The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-11 00:00:00

Ztt

LONDON
TUESD 11011NING. OCTOBER 11, 1842.

In.another part of The Suit, will be found the
Revenue Tables for the quarter ending the 10th
of October. The increase in the year is only
333,9811., though that includes a sum of 313,844/.
obtained by the Income-tax. In also includes
477,803/. from Miscellaneous sources, chiefly
made up front the Chinese booty. Of every
branch of old taxation, except the Customs—in
which duties hare been reduced, and some
articles are now included which were before
prohibited, and which include the whole sum
received on the corn imported—and, except the
Post-office, the produce is declining. In the
year the Excise has fallen • off 733,4481., the
Stamps, 139,71-2/., and the Taxes, 62,233/. Deduct-
ing the decrease from the total increase of the year,
and deducting the produce of the Income-tax,
the revenue is just 4:2,137/. better this year than
last. Deducting the Miscellaneous, it is 433,6661.

worse.

We are much disappointed by the produce
of the quarter's revenue. We anticipated in July
that, in consequence of the tariff being settled
in the present quarter, there would have been a
rent
, ,rt increase in the Customs' revenue;
t,
• it. is only 206,760/. These tables do not
show us how much the Customs have lost by the
alteration in the Coffee and other duties, nor
how much they have gained by the Corn duties,
but we should conjecture that the latter must
numb exceed the former, and we regard the
small increase in the quarter as an indication that
our trade has had ro revival. .4,
-The Who.). off
Ahi.c • ' in the Excise this 'quarter,—
-h li the worst index we have yet seen
twythe diininishcd consumption by the peo-
ple—is not 1 -
We
can b4amp
• Off - in
,the
~e,ss than 434,8311. The falling
duties, is 107,224/ ; and
, . "1Y account for
...:e Taxes, 14c2,7,-,3/ the falling off in
occasioned by reductions.bY supposing that it is
to prepare for the In in
expenditure made
grease on the quarter, ncloultwe-it The whole de-
grease
the addi-
-7a3tlid the increase of
tion of the Income-tax
Customs' duties, is 67,4,
er'seßeing unable to ap-
the
„-eciate correctly the adverse
. ,::wis of increased traffic and the reduction in the Gus-
-.);everal duties, we give no deci,eicid•eduction in the
these returns; but, on the whole, 7e opinion upon
pointed at the produce of the revenue for the
are disap-
14quarter , while the falling off in the Excise
con
firms the statement that the distress of the people
htts.as yet undergone no mitigation.

• I.l'.France or Germany, both of which countries
possess a well organized system of police, and
patronise the, passport plan, alias the plan for
ticketing and numbering the human race, were
Nz) -refuse a free passage to Englishmen, Spaniards,
„or Italians, through its territory, on the same
.zonditions of keeping the highways, ex hi bi ti
their passports at the gates of the towns, as it
allows its own subjects to use the privilege of lo-
vomotion, or on any additional conditions it may
lay down as r.ecessary for the preservation of
order, it would be justly stigmatised as a susPi-
agd barbarous State. In truth, when these
and other States, from an apprehension of war,
.or tearful of rebellion, have prohibited to pas-
.engers the free passage of their high roads, or
love prohibited them from entering and leaving
their territories,States ha
.s
of these I s
ci.en considered unjust,. and injurious to them-

selves. Far from such being the general prac-
tice, all passports given to the natives of one
country going into another, recommend them to
the care of the authorities, who are expected
to protect, not to molest them. At present there
is no inconsiderable influx of English into and
efflux from France, and while every man is aware
that the French Government has the power to
stop this ebb and flow whenever it pleases, and
to prevent a single Englishman from travelling
to Paris, yet every man is equally sensible that
the French Government, in the interest of its
own subjects, who would suffer much from such
a communication and free circulation of the Eng-
lish in France being even impeded, has no right
to stop it. We deduce from this—looking at the
interest of the_ people governed as the basis
of all the rights of the Government—the gene-
ral rule, that
rno State has the right, whatever
may be its power, to prevent or impede foreign-
ers from freely using, subject to all customary
tolls and conditions, the high roads of that State.

What is true as to the persons of foreigners is
equally true as to their goods and. property.
Atter paying those Customs duties which every
State—from what is, in most cases, to us a piece
of high and inscrutable wisdom—levies on goods
imported from abroad—those goods, whether in
the possession of the foreigner, and conveyed in
his own carriage, or in possession of the natives,
and conveyed by some of the carriers of the
country, are allowed to circulate on its highways,
on the same conditions as the property of the
natives. Every Government has the power of
prohibiting—and, but for the smuggler, might
prevent—the importation of all goods from abroad
on' any conditions; but, looking to the interest
( of its own people, no sane-minded man would say
that it had a right so to prohibit the importa-
tion. We have, by these remarks, we think,
established the general rule that Governments,
though they hay.e the power, 'have no right to
prevent the free circulation of foreigners and
foreign goods on the highways which those Go-
vernments form and maintain.
We believe that our readers will wonder why
we enter into such a discussion, and take so
much pains to demonstrate a received truth and
the common practice. We are about to apply
the doctrine to sweep away a heap of nonsense,
or what Lord ASHBURTON properly called " de-
vices and manoeuvres," the " supposed artful
tools of diplomacy," which some of our Con-
temporaries have vomited forth in relation to
England allowing the subjects of the United
States the free navigation of the St. John's. If
Governments have no right—whatever may be
their power—to prohibit to foreigners the use
of the high-roads which they have made and
maintain through their own territories, for
the free circulation of their persons and goods,
it is clear, a fortiori, that Governments can
have no right to prohibit to foreigners, for the
free conveyance of their persons and goods,
the use of those rivers which flow through
their territories, and which they did
not make, and perhaps are at no ex-
pense whatever in maintaining. Of course,
possessing both banks of such rivers, Govern-
ments may inhospitably refuse all succour and
assistance to. the foreigners who seek to pass
along them, or they may• throw a boom and
chains across, and bar the passage where the
river enters and leaves their territory. They
have.the power to•do that; they have the power
even to murder the boats' crews that might at-
tempt to pass down a stream, as MUNGO PARK
is said to have been murdered. But they have no
right to murder them ; they have no right to
bar the passage ; they have no right to impede
foreigners in freely using, for the conveyance
both of their persons and their goods, those na-
tural and unexpensive highways. Of course,
they may make such police regulations and im-
pose such duties on goods and persons entering
their territories by a river as if they came
from the sea, or across the frontier, from the
high road of another State; but their right to do
so is strictly circumscribed by the interest of
their own people. Whatever, therefore, may be
the opinions of old HUGO GROTIUS or Herr
-Von MARTENS, both respectable and honourable
men in their way, we assert that a Government
has not the abstract right to interdict.the navi-
gation of rivers which pass within•its territory to
*peaceful and friendly foreigners.

There may undoubtedly be a question
whether it be for the interest of the peo-
ple whose Government possesses both banks
of a river to prohibit its use to foreigners.
We have not heard, however, a single
human being say, or surmise, that it would
be for the interest of New Brunswick or Great
Britain that the Americans should not convey as
many of themselves, and as much of their pro-
duce as they please, down the river to the town
of St. John's. if our country has no interest in
preventing them doing that; if it would be fur the
public advantage that they should bring their
goods to the people on the banks of the river, and
to the inhabitants of St. John's, to be there loaded
on board ship, enriching that town with their
traffic, we have no right whatever to prevent
their doing it. We doubt whether it ever can be
for the interest of a people possessing a river to
bar its use to those who dwell on it, above and
below them, any more than it can be the interest
of France to bar the use of its highways to the
Germans, the Italians, and the English. We
conclude, therefbre, that Lord ASHUURTON
promoted the interest of New Brunswick and of
Great Britain as much, by consenting that the
Americans should freely navigate the St. John's,
as France promotes its own interest by allowing
the tolerably free ingress and egress of English
into and from that country.

who. von
equoted MARTENSbysomaendorHUGO GROTIUS,
Hell
tion, borrowed. their doctrines, our Contempo-
.authorities on this ques-
raries) as great
international
Sometimes,
butla farlo,mlctat:isn,eits.i,ielyikaetatellin-irvrtitteorcsoorn-
the practices of States.
law,
cor-
rect those practices by
the moral law; but, ingeneral,
iigher principles of
what they call the
law of nations is nothin,
, more than a transcript
of what Kings have done. They
saw the prac-
tices of the Sovereigns of •Gentr
any, one of the
few European States of which the navigable
rivers flow through the territories of
several p°-
litical Powers—Sovereigns saw the ' of thine
States, with a hateful, dog-in-the-manger policy
trying, by tolls and impediments, to prevent each
other from reaping all possible advantage from
the noble rivers which flow through their com-
mon country; and GROTIUS and Herr Von
MARTENS deduce from their practices the right
of Sovereigns to the exclusive control and posses-
sion of rivers, and the right to bar their use toothier
nations. But What was the consequence of this
exercise of selfish, ignorant power? The rivers
of Germany remained for centuries almost un-
navigated. While the streams of the United
States were covered with steam-ships, the
Elbe, the Weser, the Danube, and . the
Rhine (now they have a few), remained un-
visited and unblessed by those miracles of
human skill. Are we, then, because Herr Von
MARTENS and Hucos GROTIVS say we have the
right, to imitate the blind power of the petty
Sovereigns of Germany, and impede the free use
of the waters of our American colonies to our
peaceful brethren of the United States? We
answer no; we say that we have DO right to do
so; that our own interest demands that our
rivers be as freely used as our roads by foreigners.
If this be a correct view of this important
question, Lord AsnBURTON made no concession
to the Americans, but pronyted the welfare of
our Own
people—and
happily for us pro-
moted the
the same . welfare of the Americans at
river - St. J 0717— by stipulating that the
navigation. b should be free to their
that it is a These
same writers lay it down
duty 4. States,
'ot to 11
passage to a ow a free
peaceful foreigners
dominions; and
that through their
cannot possibly cease to be
a duty when these
foreigners
rivers. Their pages, then pass on their
~ can no more afford
arguments against Lord ASIII3U RTON'S stipula-
tion, that the Americans shall use the St.
John's, than the Laws of MENU,
or the
Carolina
Code. International law-has
yet to be for Med,
and we would as soon take the
practices of the

feudal Barons, as of the Sovereigns of Germany,
for its basis.

We deeply regret to see the journals of the
Liberal party—whose power is reason, as con-
trasted with prescription—the public good, as
distinguished from ancient usages—taking up
gross errors, the representation of ancient usages,
and of worn-out because unjust prescription, and
trying by them to misrepresent and disparage a
treaty which is of great public advantage. Those
journals will not inflict on the Liberal party all
the damage they perhaps desire, fin• we are
happy to know that there is scarcely a Whig,
journal of any character, throughout the coun-
try, which shares the feelings of the late occu-
pants of the Foreign-office; and scarcely one
which does not refuse to follow, on this occasion,
the mislead of the Globe and Chronicle.