The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-13 00:00:00

_LONDON :
FRIDAY, D,7.CEMBER 13, 1839.
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The Tory Journals bef,ln to cry peccavi on the
Corn-laws. They complaint that the blows of the
Anti-Corn-law people are too hard. They want
to he let alone in their iniquity. All would go
smoothly with them and their patrons if the Anti-
Corn-law Journals would disguise the truth, not to
k:ridle the feelings of the people, and spare the
feelings of the Aristocracy. Last night, for ex-
ample, the Standard thus complained :
Is it right to proclaim just now that masses " who
know that they have been wronged," are to prepare for
a 41...sitructivc struggle with a class said to be untriended?
" Toe.-e are times," says Fontenelle, " when though my
baud we:c full of truths, I would not open a finger ;"
but if there are times when eve,: truth is hazardous,
whit ought w to say of those who in such times fling
abroad incendial7 falsehoods ?

The Standard has been for months and years
appealing to the most mischievous passions in the
strongest. language, and that it now deprecates ap-
peals to the people proves how much it is
frightened and how great is its hypocrisy. It does
not stand clone, however, in its alarm. Even a
journal which -iirts itself forward as the ad-
vocate of the ai;olition, but which has more
respect for privilege than justice, reprobated, '1
a few evenings ago, the ad invidiam argu-
ments by which the Corn-laws are attacked.
While such writers can fight witii distant shadows
and minute statistics, which are susceptible of being
mystified to any required extent, they are much at
their ease ; but they become dreadfulilv alarmed
when the base motives which gave rise to the law
and the iniquity which it involves, are dwelt on.
On doubtful facts, which are only hereafter to be,
they are very eloquent, but they dare not touch the
chord of moral feeling. The alarm which obviously
begins to prevail among the Corn-law advocates
assures us that if the inhabitants of the manufactur-
ing districts, masters and men, will now put forth
Oieir united strength, the Devil's laws may be
sweet into oblivion.
An,-Ither great source of hope for us is that the
fluctuatinN scale has fallen out of favour with the
landed interest. They are almost ready to give
that up, though they have not yet determined what
fixed duty they will accede to. As of carts are
tnaking in that direction, let us remind the farmers
that a fixed duty will be greatly injurious to them.
In the case of a very short crop it could not be
enforced, and would cheat the farmer into making
an outlay which he would never recover. But if
owl] would be its effects in very bad years, in very
/.1e years it would be still more disastrous to him.
A ri,:ed duty would keep prices here, as the rule,
hither by the amount of duty than abroad. To
export wi:h a profit, therefore, would be out of the
question. in ordinary years the supply would be
fully equal to the demand ; in abundant years the
supply would exceed the deman,i, and, having no
foreign vent, the prices would fall ve.7y considerably.
Farmers in general cannot hold over their produce,
they must send it to market, and by a great reduc-
tion in price the farmers would be injured or rui:led,
while the:monied capitalists, watching for such an
event, would buy largely, and when prices rose,
realize iomense fortunes at the farmer's cost. A
fixed duty would be, as it has been, ruinous to the
aviculturists.

At 3 a remedy for this, it has been suggested, that
a bounty on expovtation, proportionate to the duty,
should be allowed. But it is not to be expected
that the people will now tolerate a tax to pay a
bounty for the very purpose of waking their food dear.
The time for such sleight-of-hand tricks with the
national resources, such juggling with the pockets
and property of the people, has passel away.
a draw hack would answer the purpose of
Though
the schemers, such an inapt scheme could
not be ca!ried into effect. While it seems
highly probable, therefore, that something will
be done to ainend the Corn-laws, it is also pro-
bable that a fixeLl duty wth, on the interest of
the farmers, he resisted.
The Morning Post of yesterday announces
formally that Sir ROBERT PEEL is to ;.Teak
up the Ministry whenever Parliament meets.
Of course he will put down all
attempts to
repeal the Corn-law. The course he took last Ses-
sion, when he assumed the character of an advocate
of the starvation laws, making garbled and false
stNernents without the excuse of being misled by
a hr;ef and an attorney, will preclude him from
adopting a different course when he shall be Prime

Minister. He is to seize office in spite of the'
QUEEN, so says the Times, as the representative of
the firebrand and the starvation interests ; the sworn
servant of the tithe-lords and the landlords ; the
pledged enemy of all the Dissenters from the
Anglican Church, all the manufacturers, and
nearly all the capitalists of the empire ; the cham-
pion of the past, who is to arrest, like another
JOSHUA, the course of the universe. If such be
his projects, and such ths principles of his friends,
the sooner the town population—all who cherish
religious freedom, and all who require freedom of
industry—all who are opposed to starvation laws
and Church rates, make common cause against
Tory statesmen, landlords, and tithe-lords, the
greater will be the probability that the intolerants
and the restrictives will be overthrown. Of their
ultimate defeat the progress of the last century is a
certain guarantee.

We copied on Tuesday from the Times an ar-
ticle announcing that the Cardiff and Glamorgan-
shire Magistrates " had called Lord NORMANBY'S
attention to the mischievous tendency of the West-
ern Vindicator." We also inserted on Wednesday
a statement " that a despatch had been received at
Cardiff from Lord NORMANBY respecting the se-
ditious publications so widely disseminated through
the country, stating it to be the intention of the
Government to use active measures for their
suppression." It was added that a seizure
of seditious publications had been made. In
neither of these announcements was there
any objection made to the publications, ex-
cept that they were seditious ; and therefore, ac-
cording to that statement, by which alone we were
guided, they were suppressed. On that showing,
being well convinced that if the Vindicator may be
seized and suppressed, because some fierce partizans
of county Magistrates suppose it to be seditious,
so may the Times and The Sun, we th ought it our
duty, as one of the watchmen of society, to give the
alarm, and reprobate the assumption both of the
Magistrates and the Secretary of State for the Home
Department, of a power of deciding whether a jour-
nal be seditious or not. That is at once assuming a
censorship over the Press, and he who assumes it,
If he also seizes the juurnal, carries his own decree
into execution. Remembering that bad precedents
are more readily followed than good practices, we
condemned what, in these times, must be, as repre.
sented, a most baneful precedent.
The view taken by the Correspondent of the
Times, on which our remarks were founded, was
confirmed by the observations of the Globe of Wed-
nesday, which we yesterday copied. The Even-
ing Paper stated, that " the Magistrates of Cardiff
and Glamorganshire have called Lord Nort-
MANBY'S attention to the dangerous nature of the
Western Vindicator. It stated, moreover, that a
letter in that publication had recommended assas-
sination, and it gave reasons why that publication,
being published at irregular intervals, in haste and
secresy, had not before been seized by the police. In
all this there was not one word about the Vindi-
tor being an unstamped publication, a violation of
the law in its very nature, whatever may be the
doctrine it contains ; but it was the particular sort of
doctrines which was held forth,both in the communi-
cations of the Times, and in the article of the Globe,
as authorizing its suppression. Last night, how-
ever, the Globe contained the following article :
The Sun regrsts that the Marquis of Normanby has
sanctioned the seizure of the Western Vindicator at
Newport, and says, " The Noble Marquis assumes that
he possesses in himself a censorship of the press." We
believe that the papers in question were seized, not by
any " assumption" of power, but under the provisions of
the Act 6 and 7 William IV., cap. 76, which empowers
Magistrates to search for and seize unstamped newspa-
pers. This Act was passed while a Whig Ministry was
in office, and there can surely be no inconsistency in
their enforcing it. The quality of the unstamped articles
may be an additional motive for activity in the search ;
but, whatever it might be, gross injustice would have
been done to the fair trader by any connivance at
smuggling.

We are glad to see this explanation, however tardy
and however contradictory, to what the Globe said
on the previous evening. We of course can make
no objections to unlicensed poachers on the domain
we must pay for permission to hunt over being
put down ; and if those who ordered the suppres-
sion had either stated such reasons for it in the first
instance, or contradicted the statements which were
published on apparently good authority in the
Times, and evidently published from none of the
malignity which usually actuates that journal, and
which ascribe the suppression wholly to the doc-
trines, they would have done justice to their own
cause and prevented a considerable injury being
done to the public. To put down the Vindicator
because it is seditious, will be considered as
an additional assault by the Government on nearly
two millions of men, who already regard it as their
enemy. To suppress the Vindicator, because it is an
unstamped paper—without reference to its doctrines,
would give no one a right to complain, except of
the law. If, however, it be suppressed because it is
an unstamped paper, and if it have been, as the
Magistrates of Cardiff have said, and as the Globe
has repeated, a source of much of the bad feeling
which exists in Wales, the stamped newspapers and
the public will have a great right to complain that
it has been suffered to exist so long.

The journal which erewhile instructed the public
that we " have too much Church," has of late
found out, from the lessons of the Standard, that
we have not Church enough. The once leading
Journal has now become the led, and follows its
teacher most respectfully. It took up yesterday,
with great alacrity, the latter part of Chief Justice
TINDAL'S charge, and demanded a sound religious
education for all our youth. We all know that in
the Tory Journals a religious education means edu-
cation under the Anglican Clergy. It means more
Church to teach religion—a demand which the
Standard made years ago, and which is now daily
reiterated by the Times. The leading Journal, in
fact, never had the ingenuity to devise a scheme of
policy of its own, and has gone with every stream
into which its interest has drawn it.

It must be noticed that there is no country in
Europe where there is already so much Church as
in England ; no country where the dominion of the
priesthood has been more uninterrupted, and less
questioned, or where all writings which impugn their
doctrines have been more carefully put aside by
public opinion ; and the result is written in legible
characters in the present condition of our population.
To give more Church is to add to our present dread-
ful diseases. Before it be increased, let it be reformed
and made worthy of esteem.
When a demand is made for more Church we wish
to ascertain whether the people are to profit by the
doctrines of the clergy, or by their example. Their
lives ate at variance with their teaching. Gospels recommend humility, charity, poverty, and
peace : the priesthood are arrogant,
overbear Tinhg.,
greedy of wealth and power, and stirrers up of
strife. Their example is more powerful than their
sermons, and to make men religious according to
the Gospels, no more efficacious means could be
found than to take the teaching of their doctrines
out of the hands of the State Clergy.
They demoralize the community in two ways.
The vast wealth of some of them stimulates the
general avarice ; and their wealth, not being the
produce of any labour of their own, but taken from
the general fund of industry, necessarily deprives
scchmuercohthaenr:i):::::s of their just share, and genprates
pove:.%v with all its unsatisfied desires. More
clergy imply more drafts on the
produce of industry,
.'aLOY .rlWre taxes, more ,7"
verty, more inequality inbriutihtnee:l;stribution a wealth,
floer ,e haveise more raend Church, more
crime. Let
reform
nt
of
fst
the Church,
htuhreerhe: