Karl Marx 
The Paper Tax—The Emperor's Letter 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr.6030, 22. August 1860 

The Paper Tax—The Emperor's Letter. 

From Our Own Correspondent. 
London, Aug. 7, 1860. 

The great Faction-fight of the session, which came off yesterday night, in 
a full House of Commons, proved a failure in the scenical sense, although 
it was a triumph in the ministerial sense. Mr. Gladstone's resolutions for 
reducing the custom duties on paper to the level of the excise duties—some 
slight charge being added to the customs duties to counterbalance the in- 
cidental inconveniences of the excise duty—were carried by a majority of 

33. But the House of Commons had it all their own way. There was the arena, 1 o 

and there were the gladiators, with their retainers behind them, but there was 
no audience worth mentioning. Before the battle had commenced, its issue 
was known and its bulletin promulgated. Hence the indifference of the 
public. The coalized parties, forming the so-called "Great Liberal Party," 
notoriously sway a Parliamentary majority, so that a defeat of the Cabinet 
could only have proceeded from a split in the ranks of the majority. This 
point, however, had been settled in Lord Palmerston's official residence, 
whither he had summoned the liberal members of all shadows and shades. 
The resolution itself proceeded from the Manchester fraction of the Ministry, 
Lord Palmerston having only been able to retain the support of Messrs. 
Gladstone and Milner Gibson by pledging himself to raise Mr. Gladstone's 
resolution to the rank of a Cabinet question. He had betrayed them by his 
management of the Paper Duty Abolition bill. This time they had bound lüm 
over to a certain line of conduct. The regular Whigs were the only fraction 
of the majority suspected of hatching treasonable designs; but the harsh 
voice of their master and the menace suspended over their heads of a new 

The Paper Tax—The Emperor's Letter 

dissolution of Parliament sufficed to bring them back to the stern behests 
of discipline. Thus many hours before the curtain was drawn, all London 
had become acquainted with the exact result of the party trial, and, save the 
habitués of the Stranger's Gallery, nobody cared to assist at the sham fight 
at St. Stephen's. It was indeed a rather dull affair, enlivened only by the 
sweeping oratory of Mr. Gladstone, and the highly finished pleading of Sir 
Hugh Cairns. Mr. Gladstone tried to represent the opposition raised against 
his bill as a last desperate stand made by Protection against Free Trade. When 
he sat down, the cheers that drowned his concluding words, seemed to hail 
him as the true chief of the liberal party, of which Lord Palmerston is the 
by no means beloved despot. Sir Hugh Cairns, on the part of the Con- 
servatives, proved by close argumentation, and with great analytical power, 
that the reduction of the custom duty on paper to the level of the excise duty 
was in no way stipulated for by the commercial treaty with France. His 

15 antagonist, Sir Richard Bethell, the Whig Attorney-General, had the bad taste 

to show ill temper at the success of his rival, to sneer at Sir Hugh's "forensic 
eloquence," and thus to draw upon his own devoted head a regular volley 
of Tory interruptions. 
The great faction-fight of the session being over, whole flocks of honorable 
members are sure to desert the House, so that Lord Palmerston, by the sheer 
process of exhaustion, may now succeed in passing any little bill he has set 
his heart upon—i.e. the monstrous Indian bill for the amalgamation of the 
local European army with the British army. If any new striking proof were 
wanted of the depth of degradation Parliamentarism has reached in England, 

25 this Indian bill and the treatment it received in the House of Commons would 

afford it. Every man in the House, of any authority on, and any experience 
in, Indian affairs, had opposed the bill. The majority themselves confessed 
not only their complete ignorance, but they betrayed their dark suspicions 
as to the ulterior views of the framers of the bill. They could not but confess 
that the bill had been smuggled into the House under false pretenses; that 
the most important papers indispensable for a just appreciation of the case 
had been fraudulently withheld; that the Indian Minister had introduced the 
bill despite the unanimous dissent of the Indian Council, a dissent which, 
by an open infraction of the new constitution bestowed upon Indiain 1858, 
he had omitted to lay on the table of the House; and lastly, that the Cabinet 
had not even attempted at showing any reason for driving, toward the end 
of the session, and after the withdrawal of every measure of import, with 
such indecent haste, a bill through the House which, in point of fact, radically 
changed the British Constitution by an immense addition of patronage to the 
crown, and by the creation of an army that, in every practical respect, would 
become independent of the vote of supplies. Still, this bill may now be 

Kad Marx 

carried, the chiefs of both factions having, as it appears, come to a secret 
understanding with the Court. 

Louis Napoleon's letter to his beloved Persigny continues to form the chief 
topic of conversation here and on the other side of the Channel. It seems 
that, in the first instance, the protest of the Porte against the Syrian ex- 
pedition, as originally planned between France and Russia, met witha strong 
support on the part of Austria and Prussia, while Lord Palmerston, having 
just singled out, during the fortification debates, Louis Napoleon as the great 
object of British suspicion, could not but throw his weight into the balance 
of Turkey and the German Powers. It appears, moreover, that the Man of 
December got somewhat frightened, not only at the dictatorial tone assumed 
by Russia, but still more at the sneers circulated inthe saloons of the "anciens 
partis" and the low murmurs audible in the Faubourgs in regard to the 
"alliance Cossacque. " 

To make the latter palatable to Paris, a far greater complication of tilings 
must have been arrived at. Under these distressing circumstances, and in an 
evidently uneasy state of mind, Louis Napoleon penned his letter, several 
passages of which are highly perfumed with the scent of the ludicrous. 

An Englishman may indulge in a down right laugh at the phrase addressed 
by Louis Napoleon to Lord Palmerston: "Let us understand one another in 
good faith like honest men as we are, and not like thieves who desire to cheat 
each other;" but the exquisitely bad taste blended with the power of ridicule 
of the original French "entendons nous loyalement comme d'honnêtes gens, 
que nous sommes, et non comme des larrons qui veulent se duper mutuelle- 
ment, " can only be appreciated by a French ear. No Frenchman can read 
that passage without being reminded of a similar sentence occurring in the 
famous play of "Robert Mäcate. " 

I subjoin some data for a comparison between French and English state 
expenditure. According to the provisional or prospective budget, the total 
revenue of France for the year 1860 is estimated at 1,825 millions of francs, 
or £73,000,000 sterling, derived from the following sources: 

I. Direct Taxes, land, house, personal pat- 

£18,800,000 

II. Enregistrement (stamps and domaines) . 14,300,000 
m. Woods, forests, and fisheries... . . .. 1,500,000 
IV. 9,100,000 
v. Contributions indirectes (excise, etc) .. . 19,500,000 
VI. Post-Offce.... 0. 2,300,000 
vn. Miscellaneous................... 7,500,000 

The English revenue for 1859 (the financial accounts for 1860 have not yet 
been issued) was as f ollows, in both cases round numbers only being given: 

The Paper Tax—The Emperor's Letter 

L Taxes (including income tax)... ..... £10,000,000 
Il. Stamps... 2... A ie RDA R A 8,250,000 
HI. Crown Lands. ................... 420,000 
IV. Customs....................... 24,380,000 
VEREXCISE: 5 2 2.5 Sah tt £8 24 ASG Jt ARES 18,500,000 
VI. Post-Office. .. 222222... nn. 3,200,000 

VII. Miscellaneous. ... 222222222... 2,100,000 

France England. 
Interest on the debt... ..... £22,400,000 £28,500,000 
Amy and Navy. _ . . . —_—18,600,000 22,500,000 
Civü List of the Crown. . . . ~~ 1,000,000 400,000 
Cost of collecting the Revenue 8,000,000 4,500,000 
Other expenses... .. 2... : 23,000,000 9,000,000 
Total a5. aust na £73,000,000 £65,000,000 

From the last tabular statement it will be seen that the interest on the public 
debt is in Bonapartist France rapidly mounting to the British level; that 
Continental centralization keeps the Army and Navy at a cheaper cost than 
insular oligarchy; that one Louis Napoleon wants for his private expenses 
twice and a half more money than a British sovereign; and, finally, that in 
a bureaucratic country, like France, the cost of collecting the revenue grows 
at a rate disproportionate to the amount of the revenue itself.