The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-13 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 13, 1844

Be it remembered that the essential premises, predi...
cated by the Tamworth practitioner, of his proposed
remedy have been suspiciously underrated. The pro-
duct of the new tax has largely exceeded his avowed
anticipations on the subject, and this excess of its
product has not elicited any announcement as to the
accelerated termination of the experiment. Parlia-
ment itself, without distinction of party, seems dis-
posed to congratulate the Premier on the language of
the Speech from the Throne, on the auspicious dis-
tinction of this year in the fact of the revenue
being fully adequate to defray all the charges of the
expenditure. Ministers assume a lofty tone of
self gratulation at having achieved this re-
sult ; and the Opposition forbear to remind
them that it has been accomplished by the
revival in a period of profound peace of the most
odious and inquisitorial of taxes ever resorted to in time
of war. Even the economists—apt to watch with
jealous vigilance the increase of customary, or the in-
troduction of new items of charge on the estimates—
abstain from showing that by how much the antici-
pated product is exceeded by the actual receipt on
account of the income-tax, by so much is a case of
irresistible force made out for the reduction of the
rate of per centage. They forget to insist that, in
the alternative of retaining the present per cent ige,
yielding this excess of product, a case as unanswer-
able is established for the-Minister's abridging the
term during which this iniquitous impost shall be
levied on our overburdened country. Finally, per-
haps, from very weariness, they cease to expose the
juggle of a surplus income, derived not from the legi-
timate yield of previously-imposed taxation, more or
less equal, but from the screw force brought to bear
upon private property and income, by the application
,f that perilous and unnatural high pressure which
the most inapt of financial Ministers has ever ven-
tured to invoke under similar circumstances.

Surely some Member of the House of Commons
will presently call on the Premier for an explicit
statement of the views entertained by her Majesty's
Government on these points. The country has a
right to demand how much longer it is intended to
charge upon her a growing tax, which she consented
to bear only ow• the express assurance, that it would
be so charged for a very limited period, and on the
express assumption, that its annual produce would re-
present a sum greatly inferior to that which it is now
realizing. And should the Member, who may make
this demand, be met with one of those petulent "flings"
of official ill-humour, or personal arrogance, with
which Mr. PATTISON, the representative of London re-
turned, instead of " BARING the preferred," was res-
ponded to the other evening, on his question touching
the sugar duties, we trust he will not lose so fair an
opportunity of apprising the Premier with what sen-
timents of disgust and indignation the public at large
regard the Right Hon. Baronet's whole scheme of
income-tax—with what hostile suspicion they scan all
his acts in connexion therewith. Let him lay bare to the
Right Hon. Baronet's observation, and the judgment of
the Legislature, the whole iniquity of that character-
istic selfishness and egoisme which must have devised
the principle and determined the scope of this tax--
a principle and a scope of common application to the
ducal rent-roll of hundreds of thousands per annum,
and the starving salary of 1501. a year. Let him
show how the inheritors of splendid patrimonies, the
recipients of large public salaries, the dispensers of
)fficial patronage, have responded to that "impera-
tive State necessity" which has been relied upon for
the justsflcation of this intolerable expedient. Let
him illustrate the fairness and_ equity with
which only sevenpence in the pound is abstracted
'rom the redundant income of the great proprietors
and large capitalists, and wealthy nobles, in whose
revenues this amount creates scarcely any
.sensible
diminution ; and so much as 7d. in the pound is
equally taken from the small tradesmen, the ill-paid
clerk, the toiling artisan, or the thrifty small annui-
tant, to diminish their respective pittances below that
point at which they had hitherto managed to maintain
themselves out of the reach of debt and its concomi-
tant disquietudes. The tyranny of Sir Ron Ear, as a
financier, is the exact converse of Procrustes as a
destroyer of his species. The tyrant lopped off limb
And member from all whose proportions exceeded the
limits of his iron bed. The Minister cuts down, after
one and the same measurement, all incomes which
can be made to come within the limits of his not less
cruel " standard."