OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
THE BUDGET.
TIMES—Hope gave to the budget of this year a peculiar interest, be- cause the distresses 'of the people seemed tti justify the expectation of peculiar relief. It is certain the taxes are to be diminished,--dimieished, it is conceived, to the amount of about 1,250,0004 : but while we do ample justice to Ministers for the beneteleiree of their intentiona, fl kindness of their wishes, we really cannot help expressing our surpt1se at the list of articles on which they propose a reduction of impost. It may be thought by some, that the people are not always the best judged of the nature of the relief to be afforded to them. We, however, are not of this opinion : it needs no great sagacity to know " where the shoe pinches,"—" where the burden presses ;" and it would have been not only popular, but substantially useful, to release or relieve those articles against the taxation of which there has been the greatest ex- citement. In this sense we readily allow that much has certainly been done with respect to candles and sea-borne coal ; but who, in the name of wonder, either expected or called for any relief in the article of tobacco,—that vile, stinking, semi-poisonous narcotic, which, if it could be excluded altogether from the kingdom by heavy taxation, we should be all so much the better and sweeter ? We really could not for a while believe our own eyes when we saw this article set down as one, at this time of want, from whittle above a million of taxation was to be withdrawn. The mistake in so ne other articles is less striking, and it would require Our entering more into detail to expose the error. The relief afforded in the stamps of newspapers will scarcely be felt, anti the scale by which we hear adver- tisements are to be graduated (the Chancellor of the Exchequer may not have been aware), besides being improper, was under consideration ire Mr. Pitt's time, and was discovered to be vexatiously impracticable. T1. e equalizing duty on foreign wines is a reasonable one ; but why Care wine should be equally taxed, unless to prohibit its growth altogether, we cannot see. We suppose the Chancellor does not expect any revere e from that branch of our Colonial produce ; nor, perhaps, will any bat the colonists themselves much regret the loss of the article itself. The new stamp-duty upon the bond fide transfer of property, which will net
affect gambling transactions and time-bargains, is not, we apprehend, well judged, and will be found to Oppress those who sell through distress In fact, it will increase time-bargains, and be a benefit only to gambler:.
IIIISTERIOUS WARNING.
STANDARD—Sir Robert Peel is at work again. A new list of a coali- tion Cabinet has just been issued. In this, the first place is not claimed by Sir Robert, but assigned to a nobleman, who, on the strength of a single speech, has been set down a Protestant Tory. We know not whether the nobleman in question is a party to the manceuvre now itt progress, and therefore we shall not name him ; but we would remind the person by whose exertions the Tory party was split last summer, long before the change of Ministers, that he is already suspected, upon grounds that no man can consider slight ; and that by any approach to a connexion with Sir Robert Peel, he will fully confirm all the suspicion of a two years' dishonest understanding with that ingenuous and con- sistent statesman, which other indications have excited. -What we say to this person, the ostensible head of the proposed new Ministry, we say to all—Our good lord, or good sir, do you respect character ? You re- spect it if you respect virtae ; for "contemptu fames contempta est virtus." Do you respect character, observe warily how you are going to act. You have hitherto spoken and voted rightly, though not, per- haps, with that fierceness of zeal which characterizes the unsophisticated legionaries of Toryism. You have spoken and voted rightly ; and , therefore your deficiency in that truculence of opposition to treachery which we more savage Tories had rather found, has been ascribed to constitutional gentleness, to the habitual urbanity of elevated rank, perhaps to more exalted wisdom—to any thing rather than a hankering after place or a sympathy with the apostates. How long will this charitable hypothesis survive your taking to your bosom the Prince of the Apostacy ? You plead, forsooth, the necessity of resisting Par- liamentary Reform. This is a very flimsy pretext. First, neither you nor any one else can pretend it to be a moral duty to resist Parliamentary Reform on moral or religious grounds ; it is a simple question of expediency. Its promoters Mey be forgiven some enthusiasm, because there is a sound of liberty in their cause ; but there is no ennobling principle to consecrate Gatton, or Westbury, or Old Sarum. Men who die to avert the profanation of a shrine are to be honoured ; but the fanatical champion of a pig-stye or a toll- ' gate is not even pitied as a fool ; he is suspected as a rogue and a hypocrite. No—there is no moral principle concerned in the Reform question. It is, then, a question of expediency, .and, as such, you know it cannot be fought off for ever. On one side there is always a spring of enthusiasm—sometimes pouring in a stronger, sometimes in a weaker current, but always pouring ; on the other there is the total absence of any moral support (for there has been no Anti-Reform party' in the country for two years, whatever there may have been in Parlia. ment) : there is, indeed, the ill-cemented and incongruous lumber of the old institutions ; but it cannot be expected that theft. mere "viz inertim will long resist the assailing tide from without. As a prudential question, therefore, if the country's good be our. object, the earliest settlement is the best. The matter, then, stands thus—In regard to morals, the Re- form question is open: prudence advises the earliest arrangement, and advises it most strongly to those who most fear a popular ascendency ; and you, good lords and gentlemen, who have opposed the Wellington Administration on account of its treachery, ally yourselves to the Apos- • tates, in order to postpone the arrangement which you know must come ultimately. For what can you do this, but to get the Apostates and yourselves into place, in order that you and they may have the priest's share in the sacrifice ?
THE STATE PAUPERS.
Timm—There is much discussion in the public on the subject of the pensions, and the determination of Ministers respecting them. The principle on which present pensions are to be continued is that of charity ; an agreeable sentiment to the distressed, an unassailable one to the philanthropist—to the haughty beggar, to the alms catching noble, justly painful and degrading. Ministers, therefore, may think they have acted adroitly in placing this outlay of the public money to that account. They may have acted adroitly for two reasons—first, they will have placed those who persevere in receiving the public bounty in their proper light and character, as callous beggars ; and next, it cannot be conceived but that some will from a mere sense of shame relinquish the plunder. • Will the noble act of the King in foregoing his 50,000/. be a solitary act ? Will it not operate as an example ? Of this we are sure, that whatever example a Ring sets of an opposite character, that is followed and copied zealously .enough. Are the generous deeds of Royalty only to remain without imitators ? There are . many upon those pension lists which have swelled our columns lately, that are better able to relinquish a portion of their claims upon the public purse than his Majesty-some even of the wealthiest of the nobility ! It may be readily supposed that such individuals as the Bankheads, for example, who probably may not he too well off, cannot now give up what they never ought to have re- ceived; they might else be obliged to starve or work,-grievous alterna- tives, no doubt : but such would not lie the case with Lady Westmeath, the sister of Lord Salisbury, or with Lady hlornington, the mother of the Duke of Wellington, and of the Lords Maryborough and Cowley ! These names occur to us first, but we could mention scores of others. Can it be believed, then, that the Marquis of Salisbury will any longer suffer his sister, Lady Westmeath, or the Duke of Wellington his mother, Lady Mornington, to be maintained, wholly, or in part, as objects of charity, by a distressed nation ? Impossible. If they do suffer this, there is not a shopkeeper in London, who by honest industry has got a little before the world, that his not a nobler soul than that Marquis and that Duke. There is not an honest shopkeeper in Cheapside, or the Strand, or in the town of Hatfield, or the village of Mornington, that would not scorn to have his sister or mother kept by the public through charity !
GROWTH OF IRRELIGION.
MonxxsO HERALD-The growth of irreligion is generally a symptom of the decline of empire. It is indeed impossible that a nation can long flourish where the foundations of morality are broken down-and with- out religion the obligations of morality are easily dissolved. Great complaints are made in some quarters of the progress of infidelity in England of late years. We believe it has made considerable progress, and deeply lament it. But some of those who are affectedly vehement in their complaints of the increase of such a national evil are themselves chiefly responsible for its prevalence. Small is the mischief which licen- tious writers can produce, compared with the injurious consequences of bad example on the part of those who, being appointed the guardians of religion, falsify their sacred profession by their practice, and betray their trust. Unfortunately many abuses have grown up in the Church of England, which, in consequence of the length of time during which they have been allowed to endure, have become, in some measure, identified with the system which they deform and disgrace. The abuses of religion which minister to cupidity, vain pomp, and secular ambition, seldom want supporters and even panegyrists, because such abuses are the only inducements which cause some men to seek their fortune in the Church. It is the principle which tempted the "money-changers " of old to enter the Temple, and desecrate it by their traffic. It is the principle which makes Church reform imperiously necessary, but at the same time renders it as difficult as it would be beneficial. Of the eccle- siastical abuses to which we allude one of the most serious and preva- lent is that of pluialitica in Chtnillivings and preferments. However good Church livings may be, in a selfish and worldly point of view, to those who enjoy them, they are of no value, in a religious sense, but as they are connected with the cure of souls. The churchman who reaps the profits of a living, to the duties of which he cannot attend, gathers the fruit of the vineyard which he does not till, and consecrates to Mammon the offerings which are plundered from the altars of the living God. It is natural that such a man should be loud in his outcries against the reform of abuses in the Church, for such a reform would prevent him eating in idleness the bread for which pious industry toils in vain. As nothing tends to promote infidelity more than the bad examples of luxurious and indolent and grasping churchmen, so to cut down the abuses of the Church is the most effectual way to restore the pure influ- ence of religion. We speak now of pluralities in•particular, because they have been attempted to be defended of late by some churchmen, as if they were part and parcel of the Church Establishment, and that any at tack on them was a profane incursion on the sanctuary itself. But it happens that those who call for the suppression of pluralities are sup- ported by the recorded opinions of some of the most distinguished Pre- lates whose learning and virtues have adorned the church-men who, -while they were anxious to correct its abuses, were the vigilant and faithful guardians of the principles in which the vitality of its holiness resides.
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