The Sun.
London, England, 1839-08-23 00:00:00

'1 HE MARKETS,-(THIS DAY.)

1 CORN EXCHANGE.
There is a moderate return of English Wheat this week, and
a large arrival of Foreign Wheat and Oats. The continuance
of tine weather has made the Wheat trade very dull, and to
effect prices, reductions in price have been submitted to of 2s.
per quarter for old, and 3s. to 4s. for new English Wheat, but
the Foreign factors are not disposed to give way in an equal
proportion. In other Grain there is no variation from Mon-
day. The Flour Trade is very heavy.
ARRIVALS.
Wheat. Barley. Oats. Flour.
English I 4,110 qrs. 20 qrs. 300 qrs. 4,`.:so:acks
Irish - - - -
Foreign
23 910 - brls.
SMITHFIELD MARKET.
Of beasts there is but a moderate supply, yet the trade is
dull with a decline of full 4d per stone for the choicest descrip-
tions. Mutton and Lamb have also undergone a decline of
about 2d. on last Friday's quotation ; little doing in Veal and
Pork, with no alteration to notice. Price per ,tone of 81b.,
sinking the offal :-Beef, 3s. 4d. to 4s. 4d ; Mutton, 4s. to
4s. 10d. ; Lamb, ss. 4d. to 6s. ; Pork 45. 4d. to 3s. 4d. ;
Veal, 4s. 4d. to ss. 2d. Head of Cattle at market :-Beasts,
597 ; Sheep and Lambs, 8,640 ; Pigs, 535 ; Calves, 35,
CITY FISH MARKET.
Supplies continue very steady, but the demand is languid ;
prices
continue much the same from day to day. Turbot, ss.
to 10s. 159. and I8s; Salmon, Is. to Is. 3d. per lb. Oysters,
15s. to 40s. per bushel, and some very superior Natives were
as high as 32s ; Soles 9d. to 3s. 6d. per pair ; Lobsters 9d. to
:3s. each; Cod ls. 6d. to ss. Ss. and 72. ; Fresh Herrings, Bs.
per 100 ; Whitings, 3d. to 6d. each : Haddocks 6d. to Is. each.
SPIRIT MARKET.
There is but little passing in any kind of Spirits-prices
steady. Proof Leeward Rum 3s. 3d. and 35.; 3i.d ; Good
Jamaica, 4s. 2d ; Good Cognac Brandy is selling at 4s. and
4f, 641. ; Geneva continues at Is. 10d. ; British Corn Spirits
are 10s. 3d. for the distiller's price.
HOP MARKET.
picking is closing ; the accounts
The duty is 200,000/. The
are goal; prices in the Market are but nominal. New Hops
are expected next week.
COLONIAL MARKET.
There was a fair business done in Colonial produce, and
prices
continue firm. B. P. Sugar sells slowly at 58s. for low
brown, 68s. to 6.3 s for middling, and 68s. for fine. 6,300
tboags2o,l.lanil
according were
. put up,
andpart sold at from 18s.
sold in part at . to
quality; B,OOO bags Mauritius
300 bags St.to 535. ;
Domingo,)res varying from 48s. Coffee,
sold at 425. to 435. ; Cocoa, 40
bags Trinidad sold at 475. to 50s. for fair grey. Rice, 500‘ bags, sold at 113 to 19 . _3. For common Bengal Pepper, 462
bags went at 4d. per lb. The
the week there has been a tolerable
imports were light, and during
erable amount of business done,
prices very rarely showing any • •
TALLOW variation from those of last week.
P. y. C. continues quiet at 525. AsynRKET.
Use
spot and 48s. to arrive. I
S
M I

AND BIRMINIANI EXTEN.•
_ANCHESTER
iION RAILWAY BILL—The CommittGe
labours on Tuesday, having sat sixty-ounicng have ea_
character, neterminated its
positions it i 3 pretty well known, and ind a". The „.
parent from the length to which the proceee7l must be apr_
tended, has been of the most bitter and
character, every species of device having been rePrZiling
if possible, the Committee
in every'e
however, has been frustrated ; and the Committeeeshie'
presented a Report favourable to the undertaking
respect, and containing a strong recommendation to the
Hcu;e to afford every facility to the measure in the next
Session, on account of its public importance, and in con_
k ideration of the opposition which it has encountered in
this Session. The Report will be published in a few
days.
CHARGE OF MURDER.-TWO excavators, em-
Elo?.ed on the Cheltenham and Great Western Union
ilikt'il LY, were apprehended on Monday last, on suspicion
of ten; concerned in the murder of Mary Antill. We
have been informed that these men were drinking together
when they inadvertently let slip some words in the pre-
sence of a third person, which implied
a guilty know-
ledge that the being deceased
met with her death by be
into the pond.— Cheltenha c
pushed
m Chronicle.

LONDON:
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1839.

The Peers, at first meeting, forwarded several mea-
sures ; and the account of their proceedings is as
shortly reported as they could be described.
Lord BROUGHAM wished to present a petition from
Colonel BRADLEY, who was tired, we thought, of peti-
tioning Parliament ; but on the Duke of WELLING-
TON suggesting a doubt whether the petition could
be received or not, and on Lord MELBOURNE concurring
in that doubt, the Noble Lord withdrew the petition.
The Noble Lord presented a petition from Mr. VIN-
CENT, Mr. EDWARDS, and Mr. DICKENSON, confined
at Monmouth, complaining of the manner in which they
were treated, and of the wretched diet they received ; the
Noble Lord said that neither Sir F. BURDETT nor Major
CARTWRIGHT, who were incarcerated for a seditious
libel, would have been so treated. They would have
been removed from such a gaol, and the Government
that permitted this kind of different treatment to rich
and poor ought not to be tolerated. Lord MELBOURNE,
we regret to say, held out no hopes that Mr. VINCENT
is not to be tortured as well as confined, because such
are the regulations of the goal in which he is confined.
The Bolton Police Bill went through a Committee
without opposition, and the Report on the Manchester
Police Bill was agreed to.
Lord LYNDHURST gave notice that be should this
day move for papers relative to the business of the Ses-
sion, when the Noble Lord will, no doubt, make as
furious an attack on the Ministers as he did last year.
It would have been prudent in us, had we seen the
Noble Lord's announcement, to have withheld the few
remarks till to-morrow which we have made on the
subject. The Peers rose at Seven o'Clock.
In the Commons several petitions were presented against
the Birmingham and Manchester Extension Railway Bill,
and as the SPEAKER thought the Bill could not be dis-
cussed till Tuesday week, when the House will most
probably be prorogued, it will not become a law this
Session, after all the money and time that have been
wasted on it.

Mr. WAKLEY presented a petition from a Mr. NI-
CHOLAS SOMERS THONIAS, proving a case of great op-
pression under the laws, though the Judges continually
affirm that such things never take place.
Lord PALMERSTON laid on the table a Convention
concluded with France, relative to the disputed
fisheries, and he is to move for leave to bring in a Bill
to carry it into effect. We hope it will be satisfactory.
The Noble Lord also stated that there was nothing
likely to happen to disturb the general peace of the
East, as the Five Powers were agreed on that point.
On the motion of Mr. AGLrONBY a resolution was
agreed to appointing an officer to carry into effect the
recommendations of the Committee on Private Bills.
In a Committee on the Exchequer Bills Funding
Bill the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER gave an ac-
count of the progress of that operation, which, owing
to a sun-shining day appears to be almost complete.
The Right Hon. Gentleman has been more fortunate
than his opponents expected.
The House was counted out about Seven o'Clock,
on the motion to read the Duke of Marlborough's
Estate Bill a third time.
Two or three notices were given in the course of the
evening, which can be as well read in our Report as were
we to reprint them here.

Parliament will be prorogued on Wednesday,
and before that time new writs will be issued for
Cambridge and Portsmouth, Mr. RICE removing
to the Upper House, and Mr. BARING becoming
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Parties are gratified ;
Statesmen attain honors and rewards ; Mr. RICE
is to hide his defeat on the Irish Bank Bill in a
coronet, but the, people get nothing from the
Legislature. What has it done for the public
benefit during the six months that it has been as-
ambled ? Filled the Newspapers with worthless
debates, and wasted no inconsiderable quantity of
the public money in printing Bills that have never
become laws, and reports and papers that have
never been read. It has given employ..
ment to printers, and fees to attornies and clerks,
by the contests for Railway Bills, which it ought to
have settled as public questions. It has frightened
the inhabitants of Jamaica, not satisfied the Cana•
dians, and not given the inhabitants of this part of
tehoenestmabpuirleartyh.e least reason to be pleased. They
asked it for cheap bread, it has given them a county
They would would have rejoiced at a de-
crease of taxes,
given them an increase of the
army. It evidently regards itself as a body bound
to coerce and restrain.t_ their wishes, and whatever
they have desirPd
countemned oropposed. ha s oon
ithistnhoQuourlet principleßsi:igi
e e
xc eitherexcep-
tion -
tion of the Uniform Penny Postage, the execution
of which is to be the h
CHANCELLOR of the Excol of the new
nothing it has done whichlE has theve klie'aoswt
tendency to reconcile the people to its authority
--... .

and rule over them by affection and reason. The
thousand gentlemen of whom the two Houses con-
sist, seem to suppose they have received a mission
to devise the best means of annoying the com-
munity. Hence they have sharpened prison dis-
cipline and extended the police. Hence they have
' kept up Corn-laws and timber duties. Hence they
have refused the means of—health and instruction
and multiplied magistrates and extended their
jurisdiction. On that supposition their conduct
has been perfectly consistent ; but they will not
surely expect to be long honoured as an instrument
of torture. To preserve their power in that cha-
racter, the people must adopt the odious supersti-
stition of the Fakeers, and consent to cripple and
mutilate themselves.

To form a correct estimate of the conduct of the
Government towards the Chartists we must not
only compare it with the conduct of Governments
in past times, but we must take into consideration
the progress of political improvement. It is not to
be expected, when everything around us is in pro-
gress, when railroads are everywhere made, and
steam-ships cross the Atlantic, that Government
is always to be conducted on the principles of the
dark ages. As the halter was wrested from the
hands of the executioner, the whole conduct of the
Executive, in all its branches, was necessarily
ameliorated, and it was as impossible for the
Government of 1839 to act on the prin-
ciples of 1800, as to revert to the prac-
tices of the fourteenth century. It is the
fashion, however, of most writers, wholly to over-
look the spirit of progressive improvement, to com-
pare the conduct of the Ministers to the conduct of
the Tories at some former time, and jump at once
to the conclusion that they have behaved discreetly,
wisely, and humanely. We should rejoice if we
could adopt the same conclusion ; we are favourably
disposed towards them, but that would, in our esti-
mation, be to admit the principle, that the conduct
of one set of Ministers is justified, because it is
less foolish or less cruel than that of their pre-
decessors.

We admit the authority of custom, and admit,
:herefore, that by the actions of the Tories the
Whigs may be justified. From them, however,
much better was expected ; and if it be a defence,
it is no compliment to say, that they have not acted
quite as badly as the Tories-. Compared with the
readiness of Lord CASTLEREAGH to pass the Six
Acts, or of Sir R. PEEL, when Secretary for Ire-
land, to introduce an Insurrection Act, we cheer-
fully allow that the Ministers have acted well to-
wards the Chartists. But twenty years have
elapsed since Lord CASTLEREAGH passed the Six
Acts, and nine of those twenty the Whigs have been
in office. During that period the punishment of death
for a great number of offences has been abolished,
and slavery has been put an end to. We have had a
reform in Parliament, great expectations have been
excited, and the desire to take part in the manage-
ment of public affairs has been amazingly extendd.
Politics are now the business, as it were, of classes
which in 1820 never troubled themselves with any
thing beyond their daily labour and their daily food.
A totally new set of circumstances therefore have
come into existence, and we must test the conduct
of the Ministers by them, not by what the brutal
Tories did in former times. On this ground we
proceed, and on this ground we are not able,
though we say it with regret, to form such a favour-
able opinion of their conduct as many of our
Contemporaries.
Because a greater number of the people have be-
come politicians, because they are more enlightened
than the bulk of the people in 1820, and because
the whole force of prescription has been overthrown
by successive reforms, and reason alone appealed to,
it became necessary to treat them with more
caution, and rather to act on the principles of
justice than of law. Let it be remarked, too,
that the Whigs, for which we are still, and always
shall be, grateful to them, led and encouraged
the people to attack and overthrow many bad laws ;
and they could not expect, when they had sapped and
destroyed the principle of reverence for bad law, that
all other men would stop just where it suited their
purposes, and find no laws bad which they approved
of. It was idle to imagine that when they found it
convenient to enforce the law, that the whole
community must at once regard' all that remained
of it with unmixed reverence. The minds of the
working classes did not stop where the Whigs
stopped, and they have as little reverence for the
ten-pound Parliament created by the Whigs, and
for the Judge-made law about public meetings, as
the Whigs had for Gatton and Old Sarum, and the
solemn enactment of the Test Act. If the Minis-
ters are not denuded of the power of reflection, they
are bound to consider all these circumstances ;
and bound to remember that the Tory system
of terror on which they are acting is wholly
incompatible with the knowledge and feelings of
the present generation.
To come to the particular offences of which Mr.
STEPHENS, Mr. M‘Do LTALL, and the rest of the
persons have been convicted, they are, either attend-
ing illegal meetings, conspiring to bring the law
into contempt, or having arms for an illegal
purpose. We have stated in this Journal
that, according to the definition which Mr.
Baron GURNEY gave of conspiracy, all the Jour-
nals of the empire are guilty of conspiring to bring
the law into contempt. Is it fit, therefore ;is it
likely to enhance the people's respect for the law;
will it add to their contentment, to prosecute and
punish the leaders of the Chartists, for doing that
which is openly and daily done, antJ done with ap-
probation, by the Newspapers ? Then again, what
is an illegal meeting? Did not the ATTORNEY-
GENERAL and the Judge strain or make a
law for the occasion ? And have not such meet-
ings as those Messrs. M'DOUALL and STEPHENS
attended been frequent in the land, and were they
not encouraged when it suited the purpose of those
who in 1832 were seeking Reform ? Every body
knows that a Judge, in the humour for it, will make
anything an illegal meeting, and that a Jury
alarmed at any violent reports touching themselves
are prone to find any person guilty. In the case
of Mr. M.DouALL we are assured that his de

. fence. made a most profound impression on the
• Court and the audience--that ladies sobbed aloud,
and even the Bench was melted ; but we are also
assured that his conviction was resolved on before
the defence was heard, and that it might as well
have been addressed to men with dye-stuffs for
blood, and cotton printing-blocks for hearts, as to
those who decided his fate.
Having arms is the next offence. Why, have
not all the gentry in the kingdom pistols and Man-
tons ? Why punish the poor for having alms ?
The purpose, it is answered, is illegal. Who
knows the purpose ? And if it be illegal, is
it a less noble purpose to arm to get
rid of a tyranny, if they so regard the
dominion under which they live, than arm to kill
grouse and partridges ? The fact is, that the
Whig Ministers know that the laws they appealed
to are bad laws ; they could not avoid knowing
that they are invoked by one embittered section of
the people against another ; and knowing these
things, and knowing as they must, or ought to
know, the change in the disposition, knowledge,
and circumstances of the people, though they did
better than the Tories., they did most injudiciously,
most unwisely, and most tyrannically, let us add,
when they employed the ATTORNEY-GENERAL
to press these Judge-made and bad laws, laws that
mean anything, against misled, and perhaps legally
offending, but not malevolent or wicked men.
What they have effected by it is—not to put down
the Chartists, for they have been strengthened by
these prosecutions, and were falling out of favour—
but to exasperate the bulk of the people, to make
them look on the law as a mere instrument of

tyranny, and resolve firmly to overthrow it when-
ever they have power and opportunity.

The inhabitants of Birmingham are in the
habit it appears of meeting at Holloway Head
on a Sunday, to hear the newspapers read, and
to prevent their meeting the London police wer
ordered to take possession of the ground, which le
to the assault mentioned in our paper yesterday. It
has for some time been apparent to us that Sunday
is a dangerous day, for we see scores and even hun-
dreds of artizans then betaking themselves out
of the city in small squads, and communing one
with another as they go. If justice were done the
people, and they were contented, no harm would pro-
bably come of their being unoccupied for twenty-
four hours. But being unjustly treated, it seems
to us a matter of prudence on the part of the autho-
rities, to allow them to have as little idle time as
possible.
In
proportion as any system is incom-
plete and imperfect, and the principles on
which it is based are not fully carried out, so is it

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