The Sun.
London, England, 1841-02-02 00:00:00

The turning point of the late Presidential elec-
tion in the United States was the currency. The
VAN BUREN party was defeated by the advocates
of a national bank and paper money. Accord-
ingly it has been predicted that General TlAnnt-
sox will no sooner be installed in office than a
total change will be made in the monied system
of the United States. We have ventured to doubt
the probability of such a change, and we must
now refer to the intelligence from America, in
another part of our Journal, as tending to confirm
our opinion.

The great opponent of General JACKSON and
Mr. VAN BLTREN was the monied interest as re-
presented by the United States Bank. The
Bank and the President were the two con-
tending powers. In the first instance Mr. VAN
BUREN has been defeated because his sub-
treasury scheme has not answered all the ex-
pectations of his countrymen. But now, in
the full tide of success, comes the "panic in
the Money Market;" the United States Bank
returns show that " it has not got the means of
standing for an hour before the slightest dispo-
sition to discredit it." " The question now is,"
says the New Yorh Herald, "will the Bank
stand the storm ?" Whether it stand the storm
or not, the Americans are too sagacious not to learn
wisdom by the lesson which the condition of the
Bank teaches, and much too cautious to over-
turn a system of currency, in order to set up
anew bubble banks. A modification of the pre-
sent scheme may be admitted, but we may rest
satisfied, after the exposure of the Bank of the
United States, that the party of which it is the
representative, will be unable to carry any such
sweeping change as that our over-sanguine
money speculators have expected and announced

In the article which we copy from the Times,
, the condition of Louis PHILIPPE is represented
to be very precarious, painful, and tormenting.
He is surrounded by a mass of intrigue, complex
• and embarrassing, from which all pretence, even,
• of generous motives or patriotic spirit, is banished
by common consent. The Times gives that as a
description of French statesmen, but to us it
seems of more general application. It is not only
in France that statesmen want a fixed principle
tor their guidance, such a want is felt everywhere.
Our own statesmen talk of holding fast by the Con-
stitution ; of maintaining the institutions of the
country ; of resisting all progress towards demo-
cracy and republicanism; of upholding the
Church; but almost every day sees them com-
pelled, whether they be Whigs or Tories, to
make or consent to some innovations which
weaken and tend to destroy the institutions of
the country. Great changes have been made
in them during the last few years ; the changes
have deprived the institutions of the sanction of
prescription, without winning that for them-
selves ; the changes are already found not to an-
swer the intended purpose, and men's minds,
however fast the leaders of both political parties
may clinch and rivet our institutions, are en-
tirely unsettled, and there is no solid foundation
on which to fix them.
Take for example the Church. That rests,
and must rest, wholly on opinion. No coer-
cion, no bribery, can prop it up against the
sense of the community. However loud the
parsons may preach, and whatever sums of
money they may coax out of the pockets of
indolent gentlemen and timid ladies, however
much they may say in praise of their own call-
ing,—when the people desert it, when it is proved
to be inefficacious, when its claims to promote
morality are ascertained to be hollow, when the
multitude instead of listening to the parsons
mock at them and their doctrines, no State art

fice can uphold the Church. If statesmen cannot
unlearn the people the experience of the last half
century, if they cannot revive in the hearts ofthe
if they
cannot
sauvpoplit.iensstakrynor,evslpedegcte, their assertion thatfor the clergy,

they will support the Church will be mere idle
talk.

If Acts of Parliament could fix men's opinions

it might be reasonable to declare that the Church
shall be upheld, and the House of Peers shall be
preserved ; but as long as opinion is formed and
determined by circumstances and events, and as
long as institutions depend on opinion, it is pue-

rile in statesmen to say, as if they could command
the universe, Our institutions shall be maintained.
How, if the nations will not have the institutions,
can they be maintained ? But it is plain from the
discussions of the press that opinion as to political
institutions and political principles is everywhere
unsettled, and till it be settled it is little better
than absurd to talk of giving permanence to in-
stitutions.

This unsettled state of opinion is shared by
statesmen both at home and abroad. They are

in a situation in which they are bound to act.
They are lashed, in fact, into exertion by
the public demands and by the fears
of rivals. There are about a thousand legis-
lators, now assembled in and about West-
miftster, looking for something-, having occa-

facturers stopping work because they can get no
profit, but coming into collision with the land-
lords, who compose the Legislature, prayed in
vain. Such is human nature. The smallest
personal inconvenience weighs more with every
individual than the welfare of millions, and he
will, if he have the power—let him be called
Emperor, King, Consul, President, Peer, or
Representative—disregard or betray the public
welfare and gratify his personal feelings.
At the same time, there runs through the
oratory of the speakers on the subject a large
vein of hypocrisy. On both sides they referred
to the people in our Colonies and in our Indian
Empire. Now, it is well known that the
wages of the labourers, semi-slaves as
they still are in both dependencies, will not
be affected one dolt either way by any ahem_
tion in our discriminating duties. It h mon-
strously preposterous to suppose that the wel-
fare of some 80,000,000 labourers in India can be
influenced by the admission of a few barrels of
rum, or hundred weights of sugar, more or less
into our country. But the few European sugar
planters, the few merchants trading to India, will
be enriched by the change; and while these alone,
amounting at most to a few thousand, not to
say hundred, Europeans, and their connections,
will be benefited, the change is hypocritically
described as demanded by the welfare of the
people of India. This is the hypocrisy of the
matter, to which is added a spice of pseudo bene-
volence.

The poor Hindoos, it is said, are our fellow-
subjects; the Legislature is bound to take care
of their interests, just as it pays attention to the
negroes, and for their pretended benefit mulcts
the suffering labourers of England, their wives and
families. The Hindoos have no means of appeal-
ing to the justice of the Legislature, they are
dependent on its bounty. To them the Legisla-
ture is, therefore, kindly disposed; to the peti-
tioning people who appeal to its justice, and have
some power to disturb its equanimity, it assumes
the character of a severe and rigid master. At
home its authority is at stake, and it stickles for
that at the expense of justice. The people some-
times assume the character of teachers, and they
can expect nothing from the benevolence of
the Legislature. It expects them, in fact, to
help themselves. They are freemen, and
must decide their own fate. What they can-
not command they will never obtain. The
inhabitants of India, and of the Colonies,
are thoroughly slaves. Submission, were it
violated, would be instantly restored, if possible,
by the sword; but as long as they are submissive,
the Legislature feels benevolently disposed to-
wards them. Between the people here and the
Legislature there is a struggle for power ; they
are something like rivals; they approach to an
equality ; the Corn-law-starved people may ac-
cordingly, at some time or other, command justice
from the Legislature—they will never receive it
as a favour.