The Sun.
London, England, 1850-09-27 00:00:00

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[PRICE SD.

engines are only in the proportion of one-horse power
to every ten tons, she started remarkably well against
tide, and will evidently realise the expectation that
she will make six knots per hour with steam alone.
She appears a very fine vessel, and admirably adapted
for the service she is to be employed upon--the cap-
ture of slavers on the coast of Africa. The Monkey
steam-vessel went down at the same time to try her
engines.

THE ARMY.
The following has just been issued for no guidance of
commanding officers of regiments:—
" (Circular, No. 1,073.)
" War-office, Sept. 19, 1850.
am directed by the Secretary at War to
annex for your information and guidance a statement of
the daily rates of allowance to general and other staff-
officers, and to field and staff-officers of infantry regi-
ments, in lieu of forage for the horses required to be
kept by them for the public service, for the half-year
from April 1, 1850, to September 30, 1850, agreeably to
which the charge for forage will be allowed.
" I am to add that if a charge at a different rate has
been already made, the same should be corrected accord-
ing to the said statement.
" I have, &c.,
" L. SufavAN.
" Officer commanding the Regiment of .lf
Statement:of the daily rates of allowance in lieu of forage
for the period from the Ist of April, 18i0, to the 30th
of September, 1850:
GREAT BRITAIN.
Rate of
Counties. Allowance,
S. D.
Berks 1 7
Chester ... 1 8
Devon
Dorset
Essex 1 9
Gloucester 1 7
Hants 1 9
Kent
Lancaster
Leicester
Middlesex 1 7
Norfolk 1 7
Northampton 1 8
Northumberland
Nottingham
Somerset
Suffolk
Sussex
Warwick
Worcester 1 9
York
Wales 1 7
North Britain
The counties in
which there are 1 7
no contracts
Monmouth 1 7
Jersey
Guernsey

IRELAND.

'Rate of
Counties. Allowance.

S. D.

.._ _.
I Antrim
Armagh...ll
Carlow
Cavan 1 4
Clare 1 4
Cork
Donegal 1 4
Down 1 4
Dublin
Fermanagh .
Galway 1 4
Kerry 1 4
Kildare
Kilkenny
King's County
Leitrim
Limerick
Londonderry 1 4
Longford
Louth 1 4
Mayo 1 3
Meath
Monaghan 1 5
Queen's County
Roscommon
Sligo: 1 4
Tipperary 1 3
Tyrone
Waterford 1 4
Westmeath
Wexford
Wicklow

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM TILE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TlDlES.—Everybody is asking what has become
of the Protectionists. For some years past they have
come out with unusual force at this season, and we
were as sure to have a demonstration by Lord Stan-
hope or Mr. Newdegate, or the Marquis of Granby,
as a fat goose on Michaelmas-day. It makes one
shudder to think of the dreadful auguries and stern
denunciations that began with the falling leaf, and
fell in one continuous shower till Midwinter. But
now all is still in the agricultural atmosphere. The
equinoxial gales will return in due season, but no
Duke of Richmond or Mr. Disraeli. Sir John Tyrell
is quiet, and the Earl of Winchilsea at peace with
mankind. We will confess ourselves not yet recon-
ciled to the change. Like the lady who could not
sleep except on the ground-floor of her mansion in
Piccadilly, we miss the rumble of Protectionists.
Their tameness is shocking to us. With the single
exception of the friendship they have struck up with
the draymen of Bankside, they have hardly stirred
a finger or wagged a tongue since the prorogation.
Lord Stanley has made a speech at Warrington
so full of civility and kindness to all parties as
hardly to he worth a report. At Newark, on Tues-
day, Mr. Hiblyard, whose contest with Lord Lincoln
rent the county in twain, could only recommend
landlords to lower their rents, and tenants to employ
more labourers, so as to save the first from the Ga-
zette, and the last from the union. The furious
Chowler interrupted him in vain, for the meeting was '
all for peace. 'What does this presage ? Is it the lull
before the storm, or are we really ab,mt to have a
grand fraternal embrace of all classes? Has Ana-
chassis Kloots really carried the day ? Even the
Standard would be content with the destruction of
Lombard-street, and the Herald would be happy but
for the spectacle of Mordecai sitting in the gate.
Possibly so small an affair as our extinction would
satisfy them both. Nor is this all. Where are all
the calamities with which we are threatened ? The
land is not gone out of cultivation. Excursion trains
have visited Stonehenge, and returned without encoun-
tering either bustards or lions. The southdowns are
disappearing under the plough, and half the Wash is
being rescued from the ocean. As for the labourers,
who by this time were to be laying themselves down
to die at the door of the House of Commons, we bear
everywhere the complaint that, like the emancipated
" niggers," they are getting quite saucy. In spite
of the most tremendous difficulty, a dearth
of material, the cotton mills manage to keep
et work. There is distress, it is true, for the
Irish bubble, and the colonial bubble, and the rail-
way bubble have all burst. Vicious systems will ul-
timately work themselves out, and frantic speculation
will end in a collapse. But, somehow, the mass of the people are enjoying a great deal of vulgar pros-
perity. One cannot help asking, ,then, when is the
explosion to come ? The catastrophe hangs fire.
England's sun is a long time setting. That sad event
was confidently announced twenty years ago, but it
has not yet taken place, on the testimony of alarm-
ists themselves, for they still predict it. So far, how-
ever, from the old alarm being fulfilled, a new alarm
has almost supplanted it in the timid and prophetic
Protectionist soul. The present fear is that the
foreigners about to visit us on the pretence of the
Exhibition next year, finding themselves in a
vast majority, hating England, and being
perfectly unanimous, will seize the me-
tropolis and declare a republic; or, at all events, do
us a mischief of some sort or other. Well, one nail
drives out another. A. succession of bugbears is not
quite so oppressive as a constant one. Depend upon
it we shall have something else next year—the ap-
proach of a comet, or the conflagration of the Thames.
The middle classes have been very severely punished.
We have gone through a social revolution. The last
five years have scattered, partly over the rest of so-
ciety, and partly to the winds, the hard earnings of
many industrious families. It could not be other•
wise when the vast majority of the middle class, of
commercial and professional men, were the victims
of a mania in which they bought dearly what was
good for nothing, and undertook what was impos-
sible. Misfortunes seldom come alone, and they that
halted to become rich have found their difficulties
aggravated by famine and revolution. Hence pro-
perty has been destroyed, and property has changed
hands. But the labouring classes of this country
have been gainers. One of the most striking fea-
tures of the last five years, and of the present hour, is
the number of persons rising from the ranks. In-
dustry already gives proofs of its emancipation. The
wealth, and consequently the power, of the country
have been distributed among a larger and a humbler
class of owners. They have been divided as it were
into premiums for industry and talent, and have re-
warded the exertions of innumerableg
persons pushing
the way upwards from the louh, the shop l, and
the loom. It has often been co
mplained that v
the ten-
dencies of our social state are toomuch in favour of
accumulation, and that the many are continually sa-
crificed for the aggrandisement of the few. Un-
questionably these tendencies are still at work, RAILWAY SHARE MARKETS.
and many great fortunes hare been made, and BRISTOL, Szrr. 26.
houses established on the commercial devasta-
Smelt Excilk.waß.—The share market was firm to-day,
tions of the last five years. But it is equally
transactionand
reported being—Midland, 41.
prices remain without any material deviation, the only
certain that what the middle classes have lost has ILIVERPOOL SEPT. 26.
not been altogether, or even mainly, swept up by SeocK EXCHANGE.—The share market was firm to-day
the giants of commerce. The more important result at the quotations. Midland and Dover shares commanded
considerable The transactions were as follow:—
of the recent crisis has been the elevation of the work-
L ncashire and Yorkshire, Consolidated, 4734—Ditto, Fifths,
ing classes—the greater independence and comfort of
8% dis.—London and North-Western 114 —Ditto, New
the whole, and the ascent of many among them to Quarters, 2 p.—Ditto, Quarters (C), 2 p.—Manchester,
superior and more lucrative employment. Such we Sheffield, and Lincolnshile, 18'4 Midland, 42 Ditto,
Halves, 221,f., dis.- SliTsburyoand Birmingham ( B), 2 13 16
believe to be a fair account of the last five years. The
, 2 (No. 4). Regis-
disasters of that period are now becoming matters of t6he ast_eorr7
I k and
North Midland, 20L/9—Dutch Rhenish,
Regis-
history ; its benefits survive and grow. We never
5 die.— Lancaster and Carlisle, Thirds, 234' p.—Newcastle
have denied the existence of much calamity and Cis • and Carlisle, /s North Briti-h, 6% —North Union (B.),
tress, even though sure to see our statements tor- 166: —Shrewsbury and Chester ( Oswestry and Chester),
tured into admissions against the operation of free 6!.i—Ditto, Preference, guaranteed tl per Cent., 123 q•
• 26t*t active
asfollto-day,
trade. But free trade is now at length fairly in ope- _roar
Excn MaAaN. C H
bEeS
T mTEarik'etSwk:as
ration, and we may begin to form a judgment upon ; prices were firm. The transactionsprwe•ere
it. 'Where, then, is the ruin ? what state do we and
East Lancashire 10—Great Northern, 12 dis.—Lancoaswhi;
find ourselves ? n a state not of ruin, but of reco- ! and Yorkshire, 4,71/I.—• itto, Fifths, BC. die.—London and
very. Notwithstanding a more than usual allowance North-Western, New Quarters, 2 p.—Ditto, Manchester and
Birmingham,ualrtBerspTdo,
('luca.rtper.—s laonclhesster, Sheffield,
of difficulties, the country is now in a far more pros-
),
dLincolnshire,
Central, IVA —llropshire Union 344 die.—South-Eastern
peal of the corn-laws.
DAILY NE WS.—A representative system of and Dover, 20—Ditto Consul. (No. 4), 63/4 C. -
YORK, SEPT. 25.
government has its defects as well as advantages. The Srocis EXCHANGE.—The transactions to-day were as fol-
low:—Great Northern, 115 A—York, Newcastle, and Der-
latter, indeed, incalculably overbalance the former ;
wick 1s _Ditto (ex, E. rgrcheee), 444.
but that j 5 Ay ref why Nch defects should Aot be •

TRAGICAL EVENT.
Yong, THURSDAY.—Two events of a painful and
tragical nature have occurred in this city, viz the
suicide of one female, and the supposed death, h'y her
own act, of another.
The first victim was a woman about forty years of
age, named Burton, who, along with her husband,
kept a lodging and coffee house for the accommoda-
tion of railway passengers, opposite the station in
Tanner-row. She has had a family of two or three
children, and she and her partner have lived very
comfortably together, but for the last three-quarters
cf a year she has been afflicted with an internal com-
plaint. For this she had been at Buxton, and it was
thought that her health had much improved. No-
thing peculiar was observed in her conduCt on Tues-
day, but she attended her domestic duties as usual as
well as her strength would allow. In the ercning
she went upstairs, and some time afterwards the door
of her room was discovered to be fastened. A ladder
was obtained, by which the room was entered and
the door unfastened, and on the husband going into
the room with a candle a dreadful spectacle presented
itself. His wife was Li I extended on the bed
with two fearful gashes in her throat, and life quite
extinct. There was a rsz nr and a pool of blood on
(
the floor, and a portion of the blood Ir-A trickled
through the fLoring into the room below. Mr.
Keyworth, surgeon, was sent for, but of course too late
to render the female any assistance. An inquest was
held yesterday before Mr. Wood, the coroner, and
the jury returned a verdict that the deceased had cut
her throat whilst labouring under temporary insanity.
The second inquest was held the same day on the
body of a young female named Smith, who had
drowned herself. This event happened on the same
night. The deceased had been labouring for some
time under a depression of spirits, and had complained
that she could not appear in as decent clothes as any
other person. She had declared she would drown
herself: She was heard to fall into the Ouse by some
person near, and immediately to utter the exclama-
tion, "Oh dear I" An alarm was raised, but no
assistance could be rendered, and she sunk. There
was no positive evidence as to how she got into the
water, and therefore a verdict of " Found drowned"
was recorded.

admitted, provided for, and remedied. The greatest
defect of a representative system, perhaps, is, that
the class most powerful in the representation of a
country will always be the most lightly taxed. This
may be taken as an axiom, or a rule. Nor need we
go cn to indulge in denunciation of an aristocracy for
flinging off its burdens. Let us take it for granted,
that each class will consult its interest and follow its
nature. Give each ascendancy, and each will convert
its political ascendancy into fiscal exemption. Our
own history speaks plain enough to this truth. There
was no statesman who began public life With fairer
or more honest intentions than Pitt, none who was
more fully prepared to equalise taxation. And if one
of his first proposals, indeed of his first crotchets,
was Parliamentary reform, it was that he saw
plainly that reform in inequality of taxation was im-
possible, till it was preceded by electoral emancipa-
tion. Defeated in his views of reform, Pitt was
hurried by the aristocratic passion of the age into
war, and the war rendered him dependent on j the classes whose passion supported him. Hence his
annualincrease of the duties on consumption, and his
mortgaging of these revenues to the interests of an
'increasing debt, while the land
,and malt-tax he was
obliged to reserve as subject to annual vote. To get
money out of the landed interest be was compelled to
have recourse to tricks, of which the most egregious
specimen on record was certainly that for the redemp-
-1 tion of the land-tax, as if any Government could have
held the right or entertained the hope of alienating
the country's fiscal claims upon its landed property.
From that plunge he floundered on to the still greater
ione of the income-tax, the nature of which, and its
effects on the landed interest, are forcibly and pithily
described by Dr. Beeke :
" I am convinced (says Dr. Beeke in 1799) the landed
and agricultural incomes had to pay a.sessed taxes in
a triplical proportion to monied and trading incomes.
But now by the income-tax the towns will pay more
than last year in very nearly a triplical proportion, while
the country scarcely pay 6 as much as it did by the for-
mer assessment."
And yet with what tenderness and precaution did
1 Pitt endeavour to render the income-tax palatable to
the earner. He exempted all incomes paid on poll-
, ties of insurance from the operation of the tax. He
granted exemption for children whilst in a dependent
I' state, and established a graduated scale of payment
for incomes between 601. and 2001. The man pos-
sessed of but 60/. a year paid but 2d. in the pound, or
1-120th part of his income; the man of 1001. a year
6d. in the pound, or 1-40th, and so on until 2001. a
year was taxed at 1-10th, or 2s. in the pound, which
was the maximum. Thus the graduated scale had at
least no radical origin. In all cases, however, then as
now, the weight of taxation fell on the middle class,
who not only, as employers, paid the greater part of
the duties on consumption, but whose direct tax was
I infinitely more onerous to them than their proportion
Ito the rich. We forget who wrote a book to prove
that the most distressed people were those of from 2001.
to 400%. a year—people always with families, generally
liable to the expenses of gentility, obliged to be served
by others, to keep up appearances, struggling to im-
prove their incomes, risking and losing what they
had. A Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, can-
not enter into such considerations as these. Capa-
bilities of paying taxes must be to him in proportion
to income, and ought to be in proportion to the nature
and durability of that income. The classification of
different kinds of income is, however, no easy pro-
blem To capitalise them, estimating them at their
several years' purchase, is that most generally pre.
ferred. And certainly it were a fair proposition for
income that was transferable and appreciable, but we
must confess we doubt its applicability to the profits
of either profession or trade. From the man en-
gaged in a business where thereis little mystery and
large competition, and where the profits are but a
little more than the current rate of interest on the
money employed ; from this case to that of the apo-
thecary, whose capital is trifling, and whose skill is
everything, there exists a regular chain of gradation
through which to distinguish that part of income
which is profit on capital, and that which is wages
for skilled labour, would be impossible. Twenty
thousand pounds in the hands of skilful and experi-
enced merchants is better than a million in the hands
of a fool, but how appreciate the difference of
their brain-pans ? One man can drive a thriving
trade upon no capital, whilst another manages a
humble one with hard coin. Skill in the one com-
pensates for property in the other. But this is durable,
that perishing. How could capitalisation reach all
these minutice? Yet, in order to be perfect it ought
to go:further—to take into consideration men's ages,
fading health, offspring. Better to establish some
simple rule, as that the income derived from the use
of capital should pay so much ; the income derived
from personal exertion or skill, so much in proportion
less. In land and trade, income replaces capital be-
fore it is considered profit. In professional income
all is considered profit, and none set apart as replace-
ing capital, as certainly ought to be the case. A
man's professional gains are analagous to all the re-
ceipts of the trader, and to all the receipts of land.
He ought to replace capital for himself and his children
in economy, in their education, in insurance, and
these should be exempt, as Mr. Pitt's Bill in some
cases did consider them. This would be a
fairer ground than capitalisation, or than a lesser
rate on what was callsd profits in both cases, while
the net profit was only taxed in the one case, the
gross returns in the other. There ought, therefore,
to be a classification of incomes, according as labour,
skill, and capital produce them, unskilled and manual
labour paying nothing, skill paying something, and
in the higher rates of each a fair proportion, but by
no means equal to that paid by the profits of capital,
regularly replacing itself independent of the income,
now alone rated to the tax. But it may be as well
to warn the public that no Minister will do this, un-
less the voice of-the earning and industrious class be
united, loud, and strong. Statesmen will exempt
mere labour. To keep the wealthy and high born in
power by contenting and alleviating the lower and
working classes, is the great modern dodge, invented
fir the safer and surer oppression and spoliation of
the middle classes. If these remain dumb they will
be bitted, if they remain isolated they will be made
to pay for the rest of the community. Nor will they
get always men even of their own rank either to pity
or to aid them.