The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
IRON THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—The near approach of tpe
he heren
Parliament will be called upon to decide whe the
property and income-tax shall be abandoned, or con-
tinued in a modified form for a longer period, invests
with peculiar interest the question of its superior fit-
ness as a means of obtaining the necessary supplies for
the government and defence of the country, to an
indirect system of taxation. This question is dis-
missed, with considerable clearness, in the pamphlet
on the property-tax by G. P. Bushe, Esq., to
which we alluded on Monday. We resume our
notice of that pamphlet, for the purpose of examining
the writer's views on the expediency of continuing,
and even perpetuating, the tax on property as a sub-
stitute for the existing system. Mr. Bushe strongly
advocates a modification of the present income-tax, so
ea to convert it into a property tax, which shall be
levied upon every description of property in the United
Kingdom, whether the proprietor resides at home or
abroad. One of the arguments—the expense of collect-
ing the indirect taxes—adduced in support of this re-
.commendation, is worthy special attention. The pro-
portion which the means bear to the end, will always
be a consideration in the fiscal arrangements of a wise
Government :—" The Customs produce annually
about 22,000,0001., and the expense of the establish-
ment, in all its department, civil and military, for
collecting this sum, is about 2,400,0001., or nearly 11
per cent. on the amount received. Now, according
to the best authorities, about 19,000,0001. of the
Customs' duties are „obtained with comparative little
difficulty or expense ; and it is to secure the other
3,000,0001. that a great part of the establishment is
required; the proportion of which is estimated at
about 1,000,0001., or 33 per cent. on the sum collec-
ted." This most improvident expenditure—this waste
of public money, the impolicy of which a careful re-
vision of our present system of taxation would expose,
and thus prepare for its abandonment—is thus illus-
trated :—" If a merchant sends his clerk to call in
moneys due to him ; and, on his return, the clerk
makes out a bill for expenses amounting to one-
third of the sum brought home, the merchant will
assuredly Investigate the matter, and introduce
very material alterations into his system of proceed-
ing. Yet it is in a precisely analogous manner that
England, the most commercial nation in the world,
has for a long time collected a large portion of her
revenues, and still continues to collect them. An abo-
lition of the Customs' duties which produce these three
millions, would enable the Government to reduce the
expense of a Customs' department by about a million
—a clear saving to the country to this considerable ex-
tent. It is certain that the demands of the revenue
must be supplied. The great mass of the labouring
poor can only be enabled to pay an increased rate of
taxation by an increased rate of wages; so that, after
all, the. means of taxation must be furnished by
the wealthier chimes. Some of these may be tempted
to cry out against the increase of taxation to which
they would be subjected by a tax upon property ;
but without reason. The further taxation is removed
from capital, and the more indirect its operation, the
greater must be the cost of its collection ; or, in other
words, the greater must he the sum lost in gather-
ing it in, and the greater the gross amount re-
quired for the services of the State. Nothing can be
more unequal than the pressure, nothing more expen-
sive than the collection, of revenue from the great
masses of the population. If the labourer is to pay
one shilling, the capitalist will have to supply him
with much more than one shilling, in order to make
up for the waste and profits, of capital while passing
through so many hands-downwards, from the
capitalist to the labourer ; and upwards, from the la-
bourer to the tax-gatherer. The ultimate saving to
the community by a system of direct taxation
would be immense. Nor is this the only
form in which the people would find relief
from the substitution of direct for indirect
taxation. It is under the veil of indirect taxa-
tion that monopoly, with all its miserable conse-
quences, has been allowed to stalk through the land.
It is only because the evil is not discovered in its
natural hideousness, that a bread-tax in the shape
of corn-laws, or sugar-tax in the shape of protection
to the West India interests, has been allowed to carry
on its inordinate exactions. Were the wants of the
State supplied from the property of its subjects, 'with-
out any circumambulations, the benefit would be felt
by all. The burden would be equally distributed;
and payment for protection would be made in pro-
portion to the value of the property protected.
STANDARD.—At a late hour yesterday it was
determined to withdraw the addition to the statute
" de auetoritate," &c., intended to be proposed at the
Oxford Convocation on the 13th prox. We deeply
regret this determination, but we have been
tome time prepared for it by the multitude
and variety of objections to the intended proceed-
ings which we have heard from different quarters—
objections not proceeding from the -Romanist party
only or principally, but from men who highly prize
the Protestant character of the Church and Univer-
sity prize it above everything, except—each man's
display of his own private wisdom. It is a melan-
choly reflection that in the age in which we live, no
united effort can ever be made upon mere reason and
conviction—passion is the only feeling that will so
far discipline our rampant self-opinion as to bring
us to act in perfect harmony. Tell any one in cold
blood that he must sacrifice this crotchet or that
scruple to ensure the success of a common enterprise,
and he will tell you that his crotchet orscruple is very
precious in his eyes, and that he is not a man to
compromise his own convictions in even a trifling
matter ; while in this very obstinacy about trifles he
is making the meanest and most unprofitable of all
compromises—selling a noble end for the saving of
some petty means. This wretched temper of the
time is almost a sufficient excuse for those who
inflame men by appeals to their most violent
passions before calling upon them to act in pursuit
of any important object, a complete excuse for the
authorities in the Church declining to take any
definite course in repressing the evils that threaten
the Church, and ultimately the State, with ruin.
Men can be brought to concur in nothing '
definite, because such concurrence involves the
humiliating confession, that there are others
in the world as wise as one's self ; the offer
of the most simple definite proposition is a sum-
mons to the exercise of that most vulgar and
universally diffused of talents, the talent for
" picking holes." What simpler proposition, in-
deed, can be imagined than this, that " men
ought to be made to say only what they mean,
and to mean what they say r Yet this is the
proposition which cannot be safely hazarded at
a convocation of a Christian Protestant university.
This state of the public mind is distressing, not
merely as affording protection to the most serious
evils, but as proof of a great intellectual decline.
Great men wrestle with or dispose of objections
that little men weave about themselves, like some
insects, until they are smothered in them. We
need not reflect long to know whether the
manufacturers of or the tramplers upon objections
most advance the knowledge and the happiness of
mankind ? Not all the Germans that ever
lived—and they have ever been and are the
great artists in this line—have done so
much for human knowledge and learning as
Locke and Butler, Bentley and Porson—men more
remarkable for nothing than their contempt of the
objection trade. The most eminent objector that
ever disgraced this country was Mr. Malthus.
He objected to feeding the poor, lest they should
exhaust the granaries of Providence. He had
his day, as the objectors to making men speak
truth will, we suppose, have theirs. Posterity
will look upon both with equal contempt and
pity. But Mr. Malthus was the cause of inde-
scribable evil ; and the objectors of whom we
have now to complain will, we have no doubt,
be the authors of even worse evil. Let us not be
understood 'as imputing blame to the Oxford Board ;
they have done their part nobly in, framing the sta-
tute, and perhaps they have used a sound discretion
in withdrawing it. We know not whether it is com-
petent to a single member of Convocation to propose
the measure. If so, we have no doubt that it will
be proposed—aye, and carried too—while the Board
will he relieved rom the responsibility of having it
. carried by a small majority.

MONEY MARKET and CITY NISW6
CITY, TUESDAY EVENING.
TIMES.—The premium on gold at Paris is 12f per mille
which, at the English Mint price of 31. 17s. 10}d, pis
ounce fer standard gold gives an exchange of 2:
46 ; and the exchange at Paris on London at sho.
being 25
,65, it follows that gold is 0.74 per cent
dearer in London than in Paris.
By advises from Harnburgh the price of gold is 41.1
per mark, which, atthe English Mint price of 3/.175. Mit.
per ounce for standard gold, gives an exchange of 13 jti;
and the exchange at Hatoburgh on London at shot:
being 13 10i, it follows that golf is 0.57 per cent. deems
in London than in Hamburgh.
The English securities were pretty steady to-day, ants
prices underwent no material alteration. The Govern
went broker continues his official investments in Threq•
per Cent. Reduced and Three and-a-Quarter per Cent.
Annuities ; and these, with the purchases of the publ'e
who, notwithstanding the large amount of business doing
in shares, by no means neglect the old Government
stocks, give the market altogether a very health;
appearance.
The operations in the foreign market have been
almost wholly confined to Spanish, which has further
improved, although the highest prices of the day were
not maintained towards the conclusion of business. The
favourite stock, the Three per Cents., was done at the
top figure of 41, but .11‘11-uly aSterwards declined, an!
closed at to
The rise in Spanish within the last
40f
few days, and which has been considerable, appears
mainly to be caused by the punctual payment of the di-
vidends, and the hopes entertained that they will not fail
in future. It must, however, be remarked, that the
greater part of the buziaess transacted is among the
speculators ; and as this is conkssedly one of the chief