The Sun.
London, England, 1822-01-04 00:00:00

December, which often surpasses the precut
ing Month in dreary aspect and chilly tempera.
tare ; and at other times puts on the stern Yel
majestic habitudes of determined Winter, has, in
the newly completed year; taken a mask, stud as-
sumed the 'character of Springs; high and stormy
gales, heavy series, but transient falls of rain,
would betoken March, and might be pictured by
the imagination did not our avocations in the
garden proclaim the truth too strong for even the
soaring power of fancy to overcome. Little re-
mains to be done.. in the Garden during this.
Month ; cutting down the. filching and retentive
weeds ; trenching the vacant ground, to be ame-
liorated by the influence of the atmosphere, and
clearing the beds of the fallen honours of the
Closing year, with the insertion of a few early
crops, form the catakgue of the Horticulturist's
chief December employments. The never-fail-
ing moisture of the soil, and the constant mild,
ness of'the seasons of the past year, at no time,
for a continuance, evincing an excessive increase
or reduction of temperature, has caused, as it
were, a greater revulsion in the natural proceeds
of the Vegetable World than I ever remember
even to have heard of. In my Garden, and in
those under my immediate notice, there •were,
on the 2d, Caroline Strawberries and Primroses
(Primula veris) in full blossom.—JOth. Some
Geraniums, not yet removed under shelter fur-
ther than that of a South East wall, are uninjur-
ed, and in full blossom.-18th. The Snow-drop
.(Galantus nivalis), that harbinger of Spring, has
now got its white-tipped flower buds above the
surface of the soil. The leaves of the Daffodil
.(Pseudo-narcissus) have been for some days appa-
rent above the mould of the beds.—The female
Catkins of the Filbert'and'Hasel (Corylus aVel-
lana) are remarkably forward.—The Chrysan-
themum, the Lauristinus (Viburnum Tinus), the
Double Stock, and the Marigold (Callendula Of
•ficinalis).are in full flower. But all these unsea-
sonable beauties, and the numerous instances re-
corded by. the Public Prints, are merely partial
lusus natures; and. although these melancholy
sweets do exist, yet they betray, by their in general
.drooping and pining aspect, that this is not the
season which they best adorn :--the fragrant
and beauteous n'igrators with us in the summer
will be thinned, it is to be feared, by this hyemal
The common Fennel (Anethem
fceniculum) the old stems of which were cut down
in November, have now thrown out luxurious
shoots.-20th. The buds of the White Lilac
(Syringa vulgaris) are on the• point of bursting;
those of the red much backwarder. The Novem-
ber so:sn Peas and Beans for the first crops of
next year, it is to be feared, will suffer mach
from the frosts and piercing winds of Winter ;
being forced into too luxuriant a growth by the
unusual mildness of the season. The last Au-
gust sown Peas for production in the same year
are now in blossom, and yielding a small pro-
duce, but the greater part were destroyed by the
white frosts and blasts of November ; we still,
however, have this last year justified the remark
of the Russian, that we have Peas in December
and ice in June ;, the first we have just instanced ;
and there was ice on some of the ponds near the
metropolis on the first of the Dog-days.7-2-1-th.
A considerable number of plants of Migaionette
are still in flower and fragrance, though in an
open exposure to the north-west.-26th. The
lofty stems of the Holyoak, (Alcoa rosea) have
still their summits crowned with healthy flowers.
...--27th. The leaves of the Cabbage, Turnip, and
other members of the Brassica tribe, have not in
the least, as hitherto, suffered from frost ; scarcely
a leaf has changed its healthy verdure for the
yellow tint of death ; the bulbs of the latter have
somewhat decayed from the excessive moisture.
The. Apricot trees on a south-wt-St wall have lost
their leaves about a fortnight.-31t. The Crocus
(Crocus vernus) is this day considerably above
the surface, and its variegated leaves are begin.
fling to expand. The leaves of the French
Honeysuckle, of the American Laburaam (Cy.
tisus Liburnam),:of the. Privet (Ligustrum
vtrl-
gare), and of the Provence Rose, are not yet all
fallen. The simple, yet beauteous llearts-ease
(Viola tricolor), is still in flower. The Double
Violet (Viola odorata), is still yielding her de-
lightful perfume in many gardens. Never were
the hedges so generally deficient in those berries,
which form the winter sustenance of many of the
feathered tribe. The berries of the Hawthorn,
and of the Dog-Rose (Rosa canina), are remark-
ably deficient ; of the first, not one is to be seen;
and of the latter, there is merely a solitary one
scattered here and there ; this, according to our
ancestors, is Nature's prophecy of a mild winter;
this prophecy has no appearance hitherto of being
erroneous.

A beautiful bouquet, composed of the follow-
ing flowers, was sent to some ladies resident in
this city, by a friend in the immediate neighbour-
hood, on ' Christmas-day :—Dark and light co-
loured roses, violets, sweet peas, mignionette, In-
dian pink scabious, pink valerian, stock, heart'S-
ease, polyanthus (two kinds), sweet-scented
colt's4oot, colutea, single sun-flower, lauristitms,
arbutus, candy tuft,. African marigold, American
groundsel, grape hyacinth, and everlasting. The
flowers retained all their summer fragranct.
Ilerribill .Ip ur na I.)

•
MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY.-:.(LETTER III.)
Mit. EDITOR—There is no end of the pro-
found_drollery of this farcical science; its pour.
pons pretensions, and its vain solutions, put me
in mind of that very wise and enlightened prac-
tice, commonly called breaking eggs with a. ham-
tner ; or rather the more recondite art (which
know not who discovered) mentioned in Thai-
bras, namely, telling • the clock by algebra. --7 A
pretty clever fellow, well versed in languages,
and furnished with all the books he chose to
read ; but bred and born at the bbttom of a mine,
and never allowed any intercourse with the •
world, would probably reason much.in the same
manner as Mr. RICARDO does about value,
wages, rent, tithes, and free trade. • I have al-
ready addressed a few thoughts to your Readers
on the three foregoing of these particulars, and
will, with your permission,- take a short review-
of ,the two remaining ; but allow me to observe
by the way, that my former objections to the mo-
dern doctrine on rents may be justly applied to
Italics also, for one no more falls on the con-
sumer than the other. It should seem, by the
principles of these political cognoscenti,- that
every thing is evil, mischievous, exorbitant, .and
hurtful to the public, excepting the annui-
ties of funded property ; this is the 'only
sacred thing in the eyes of the new school and
though I should be sorry to go into any indivio.us
remarks upon it, I may be allowed to say that it
is that, not golden but paper image, which 'not
only the Landed interest, but the Church likewise,
must fall down and worship : and whereunto
they- must both be sacrificed.---I. say, not content
with declaiming against rent, as falling on the
consumer, and raising the price of bread, they
insist that tithes do so too ; and their doctrine has
been so echoed and bruited about by reviewers
and news writers, that it has literally been pla-
carded. on the walls in various parts of the city,
and in all the Radical Newspaper, shops, that
" Tithes make the.teripenny quartern loaf eleven -
pence."—Y ou see the arch'cunning of a Stock-
jobber in all this sage doctrine ; the interest•of
the funds does not fall on the public--no, not it ;
high as the public is taxed to pay it—and little
as it leaves many of them to pay for any thing
else, it does not come within the denunciation of
the political economist, no—the indianation of
the ignorant is to be directed against'Land Hold-
ers and the Clergy, in order to divert. their
thoughts from that which really absorbs the capi-
tal of the country, and stops the circulation, (f:
mean the adequate circulation) of money.
As to rents, it may seem an-lazily, to some cf
your readers, that notwithstanding they are said
to fall on the consumer, Mr. Ilicanno . (the
master of scholars, as Lingo has it) writes thus,
p. 64, in the first, and only edition which I have
heard of, of his book :—" The rise of rent is
always the effect of the increasing weallh-of
country, and of the difficulty of providinefoot/
for its augmented inhabitants." Nothing can be
more true, but nothing can better serve to -de-
monstrate that the rents are regulated by general
circumstances, and proportioned to the Value of
ail other things. Within my time, Mr. 'Editor,
I have seen and known (and I could mention
the persons and the places) that Land Owners
have advanced their rents so rapidly as fo ruin
their tenants, aid beggar the soil, by their mere
cupidity, and (as I suppose) ignorance; so Mr:RI-
CARDO says well (p. 66), " That the rise or rent
is a symptom, but never the cause, of wealth,":-"-- but
it produces, you see, sometimes a change in the
owners; for disproportioned rents soon cause•all
the disposable wealth produced on the land to
pass into the hands of the landlord ; while it
adds nothing to the price of provisions.'• The
truth of this matter, as it exists in real business,
both present and progressively, is this :—High
rents, or too high rents—l mean rents over-
strained, as they have been generally from 1814
to 1820 (and many of them yet)—have a ten-
dency to lozcer the price of provisions for a time,
and have very much operated to this effect
through all this period Of agricultural sufferings ;
because they force the sale of corn and stock,
and bring gluts of all kinds of produce to mar-
ket. In their remote effects, over-strained rents
have a tendency to raise the price of provisions
by producing over-cropping and mismanageMent,
and thus bringing the soil to produce gradually
less ; as well by being worse tilled for corns as
by leaving less capital to stock it with 'when it
is in grass. But let me add, that in general rents
had not advanced beyond what the wealth of the
country naturally raised them to ; they had not
advanced' more in proportion than general taxa-
tion, and the accumulation of funded property ;
and were they now to be lowered tO'nothing?--:-
I do not believe that at the present value of pro-
duce that Government could pay these political
economists their sacred dividends, even if all the
Landholders, and the Church to boot, were to be
sacrificed by their most eligible new princiPles.—
I see very plainly what they aim at ; they would
sack the whole revenue of the kingdom ; and es-
tablish free trade, that they might bring in porce-
lain, silks and spiceries ; wines, liquors, fruits,
and pies of goose's liver; Turkey-carpets and
Imperial tea; together with gold and silver,
diamonds and jewels.; Parmazan and *Gruyere
cheese, and caviare for the mu.stitude !—For cer-
tainly when they had new-modelled.society upon
their'own plan, their schemes would leave them
no other customers for their commodities, but
bankrupts and paupers.

.1 remain, Sir, your's, &c.
A PER