The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-30 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1859.

Lord JOHN RUSSELL and Reform ! we hope we
shall have one day to give with all the honours ;
to-day we give Lord JOHN RUSSELL and Italy ! with
three times three. Heartily, unreservedly, we re-
joice in his announcement of foreign policy at
Aberdeen ; it is worthy of him, and worthy of his
country, and this part of his speech will be read
with pride by every Englishman. Without a syl-
lable of threatening to any power, without a word
of vain-glorious boasting of what is due to Eng.
land's dignity, without a sentence of such solemn
bluster as every now and then appears in the
Moniteur, the Foreign Secretary of England has
maintained our position in the business-like, rea-
sonable language which best commends itself to
his own countrymen, and which must weigh with
• Foreign Courts and Cabinets.
As to our general position, he justly says it
ought to be such a one that " if we forbear, our for-
' bearanee should be the forbearance of strength."
It has been the object of one great continental
monarch to bring about a different result, and to
render forbearance, on our part, a prudent calcula-
tion of the strength of a fleet built to vie with ours,
and for nothing else. Lord JOHN RUSSELL speaks
the general feeling of the country when, as its
Foreign Minister, he advertises all Europe that
this is not to be. England objects to shedding
more blood on the Italian question, but it is not
because she cannot match her navy with the navies
of the whole Continent. She thinks that common
sense and reason ought to avail between nations,
and she will try what it can do. Able to strike,
she will strike only with the force of argument,
unless she should be driven to another course by
unquestionably hostile movements.
And admirably, all must confess, does Lord JorrN
put the arguments for leaving Italy to the Italians.
He saves the pritle of Austria by showing that
France could not, when she tried to do it, govern
Italy. Be saves the pride of France by showing
that Austria could succeed no better ; shutting up
both to the conclusion that the Italians themselves
could best govern themselves. " A general full of
youth, full of genius, full of capacity of every kind,
both for war and civil appointments ”-

'—ev en

he only caused the Lombards sixty years
ago to sigh for emancipation from France ; and
France must make the best of the compliment to
her general, and of the fact. Since 1814 Austria
had, by the decree of the Great Powers, tried her
hand in governing Italy, and with the result, as
mildly phrased by Lord JOHN, that the Italians had
become every year more and more averse to her
rule. Both the great neighbours of Italy are out
of court as candidates for acceptable governors of
the Italian piminsula.

Well, another great man arises in 1859, and
affords the Italians an opportunity freely to state
afresh what they would have. and, with one voice,
they tell us their one wish. That wish Lord JOHN
RUSSELL is determined, so far as English influence
can effect it , sh all be respected. Should a congress be
Proposed h o will make it a sine qua non of Eng-

land's having anything to do :with it, that no
foreign force shall be used to interfere with the
right of the people to manage their own concerns.
" A right," Lord JOHN says with homely
but telling truth, " not very different from
that of a man—say in this city of Aberdeen
—to regulate his own house !" There, gentlemen
of the Holy Alliance of 1815, meditate upon that
homely English sentence of an English Foreign
Secretary, when receiving the honour of the free-
dom of a British university town. It may be a
better text for you than one you once had from the
German Consort of her MAJESTY, that this old
" Constitution of ours was on its trial."
Lord JOHN is not content, however, with
giving them the mere principle, he will meet
objections. What if a man so regulate his
house as to endanger setting his neighbour's
house on fire ? Well, good ; his neighbours
would no doubt put a strait jacket on him, or
take his house under their own care ; but the very re-
verse is the case in Central Italy. While Austrians
were dominant, their part of it, at least, was at the
mercy of brigands, and hardly safe to live in.
The other parts were groaning beneath the
Dukes, till every republican plotter had a chance
to conspire or agitate. Since Italians have got rid
of Foreign influence the house is quiet ; the Ro-
magna is free from brigands, and no one who
would mar their efforts to secure a regular quiet
constitutional government under VICTOR EM-
MANUEL, can gain a hearing. There is not a
chance for the despots by force of either arms or
arguments. The two Emperors, Lord JOHN says,
have given up the first kind of force, and the
second is altogether with the Italian themselves.
Even the editor of the Moniteur —the editor, we
mean, now knows this so well that he publishes
in his journal that the last hopes of a NAPOLEON
in Italy are at an end. And we are to believe the
very idea to have been a calumny ! Amen !—let it
be what. the Moniteur pleases so long as central
Italy is left to choose its own master.
Very glad are we to see England thus speaking,
and speaking through a man who is on this ques-
tion at least but following out the antecedents of
his former life. We may forgive LOUIS NAPOLEON
and Lord JOHN a good deal if they between them
give us a free Italy. We have only to whisper in
Lord JOHN'S ear, that we mean, too, to be a little
freer ourselves.

India will now be saved—she is to have an incom-
tax. Two or three times this graceless and merci-
less impost has saved England, and now its virtues
are to be tried on our vast but bankrupt colony.
Just at the same moment, too, that we learn the
financial doings of our Calcutta magnates, we have
Mr. JAMES WILSON, the very impersonation of
statistical arithmetic, pruning his wings for a flight
to India, and performing, much like the swallows,
who are also preparing for their voyage, little
flights in Indian finance, at Sheffield and Hawick.
What he will say to the doings of his compeers—
for we are told he is to be as great a man in India
as the Chancellor of the Exchequer here—when he
arrives at the Government house on the banks of
Hooghly, we are not permitted to know. The
fiscal proposals now before the Governor-General in
Council were known when he spoke at Hawick ; but
whether they are the prelusive dawn of the Wil-
sonian mind on the East, or whether they will need
revision in the light of his greater knowledge, Mr.
WILSON did not vouchsafe to tell his old friends at
Hawick.

One class of taxes which have been proposed
cannot be very pleasing to Mr.WlLsoN's somewhat
Manchester mind. New taxes on imports into
India will appear to him like an attack on Man-
chester cottons; Burton ale, and such kinds of
things, he would not mind, perhaps—that cannot
be made in India; but to tax what is so largely
produced in India itself by hand labour, will in his
eyes violate every principle of free trade. Pro-
bably he regards it as the temporary expedient of
a crisis. He announces free trade as the finincial
saviour of India ; but, he will not think it free trade
to have cotton goods taxed when they come
from England to India, and not taxed when they
are produced in India. A general augmentation
of Customs duties is, however, the first proposal.
And as it falls heaviest on luxuries, and the natives
use but few of them, it is assumed to be a tax on
Europeans chiefly. The trade of India is, however,
gradually increasing, and its exports so far Qxceed
its imports, that it has taken £26,000,000 of silver
in five years to pay the difference! a circumstance
which has, we are told, caused a general rise of

prices in Bengal.
The Income-tax does not seem likely to be
popular ; everything else is likely to be taxed •to
the uttermost it will bear, not overlooking an in-
crease of the odious salt tax, which Sir Jollsi PAR-
INGTON will not forget to notice—it seems therefore
to Anglo.lndians as if, after having been bled at
every pore, some large artery was now to be cut in
addition. But, most ungracioutiof all, the cove-
nanted civil service, the highest paid service in the
world, exempts itself from tax!! When Sir ROBERT
PEEL proposed an income tax to redress the balance
of finance and to enable him to commence his Free-
trade policy in this country, our QUEEN sent a mes-
sage by him to the House, that should Parliament
find it desirable to adopt such a measure, she wished
her own income to be subject to the same deductions
as those of her subjects, and one'schedule especially
provided for the assessment of our Government
officials down to a minimum salary. In India the
QUEEN'S respresentative and the Government in-
troduce an Income-tax Bill, under which all em-
ployments but their own are to be taxed!—all, except
of necessity, the poor ryots, who, as they already
pay about eighteen shillings in the pound, are mer-
cifully supposed to have paid enough. Bankers are
the highest class subjected to the income tax, they are
to pay £2OO or £lOO a year for exercising their call_
ing. Thence the scale descends till the lowest
taxed trade—the costermongers of India, we sup-
pose, are to pay 4s. per annum into the Indian
Exchequer for leave to buy and sell their wares.
After all, we arc told by the Indian journals that
there will be a deficiency of 63- millions in India,
besides at least as much in this country, and of this
they do not expoct the new taxes will meet more
than 11 millions ; 5 millions still to make good !
Mr. WILSON, no doubt, lays his finger on the
remedy—the army must be reduced. The native
army is now larger than it was before the mutiny.
The European army four times as large, to watch
such an enormous native force. This must all be
put an end to, although it may destroy a vast
amount of military patronage. If, as Mr. WILSON
says, the Indian army is to cost £21,000,000 per
annum, we had better have done with the country
at once. It will not pay for occupation, govern-
ment we will not call it, at such a cost. The Pun-
jaub was disarmed successfully; Oude is now dis-
armed ; and we are told disarmament is to be uni-
versal. Let it be so ; and then, if we reduce our
native army as quickiy as non-enlistment, and em•
ployment in China, or elsewhere, render possible,
and our European army by sending home super-
fluous regiments, we may soon have an army which
is amply sufficient for the peace of India, and not
ruinous to her exchequer.

An income tax is. however, a fair thing for the
wealthier natives of India, who contribute now

next to nothing to the Government under which
they amass their naoney. It must, however, be
made to bear fairly on all men of large incomes or
property. A Goirernor-General and his Council
ought to pay double rather than nothing.