The Sun.
London, England, 1839-02-07 00:00:00

LETTER of LORD JOHN RUSSELL

TO HIS CONSTITUENTS.

The Brighton Gazette, «ith an amusing air of self-satis-
fied importance, puts forward to-day, in a very prominent
manner, the following letter, which, it is stated, was
addressed by Lord John Russell, when Member for Hunt-
ingdon in 1822, to his then constituents :
g, Woburn Abbey, January 14.

" It being impossible by means of a Corn Biit to re-
stere the war prices, I beg of you seriously to consider
whether a new Corn Bill is to do you at present
any good whatever. Supposing you were allowed to frame
it yourselves, or that tLe Legislature should enact a pro-
hibition at all times to import any article the produce of
the rc.ii of Great Britain, would your distress be at all
relieved ? I think not. I think also, if you agree thus
far, you must also agree with me that any efforts in this
directiori are not likely to be attended with benefit to
yourselves. For the truth of this, I appeal to the best of
all tests—the experience of last year. By active peti-
tioning, you obtained a Committee on the State of Agri-
culture. And what was the result? Evidence proving
the distress beyond all doubt, and a report suggesting eo
relief but time and patience. Time has not yet brought
you any consolation; and as for patience; you surely did
not require twenty-one g. ts.lemen to sit three months for
the purpose of recommending that well-known virtue.
But the Committee have also advised an alteration of
the Corn Bill. That is to say, they recommend a lewd:
iinpar.atien price with a duty. Whether such a law, as a
permanent system, might not be better than the present, I
am not quite prepared to decide. But it is clear that
lowering tilt importation price would bring you no relief
for present distress. And I am inclined to believe that,
with many sugared words, the framer of the Report in-
tended to lay the foundation for subverting the principle
of the Corn Bill altogether and introducing foreign corn
dl times into the market ; for the principle of admitting
cign corn, when our own prices are low, being .once
grentvd, it would be extremely difficult to counterbalance
the taxes paid by the English farmer. A duty of 40s. or
50s. a quartee upon foreign corn could hardly be enacted ;
and if enacted, certainly would not be persisted in. But
I am inclined to think, that if foreign corn were admitted,
even if you had scarcely any taxes to pay, it would not be
easy for the farmers of England, who require to live in a
certain degree of respectability and comfort, to compete
wilt the Lords of Poland and Russia, whose vassal pea-
eantryeare unacquainted with the wants of a civilised state.
Cern is a manufacture (to use our new phraseology)
cle aply produced in a fertile soil, by wretched ploughs,
wretel.ed horses, and wretched men.
" There is a party amongst us, however, distinguished
in what is called the science of political economy, who wish to
substitute the corn of Poland and Russia for our own. Their
principle is, that you ought always to buy where you can.
buy cheapest. They repeat with emphasis that the nation
pays a tax of 25,000,0001. yearly to the growers of corn.,
They count as nothing the value to the country of a hardy
race of farmers and labourers. They care not fur the dif
ference between an agricultural and manufacturing popula-
tion, in all that concerns morals, order, national strength,
and national tranquillity. Wealth is the only object of their
speculation ; nor do they much consider the two or Aimee
millions of people who may be reduced to utter beggary
in the course of their operations. This they call diverting
capital into another channel. Their reasonings lie so much
in abstract terms, their speculations deal so much by the
gross, that they have the same insensibility about the suffer.
ings of a people, that a General has respecting the loss of
men wearied by his operations.
" It is to these men, I suspect, that our Mini:ssess are
about to give up the question of trade in coree,q.
Our Conservative Contemporary does nOt attempt to dis-
guise the satisfaction felt in die:veering this treasure of
a letter, and presently proceeds to build on its superstruc-
ture speculations superlatively gratifying to Tory tastes.
Ile even chuckles in the fanciful notion that the hopes of
the Conservetives will soon be consummated in the down-
fall of the doomed Administration of my Lord Melbourne.

" Tdose members of the Cabinet %lb() have setts in the
House of Commons will sneak out of the question by
supporting Mr. Villiers' motion for a total repeal, with an
un:lerstanding that their county Members ehould vote
against it, and immediately afterwards dissolve the Par-
liament, to save their places a few weeks longer. But
even this expedient will not avail : their " shabby" reign
will end in a dissolution of Parliament and then some forty
scats will be gained by the Tories. A moderate fixed
duty would entail ruin on Ireland. And O'Connell will
now support the motion for a repeal of the Corn-laws,
only because he knows it will not b 3 carried."
Now there can be no doubt at all that these crumbs of
comfort thrown before the Conservatives, who hunger after

the sweets of office, are acceptable enough. Ai:id when
hopes so sanguine arc entertained, anticipations so exces-
sively bright indulged in, it were cruel indeed to destroy
the cobweb, lay bare the delusion or not to let them, at
least for a day, revel in those extatic visions of place and
profit, in which the loaves and fishes abound and multiply.
The Tories, no doubt, desire vehemently enough to regain
the paradise of Downing-street, but we apprehend the day
is distant indeed when the nation forgetting Tory-tyranny
and the sins which in their official lifetimes they committed,
will permit them to re-enter the paradise from which they
were drawn by the Spirit of the Age.