The Sun.
London, England, 1849-07-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC J OURNALS.
FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TIMES.—It is with no little pleasure—we may almost say
relief—that we turn from the struggles of faction at West-
minster to the simple and unaffected patriotism unanimously
displayed at this juncture of difficulty by the city of London.
A Special Court of Common Council was held on Thursday,
" to consider the propriety of purchasing estates and waste
lands in Ireland, with a view to cultivate and improve the
same, so as to benefit Ireland, and give employment to its
people, and, at the same time, to secure to the Corporation
a return of the capital to be invested, with interest, and
to adopt such measures thereupon as the Court might
deem expedient." Had any additional impulse been
wanted by a body of gentlemen so hearty and so accustomed
to act as well as talk, it would have been furnished by a
letter of the warmest congratulations and encouragements
from the nobleman whom Providence has placed over Ireland
in the hour of herigreatest icalainity. His Excellency has
stated the case of Ireland in a manner which appeals irresis-
tibly to the generosity and enterprise, the arts and wealth, of
this country. His letter deserves to be written at the head
of the undertaking which he urges, and we will not run
the risk of weakening the force of his arguments by
a meagre resume. It any member of the Corporation feels a
qualm at the thought of an Irish estate—if any dislike an
investment so remote, or think philanthropy incompa-
tible with profit, we recommend a fresh perusal of Lord Cla-
rendon's letter to the Lord Mayor as often as the tit may
conte-car;- and if we are not much mistaken, it will act like
a tonic on the nerves. It was received on this occasion with
loud cheers. Some very good speeches were made, and the
question was referred to a committee, the names of which are
sufficient guarantees that the scheme will not fail for want of
talent, perseverance, humanity, and experience in
Irish affairs. No act of modern times that occurs
to the recollection surpasses this large-minded and generous
design. It wholly exceeds the measure of modern under-
takings, which, colossal and beneficial though they
yet entered into solely for profit and convenience,
are
yet
are
e
generally the practical applications of scientific
T.Fie benevolence and religion of the age boast their csVeraryi
wonders, and deserve their weed of honour; but alms to our
neighbours in distress, and the propagation of our faith, are
duties Of all times. Seldom, however, have we the opportu-
nity of eeeing private citizens compassing the revival of a
country and a people, the reclamation of a soil, and
the salvation of millions from hereditary wretchedness,
turbulence, and barbarism. We will venture to say, that
should the Corporation set about its designs with moderate
energy, and meet with moderate success, nothing will more
excite the admiration of Europe, indeed of the world. In
many respects there is a peculiar congruity in the scheme as
compared with its authors. The city of London does nothing
more than propose to proceed with an old work, and to
carry out an existing design. Having revived one extensive
district from the desolations of war, it proposes to rescue
another from the lingering and recurrent visitations of
famine. It is a link of distant ages when we see a great
work resumed. Though we have altered much, we are not
yet accustomed to search for projects in the clouds, or in the
still more nebulous regions of intellectual speculation. We
still respect precedent, and go by the book. We wisely
reflect that what has been done may be done again, while it
is by no means so certain that we can do what has
never been done. Now, the city of London possesses
in its own annals and records the precedent, the
authority, and the encouragement necessary for this
design. It has planted a Goshen of moral and of
physical culture in the thick darkness of Ireland.
It can, therefore, do the same again. The interval of :two
centuries and a half is great when it proves the long success
of the former experiment, and when it extends over so many
generations the credit of the performance, but it shrinks to
nothing when we look to the question of practical means. If
Loudon could plant Ulster in the seventeenth century, it can
also plant Connaught in the nineteenth. The interval is
nothing. Ireland still supplies the opportunity, and Loudon
still possesses the power. The Corporation of London hap-
pily is in a condition to despise incredulous or scoffing ob-
jectors. There are men in this country whose whole know-
ledge of history, geography, law, religion, morality,
and, indeed, of all affairs human and divine, is
comprised in the art of proving to the satisfaction of a
few gaping noodles the expediency of debarring a hungry
and industrious population from the use of foreign corn.
Such impostors may sneer, if they please, at a scheme which
has worked for two centuries and a half with increasing suc-
cess. Their own gospel, the obsolete sliding-scale, scarcely
worked, from first to last, a tenth of that period, and did not
succeed for a day. It is vain for such men, or, indeed, for any
men, to tell the Corporation of London that the plantation of
Ulster, the institution of the Irish Society, the grant of
James 1., the co-operation and ultimate mixture of the Eng-
lish and Irish races on the soil, and the consequent ameliora-
tion of the districts, is, forsooth, all a delusion. The Corpo-
ration of London knows better.
HERALD.—Rome, we have every reason to believe, is
now occupied by the French. The results of this achieve-
ment we shall not now speculate upon. But we cannot help
stating that we have been very much edified lately by the
articles furnished by the Italian correspondent of the Times.
This gentleman has informed the people who read that paper
that he is a Papist. We are glad of it. We rejoice to find
that no Protestant is doing such work. This " correspon-
dent" was recently being hospitably entertained by General
Oudinot. He appears, from his own account, to have suf-
fered from want of water, and his bedding seems to have
been of au indifferent quality, sometimes brickbats, some-
times flagstones—and as a great indulgence, and most grati-
fying variety, the rafters of a garret—have furnished his
cubile to this temporary guest. But the " correspondent of
the Times" has received all possible honour at the French
head-quarters. We are not surprised. Our contemporary
has done its best to traduce, calumniate, and ruin the Roman
revolution and its authors. It has heaped every imaginable
term of abuse upon Mazzini and his fellows. if any person,
not acquainted with the real feeling of the English people, had
been guided by the Times in forming his opinion as to our na-
tional bias on the Italian question, he would undoubtedly
have fancied that the English were unanimously against the
Roman Triumvirate, and in favour of the Pope. The truth
is exactly the other way, and we doubt whether there be an
Englishman out of Printing-house-square who does not look
upon the French invasion of Italy with unmitigated abhor-
rence and detestation. The journal to which we refer, it is
true, has begun to find out that popular opinion is against
it on this point, and we fully expect to see that paper, in a
very short time, highly and virtuously indignant about
the "abominable conduct of the French," &c. To
be sure, Mother Punchbowl's declamations about virtue
would not be a whit more funny—but let that pass.
General Oudinot is quite right in offering hospitality to the
" correspondent of the Times." But the mischief which our
contemporary has done by eulogising that worst of charla-
tans and humbugs, Pope Pio Nono, and by systematically
libelling his opponents, is very great. Equally extraordi-
nary has been its conduct respecting Hungary. We will not
pay the Times so bad a compliment as to express a suspicion
that the writers of its articles on Hungary are ignorant of the
nature of the connexion by which that country was united to
Austria ; yet the historical fact has been totally misrepresented
in the Times. Hungary is not an integral and corporate part of
the Austrian empire, and never was, except by its own free
choice. The Hungarians have for three centuries chosen
the Emperor of Germany for the Sovereign; but they have
no need to do so—they are not compelled to do so by their
constitutional law; and now, because they do not choose
to he handed over to a new master—a master nomi-
nated by the caprice of a foreign Emperor, who
thought proper to resign his throne, and to appoint a
person as his successor, who was not the next lineal
heir—because the Hungarians will no longer submit
to the intolerable bondage of Austria—the Times is to
brand them with every epithet due to cut-throats and rebels I
And not only so. The. Times has not simply mistaken the
truth, denying that the Hungarians have gained any ad-
vantage—always magnifying the exploits of the Austrians,
at the same time that it has kept a profound silence
about their truly infernal cruelties—witness the suppression
of the fact that the Austrians had an Hungarian lady of
high birth publicly flogged at Pesth (though we remem-
ber the virtuous indignation of the Times about the
cruelties of the Poles a short time since)—but has
traduced men of great and noble character ; it has
uniformly spoken of the leaders of this Hungarian war as
despicable, worthless creatures, whereas they are truly and
essentially great men. In a word, the Times abets the
Austrians against the Hungarians in such a way that if
Prince Metternich himself had written certain articles in
that paper he could not more exactly have expressed the
views and defended the policy of his Court.
troubles in
when the (truth is known about the presenteur
contemporary
Hungary and Rome, the course pursue ty
will form a curious subject of speculation for the political
reasoner.
CHRONICLE.—The resumption of the debate on Mr.
Disraeli's motion must have been felt by all parties concerned
to be a work of supererogation. The motion had been prac-
tically disposed of, and the mover put out of court, before
the house rose on Monday night. The ample sources of
information placed at Sir Charles Wood's disposal, by the
extended machinery of the Home Department, enabled
him to turn a broad light upon the subject, which
time ingenuity of his antagonist had been vainly em-
ployed to obfuscate, and before the array of facts
collected and arranged by official industry and re-
search, the baseless hypothesis upon which the latter had
built his superstructure of fallacies fell at once to the ground.
But the general defence of the policy which it was the real
drift of the motion to arraign, devolved of right upon a
statesman of different standing and calibre from the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer. The modern commercial policy of
the British Empire dates from the year 1842; and with the
men who inaugurated it, at the sacrifice of popularity and
power, must rest the glory or opprobrium of having struck
into a new path, and guided the prow of the vessel of the
State into an unexplored current. Peel and Graham cannot
escape, if they would, the responsibility attaching to the work
of their own hands. Posterity will bear in mind that the
Free-trade Tariff, on which our present system is built,
was the legacy bequeathed to the nation by
the Administration of Sir Robert Peel. The speech delivered
last night by the quondam leader of the old Conservative
party presents a most masterly resume of a question with all
the bearings of which lie is more familiar than any. other
living statesman. Fastening at once upon the odda in,cooens-
sistency to which we ourselves directed attentione _
day morning, he showed that the policy whi e srh
Disraeli's own admission, had conductedos tn
perity during
empire to an unprecedented pitchs identically the same
o
the tire years preceding 1846,
as that to which the ingenious‘v declaimer. aDscortibieess its
subsequent decay and
approaching ruin.
articles of primary necessity, to the amount of six millions
were remitted prior to 1846—in that
year the principle s,
was
carried further by sweeping away
four millions more.
It was not till the spring of the present
year, long after theend
rate returns cited by Dlr. Disraeli exclusively relate, that the
repeal of the corn-
laws came into operation. Mr. Disraeli's
evidences of distress and impoverishment carry us down
to Lady-day, 1848—not a day later. ;The corn-law ex-
pired on the Ist of February, 1849. So much for the con-
nexion between the growth of pauperism and corn-
law repeal. But we must defer till another opportunity the
remarks suggested by this admirable exposition of the true
principle of free trade—the principle uniformly upheld in
these columns—viz., that it is the policy, and the only sound
policy, of a commercial country "to fight hostile tariffs by free
imports." One short sentence is long enough to contain the
whole argument :—" I say that all protection given to insure
a higher price for an article, when you can procure the same
article elsewhere at a lower price, far from encouraging
domestic industry, is, first of all, an interference by the Le-
gislature with the application of capital ; next, it is a dimi-
nution of the annual income • and last, it is giving more for a
thing than it io worth." The very peer figure cat by tho