The Sun.
London, England, 1841-06-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—When the convulsions of ungovernable
passion have ceased, men begin to reflect, with more or
less of sobriety, upon the consequences of their conduct.
This is now the case with that violent section of the
united Tory party, which goaded the unhappy leader of
the body to measures repudiated by his better sense
and greater caution. Never was a man of character and
ability more rudely and contemptuously treated by his
followers than Sir Robert Peel. The essence of his
policy was delay, and delay till he had attained an un-
uestioned superiority over his political opponents.
From a great variety of circumstances, peculiar to the
existing position of things, this happened to be just pos-
sible.; while a premature exposure of the scheiYe was
quite sure to ruin all. But the Stanleyites were im-
patient ; they forced their nominal commander to risk
all upon one throw ; and the unwilling gamester won the
unwelcome and disastrous victoky by a single vote.
Takins, it as a matter of the highest probability that
the election will give Ministers a fair working ma-
jority, the question is, of course, at once settled. Their
measures will then be carried by acclamation ; the Lords
will eat their leek in calm aristocratical dudgeon ; while
Sir Robert and Lord Stanley will quietly take their
places as Members of the new Opposition. And this is
now, perhaps, the very best thing that can happen for
their real interests. But suppose the contrary. Suppose
the elections give the Tories their hoped-for majority,
ranging from 20 to 25. What follows ? An enormous
Whig Opposition, backed by the intelligence and public
spirit of the country to a degree never before witnessed,
and sustained besides by all. the democracy of England,
Scotland, and Ireland. It would be amusing, but for
the appalling seriousness of the subject, to anticipate
Sir Robert's first appearance in the closet of his in-
suited and persecuted Queen, after he had just
placed the Speaker in the chair, and heard Lord John
Russell give notice of a motion for a Committee of the
whole House on the Corn-laws—to say nothing of those
other measures to which her Majesty's own refined and
vigorous understanding has led her to feel distinctly and
almost personally pledged ! Does Sir Robert mean to
carry those measures, or does he not ? If he say nay,
what does he mean to do with a distressed and discon-
tented nation ? If he say yes, why is the whole island
frighted from its propriety, and the Queen at this pe-
culiar juncture annoyed beyond expression, if the Whig
measures, or measures analogous to them, are after all
to be adopted ? For• Sir Robert to govern on the
old ultra-Tory system, with Orangeism for Ire-
land, Puseyism for the Church, Intrusiveness for
Scotland, Monopoly for England, and dear bread and
bayonets, for teeming starving Lancashire, is clearly an
impossibility. But neither his High Church friends at
Oxford (his friends !), nor his own little remaining con-
sistency, will allow him to liberalize ! Then what re-
mains, but hasty and inglorious retreat, followed in-
stantly by the triumph of a national ministry and Mo-
narch ? These are the galling topics upon which the
more sober-minded of the Tories are now beginning to
meditate. They now find that their too great eagerness
has ruined the Fabian tactics of their leader. If they
lose this election, there is an end of their party as at
present constituted : whereas, if their opponents are
defeated, their game is only beginning, with assured
success after a short interval. Hard is the lot of a party
to whom victory would be useless, and defeat disgraceful,
and who yet have only to thank themselves for their mise-
rable position. The public, however, have an interest dis-
tinct from all party squabbles. The country requires a so-
' lid, endarins, Government ; and if it be clear that the med-
ley party, led by such very "striking opposites" as Sir
Robert and Lord Stanley, cannot secure this object,
surely it behoves moderate men to pause before they
unsettle the existing Government, which in its domestic
measures promise to promote the prosperity of all classes,
while in its foreign policy it has won universal admira-
tion. The City election will soon speak the sentiments
of the olis, and the Ultras may be assured that
the merchants of London will think twice before they
allow themselves to be associated with the more senseless
persons in the community in the support of impracticable
monopolies. No one has more reason to hope for the
failure of the Tories in this election than their ill-used
chier, Sir Robert Peel.
COURlER.—lndependently of the confusion reigning
in every department of the Home Administration, where
all public business may be said to be brought to a dead
lock, not less signal and chaotic is the confusion in our
foreign and colonial affairs. For ten years last past, the
erratic genius presiding at the Foreign-office has been
actively at work, confounding the order of things existing
without re-establishing any other order ; intriguing here
and warring there ; anon sending armies to be slaugh-
tered and routed under Evans on the very theatre of
Wellington's glories ; now reaping a few stray, however
splendid, triumphs at Acre or Sidon, through the in-
domitable valour of British seamen, commanded by the
veteran Stopford, or led'on by Napier, but barren of all
other substantial fruit beyond the laurels achieved by
their heroism ; then ingloriously wasting time and trea-
sure off the coasts of China, exposing brave troops to
the destructive miasma of •Chusan, scarcely sacked before
abandoned, disgracefully withdrawing men-of-war from
the Yellow Sea where an honourable peace might have
been exacted, and endeavouring afterwards to retrieve
a hundred follies and disasters by the storm of a few
mud forts at the Bogue, or an onslaught upon some
miserable mandarin and war junks, the defences of the
river of Canton. Such are some of the doings and
wanderings of the evil genius of foreign affairs, which
mocked us with the cry of non-intervention where all
has been mischievous interference, and which leaves, or
soon will leave, all the vast countries traversed and
hovered over by its baleful opinions, each and impartially,
in prey to the ravages of external war, or the not less
sanguinary horrors or disorganising furies of civil
war and internal discord. Lord Palmerston, on
his advent to power, found peace every where, as
now he leaves war ; he found revolution and anarchy
only in France, he extended and fostered it in Belgium,
Portugal, and Spain, where, so far as the two latter
realms, it may be seen yet pursuing its wild career.
The Turco-Egyptian quarrel remains still unarranged,
and all the elements of original strife as rife as ever,
despite their compulsory subjugation into temporary
quiescence by the overwhelming prowess of British
arms. Affghanistan, where a British bayonet had never
glistened in the sun till his day, and ought never to have
appeared, is once invaded and conquered, only to re-
assert independence and show itself unconquerable.
Whilst China, pacific China that was, and that might
have been with less intriguing and indolent diplomacy,
is there a memorable monument of Foreign-office im-
becility and rashness by turns, and of the blundering
vacillation and never-relaxing cupidity of the Elliots.
STANDARD.—Before touching the main question,
there is a point upon which it may be well to remark—
Why is it that the price of foreign corn has been'made
excessive by the Corn-laws ! We have been all along
told that the effect of the Corn-laws would be to raise
prices on the Continent, and.that, instead of being made
excessive, prices are depressed by the existing state
of British commerce. The primary consideration is,
however, this—would not a repeal of the Corn-laws
cause more in value of corn to be imported than
could be paid for in manufactures, so as to occasion
a steady drain outward of money, until the capital
of this country should be exhausted, or at least brought
down to the level of Continental poverty ? We maintain
the affirmative, and we maintain it upon the evidence of
uniform experience. Every commercial and manufactur-
turing country that relied for food upon strangers, Venice,
Genoa, Holland, each in its turn the richest of States,
have sunk into poverty from this single cause. Our own
recent experience proves the same I hing, and so it must
always be. A million of men, including poor with rich,
consume five times as much value in food as they con-
sume in manufactures of every kind—ten times as much
as they can consume of any manufactures not made upon
the spot. Well, yOu have a million of agriculturists ex-
changing their produce for the produce of a million of
manufactures ; does it not follow that the manufacturers
have a vast deficiency in value to supply with money?
Thus, in whatever degree it may be pursued, the
importation of food must be always a losing trade, a trade
by which capital is permanently alienated. But, say the
profound political economists, trade must move in a circle.
Yes, until the circular movement stops, as stop it will
when the moving power, the superior weight of capital,
shall have been removed. You see trade move in a circle
just as you see the mill go round while the reservoir af-
fords a supply of water ; but break down the banks of
the reservoir, and cut off its sources of supply, and
you will have to sell your mills for old materials, as
so many mills at Macclesfield and elsewhere were sold,
upon Mr. lluskisson's first application of your free trade
theory. It is the agriculture of your country which
supplies the springs of the great reservoir.; they are the
Corn-laws which secure it embankments. Money, like
water, will find its level, except artificial means are em-
ployed to restrain it : it will go where it is most wanted,
if you oppose no political check. We hear, again, a
great deal of the increased consumption of British
manufactures that would instantly follow a repeal of the
Corn-laws ; we doubt not that a great export would fol-
low, because the overtraders would take advantage of any
delusion abroad or at home to unload their warehouses.
But who abroad would be the permanent consumers ?
The people—the people enriched by the money paid
for corn ? We deny it. The people of any country,
as we have shown, never consume foreign goods
to any extent worth notice ; and the people would
not be one farthing the richer for all the money paid for
corn. The landowners of Germany and Poland give proof
in their present social system that they understand as well
as the millowners of Manchester and Leeds, how to keep
the people from any share of their receipts; the landowners
would accumulate the money, they would lend it to spe- '
culators, and those speculators would employ it in
establishing manufactories. What else could they do
with it? The choice then is this—are we to send the