The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-10 00:00:00

of the Agricultural Benevolent Institution. The
object held in view by this institution is the relief of
Decayed Farmers, their Widows, and Orphans—a
cause surely in the furtherance of which every one
of us alike, Whig or Tory, Liberal or Conservative,
may equally wish to participate. The Festival, in
aid of the Funds of this newly-established Agricul-
tural Benevolent Association, will take place, then,
in the Freemasons' Tavern, on Wednesday evening—
the day after to-morrow. And most heartily do we
wish it success. As Chairman of the evening, no one
assuredly could have been in any way more suitably
selected than the right hon. leader of our English
Country Gentlemen.

It was purely a coincidence, of course, but still it
was a singular coincidenee under the circum-
stances, that at the very sitting of the House of
Commons which witnessed the successful passing
through the popular branch of the Legislature of
th© long-contested Budget Bill, with its dubious
little enigmatical surplus—[in respect to which
surplus, by the way, there was all that pother
about the Tea Duties, and the Paper Duties, and
the Sugar Duties, and the Income Tax)—the Secre-
tary of State for India produced his startling and
almost alarming motion for a supplementary loan
of £4,000,000 in behalf of the Government at Cal-
cutta.

There always are these tantalising addenda
requiring—as certain as fate—to be taken into con-
sideration by the House of Commons, after that
House has nominally got through the whole tangled
web of the country's resources and liabilities. It is
a mere matter of eourse, we must acknowledge it,
that when the financial position of the empire
appears to have been thoroughly scrutinised in
all its bearings without anything of importance
apparently having been anywhere overlooked, there
will all of a sudden start forth, almost at the mo-
ment of self-gratulation with JOHN BULL, another
of those vexatious little sums in addition of which,
until that instant, he wots not at all. Talk of every
house having its " skeleton in the cupboard," Mr.
THACKERAY ! The political House that Jack built
swarms with them. And, above all, the Counting
House attached to it, among the other " Offices,"
the old familiar Counting House where Jack sits,
like the king in the nursery song about the black-
bird pie, "counting out his money"—yes, counting
it out, everlastingly counting it OUT—doing this
vicariously, of course, through the hands of his
appointed Steward and Cashier and Seneschal all
in one, to wit, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer !
Why, that one apartment alone, among all the
numberless apartments of the great national estab-
lishment, the palace-home of Circumlocution—
JACK'S Counting House—is completely wainscoted,
is absolutely walled with those Skeleton Cup-
boards. And as the national destiny will have it—
the door of one or another of those cupboards, JOHN
beholds flying open perpetually—now that, now
this—at moments, too, almost always the most pro-
vokingly inopportune.
It happened exactly in this way as we have here
intimated on Monday, the 3d of June, in the House
of Commons—the very sitting at which the long
talked-of and obstructed, but at last triumphant,
Custms and Inland Revenue Bill was read a third
time and passed, amidst the readily comprehensible
cheers of the Liberal side of the House, the side of the
Government. Scarcely had the echo of those cheers
of theirs died out, when—er-r-r-w/any ! wide open
flies the Calcutta cupboard, disclosing to view the
grim Indian Skeleton. The Secretary of State, Sir
CHARLES WooD, with no unwilling finger, has
touched the spring—the right hon. baronet, skilled
by long practice in these heartless manoeuvres,
wants to borrow a snug little sum of £4,000,000
for the convenience of Hindostan. Thereupon,
after Sir CHARLES has spoken and explained, so far
as he himself could then understand it, the situation
of affairs, fiscal and financial, over yonder in the far
East [Mr. LAING'S admirable speech not having then
arrived], there is a somewhat lengthened discussion
in regard to this motion for a loan of £4,000,000 in
favour of the Indian Government. The upshot of it
all being—what it always is in these cases—just as
a mere ordinary matter of course—how does the
phrase run ?—" the motion was agreed to, and the
House resumed." Scarcely a moment's hesitation
about it. The thing is to be, the House sees that
it is to be, and it acts accordingly. Mr.VANSITTART
stood almost alone on Monday evening last during
this debate in the House of Commons, when pro-
testing that, to his view, the statement just heard
from the lips of Sir CHARLES WOOD justified the
gloomiest anticipations. That lugubrious view of
the future, particularly of the financial future,
opening up to our Indian Government, we, for one,
could not but regard even then as in the highest de-
gree extravagant. Unwelcome though this fresh de-
mand upon the Imperial Government for aid through
a loan to the extent of another sum of £4,000,000
may be, we will even say at once is, we must never-
theless think, as we do think, and that most deli-
berately, that the aspect of affairs in the Indian
perspective is in all respects, when viewed as a
whole, singularly fraught with encouragement.
Indications of the on earning of this more propi-
tious future for Hindostan were visible to all who
cared to look at them with a dispassionate glance on
Monday, even in the inadequate and merely frag-
mentary explanation given by Sir CHARLES WOOD
when asking for this new loan of £4,000,000. Mr.
LAING'S Budget for the year had been—we knew
that much even then !—[how much more fully do
we not know it now that we have actually read and
have since commented upon Mr. LAING'S masterly
Financial Statement !]—had been brought forward

at Calcutta, and had been recognised as, upon the
whole, far more satisfactory than any one could have
well anticipated. Mr. LAING had telegraphed to

Sir CHARLES WOOD—the pleasantest news he could
well have sent him !—that by January he (Mr. LAING)

would be able to balance the Indian income and the
India expenditure ! More than which mortal' man
could hardly have looked for at' the hands of:.thq:
late Mr. WILSON'S successor under existing•cireurn.:
stances. Remembering the legacy of debt left-bp
\ the Sepov Mutiny, and recolleCting how in addi-
tion to that after-result of the dreadful Bengal insur-
rection the resources of the Exchequer at Calcutta
had been latterly drained away by reason of the
late deplorable drought and consequent famine
in the North West provinces—it is in a manner
equivalent to a magnificent surplus, in its way
that assurance of Mr. LAING'S, promising the Secre-
tary of State that by January next there shall be
a balance in India of income over expenditure ! As
it is the India Chancellor of the Exchequer is now
known to have distinctly announced in his recent
Financial Statement that there, in that last Budget of
his, there is already nowhere recognisable any deficit !

Stillmoney,actual money,hard eash,vrrung out upon
the nail is wanted, and must be got at somehow—by

reason of the famine there, and of the necessPry
employment of the starving population upon the

public works latterly, and very judiciously set on

foot—hence this demand for the sum of £4,000,000.

A million of silver, Sir CUAP.LES WOOD remarked,

he had already very recently transmitted in hot

haste to Calcutta.

But one million of silver, it

scarcely needed that the Secretary of the State

should add (as he yet did add nevertheless), was
wholly inadequate for the emergency out in India,