The Sun.
London, England, 1839-02-05 00:00:00

of "embarrassed circumstances." One kind only, or perhaps
two, of landowners could escape from these consequences ;
those who, like fellows of some ecclesiastical corporations,
were debarred from marriage by their statutes ; and those who
by some means or other should possess the power of making
an eldest son, and quartering the rest of their children on the
public.
Here then, if no competent difference is shown between the
cases, appears to be the solution of the problem which has so
much engaged attention—the accounting for the continual
complaints of want among the lower and bankruptcy among
the higher classes of labourers. Both are equally breeding
against a stone wall. The number of possible traders is as
much limited under the existing state of things as the numher
of possible day-labourers ; and by their several and pc, u:iar
Processes, the bankrupt list and the poor-house, each must 1.,
kept within the bounds which law, not nature, has chosen to
assign.
It is amusing to observe the blindness of men to these con-
sequences, except where the results ate thrust at first hand
into their faces. The man at Manchester or Nottingham, who
has goods he wishes to see transported in their proper persons
to a foreign port, arrives in the course of time, and after years
of indistinct complaining without any very distinct conception
of the cause, at something like a resolution to join with his
fellows in seeking for a remedy; but the man who only meets
the evil in what may be called its secondary symptoms is still
far from being in general either a reasoning or a complaining
animal. No barrister, for instance, discovers that on the
wealth and numbers of the community the quantity of law-
suits must depend ; and consequently a rule to limit the food
of man is in fact a rule to limit the sustenance which shall be
divisible among the learned in the law. No divine lights on
the same conclusion with respect to the cure of souls, nor
physician in regard to the bodies in which he is concerned :
the crafts, the mysteries, arc almost equally in the dark, or
are only beginning to rouse themselves to a consciousness of
the bearing the question has upon themselves. It might al-
most be set down as established, that the easiness of fraud
is as the number of the deceived ; and that the way to nul-
lify the tendency of mankind to self-defence is to multiply
the attacked.
If it is urged, as might possibly be done in the instance
set out with, that all liberty would expend itself in temporary
advantages, and consequently be productive only of fugitive
good; the answer is by asking, what human comfort or hap-
piness is made of but a succession of fugitive goods. The
dinner of to-day has not the smallest tendency to remove the
recurring necessity on each day of the coming week ; nor will
the warm bed of last night have the smallest remedial effect
on him whose fate it may be for the next month to couch on
flints. What we mean by happiness is a succession of good
things; and to have the liberty of securing these, unchecked
by the mere desire of dishonest appropriation on the part of
others, is what the inhabitants of a free country ought not
easily to forego.
On these questions and their numerous ramifications, the
public is opening its eyes; and it cannot fail to be gratifying to
the philosopher and man of science, to see so many points of
coincidence bete eon the progress of the old mechanics and
the new. As the one has rid us of perpetual motions and sail-
ing chariots in the air, so the other will free us, in the end,
from pestilential quackeries of vastly greater danger and
importance.

DUCHY OF CORN WALL.

TO THE TENANTS OF THE DUCHY OF CORNWALL holding
their lands under the Duchy by virtue of a certain tenure) called the
modern tenure of the Duchy) as established by Act of Parliament of
the 21 James, c. 29.
Sirs,—These tenures are by means of renewable leases, ard copies of
Court Roll for 31 years or under, for one, two, or three lives, or for
some term of years determinable on one, two, or three, lives, at a cer-
tain ancient rent, renewable es often as the tenant shall desire his lease
or copy to be renewed, under some or one of those three species of
tenure, you and your ancestors have held and enjoyed your estates ever
since its establishment in 1623. It was established because otherwise
the lands would still have remained in their barren state. Many of the
old Acts establishing this.tenure have been abolished from the present
edition of the Statutes, and for these last 60 years and more this tenure
seems to have been buried in oblivion, and almost forgotten by you and
nearly by every one else, and of which the Duchy Officers havebeen taking
advantage, and have been exacting extravagant fines for renewal of those
leases, when by the law of the tenure they are not entitled to any fine
on renewal whatever, and which tenure they, the Officers of the Duchy,of
late years have been endeavouring to undermine and to destroy the
better to enable them to seize upon your estates, and deprive you of your
just and vested rights and interests under! it, and which are the legal
right of renewal on the terms and conditions of the Acts, namely, at a
certain fixed ancient rent only, without any fine. They have lately
been charging 72,0001. to put in one life on an estate at Kennington in
Surrey, close by London, held under the same tenure, calculating the
fine on the rack-rent value of the property, though it brings the tenant
under the tenure in no more than 1,2001. per annum ground rents, after
an outlay of 7,0001., and because this enormous fine could not be raised,
have seized on the estate and granted the same out to others to the ruin
of many hundreds of persons and families interested under this tenure,
and make no scruple in telling the tenants that the estate is theirs, and
that they have a right to charge what fine they please, and that there is
no tenant right of renewal whatever, thinking this tenure so buried in
oblivion could never be brought to light. Now I think it highly neces-
sary that you should know all this, that you may take the alarm in time
and petition Parliament to have your tenure restablished on its original
foundation, or depend upon it you will all be served the same. You
should petition Parliament to revise the Acts of the Duchy Officers,
passed since the 16th George 111, up to which time the tenure has been
kept inviolate, because the Acts of 33d George 111, George IV, and
William IV., arc acts fradulently procured by the Officers of the Duchy,
in violation of all former Acts, and in violation of all your rights and
interests under the tenure, and to enable them to act and do just as they
please with you. This law establishing this tenure, by means of renew-
able leases, gives you a perpetual estate in your leases upon condition
they arc made according to the directions of the Acts, that is for 31
years, or three lives, at the ancient rent only, and if they are so made,
then )011 have m perpetual estate in your lease, namely, the legal right of
renewal of the same at the same ancient rent. And that the lenses
shall be so made this law declares, that if they are otherwise made, they
shall be null and void, therefore they are bound to dispense this tenure
to you in the manner prescribed by the Acts, and the Acts all declare
your estate and interest to be a good ,sure, fixed, and indefeasible estate.
They all recognize the tenure to be by leases, and also recognise the
tenants' exercise of their right of renewal under it, and admit the pro-
perty to be the property of the tenants held under the Duchy by virtue
of this tenure, therefore there can be no mistake about your tenant right.
It will be necessary, and 1 feel it my duty, to explain to you how tines
on renewal commenced. When they commenced and for what pur-
pose they were first paid. They commenced then on the restoration of
Charles 11., to an impoverished revenue, when the officers of the State
found it absolutely accessary to exact and to raise money by unlawful
means, to support that restored monarch on the throne, At this period
among other exactions, tines on renewal began, and had their origin in
exaction, such fines being wholly inconsistent with the spirit of the law,
which established the tenure in your favour egainst the Duchy, and
which was to give all the interest which possibly could be given to the
tenant (the fee only excepted), for the purpose of encouraging him to
Luild and to improve those waste lands for your own and the public
good, and those tines ought to have ceased from being taken when the
cause for their exaction ceased, and when the officers of the State no
longer required them; but instead of their being allowed to cease, the
Officers of the Duchy laid hold on them, and have continued the exac-
tion ever since, having no legal right whatever to any fine on renewal, as
will be seen by the law, establishing your tenure, which is, as I have before
said, at a certain timed rent only. I have given myself the trouble to
collect together all those Acts relating to this tenure, and have
studied them, and am fully convinced that what I say is true, and
that the time is fully arrived that the tenants ought to petition I'ar.
liamcnt (who are the parents and creators of the tenure, and who
established it for your benefit, and with a 'view to public good,
and who are bound to uphold and protect the tenure so established by
them, and who are in honor bound to protect your vested rights and in-
terests under it) and pray Parliament to revise the tenure so established,
continued, and confirmed from the 21st James I. up to the 10th George
111., and cony= those Acts with the Acts which the Officers of the
Duchy have surreptitiously, I might say fraudulently, procured to be
passed since, with a view to undermine and to destroy your vested rights
and interests, and with a view to abolish the tenure so established by
Parliament for your benefit, and to call on the Officers to show by what
authority they demand those fines.
To the tenants who hold under any of the ancient tenures of the
Duchy which existed before the establishment of this modern tenure by
21 James 1., I have this notice to give them, and which I feel it my duty to
do, that the Duchy Officers have get a clause i❑ the last Act passed by
William IV., enabling them to assess all the lands held under the ancient
tenures, by which I understand they will have a right to levy any fine
on them they please, and thus ♦iolate their rights also; this applies to
all the tenants under tho ancient Duchy, more particularly to the pro-
prietor of another large estate belonging to the same proprietors as the
Ke.iningten estate, and which adjoins thereto, and I give then'
this notice as an additional reason why they ought to petition Parliament.
♦nd new I believe I have discharged my conscience; and if the tenants
choose to give their estates away without taking the proper means of
securing them from the grasp of the Duchy Officers when they have the
law in their own hands, it will be their own faults, and they will have no
one to blame but themselves.
The tenants need not be alarmed at the decision of Lord Brougham;
for, according to that decision, the person who sells the raw material to
the manufacturer, and for which he is paid a valuable consideration,
would have a right to claim the goods as his own after they are manu.
factured. In my opinion, no two transactions can be more alike, for
here is the Duchy, by sufferarce of Parliament, contracting for the sale
of waste lands (which are as the raw material), and for which the
Duchy receive a valuable consideration of the tenant who purchases
the same, in order to manufacture this raw material (waste lands) up
into farm houses, farm buildings, and good cultivated farms, and
where the land is so situated into streets and houses; which being
done whose property is it, or ought it to be by law, but the persons who
so manufactured it ? His Lordship will see there is a great deal more
analogy between these two cases than there is betwixt this tenure, as
established by law, and a power of leasing under marriage settlements
or private Acts ; and I am sure he must he, on reflection, convinced cf
his error.

It seems to me that what the Officers of the Duchy (whose duty It is
to dispense this tenure to the tenants in the mariner prescribed to them
by the Acts) have done as respects the Kennington estate, is not only a
violation of all former Acts, and of the tenants' rights and interests
under the tenure, but is a fraud upon Parliameet in procuring Acts in
violation of the tenure established by them foe the benefit of the tenants
against the Duchy, and I had almost said a violation of one of the most
fundamental principles of the Constitution, the right of the subj.,ct to
the free enjoyment of his property; for if property which is absolutely
given to, and vested in, a person by an Act of Parliament, for the ex-
press purpose of encouraging him to outlay his capital in building and
improving for the benefit of himself and family and the public good, and
who has in consequence built upon and improved the property to the
amount of half a million of money, I say, if such property as this cannot
be protected, and if Lord Brougham's decision, without the real ques-
tion as to this tenure being first argued, is to be considered as a sanction
to the illegal proceedings of the Duchy Officers, then I say that every
lord of a manor might, with equal right, seize on all the estates of his
copyhold tenants, and in like manner grant them out to others, and on
the same principle, the Crown might resume the estates of the nobility
and landowners of this kingdom and grant them out to others.
X. Y., A FRIEND TO THE TENANTS.
January 31, 18.39.

The importance of Hearing and Sight to man is
indeed great; for, through the medium of the Ear and Eye we are con.
s.:ious of harmony and beauty—sources of some of the most refined
and pure enjoyments of which we arc susceptible—and when we recol-
lect that there are thousands of individuals in this country afflicted with
deafness, and weak and imperfect eyesight, of whom many have never
sought any relief, some from sheer negligence, and others from the
belief that nothing can be done tor theta, we are happy to inform our
readers, that the Messrs. S. and B. Solonions, Opticians and Aurists to
the loyal Family, of 39, Albemarle-street, Piccadilly, have made, after
30 years' practice and experience, a simple and most important disco-
very, by which those maladies are at once obviated.