The Sun.
London, England, 1830-01-04 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TUE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The " owners and occupiers of land" in the
hundred of Ely, &c. &C., have had a meeting,
and have agreed on a petition to Parliament,
praying for some measures of relief to the suf-
fering of the agricultural interest. We neither
object to a general petiti )n for redress or
grievances, nor (as little) do we object to the
specific means of remedy which are sought for
in- the present petition. y The owners and occu-
piers pray for " economy and retrenchment in
every department of the State," and that such
virtues may be carried " to their utmost practi-
cable limits,"—that is to say, to such limits as
may be found "consistent with the maintenance
of the public safety." As connected with, apd
resulting from, a system of rigid and conscien-
tious economy, and one, indeed, on which it
would be foolish to reckon apart from such a
preliminary, the petitioners call for a " material
reduction of ail taxes pressing directly or indi-
rectly on the necessaries of life." This, of
course, must imply a reduction of all taxes
whatever ; for where is the impost whielm does
not press " directly or indirectly" on the ne-
cessaries of life ? The malt tax is here par-
ticularly, and we admit wisely, referred to,
as one which goes in a most direct manner to
curtail the comforts of the working classes.
A revision of the poor laws is further sug-
gested,—an experiment in which we have long
and often declared our concurrence, but not with
a view to restore them (which would now
in. _England be a hopeless experiment) to their
original condition in time days of Elizabeth, fbr
it is undoubted that iF relief from the poor rates
often acts under its present administration " as
a premium on idleness and dissipation," the in-
variable absence of such relief would, under pre-
sent circumstances, consign, in many cases, to
hunger and destruction, whole families of ho-
nest and industrious unemployed and resource.
less poor. Respecting the charges, for such
they seem to be, brought against the fundholder,
as contrasted with the dealer in landed property,
they arc really quite untenable. The fundholder
has not been treated by all our finance Ministers
since the war, "solely as a claimant on the pub-
lic resources of the country, without regard to
his responsibility for the debt, as a member of
the community ; and the illustration of this
statement is as absurd as the thing itself is un-
founded ; for the petition alleges that funded
property has increased in value in the same ratio
that land has diminished. What is meant by
increasing "in value ?" If by value be meant
the return which is respectively yielded by Nod
and stock, there never was any thing more fu-
tile. The Governmetit cut down, at one stroke,
the interest of the fundholder, from five per cent.
to four,—a loss to him of 20 per cent. out of
his income. What attack of the same nature
was ever made by Government on the land-
lord ? Why, the parallel castigation inflicted
on hint by the State, was a corn law, which
has Forced the fundholder and every body else to
pay nearer 50 per cent. than 20 to the landed in-
terest for bread, and has accordingly enabled the
country gentleman to levy on his tenant a higher
rent, than land, unbolstered up, would fetch
under any natural vicissitude of the markets.
But what folly is it for the merroccupants of
land to make common cause with time owners of
it ; or to attend their meetings and sign their
names to such petitions as the landlords dictate !
The interest of the tenant is the same with the
rest of the community—it is to have land open
and prices low. The landlord passes a gross
cheat upon his tenantry, when he persuades
them that they are benefitted by his enormous
rents. Time " agricultural interest" is properly
the interest of those who till time ground ; and
they who cry out in favour of a corn monopoly,
speak only on behalf of those who wring from
the tenant the highest possible tax on his skill,
and industry, and capital employed in agriculture,
—namely, on behalf of the gentlemen owning
and hiring out their land. We wish the occu-
pants to consider more soberly whose game it is
that they are playing, when they attend the gen-
tlemen-meetings, and sign petitions prescribed to
them by country gentlemen, which either call for
favour to the land, or for an opposite course of
policy towards the monied interest of the king-
dom. The following is the petition on which
we have commented :--
AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS.

At a meetivg of the Owners and Occupiers of
Land in the Hundreds of Ely and South Witchford,
held at the White Hart Inn, in Ely, on Thursday,
the 31st of December, 1829, Jonathan Page, Esq.,
in the chair, the following petition was agreed to,
and ordered to be presented to the House of Com-