The Sun.
London, England, 1839-01-09 00:00:00

PIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The combination of ignorance and presumption which is
exhibited in the remarks made by the Times of yesterday
morning exceeds all the preceding feats and manifestations
of the mis-leading Journal. Ignorance of the law, igno-
rance of the facts, and ignorance of the simplest principles
on which all financial statements of account must rest, are
there exhibited in the most glaring manner. But perhaps
we do injustice to our mis-leading Contemporary, and that
his errors, not being those of ignorance, afford a more di-
rect justification of the title which we have assigned to his
Journal. He repeats that the revenue carried to the
public account, from Crown lands, arises from the prin-
cipal raised by the sales of estates. This is in absolute
ignorance of the law. By Act of Parliament such
sums could only have been re-invested, and the twice
contradicted invention of the Times would have been
refuted, bad the statute-book been referred to. Then as
to stamps ; here the commentator has discovered and applied
a most ingenious dilemma, on either horn of which he
appears certain to transfix the luckless Whig financier. If
the stamp revenue fail, he has at once a conclusive proof of
his case—mercantile distress, cessation of transfers of pro-
perty, ruin of the landed aristocracy, would be grateful and
never-failing topics for his columns. But if, on the other
hand, there be an increased revenue, the argument is still
more triumphant. He then is pleased to assume that this
increase arises solely from the multiplication of bill
stamps : and then he lays down the principle that
mercantile bills are increased in exact proportion to
the distress of the community. Now, perhaps, he
will hear with surprise, that the stamps on bills of
exchange form but a small part of the stamp reve-
nue ; that out of 6,700,0001. the stamp revenue of
Great Great Britain in 1837, the bill stamps amounted
to 509,0001. only ; and if he will take the trouble of refer-
ring to some better authority to the east of Temple•har
than his own City Correspondent, he will learn that the
abundance of commercial bills does not, according to his
theory, indicate a decay of trade ; but that in proportion
as transactions increase, so the bills, which are the pecu-
niary representatives of those transactions, increase also.
But signal as these blunders and mis-statements are, there
is another yet more astounding, and which we fear even
the expansive powers of the m.s-leading Journal cannot in
future excel, and which, in point of ignorance and absur-
dity, we think neither he nor any one else can hereafter
hope to rival. He observes sagaciously that the in-
crease of 323,000/. in the Customs " is palpably derived
from the duties on grain imported in the course of the
past year, and is a test, therefore, of the privations
that await the country, rather than any indication of re-
newed commercial prosperity." We could scarcely credit
our eyes when we read this statement so palpably derived
from the densest, or, as Lord Brougham is accustomed to
say, from the crassest ignorance, or the most unparalleled
confidence, in the credulity of his readers. Is there a
reader of the Times who will not be insulted by the suppo-
sition that he does not know that in proportion as the
prices of corn rise, the duty diminishes until it becomes
wholly nominal ?—that this result has been and is the case
in the present year ?—that it was not the case in 1837,—
and that the high price of corn, to which the Times would
attribute a large receipt of custom duties, produces the ex-
actly opposite result of diminishing those duties to their
minimum ? This is so obvious, that we cannot under-
stand why the mis-leader should disbelieve it, except that
he had found it stated in the columns of his own journal.
But how stands the fact ? The Times asserts (and what
will it not assert ?) that the increased receipt of 300,0001.
in the customs revenue has been produced by an increased
receipt of corn duties. The confutation of this glaring
absurdity is found in the following statement

Corn receipts in 1837 - £588,000
Ditto 1838 183,000

Deficiency in the latter year £403,000

Thus, in place of an excess of 300,0001. produced by
corn duties, there is a deficiency of 405,0001., and the
nth-leader has only misled, to the extent of 700,0001. ;
and, besides that, has committed a mistake in principle so
absurd, that the lowest servant who works his steam-
press would be ashamed of it. What will the readers of
the Ti»ies say to their guide ? What will the Tories say
' to their enlightened champion ?—Morning Chronicle.
Those of our readers who happened to cast their eyes
upon the Government prints during the last week will be
aware that they seemed to rival each other in aggravating
the language attributed to Mr. Stephens on the subject of
the New Poor-law, in swelling his power and importance
among the operatives, and in magnifying the danger of
suffering so formidable an agitator to remain at large, or to
escape the severest punishment of the law. The very
same Papers this week are proceeding, doubtless at the
command of their masters, the Ministers, on the very op-
posite tack, so far as regards the power and influence
of Mr. Stephens! The agitator, who was last week
more formidable than O'Connell, has been disco-
vered at the commencement of this week to be unable
even to raise a row in the streets ! There was no
agitation except in the Newspapers! If this be so,
the prosecution against Mr. Stephens, which was
justified by the Ministerial prints on the ground of
his mighty influence with thousands of armed and discon-
tented artisans %ill, of course, be abandoned. Will the
Government scribes be so good as to inform us what they
and their patrons mean ; which representation they intend
to stick to as the true one ; or whether in this, as in
almost every other case, the " Liberals" are determined to
hase two strings to their (long) bow ? And while we are
upon this subject, we may, perhaps, take the farther liberty
of inquiring whether the following inflammatory extract
from a Government print of last night, relative to the black
labourers of Jamaica, can be matched in any of the speeches
of Mr. Stephens, relative to the white labourers of Eng-
land :—" If our voice could reach the fair and fertile
island of the sea to which these observations espe-
cially apply, it should be lifted up in warning against
the measures many of the planters have adopted.
Ere they exercise the power of driving the black la-
bourer and ks family from the hut which he has reared, and
the plot of land he has cultivated, let them reflect that they
may provoke a spirit of retaliation—the madness produced
by oppression is terrible in its paroxysms !" Can any of
the Poor-law agitators have done more than warn those
who would drive the " white labourer and his family from
the hut which he has reared, and the plot of land he has
cultivated," and imprison him in an union workhouse, that
" they may provoke a spirit of retaliation ;" that " the
madness produced by oppression is terrible in its pa-
roxysms ?" We more than half suspect that our Whig
Ministers arc jealous of Mr. Stephens, Mr. Oastler, &c,,
and desire to keep all intemperate and seditious agitation
to themselves awd their trusty and well-beloved Counsellor,
O'Connell.—Tinzes.
In the Gazette of last night, there appeared a statement
to the effect, that in consequence of an excess in national
expenditure over income during the last year—an excess of
expenditure amounting to nearly eight hundred thousand
pounds—no payment will, during the next quarter, be
made, on account of the Sinking Fund. The critical posi-
tion of the country in regard to its most important foreign,
colonial, and domestic relations, renders it certain, that,
during the next year, the national expenditure must be
greatly increased. The extent of the " deficiency," there-
fore, that may be anticipated, at the close of the next yearly
balancing of the public finances, is likely to alarm some
even of the least nervous of the admirers of Whig " eco-
no my ."-- Mo rn ina Herald.
After all, an abundant supply of the physical wants of
life--or at least enough to allay the cravings of hunger—is
the first essential to the well-b Ling of a people. Without
this as a basis, it is in vain to expect any satisfactory pro-
gress in moral or intellectual development ; as until the
stomach be fed, the mind's first consideration will be the
mode, legitimate or illegitimate, in which hunger may be
appeased ; and while thus occupied it would be in vain to
expect the cultivation of that higher order of faculties cal-
culated to elevate man in the scale of civilised and intellec-
tual existence. Want—physical privation—it is true, has
ever been a great stimulus to revolutionary movements, but
the political changes effected under such pressure have
seldom or never tended to improve the condition, or
permanently promote the liberty of the people. Such
was the first French, the most remarkable revolu-
tion in modern history, wherein, after pouring out
oceans of blood, the people, so far as regarded political
rights, found themselves nothing better at the end than
at the commencement. Therefore it is that above all
things we deprecate a revolution from famine—and there-
fore it is, also, that above all things we conjure the Govern-
ment to make the abolition of the Corn-law monopoly the
first of its acts after the assembling of Parliament. With
a sufficient supply of food, the people will be better disposed
to give to other legislative reforms more cool and deliberate
consideration ; but, with the cravings of nature goading
them to desperation, it is not to be expected that men will
tranquilly allow the conflicting claims of principle and ex-
pediency to adjust themselves. To the Government we
recommend the abolition of the,Corn-law monopoly, as the
b_st means of securing from the public a favourable consi-
deration to the other measures of Reform which they may
bring forward. To the people we recommend, with the de-
mand fur the repeal of the Corn-laws, the steady, peaceable,
but determined assertion of a more extended franchise—
the Ballot and shorter Parliaments—as the best impulse to
the concession of an open trade in corn ; or if this be not
readily conceded, as the best agency through which it may
be coerced, and similar aggressions of the landowners on
the industrious classes guarded against in future, It is
not a change from the pressure of physical, but from the
pressure of intellectual necessities, that will prove beneficial
to the permanent interests of Great Britain. We wish
not to see changes forced on by the fell desires of famine,
H rim ia153,4% by the steady application of opinion operating on the
, '—...

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