The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-16 00:00:00

Doors open at half past 6—Commence at 7.

CANTERBURY-HALL CONCERTS!!
Westminster-road.
Proprietor........C. Morton.
A Grand Selection trom Verdi's new Opera,
IL CORSARO,

(This opera has never been produced in this or any other
country, except at these Concerts), having met with that de-
cided success which charactise the most popular werks of
this groat Master, will be performed EVERY EVENING ;
together with a Slecion from LA FIGLIA DEL REGGI-
MENTO, by Doneizettti,
Principal Artistes—Miss gavel], Madame Maria, Miss
Tyrrell, Mr. H. Herbert, Signor Tivoli, H. Drummond, and
c. W. Bernard. Director, Mr. F. Jonothmins.
The Comic Department comprises Messrs. E. Marshall, A.
B. Hollingsworth, J. Blanchard, F. Bell, W. H. Welland, and
the Brothers Conrad.

John Martin's Three celebrated Pictures will remain on
view a short time longer in the Pine Arts Gallery of the
Establishment.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
TKIB DAY.—Morning, sh. 14m.—Afternoon, sh. 34m.
To-MORROW.-Morning, sh. 54m.—Afternoon, Gh. 20m.

THE WEATHER.-Sux OYFICM, ArRIO,I6, 1561,

THEEHOYETER, IN THE SHADE.
52—highest since noon yesterday.
42—lowest this morning and during the night.
57—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-30.43.

WIND—E.-S.-Easterly—freeh; with fine weather.

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THE SUN.
LONDON, TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 1861

Mr. GLADSTONE'S Financial Statement, the right
hon. gentleman himself spoke of last evening as a
wilderness of details or figures. Mr. BERNAL
OSBORNE, referring to that remark shortly after-
wards, eulogised the Chancellor of the Exchequer's
enormous and elaborate Budget speech of yester-
day as, on the contrary, " nothing but a garden of
flowers." Without reiterating or adopting in its
completeness that graceful compliment, we should
be ungrateful indeed were we not upon the instant
to admit that, while the Financial Statement of last
evening was necessarily, as all Financial State-
ments must be, precisely as Mr. GLADSTONE him-
self described it—namely, as altogether really and
truly little better than a wilderness—it is never-
theless a wilderness that is just for once not by any
means thinly sprinkled over with flowers; on the
contrary, bearing here and there flowers in affluent
abundance. Let us now for one moment—to begin
with—cull a nosegay from Mr. GLADSTONE'S wil-
derness ! We can promise it shall be, in every
imaginable way, most agreeable to contemplate.
Our Chancellor of the Exchequer, then—to give
the fairest flower of all, and to select it as the cen-
tral point or cynosure of our bouquet—calculates
that there will be a surplus, a clear,
bona fide surplus, not as was dimly
anticipated of one million, but of very nearly two
millions, of £1,923,000, an excess (to that extent
during the next financial year) of the estimated re-
venue over the estimated expenditure. This, re-
member ! notwithstanding the estimates of revenue
(previously explained by him with all his inimitable
lucidity) constitute, as he himself acknowledges,
"if not the largest, certainly one of the largest"
ever presented during a time of peace to the con-
sideration of Parliament. The revenue, in fact, for
1861-1862 Mr. GLADSTONE puts down at the
appalling sum of L 71,823,090. But, as he imme-
diately afterwards indicates, the total amount of the
estimated expenditure during the same financial
twelvemonth will not be in excess of the sum of
£69,900,000, the result follows manifestly enough
according to CocIER that there will be (relying, of
course, upon the accuracy of these calculations) a
distinct balance in our favour of—as already inti-
mated, not one million only, but 0f—£1,923,000.
Now upon the very face of it, oar system of taxation
has already grown to bo one of such enormity,
our expenditure has continued to be during a
lengthened period so increasingly excessive, that
the time has long since gone by when any Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer could be allowed to carry
over a difference like that the next leaf turned in the
national account book. So soon as our financier can
announce a surplus of any real magnitude, it is at
once incumbent upon him to announce also a reduc-
tion in those taxes notoriously pressing the most
heavily and vexatiously on the community. Hence,
no sooner has Mr. GLADSTONE intimated the plea-
Cant tidings that he is now locking for ;lard to a
surplus of revenue over expenditure amounting to
nearly two millions sterling, to £1,923.000, than he
hastens to explain how it i; that he proposes to
deal with that surplus—in regard to what taxes he
now proposes any diminution. Instead of remit-
ting or mitigating the duty upon tea (a duty of
more than 100 per cent.), instead of adventuring
upon the like coarse in regard to the duty upon
sugar (a duty of over 50 per cent.)—Mr.
GLADSTONE, in point of fact, proposes now to
remit the tenth penny upon the Income
tax and to repeal the Paper Duty altogether

Towards the aggregate of the estimated revenue of
this next Financial Twelvemonth—an estimated
revenue, as we have seen, of £71,823,000—the In-
come Tax (already expired) and the Tea and Sugar
Duties (the act for levying which will expire on
the 30th of June), are estimated as contributing, if
renewed, a sum amounting in all to fully £22,000,000.
The Tea and Sugar Duties, our Financier still sug-
gests, shall, for another year, be wrung out of the
Pockets of the consumer. The Income Tax he also
13, roposes to continue for, at any rate, one other
twell'araonth, hut at the reduced rates of ninepence
(haste
a- or tenpence) in the pound, on incomes
above £ls° a-year, and of sixpence (instead of
sevenpence) in the pound, upon incomes below that
amount. Each
-a4 the country
PQnn
e,-- y upcn the income tax yield-
by Vois time to its cost, learnt full well
some
has,
remi,ision of the tenth and
where about £1,100,000, the
(affecting, seventh penny will
ecting, as it can only do the concluding three-
fe urths of the twelvemonth), lessen
the surplus by
X 850,000. Adding to this remission of
£850,000
under the head of Income Tax,
the total repeal of
the Paper Duties—not immediately, not even on
the 16th of August, as was proposed last session,
but merely from the Ist' day of October—the esti-

mated surplus will be still further reduced by an

r4dditional remission, after all reductions have been

ullowcd [such as the reduction by X 15,009, for

example, upon the vote for stationery, or the reduc-
tion by £lO,OOO upon establishment charges for the
half-year], the estimated surplus will be thereb-
further reduced by £665,000 net loss on the repeal
of the paper duties, dating that repeal, as we have
seen and remarked, simply from the Ist of October.
By yielding up thus altogether £1,515,000—
namely £665,000 by the abolition of the paper duty,
and £850,000 by the penny deducted from the
Income Tax—the estimated surplus upon the year,
originally set down at £1,923,000, will be so far
reduced that there will remain only a moderate
residue of surplus upon the financial twelvemonth
of less than half a million, or just £408,000. So
that, according to this scheme of arrangement, the
balance-sheet of the nation f0r.1861-1862 will show,
as opposed to our estimated expenditure of
£69,900,000, an estimated revenue, not of
£71,823,000, but of £70,308,000. The nation
holding still within its grasp at the end of the year
a balance of £408,000 over and above its still enor-
mous though diminished expenditure, a net surplus
of nearly half a million out of an estimated revenue
(wisely, of course,) still more considerable.
Who shall say that Mr. GLADSTONE'S proposi-
tions in this remarkable Budget Speech, in what
we cannot but regard dispassionately, as (when
viewed as a whole) this truly admirable and
eertainly very masterly financial statement—who
shall say that the fiscal and financial propositions
of Mr. GLADSTONE are not adroit to the uttermost
stretch of adroitness ? None, we may safely aver,
in the first instance will venture to assert anything
so ridiculous as that the tenth penny upon the In-
come Tax should be at once frankly remitted, as
Mr. GLADSTONE propose? to remit it—in the
presence of this estimated surplus upon the year of
£1,923,000. A momentary doubt, it is true, may
occur to some in respect to the other means
adopted by Mr. GLADSTONE for availing himself
of that novel advantage of a net surplus upon the
year's balance of revenue over expenditure—the
repeal of the paper duties from the Ist of October,
and the consequent loss of £665,000 upon the half of
the financial twelvemonth ! A momentary doubt,
we say, may occur to some minds in regard to the
reasonableness or the urgency of this particular
proposition. Mr. DODSON may go for the remis-
sion by preference of the hop duties—Mr. HAD-
FIELD for the diminution of the duty upon fire
assurance—Mr. HENNESSY (wonderful sugges-
tion !) for the equalisation of the duties on coffee
and chicory—Mr. BALL for the satisfactory settle-
ment, at last, of the malt tax—Mr. CAVE
for the diminution of the tea and sugar duties
simultaneously—a great many, their name being
legion, for the dropping, in preference to the paper
duty, of another penny upon the income tax ! A
bold proposition certainly this last, under the
circumstances, seeing that a penny upon the income
tax involves the question of £1,100,000 upon the year
being swept from the estimated revenue—or at any
rate, allowing that the ninth penny, while following
the lead of the tenth, its predecessor in remission,
be also yielded up only upon three-fourths of the
financial twelvemonth, the second penny thus de-
ducted from the aggregate returns under the income
tax involves the notion of sweeping aside
close upon another million from the estimated
revenue of £71,823,000 thereby running
the extreme of hazard of transforming a probable
surplus into an almost inevitable deficit. No; let
any one dispassionately regard the position in which
the country stands, in which the House of Com-
mons stands, in which for that matter, too, we
might even say the House of Lords itself stands
(victor though it was, last year, in that all but un-
constitutional contention between the two
great chambers of the legislature) in regard to
that question of the paper duty and its
repeal—and it is as nearly as anything of
this kind can be impossible to do otherwise
than admit that in presence of . a still
considerable surplus, after having conceded the re-
mission of a penny—the tenth penny—upon the
Income-tax, Mr. GLADSTONE in this matter had
really, so to speak, no alternative. The frank and
manly course at once followed in respect to this
revival of the paper duty repeal this session [it will
be allowed under the very different circumstances !
in the presence of a considerable surplus instead of
in sight of a formidltble deficit ! accompanying the
proposition, moreover, this year with a diminution
by one penny, instead of, as last year, with
an increase by one penny of the detested
Income-tax] -- the frank and manly course
in respect to the revival of the paper duties repeal
question, followed out last evening by the hon. and
learned gentleman the member for Wallingford,
has about it, we cannot but think, a very auspicious
significance. However this may be—there is the
Financial Statement now fully and clearly, and,
as a whole, we cannot but think most satisfactorily,
placed before the country by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. To pronounce anything like a defini-
tive opinion upon each and all of its elaborately
interwoven and exquisitely complicated details,
requires, as a matter of course, from the House,
from the country, from the journalist, from the
members generally, but especially from those num-
bered in the ranks of her MAJESTY'S Opposition, a
most calm, candid, and deliberate consideration.
Already, however, upon the first blush—with not
much anticipation in the inner recesses of our judg-
ment, that, in regard to this particular sectiun of
the Budget, second thoughts are likely to be better,
or, for that matter, to be in any way different—we
hesitate not at once to avow the cordial satisfaction
with which we recognise the remissions adventured
upon by Mr. GLADSTONE under the encouragement
of his estimated surplus of £1,923,000. Referring
to the highly beneficial, because directly and
appreciably reproductive consequence of reducing
gradually our indirect taxes, the right hon. gentle-
man spoke of those almost magical results as re-
minding him of VIRGIL'S misletoe, as described
by the Sybil—

"- Primo avulso non deficit alter
Aureus ; et simili frondescit virga metallo."
The Sybilline hag adding to this the wholesome
advice—

"Ergo alto vestiga oculls, et rite, repertani,
" Carp© manu."
Applying to himself the happy augury latent in
the words that follow immediately thereupon, Mr.
GLADSTONE might have articulated them with

greater force as words applicable to the proposed

remission by him of this penny of direct taxation

and to the proposed repeal altogether of one of the

most vexatious items in our still large and motley

scheme of indirect taxation.
" -nainque ipso volens facilisque sequetur,
Si to fata vocant : aliter, non viribus ullis,
Vincere, nec duro poteris convellere ferro."
Armed with his trenchant surplus of nearly
two millions sterling, there can be little

probability that those two golden branches

gemince super arbore, which he

is now

bent upon abstracting, will resist his efforts

to tear them away. Ti“! Fates that call him now are

obviously more propitious than they were a year ago.
And as to the golden boughs themselves—when.
abstracted from the parent trunk of our gigantic
Upas of Taxation—if in nothing else they will be
productive, we may be assured of that, of an im•
mense amount of popular satisfaction.

One bitter mortification, the first result of seces-
sion, the Disunited States of America have already
witnessed the Spanish flag hoisted on the Island
of
St' 3)911141P. But a few years ago Mr,