The Sun.
London, England, 1830-05-14 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer last night stated
that in the New Stamp Act would be a clause em-
powering stage-coaches, as well as hackney-coaches,
to convey passengers from one part of London to
another. This will be a useful regulation, and wily
tend, among other benefits, to improve the hackney-
coaches,—vehicles which at present are a disgrace
to a civilized metropolis.—Times.
We have to congratulate our readers on a most
important announcement last night by the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer. "At present," he said,
" no stage coach could take up and set down on the
stones of the metropolis without being liable to a
penalty. This penalty he intended to repeal." 'We
may now have all sorts of conveyances at all times
throughout the streets of the metropolis, and we may
travel in Omnibusei at as cheap a rate as the
Parisians. Thank God the abomination of hackney
coaches is near an end.—Morning Chronicle.

Last night Mr. Slaney entered on a subject
of great interest—the fluctuation of employment
among manufacturers. He concluded with moving
for a Select Committee to consider of the means of
lessening the evils arising from such fluctuation.
A very large, and a constantly increasing propor-
tion of the population of this country, is employed in
manufactures, and therefore no subject is more de-
serving of the attention of a rational being than an
inquiry into the means of promoting the welfare of
a body almost identified with the nation. Without
reposing entire faith on the proportions of the ma-
nufacturing to the agricultural population, given by
Mr. Slaney from the Parliamentary Returns—
for we know too well how unfit in general were
the people who made out the lists to classify
the population, and how variable were the prin-
ciples on which they acted in different places—
we are not the less aware that the manufac-
turers form the great majority. The agricultu-
rists are in some parts of the year fully em-
ployed ; at other times only partially employed. The
manufacturers have also their ebbs and flows. Some-
times the period of full employment is of longer,
sometimes of shorter duration. But, independently
of the fluctuations of employment in all manu-
factures, there have hitherto been constant migra-
tions of branches of manufacture, from country to
country, and from place to place. "An extraordi-
nary change (said Mr. Slaney) had taken place in
the locality of many of our manufactures. Since
steam-engines had been so much used, it had be-
come the interest of the proprietors to fix their works
where there were coal-pits. The wool-manufac-
turers, that had formerly abounded in the southern
part of the country, have now found their way to
the north. In addition to these rea-ons, fashion
often made a great alteration. Cottons, for instance,
had, to a great extent, displaced woollens; and
linens and silks had changed places in like mariner;
all which, of course, had been felt in certain quar-
ters." The changes of locality in manufactures are
coeval with the history of manufactures, and took
place long before the great change from the South
to the North caused by the use of coal. Daniel
Defoe, whose newspaper is a storehouse with regard
to our trade and manufactures, alluding in 1705
to these migrations and changes, says—" Since
I can remember, there went weekly from the
county of Norfolk, more stockings to London,
to Ilolland, and France, than all the yarn em-
ployed in Spitalfields to make the 5,000 pieces of
stuffs a week amounts to; arid in the room of
all this vast quantity, I believe the whole county
does not now send away 2001. worth per week.
The manufacture is quite sunk ; while towns, which
in former times were almost wholly employed in it,
do not now knit the hose they wear, the makers of
them are dead, and none take up the trade in their
room ; the large towns of Deerham, Wymondham,
North Waltham, Lynn, and Yarmouth, are living
testimonies of what I say; the first of these towns
have quite laid by the trades—the two last' make
less than a twentieth part ; and the city of Norwich
not the hundredth part of the quantities they for-
merly did: -. . Nlany of the master-weavers
are removed to Spitalfields; and in many out towns
as at Lynn, North Walsham, and several other
towns, the manufacture vanishes, and leaves hardly
its ruins to sliew it has been there

The tom" of Reading, Newbury, and parts adja-
cent, which once were as considerable for clothing
as any in England, and if the story of Jack of New-
bury be a truth, which, notwithstanding some addi-
tion of fable, we have no reason to question—were
superior to most in England. The towns of Farn-
ham, Guilford, Alton, Aylesford, and, in short, all
these three clothing counties, what's become of all
the clothing trade which employed so many thousand
families, hardly the dregs of it are found at Reading
and at Guilford, and all that county are now hard at
work making druggets. From thence Ist us go
into Kent, and I can produce men now living who
remember above fifty clothiers in the parish of Cran-
brook, where now they please themselves with re-
taining about fifteen, and the like proportion in the
neighbouring county. I could run the like length
through a great many parts of England, but my
aim is demonstration, not prolix multiplying ex-
amples. Nothing obeys the course of nature more
exactly than trade; causes and consequences follow
as directly as day and night : if a manufacture grows
in one place, that or another will sink somewhere
else. As to Spitalfields, in about 1679 and 80, if
I remember right, when the weavers of Spitalfields
mutinied, upon some occasion of setting up engine
looms, as they called them, in which one man might
do as much work as six or eight, or more, the com-
plaint was want of work, and 'twas alleged then
that in Spitalfields, &c. were above 50,000 narrow
weavers, as they called them, or, in common
English, ribbon weavers. At that time there were
abundance of broad silk weavers there; at Canter-
bury a great many more; of all which by itself
when it may
.come in my way to discourse of the
public mournings and such like follies. But to the
present case; if there were 50,000 narrow weavers
in and about London, and 2,000 will go a great
stay through their number now, what is become of
them ? The answer is plain, the trade falling off,
and the people not wearing shoulder knots, panta-
loons, and other fopperies, they turned their hands
to other trades, viz., weaving of stuffs or druggets,
&c. Will any man tell me if a manufacture started
up, but I shall tell him of another fallen down ;
of a manufacture begun in one town, but what
sunk in another ? Can the poor of one town be
employed in the business another did, and not that
town or some other do the less ?" These changes,
are not, however, effected without often producing
great suffering. One great came unquestionably of
the redundant population in the home counties, is the
flight of manufactures, leaving behind a multitude of
unemployed poor. The poor rates have long been
J1;0 in all those counties which once were the seat
tai.naanufactures, and are now almost exclusively
agricultural; but the circumstance in which the high
rates originated is not sufficiently taken into account
by those -who speculate on the high rates in the
counties ofßerks, Kent, Suffolk, Essex, &c. We fear,
however, the wish to secure the workmen from
the distress caused by fluctuations of trade, is what
our old writers would have piled a fond conceit.
We can understand how, in a trade like that of the
tailors, which has always been close, the wages of
one period may be made, by regulations, to cover an-
other; but in our great manufactories, the price of
labour in which is in a great measure regulated by
foreign competitionrwe fear it will be no easy mat-
ter to make the wages of periods when there is em-
ployment, suffice for the other periods. To take the
weavers, for instance, Mr. Slaney says, " there are
now about 240,000 hand-looms in England and
Scotland. The wages of these weavers are so low
at all times, when in full employment, they can af-
ford nothing for other times. Where machinery
again is used, the workmen are seldom unemployed,
for the manufacturer is anxious not to allow his
capital embarked in the machinery to remain unpro-
ductive." There is not in the case of factories
much evil to be apprehended from fluctuations, and
this is, no doubt, a revolution in industry, pregnant

with the most beneficial consequences.. Sir George
Phillips, in adverting to this important point, sail,
he was happy to confirm the statement of the Hon.
Member for the county of York (Mr. Marshall),
that the people employed in factories—and there
was a general tendency to employ all the manufac-
turers in factories—were much better off than those
not employed in factories. He believed, too, that
he might state that the workmen employed in fac-
tories were a great deal better off than workmen
were 30 or 40 years ago. Owing to the great
quantity of machinery now employed in our manu-
factures, the workmen were continually employed,
for the necessity of keeping the machinery at work
compelled the manufacturer to employ his men."—
We are far from wishing to discourage Mr. Slaney
in his endeavours to extend the principle of Benefit
Societies. Indeed, it is of such paramount im-
portance to guard against the growth of pauperism,
that we could wish means were devised for incor-
porating with the poor laws some scheme for mak-
ing the industry of the labourer more conducive to
his comfort than at present, by connecting his
exertions with his comfort in after-life. But then
there are many considerations to be attended to
here; and above all, the great consideration of the
necessary connection between the reward of the
labourer and the supply of labour. All attempts
to raise the wages of labour, with a redundant po-
pulation, must be hopeless. In other words, the
population ought not to increase more rapidly than
the means for employing them.— Morning Chronicle.
One of the most important questions to be brought
under the consideration of Parliament during the
present Session is that of which Mr. Sadler has
given notice for the Ist of June, when he means to
move for leave to bring in a Bill for bettering the.
condition of the labouring poor throughout the
British empire. We know not what specific mea-
sure the Hon. Member for Newark means to pro-
pose—we only know that the necessity for some im-
provement of the condition of the labouring popu-
lation of this country is most painfully urgent, and
that every day furnishes au accession of afflicting
evidence of their misery and degradation. No man
of any party now ventures to deny the fact—for, in-
deed, it would serve no purpose to deny it, as the
melancholy evidence of truth meets us wherever we
turn our eyes. No man, we say, whatever the com-
plexion of his political creed may be, ventures to
deny the fact, that among the working classes,' both
peasantry and artisans, pauperism and debasement
have spread, of late years, to an alarming and unex-
ampled extent. In a report which we gave yester-
day of a meeting held in the neighbourhood of
Huddersfield, the condition of the labouring
classes was represented as most deplorable, and
not at all mitigated by the consoling accounts
which some journals have published, of the in-
crease of trade, and the return of prosperity. It
appears that a Committee had been formed during
the winter to inquire into the state of the popula-
tion in the district, when, after diligent inquiry, it
was ascertained that the average support of members
of families was twopence halfpenny per day. This
was in the wititer,—but then we were told by those
who make the Press minister to public delusion,
that the distress was only temporary, and would be
no more heard of in the srason when the " crocus
and primrose" come forth to adorn the earth. Well
—the flowers have appeared, and genial sunshine
has gladdened our fields, but distress still withers
the energies, and throws its gloom upon the heart
of man. The report to which we have alluded tells
us that the condition of those people who passed
their winter in such dreary destitution, has not in
the least improved, and that there are hundreds of
adult persons iii the village of Aldmonbury alone
who have not tasted butcher' meat for the last
seven or eight months (except what they may have
received at alms, and to many of whom potatoes
would be a luxury !) Is this a state of things to
be derided by the minions and flatterers of Govern-
ment, or to be neglected by the Legislature ?
Morning Herald.
It will be seen that the Edinburgh petition, praying
for the abolition of death in cases of forgery, was
presented to the House of Commons last night by
Sir James Macintosh. This is the petition to which •
we have before adverted as being signed by about
700 persons of respectability, being all either bankers,
merchants, magistrates, private gentlemen, or mem-
bers of the Universities and learned professions. •
All the bankers in Edinburgh, we are informed,
signed it ; and they declared, as Sir J. Macintosh
stated, that from the result of their experience, under
the present severity of the law, they had much less
security against the crime, whose suppression was
of so much importance to them, than they would
possess under a milder code. This fully bears out
what «e stated yesterday respecting the sentiments
of the bankers on the sanguinary law of forgery.
Sir James also observed,in contradiction to what had
been asserted by Sir Robert Peel before, touching
the danger of proceeding further in the work of
legal reform than public opinion warranted, that the
number of petitions which had been poured into
the House on this subject, and the character of the
persons by whom they were signed, showed that the
country was ripe for the abolition of the punish-
ment of death in cases of forgery. So we say, and
we can assure Mr. Spring Rice that he need not be
in the least afraid, even if his Right Hon. Friend
the Home Secretary adapted his Bill to the prayer
of the Edinburgh petition to-morrow, he would
thereby outrun public opinion.—Morning Herald.
The Morning Journal announced its last publi-
cation yesterday. In alluding to the event, we avail
ourselves of the opportunity to say, that the fate of
that Paper is connected with transactions which it
would be well for the character of our " liberal"
Administration if they could be for ever buried in
oblivion ; but their memory will live—and live, we
trust, to warn statesmen to beware how they allow
themselves to act more upon their passions than
their reason; and abandon the moral aid of opinion
for the odious agency of persecution. If the fate of
the Morning Journal has been accelerated, as its
Editor states it has, by the ex-officio informations,
the Ministers and their Whig Attorney-General
have so far carried their point—they have crushed
an adversary—but they have not, they cannot crush
the spirit and feeling which have been excited against
them by a series of prosecutions against ono devoted
Journalist, unexampled for the bitter animosity they
displayed against freedom of opinion since the days
of the Star Chamber.—Morning Herald.

A heavy mass of clouds of a dark blue tint,
like those, we imagine, in Lord BYRON'S Cain, rolled
along the horizon for many mi!es on Saturday evening,
and bore a strong resemblance to a range of downs, giv-
ing the sea betwe,tn them and the land the appearance of
a large lake or estuary. It required no great stretch of
the imagination to fancy hills covered with trees, towns,
and embattled castles, and deeply indented vallies, amidst
the vapourotts condensation—" giving to airy nothing a
local habitation and a name."—llr•iyhton Gazette.

AN EXTRAORDINARY STARLING.—We
have to record, not the death of a human being, but of a
little creature, whose habits so nearly approached those of
human nature as almost to induce us to believe in the an-
cient Pythagorean doctrine of souls. The deaths of this
little chatterer occurred lately, it was not quite twelve
mouths' old. The bird was the property of a gentleman
in the neighbourhood of Nottingham, and its aptitude for
repeating what it actually heard induced the owner to
have its words so arranged as to form complac sentences:
these he would without difficulty repeat, occasionally vary-
ing them by the introduction of the names of the persons
who wre accustomed to supply him with food. He fre-
quently applied for his favourite food " sop," in language
the most perfectly distinct, always beginning or ending
with " I can't g t out," uttered with an emphasis strictly
correct and approrriate. A (log which he had heard
called by name, he would repeatedly call to, if he barked
or made a noise, in such way as to leave no doubt that he
knew him, and with a manner singularly curious. The
editor has been favoured with a list of his words and sen-
tences strongly authenticated.—Nottingham Mercury.