The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-11 00:00:00

E VENING EDITION.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JO URN ALS

PROli T*r -PkrEittl OP THIS DAT.

(From the Morning Chronicle.)
We observe that our Liberal provincial COnternpo-
'tries are very generally exerting themselves in the
cause of the people against the corn monopolists. Meet-
ings are already announced in various places, and we are
prepared to expect that in a week or two the whole
country will be in motion, indeed, we do not recollect
a period when the prospects of the rople were so had
as they are now. No hope is entertained that during
the present winter our manufacturing population can
experience any relief from improvement in trade. The
Leeds Mercury, a journal peculiarly well informed on
such subjects, observes :
" We should delude our readers if we encouraged them
to believe that the trade of the country this winter would
not be universally bad. It will be so. Every department
will suffer. The great Cotton dirstrict is at this moment
in severe distress : the great Woollen district is not much
better; the cutlery of Sheffield, the lace and stocking ma-
ottfacturers of Nottingham, the hosiers of Leicester and
Derby, the hardware manufacturers of Birmingham and
Wolverhampton, the potters of Staffordshire, the cotton
spinners and weavers of Glasgow and. Paisley, the linen
weavers of Dundee, and the great trading communities of
London, Liverpool, Bristol, Hull, and Newcastle, are all
labouring under a degree of stagnation which will destroy
the profits of capital, and leave scores of thousands of work-
men without work, and bread."

As the great public dinner, alluded to in the Chronicle
of Saturday last, is to be given at Manchester on the
9th January next, every town and village in the country
ought, during the intervening period, to meet, in order
that public opinion may be expressed in a manner cal-
culated to be effective. It is expected that Leeds will
set the example, and that not only will there be a meet-
ing of the borough, but of every ward and township
separately. Our Corn-laws, at all times mischievous,
bas this year been particularly injurious. Much of
the distress of our manufacturers is owing to the
absence of the usual demand from the United States ;
but were not the Corn-laws in the way, the produce
of America would already have revived that impor-
tant branch of our trade. "We have this year," said
Mr. Daniel Webster, in the letter read by the Duke
of Rutland to the Leicestershire agricultural meeting,
" a most abundant wheat crop ; and, if England should
have occasion to import corn or flour, both countries
would be benefited by her taking her supply from us.
We should be paying so much of our debt, and she
would be receiving her supply, without the necessity of
sending abroad specie. And it is undoubtedly true,
that the short crop in England last year, leading to so
heavy an export of gold and silver to the Continent, most
seriously affected commerce and business in the United
States as well as in England." Here are the hands re-
maining idle for the want of a market for their goods,
and there is the corn ready to pay for the goods, and re-
vive industry ; but the Corn-law is in the way, and the
people are condemned by it to the horrors of starva-
tion. For now the people have a practical demonstra-
tion of the fallacy of the argument, that a high price of
food causes high wages. The monopolists are now
revelling in abundance. The deficiency of a fifth or
sixth in the harvest, through the monopoly, has doubled
prices, but the demand for manufactures in the home
market, so far from increasing, so as to keep pace with
the diminution in the foreign demand, is less than in
ordinary years, for this plain reason. that the bulk of the
population paying so much for bread, have but little left
to purchase anything else. The landowner and
farmer do not wear more coats, or shoes, or stockings ;
but they expend more in foreign luxuries. At this time
when the operatives require additional wages to be able
to live, the employer, finding his goods unsaleable,
cannot pay the usual wages, and turns off his hands.
Now is the time for the people to bestir them-
selves. Public opinion must he loudly expressed.
Many landowners, we know, are sensible of the mischief
caused by the Corn-law ; but still, as a body, the land-
owners are obstinate, and nothing but the expression of
an injured people, indignant under the injustice of which
they are the victims, will obtain an alteration of the law.
They must make a 'great and combined effort, if they
hope to be able to shake off the weight which is now
pressing them to the earth. We cannot better conclude
these remarks than with the following quotation from the
Leeds Mercury :—" If the manufacturers and mer-
chants should hold back at such a time as this, they will
deserve to have the Corn-laws bound immoveably on
their backs for ever. If the operative population should
not think fit to petition for this great relief, they will
deserve to be pinched and pined for years. And so they
undoubtedly will be. Now is the time for a long pull,
a strong pull, and a pull altogether. The Government
is favourable to a decided change in the Corn-laws ; but
they can do nothing without the people. The nation
must work out its own deliverance."

(From the Morning Advertiser.)