The Sun.
London, England, 1838-07-05 00:00:00

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WITH WHICH
TILE " TRUE SUN" IS NOW

INCORPORATED.

LOND :
THURSDAY EVENING, JULY 5, 1838.

Tile Morning Chronicle, yestcrLy, in a strainei and
unfair ennunent on a !it tie p!easuntry of Lord BROUGHAM'S
in the House of Lords on Tuesday evening, made it appear
that tt e Noble Lord Lail I.or(r- IJU Ava

his abs 6 ice. INclndy who knows Lord BROUGHAM
will ever accuse bin of an wiwilliiisriss to attack
his opponents to their flees, or of a willing-
*ll,m behipd their backs. But be that as
it may, we are authorised to state-thatno pti-son.n
whatever was meant oa Lord DURHAM, and that the
Chronicle has shown a great deal more Malice and ill will
by its comments towards a Noble Pecr, who was once
one of its special favourites, than he ever showed to Lord
DURHAM. In fact Lord BROUGHAM has, in the absence
of Lord DURHAM, stood up to defend him in the Home
of Peers, when his own relations and personal friends sat
silent.

Mr. PLUMPTRE'S Sunday Starvation Bill met last night
with the fate it deserves. It was kicked cut of the House
of Commons by a majdrity of twelve. We are delighted
with this result, though we fear it will occasion the suc-
cessor of St. ANDREW many a pious pang, and compel
him to derive his sole meagre consolation from the reflec-
tion that " virtue is its own reward." We trust in
future Mr. PLU3IPTEE will have the good sense to con-
fine himself to worthy matters of legislation, and not
go crusading and tilting—like Don QUIXOTTE with the
wind-mills—against the old apple-women, and bakers,
and cab-men of the metropolis. He may rely on
it that nothing but ridicule and discomfiture will ever
attend such a rencontre. The labouring classes of so-
ciety are not to be made pious by Act of Parliament.
Their innate good-sense revolts against any thing like
spiritual coercion, and more especially do they eschew
the'Salnts' faVourite nostrum of Sunday starvation, having
quite enough of it on the other six days of the week.
When Mr. PLUMPTRE, and those silly zealots who vote
with him, can bid the advancing tide recede, enchain the
free winds, or arrest the march of the seasons, then will he
be able—and not till then—to improve the religious and
moral sense of the working: classesLof the community, by
dint of Sabbath-restriction Acts.

We insert entire the long notice which the Herald of
to-day takes of our short article of yesterday on the Corn-
laws, and beg that our readers will peruse it before they
peruse our reply. Supposing them to Lave done that, we
say, that The Sun did not undertake to describe the argu-
ments of our " own economical party," but to refute a fal-
lacy of the Herald ; and that we thought only of expound-
ing a correct opinion, regardless of the " faith of the great
fathers of political economy." We are responsible for our
own assertions, not for theirs; and it was the business of the
Herald, noticing our observations, to have combatted them,
not the theories of political economy. Now, we must take
the liberty of asserting, that through the long article of the
Herald there is not a single word to disprove our position,
that to abolish the Corn-laws would augment the real wages of
labour. We made that assertion in the face of the Herald,
because that journal pretends to be the great friend of the
working classes, and in their name, and on their behalf to
resist the abolition of the Corn-laws. It is bound there-
fore to disprove our position, and unless it do that it ought
to come over to our side. Its remarks about the opinions
of the economists and the Act of 1819, which now equally
affects all classes, are wholly foreign to the point in dispute,
and on them we shall not now bestow a single word.
Although we are not directly interested in defending or
explaining the views ascribed by the Herald to the political
economists, there is not much difficult) in proving that there
is no essential difference, at least in the results, between
their views and ours. As expounded by the Herald, they
all resolve into this, that the economists have advocated the
repeal of the Corn-laws in order that the capitalists and.ma-
nufacturersof England should get labourat the same price,or
as cheaply as it is obtained on the continent ; while our as-
sertion was and is, that the abolition of the Corn-laws
would give more real wages, that is more food to the la-
bourers. Now, those two statements may be easily recon-
ciled. The abolition of the Corn-laws would place ar6sreater
quantity of food at the command:ea our capitalists and
manufacturers than at present. They would enter with
the foreign manufacturer, into cothOtition for corn in the
cheapest foreign market, and would enhance its price to him.
If it did not actually equanze the-price which they and the
foreign manufacturer wculd hav'e to pay fur food, it would
have that tendency, and would place the two more nearly
on a level than at present At the same time cur manu-
facturers would compete with one another for corn
in the home market much less ke:nly, and they
would in both markets get more corn for their money than
at present. Obtaining, more: corn for their money, they
would have an increased demand for labour, and would
give more than at present of the increased quantity of corn

which they obtained to the labourers. We do not pretend
to conjecture in what proportions the increased quantity
of food at a lower price, which would come under the com-
mand of the capitalist, would be divided between profit
and wages ; but we have no doubt whatever that the aboli-
tion of the Corn-laws would augment both. Supposing
that the reduction in the price of corn should only be
10 per cent., 2 or 3 per cent. or 5 per cent would be a
rich reward to a manufacturer on his large capital, and
an addition of 5 per cent. to the wages of labour would be
a great boon to all the labouring classes. We yesterday de-
monstrated that the abolition would increase the real wages or
rewards of labour ; and now, taking the statements of the
Herald, we have shown that it would augment the
profits of capital, and thus we have reconciled our
" heresy" with the " pure faith of the great fathers of po-
litical economy."
Nor would any parties lose a sum equal to the gains of
the capitalists and the labourers by the abolition. The
Corn-laws are a bounty on one species of industry, and a
restraint on another species. They force a costly cultiva-
tion, and prdsibit our merchants and manufacturers from
exchanging the produce of their labour for the produce of
corn grown at a less cost than on our own soil. They
wake it necessary to labour more to obtain the same value.
They also compel men to labour in a less profitable manner
than they otherwise would. To what extent, by this mis-
direction of the industry of the community, they inflict
on it a pure loss it is impossible to say. But,
whatever it may be, that amount would be saved
and shared between the capitalists and labourers,
without abstracting one farthing from any other class.
We are far, however, from saying that the abolition would
not take away something from some classes. It would
lower the rent of land, in the first instance ; it would
make tithes less valuable ; and it would abstract a very con-
siderable sum from the land-owners and the tithe-owners.
The farmers, as capitalists, would be benefited by it ; as
land-owners they would participate in foe loss of their class.
But as land-owners they share in the monstrous wrong
committed by the Corn-law, of taxing the people to enrich
that class, and they must p..y the penalty of their unjust
cupidity. In the long-run, indeed, even the land-owners
would be benefited by the abolition, for rent increases in
proportion as the population increases, and the population
is sure to increase up to the greatest amount of obtainable
food.

We presume, by the Herald not having replied to our
observations of last Saturday, to disprove its two fallacies
about the abolition of Corn-laws " putting half the land out
of cultivation," and " confiscating all the farmers' capital,"
that it gives up those assertions, and is consiaced that no
other classes would be even temporarily injured by the
abolition of the Corn-laws, than the land-owners and the
tithe-owners. Now, neither of these classes as such can be
said to belong to the industrious or productive classes.
They live, in fact, on the labour of others; and it is incum-
bent on the Herald, the boasting advocate of the in-
terests of British industry in every shape, to prove
how tl:e Corn-laws, which eutteil and strarg'e our
manufacturers, which diminish the wages .of labour
benea our in lustry by enriching the priests and the land-
owners. But while we exclude the little taxed corn of
Poland from our country, we admit the almost wholly un-
taxed corn of Ireland ; and thus the English labourers and
manufacturers are taxed to enrich the landlords and the
priests of Ireland. Now we are free to say that the whole
compass of human history supplies us with no example of
two classes of men more useless than these, or even more
noxious to the genoral welfare. To tax the people's bread
to enrich such rnm as my Lord BANDON, or my Lord
RODEN, or any other extirpating, bigotted, idle, Orange
Lord, or tLe Archb'shop of Anmacir, or the Rector of
Itathcormac, is a monstrous outrage on common sense,
as well as on justice and humanity. But as the
corn of Ireland .sTe-TreS in theifo7ls-pcii); ii7LieTi-ITIF-Cdrra-
law gives of our markets, that the people here are taxed
to enrich the title owners and landowners of Ireland, is as
:hat:Awe and two make four. "We tax (said Mr.
BILANFILL at the meeting at Chelmsford on the 15th ult.)
we tax the poor man in various ways—we tax him in effect
in his bread, for as a landlord I could rot other.vise get the
price I do far my corn, and I cannot afford it for le .s : this
r If treQuicc

for my corn baclum I am taxed to raise its, what right ha's
the Clergyman to 605., for he is not -taxed for it ?
(Cheers.) I mention this here because if I were to broach
such a principle as that at our agricultural meetings,• I
should be hissed out of the room." Thus, according to the
landowner, the bread of the poor it taxed to enrich
the titbeowner as well as the landowner, and the land-
owners and titheowners of Ireland as well as those of
England. We require the great advocate of British in-
dustry and of the labouring classes to show how either is
benefited by a tax which enriches only idle landowners and
noxious titheowners, including the landowners and the
titheowners of Ireland.

Lord Joitti RUSSELL has been blamed for allowing
COURTEN AY, alias Mad THOM, to be removed from the
Lunatic Asylum in which he had been confined. The
KNATCHBULLS, and others of the Magisterial breed in Kent,
in bringing this charge against the Noble Lord, are trying
to shift a burden from their own shoulders to his, for it is
as clear as any thing can be, that but for the supineness of
the Magistrates the lamentable occurrence, which cost so
many men their lives, would not have taken place. We
think the Secretary of State for the Horne Department
ought, however, to be on his guard against subjecting him-
self to a similar charge on much stronger grounds. If,
after the example which we have had of the fatal effects of
madmen's influence over the minds of our ignorant peasantry,
men are permitted to go at large who are not only follow-
ing in his footsteps, but may justly be considered as parti-
cipators in his crime, a heavy responsibility will rest with
the Noble Lord. Is Lord STANHOPE a man fit for any
other place than a place of confinement? Ought he not to
be prevented from pursuing farther his extravagant and
dangerous course ? Advice upon such a person is thrown
away. He has shown himself utterly incapable of appreci-
ating either the counsel of his friends, or the ridicule of his
enemies. Nothing comes home to his bewildered under-
standing but a Poor-law grievance—in that form, the
greatest falsehoods and the grossest absurdities find ready
admittance. It is enough that they be dressed up in such
a form as to excite the people to resist the law. We verily
believe that nothing would give this unfortunate Nobleman
more satisfaction than to see England in one universal con-
flagration, provided it were caused by opposition to the
Poor-law. He is as completely under the influence of mo-
nomania as any man that ever crossed the threshold of
Bedlam.

The vagaries of Lord STANHOPE on Tuesday night in the
House of Lords were of a piece with his usual conduct.
He presented two petitions from two itinerant clergymen—
men who, instead of attending to their spiritual duties at home
are vagabondizing about the country, and putting evil into
the minds of the populace—respecting the abuses of the
Poor-law, and made a cackling about them such as never
was heard even from him. And what was the amount of
these mighty grievances ? One of the parties so deeply
injured was a fellow who refused to allow any thing
out of his wages to his wife and children, and who was im-
prisoned, not by virtue of the new, but of the old law!
This man was so conscious of his misconduct that he bad
not the face to petition in his own person. The impu-
dence, however, that he wanted was not wanting in the
clerical tramp. The Rev. Mr. MABERLY, the Cambridge-
shire agitator, soon cooked up a nice mess of grievance out
of this worthy person's case, and sent it to the Poor-law
grievance manufactory, preside& over by Lord STANHOPE,
in the form of a petition, in his own (MatiEaves) name.
The House, it will be seen, refused to receive it. The
other petition was from the Rev. Agitator DEWDNEY, and
a few of his dupes in Portsmouth, complaining of the
Board of Guardians. DEWDNEY, be it remarked, was re-
jected by the rate-payers at the last election of Guardians,
in consequence of his previous conduct while in office.
Mortified vanity is the cause of his spite against that body.
The Duke of RICHMOND soon demolished the assertions
both of the Noble Lord and of his clerical " squad," as he
very appropriately denominated the reverend firebrands who
are making themselves so busy in a bad cause.

Whatever effect Lord STANHOPE'S Quixotism may pro-
(!uce upon the ignorant rabble, it cannot be slid to have in-
jured the Poor-law Amendment Act in the opinion of the
reasonable and thinking part of the community. On the
contrary, it has done much to establish in the public mind
the conviction that the Act is produc'ng the most Lene-
tici:d effects on the condition a-41 character of the poor,