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

:THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY,. 4EVENING, MAY 1, 1861

(From the Times.)
The debate on the Budget, though it has had but
little liveliness, and hitherto but little point, has
been very intelligible. Few cases of Parliamentary
controversy have been more thoroughly compre-
hended outs f doors than that on which the house
is now engged. By a natural artifice of rhetoric
Mr. Bright and Mr. Gibson may ask what it is that
is disliked in the Budget, or what more can possibly
be desired, but they know as well as the rest of us
where the hitch is. No doubt, we get the Paper
Duty remitted for nothing, and we get a penny off
the Income Tax to boot. Nobody suffers ; every-
body gains. All this may be true, but it is true
only for the moment, and if at the next day of
reckoning affairs should be altered, the cost will
fall upon one side only. Mr. M. Gibson and his
friends stand to win only, while the rest stand to
win or lose. The bargain appears the harder, too,
when the terms are more closely examined. It is
but too probable that we shall want all our re-
sources, and yet we are abolishing a source of
taxation which is increasingly productive, and
against which, when it comes to the point, less can
be alleged than against any similar impost. All
this the house feels ; but it cannot help feeling also
that its peculiar position in this matter materially
interferes with its freedom of action, and it is un-
easy accordingly. There is a great reluctance to
destroy a source of indirect taxation whioh can only
be replaced by an addition to direct taxation. This
reluctance is strengthened by the belief that the
proposed remission will really benefit only a com-
paratively narrow interest, and it is confirmed by
the reflection that if indirect taxes are to be thus
abolished one after another the country will be
compelled to defray an immoderate proportion of
its ordinary expenditure from a single tax so ex-
ceptional and exceptionable as to have been hitherto
reserved almost exclusively for the emergencies of
war. In this predicament—pledged to ameasure
which on a nearer view appears fraught with fewer
advantages and many more perils than had been
assumed at first, unwilling to take the step, and
yet scarcely able to decline it, the house hesitated,
murmured, and indulged in speeches which did not
indeed point to very definite objects, but which
showed the misgiving and apprehensions generally
entertained. Nothing could be more natural.
There is no point on which Mr. Gladstone's pro-
positions are absolutely satisfactory. To make
them so a e ought to be able to assume either that,
our expenditure will certainly and speedily de-
crease, or that the remission of the Excise duty on
Paper will be attended with such benefits to the
whole community as to justify its reduction even
in the face of peril, or that its place can be supplied
in case of necessity by some other tax as produc-
tive and as inoppressive. Can any of these points
be clearly established ? Of the political aspect of
Europe we need hardly speak. It may not be so
menacing as Mr. Horsman supposes, but it would
certainly have been thought formidable enough by
a generation less familiarised than we have been
to revolutions and wars. The utmost that is said,
even by those least given to alarm, is that European
war may now probably be postponed for a twelve-
month. Preparations, too, for war or against war
are more costly than at any former period, and no
nation is now safe without armaments of a kind
unheard of but a few years back. But our warlike
expenditure is not our only expenditure. The cost
of our Civil Services is increasing incessantly and
under every head. Government upon liberal and
philanthropic principles costs money, and we are
finding it out. Although, therefore, we may be
content to believe, on Mr. Gladstone's authority,
that we have a surplus at present, it is by no means
certain that it represents any such permanent
superfluity of income as would suggest the utter
destruction of a source from which a convenient
portion of that income is derived. It would be
perfectly allowable to relax the screw if it could be
tightened again when necessary ; but, though the
penny off the Income Tax may be put on again to-
morrow, the duty off paper will be gone for ever.
Mr. Bright utterly mistakes the nature of the
case when he thinks that a set is made against the
remission of the Paper Duty on grounds of special
jealousy. There is no doubt that at first the press
was taxed for political as well as fiscal purposes,
just as there is no doubt that recently the " taxes
on knowledge" were assailed with a double view
also. But the fact is that we have now got beyond
that ground of debate. Men look with misgiving
on the proposed remission, not because they are
angry with Mr. Gladstone, or because they are
opposed to the enlightenment of the people, but
because one after another of the indirect taxes has
been abolished, till it seems as if direct is to be gene-
rally substituted for indirect taxation. Mr. Bright,
in fact, has as good as told us that, if Budgets were
but left to him to frame, he would remove tax after
tax until Property and Income were left with the
obligation of supporting the expenditure for which
he is pleased to hold the propertied classes alone
accountable. This prospect people do not like ;
anti, as LUC present, Duageu Esur3 a srep
towards realizing it, they do not like the Budget.
This is the whole secret of the matter. It is not
" vindictiveness" or political jealousy. It is not
that there is any special "affection for the Excise
in the case of paper" beyond what was felt in the
case of glass or soap. But the Excise on glass
has gone, and the Excise on soap is gone, and if
the Excise on paper is to go, and Excise duties
are thus to continue going, what is to become
of that class of taxpayers who have to make every
reduction good again, when it is found, too late,
that the money could not be spared? The Paper
Duty is neither better nor worse than the rest, but
it is one of the last teeth in our heads. That is why
there is all this murmur about .
t.
However, we repeat once again that there is no
help for it. After what has taken place, we do not
see how the Paper Duty is to be retained in the
face of a surplus, however unsubstantial, and the
fact of a surplus has been officially announced. It
may be very true that cheaper paper will not help
the million to live, and that it will not even help
them to read, for, if cheap newspapers -were wanted,
the people have got them already, and will get
them no cheaper, It may be very true-that the
papermakers themselves are, as Mr. Bright mildly
expressed it, " not enthusiastic for the repeal of
the tax," and that the class immediately interested
in the abolition of the duty is a small one, but we
can only add that all this should have been thought
of before. The time for such arguments was when
the ;repeal of the tax was originally proposed.
With the light now thrown upon the subject, it is
probable that even an " abstract resolution"
against the continuance of the Paper Duty would
fail to be carried ; but, for all that, the Paper Duty
—whatever Mr. Disraeli may think—has been
formally condemned by the House of Commons.
No tax has ever yet passed through such condem-
nation and survived. This time last year it was
thought as good as dead. People, indeed, do not
think now as they thought when those decisions
were taken, but the obligation has been assumed.
Promises and payments are always rather different
things, especially when the latter come on at a
season of inconvenience and repentance, but one is
apt to bring about the other. We promised, and
we, however disagreeable it must be, must pay.
Parliament marked out the Paper Duty for extinc-
tion before it knew that we could spare it, and
when it did not know what little ground there was
for condemning it, but the resolution was taken.
More now turns upon the point than the loss or
gain of a million. Events give the question another
aspect, and it is eminently desirable that it should
now, with all its incidents, be set finally at rest.

(From the Morning Post.)
We give Mr. Disraeli every credit for the inge-
nuity with which he framed his argument on Mon-
day night, when he narrowed the question between
himself and the Government to Tea v. Paper. Ile
strove to conciliate all parties, and at a very low
rate of political exchange undertook to sell each
point of consistency for each vote not yet bought up
in the Parliamentary market. He was in this di-
lemma, that without the support of the Radicals he
could not hope to outvote the Administration ; and
yet, in opposing the repeal of the paper duty, he
was ensuring their hostility to his own cause. Ac-
cordingly, Mr. Disraeli rather adroitly inveighed
against what he termed " the profligate expendi-
ture" of the Government. Was there not thus a hope
that a few of the greener and more innocent Radi-
cals might see in the chance.of his advent to power
the prospect of a great retrenchment ? We fear,
however, that this artifice will deceive few. If the
expenditure of the present Government, falling as
it does two millions within its presumed income, be
profligate, what is to be said of the expenditure of
Mr. Disraeli's and Lord Derby's own Government,
whose great merit was said by its defenders to rest
in the fact that they overspent their income in the
naval and military establishments which Mr. Dis-
raeli now desires to reduce ? At any rate, that third
Derby-Disraeli Administration, which however is
at present in nubibus, can have no cry of Pak-
ington and the reconstruction of the Navy" to sup-
port it.' We sincerely sympathise with chat right
hon. baronet at his being thus unceremoniously
thrown over by his chief, and at the declaration of
profligacy against an expenditure once so vaunted
by the Conservatives for its application to the
defence of the country, and in fact Sir John
Pakington's solitary political testimonial. But,
perhaps suspicious of some inconsistency in his
own argument, Mr. Disraeli adopts the bold
stroke of denying the fact of a surplus. This
he does upon grounds purely technical. Technically
there is of course a hiatus. If the property and
Would
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no income,
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But nobody ever looked upon the property or income
tax as a determinating or expiring tax, simply be-
cause it was placed in 18G0 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 maintaineeluninterruptedly 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. M'Culloch 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 assoeiation 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 oi
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
ninepenny 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 tar, why not reduce this tax to
eightpence instead of /emitting indirect taxation to
a corresponding amount ? 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. lie 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 o
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 made. The balance of justice
seems therefore largely on the side of an
abolition of the paper duty, which may be
effected at a loss of revenue which would confer
no great reduction in the price of tea and sugar.
We apprehend that much of the hostility to the
abolition of the paper duty entertained on the Con-
servative benches takes 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 we 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 Xll tea Luta Sugar.

?HE AMERICAN STAI'ES.

waited for same overt act of hostility, such as the
reduction of Fort Sumter. And you may be sure
that he has the nerve and determination to sustain
the law, even to the bitter end.
In closing, permit me to say one word of the
Morrill Tariff, which justly mcets with so much
opposition in Europe. It is very nearly as unpopular
in America to-day, and will most certainly be
repealed or essentially modified by the Congress
which Mr. Lincoln has recently convened.

PAPER MAKING.