The Sun.
London, England, 1838-12-24 00:00:00

J

WITH WHICH
THE " TRUE SUN" IS NOW
INCORPORATED.

LONDON :
MONDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 24, 1838,

The Norning Chronicle of to-day has the following
paragraph in reply to Mr. COBDEN'S observations in
the Manchester Chamber of Commerce on Mr. Pou-
LE'ET THOMSON :
" Several of the speakers at the meeting attacked with
some asperity Mr. Poulett Thomson for not taking a more de-
cided part with regard to the Corn laws; but the Right lion.
Gentleman is but one of the members of a Cabinet, and what-
ever his opinions individually may be, it is impossible that he
should act against the determination of the Cabinet. What
-the Manchester people bare to do is to raise a wind capable of
snovirr, the Cabinet, when of course Mr. Peulett Thomson
will be enabled to give effect to his own views."
Of course our Contemporary is fully aware of " the
!bearings of his own remark, and that he throws on the
-whole Cabinet, in order to shield Mr. P. TircimsoN,
the blame, whatever it may amount to, which Mr.
COBDEN and the other manufacturers threw on Mr.
THOMSON. This is a more serious matter, wo.ap-
prehrlnd, than our Contemporary is aware of, and we
doat, when the business is properly understood,
whether the Cabinet will be disposed to take the bur-
den which its advocate lays on it.
Our Contemporary speaks very boldly against the
the Corn-laws, describing the: landowners as selfish,
and as planning a robbery of the other classes for their
own separate benefit. He says they " have sapped
the foundation" of the national prosperity; and he in-
dirates the coming of a serious " contest between the
Pnen of business in the towns and the squires." Why
does our Contemporary speak so earnestly ? What
makes him just now use this strong language ? The
extraordinary revelations relative to the decay of our
trade, and the increase of foreign manufactures, made
in the Chamber of Commerce, and with which he
has enriched his own columns what do they
amount to ? Proofs that our trade " with
the most populous and civilised part of Europe,"
-was less by 7,400,000/. in the five years since
1832, than in the first five years subsequent to the war ;
that our hosiery manufactures can no longer sustain a
competition with that of Saxony, and the weavers of
Nottingham are in a state of decay and deep distress—
that the hardware of Birmingham and Wolverhampton
.was gradually giving place to the cheaper productions
of the Continent, which were first beating us
out of the foreign markets, and then coming into
ourown markets—that capitalists were breaking up their
establishments, and were retiring to other countries ;
the Messrs. GREG alone, have 'put, or are putting
glown, 400 looms—that the supply of one article after
another is gradually leaving us, that manufactories
rivalling or even surpassing those of our country, are
growing up under the direction of Englishmen in every
part of Europe and America—that not a week passos
but some skilful persons emigrate from our manufac-
turing towns—that the machinery they have erected
abroad equals or surpasses our own—that the exports
of manufactures from Russia,:Amorica,France, Saxony,
were increasing much more rapidly than those of Eng-
land ; and that, in short, owing to the Corn-laws, our
actual prosperity and our relative superiority were ra-
pidly declining, threatening at no distant day to reduce
England, according to her geographical dimensions, to
the rank of a third-rate Power, and exposing her to
be humiliated by her prosperous and aggrandizing
rivals. All these, and a multitude of similar circum.
stances, have been forced on the attention of our Con.
temporary by the excellent speeches made by Messrs
SMITH, COBDEN, GREG, and others, at Man-
chester. He has learned also, from that meeting, that
things are fast coming to a crisis, and " that the vam-
pires who have been living on the blood of the nation

must be shook off; if not strangled, or it will penis
for ever.

. But though the Chronicle and other Journals
have only now learned these astounding facts
from the speeches at Manchester, it is not
possible that the Member for 'Manchester, who
represents the free trade interest, who is also the Pre-
sident of the Board of Trade, and a Member of the
Cabinet, can have been ignorant of them till now. If
he have had to learn them from such a source, and at
such a time, of what use, in the name of the public
welfare, is the Right Honourable Gentleman
and his Board ? Of what use are those returns
he annually lays before Parliament, and employs
Mr. PORTER to collect in ponderous volumes ;
of what use are the Consuls who receive large
salaries for the protection of our trade, and who
continually make communications of the trade of
other countries, which are published at the public
expense ;of what use—if Mr. POULETT THOMSON
be ignorant till now of the decay of our hosiery
and hardware manufactures, in consequence of the
Corn-laws, is he, and the extravagant Board over
which h presides, to the public ? He can scarcely
have been ignorant of these astounding facts, and he
must, we presume, have called the serious attention of
the Cabinet, as is his bounden duty, to them more
than once. If he have not, then the Cabinet
have great right to complain of a most negligent
or treacherous colleague. If he have, and
the
Members have refused to listen to his statements ; if
they have been determined, in spite of this information,
to ruin our manufacturers, for the supposed behoof of
then it was Mr. TriontsoN's
the landed aristocracy,
duty, as the Representative of the free trade interests
of Manchester, and even as an honest Member of
Parliament, "to have come out from amongst them."
Tie owed it to his previous character, to his present
situation, and to his future prospects, if he were not
ignorant of these facts, to have laid them before the

Ministers, and if they refused to act on them to have
laid them before the public by the weight of his audio-

rite, and to at once have separated himself from a
Ministry which, on such a supposition, was wilfully
ruining the country.
Either Mr. THOMSON was acquainted with
these facts, or he was not. If he were not,

he is from that ignorance utterly unfit to fill his

present situation. If he were, he either communi-

sated those facts to the Cabinet or he did not. If

he did, and the Cabinet persisted in opposing his
♦iews, we can imagine no excuse, but one that stamps
him as utterly despicable, for remaining a member of
such a Cabinet ; if he did not, we can imagine no