The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-03-22 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 22, 1842

In a series of articles, upon the financial position of
Great Britain, which appeared in this journal so long
ago as in January of last year, we expressed.our opi-
nion that the time had arrived when a determined ef-
fort should be made, by means of direct taxation, to
equalise the income and expenditure of the country.
At that time the deficiency of the revenue was not by
any means so large as at the present moment. The
disasters which have fallen upon our eastern empire,
and which compel us now to increase our military and
naval establishments, had not then occurred. Our
embroilment in China was then thought to be capable
of speedy adjustment. The consuming power of the
country had not then, as now it has, proved itself
capable of sustaining, with profit to the'revenue, addi-
tional taxation ; and yet at that time, even, we were
prepared to welcome the imposition of a tax upon the
-property of the empire as the most sa4Sfactory mode
of extrication from financial difficulty; and, especially,
because we saw in such a tax the only means by which
any ministry could be enabled to enter upon, and safely
and effectually to deal with, a remodification of our
entire commercial tarifF, with a view to relieve the
working of the national industry, and to restore us to
a healthy and permanent prosperity.
Having entertained and expressed such views,—in
advance of by far the greater portion of the party to
whose principles in general we assent,—we received
with almost unqualified satisfaction their enunciation
by Sir Robert Peel, as those upon which he had deter-
mined to rest the security of his administration. With
respect to the details of the proposition which that
wisely bold statesman has brought forward, we may
reasonably have differences of opinion. A considera-
ble number of these details, however—a considerable
number of the modifications of duties proposed—we
expressly alluded to upon the occasion in question;
and when we find the same great principles directing
the government in their arrangement throughout, we
are bound to declare our conviction that this measure
of Sir Robert, viewed as a whole, is one which a pa-
triotic people, and, above all, an industrious and com-
mercial people, should support him in carrying out,
with their undivided energies.

It is tacitly admitted by all, except by a few ejected
Whig placernen, that, independent of any fiscal and
commercial ameliorations, it is imperatively necessary
now to repair past deficiencies, and to meet effectually
the increasing demands upon the revenue. Sir Ro-
bert Peel proposes not only to meet these demands,
but to place, at the same time, our commercial tariff
upon a basis which shall advance the prosperity of the
commerce and the industry of the country. 'We are,
as a nation, in an unhealthy and disordered position ;
and the questions which we have to solve are, whether
we will he radically cured, or whether we shall seek
only temporary relief; whether we are willing to en-
dure a little in order to gain a great permanent good,
or whether we will shrink from this endurance and
abandon the permanent good which is held out to us.
S;r Robert Peel, in his honest truth, tells us that the
full enjoyment of the objects at which we aim is not
attainable without we are willing for, a season to sub-
mit the income of the country to taxation ; Whiggery,
on the contrary, assures us that no such nauseous re-
medy is necessary, and that it can do all that is re-
quired without subjecting us to this inconvenience.

We believe, however, that notwithstanding any at-
tempts which may be made, by pretenders and quacks,
to mislead their judgment, the people of Great Britain,
appreciating to its full extent the benefits which must
resul,t from the course recommended to their adoption
by the Conservative government, which now enjoys
their confidence and the confidence of the Sovereign—
appreciating, too, the self-sacrificing integrity which
has led that government to recommend a course which,
despising the popularity of the hour, aims only at the
maintenance of the empire in honour and permanent
safety—are prepared to scout the counsel of the ped-
dling imbeciles whose misrule has precipitated us into
the difficulty by which we are surrounded, and to em-
brace the straightforward path which alone offers the
sure prospect of speedy extrication.

We may be told that the tax upon income is one pe-
culiarly obnoxious to the British public ; that it is in-
quisitorial in its nature, and that it ought not to be re-
sorted to except in the last extremity. We admit much
of its obnoxious and inquisitorial character; and yet
we are prepared to contend that the present is an emer-
gency which calls upon every man who loves his coun-
try to submit to its alleged evils. There is no tax
which the most cunning statesman can devise which is
not, more or less, unequal and, in the abstract, unjust
in its pressure upon individuals or upon classes; and
if that which is now proposed were, even to a far
greater extent than it is in reality, faulty in its opera-
tion, we must bear in mind that it is not intended to be
p!rmanent in its character, and that, in imposing it,
the legislature offers to us a great ultimate advantage
in Prospect ! We are called upon to accord it to go-
vernment not only to sustain the national Credit, not
only to Protect the national honour and safety, but

that, by making this temporary sacrifice, we may see
the commerce and industry of the country raised from
its present prostrate state and placed once more, by an
amelioration of our entire fiscal system, in the enjoy-
ment of a sound and healthy prosperity.

With such objects in view we are confident that our
fellow-countrymen will not be led, by the factious ef-
forts of the prating imbeciles who have themselves
produced the evil, to reject or to receive with dissatis-
faction the remedy, severe though it may be, now of-
fered by an honest Conservative government. We
must not criticise the proposed tax upon income as if
it were about to be permanently fastened upon us. On
the contrary, we are bound to look upon it as an ex-
traordinary and irregular effort ; and we can conceive
nothing more ennobling to us as a people, and to those
especially upon whom this tax must press most heavily,
than that for a great common object we are ready thus to
embrace the individual sacrifices and inconveniences by
which alone that object can be purchased.

If we may take as a specimen of the kind of oppo-
sition which the proposed financial measures of go-
vernment are likely to meet with in the House of Com-
mons, the demonstrations made on Friday night by
Messrs. Baring, Labouchere, and Lord John Russell,
little doubt need be entertained of their passing into a
law, very nearly in their present shape. Some string
of ad captandam resolutions will no doubt be con-
cocted by these distinguished statesmen, upon which to
exhibit to the world their exceeding sagacity. Mr.
Baring will hold out his " sugar budget" as an infi-
nitely more tempting bait to the patriotic opposition
than an invitation to contribute from their own pockets
to the support of the declining revenue of the coun-
try; the Ex-President of the Board of Trade will usher
into being his unborn and previously unheard of tariff
project; Lord John Russell will proclaim, as a panacea
" for all the evils that afflict the state," his fixed duty
of Bs. upon the importation of foreign corn. The
Howicks, Ewarts, Woods, "et hoc genus omne," will
ring the changes upon the injustice, the inequality, the
inquisitorial, and oppressive nature of an income tax—
revivify defunct leading articles of defunct Whig jour-
nals—rake up forgotten speeches of forgotten states-
men—out-Brougham Brougharn—nay, perhaps, even
level against this obnoxious proposition the never-to-
be-forgotten petition of "John 'Taylor" himself, the
solitary representative of the wisdom of the "merch-
ants, bankers, and tradesmen of Liverpool "—the man
whose fame froin henceforth is destined far to eclipse
that of the " three tailors of Tooley-street " ! All
these efforts, however, we 'are well assured, will not
move Sir Robert Peel one step from the position which
he has advisedly taken up upon this important ques-
tion ; and the country will only be provoked to smile
at the feeble attempts of these feeble people to ob-
struct, when they have failed to guide, the progress of
healthy and invigorating legislation.
If we have no fear of the opposition of the discom-
fited Whigs in• Parliament, 'we have still less of any
opposition which can be got up out of doors. The
" liberals" of the middle classes, whose distinguishing
characteristic is intense selfishness, are well enough dis-
posed to carp at the imposition of a tax upon income,
as " unjust," "inquisitorial," &c. The explanation of
Sir Robert Peel, however, on Friday, must satisfy them
that a great portion of the objections brought against
it are rendered untenable by the proposed alleviations
in the mode of its collection; and, were this even not
the case, the revision of the tariff, of which the in-
come tax is the price, is replete Nvith benefits to the
commerce of the country, far more than sufficient to
compensate for the temporary sacrifice which they are
called upon to make. If it is, in the abstract, hard
that mere income derived from the profits of trade
should contribute to the revenue in the same propor-
tion as income derived from realized property, the facts
will not be lost sight of, that the revised tariff which is
to be the set off against this hardship, will benefit in an
increased ratio the very classes who thus complain of its
operation ; and that the party who appeal most loudly •
to the selfish principle, which exists in all men, for
support in an opposition to a tax upon income, have
no other measure to offer by which the boon which
accompanies it can be securecL

At a time when the policy of Sir Robert Peel on the
sugar duties is much canvassed, even by many well-
intentioned Conservatives, it may not be uninteresting
to know that our West India colonies have readily and
cheerfully sustained an immense local taxation to carry
out the views of the government, under an implied
stipulation that their interests would be maintained, as
far as was consistent with justice, against all slave-
holding nations. The extent of the demand upon the
colonial exchequer may be in some degree appreciated
by the fact, that the reforms in the law courts alone
have cost Jamaica upwards of thirty thousond sterling
per annum. This sum does not include the expense of
altering prisons and erecting penitentiaries. They have
already voted thirty-five thousand pounds for One pe-
nitentiary in Kingston, and have authorised Captain
Saint-John, the colonial engineer, to introduce the
latest improvements suggested by humanity in the
executive of the law. Captain St. John has arrived in
England for the purpose of inspecting the principal
prisons, and we have a surety in his well-known anxi-
ety to protect the rights of the negro, displayed whilst
he. acted as secretary to the governor, Sir John Keane,
or more recently as a voluntary and unpaid special
magistrate, that every reasonable suggestion emanating
from the anti-slavery party will be attended to. We
understand that Captain St. John has already had many
interviews with the chiefs of this party, and has also
inspected the prisons of the manufacturing districts.
He was in Liverpool a few days since, and saw the
borough and Kirkdale prisons, in company with Mr.
James Aspinall and other magistrates.

To-morrow is the day fixed upon for the election of
a councillor to supply the vacancy which has occurred
in St. Anne's Ward; and we beg earnestly to impress
upon its Conservative electors the importance of using
their utmost exertion to secure the return of the Con-
servative candidate, Mr. Brassey. Upon all those
great questions which the constituencies throughout
the borough have the most deeply at heart, this gentle-
man, we are assured, is sound and staunch. Upon
the subject in particular of scriptural education in the
corporation schools, he will not be found—as, we regret
to say, too many who have got into that council,. under
Conservative colours, have been found—ready to sa-
crifice principle upon the shrine of expediency—ready
to give up his honest convictions and past professions, to
purchase the hollow praise of political opponents, who
will despise him for his weakness, whilst they. profit by
his treachery. In every respect Mr. Brassey is Well
fitted to occupy the position to which he aspire's ; and
we do ti ust that no want of energy and watchfulness,
on the part of the Conservative electors of the ward,
will suffer so serious an injury, as would be the loss of
this or any ward at the present crisis, to be inflicted
upon the Conservative cause.
With respect to the claims of the gentleman by
whom Mr. Brassey is opposed on the liberal interest,
we shall not venture to give an opinion. From all that
we can learn, however, of that gentleman, he is quite
as ornamental and useful, in the localities which he at
present dignifies with his presence, as he is ever likely
to be in the council ; and it will not be by the force of
any shining qualifications which he possesses for muni-
cipal honours, but by sheer indolence—and we may
add criminal indolence—of the Conservatives of St.
Anne's Ward, if he is ever permitted to take his seat in
that assembly.

We reported briefly in our last the proceedings of a
" soiree and concert" held on Thursday evening, under
the distinguished patronage of the ex-mayor of Liver-
pool, and sundry other radical worthies, for the purpose
of raising funds in aid of the school attached to St.
Patrick's chapel. The principal performers on the
occasion were the Signors Valentini, Messrs. Parker,
Shiel, Rosson, &c. ; but the gem of the evening was
the excellent personation of " a Kentucky screamer"
by that amiable ex-quaker and ex-councillor, Mr. Wil-
liam Rathbone.

Amongst other amusing portions of the performance
in question was an exhibition of the effect, produced
upon his own atrabilious anatomy, by a contemplation
of the unassailable front which has for years past been
offered to the frantic assaults of radicalism by the Pro-
testant clergy of this town. At the bare mention of
these reverend gentlemen, the very bones shook in the
antiquated garment of the screamer; his teeth ground

together—his eyes turned yellow and watery—his hair
stood up " like quills upon the fretful porcupine"—
and his voice, changed from its former shrieking pitch,
came bubbling from between his clenched teeth, scat-
tering foam on all around him, with a sound like " the
universal hiss" which startled pandemonium. Al this
moment the ex-quaker presented a picture at once
sublime and terrific ; and we are assured by our re-
porter that the effect produced was perfectly astound-
ing and indescribable.

We learn from a leading article of the Manchester
Courier of Saturday last, strongly urging the propriety
of such a step, that it is in the contemplation of the
people of Manchester to lay their claim before the
parliamentary committee upon the proposed borough
improvement bill for an exemption, in behalf of vessels
navigating the river Mersey to the ports of Runcorn
and Manchester, (!) from the liability to contribute to
our town dues. We have no great fear of the success
of such an application ; but it is at least desirable that
we should be prepared to meet the attempt.