The Sun.
London, England, 1859-10-03 00:00:00


dinner-rings where the table napkins should have '
been, observe—" It is a most unaccountable orna-
ment." Here, however, among this primitive
population are found cultivators of two kinds of
cotton—" both very good in quality"—happy
tidings for Manchester ! Here flourishes the sugar-
cane! Here indigo may be easily picked up in
waggon-loads! Fat and oil can be expressed in
large quantities from the seeds of a plant called the
motsikiri! Coal lies there temptingly in seams,
seven feet, thirteen feet, and twenty-fivz feet thick !
A paint or drying oil can be drawn from the juices
of the seeds of the buarge! While as for ivory—
mark under that head what is here related by this
`modern SINBAD, Dr. LIVINGSTON —" The valley of
the Shire (he writes) at one part abounds in
elephants, and if you come to see us about January,
I undertake to show you five hundred of these noble
animals grazing on the plain. We saw more than
that ; as there are branches of the river which form
islands, we sometimes chased them with this vessel.
They had magnificent tusks. I think that they
are attracted down from the hills by the sweet
fruit of wild palmyras, of which there are fine
forests there." It reads like the account of a com-
mercial fairy-land—indigo, cotton, sugar, coal, and
troops of elephants ! Sweet fruited palmyras,
lemons, oranges, and pine-apples growing there,
among chalybeate fountains, in wild profusion !
We long for the next tidings from this Central
African Cathay, brought to light by the researches
of DAVID LIVINGSTONE.
e.

The Revenue returns, it will have been seen, on
Saturday, are, for the quarter last passed, upon the
whole satisfactory. And this not merely because
there proves to have been a net increase, upon
those three months, of fully £300,724. Although

it must be confessed, of course, that that net in-
crease upon the last quarter of upwards of
£300,000 shows an extraordinary advance upon its
predecessor—an advance apparent upon the instant
when it is borne in mind that the increase upon
the half-year amounted only to £513,014, and upon
the entire twelvemonth to no more in the aggre-

gate than £828,798. Again, we must remark dis-
tinctly, however, that what is mainly satisfactory
in these last returns is not by any means to be
discovered simply in the clear advance in the net
increase upon the quarter. It is rather in the cir-
cumstance of this net increase having been attained
in spite of a diminution upon the quarter of nearly
£200,000 under the head of " Miscellaneous" (the
decrease under this comprehensive item being, in
truth, exactly £191,759), and in spite yet more of
another and a far more formidable diminution of
almost £600,000 under the one head of the " Pro-
perty Tax" (the decrease there being placed at
£580,000)—a net increase of £300,724, in point of
fact, in spite of a decrease in the Quarter's Revenue
under those two heads alone, " Property Tax" and
" Miscellaneous," amounting in all to £771,759 !
As a set-off to this, it is obvious how large must
have been the increase upon the Quarter in other
directions, so as to produce that advance of more
than £300,000. A simple sum in addition shows
at once what that increase elsewhere must have
been. Adding the estimated net increase upon the
Quarter of £300,724 to the known decrease of
£771,759—we find of course that the increase for the
quarter ending upon September 30, 1859, reaches
the good round sum of £1,072,483. Here obvi-
ously is our real source of satisfaction. It is this
increase of more than £1,000,000 in a single quarter
that causes us to regard these last returns of the
state of the revenue with such peculiar compla-

cency. And remember, this increase beyond a
million is arrived at, as a total, from the combina-
tion of the results of merely six sources of revenue!
It might, even more strictly, be said that more than
one million increase upon the quarter is attained
through merely three out of the eight sources of
the revenue. For under the head of " Crown
' Lands" the increase during this last quarter is
quite insignificant, being simply £1,039. The in-
crease for the same time from the land and assessed
Taxes" being of little more importance, namely,
just £5,000. While the increase in the Post-office
returns reveals an aggregate advance within the
same brief interval of no less than £35,000. It is
under the three remaining heads, therefore, of
Stamps, Customs, and Excise that we come—
recollect within one single quarter—to a total
increase of £1,031,444. The increase under the
head of stamps—including legacy, succession, and
probate duties and bankers' cheque stamps—amounts
to £106,000 upon the quarter. Under Excise the
increase in the three months has been fully
£464,ooo—the receipts exhibiting improvement
under every item, saving only " hops" as the one
solitary exception. Almost the same amount of
increase is observable also in the Customs—an in-
crease of £461,444, derivable chiefly from the
greater consumption of tea, wine, spirits, currants,
coffee, molasses, and tobacco ! Here is the true
source of satisfaction at the returns of a revenue
increasing in proportion to the wider diffusion of
comforts and luxuries among the population.