The Sun.
London, England, 1842-04-16 00:00:00

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have incorrectly augmented the deficiency on tine year
by 100,0001. The reduction of price, he anticipates,
can only be the result of the importation of consider-
able quantities of food paying duties, which will add
to the Exchequer. He has, therefore, tar less noed than
be makes out for en income tax, except that he is pre-
raring for war with America, which be and the Tories
prefer to free trade (for, had the Corn-law been abo-
lished, we should never have heard of that meeting at
New York which our Journal to-day records, uor heard
of a proposition to increase the import duties into
America), and preparing for war against liberty in.
France ; and, except as a means of preparing for war, he
could dispense with the income tax. The whole plan is
a fraud on the people, fur it is brought forward, as the
Times admits, on false pretences. We ought, therefore,
at once to scout such a petty advantage as the tariff;
when it is accompanied by such a gross iniquity as an
income tax, to maintain a Corn-law and promote the
horrors of war.

On all these accounts, and we might dwell on some
others, it seems to us advisable not to press the tariff;
which is in many points so essentially unjust against the
wishes of the farmers. It involves a new distribution
of property by the Legislature, which ought always to be
resisted. Better would it be, therefore, for the menufacturers, and townspeople, and their representatives, to
make common cause with the farmers and their friends
in o, posing the tariff, and so get rid of that, the income
tax, and PEEL together. The present system is far too
much damaged to be continued by any set of men, or
any combination of politicians, however unprincipled.
To break up the monopolist Administration, therefore,
will be a short cut to throwing overboard the whole
system •of protection, which continually requires the
Legislature to be dabbling and meddling with the pro-
perty of the people, and to obtaining complete per-
fect, and enduring free trade.

It can scarcely admit of a doubt that the claims of the
aristocracy to fill the high station they occupy will not
bear investigation. Prescription and custom are the
foundations of their power, which is threatened by the
very act of inquiry. The habit of the mind, on which
their authority depends, is totally at variance with
investigation, and must cease carrying their authority
with it as inquiry extends. The conduct of the
at istocracy consequently, which provokes an in-
quiry into their claims and privileges, is for
them full of danger. The result, if not imme-
diate, yet at no distant day, will be to place the
aristocracy in that position which their merits and their
services to society destrve, and not in that position which
the aristocracy filled with some propriety a few centu-

ries ago.
Of such inquiries we have seen none more complete
• and exhaustive, as far as the investigation goes, than is
carried on by the author of a pamphlet called Aristo-
cratic Taxati,n ; its Present State, 4-e. Not contented
with proving, in opposition to the interested assertion of
the landlords, that the land is subjected to no peculiar
burdens, the author shows that a considerable portion of
our customs and excise duties, 10,000,0001 at lost are
for the purpose of protecting the land. lie adds to this
other taxation levied on the people for the behoof of the
aristocracy, and arrives at the conclusion that the total
overcharge . of taxation on the middle and lower classes
for the behoof of the aristocracy, is not less than twenty-
eight millions per year. Not contented, moreover, with
merely proving the fact, the author traces the injustice
historically from the beginning of the feudal system
downwards, and properly concludes that this system is
not yet extinct amongst us. He has produced, at a very
appropriate time, a most useful work, which will help to
swell the tide of opinion now rolling in heavily against
the aristocracy.
We shall 'hereafter find an opportunity probably of
quoting a passage or two from the book ; we only wish
now to guard ourselves from the supposition that we
draw any conclusion against the aristocracy from the
mere fact that, in the earlier ages of society land bore
a much larger share, indeed the whole, of the burdens
of taxation, than at present. There was a time when
land and its produce constituted the only property.
The increase of other property is the necessary
consequence of the progress of society. It is quite
right that commerce and manufactures, as they come
into existence, should bear some of the burdens of so-
ciety. Fleets are maintained, in a great measure, for
the protection of commerce. Consular and diplomatic
officers are chiefly required to protect those persons
who visit foreign countries for purposes of trade. Many
of the expenses, therefore, of modern States aro caused
by the extension of manufactures and commerce, and
those who profit by them ought to pay a due share
the cost cost of protection. It is not, therefore, because
in the progress of society we find commercial and
manufacturing, or personal property contributing,
in relation to the land, more and more to
the necessities of the State, that we conclude that
the landlords throw on others the burdens they ought to
bear. We must have proofs of the particular acts by
which they have done this, such as their passing the
law for subjecting personal property to a probate duty,
and exonerating the land—and the utility of the present
pamphlet consists in this, that it supplies those proofs.
If the aristocracy hope to stifle inquiries into their merits,
and hope, after such inquiries, to retain their present high
place, they are assuredly most mistaken.

Mn. GLADSTONE'S PROPOSED COLONIAL TARIFF.—
British North America, scarcely raising sufficient corn
or meat for home consumption, cannot victual her ships
so cheaply as the United States ; freights from the
northern ports of the Republic to the West- Indies
will consequently be much lower than from New Brims-
, with or Canada, and freight in the conveyance of so
bulky an article as timber is an important constituent of
price to the consumer. Under the new Colonial customs'
tariff the northern colonies will lose the transport of flour
and meat to the West Indies, which enabled their ship-
owners to keep down the freight of timber ; but now that
the new tariff will deprive them of that transport, and
' take from American timber all protection in the colonies
of the West Indian Archipelago, the lower freights of
American ships Will transfer the export of timber from
British North America ti the United States, will de-
prive British colonial navigation of freights to the yearly
value of 200,000/., and British colonial trade of annual
exportation of timber to the amount of 700,900/., will
destroy the colonial capital invested in that shipping, and
in the mills and other establishments for the preparation
of wood for the West Indies.—Morning Herald. [This
statement is worth attending to for its admissions. In
consequence of bounties on timber-cutting, &c., as has
been over and over again proved, the colonists are
induced to neglect agriculture ; and of that the
consequence is, that they cannot victual their ships
so cheaply as the inhabitants of the United States.
Our bounties then inflict a mortal injury on the colonies.
In spite, too, of all the encouragement given to our des-
titute labourers to go to our colonies, which should pro-
vide them with labour at a cheap rate, the Americans
undersell our people. All the excuses of an old and new
country which are usually put forth to justify our suicidal
policy, and account for the success of the Americans,
fall to the "round in this case, for our colonies have an
abundance of land, and are quite as newly peopled as the
American States. The system of Government, the ex-
travagant meddling system of Goyernment,which prevails
in the colonies, and the comparatively cheap and free
system of the United States, are the causes of the (Id-
te-ence, and why our colonies do not thrive as fast as
the United States. This is the Tory system, alike mis-
chievous to the colonies and the mother country, but the
Tories themselves have been now compelled to deal it a
blow under which it reels, and from the effects of which
it will never recover.]

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