The Sun.
London, England, 1852-11-13 00:00:00

Eiti4einrina t::",1414111
C

~~~

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1852.

The more we ponder the paragraph in theQuEEN's
Speech in which the farmers are adverted to,
the more it disappoints us. It is wanting in manli-
ness. It takes advantage of the conventional and
desirable courtesy which declines to raise angry dis-
cussions on the Address to the QuEEN, to say what
the Free-traders would prefer unsaid. In the days
of our youth we remember the parish parson used to
attack the parish squire from the pulpit, whose only
possible mode of retort was to rise in his pew. In like
manner the Free-traders could do little more than '
rise in their places without being well able to move
an amendment on the Address. In party honour the
special notions of party should have been entirely
omitted, if it was wished to avoid discussion and an
amendment. Indeed three honourable courses were
open to the QUEEN'S advisers. One, omission of the
disputed subject; another, a manly recantation of
their past errors ; and a third, the distinct statement
that the farmers bad been severe sufferers for the ge-
neral good, and that they were to be the subjects of
some special enactments on their behalf. All these
have been abandoned, and all is now suspended on the
lawyer-like reason of an " if."
We dislike for the same reasons the mystified
phraseology of "important interests," and "the in-
dustry of the country." Why not say at once and
plainly, " the tenant-farmers of this country, and es-
pecially the poor tenants-at-will,"—no other class is
meant. What can sound more tautologically illogical,
than to congratulate us in the first part of the para-
graph on the generally improved condition of the
country, especially the industrious classes, then to
wind up by suggesting expedients to enable the in•
dustry of the country to meet successfully the compe-
tition to which it is now exposed! Surely if the in-
dustrious classes are especially prosperous, they must
be meeting competition successfully. And they are
doing so. Manufacturing operatives and farm-la-
bourers, are both so notoriously better off than they
have been for years, and cheap bread is so notoriously
the principal cause of it, that it were useless politi-
cally, nay ungrateful to PROVIDENCE itself, not to
acknowledge it.
The manufacturers, in almost every department,
the ship-owners, and the Landlords themselves, they
have no reason to complain ; no, there is but one
class, and no one knows this better than Ministers
—but one class, the class who, thanks to the Marquis
of CRANDON returned so many County Members,
that complain of distress ;—the class of Tenant-
farmers. Why, then, puff them off as important in-
, terests? We all allow them to be an important
interest—one so important that we demand for them
the power of independent representation, by means
of the ballot. Why talk of them, too, as the industry
; of the country. We have no doubt they work pretty
hard at times ; bat to speak of a class, the larger por-
tion of whom are favoured with a tax-free riding
horse and gig, and whose very work is that which
the retired townsman covets for an amusement,
whose after-dinner and evening repose, and whose
rosy countenances, are not mere rustic poetry, but an
every-day fact ;—to speak of such a class as the in-
dustry of the country, and to bespeak pity for them
as for starving
mechanics, pallid with 12 or 14 hours'
toil—this is really but paltry special pleading, un-
worthy of a QUEEN'S Speech.
Bat there is still left what we like the least of all—

the " ifs "in the paragraph. There are two of them ;
one fairly written and printed—" if yon should think
that Free Trade has hurt the farmers."—Another
implied, "if there be any honest way of helping these
hypothetical sufferers, do it." If upon if—if they
want help, and if, you ought to help them. A doubtful
begging case this, surely. Had her MAJESTY been
employed as counsel to generate doubts in Lord
ELDON'S mind, she could scarcely have held a better
brief ; and we suspect if the farmers have to wait for
help upon the Parliamentary settling of these " ifs " in
their favour, they might quite as well have taken
their case into the unreformed Court of Chancery.
But these "ifs " mean something or nothing ; if
nothing, it were wanton to tantalize both Farmers
and Free-traders. If something, why are we
not told what it is ? The country will think
that Ministers have had ample time to learn
all that can be known of the matter. Every indul-
gence has been shown for the haste with which
they were called to enter upon office. The Free-
traders themselves would not allow the Whigs to use
them merely as tools to turn out the PREMIER, whom

the Whig leader himself hal advised her MAJESTY to
entrust with the formation of a Ministry. Mr.
DISRAELI has been allowed to study in quietness the
facts which everybody knows, and no pressing public
business has interfered with Lord DERBY'S more aris-
tocratic meditations. lie could reconsider his Pro-
testant speeches, from the celebrated Tamboff one, to
the last modest assertion of unchanged opinion made
to the House of Lords last spring. Yes, now they
°light_
in-
capacity to have no more "if's" or " buts ;" the time is
over for that. Ignorance now is but confession of
to learn. The truth is, Ministers do and
r must know.
which lasted for
They know that farmers, after the tem-
porary high prices consequent on the famine, and
ever since bnd to c
• of wheat,
' that the transition
a short timea under Free Trade, have
and
almost
equally with permanent low prices
they also know that unaltered hlvhight rents. They know
omllNys
had
.and tithes,
,:en a trying one ; but
, atm quite m much
! tenancies-at-will, and