THE 33RD REGIMENT AT QUATRE BRAS. WE regret that an expression justly offensive to the old officers of this gallant corps should inadvertently have found its way into the pages of our May Number. Our contributor, on discovering the mistake, has frankly acknowledged his error; and we trust the subjoined apology and explanation will be satisfactory to the regiment, and the surviving officers who signed the remonstrance. Their esprit de corps commands our warm sympathy and respect. TO THE PUBLISHER OF THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE. 40, Melville-street, Edinburgh, 26th May, 1854. SIR,-I hope the accompanying letter will be admitted into the June Number of the DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE. It is signed by Major-General Parkinson, Lieut.-Colonel Harty, Lieut.-Colonel Trevor, Lieut.-Colonel Whannell, Lieut.-Colonel Westmore, Surgeon Sir George Ballingall, and by Lieutenant Pattison, and myself, Lieutenant Pagan. We have no controversy, you will observe, with either publisher or editor. Our sole object is to vindicate our old and respected regiment (the Duke of Wellington's) from a most unfounded charge, and this we think the more incumbent upon us that the corps being now employed on active service cannot be supposed to be in a condition to watch with jealous care its former laurels and reputation, though we have no doubt of its adding to both. TO THE EDITOR OF THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE. SIR,-You must be sufficiently acquainted with the spirit which pervades the British army to know that next to an officer's personal honour, that of his regi. ment is nearest his heart. Our attention has been directed to an article in your May Number, purporting to be a "Memoir" of the late Colonel Cameron, of the 92nd regiment. We have no intention or desire to detract from the praise so plentifully heaped on the Gordon Highlanders, or any other regiment; but, as old officers of the 33rd, who served in it during the campaign of 1815, and long after, we feel ourselves not only entitled but compelled to deny, in the most explicit terms, the accuracy of a passage in which that corps is said to have disgraced itself, by stripping, not only its Highland neighbours, but its own officers, who were killed or wounded at Quatre Bras. We content ourselves with asserting this to be a most unfounded charge, from whatever quarter it may have come; and we remain, sir, your obedient servants, (Signed) E. PARKINSON, Major General, late 33rd regiment. J. M. HARTY, Lieut.-Col. late 33rd regiment. A. H. TREVOR, Lieut.-Col. late 33rd regiment. With reference to the Memoir of Colonel Cameron, K.T.S., in the May Number of THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE, in which a passage occurred which proved unpleasing to the 33rd regiment, by stating that its soldiers at Quatre Bras had stripped some of the killed and wounded; in justice to the Editor of the Magazine, and to the few survivors of that gallant corps, the Author of the Memoir feels it his duty to state, that after an interview with his informant an officer who was severely wounded at Quatre Bras he deeply regrets to find, that he has fallen into an error and misconception, as the stripping in question was perpetrated by the fatigue parties who buried the dead. after the action. The Author feels it but just, and due to the soldiers of the 33rd regiment, to make this retractation, and begs to assure them, that he has no wish to take one leaf from the laurels they so gallantly won on the memorable 16th and 18th of June, 1815. THE AUTHOR OF THE MEMOIR. TO CORRESPONDENTS. THE Editor of THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE begs to notify that he will not undertake to return, or be accountable for, any manuscripts forwarded to him for perusal. Ir is now exactly nineteen months since Lord Derby surrendered the seals of office and the responsibilities of Prime Minister to the noble Earl who still reigns in Downing-street, although he has long ceased to govern in the new Palace of Westminster, or to lead public opinion anywhere in the country. The period has been an eventful one for England and for the world; yet who can doubt that it will, in all likelihood, prove to be but the premonitory stage of a revolution in human affairs, such as has not been witnessed for generations? At home, the convulsive energy of the Government has sufficed to complete an organic change in our financial system, and has fixed among us, to all appearance permanently, a mode of taxation opposed in its nature to the spirit of British institutions, and which never previously was resorted to but as an exceptional resource in cases of emergency so urgent as to justify a temporary subjection of the principles of the Constitution to the necessities of the commonwealth. The income-tax, in former times resorted to only to meet the exigencies of war, was employed by Sir Robert Peel professedly as a temporary expedient to evade the difficulties involved in the derangement of the fiscal system caused by his free-trade measures. Extended to Ireland, and supplemented by the succession tax, it has been endowed with a character as permanent as any Chancellor of the Exchequer could confer upon it. The principle of direct taxation it includes has been thus so far established; and that principle is impossible of application apart from details, impolitic, unjust, and in direct contravention of the most distinctive theories and the most timehonoured practices of the Constitution. VOL. XLIV.-NO. CCLX. All that Mr. Gladstone could do has been done towards fixing upon a small portion of the people the burthen of the support of the State, towards the creation of a privileged class exempt from taxation, and towards the fencing about of the newly-created privileges of that class the lowest and most ignorant of the nation by the imposition of penalties upon industry, and the addition to our criminal code of the new offence of possession of property. Sir Robert Peel, in his anxiety to enlarge the Manchester loaf, and to give ten hoops to the Glasgow pot, did, indeed, take the initiatory step in this process of placing the peace-taxation of the country upon a war establishment; but to his pupil and successor is due the credit of having given to that transitional expedient a character of permanence which will scarcely be obliterated without a revolution. Henceforth, all praise to Mr. Gladstone, his malt-tax, his succession-tax, and his extended income-tax! the pot is again reduced to its six hoops; the acquisition of a permanent stake in the soil is prohibited under heavy pecuniary penalties; a fine of £4 3s. 4d. is imposed upon every artisan who shall presume to earn two pounds a-week; and the small tradesman who shall be found guilty of the more heinous crime of raising his gross profits to the figure of £150 yearly, is thereby rendered liable to the enhanced mulet of £8 15s. "Property is a theft," was a barren dogma in the mouth of M. Proudhon; Lord Aberdeen's Chancellor of the Exchequer has registered the maxim in the code of British statute law, and has confirmed and realised it by the sanction of specific penalties. This, in truth, is the opus operatum of the Coalition Ministry-the grand product of L |