The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-21 00:00:00

ASSESSORS AND COLLECTORS

OF THE PUBLIC TAXES.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SU.N.

SIR,—If one of your legal friends and occasional
correspondents would be pleased to favour your readers
with the law on the subject of the appointment of
assessors and collectors of the public taxes he would
confer a great obligation.
I am not able at this time to make reference to that
point, but my impression is, that if a party who has
been agreed upon in public vestry be tendered to the
Commissioners of Taxes, with parties prepared to
enter into security on his behalf, that the Commis-
sioners are bound to accept such person; but, in case
of such default on the part of the parish, the Commis-
sioners may appoint parties either with or without
security, the whole parish being liable to any default,
in case no security be given.
In the:spring of the year, I believe, the Commis-
sioners have a preliminary meeting, at which their clerk
is ordered to issue a precept to the Churchwardens and
Overseers of the poor, to return proper persons as as-
sessors and collectors for the year ensuing; by some
juggle or other, these precepts are too often delivered
to the old assessors and collectors, to be given to the
Churchwardens and Overseers, but which are in a
vast many instances surreptitiously withheld, so that
the old ones actually return themselves, and by this
means get re-appointed. There is one point which I
would wish to point out as objectionable beyond mea-
sure, which is the appointment of the same parties as
assessors and collectors ; this must be evident to any
parties who consider that the collectors are paid a per
centage, therefore, if the assessor can surcharge parties'
returns, he insures himself an increased poundage.
Parishioners are liable to serve the offices of Church-
warden, Overseer of the Poor, Surveyor of the High-
ways, and constable, without any pay or remunera-
tion, and, I believe the office of Collector of the Taxes
is almost the only one a parishioner is compellable to
take that has any emolument attached to it ; there-
fore, I think it would be fair and reasonable for the
parishioners in vestry to agree that the outgoing
Overseers of the Poor should be the Collectors of the
Taxes for the year ensuing, if they choose to under-
take the office, and give proper security, and not to
allow one ,individual to monopolise a yearly office,
being the only beneficial one.—l am, Sir, yours, &c.,
Dec. 16, 1842. JUSTICE.

seirtrr of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.

GLOBE.—The controversies and quarrels which
have disturbed, and, indeed, fearfully shaken, the
" compact" and " impregnable " Tory party the
same which installed Sir R. Peel in power, have been
most dire on questions of domestic policy. The
Premier's Corn-law and Tariff have thrown the
agriculturists into " sixes-and-sevens." Their
representatives are endeavouring to flounder out
of the difficulties in which they find themselves
involved by the unlooked-for proceedings of the
Government. Explanations, which satisfy no one,
are attempted; and apologies, which inspire contempt
for their contradictions, are stammered out by Ho-
nourable Members, who evidently feel that they have
been induced to violate every pledge, and to falsify
every promise, on the faith of which the constituencies
were induced to elect them. These promises and pledges
they made in the firm belief that Sir R. Peel, on whom
they pinned their faith, would propose the measures
to which they had committed themselves to their consti-
tuents. To their consternation they heard him pro-
pound measures of a nature and tendency diametri-
cally opposite to those they had predicated from his
former speeches and professions. They were com-
pelled to " eat the leek " they had " mocked " to
unsay by their votes in Parliament all they had pro-
mised and vowed at the hustings but a few short
months before—to proclaim themselves to their
constituents, and to the country at large, as
political weathercocks—to be impaled on the columns
of the Post, with their characters and crimes
inscribed over their heads--" Political Apostates"—
" Deserters from the standard to which they pledged
fidelity." Such is the degradation to which Sir R.
Peel has consigned his supporters ! Such is the ig-
nominy to which, for the sake of office, he has con-
sented to reduce himself ! That such a Government
will he able to maintain itself in office—dependent,
as it is, on the precarious, because the constrained,
support of a large proportion of its professed
adherents in Parliament, and amid the scorn
and contempt, mingled with distrust, of former
friends, as well as open and avowed enemies—
would be something so new and strange in a
country in which the Government, to be strong
and permanent, must be based on public opi-
nion, there is no reason to conclude. The Govern-
ment of Sir Robert Peel will not, certainly, supply
the monstrous precedent. By what particular mea-
sure the present Government is doomed to fall, it
would be presumptuous to attempt a prediction.
That it has within itself the elements of dissolution,
is certain. The House of Commons that was
returned to support the Government in its re-
sistance of the changes which were proposed by its
predeces!ors, is disorganized in opinion, and will soon
become feeble in support of the Ministers who, by
the adoption of, those very measures which were re-
pudiated by them when in opposition, have proposed
the startling problem for solution, whether a Govern-
ment can maintain itself in office from which public
respect and confidence is withdrawn ; or—which
amounts to the same—whether a Cabinet which upset
a Ministry by perseveringly denouncing the policy it
pursued, as dangerous to the country, can retain
office upon the credit of those very measures it for-
merly denounced, and which, by intrigue and.faction,
it managed to obstruct and defeat?
STANDARD.—The journals of the Anti-Corn-
law League found a strange charge against Sir Ro-
bert Peel's Government upon the article of the Quar-
terly Review, to which we have lately referred. The
article, they say, is little more than a transcript from
a brief, prepared for the law officers of the Crown,
in contemplation of a prosecution of the Leaguers
upon a charge of high treason ; insinuating that the
material allegations in this brief have been collected
by spies.' , Now to, this it is 'obvious: to ;reply.
that if the Review makes out, as we indeed
acknowledge it does, a case of treasonable clesigti on
the part of the Leaguers, the evidence upon which
that case rests has all been furnished by the Leaguers
themselves. The Reviewer • never once pretends to
secret information, or alleges anything upon testi-
mony not open to the whole world. He merely
quotes the public speeches, addresses, and sermons
of the League, and the public acts of its members ;
the trace of a spy cannot be found in the whole
mass of evidence. Whether it was ever contem-
plated to proceed by a criminal prosecution, or
whether it is now intended to proceed against
the conspirators, must remain an official secret; but
if any such intention existed or exists, it is plain that
a proceeding open and above board is the only one
the Leaguers have to apprehend. In the whole
course of his official life Sir Robert Peel never em-
ployed a spy or a traitor, and we trust he never will
employ one. Let him retain this not the least
honourable of his distinctions. It is, perhaps, not
surprising that the apologists of the League feel
shocked and alarmed by the, mass of treasonable
matter collected by the Quarterly Reviewer, and that
they conclude that no one but a lawyer could have
employed the diligence to collect so much proof, or
exercised the skill to marshal it so effectively—but
their inference is not a necessary one. Any, man of
equal ability, using equal industry, and devoting him-
self to the painful . task, could make a similar collec-
tion from.,the affluence of the crimes of the League
during the last two years. In fact, the Quarterly Re-
viewer has scarcely printed anything which was not
previously printed in theifforning Chronicle, the Anti-
Bread Tax Circular, the Globe, &c.

MONEY MARKET and CITY NEWS.

FROM TILE MORNING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
POST.—The English Funds were again compara-
tively flat in the early part of the day. Consols were
done, for the opening, at 93k. The depression was
ascribed to a fall of 4- per Cent. in French Rentes at
the Paris Bourse, caused by the anti-British feeling,
as it was 'considered, exhibited by the Government of
France on the occasions of the late troubles at Bar-
celona. No other cause has been named for the
momentary decline in our Government securities,
nor is this to be regarded as a legitimate one, as
there can be little fear of the amicable relations of
France and England being disturbed by extraneous
events of the nature of that referred to under the
present organization of the ,Cabinets Ed the two
Powers. The honour conferred upon the Barce-
lona Consul may have been deemed but an in-
adequate consideration for the odium the individual
has encountered, and the risks he has run, in uphold-
ing the interests of France. His house was made
an especial object of attack on the part of Espar-
tero's battering forces. Numerous shells, and
other missiles, were thrown into the Consul's court-
yard during the bombardment, so that his life was
seriously imperilled. Were it on this ground alone
that the dignity alluded to was bestowed the pro-
ceeding would seem to be no more than a natural
and proper one. The Consul, is, however, charged
by the opponents of his Government with having
taken a leading part in the late movements at Bar-
celona, as a fomenter and abettor of the insurrection ;
and, assuming that it is on this special account he
has been placed in the ranks of the Legion of Ho-
nour, the circumstance is construed to have a direct
political bearing, as directed against the commerce
and influence of this country. The affair is, how-
ever, viewed very differently in the two capitals. The
fall in Stock at Paris is really an important one,
while, in our own market, it was limited at the most
to * per cent.; and even that trifling retrogradation
was but of short continuance, the quotations by the
close of business having recovered themselves com-
I pletely, or as nearly So as possible.