The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-17 00:00:00

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LONDON :
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1839.

Believing that the abolition of the Corn-laws
should form the great and single object of the
People's present exertions, we return to that subject.
Our opponents, being now at a loss for argument,
have recourse to ridicule. " These people," said
the post yesterday, " have no notion of country,
save as connected with cotton. Their soul is in
•twist.'• The spinning jenny is the point upon
Which all their ideas turn. Their capacity is
bounded by
calico. Cotton is in all their thoughts."
Such wit is
.
pointless It is worthy of the wisdom
of the same writer
who proposed a few days ago,
as a remedy for the
danger to which the currency
is exposed when corn is brought from abroad, that
the Government should suspend cash payments, and
expose the country to the misfortune of an num-
deemable paper currency. This gigantic genius,
who can so easily remedy one evil by a greater,
would no doubt also advise the Government to take
the. regulation of all the trade of the country into its
oWn.hands, which must be the next proper step
after suspending cash payments, and so disor-
ganizing all trade. But, leaving such pointless
wit and crude suggestions as scarcely fit even to
turn aside the Tories from the painful view of the
miseries that are impending over them, we wish to
place before our readers a picture of what the con-
dition of the country would probably now have
been but for the Corn-laws.

What its condition is we unhappily know too
Well. The masses are discontented, and the ruling
classes are despised. Th- clergy are obliged to
struggle to keep any hold of the people, and they
are fast losing the little hold they still possess. Ac •
cording to the statement of the landlords and the
Clergy, vice and crime are rapidly increasing. There
is an immense deal of poverty, great daring, and no
security, New and stringent laws, and a new and
strange police force, unknown to our forefathers, are
required to preserve order and ensure protection,
but they are not sufficient to keep the peace. Se-
damn and treason, according to the law, are vomited
forth in every village, and there are no means of
repressing thern The manufacturers are now suf-
fering; a short time back the agriculturists were
ready to rise in arms from distress ; but every class
is alternately the prey of distress. Most disastrous

s the contL ton of the c ?tomuntiv wider the Corn

iaws.
What wou hpv,

'he Corn-inwN?

It is ascertained that population. when food is
abundant, will double itself every 25 years. Our
country has now been nearly 25 years completely
free from foreign war. During that time, but for
the Corn•law, the whole world would have been
ope❑ to supply our peol►le w►th food—they could
have purchased it by their manufactures at a le s
expense of toil than it is gained by those who have
to clear a new country, and might have multiplied,
but with tenfold more advantages, as fast as the in-
habitants of the United States. Germany, Poland,
Austria, Denmark, America offered us their
food, and the Corn-laws wilfully shut it out.
Through all these years, closely connected as we
have been with the United States, England might
have enjoyed all the advantages of a new and un-
cultivated country with all the blessings of civili-
zation.

In 1815 the population of Great Britain and Ireland
was probably somewhere between 16 and 17 mil-
lions. It might now have been doubled. Hunger,
poverty, and distress are the immediately exciting
causes of ferocious passions. How can the hungry
savage know compassion ? But the well nurtured,
daily fed, opulent, middle classes of England are a
compassionate people. While the population,
therefore, would have increased rapidly by the free
admission of corn, they would have been well fed.
In fact, accustomed to a tolerably high standard of
comfort, they would not have increased unless they
had been well fed, and thus while our people increased
in numbers they would also have increased in kind-
liness and humanity. The poor would have ac-
quired the virtues which belong to competence ; the
ferocious passions would have been rapidly abated,
while there would have been much less poverty ; and,
if crime had not by this time been wholly unknown,
it would have most certainly been much diminished.
Mr. WAKEFIELD'S accredited theory of colo-
nization ascribes a multitude of virtues to the
colonists being circumscribed and kept together.
As our people increased, the bounds of the island
would have kept them together ; none of them would
have strayed, like many of the Americans, into the
wilderness, and become tainted with all the vices
of saVage life. While we increased in numbers
from importing food, we should have kept up
and increased our civilization. In fact tl,e
great physical change which has accompanied the
moral phenomena of civilization has been an in-
crease in the numbers of the people. The arts and
sciences have always flourished most in increasing
and crowded communities. The increase of the
people is the source of an ever-growing necessity,
and necessity is the mother of invention. There
can be no doubt, therefore, rapid as the people
have improved in knowledge, arts, and science since
the peace, in conjunction with a very great increase
of population—a more rapid increase perhaps, both
in population and knowledge, than at any ante-
cedent period of our history—that, with a free im-
portation of corn, improvement would have been
still more rapid, for population would have increased
with greater velocity.
It is scarcely necessary to add, though that is
the consideration which will most weigh with
the landlords, that, as the population increased in
the manner supposed, the demand for home-grown
food would have extended, cultivation would have
improved rapidly—fields wou:d have been converted
into gardens, gardens into towns, and rent would
have increased to double its present amount. Then
the revenues of the Church would not have been
felt as a burden—rent would not have been the
produce of a tax—and the priesthood as well as
the gentry, not being felt, as at present, mere instru-
ments of plunder, vexation, and torture, might
have continued to enjoy the respect and homage of
the people. But for the Corn-laws there would
have been wealth where there is now poverty, con-
tentment where there is now discontent, peace
where there is now strife, obedience where there is
now rebellion, and happiness where there is now
misery.

For some wise and inscrutable purpose, the sel-
fish landlords have been allowed to turn aside all
these blessings, to convert the country into an un-
safe habitation, and to make the people desperate
What that purpose may be it is hard to guess.
Why men must reach ultimate security and peace
through travail and pain puzzles the understand-
ing, but the effect on the mind of the communit3
of the unwise and selfish legislation we are ad•
verting to, is to degrade and ruin in public estima-
tion the selfish classes who, in seeking their own
endS, have inflicted so much misery on the country.
Whether it be intended to prepare the way for tin
destruction of the Aristocracy we know not, but wt.
.see plainly that their legislation has brought on
them national contempt.

We are sure that the Globe cannot be consi_
tiered as expressing the sentiments of the Ministers.
for there is in its articles, on the subject of ill(
Chartists, a degree of heartlessness and flippancy
which, on any subject, would ill become the Ministers ;
and on such an unhappy affair as that, is ineffabl:.
disgusting. Although we do not agree with the
Standard in wishing to have the trials of the
Chartists removed to the Court of Queen's Bench,
for ►ie believe they would create even more dis-
turbance in London than in Monmouth, we heartily
coincide with that Journal in expressing a hope that
mercy may be extended to Mr. FROST and his
misguided followers, should they be found guilty,
But that sentiment provokes the mockery of the
Globe, and those who are advocates for mercy are
set down as allies of the Chartists.

We fully agree with the Chronicle, that the
authors of the Corn-laws are chargeable with the
untimely death, by slow starvation, of many thou-
sands of their countrymen, while the authors of
those laws had nothing in view beyond the poor
selfish gratification of putting a little pelf into their
own pockets. Agreeing with our Contemporary on
this point, and knowing that the lives of all states-
men teem with similar errors, we look, we confess,
more with pity than with anger, on the smaller
errors and lesser crimes of such men as Mr. FROST
and his followers. He but sought to do that which
is daily practised by the Anglican priesthood, and
daily taught by the Tories ; namely, to secure an
ascendancy for his own political opinions by con-
straint and violence. If the Ministers in the exe-
cution of their duty to her MAJESTY and to the rest
of her subjects, have been already compelled, we
should hope, reluctantly compelled, sternly to make
up their minds to let the law—which the Chartists
ntmaking, complain,
g, be it
and to w hni
ooitled, that
otfhe h
essy
neither
n
no share
in
attachment
nor allegiance if the Ministers are, from a sense
of duty, sternly
its ~veight
on:threeshoelavdesd
ofto the misguided Chartists let the law fall with all
of N
Newport wnport, sufferingsitill o
beefotmheesse unhappy men, or to
them to mock the sor-
rowsspeak of their conditio
in any terms but those of
deep commiseration.

It is no honour to the Government that such out-
rages should have been attempted—nothing to. its
credit that the population can be so easily excited
to acts of violence. If it look on all these events,
as it ought, with becoming sorrow and even humili-
ation, it is most scandalous in those who pretend to
speak its sentiments to scoff at the unhappy men
whose existence and conduct are nothing less than
a reproach to it.

The Chartists are numerous in the country, and
are keenly alive to insults as well as injuries. Nei.
ther the cause of the Ministers nor the cause of the
QUEEN can be served by using language towards
them which can only embitter their feelings without

iheir I,umbers or their strength. It is
therefor• , and insulting to mock at
their error-s aid their misfortui,es; and if we thought
that the language and sentiments of the Globe wete
known and approved of by the Ministers, we should
think them unworthy of support. We know,
however, that it is foreign to their nature, and alien
to their policy, to ridicule and insult either men or
opinions, against which they are obliged, as a mat-
ter of duty, to direct the force of the law, and we
notice the effusions of the Globe to deny that they
arc authorised by the Ministers. For them to en-
courage such remarks, would be to forfeit the re-
spect of the reflecting and humane. A sort of
scoffing similar to that now adopted by the Globe,
formerly made the Tories intensely hated by the
working men of England.

A writer in Blackwood's Magazine for the pre-
sent month, challenges the Whig Radical writers
to contradict certain facts which he states relative
to the condition of the Navy and the country. On
one point we will accept his challenge. His object
is to show that the Ministers have neglected the
interest of the country. The Sun has on so many
occasions pressed on the Ministry the necessity of
reinforcing the Navy, that we shall not be suspected
of any desire to defend them against the strictures
of the writer i❑ Blackwood; but we respect truth,
we love fair play, and think it is our business to
point out when other writers speak ill of them
falsely. The writer in Blackwood institutes a com-
parison between the amount of the Navy in 1792,
and at the present time, and the relative numbers
are as follow :—Ships of the Line in commission
in 1792, 26, in 1838, 21 ; frigates in commission,
respectively 52, and 9; ships of the line in ordinary
and building, 124, 70 ; frigates ordinary and build-
ing, 63, 84 ; total line 153, 90 ; total frigates 115,
99 ; grand total of all vessels 411, 363. The writer
adds a comparison between the population, exports,
imports, and tonnage of the two periods, and draws
this conclusion :

" Thus it appears that since 1792 the population of the
British islands has more than doubled, the imports more
than tripled, the exports more than quadrupled, and the
commercial navy increased about 70 per cent., while
the ships of war, in all branches, have sunk to nearly
a half (f their standard in 1792. This, too, has
taken place during a time when the colonial empire of
Great Britain has been multiplied above five-fold, and
the chances of hostility with which we are brought in
contract at different points over the globe, have been
increased in a similar proportion. We invite the Whig-
Radical writers to examine and contradict these facts if
they can, and submit them to the deliberate considera-
tion of all the sober reasoners, and of all the intemperate
admirers of democratic wisdom throughout the realm."

The author appears to have taken his account
of the Navy in 1838, from " Barrow's Life of Lord
Anson ;" we have not that work at hand, but it
was referred to by Lord COLCHESTER in the de-
bate on the state of the Navy in the House of
Lords, on the 22d of February last, and Lord
COLCHESTER then gave precisely the same account
of the number of ships in commission as the writer in
t heMagazine, but the Noble Lord ingenuously added
five steam-ships. Why did Blackwood omit this item?
Steam-ships are at present the most effective of all
vessels, and five steam-ships, with a suitable arma-
ment, may be set down as equivalent to ten frigates.
This important class of vessels has since been
nearly doubled, and is of itself equivalent to what
was a very large force in 1792. Such an omission
does no credit to the correctness of the Blackwood
critic, to say nothing of any bad motives by which it
might be dictated.
In 1792 the country had been nine years at
peace, and in the interval had prepared a great na-
val armament, on account of the dispute relative to
Nootka Sound. There had not been sufficient
time, even if such had then been the policy of the
country, to get rid of every vessel, whether useful
or not, which had ever borne the name of a man of
war. Not one, but some score of vessels were at
that time kept on the Navy list that were as useless
foramen of war as the river barges. Now, after twenty
four years continued peace, when every useless. vessel
has been broken up or sold, there is not a. single
vessel on the list which is not sea-worthy, and- fit
to perform all the duty of a man of war. *lf.the,
writer in Blackwood were not aware of this great
difference between the ships at the two periods, his
ignorance is inexcusable ; if he were, his bad faith:.
is still more to be condemned. At any rate, the
,erms of his comparison give a very imperfect de-
.•cription of the state of the Navy at the two periods..
Moreover, in 1792, the " Ships of the Line"
included some score or two " of Heroes, Leanders,
Lions, Gladiators, and Centurions," that were far
less than the frigates of our day. In like manner,
at that time the " Frigates" included a multitude of
Ariadnes, Storks, Cymbelines, &c., carrying twenty
small guns, which might be conveniently hoisted on
ward and stowed on the booms of the vessels that
are now called frigates. As the writer in Blackwood
seems to know no more of the Navy than he may
have learned from the novels of Capt. MARRYAT,
we make no reproaches to him for his ignorant pre-
sumption, but other persons are aware that ships
of the same denomination in 1838 are twice as
large as they were in 1792. Their scantling and
their armaments have been at least doubled since
that time ; and consequently, putting out of view
the inefficiency of about one-third of the ships that
were then in tree Navy List, the number of ships
in 1838 ought at least to have been doubled to
make the comparison a fair one. Such trifles, how-
ever, arc conveniently neglected by the Tories, who
generally have it at heart to make the worse appear
the better reason.

If the writer in Blackwood had had an atom of
penetration or a grain of honesty, he would have
of his comparison from the
seen all the fallacy
number of men employed at the two periods. In
1792, said Lord COLCHESTER, on February 22d,
(see " Hansard's Debates," Vol. 45, page 770)
the whole naval force of the country only amounted
to 16,000 men, whereas last year our whole
naval force was 35,000 men, from which it
appears, confirming what we have said as to the
efficiency and size of the ships at the two periods,
that in 1838 the Navy, instead of being " sunk to
nearly half of its standard, in 1792," is more than
doubled. Without disputing the facts as stated by
Blackwood, the Whig-Radical writers of The Sun
tell him he does not know the value of the facts he
quotes, and that his comparison, though nominally
correct as far as it goes, is, by its incompleteness,
sadly dishonest.
But if this fallacious comparison should redound
to the discredit of the Whigs, what will the writer
say to his friends the Tories, who had not more
than 20,000 seamen up to 1830, and not more
than fifteen sail of the line in commission ? If the
Whigs are to be blamed for the smallness of the
Navy at present, in comparison to its amount in
1792, the Tories, up to 1830, were doubly descry-
in.; of censure. We however do not blame them,
f the Navy was sufficient for the wants of the
country. The Whigs have now a naval force in a
perfect state of order and discipline almost twice as
large as the Tories then had. At the same time
our relations with foreign countries are peaceful.
There is, however, one great difference in the
situation of the country now and prior to 1830.
Then the Tories were in power, and had no par-
ticular motives for sowing dissension between dif-
ferent States, and the democratic and Whig op-
position deprecated war in all its phases, recom-
mending to the utmost of their means the improve-
ment of commercial relations between different
nations as the surest bond of peace. Since 1830,
the Tories being in opposition, have wickedly
sought to sow dissensions between nations as a means
of obtaining power. Their absurd rhodomantades
against France have no other object. Since they lost
the power of coercing the people into submission

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