The Sun.
London, England, 1841-09-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—It is not often that the Prime Minister of
England has condescended to practise what is commonly
called a hoax ; and though we have heard it alleged that
some fiscal impositions, such as those upon attorneys and
pigtails, originated in a jest, yet the fact of those taxes
having been first conceived in joke—rather a serious one,
by the bye, for the victims who had to pay them—was
• not allowed to transpire openly beyond the walls of the
Cabinet. To tax the limbs of the law was a merry con-
ceit, no doubt, in which, on account of existing preju-
dices, the public would fully sympathise ; whilst the
duty on tails, which led to the practice of cur-tailing in-
stead of pig-tailing the heads of the rising generation,
was at least a legitimate subject for a laugh ;. but the
joke played off by Sir Robert Peel, mocking, as it does,
the expectations and hopes of the people, is doomed,
we suspect, to be very ill taken by the whole community.
We will, however, explain the nature and subject of the
Premier's wit, and then leave the public to judge how
far it has been well-timed, and what amount of taste has
been displayed in choosing a subject for its exercise.
The re-assembling of Parliament on Thursday had :been
looked fbrward to with the greatest anxiety by the whole
nation, plunged at this moment in more than ordinary;dis-
tress, as the day on which there might be expected from
Sir R. Peel some annonneement of the measures he in-
tended to propese for the alleviation of those evils that he
professes to have the skill as well as the will to remedy.
Instead, however, of suggesting even a temporary measure
of relief for the people's sufferings, the new Minister
conies forward in his place in Parliament, to talk only
about " warming and ventilating the House," and
"granting leases of a portion of the kitchen-garden at
Kensington." That these are subjects on which Sir R.
Peel- may have had an opinion to give is true enough ;
but when we find that on the first day of meeting Par-
liament as a Minister, he begins his speech with " Doctor
Reid, and the warm •air stoves," concluding with the
" Kensington kitchen-ground," and inPntiorang inciden-
tally that he shall ask for six months' supplies, the
whole affair wears the appearance of a monstrous hoax,
following as it does immediately on his repeated assu-
rances that " when called in," p lvould declare, the
plans he had formed for the country's benefit, May
tell us, perhaps, that the Ministers can do nothing till
they: are " warm in their places," and that Dr. Reid
and his hot-air apparatus are consequently pi eliminary
requisites to the legislation of the new Cabinet,
winks the poor are shivering through the winter in their
cotnfortlesa hovels, may not the position of Sir Robert
Peel, with all his adaptation of temperature both high
and low—his blowing warm and f 4,44 with the same
breath—may not his position, we say, in spite of every
artifice, become a little too hot for him ? We are now
bluntly told that we are to expect nothing from the
Tory Government until February next. As to the distress,
that IS to be left to die away ; and if some of the people,
in the course of a gevereiy men -.sholihrliaprien to die
away too, there is to be no help fOr it. t'}g4,j4ta
Nero was fiddling away while Rome was in flames.
Sir Robert Peel proposes also " fiddling
whole of the time eetw4:en this and-Februara;,vaviy- the
e
people are either inflamed into disoketers, or fropri iltf4
apathy, as the strength of their passions or the severity
of the winter may happen to operate. We suspect, how-
ever, that &segment so general-as that which now exists,
when roused as we fP,IF it Will be, by the inattention of
the Government to its prayers, 4'41149
burst into flame than to liybernise into iorpidity,
doubt any such incidents are to be deprecated, and, if
they occur, must be quelled ; but condemnation would
not ha icaS Merited by the policy which should have pro-
voked .them.•
COURIER.—The public meeting held in Mancbpster
on Thursday last, the report of which appeared in the
papers of that locality on Saturday, possessed the attrac-
thin for once of the absence of Mr. Cobden's vague decla-
mation and montbing coarseness, and of Dr;Bowring's
random recollections of foreign 'travel n-t the public cost
and statistics travestied, so far at least as the pevs.PngiV Pc
these honourable persons, for their places and more spe,
cial cast of performances were supplied by two reverend
dissenting actors, who scarcely left their absence to ba
regretted by such an assembly as could take pleasure in
that sort of oratory. The proceedings on -the Occasion
were opened by a Mr. Absalom Watkin, of whose
speech, disagreeing as we do with the tenor of Its tope:-
meat and assertions, we are still disposed to observe that
the language is of a higher order, and that it is free from
the vices of that foul personal and class vituperation
which pervades every display of ltis townsman the Alder-
man M. P. for Stockport, Mr, Watkin draws mlOOOOOO
picture of the general distress in that large manufactur:
ing community, the existence and the actual extent of
which we are by no means inclined to question, although
when he affirms it to be " unprecedented" we must
take leave to acquaint him that he-can be but little con-
versant with the history of bis own locality to be ignorant
of the fact, that on more occasions than one Manehognf
has been the scene of much more calamitous afflictions,
In those periodically recurring visitations to which the
manufacturing, as well as the agricultural and every
other great national interest, are inevitably subject in
the order of things, as the physical world is to stoma
and earthquakes, it could scarcely be hoped that Man,
chester alone should escape unsheathed. There are dis-
tricts, however, where the cotton manufacture is carried
on, which have suffered infinitely more than that town,
even in the worst stages of its misery, of which it is
only necessary to consult the Report of the Hand-loom
Weavers' Commission for abundant proofs. The condition,
some few years since, of Blackburn, Padiham, and other
places where common calicoes were chiefly woven, was
infinitely more heart-rending and disastrous than can be
paralleled in Manchester at the present time, admitting,
as we may, the general fidelity even of the lamentable
description drawn by Mr. Watkin himself.
STANDARD.—But a repeal of the Corn-laws for the
distresses of the people (say the Corn4aw agitators) is
the only remedy. How ? The stimulus that it would
give to trade would set all the mills in motion. We have
not belief that such would be the case; but grant that it
would fur argument sake, what, as respects this parti-
cular question, would follow a change otherwise
pregnant with a thousand ills ? Would conti-
nuous employment of men be one jot more secure?
Would the repeal of the Corn-laws be more
than a meal, from which the mill-owners would
rise, as giants refreshed, to build more mills, and to find
uses for " more capital which must be employed" in
the system of gambling with the lives and happiness
of our fellow creatures ? Cover all England with
brickwork and machinery, and you only prodigiously
augment the mass of evil. Nothing can quality
that evil but a full protection to agriculture, and a
generous Poor-law, as we have more than once proved.
We could say a great deal more of the debate, but
we are satisfied that most readers have already drawn
their own conclusions ; if Sir Robert Peel has failed
to convince them of the propriety of his proposed line,
we cannot hope to succeed. Meanwhile the weather
and the prospects of the harvest, and the minds of men
on the Continent, as well as at home, are working to-
gether gloriously for the Conservative Minister, so as
to render probaby early. in February that which might
be difficult in November.