The Sun.
London, England, 1838-12-25 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

We learn from the Manchester Times that Mr. R. H.
Greg, who spoke so effectively in the meeting of the Cham-
ber of Commerce of Manchester on Thursday last, and who
did not hesitate to declare that he had thoughts of carrying
his capital and skill to foreign countries, from an impres-
sion that it would be impossible to avert the ruin of the
manufactures of this country, from the repeal of the Corn-
laws having been so long delayed, is the largest spinner and
manufacturer in this country, and that his firm manufac-
tures one-hundredth part of all the cotton imported into
Great Britain. Both meetings were crowded, but the last
particularly so, and, after an adjournment of a week, to
afford time for reflection and consideration, the most emi-
nent merchants and manufacturers of Lancashire, men of all
shades of political opinion, by a majority of six to
one, adopted, instead of the petition recommend-
ing the substitution of a low rate of duty to
th present (which was supported by the remaining sixth),
an amended petition, declaring that unless the Corn-laws
be immediately repealed the destruction of our manufactures
is inevitable. The profits of the manufacturers have been
so much reduced by the operation of the Corn-laws, that
the utmost uneasiness prevails in that body. The opinions
of such distinguished commercial men as the speakers at
the Manchester meetings, and the startling facts stated by
them in support of these opinions, must rouse the country
from one end of it to the other. All men who have pro-
perty embarked in trade must feel that if they do not now
bestir themselves to combat the landed monopolists, ruin
must soon overtake them. Let every man, then, from the
Land's-end to John o'Groat's House, follow the ex-
ample of the enlightened traders and manufacturers
of Manchester. These men have too deep a stake
in the country to commence an agitation like the
present from any trivial inducement. They suffer more
than any other class from agitation ; but like men of sJrisc
they have made up their minds to a great sacrifice, once
for all, to avert that ruin which is advancing on the country,
and which can only be averted by immediate and well con-
certed efforts. The physical force men have had their day.
The most of the working men are, we believe, opening
their eyes to the delusions practised cn them. The mei)
who have hitherto drawn together at the incendiary meet-
ings are beginning to abuse each other. A recent number
of the Northern Star (the paper of Mr. Feargus O'Con-
nor), is in keeping with his speech at the meeting in the
New-road ; and it proves he means to keep out of harm's
way for the future.
" We have," says that Paper, " to request the particular
attention of our readers to the two letters of Mr. O'Connor,
one of which they will find in our third, and the other in our
eighth page. From the first of these they will perceive that
Mr. O'Connor intends henceforth to carry on his operations for
the promotion of the great ends of public justice, simulta-
neously with those of the other great and patriotic leaders of
the people, but without identifying himself with them in such a
manner as to be liable to be held acaountable either to, or for,
any one but himself. We regret that this should be neces-
sary ; but, really, on a calm review of the circumstances in
which that gentleman has been placed—not less by the watch-
fulness of timid or jealous friends, than by the vigilance of
enemies—we confess that we do not see how he could have
acted otherwise without sacrificing some portion, at least, of
that usefulness which the public cannot spare."
'That fever may be supposed to have nearly had its course ;
and w e trust that men will take warning by the result,
and for the present concentrate their efforts to the one
great object of the repeal of the Corn-laws, which they
may hope to carry. This is a matter which comes home
to every man's business and bosom. It is a matter, too.
which cannot be delayed with impunity. The population
of England advanced slowly till the period when the in-
ventions of Arkwright, and Watt, and Wedgwood, opened
such a wide field for industry. The number of inhabi-
tants in 1700 was 5,134,516; in 1750, after a lapse of
half a century, the population was only 5,829,705, an in-
crease of 695,189. The population began then to ad-
vance somewhat more rapidly ; but in 1780, it was still only
7,814,827. But since that time towns have become
large cities, and villages towns. The population in 1830
was fourteen millions, and must now be upwards of
sixteen millions. In the first half of the century, when
with the exception of London and Bristol, the other towns
were of comparativey trifling impartance, the greatest pains
were taken to keep down the number of the inhabitants,
the landlords being well aware that the hands that could
not be employed in agriculture must be fed at their cost.
In all leases there were provisions against building cottages
or allowing settlements, and according to the phrase of a
writer of that time, a new married couple of the lower
classes was hunted about from place to place like wild
beasts. When England changed its character and became
a great manufacturing country, the demand for em-
ployment drew people to the towns, and the laws of
settlement were comparatively disregarded. But this
enormous population, of which so large a propor-
tion had been created by our manufactures, nearly nineteen
millions of human beings within the limits of this island,
must not be sacrificed to the short sighted avarice of greedy
landowners. Should our manufacturing industry receive a
blow by the creation of rivals in every country of Europe,
not not able to dispense with importation from us, but to
meet us like the Saxons in every part of the world, it will
be but a small consolation to us that the landholders are
ruined by the produce of the soil being consumed by pau-
pers instead omen employed at high wages. We must
bear constantly in mind that an old country without
manufactures is always a miserable country, for the
whole of a population cannot be employed in agri-
culture (witness Ireland), and to avert the calamity
ip,of decaying Manufacturers and extended pauperism,
we must now rally a 5 opp man against the squirearchy.
Ministers are so much bcfand up with the aris-
tocracy, that it would be madness to expect from them
any effort which they are not compelled to make.
Lord Melbourne fairly told the people that it depended
on themselves whether there should be a change in the
Corn-laws. But it required neither Lord Melbourne nor
a ghost to tell us this. It is obvious that Ministers
can only carry a repeal of the Corn-laws by the people
demonstrating fn the landowners that it must be carried.
We are the last persons in the world to encourage agitation
without a reasonable prospect of success but we perceive that
the time is comefor agitating to some purposefor a repeal of the
Corn-laws ; and our efforts shall not be wanting to second
the favourable disposition of our countrymen. We re-
peat, there must be a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull
altogether. Honour to the enlightened men of Manches-
ter, who have set so noble an example—who have already
struck the monopolists so heavy a blow.---,lforning
Chronicle.
- -

Agitation against the Cornrlaws has, at length, com-
menced in earnest. The Manchester Chamber of Com-
merce—a body comprehending some of the wealthiest ma-
nufacturers in the world—has agreed to a petition for the
total and unqualified repeal of those enactments against the
free importation of foreign grain, on the faith of which
English farmers have invested their capitalin the cultivation
of their native soil, and on the faith of which, more,
over, no inconsiderable portion of the land has been
bought. This movement of the Manchester Chamber of
Commerce will be imitated without loss of time, by all the
commercial and manufacturing bodies throughout Lanca-
shire and Yorkshire. The political economists, meanwhile,
are not idle. They have itinerant lecturers in their pay, to
declaim against the " atrocities pf landed monopoly :"
whilst all the Ministerial Journals in London, and through-
out the empire are, at thismoment, busied in denouncing "t,
starvation laws," as the chief or sole causes of all our social dis,
orders, The existing Corn-laws, in short—and not the exist-
ing Corn-laws alone, but every system protective of agri-
cultural industry—will be assailed, during the approaching
Session of Parliament, with a degree of ferocity and of
pertinacity combined, to which the history of struggles
for class ascendancy in this country, furnishes no
There can, in point of fact, exist little doubt, that—unless
the landowners and farmers shall without delay shake off
their inexplicable apathy on this vital 9uestion—the Corn-
laws will he repealed within the next six months, and that
the country will, by consequence, be involved in a series of
convulsive movements, more frightful in their character,
than any witnessed since the era of the great civil war.
We shall, to-morrow, analyse with some care, the argu-
ments employed by the speakers in the Manchester
Chamber of Commerce—because these arguments will
constitute the staple of all the declamation, with which
the country is destined to ring for months to. come,
To-day, we must content ourselves with adverting
to some of the more general features of this great
question. Free trade doctrines have, with partial modifi-
cations, prevailed in this country, for twenty years past ;
and each year that has elapsed, since the pernicious doc-
trines of the economists obtained ascendancy, has witnessed
a diminution of the sources of the country's strength, and
e country,
a corresponding extension of misery amongst the producing
classes. The Currency Act of 1819 was the first great
triumphth achieved by the free-traders over the industry of
thoseT b
classes,
sAs
ecst,
icno
whose n fisocsae
t ed , perhaps, half of the
property o f
machinery, of prosperity
theprosperity
of the country • necessity, bound up. The spread of un-
taxedand of free-trade in its various niodifiea:
iiion 4 of h
bons, has followed rapidly p o greatntahned hand-loom
m cw,uhreeraevi nibryst)
uh raivn revolutioneg bpoor
e e
been
of 1819. Nearly a m
reduced to a state of of seini_starvatioono The
been compelled to sell their children to thehorrors of
factory slavery. The hours of labour have been lengthened
to vast bodies of artisatis > whilst, in the same proportion,
have the wages of these artisansbeen lessened. The march of
misery has, in fact, kept pace with the " march of mind :"
and yet all the m.iscry, to which a fraudulent standard of
ys em of depriving la-
bour of its just value, by means of unrestricted competition
value, together with a fraudulent s t
with machinery and with foreigners, have given rise, has
not sufficed to procure for the free traders, a sufficiency of
that " cheapness" on which their hearts are fixed,. The

new Poor-law—with its provisions for directly lowering
wages by universally lowering rates—was regained ; and
now, the men who first demanded the new Poor-law, de-
mand that the sacrifice of the farmers and of the land-
owners shall consummate the sacrifice of the industrious
poor. Let it be noted, that with the spread of free-
trade doctrines at home—and of the consequent increase
of social misery amongst the industrious classes—has
been exhibited the decline of English influence in every
quarter of the world. As our free traders have acquired
power over the movements of our Legislature, England
has gradually lost or abandoned those sources of power,
which previously secured for her the loftiest position
amongst the nations of the earth. Under the operations
of our politico-economico policy, the fleet of England has
been dismantled—her army rendered insufficient for the
protection of her colonies—her colonies themselves have
been made to appear like burdens—whilst her power to de-
fend her honour, or to repress the most insolent aggressions
is gradually disappearing. The authors of that system of
policy, to which we owe nearly all ,the distresses and cala-
mities of the last twenty years—the men, to whom we owe
it, that large bodies of our labouring poor are in a state of
desperation—that our colonies are defenceless—and that
our own shores are unprotected against foreign invasion—
these men, instead of labouring under a sense of humilia-
tion, when they contemplate the operation of their fatal
principles, have the hardihood to maintain that their quack
medicines have failed to exhibit all the beneficial pro-
perties of the fabulous elixir vita., only because these
drugs have not been swallowed in sufficient abundance.
" Let the dose be doubled—such is their cry—" and the
memory of all past failures will be lost. Let commerce be
altogether unshackled—let the Corn-laws, in short, be re-
pealed—and England will soon assume the aspect of Ely-
sium." The proposition of these ingenious prescribers for
the national diseases, has, it must be admitted, in the cir-
cumstances of the case, the merit of modesty. Not content
with robbing millions of the labouring poor of a consider-
able proportion of their wages, the free traders now demand
the confiscation of all farming capital—of three-fourths of
the value of all the land in the kingdom—together with
one-half, at least, of those reduced wages which the use of
machinery, and the operation of free trade still permit our
artisans, our mechanics, and our unskilled labourers to earn.
Those noisy advocates of free trade in corn never tire of
enlarging on their assumed importance to the community—
and on the vast amount of capital, which they re-
present. Let us recall to the memories of these
gentlemen, certain facts, of which they are disposed,
somehow, to approve themselves strangely forgetful.
We are, certainly, little disposed to underrate th e impor-
tance of foreign trade (so long as it is conducted on sound
principles) or, to treat lightly the amount of capital em-
barked in it :—but we cannot forget, that the importance
of the classes connected with the land directly and indi-
rectly, is more than ten times greater than that of the
classes interested in our foreign trade. The whole amount
of the capital embarked in those pursuits, which could, by
possibility, be rendered more lucrative by the influence of
free trade principles, has never been estimated at more
than two hundred and ten millions—whilst the amount of
capital invested in land by the owners and occupiers, and
in those trades which are intimately connected with the
land, has been computed to exceed two thousand seven
hundred and fifty millions ! The owners of the two hun-
dred millions, therefore, in demanding a repeal of the
Corn-laws, are simply demanding nearly the total confisca-
tion of property, exceeding in amount, their own, multi-
plied ten-fold. We shall, to-morrow, notice the specific
arguments of the Manchester anti-Corn-law agitators.—
ilforiiing Herald.
The renegade Baronet of Cumberland has been exhibit-
ing for the especial amusement of the boys of the University
of Glasgow. These youths, it seems, under the tuition of
their Tory parents and Professors, have elected Sir James
the Lord Rector of their University, and, in return for the
honour, he has treated them to a world of words in the shape
of a speech. The apostate's oration was partly of a poli-
tical, partly of a literary character. Of the literary portion
of his harangue we shall say nothing ; it is undeserving of
observation, consisting, as it does, almost exclusively of the
merest common-place, and not being redeemed by a single
brilliant conception, or striking sentiment. If any of the
youths themselves could not have produced, at a day's notice,
an essay of equal literary merits, they would richly deserve
the sererest punishment which is ever administered in the in-
stitution. The political portion of the newly-fledged Lord
Rector's speech, was such as any one who has watched
his conduct for the last four years might have expected.
So thormaghly and so glibly did he talk Toryism, that
his audience must at times have forgotten that he ever pro-
fessed an opposite creed. The principles which he advo-
cated four years ago, and which he advocated with a vio-
lence peculiar to himself, were denounced in his Glasgow
address as revolutionary in the highest degree. The party
with whom he formerly acted, came in, as a matter of course,
for a liberal share of the renegade's abuse. Their object is
to overturn the throne, and lay the altar in the dust. There
is no religion, no loyalty, no patriotism, among the Libe-
rals. It follows, then, that Sir James himself must have
been neither religious, loyal, nor patriotic when he figured
in the ranks of the Reformers, applauding to the echo the
leading performers in the French Revolution of 1830,
and all but fell down to worship the tri-coloured flag.
Toryism must be a singularly powerful moral agent
when it can at once transform an irreligious, a disloyal,
and unpatriotic individual, as Sir James by implication
admits himself to have been during the greater part of
his life, into a pious, loyal, and patriotic person. The re-
jected of Cumberland, after having exhausted his stock of
abusive epithets when speaking of his former principles and
former party, bethought himself of trying his hand at a
little praise of the alliance between Church and State.
Here he soon found that lie reckoned without his host.
Scotland was not the proper soil for the reception of such
doctrines. The shouts of disapprobation, even from his
packed audience, at once drowned his voice and deprived
the world of the serious loss sustained by the non-delivery
of that eloquence on this favourite topic of his, which was
doubtless burning within him. It appears that this unex-
pected burst of disapprobation so disconcerted the Cum-
berland Baronet, that, after several ineffectual attempts to
proceed with his speech, he found himself obliged abruptly
to resume his seat. Poor Sir James ! And did he travel
all the way from Cumberland to Glasgow to make a speech,
and, eft or all, be obliged to stop short in the middle of it?
—Morning Advertiser.