The Sun.
London, England, 1842-05-02 00:00:00

PUBLIC OPZATION.

In reference to Mr. Roebuck's anieitdinent on Schedule D
of the Income-tax Bill, the Morning Herald observes:—" We
think, indeed, that professional income of any kind, but especi •
ally where it is of fluctuating amount, ought to be exempt
altogether from such a tax. This total exemption, it should
teem, there is little chance of realising, under the present un-
toward aspect of the public revenue. The next thing, in point
of desirableness, is suck a modifieation as that which is com-
peised in Mr. Roebuck's amendment. lhis ought to have
been carried. It is impossible to deny the general but striking
argument upon which it is founded: that it is cruel and absurd
to the last degree, to impose on • industrial income this same
amount of tax as you levy on (what we should consider for the
purpoees of argument, were distinctly and emphatically termed)
fixed property t— en ' lauded property,' in the terms of Mr.
Roebuck's amendment. There is, we must say, a principle of
moderation about the proposition which at once increases our
respect for the mover and our favour to the amendment."
The following is from the Chronicle :—" The Election
Committees are going on in a very useful course. Day after
day they are unravelling the mysteries of our representative
system, and exposing to •üblic obloquy the enormities of those
practices by which the House of Commons is brought together.
They are bringing the present constitution of Parliament into
universal and merited obloquy : arid Tories, as well as Whigs
and Radicals, are all labourit'?, not certainly for the purpose,
but still effectually for the end, of proving that the Chartists are
right so far as they complain of the present system. The con-
clusion that that system is full of dangerous and disgraceful
defects, is one which Chartist declamation has not been able to
establish; but which is now being, day alter day, impressed on
the public mind by evidence upon evidence, delivered upon
oath, and restricted by the rules of law."
The Post says :—" It is very well known by those who are
familiar with our High Courts of Justice, presided over by
men of learning in the law, and impressed with a conscious-
ness of their great responsibility—it is very well known, we
say, with what reluctance they use the power of commitment
for contempt, with which they are vested. The Judge never
exercises the power but in the very last resort, and alter hav-
ing done all that patient explanation can do, to subdue tire ob-
stinacy, or clear up the misunderstanding, which has led to a
neglect of the authority of the Court. But it would appear
that Committees of the House of Commons, and in a late case
the gentleman who presides over a Committee, has no such
careful sense of the rights of personal liberty. A gentleman
who calls himself a Liberal' in politics, •he Chairman of the
Southampton Committee, seems to be possessed with a rage
for committal to Neegate, which forms a strange illustration
of that devotedness to the liberties cf the people for which he
seeks credit as a public man. He is a great admirer of liberty
in the abstract, but when hiS admiration comes to be tried by
an individual example, he would exemplify it by the method of
committal to her Majesty's gaol of Newgate !"
The Advertiser has the following observations :—"Mr. Roe-
buck's amendment in Committee on the Incoine-tax--.' That
for'and in resi ect of the annual profits or gains from any pro-
fession, trade, or vocation, there shall be levied annually, for
every twi.nty shillings, threepence-halfpenny'—was last night
lost in die House of Commons by a majority of 25e against I W.
Lord John Russell, as if in verification of our opinion that the
Whigs are desirous that the Income. tax Bill should pass in the
.unmitigated enormity cf• its injustice, in order t') make the
Tories more odious to the country, actually opposed the amend-
ment, on the grounds that it was inadequate to rem' dy all the
unjust operations of the Bill, and that if the Heine, having
agreed to the necessity of an Income-tax, once commenced
making distinctions between the sources of income, it would
only involve itself in inextricable labyrinths. We confess our
incompetency todiscover the force of this reasoning, Even though
the Huuseof lower oligarchs—it would be mockery to call it the
House of the People—has decreed the imposition of an oppres-
sive and inquisitorial tax, this is no reason why. as Lord John
Russell contends, the tax should be levied with all its monstrous
inequalities. Neither do we see why Lord John Russell
should be so solicitous to guard the House from getting into
any labyrinth on this subject, that House being no longer under
his leadership, but, on the contrary, approving a tax to which
he pledged his utmost opposition—it is not his business to clear
away the difficulties mid impediments which crowd upon the
path of his opponents. The truth is, his Lordship's tendencies
have for a long time evinced themselves far more in favour of
the class to which he belongs than of the people. 4 *
When the Reform Bill was passed, there was but one
party in this country who considered it a final measure, of
whom he aims to be the leader. That party consisted of
the men who framed it—forsooth, the Russells, and those pre-
tenders to popular confidence who, on so recent an occasion
as that of Mr. Sharman Crawford's proposition for extension
of the electoral franchise, absented themselves, heroically
and honourably, from the House of Commons. Titan these
the Tories were not more blind, nor more selfishly deter-
mined to uphold aristocratic usurpations. The Tories confessed
that the Reform Bill would be looked upon by the people as a
concession, leading only to further concession ; while, on the
other hand, the democratic bOdy regarded it not even as a con-
cession, but merely as something leading to a future reality.
The Whigs, and the Whigs only, regarded it as a termination
to organic change—as a first and final balance between the pre-•
teusiocs of the aristocracy and the rights of the people. Thus,
in the opinion of those pseudo-statesmen, the first stet in par-
liamentary reform we, also to include the last ; —the little more
than fact of sweeping away the rotten boroughs seas to stand
for that gradually progressive enlargement of political privilege
among the people, which their increasing intelligence and
wealth so imperatively call for. It is to be owned that this
may be Whig statesmanship, but it is certainly rest the view
which will answer in the nineteenth century for England.
England, to be at her natural stage in the political
.principle—
to be where, if Mr. Pitt's policy of reform had ensued, she
must now have essentially been, would now see the franchise
extended to all those classes among whom intelligence and in-
dustry are found to predominate."