The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-09 00:00:00

hardware, besides other manufactures. The Senate I
evidently did not relish the Bill, and made, it is
said, 150 amendments, and hope has been
expressed that these will have delayed its
progress till it may not get through this
session. We trust it may prove to be so, since a
more suicidal policy on the part of the North ;
one more calculated to justify the South in seced-
ing, and to dispose other countries to recognise the
new confederation, wnich will almost certainly
adopt the opposite policy, can hardly be conceived.

The Anti-President of the Southern convention,
who has contrived to be inaugurated first, proclaims
for the new confederation a policy decidedly the
reverse of that of the MORRILL Tariff. He says :

—" As an agricultural people, whose chief interest
is the export of a commodity required in every
manufacturing country, our true policy is peace
and the freest trade which our necessities will per-
mit." He tells them that it is the interest of
the States, and of those from whom they
would buy and to whom they would sell,
that there should be " the fewest practi-
cable restrictions upon the interchange of com-
modities." Thus Free-trade doctrines are as natural
to the South as the selfish code of Protection is to
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Assuredly Eng-
land does not wish to see the breaking up of
the Union ; but if the North perseveres in the mad
policy of driving our merchants and manufacturers

from its doors, and the South adopts the reverse one
of making them welcome, who can say whether,
slavery notwithstanding, English trade and capital
may not flow to the South and desert the North.
We expect much from the firmness of Mr. LINCOLN,
and the two internal slave States of Tenessee and
Arkansas already seem to have responded to it by
voting for the Union, and the border States by

their hesitation ; but the North must renounce
commercial hostility to the Southern States and to
England, if it would not place itself in a false posi-
tion.

No sophistry can convince the public that a tax
on Insurance does not comprise all the worst vices
of a tax.- If a tax on luxuries, especially on
demoralizing luxuries like spirits, be cheerfully
acquiesced in, because self-indulgence is a fair
subject for a tax, and because vice ought, if
possible, to be met with the check of costliness,
then Fire Insurance, and indeed every kind of
insurance, ought to be untaxed. Insurance is
prudence, not indulgence; it springs from the
'virtues which create and protect the capital and
industry of the country, not from vice. Yet, as
Insurance taxes now stand, they are a penalty on
prudence, and a premium on recklessness. The
man who will risk his property—property,
too, perhaps, which, if destroyed, will

cause loss to his creditors also, saves the tax.
The man who, for a yearly payment, takes secu-
rity for himself and creditors against what may or
may not happen, pays the Government from fifty
to two hundred per cent. for his prudence and
honesty.

But Mr. SHERIDAN, in his able speech last night,
did not, in one respect, do full justice to his sub-
ject. The inequality of the tax is something
enormous. It is an inequality, too, entirely in
favour of the landlord class. The tax, it should be
observed, like the probate duty, is a tax inflicted
almost exclusively on the industrious, as compared
with the landed class. It is tax which does not
touch the most valuable property of all, land,
which is incombustible ; and not only that, but the
produce of land—farming stock—is exempt from
duty ! Thus the landlords have called in
Legislative Exemptions in aid of nature to ren-
der their property absolutely free from fire
insurance duty ! Who can wonder that in a house
of landlords a majority of nearly three to one de-
termined to let their well alone. It has always
appeared to us, however, amongst the most un•
righteous of imposts, since while incombustible pro-
perty is burdened with no equivalent tax, combus•
tible property should, in addition to the disadvantage
implied in that fact, be wilfully subjected to another
by arbitrary taxation.
It is common to justify it as a property tax—but
it has in that aspect two glaring defects. First, the
one just mentioned—next, that of not being made
compulsory on all. If landlords paid 3s. per cent.
on the value of their land, and if all other property
were required to be insured and to pay 3s. per
cent., as it now does on its fair valuation, it would
be at least a fair property tax. We do not know
that it might not be one of the best forms of
property tax ; but as it now stands it is
self-convicted of being class legislation of the
most obtrusive and offensive kind. It is not even
reduction of the amount which strikes us as most
important. The tax ought to be abolished, or by
compulsory insurance, and an equal tax on the
value of land, to be made equal for all classes.
As to the state of the Exchequer, that is quite
another question. We certainly have not yet been
told what we shall want. Still the old adage of
" too soon if before the Budget, too late after-
wards," though Mr. GLADSTONE tried to explain
it away, cannot be forgotten. Looking to this,
however, we must confess that the iniquities of
the Income-tax so far transcend those of any other
tax that the first reduction must be made there ;
and the first tax which ought to be abolished is
that which has a schedule A and a

schedule D assessed at the same rate.
So long as even a remnant of a tax
exists which treats as income equally available for
taxation, that which is derived from daily labour of
the brain and the hands, and that derived from the

funds and from real property—which also treats as
having the same income the man who, out of £5OO,
has to maintain a wife and large family, and the

man who lives on it at lodgings—so long will there
be a tax which has a claim to repeal in preference
to Hops, or Paper ; or in preference even to reduc-
tion of tea and sugar duties. All who desire the
repeal of other taxes, must earn that repeal by first
getting rid of the most unrighteous tax of all, the
tax which ought to be laid by in reserve as our
great resource in war—the income-tax.

REPRESENTATION OF CORK.—An influential
deputation waited on Dr. Lyons on Thursday to request
him to retain his seat as member for Cork till the next
dissolution of Parliament, and that with the strict under-
standing that he should not be required to attend in his
place in the House of Commons. The doctor yielded to
the solicitations of the deputation, stating his regret that
the state of his health would not allow him to serve them
more actively, but that he would continue as their repre-
sentative to the close of the session.—Freeman's Journal.

The Cork Reporter states that the head-quarters
division of the Tipperary Artillery Militia is daily expect-
ed in Cork harbour, on board the Megrera, from England.
The division will proceed fr m Cork to Cahir for
bodiment.

A letter from Berlin of the sth instant says
that Herr von Zedlitz, the head of the police department,
had just challenged Herr von Vincke to a duel with
pistols, which, if not prevented, is to take place in the
Easter vacation.

The .Regno d'ltalia states that a petition has
been circulating in many Italian towns, and has received
a great many signatures, beg;ing the Italian parliament
to revoke the sentence cf death under which Mazzini still
lies, and to permit him to return to Italy.
THE " ENTERTAINMENTS " AT THE VICTORIA
THEATRE.—One of the attractions last night at the Victoria
Theatre was to have been a "set-to" between some bull-.
dogs, commonly called pugilists, amongst whom were Mace
and Langham, but the Lord Chamberlain very properly
prohibited the display of such a demoralising exhibition.