The Sun.
London, England, 1842-03-11 00:00:00

every voice was drowned in the cry of " Question,"
and the House divided, when the numbers were—
For the Property-tax 2Ol
Against it
lajority, condemnatory of the tax - 37
It was observed during these discussions in Parlia-
ment on the Property-tax, that the petitions, though
numerous, did not represent the general sense of the
people, for that much the largest proportion of the
country prosecuted no petitions. -
The Property-tax ceased on the sth of April, 1815,
but was revived for one year more (1815, ending sth
April, 1816) in consequence of the renewal of the war.
The assessments charged for 1814 were continued
without fresh returns, and without the power of in-
creasing them, except in respect of the dividends of
funded property and interest of Government securi-
ties, &c., under schedules C . and E ; but in conse-
quence of the great distress among the agricultural
and other classes at that time, provision was made for
abatement of the duties in certain cases of diminution
of rents and profits under schedules A B ;and D.
The opinion of Lord A lthorp on this question of a
Property-tax is conveyed hr the subjoined extract from
one of his spoeches, made at a time when the point was
under agitation :
" Much has been said about a Property-tax, and he
believed he differed on that point considerably from
his friends about him. Still he had no hesitation in
saying, that to grant relief to the productive popula-
tion by a reduction of taxes, and to impose a Property-
tax to meet the deficiency thus occasioned, would be.
a very good measure. That was his own individuktH
opinion. It might be alleged that he was inconsistent
in what he he now said, when his present was . con-
trasted with his former opinion ; and perhaps it might
seem to many that he was so. But the country was
now in a situation very different from that in which it
was formerly placed : and he would say to the land-
owner that if a Property-tax of 10 per cent. were im-
posed, he would be the gainer ; because he thought
that the landowner, in consequence of the ex-
isting distress, and the large sums he was obliged to
advance for the maintenance of the poor, lost consider-
ably more than 10 per cent. on his rents. He was
perfectly convinced that it was the ill-arranged state
of the taxes, more than the amount of the taxes, that
pressed heavily on the country."
Palev's opinion, with regard to the Property-tax,
as to the scale of equitable proportion—proposing to
affix certain rates of taxation upon certain amounts
of property, proportioned to the general conveniency
of subsistence of those by whom such payments are
to be made, is worded thus :
" We are accustomed to an opinion, that a tax to be
just, ought to be accaately proportioned to the cir-
cumstances, .or more correctly perhaps to the amount
of property of the persons who pay it. But upon '
what, it may be asked, is this opinion founded, unless
it could be shown that such a proportion interferes
the least with the general conveniency of subsistence ?
Whereas I should rather believe that a tax con-
structed with a view to that conveniency, ought to
rise upon the different classes of the community in a
much higher ratio than the simple proportion of their
incomes. The point to be regarded is, not what
men have, but what they can spare ; and it is
evident that a man who possesses a thousand pounds
a year can more easily give up a hundred than a
man with a hundred pounds a year can part with ten ;
that is, those habits of life which are reasonable and
innocent, and upon the ability to continue which the
formation of families depends, will be much less
affected by the one deduction than by the other. It
is still more evident, that a man of a hundred pounds
a year would not he so much distressed in his sub-
sistence by a demand from him of ten pounds, as a
man of ten pounds a year would be by the loss of
one; to which we must add, that the population of
the country being replenished by the marriages of
the lowest rank of society, their accommodation
and relief become of more importance to the State
than the conveniency of any higher but less numerous
order of its citizens.

AWFUL DOINGS IN SCOTLAND.

(From the Spectator.)
Extracts from Scotch journals, in our news depart-
ment, communicated to our readers last week the appal-
ling information, that " Scotland is at this moment an
object of intense interest both in Heaven and in hell !"
being " the battle-field in which the Powers of Light
and Darkness are engaged in a desperate conflict !"
Such intelligence had not been received from the North
since, under the auspices of the sapient King JAMIE, an
attempt was made to stem the growth of witchcraft by
increasing the staff of " prickers (the officials who de-
tected the seal set by the Evil One upon those who had
sold their souls to him) in every town and village. It
appeared that the scattered bands of the " powers of the
air," carrying on a guerilla warfare over the whole
earth, had been called in for the purpose of concentrat-
ing the Satanic force upon Scotland. The good people
of the South, relieved for a time by this step from the
assaults of the tempters, had the more leisure to watch
the progress of the Northern struggle.
The first news from the theatre of war was alarming—

the Powers of Darkness had triumphed! It was some re-
lief, however, to learn that their opponents were not
disheartened. The minority of the shareholders in the
Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway Company met on the
very evening of their defeat, in Cotton's Wellington
Hotel, and resolved " that the Committees at Edinburgh
and Glasgow do declare their meetings permanent."' It
was high tune ; for never since Dr. Martin Luther
threw his inkstand at Satan's head, had that great
author of mischief stood so clearly revealed to view.
Do not the fire and smoke of the locomotive engines,
and the unearthly scream or whistle with which they
give notice of their approach, betray their parentage? It
is clear from the vote of the proprietors of the Glasgow
and Edinburgh Railway, that " the dread Fire-lung"
does not lend them his services for nothing; he repays
himself by taking them bound to promote Sabbath-dese-
cration. Dr. Symington seoms, from a speech he delivered at
a meeting of the minority on the evening of the 25th of last
month, to see the matter in its true light—" It was said
that the agitation against the Railway was a Non-
intrusion measure : the Nonintrusionists need not be
ashamed of being the advocates of Sabbath-observance ;
but, though he denied it was a party measure, he would
like to see the great seal applied to a deed to prevent
engines and railway-trains, with their din and their
smoke, and their congregations of desecrators, from
being intruded into any of the parishes of Scotland con-
trary to the will of the people." The Doctor is right.
Whoever handles pitch will be defiled : into whatever
parish these unholy engines are allowed to penetrate,
they will carry irreligion along with them. Keep
them out I
Let us, however, see what the proprietors of this
Railway are going to do, in order that we may more
justly estimate the measure of
.their iniquity, as masters
obliging their servants to work on the Sabbath : for
those who may avail themselves of the railway
accommodation they are not answerable. " You will
have," said Mr. Hamilton, at the meeting which
has occasioned all this outcry, " about ten or
twelve engineers and as many stokers : of these, -two
will be on duty each Sunday; that is, their turn will
come round once in five or six weeks; in other words,
they will be employed about ten Sundays every year,
and have about forty Sundays at their own disposal.
Again, they need not be taken from their families even
on those ten Sundays. By the regulation of the Man-
chester and Liverpool line, when the trains meet midway
the Company's servants meet and change trains. and
each returns home. This rule might be adopted here,
so that the whole length of time they would be separated
from their families weuld be about three hours morning
and evening for ten Sundays in the year."
The sacrifice is not so very great after all : what
is the object proposed to be obtained by it ? Not
lucre : for two trains with a limited number of coaches
despatched from each end of the railway, in one
day will scarcely pay expenses. The object is to af-
foid an accommodation to the public which it has a
right to demand. When individuals, or a company,
establish a regular system of conveyance for passen-
gers, their calculation is that there are a sufficient
number of individuals obliged to travel, and yet obliged to
economise, to insure to them a constant succession of
customers. They profess to extend to the less wealthy
classes of the community that power of travelling with
expedition, which otherwise would be exclusively con-
fined to the rich. They are well paid by the public, and
become bound in equity to supply it with
.all necessary
accommodation in the way of travelling. Now, viewing
the question only in this point of view—assuming, for
the sake of argument, that Sunday-travelling really is
the deadly sin some account it to be —it must be
taken into account that there are cases when people
must travel on Sunday. If these traffickers in travelling
are to keep their promise to the public, there must be
provision made for the accommodation of those who are
forced by contingencies to travel on Sunday. This can
only be done where, as in the case of Edinburgh and
Glasgow, two communities; numbering respectively nearly
200,000 inhabitants. rely upon these passenger-
carriers for accommodation, by a regular despatch of
conveyance on Sundays as on other days. No one can
say when they may be wanted ; and stopping them for a
whole day may be productive of painful consequences.
The most rigid will not deny that any person receiving
late on Saturday night the intelligence that a parent
was dying, would be warranted to travel to see him on
Sunday ; or that a medical man summoned to a consul-
tation might travel on the Sabbath without sin ; and
many parallel cases might be imagined. Regular
public conveyances are the only means by which the
middle and poorer classes can avail themselves of these
exemptions ; and in such numerous cormicunities they
are of sufficiently frequent occurrence to render it neces-
sary that they should be attainable on Sundays as
on other days. The question is not whether speculators
in the trade of public conveyance should he al-
towed to convey passengers on Sunday, but whether
under any pretext. they should bo excused from convey-
ing them on that day. Mr. Hamilton's statement, quoted
above,'shows with how slight a sacrifice of Sabbath
leisure this accommodation may be kept open for the
whole public where there is ft. railway. The railway-
owners are bound to find all comers the means of travel-
ling : whether the travellers do right or wrong in tra-
velling, is their own concern, with which no human being
has a right to interfere. If that class did not travel by
railway, it would desecrate the Sabbath in some other
and perhaps gresser manner. Above all others, railway-
proprietors are bound toprovide this accommodatian, for
they destroy even posting on the lines along which they
furnish the means of travelling : you must go by them or
not at all.