The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-08 00:00:00

ott :-ZUII/4

LONDON:
SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1842.

It is impossible to :read the concluding para-
graphs of Mr. STEVENSON'S last communication
to the Earl of ABERDEEN, on the right of
search, without being convinced that there is
great danger of a war between this country and
the United States. " If," says Mr. STEVENSON,
" a power such as that which is now asserted by
her MAJESTY'S Government shall be enforced,
not only without consent, but in the free of a
direct refusal to concede it, it can be regarded
in no other light by the Government of the
United States than a violation of national rights
and sovereignty." We know that the PRESI-
DENT has adopted that view in his Message, and
we also know that her MAJESTY'S masters, or
Ministers, feeling alarmed at the probable con-
sequences of their own doctrines, have appointed
Lord ASHBURTON, whose great diplomatic
talents have been developed in .Bishopsgate-
streetWithout, an Ambassador Extraordinary to
settle, if he can, this important dispute. It con-
cerns the whole people very nearly ; for, ar-
dently as they desire the suppression of the
Slave-trade, they will think it notch too dearly
purchased by a war with the United States—the
cud of which should it be begun cannot be
fore.-Ken—if that could fur ever annihilate the
piratical traffic.

It is much to be regretted, we think, when it
became an object of our Government to suppress
the Slave-trade, that greater exertions were not
made to induce the -United States to assist us in
attaining this end. it is teue that the United
States' Governaticnt was asked to become a party
to the treaties by which other nations " had
conceded a mutual right of search," but declined,
for reasons growing out of the peculiar character
of their institutions and Government, After
they had declined, no efforts were made to de-

vise any other means by which the same object
of suppressing the Slave-trade, carried on under
the American flag, could be attained.
How poor and unfertile are the resources of
that diplomacy which costs the nation such
huge sums of money ! Diplomatists, in truth, are
guided wholly by precedent, and consequently,
when new circumstances demand a new line of
conduct, they either act erroneously, or they
cannot act at all. What Lord ASHBURTON, the
diplomatist, may accomplish, we cannot predict;
but if Mr. BARING, the merchant, in his bargain-
ing days, had wished to buy from the United
States the privilege of visiting American ships,
for some special purpose, of which the American
Government and people approved, he would no
doubt have found the means of buyingit as easily
as buying a large tract of land in the Union.
The love of gain is not daunted by one refusal,
and he would have presented the subject to the
American Government in a great variety of
aspects, till he and it had agreed to the terms of
the bargain. But diplomacy shrunk back at one
refusal, and Power immediately begun to seize
and to use the very right which the American
Government had refused to concede.

The only effort made was an agreement
between the Commander of an American vessel
on the coast of Africa, and the Captains of
English vessels, by which the former was sup-
posed to consent to American vessels being
visited ; but that agreement was disavowed by
his Government, and the first thing we learn from
Lord PALMERSTON'S answer to Mr. STEVENSON
is, that, in spite of the refusal of the American
Government to concede the right of search, our
cruisers had boarded American ships, detained
them, and given the Captains and crews cause of
complaint. After we have recognised the right
of the American Government to protect Ame-
rican vessels, by asking it to concede a mutual
right of search which it had refused, to act on
our own views, and set aside a right we
had acknowledged, must seem to the Ame-
rican Government very like a settled deter-
mination to treat it with contempt. Before we
began to exercise our power, scores of plans
should have been devised and offered to the
United States' Government, by some one of
which it would have been brought, as well as its
intelligent people, heartily to co-operate with us
in suppressing the nefarious traffic in men.
Some of our Journals, we regret to see, are, in
this respect, as bad or worse than our Ministers,
and, without any regard to the customary laws of
nations, or the repeated admissions of our own
negotiators, that during peace England has no
right to visit the ships of other nations unless
the right be conceded, they recommend that
England should establish an effective po-
lice of the sea, and, in conjunction with
the liberty-hating powers of Russia, France,
Prussia, and Austria, insist on visiting every
ship which an officer of a man-of-war may re-
gard with suspicion. Instead of trying what
good words and good management can effect,
our Tories, in a very furor of humanity, are at
once for making a new maritime code by their
own will, and by the aid of the despots of
Europe, for imposing new fetters on all trade,
under the pretext that they are extremely
anxious to protect the rights of the Africans.
We trust our benevolent people will not be mis-
led by their own just and humane desire to
redress the wrongs of the Africans, to disre-
gard the rights of the Americans, and will not
be instrumental in exciting a war which would
be more afflicting to humanity, and a greater
hindrance to civilization, than the existence of
the Slave-trade, in all its horrors, for another
century.

We must remind our readers that by the Par-
liamentary Return, No. 438, ordered by the
House of Commons to be printed on June 22,
1841, it was established that the income was de-
ficient in the years 1837, 655,7601.; 1838, 345,2281.;
1839, 1,512,7921.; and 1840, 1,593,9701.; or a
total sum of 4,107,7501. The deficiency on the
year which has just elapsed was estimated by
Mr. BARING, on April 30, at 2,421,0001., and by
Mr. GOULBURN, on Sept. 27, at 2,467,4321.;
making, up to this time, an actual deficiency, ac-
cording to Mr. BARING, of 6,528,7501.; and ac-
cording to Mr. GOULBURN, of 6,575,1821.
In the Gazette last night, the excess of ex-
penditure above the revenue, is stated by the
Commissioners for the Reduction of the National
Debt, at 2,354,096/., for the year ending with the
10th of October, 1841. We may put the whole
deficiency down, therefore, at 6,500,0001. To
cover that deficiency no effort has been made,
but by Mr. GOULBURN'S abortive loan. There is
not the least reason to suppose that the expendi-
ture of the Government has been diminished in
any sensible degree since the accession of the
Tories to office ; and hence the present amount
of the national revenue, and whether it be in-
creasing or diminishing, are questions which in-
volve new taxes or national bankruptcy, Let us
look, therefore, at the revenue returns for the
same period of which we have quoted the defi-
ciencies.

The paper above mentioned states the receipt
of the revenue, after deducting drawbacks and
repayments, but not deducting the charge of
collection, at, in 1837, 50,663,353/. ; 1838,
51,375,520/. ; 1839, 51,927,495/.; 1840, 51,850,0831.
A continuation of this account is not made up for
1841, and we have only in the accounts pub-
lished on Wednesday the net produce of the
revenue for that year, excluding the dead-
weight annuity, &c.; but we beg the reader to
remark that the produce of the revenue of
1840 was less than the produce of 1839, though
the increased rate of taxation operated over
eight months of the year 1840. The returns
published on Wednesday enable us to compare
the net produce of the revenue in 1841 with
that in 1840 ; and we again invite attention to
the fact, that in 1841 the increased rate of taxa-
tion operated through the whole year, while in
1840 it operated through only eight months of
the year. As we showed yesterday, that circum-
stance ought tohave made the revenue of 1841,col-
lected from th e Customs and Excise alone, exceed
the revenue of 1840 by 538,0001. To this must be
added the increase of 10 per cent. on the Assessed
Taxes which, taking them at 4,000,0001., would
(live for four months 133,0001., making a total
of 671,000/., which the revenue ought to have
been better in 1841, had things remained even
stationary, than the revenue of 1840. But it was
only 506,0951., showing an actual falling off in
1841 to the amount of 165,0051. That falling off
is irrespective of the increase which ought to
have been caused by an increase of population,
and which, down to 1839, caused the revenue to
increase, and irrespective of the augmentation of
the revenue of 1841, by the new arrangements
in the Excise, and by the extreme application of
the collector's screw.

As to the second, it is admitted by both parties
that there has been such an alteration in the Ex-
cise ; but the Whigs affirm that it was carried
into effect only during the last quarter ; the
Tories affirm that it was begun before the sth of
October, and showed its effects in the preceding
quarter. In whatever quarter the effects may
be placed, the result on the year's revenue will
be the same. A fortnight's, or perhaps three
weeks' revenue of Excise has been added
to the revenue of 1841, to which there will be
no corresponding addition in 1842.
IVe estimated that on Thursday at 600,0001.,
which may well be doubled, for the balance in
the hands of collectors, from which the sum was
drawn, amounted on Jan. 3, 1840, to 1,574,224/.
The new system, which reduces those balances,
arid adds the sum taken from them to the revenue
of the year, has thus swelled the revenue of 1841
above the revenue both of the preceding and
succeeding years.
The painful but certain inference from these
facts is, that there is no probability of the reve-
nue now equalling the. expenditure, without an in-
crease of taxation. It is, at the same time, certain,
from the consequences of Mr. BARING'S increase
in 1840, that an addition to the rate of indirect
taxation will add nothing to the revenue. Sir
ROBERT PEEL has pledged himself to put our
finances in order, and to accomplish that he

must increase direct taxation, or, perhaps, esta-
blish a property tax. He must be sensible how
mischievous that will be in peace. He has more than
once declared against the practice of providing for
the public expenditure by loans, and he has no
other alternative, we believe, but to inflict on
the country some addition to its direct taxation.
The complacency with which Sir ROBERT PEEL
and his supporters talk of the necessity of keep-
ing up the revenue to meet his and their de-
mands on it—as if their services, to the meanest
Treasury door-keeper, could not be dispensed
with—is well calculated to make the nation
weigh the advantages of the Government
against its enormous cost; and when both are
put into the balance, the Tory Government,
with its horde of mischievous officials, will in-
stantly kick the beam.

The Sun has consistently and zealously advo-
cated that extension of copyright which Mr'
Segeant TALFOURD proposed. We may venture,
therefore, with no chance of having our motives
misconstrued, to express a doubt whether lite-
rary men consult the public feeling in now
urging forward legislation on that subject. We
are told, however, that Mr. THESIGER is to take
up the measure which Mr. Sergeant TALFOURD
is no longer, we regret to say, in a condition to
advocate. We see, also, that there are
able and elaborate articles on the question
in the Quarterly Review, and in Blach-
wood's Magazine, while the awful-condition-of-
England question seems unworthy of notice.
The distressed people will thus be taught that
literary men are as selfish as the landlords, and
have no sympathy with their distress.
At present the authors of:the empire should be
employed in counselling and advising the nation,
if they are really to be its lights and guides,
how it may navigate safely through the dangers
which surround it, so as to avoid the engulph-
ing quicksands of despotism on the one hand,
and the rocks of anarchy on the other. They
may be certain of being better rewarded should
they forego their own small advantages to a
calmer season, and now take their proper station
as the pilots of society. If, like merchants or
money-brokers, they regard only the means of
leaving a fortune behind them—if, while they
talk and write of high-mindedness and pure
aspirations, they display • only a sordid feeling,
grasping after some doubtful advantage to them-
selves—they will only prove that they are not
more noble-minded than the money grubbers,
against whom they rail, and they will inflict an
irreparable injury on the literary character.
If their energies, too, are now to be employed
in advocating a kind of Puseyite or learned des-
potism in Tory Journals, while they selfishly
urge the Legislature to attend to their pecuniary
advantages, they will perhaps make their calling
contemptible in the eyes of mankind, and pre-
vent themselves from obtaining their wishes.
Prudence, as well as patriotism—a regard to their
own interest, as well as a due sense of their own
usefulness, and what the country now requires,
ought to make them think less of themselves,
and more of the public. They should write less
about copyright, and more about freedom of
trade; so will they in the end find a Parliament
and a public trained and tutored by them, grate-
ful for their services, and willing to grant them
all which they can reasonably ask. If they must
have Mr. THESIGER for their reprepresentative
and advocate, at least let them caution him not
to bring forward the subject till the Legislature
can fitly entertain it; and let them not press
what seems their private concern on the public,
at a time when all the energies of the leaders
of society are required to save it from great
disasters.

The Paris Journals of Thursday have been
been duly received. There are some people who
are never happy but when they are in hot water,
and our good neigbours the French are certainly
of the hot-water-happiness seeking family.
A state of absolute repose is to them a state of
torture. HAZLITT, when travelling in France,
accounted for the sobriety of the people, as com-
pared with the English, by their inability to
go through the soddening, still, and dreamy
process of gradual intoxication. His the-
ory was, that deep drinking marks the
grave character of a people, and their proneness
to deep, continuous thought. Whether this be
so or not, our Gallic neighbours are no admirers
of that quiescent state which constitutes the
ne plus ultra of John Bull's terrestrial hap-
piness. While the Eastern Question remained
unsettled ; the rebels in Candia held out; the
Christino rebellion raged in Spain ; Druses
and Maronites were cutting each others' throats
in Syria ; and the trial of QUENISSET and
his accomplices occupied the Chamber of Peers,
the French had excitement whereon to feed to
their heart's content. But when the treaty
of the Five Powers was ratified; when the
Candian insurrection was suppressed; when
liberty triumphed in Spain ; when the Court
of Peers astonished Europe by its sen-
tence upon M. DUPOTY, we really felt at
a loss to imagine how France could contrive to
kill the few days which must elapse betbre
the commencement of the gladiatorial exhi-
bitions 'of placemen and placehunters in the
Legislative Chambers. We were not, however,
long kept in suspense. An affair in which
the late Mr. Simpson, Master of the Ceremonies
at Vauxhall, was better adapted to figure than
the Ambassador of a great nation in the nine-
teenth century, drove M. SALVANDY from
Madrid, and set the French and Spanish
Press together by the ears. Before this
had time to lose the first bloom of its
freshness, a sort of Court warfare was got
up, between the Sovereigns of France and
Russia, in a controversy about which all the
leading Paris papers are chin-deep involved.
Like rival beauties at a ball, or rival actresses on
a stage, the Sovereigns of France and Russia
are magnanimously occupied in devising little
artifices to spite and annoy one another. Thus
at the fete of the Emperor of RUSSIA, when all
the diplomatic body assemble to congratulate
his MAJESTY, all the members of the French em-
bassy were advised to be -seized with such
severe colds that they could not exhibit
their noses at Court ;—a proceeding which
the CZAR was careful to retaliate when
it was the turn of the Ambassadors to address
Louts PHILIPPE at the beginning of the new
year. This affords ample materials for discus-
sion in all the Journals of Thursday. That the
facts stated are strictly correct, may be ga-
thered, notwithstanding the cold disclaimer, from
the following article in the Journal des Debats
—the organ of King Louis PHILIPPE personally,
and the members of his family :
That M. de Pahlen, the Russian Ambassador at the
Court of France, should have been recalled to St. Pe-
tersburgh, because in his quality of Senior Member of
the Diplomatic Corps he would have had to harangue
the King of the Revolution of July on new year's day, is
very probable. That M. de Kisseleff, his substitute,
should, on the same day, have been indisposed by or-
der, is also possible, and there is nothing in such pro-
ceeding's on the part of the Emperor of Russia to create
astonishment. The Emperor Nicholas has accustomed
us to his puerile ill-will and vexatious diplomacy. The
refusal to join by official agents in the homage which
France loves to pay to King Louis Philippe is, there-
fore, with the Emperor a very natural and ordinary
occurrence. But what we do not know, and what we
do not believe is, that the French Government should
have sulked by way of reprisal, and that its agent at St.
' Petersburgh should have received orders to be ill on the
fete day of his Russian Majesty. Wo cannot compre-
hend a war of this kind between two powerful nations.
If they are unwilling to wage a war a coups de canon,
they do not go into a battle of etiquette, and fight
with ridiculous weapons. This would be unworthy of
France, and also of Russia, which is a powerful nation,
and has not, without doubt, espoused the petty pas-
sions and empty anger of its Sovereign. We comprehend
the unpleasant feeling which the Revolution of July may
have created in Europe. We conceive the alarm which a
change of dynasty was calculated to inspire in the mind
of the Emperor Nicholas. In the first instance, France
neither asked for his confidence nor his sympathy ; but
time has rolled on. Prussia, 'Austria, England, all have
by turns testified on every occasion the great and sym-
pathetic confidence which they place in our King and our
Government. Will the Emperor of Russia alone persist
in a puerile and personal enmity? Will he alone pro.
test, by a systematic isolation, and by official sulkiness,
against our glorious and inevitable revolution? If;
which we do not believe, relations with the Russian Ca-
binet are no longer possible, upon the footing of ti good I

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