The Sun.
London, England, 1850-02-14 00:00:00

!arming 21111.

LONDON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1850.

Elsewhere, in our impression of this evening,
will be found extracted an article from the Times
against, and another from the Daily News in
favour of, the abolition of the system of taxation
upon knowledge. Yesterday, we ourselves,
in commenting on the postponed motion of
Mr. MILNER GIBSON, and on the admirable pamphlet
of Mr. CLIABLES KNIGHT, adverted to the subject
upon which public discussion is now being revived.
Yet, without those recent expressions of our opinion,
it would have been by no means difficult for.the readers
of The Sun to conjecture the nature of the principles
advocated by us in reference to a matter of such
paramount importance—even bad not our sen-
timents in this regard been already for
very long time upon record. Our views, in-
deed, respecting the pernicious influence exercised
over the intellect and the morality of the community
by the imposts upon paper and the unequal tax upon
advertisements, are sufficiently well known to render
apparent at a glance the direction of our coincidence
between the conflicting arguments of our two morn
ing contemporaries. On turning to those arguments,
it will be seen that the Times, before adventuring
up= the delicate and brittle ground of the discus•
slop, premises that, at any rate, it is absolutely in-
eumbent upon us to wait until the national debt be
paid off before we attempt to remit this, among
other descriptions of taxation. Such a postpone-
ment, it must surely be manifest, would
prove somewhat about equivalent to the Greek
Kalendr. Or, at the very least, a procrastination so
understood would be nothing less than tantamount to
the indefinite period comprehended in the phrase
sine die ; for certainly the day of such reform would,
in truth, be altogether delved sine cke, unless indeed
the day meant in the reservation is doomsday. We
are told, moreover, simultaneously with this assurance,
by the Times, that our national debt is the result of
our " redundant heroism," the attestation of our
glory the token of those honourable scars and
gashes which the last two generations received in the
hour of their victories. gor these reasons it is as-
serted that the interest, if not the principal of that
debt, must continue to be paid with all possible
punctuality. That interest we are reminded can
oily be obtained from the nation through the medium
of taxation : and hence for the national credit, if not
in consideration of our past heroism, glory, and
victories, that taxation must be maintained, those
creditors upon the State must be paid even to the
uttermost farthing—what though it be at the expense
of the national intellect, and of the national morality,
though the required " pound of flesh" be in dangerous
vicinage to the popular heart, though the men of
England be reduced to the necessity of " dropping
their blood for drachma !" Now, with all submis-
sion, we conceive it compatible with the
closest adherence to truth to give a very
different version indeed of the nature and 1
origin of this same incubus 'yclept the National
Debt. That Debt, we are bold to aver, was a debt
incurred to save the property of the aristocracy. the
poor being ever since then ground down for the pe-
riodical payment of its interest. That is the root of
it. Twit is the poisonous seed out of which this de-
structive and desolating Ulna of England has grown
up to such colossal magnitude. To preserve the
Wealth of Indolence a debt was created, which has
ever since then drained away the bast part cf the
Rages of Industry. And, talk as they may about the
advantage of ultimately paying off this enormous
Debt, the annuitants upon the Public Funds are the
very last who would really wish to witness its liquida-
tion—and why ? because they are the very last per-
eons who could st all hope to obtain employment.
Turning, therefore, at once from this visionary
postponement of the projected reform, to an indefinite,
we had almost said an impossible, period ; and look-
ing directly into the nature of the arguments brought
'Amara by our contemporaries in this disputation,
F. are *forcibly struck with the anomaly of the