The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-30 00:00:00

REACTIONARY TENDENCIES.

It is said of the Emperor of China that be stops
the pay of all his physicians whenever he falls sick,
and never resumes it until he feels himself convates-
cent. Some less civilized oriental potentates go on
cutting off the heads of their doctors until their dis-
temper is removed. They do not stop to inquire
; whether it is the leach's fault that they have a head-
ache, or their own. They only know that they are
ill, and that they keep a medicine man, and that he
must contrive somehow to keep his patient sound
in wind avid limb, or else " there will he the
devil to pay, and no pitch hot." So it is with the as-
gecious British public. If the ledger has a queer look,
and customers are scarce in the front shop—ir the mills
fall to half time, and the slug takes the wheat—if
wages are low and rates are high—no goods on the
wharf, and ships have to go in ballast, and bills
are dishonoured, and thousands of pounds are
owing, and no money coming in, John Bull looks
no further than to the luckless Ministry, Whig or
Tory, Protectionist or Free Trade, which happens to
be in power, but manfully resolves that whereas they
are in, they must in "double quick time bundle out."
If the bread-tax reigns when his travellers write
home that all the customers require more time, then
it is the bread-tax that is ruining trade. If free trade
predominates when his acceptances are returned on
his hands, then it is " those cursed political economists
that are at the bottom of all this." Like the fine
gentleman who, cleaned out and hunted by duns,
makes a pair of dumb-bells of the boot-jack and
his tiger's head, so John Bull, when bad .times
make him sulky, seizes the first thing that comes
to hand to be revenged, and that first thing being her
Majesty's Ministers, they are bow-strung by the fury
of enlightened public opinion. Then is the time for
the Opposition to get up a " good cry" to be re-
venged upon the good cry. which the Ins got up
against them when they were the Outs. Then is the
time when, " anything for a change," they would
irefer Satan. himself, on the wrong side of the
House, to the angel Gabriel on the Treasury benches.
;Ve are now in the access of this fever. French Re-
volutions, and Red Republicans, and Communisms—
Italian triumvirs, Sicilian rebellions, Hungarian
troubles, and universal turnings upside down, coupled
with Irish treasons and English Chartist plans of
general conflagration, have so arrested trade, and
;topped businers, that conversions to Toryism may
be reckoned by tens of thousands among the
-doctorial body. There is a decided reaction among
many towards Conservatism. But this tendency
,night, perhaps, be more than counterbalanced by the
inclination which gains ground among the Anti-Corn-
-law Leaguers to finish the work they have begun by
following up their advantage in a united effort to
Chain an extensive measure of organic reform. It is
here that the middle and working classes seem in•
dined to meat on common ground, each to give and
rake for the sake of that union which is emphatically
4trength. We should ill perform our duty, however,
" the abstract and brief chronicle of the time," if
we did not warn our friends of a very imminent peril
which at this moment hangs over the principles of pro-
eressive liberty. We see many indications of a rather
lecided reaction towards the doctrines of Protection.
As the bell clinks the fool thinks." Every man
,vho has a grievance goes to Catiline Stanley to be
revenged upon the State. The decaying shopkeeper,
he struggling merchant, the unemployed mechanic,
she nervous shipowner, are all just in the humour
fly at anything which promises a change. The
farmers, one after another, are throwing up their
"arms, keeping their sons from taking any which are
to let, toasting " Peel to the Devil" to the very
!ees of their bottle of bad port at the
market ordinary, holding meetings, sending
leputations, hawking about petitions, and wear-
ing out the knocker of No. 1, New Bond-street,
to " see what's to be done about it;" and the no-
bility are beginning in earnest to try their old game
of popularity-hunting, and " fighting the battle of
the Constitution in the Registration Courts." Mark
our words. There is a central office in London where
have been collected the registers of every county and
borough in the kingdom. The Protectionists are
even now quietly, but effectively busy with their
objections. If they can steal a march on the Liberals
thov will, and we call upon our friends, as speedily as
possible, to provide proper guardians of their franchise in
every electoral district, if they would prevent a surprise
which may saddle them with the dear loaf interest for
the next seven years. Let not the Financial Re-
formers, in looking for more, neglect to secure what
they have got. Free Trade is yet in danger. We
must not go back, by forgetting where it is we
stand, in our eagerness to go forward. The shipping
monopolists are powerful at the outports. The
farmers are desperate in the counties. The country
tradesmen are sulky and eaten up with poor-rates in
the agricultural boroughs. The Irish Members are
either furious at the Rate in Aid, or quite
ready to be bribed by railway grants, or
other less public-spirited considerations. The
country gentlemen are rattling the dice for
their last throw. It may be necessary to commission,
indeed we think there is no time to be lost in again
sending forth, the lecturers of the League. A new
phasis of the question demands novel illustrations.
I'he tenantry of the kingdom are in a declining con-
dition, and as the year wears on, as our own crops
promise abundance, and foreign importations accumu-
late, their prospects will become rapidly worse.
On all hands we hear of farms upon farms thrown
upon the owners' hands, and an absence
of offers for renewals. Men whose whole ar-
rangements have been made upon the theory that
scarcity was profit, and abundance ruin, have much
to suffer, and mare to learn, before they can adjust
their calculations to a more natural and humane sys-
tem of agricultural polity. "Here comes a farmer,
who bath hanged himself on the expectation of
plenty" was a possibility not alone in the age of
Shalcspere. We anticipate, and have not hesitated
to predict, a season of deep bucolic tribula-
tion. We believe the fortunes of the tenantry
to be in the most desperate state, and to
demand our immediate and first and best attention.
There are fifteen millions of acres of waste lands in
those islands capable of profitable cultivation, besides
a vest tract of desef ted farms in Ireland. We shall
not be sorry to see half the farms in England thrown
up. That is the ouly way to enforce a reduction of
rent, and to compel the landlords to dictate economy
in the public expenditure and retrenchment in tithes.
We trust that it will have the effect of entirely abo-
lishing the law of settlement, so as to enable the
poor to obtain relief wherever they please, to equalize
the burden of poor-rates, and to ltvy them by a
general equal impost over the whole kingdom. The
condition of the five and ten acre tenantry of Bel-
gium, and of Ireland under Mr. Blacker, proves how
infinitely more productive our land may be made by
an extension of small holdings. There are 1,000
families, embracing 5,000 individuals, comfortably,
respectably, independently provided for on- 5,000
Belgian acres, of far inferior land to that which is
held by a single farmer in Northamptonshire, who
provides, on the whole, for not above 100 labourers, or
500 individuals. These labourers can scarcely afford
any encouragement to the home trade, while their em-
ployer produces not one half
.the quantity of food on
m
his huge holding, which is rased by his humble Bel-
gian rivals, and is unable to afford his landlord much
more than half the same amount of rent. Among all
these peasants of the Netherlands also there is not to
be found a single pauper, while our agriculture has to
support three millions and a half, at a cost of nearly
8,000,000 sterling. It is mere cant in our politico-
economical ignoramuses to talk about the economy of
producing food with fewer hands, when to do so we
only make "wealth accumulate and men decay." It is to
small purpose that we employ horses on the farm only
by sending men into the workhouse at a cost of eight
millions a year. For every 50 acres at least a coupe
I of horses are employed, and a ploughman and boy
to hold and drive. In much of the land at lestthree are used. Each horse costs annu_arll yborst:
besides his price—so that for 50 acres fo
and 27/. for man and bay, or 117!1 .
in all, is re-
quired ; add .5s an acre for poor-rates, or -
sumr ate s w
oaunl
dd.
the expenditure will reach 1301. This
find wages for seven labourers, and maintenance for
35 individuals. The culture of 50 acres among seven
is only 7 acres to each uncleer spade husbandry, and
we hive no hesitation in saying they could till at least
double that quantity, or 100 acres, and that they are
thus actually more economical than horses, besides
more productive, experiments having
being- infinitely
shown that the spade produces half as large a crop
again as can be raised by the plough. It is
not without deep regret that we regard the
anxiety and distress of our honest yeomen, and the
compulsory migration of our industrious peasantry.
We would, for this kingdom's sake, far rather ke. p
them at home; and, that we may do so without ruin
to themselves and the country, there is no safe t xpe-
dient but the reforms we have indicated. Protection
is gone—high prices can never return—there is no
remedy but in diminished burdens, rents, rates, and
tithes, and the reclamation of waste lands. Let us all
strive manfully and lawfa!ly ter these ends, in the
assurance that in them lie the redemption of agricul-
ture and the safety of the kingdom.— Weekly Dispatch.

Mr. Thomas Dickinson, of E3lington, killed, in the
iliv(x Brownish, a few days ago, in the short time of six
hours, 21 dozen of trout, which weighed upwards of thleo
stsme.—Newcastle Journal.