The Sun.
London, England, 1838-06-06 00:00:00

'THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 108.

discussion, we venture to entreat our Contemporary's kind at- •
tention while we expound to him the fallacies in his replication
of last Saturday. We said that the present system of
Corn-laws was an admirable self-adjusting arrangement,
upon which our Cntemporery observes—" Alas ! the
farmers have told a different story, and are likely
soon to repeat it. The present Corn-laws arc ten
years old, and during the period of their eaistence how
often has agriculture been on the verge of ruin, with wheat at
from 38s. to 40s. a quarter? Ask Mr. Cayley, question Lard
Chandos, read the evidence given to the Agricultural Com-
mittee of 1833, and then talk of the admirable self-adjusting
arrangement." These observations indicate a very strong
case of hallucination ; we must try to make it obvious by the
exhibition of a similar fallacy upon a subject on which the
patient is probably quite sane. The system of the Corn Laws
is an admirably self-adjusting arrangement with reference to
be the keeping cut of foreign corn when competition would be
injurious, and the admitting of foreign corn when such admission
would not be injurious, but, on the contrary, a public benefit ; but
it is not pretended that the adjustment goes beyond this, and can
prevent an injurious depression of price in agricultural pro-
duce when arrising from other causes than foreign competition.
The farmers of England, or Mr. Cayley, or Lord Chandos,
even when complaining of the depression of agriculture, would
no more have repealed the Corn Laws than they would have
cut off their left hands to cure a weakness in their right
bards. It will, we suppose, be admitted that doors, and
windows, and blankets, under judicious domestic management,
are very efficacious for keeping out the winter's cold. It did
happen, however, that during the severity of last winter even
these arrangements failed to keep up a comfortable tempe-
rature the oughout the dwelling-houses of this northern and
sea-encircled land. Would the Spectator therefore recom-
mend a free trade in wintry atmosphere ? an uarestricted
adniissicn of external cold ? an Opening of the ports of our
houses to the blasts from the Mitre ? We should think nut.
Yet that would be quite as rational a remedy fur the untoward
temperature of last January as the admission of foreign grain
would be for the depression of prices in our corn markets.
Some people who are hugely philosophical assert that Dr.
Arnott's stove is "an admirable self-adjusting arrangement."
It is precisely upon the principle of our present corn laws ;
and, with all deference to the Doctor's originally of mind,
we apprehend that the idea of his stove must have been taken
from the corn laws. The Doctor (if we have heard his in-
vention rightly described) assumes 60 of Fahrenheit to be a
comfortable Fedi= temperature, and has so arranged the
machinery of his stove that if a supply of warmth be required
to bring the air of a room up to 60, the air -post of the
stove is opened, and the fire burns briskly, but when that
temperature is attained then, by the self-adjusting principle of
the apparatus, the air-post shuts again, or does so to such an
extent as to keep the temperature about 60. Here is ex tctly
the Corn-law principle in a store, but if he of the Spectator
could not cook his beaf-steak or even boil an egg upon this
stove (which assuredly he could not), would he cry out " away
with your admirable self-adjustment—alos what signifies it,
when here have I a beef-steak not unwilling to be dressed,
and yet I suffer hunger, not being able at this boasted stove to
dress it ?" To such a complaint the answer would be that the
self-adjustment was calculated to keep the temperature at 60,
and to the complaint against the Corn laws that the selfsad-
justment is calculated to regulate the application of foreign
competition. Neither the Corn laws nor the stove can do
that which they were not made to do. When wheat was at
two guineas the quarter it is se ry true that the agricultural
interest was in a state of depression and suffering, but it must
seem tolerably evident to all persons of sane understand-
ing that if so low a price as two guineas produced suffer-
ing, an importation of foreign wheat et 325. the quarter would
have made the state of things very considerably worse.
We suggested last week, that, supposing.. there were
a profitable trade to spring up between British manufacturers
and foreign corn growers, this country would in consequence
lose the profitable trade which is carried on between British
manufacturers and British corn growers. We could not ima-
gine that our manufacturers would purchase both foreign corn
and home-grown corn, and we hinted that tho gain of the fo-
reign trade would not compensate for the loss of the home
trade. The Spectator answers thus—
" But it might come to pass that laud in England would housed more
profitably than in producing an article which requires an enormous pro-
tecting duty. The great trade between British landowners and culti-
vators would not be destroyed. It would not be a corn trade, but expe-
rience has proved that the possession of land near manufacturing towns
is the sure means of converting a poor into a wealthy proprietor. There
would be less corn raised, but more sheep and oxen reared and sold—
fewer fields of grain, but more towns and vil!agcs in the country."
To us all this seems to be mere raving. At best it can only
be regarded as a Utopian speculation of what " might come
to pass," and yet it is given as an equivalent for the certainty
of the rich return which we know is given to British cultiva-
tion of the soil. In what wild visions may we not employ
ourselves if we are thus to speculate upon what might come to
pass. We wish we could believe with the Spectator that the
country might be as rich and happy as it is, though pasture and
wood took the place of corn fields, for we have a distinct pre-
ference for hay fields over corn fields, as an affair of the plea-
sant and the picturesque. But there is no foundation for the
belief of a sane man that the soil of this country could be
turned to profitable account if the growth of corn were aban-
doned. As soon as the Speettator is able to prove that all the
land in England wow devoted to the production of corn could
be used more profitably than in producing an article which re-
quires protection against foreign competition—as soon, we
say, as this shall he proved, we give up the point we have
hitherto maintained, and we shall confess that the sayings of
the Spectator arc worthy of all acceptation, and not monoma-
niac ravings, as we now consider them. —Morning Post.
The evening organ of the Government, with its usual hums.
nity and taste, has chosen the lamentable catastrophe in Kent
as a subject of brutal scoffing and stupid jocularity. The cir-
cumstance of the bayonets of British soldiers being steeped in
the bleed cf the Queen's subjects, heightened in its tragic
misery by the bereavement of widows and orphans, affordsinviting a theme for its dull merriment and ponderous levities
.as
as did the sufferings of the negro slaves, in reference to tne
sad narrative of whose heart-rending wrongs it was the other
day so amusingly facetious. If the "learned Theban .who
indites such ill-tinted and witless ribaldry for the Globethmks
that he serves the cause of his patrons of the Treasury in that
way, he must estimate the understanding and feelings of the
English people according to a Spanish scale of civilisation.
Nor do we wonder at that, seeing the close connection which
subsists between the genius of the Foreign-office and the
brigandage and bloodshed of the Peninsula. The " bucca-
neering war" has, indeed, made the -practice of cruelty but too
familiar to many British subjects; but the morals of the people of
England are not yet contaminated by Spanish example, and hu-
manity is among the first of their virtues. Leaving the miserable
jester of the Globe to jingle his fool's-cap and bells over the
carnage which has attended the freaks of the madman Courte-
nay, whom our Government let loose upon society from a lu-
natic asylum, we turn to another Liberal contemporary,
that,
neither on the subject of slavery, or destruction of human life
by military execution, culls topics of dull levity and disgusting
merriment—we allude to The Sun—a journal from which,
we need hardly say, we differ in politics as widely as from pole
to pole, but whose views of some great questions affecting
public morals and the rights of humanity coincide with our
own.; the extinction of slavery, and the abolition of capital
punishments being of the number. In alluding to the article
in the Morning Herald of yesterday, on the subject of
the Kentish tragedy, The Sun has, in one respect, some-
what mistaken our meaning. Our contemporary says
The Herald of thir morning, in an article which we insert,
and of which we can speak only with approbation, offers a sort
of defence of the first arrest of Courtenay, by saying that It
is an offence against the law and the Queen's peace for a
' number of persons to be riotously and routously assembled,
and to go about the country armed with bludgeons in such a
manner as nas calculated to create terror in the minds of the
Queen's subjects.' That may be the law, but some deposi-
tions before magistrates are required that persons have riotously
assembled before warrants can be issued to arrest them. A
magistrate being present on the spot, and witnessing the breach
of the public peace, may arrest the offending individuals; but
no magistrate was present, no depositions appear to have been
taken, and no proper precautions were adopted after the war-
rants were issued to ensure the peaceable and successful arrest of
the lunatic." We were not conscious of stating what we did as a
defence of the first attempt to arrest Courtenay, fora more
blundering sort of business than that attempt we never heard
of. What we said on that point was only in answer to the
ststemeet of The Sun, as to the allegotion that up to that time
"no legal offence had beencommittad" by Courtenay and his fol-
lowers. We showed that there was an offence against the public
peace, which would have justified an arrest, if executed accord-
ing to the legal forms ; but we never said or insinuated that
warrants could have been regularly issued for the arrest of any
of those persons thus unlawfully assembled, without an infor-
' ?nation previously laid. We took for granted that the Pub-
lished statement of warrants having been issued against
Courtenay and two of his deluded followers, for some ollence
or other, was correct, and supposed that such warrants had
been issued in the regular way ; but .we expressly guarded
ourselvesedg e on thefro m
subject,beingb y
understoodebs observing
nags
th havingat" we were left in the any positive-know-
j
dark, both as to what the charge was, and upon whose infor-
mation the warrants were issued." We had not then seen
the report of the evidence taken on Monday before the Ma-
gistrates at Feversharn. That report, winen contained some
other matters also to which we would have alluded, had we
been acquainted with them when we wrote, did not arrive at
our office until some time after that article had been in
print—for instance, we made no allusio
,i to the circum-
stance of Mr. Church, the Surgeon, of ttingbourne, having
stated that he saw Lieut. Bennett run a man. through the body
uthdeenperyin.eiplatl points
with his sword before Courtenay shot
it
circumstance,
however, contradicted by others, t± Inch would not have been
ofafirtltioeis true
leave
evidenceomitted
n regardwhen toireasoningtsleual"tel
the coroner declined to swear Mr. Church to that statement,
and, with so much evidence to the contrary, it is hardly possi-
ble but that gentleman must have been mistaken ; still the
statement having been made must, under the sanction of an
oath become part of a more deliberate inquiry clsewhefe.
But on the :subject of the warrant our evening contemporary
says :
" But what if there should have been no such warrants is-
sued? Before the coroner, as reported, Mears, the constable
swore that he went to execute three warrants.' Before the
Magistrates yesterday, at Feversham, presided over by Dr.
Poore, the principal agent in the whole proceedings, and who
must have known whether Mears was stating what is accurate,
he deposed, we presume on oath, that he went with his
brother to execute the writ against Courtenay.' D. Edwards
repeats these words also, we believe on oath, and states that
he went with the last witness to execute the writ on Cour-
tenay.' We cannot suppose that this word twice repeated in
the presence of Dr. Poore etTor ; and, if it be Osi an
error, Courtenay was to be arrested on a civil writ, nut on a
criminal warrant. That circumstance, wish the total absence
of all proof that any depositions were made before any Magis.

trate to justify the issue of warrants, makes us repeat that we
see no good reason for the first attempt to arrest Courtenay,
and no legal prod, nor shadow of legal proof, has been exhi-
bited, that prior to the brutal murder the lunatic had been
guilty of any legal offence."
But passing by that first attempt at arrest, and coming to
what took place at Bosenden Wood—where we find 100
soldiers, with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, on one side,
and about 40 peasants, armed only with sticks, led by a
maniac with a brace of pistols on the other—we cannot help
asking once more how it happened that, with so overwhelming
a force, such an unlawful assemblage was not put down, dis-
persed, or captured, without the dreadful effusion of blood which
has shocked the feelings of society ? It has not, indeed,
shocked the thorough-going Government writers ; and if ten
times as many victims to the fully of the madman whom the
Ministers liberated had fallen by the musket-halls or bayonets
of the military, it would only give those Whig scribes the
greater opportunity of showing what " mad wags" they arc
when such " comical" scenes of popular excitement and mi-
litary slaughter occur as those which, under Whig sway,
have been witnessed at Bristol, Nottingham, Merthyr Tydvil,
Bradford, and Bosenden Wood. The Courier last night
sneeringly observed that The Herald was humane towards
1 everybody but the Whig Ministers. If The Courier has
1 chosen to place the Ministers in the category of cri-
minals, to try the extent of our charity, we can only say
that if the said Ministers were in the predicament of
some of those minor delinquents for whom we consider it
1 a duty to intercede with a Government rather too much
prone to examples of blood, we woull, notwithstand-
ing our detestation of their conduct and pi inciples, make every
possible effort, as we did in the case of the ex- Ministers of
Charles X., to obtain a commutation oftheir sentence. After this
I avowal, we hope the sportive sage of the Courier will believe that
1 our humanity is not limited by sect or party, and that our corn-
-1 passion is very comprehensive. But to return to The Sun—
thatl Journal says, in allusion to our remarks on the verdicts of
! wilful murder against Courtenay and others:—
" Our Contemporery has properly directed public attention
to the fact of Courtenay having been notoriously a madman,
which rendered him legally incapable of committing a crime ;
and it opens up the doubt, how far the deluded and lunatic
i followers could be considered in the eye of the law legally ac-
; ces,orie3, when in its eye no crime had been committed."

Our Contemporary then goes on to say--
" But if that b a correct view, and if the magistrates e•, en
suspected that Ceurtenay was a madman, how much does
that enhance the folly of the second hasty and injudicious
arrest ? It must have been known to the magistrates that
only Courtenay, and at most, one of his followers had fire
arms; they must have been aware that the number of the
deluded did not exceed 40 ; they had 100 well-trained and
well-armed soldiers; they had a considerable number of civil
assistants, constables, policemen, and book-keepers, also
armed, at least as well as the 40; they had all the peaceful
community around with them ; and to U 3, therefore, it appears
that their mode of attempting to arrest the madman and his
deluded followers was wholly unwarranted. They will have
to answer them to the country for the blood which has been
shed, while some of them, we sec, are presumptuously talking
of shedding more."
_

As no Magisterial order was given to " fire," we cannot consi-
der any Magistrate responsible for all the bloodshed ; and, as
to the deaths caused by the military, the Coroner's Jury have
returned verdicts of " justifiable homicide." Still, between
Magistrates and military, it appears an extraordinary thing to
us that Courtenay's " little insurrection" could not have been
quelled without more slaughter than has attended some of
those " great victories" of which the Spanish Generals so
pompously boast. There are, certainly, very long odds be-
tween 100 levelled muskets and forty sticks, though with
hearts of reckless bravery promptin, the hands that wielded
them. We have already expressed our opinion of Oct extend-
ing order given by the Rev. Dr. Poore, to take Courtenay
dead or alive—and we regret that any Clergyman sLould have
given such an order, or lacen prominent at all in a transaction
signalized by so much blood and misery.—Morning Herald.