The Sun.
London, England, 1839-09-24 00:00:00

agitate for repeal of the Corn-laws, when they
have just urged the Government to put down agi-
tation for the Charter? If the middle classes rely
on the support of the Chartists, they will find
themselves deceived, and that they have pushed
their dread of political discussion much too far.
PusLius affirms that the repeal of the Corn-lays
will not enhance the rate of wages. We
differ from PuBLI us. The Corn-laws pro-
hibit all trade with Norway, and much
trade with other corn-growing countries, which
would be restored or increased by the abolition of
the Corn-laws. Not only, therefore, would prices
fall, as our Correspondent admits, but there would
be a greater demand for labour. The competition
would then be amongst employers who should get
workmen, whereas it is now amongst workmen who
shall get employers ; and that change in the relative
situation of parties, would enable the workmen to
prevent wages from falling in proportion as prices
fell. In fact, there would be more food on the
whole, and a greater proportion would fall to each
man's share.

We admit that a greater quantity of 'manual
labour is employed in producing food, than in pro-
ducing manufactured articles of equal value.
Machinery is much more used in the latter than i❑
the former. Hence it seems to be inferred, that
to import food, which is to he paid for by the pro-
duce of machinery, is to substitute machinery for
labourers, and so to throw labourers out of em-
ployment. But it by no means follows that
for every quarter of wheat imported, one less
would be grown at home. The reverse i 6
the truth. Not a grain less would be grown
at home and we should have the additional quarter
which our own soil cannot produce, brought from
some other country. We should have a greater
quantity of food than at present, by the whole
quantity imported. A larger quantity of foreign
corn, says Sir JAMES GRAHAM, was imported last
year, than ever before, and contemporaneously
with that importation, a larger breadth of land
has been sown with corn, than ever before. The
importation has added to our food without
lessening :by a single blade the production of the
home commodity. Our skilful art:zans, therefore,
have not the slightest reason to fear that the aboli-
tion of the Corn-laws will make the peasantry com-
pete for employment with them, while it will in-
crease their employment and their wages. They
have much more reason to dread the lumper-fed
Irish, who would be kept at home, or driven thither
by the abolition of the Corn-laws, than the English
peasantry.

But if it were to be admitted that the abolition
of the Corn-laws would enable our people to sup-
ply their wants by substituting machinery for
labour, is not that exactly what all the honoured
improvers of the world, from the first inventor of a
spade to JAMES WATT, have been attempting ?
We argue not with those who are enemies to ma-
chinery, but with those who make it and use it, and
they will agree with us that if the Corn-
laws do, according to the supposition, com-
pel our people to obtain their subsistence by
blind, ignorant, hand labour, instead of
that skilful labour which is the offspring of mo-
dern knowledge, they are opposed to the progress
of civilization. From the beginning of time till
now it has been the ambition of man to make
the elements work for him. The Corn-law ad-
vocates say that our skilful people shall not extend
their dominion over the elements ; the wind must
be unused, and steam lie idle, that the community may
be fed by the irksome labour of the plodding pea-
sant, instead of the unwearying labour of machinery.
PUBLIUS, and the class to which he belongs, can
never consent so to brand the skill of their own
hands, and the knowledge of their own minds, as
to support the Corn-laws, because they substitute
human toil for the toil of machines, out of deference
to the prejudices and interests of landlords and
tithelords.

LONDON :
TUESDAY, SEPTE lIBER 24, 1839.

Sir JAMES GRAHAM (see his speech else-
where) tries to frighten and (lisp the Cumberland
farmers. A suddien alteration of the Corn-laws,
he says, would lower the value of the farmers'
capital. Ifeit would, it would lessen his outgoings.
He would Nye less rent to pay, wages would fall,
the price of seed corn, of the keep of his family
and tattle, of his clothing, and every thing he uses
and consumes, would fall in proportion, and his
esepenses would be much diminished. He could
not sell his capital, we grant, for as much as at pre-
sent, but he does not want to sell it ; he wishes
, to keep and use it, and the real question for his
consideration is, would not his capital yield him as
large a per tentage, as much real profit, as at pre-
, sent ? We have no means of calculating this
' problem exactly—it is for practical men ; but our im-
pression is, as the farmer is the greatest employer of
manual labourers, in proportion.to his capital, of any
master, that the reduction of his expenses would
more than eompensate the fall in the price of corn ;
and that he would be a gainer by the abolition of
the Corn-laws.
The farmer mum not, however, consider only
what his capital may be worth at present, but what
it would be worth on an average. He must in-
elude the year 1835, when wheat sold for 355. the
quarter, as well as 1838, when it sold for 88s. The
true criterion for him is the average price of wheat
forthe last ten years, not its present exorbitant
price ; and what it might fall below the average
iby the free importation of corn, is what he must
juke by. We apprehend the average price for
the last ten years has scarcely exceeded 55e., and
during that time the farmers have suffered more
years of distress than of prosperity. Instead of the
abolition of the Corn-laws, then, reducing the value
of the farmers' capital one haft: as Sir JAMES
GRAHAM asserts, one-fifth is the utmost at which
'rational political economists have ever calculated
the reduction. The farmers could not possibly he
;inech injured by the abolition of the Corn-laws,
.whaiever•might be the fate of the landlords.
We agree. with Sir JAMES GRAHAM, that the
abolition of the Corn-laws would ruin those land-
lords whose estates are mortgaged for more than
they are fairly worth in the market. We admit,
too, that the abolition of the Corn-laws would in-
jere the tithe lords ; but as neither landlords nor
retie lords contribute in anywise to the growth of
wheat, to ruin them would by no means ruin the
eerieultare of the country. Does Sir JAMES
GRA II A.M dream—can he for one moment
assert, that the skill of the farmers and
Ithe industry of the labourers would be destroyed
or diminished, if they had neither landlords nor
tithe-lords to share their produce ? He speaks as
a mere landlord seeking to humbug his confiding
hearers, when he asserts that the withdrawal of
ti;e tax on the farmers' food, en the food of his la-
bunters and his cattle, and of the paupers he must
support, which Sir JAMESsupport, falsely calls protection,
• would drive title rand out of cultivation, and reduce
the nation to dependence on foreigners. That is
often refuted twaddle. Poor frightened man—
. let him caini his soul ; the nation never can be so
' dependent for food, the growth of every clime,
Ili ;it. is at this moment for cotton, the growth
I:alrnoirt of a si:.:gie country, with which we
': lave been and may again be at war. Such
'aeen:l.etaafe, however, is at present most
forcibly proved, by the condition of the
~ UnitedSiatec, to he mutual ; for the Ante-
ricans as much require our market for their cotton
I as we require their cotton to keep our manufacturers '
1; at work. Sir JAMES may rest assured that the
time is gone by when the landlords will be able to
: Make riteir fears and their interests the guides of
other men's-judgment.
. There is one part of his address which is espe-
'te-i-alle worthy of notice, Sir JAMES asks " what
i`d"lenxislbe the situation of our immense population
tumitttyefour millions crowded into the space of
I`v6)lfterois islands, and looking for the supply of
' the.4'' daily bread, not only to Europe, but to all
•
P."-t,
of the world?" He adds " history would afford
no ,
parallel to the scene of distress—to the strife of
,-,.,,,
TY P*41Q111; which would re called n i
I • i*o play
'when twenty-four millions of people, confined
witlin our narrow limits, should be reduced to the
extremity of want and actual famine." But what
iSir JAMES supposes, is now actually
Our twenty four millions of people, , the case.
lin,.c.onnned by the
1 Corn-laws within our narrow are actually
i reelneed in many cases to the extremit of.want and
actual famine. This is the case in Wiltshire, where
the agricultural labourers starve on 7s. week ___en The celebrated Auchterarder case seems to ac-
Ireland, where an insufficiency of i
Jumpers •
is the quire additional interest as it proceeds towards the
only food of the people—and, alas, in England, ge- aen t. It is not long since the Reverend
nerally, where the wretched Irish standard of subsist- 9uemen
the presbyteryhumiliating of Lethendy were ine
enceis fast becoming, as the reduction from wheaten position Of culprits at the bar of the Court of Ses-
to barley bread in the most flourishing agricultural ski merited
It where they received a severe but well
distriets of England shows, the standard of an reprimand from the President of that Court for their
English labourer's comfort. There is somxthing in contemptuous defiance of its authority. It is not
the tone of the Right Hon. Baronet's. speech of at all
unlikely
which` we approve, but his defence of • a 'tax on the terarder will e
„oon have to undergo a still more un-
pGor man's bread, that lie may pay the chargespleasant discipline. They are now in that pecu-
with which his predecessors burdened Nether! , liarly disagreeable predicament commonly called a
is a disgrace to any man pretending to a charac- " cleft stick." Their ecclesiastical superiors, to
ter for common honesty, to say nothing of a gen- whom they have sworn obedience
in spiritual things,
tleman so religiously honest as Sir JA ME,: I command them to act in a certain w -h'l the
GRAHAM ay, se tete
GRAHAM !
civil court in Scotland, hacked by the solemn de-
While we are on this subject We must advert to 1. cision of the House of Lords, has declaredlil
that to
the lett* of our Correspondent PUBLIUS. Know- i act so is to set the law of the land
at open defiance.
tng that he has a good deal of information, I Out of this dilemma there seems to be no ready
and perceiving that his observations coincide with ! means of escape. By one horn or the
other the
those of the Charter, we are obliged to conclude Presbytery are in a fair way of being gored.
that the working-classes will not interfere - i The Commission of the General Assembly hay-
cure a repeal of the Corn-laws. The Charter asks ing directed the Presbytery not to proceed to the
,Now the middle classes can expect the Chartists to ' ordination and settlement of Mr. YOUNG, the pre-

The contest for Clerkenwell has terminated in
the election of Mr. FAULKNER. Whichever of
the candidates might have been successful, he
would have done honour to the principle of allowing
the people to choose their own pastors. If the one
candidate, in careful and assiduous attention to
his pastoral duties, in real Christian charity, and a
blameless life, so the other, in a popular eloquence,
and great zeal in the cause of the Church, stands
much above the average of the clergy, Honour,
then, to the popular or voluntary principle, which
the priesthood, in the young days of Christianity,
set aside on false pretexts, the more easily to secure
the supremacy of their order.
But a little closer examination convinces us that
the electoral principle in this case, like other
things for which the priesthood should
provide, is much perverted. Clearly only
those should take part in the election, like the
members of Dissenting congregations, who are in-
terested in the result. In Clerkenwell, however,
all the householders being rate-payers, includ-
ing Dissenters, Catholics, Jews, infidels, and
the congregations of half a dozen Chapels,
have votes ; and the electors are susceptible of
being influenced by a variety of motives at variance
with those which ought to guide their deci-
sions. Hence canvassing, cheering, mobs, placards,
squibs, carriages rattling about bearing the names
of the candidates, and all the bustle, noise, and not
of a political contest. In spite, however, of these
disadvantages, in spite of the fact that the whole
body of the householders in this extensive parish
concur in the election, instead of its being con-
fined to the congregation of the pastor, the result
does honour to the voluntary principle.
If those who watch over the public concerns
in Church and St!ite had ever thought of doing their
duty they would not have allowed the anomaly we
have just noticed to grow up, and certainly would
not aliovv it to continue. When the parish was
thinly peopled and all the parishioners belonged to
the Church, as in the Catholic times, to allow all
the householders to concur in the election of the
clergyman was excellent, but now when only a small
port►on of the parishioners frequent the particular
Church at which the elected clergyman perforim
any duty, it is shorn of most of its beauties. Sul-
lied, however, as it has become, it is still better than
a nomination by a worldly-minded Bishop or a
libertine Nobleman.

We are not disappointed, nor indeed sorry to
find, that the LORD MAYOR is harassed by com-
plaints from publicans about the non-observance of
the 42d clause of the New Police Act, as inter-
preted by his Lordship and some other Magis-
trates. While one obeys the injunction of 'his
Lordship, ten, somehow or other, evade it,
and will continue to evade it, notwithstand-
ing his determination that the law shall be
respected. All his five hundred City policemen
would not suffice to make this law respected. And
why ? Because absurd and arbitrary regulations
like this, raise up a spirit of opposition which no
police force can overcome. Before a law can be
he respected, it must be made reasonable and just,
and there must, besides, be a perfect unanimity
among those who are to carry it into effect. This
is not the case, notwithstanding the assertion of
his Lordship. Mr. BURRELL, on Friday,
decided at Queen-square, that the publican
was not obliged to clear the house at twelve, s• that,
as the case at present stands, one man is fined
in the East for what another may do in the West
with impunity. Before the law is respected, the
LORD MAYOR will concur i❑ Mr. BURRELL'S
opinion, and leave the publican as before, to an-
swer for the good conduct of his customers, without
expelling them by force._