The Sun.
London, England, 1845-08-01 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY. AUGUST 1, 1815.

The Lords met at Four o'clock.
The royal assent was given, by Commission, to seve,
ral Bills.

The Earl of BESBOROUGH drew the attention of their
Lordships to the evidence which had be n given before
the Committee appointed to inquire into the- petition al-

leging fraud against the promoters of the Dublin and
Galway Railway Bill, with a view to promoting a prose-
cution against one of the witnesses for perjury.
Lords CAMPBELL and COTTENHAM thought there
would be great difficulty in conducting the prosecution
to a satisfactory termination.

Lord MONTEAGLE and the LORD CHANCELLOR thought

the House ought to proceed against the individual, and
eventually, cn the suggestion of the Earl of BESBOROUGH,
the matter was referred to a Select Committee.

The Merchant Seamen's Bill was committed pro forma.
In answer to a question from Lord BEAUMONT, the
Easl of ABERDEEN went into a lengthened statement
relative to the affairs of Greece. He admitted that the
present state of Greece was anything but tranquil and
orderly, but still the excesses said to have been com-
mitted on the frontiers had been grossly exag-
gerated. He gave such advice to M. COLLETTI
as he thought prudent and useful, and he did not at
present feel called upon to interfere further. It was un-
true that the Greek Government had encouraged in-
cursions across the Turkish frontier, and the supposi-

tion that a bankrupt State like Greece anticipated going
to war with Turkey, was most absurd. It was also
untrue to say that the English interests had declined in
Greece. There were Engiish, French, and Russian
parties in that country—the great misfortune was, that
there was no Grcek party.
The Coal Trade of London Bill was read a second
time.

After a short discussion, in which the Marquis of
LONDONDERRY, the Earl of DALUOUSIE, and the Marquis
of W ESTMIN SI ER took part,

The Lunatics Bill was read a third time and passed.
The other Bills on the table were advanced a stage,
and the House adjourned.

The Commons met at Four.
A new writ was moved for for Kirkcudbritht, in the
room of Mr. MURRAY, deceased.

Mr. TUFNELL gave notice that Lord Joux RUSSELL
would move for a return of the Bills which had passed
during the present Session.
The reports of the Committee on Ways and Means,
and of the Committee of Supply, were respectively
brought up.
On the order of the day being read for bringing up
the report on the Brazil Slave-Trade Treaty Bill,
Mr. M. GIBSON said he con idered the measure calcu-
lated to excite hostility and resentment apinst this
country, and he wished to know whether any remon-
strances had been addressed by the Brazilian Govern-
ment to the British Government on the subject, and if
so, whether they would be communicated to the Home.
Sir R. PEEL assured the Honourable Gentleman acre
was nothing in the present treaty at variance with inter-
national law. It merely recognised a principle already
incorporated in previous treaties and acted on by other
nations.

After a few remarks from Mr. MITT and Captain
PECILELL, the report was brcught up and the Bill ordered
to be read a thitd time this day.
After several other measures had passed through
their respective stages, the CHANCELLOR of the Ex-
CHEQUER moved that an Address be presented to the
Crown, requesting the grant of 20,0004 in aid of the

sufferers by the late fires in Quebec. The motion was
agreed to, without opposition, and shortly afterwards
the House adjourned.

In four or five papers on the " Oregon" question, we
have, from time to time, endeavoured to lay before our
readers a general outline of the incidental points con-
nected with its principal bearings. On the last occasion
of our adverting to the same very important subject
we undertook to demonstrate the unsoundness and
futility of the title set up by the United States on every
one of the grounds upon which it had been asserted and
argued by Mr. GREENHOW-by far the ablest champion
which that title has et found, and himself a salaried
servant of one of the civil departments of the American
Government. Want of room and the press of more
urgent matters have since combined to prevent
us from recurring to, or fulfilling our pledge.
But we read in The Journal (a Washington
paper, generally understood to be the official organ of
the President's party and opinions) the following pas-
sage ; and we find it so apropos for our purpose of refu-
tation, that we will, on the first occasion that offers to us,
take each of the several assumptions that we print below
in italics, and prove, by incontrovertible facts and docu-
ments, the absolute and atter falsehood of such assump-
tion. We may, then, feel disposed to inquire what must
be the condition of moral feeling among the readers and
supporters of a " Journal" which can wilfully propagate
such gross misstatements and deliberately attempt to
deceive and irritate the public mind of America into
hostile excitement upon them ? We must entreat our
readers not to lose sight of the grave and malicious of-
fence thus perpetrated, in the merriment which we may
be tempted to indulge in by the bombastic egotism of
this arbiter of the disputes of nations.

"As the property of the United States has been fully proved
and righyitily attached, bold must be the Executive, and Anti-
American must be that Cabinet officer who would draw, or
recommend the drawing, of the American Boundary Line
below the line of the Russian American Settlement (54 deg.
40 min. ), and thereby give the British Government an out-
let, even, to the Western Ocean. From 42 deg. to 54 deg.
40 min. N. latitude, the United States by discovery, by occu-
pancy acknowledged on the part of Great Britain, by the
French cession of 1803, and by the Spanish cession of 1819,
IT IS THE OWNER."

Some men, it is said, have greatness thrustupon them;
and of this class we presume that the present Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer—we have had, ere now, to
make the same remark of a Comptroller of the Exche-
quer—is one of the most astonishing individuals. He
tills—and not for the first time in his life—that exalted
and responsible office which has, ever since the Revolu-
tion, been assumed to indicate the highest class of official
ability, financial knowledge, and general statesmanship.
His rube is a mantle which has clothed, in succession,
the shoulders of men who have rendered their names an
illustrious bequest to posterity. Without distinction of
party, it has ever been one of the most honourable ele-
vations that an English gentleman could attain to in the
service of his country. To exemplify this fact would be
to name almost every great political leader who has
appeared in Parliament during that interval. Nor is
this sort of general rule marred by such occasional
exceptions as have been afterwards pitch-forked into the
House of Lords—in times past, and in our own espe-
cially—by titles which it might seem insidious here to
recapitulate. Whether or not Mr. GOULBURN is des-
tined to increase the number of these anomalies we do
not purpose now to inquire. But we wish to show how
unworthy sentiments may be avowed in the House of
Commons, by so high an officer of the Crown, with
perfect impunity in the year 1845.
Mr. FIELDEN brought under the notice of the
QUEEN'S Ministers and of the House the vexatious,
unjust, and arbitrary usage which he had received under
the operation of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Income-tax Act.
The house in which he was himself a partner, FIELDEN,
Brothers, had been assessed for profits at the capricious
valuation of exactly 12,0001. a-year—not, for aught that
appears to the contrary, that the assumption might not
have been made with just as much probability, that
these profits were 8,2001, or 9,1501., or 10,670/., or
11,7601., or 12,000/. a year. But the local 6' Commis-
sioners," or " Assessors," or by whatever other name
the people are called who do the dirty work of the Paul-
Pry machinery created under this odious and inquisito-
rial statute, preferred to take the amount of 12,0001. in
the first instance—as a round number, we suppose. Mr.
FIELDEN and his partners protested and appealed against
this assessment of income, and offered to produce their
books to the Commissioners, and proceeded to show that
for the year over which the assessments demanded ex-
tended, they, so far from realising profits, had, in fact,
sustained large losses on the balance of the year's trans-
actions. Another notice was served, accompanied with
an intimation, in the usual impe►•ative style, that it must
be paid forthwith. Again the Messrs. FIELDEN remon-
strated ; and what was the reply ? That they were im-
mediately served with notice of assessment, increased in
the proportion of exactly 100 per cent. ; that is to say,
on an assumed income of 24,0001. per annum. Very
arbitrary—very insolent, beyond all question—in the
officers, whoever they were, who presumed to try so un-
authorised and impertinent an experiment on the easi-
ness or the purse-strings of the Messrs. FIELDEN.
Doubtless there was the same excuse for this, as for the
original assessment—that 24,000/. was " a round
number." But there was even le s defence to be
made for this second assessment ; and we do trust
that the Messrs. FIELDEN will not relax their ex-
ertions till they discover, and pursue to punish-
ment (if any punishment have been reserved by
our constitutional Premier for such an offence, al-
though we suspect the common law would not be slow to
deal with it as a conspiracy to defraud), the authors o
this gratuitous impertinence. Like most of those
over-zealous and offensive subaltern authorities who are
called " Jacks in office," they grew alarmed the instant
they discovered that these gentlemen were in earnest in
their resolution to resist this unheard-of and most dis-
graceful attt rept at extortion, and when Exchequer pro
ceases were issued against the firm, they were issued fur
the assessment, net on the 24,000/., but, strange to say,
for the original one on the 12,0001. Can any fact more
clearly demonstrate than this the arbitrary, despotic
system, on which the commissioners and surveyors fabri-
cate their assessments of income derived from profits on

trade ? And yet it is to these people that Sir ROBERT
PEEL has the serene assurance to refer the tax-payers
for redress, forsooth, who may feel themselves aggrieved
by over assessments ! It is almost as bad as constituting
a Board of Officials for the assessment and levy of a tax ;
paying them by a per centage on the aggregate product
of that tax realised through their devices and exertions ;
and then intimating to the over-charged tax-payer that
he will always be secure of redress at the hands of the
same disinterested functionaries. The Exchequer pro-
cesses were enforced against the Messrs. FIELDEN, they
still refused, on the principle of " no profits realised,"
to pay ; and chattels and goods, their property, Were
taken and sold in execution by the QUEEN'S officers, to
the amount of the claim of the Crown. This is, shortly,
the grievance of which Mr. FIELDEN complained in the
House of Commons. In replying to his speech, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer was betrayed into an ob•
servation which we trust will not be lightly forgotten by
the British public. The difficulty in which Mr. FIEL-
DEN found himself, quoth Mr. GOULBURN, " would not
have arisen, if the Hon. Gentleman had shown a little less
of that British r,•iltuc which had led him to resist, with
more than ordinary firmness, what he considered an im-
proper intrusion into his private affairs."
This " sneer," as Mr. lIAwEs well called it, at " Bri-
tish virtue," was uttered with singularly bad taste in
reference to Mr. FIELDER, than whom a man of higher
probity in private life, or of purer purpose in his public
career, is not to be feund within the walls of the House
of Commons. The architect of his own fortune, and
himself the centre and mover of an enormous amount of
industrial labour, in the very district which has wit-
nessed his gradual advance from the position of a simple
artisan to the head of one of those enormous private
establishments which are the wonder of their age and
country, Mr. FIELDER has long acquired, and enjoys,
unchallenged, an enviable reputation for his kindness,

his charity, his liberality, and enterprise. To have " re-
sisted," as he has done, the assessment of the Income-
tax Commissioner, on the principle incorporated in words,
though not, it should seem, in spirit, into the very Act
of Parliament under which that assessment was made

out, and to have risked and suffered, too, so costly a
sacrifice of property as he has endured in contesting a
demand which, either in its original or its subsequent
shape—as charged on an income of 12,0004 or one of
21,000 I.—must have been iniquitous and illegal—wart
indeed, a reach of "British virtue" such as an over-
pensioned official might challenge, in a tone of disparage-
ment the more sarcastic from the consciousness, perhaps,
of inability to imitate it. But is this "British virtue
expounded by him who reflects upon it even, as having
been elicited by " what the party considered an im-
proper intrusion into his private affairs "—is this con-
stitutional principle to be twitted and mocked at, in
that House. of Commons which is to this day conse-
crated by the memory of that HAMPDEN whose resist-
ance to the payment of an illegal exaction for ship-money
was the first step taken in the great work of consolidating
the rights and liberties of Englishmen, in respect of the
limitations of their liability to taxation, on their present
broad and constitutional bases ? Let us hope that this
ill-timed sneer will arouse, even at this late hour, the
Commons to a sense of their duty to their constituency--
that it may teach them how little they can be justified

in trusting to the pledges or the promises of a Govern-