The Sun.
London, England, 1839-01-30 00:00:00

(Laughter.) Don't you think your rivals will soon make the
sow-metal? The Germans, I am told, are making mill-saws
of good steel, for half the price of yours, made of Low Moor
Slab. -As the cotton-spinners are sending abroad the best
_thread and the worst cloth, so you are sending abroad the best
steel and the worst goods.—( Hear.) Don't you think your
rivals will soon make the steel ? They must do ao ; the Corn-
laws tempt them, force them to do so ; tempt them, by raising
the price of your food, and lowering theirs ; force them, by
refusing to take their food for your goods, while you want the
food, and they the goods. Your merchants, it is said—like so
many owls, staring from an empty barn, after the very mice
have begun to eat one another—arc beginning to open their
eyes, the wisest eyes that ever peeped. A Mr. Quick-
quart, I think they call him—a sort of a half-bred, seem-
ingly, something between a cock lawyer and a general—
( Laughter)—has been persuading them that effects are causes ;
so, with the philosophic Thomas Deakin at their head, they
have determined to establish a Chamber of Commerce, on the
good old John Bull principle, of lockirg the stable door after
the horse is stolen.—(Cheers.) Let them knock their thick
heads together by all ineans—sparks of some sort will come
out of them ; but if they don't make haste, " a closet of com-
merce, a cupboard of commerce, a band-box of commerce. will
be big enough to hold your transactions." So said the ruined
merchants of Holland to Napoleon, in similar circumstances.
" Your blood is water," replied the insolent tyrant ! ignorant
that, under the frown of God, his Berlin and Milan decrees,
which had ruined Holland, were about to hurl him from his
throne into that famous grave, which ought to be for ever a
beacon, warning all nations of the fatal tendency of restric-
tions on trade.—( Hear' hear.) Like Buonaparte's Bernal
and Milan Decrees, Lord John Russell's landed awn-.
dancy is based on the public ruin : so was that of the
French nobles before the Revolution ; is Lord John Russell
prepared for the consequences ? After a sufficient number of
Frenchmen had been starved or killed, the remainder seized
the land : by the revolution they won their country : they
were a nation of beggars, they arc now a nation of free-
holders.—( Hear, hear.) I shall never despair of my country
while the madmen who deny you freedom of trade allow
you freedom of mind. Some of you will see better days.
But if you wait till two-thirds of you die of starvation,
though the remainder may become landowners, as in
France, will that circumstance raise the dead ? Can it
meal to life the myriads of unfortunate beings who in the
meantime must perish ? It cannot. Why, then, do you
endure laws which exist only to ruin tenants—to convert
customers into rivals—to drive out of the country pell-mell
the men and the capital that you cannot spare—and to
pamper in wickedness the very men whom you could best
spare, 30,000 insolent, ignorant, utterly useless, all-destruc-
tive land annuitants?—(Cheers.) What are landlords but
annuitants ? Who does not know that when an annuitant dies
there is a merry funeral ? And who can be ignorant, that
if farmers had no rent to pay, they would be so much
the more able to improve the land ? Now God made the
land, and the farmer the improvements. Yet the landlords
convert their property into a curse to all mankind, and seem
resolved to force you, in the extremity of hunger, to devour
them alive. They have only left you two other alternatives—
to sweep away the whole food monopoly, with all other mono-
polies, or perish. They wish, and they intend, by a fixed duty
(,0 says Lord John Russell) to lower you gently down to Irish
fare, and Irish insecurity—for, thank God, these things mean
each other I—(Hear, hear.) But they cannot do it gently.
Neither the New Poor-law, nor the old one, will enable them
to do it. If the Corn-laws destroy your trade, all the work-
houses in the land will not bold the tenth part of the tithe of
the applicants for admission, and there will be no rate-payers I
You will die by tens of thousands, not in your beds, but in the
streets—bowling and grinding your teeth like wild beasts—
beneath clenched hands and glaring eyes—amid the
shrieks and groans of horror and despair.—( Hear.) Yet you
listen to men who tell you that when food is dear wages rise,
and that when food is cheap wages fall. But what do your
bellies say ? Have you found it so ? Three sears ago bread
was Is. 61. a stone. Were your wages low then ? No, never
higher. Now bread is 3s. a stone. Have your wages dou-
bled? No, they are sinking. Listen, then, if you will, to
men who tell you that a sixpence is better than a shilling, but
you cannot listen long, for famine is in the pantry—death is at
the door—by and by Saturday will bring no wages—" and the
wages of the poor are his life," says a book which I fear is sel-
dom read either by the landlords or their parsons.—( Hear.)
In conclusion, if I might advise you, I would say carry tilt:
war into the territories of the enemy. Consent to no fixed
duty on corn—to no slow fall to potatoe-peel—but sweep
away the whole food monopoly, with all other monopolies,
and then demand a tax of fifty per cent. on the rent of
land for ever ; because the food monopoly has cost you more
than the land is worth, and you have a right to repay-
ment—because it is high time that landlords began to
pay taxes—because if you force them to bear a fair share of
the burdens they have imposed, they will all turn Radicals,
the best Reformers that the world ever saw ; " for lions,"
your friend Bywater says, " always roar loudest when they
are clamming"—(Laughter)—and if you go a little beyond
justice, which I don't advise, the Prince of Paupers, Chando%
himself, will write odes in praise of Colonel Thompson.—
. .

(Cheers.) In the meantime your choice is free trade or ruin.
Let it not be recorded in history, that the Reform Bill was a
fatal mockery, passed by the Nobles to prevent a convulsion,
which they rendered inevitable by postponing justice. Re-
member that you have nothing but mischief to expect from
Government ; Lord John Russell having declared for a fixed
duty, which signifies—workhouses without rate-payers. What
a clever fellow he must be then. I second the motion, though
it does not propose a tax on, rent.—( Cheering. )
Mr. ISAAC IRONSIDES rose to move an amendment. the men-
tion of which was received with some expressions of disappro-
bation. He said that the object of his amendment was more
effectually to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest.
number. He had examined the speeches of the gentlemen who.
commenced this agitation at Manchester, and found that they all
complained of the loss of their own profits, and not of the dis-
tress of the people. So long as they could obtain a profit by
screwing down the wages of their work people, they were
silent, but now they cried out. He argued that the labouring
classes on the Continent were worse off than the British
operatives, and the cause was, that they had less political
power, and that to prevent any advantage being taken of the
repeal of the Corn-law to deprive the working classes of the
benefits it ought to ensure to them, Universal Suffrage ought
first to be obtained. He moved an amendment to the effect—
" That the Corn-laws were one of the fruits of the legislation
of landowners, and that the people could not expect to reap,
the benefit of the repeal, unless they also obtained Universal
Suffrage."
Mr. GILL (the person nominated by the Chartists of Shef-
field to be their Delegate at the National Convention), se-
conded the amendment, and contended, that unless Universal
Suffrage were obtained before the repeal of the Corn-laws,
the labouring classes would be deprived of all its benefits by
the application of machinery, and by the monetary monopoly,
which, be contended, taxed the people to the extent of fifty
millions a year. He urged that the property of the country
ought to bear all the burdens, leaving industry unshackled.
Colonel Tnomesors was received with cheers, and said—.
Mr. Master Cutler, and fellow-countrymen, I came here with
great pleasure from knowing that I had to present myself
before men whom I have always earnestly endeavoured to assist..
I presumed that I should see none here but friends.—( Cheers. )
I am further delighted to think that I stand in the place wbic.h
sent to Parliament that able and worthy man, your la.te
Member, Mr. Buckingham—(Cheers)—with whom I have
been joined in some Parliamentary efforts which I will not
detain you by detailing here, but which give groat joy to my
heart whenever my memory recurs to them. Had he been
here now, no man would have been more earnest to give you
his services in the way of advice, and most particularly in pro-
moting union on this moat important occasion.—( Cheers.)
You will bear with me if I say that I come here in some
degree in the character of a mediator. I find two opinions,
when I was anxious to have seen but one. Will you indulge
me in endeavouring to examine how far they may seriously
clash, and in endeavouring to discover some course on
which we may be agreed. Allow me, as a man who has la-
boured much on this subject, to endeavour to give you a plain
exposition of what I consider to be the state of the question.
Supposing it were proposed to you that your town should be
surrounded with a wall of brass, in order to cut off communi-
cation with the surrounding country from which you procure
corn, and to confine you to the produce of the ground which
might be within your walls. Something like that is the case
now, and if you will try the various questions of your present
position by the case I have supposed, you will find it useful to
direct you. lam aware of arguments that have been addressed
to the working classes on this subject, which I am happy to say
I have seen no symptom of the appearance of 'here, and
cherish the hope that you have got beyond those fallacies. One
of them is, that if the price of corn falls, wages will fall with it.
Now to a certain extent this is true ; they will fall; but the grand
question is, will they fall in an equal proportion? I shall endea-
vour to prove that they will not. Supposing the town were walled
in, and sonic person should say, " Shut the gates, and keep
them close, that the price of corn may rise." Is there a head.
I so thick as not to perceive that if the corn becomes dearer, it
is because there is less of it? And if there be less of it, hem
can wages rise so as to give you the same quantity out of the
half as out of the whole? In like manner, if it should be
said that if we open the gates corn would fall, and that wages
would fall too ; the answer is, that corn would fall because
there was more corn to be sold. It must either remain un-
eaten, or the working classes must obtain more corn or more
Power of buying it than before. If there be any other fallacy,
try it in the same manner. Mention has been made of taxa-
tion and the national debt. Suppose any imaginable amount
of taxation in the walled up town, arising from a lowa
debt or other cause, would anybody recommend closing
the gates and shutting out corn to mend it? I am
glad to suppose that these fallacies arc disposed of,,
and that we are not called upon to meet objections on these
grounds. Yet other reasons have been urged to keep tee
working classes from uniting on this subject. One of these is
that the agitation against the Corn-laws is a Whig plot. I
ace reason for doubting that ; especially, as during the last
week, the Whig Minister has declared for a fixed duty. The
Whigs then are against us, and we against them. Is it then
probable that they made the plot? I think we need hear no
more of that. I surmise that your affection for the political
party that goes by that name, may not be great; mine I as.
sure you is small. Will you, then, having seen it proved to
demonstt ation, that the agitation against the Corn-laws is not
a Whig plot, will you side with the Whigs, or give the prefer-
ence to us? For these two reasons I urge a general union, but
I have a weightier matter behind. lam anxious for an Exten-
sion of the Suffrage.—(Cheers.) On that point let there
be no mistake. If I might be allowed to speak of
myself, perhaps it would be found that I was among the first,
if not the very first, in these latter times, to lay down point-
edly and clearly the principle on which the working classes
were bound to maintain their right to Universal Suffrage
(Cheers.) I do not ask you to check your desires; but only
to take the most reasonable way by which their attainment