The Sun.
London, England, 1842-03-28 00:00:00

%A
minishin g. According to Sir ROBERT PEEL'S
plan they will be taxed on the incomes they
have lost. It is our belief that there are in many
parts of the kingdom many trades, which, like
that of an innkeeper and a coachmaster on the
Brighton road, are declining in prosperity ; and
to tax all such persons on an average of the in-
comes they have enjoyed for the last three years
will be a cruel injustice.

Mr. PITT wanted an income tax for great and
rapidly increasing expenditure. Sir R. PxxL
levies it to compensate diminished re-
venue. These circumstances show that the
income of individuals is declining, and it esta-
blishes a difference between the two periods,
which will make an income tax now three-fold
as mischievous as it was then. Mr. PITT esta-
blished an income tax to carry on war; Sir Ro-
BERT PEEL establishes it to revive trade. What
folly. The former was a great man, who had
some comprehension of what was adapted to times
and circumstances ; the latter is a poor imitator,
whose botched crotchet, if he have influence
enough with the House of Commons to procure
its adoption, will add to the distress and seriously
injure the country.

We have from the first treated the amended
tariff and the income tax as unconnected ques-
tions : Sir ROBERT PEEL, with Dr. BOWRING
and some other Liberals, have treated them as
connected and inseparable. On their showing, if
the Liberals consent to the income tax, they are
certain to have the tariff as their reward and
compensation. Is this true? We think the ques-
tion very important; for though the amended
tariff, which we regard as far less beneficial than
some of our contemporaries, would not reconcile
us to the income tax, if we were certain to obtain
it ; yet the possibility of not obtaining it, even
though the Liberals assent to an income tax,
should make them extremely wary in their pro-
ceedings.
The resolution imposing an income tax is pro-
posed in a Committee of Ways and Means; the
resolutions for altering the tariff cannot be pro-
posed, we apprehend, in the same Committee.
The reduction of the timber and coffee duties
cannot form part of the supplies for the year;
and the resolutions for altering the tariff must
be submitted to the whole House, we believe, in
a Committee on the Customs' Acts. It is plain,
therefore, that the tariff and the income tax are
totally distinct measures ; and there is no reason
to conclude, because the Opposition assent to
the latter, that the Ministerialists will assent to
the former.
What are its beneficial parts? The reduction
of the duties on potatoes and meat, the aboli
tion of the prohibition to import cattle, &c.,
against which the farmers, and the farmers'
friends, are now moving in every part of the
kingdom. Supposing, therefore, that Sir R.
PEEL is quite sincere in proposing these altera-
tions—supposing that he means no trick ; that he
does not put them forward as mere lures, not
meaning to carry them—will he be able to carry
them in opposition to his agricultural supporters ?
As a Minister he is entirely their creature. The
Duke of RICHMOND stated, in the House of
Lords, that the landlords had made Sir ROBERT
Prime Minister, and they could unmake him.
Even admitting Sir ROBERT PEEL'S sincerity and
uprightness—qualities for which we are not dis-
posed to vouch in any politician contending for
power, much less in him who has sacrificed the
interests of the country for the purpose of getting
into office—it is quite possible that he will be un-
able to carry the alterations in the tariff which
he has proposed, after he has succeeded in enac
ing an income tax.

In resisting the adoption of the leading point s
of the tariff we have adverted to, it is nearly
certain that the agriculturists of his own
side of the House would be supported by a con-
siderable number of representatives of English
agricultural communities, and of Scotch and Irish

counties of the other side. Such a union might
defeat Sir R. PEEL in the House of Commons,
and if he were not defeated there the Lords might
throw out the whole measure. We maintain,
therefore, that there is no security whatever that

he proposed tariff will be acceded to after the

ncome tax is passed.

Sir ROBERT PEEL'S declaration, that he would
resign office, on which some persons may build,
to secure the passing of the tariff, if the income
tax be acceded to, does not seem to us to war-
rant such a conclusion. On Wednesday he said,
"with regard to the details of the tariff, as I stated
before I am perfectly open to conviction, and if
I should consider that the arguments should pre-
ponderate in favour of a modification, I shall have
no difficulty whatever in assenting to it." The
Right Hon. Baronet is not even pledged, there-
fore, to carry through his proposed tariff if thA ar-

guments of the graziers and others against his
propositions should preponderate against his
reduction of duty on meat and potatoes. So
little pledged in fact is Sir ROBERT to these de.
tails, that he has already, if we are rightly in-
formed, consented to a considerable modification
in the wrong direction. The import duty he pro-
posed on starch was per cwt., which amounts ,

poses either in the Corn-law or the tariff. They
are not free trade, nor are they complete and
efficient protection. They are not Conservative
holding- fast by things as they are ; neither are
they revolutionary, gratifying those who look for
(=Teat changes. They are not framed according
to the demands of national justice, and cannot be
defended on any general principles. They are
simply PEEL'S crotchet, to be passed into laws
because he is a necessity for the Tories. A
measure which rests on such individual
views, which is not in accordance with
either general principles or the demands of the
people should be scouted as a piece of wanton
and officious tyranny—not accepted as useful
legislation. Far from settling the conflicting
claims of different classes, Sir R. PEEL'S crotchet
has made complainants of those who have been
unheard of for years, and has provoked more re-
clamations from different quarters, than were
ever provoked by the Whigs in the eleven years
of their administration.
The income tax, too, is entirely Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S crotchet. Nobody asked for it. On
the occasion of Mr. BARING proposing the
additional per centage to the taxes in 1840, Sir
ROBERT PEEL approved of his plan, and spoke
against having " recourse to a property tax for
so small a sum as 2,500,0001." He was not ex-
pected, therefore, now to propose such a tax,
and it must be considered as a misbegotten
child of his present pride. When Mr. PITT
proposed such a tax, notwithstanding he could
say, that the " voluntary exertions of indi-
viduals compensated to the public for the
meanness which shrunk from equal contribu-
tion, " yet he had, in spite of the public
enthusiasm, to complain of fraud and evasion,
and to take strong measures to prevent them.
Fraud and evasion will now be ten times as great
as they were under the former tax; and Sir 8..
PEEL, by fixing a point at which the evasion
is sure to be successful, informs people at once
how they may evade the tax.
At present, also, great changes are going on in
the distribution of wealth and employment in
society; and, in general, there is little prosperity,
while in many trades there is a decline. When
Mr. PITT imposed his income tax—owing to the
recent invention and improvements in the
steam engine—owing to our monopoly of the
commerce of the world, and owing to the depre-
ciation of the currency then in progress—every
man, as Lord ASHBURTON once remarked, then
found himself richer when he rose in the
morning than when he went to bed the night
before. When the people were prosperous,
when the bulk of the income of the country was
increasing every year, an income tax was com-
paratively bearable. Now the reverse is the
case. Not only is the bulk of the income not
increasing, but there are a considerable portion
of the people who are losing their incomes.
In another part of our paper will be found an
account of the stopping of the " Age" Brighton
coach, which at once shows that on all the coach
roads which come into competition, with any
recently opened lines of railways, there are
large classes of persons whose incomes are d