The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-11 00:00:00

But the Tory Evening Journal showed that this
supply might be got for one-third of the price,
whence it follows, on the joint reasoning of these
two advocates of one class plundering another, that
on the article of wheat alone—every other produce
of the soil, and the soil itself, and even standing
room on it, being taxed in an equal proportion—the
landowners levied on the people of this country last
year no less a sum, by a tax, than 33,600,0001.
Leaving these two promoters of anarchy and des-
troyers of the sacredness of property by degrading
it to the level of a poll-tax, to crack this nut be-
twixt them, we shall conclude our notice by ad-
verting to the mode in which Mr. PRENTICE illus-
trated the influence of the Corn-laws on wages :
He was on a visit in Suffolk after the harvest of 18:35;
and saw in a friend's barn a great heap of the finest
wheat, which he said he was ready to sell at 4s. 6d. a
bushel. He (Mr. P.) had begged a little sample hag
full of this fine wheat, and had happened to place it in
his reading desk, where it remained ever since, and
whenever he saw it, recollecting the fallacy as to wages,
and knowing that such wheat was now worth 10s. a
bushel, he had repeatedly said to himself," I wonder if
the hand-loom weaver, who, in 18:35, earned 4s. 6d. for
a certain quantity of work, can now earn 10s. for the
same quantity.—(Hear, hear, hear.)

A precisely similar fact was stated in The
Sun ,yesterday, on the authority of the Witt-

shire Independent ; and it is so palpable that
a stinted supply of food is felt most severely
by the labourers, that we should be puzzled
to find out the origin of a contrary idea in the minds
of the labourers, were we not acquainted with the
arts of the Tories. They are the great masters of
humbug, delusions, and fallacies. By them they
maintain the little ascendancy they yet preserve.
In their columns are to be found, elaborately set
forth, the argument that cheap and abundant food
is injurious to labourers. If the Chartist leaders,
such as Mr. LLOYD, at Bolton, as quoted with
much approbation by the Morning Herald yester-
day, be not, as we hope they are not, the tools of

the Tories, they are unquestionably doing the Tors
work most successfully. Those who oppose the
abolition of the Corn-laws are the true friends of
Tory tyranny.

We regret to Fee that the Marquis of NOR-
MA NE Y has sanctioned those proceedings of the
Magistrates of Cardiff, which we adverted to yes-
terday, by ordering the seizure of some publications
at Newport. The Noble Marquis, then, assumes
that he possesses in himself a Censorship of the
Press. We shall on this occasion only remind
Lord NORMANBY and the Whigs that the seizure
of those publications is what the Tories have been
loudly demanding of them, and blaming them for
not performing for several weeks and months. They
did take credit to themselves for not acting on these
Tory demands and Tory maxims, and we therefore
are now constrained to say, with deep regret, that
they are acting, in this case, on Tory principles,
and doing the unhallowed work and unhallowed
bidding of the Tories. To the middle classes,
many of whom, we are afraid, approve of this rigor-
ous persecution of Chartist opinions, we must hint
that they cannot stop at this point. Between allow-
ing free unlimited discussion of political matters
and completely fettering the Press, so that it shall
express no opinions unfavourable to a dominant
sect and party, there is no middle course. If we
must believe that such a vast assumption of power,
whether by Whigs or Tories, will be generally and
permanently sanctioned, we must conclude that the
end of the national liberties and prosperity is close at
hand.

Between the stocks of the different American

States and the Stock of the United States Bank,
which some of our Journalists have united in one to
condemn, there is a wide difference. For the former
the good faith of the State is pledged ; and as there
is no one of the American States the resources of
which is not rapidly increasing, while the good faith
of no one, in pecuniary matters, has ever been tar-
nished, we know no national or State Securities which
constitute a safer investment. For the latter, only its
capital and the skill of those who conduct it, as
pledged. Of the value of its stock we
hankers, are
give no opinion, but while we are powerfully itn-
pressed with the growing wealth of the several
States of the United States, as offering an ample
security for any loan they may contract, we must
say that their wealth, except as the above Bank
may hold their stocks, is no guarantee for its stabi-
lity or solvency.

As to the stock of the several States, we have
just seen a little pamphlet, entitled " A Letter on
the Commercial Relations of Great Britain with the
United States," which gives rather a striking illus-
tration of the good faith of those States, and the
advantages they have derived from loans. New
York, for example, according to the pamphlet, corn_
menced her system of borrowing to promote internal
improvement in 1817, and at the same time began
to construct canals. They were completed in 1825,
and the receipts from the tolls were so great, while
the law had both forbad a decrease of tolls, and any
other application of their proceeds, till all the debts
were paid, that in order to be enabled to decrease the
tolls the State actually offered and paid a premium to
the creditors to receive back their money before it
) could be legally demanded. We will quote the whole
passage, with some other extracts from the pam-
phlet, when we have an opportunity. We must
now content ourselves by adding, that it is the
order
nature
tolendoftheir
c forapi otall,d
which
densely-peopled yo-pnl oy
apnl eodt
another
countriesam
e
for skilled labour, or the means of commanding
labour, to newly and thinly, inhabited countries ;
and that the capitalists of Britain probably can
nowhere find more advantageous investments than

they will find that it is almost completely at a stand ;
and if you ask any of them what they attribute this to,
they will, one and all, assign the true reason, that it is
owing to the high price of food, which leaves the mass
of the people unable to purchase articles of clothing.
This is quite true, and it will affect all classes of
tradesmen, and make them Corn-law repealers. In
the first Report of the Agricultural Committee of
1836, a Mr. MORTON stated that he had inva-
riably observed that when the price of corn was high,
an increased proportion of wages was spent on bread;
the people were confined to bread only, which must
be felt by butchers, grocers, and all other trades-
men, as well as linen drapers and hosiers. But as
their profit is curtailed, and their business les-
sened by the supply of food being cut short and its
price raised enormously, a Tory Journal inadver-
tently last evening reminded the public that corn
might be got from various places at a third of the
cost for which it can be brought from America. We
may add that it might be got also abundantly, as well
as cheaply ; and we know no right the Legis-
lature has, which asks obedience to its laws, on
condition of affording equal protection to all, to pre-
vent the manufacturers of Bolton, Sheffield, and
Manchester, to buy corn freely at Trieste, Rostock,
and Salonica, more than it has to put fetters on
their hands to prevent their working, and gyves on
their legs to prevent them running away.
Another Tory Journal, yesterday morning, in
order, probably, to prepare the way for the illustra-
tion his brother of the Evening was to supply of
the enormous tax levied on us by the Devil's Laws,
had the following passage :
People who think and write loosely upon this matter
(said the Post), or who only repeat the gabble of poli-
tical economy quacks, seem to forget the prodigious
magnitude of the food-furnishing interest. They seem
to forget that, at the present price of corn, the consumers
of wheat alone, in the United Kingdom, pay for that
one kind of grain in the year more than the value of all
the exports of every kind from Great Britain to foreign
countries within the year. Taking the consumption at
but fourteen millions of quarters of wheat annually (and
we believe that of late years the most observant calcula-
tors have considered it to be between fifteen and six-
teen millions), and taking the price at 725., the money
value of the wheat consumed since this time last year
is 50,400,0001.