cessors.
HERALD.—" God bless the King, but save the
dinner"—God help the bill, but save the Ministers,
is a tolerably exact resume of the prayers of Down-
ing-street at this moment. We do not feel at all
sure that any very satisfactory ans ver is likely to
come. The bill is past praying for. If it had not
come to grief enough Lord Stanley has finally settled
its fate. Nobody has ever tried to answer him. No-
body by any possibility could have succeeded if he
had tried. Vague talk about the need of reform
a la Mill and Forster, and wild gesticulation of the
Grey and Layard sort, are all that can be done for
it. In truth, the thing was doomed long ago. There
was for a time a hope that the Whig houses and
their followings would have mercy; that they would
help the bill through a second reading on the un-
expressed understanding that it was to expire by a
slow death in committee; and there was a good
deal to be said in favour of this homoeopathic pro-
cess of extinction. The bill appeared, in fact, to
have been constructed with a special view to an
emergency of the kind. First, the stupid proposal
to disfranchise the dockyard men gives at once a
decent opening for. a hostile majority. The clause
has nothing whatever to say for itself. Nobody
pretends that the men are under influence of any
sort ; they may occasionally (as at Devonport) be
browbeaten by a Radical attorney fishing for evi-
dence under the patronage of their superiors; but
the experiment is hardly likely to be repeated ;
they are the elite of the working classes, if anybody
in England can be so-called ; in short, the parents
and god-parents of the measure have provided
themselves at the outset with a capital chance
of flinging their bantling overboard. Then,
there is the savings-bank question. Nobody
but Mr. Gladstone cares much for this par-
ticular feature of the bill. The persons who have
invested their capital in this wry are recipe to
whose admissioa to the franchise there is no parti-
cular objection, and Mr. Bright's dislike of the
propositiOn tells strongly in its favour ; but the
Conservative party claim leave to admit many
"others along with them—the Rochdale and other
co-operative societies, for instance, the freehold
building companies (excellent • borough -voters,
though not, perhaps, a desirable addition to the
county constituencies) ; professional persons of all
sorts ; schoolmasters, everybody whom the posses-
sion of brains entitles to a voice in the government
of the country--all these will have their hearing
with thoughtful people ; they have not got it with
the concocters of the lurried farrago which is at
present before the House of Commons as a Fran-
chise Bill ; and the hearing allows any number of
opportunities for an adverse division. These are
only a specimen or two of the way in which the
bill seems to have been framed with a direct view to
the possible expediency of infanticide. This mode
of getting rid of difficulties has become almost a
science in certain strata of society ; it seems that it
is now to be extended to politics. Whether how-
ever, the bill may be lost and yet the Ministry
saved is very far from being clear. Some 40 or 50
of the habitual supporters of the Government are
understood to be in grave doubt what they mean to
do. Possibly they may vote for the second reading
of the bill, on the understanding that accidents are
to happen in committee, and thus save the Ministers
from the more immediate consequences of their
folly. But people do not readily forgive a hoax,
especially when it involves an insult to their under-
standing. It rather appears as if the less kindly
disposed part of the victims were going to get help
from an entirely unexpected quarter. Mr. Bright's
paper of Monday is in a serious tremble about the
matter. Certain Irish Liberal members were
supposed to have declared their intention of sup-
porting the bill, by the mouth of a Mr. Cogan at
Lord Russell's exhibition of " the happy family,"
to an admiring circle in Downing-street the other
day. This gentleman's vehement rebellion against
Whig dictation a couple of years ago was thought
to have added some peculiar weight to his utterance
on this occasion. Unfortunately he seems to have
represented nobody but himself and Mr. Maguire.
It was observed that among others The O'Donoghue
and a few others were significantly absent on that
occasion. Mr. Pim has dispelled any illusion that
may have been produced by the officiousness of the
member for Kildare; the Tablet has taken the earliest
opportunity for unpleasant plainness of speech ; and
the recent intelligence from Ireland is not reassuring.
People there are asking themselves, as people here
have long been doing, what on earth they have to
thank the Whigs for ? That the bill is a caput
nzortuum they know as well as we do. That the
present question is very simply, as Mr.' Gladstone
has put it with unconscious innocence,. one of mere
confidence in the Miniitry, is equally clear. The
Irish members not unnaturally ask, what is Ireland
like to be the better either for the bill or its authors?
As regards reform, obviously nothing is likely to
be gained, though a good deal may be lost. A
diminishing population can scarcely be advantaged
by a measure, which, so far as it means anything,
means mere representation of numbers. As regards
anything else, the Government has been unluckily
driven into a premature exposure of its views upon
all Irish matters • and what does the exhibition
amount to ? Irish difficulties and Irish needs were
set forth at the beginning of the session with a
vigour and exactness hitherto unequalled. On the
Conservative side of the house the statement met
with an honest sympathy, which was unmistakeable.
From the Ministerial bench all we learn is, that the
" Catholic University" is a silly speculation, that
the land question is beyond its comprehension, and
that the Church business is not "ripe," though
(if Lord Russell was on a somewhat celebrated occa-
sion anything better than a rank charlatan) it was
ripe some 300 years ago. In plain English they
have been told that Irish questions are capital foot-
balls for party play, but that nobody expects any-
thing to come of the game expept here and there a
few broken shins. Ireland, very naturally, does
not see any good result from this sort of treatment ;
and there is some vigorous bargain-making going
on, notwithstanding Mr. Cogan's magniloquent
profession that it would support her Majesty's
Ministers " without condition." The light that his
maladroit speech shed on former majorities he had
probably forgotten, or he would have observed a
more discreet taciturnity on so slippery a subject.
But the Irish difficulty is very far from being the
only one. The stupid wrong-headedness which
produced a single-barrelled bill, in the hope that
people would walk blindfold into a trap, open their
mouths, shut their eyes, and see what the chapter
of accidents would send them, will only begin to
produce its suicidal results when it has been, for
the moment, successful. The second reading of the
bill will be far more fatal to the Whig party in e
in
,
the long run than its rejection can possibly. be. ,
do not pretend to regret the queer dilemma in whichhich
the-policy of Earl Russell has placed a party
w
has allowed itself to be led for years past by noble
We instincts into a very ignoble position. le,have only
to chronicle the dullupshot of all its toiling through
so many years—either the establishment by act of