The Sun.
London, England, 1839-01-14 00:00:00

ZT)v fll:I.

WITH WHICH
THE " TRUE SUN" IS NOW
INCORPORATED.

LONDON:
MONDAY EVENING, JANUARY 14, 1839.

We ,said on Saturday that the Corn-law question
was the trial of the Ministers and the Parliament.
Further reflection has only convinced us of the truth
of the remark. Unsupported as the master-manufac-
turers are by their own working population, it seems
to us doubtful whether they can succeed, however
well they may combine their operations, unless the
Government, convinced by the statements of the Man-
chester manufacturers, shall throw its weight into the
scale. In 1812 the manufacturers succeeded, it is
true, when they were not so powerful as at present,
but then they were not opposed by the landed
interest. The recal of the Orders in Council was a
question betwixt them and the Administration of the
day, and the landowners were neutral if not favourable

to the recal. The great Whig party then in oppo-
sition were one and all favourable to the recal of the
Orders in Council. From the time of their being first
issued in 1808 to 1812, they were continually and re-
peatedly condemned in both Houses of Parliament,
Lords GRENYILLE, AUCKLAND, and GREY, taking
the lead in the Peers, and Mr.WH I TB REA D, Mr. Tr ER..
NEY, and Mr. BROUGHAM taking the lead in the Com-
mons. The motions on the subject were numerous and
the debates frequent ; and the petitions from every com-
mercial And manufacturing town in the empire were
incessant. Not one petition, we believe, was
presented in their favour ; and the arguments
of the manufacturers were strongly enforced by
considerable distress in the manufacturing districts:
leading !o numerous riots and outrages. At present
no political party supports the manufacturers ; their
own Representatives chiefly vote for them, while the
bulk of the landed interest, and almost all the Tories,
because the fate of the Church is at issue, are against
them, and are moving to get up petitions in favour of
retaining the Corn-laws. The cases therefore of the
repeal of the Corn-laws and the recal of the Orders
in Council in 1812 are by no means similar, and the
manufacturers can hardly expect to succeed by con-
fining their exertions to the proposed plan of getting
a hearing at the bar of the House of Commons.
The decision of this question will be in the hands
of 'Ministers, and on them will rest the awful respon-
sibilty of continuing these starvation, murderous laws
or of putting an end to them. In particular, a vast
and awful responsibility will rest on that Member of
the Cabinet, who is also Member for Manchester, to
whose department this question particularly belongs.
If he have made up his mind in favour of the repeal,
he will be more contemptible than the meanest wretch
that crawls, if he do not quit the Cabinet which will not
carry his views into effect. If he have made up his
mind again the repeal, he is most unfit to repre-
sent the great eCtnmercial community which now sends
him to Parliament. If he have not made up his mind
on such a vital question, then is he as wholly unfit to
be a Member of the Cabinet as he is to represent
Manchester. He cannot, 2.0 d the Cabinet cannot,
shirk this great question, or pretend to be neutral on
it, without giving up all claim to the character of a
Government, and confessing that they are a set of men
who preserve office for its emoluments, and thrust
themselves into high i places while they will not
perform the duties belonging to them. We certainly
shall not silently allow the Ministers to follow a
doubtful and undecided course ; and being thoroughly
convinced that the decision of this great question
now rests with them, and that they will be responsible
if it be not carried as the manufacturers wish, we call
on all the manufacturing and commercial towns, who
are the great supporters of the Ministers—we call on
all who are favourable to the repeal of the Corn-laws
_-to convey to Ministers their opinions on the sub-
ject, ,and assure them that they must never look for any
support from any of those towns if they do not
step boldly' forward and throw their weight into
the scale of the Abolitionists. This is for the manu-
facturers, and for the public peace, a question of life
or death ; it is a question between honesty and
robbery ; between all the hard-working and intelligent
town population and the taxing, plundering, men-
and-women-starving, idle landlords ; and the whole
of the town constituency of the empire will be traitors
to themselves if they do not at once inform the Minis-
ters that they must choose betwixt the support of the
town population and that of the Devil's laws. It is
the business of the towns to convey to Ministers,
through Mr. PO ULETT THOMSON, that information
of the working of these laws, of which he seems so
much in need ; and it is their bounden duty to them-

selves to instruct their Representatives to oppose the
Ministers, if the Ministers are resolved, in defiance
of all principles of honesty, morality, and justice, to
support the landed interest.
If the Ministers are on trial, this question will also
be decisive of the fate of the House of Commons.
Broadly, openly, and loudly is it declared in the
country that this assembly represents only a class—
that it sacrifices the public good to enrich a few indi-
viduals—that it deserves no confidence, and that no
good laws can be hoped for till Universal Suffrage have
wholly changed its character. It can refute those
opinions, by sacrificing the supposed pecuniary inter-
ests of its Members to the public welfare, and allowing
honesty to triumph over selfishness. If it do not refute
them, its character will be gone for ever, and thousands of
wealthy and respectable men will become Chartists on
principle. The question is an experimentum crucis,
both for the Ministers and the reformed. Parliament.
The vital nature of this question is, we are glad to
see, recognized by other towns as well as Manchester,
Glasgow, and Leeds ; Liverpool is stirring, Maryle-
bone has spoken, Finsbury and Lambeth are coming
forward, and, ere the Parliament assembles, we hope
to see such a demonstration as will convince Viscount
MELBOURNE that he must take a decided course.

By our Queen's Bench report our readers will ob-
serve that the Canadian prisoners were brought up
this morning. Two of the returns were road : one, in
a case in which, according to the return, there was a
regular trial before Justices of Assize, and a con-
viction and sentence ; the other, a case in which there
was, indeed, a sentence, but which was peculiar in this
respect, namely, that it was passed upon the confession
pf the prisoner, without a trial ; but it appeared that an
Act was passed by the Colonial Legislature to authorise
this mode of proceeding. Of the competency of the
Colonial Legislature to pass such an Act there c:.:1 be,
we presume, no question. It consequently- appears
that the fate of the prisoners is certain, and that
they must undergo the sentence of the law, subject
to such modifications as the Crown, in the exercise of its
mercy, may consider expedient ; and this, we believe,
is the prevailing opinion in Westminster Hall. The
case, however, underwent no discussion upon the

merits; for the ATTORNEY-GENERAL, immediately
after the two returns were read, stated that he intended
to meet the cases by an objection to the jurisdiction of
the Judge, who, according to his argument, had
no authority to issue these writs in vacation.
He stated that his Learned friend admitted that
these writs were issued, not under what is commonly
called the Habeas Corpus Act, but under the common-
law authority of the Judges, and he denied that the
Judges had any authority to issue them in vacation.
If a writ of habeas corpus was required out of term,
the application should be made to the LORD CHAN-
CELLOR. This is obviously a most important question,
and we recommend the people of England to look well
to it. It appears that the Judges have in fact, either
with or without authority, been in the habit for more
than two centuries of issuing these writs in vacation,
and, as the LORD CHANCELLOR is a political Judge,
removable at the pleasure of the Crown, and the
Common-Law Judges are not so, it_ is evidently
desirable that this jurisdiction should remain with
them. They have themselves to decide upon their
jurisdiction, and to-morrow will deliver their judgment.

The Times of this morning recommends strongly
that the whole education of the country should be
placed under the control and inspection of the State-
paid priesthood. Our Contemporary seems to be sud-
denly converted to the doctrine of the fifth-monarchy
men, and to be prepared to substitute our Lord
JESUS CHRIST for her Majesty the QUEEN, the
priests of course being the Lord's Ministers, and adding
political to religious power. The passage is so curious
that we must preserve it :

According to that legalized identity of Church and State,
whereby every individual of this realm is held to be subject to
the Lord Jesus Christ, it is the province and right of our Ec-
clesistical Establishment to superintend and regulate the edu-
cation of the nation, not in religion alone, but in general
knowledge, as ancillary to it; and of this fact, illustrated by the
practice of ages, we have abundant proof in the legal and exclu-
sive control which the Church possesses over the National Uni-
versities, as well as the chartered and parochial schools of the
country. This, we say, is not only the theory and practice of our
mixed Constitution, but admits of ample justification, from the
desirableness of having a qualified order of men responsible
for the Christian and Protestant character of our national
education—from the necessity of insuring the dissemination
of sound knowledge in contradistinction to sectarian ab -
absurdities and extravagancies—from the expediency of main-
taining a proper and equal standard in regard to the attain-
ment of schoolmasters—and, finally, from the manifest pro-
priety of extending to the rising generation the same sort of
defences against the irreligious poison of central boards and
educational quacks as our chartered medical colleges are meant
to afford against the doses and drugs of unaccredited practi-
tioners.

We are surprised at the recommendation of the
Times, because that Journal demonstrated a few days
ago that the state-paid priests had corrupted, by their
Puseyism, that nice young man, Mr. GLADSTONE,
and had converted him to tradition and Popery. Will the
Times satisfy the public that the clergy, if they get hold
of all the education of the country, will not pervert the
multitude as they now pervert Members of Parliament ?
Our Contemporary, who is a stanch anti-Puseyite, will
hear, no doubt, with deep regret that the Archbishop
of CANTERBURY does not agree with him. In
Tuesday's Sun we asked what the Archbishop was
about ; and in reply a Correspondent sends us the fol-
lowing information :

The Rev. Mr. Harrison, the intimate associate and right-
hand man of Dr. Pusey, was three months since made Private
Chaplain to the Primate. You will remember that Dr.
Howley refused to listen to the appeal of Dr. Hampden, who
was run down by the pro-Papist party because of his being a
better Protestant than themselves; rely on it that this was the
cause of their hostility ; they have been Jesuitically working
for several years, and Dr. Hampden's appointment was ob-
noxious, not merely on account of his Liberalism, but from
the obstacle it created to their plans. .

The answer then is that Dr. HOWLEY is aiding
and encouraging Dr. PUSSY, in his efforts to re-con-
vert the nation to Romanism. Place the whole edu-
cation of the people in the hands of the priesthood,
and we should have an Inquisition established in less
than half a century.

In another column will be found the plan of Corpo-
ration Reform for the City of London, which, after
much consideration, has been adopted by the Associa-
tion whose proceedings we have had much pleasure in
laying from time to time before the public.
The plan, as it now appears in its matured
form, is such as ought to satisfy every person
who is desirous of seeing the great principles of po-
pular election and representative responsibility com-
pletely exemplified, without any risk of being followed
by the dangerous consequences which some persons
apprehend from too great an extension of the suffrage.
The triennial election of the Aldermen, the elec-
tion of the Mayor by the general voice of
the Common Hall, without a veto on the part of the
Aldermen, and the abolition of the Court of Alder-
men in the inner chamber, with the transference of its
functions to the Court of Mayor, Aldermen, and
Commons, are improvements called for no less
by the enlightened spirit of the times than by
plain common sense. The mode in which
it is proposed that the Magisterial office shall he filled,
is also a great improvement on the present system, and
has this advantage, that it is in conformity with the
tenor of a general Act for tl►o Reform of the English
Corporations.
We have not space to enter into a detailed
discussion of the vi►rious clauses of the new
scheme ; nor, indeed, is it necessary, as we
have on former occasions stated our opinion of
the proposed alterations. We shall therefore only
add, that the community are greatly indebted to the
City of London Corporation Reform Association for
their unwearied exertions in forwarding this highly
important question—important, not to the metropolis
only, but to the cause of general reform.

The Paris Journals of Friday and Saturday have
all been received, together with a report of the debate
in the Chamber of Deputies on the Address, which will
be found elsewhere in The Sun. To the no small sur-
prise of all parties, the first division of the Chamber on
an important amendment upon the first paragraph of
the Address, gave the Ministers a majority of seven
votes. This division, at which 425 members voted, took
place on Thursday evening, as we anticipated in
this Journal of Saturday ; but upon a second division
on Friday, the Ministerial majority dwindled to four—
although it is remarkable that Ministers had pre-
cisely the same number of votes on both divisions, that
is to say, 216. The majority, on the contrary, had
only 209 on the first division, but on the second they
obtained 212—thus gaining rapidly upon Ministers.
Should the Ministers succeed in keeping up a majority
upon the divisions on the separate paragraphs of the
Address, so capricious is the temper of the Cham-
ber that we should not be surprised at its entire
rejection when put finally to the vote. To such
of our readers as are only acquainted with the form of
voting addresses observed by the British Parliament, it
may prevent great confusion of ideas to state here that
the French Chanlbers vote Addresses in nearly the same
way in which a Bill is passed by the House of Com-
mons. The Address is prepared Committee !iv a
bal-
lotted for by the whole Chamber. 4-..4.fter pre-
sentation, it is read and discussed, paragragn
by paragraph, every Member being, of course, compe-
tent to propose what amendments he thinks proper.
And lastly,lwhen all the paragraphs are gone through, it
put to the vote in its perfect form in the same way as
a Bill :TOn the third reading in the House of
Commons.

From the whole tenor c.%f the debate, it will
be seen that men and measures are equally the
objects of attack on the part of the • Opposition.
M. THIERS is for once distinct and intel.

Bible in his strictures ; and by citing what he de-
nounces as the errors of Count MOLE'S system, in
some sort pledges himself to their abandonment by
any Cabinet numbering him among its Members.
The prevailing opinion, however, is, that the
KING will not consent to a change of system ;
but that he will try what can be done by means
of a coalition Ministry. Rather than abandon
the existing system, his Majesty, it is said, will
dissolve the Chambers, arid appeal to the loyalty
of the electoral body—over whom the Minis-
ter, for the time being, can always exercise a
paramount influence. France is at present little
better than a great rotten borough, in every corner of
which a corrupt influence is visible. The candidate
who has places, Government contracts, jobs, and
the direction of local improvements at his disposal,
may snap his fingers at the principles declared national
and sacred by the Revolution of July. France must
obtain electoral reform before she can make her voice
heard in the councils of the nation.

Two Envoys from Hayti have arrived at Brest.
They are the bearers of 350,000 piastres of the
French claims upon that island. A welcome reception
awaits them in Paris.

M. GISQUET is about to write his life. If he
tell the truth, VlDocQ's memoirs will not contain more
extraordinary disclosures. The scandal-loving portion of
the public are quite impatient for the appearance
of the Ex-Prefect of Police's interesting narrative—for
M. GISQUET has promised to heighten the flavour
of his pages with piquant personal anecdotes of all his
Contemporaries.

The Madrid Papers received this morning are of the
sth inst. The Chamber had then agreed that M.
ALVAREZ, the Deputy, should be prosecuted fi;r the
part taken by him in the recent insurrection at Seville.
No day was fixed for the trial, as Ministers had to
wait for fresh instructions from their tyrant EspAR-
TERO. M. PITo PizARRO was hard pressed to find
supplies for the army. ESPARTERO'S force alone—a
body rendering no effectual service to Spain—con-
sumed sixty-two millions of reals monthly.