The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-19 00:00:00

tax. The Noble Lord went into a great number of sta-
tistical details, for the purpose of showing the injustice of
the tax and detrimental effects which it produced on the
public health, and concluded by moving for a Select
Committee to inquire into the present mode of assess-
ing, levying, and collecting the window-duties in Great
Britain, and to report their opinion thereupon to the
House.

Captain Ilous seconded the motion, which was op-
posed by the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER. In the
discussion which followed Captain PECHELL, Sir C.
NAPIER, Mr. E. ELLICE, Mr. HUME, Mr. BARING, Mr.
WARLEY, and Sir R. PEEL, took part, and on a division
the motion was negatived by a majority of 46.
Mr. G. W. HOPE, in moving for certain papers re-
lating to New Zealand, took the opportunity of vin-
dicating the conduct which Lord STANLEY had pur-
sued in his negotiations with the New Zealand Com-
pany, He was replied to by Mr. CHARLES BULLER,
who concluded an admirable address by moving, as an
amendment—" For the production of all correspondence
that had taken place between Lord STANLEY and the
New Zealand Company."
After an angry debate, the motion was agreed to, and
the House adjourned at a Quarter to Two o'clock.

It ought to be a great consolation to very poor
men who cannot conjure a crown-piece into either
pocket, " charm they never so wisely," that there are
other mortals who are reduced to a fearful condition
of perplexity and distress by the very converse of
their own condition. A poet of antiquity has sung
" that a good man struggling with the storms of fate"
is a spectacle fit for the contemplation of the immortal
gods. He would have added, had he lived to our
times, that the study of a First Lord of the Treasury
" bother'd"—(there is no other phrase of force or
significancy equal to our meaning)—with a
surplus revenue of about 3,000,0001. is a luxury
to be enjoyed, in all its intensity, only
by a pauper. Pleasant to him who, having little
money enough, Heaven knows, to spare for his own
and his family's purposes, is compelled to part with a
portion of it to a grasping Government, which is
hampered in its movements by the fortunate dilemma
of having " money in both pockets." The Premier
is like a successful gamester, who, having broken the
other players and swept the board, is set upon, before
he can move off with his booty, by twenty different
claimants on his " kind consideration " and relief,
They become importunate in the proportion of his
success ; and the imperiousness and decision of their
demands in the ratio of their numbers and influence.
Sir R. PEEL had a task of no slight difficulty, either
on his original proposition of the income• tax or on
his recent application for its three years' renewal—
to win the consent of the ,House of Commons to his
plan. lie played boldly, however, and, as we have
stated, he succeeded. In return, the House was to be
put in good humour with his scheme for appropriat-
ing the surplus of public income over expenditure
which he had realised on the financial year ending in
January last. Every man who voted for the Pre-
mier's property and income-tax must have assumed I
that there was something to be obtained in return, by
way of fiscal concessions, in which his constituents
or himself would find themselves more or less inte-
rested. Not the least successful part of the character
which he so well sustained, pending the discussions
on the nature of the exigencies that were to
justify his demand and the vote of the
House, was, the ability with which he managed, up
to the very closing scene of his performance on this
occasion, to induce all classes of his supporters to
imagine that he was acting up to the wishes and hopes
of each, to the exclusion of those of all others. The
drama being over, the serious interlude ensues of the
" Surplus and its Disposal."
In this the new principal appeals to the favour of
the Legislature are sustained on behalf of the remis-
sion or modification of the tea duties, the total re-
moval of the window-tax, the extinction of the soap
duty, a large diminution of the duty on malt, or a
still larger reduction of the tobacco duties. When a
great nation can be persuaded, in a period of profound
peace, whilst in the enjoyment of a very high degree
of nati;mal prosperity, and of a still increasing com-
merce of unexampled extent and almost incalculable
value, to submit to the imposition of a war-tax, for
the sole purpose of bringing up the aggregate of the
public income to the sum of its expenditure—the
nation has a clear right to the !greater; proportion of
whatever benefit, direct or indirect, may accrue on the
result of such an experiment. The constant tax-
payer has an equitable claim to this indulgence rather
than the larger tax-payer. This consideration is
strengthened by the fact that the new impost, in virtue
of which the excess of revenue arises, is an extraor-
dinary one. Now, since it is the inevitable condition
of trade to fluctuate in extent and value, the product
of custom and excise duty must be liable to similar
variation. New tariffs, moreover, and the philosophy
of free-trade principles, occur now and then
to relieve trade from many and grievous burdens.
But there is no phenomenon in the history of Go-
vernment measures so rare. as a tariff of reduced
assessed taxes. The great bulk of assessed tax-
payers are a perpetual:target_for Ministerial finance
practice. They stand to be shot at. There they
have stood so long, and have been fired at so success-
fully, that Ministers, without them, would retain
neither the eye nor: the aim needful to carry on the
operations of their Government. In short, the as-
sessed taxes, since the close of the war in 1814.15,
have had so little remission or indulgence that it
does seem high time to give them the honours of at
least a partial dismissal and retirement. They ought
to be superseded.
On the principles we have stated, it seems clear to
us that of all the proposed remission of taxes, this
class of imposts has the preferable claim on the
Premier. And of this class we are strongly dis-
posed to concui with those who consider that the
window-tax ought to have stood foremost on the list
of the " boons," as they have been called, or re-
missions in favour of the tax-paying community.
Its principle was odious, vicious, and oppressive, from
the first day that it received the sanction of the
Legislature. Its operation, like that of almost
every other tax in this country, has been espe-
ciall3 severe upon the poor. It has a ne-
cessary tendency, by rendering chargeable one
of the first common bounties of Providence, to
mar the beauty of nature ; to sap the health of the
community ; to discourage all those conditions of
the atmosphere within and without the dwellings of
man, which are most essential to the vigour, conve-
nience, and enjoyment of his existence. A tax upon
the light of heaven—that blessed element of all social
vitality and beauty—is a premium en disease, a de-
stroyer of industry, a scourge of the human consti-
tution, an incentive to crime, and a cloak for guilt;
and the mother of the most sordid progeny, that be-
speak their connexion:with idleness, squalor, misery,
and shame. Remove this tax, and give to the hum-
bler classes well-lighted, and therefore well-aired
tenements, and you surround them at once
with an ameliorated physical atmosphere, which
will have for its sure concomitants a moral
cheerfulness, an alacrity of spirit, a suscep-
tibility to the improving influences of natural
scenery, or civil associations, in the town and in the
country, which will work a reform and an improve-
ment in their condition far more practical and exten li
-
sive than any of which nine out of ten projectors of
utilitarian schemes and normal schools have, we sus-
pect, any Lotion.
On these grounds we are most anxious for the re-
mission of this window duty ; postponing only (but
far from undervaluing, even comparatively) the re-
mission of the various other duties to which we have
alluded in the commencement of this article. We
have not forgotten with how much severity certain
Whig leaders, after accepting office, were visited by
their constituents fur their violation of the pledges they
had given to procure the repeal of the window duties.
If anything connected with the ingrained " luck" of
the present Government could astonish us, we should
marvel at the facility with which the vast proportion
of their supporters, equally opposed to this obnoxious
tax, have permitted it hitherto to remain unchal-
lenged at the hands of her MAJESTY'S Ministers. The
division of last night has settled the question for the
session, but hopes are held out by the Premier that he
will take the subject into serious consideration, and
remove the tax as soon as the state of the finances will
admit.

We have received Madrid journals of the 11 th inst.,
which contain' an outline of the Bill for reforming the
representative system in Spain, and perhaps in no
country where a national assembly exists is reform more
motel. The return of Members hitherto has been made