A good healthy conscience is the noblest point in the character of that noblest work of creation--an honest man. But a diseased conscience is as bad as a rotten potato; it is worse than no conscience at all: some degrees below mere dishonesty. This kind of conscience makes people pay omitted Income Tax. They shouldn't do so. It is really quite immoral. The Income Tax is acknowledged to be an imposition by GLADSTONE himself, insomuch that he has even made arrangements for its cessation. That it never will cease, however; that it will be as perennial as evil in the abstract, or the Deuce himself, is feared by everybody except the jolly beggars, and those who are too ignorant and helpless, or too lazy, to earn liability to its infliction. Any symptoms of acquiescence in it, of anything but dogged opposition to it, on the part of the public, will infallibly encourage Chancellors of the Exchequer to try and perpetuate it. To pay it voluntarily, to pay it at all except under protest, to pay it under any circumstances whatever but those of legal necessity, is to give Chancellors of the Exchequer that encouragement: much more to pay it in a conspicuous and ostentatious manner, at beat of drum, so to speak, as the gentleman settles his just accounts in _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_. And this is encouraging the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER to go on cheating the nation, or rather cheating part of the nation, in order to bribe the rest. It is being an accessory to the confiscation of one's own property; to defrauding one's self: whereas, surely, if suicide is the worst kind of murder, self-cozenage is the vilest sort of roguery. Therefore, we argue that the conscientiousness that pays conscience money on account of Income Tax is, as aforesaid, morbid; a diseased bump, in phrenological language, which ought to be shaved, and have ice put to it, or leeches, or cupping glasses after scarification, to be followed by a blister: recourse to these antiphlogistic measures being combined with alterative and cooling medicines. * * * * * A GROSS IMPOSITION. Should the Corporation of London be "hauled over the coals" it will certainly be the heaviest burden that has yet been laid on the unfortunate coals--in spite of what they already suffer. * * * * * IMPORTANT TO MANUFACTURERS.--The machinery of a cotton-mill in general goes like clock-work, but this is not the case when the hands strike. * * * * * THE GAME IN THE EAST. Of all the games that e'er in the world of play were hit upon, Since the ingenious "heads I win, and tails you lose," was lit upon, The most winning game by far is that now played by the CZAR With France and England--famous flats to try his wicked wit upon.