The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-18 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY E'EN

This is patent proof that there still lingers a remnant
of rent in England. And let us, by the way, take
leave to remark that we have offered precisely this
same proof before to the Leaguers, when they
pretended, with about as much truth as Mr. Attwood
and the Morning Post new advance their paradox,
that the retail traders have no interest in supporting
the landed interest, as certainly they would have none
were rent annihilated. But this proof that rent
survives, though as obvious and satisfactory as
that of the philosopher who proved the possibility
of motion by walking across the floor, is not in direct
terms, and therefore we shall call a witness above ex-
ception—a gentleman known to the whole country,
and deservedly respected for talents and integrity by
all who know him ; a gentleman, moreover, whose com-
petency to give evidence upon the point every one
must admit. Our witness is Ge,orwe Robins, Esq.,
who has probably transferred more landed property
than any other man ever did. Well, Mr. Robins ;
you frequently in a any sell three or four hundred
thousand acres—f.'4o these acres pay any rent; and if
not, what consideration do you offer for the 301. or
401. per acre that you not unfrequently obtain for the
seller ? 1Y -e will abide by the answer of Mr. George
Robins, 'We might produce a score or more highly
res,ctable gentlemen, extensively engaged in the
.-tlme line of business, but one of a class is suffi-
cient. We next request the evidence of the Commis-
sioners of Property-tax. We would respectfully
ask of these gentlemen, from what funds do they
suppose the landowners have been able to
pay the millions that they have pain within
the last two years ? But next, we have,
indeed, a crowd of witnesses, honest and
hearty -fellows, but a little boisterous in mirth or
anger, and not likely to be put into the best of
humours by oflering it as a doubtful question,
whether there is any such a thing as rent ? Let the
hearer prepare his ears for such a roar as never
before greeted them, when the question is put to
the farmers, "Is there any such thing as rent ?"
That shout is decisive ; but, indeed, we need not go
beyond the Morning Post's own article for proof of
the ludicrous absurdity of its proposition. " Can
landowners afford to hand over to the mortgagee
the last acre of their possessions ?" asks our Con-
temporary ; but if its proposition that the land
affords no rent be true, the question ought to be,
can " mortgagees afford to take the land off the
hands of its owners," paying or sacrificing a loan
at the same time. There may be concerns, perhaps
the Morning Post knows something of such, that
no prudent man would purchase at any price,
or even accept as 'a gift ; and we take it that
land affording no rent is one of these concerns.
But why should rent be annihilated ? The
average price of the quarter of wheat is this day 48s.
sd. The average price of the quarter of wheat this
day ten years was 415., this day nine years 365.; so
that the quarter of wheat is now worth 7s. in money
more than it was ten years ago, 12s. in money more
than its price nine years ago—through what leak is it,
then, that rents have disappeared ? The populatioy
has augmented one-seventh within the ten years;
and, as no more foreign corn has been imported, nor
are the people much worse fed than ten years ago,
rent, instead of disappearing, must have increased
in pretty much the same ratio, unless the cost
of cultivation has become greater; but every
improvement in agriculture, every additional outlay
of capital upon land, renders the cost of cultivation
much less, and it is notorious that many improve-
ments have been effected in agriculture since 1834,
and that much capital has been laid out upon land.
Must we then not, however reluctant to oppose such
high authorities, come to the conclusion that Messrs.
Thomas Attwood and the Morning Post are mistaken,
and that rents are not yet either actually or virtually
annihilated.

STATE or TRADE.—To-day we have had but a
limited business, and last Tuesday's prices were sup-
ported with difficulty ; this applies both to goods
and yarn. The closing of the continental markets
by the ice in the rivers, is one great cause of the
present dulness ; to which we may add the usual
quietue3s of the present season of the year. DALE FLANNEL MARKET, DEC. 16.—There has
been an improved demand for goods to-day, and consi-
derably more have been sold at former prices. The 4-
maud for wool is also increasing, and prices slowly A.
the advance.—Manchester Guardian.

THE LATE FATAL ACCIDENT TO Miss CLARA.
WEBSTER.—The inquisition to be held, to investigate
the circumstances leading to the death of this young and
promising artiste, will held its sitting at ten: o'clock to-
morrow.

ASIITON- UNDER -LYNE.—COLLIERS' WAGES.—On
Saturday last, the notices given to the coal-masters, by
the colliers of this district, for an advance of wages, ex-
pired ; when it was expected that a strike would take
place at many of the pits in the neighbourhood. We are
happy, however, to state that the matter has been
amicably arranged between the masters and men ; the
latter having received an advance upon their wages of
twopence in ;the shilling. Coals hare been raised in
price one halfpenny per hundredweight, which is thought
by the manufacturers in this locality to be most exorbi-
tant ; and many of them have determined to get their
supplies from other parts of the country.—Manchester
Guardian.

THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFI-
CULTIES.
(From the Sentinel.)
In 1835, Sir liv. Peel announced to the country
that his great difficulty was Ireland. That removed,
he felt confident that he could maintain his adminis-
tration against all opposition. Ten years have won-
derfully changed the state of affairs. The difficulty
of Ireland remains in undiminished force, but added
to it is the difficulty of Britain. To make the revenue
square with the expenditure—to raise that revenue
without destroying industry—to provide employ-
ment for capital without disturbing vested
interests—to liberate trade from the fetters of
monopoly—in a word, to reconcile the rights of
labour with the rights of property—this is the
problem to be solved, this is the difficulty of difficul-
ties. It is one which does not affect Sir It. Peel
alone; it lies in the path of every man who aspires
to the rank of Prime Minister. Hitherto the solici-
tude of our statesmen has been confined to keeping
faith with the public creditor; henceforward they
must make arrangements to keep faith with the
public debtor. With a general fall of prices, it will
he impossible to keep up high taxes. With wheat
between forty and forty-five shillings, which will be
an average permanent price with average crops,
cents must fall, and then the waters of bitterness will
rise up and reach the Corinthian columns of society;
then will come that conflict between the land-
holders and the fundholders which wise men
have long foreseen, but for which statesmen have
made no provision. "It will last our time," said the
heartless George the Fourth ; but he had the sagacity
to predict that when the proposed day of settlement
did arrive, the consequences of violating justice would
be awful to the wrong-doers. Already has the cry
gone forth from agriculture that it sinks under the
pressure of taxation, and a committee of 120 power-
ful and talented names, aiming at a repeal of the duty
on malt, is a warning to Sir E. Peel that even those
who placed him in power are now about to demand a
recompense which circumstances must compel him to
refuse, even should the refusal drive him from the
helm of the State.

We will submit a few facts and figures to our
readers. They may enable them the better to ap-
preciate the real perils by which we are surrounded,
and will give to our argument all the weight of a
stern 4 and unaccommodating arithmetic. Let us,
then, contrast the fiscal relation of a working man
with eleven shillings a week with that of a landholder
with a rental of one hundred thousand pounds.
William Gladstone, a labourer, presented a petition
to the House of CAnntnons, stating that he earned
eleven shillings weekly, and that he cousumed one
ounce of tea, two ounces of coffee, eight ounces of
sugar, eight ounces of meat, eight pounds of flour,
seven pints of ale, and one quarter of a pint of brandy.
Of these articles, the untaxed price was 2s. 441 d.; the
Excise and Customs charged on them was ss. 2id.
Gladstone, therefore, paid out of his eleven shillings
a week a tax of about fifty per cent. on his necessary
food.
Let us now inquire into the burdens imposed on
the man with a rental of 100,0001. We can fix his
land-tax exactly, because we know the rate of the as-
sessment. We can do the same with the present in-
come-tax. We can only do so approximately on his
consumption of food and his articles of luxury, since
these will vary according to his mode of living. Ne-
vertheless, we may form a pretty accurate estimate ;
and this, indeed has been done by Mr. Macintyre, in
his work on " Aristocracies." Availing ourselves of
his conclusions without filling up our columns with
his details and enumerations, we arrive at the follow-
ing result :

Land-tax £2,716 17 11
Income-tax
Taxes on consumption..
Direct taxes on articles of luxury,
as servants, horses, &c ..

of twenty millions, it would equal twenty-fi ye pe:
cent. of this rental, for take away the monopoly the
rental would [fall ;to 85,000,000/. Thus, the land-
owner, with a rental of 100,0001., stands thus :
lie levies a private tax on the conga-

mere of food of
lie pays a personal tax to the State of 6,992 2 0

Net Annual gain ...£18,007 18 0
We must entreat the reader to bear with us a little
longer in these arithmetical demonstrations. By
figures we can best prove the graspings of the oli-
garchy, and we will do our best to force truth even
on the unwilling, and rouse even the sluggard from
his deceiving slumbers. If what we are now about
to transcribe fails to rouse our readers from apathy,
they deserve to have a tax-gatherer permanently do-
miciliated at their firesides.
From 1793 to 1816, the taxation raised

was X1,560,000.000
Deduct expenses of country supposing
we had been at peace

460,000,000

Expense of War £1,100,000,000

OF this total, Ih© Land paid
f f Industry paid

.£120,000,000
1,440,000,000

£1,560,000,000
Or, the tax on Property and Land was 8 per cent.
The tax on Industry was 92 per cent.
In these proportions, then, was the national debt
contracted : it was incurred to save the estates of the
oligarchy, and they contrived, through their mono-
poly of legislation, to make the working classes pay
nearly the whole cost of the protection. When the
danger was over, by the fall of Napoleon, it might
have been expected that industry would haye re-
ceived some compensation for the fearful sacrifice it
had made in the hour of peril. Quite the reverse.
The oligarchy first passed a corn-law to raise their own
rents, and make those who had saved them from
ruin, eat dear bread ; then they abolished the pro-
perty-tax, which drained their own purses • thirdly,
they converted a paper debt into a metallic debt, and,
by so doing, indirectly increased the value of their
own rentals, by reducing the price of all commodities.
Since then, the working classes have dragged on a
wretched existence, at famine wages, while the middle
classes have been racked in body and mind to
maintain the respectability of their position. All
sorts of fallacies have been invented to disguise the
truth. Over-population, over-production, too abun-
dant harvests, and other similar absurdities, have been
proclaimed as the causes of the distress, and the reme-
dies proposed have been just as stupid as the descrip-
tion of the disease. The people have been studiously
deluded by newspapers, whose proprietors derived
enormous profits by acting on the money market; and,
whoever ventured to insist on a paper currency, was
held up to ridicule and execration, as a bankrupt spe-
culator, seeking to serve his private ends by issuing
" sham" money. That was the phrase. It was a
" telling" phrase, and well has it served the purposes
of Lombard-street and Capel-court.
It is our duty to tell the working classes of this
realm, that unless the taxes are taken off industry and
placed on property, relief to them is utterly hopeless.
Without this fiscal reform, all the enactments of
the Legislature will be valueless as waste paper.
Now, there are but two ways of effecting this adjust-
ment; either by levying directly the whole of the
taxe3 on property, which would require a rate of
about thirty per cent., or by an issue of taxation
notes to the amount of the annual expenditure. If
gold is continued as the standard and measure of
value, and its price kept permanently low by
Act of Parliament, profits and wages must remain
low, for it is utterly impossible that they can
rise above the standard by which they are mea-
sured. This truth should be ever present to the
minds of the people. Only let the corn-laws
be abolished, and wheat will fall down to a scale cor-
responding with that of all other commodities, and
then the full workings of the Bill of 1819 will be felt
by the farmers, and when rents fall from this cause,
let the fundholders tremble. They will be robbed
with the same coolness as the industrious classes have
hitherto been robbed. Then the landlords will transfer
all their affections from the public creditor to the
public debtor. We have shown what they have done
in times past, and what they are doing now ; in the
same spirit will their future policy be dictated.

TUESDAY NIGHT'S GAZETTE.
FOREIGN-OFFICE, Dm. 13, 1844.
The Queen has been graciously pleased to nominate
and appoint William Gore Ouseley, Esq. (now Secretary
to her Majesty's Legation at Rio Janeiro), to be her
Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary to the Argentine Con-
federation.

The Queen has also been graciously pleased to nomi-
nate and appoint John Fiennes Crampton, Esq. (now
First Paid Attach 4 to her Majesty's Embassy at Vienna),
to be Secretary to her Majesty's Legation to the Confe-
derated States of the Swiss Cantons.

The Queen has also been graciously pleased to nomi-
nate and appoint Francis Farrant, Esq., to be Secretary
to her Majesty's Legation at the Court of Persia.
DOWNING-STREET, DEc. 16.
The Queen has been pleased to appoint Denis Benja-
min Viger, Esq., to be President of the Committee of
the Executive Council of Canada.

Her Majesty has also been pleased to appoint Henry
Sherwood, Esq., to be her Majesty's Solicitor-General
for that part of the Province of Canada formerly called
Upper Canada.
Her Majesty has also been pleased to appoint
R. Y. Cummins, Esq., to be Accountant to the Surveyor-
General's Department for the Island of Mauritius.
Her Majesty has further been pleased to appoint
William Dudley Ryder, Esq., to be Assistant Secretary
for the Island of Ceylon.
CROWN-OFFICE, DEC. 16.
The Queen has been pleased to appoint William Fuller
Boteler, Esq., one of her Majesty's Counsel learned in
the Law, to be one of the Commissioners of the Court
of Bankruptcy, to act in the prosecution of Fiats in
Bankruptcy in the Country, in the place of Edward
Goulburn, Sergeant-at-Law, resigned.
BANKRUPTCY SUPERSEDED.

William Cowland Buttress, silk throwster, Steward-
stone, Essex.