The Sun.
London, England, 1831-08-27 00:00:00

\*-‘,54:k.

LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, AUGUST 27, 1831.

o sacrifice the independence of Poland, and thereby
he interests of England and of civilized Europe, to
-he 4‘ irresistible" (for so it proved) influence of
he barbarian Autocrat. The Duchy of Warsaw
-vas accordingly, with the consent of all the Powers,
.rected into a kingdom, with the Czar at the head,
is King of Poland, and on the condition that she
-hould have a Constitution of her own, and separate
national institutions, independent of Russia. Thus,
it the moment that the national existence of Po-
!and was proclaimed, the chains of her future sub-
jection were forged. Still her independence was
liplomatically recognised by the Great Powers of
Europe. That independence and the conditions of
sovereignty have been grossly violated by Alexander
and Nicholas. Russia has torn to pieces the treaty
which bound the Great Powers to protect the in-
dependence of Poland, and they have, one and all,
.mbmitted to the insult and connived at the aggres-
sion.—Morning Herald.

Among the papers printed for the use of the two
Houses of Parliament, there is one which has been
laid before the Lords' Committee engaged-in an er-
' quiry " into the state of the poor laws," which con-
rains some curious tables. The purpose of the per-
son who has compiled these tables is to show, that
from the increased population of England, unaccom-
panied by an equivalent increase in the capital ap-
plied to employment, and consequently in the means
cf subsistence, the surplus people can be no other-
wise got rid of but by emigration. To prove this
point, the calculations are carried back to Cie year
1700, when the inhabitants of England and Wales
appear (from these returns) to have fallen short of
.5,500,000 souls, and thence brought forward to
1821, when 12,085,000 is stated to have been the
amount of our population. The increase, therefore,
in 120 years would be above 6,600,000, yielding an
increase of 120 per cent. There may be reason to
conclude from other causes, that the population of
England has augmented considerably within the
last 100 years; but it would be satisfactory to
learn on what grounds we are called upon to place
credit in any returns on that subject, of so old
a date as the year 1700. It has been generally and
confidently asserted, that the first accurate lists on
record in modern times were those of 1800. In-
deed, the compiler of the tables now exhibited con-
fesses that he has deduced his general estimates of
the population from the births of each year only,—
a standard somewhat vague we should imagine,
even if the registry of births were correct, which is
more than can be safely taken for granted. A se-
cond table is designed to prove that the proportion
of annual deaths to births has diminished:from a ratio
of 1,000 in 1,146, to one of 1,000 in 1,60.5, com-
paring the year 1700 with 1820. Not knowing '
from what source, whether parish registries or
others, the compiler may have drawn this second
series of calculations, we are ignorant what faith
may be reposed in it. The author next proceeds to
the ten agricultural counties following, and states
that the births of 1810 were, to those of 1700, as
about 47 to 28,—a proportion of excess falling some-
what short of that exhibited by the modern popu-
lation of the kingdom generally over that of 1700 :
and between 1811 and 1821, he makes the ac-
tual increase of population in the same counties
amount to 15 per cent. He concludes by several
observations tending to show, that while population
has increased, agriculture has not so improved or
extended as to make the produce of the soil keep
pace with the growth of consumers ; and therefore
he argues that nothing can save us from famine or
civil war but a recourse to emigration. We believe
there is little doubt that, from the fifth or sixth year
of the war against the French revolutionists, the po-
pulation of this country did take a:sudden and con-
siderable start. A greater number of hands were
required, both for war arid manufactures, than at any
former period, and a much improved cultivation of
the soil afforded a large increase of subsistence. The
general adoption of the green crop system of farm-
ing not only began to supply food in greater quan-
tity, but of a better and more wholesome quality
than had been enjoyed by preceding generations.
Cattle had, down to nearly the end of the last cen-
tury, been slaughtered about November,and salted for
winter store. Bacon, salt beef, and salt fish, formed
the staple nutriment of most of our countrymen
who were between the rank of gentry and the mere
handicraftsmen and labourers, to which class they
served as luxuries. W' hen the turnip and green-crop
husbandry came in,—and we believe it may be fixed
between 1790 and 1800,—ample means were fur-
niched for fattening cattle through the winter
months ; fresh animal food, consequently became
the substitute for salted during the 7-12ths of the
year; and we have heard intelligent physicians
state, that a gradual improvement in the general
health of society might be distinc!ly traced to it.
If a comparative diminution of deaths have really
taken place in England, some cause must, we appre-
hend, have operated powerfully to counteract the
vast increase in the consumption of ardent spirits,
which, unhappily, during the last thirty years have
superseded to a dreadful extent the enjoyment of
home-brewed beer. But, admitting at once the
accelerated growth of population, and the dearth of
demand for labour, as affirmed by the note-maker
on the tables to which we have been adverting,—
that is to say, granting that the power of buying
food has not kept pace with the want of it,—was
ever madness so combined with inhumanity, as in
the legislation of the British Parliament with refer-
ence to the supply of corn ? As our people have
become more numerous,—as mouths have multi-
plied,—while, according to these returns, the pro-
duce of the soil of England, for many years past,
has been stationary, if not declining, our lawgivers
have been straining every effort to make food more
inaccessible, instead of more attainable, to the poor.
Far from inviting bread to the poor man's door,
they have been repelling it,--first, by open prohibi-
tions,—next, and to this moment, by severe and
pinching duties. They have striven to check popu-
lation by artificial famine. Why, such a system is
no better than delibetaie rebellion against Provi-
dence, and is of itself enough to draw down some
signal visitation upon us, if instant means be not
taken to retrace a course so indefensible. One in-
fallible test of the reality of Reform in our Parlia-
ment wi:l be the treatment of the corn question by
the House of Commons of IB32.—Times.

The Reform 13111 has at length progressed, as the
Americans say, beyond the 101. clause. This may
be considered the most important of the constructive
clauses, and it has been. accordingly the subject of
much discussion, and attacked by all sorts of amend-
ments. We may now indulge the hope that the
remaining parts of the Bill will be soon disposed of.
We trust that this day there will he a grand move-
ment. The public are beidtily tired of the endle-s
debates on this Bill, and most aox:ous to see it fairly
launched in the oilier House. In a discussion in
the House last night on the Newtownbarry affair,
Mr. George Dawson said, if the Government should
come to the unwise determination of disbanding the
Yeomanry, they would throw themselves into the
arms of Mr. O'Connell. A pretty tenure of a
country ! Government must employ the yeomanry
against the Catholics, otherwise the yeomanry will
join the Catholics auainst the Government.—Morn-
ing Chronicle.
Mr. Senior has just published a letter to Lord
Howick, " On a legal Provision for the Irish Poor;
Commutation of Tithes; and a Provision for the
Irish Roman Catholic Clergy." We have only
space at present for a notice of the first division of

'iis pamphlet. No man who looks with any degree
if attention at the condition of Ireland, will hesitate
o admit that the establishment of a provision for the
ion is beset with many difficulties. But it is not
enough, that there are difficulties in the way of any
measure, to induce us to reject it ; if the measure,
though not without its evils, free us from still greater
evils, we ought still to adopt it. Mr. Senior sets
ret with the proposition, that " it is generally ad-
mitted that the prosperity of the labouring classes
lepends principally on the extent of the fund for the
maintenance of labourers, compared with the number
af labourers to be maintained;" and that it "is also
admitted that the extent of that fund depends princi-
pally on the efficiency of labour in producing the com-
modities which the labourers consume." Now in order
that the fund may increase, it is, we suppose, also ad.
mined, that there should be security for property,for no
man will embark capital in any undertaking without
being tolerably assured that lie will be allowed to
reap the returns from it in security. The fund for
the employment of labourers cannot, therefore, be
increased without security ; and where the labourers
are sufTeaed to increase without restraint of some
kind, moral or physical, they will more than keep
pace with the funds for their maintenance, and con-
sequently there will be no security for property. Mr.
Senior has not had the main points of the question
clearly in his eye in his pamphlet, which may be
said to have proved every thing but that which he
ought to have proved. The grand point is security
for property. Sir Matthew Hale, in his discourse
touching provision for the poor, has, in the preface
to ir,shewn this in a few words :—" A due care for
the relief of the poor is an act of civil prudence and
political wisdom ; for poverty in itself is apt to
emasculate the minds of men, or at least it makes
men tumultuous and unquiet. When there are
many very poor, the rich cannot long or safely con-
tinue such. Nreessity renders men of phlegmatic and
drill natures stupid and undiseiplinable ; arid men of
more fiery or active constitutions rapacious and
desperate." All our hopes for the improvement of
society must rest on the security for property. With
every increase of wealth we obtain additional means
for extending the dominion of man over matter.
Without a class relieved from the necessity of unre-
mitting toil, we should make no advances in science
—we should be strangers to the arts which embellish
life. It will hardly be denied that the chief cause of
the present &stress in Ireland is, that the number of
labourers exceeds the fund for their maintenance.
But, says Mr. Senior, " if any moral fact coin be
a,certained by experience, if the testimonies of all
ages and all countries have any weight, it is esta-
blished that idleness and improvidence can be pre-
vented only by leaving them to the punishment in-
flicted by nature—want and degradation." Why,
the Irish have been left to this punishment from the
time of the English conquest to the present day,
and yet they have increased far more rapidly than
any other people in Europe. If the punishment
inflicted by nature were a cure for idleness and im-
providence, the Irish would be at this day the most
industrious arid provident, instead of being the most
lazy and improvident, as they have enjoyed more of
that punishment than any other European nation. Mr
Senior is altogether on a wrong tack. With a people
having the low notions of the Irish as to what is ne-
cessary for subsistence, he will find that the punish-
ment of want and degradation is without terrors. To
a people who have already made some advances in
civilization, arid of whom the very lowest consider-4
certain luxuries indispensible to his comfortable
existence,want and degradation may have some ten ors.
An English labourer will work, and work hard, that he
may have something more than bare necessaries.
An Irishman is content with lower fare, and if he can
obtain that fare at a small expence of labour, he will
give no more. It is no easy matter to induce an
Irishman in this country to undergo hard labour. The
general complaint of all who employ labourers is,
that an Irishman requires to be well watched. Load-
ing and unloading barges, or any sort of labour
which is soon over, suits them ; but constant toil
they hate, and would rather live meanly than toil
hard. The land of every country belongs to the
whole inhabitants of it. It is found beneficial for
society that the soil should be appropriated to indi-
viduals ; but they hold the soil under the implied
trust of enforcing good order. The proprietors of
the soil are properly held responsible for the main-
tenance of the population ; but then, as they ought
not to be held to perform an impossibility, they must
be vested with powers to prevent such an increase of
people in the various localities as shall create a dispro-
portion between the number of labourers and the fund
for maintaining them. By making every man a co-
partner with the nominal proprietor, while the latter
is vested with full controul over the distribution,
the weight of the proper discharge of the important
duty of preserving a balance between the labourers
and the fund for inaintairring them will be attended,
as it ought, with the severe punishment of the cul-
pable party.. That it ever can be an easy matter to
prevent an unnecessary increase of the numbers of
the people we do not mean to say. In truth, the
history of every society is a history of constant
struggles—of tendencies contracted by other ten-
dencies—of difficulties, and discoveries of means for
surmounting them• The landlords of Ireland will
have unquestionably no sinecure in preventing those
who are charged on the land from having more than
a due share of its produce. But property is power
—and we know of no class so well able to cope with
the evil alluded to as the possessors of property.
The question between poor laws and the absence of
them would be at once decided, could it be shown
that poor laws, with suitable vagrant laws, have a
tendency to prevent an undue increase of the popsy
lation. No man who examines the domestic his-
tory of England, Holland, Switzerland, Norway,
Denmark, Sweden, Germany, &c. even superficially,
can fail to discover that the laws for maintaining the
poor have contributed materially to keep the num-
ber of the people within bounds. In all these coun-
tries there are Poor Laws, and in most of them ri-
gorous laws of settlement. In England difficulties
were constantly thrown in the way of the marriage
t wereperiod
loud whenar)
and
of labourers when hands were trot wanted ; and the
ctomplaints
orrnipal‘avise tosf onttthl
eemsubject,
wered o:evlrt
taxed,o
:leent
:lYrepeated. In a work of a distinguished
Gelauthor, who wrote about the middle of last
century, Justus Moeser, there is a very instructive
essay, written when it began to be fashionable to
preach the encouragement of population, to show
wily their forefathers had constantly opposed them-
selves to an increase of population. All the Teu-
tonic nations seem to have been early alive to the
necessity of guarding against being overrun by des-
titute people. Mr. Senior objects to the restraints
usystem of Poor Laws. " A po-
licenish idleness. How constant is
heece (lie says)tserairrY in
tendency to p
yer a
of extremes to meet—of systems
which began by promising benefitsin to end by inflicting evils pecular to slavery."
inconsistent with
state could be obtained in civilized society?
eve: imagined that all the advantages of
savageitirrril'eelleeetd‘qc%'uhe°stion is not, whether a man shall have ab-
solute freedom, but how much of that freedom it is
necessary that individuals should sacrifice, to enjoy
the advantages of the social union ? If a man
without property will not work, and becomes a
nuisance to others, society must
place him under
constraint. No man is entitled to even his liberty,
to the detriment of others. The statements bor-
rowed by Mr. Senior from the Scotch writers are
imperfectly understood by him, from his want of ac-
quaintance with the circumstances of the northern

PRICE 7D.

girt of the kingdom. The reluctance to depend on
•harity in those parts of the country in which assess-
nents prevail, may be abated ; because, where there
a a regular charitable fund, the necessitous will
pply to it, rather than trust to casual relief. Bu►
f Mr. Senior supposes that in those districts of
,cotland in which assessments prevail, the lower
lasses are in a more destitute condition than in-
ithers, or are more improvident, he is woefully mis-
aken. In fact, assessments began with the outlay
if capital on the soil, and they have followed the
narch of cultivation. They began in Berwickshire
ind Roxburghshire, and East Lothian districts, cul-
ivated like a garden, and in which the labourers are
'letter off than in any part of Scotland, or, perhaps,
England. The condition of the hinds of Ber-
vickshire and Roxburghshire, in particular, has al-
vays been considered most enviable. In all the rich
Ind cultivated districts, the possessors of property
'nund it for their interest to provide regularly for the
poor, and rigorously to repress vagrancy; and it is
only in the miserable districts of the Highlands, and
)ne or two poor districts of the south-west, that
he poor are not provided for by assessments. We
fief), Mr. Senior to lay down any plan for preserving
arder in a country which shall be effectual to its ob-1
ject, without a vagrant law, and a vagrant la►v
supposes a fund for the destitute, and limits within
which the vagrant shall be coerced. Without a va-
4rant law and law of sttlement, it will always be
in the power of proprietors to allow a worthless po-
oulation to grow up on their estates, and to keep
their neighbours in a state of insecurity. One pro-
prietor can at any time, in Ireland, throw a whole
country into a state approaching to civil war.—
In England, the poor laws limited the range of in-
dividual caprice, and compelled them to proceed in
their plans with some regard to others. " Tenants in
the North," says Laurence (Land Steward, 2d edi-
tion, 1731), " who rent but small farms, have, gene-
rally speaking,but little substance wherewith to make
any expensive improvements. This, indeed, is a mis-
fortune, but it is such a one as requires time to mend
and alter. To alter farms,and to turn several little ones
into great ones, is a work of difficulty arid time; for
it would raise too great an odium to turn poor fami-
lies into the wide world by uniting farms all at once,
in order to make an advance of rents. 'Tis much
more reasonable and popular to be content to stay
till such farms fall into hand by death, before the
tenant is either raised or turned out. I remember
an instance in my surveys, of a gentleman, who was
for tasking small farms into great ones all at once—
the consequence whereof soon after appeared to be
this—that the Church and Poors' assessments fell
so heavy upon the remaining tenants, that the Lord
of the Manor was soon brought to discover his mis•
take, by re-admitting the poor tenants, and disposing
the farms partly in the same state they were in be-
fore, arid to content himself to allow time to com-
plete his desire of improving his estate in that way
of making the farms larger." In Ireland the dis-
possessed tenants would have murdered their suc-
cessors and set fire to their property, and thrown
the whole country into confusion and alarm. But
we must drop this extensive subject for the present. i
—Morning Chronicle.

clause could have been added to the Bill for: any
ether purpose than to discredit and destroy it?
Why, again, if it be necessary to add yet another
luestion, and one still more perplexing to the frau-
iulent professor' of Reform, should the same men
vho three months ago thought the quarterly pav
'tient of rent an insufficient test of respectability and
ndependerice, and who still think it so in Scotland,
le now so resolutely fixed upon bestowing the frar,
.hise in England upon weekly rent-payers ? Will
Lord Althorp or the Attorney-General attempt to
'rawer these questions ?-211orning Poe.

We have always entertained the opinion that not
one man in ten in the House of Commons of thoso
who affect to supprrt the Revolutionary Bill are
sincerely desirous that it should pass into a law,
while with respect to his Majesty's Ministers we
think there is abundant evidence that they hate
their own monstrous offspriug with a perfect hatred,
and are deterred from strangling it only by the cer-
tainty that the contempt and indignation of the
nowwoupldartbiauirlyst and
upon
awithd great
dcoiffiuncturlyty,
whichsuppressed,
over-
whelmi them the moment their abominable hypocrisy
is unveiled and acknowledged. The determination
of Government and of a majority of the House of
Commons to insert a clause in the Bill imparting
the right of voting at the election of two-thirds of
the Members of every future Parliament to persons
occupying tenements by the week, is the newest
and perhaps the strongest manifestation of their
desire to destroy the whole measure. Such a clause,
we fearlessly assert, could not have been agreed to
by one man in his senses, from any other motive than
that of hostility to the measure into which it is intro-
duced. Mr. Campbell, who seems to bean honest advo-
cate of Reform, clearly, but in vain, pointed out to
the fraudulent pretenders to the character of Refor-
mers the incompatibility of the franchise they were
about to create with any degree of freedom or purity
in future elections of Members of the House of
Commons, asserting his belief that in the borough
of Southwark there is at this time one man who is
the landlord of 500 houses let to weekly tenants.
We do not question the accuracy of this statement;
none of the Reformers pretended to deny it ; and
if it be true, what did they do by their clause?
They conferred upon an extensive house-jobber,who
may be a man of substance or who may he a man
of straw (for being the landlord to 500 or 1,000
weekly tenants does not prove him to be one or
the other), the power at every future election for
the borough, and at a very small cost to himself, of
commanding some proportion of his 500 teriata to
vote as he thinks proper, and of annihilating the
votes of all the tenants whom he cannot command.
Whether there be any one man who carries on
the trade in small houses in Southway k or any other
borough to the extent described by Mr. Campbell
is, however, unimportant. Not a singla individual
of the majority who voted far tha clause can by pos-
sibility be ignorant that such a trade exists, and is
carried on very extensively, by men even of small
property (for men of large property this Lade is a
great deal too troublesome), in every borough and
city in the kingdom. Nor is it possible to suppose
any individual of this majority, dull as many of 1
them att., so dull as not immediately to have per-
ceived that the effect of the clause must be to su-
peradd to the trade of these lieu:e,jobbers the more
profitable and dignitle;l4 profession of an election-
jobber. And th2se men, we arc to be told, are ha
nest and sincere Parliamentary Reformers I The ill-
effable nonsense that was uttered in support of the
clause is an insult t o the common sense of the com-
munity, and proves the sham Reformers of the Ad-
ministration to Lava a thorough contempt of the
people, whom, having excited into momentary
frenzy, they think to keep in permanent delusion.
Lord Altltorp and the Attorney-General both dis-
tinctly admitted that the clause code's the power.
we have described; but the former does not think
it will be abused to destroy the fredom and parity of
elections, because if a man have few houses the
abuse of his power can be of littla consequence, and
if he have many he will not incur the hazard of loss
of rent by giving his tenants notice to quit; and the.
!attar consoles himself with the notion that r 4 force
of public
inblic suchopi hands.rdor iwill pAregritfotrhethuenidraepoexorercNiNs,ietsof
power
etthe the
manwho inducements
has
which may
halfpenny
y and wi l
be oeffkre
The loss of rent, of a week's or perhaps a fart
night's rent, of 500 houses, at three shillings and
e
a, against
to the
we
the power of extinguishing or controlling 500
t cma
vot, s ! Alas for their poor wits ! The force of
public opinion upon the mind of the middle-
man, the jobber, the grub, who ferrets about every
Monday morning to grasp his one, two, three, four,
or five hundred three and tenpences in the wretched
recesses of St. George's Fields! Away with such
paltry hypocritical palliatives. Does that deserve
the name of a Reform Bill which places such power
in such hands ? Is it possible to believe that such

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