The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-16 00:00:00

example, upon the vote for stationery, or the reduc-
tion by £lO,OOO upon establishment charges far the
half-year], the estimated surplus will be thereby
further reduced by £665,000 net loss on the repeal
of the paper duties, dating that repeal, as we have
seen and remarked, simply from the Ist of October.
By yielding up thus altogether £1,515,000—
namely £665,000 by the abolition of the paper duty,
and £850,000 by the penny deducted from the
Income Tax—the estimated surplus upon the year,
originally set down at £1,923,000, will be so far
reduced that there will remain only a moderate
residue of surplus upon the financial twelvemonth
of less than half a million, or just £408,000. So
that, according to this scheme of arrangement, the
balance-sheet of the nation for 1861-1862 will show,
as opposed to our estimated expenditure of
£69,900,000, an estimated revenue, not of
£71,823,000, but of £70,308,000. The nation
holding still within its grasp at the end of the year
a balance of £408,000 over and above its still enor-
mous though diminished expenditure, a net surplus
of nearly half a million out of an estimated revenue
(wisely, of course,) still more considerable.
Who shall say that Mr. GLADSTONE'S proposi-
tions in this remarkable Budget Speech, in what
we cannot but regard dispassionately, as (when
viewed as a whole) this truly admirable and
certainly very masterly financial statement—who
Shall say that the fiscal and financial propositions
of Mr. GLADSTONE are not adroit to the uttermost
stretch of adroitness ? None, we may safely aver,
in the first instance will venture to assert anything
so ridiculous as that the tenth penny upon the In-
come Tax should be at once frankly remitted, as
Mr. GLADSTONE proposes to remit it—in the
presence of this estimated surplus upon the year of
£1,923,000. A momentary doubt, it is true, may
occur to some in respect to the other means
adopted by Mr. GLADSTONE for availing himself
of that novel advantage of a net surplus upon the
year's balance of revenue over expenditure—the
repeal of the paper duties from the Ist of October,
and the consequent loss of £665,000 upon the half of
the financial twelvemonth ! A momentary doubt,
we say, may occur to some minds in regard to the
reasonableness or the urgency of this particular
proposition. Mr. DODSON may go for the remis-
sion by preference of the hop duties—Mn HAD-
FIELD for the diminution of the duty upon fire
assurance—Mr. HENNESSY (wonderful sugges-
tion !) for the equalisation of the duties on coffee
and chicory—Mr. BALL for the satisfactory settle-
ment, at last, of the malt tax—Mr. CAVE
for the diminution of the tea and sugar duties
simultaneously—a great many, their name being
legion, for the dropping, in preference to the paper
k duty, of another penny upon the income tax ! A
bold proposition certainly this last, under the
circumstances, seeing that a penny upon the income
tax involves the question of £1,100,000 upon the year
being swept from the estimated revenue—or at any
rate, allowing that the ninth penny, while following
the lead of the tenth, its predecessor in remission,
be also yielded up only upon three-fourths of the
financial twelvemonth, the second penny thus de-
ducted from the aggregate returns under the income
tax involves the notion of sweeping aside
close upon another million from the estimated
revenue of £71,823,000 thereby running
the extreme of hazard of transforming a probable
surplus into an almost inevitable deficit. No ; let
any one dispassionately regard the position in which
the country stands, in which the House of Com-
mons stands, in which for that matter, too, we
might even say the House of Lords itself stands
(victor though it was, last year, in that all but un-
constitutional contention between the two
great chambers of the legislature) in regard to
that question of the paper duty and its
repeal—and it is as nearly as anything of
this kind can be impossible to do otherwise
than admit that in presence of a still
considerable surplus, after having conceded the re-
mission of a penny—the tenth penny—upon the
Income-tax, Mr. GLADSTONE in this matter had
really, se to speak, no alternative. The frank and
manly course at once followed in respect to this
revival of the paper duty repeal this session tit will
be allowed under the very different circumstances !
in the presence of a considerable surplus instead of
in sight of a formidable deficit ! accompanying the
proposition, moreover, this year with a di»ainution
by one penny, instead of, as last year, with
an increase by one penny of the detested
Income-tax] the frank and manly course
in respect to the revival of the paper duties repeal
question,followed out last evening by the hon. and
learned gentleman the member for Wallingford,
has about it, we cannot but think, a very auspicious
significance. However this may be—there is the
Financial Statement now fully and clearly, and,
as a whole, we cannot but think most satisfactorily,
placed before the country by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. To pronounce anything like a defini-
tive opinion upon each and all of its elaborately
interwoven and exquisitely complicated details,
requires, as a matter of course, from the House,
from the country, from the journalist, from the
members generally, but especially from those num-
bered in the ranks of her MAJESTY'S Opposition, a
most calm, candid, and deliberate consideration.
Already, however, upon the first blush—with not
much anticipation in the inner recesses of our judg-
ment, that, in regard to this particular section of
the Budget, second thoughts are likely to be better,
or, for that matter, to be in any way different-140
hesitate not at once to avow the cordial satisfaction
with which we recognise the remissions adventured
upon by Mr. GLADSTONE under the encouragement
of his estimated surplus of £1,923,000. Referring
to the highly beneficial, because directly and
appreciably reproductive consequence of reducing
gradually our indirect taxes, the right hon. gentle-
man spoke of those almost magical results as re-
minding him of VIRGIL's misletoe, as described
by the Sybil—

ti - Primo avulso non deficit alter
" Aureus ; et simili frondescit virga metallo."
The Sybilline hag adding to this the wholesome
advice—

"Ergo alto vestiga oculis, et rite, repertum,
" Carpe manu."
Applying to himself the happy augury latent in
the words that follow immediately thereupon, Mr.
GLADSTONE might have articulated them with
greater force as words applicable to the proposed
remission by him of this penny of direct taxation,
and to the proposed repeal altogether of one of the
most vexatious items in our still large and motley
scheme of indirect taxation.

" -nanique ipse volens facilisque sequetur,
Si to feta vocant : aliter, non viribus ullis,
Vincere, nec duro poteris convellere ferro."
Armed with his trenchant surplus of nearly
two millions sterling, there can be little
probability that those two golden branches,
genzine super arbore, which he is now
bent upon abstracting, will resist his efforts
to tear them away. The Fates that call him now are
obviously more propitious than they were a year ago.
And as to the golden boughs themselves—when
abstracted from the parent trunk of our gigantic
Upas of Taxation—if in nothing else they will be
productive, we may be assured of that, of an im-
mense amount of popular satisfaction.

One bitter mortification, the first result of seces-
sion, the Disunited States of America have already
witnessed—the Spanish flag hoisted on the Island
of St. Domingo. But a few years ago Mr.