The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-06 00:00:00

true sense of the word while hanimer-
ing out an enormous mass of calculations,
would set at defiance the rhetorical capabilities of
a CHATHAM or a BOLINGBROKE, of a CicEno or of
a DEMOSTHENES. Clear, a great orator may be,
cogent, lucid he may be, in hiafinancial statement :
but to bring forward a Budget, and, while doing'
so, to be pouring forth for four or five consecutive
hours a strain of surpassing eloquence, of
sonorous and bewitching oratory, is just, in
one word a word of Oriental slang,
that it only requires Mr. GLADSTONE to use
mace to render, in the estimation of some
people, immediately and for ever afterwards classic
—is just, in one brief monosyllable—Bosh. Why, it
is only necessary to bear in mind that the very
last of these great Budget speeches of our preter-
naturally gifted Chancellor of the Exchequer, the
Budget speech of 1860—the greatest of all his
Financial Statements as it was declared to be at
the time, the greatest of all his Financial Blunders
as it has since then proved to be beyond a doubt
—it is only necessary, we say, upon this head,
to look back to that last boasted masterpiece
in evidence of his pre-eminent powers as a
rhetorician. We heard him delivering that
speech, and he was certainly, as we have
already observed is so often remarked in his
regard, in " magnificent voice"—a voice so clear
rand silvery, and bell-like—" so musical, so melan-
choly"—(notwithstanding the dreadful condition
very shortly before then of his larynx, uvula, bron-
' chial tubes, and all the rest of the marvellous me-
chanism of that wonderful organ)—he was " in
magnificent voice"—a sort of talking SIMS REEVES.
He had the ear of the House, as he always has,
completely. He was there speaking for several hours
together—to everyone's consciousness then listening
to him—about the most gifted living orator address-
ing the grandest deliberative assembly in Christen-
dom. But for the eloquence, for the oratory of that
great Budget Speech ! Why the bulk of it, as every
one will distinctly recollect who heard it, the mass
of it was—unavoidably was, was by sheer neces-
sity—arithmetical, the utterance of numerals, the
winding out of a long and intricate coil of cal-
culations. " Sir, When I take this into account,"
one heard him say, " Sir, when I take this into
account, I find the result not as might have
been conjectured, three thousand five hundred and
sixty-two pound seven, but—let the House mark
this, for it is a matter of supreme importance, under
the circumstances—nine thousand four hundred
and twenty-three pounds ten shillings and seven-
pence halfpenny." And so on for four or five
mortal hours at a stretch—the House cheering—
Mr. GLADSTONE drinking at intervals from a mys-
terious little bottle, especially provided for the pur-
pose, instead of sucking the M.P.'s customary orange
—and crowds of people all the while persuading
themselves into the notion, as they listened to that
wonderful Budget Speech, that as a rhetorical
display it could not possibly have been sur-
passed by DEMOSTHENES.
For the luxury of having a great and graceful
rhetorician as our Chancellor of the Exchequer
we have to pay now—as we all very well know—
we have to pay now inadequately an appalling
sum every year in the shape of taxes ; and we have
to find at the end of the financial year, when all is
spent and gone, an increasing Deficit. For example
now, this year it is estimated that the country's
income may be set down at £72,260,000,
and that the country's expenditure may be stated
at £73,546,000, showing, consequently, a distinct
and readily comprehensible deficit of £1,286,000.
Looking more closely into the accounts of the
nation it turns out, however, that instead of it (the
nation) being, according to the first roseate
statement with (a bloom upon it) 'an income of
£72,260,000, it (the nation) will find that it has an
income of nearly [we are becoming surely quite
as eloquent as Mr. GLADSTONE !] £70,213,674—
so that instead of having a deficit to deal
with of merely £1,286,000 we shall have to
make up a deficiency of nearly two millions more
(£1,976,000), in other words, we shall have to take
into consderation a gross deficit upon the financial
year of £3,263,000! This!—after all Mr. GLAD-
STONE'S delicious fanfaronade last year about the
nation riding in paper coaches (we presume on the
Road to Ruin), drinking claret instead of old-
fashioned humming ale, entering into eternal bones
of amity with our Arcadian neighbour on t'other side
of the Channel, and, in fact, going the best way to
work to beat our swords into plough-shares and our
spears (say those of our lancers) into reaping hooks,
and settling down blissfully, for ever and a day, in
the estatic condition of the Flying Island, peopled
by its One-eyed Philosophers. Mr. GLADSTONE, in
fact, last year piped for Arcadia ; and, as a matter
of course, we have had to pay for our whistle. Last
year we had the Income Tax for one year—just for
one year only—at tenpence. This year it is thrown
out already as a sinister hint betimes—a feeler deli-
cately thrust forth through an affected at-
tack upon Mr. GLADSTONE —it is absolutely
thrown out as a casual suggestion that, instead of
any longer mincing the matter by resolving upon
an income tax for a single twelvemonth, we should
regulate our financial system boldly, without any
further nonsense in the way of hesitation, and
saddle ourselves for at least three years in a lump,
for these next three years, with the reimposition of •
the Tea and Sugar Duties, and the perpetuation in
the same way, for the period here prescribed, of the
abhorred tax upon incomes. The latter (we are left to
conjecture) to be increased of course, in consideration
of the increasing deficit, from an income tax of ten-
pence to one of a good round " splendid shilling."
But will the country tolerate all this ?—will the house
consent to swallow it ?—this wonderful new Bolus
of a Budget to be gilded overlts usual with the elo-
oqf a uenceFoifoatnhoaiter ouranparagongroefatChancellor Orator, that
of theatDunce
Exchequer ? We doubt it. The Bolus is too
nauseous—the worthlessness of the gilding has
become at last too transparent.

Why utter a note of warning wl7; ncp symptom
of danger appears I' Just because it is then too
late. It may seem to unreflecting persons quite
gratuitous to throw in a word just now about Sat.-
dinia—Sardinia itself, the island we mean, with
its harbour of La Maddalena, which Lord NELSON
pronounced to be, for naval purposes, worth fifty
Maltas. But who, it will be asked, says a word
about transferring Sardinia with its harbour from
Italy to any other Power ? And who, we ask in
reply, said a word about transferring Savoy and
Nice to any other Power for several months before
they were handed over to the Emperor of FRANCE ?
On the contrary, was there not, firstly, a public
talk about the transference ; secondly, a series of
explanations assuring to England and to Europe;
thirdly, an entire cessation of even rumours on
the subject ; and fourthly, after both
together had deceived our Ministers into 1
deceiving the House of Commons, had we not the 1
last rumours of what proved to be then facts and
not mere rumours.

We are now, as we have some fear, in the third
of these stages in regard to Sardinia. We have
had the public talk and the denials and the ex-
Jganations; we have now the lull before the burstini
lof the__ plot. We do not affirm that it is so. Pretty