The Sun.
London, England, 1842-05-17 00:00:00

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SUN OFFICE Three o'Cloch.

The Railways Bill is to be further considered in
Committee on Friday next, when we expect some ma-
terial alterations will be made. The Bill in its present
shape is little calculated either to protect passengers
against the recurrence of fatal accidents, or to place on
an equal footing Companies using lines with a common
terminus. In reference to the latter point, Lord Ro-
BEET GROSVENOR will propose a clause to the effect
that, where more than two Railway Companies have a
common terminus, they shall all have the same accom-
modation in regard to the booking of passengers, the
running' of carriages, and the removal of luggage.
Some clause. of this sort is required, in order to put
an end to that partiality shown on some lines to
particular parties to the prejudice of others. Be-
sides this, there are two other clauses of more import-
ance to the public to be brought forward by Mr.
O'BRIEN and Mr. HUME. The first is to move the
insertion of a clause to prevent the locking of the
door of any carriage on the side next the stations,
and the second is to move that instead of Mr. PLUMP-
TEE'S crotchet for shutting the lines on Sunday, that
in all cases in which the Postmaster-General
shall require that the mails or post-letter
bags shall be conveyed on any railway, the
Company shall forward the same on every
day of the week on which the conveyance of
such mails and letters shall be required, without
making any difference either in the rate of speed, or in
the cost and charge for conveyance, 'and that the
same accommodation shall be furnished whenever any
special train shall be required. It is but fair that
some regulations of this kind be adopted, in
order that the Post-office authorities should,
as under the former system, be able to
transmit letters and despatches whenever the Govern-
ment or other parties may require this mode of con-
veyance. The Companies cannot, on any reasonable
grounds, object to such a clause. They will be paid
all reasonable expenses, and, as they generally profess
the utmost readiness to oblige the public, we have
no doubt they will agree to the arrangement. But
independent of the benefit to be derived by the
public, the Companies themselves would be saved
all that annoyance, injury to property, and
malignant calumnies which for months were inflicted
upon the Directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow
Railway. No man should be suffered to injure the
property of another, to gratify either his religious or
political prejudices; and it is the duty, therefore, of
the Legislature to put a stop to such persecution. The
clauses propoied by Mr. HUME would fully effect the
object in view.
Mail trains, at stated times, would pass along almost
every line on Sunday; persons would thus be allowed
to visit their friends as they did when the mails were
carried by coaches on the highway ; and all pretence
would be removed for calumniating the innocent
Shareholders and Directors.

As we presume the present Government does not
intend that the exaction of a tax upon income should
be more stringent now than under the LIVERPOOL
and CASTLEREAGn Administration in 181 3- 14, we
may congratulate authors, and men who derive a sub-
sistence from their literary labours, upon their exemp-
tion from this impost. It is clear from the subjoined
letter from Sir WALTER SCOTT, now first published,
and from the opinion of the most learned lawyers in
Scotland and England upon it, as well as from the
decision of the Income-tax Commissioners, that un-
less the present Government is resolved to manifest
less sympathy for literary men than the Government
of 1813, they are entitled to claim an exemption from
the tax. This is not only just towards them, but to-
wards the public, whose instructors and guides they
are. There is no class of men whose gains are so
precarious and so hardly earned, and whose labours,
generally speaking, contribute so much to the happi-
ness of their species as authors. They rarely owe much
to society, whereas society owes everything to them.
They guide its opinion, purify its morality, protect
its property, and supply it with whatever knowledge
it possesses. To tax such men would be to tax the
most efficient moral teachers, the most vigilant police
of society.
The genius which produces good books, and the
talents which enable a man to write words of wisdom
for the guidance of his fellow-men, are not property
cognizable by human laws. They are the gifts of
GOD, and, instead of burdening, benefit the Govern-
ments under which they most flourish. Their appli-
cation to money-getting purposes is so brief, that it
rarely constitutes more than one brief hour in the
day journey of human life. No, it cannot be possible
that the Government contemplates taxing such men—
that the State proposes to fatten by sucking the
brains of those who devote their days and nights to
the diffusion of knowledge.
GOD knows, in this pounds, shillings, and pence
age, the condition of a mere literary man is sufficiently
trying without sending a new tax collector to his
door, to ascertain in what demand the offspring of
his brain is with the public. He is, generally speak-
ing, a man of superior education, and, from the very
nature of his pursuits, more painfully alive than per-
sons of his rank or station to the privations that sur-
round him. If destined to live long, he is doomed
to rook forward to a period when the oil which feeds
the lamp of genius or fancy, will be burned out, and
provision againstwhen, unless he' have made some