The Sun.
London, England, 1839-01-30 00:00:00

(-7" rif
k),e 1111+

LONDON :
WEDNESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 30, 1839,

We know that our readers are growing tired of
Corn-laws, so are we, just as a man is tired who is
laid up with an ulcer on his leg, sloughing and spread-
ing from ancle to knee, threatening to mount to the
vital parts—sure, unless it be speedily cured, to deprive
him of his limb ; allowing him no sleep at night, and
no peace by day ; harrassing him with pain, and wear-
ing him out, with the prospect of terminating his exist-
ence in unspeakable agony. He has good reason to be
thoroughly tired of his ulcer, and so has the na-
tion to be tired of the Corn-laws ; but as he knows,
so we know, that to get cured we must be constant in
our vigilance, and must, however painful and irksome
the applications, continue incessantly to employ the
means which skill has discovered to prevent the
progress of the disease, and restore the limb to its
original strength. The ulcer of the Corn-laws exists in
a most destructive form ; we had no hand in bringing it
on ; we are rather the surgeons, whose tight bandages,
caustics, and probes, though painful, must be borne
that a cure may be effected. Every one speaks of the
Corn-laws. Meetings are everywhere holding, and
they are all about the Corn-laws. The frost even
makes us think of the increased sufferings of the
poor, and then we naturally advert to the Corn-
laws, which tend to impede the increase of
those in-door occupations which can be carried on
with a profit in all times acid seasons. From every
part of the manufacturing districts—Leicester, Shef-
field, &c. &e.--to-day,-yFe have stirring accounts oh
the zeal and almost unanimity with which the people,
to use the words of Mr. E. ELLIOTT, are resolved
"to have fair play, and not to die-like flies." We will
not here quote any passage of his stirring address, nor
of Mr. IBBOTSON'S, but we refer our readers to those
gentlemen's speeches, which are fully reported in an-
another part of our paper, as decisive proofs that a
spirit has been roused in the North which no half
measures, which no compromise, no fixed duty, will
ever again set to sleep ; and that there will be neither
peace nor hope for the country till every vestige of the
foul and harassing ulcer be wholly and completely
eradicated.
As if to spur on a zeal which seems, if we may
judge from Mr. E. ELLIOTT'S proposition to tax the
land 50 per cent., to have already reached an extreme
point, and to take rather the hue of vengeance than
of justice, the Morning Herald assures us to-day,
Along the Black Sea, it is indisputable, that there exist
millions of acres, uncultivated at the present moment, but
possessed of a degree of fertility so high, that wheat may be
grown upon them, and carried to market, for less than twenty
shillings a quarter. Suppose the English ports open for the
admission of this wheat, it could, beyond all question, be sold
in our markets for less than thirty shillings.
What glorious news for the cutlers of Sheffield, and
the spinners and weavers of Manchester, that if the
Corn-laws were abolished they would have bread
down to 3d. the four pound loaf, and plenty of it ! If
the zeal of the manufacturers needed a stimulus to lash
it almost into madness, the Herald's observations, so
well calculated to snake the mouths of our hungry people
water, will surely apply it. An excellent ally of ours
is the Herald ! We know, indeed, that it will
expect to cool the burning zeal it excites, by
saying that the land of England would go out of
cultivation if the cotton-spinners and cutlers were
well fed by foreign corn ; but we beg leave to remind
the Herald of a little page in the History of England
which it seems unaccountably to have overlooked.
Between the years 1773 and 1791, embracing the
whole American war and all the changes imme
diately consequent on that, the trade in corn was vir

tually free in England. Whenever the home price
reached 48s. wheat might be freely imported at a
nominal duty of 6d., and as the price was in the great
majority of those years above 485., the importation
was all that time actually free. In those eighteen
years the price was the steadiest to be found in
the whole history of our corn trade, the extreme
variation of it having been only 20s. The lowest

price was 365. in 1779, and the highest 565. in 1790.
That was a flourishing time, as is well-known, for our

farmers, and if any proof of it. beyond traditionary re-
collections were now required it would be found in
the fact, that the greater part of 1,532 Inclosure
Acts were passed, and the greater part of 2,804,197

acres of land were brought under the plough during
those eighteen years. In 1791 the free trade was

abolished, and never since has the country known

aught, whatever system of prohibitory or fluctuating
.duties may have been devised, but excessive fluctuations
in price, great public distress, and overwhelming ruin
for the farmer. Our authorities for these statements

are Mr. MACULLOCII'S Dictionary, and Mr. CLAY'S
speech in 1837.

In conclusion, let us observe, that if the Tories
exult over the failure of the middle classes at Bir-
mingham, and the triumph of the Chartists—the new
allies of the Tories, bent apparently on keeping the
people hungry that they may the more cordially hate
our institutions—the Tories will not find any cause to
rejoice in the success of the acknowledged destructives
at Sheffield. They proposed a❑ amendment to the effect
" That the people could not expect to reap the benefit of
the repeal, unless they also obtained Universal Suffrage,"
but they were defeated, at least two to one. It re-
.

joices us to see that on this occasion the Chartists

were in opposition to Colonel THOMPSON and Mr.
ELLIOTT, who, in July, when they met in Palace-yard,
. _

supported the Chartists. They will probably now join us
in regretting that they did not discountenance the agita-
tion in thesummer, for though theyhave by their personal

nfluence succeeded at Sheffield, their friends at Bir-

miugham have failed partly, as it appears to us, by

their fo:mer exertions. We ara as great friends t°
the improvement of the people, and the extension of the
popular rights, as our two friends at Sheffield, or as any
of the Icatkrs of the Chartists, but we prefer practical
im,astnes, which will surely improve the condition of
all classes, to vanlic Consri!utional chmges which
history tells us, however apparently well devised, have
almost always led to confusion, if they have not ended
in despotism. Such a practical measure is the aboli-
tion of the Corn-laws, and heartily glad are we to See
our friends now bending all their exertions to attain
that object, though they have thrown the Chartists
overboard, as we were, from a sense of duty, formerly
compelled to oppose them.

It cannot prove inopportune, at a moment when the
Spanish Government has directed an agent to proceed
to this country for the purpose of raising a New Loan,
to put the mercantile classes upon their g,u'ard against
being made the dupes of a credulity which has al'
ready plunged thousands of families in irretrievable,
ruin. Strong as are our sympathies in favour 01
Spanish liberty, they have never so warped our judg'
went as to blind us to the now notorious fact,
that Spanish patriotism in loan-contracting is seldon
more than a cloak for the carrying on of a fraudulent
system of credit, which an honest Government would
blush to countenance, and which is unequalled in the
annals of European finance. We will even go so far
as to affirm, that to the bad faith of the Cortes to the
public creditor is attributable all the failures that have
hitherto attended the efforts of the Constitutional
party to drive the PRETENDER and his partisans out
of the Peninsula. Had the Constitutionalists
convinced the capitalists of France and England, by
their first legislative proceedings, that they were honest
men, and had resolved to sustain Spanish credit by
the just liquidation of the national debt, they would
have soon been furnished with the means of terminating
the Carlist rebellion. But in Spain one system of dis-
honest jugglery has succeeded another; and truth obliges
us to add, that of guarantees the worst hitherto offered
are the solemn decrees of the Constitutional Cortes.
Upon this important subject, a clever, well-timed
pamphlet has just been published by RIDGWAY, en'
titled " Spain—its Loans and ResourceS considered,:
with reference to the Claims of its Foreign Creditors,''
which we recommend to the perusal of all who feel
disposed to dabble in New Spanish Securities. "It
would be too long and too irksome a task," says the
sensible writer, "to enter into a full historical detail
of all the loan transactions since Spain was blest with
the twaddling Cortes of 1821. The Loans called
Cortes (independent of all the other public recognized
debts of Spain) amounted, in the year 1834, to the
moderate sum of sixteen millions sterling ! It is now
upwards of 17 years since the first Cortes Loan was
negotiated, and how many dividends have the English
bondholders received for their money ? Just three diva.
dends !" In the year 1831 about four millions sterling
of Cortes bonds, bearing nominally five per cent. interest,
were converted into three per cents.; the interest on
which, by a solemn decree was to be punctually paid on
the Ist of April and the Ist of October. As a bait to.
borrow five millions more in London and Paris in 1834,
the Cortes Loans of 1821 and 1823 were recognised at
very reduced prices, but of the interest upon either not
a fraction has yet been paid. The Cortes debt Of
Spain at the present moment exceeds twenty millions
sterling ; nor is there the remotest chance of its ever
being liquidated, if the present system be continued.
To mark the dishonesty of the National Cortes it
is only necessary to point attention to the fact,
that the produce of the Almaden Mines is the
security offered for every new loan contracted, al-
though such produce was mortgaged years ago, foe;
more than the Mines, if sold, would bring in any mar
ket in Europe. What has become of the conventual
and church property in Spain ? If the Government

have not money to pay the interest on the loans
already contracted, let the Minister of Finance
propose the sale of the church lands now con"

fiscated to the Crown, and accept the national
bonds in payment, at their nominal value. Such a
scheme saved the credit of Portugal, because it evinced
a disposition to deal honestly with the public creditor:,;o
But the Spanish financiers propose no such expe-,
ditnt, because their object, in nine cases out of
ten, is to enrich themselves and their creatures at the
expense of the national faith, and the interests of the
credulous inhabitants of Great Britain. We have not
forgotten the TORENO job of 1834, nor the partici-
pation of the REGENT herself in that most disgraceful
transaction. To our countrymen, then, we say in all
earnestness—Leave the support of the constitutional
cause in Spain, as far as regards the sinews of war, to
the Parliament and Government of Great Britain.
Give the Patriots your sympathies, but do not
trust them with your purses. For what aid
our Government grants in either money or
arms, it can compel repayment by the seizure of
securities, but you will obtain no other security for
your money than bits of dirty paper, only the more
valueless for the inky blots on the face of them. There
is gold enough in Spain. Why, then, are not the
loans contracted there ? 'We will tell our readers.
Rather than lend their money to the Government, at
any rate of interest, the Spaniards choose to bury it in
hiding-holes near their dwellings. They are sensible
people, and do not like to lose the principal for an
empty promise of exorbitant interest. Such is Spanish
confidence in the good faith of the Spanish Go vern-
ment

The Tories, it seems, are determined to " sweat"
old BURDETT for the deeds of former days. They
owe him a grudge for the virulent abuse he used to
heap upon them, and they are now making him do
penance for his sins. The drivelling grey-beard is
hawked about from town to town in a white, sheet,
recanting his opinions, and proving to all the world
either that he is bereft of his senses, or that he never
was anything but the hollow-hearted hypocrite that
COBBETT, who knew him well, represented him to be.
The other day he was shown at Ashby-de-la-Zouch ;
since that, he has we see been exhibited at Wolver—
hampton before an Association got up to display the
virtues of " operative" Toryism ! At this latter place
he openly acknowledged his apostacy, and made a lame
attempt to justify it. The idiot ! has he forgotten that
he has always hitherto insisted that he had not changed
his opinion, but that his farmer friends and supporters
had changed theirs ? What a lamentable spectacle
does this old man afford of all that is humiliating ire
human nature !

RIDGWAY has just published a very able pamphlet,
on a subject which engaged the attention of Parlia-
ment last session, and which cannot fail to be brought
before it during that which is approaching—namely,
the Custody of Infants. The law, as it stands in re-
gard to this important matter, is characterised by the
barbarity of a rude age, which drew a broad and de-
grading distinction between the rights of men and those
of women. The legal position of a married woman
is i❑ many respects little better than that of a slave.

Her humiliation commences at the very altar, and every
day of her future life, serves to remind her of the inferiority
which she is there made to acknowledge. Should the man
whom she has sworn to " worship" turn out a brute,
as not unfrequently happens, the law gives him a
power of oppression which is shocking to every feeling
of humanity, to say nothing of religion. He may
squander her fortune in sensual and criminal gratifica-
tions) embitter her 'ife by a thousand nameless art•

,-...'

t

0

the
any
'tot

noyanceF, and at last break her heart by depriving her
of her only remaining consolation, her children, whom
he may rear in vice and infamy ; yet there is no re-
medy—all is done according to law. That such a
state of things can continue in an age of improvement
like the present is utterly inconceivable. It would be
an insult to the feelings of the community to suppose
the possibility of longer acquiescence in a law which
is stamped with cruelty, injustice, and impolicy.
We are sorry that it is not in our power to-day to
enter more particularly into the merits of the interest.
lag pamphlet to which we have alluded, but we shat
take the first opportunity that occurs of examining
in detail.
T'

:he Paris Journals of Monday have all been re-
ceived. Politically speaking they are barren of all
Interesting intelligence. The Cabinet interregnum
Continued, to the great astonishment of the Journals
of all parties. The following are the only extracts of
any moment supplied by the papers of Monday :
The Prince de Joinville, who was expected to arrive at
Brest with the Creole corvette, cannot return to France before
the latter end of February. The Prince will touch at the
Havannalt, where he will remain a fortnight, in order to give
some rest to his crew, which is much fatigued by the campaign,
and in want of fresh provisions. The Consul of France at the
Havannah has invited the Mince to reside in his house during
Ills stay in the island, and his offer has been accepted.
A Strasburg Journal of the 24th says_" General Mungin,
Commander in this department, sets out to-morrow to take
the command of a brigade between Longedy and Thionville.
Three batteries of artillery, taken from the two regiments in
garrison at Strasburg, have received orders to repair to the
frontier of Belgium. Three squadrons of the regiment of
Ghasseurs in garrison at Wissemburg, are likewise ordered to
the frontier."
, The Indicateur of Bordeaux, of the 26th, has the fol-
-10 Wing
" General Van Helen, coming from the head-quarters of
'no army of Arragon, arrived yesterday at Bordeaux, and is
Ging to Belgium and London, on a mission from the Spanish
Government."
In another article, dated Frontiers of Spain, it is stated
Ti :e brother of General Van Halen has arrived in our
Ity. He has a mission to England ; some persons think he
lt going to Belgium."—Le Constitutionnel.
We have announced that the Maine, corvette, had orders to
proceed from Toulon, to effect the salvage of the Hermione,
frigate. The Toulon Papers ray that it being uncertain
this shipwreck really happened, some say that it took
Place at the Bermudas ; others, at the Bahama Islands. The
Beptain of the Maine will go to Havannah, touching at the
rniudas. All uncertainty has now ceased. Letters have
been received from Captain Bazoche himself, and, as it might
be expected, the shipwreck is one of those events which no
rroan foresight could have prevented. Captain Bazoche
ys,That after leaving Havannah, on the 15th Nov., he
Bermudas
contrary winds, but not bad weather. Being near the
.Derrnudas he resolved to approach as near as possible, and
/148 still four leagues from the shore, when the frigate struck
" reefs which extend to that distance, and which are not
marked in any French charts; she had no others on hoard."
nut now what is the vessel, the wreck of which, on the
ctlibs of the Bahamas, is announced in the Royal Nassau
it • eite, The details given by that Journal are so precise, that
bol: impossible to doubt the reality of the fact which it an-
ehanees. No frigate of our navy could be in the Bahama
boarntinel on the 4th December. The Natade, which has on
could Admiral Baudin's despatches, is a corvette; besides, it
her not have left the squadron till the beginning of Decem-
exh' and though its arrival has beendelayed longer than was
torrected, there is no reason to suppose that our navy will have
gret the loss of another vessel.—Le Commerce.
BOURSE—Nats, MONDAT, JAN. 28.
allistr-pasT THREE —The French stocks have been very firm, which
, Perhaps, owing to the approach of the settiirg and the account being
„s°, Perhaps, a bear one, for nothing in the political horizon gives cause
tura rise. For the Account the Three per Cents, opened at 78f. 80c,.
'').o to 79f , and closed at 78f. 90c., a rise of 15c. The Five per
Cents. from 110 f. 45c. rose to 110 f. 65c., and closed at 1 10f. 55c. an
ißprovement of 10c. For money, the Five per Cents, are 5c., and the
Three per Cents. 20c. higher. The Bank shares are sf. better. The
Lafitte Bank I,ooof. shares are 30f., and those of 5,000 f. are 75f. higher.
The Belgian Five per Cents.'have declined 1. The Three per Cents, are
10c. better, but for the Account they are 66f. 20c. The Bank Shares
Closed as on Saturday. The Spanish Active is A lower; from 191 it im-
proved to 191, and closed at 191. Scarcely anything done in Railway
Shares.

First Highest I owest Last
rice. ric
French 5 per Cents.
50 ... 110 35 ... 110 50
4 per Cents
3p r Cents.
Bankof France 2635 —.2645 ...2635 —.2635
Lafitte Bank I,ooof. Sli
5,08 f. Sh.
lieltian S per Cents.
3 per Cents. 6O ... 66 ... 6(1 ... 66
tb,„: Oak 535 ... 535 ... 53) ... 3'5
—"'4ll Active
th, Passive
bltalliese 5 per Cents.
'4,„1,,,1,t,„
,kti ."' •
100% ... Ic(pi ...1c03.2 ... 100%
Bt, n
It ILWAY SH A RES.
Ve innai,
590 ... 590 ... 590
c, -hie,, R.B.
-'4l, ' L.B.
oy
430 ... 430 ... 430 ... 430
AUSTRIAN FUNDS.—VIENNA, JAN. 19
tive per Cents. Thrilll:tailiques
r per Cents.
Three per Cents.
• . tiank Shares
'''''' f-41/Zemeinc Zeitung, Jun. k 4.