The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS,

IRON THE EVENING PIPERS OF YESTERDAY.
STANDARD.--THE REVENUE.—The Rave-
• nue for the Quarter and Financial Year, ending
to-day will be made up this evening, and we
rejoice in being able to state, that from the
accounts already received, it is likely to show
an increase on the quarter, as compared
with the corresponding quarter of last
year, and on the year a considerable
increase. In the important item of Excise
on the year there is, we believe, au increase
of about 400,0001. The Customs also, we under-
stand, will exhibit an increase on the year of
nearly half a million. In the Stamps there is a
small decrease on the quarter. The Property
and Income-tax remains much the same,
averaging; something- more than 1,260,0001. the
quarter. In the Assessed Taxes a slight decrease
is anticipated. The Post-office returns, it is ex-
pected, will not materially differ from former
quarters ; and the returns from the other
branches of the revenue are considered to be
satisfactory. On the whole, the aspect of the
revenue for the last year is most gratifying. It
shows a gradual increase in the trade ancom-
merce of the country, and will, we believe,
exhibit a surplus. The revenue for the year
ending to-day will, it is confidently expected,
exceed the expenditure of the country ; but the
exact amount is not yet known, as some of the
returns from the public departments have not
yet been completed.

GLOBE.—It may relieve," says the Herald,
" the perturbation into which the excellent
article on " The Causes of Distress and Sys- I
tematic Colonisation," in the Foreign and Colo-
nial Review, has thrown the Globe, if we state
at once that Mr. Gladstone has no claims to its
paternity. That the Globe, of all papers,
should have fallen into so patent an error will
amuse the initiated. Our Contemporary needs,
we fear, instruction on other subjects besides
Brazilian politics." The Globe has an un-
lucky adhesiveness to its principles, which,
we don't doubt, " amuses the initiated ;"
and it follows naturally, that when one
of its old friends gets into such shocking bad
company as that of the Morning Herald and the
Foreign and Colonial Quarterly Review, the
Globe is not the first quarter to which he announces
his deplorable condescension. For the rest, on
whatever subjects we may happen to require in-
formation from the now official Herald, we shall
no longer look for any satisfaction from that guar-
teras to anypractical results whatever from the pre-
tended " reciprocity " commercial policy of the
present Government. We were led to expect
marvellous things not long back, in the way of
reciprocity. Prosperity Freddy was to be no-
thing to Reciprocity Bobby. Now behold the
upshot ! One nation alone has sent its repre-
sentatives to us to offer reciprocity. We
would not take it—we would move no finger
to preserve, upon equitable terms, a commerce,
the value of which has been estimated from
three to five. millions annually. The envoy
of Brazil has gone back to study the part
of a Roland for our Oliver. We, on the other
hand, have gone about pressing something we
called reciprocity on continental customers,
whom we had previously forced to become ma-
nufacturing rivals. We have taken nothing by
our motion—except dragging the name of Eng-
land through the dirt—incurring the moun-
tebank shame of puffing to others nostrums
we eschew ourselves. We, examples of free
trade to the world—we, whose present Admi-
nistration has taken up anew, with such
admired variations of absurdity, the old song
of colonial all-sufficiency —the old Spanish
scorn of aliens ! There is a want of honest and
single purpose in the commercial measures of
this Ministry, which renders their vaunts of li-
beral example to all nations simply disgusting.
They had their organs everlastingly blowing hot
and cold with one breath. We have a right to
regard the Foreign and Colonial Quarterly on
these matters as their organ, whether Mr. Glad-
stone or more recent recruits write their " excel-
lenelucubrations. Well, that organ, as Nye showed
yesterday, with wonderful assurance throws
the blame upon foreigners for the failure (hither-
to) of foreign commerce to supply the deficien-
cies of our home-growth of agricultural produce !
It talks of " the erroneous policy of the agricul-
tural States," as the cause which " prevents the
increasing capital of the agricultural States
from being employed in raising increased
quantities of raw produce, to be exchanged
against the increased quantity of manufac-
tured goods brought to market by the more
rapidly increasing capital of England." The
erroneous policy of the great agricultural States!
At what period, past or present, leave we given
" the great agricultural States" a chance of regu-
larly supplying us their staples of raw produce ?
Excepting the hemp and tallow of Russia (whose
policy in commerce, as elsewhere, is a thing
sui generis), what great agricultural State have
we suffered to engage in reciprocal commercial
dealings with us ? Has not the possibility of such
reciprocity been the great bugbear of our land-
owners'? Has not the express scope of our corn
and timber laws been to keep out their raw pro-
duce Has it not been by painful persuasion of
political leaders less insane than their rank and
tile of adherents, that even a sliding scale was at
length substituted for total prohibition of the
most important raw produce till i t readied starving
prices? The other Foreign Quarterly Review (not
Mr. Gladstone's own) has an interesting article on
M. Tegoborski's " Finances and Public Credit of
Austria." We find this official Austrian writer
advocating the retention of some system of re-
striction on the very grounds which the English
corn-laws have rendered too legitmate these
thirty years ! "He quotes unhappy Poland,"
observes the Foreign Quarterly Reviewer, "and
with justice states that she had nothing to export
but corn, and could not cultivate that upon the
mere hazard of abaci. harvestin England. Justly
does the author ask to what end an agricultural
country is to go on producing corn without a
market, and whether creating a manufacturing
population to consume is not a wise measure."
Good Heaven ! and here was our " manufac-
turing population" ready created " to consume"
—and here is Mr. Gladstone's organ, if not Mr.
Gladstone himself, declaring that nothing but
lack of raw produce as returns for its goods
is what causes its sufferings—here was a
bread-store provided for English operatives—a
market for Polish tillers—and why (lid not these
markets—sufficient to each others' wants—find
each other out ? Because that party, with
which Mr. Gladstone and his new auxiliaries
act, without thinking with them, enacted laws
expressly to prevent the one surplus produce
being exchanged for the other. Because there
was nothing our senators feared so intensely as
the realisation of that abundant access to raw pro-
duce,which the Gladstone Quarterly now says was
of all things most to be wished. Truly the
Gladstone satellite sees the right, while he
seconds the wrong. He sees what would have
saved us our chronic malaise—but lie won't see
before him. Accordingly, he throws the whole
blame, forsooth, upon foreign countries; as if our
conduct in refusing what we wanted, and they had
to give, had no share in perverting their policy.
And he gives no hint of repairing that grand pri-
mary crime and blunder. As if our total refusal of
a regular trade in that vital article were not
enough to neutralise the whole effect of the
mighty liberality of the Peel tariff on some seven
hundred minor points, which not a soul, here or
elsewhere, ever thought about. But we say, in
the face of the Peel parasites who conduct the
few journals faithful to the grand principle of the
See-saw, which is the only one discernible in their
measures—that the language and conduct of these
men do not set foreigners any good example what-
ever. They are continually oscillating between
doctrines of free trade and colonial preference—
holding out " reciprocity " with one hand, and
sacrificing it to monopoly with the other. The
last new nostrum is the all-sufficiency of colonial
trade. We are in the fair way to teach all our colo-
nies the lesson we taught those we lost. We arc in
the fhir way to teach them those peddling notions
of this or that petty preference—of this or that
privileged production—as preferable to free com-
mercial interchange. We are setting up normal
• schools of future restriction against ourselves.
We teach young colonies to lisp monopoly. Old
colonies improve the lesson against ourselves.
Indeed we need not wait colonial independence
to observe the application of that lesson. 'We
may soon experience Canadian gratitude for the
monopoly of our American corn trade.