The Sun. — 1860-08-21 (London, England)

CANOVA-or at least the object of that great sculptor's unstinted admiration. The iron bridge at Southwark, and so many of the other minor bridges over the Thames above Westminster! There are vacant sites, too, in the very heart of our metropolis, tempting a really energetic Chief Commissioner to fill them up with public works of conspicuous utility and importance. The site of the old Fleet Prison, for instance, on the east side of Farringdon-street, for years past as much a memento mori in its way as a caput mortuum. Descending to mere minutiae, there is even a vacant pedestal standing this long while in one corner of the Finest Site in Europe—not spelt, however, by any means the Finest Sight in Europe—beseeching the statue (equestrian, if possible) of some one, of any one among our English Worthies (if only by way of contrast to that royal ostler, GEORGE the FOURTH, leading his charger to water at the adjacent fountains !)—a vacant pedestal, we say : imploring some statue, any statue that might suggest itself as appropriate to the imagination of an enterprising Chief Commissioner. Then there is the completion of Nelson's Column to expedite—there is the fagade of the National Gallery to reconstruct—there is the projected Palace of Justice (say upon the proposed site between Clement's Inn and Carey-street) to raise from its foundations—there is the long talked-of viaduct to build at Holborn Hill there is Smithfield to turn to good  And then to remember the almost certain diminution of consumption, and the consequent diminution of employment. It is no trivial evil when every individual of a family living on wages has to buy some article of wearing apparel or some domestic article less. What a tale does this tell at Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield, Coventry even, and the Potteries. There is no trade unaffected when even the poor cannot possibly lay out on manufactures what they have already been compelled to expend through the higher price of food. Then follow short time, lowered wages, and too often some Secretary POTTER rises up and exasperates all the suffering by getting his sub-despots to order a general strike. The demagogue forces social suicide on those who, left to themselves, would have experienced temporary privation merely. No terms of condemnation can be too severe for the ignorant men, for it is most charitable to believe them ignorant, who stir up their unreflecting but naturally patient as well as industrious fellow-men, in reality, to take vengeance by idleness on Providence for a bad harvest and its inevitable consequences.  We may hope, however, for some good out of the evil. At present our taxation is enormous— unreasonable. More than seventy millions sterling, besides borrowing for fortifications and for India, in a time of profound peace, shows something utterly wrong. The leaks must be found out and stopped. We may go on very well with them when sailing before the wind, but already the enhanced prices of all provisions are telling fearfully on the returns of our Board of Trade. They will tell yet more. And if so, and if the rate of expenditure be kept up through the year, the " elasticity of our trade' will not save Mr. GLADSTONE from a deficiency next spring. Then it will begin to be asked, in sober seriousness, whether we are really obliged to pay seventy millions for public purposes merely— whether less than thirty millions will not suffice to defend us, seeing France spends nearly ten millions a year sterling less, to keep us all in a fright ? And it will be asked whether we do not pay too much for such 'whistles as CARDIGANS, LL'CANS, and AIREYS, and featherbed field-marshals, and all the glories of the Horse Guards ? and whether at the Admiralty, the men who give £365 each for anchors, which drag half a mile in a storm, and reject those which never move in the same storm, and cost but one-fourth the money, are just the men to see us well served on the cheapest  :erms.  In many ways, a little check may do both governors and people no harm ultimately; the only thing one feels much is the sufferings brought on the poor. Would that it might teach them the lesson of better providence ! The painful fact is, that families living on wages, and paying no In• come-tax, but earning twice or three times as much as thousands who do pay Income-tax, the instant a time of hardship comes have immediately to resort to the pawnshop. This improvidence, together with too general intemperance, are the ruin of our industrious poor. Were they as economical as they are industrious they would be the wealthiest operatives in the world, and they could cease work without being ruined.