The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-06-28 00:00:00

iniquitous in character, to tax licenses. " Dealer :in
tobacco and snuff,"—how many times has this modest
annonce met the eye on the small board over the chandler's
door ; yet these poor petty dealers were to be taxed up to
the eyes, by having leave to pay a tax for a license to sell
the weed in leaf or in its pulverised state. But the
pressure on such " small deer" were as nothing compared
to that on the publicans throughout the kingdom ; they
would have to pay a tax upon a tax for the sale of tobacco.
spirits, wine, music, and I know not what besides. Now
surely Mr. GLADSTONE must know—he has been told of
it—that there is no class of persons in the United
Kingdom so severely taxed as the keepers of houses
of public entertainment ; knowing this, he ought to
have been cautious before he " tried it on." How-
ever, he has tried it ; and, from one end of the
country to the other, the outcry against the scheme has
been loud and unanimous. He said it would not do, and
on Monday he was fain to get out of it after a rather
sneaking fashion. It appeared that on an examination of
the scale of licences, as originally proposed, it was found
that it would be attended by very great inconvenience,
and in particular cases by what might be called oppres-
sion ; and he, therefore, made it his business to consider
how the scale could be revised, and in what shape it could
be put, so as to remove those objections; but he discovered
the effect would be to materially reduce the proceeds
arising from the scale. The Government had not at pre-
sent come to any absolute conclusion on the subject ;
but he thought he might venture to say, provided no
other inroad was made in the finances which were avail-
able for the public service, that it might be in their
power to dispense altogether with making at the present
time any proposal with regard to increasing the duties on
licences. Qualified and roundabout as the Chancellor's
statement is,—and it certainly was to the above effect—
JOHN BULL—I mean JOHN BULL'S purveyors—will be
right glad of immunity from the impost. The peri-
phrastic manner of the Chancellor was, perhaps, adopted,
to render the relinquishment of the tax as little palpable
as possible, seeing he was compelled to abandon it.
Chacun a son gout. One likes to be disgusted some.
times, especially when it is paid for on compulsion ; for
this purpose I hied me to the House of Lords, on Tues-
day, to see how " Mon cher" ABERDEEN propounded his
income-tax bill. I had heard Sir ROBERT PEEL introduce
the measure, some years ago, and in one breath admit
that it was essentially a war-tax, and that the country
had enjoyed more than thirty years of peace ; but that he
believed his amended tariff would much more benefit the
public than his income-tax would damage them ; besides,
it was only for three years. Little JOHN RUSSELL,
though in the opposition, licked his lips, looking for
another chance of getting in ; he did not much object to
the scheme, knowing it would be a good thing for him
and his hungry Whig retainers. And he judged rightly ;
it came to his turn to propose a continuance of the ob-
noxious tax, and he did it with all the sang froid of Sir
ROBERT PEEL, and with much more hardihood. Then Mr.
GLADSTONE, encouraged by the submissiveness of the
English character, came forward and boldly proposed
seven years ; but then the tax is to be comminuted—
broken up into small particles, year after year. It passes
the House of Commons, and on Tuesday evening afore-
said, the Premier, Lord ABERDEEN, tried his hand at a
little bit of financiering, which he bad not done for a
long while past. Before " Mon cher" made a mess in
his figures, which nobody understood, nor cared to under-
stand, he said, in the outset, that the tax was inquisi-
torial, encouraged fraud, caused loss to the revenue and
injury to morals. Morals ! The morality of this great
country, Thane, is imperishable, like your own Aberdeen
granite ; therefore don't alarm yourself on that head.
Do you ? No. Then why throw this dust—cant—in
the eyes of an honest, tax-afflicted, and virtuous people ?
Then, again, you old " sneck-drawer," a phrase you have
heard at the village school, more than fifty years ago,
why say the public would not believe it if Ministers pro-
posed the tax for three years only. Of course not—after
what we—the public, have seen ; what you ought to have
said. or something like it, was this, " Stuff and nonsense,
why shilly-shally, we want your money, and will take it
for seven years ; you would only laugh at us, disbelieve
us, were we to name a shorter period." The Earl of
DERBY, of course, is not going to oppose the bill ; but he
appeared to be as much in the dark about the Earl of
ABERDEEN'S figures as your correspondent. Lord DERBY
observed that he could not help thinking some of the
calculations of the noble Earl were so vague as to render
it quite impossible to reckon on them. Lord BROUGHAM
came in at the close with a bit of fun, saying that the
income-tax was worse than any other tax—even a tax
upon law proceedings. Thereupon there was much
laughter, and the bill was read a second time, verifying
the old saying, " Let them laugh who win."
Amidst all the gaiety of Queen VICTORIA'S court at
present, and at no time, perhaps, in our country's history
was the English Court more truly gay—merry, and wise—
let it be added, than, at the present period, either in
drawing-room, concert, state dinner, or ball ; amidst all
the gaiety of the opera, and in that quarter surely there is
sufficient, for the time at least, to banish care ; amidst
these scenes and others not now to be described—
Chobham with its tented field,—there is one being the
appearance of whom is well calculated to humble every
one possessing a well-constituted mind. I refer to
GEORGE, the blind KING OF HANOVER; just entered on
early manhood, in possession of a crown. firmly placed on
his.throne—part and parcel, is it not, of England—with a
lovely Queen, of whose peerless beauty he has only hearsay
evidence; the father of children whom he daily fondles,
yet never saw ! I remember him when he and Prince
were little playful
GEORGE of CAMBRIDGE, now the Duke, •
boys—too playful sometimes for some of the old lords.
For example, one evening when Lcrd L Y:cnnuasT, like
Homen, was nodding, the two boys got hold of the rich
and antique gold and velvet purse in which the Great Seal
of England is deposited, or supposed to be deposited. On
the occasion referred to, the Seal must have been in the
bag, for the boys evidently felt something, and tried thee
bag, tumble it out. Lord LYNDHURST was not long in per-
ceivine

_ ..hat they were about—" Catch a weazel asleep"
—laughing heartily at the lads, the noble and learned lord
explained the use of the Seal, and gave them to under-
stand that it was not for them to play wills Physiolo-
gists say that the blind have faculties more acute than
people blest with sight, which compensate, so to speak,
tor the want of one of our greatest blessings. lam afraid
this holds only true in cases of congenital blindness ; at all
avents, the KING OF HANOVER. appears by no means an
fait, though at the opera, on either side of him, are, if not
old familiarface.), still familiar voices, and he is taken much
care of. At Chohh9.ra he mixed in the gay throng of dis-
tinguished personages who formed the immediate suite of
the QUEEN (she mounted on a charger), but the KING
ANovEa's horse, apparently a quiet animal, was led
close by an aide-decamp. In other respects His Majesty

looks well.
Would the readers of the Standard like to know any_
thing about Count NESSELRODI ? To be sure. Done.
is one of two living diplomatists, TALLEY-
NESSELRODE is the Prime Minister

of the Emperor of Aussia; in pergonnel the Count is as
tough as pin-wire, gentlemanly looking, without being
handsome, about the age of our own PALMERSTON, and,
like PALMY, is a don at table, Several puddings and
jellies have been named after NESSELRODE. He is a great