Public attention, during the recess, has been very generally directed to the state of the finances of the country. No wonder. Last year, in proposing the first of his abortive budgets, Lord John Russell distinctly calculated the probable excess of the expenditure over the income at the sum of three millions and a quarter; to balance which he asked for an augmentation of the income tax--a proposal which the nation very properly scouted. But, whilst we state now, as we stated then, our determined opposition to the increase of the direct taxation of the country, we must remark that the free-trade party were hardly justified in withholding their support from a minister who had played their game with such unimpeachable docility, in an emergency directly resulting from the operation of their cherished system. The statement of Sir Charles Wood, to the effect that, during the last six years, the nation had remitted seven and a half millions of annual taxation, ought surely to have had the effect of an argument upon these impenetrable men. Seven millions and a half had been sacrificed before the Moloch of free trade. Good, benevolent, plain-dealing Sir Robert, and profound, calculating Lord John, had each, in preparing their annual estimates, lopped off some productive branch of the customs, and smilingly displayed it to the country, as a proof of their desire to lessen the weight of the national burdens. That our revenue should fall was, of course, a necessary consequence. Fall it did, and that with such rapidity that Sir Robert Peel dared not take off the income tax, which he had imposed upon the country with a distinct and solemn pledge that it was merely to be temporary in its duration, but handed it over as a permanent legacy to his successor, who coolly proposed to augment it! Now it really required no reflection at all to see that, if our statesmen chose, for the sake of popularity or otherwise, thus to tamper with the revenue, and to lessen the amount of the customs, a deficit must, sooner or later, occur. Not the least baneful effect of the policy pursued by Sir Robert Peel has been the system of calculating the estimates so low, and adapting the income so closely to the national expenditure, that a surplus, to be handed over to the commissioners for the reduction of the national debt, is now a tradition. We have abandoned the idea of a surplus, nor can it ever again be realised under the operation of the present system. Instead of a surplus we have a permanent income tax, and, more than that, a fresh debt incurred by us, under Whig management, of no less than ten millions.