The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-18 00:00:00

LLOY'D'S HIPPING.-(THIS DAY.)

DEAL, DEC. 17. —Wi,id S. E. fresh. Sailed the
Thomas Jones, Rose, for
Win Trid
nidad.
LIVERPOOL, DEC. 17. S. E. S. , fresh breezes.—
ronsiduet,
Sailed the Dina, Spivat, for Rio Janie',;
Cleopatra
Trinidad; Blackaller, Cochrane, ditto; Charles (ni'
Mullins, Havannali ; Maddiza, Wood, Virginia ; i
Mitchell, Texas; Adrian, Russell, Boston ; Ruth, Ran'
'
drill, Sierra Leone ; John Lily, Turner, Africa. Off port,
the Caledonia, Carmel, front 13-,mbay.
PoaTsst,t7TH DEC 17.—Wind S. S.E.—Arrived the
Cyrus, Ray, from Qiebec.
PLYbIOUTH, DEC. 17.--Wind S.E.—Arrived the Eliza,
Jackson from Prince Edwari's Island
OFF THE WIGHT, DEC. 17.—The Maitland, Baker, fr:,m
Calcutta.
Cows', DEc. 17.—Sailed the Mary Ann, from Sydney,
New South Wales
DUBLIN, DEc. 16 —Sailed the Perseverance, Scott, for
Sierra Leone.
s.—Arrived 'he Rambl.er, Bree, from
CORK, DEC. 1
Tatmagouche. Off Port—The Britannia, Burridge, from
Cape of Good Hope, with loss of bulwarks, &c., in a gale.
BRISTOL, DEC. 17.—Sailed the William Goddard,
Potter, for Boston, United States,
SHIELDS, DEC. 16.—Sailed the Agnes Sophia, Thomp-
son, for Alexandria. The BuFk, of this port, on entering
the harbour, grounded upon the Herd, but came off with-
out apparent. damage.
LI.VERPOOL, DEC. 17.—A ship with a black ball, sup-
posed the North America, from Liverpool to New York,
was seen off Sar.dy Hook, with loss of foreyard, &c.
The ship Alfred, Captain Flint, from London an Ply-
mouth for Sydney, was spoken with, all well on the 29th
October, in lat. 7 S , lon, 30 W., out thirty days from
Plymouth.

The Earl of Stamford anti kVarrington has
left Dunham Massey, in Cheshire, for Enville Hall, in
Staffordshire.

LONDON
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1839.

The use which the Tory journals are now mak-
ing of that part of the law of treason, to which we
called attention on Thursday, when we referred to
the Judge's charge at Monmouth, proves the
propriety of our remarks. We then de-
nounced as absurd that part of the law which
classes as treason the exertions of the people, how-
ever numerous, to overawe the Parliament, and
which regards as overt acts or proofs of treason
such appeals as those by which half the Liberal
writers of the kingdom, urge the people to exert
themselves to procure a repeal of the Corn-laws.
A few days ago the Standard said, speaking of those
appeals—
At the very moment when the law is putting forth
its arm to punish one sedition excited by the arts of
Whig-Radicals, we find another sedition in preparation
by the same parties.

The sedition at Newport is to be tried as trea-
son, and so, if the Standard's doctrines were fol-
lowed, would be the sedition which the terrible dis-
tress now prevalent in the manufacturing districts
is stirring up against the bread tax. In the same
spirit as the Standard, the Morning Post of yes-
terday said—
The Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas told
the Grand Jury of the county of Monmouth, but a few
days ago, that to attempt " any great change or inno-
vation in the Government, or in the law of the land, by
dint of numbers or violence," was to commit high treason.
Now, to alter the Corn-laws is to alter the law of the
land, and to excite by gross calumny the labouring
classes to " move" against these laws and against the
landowners seems to us to be very plainly an excitement
to the commission of that which the Chief Justice states
to be high treason."

But it is demonstrated by much experience—to
wit, the Catholic Emancipation Act and the Re
form Act, and the very Corn-law, that the selfish
landlords who constitute the majority of the Legisla-
ture, do yield to compulsion of the kind now adverted
to, and will yield nothing to reason, whence that must
be a most absurd law which precludes the great
bulk of the people from using those only means by
which they can gain anything. All our liberties and
rights, according to Mr. HALLAM, have been
wrested from the iron grasp of power. "To make
the ruling few uneasy," as the only means of obtain-
ing useful reforms, has passed into a proverb ; but
for us to repeat such exertions as won the Magna
Charta from King JOHN, and the middle class
charter from the Tory Lords in 1832, is stigmatized
a treason by the authority of a law made when the
boron
&mongers were dreadfully alarmed for their
the progress of the French revolution.
Power by
A more atrocious attempt than the said statute
of treason, to place the complete sovereignty of the
nation in the hands of an oligarchy of borough-
mongers, is not to he
found in the records of legis-
lative usurpation. By that statute the Parliament
oi. 1796 endeavoured to
relieve itself of all responsi-
bility to the nation. It was undoubtedly, according
to that statute, an act •of treason to overawe the
Tory Parliament in 1832 ; but unless it had been
overawed there was no means of obtaining Reform,
and the Tory
Oligarchy would have remained for
ever the undisputed masters of our lives and liberties.
It was necessary, therefore, to set aside the law to
save the Commonwealth. is quite
Such a fact
enough to demonstrate the absurdity of the law
when pushed to the extent to which it is now
pushed by the Tories.

Let us add that the unrepresented have no
means whatever of making their wishes and wants
known with the least effect, except by meeuteilnigwaitsi
numbers and so enforcing their opinions. s
their object by the petition they presented last ses-
sion, and we are surprised that Sir ROBERT IN-
GLIS or Colonel SIBTHORP did not then find out
that their petition was an act of treason, Cut off

fi ern al! ,litre in the reprr.,,enta.tion. forhiddeo to
meet in numbers, because that terrifies the minority
called for the nonce the public, and now threatened
with an indictment for treason if they overawe
Parliament and endeavour to procure by numbers
a change in the law, they are degraded to a state
of complete slavery, of which the violent outrages
they are guilty arc the results. The eagerness of
the Tories to stretch the law of treason to the point
of putting down all attempts to get rid of the Corn-
laws, and of relieving the Parliament from all re-
sponsibility—short of bringing it to account by a
successful revolution, may possibly not be without
advantage to the persons accused at Monmouth, as
it has compelled us again to direct public attention
to the absurdity of the law under which they are to
be tried.

We have in few words shown that the law is a
gross piece of tyranny, usurpation, and absurdity,
yet the Standard says, with an indiscriminating
reverence for everything which has received the
sanction of the boroughmongers, and is embodied
into the form of a statute, " Away, then, with the
lying cant of Liberalism ;' liberty has no friend
but the law and the adherents to the law." No!
We must have good laws before we are warranted
in asserting that the law and its adherents are the
only friends of freedom.

It has been our duty of late frequently to
bring under the notice of our readers the distress
which pervades the manufacturing districts of
Scotland and England. Confirming all our observa-
tions, the Times of yesterday collected a who!e
column of recent reports from the manufacturing
districts, containing such statements as these :
" Trade," says the Leeds Intelligencer, " in al-
most all its branches continues in a depressed state,
and the commercial world resounds with com-
plaints of embarrassments and loss." " Distress,"
says the Leeds Times," among our labouring po-
pulation is daily on the increase." So on at Bol-
ton, Preston, Bradford, Nottingham, Hud-
dersfield, Halifax, Manchester, Leicester,
Paisley, &c. &c. If for this dreadful suf-
fering, brought on by a law which, the
Tories say, it is treason to subvert, by calling on
the sufferers to tell the Parliament that they will
not submit to be starved while the world eagerly
offers them food for their labour, the agricultural
labourers were in a better condition, we should find
some consolation ; but their poverty and distress
are scarcely less afflicting than the poverty and dis-
tress of the manufacturers. On Monday six or
seven such labourers appeared before the Magis-
trates at Uxbridge, to be relieved from the payment
of poor-rates, and of them none had more than 12s.
per week, while one of them earned only Bs. 6d., and
another lls. We quote a specimen of the examina-

Lion
John Allday was assesssed in two rates, each amount-
ing to 35., making 6s.

His wife, a poor miserably-clad young woman, de-
clared his inability to pay the rate, they finding it diffi-
cult to obtain a sufficiency of food.
Sir W. Wiseman—What is the matter with your
husband that he's not here?

Mrs. Allday—He's very well, thank you, Sir. He
must hare lost half a day had he come.

The husband of this person was considered so
well off, having earned Ils. last week, that he was
ordered to pay the rates. But low as these wages
appear, Mr. LARKIN stated to the Court that he
had not a doubt that many would jump at them.
Such testimony fully corroborates the assertions
made by the Wiltshire Independent, that in the
remote districts of Wiltshire wages are still lower,
and vary from 7s. to Ss. per week. Deep distress,
therefore, under the Corn-law pervades alike the
agricultural and manufacturing districts.

Let it not for one moment be said that this is a
visitation of Providence, and that the Legisla-
ture could not help the bad harvest. In fact it
caused the bad harvest for the manufacturers. I❑
the United States the harvest was not bad, but
abundant ; and a part of that belongs, by right, to
the manufacturers of Sheffield and Manchester,- to-
whom the Americans are indebted, and whom they
would gladly pay with their wheat and flour. Our
so-called paternal Legislature, however, will not
allow them to receive • the food they have earned.
In fact, too, the harvest was not bad in Germany.
With our extensive shipping, prodigious manu-
facturing power, and facility of communication,
the harvests of the whole world are at the
service of our manufacturers ; and it is false,
in fact, to say that their harvest has been a failure.
It has been abundant, and was no otherwise a
failure than as the Legislature forbad them to
gather it. But admitting that distress may some-
times be caused by a bad harvest, can any folly
be greater than for our law-makers to step be-
tween the community and the visitations of Provi-
dence, and make themselves responsible by a Corn-
law for all the misery which a dearth may bring on
the people ? But they do more than this ; they
cause, as we have said, the bad harvest to
the manufacturers. They are the authors of the
dearth, and instead of folly we must accuse them
of guilt of the deepest dye. In spite, therefore, of
Chief Justice TINDAL'S charge—in spite of the
Standard and the Post, we must continue to point
out such consequences to the people, and call on
them, if they would not be the willing victims of
the law-makers, and so share their guilt, to insist
that the Corn-laws be abolished.

At a dinner given by the Hulme Reform Asso-
ciation on Thursday last, in honour of R. H.
GREG, Esq., the new Member for Manchester,
and reported in the Manchester Times, Mr. M.
PHILLIPS, the other Member for that town, is re-
ported to have said:—
With respect to the extension of the franchise, he
was not so well aware of what 'were their views on this
point as he was upon some others. A great variety
of opinions might exist on that question, and he would
tell them that he was by no means certain that house-
hold suffrage would result in accordance with the wishes
of many who formed their opinion as to its result merely
in large communities like that of Alanchester. He was
much afraid that if they introduced household suffrage
without the ballot, those in the agricultural districts
would be at the beck and nod of those who lord it over
them ; and he should not like to add to the number of
slaves at present existing in the agricultural districts of
this country. This was a great difficulty with him.
What would be the best mode of extending the fran-
chise he would not say ; but he thought the franchise
could not be permitted to remain where it was without
great danger to the tranquillity of the public peace.—
(Loud cheers.)

We are extremely glad to see Mr. PHILLIPS,
who is no visionary, express such sentiments.
Though he does not know what extension of the
suffrage might be satisfactory to the people, he is
convinced that great danger will result from con-
tinuing the franchise as at present. We entertain
the same conviction ; but expressed by Mr. M.
PHILLIPS, the representative of the Manchester
mill owners, who have been thought very hostile to
an extension of the suffrage, it may go a long way
to reconcile those—masters and workmen—who lat-
terly have looked on each other as enemies. Either
there must be a great extension of the suffrage, or
the Legislature, as now composed and constituted,
must pass righteous laws, or all quiet and peaceable,
except thoroughly despotic Government, will be at
an end.

At present nearly four-fifths of the people, havinc,
a peculiar interest in labour, at variance with the
interest of the other fifth, whose interest is in capi-
tal, or properly, as distinct from labour, are excluded
from all share in legislation. They are perfectly
sensible of their rights, and may be roused to violence
to procure them. On matters of Government they
are as well instructed as the privileged fifth, and
unless they be admitted into the constituency, or
justice be done them, they will not submit to the
laws. Already they declare that they owe the law
no allegiance, and if they are to be governed in