The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-01 00:00:00

But nobody ever looked upon the property or income
tax as a determinating or expiring tax, simply be-
cause it was placed in 1860 on the principle of
annual duration and renewal. Mr. Disraeli might
as well say that those supplies which are granted
annually by Act of Parliament, with the constitu-
tional view of limiting the prerogative of the Crown,
were intended to expire, and the Crown to be left
without the means of conducting the government of
the country, simply because they were so granted.
The property and income tax has never presented
anything in this year but a question of amount ;
and one proof of this is to be found in the fact that
Mr. Disraeli does not attempt to disturb the amount
proposed by the Government, any more than the
principle of the tax.
But the most glaring evidence of Mr. Disraeli's
incapacity to estimate the growth of financial prin-
ciples in this country is to be found in the tenacity
with which he clings to the obsolete notion that the
property and income tax is a war tax. Surely a tax
that has been maintained uninterruptedly through
nineteen years of almost uninterrupted peace, and
during every possible change in the principles and
application of indirect taxation, is termed rather by
a misnomer when it is designated as a war tax. Tory
financiers always go back to the age of Pitt and Per-
ceval for their doctrines of taxation, and we fear that
Mr. Mill and Mr. McCulloch have produced no more
impression upon them in the interval than Adam
Smith himself had made upon Mr. Perceval. It is not
surprising that, in an age in which the genius of
the country ran in favour of indirect taxation as
the normal source of ways and means,' a property
and income tax, temporarily raised during war,
should, by the mere association of ideas, have been
described as a war tax. And so it then essentially
was; for in 1816 the House of Commons outvoted
the Liverpool Administration, which had desired
to continue the tax for a year, and insisted on its
immediate abolition. But five and forty years
make an impression on all men who really live to
learn ' • and the five and forty years that have inter-
vened since the abolition of that tax have been
marked by a general change in our principles of
finance. We have taken off an infinite variety of
imposts ; and although the consequent increase of
the productive energy of the country has been such
as vastly to increase the amounts obtained under a
given ratio of taxation in stamps, taxes, and excise,
yet this increase is not sufficient to dispense with a
nincpenny income and property tax, as some set-off
against a larger abatement of indirect taxation. In
effect, Mr. Disraeli himself admits this, at the ex-
pense of self-contradiction. If the property tax at
ninepence is a war tax, why not reduce this tax to
eightpence instead of remitting indirect taxation to
a corresponding amount P Mr. Disraeli objects to
the remission of the paper tax, not because he
wishes to reduce the property tax to eightpence,
but because he desires to reduce the duty on tea
and sugar instead. He thus admits, in spite of
himself, that the property tax is not a war tax,
otherwise he would prefer its reduction to that of
a tax on tea, which at ls. sd. is certainly no war
ax.

But the party question, as we have said, is one of
tea and paper. Now there are two leading sources
of indirect taxation in every country. There are
the imposts levied on its own productions, and there
are the imposts levied on the goods which it im-
ports. Evenhanded justice should be done to both.
But there can certainly be no question that for the
last twenty years—that is, since the commercial
legislation of 1842—we have done far more to re-
duce custom duties than to reduce duties on articles
of our own production. On articles of the first
necessity the duties have been abolished by the
Acts of 1842 and of 1846. So lately as last year
the duties on several hundred articles of import
were abolished. These duties indeed were singly
small, but they were collectively large. No such
concession to the productive energy of the
country was male. The balance of justice
seems therefore largely on the side of an
abolition of the paper duty, which may be
effected at a loss A revenue which would confer
no great reduction in the price of tea and sugar.
We apprehend thet much of the hostility to the
abolition of the payer duty entertained on the Con-
servative benches :akes the shape of political hos-
tility. • The Opposition are afraid of the penny
papers. Mr. Disraeli indeed avers that the penny
press is almost altogether Conservative. We cer-
tainly were not aware of it ; but if the fact be so,
we fear that the penny press is not so respectful to
its political chief as might have been anticipated.
Mr. Disraeli avers, too, that Conservatism was never
so popular as it is now ; but, if that assertion also
be true, it may be demanded how it happens that
there is commonly thought to be so little prospect
of a Disraeli Administration? The explanation,
perhaps, is, that the country is conservative enough
of its true interests to desire itself to be governed
by those statesmen in whom the most confidence is
to be placed. Mr. Disraeli may put the question to
the House ; but -vie apprehend that both the House
and the country will deem it right to remit taxes
on knowledge- now, and to await another year for a
reduction of those on tea and sugar.