The Sun.
London, England, 1845-02-17 00:00:00

T Mil BUDGET.
MIRONICLE.—AIthough unable to-day to enter into a eon;
sideration of the details of " the financial statement " fats
5.
by Sir Robert Peel last night, we cannot allow the opportu
pass of expressing our admiration of the bold and
hcaoamhpreahnemi4V.
principle upon which this large remission of taxatifotihat
pee
rinci pleas
Nor is it so much with the present application o
his that the public
with its direct and inevitable tendency, cheers ofwill be
pleased. The ominous silence of own snpporteedrs,
in thet hofawa of
the Opposition, and the [dismay so painfully pictured
the Knightleys the Inglises, the Reelibrookes, etc , were all preg-
nant conunentL it wonld ies upon they free-trade demonstration. We cannot,
however, tee mach deplore the obstinacy (
be rielien-
toiee to call it consistency) which led Sir Robert Peel to
In such an arrangement as he proposes
involve himself
of the sugar duties. From this part of subject lan, however, we
Let he will be yet obliged to recede. The will be fully dis-
tenussed in the course of the ensuing week, serif we do not yet despair of
ae.eing Sir Robert Peel sacrifice those hypocal pretexts by which
the markets of Brazil and Cuba are threatened to be closed, to those
round principles of commercial legislation to which he paid such prac-
tical homage last night. Sir Robert Peel may rely with confidence
upon the support of the Liberal party in dealing with sugar and with
corn, as he deals with so many other articles that were formerly pro-
tected. We owe Sir Robert Peel a deep debt of gratitude for the ex-
cellent purposes to which he is turning the monopolist majority who
brought him into power. Should that majority turn restive, either in
anger, in disgust, or in selfish apprehension about their own interests,
we say again Sir Robert Peel may depend upon the support of his
opponents. Several members at once recorded their approbation of
the scheme. Some few objections were started, and Lord John Rus-
sell stated that he considered the Right Hon. Baronet's proposal as
to sugar to be the most important andamost objectionable part of the
scheme. The Noble Lord said he should be ready to go into the dis-
cussion on Monday, on which day the Committee is to sit again.
-Upon one question we hope Sir Robert will be compelled to give way.
Surely, after the admissions of last night, a majority of the House of
Commons should insist upon a repeal of the odious income-tax.
While there is yet time, let the country make itself heard upon this
question. Petitions should be sent iu from every county and town
in the kingdom.
POST—What our amiable and lively Contemporary, the Herald,
wit: say to this, alter its elaborate commendation of surpluses and
public works, we really cannot imagine. But the devices and re-
sources of the higher orders of genius are inexhaustible. When we
take into account the great personal interest which the Minister has
in the value of British land, and in the prosperity of the landed
interest, we cannot but admire the dauntless devotedness with
which he gives himself up to the promotion of the commercial
and manufacturing interests, and the total absence from his conside-
ration of the interests of landlords and farmers. We mean, of course,
their immediate interests. Doubtless, he expects that, in the end, what.
ever enriches Manchester and Liverpool will benefit the farming inter-
esteromCornwall to Caithness. In the meantime, however, the case
of the landowners and occupiers may seem to many of them to be
rather hard. They pay the greater part of the property and income-
tax, yet that is to be kept on solely- (as the Minister admits) that a
great experiment may be tried in the reduction of taxation for the
benefit of the merchants and manufacturers. A million and a quarter
Is to be added to the expense of the year, solely (as the Minister
admits) to add to the defence of our increasing commerce, and not
for national purposes independently of commerce. The army, as the
Minister contended at great length, is mainly kept up for the sake of
our colonies, and our colonies are necessary for the sake of our com-
merce. The army, therefore, and the expense thereof, cannot be
reduced. So, then, expenses continue for the sake of com-
merce, and they are to ix; increased for the sake of commerce, and
three millions a year of taxation are to be taken away for the sake of
commerce and manufactures. It is all very well so far as commerce
and manufactures are concerned, and these interests, we own, are
mighty. But there is another great interest which pays by far the
greater part of the property-tax, and a fair proportion of the income-
tax, and which is not now prosperous, whereas the commercial and
manufacturing interests are now prosperous. Yet that great interest
gets nothing but the permission to continue to pay what it has paid
hitherto. It was a pity that, when the agriculturists had power to
snake a Ministry some years ago, they did not make a Ministry which
would at least think of their exietence upon national occasions of
great importance.
TIMES.--The pleasing nature of the Premier's task, last night,
fully accounts for the joyous haste with which he has discharged it,
that is to say, on the seventh night of the session, and for the early
anxiety he had displayed to publish the preliminary document!. Bis
eat qui cif() dat, thought Sir Robert, and resolved not to spoil his
magnificence by delay. He was, too, in the situation of the traveller
landing at a foreign port, and immediately besieged by the porters and
commissionaires of twenty different hotels. " Close with one, and the
Test will leave you," whispers a friend. The Minister has selected
the objects of his favours, and we may enjoy a little peace for the
present. In the first place, the Premier proposes to take another
lease of the mine which has yielded him these golden opportunites.
For three years longer he claims to sink his shafts and edits, to drive
tunnels, and make all sorts of bores and cavities, in the dark
recesses of our private affairs--to bring up, break, smelt, and run our
means and ourindustry, as if it were so much rough ore, in quest of
his precious three per cent. Now for the bright side of the picture.
A very material reduction in the sugar duties takes the lead. " The
temporary arrangement" of last session, as it is isdustriously called,
gave satisfaction to neither party, and has been attended with very
imperfect success. On a half enunciated principle of free trade, and
still more, perhaps, on a point of honour, the Premier persevered in
a serious reduction of the differential duties, which the state of his
finances at that time did not allow bins to render more palatable to
the Colonial interests. A more propitious moment has ar-
rived. The duty on both foreign and colonial sugar is to he
reduced far beyond the expectation either of the South
American or West Indian planter, while the protecting duty
is diminished below even Sir Robert's of last year. This
is a triumph to all parties. Even Mr. Miles has more than he asked
for. Last year the duty on foreign sugar, the produce of free labour,
was 11. 15s. Ode '
that on our colonial, 11. ss. 3d. • leaving a protecting
duty of 10s. Gut., which, it will be remembered, Mr. Miles wished to
increase by 4s. odd, and on that question the Government was all
bat overthrown. The day of tea has not yet arrived ; so an entire
abolition of the import duty on cotton-wool is the next, and a very
considerable relief to our manufacturers, merchants, and consumers.
The tax amounted to 12 4 per cent. on the value of the raw material,
being a great actual increase on its relative pressure when first im-
posed, which was at a time of public necessity; and it has lately
operated to the absolute extinction of portions of our manufactures
and trade. The necessity of this remission we have frequently
pointed out, and we may suffer It now to speak for itself. Atter this,
at one fell swoop, 430 items are struck off the list of " dutiable"
articles. The greater part of these have returned very small sums to
the revenue, and occupy the four lowest schedules in the lately pub-
lished expository statement, where they look more like a zoological
or botanical index than a national tariff. An immensity of labour
and expense is saved by this wholesale excision, while the right of
inspection is not to be given up. The list includes many smaller
luxuries and helps to comfort, taste, and even information, and will
Abolish many of .the petty robberies now suffered by the home-
ward traveller at the moment ho salutes his native soil. Arts,
crafts, and sciences will be allowed a facer use of foreign aids. The
cabinetmaker will be allowed more -variety of materials. To take
some ofthe larger items, the coopers are to be relieved by the free
importation of staves, last year accidentally lost sight of in the
amended tariff. The reduction of the Excise duty on glass is a bless-
ing to three million poor windows, in addition to half a million win-
dows returned to the assessed taxes, and millions of windows, single
*windows, and double-glazed windows, yet unborn. What a luxury
It is in continental countries, that you can thrust your elbow or your
foot through a pane without being utterly ruined A franc repairs
the damage which in England you would think cheap at 3s. 6d. Good
news for householders, and, Sir Robert intimates, a hope even to the
Irish cottier. 3foreover, people tnay now experimentalise in glass,
Make it as good or as had as they please, plate for palaces, and bottle-
reen for churches, and without paying for either fancy. We venture,
Lowever,humbly to suggest that a repeal or modification of the window-
ten might, perhaps, have been more to the pointjust now. One whole
department of the revenue is to cease. Export duties are to become
a matter of history. The duty on coals constituted nearly the whole
antler this head, and Its entire surrender presents the unusual fact
of Sir Robert undoing his own recent work. He Is prompt, how-
ever, to make a virtue of what we believe amounted to a necessity.
Fir Robert has been ingenious. To show that he has not merely
yielded to clamour, he has looked for a tax that nobody had tor-
mented him about, and, strange to say, has found one. The
auction duty is given up, not from pressure from without,
but to the secret murmurings of the Excise. A duty from which
there are 32 exemptions by special statute, and 500 evasions by pri-
vate management, is happily to be extinct and forgotten. The
mounts and sum-totals of these several reductions our readers will
find elsewhere, so we need not here repeat them. But they
mount up so high that we can hardly believe our eyes that the Pre- I
miler nevertheless proposing, what, however, we cannot doubt to be
most necessary, a-considerable increase of expenditnre upon the navy.
On the whole, we must congratulate Sir Robert Peel on his selection,
difficult, and even invidious, as it must have been, when, as he
says, every tax presents a prima facie case for reduction,
'which there are plenty to advocate. It would be hard upon
not him,
and human nature itself, to expect that he should do
the thing rather grandly. It is not his fault that he acts the Goddess
of Plenty, and wields his cornucopia with an air. It is his mission to
confer felicity, and when he unfolds his budget Nature smiles, and
even the four children with which Heavenas blessed the Royal union,
are happy. The Queen is happy, and the people happy, and so too
is Parliament, particularly when they are informed her Majesty asks
for no increase of the Civil List. All is happiness ; but
medio de forte leporuin
Surgit amari aliquid."
Id three short days—next Monday evening—the House Will be called
on, with one short vote, to saddle the nation with a second three
years of the Income-tax. Surely a little more interval of deliberation
was due to the universal feeling that mere income should be spared a
burden and scrutiny above its capacity, and suited only to the .solid
rind tangible investments of property.

SPIRIT of tht., PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF SATURDAY.

GLOBE.—The Premier has taken a bold course. While
he remains in office the income-tax must be continued. lie
has no alternative, except giving up the protective system ;
and as that would, in all probability, involve the imme-
diate relinquishment of office, it is to be avoided at all risks.
On the whole, the most obvious inference, from a review
of the statement of last night, is, that Sir Robert
i painfully conscious of the failure of his financial
schemes of the last three years. Nothing has been success-
ful but the income-tax, the imposition of which involved
no financial ability beyond that which is every day displayed
in the parish vestry—an estimate of the amount of income to
he taxed, and of the per centage upon it which will yield the sum
required. Even in this he was far from accurate. The produce
was estimated at considerably less than 4,000,0001.—it yielded
more than 5,000,0001. Vast apparent changes were made
in the tariff with the ostensible object of largely dimi-
nishing the cost of subsistence, and so increasing consumption
as to revive the ordinary sources of revenue. At the end of
three years the cost of subsistence is found not to be sen-
sibly affected ; and any increase in the consumption of taxed
articles, and consequently of revenue, is traceable directly to
causes which would equally have operated under any system
of taxation not involving an entire stoppage of our foreign
trade. As a general rule, wherever the tariff has been
altered, the result has been a loss of revenue. The
duty on copper-ore smelted for home consumption,
forms, we believe, the only exception. This, however, as it
amounted merely to the removal of a prohibition, originally
absurd, and which had long been found practically injurious
to all concerned, and is, in reference to the great objects now
in view, extremely trifling—would be unworthy of notice,
were it not thus singular. A comparison of the tariff as it
1400(1 before and after the changes made in July, 1842, is
sufficient to show that the reductions of duty were almost
entirely upon articles (as, for instance, drugs and other
things of a similar nature, used in medicine, and in various
manufacturing processes) upon the price of which, to the
ultimate consumer, the duty can never have more than a
very slight effect. The inefficacy of such reductions, for the
purpose of reducing prices, extending consumption, and so
materially increasing the quantity of the article brought to
charge, . cannot indeed be better expressed than it was by
Fir R. Peel himself, some years ago. " I know," he said
in his speech on the Budget in 1830, "from experience, and
it is easily proved with respect to several articles the duties
on which have been reduced, that the benefit of the
reduction is enjoyed by the dealers, and that the price of the
article does not decrease in proportion to the remission of
fy.. Sir Robert's deductions, from " experience," made
fifteen years ago, have now been amply proved to be correct
—not
oit easily," if we consider that the experiment has been
c conducted at the expense of three years' time, and a good
_
,anY millions of money—but, it is to be hoped, sufficiently
teol„convince all future doubters, and render any more of
experiments unnecessary. The revenue from
Gore ordinaryelear than soanurces has increased. But nothing is
snsent Government havethatn
toltie
only measures of the pre-
producing such in had no share in
the increased prosperity
it has arisen solely from
t ulted from the recent 2: of the country, which has re-
tension of our trade with foreign
tuntries—hut that the increase from these sources would
Dave been much larger, vie the real burden upon the
country would not have been materially greater, had no
alterations whatever been made. short, the " expository
statement," lately published, furnishesconclusive proof
that ix) inndification of our sys,teinatfindirect taxation
which a Minister, supported by w
can possibly effectare called the
dS protected interests,"
'ivtP renders the
will furnish
the means of dispensing with an income-tax.'
bas now been continued to the point at which
ordinary- income of the country permanently inadequate
expenditure. To rescue those whose interests are ent to
with " protection" from the growing influence of a sound
commercial policy—to preserve the vicious and absurd id
ar-
rangement by which the effective weight of our taxation
upon the productive resources of the country is more than
doubled, recourse must now of necessity be had to a direct
tax, admitted to be unjust, because unequal in its operation,
and necessarily attended with the exercise of arbitrary and
inquisitorial powers which nothing but the direst neces-
sity can justify in a country such as Great Britain.
The result may not be immediately obvious ; but
from this time forth the advocates of free trade need
look for co effective commercial reform from the party
now in power. In effect, it is now fairly con-
fessed to be impossible. Particular interests may be
conciliated for a time by the removal (under the
shadow of the income-tax) of imposts appearing to bear
more immediately and exclusively upon thilam ; but the real
ittenbas—that which nor alone cripples the gigantic