The Sun.
London, England, 1852-04-15 00:00:00

noted what they saw for perhaps f a centt4,
"ea who have witnessed many sudden gush of
prosperity, are now as surprised se, what they see as
ifthelikehad never been seen before ? It is because
everything
is abundant and cheep, and yet wages keep
)and labour has its due. It is because bread is un-
ced ; because all kinds of food, if not wholly free,
are at least little taxed ; it is because bricks are un-
taxed, and timber .owing to the reduction of the
duties, costs two-thirds, in some instances less than
half, its former price ; it is because coal is cheep,
metals are cheap, and all the material of industry
is free. Hence it is that our hard-working popu-
lation have every facility and every inducement to
labour, to settle, to be householders, to surround
themselves with comforts, and to maintain a decent
state. How far they will generally stand the trials
of prosperity, which certainly has its trials, is a
question for them to consider very gravely ; but it
is not a question for the nation to decide by starving
the poor man for the safety of his soul.
Though. the surrender, then, is as total as it is
reasonable to require, Mr. Adderley still retains his
thstract love of Protection, his tender recollectioes of
its benign influence, and his fond anticipations of its
pos;ible, though distant revival. He tells us he has
not in the slightest degree abandoned his opinion that
the agricultural interest had a right to protective
duties, as an equivalent for their extra share in the
national burdens. Till the nation undergoes the above.
mentioned change of opinion as to the wisdom of a
duty on corn, he demands from a country proverbial
for its love of fair play, that a class which is now dis•
playing so much tardy and superfluous generosity
shall be relieved from those burdens which, as he says,
are now wholly uncompensated. On this point we only
wish that he had spoken with a particularity and ex-
actness which promised success, if not in obtaining
actual relief, at least in telling us what ought to be
done. Strongly as we feel that many agriculturists
have suffered by the change, and are now more bur-
dened than they would have been but for the theory
of a protected agriculture, we wholly despair of hit-
ting the exact remedy which is to relieve the case of
the sufferers without either injury to one class or
wasteful generosity to another. In justice to Mr.
Adderley, it ought to be stated that he most empha-
tically deprecates any measures of relief which shall
have the power, if not the form, of Protection. Nay,
in so doing, he makes a curious admission, which
sufficienty disqualifies him from agitating Protection,
even in that far distant day when a repentant and
self-denying people shall clamour for it. " What"
ever ether anode there may be," he says, "foe' an
adjustment or unequal taxation, it 3ptioars to me
that those at %least must be abandoned which
have the tendency in any degree (and the
less that degree the less reason for adhering to them)
to raise the price of food." According to Mr. Adder-
ley, therefore, protective measures are only beneficial
so far as they raise the price of the protected article;
and the less nuisance they are to the people, the less
are they worth the odium of stickling for them. So
the working man's bane is the landlord's weal. Of
course this has often been alleged, but not hitherto
by county members. They have usually tried to
make out that it was possible to fill the pocket of the
landowner without the least interference with that of
the working men ; nay, with benefit to it, rather than
otherwise. Mr. Adderley, overflowing with candour,
and carried along by the tide of political transition,
has confessed the honest truth, as stated by Mr. Sid.
nay Herbert, that the corn laws were nothing but a
system of out-door relief for the benefit of the land-
owner.