THE ROSE-COLOURED REVENUE ACCOUNTS.
WHAT a charming spirit of faith and hope animates all the subofficial races—from court newsmen to court newspaper-men ! The court newsman turns every act of royalty "to prettiness and to favour " : "a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse," but to a court newsman it is as good as—what most blessed thing shall we say t—as good as a fee. Every royal answer is "gracious," every royal cheeseparing a wonderment. Courtly financiers are of the same mould. Even the current Revenue-tables cannot sadden the smile on their hopeful countenances. One reads in them—not stagnant trade and deranged finances, but only "a check to the briskness of our import trade"; as if there were any "briskness" to be checked.
Another, overleaping the unpleasant comparison of the revenue with that of 1847, goes back to the previous year and. thence discovers for the present, in lieu of the disastrous decrease, "a most gratifying increase," attesting at once "the buoyancy and stability of our resources. The state of Europe has done much, he admits, to check the increasing prosperity of the Customs. So, according to this courtly writer, decline is still "increasing prosperity," only in a checked form. By the same rule, he should describe a young spendthrift as a person of great parsimony and shrewdness in business—through his Jew creditors; a pauper would be a man of" checked" affluence • a dead man, a person of singular vital energy, " all things considered." The incorruptible financier pronounces "this state of things most encouraging." Such a man would smile at a tavern-bill.
But surely, these smiling reports on the revenue must all be Written by very young ladies, wildly in love with Sir Charles Wood, who read revenue-tables as heroines of fashionable novels read the Parliamentary speeches of the heroes, and see in "the tattle of the whole" nothing but the fascinating creature of their adoration.
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