The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-05 00:00:00

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LONDON:
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1341.

The Times. of yesterday noticed the extraor-
dinary fact, that while peace has been maintained
from 1830 to 1841, while arts have flourished,
trade has been extended, and wealth increased,
all the Governments of Europe are
plunged
in
financial embarrassments, and have increased
their debts. Our Contemporary—beginning with
Russia, and proceeding to Austria, France, Rol-
land, Switzerland, England, Spain, and Portu-
gal, which two last alone have had
a civil war to derange their finances__
shows that all these Governments have
successively, in these times of peace and pro-
sperity, been unable to keep down their expen-
diture to their revenue, and all, without excel):
tion, have augmented their debts. These re-
marks bring under public consideration a general
fact well worthy of engaging the highest facul-
ties of the mind. They are closely connected,
we think, with the remarks which we offered to
our readers on last Thursday on the inefficiency
of the Legislature, as exhibited in its results,
and it is impossible for us to pass them by un-
noticed.

Not questioning the facts above stated by our
Contemporary, we demur to the moral he ex-
tracts from them. The Times says—
The last ten years ought unquestionably not to have
increased the debts of nations but to have diminished
them, if SOln9 powerful cause had not been at work to
check the influences of public prosperity, and mar the
benefits of peace. That cause we believe to be no other
than the temporary
depression of the Conseetative cause
throughout Europe during
this interval; and the burdens
now thrown upon our contemporaries, to be handed
down by them to posterity, are the price which
must be paid for democratic ascendancy. The
waste of the public resources, the unscrupulous
creation of innumerable places' of profit destined
chiefly for the purposes of corruption, the rise of needy ad-
venturers to power, the imperious necessity of gratifying
at any cost the passions of the people,
hand, the enormous a.mot!nt of the military establish-
and, on the other
ments required to niintain public order in the presence
of revolutionary excitement,.are facts which more than
account for what is now Po-35111C around us. They de-

* The Emperor Paul is said to have been strangled with an
officer's gash.

THE SUN, L

sophers." Then it quotes NIEBUHR, who recom-
mends public writers to devote themselves to
the education of children, to give the hand of
friendship and consolation, if they have nothing
else to give, to the poor; and, of course, in our
case, allow the (Tory) Government to pursue its
own mischievous career, unchecked by any
public opposition. Herr NIEBUHR'S advice
would be very good, if statesmen were not just as
weak and wicked as the rest of mankind, had
they not as many blind and base passions to
gratify, and did they not continually use the
power with which they are entrusted to aggran-
dise private individuals or classes.
This is our case here in England. Legislation
has long been exclusively in the hands of a class
who have made laws exclusively to aggrandise
themselves and their supporters. They still have
the power of making laws ; and were the people
in silence to allow them to pursue their own
course, they would soon raze half our cities, and
leave just slaves enough to minister to their
necessities. Englishmen cannot sit still under
our present laws without suffering great damage,
and they know that the law-makers are wedded
to their folly. _ _ _

What they ask, however, rightly understood,
is not new laws, but the repeal of the old laws.
We do not say that the legislator can model
society according to his own plan ; on the con-
trary, we say he has tried, and has signally
failed; and now, when the Tories are requested
to abstain from the attempt, and begin by abo-
lishing some of their most pernicious enactments,
we are treated with a homily on the impotency
of legislation. We agree with the Post—the
legislation of its friends the landlords has been
a complete failure ; and we shall be content if it
will join with us in calling on them to nullify
their own acts, and replace society under those
better principles the Post enumerates.

In our article on Sir ROBERT PEEL'S ever-to-
be-celebrated fever returns, we pointed out,
from his own documents, that it supplied one
striking illustration, by the increase of fever
patients in 1838, the first year of slack trade and
deficient harvests, of the mischiefs inflicted on
the community by withholding food. A Cor-
respondent of the Morning Chronicle has sup-
plied us with some additional illustrations.
There is a town of the empire, (he says,) in which a
board constantly sits, for the special purpose of hunting
out cases of fever, and giving the earliest notice of the
invasion of an epidemic. This town is Edinburgh, and
if Sir Robert Peel have any candour left, let him read
the following table, and blush for shame. We have
coupled with the report of cases of fever in Edinburgh,
for seven years, the return for the same period of quar-
ters of corn imported into Great Britain and Ireland.
This is one of the best indications of the imperfection of
the harvest, and the degree of suffering of the people.
It is, indeed, by no means an unerring index, and we
know all the risk of giving such insulated facts, when
dealing with so accomplished a trickster as Sir Robert
Peel. Very likely, in pursuing the same fact through a
course of years, large importation may be found coinci-
dent with sufficient employment and health on the part
of the people, because some other cause, studiously con-
cealed by the Right Honourable Baronet, will have tern-
pared the severity of the seasons. We leave such inge-
nuity to the gentleman who understands " dressing a
case" and his colleague and accuser, who is not less ex-
pert, notwithstanding his sentimental and religious
affectations.

Quarters of Corn Cases of Fever
Imported. in Edinburgh.
1832 375,782
1833 83,714
1834 64,552
1535.
1836 30,096 B4l
1837 244,086 972
1838 1,834,453
1839 2,681,390
Sir Robert Peel has now stated his opinion that " a
Minister of the Crown should not silently hear that
thousands in this country were actually suffering from
typhus fever from want of sufficient food ;" and " that a
subject of this kind should not be heard without in-
quiry, and the result of that inquiry ought in some way
or other to be communicated to the House." Will he
now grant inquiry ? or will he set his ponderous wits to
work out some new dressing for his case, plausible only
to the empty and jingling heads on the benches behind
him ?

If fever returns are to be quoted in the con-
troversy, what better illustration of the fever-
producing effects of short commons can be found
than these facts ? From 1832 to 1837 inclusive,
there was comparatively plenty of food; we had
no occasion to import much ; the average prices
were respectively—

1832 ... 58s. Bd. 1835 ... 398. 4.
1833 ... 525. 11d. 1836 ... 48s. 9d.
1834 ... 465. 2d. 1837 ... 535. 10d.
And in those years the fever patients were only
the half; or one-third of the number in the years
1838, 1839, when the importation was nearly
2,000,000 quarters per year, and average prices
were high—in 1838, 645. 4d., and in 1839, 705.6 d.
Either Sir R. PEEL must instantly hasten to put an
end to this frightful condition of society by admit-
ting food, in spite of the awful responsibility taken
on himself by the iron-minded Duke, or he must
admit that, notwithstanding his Parliamentary
skill, he is wholly unworthy to preside, at such a
contingency as the present, over the national
councils.

There is one consideration connected with such
returns, which ought to influence a statesman, who
is too apt to consider only the strength of the
whole, without troubling himself about the afflic-
tion of the units which compose it. A statisti-
cal writer says, that about 1-24th part of the
community is continually the prey of sickness,
and unable, for the time being, to contribute to
the wants of the community.
Admitting then (to quote the passage) that the annual
mortality is 2.13 per cent., after the corrected returns,
and that the population of England and Wales is
14,000,000, the total number constantly disabled by sick-
ness will amount to 600,000 persons ; and if the same
proportions be extended to Scotland and Ireland, to
1,130,000. This reduces the efficient population of the
empire 1.24 th part, and the productive power, so far as
it depends upon human labour, 1-18th part, if the main-
tenance and attendance of the sick cost half of the pro-
duce of their labour in health.— Vital Statistics : Sta-
tistical Account of the British Empire.
A dearth, therefore, or a deficiency of food,
which, judging by the fever returns of Edin-
burgh, augments the number of sick probably a
third, to that extent impairs for the time the
national resources. Putting out of view the suf-
ferings of the individuals—for which we know
selfish, avaricious, and iron-hearted Dukes care
not one straw—this diminution of the national
strength and national resources ought to have
some influence over politicians. By allowing the
supply of food to be increased as much as possi-
ble, not merely more human beings would be
called into existence, but those who were so
aallad xvould._eujoy.more healthy and a happier
existence, and contribute more while on the earth
to the wealth and strength of the community.

Lord FITZWILLIAM'S letter to Mr. GOODMAN
of Leeds, inserted in yesterday's Sun, explaining
that, as her MAJESTY at present held no Courts,
he could not present the Leed's Memorial to her
personally, without intruding on her in a manner
which the memorialists would be the last to sanc-
tion, should serve to put an end to the expecta-
tions still nourished by some of our Liberal Con-
temporaries, that some Peer will demand an au-
dience of her MAJESTY to present to her the me-
morials of her people's distress. It may be a
misfortune, but it is undoubtedly one of the
consequences of having a female on the throne,
that the SOVEREIGN cannot be approached and
agitated with business—particularly business of
no pleasant nature—at all times. The memorials
to the SOVEREIGN will, we presume, be con-
veyed to her through the usual official channels;
so that her MAJESTY'S masters, and the people's
tyrants, will keep from her all knowledge of
their condition and their wishes.

There is an absolute dearth of political news
in the French Journals of Sunday. The war
mania, in a milder form, still rages in the French
capital. All the Journals are clamorous for an
increase rather than a reduction of the navy ;
and in reply to the remonstrances of the English
press, they tell us that we are welcome to in-
crease our fleet as much as we please.
This is not the way to increase the
prosperity of the French people, consolidate the
power of the French Government, or maintain
the peace of Europe. To impose upon us the
vast trouble and immense expense of increasing
our navy, is not the way to make us better and
more confiding neighbours, and in what way an

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