The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-28 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TlMES.—After a silence of two months Mr.
Bright has at length accepted the challenge which
during all his long and angry correspondence with
this journal Mr. Cobden most carefully eluded—the

challenge to state what those measures were, not to
be passed in our present Parliament, but which
would be passed under a Parliament democratically
elected, the effect of which would be to abolish feu-
dalism and redeem the agricultural labourer from
his present poverty and serfdom. We denied that
any such measure could be pointed out, or that
there was the slightest reason to suppose that the
present Parliament would be ill disposed to enter-
tain it if it could be discovered. Mr. Bright has
undertaken to do what his champion, Mr. Cobden,
did not venture to attempt, end we beg especial
attention to the manner in which he has acquitted
himself of his undertaking. We dismiss as irrele-
vant, distasteful to ourselves, and wearisome to the
public, the personalities with which these chem.
pions of freedom have thought fit to encumber a
question in itself neither unimportant nor uninte-
resting. It matters very little to any one except
himself in what society the Editor of this journal
moves, or where he spends the hours of relaxation
which Mr. Bright devotes to the smoking-room of
the House of Commons or the billiard-room of the
Reform Club. It will be time enough to accuse any
gentleman interested in the Times of seeking for a
peerage when it can be shown that he has ever
striven to push himself into a position beyond that
which naturally befogs to him, when he can be
shown to have sought any favour at the hands of
the Government, or when the public is ready to
assume., as Mr. Bright does, that a connection with
the Press is a virtual disqualification for any office
or any honour for which a person may otherwise
be fit. To appeal for proof of groundless asser-
tions to " the gossip of the Clubs" is a shabby
artifice, and to say that au iotellig.noo which
comes into hostile collision with his own is
" godless intellect and practical atheism" is
to employ a weapon which in these days the
most grovelling fanatics ,scarcely condescend to
use. The existence of a Deity rule on evidence
differing both in kind and in degree from I,!tat dis-
torted political economy for which Mr. Bright seems
to claim something like a special revelation to him-
self, and impossible as it may seem to Mr. Bright,
people can be found who believe in God but have
not the slightest belief in him. The Times is public
property, its essence is notoriety, it will be judged
by its advised utterances as daily put forth, and not
by the gossip of elubs or second-hand tattle about
political or fashionable society. What, then, is that
law which Mr. Bright thinks could be carried in a
more democratic Parliament, and cannot be carried
in the present Parliament, which would redeem the
agricultural labourer from his present poverty and
degradation? Of course by making the change
depend on a change in the electoral franchise Mr.
Bright excludes the notion of force or outrage, and
implies that everything would be done by consti-
tuted authority. It is ridiculous, therefore, to charge
us with inconsistency for denying that whioh we
never asserted. We have said, and we say it again,
that we know of no law which could distribute the
lands of the rich among the poor which did not
make the alienation compulsory and the distribu-
tion gratuitous; the alienation compulsory because
the rich will not voluntarily part with their land,
and the distribution gratuitous because the poor
have no money with which to buy it. We gave Mr.
Bright oredit—though it seems we ought not to have
done so—for really meaning what be said. We did
not at that time believe that he WIS capable of re-
presenting the poverty and misery of a million and
a half of his fellow-subjects as removable by an act
of legislation, without having formed to himself the
least idea of any measure adequate to effect such a
result. Mr. Bright repudiates as inadequate the
proposal for a Union settlement, and for abolishing
criminal liabilities for breaches of contract to labour,
So, of course, they are. Here, then, is his remedy.
He proposes that in case of intestacy landed pro-
perty should go among the next of kin instead
of to the eldest son, and he proposes that no
devise of land shall be made to any unborn
person. That is all, absolutely all, and these pro-
visions, Me, Bright has the face to tell us, would
remedy the present poverty, serfdom, and degrada-
tion of the agricultural labourer and enable him to
become a farmer. Surely never did such enormous
promises end in a conclusion so contemptible ? It
is just as if Mr. Bright were to undertake to make a
ploughman live as well as an alderman by, taking
off the duties on claret and champagne. We will
not discuss the policy of these measures. They may
be good or bad as matters of Law Reform, but we
will submit to Mr. Bright a few questions which we
trust he will answer in his speech this evening :
If these measures would have this immense effect
in improving the condition of the agricultural la-
bourer, why has Mr. Bright never proposed them
before ? Why has he not given the present Parlia-
ment the opportunity of pronouncing an opinion
upon them ? Why has he not communicated to the
world the secret of their connection with the wel-
fare of the poor, which is known, apparently, to
himself alone ? and why, in the name of truth and
justice, does he revile the present Parliament for
not passing measures which have never been brought
before it, and call upon us to make a political revo-
lution in order to obtain a Legislature to do that
which our present Legislature has not refused to
do ? Mr. Bright anticipates that he will be told
his measures would be inoperative, because few men
die without a will. This only shows how much
superficiality may be concealed under how much
arrogance. Mr. Bright, apparently, does not know
that the great mass of landed property in England
does not pass by will at all, but by settlements exe-
cuted on the marriage of the eldest son. We would
next like to ask how the abolition of devises to un-
born persons, or the devolution of land to the next
of kin under a contingency which very seldom takes
place, will help the poor to the acquisition of land,
either as tenants or freeholders. Will these laws
make the proprietor willing to cut -up his estate
into small holdings ? Will they give the labourer,
such as Mr. Bright describes him, the power to pur-
chase ? Will they give him the means of affording
that most expensive of all luxuries in this country,
an investment in land ? Will they give him capital
to buy stock ? Will they give him skill and know-
ledge to make the best of his property ? Will they
enable him to compete with a large capitalist? Will
they enable him to resist the temptation to sell to a
rich neighbour at a price which will double his
income, and leave him free to earn wages besides?
And, above all, will any change in the law of suc-
cession to landed property give the poor man the
industry, the temperance, the self-denial, and eco-
nomy to which alone the poor can look for advance-
ment in life? Will any law put England, where
land is the most highly-prized of all possessions, on
a level with America or Australia, where it is a