The Sun.
London, England, 1842-04-01 00:00:00

tnyg,

LONDON
FRIDAY MORNING, APRIL 1, 1842.

Our country is placed at present, with refer-
er.,:e to parties and to statesmen, in a peculiar
and unfortunate position. The Tories, from a
preformed theory of bringing up the revenue to
tip expenditure—never dreaming of cutting
de•sn the expenditure to the revenue—have re-
so' ved to impose on us an onerous and iniquitous
ac litional tax, while th Whirrs, having in office
pr )fessed a somewhat similar doctrine, and
being in fact the authors of a large portion
of that expense which the T •
ones assert justifies
ad-litional taxation, Cannot give an effective and
zealous opposition to the Tories. They mean
income tax, because they object to
to oppose the
that particular way of raising the supplies; but
they have throughout admitted that the Govern-
ment must have an additional revenue. Thus
the country, which is at this moment groaning
tinder an enormous buiden of taxation, can have
no hope of effectual relief from either party, for
both agree that more money must be had for the
overnmeut.

We look on that as ominous, The Govern-

Imeat and all our leading politicians are opposed
to the good of society. The people need a re-
-1 duction of their burdens—they,need aneconomi-
cal administration of their affairs—they 'need
freedom for their industry, and the statesmen of
both parties are chiefly intent' on adding to the
national expenditure and the national burdens.
Such an opposition between them and the public.
welfare must weaken the Government, let it be
placed in whose hands it may. The people find
its burdens too grievous to be borne, and more
than it is worth ; and to add to the load may
make the nation throw it entirely off.
To us it seems that the lessons of experience
are lost on our leaders. With the most solemn
aspect, but with the greatest levity of mind, Sir
R. PEEL proposes additional taxes, as if he were
merely setting down to a state dinner.. He can-
. not be ignorant that excessive taxation has
been the precursor to national decay and re-
volution. If the French had been prosperous
no demagogues would ever have induced
them to put down the Monarchy, and
pat the BOURBONS to death. The enormous
burdens laid on the bulk of the people by the
Government and the aristocratic classes were
the causes of the French Revolution. It had
its origin in distress, brought on by financial
oppression. Similar causes made the people
of the States which surrounded France indif-
erent to their Governments, and the oppressive
taxation levied on them was a more potent
cause than the valour of the French armies of
the subjugation of the monarchies of Europe.
Take, for example, the case of Holland as an
illustration of the whole. At the close of the
lith and beginning of the 18th centuries, Hol-
land, whose people were then prosperous and
united, was able to resist the whole powers of
France. Before the breaking out of the French
Revolution they had become comparatively
poor and discontented, and soon after that event
occurred "they opened their fortresses and towns
to the French. Now there is no doubt that
their discontent was mainly the consequence of
exorbitant taxation, which should be an especial
lesson to us, as it was inflicted by a quasi popular
Government. In Dr. SMITH'S time, " heavy
taxes upon the necessaries of life had gone so far
in Holland, that they had ruined, it is said, their
principal manufactures, and are likely to discou-
rage gradually even their fisheries and their trade
in ship-building." That heavy taxation continued
to cut up the trade of the Dutch, destroyed their
property and patriotism, and made them an easy
prey to the French Republicans.
In spite of these terrible lessons our states-
men are treading in the same paths as the states-
men of France, Holland, and Germany, before
the French Revolution. Much of our prosperity,
as compared to them, arose from circumstances
the reverse of those of Holland. According to
Dr. S3IITII, "the taxes upon the necessaries of life
were then inconsiderable in Great Britain, and
no manufacture has hitherto been ruined by
them." Since then, however, our Government
has surpassed all other Governments in heaping
taxes, partly for the service of the State and partly
for behoof of monopolists, on the necessaries of
life: They were emphatically, indeed, warned
by the great authority we have quoted, but
warned in vain, that
Taxes upon the necessaries of life have nearly the
same effect upon the circumstances of the people as a
poor soil and a bad climate. Provisions are thereby
rendered dearer, in the same manner as if it required ex-
traordinary labour and expense to raise them.
Such taxes, when they have grown up to a certain
height, are a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth
and the inclemency or the heavens ; and yet it is in the
richest and most industrious countries that they have been
..most generally imposed. _ .

Our statesmen have seen this verified; they
have seen an industrious people ground down
to poverty and despair by excessive taxation ;
they have seen them filled with discontent, and
heard them demand great constitutional changes ;
yet they perversely persist in adding to their
burdens, and increasing their distress and dis-
content. They are driving the people to the
wail, and leaving them no alternative but to be
destroyed themselves, or destroy the Govern-
ment. If, from the unteachable arrogance arid
pride of the routine men, whom the ignorance
andseltishness of the electors have placed at the
hcd of our affairs, England. is doomed to decay,
similar to that which excessive taxation and
aristocratic oppression brought on Venice and
Holland, writers, like ourselves, will only have
to mourn over a calamity they have no power to
avert. We may think perhaps that the fate of
an individual is in his own hands ; the fate of
litions, however, their grandeur and decay, are
to the order of nature, and must be the work of
PROVIDENCE. Nevertheless, it is given to man
to avoid the rocks on which others have split
and it is now, therefore, the duty of the people
to resent that increase of taxation which has
been in other cases so fatal to national greatness.
PrimWrily, they ought to opp ose the proposed
income tax as the most odious of all taxes; but,
secondly, they ought to resist all increase of
taxation, and let the Government understand
that its preservation is not worth pure hasing by
the poverty, misery, degradation, and ruin of
the people.

We have never advocated what is falsely
called protection for any one class of producers,
but we have always been aware that consider-
able injustice has been committed by reducing
the protecting duties on certain foreign com-
modities, and will be again committed should
such duties be again reduced before the Corn-
laws be abolished. Free trade must begin by
abolishing the master monopoly. Though the
silk and glove manufacturers have struggled
through the difficulties of competition, since Mr.
I HusKissoN and t e Lord SYDENHAM ex-
posed them to its ro i breezes, and have been,
as we believe, much improved, yet owing to the
continuance of the Corn-law, success has been
purchased by very considerable sacrifices, both
on the part of the masters and the workmen. It
is a manifest injustice to keep out foreign corn
by a high duty on the pretext that the land is
peculiarly taxed, and after having by this
means laid a very heavy and peculiar burden
on handicrafts, to expose them to the com-
petition of other people, who are not subject
to their burdens. It was well said by
Mr. MACFARLAIIE, at the meeting of the
Edinburgh Merchants' Company, that " while
corn and food
_remained at their present
prices, and the whole general taxation re-
mained the same as now, our handicraft la-
bourers could not compete with their brethren
on the Continent."

The glove trade at Yeovil, of which some ac-
count will be found in another part of The Sun,
is a case in point, and the manufacturers there
feel the injustice with which Sir ROBERT PEEL'S
tariff threatens them so strongly, and dread so
much the injury he will inflict on them, that
they have resolved to suspend working for one
month. About 20,000 persons will suffer the
want of bread from that resolution, which is one
of the first consequences of Sir ROBERT
PEEL allowing the competition of foreign
glovers under a small fixed duty, while he
will not allow 'the competition of foreign
corn-growers except with an onerous sliding
scale. The people of Yeovil complain of the
cheaper provisions obtained by those with
whom they will now have to compete ; and, as
long as the Corn-law is continued, we must con-
tend that their complaints arc well founded. One
of the curses attendant on those laws is, that
they forbid. extending free trade in manuflic-
tures. It is on this ground alone that we have
any sympathy with the protected manufltcturers;
and were the corn-trade free, we should be
amongst the foremost to contend that the Yeovil
glovers have no more right to tax people in the
price of their Owes, than the landlords have to
tax them in the price of their food. -
With Sir R. PEEL and the Tory journals, who
are very noisy, if not-very consistent advocates
of the principle of protection, their reclamations
ought to have great weight. He has armed them
against himself. He has stolen into power on the
principle_ of protecting " native industry;' and
native industry will compel him to act on the
principle, or give up his power. In particular, he
has encouraged the farmers to believe that they

must, and that 'they will be protected; and we are*
not sorry to see .the agriculturists in different
parts of the kingdom repudiating his, talriffliecanse
it violates the principle of protection. ,We told
Sir ROBERT PEEL from the first, that by propo-
sing to deal out protection to all classea be had
undertaken an impossible task, and his own dear
friends, the farmers, are the first to turn against
him. We expected that he would be well baited
by some of the protected classes, but we were not
quite prepared to see his own petted dogs ready
to hunt him to death.

The enlightened and intelligent people of
Edinburgh are setting the citizens of London and
of the emrire a good example. At a numerous
meeting of the inhabitants, called by circular,
held on the 29th ult., the LORD PROVOST in the
chair, they resolved:—

That of all the modes of levying the necessary sup-
plies, an income tax is by much the most objectionable,
being unequal, oppressive, and inquisitorial, and which
should - never be resorted to but in cases of extreme
necessity.
That no such necessity exists, and we therefore resolve
to give the imposition of this tax, proposed by Sir R.
Peel, our most determined opposition ; and we now in-
struct our representatives in Parliament, the Right Hon.
Thomas B. Macaulay and W. G. Craig, Esq., to lay
these resolutions on the table of the House of Commons,
and to use every means in their .power to prevent this most
odious tax being in flieted upon us.
. .

On the same day the Merchant's Company of
Edinburgh adopted some similar resolutions, of
which we quote a part, particularly the last, with
great pleasure :
That an uniform tax upon.income, whether derived
from property, profits of trade, professional exertions,
terminable annuities, or otherwise, is essentially unjust
in itself, inquisitorial in its nature, oppressive and une-
qual in its operation.

That the imposition of such a tax is more especially to
be deprecated in the present condition of the country,
when the necessaries of life are at the highest rate, when
trade is languishing and profile reduced to the lowest ebb.
That on these grounds the imposition of an income
tax ought to he resisted, and further, that the thanks of
the Company be tendered to those Members of the House
of Commons who have opposed it, and that they be re-
spectfully requested to persevere in their opposition . to it
by every means which the .forms of Parliament and the
Constitution of the, country wilt permit.

That is the true spirit in which this weighty
affair ought to he taken up, and if the excellent
example of Edinburgh be followed, there is yet
time to compel Sir ROBERT PEEL to give up his
ruinous and insane project. The opportunity is
favourable for enabling public opinion in a good
cause to triumph over a corrupt and selfish
Legislature, and establish, in fact and truth, the
dominion of the many over a usurping and heart-
less few.

Although it is pretty generally known in France
that King Louis PHILIPPE is labouring under a
disease which at his advanced age can have no-other
than a fatal termination, it does not appear from the
Paris Journals that any apprehension of the conse-
quences which would follow the demise of this able
Prince has seized upon the public mind. This in a
great degree is characteristic of the French people
At no period of their history did they ever much con-
cern themselves about the past or the future. Unlike
the people of this country, who will allow nothing to
consitute happiness which does not please upon reflection,
the Trench find in reflection only the disturbance of
pleasureable sensations, and regard as the interruption
of enjoyment whatever prompts it. The empire of
taste, asserted by a new bonnet-shape, or a bale of
fashions in other articles of female finery, gratifies
the national vanity for the moment quite as much as
the most complete of General BUGEAUD'S African
victories. The indifference therefore of the French
as to what effect the death of the KING may
have, not only upon the prospects of Franco
but on the peace of Europe, is no indica-
tion of a want of importance in the subject,
or of its being unsuited for the consideration of our
more reflecting countrymen. On the contrary, the more
indifferent the Fronch appear to it, and the less they
prepare to surmount the dangers to which it may ex-
pose them, the more it is incumbent upon us to adopt
such precautionary measures as may best secure us
from the evils to which any future disorganization of
France must inevitably threaten so near and sympa-
thising a neighbour as Great Britain.
While we admit that the present King of the
FRENCH is very far from a popular Monarch, and that
if the bad faith of a Sovereign is only justly punished
by the distrust and hatred. of his people, Louis
PHILIPPE is not more unpopular in France than he
deserves to be ; we are equally willing to attribute to
his individual influence that great and incalculable
blessing—the preservation of the peace of Europe.
This is a boon to the world for which we feel good
and honest men cannot be too grateful. It is the
charity which covers a multitude of sins in the regal
life of the monarch Of the Barricades. When the
swords of more than half a million of Frenchmen were
ready to leap from their scabbards to sustain, at the
bidding of M. TRIERS, the dominion of MEIIEMET
ALI in Syria,. the single veto of the KING rendered
them as impotent for carnage as so many distaff's in
the hands of as many women. The fabled deity of
storms repressed not the struggles of the imprisoned
winds with a firmer or more potent hand, than has
Louis PHILIPPE for a period of eleven years, the mad
war impulses of his ultra-democratical subjects. This
is a highly important consideration.

Now were the KING to die, two very momentous
questions must instantly present themselves for con-
sideration. One of them is, however, of so delicate
a nature, that we shall do little more just now than
allude to it. We shall, therefore, notice it first. It
is this :—Would the French nation allow the Duke of
ORLEANS peaceably to ascend the throne filled by his
father ? Is the power of Louis PHILIPPE sufficiently
consolidated for this ; or rather, does he not reign by
the mere force of his personal qualities and character ?
Every person will be able to do justice to the feeling
which suggests the propriety of not now pushing to a
solution this branch of the inquiry. Enough, that
we moot it for a higher purpose than the gratification
of petty passions, or the supplying the stimulant of
inuendo and surmise to national prejudice.
But supposing no attempt to set aside the Orleans
dynasty, it is worth while to inquire whether the
Duke of ORLEANS would follow the pacific policy of
his father. We feel a persuasion almost amounting
to a conviction that he would not. Though wisely
restrained from taking any part in the political dis-
cussions of the day, it is well known to the Cham-
bers that the DUKE inherits but a small proportion
indeed of the sagacity of the KING. He is an amiable
and accomplished Prince, but his talents for govern-
ment are of a very limited order. His favourite
among his father's Ministers was that little incendiary
M. TRIERS ; and did any misfortune accelerate the
date of his accession to the throne we presume M.
TRIERS would be the first summoned to assume the
direction once more of the National Counsels.

What, then, does it behove England to do ? When
the unjust steward in the gospel was threatened with
the displeasure of his Lord, he made himself friends
before hand with all who could help him in adver-
sity. Let us do the like. By establishing a free and
profitable commercial intercourse with Portugal and
Spain, we shall make these countries firm supporters
of it peace policy throughout Europe. By seizing the
present opportunity for making concessions to the
wine, brandy, and fruit growers of France, and the
fancy artizans of Paris, we shall more effectually ex-
tinguish the war mania, whatever be the views of the
future Sovereign, than if our ships of war rode trium-
phant in every harbour over which waves the tri-
colour flag. The majority of mankind, and especially
of our continental neighbours, have yet to learn the
blessings which peace is capable of bestowing upon
them. If they did, they would not be so ready to
foolish
is eachh
anodt other's
unprincipled
throats,cipled
to gratify the ambition of
rulers.

The rapidity with which a West India fleet of
steam'.Vessels has been brought into existence, and the
manner in which they are constructed and fitted up,
are highly creditable to the enterprise of the con-
tractors, and the skill and ingenuity of British ma-
chinists. In no other part of the world could such a
splendid and powerful naval force have been created in
the same time ; and perhaps it may also be said with
truth, that no other workmen could have completed
the machinery with such precision and adaptation for
the purposes intended. The Isis, the twelfth of the
vessels contracted for, left *the river on Tuesday, and
though a vessel measuring 1,300 tons, with en•
gines of 430 horse lower, and the machinery had
never been put-in-Motion till she started on her mis-
sion, every crank and wheel and piston worked as re-
gularly as those of a well:tried steamer. This is
the perfection of art, The magnitude of the under•