The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOU RNALS.

r TUE EVENING PAPIAIS OF S.ATINDAV

. ,
GLOBE.—The :-.:•!ate of last night, on the Hon. Mem-
ber for Laitibeth':i r!.)ti, for an cliewance of drawbaele on
ginty-pait? 1, allOrds an amusing instance of the
freedom with Lb.! Premier treats his followers. Mr.
Genlburn, Mr ••. ‘,ll, and Sir George Clerk were put up in
succes,ion !notion ; and, to all appearance, each
fiki hu•!,. !]!tt it was neither just nor expedient
t hat ,any d: ,( whatever should be allowed We. pre
same they were not awflre of what was to follow—thait they
were ignorant of the stultification in store for them. But the
justice of the claim was palpab:e to all ; and in encountering
this, the contrast between the veteran hardihood of the elder
officials, who met assertion by assertion point- blank, denied
the applicability of the clearest precedents, and put, the ne-
gative in the most unmi-takable faun—and the less direct
and more subtle course adopted by Mr. Cardwell in his
retreat upon principle, and the possibility of inducing a
multitude of other claims, with shades of justice varying
downwards in an infinite series—was very amusing, and
strikingly illustrative of the relative progress of the parties
in the acquirement of that
" conscience that will bend and ply,
Say aye or no, and not know why ;"
which the "wisdom of our ancestors" deemed essential to
the character of a statesman. Having taken "the sense of
the House," by a sacrifice of the consistency of three of his
oicagues, and so felt his way, Sir Robert Peel rose, and
expressing his belief " that the Right Hon. Gentlemen
the late Chancellor of the Exchequer and the late President
of the Board of Trade would not have supported the
proposition before •he House, excepting that this was
a special case, deserving peculiar consideration," at once
yielded all that was asked for! How these matters are ar-
ranged behind the scenes, it is difficult to conceive ; but we
suppose, and indeed hope, for the sake of all parties, that
some arrangement is come to which is satisfactory to the
amour propre of those chiefly concerned. Sir R. Peel must,
of course, take his colleagues as they are. We know that it
is hard to make the extremes of official virtue meet. The
perfection of obedience will lack judgment. As it ap-
proaches the confines of servility, it must needs lose sight of
discretion ; so when a man begins to do exactly what he
is told, he commonly ceases to do anything else. -Undoubt-
edly it is the part of -a
leader so to marshal his followers as to
make the most of their respective abilities; and it may be
wisdom in the Premier so to choose and train his colleagues.
as t) keep them at that end of the scale of usefulness which
most favours strict discipline and uniformity of action. Under
the circumstances in which he is placed, it probably also
favours the most complete division of responsibility which is
consistent with a monopoly of official merit, and displays to
the greatest advantage that " sublime of mediocrity" which
constitutes his claim upon public attention and support.
STANDARD.—The discussion on the sugar duties, last
night, curiously illustrates one out of many of the evils of
indirect taxation. You cannot repeal an indirect tax any
more than you can impose or continue one, without com-
mitting great injustice. It is proposed greatly to reduce
the sugar ' duties upon importation, but there is ne-
cessarily a • great amount of sugar in the country
which has paid, or which • is subject to pay, these
duties ; here is an obvious unfairness towards all holders
of sugar, from those who have thousands of hogsheads in the
Quetta 's warehouses bonded, to those who have it in their
own refineries or warehouses, their wholesale stores or retail
shops—even the chandlers'; and why not to the poor room-
keeper, who has her frugal store laid up in a canister for a
month's use ? All suffer wrong by the change in the law,
which compels them to deal in, or use a highly-taxed,
while others, less provident, are dealing in or using
a lightly-taxed . article. But how is this injustice
to be remedied ? The chandler's shopkeeper cannot
be repaid his five shillings upon, it May be, his half-
hundred weight of sugar, or the wealthier grocer his fifty or
five hundred pounds. This would open a door to frauds
absolutely without limit. Ascending, however, to the
larger holders, it is possible to remit the whole or
part of the duty to the holders •of -Sugar in the
Queen's warehouses, but is not that merely narrow-
ing the injustice to the middle and lower class dealer ?—is it
not also aggravating the injustice by letting loose earlier
npon them, a more favoured class, and at the same time, by
so much augmenting that class ? There is, however, really
no remedy • the taxation is indirect taxation, and therefore
mischief and injustice adhere to it to the very last.