The Sun.
London, England, 1839-01-14 00:00:00

any " reciprocity," for our Government will not dare, in
turn, to insult that of France. Government had not spirit
to demand that France should desist from accomplishing
a vast plan of conquest in Africa, along the shores of the
Mediterranean, at the expense of our Ottoman ally, al-
though France bad given a solemn pledge not to make any
permanent settlement on that coast when she captured Algiers.
A little longer tenure of office by such a Government as we
now possess will inevitably place it beyond the power at
least of human wisdom to save the empire from utter ruin.
—Morning Herald.

The greedy manufacturing capitalists, and the journals
in their interest, continue their efforts to work up a cla-
mour against the Corn-laws. It is gratifying, however, to
observe that all the ignorant violence on this subject is con-
fined to knots of selfish individuals and their newspaper or-
gans. The mass of the working people seem, in this in-
stance, to have seen through the fraud intended to be prac-
tised upon them, and the efforts made to agitate them
against protection to the agriculture of their own country
have so far been made in vain. The working people, in-
deed, know well enough from experience that the ordinary
price of bread in Great Britain is no hardship to them.
They have often found that, when bread was at the
cheapest, their condition was the worst, and therefore
they do not, and cannot, believe the impudent lies which
are attempted to be forced upon them by the gross
grasping, and greedy capitalists, and their persevering hire-
lings of the Press. Every workman who can remember
the price of bread for the last seven years must know that
it has been for months upon months during that time at
little more than half its present price, but they may also
remember that at such periods they were very frequently
much worse off than they now are, and so were their mas-
ters, too, notwithstanding the noise which they have now
the effrontery to make about the Corn-laws. Were it not
that in these days the impudent selfishness of manufacturing
traffic knows no bounds, we might almost be surprised at the
hardihood with which complaints against the Corn-laws
are now uttered, for the circumstances of the time—the ac-
tivity and prosperity of the manufacturing districts, not-
withstanding the high price of corn—are a direct and
palpable proof that the complaints of the factious ma-
chine-owners are without any honest foundation. The
working people in the manufacturing districts cherish no
greedy enviousness of the landowners and the farmers.
" Live and let live" is the principle upon which they are
willing to go ; but the machine-owners are insatiable in
their covetousness, and almost cry with envious vexation
that any should prosper but themselves. They desire—
like their appropriate champion, Joseph Hume, who
in gross stupidity, inordinate self-conceit, and intense
selfishness, is their matchless representative—they
desire, like him, that there might not be another
blade of corn grown in England, but that the rich and
smiling face of our beautiful country should be changed
into a black wilderness, studded here and there with hor-
rible smoky aggregation of toil, and dirt, and despotism—
the despotism of capital and machinery over miserable men.
The working people in the manufacturing districts are well
aware that if the English agriculturists should be delivered
up to the ruin arising from competition with untaxed land-
owners, whose ground is tilled by wretched serfs, these
agriculturists would be forced, in turn, to ruin the ma-
nufacturing labourers by competition in a field of labour
which is already full. The machine owners look with no
apprehension, but with gladness rather, upon such a pro-
spect, for it seems to be their maxim, that the worse the
condition of the labourer the better for them, since he is
thereby the more completely in their power. Their object
is, not that the people should be largely prosperous, but
that capital should make a large profit. This object they
pursue with a stupidity as gross as the object i:self is sordid
and'selfish ; for, though they might make larger profits by
grin-ding down a whole population dependent upon them for
existence, yet such a process would take away all the se-
curity which they now enjoy in the possession of their pro-
perty. It is perfectly incredible that security for
capital
could continue to exist in this country, if
the greedy capitalists were allowed to have their
way in the Legislature. We are told, day
after day, that the insecurity of the South of Ireland
is owing to the circumstance of the population being forced
upon one line of life. There are no manufactures to re-
sort to, and ejected tenants murder those who have put
them off the land—the only means they have of living.
Can any rational being doubt that with such a population
as ours the circumstance of having no agriculture would
be even much more perilous than that of having no manu-
factures. If legislators were so mad as to annihilate one,
and by far the greatest branch, of our industry, is it con-
ceivable that we should be safe from the desperation of such
us could not find a remuneration for their labour ? If the
envious machine-owners should have their way, and all the
enormous capital devoted to agriculture—capital so
immensely exceeding all that they can pretend to
possess—should be sacrificed to their folly and cupidity,
how could we expect anything but such a re-action of the
wronged as would sweep away cotton-capital, and cotton-
mill, steam-engine, and spinning-jenny, in one resistless
• tempest of national fury and destruction ? But there is
• no end to the absurdity of the supposition that the agri-
culture of England should be given up, because the manu-
facturers think it would be more for their interest to ex-
change their manufactures for foreign corn. If they rind
something so enchanting in cheap corn, and in exchang;ng
' their goods with foreign farmers instead of British, why
do not they go away, and make their exchanges without
the trouble of marine transit ? They who go away be-
cause they have not in this country sufficient opportunity for
the exercise of their sordidness would be no loss, and even
if they were, it would be but &very temporary loss, for right
sure we are that they would soon be glad enough to come
back again to freedom, security, and the dear corn of
England, with the English market, which is so good, be-
cause the agriculturists are not serfs, but owners of pro-
perty, who, as they sell their corn well, can afford to buy
manufactures for themselves, and to give such wages to
their labourers as enable them also and their families to
buy manufactured goods. The reiterated nonsense and
falsehood of the organs of the manufacturing capitalists
compel us to keep before the public the plain facts which
refute this nonsense and falsehood. We are unwilling that
by the mere force of uncontradicted effrontery any
one should be led to suppose that the anti-Corn-law
agitators have even the smallest particle of reasonablenths
on their aide. They have no such thing. It is only by
audacious assertion of what is utterly at variance with fact,
or by the enunciation of general principles which they
falsely pretend have an application to the existing system
of Corn-laws, that they can maintain even the appearance
of a case in their favour. They think, however, that they
must make the best of their time in getting up popular
agitation, and drawing rash and shallow people into pledges
on the subject, before Parliament meets. They know that
as soon as it does meet their shallow sophistries will receive
a decisive answer, and the agitating manufacturers be
visited with the rebuke which they deserve.—Morn. Foal.