Nothing has occurred to alter our estimate of Sir,RoneaT PEEL'S
position ; but the events of the week have rather confirmed it. The alterations of the Corn and Provision laws have called forth loud complaints, and sometimes bitter threats against their author, from agricultural associations, which are probably of some importance as possessing an electioneering influence. The Income-tax has been inveighed against in a few places i • and the Scotch agriculturists have declared both against the Tariff and against the mode in which the Income-tax is imposed upon themselves. Indeed, Sir ROBERT PEEL says that every interest has something to say 'agaitisi,
the mode in which it is itself affected. Yet there is still no deter- mined resistance on any one point. Sir ROBERT will therefore carry all that he chooses to carry. He will have no difficulty in laying on his Income-tax ; it is virtually done already. But the cntical time has yet to come—the day of collection. The English- man always thinks that "sufficient unto the day is the evil there- of" ; so that the remote pay-day for the Income-tax has but doubt- ful terrors. But come it must : the day will arrive when certain ugly bits of paper will be left at the house of every man—of every elector : the evil will be very sufficient for that day to cause a strong feeling of dislike in many a breast towards the author of the tax ; active minds will be at work to improve that feeling, which will then be common to many classes now disunited or opposed ; and the very process of disintegration which now fa- vours the Minister, and secures him, to use what will scarcely be thought a paradox, against opposition from his own supporters, will have a chance of leaving him powerless then. That danger for the future will be mitigated precisely in proportion to the ingenuity with which the tax is imposed so as to reduce its inherent in- equality and vexatiousness to the least possible degree. No party has a more vital interest in giving the tax as perfect and unfor- bidding a form as possible, than that party which consists in the single person of Sir ROBERT PEEL.
