What the exigencies of the State now require is the raising five and a half millions more than the ordinary produce of the revenue, and NOT the resumption of the Property and Income Tax. These are two separate and distinct things; but, as a matter of course, we must expect to see them confounded, as if the fact of a peculiar tax having once been raised, gives a sort of servitude to the provider for the Exchequer over the property from which it is levied, notwithstanding the express limitations of the statute, continuing the impost for a certain time, but no longer. This has been, and no doubt will be the Whig logic; and it is very material for those who think with us that it is full time that this odious, unjust, and inquisitorial tax should cease, to remember that they stand now on precisely the same footing which they occupied when the impost was originally proposed. Sir Robert Peel, then in the zenith of his power, and with a large and undivided party at his back, dared not propose it as a permanent source of revenue. He asked it, in 1842, as a special and exceptional boon--almost as a mark of personal confidence in himself; and as such it was given. He did not attempt to aver that the measure was perfect in its details; on the contrary, he admitted that it was partial; but he excused that partiality on account of the shortness of its duration; and the public, believing in the sincerity of his statement, was willing to accept the excuse. He used the money thus partially raised for the reduction of other taxes, in the hope of effecting "such an improvement _in the manufacturing interests_ as will react on every other interest in the country;" and when, in 1845, he proposed its continuance for another limited period, he expressly said, "I should not have proposed the continuance of the Income-Tax unless I had the strongest persuasion, partly founded on the experience of the last three years, that it will be competent to the House of Commons, by continuing the Income-Tax, to make such arrangements with regard to _general taxation_ as shall be the foundation _of great commercial prosperity_." And again, "If we receive the sanction of the House for the continuance of the Income-Tax, we shall feel it to be our duty to make a great experiment with respect to taxation." So, then, by the confession of Sir Robert Peel, its author, the Income-Tax, a great portion of which is levied from the agricultural section of the community, was laid on for the purpose of enabling him to stimulate manufactures; and that being done, it is to be made permanent,--the landed interest, in the meantime, having been almost prostrated by the subsequent repeal of the Corn Laws!