The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-30 00:00:00

estimates of 1861, • and without detriment to the

efficiency of the pub lic service.
Another mode, a nd it is one which might be
combined with the I former, of compelling Ministers
to economise, is to refuse the means of extrava-

game or carelessuc.as. We must indeed assume

hat we have such. an amount of patriotism in the

Government that it vi ill make the smaller sum do

he work of the larger, and not cut off more than

would leave what was r eallp sufficient. But, with
this caution, no plan is s 9 efficient as that of stop-

ping the superfluous sup.nlies. This was indeed
the wisdom of our *ncestoi If our readers will
turn to another column thy will find a sketch
from the pen of Lord BRoLIGHAm, of the battle
foughtby the people, and theret 'ore by the Commons,
of 1816, against the old income tax ; and they will
see how the proudest of the Tories, the lord who
denounced the people's " impatience of taxation,"
had to yield to the wisdom -which he scoffed at as
ignorance. The Government -wished to maintain
a war establishment and war taxes for some time
after the peace. The people refused their assent,
and made their refusal tell. The income tax
vanished, revised estimates were brought in,
economy and retrenchment followed.
We can hardly doubt that oar ancestors took the
wisest course. They did not—Mr. BRIGHT says he
will not do it—hack at hundreds of pounds, while
millions were being squandered, they went straight
at the millions. They alleged all the arguments
against the Income-tax which we now do, and
they laid special stress on its being a war tax ; the
tax which ought to be kept in reserve for war, and
which it is treachery to our strength in time of
war to continue in time of peace. On what arti-
cles of commerce could a Chancellor of the Exche-
quer, with any hope of success, lay duties now, if he
needed to raise more money in time of war His only
resource, then, must be direct taxation; to fore-
stall that source of Revenue therefore, appropriate
to the hoar of extremity, and to make it a part of
the regular taxation of the State is, really, as
dangerous to our security as to leave us without an
adequate army or navy. Should war break out,
we shall assuredly need supplies of money as we
shall ships and soldiers. It is tantamount to
leaving the country without a war tax to prolong
the income tax, merely to repeal Customs' duties to
which Manchester objects.
The other social and fiscal arguments against the
tax which render it an abomination now, were not
less felt then. Yet, if we remember rightly, it had
one injustice less than those to which we are sub-
jected. The Peel-Gladstone income-tax makes no
allowance for the number to be maintained by any
income. The poor clerk, whose income is, in fact,
the income of half a dozen or half a score persons,
who must maintain a wife and family out
of it, pays just the same as the
man whose entire income is devoted to
his own support. A considerable allowance was
made for families formerly; indeed, Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S only excuse for not doing it was that the
tax was intended to be temporary ! We need not
repeat what almost any one knows by experience,
respecting the cruelly unjust incidence of the tax
on the incomes whch have to be earned by labour,
skill, and risk. No man has yet been found to
deny it. Mr. GLADSTONE himself has condemned
the hopeless iniquity of the tax, in language as
strong as any one.
We would then suggest to Mr. BRIGHT and
the Manchester School, that if they mean to effect
anything, they must place the Government under the
swcessity of economy. They must select the ini-
quitoug ?oar tax, and demand that it be reserved
for war. They will not deprive the Government
of the entire amount raised by the tax, for
part of it will come back in the shape
of increased consumption ; but they will have
cut off as much as will compel a revision of
the estimates, and probably a permanent reform
in the money-spending Departments themselves.

A French Magazine, it is said, will soon throw a
flood of light for Parisian eyes upon the disease,
the squalor, and the poverty festering among great
masses of our London population. "They manage
these things better in France" as well as others to
which the Rev. LAURENCE STERNE alluded in
his famous journey as a sentimentalist. They
manage these things far better, do our Gallic
neighbours; and they will now know that
they do (to our shame) if this announced design
on the part of the Paris magazine be but dUly
realized. It is not by any, means for want of a
knowledge of the miseries rife in London that we
have done so little, and that little so indifferently
in the way of striving to dissipate them, or
even (to any appreciable extent) to diminish
them, The squalor of the back slums
of the English capital is a very old story
indeed to Englishmen generally, but particularly
to Londoners. Mr. DICKENS has, with his benign
genius, brought the frightful truth in this matter
to light in many and many of his wonderful
descriptions of the condition of the humblest classes
of his fellow-countrymen. Every one remembers
Tom all Alone's. And the name is the name not
of a locality, but of a class of localities. And
the Brothers MAYHEW have, with rare industry and
varied ability, done their part too in the wholesome
toil of exposure. Of this fact let HORACE MAYHEW'S
story of the "City paved with Gold," and HENRY
MAYHEW'S statistics accumulated in the terrible
chapters of his " London Labour and the London
Poor," bear witness. Our charitable societies
again have been more or less frequently, and accord-
ing to their energy more or less effectually drawing
the veil of conventional ignorance aside, and
laying bare an appalling diversity of hidden
wretchedness. Journalism has assisted continually
in furthering these humane efforts. We ourselves
have so far the consolation of remembering that for
years past we have striven to forward the good cause
_however, by necessity, our efforts in this way have
been made, for the most part, intermitently. The
Morning Chronicle a dozen years back toiled
through much of that Slough of Despond, choking
up the back ways of London, toiled through much
of it effectively and systematically. An intelligent '
and benevolent representative of our contemporary
the Morning Post has been now very recently
penetrating into those miserable haunts of vice and
anguish, constituting a fearfully large proportion
of the externally wealthy and well-to-do mass of
these twin cities of London and Westminster. The ,
correspondent of the Post has done this very strik-
ingly, indeed, and very eloquently—exposing to
view, one after another, a series of appalling
sights,otitle
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the
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amaze-
ment ment of the Parisians. And to the interest thus
excited among the Parisians we have to attribute
the rumour of the design already spoken
of as entertained by one of the French
Magazines. An announcement like this
ought to shame us at last into some more
comprehensive and systematic endeavours than any
that have yet been adventured upon with a view.to
the clearing away of so much squalor and wretched-
ness ! To this end the Government ought to come
to the aid of scattered societies, and to the aid of