The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-18 00:00:00

THEATRE-ROYAL, OLYMPIC.

Tins EVENING, at 7, SLASHER & CRASHER: Messrs Atkins,
Vaughan, G. Vincent, &c. ; Miss Lennox Grey and Mrs Caulfield.
After which, at 7.45, THE YELLOW PASSPORT : Messrs. H.
Ne ille, G. Vincent, E. Atkins, H. Vaughan, H. Cooper, and H.
Wigan; Mesdames Furta,do, Lennox Grey, and Caulfield

ROYALTY THEATRE.
Under the Management of Miss 1L Oliver.
THIS EVENING, at 7.30, A LOVING CUP. Mr. Dewar, Miss
M. Oliver. To be followed by THE RISE AND FALL OF
IIC HA RD III.; or, A New Front to an Old Dicky: Mr. Dewar
Vr. Danvers; Miss Collinson, and Miss M. Oliver. To con •
elude with THE ULOCKMAKER'S HAT.

PRINCE OF WALES'S ROYAL THEATRE.
Under the Management of Miss Marie Wilton;
THIS EVENING, TAME CATS: Messrs. Hare, H. J. Montague,
Blakeley, Montgomery. and Bancroft; Mrs. Buckingham White,
Miss C. Addison. and Miss Marie Wilton. After which, WHO
SPEAKS FIRST 1 Messrs. Montague and Blakeley ; Miss C.
Addison.

ROYAL SURREY THEATRE.
Lessees, ?Messrs. Shepherd and Creswick.
I'ms EVENING, THE WIFE'S SECRET. 1- it Walter Amyott
Mr. Creswick; Eveline, Miss Paancefort After which, TIME
TRIES ALL,

ROYAL AL 11AMBR A PALACE. THREE BALLET',
Promenade Concert. Band of GO. Begin at 8. la. Box-office
open from 11 to 4.

CHRISTY MINSTRELS. St. James's Hall, Every Night, at
Wednesdays and Saturdays, at 3 and 8 all the year round.

ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, Regent's-T,ark, OPEN daily (ex
cept Sundays). Admission, ls.; on Mondays, 6d.; Children
under twelve, 6d.

TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS.

" THE SUN " WILL BE PUBLISHED AS USUAL ON

CHRISTMAS DAY.

0•74
• • 4 s•:^
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LONDON, FRIDAY, DEC. 18, 18G8.

Ministers will, collectively, be put upon their metal
if only by reason of their individual antecedents.
The Premier, to begin with, is known intensely and
essentially as an innovator. He especially has Her-

culean work before him, to the performance of which
he is solemnly pledged, for the accomplishment of
which, in point of fact, he has been made Premier,

so to speak, by acclamation, and for the carrying
through Parliament of which the immense Liberal

majority at his back has been sent to the House of
Commons by the electors qf the United Kingdom.
Mr. GLADSTONE'S energies will be sufficiently occupied
for some time to come, in the maturing of his as yet

vaguely foreshadowed plans for the disestablishing
and disendowing of the Irish Church as an institu-
tion, the foundations of which were laid as nearly as
possible three hundred years ago. The Chancellor of
the Exchequer, in hii department, is hardly less dis-
tiuctly pledged than his leader is pledged in the matter
of thelrish Church, to have eipecial regard to the eco-

nomical employment of the national revenues and to
diminish in every reasonable way that can be devised
the aggregate amount of national taxation. The
First Lord of the Admiralty, if he, as a civilian, has
been selected for any particular reason to undertake
the duties of that high and responsible office, has cer-
tainly been chosen with the express intention that he
shall do his very utmost towards guarding against
the continued prodigality of our expenditure in
the operations of our dockyards, without, of course
at the same time in any way recklessly jeopardizing
the maintenance of our maritime efficiency. The
President of the Board of Trade, again, distinguished
as he is among the champions of justice to Ireland—

earnest advocate as he is of the interests of Peace

even to the length of identitying himself years ago
with those who are the recognised exponents of

the principles of Peace at any Price—devoted I
as his attention and sympathies have long
been to the design of ameliorating s.) far
as may be found practicable the condition of the
vast population of India now subject directly to the
sceptre of the English SOVEREIGN—is above .a 1 what
he was so very conspicuously thirty years ago, and
it might even be said what he was then, at the outset
of his political career, almost:exclusively, the eloquent
and devoted advocate of those great economic prin-
ciples which are at the heart of what is popu-
larly known as Free Trade. To the furtherance yet
more and more of those beneficent princiPles wherever
they may still be applied afresh, he is pledged now, as
he has ever been, he is pledged now, if possible, more
than he has ever yet been—now, that is, that to his
responsibities as an individual legislator and as a re-
cognised Tribune of the People., have been added the
still weightier and more solemn responsibilities of
a Cabinet Minister, a servant of the Crown,
and • an affirmed Councillor of the SOVE -
REIGN. Of the Lord Privy Seal nothing whatever
departmentally of this kind, as a matter of course,
can by possibility be said—that office, among all the
offices in the Cabinet, being purely and simply orna-
mental. But, without in any respect speaking
invidiously in either instance, it is only right and
reasonable that we should add that in the case
of the Lord Chancellor, in the case of the Lord
President of the Council, many will look un-

questionably for acts that shall justify the selection
to those offices of State, of Lord DE GREY and
RIPON, and of Lord lIATHERLEY. It would be idle to
regard as superfluous the manifestation by these two
noble lords of the justification of their selection,
each of them respectively, the one as occupant of the
, woolsack, the other as head of the Council Board—
Lord HATHERLEY by his energetic furtherance
of legal improvements generally, Lord DE
GREY and RIPON by his strenuous advocacy of
the cause of National Education. From the Home
Secretary there will be eagerly looked for, now, that
resolute attention to the hitherto, in a great mea-
sure, disregarded interests of the population at large,
in the dealing by the authorities with that criminal
residuum still at large, and on the loose, as one may
say, in all our great and thickly-peopled cities—
classes that were in a manner seared and branded
as with a pen of red-hot iron by Lord MAC-
AULAY when he wrote of them as " Heathens in
the midst of Christianity, and Savages in the midst
of Civilisation." From the Foreign Secretary, now
that he has been called upon to resume once more the
office for which he is so peculiarly well qualified, im-
mediately in succession to a Foreign Secretary as
popular and as successful as Lerd STANLEY—from the
Earl of CLARENOON, in the light of the success
and of the popularity of his immediate predeces-
sor, much, it is almost idle to say, will
be looked for, in the way of placable and
dignified conciliation in all our various diplomatic
relations with the great Powers of the earth in either
hemisphere. The Indian Secretary, the War Secre-
tary, and the Colonial Secretary, each in turn will
be scrutinized by the people at large, out of an ear-
I nest solicitude on the part of the latter to witness
the sy-stematic and energetic development of
a wise and active policy in each, respec-
tively, of those great and comprehensive de-
partments. Upon the Secretary for Ireland
mere than ever, there will just now necessarily de-
volve a heavy weight of responsibility by reason of
the vastness and of the radical importance of the
great measure of innovation now about to be ap-
plied by the Imperial Legislature, at the direct in-
stance of the newly installed Ministry, to the general
conduct of the Government of the Irish people.
Two others only among our fifteen Cabinet Mi-

nisters yet remain to be particularised the
one, the President of the Poor-law Board, the other,
the Postmaster-General—heads of departments, each
of them, from whom no small amount of activity
will be imperatively required, and that, moreover, im-
mediately. Mr. GOSCIIEN upon his part, has nothing
less before him as a distinct requirement on the part

of the public at large than the complete reorganisa-
tion of the whole existing system of poor law relief.
While the Marquis of HARTINGTON, in his turn,will be
called upon to inaugurate his accession to authority
in St. Martin's-le-Grand, by the carrying out of the
scheme resolved upon last session by Parliament, the
bold and comprehensive scheme absorbing into thePost-
office system the responsibility of henceforth regulating
that astoundingly swifter and subtler system of the
Electric Telegraph in all its wonderful ramifications.
Formsting, thus, their col!ective future, examining
each of them, thus, department by department, we
may with reason end what we have here said of our
administrators, by reiterating, in regard to her
MAJESTY'S fifteen newly-installed Cabinet Mi-
nisters, the remark with which we commenced,
to the effect, namely, that they will most
nssuredly be put upon their metal, if only by
reason of their individual antecedents—enforced

more especially, as those antecedents of theirs will
be, and indeed are, by the urgent and, in some re-
spects, enormous requirements of the juncture in the
midst of which they are now assuming their aggre-
gate responsibilities as a Government.

IF we are not greatly mistaken, we shall hear before
long a good deal more than we have yet heard about
" a free breakfast-table." The originator of that
phrase was a private member of Parliament, is a
Privy Councillor and Cabinet Minister. When he
announced this new programme he must have known
full well that he would be, a few weeks later, holding
office under the Crown, and in a position to give
practical effect to his scheme. True, he is not
Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he holds the office
most closely allied to that post ; he is President of
the Board of Trade. In that capacity Mr. BRIGHT
must have abundant opportunity for inquiring into
the whole machinery of taxation. We believe that
the more he inquires the more he will be convinced
of the costliness of a taxed breakfast-table.
Very opportunely, a contemporary who makes
this class of subjects a specialty has published an
article shewing how excessively inconvenient and
costly indirect taxation is. It is inconvenient
to the importer, and therefore costly to the con-
sumer. Taxation checks consumption, consumption
checks production, and thus the increased cost of a
taxed article is far greater than the amount of the
tax. This is the one fundamental objection to all
indirect taxation with one exception, and the excep-
tion thoroughly establishes the rule. We refer to
the duties on ,alcoholic drinks. These are taxed
not only for the sake of revenue, but
for the sake of morals. These, if sold
at all, ought to be taxed to the extremest limit to
which taxation will go, just because their consump-

tion is injurious to the community. No such argu-
ment exists with regard to the breakfast table.
Tea, coffee, sugar are all good in themselves. It is,
therefore, wise to encourage their consumption. How
greatly this is discouraged we gather from a very
excellent article in the Produce Markets' _Review.
Owing to the enormous amount of papers that have
to be signed, and formalities that have to be gone
through, all of which the merchant has to be repaid
plus his commission on the extra expense, £2,000,000
worth of tea costs the public in England £3,600,000 ;
that is, a revenue which could be raised directly by
2d. in the pound on the income tax, costs, raised
indirectly, a sum equal to 3d. in the pound. The
cost of sugar is even more flagrant. Free sugar
should cost £lO per ton ; taxed sugar costs £3l. In
other words, sugar which now costs 41d. per lb.
ought to be sold at 11d. Put in another way, the
£5,500,000 revenue returned by sugar, in round
numbers costs £13,000,000, as it raises the cost
of the 600,000 tons of sugar we use yearly from
£6,600,000 to £19,000,000. That is, in order to
obtain what would cost 4d. in the pound on the income
tax, we spend what would be equal to ls. in the pound.
Our contemporary estimates that the Bd. or 9d. in
the pound on the income tax, which the £9,500,000Mr.
BRIGHT'S " free breakfast table " would represent
if levied directly, actually costs the country when
levied indirectly £20,000,000, or, roughly, ls. 6d. in
the pound of its income. These are startling figures
which Mr. LowE will do well to ponder. _

We do not pretend that there is nothing to be said
for indirect taxation, or rather that there is nothing
to be said against direct taxation. It is inquisitorial,
it is a temptation to dishonesty, too often not resisted;
it is, moreover, almost impossible of application to the
poor. The idea of levying an income tax on a
labourer earning £1 a week is chimerical. So that
if we abolish indirect taxation he goes tax-
free. At the same time we could very well
afford to give up a considerable portion of the
revenue derived from the working man, if we could
only reduce the expense of raising the revenue from
the middle class. Surely we need not grumble that
our poor neighbour goes free, if his freedom costs
us nothing. We ought even to be prepared to
pay a little • more than we do for the sake
of economy. Our contemporary suggests that
Mr. LOWE should retain the income tax at 6d.,
reduce the expenditure £3;000,000, and with the
extra £5,000,000 which he would thus secure abolish
the sugar duties. Is there any one who would grudge
this extra 2d. of income tax ? We paid it cheerfully
to recover a score of prisoners in Abyssinia ; we could
hardly grudge it for the sake of our poor in these
hard times, when pauperism threatens more and
more to overwhelm us as a flood.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

FRANCE.

PARIS, December 18.

The Marquis de Lavalette has been appointed
Minister of Foreign Affairs, replacing the Marquis
de Moustier, whose resignation has been accepted.
Also M. Ferado de la Roquette has been appointed
Minister of the Interior, and M. Gressier Minister
of Agriculture.
The Marquis de Moustier has been made a
Senator.

The Illoniteur says :—" Notwithstanding the
counsels in favour of moderation and peace which
the Great Powers had tendered •at Constanti-

nople and Athens, the suspension of diplo-
matic relations between Turkey and Greece
could not be prevented. The latest telegrams an-
nounce that the Envoys of both countries
have received their passports, and were pre-
paring for their departure. However much this
rupture is to be regretted, there is still room for
hope that the co-operation and unanimity of the
signitary Powers of the Treaty of 1856 will suc-
ceed in diminishing and restraining the conse-
quences of this rupture."

ROUMANIA.

BUCHAREST, Dec. 17

The draft of the address in reply to the Speech
from the Throne has been agreed to by a majority
both in the Chamber and in the Senate.

Demete Stourdza has been appointed diplomatic
agent of Roumania at the Porte.
A decree orders a slight increase of artillery.

INDIA. AM) AUSTRt.LIAN MAILS.
SUEZ, Dec. 18.

The Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamer
Mooltan, from Calcutta the 24th of November,
arrived at 5 p.m., yesterday.