The Sun. — 1851-06-26 (London, England)

ITN,  LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 26, 1851.  It is unfortunately essential to the operatics of such a tax that, after the moat diligent inquisition, every reau must still he hie own assessor; and the censeientioirs man will have a severe assessor, and the unscrupulous man a very irdulgent assessor. The one pilgrim will perform his penance with hard peas, and the other wail take the precaution to boil them, the only difference in the visible result being that the scrupulous man does not make half so good a pilgrim or look half so honest and bold as the man who has cooked his penance to his taste. If railway directors know how to make things pleasant, income-tax payers, we may be sure, will not want that accomplishment. But it is disgraceful and even ridiculous to go on assessieg the tax, and levying the tax, altogether in the dark, without either affirming or denying its iarquality, and without being able to say that the expedients for an equitable assessment have been thoroughly siftee and exhausted. If any credit is to be attached to the language of our statesmen in 1842 and 1845, there certainly would have been an inquiry, with an attempt to rectify the inequalities of the tax on both these eceasions, kit for the idea that the tax was only for a time, arid thtt for only three yearn, it was hardly worth while to go to the hettorn of so difficult a discussion. But that excuse no longer exists. The income-tax must at al: events be treated as perpetual, for when a man has Daid it nine years, and is now asked for it a tenth year, k is his own fault if he indulgea in any dreams of its abolkion. There are thingb under the sun which we really expect one day to see the end of, that is if we live long enough. We shall see the Thames floe at Bleck: friars as clear as at Maidenhead-bridge; we shall see a National Gallery worthy of this nation; we shall see a viaduct over llolborn-hill, Middle-row demolished, Holy well-street thrown into the Strand, and Paternoster-row irate St. Paul's Churchyard, We shall see quays, walks, and, perhaps, railways, along the banks of the Thames. We shall see the House of Commons finishing its debates before midnight. We expect a reform in dress and a revolution it diet. After the changes that have actually taken place within the compass of our recollection we hardly despair of any sena' sible improvement. But there is one thitg of which we altogether despair. We see no end of the income-tax. So long as we bold Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope, so long as we maintain the Africat squadron, and employ our men-of-war in carrying gold dust for freight, we shall have the income-tax. It will last our time at all events. We have then a fair right to demand that it be equitably assessed. That is the object for which the Committee now sitting has been appointed. But we do not wish to see the aggregate produce of the tax considerably, if at all, diminished. Raise 5,000,000/. a year on property by all means, but spare the more fragile and ephemeral forms of income. Respect science, reverence genius, do justice to art, bear gently on that which Is hollow and transient, and, at any rate, take away all excuse fur a growing dishonesty of returns, which bids fair to sap the morals of the nation.—Times.  SUICIDES THROUGH FEAR of