The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-18 00:00:00

the Court of Directors meant by giving its thanks to the
Governor-General of India, who ought to be a states-
man, and certainly is not a warrior—not for the states-
manlike views, in pursuance of which the Cabul expedi-
tion was adopted, but for " the sagacity and promptitude
with which he planned that expedition," and " the zeal
and vigour which he displayed in preparing the troops to
take the field." This vote of thanks is as much like a
vote of censure as any vote of thanks that we recollect
ever to have read. The thanks of the Court of Direc-
tors to Sir John Keane was not, as we learn by the
minutes, carried unanimously. It may be expected that
in the more numerous Court of Proprietors there will
be still less of unanimity. That the commander of an
army who is suspected of having permitted or sanc-
tioned the massacre in cold blood, of prisoners taken in
war, should not have received an unanimous vote of
thanks from the Board of Directors is honourable to
that body. It will be seen to-day whether their consti-
tuents think that they have not shown gratitude enough
for the services of Sir John Keane.
(From the Times.)

It was recently announced that the bad health of Mr.
Greg, who succeeded Governor Poulett in the repre-
sentation of Manchester, would very probably oblige
the Hon. invalid to resign his newly acquired seat ; and,
perceiving from the " Court Circular" that Mr. Labou•
chere has suddenly left town for the cotton metropolis,
we naturally infer, that as the latter personage has been
promoted to the Governor's place as President of the
Board of Trade, there is an anxiety in certain quarters
that he should step into his predecessor's slippers, if
possible, as Member for that great manufacturing bo-
rough. Assuming this to be the fact, we beg to
offer a few remarks upon it. In ordinary circum-
stances one would be inclined to imagine that a
gentleman holding an arduous and important
public office would be as little disposed to covet
the Parliamentary labours devolving upon the re-
presentative of a large commercial town as the con-
stituency must be to intrust them to such an over-
burdened functionary. Even in Edinburgh, which is
in no sense a manufacturing city, the electors, after
having had a fair trial of Government officers as their
Members, are so dissatisfied with the sacrifice of their
independence, involved in such a connection, that one
of their leading Liberals, though for the most part
approving the politics of Sir John Campbell and Mr.
Macaulay, has actually published a letter recommending
that those gentlemen, in consequence of their inefficiency
and Ministerial subserviency, should be dismissed at the
next general election. The truth is, as common sense
may suggest, that, apart from any selfish views which the
cotton aristocracy may have to Mr. Labouchere's official
influence in favour of their staple traffic, at the expense
of other interests, no hard-worked public servant desti-
tute of the elephantine powers of a Canning, can pro-
perly discharge his duties to the nation, and at the same
time acquit himself with propriety as the representative
of a large commercial population. The obligations
pertaining to the two engagements are, to a great extent,
incompatible : either the one, or the other, or both,
must of necessity be neglected. But really it appears
to us that the circumstance of an immense manufactur-
ing town like Manchester being represented by the
President of the Board of Trade is, in some measure, a
public indecency, and fitted to awaken the just jea-
lousies of the other portions of the empire. The com-
merce of Britain, which, in all its relations, has a just
claim upon Mr. Labouchere's office for impartial encou-
ragement and protection, is one of the most complex
things imaginable. Cotton clothing, as well as spun
materials for the weaving of such clothing, may, by end-
less little acts of official partiality, acquire such superior
facilities for production and sale, especially in foreign
markets, as would eventually injure, to a considera-
able degree, the competing fabrics of linen, silk, and
wool. On the part of a Ministerial functionary re-
presenting a constituency exclusively engaged in a
particular branch of manufacture there is a manifest
temptation to further the peculiar interests of his own
electors, which in many cases can be done only by
sacrificing or disparaging those of others. Now, Mr.
Labouchere, if returned for Manchester, will either
show an undue partiality for its staple commodity, or
he will not. If he do exhibit that partiality, such
places as Macclesfield, Leeds, &c., must be propor-
tionably injured by his unfairness ; and if he refrain
from it, not only are his official pretensions to the
representation of the former borough completely de-
stroyed, but sundry reasons might be adduced to
show that, what with his present onerous duties,
and his necessary obsequiousness to the Whig Go-
vernment, the attainment of his contemplated object
would be a serious sacrifice of the independence
and general interests of his new constituents.
Again, on the supposition that Lord Melbourne's
tottering and tenacious Ministry shall, contrary to
universal expectation, attempt to prolong its exist-
ence through another Session of Parliament, we should
certainly augur that Mr. Labouchere's return for Man-
chester is meant to be the purchase-price of some addi-
tional tamperings with the factory question ; and that
the mill-grinding Moloch, already gorged with thousands
of infant victims, is to be still further propitiated by a
new holocaust on the part of the unprincipled Whigs.
The shameful manner in which Governor Poulett made
himself the tool of a certain section of his cotton
constituency, by postponing, overlaying, or frustrating
every humane effort for protecting the factory chil f
dren from their avaricious oppressors, is fresh in

the recollection of our readers. That Mr. La-
bouchere can succeed to Poulett's seat on any
milder terms, is what we may reasonably doubt :
but it is ,some consolation to know that al-
though Lord Ashley and his friends must again
buckle on their armour in the ensuing session, the
utter weakness of the Ministry, as well as the satisfac-
tory progress of public feeling in regard to factory
cruelties, will enable them to fight the battles of the
defenceless with greater advantage than on any former
occasion. Then with respect to the Corn-laws, on the
impolicy of which this journal has all along maintained
a decided opinion, we should like vastly to know what
possible benefit the Manchester repealers can expect
to derive from a Parliamentary connexion with any
subordinate member of the existing Government. At
a meeting of their Anti Corn-law Association the week
before last, there were facts brought forward, even by
creditable members of the Liberal party, which show
in the clearest manner the mismanagement of the
Whigs in matters of trade generally, so far from descry-
ving to be requited by the election of Mr. Labouchere
for Manchester, has literally brought the manufacturing
commerce of the country to the very verge of ruin.
The following picture, drawn by one of the speakers
on that occasion, is not more distressing than true :
" Mr. Berry, from Nottingham, was then aunounccd
to address the meeting. He said, there really would be
no living in that county in a short time unless there was
some very great change, for the people were actually all
out of work. When he came away on Friday morning
there were 3,000 persons in the streets wandering about,
who literally could not get anything to do.—(Hear, hear. )
Such was the state of things in that district, that he was
obliged to get a man to remain in his house, for the pro-
tection of his wife and family during his absence. They
came in droves of tens, twenties, forties, fifties, and hun-
dreds, begging from door to door, and of course people
could not relieve them. Such was the state of things in Not-
tingham when he left on Friday morning last. la Leicester
they were little better, and the stocking trade had nearly
left Nottingham. They had a meeting of the Poor-
law Guardians on Thursday to take into considera-
tion what was to be done, because the people must have
something to eat, and they came to the re,olution of giving
out-door relief. They could do na other. On Friday
morning there was a man who offered to take him to an
inn in Nottingham, where ho said there were fourteen of
the best mechanics of the place just getting ready to depart
to France to assist in making railways. The trade of the
country was leaving in every direction.
Of what use, then, are Mr. Labouchere and his
Board of Trade to the real interests of a manufacturing
population apart from the factory prejudices of a knot
of millowners ? The influence of that gentleman upon
the Corn-law question, or upon any question involving
the prosperity of British commerce, is only such as may
render his return for Manchester a public calamity, be-
cause, without aiding the Anti-Corn-law party in the
slightest degree, it will, to a certain extent, help to fur-
ther and facilitate the misgovernment of the very worst
Cabinet that ever provoked the resentments of a free
people.

(From the Morning Advertiser.)

,
To censure in others the vices we practise ourselves
is a failing so common as to have given rise to a pro-
verbial saying about " Satan rebuking Sin ;" but we
doubt whether even Satan himself would follow the
E, sample of certain Tory scribes, by visiting the shame
as d disgrace of his own errors on those who not only
con demned, but actually interfered, to prevent them.
With a serious and sapient air, the Times quotes a
passage s charge, in which from Chief Justice Tindal'
' " religious education" is recommended as the corrective
of political fanaticism ; and hence infers an intention
on his Lordship's part to cast a very serious imputation
on her Majesty's Ministers. Surely if there had been
a single particle of common sense or common honesty
in the moral composition of this " delicate monster"
this Caliban of the Press—be would have hesitated
to commit himself by so egregious and palpable a
blunder ; for it is notorious as the sun at noon day that
the want of religious education among the poor is the
fruit of Tory bigotry, lashed into absolute frenzy by the
h es and misrepresentations of the Times and its col-
let,, ;ties. The most disgraceful chapter in the history
of , he present year will be that which records the
prom edings of the English High Church party in re-
ferule% 'to the question of education. In no country of
Europe could priesteratt exhibit itself in more flagrant
colours, o; with a more successful opposition to intel-
lectual cultore and the best interests of the human race.
A plan for tlie establishment of a normal school (that

is, a school for the training of teachers) was issued by
the Lords of the Treasury ; and it was proposed to
F la
ce at the head of it a clergyman of the Church of
E ngland, with a view to " the incorporation of religious
Erection with the whole matter if education." A
s„h eme more carefully arranged, more sedulously
-ded, and better calculated to meet all reasonable
gual
'lions, ions, could not have been devised ; yet its publi-
cobtjieocr, was greeted with the frantic and savage ye,ls of
and the mercenary execrations of all those to
bigotry