PETERSFIELD.
On Friday last, the Commissioners met at the Dolphin Inn, Petersfield, for the purpose of hearing appeals against assessments upon income. There was the unprecedented number of 33 surcharges, some of which were to the extent of between 30 and 40 per cent upon the last year's assessment, and to show the vexatious character of these surcharges, and that they must have been made without adequate and reasonable data, it will be sufficient to state, that out of the whole thirty-three cases the Surveyor was only able to sustain two. A similar course appears to have been pursued in many other districts. Can it be that Ministers, baulked as they were in the early part of the year, in their attempt to increase per centage, are having recourse to this expedient for raising the wind, by giving general instructions to the Surveyors to "try it on" with the country, by these wholesale and random surcharges; if so, it surely is a trick unworthy the Government of this great country. Not many months have elapsed since Ministers found it necessary to appeal to the middle classes to support them in a crisis of imminent peril, and most heartily and promptly was that support rendered, and with the best possible result, but surely this is an ungracious return, and calculated rather to alienate than strengthen the attachment of the middle classes to the institutions of the country.