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

to marvel at, that the gross amount of the national
revenue, the revenue rowed into and out of the
coffers of the United Kingdom, has attained at
last in this year of grace, 1860, the year which
has been only within the last few hours completed,
that the gross amount of this extending revenue
has reached an aggregate closely approximating
to £72,000,000 ! The actual amount of revenue with
which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has had to
deal during 1860, between the Ist of January and
the 31st of December inclusively, being in truth
exactly £71,967,495 ! Showing an advance upon
the, preceding year of £5,896,906—0r otherwise but
the merest trifle (just £102,954) less• than a good
round sum of £6,ooo,ooo—the returns of 1859,
chewing an aggregate of £66,070,469. This alone
is surely a wonderful result, brought vividly
before us—a wonderful result of the national pros-
perity. What other nation in the world could
bear like England with equanimity, without revolt,
without bankruptcy, such a load of imposts as
that here represented in this vast ■uperincumbent
weight placod upon the broad Atlantean shoulders
of Joitx BULL, the world of taxes, represented in
that huge orbicular total of £71,967,495, but just
£32,505 less than £72,000,000 within the last
twelvemonth !

Looking more closely and keenly into these
returns, we are led irresistibly to the conclusion
that the financial epoch now attained by
England
under the auspices of Mr. GLADSTONE, is essential,
and in some respects rather alarmingly transitional.
Examining the Table of the Revenue for the four
last quarters making up this henceforth notable
year of our LORD 1860, we behold abundant and
irresistible evidence that as a financier Mr. GLAD-
SToNE is without any exception the boldest, the
most rash, the most daring Experimentalist that has
ever held in this country the responsible office of
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Turning to the
Customs alone, we find there a decrease
upon the last quarter of £364,000 as compared with
the corresponding quarter of the preceding twelve-
month. Nay, we find a decrease upon the whole
year in the Customs, as compared with 1859, of
£1,792,184, or but £207,816 less than a decrease
(upon Customs alone !) of £2,000,000. A diminu-
tion traceable at once directly to the Commercial
Treaty proposed during 1860 between France and
England. Of the operation of that Commercial
Treaty, however, this decrease of £1,792,184
is but the commencement. Happily the de-
crease upon. Customs thus caused during 1860
by the early operation of the Commercial Treaty
with France—the benefits of which Treaty must
still for a long while remain, to say the least of
them, exceedingly problematical—happily that
particular decrease upon Customs during the last
twelvemonth has been rendered less in the long
run by an appreciable increase under other items,
such as corn, and rum, and tea, in the varied
receipts of the Customs Revenue. Another decrease
of a large and noticeablekind will be found recorded
in another division of this last tabulated abstract
from the Treasury—namely under the head of
Excise, where there has !been a falling off actually
within the last quarter, of a round sum of
£1,000,000, nay of Xl,OOO over and aboval,ooo,ooo.
Attributable variously, this large decrease upon the
quarter, to a diminished consumption of spirits,
to the postponement of the Hop Duty, but princi-
pally and above all to the recent reduction of the
Malt Credit. While, however, there has been that
considerable decrease in Customs' receipts upon
the last quarter a decrease, as we have shown, of
more than a whole million sterling, there has.been
an increase upon the last year amounting to as
much as £28,000 in this branch of the Revenue.
An increase, it is curious, and to Mr. GLADSTONE
it ought to be actually cautionary, to note—not
merely to the circumstance of the transfer to the Ex-
cise of the duty collected on Game Certificates
not merely to the increase upon the year
on Hops and on Licenses, but (0 ye gods
and little fishes !) it is attributable also to
an increased productiveness in the receipts drawn
from the duty levied upon PAPER ! What may
be Mr. GLADSTONE'S feelings upon noting little
jottings down like these upon the Revenue
returns for 1860, it would be at once
amusing and instructive to learn. As it would

_ • _
certainly be interesting to know what his sensa-
tions might be when conning the returns of the

Income Tax for 1860, remembering his distinct pre-
dictions upon this point some seven years ago, pre-
dictions since then again and again reiterated,
voluntarily and even obtrusively ! Compare those
predictions of his, by the way, the whole elabo-

rated scheme of his policy, for the diminu.

tion gradually, bit by bit, and eventually for
the extinction of the Income-tax altogether in 1860 !
—with the return of the aggregate proceeds of the
perpetuated and (increased Income-tax (in 1860 !)
the enormous slim, namely, of £12,901,816

—or merely a trifle under £13,000,000, extorted
from the country under the detested name

of the Income Tax, extorted within the very
year in 'which that abhorred Income Tax was
to " cease and determine," while the identical finan-

cier who had ostentatiouslypre-arranged all this stil
holds office as her MAJESTY'S Chancellor of the Ex.

checiaer. Recollecting these and a few other ugly
, .

facts suggested to us by the Revenue Rectums just
published, and conscious that we have only to look
forward, both in Customs and in Excise, to pro-
bable diminutions, and to certain and unavoidable

fluctuations, while we may feel disposed, cordially
and seasonably, after the manner of Tiny Tim,
to wish, upon this New Year's Day, a Happy New
Year to Everybody—we can hardly venture,
through fear of an imputation of irony, to include
under that noun of multitude the name of the Right
Hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Count TELEKY is liberated. But the matter can-
not be so hushed up, Only a few days ago we had
a trial in an English Court of Justice, in which the
wonder to judge, jury, and the public was that the
defendant had utterly lost shame. He had seduced
a respectable young woman, debauched her min d
by acts we need not repeat ; and having thus de-
praved her habits by the unheard-of depravity of his
own, he settled disputes with 'her by the cart-whip,
and by paying servants to knock her down. Yet,
though being a wealthy man, he could have settled
all amicably by a pecuniary indemnity of no moment
to him, he did not hesitate to let the quarrel between
them come to a trial ; and, without the prospect of
gaining a farthing by it, to proclaim to the world
greater by
his own unexampled infamy—all the
being the cause of hers.
Just such a preposterous act of shamelessness is
that of Austria in the instance of Count TELEKY.
It was gratuitous self-exposure, and that, as in the
case alluded to, by including in her own disgrace
the humiliation of another Government. In Venetia,
for instance, revolting as Austrian brutalities end
government are there, the tyrant's pretext has
something in it—" I must humble and crush, or
give up. A despot's necessity compels me to be a
brute." Be it so. No necessity whatever required
that Austrian police should have known that Count
LAIASLAUS TELEKY was in a neighbouring State at
all. To avoid all unpleasantness he had travelled
under an assumed name. Austria had no
occasion, if she knew she could do it,