The Sun.
London, England, 1842-03-25 00:00:00

some trifling exceptions, to all principle, and though
we might have pardoned Sir ROBERT PEEL for not
meddling with the tariff we cannot pardon him for
meddling with it to re -enact and extend in the
year 1842, a series of restrictions, which all sound
principles cond-man. Dr. BOWRING'S praise• of Sir R.
PEEL'S tariff was unwarranted, but that Sir R. PEEL
prised it as a ♦oucher is evident by the emphasis with
which he quoted it. _

We make these remarks with no hostility to the gen-
tlemen named, but to show them and the public
how necessary it is to be on our guard against the
plausible and wily man who has undertaken to conduct
the affairs of this great empire on the abominable principle
of making and allowing one class to plunder another by
means of legislation. It is contrary to the manners of the
age to use violence and practise torture. No man need now
be apprehensive in England of being placed on a fire to
be roasted, in order to compel him to give up his wealth.
The living representatives of the ancient Barons have
fallen on a much more quiet and much less revolting
means to attain a similar end. They make a Corn-law ;
they impose an income tax, and the dread or the love of
the law serves exactly the same purpose as the gridiron
and the fire served RICHARD and his Paladins. They
act by cunning, not violence ; and we complain of Dr.
BOWRING and Mr. ROEBUCK, that they, being appointed
guardians of the people, do not see through this cunning,
and encourage its present prime agent, by praising his
schemes as bold and honest, and their probable results as
of public advantage.

It is generally said that each person should contribute
to the State in proportion as he derives advantage from
it. The Tories adopt this principle, and conclude,
therefore, that every man who has an income of 150 L
a-year should pay a per centage of his income to the
State. But if an income tax is to be levied on this
principle, it becomes necessary to inquire whether

the incomes of all classes are equally derived
from and equally protected by the State. It is

clearly not just on this principle to take the same
amount of income from those classes who are en-
riched by the State, and from those who know little
or nothing of the State but through the tax-gatherer.
The State, for example,, by that law which, as Lord
STANLEY has avowed, keeps up the price of corn; in-
creases the farmer's receipts and the landlord's rents ;
but it diminishes by so much the income of the merchant
and the manufacturer ; and the State, therefore, by
not equally protecting the incomes of these classes

has not a just claim to an equal share of each. Again
the State performs the same office for the tithe-owner as
for the land-owner ; and not only levies for behoof of the

tithe-owner, the whole tax of tithe on the people, but en-
hances its amount by the Corn-law. Surely it will not
be said that an income of 2001. a year reduced by the
taxes of the State from 250 L, to bestow that 50/. on the
tithe-owner should pay an equal tax to an income of
2001. derived exclusively from the action of the State ?

Mr. ROEBUCK alluded very feelingly on Wednesday
evening to those incomes, professional and others, which
are created, as it were, by a man's talents and mental
energies ; but of these shall the artist, who is indebted
to the State for no species of monopoly, pay the same
amount as the lawyer, who is protected by the State in
the possession of a rigid monopoly of all the busi-
ness of the Courts It is not by their own
power, but by that of the State, that Inns of Court
are enabled despotically to exclude a HARVEY and
a WOOLER from their privileges, and that their members
enjoy a monopoly of all the emoluments to be obtained
from practising the law ? Should it be said that artists
have been patronised and fostered by the State ; that
it purchases pictures and establishes galleries for the
cultivation of \art, let us ask what benefit the State
confers on newspaper proprietors and editors ? What
portion of their income is derived from the action of

the State ? It takes away their property by a stamp,
and curses them with an incomprehensible libel law,
which places them at the mercy of every rascally at-
torney. It does not give them a single farthing, either
directly or indirectly, as it gives an income to the tithe-
owner, an increase of income to the land-owner, and a
monopoly of a certain aggregate income to the members
of the Inns of Courts.

Some few manufacturers, not many, may derive a por-
tion of their incomes from a protection accorded to their
production, but the bulk of the manufacturers, all the
merchants, and all the shopkeepers, on whom the inqui-
sitorial powers of the income tax will exclusively fall,
create all their incomes ,by their own labour, and their
own exertions, and derive not one farthing from the
action of the State. The same fact holds good of the bulk
of the working classes ; they contribute largely already
to the taxes ; they maintain the servants of the State ;
they pay the tax levied for behoof of the priest and the
landlord ; but they derive no income whatever from the
acts of the State, and ought not, therefore, on the prin-
ciple we set out by quoting, to be called upon to pay as
large proportion of their income to the State, as those
whose incomes aro wholly or chiefly derived from its
operations.

If it be said that the State protects the merchant, the
manufacturer, the shopkeeper, and the newspaper pro-
prietor, in the enjoyment of those incomes they
create by their own industry, let it be noted
that it equally extends that protection to those
incomes which it creates by law as to those which are
crented by industry. There are not a few incongruities
about an income tax, but none appear to us more glaring
than those which result from adopting the principle that
each should contribute to the State in proportion to the
advantages it confers on him, and from considering the
sources of the incomes of different classes.

DR. REID'S LECTURES ON
CHEMISTRY.

Dr. Reid, aware of the technicalities which, in
chemistry more than any other science, perplex in
limine, announced at his third lecture at Exeter
Hall, that he should fix a time and place in the fol-
lowing week, where and when those students who
were willing, might hear explained from him in
private the initiatory cabbala of the science, so
as to comprehend without lack of lucidity, the
superstructural portion of his lectures. Some general
observations relative to various good study-books and
manuals proper for the young chemist, preceded the
learned lecturer's continuation of his remarks upon
gases. His former exemplification of their pressure
upon substances, and the delicate adjustment of their
particles, was followed up by remarks upon the mo •
tions of those invisible atoms, and an experi-
ment, in which a tier of candles, placed within a glass
receiver, had their lights consecutively extinguished,
demonstrated the circular motion going on among
the, particles of gas, when put into movement by a
disturbing cause ; a similar effect to which, he ob-
served, was proceeding in the atmosphere around us,
in which ten thousand different currents of air were
perpetually in rotation. Another quality of gaseous
substances was their power of diffusion, or of pene-
trating each other, and so amalgamating ; but in the
same manner that gases possessed this diffusive property,
solids and fluids, on the other hand, condensed gases,
which was exemplified by the illustration of a ball of
platinum, capable of condensing two hundred times
its own power of oxygen. From this cause arose
cases of spor aneous combustion, in which porous
bodies, condensing in themselves vast quantities of I
gas, were afterwards acted on by the air, whereby
sudden ignition ensued. Dr. Reid next proceeded to the
subject of atmospheric air; he explained, for the sake of
simplicity and clearness its component parts, and
then presented to view four simple and compounded
gases, two of which were. the primitive oxygen and
hydrogen, and the third the " intoxicating gas," dis-
covered by Sir Humphrey Davy, containing one part
of oxygen and one of nitrogen. This gas, on being
placed in a glass receiver, and brought into contact
with atmospheric air, assumed the appearance of a
ruddy compound, completely colouring the sides of the
glass. Dr. Reid explained the nature of its action
upon the human frame to be that of producing exces-
sive muscular strength in some, while on others it
acted with a stunning shock, causing them appar-
ently to drop dead. A fourth gas was exhibited,
which had for its component parts one of oxygen and
two of nitrogen. To show the various operations of
the air upon inflammable substance, the duration of
different flames in the same atmosphere furnished a
curious test. In a box containing twenty cubic feet
of air, a common candle, after burning two minutes,
was completely quenched ; oil in three minutes ; gas,
from five to nine; while the lecturer himself was
forced to quit it after an expiration of seventeen
minutes. This circumstance, as connected with the
theory of respiration. Dr. Reid promised to enter
into at his succeeding lecture.

A correspondent writes from Sartene, in Corsica,
on the 6th inst. :—" Our list of crimes for the last month
is more frightful than ever. It contains three murders,
two attempts at assassination, and a night robbery by
three armed men in a mill, which they plundered com-
pletely, destroying what they did not take away. The
bandits Giacomo and Santa Lucia continue their barba-
rous exploits. They lately posted a placard on the door
of the church at Carbina threatening death to a keeper
of the forest of Levie, and under the same penalty com-
manded E. Peratti, the curate of Altagene, to withdraw
from the parish, which he did immediately, and nearly
a month has passed without any performance of divine
service. These bandits are also believed to have been
the murderers of a man named Peroni, who was one of
the witnessess against them at the Court of Assizes.
They are said to carry about them a memorandum-book
in which is inscribed the 'names of all those witnesses,
and happy will they be who escape the vengeance de-
nounced against them. Should any one of their credi-
tors be importunate ho is immediately killed, and the
leaf of the book in which their account is entered is torn
out and destroyed*'