The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-22 00:00:00

~"'~,

hands,' &c. A local celebrity, PL eddy
Gaol,' a poor, half-witted lad who runs about; the
streets, was got on his legs to make a speech, and
for some time harangued the audience, amid great

cheering and laughter."
Such were the promising auspices under which
the business of the meeting began ; it was only to
be expected that when the offender himself made
his appearance, the disturbance should become
" fast and furious." Several ladies were with him
as well as gentlemen, but the report says, in pro-
ceeding up to the platform, the honourable mem-
ber
was received with cheers and counter cheers,
and tremendous groaning, mingled with cries of
" Lift him, lift him!" meaning to carry him bodily
off his feet. "Take Governor WALKER'S coat off
him," and " put him out," were also liberally
shouted, with cheers, groans, catcalls, cock-crow-
ing, cries of order, and noises of every descrip-
tion—stamping of feet, rapping of sticks, ringing
of bells, and the shrieks of a railway whistle.
Most of the audience" got up on the chairs.
But how shall we describe the meeting itself dur-

ing the lecture; perhaps it might be sufficient to
say that the beginning, middle, and end were alto-
gether in keeping, for sheer senseless noise and
vulgar cries of every description were continued
with ever renewed vigour; and all in spite of
attempts to soothe, to provoke to laughter, to enlist
their sense of propriety, if they had anything of
that quality, or, on the part of the Mayor, to
threaten them with his civic displeasure. One
person endeavoured to persuade them that they
were respectable and gentlemen, but they
well knew better than that, and only
laughed ',at the courteous untruth. Others
appealed to the fair fame of Derry, but they
thought their conduct quite worthy of Derry boys ;
wherein they assuredly formed a perfectly correct
estimate of themselves. The Mayor singled out
one prominent disturber, and informed him that he
recognised him as Mr. JOHN ROULSTONE, but Mr.
ROULSTONE seemed to have no objection to being
recognised as the fugleman to the apprentice boys.
The Lecturer, who kept his temper admirably
throughout,—and who conquered in so far as, that,
without any show of perturbation, he read the
whole lecture—tried various tricks on his part to
coax them into quietness ; now he had a funny
story or two, he said, to read ; now a
lady's name to dwell on ; now the great
siege of Derry itself to describe ;—but
tales, and ladies, and the exploits of WALKER
himself were all the same to these stupid madmen ;
they were enlisted to make a disturbance, to hoot,
to call the hon. member all the ill names their low,
but not very inventive, fancy could suggest, and
never did any regiment more faithfully discharge
the duties for which it was enlisted. Net
satisfied indeed with hall duty, they waited and
watched till the ladies, whom their fury had
frightened from the platform, rejoined Mr. DAW-
SON, and all went together to a friend's house.
These fellows, the cream of Protestantism, actually
hustled and hooted the party all the way, and were
with no little difficulty kept by the police off the
persons of the objects of their wrath.
What strikes us first in reading such accounts
as these coming so thickly on each other, is, that
bad as the mobs are they are not the worst. That
a set of illiterate apprentice boys and men of the
lowest order can be easily inspired to create any
amount of disturbance required, unfortunately
needs no proof. We have had GORDON Riots here,
and but the other day BRYAN KING riots, and any
man who will lend himself to such things may
easily multiply such feats in any populous place.
But to us it seems a most unfortunate state of
society, in which persons whom we are accus-
tomed to speak of as respectable, and gentlemen,
clergymen even, and members of Parliament, and
county squires, and well-to•do tradesmen, can per-
mit themselves to belong to an institution whose
actions have now become so utterly disgraceful.
These persons are the life of the social nui-
sance of Orangeism. If they refused any
longer to lend their names to it, the penniless and
illiterate would soon cease to trouble themselves
about the glorious memory of the founder of our Na-
tional Debt. It is really time that the nuisance of
Orangeism were got rid of. Mr. WHITESIDE himself
must think so. Law probably can do little more than
it has done—the remedy is now in the hands of the
noble lords and gentlemen who still hold.connec-
tion with this social abomination. Can it need
any longer time to open their eyes to the evil they
are doing ? Are not half-a-dozen outrages, all
within a few months, enough to warn off
all persons, who have any respect for their
character, from such associations ? We beg
to suggest that some steps should be taken
to withdraw from Orangeism all who have any
position to sustain, and thus to leave the evil to
die out of itself.

Theoretically nothing can be better than the pre-
ference of Direct for Indirect Taxation. An
equitably assessed Property-tax, for example, is the
very ideal perfection of the most just among all
just taxes. But—the Income-tax ! Particularly
the Income-tax, according to its present mode of
assessment ! Nothing can be more inequitable,
nothing can be more unjust, nothing can bo more
cruel, more harsh, more injudicious, or more de-
moralising, than the substitution of this kind of
direct taxation for that old-fashioned system of
indirect taxation drawing the chief part of
the national revenues from Customs and
Excise, or, in other words, from inappreciable
imposts placed upon an immense variety of articles
of more or less general consumption.
Conscious of this, Mr. M'CrLLocir, one of the
greatest among our recognised mercantile authori-
ties, has very recently—through no less conspicuous
a medium than through the latest (revised) edition
of that noble standard book of reference, his world-
famous Commercial bietiexary—Mr. M'CuLLocu
(of all men !) has put forward authoritatively (recol-
lect it is in the last edition of his " Commercial
Dictionary !" ) the following startling, and
emphatic opinion of his upon—shall we say the
efficacy ?—no, we ought rather to say the absolute
and imperative necessity for the maintenance of
Indirect Taxation—rather than the substitution for
it of an Income-tax as cruelly unjust as it is
grindingly oppressive and flagrantly and most
lamentably demoralizing. Speaking of Indirect
Taxation as preferable, Mr. M'CuLLoca has
said—" UNLESS IT BE MAINTAINED, AND TO A

VERY GREAT EXTENT TOO, A FINANCIAL

CONVULSION, INVOLVING THE MOST SERIOUS

CONSEQUENCES, CANNOT BE VERY FAR DISTANT!"
The House of Commons will do well to bear in
mind this deliberate judgment, pronounced upon a
matter of the most vital importance, by no tyro in
the science of political economy, but by a great
master of that science, by a worthy successor of
ADAM SMITH, such as TORRENS M'CuLLocit, the
author of the " Commercial Dictionary."

In justification of his argument, the great
political economist goes on to analyse a few
of the items, furnishing their quota to that aggre-
gate of more than half a million, the duties upon
which have been repealed in the recent treaty
with France—duties yielding altogether in 1859
Xe573/47 ! He recalls to mind—very pleasantly of