The Sun.
London, England, 1839-10-24 00:00:00

We do not differ from our Correspondent, Mr.
`VERB, in preferring a National Bank note to
the bank notes of individuals, but we dislike
the Bank of England, because it is not a Na-
tional Bank. The Directors of that Corpora-
tion are ail merchants or bankers. We ob-
jected to its interference -with the paper of
other banks, because that was converting the mo-
nopoly, with which it has been endowed for national
purposes, into an instrument for damaging rival
bodies. We hare before said, that were it a per-
fectly private body we should never trouble our-
selves about its mode of managing its business.

A Correspondent who writes to us on " Custom-
House Vexations," asks us to point out some means
by which the present inconvenient, degrading, and
useless Custom-house regulations might be ob-
viated, and to this we auswer--Let the examination
take place immediately on the arrival of the vessel
at the Custom-house. The number of foreign ves-
sels—nay, even the number of passengers that ar-
rive weekly, are known to a certainty, and the
delay takes place solely in consequence of the mal-
atlu.;....;...T.ecian of tha Custom-laause authorities,
We believe the establishment is fully competent to
dispatch the business as quickly as luggage is
transferred from one railway train to another, and
all that is wanting is an impulse from the Board of
Trade. The Commissioners of Customs will not
budge an inch unless the Government urge them on
—the Government can control them, and we
therefore attribute the whole evil to the sluggish-
ness of Mr. POULETT THOMSON while Presi-
dent of the Board of Trade. His successor is a
man of more energy, and the vast numbers that
travel for pleasure, information, and busi-
ness, therefore, look to him for the abatement
of a nuisance which is a disgrace to a country re-
nowned for the rapidity and well arranged system of
its commercial transactions. Are we not justified
in calling it a disgrace that a man engaged in im-
portant commercial transactions should be detained
at the London Custom-house five hours for his
papers--during which time, according to the new
mode of travelling, he could go from London to
Birmingham ?

In a Morning Contemporary another instance is
given of the reckless negligence and indolence of
the Custom-house authorities. It is so gross that,
if we did not know these gentlemen well, we should
doubt the fact. A merchant received an invoice of
a parcel from New York by the Great Western,
containing articles intended for early delivery. He
had sent repeatedly to the Custom-house, and at
last ascertained that it could not be cleared till this
evening. The sufferer may well ask, What use it
is for these steam-vessels to tear away across the
Atlantic in twelve or thirteen days, if parcels after-
wards are detained in the Custom•house for half
that time ?

We have inserted elsewhere an article from the
Cambridge Advertiser on the subject of Popular
Education as conducted in that town, to which we
invite the attention of our readers. We deemed it
necessary to animadvert last week on the neglect of
the moral and religious interests of the poor, mani-
fested by the %lembers of the University of Cam-
bridge, who, while sufficiently anxious to secure to
themselves and their institution all possible advan-
tages from education, left the poorer classes of the
community around them, and in their own locality,
to grope their way through the world in the dark-
ness of ignorance, a prey to the vices and miseries
which naturally accompany such a state.

As a proof of this awful neglect, we stated the
lamentable fact so emphatically dwelt upon by the
Learned Recorder of the Borough, that of the twelve
unfortunate persons waiting their trial in the gaol,
only one individual could read and write well, while
the others could perform even these elemental ope-
rations either imperfectly or not at all.

It now appears, as we then surmised, that this
disgraceful state of things is owing to the illiberality,
as well as to the indifference of the so-called
National Church. 'We now learn that the school
which has been established in connexion with
the " National Society" is so nationally con-
ducted, that every one not a member of the Church
of England is driven from it.
But this is not all. Not only do the managers
of this school limit its advantages to members of

g
their own communion, but every thin that the
most venomous political and religious bigotry can
devise has been done to prevent the poor from de-
riving the blessings of education from any other
quarter. A local print, the tool and mouth-
piece of the Cambridge Tories, and consequently
the fit instrument for giving effect to their rancorous
hostility to every thing that has for its object to
enlighten the minds, and improve the condition of
the working classes, has used its most malignant
exertions to prejudice the people of Cambridge I
against the establishment of another school, which I

Manchester. The same facts are true of America.
But 'this natural tendency, the result of the law of
nature we have adverted tr,,, 'IS thwarted and
impeded by Corn-latch here and tariffs there, which
mock the noble exertions of the producers. 'nth'
own efforts to feed and clothe mankind cheaply--
their perpetual exertions to supply commodities at
the least possible cost—end in min to themselves ;
so that they dread, as at present, every fall in the
price of what they have to sell.
The presumed exception we have mentiened to
I the general law 'seems to us to supply a
solution of
what now appears almost an enigma. The manu-
facturer or the agriculturist can only be prevented
from injuring himself by his laudable endeavours to
clothe and feed men cheaply by finding a continually
extending demand for his produce. Such a demand
can only be the consequence of a continual increase
of population. The only source, according to the
Economists, of a tendency of prices to rise, is the
increase of people, and that increase is 'stopped--
cut off by the barbarous law which, in one
country, cuts short the- supply of food, and
stops its indefinite increase, and in another
diverts industry from producing cheap food
to producing dear clothing and cutlery. The laws
which prevent the increase of food in England and
on the continent of Europe are the causes by which
the fall of price, which the producer labours to effect,
becomes ruinous to himself.
The intention of those who make these barbarous
laws is to counteract, so far as the cost of producing
cloth and cutlery on the Continent, and corn in
England, is concerned, the laws of nature to which
we have adverted. They wish to keep up the cost
of producing corn here, and cotton and cutlery there,
and prevent that fall in prices which the ingenuity
and skill of the great bulk of the human race are
continually endeavouring to effect. Their policy
is as short-sighted as it is wicked. They cannot
stop the exertions of ingenuity and skill ; in fact
they endeavour to promote them; they offer bounties
on agricultural and manufacturing improvement,
and at the same time they prevent the growth of
the population, which alone can prevent those ex-
ertions being ruinous. As that growth counte-
racts the tendency of prices to fall, their laws, in
fact, defeat their own object. The more we exa-
mine the commercial regulations of nations, the
more we are convinced of the profound truth of
Dr. FRANKLIN'S remark, that " an assembly of
great men making such regulations is the greatest
fool on earth." Perhaps, indeed, an exception
should be made of the nations who suffer such a
great fool so to sport with their best interests ; who
see that great fool, as in these instances, plainly en-
deavouring to counteract a great law of nature, and
then stupidly wonder why they are not prosperous
and contented.