The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-19 00:00:00

however, that the right hon. gentleman now holding
his place is compelled to meet ; and it was the secret
as to how it might be proposed by him that the nation
should meet that difficulty that lent a dreadful
charm, a horrid fascination to Mr. GLADSTONE'S
Financial Statement last evening in the House of
Commons. The secret is now at length out. We
know the best and the worst of it. Bad enough,
in all conscience, is the best—(and paltry enough
for that matter)—we are actually, with a view to
meet the estimated deficiency of £4,867,000, to
anticipate the acquisition of the paltry sum of
/780,000, which would otherwise come a little later
in the ordinary way into the exchequer. How—is
easily enough and ridiculously enough explained.
The credit of six months hitherto allowed to
maltsters is to be diminished in extent by just
six weeks—a discount of 4 per cent. on payment
being allowed by way of compensation ! By
this contrivance 1780,000 will be obtained in
anticipation, and the estimated deficiency
upon the current year reduced to a very little over
£4,000,000. And how are we expected to meet
this inexorable deficiency of £4,000,000 ? Ah !
" thereby hangs a tale"—and a tale that brings us
at length in due course to—the worst of it.
The worst of it being, in point of fact, that our
very worst anticipations have actually been sur-
passed. The Income-tax, the most cruel and ini-
quitous of all the taxes—is nominally to be almost
doubled ! is virtually to be more than doubled ! !
To enable the Coalition to tide over the present
session comfortably—to afford Mr. GLADSTONE the
opportunity of looking about him and having a
good think, so as to introduce some wonderful
Financial Statement which (next year) is to remove
all our difficulties !! ! That dreadful NEXT YEAR,
which is always the vanishing-point in the picture
of the national fortunes sketched out for us by
these masters in the art of statecraft ! That deplor-
able NEXT YEAR, which is the political mirage
shown to us session after session by Whigs and
Peelites and the rest of them, while we are toiling
on footsore and thirsting for reform and retrenchment
in the desert of routine, guided only by the trail of
red tape, and overwhelmed ever and anon, blinded
and all but suffocated by the sands of circumlocu-
tion ! Well, then, in 1860—we are to have Mr.
GLADSTONE'S Real Financial Statement. (That is
—if the Coalition should last till then). But in the
meantime we are to have the Income Tax nomi-
nally almostdoubled, actually for the next half year
more than doubled. The Torturer puts the screw
on with a flourish !

The income-tax at present is—we all know—

sd. in the pound. An additional 4d. in the pound
would yield, says Mr. GLADSTONE—founding his

argument upon the irresistible evidence of Mr.

COCKER—an additional 4d. in—the pound wou

yield the very thing we want, namely, something

over £4,000,000. But in order to meet this defi-

ciency betimes, I must have this, says the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, at once ! Wherefore he
actually has the effrontery to demand that the in-

come-tax, augmented, thus in a charmingly rapid
manner, should be leviable upon the first half-yearly

payment after the resolution has been adopted by

Parliament. The consequence of which would
be, as he himself acknowledges, that for
1859 the money of the people should be wrung
out of their pockets by an arbitrary ex
post facto act of legislation. To put the matter
clearly and unmistakeably before our readers, we
have only to quote the hon. gentlems.n'A ipsissima
verba—" I propose," says he, " therefore, that a
rate of 4d. in the pound should be laid upon the
general mass of those whose Licomes are above
£l5O, and that a rate of 1-1,-d. should be
imposed upon those whose incomes are under
£l5O. But I also frankly say that my
proposal is, ' that this whole addition of
the income tax, if the committee shall vote it for
the service of the year, shall be made applicable to
the service of the year by being charged upon one
half-year's payment. I think it is the clear sense
of the committee that on an occasion of this kind
we ought to pay our way. I will explain to the
committee exactly how the payment will stand, or
what the tax-gatherer will ask—if the committee
should adopt my resolution—the next time he shows
what I am afraid I must call his ill-omened visage
at your door. The effect of this proposition will be
that the autumn or winter payment of the income
tax will be, for all those whose incomes are above
£l5O a year, 61d. in the pound, or at the rate
13d. for the year. and 4d. in the pound for the
half-year to those whose incomes are under £l5O.
For the remaining term of 1859-60 the duty will
stand exactly as it is now—that is, at 21d. on the
half year for both classes of taxpayers. So, then, if
I have made myself understood, the next demand
will be for fild. in the pound, which is at the rate
of 13d. a year on all whose incomes are above £l5O
and 4d. on the half-year, or at the rate of Bd. on the
year, upon all those whose incomes are below £l5O.
The result would be that this additional tax will
yield to the Exchequer the sum of £4,000,000. Add
to this the £780,000 to be received from the limi-
tation of malt credits, and the total will amount to
£5,120,000. The deficit, as I have already stated to
the committee, is £4,867,000, which, deducted from
the ways and means I have thus proposed, there
remains a surplus of £253,000." As a Q.E.D.—
doubtless extremely satisfactory to the Coalition,
and to the Coalition's most ingenious, but most in-
consistent Chancellor of the Exchequer ? But how

will the proposition be regarded by the population
about to be taxed thus by—his ingenuity and his
inconsistency ? In plain English—Here is the
very financier who, in 1853, devised the admirably
graduated arrangement, according to which the
ever-odious Income Tax was at length, in the full-
ness of time, in 1860, to cease and determine—here
is the same identical financier, in 1859, coolly
propounding to the House of Commons a
plan by means. of which a deficit of
£4,000,000 (the liability for which is incurred
by an increase in the national defences) shall be
met by an increase of that very Income Tax,
amounting literally, in point of fact, to an imposi-
t ion of 13d. in the pound upon all incomes above £l5O
per annum, and to an imposition of Bd. in the pound
upon all incomes below £l5O ! To gild the pill the
national Doctor calls the rate of this imposition, as
regards the year, an additional 4d. upon incomes
above £l5O per annum, and of an additional lid.
upon incomes below £l5O. [Precarious and perma-
nent incomes, whether above or below £l5O a-year,
being still taxed alike according to the old infamous
unjust, and heartless arrangement in regard to this
most cruel of all imaginable species of taxation !J
Called, however the rate of increase may be, for
the next half-year—supposing the proposition to be
adopted by the House of Commons—the income-tax
will be levied upon the superior class of :incomes
for example, at the rate, not of 9d. in the pound, but
of thirteenpence in the pound ! This is really and
truly, we take it, the price we have now to pay—for
the Coalition ! We are not at war. There is not
a pretence of that kind as an excuse for the
imposition. No—but we are to submit to the adop-
tion of this monstrous anomaly—we are to have
virtually a War-Tax with nominally a peace
expenditure. And all this because Mr. GLADSTONE
has got it into his head that we had better not