The Sun.
London, England, 1857-02-06 00:00:00

LONDON, IFRIDAY

Ecclesiastical Government of Norfolk Island=it
must be quite obvious to every one that the
measure is urgently requisite under existing cir-

cumstances. Remembering, for example, that
that lovely island is no longer peopled by the off-
scourings of the earth ! That the artificial Hell
has reverted once more to a natural Paradise!
That in place of those miserable convicts, who
eccupied a position in regard to its beautiful ver-
dure such as the damned of the " Divine Comedy"
occupied in regard to the gloomy precincts of the
Inferno—(one of hopeless toil, agony, and degra-
dation)—Norfolk Island has received, as more
appropriate and congenial inhabitants, the redun-
dance of the interesting population of Pitcairn's
Island, the virtuous descendants of the lawless
mutineers against old Bounty BLIGH /
As to the Bill affecting the future condition of
the people of the lonian States—that, too, may
be recognised readily enough as, all things consi-
dered, most reasonable. Bearing in mind the simple
and wholly incontrovertible fact that by empowering
her MAJESTY'S subjects of the lonian Islands to
hold Military and Naval commissons under the
Crown at their own will and pleasure, the Legis-
lature will be merely placing these people upon a
footing with the aggregate of the Colonial popula-
tion of great Britain in both hemispheres.
Finally, and most especially—as to the impor-
tant motion agreed to for a Select Committee
to inquire into the state of the Hudson's Bay
Territories ! What, possibly, we ask, could
be more urgently desirable, in regard to
colonial matters, than that that particular
question, of all others, should at length
be thrust by her MIJESTY'S Secretary of State
under the consideration of the Imperial Legisla-
ture ? Look for a moment at Mercator's Chart
of the World—and then answer 1 Observe the
sweep of those enormous possessions across the
whole breadth of the gigantic continent of North
America ! Possessions so vast that they have a
width of no less than 2,600 miles across—stretch-
ing from the shores of the Atlantic to the shores
of the Pacific ! So wealthy that it is calculated
that their unworked mineral treasures far sur-
pass in value all that has ever been produced
there by the fur trade ! So prolific in ♦egetation
that its dense forest masses remind one, more than
any other portion of the globe, of that rank and
and almost awful productiveness which ages ago, in
the Oolite era of the Geologists, required to be
" kept under" by the dread Pre-Adainite mon-
sters, the browsing Igoadon and the ruminating
Hylceosaurus I Yet this wonderful territory—so
vast, ao wealthy, so prolific—has hitherto for the
last two centuries been abandoned by England,
almost unconditionally, to a huxtering Company of
Fur-Merchants, a Company looking solely to its
own pecuniary interests, and sacrificing to those
interests a track of country equal in its dimen-
sions to the better portion of the European Con-
tinent ! In the reign of King CHARLES 11., in
the year 1670, the original Charter was granted
to the Hudson's Bay Company, making over to
them for a given period the whole of these enormous
possessions. Since then that Charter has been
renewed periodically by complaisance or ignorance,
or indifference of the Imperial Legislature. Nine-
teen years ago—in continuance of this mistaken
policy—the " rights" of the Company were con-
tinued for another term of one-and-twenty years,
by Royal Licence I Consequently 3459 will, in
due course, bring the whole question again under
the consideration of Parliament I Is there not
i recognisable in this one fact a really golden op-
portunity I Rather apparently, we think, not to
say glaringly and undeniably ! Let not the op-
portunity be lost ! Whatever the Right Hon.
Gentleman iho -kr...63r for (loventry may say
to the contrary, this much-lauded Hudson's
Bay Company is a kind of a Close Corporation,
notoriously requiring (ef all things) to be burst
open, and searchingly ransacked, and thoroughly
and completely ventilated. Of course, Mr.
Emden thinks otherwise. That we might only
reasonably have anticipated. But, then, a great
many other Members of Parliament happily look
upon the matter quite differently. Insomuch so
that Mr. LA.BOUCHERE no sooner asks permission
of the House to have a Select Committee of In-
quiry (into the whole question) appoiutsd than
that permission is at once conceded by the
popular branch of the Legislature. Let the
Members of this Committee be well selected, and
we shall not have much longer reason to lament
over our old heart-burnings about the Hudson's
Bay Company. The enormous dominions hitherto
abandoned to the fur-traders being at length,
we doubt not, in the fullness of time, opened
up to the energies of .our British Colonists, and
through them to what Doctor JOHNSON me-
morably eulogised as " the benefits of Know-
12dge and the blessings of Religion !"

HARRY BROUGHAM, the HARRY BROUGHAM
of 1816, reappeared (among the Lords, alas !)
on Tuesday evening. Would that he could un-
peer himself for a while, and be the HARRY
BROUGHAM of the Commons till the Income Tax
question is settled. He has himself described, in
his published speeches, with all his own vigour, the
battle to which he alluded and in which he was so
prominent a chief. He it was who compelled a
Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had intended a
surprise, to listen to petitions and debates for six
weeks before he could get a division, and then to
submit to defeat by a majority of 37 ; and who laid
down, as Mr. WILBERFORCB observed, the whole-
some principle, " that War and Income Tax are
wedded together." Lord BROUGHAM has asserted
the very principle we have ourselves maintained
against Sir G. C. LEWIS' statement to the deputa-
tion. In opposition to him we affirmed that the
House of Commons could not, any more than pri-
vate individuals, fix unconditionally their expen-
diture first, and get the money afterwards ; that
they must, on the contrary, have regard, in
framing their e3timates, to the probable amount
they could raise. This doctrine Lord BROUGHAM
not only affirms—not only demands further reduc-
tion% than those promised by Lord P_ ANMURE, but
also reminds Sir GEORGE that the very thing was
done just forty years ago. The Chancellor of the
Exchequer then was thoroughly flogged out of an
Income Tax which brought in 15,000,0001., or
the Tax flogged out of him—and he brought in
amended estimates less in proportion I ! It will be
well for the cotton lords to remember this, and
not to forget that the Estimates will be shaped
according to the temper of the Housse on the
Income Tag.

The speakers on Tuesday night busied them
selves chiefly on what the country looks upon,
for the most part, as party debate, and therefore
skips the long weary columns; not so in regard to
the financial part of the discussion. Each speak-
er's statements will be carefully scrutinised in
respect to the all-interesting Income Tax. It is
remarkable that not a speaker defended the uni-
form rate. Mr. DISRAELI, of course, did not.
Lord BROUGNAM denounced it, as he did in 1842,
mid even so long back as 1816. Mr. GLADSTONE
himself, who said that " the question of the vary:
lug rate was a question between the air and the
clouds"—yet admitted that an equal rate was such
* 'Pill/Woes and made the tax so dangerous in time