The Sun.
London, England, 1831-10-18 00:00:00

HENLEY•ON-THAMES, OCT. 15.

Whatever opinions may have been asserted that the
people were indifferent to the cause of Reform, it caenot
be applied to this town, for the meeting held to-day in the
Town-hall (the Mayor in the Chair), to address his Ma-
jesty in consequence of the rejectiom of the Bill, was by
far the most numerous and respectable that has yet taken
place. Our worthy Rector, the Rev. J. Kine, in moving
the first resolution, observed, as a clergyman, he was glad
to embrace the opportunity of expressing his sentiments in
favour of the Reform Bill, and as an humble individual
he was gratified in coinciding with the opinions of so large
and respectable a meeting of his fellow-townsmen ; he re-
gretted that the high dignitaries of the church were so much
identified in the rejection of the measure, though he firmly
believed they acted from conscientious motives; whatever
rtfleciions might be east on the establishment, he congra-
tu'ated the meeting on the peaceable demeanour of the
town, and hoped the same line of conduct would be fol-
lowed in other towns and parishes. William Coombes,
Esq. seconded this resolution. The several other resolu-
tions, as well as the address, were proposed, seconded, and
all carried unanimously, arid the meeting broke up after
giving four cheers for King William, four for Reform, and
three for the Mara., for his loyal, spirited, and ind,pen-
dent conduct in the Chair.

SECON:) EDITION.

SUN OFFICE, Seven o'Clock•

MPERIAL PARLIAMENT

THIS EVENING.

HOUSE OF COMMONS.

The SPEAKER took his seat a few minutes before Four
o'clock.
Mr. Johnson, of the office of Chief Secretary for
Irelind, brought up a copy of depositions taken at
Newtownbarry.
The Bill for bettering the condition of the labouring
poor was read a second time, and ordered to be printed.
Mr. SADLER presented a petition from Galway, re-
lating to the Galway franchise. Also a petition from
Joseph HoTway, in prison for offences against the law of
libel, praying an alteration of that law. Also a petition
from persons employed in spinning mills at Dundee, com-
plaining of the hardships which children employed in
those factories experienced. lie wished the Bill of
the Honourable Baronet, the Member for Westminwer,
had extended to cotton factories, and he gave notice that
he would take up the subject next session. The Hon.
Member also presented a petition from a parish in Belk-
shire, praying for the abolition of Negro Slavery, and one
from Galway respecting the duty on Bari:la. The Hon.
Member then gave a formal intimation that he would
next session introduce a Bill for regulating the hours of
labour for children in cotton factories, and another Bill for
the relief of the poor in Ireland.
Mr. HODGSON presented a petition front the ship
owners, &c. of Barnstaple, for the repeal of the marine
insurance duty.
Mr. HUME strongly condemned the duty on insurances
as most impolitic, and was surprised that his Majesty's
Government had not turned their attention to the subject.
The Hon. Member also adverted to the necessity of re-
ducing the Pension List, and said he hoped to see the time
when the public purse would be shut against all pensions.
—(llear, from Mr. Hunt.)
CORN LAWS. _ .

Colonel TORRt:Nipresented a petition from the in-
habitants of London and kkrettninster praying for a re-
vision of the existing system of Corn Laws. The peti-
tion was of great importance to the country—more
particularly at the present peculiar crisis to which the
country had arrived. Endeavours had been made, and in
some places but too successfully, to place the agricultural
ip opposition to the manufactuting interest. lie
was sorry to perceive that a Noble Lord, in a re-
cent speech to the freeholders of Dorsetshite, had
said, if the Reform Bill were to pass, the agricultural
interest. would sufftr very materially, and the farmers would
be row ed. Now, a statement more mischievous, or one
more injurious to the country, could not have been put
forth. The two interests were so linked together, so dove•
tailed with each other, that they must stand or fall to•
gether, and to set them in opposition to each other was most
mischievous.—(Hear.) Had that Noble Lord taken a
leaf out of the book of 1)1r. Henry Drummond, called
Cheap Corn good fur Farmers, he would not have made
such an injurious statement. Time petitioners entertained
the same views as Mr. Henry Drummond regarding
Ithe effect of the Corn Laws, and staled, that notwith-

standing the high price of corn, they received a less reward
for their toil than the labourers in any other country, and
they attributed that result to the operation of the corn-
laws. The Hoe. and gallant Member then read various
portions of the petition, and entreated the earnest atten-
tion of the House to the contents of it, as containing, in a
condensed form, the entire theory of tie corn law system,
and as developing the effect produced from it, which was
so injurious to the country.
The petition, of which the following is a copy, was
then read and laid on the table :

TO THE HONOURABLE THE COMMONS OF THE
UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND
IRELAND, IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED.
THE PETITION OF THE UNDERSIGNED INHA-
BITANTS OF LONDON AND WESTMINSTER,

SHEWETII,
That the present alarming stagnation of trade, and the low
rates of wages and of profits, as well in agriculture as in manu-
factures, have induced your petitioners respectfully to approach
your Honourable House, in order to point out what appear to
your petitioners to be sonic of the principal causes of these cala-
mities, and to pray your Honourable House for the removal of
them.
That your Honourable House cannot but be acquainted with
the fact that labour in England is applied with more energy, with
more skill, and for a greater number of hours out of the four-
and-twenty, than in any other country of Europe.
That it seems reasonable that the labourer's command over ne-
cessaries of life should in some measure depend on the efficacy of
his exertions; and that the high intrinsic value of British labour
should secure for it a high exchangeable value in the market.
That the industrious workman, who might form such an ex-
pectation, would experience the most bitter disappointment. The
due and natural proportion between the intrinsic worth and
the market price of labour has been so deranged, that
though the British labourer executes, in any given number
of days a greater quantity of work than the labourer of
any other country, yet he receives as his daily wages a less pro-
portion of the products of his industry than the labourer in any
other country ; and while the manufacturers of this island are
capable of supplying half the world, they have frequently been
unable to obtain for themselves, in return for their skilled, their
energetic, and their persevering exertions, a sufficient quantity
of the products of their labour to support existence; and have
been preserved by parochial relief, or by the hand of private cha-
rity, from perishing from the face.of the earth.
That your petitioners arc convinced that the existing Corn
Laws form one main and leading cause of the calamitous con.
dition in which the working classes of this country have been
placed.
That these laws render it necessary to resort to inferior soils,
and to adopt expensive modes of culture, in order to raise the
necessary supplies of food, and of other agricultural products.
That resorting to such soils, and adopting such modes of til-
lage, cause a greater quantity of labour to be employed in raising
the same quantity of the necessaries of life • and it follows as
an inevitable consequence, that as more labour is required to
produce necessaries, more labour will be required to purchase
them.
That thus, as your petitioners conceive, it amounts to a clear
and complete demonstration that a system of Corn Laws re-
stricting the importation of foreign agricultural produce, and
thereby requiring the resorting to inferior lands, and the adopt-
ing of high and expensive modes of culture, must have the effect
of raising the value of the necessaries of life, in relation to any
given quantity of labour, or what comes to the same thing, of
lowering the value of any given quantity of labour as compared
with those necessaries.
That your petitioners submit to your Honourable House, that
the people have an undoubted right to purchase their food
wherever it can be obtained at the cheapest rate; and, that arti-
ficial regulations, lowering the value of labour in relation to the
necessaries of life, are an infringement upon this right ; which
infringement can be justified or excused only upon the supposi-
tion that the evil which it inflicts upon the labouring classes is
overbalanced by some great and general good, thereby secured to
them and to the community at large.
That your petitioners are prepared to show by reasoning self-
evident in all its steps, that the severe privations inflicted upon
the labouring classes by the present restrictions on the importa-
tion of foreign agricultural produce are not compensated by any
preponderating advantage conferred either upon them or upon
any other classes, that the existing Corn Laws are universally
injurious, that the master, manufacturer, the merchant, the far-
mer, mid ultimately the landed proprietor, are all more or less
partakers in the retardation of prosperity, the diminution of
wealth, and the approach to decline which they occasion, and that
by their operation all the sources of income are rendered less
productive, the same cause which gives to the labourer a di-
minished command over the necessaries of life, lowering the
profit upon capital, not only in manufactures and commerce, but
also in agriculture.
That in carrying on manufacturing industry, a certain quantity
of agricultural produce must be consumed in the form of food
and material, and also a certain quantity of manufactured
goods in the form of clothing, tools, and machinery ; that it
is manifest, therefore, that manufacturing profits must fall
as the value of agricultural produce rises; that, if the
relative value of agricultural produce and of manufactured
goods be such that the master manufacturer with one-
third of his fabrics can purchase his raw material, and the food
of his labourers, while he uses another third for their clothing,
tools, and machinery, it is evident that the remaining third will
be a clear surplus, constituting a profit of fifty per cent. upon
the capital expended. But that it the value of agricultural pro-
duce rise, until it requires two-thirds of the master manufac.
turer's fabrics to replace the food and material expended, the
remaining third being as before required for clothing and ma.
chinery, no surplus can exist, and the master's profit will be re-
duccal from fifty per cent. to nothing.
That the ruin thus inflicted upon the manufacturer speedily
overtakes the farmer. That if before the rise in the value of
agricultural produce the farmer used one-third of his crops for
seed, and for the food of his labourers, and with another third
purchased their clothing and implements, the remaining third
would be a clear surplus ; and he, as well as the master
manufacturer, would obtain a profit of fifty per cent. upon
the capital expended. That if the value of the farmer's
produce is doubled, because it is necessary for him to go to ass
inferior soil, upon which any given quantity of produce must be
raised with a double expenditure, then, instead of one-third he
must use two-thirds of his crops for seed and food, and the re-
maining third, though doubled in value, will do no snore than
purchase for him the double quantity of clothing and implements.
hat thus the quantity of produce obtained will only replace the
quantity expended, and the cultivator of the last quality of soil
resorted to will be placed on the same footing with the master_
manufacturer, and will have his profits reduced from fifty per
cent. to nothing.
'That the fall of profit soon reaches the farmers who occupy
the superior lands upon which the same expenditure continues
to raise the same quantity of produce as before. That it is not in
the nature of things that while master-manufacturers and culti-
vators of the last quality of land resorted to made no profit at all,
the occupiers of good land should for any considerable time be
permitted to realise high returns. That on the expiration of
existing leases all those who were in possession of disposable
capital would bid against the holders of fertile land, until all that
portion of the produce which remained after the replacing of
expenditure was offered to the proprietor in the form of rent.
That after having enjoyed a short-lived advantage from the rise
in the value of agricultural produce, the ancient tenantry of the
country would be either ejected from their farms, or reduced to a
condition in which they could obtain only a bare subsistence.
That the proprietors of the soil cannot continue to prosper
while all the other classes of the community declined. For smile
time rents may remain at their present amount, but at no dis-
tant period the destruction of profit will cause capital to emi-
grate, the seats of manufacture, and the marts of commerce,
will be removed to other countries, and the home demand for
food and material will subside, and thus England impoverished
and depopulated, will, as in former times, export agricultural
produce to the foreign market, and that the proprietors of the
soil will discover, when too late, that it is only in the immediate
vicinity of a dense and opulent manufacturing population, that
die value of land can acquire and retain an extraordinary
vatic,'"
That thus it appears by clear and unanswerable proofs that the
existing restrictions upon the importation of foreign agricul-
tural produce, are injurious to every class of the community,
that they lower the real wages of labour, reduce the profits of
capital, and ultimately bring down rents from that high level
which they reach in a country, the circumstances of which lead,
as in England, to the importation of corn to the low level at
which they settle in a country, the circumstances of which lead,
as in Poland, to the exportation of corn.
That as your petitioners know from dearly-bought experience
the calamities which follow from sudden changes in the direction
of industry, they are far from desiring such an immediate and
precipitate opening of the ports as might bring on a renewal of
agriCultural distress, and as their appeal to your Honour-
able House is founded on the principles of impartial jus-
tice, and of free and equal competition, they do not object to
securing to British agriculture such temporary protection as
may be necessary to place it on an equal footing with other
branches of the national industry, by compensating the farmer
for whatever excess of taxation Islay actually be imposed on him.
That from all these considerations, the undersigned petitioners
most earnestly pray your Honourable House to enter upon re-
vision of the torn Laws, with a view to the gradual removal of
every species of restriction upon the importation of food and raw
material, and with the ultimate object of securing to British
agriculture the only permanent protection which in equity it
can claim, the abolition or equalization of all those taxes, assess-
ments, or charges, which may be found to press with exclusive
or with disproportioned weight upon the soil.