The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-14 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
(From the Morning Chronicle.).
A pamphlet is in circulation, entitled " Daily Bread,"
which recommends to the industrious poor a new species of
practical protest against the bread tax, as a likely means of
exonerating themselves from its severe and unjust pressure.
Thu scheme proposed is' for a penny subscription from so
large a number of the working classes, aided by the con-
tributions of those who also suffer from and are opposed
to the food monopoly, as may suffice to freight one or
more vessels with continental corn, or American flour,
rind bring it into some English port. On its arrival, a
disttihation amongst the owners to be formally claimed,
stud it refused, as it of course would he, to proceed to
the public destruction of the cargo. Without passing
any opinion on this plan, we wish.to fix attention on the
fact that such a plan is propounded and entertained.
For aught it appears the process would be perfectly
legal. There is no law against the investment of
the smallest sums by hungry artisans in the purcig.se of
food from foreigners. The vessel so freighted might le-
gally anchor in our ports. The petition of a thousand fa-
mishing families for leave to land and e3t the food which
they had purchased from their small and hard earnings
might be a most unexceptionable document. The refusal
by the Custom-house authorities, or by their masters on
reference to them, would also be legal, and we presume
inevitable. The right of the proprietary would be unques-
tionable to throw their cargo overboard, though the billows
of Goole harbour, or the waters of the Thames should be
whitened with the sped ; or though the execrations of
multitudes, witnessing the waste while they were pinched
with want, should be both loud and deep; end if the hun-
gry and angry thousands broke out into violence, it would
teen become legal to read the Riot Act, call cut the
military, and suppress the disturbance at whatever
cost of human bloodshed. Whatever the wisdom,
justice, or expediency, of any one step of the pro-
cess, each is yet free from the charge of unlawful-
ness. The preposition is legal, and 'it is entertained ; that
is the gist of the matter, and the fact may perhaps be Worth
a thought. It is not strange that such notions should
enter people's minds. Analogous experiments have been
tried on former occasions. There was once an unship-
meat of tea in and into Boston harbour, which harbour
was then part and parcel of the British empire. Mr.
O'Connelea first election for county Clare was the con-
signment to the House of Commons of a prohibited article.
The oath was a sort of duty laid en by the Protestant mo-
nopoly, which prevented that consignment from reaching
its destination. Both these experiments won a place in
histery. They were scouted with great superciliousness,
but they did the work. Nor could it be otherwise than a
very awkward thing to transfer the evidence of the iniquity
of the Corn-laws from the mind to the senses, from logic
and statistics to the actual, visible destruction of the
ciai!), bread that people pray for and pine for—their
own honestly purchased daily bread—in order that the
wealthiest of monopolies may retain the most grinding of
impositions. The subject would be brought home to the
dullest intellects. The passions might not be altogether
unaffected. Such a scene at a theatre would be rather
striking arid inflammatory ; whither the reality might tend
it is very difficult to calculate. One thing is certain, that
the Corn-laws arc not a jot the better, nor more expedient,
nor more humane, for the fact that no scene of thin kind
has yet passed in our ports. Whatever destruction of
human food may have been caused by too long detention
in bond, has been an unobservable operation. The un-
nattual barrenness for want of culture of f uitful soils in
other lands, whose inhabitants would willingly rear the
grain for which our manufacturers would willingly ex-
change their products, does not appeal to the senses, and
is scarcely apprehended by the common mind. The effect
is not less real than ns if wheat were shovelled into the
Thames, from morning till night, day after day, in the
face of gazing, astonished, and cursing multitudes. The
pamphlet, with its Scripture motto, " Give us this
day our daily bread," explains this fact. The transaction
itself may never happen ; it can only happen through
the moss reckless iefa.uation ; but it has become, by tie
proposition, a conceivable event. It will happen, and it
does happen, in the minds of the toiling poor. who know
that they are paying seveupence half-penny for the food
and fourpeuce half-penny for the tax in their shilling loaf.
As the notion spreads amongst them, they will be not much
less influenced than by the actual occurrence. Food mo-
nopoly is food destruction, whether it be thrown into the
sea wtiie labourers are needing it on shore, or whether it
be wasted, instead of being multiplied by culture to pur-
chate goods which manufacturers would be employed to
produce. The upholders of the Corn-laws arc annual
destroyers of immense quantities of food, which the work-
ing classes earn, or are ready to care, if permitted. The
operation may be circuitous, and out of sight; it is not
the less certain. But let this fact be actually exhibited ;
or only let it be clearly and generally apprehended;
which, before long, it assuredly must be ; and what
do the monopolists think of the sentiments with which
they will be regarded by their countrymen ? " Straws
show which way the wind blows," and whether the project
of this pamphlet be feasible or unfeasible, it is still a
symptom that the Anti-Corn-law agitation is assuming a
more formidable character. Notwithstanding the inter-
ruption of public meetings by the organised uproar cf a
comparatively small minority, the petitions already signed,
or in course of signature, will, we understand, exhibit
an interest in the subject beyond all precedent or pa-
rallel. The recent detection of an outlay of 'Try
money upon disturbers of the prate, professing
Chartism, will also tend to put the interruptions
that have occurred in their true light. The Anti-Corn-
law League, and its numerous ramifications throughout
the country, are daily gathering strength, and beginning
to root themselves firmly even in many of the rural dis-
tricts. Whatever schen-es may be suggested, we trust
that alt opponents of the bread-tax, of whatever class, will
feel the importance of a full display, as petitioners to Par-
liament, of their growing numbers. This is the first, the im-
mediate and most urgent course, for adoption. Let them
show their millions. The fitting time for that purpose is
cicse at hand. The Easter holidays should be their final
season of preparation for the Parliamentary struggle that
is soon to follow. The effect of a great simultaneous
effort may not be to insure the immediate abolition of the
bread-tax, but it can hardly fail to put the question into a
position f certain and speedy triumph.
(From the Times.)
It is not always that a great statesman lives long enough
to see the full fruits of his own policy. On the contrary,
when his lot is cast in troublous times, as was the case
with Mr. Pitt, the vexing cares and responsibilities of his
position tend so materially to shorten existence, that, in
general, little more is permitted him than to exercise his
self reliance and foresight in adapting his course to the
exigencies of public affairs—he himself being often with-
! drawn from the stage of life before the results of that
course, whether for good or evil, are unequivocally as-
certained. But there is one living statesman, the head of
the genteel family of the Phippses, whose career, besides
outstripping the Timmses and the Higgses, and the other
aristocracy of the same lofty grade, presents an illustrious
exception to the preceding remark. Among the many
distinctions of that high personage, who, within a few
years, has been rapidly promoted from the position of a
fashionable novelist and a performer of private theatricals
to that of a Jamaica Governor—afterwards to the dignity
of Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland—then to the Colonial seals
in Downing-street—presently to the Home Secretaryship
at Whitehall—and, anon, to the rank of a British Mar-
quis—the fact that the happy nobleman has survived, and
is still surviving, to behold the practical effects of his
literary and administrative genius is not to be overlooked.
What account his bookseller may be able to give of the
later editions of " Yes and No," it is not for us to say.
But the fruits of the Noble Marquis's incumbency in
Ireland, increasing as they do in number and im-
portance, exhibit a uniformity of disaster and mischief
which, while doubtless awakening his own ruminations, de-
serve the anxious attention both of his colleagues and the
country. The same classical taste which made Lord
Normandy a lover of private theatricals inspired him with
a generous appetite for applause when performing the
part of mock sovereign in Dublin Castle. Knowing that
he held his engagement by the season, at the mere suffer-
ance of the great Irish manager, whose displeasure would
have been tantamount to his dethronement, his assiduous
and accommodating Excellency prosecuted throughout a
style of policy which, though well calculated to awaken the
echoes in his magnificent progresses as the Deliverer- Gene-
ral of gaols, excited the astonishment and apprehension
of every impartial Judge presiding at the Assizes,
and of every friend of order acquainted with the Irish
populace. From that period up to the present moment,
neither the more circumspect Viceroyship of Viscount
Ebrington, nor the preaching proclamations of Lord
Morpeth, nor the hollow deprecations of O'Connell, nor
the temperance diversions of Father Mathew, have been
able to counteract or repair the evils of the Normanby
reign. Depredations, arsons, bludgeonings, and carnage
have been the order of the day. The crack county of
Tipperary,_.the strongest fastness of Ribandism and the
Whig Board of Trade—is, at this moment, in a state
bordering on absolute rebellion. The handful of military
at command, reduced on account of the .tranquil condi-
tion Lion of the country, are under arms night and da
pickets of troops are scouring the disturbed dsboiytictbtsemin.
every direction where they can venture to
selves, and divers innocent lives haveqhis is Lord Nor-
, been sacrificed to
the brie al ferocity of the insurgents.
manby's " justice to Ireland."
(From the Morning Post.)
It was humorously said once of a public man, who at_
ways appeared to be busy and yet effected nothing, that
his regular habit was to lose half an hour in the morning,
and to spend the rest of the day in running after it.
Something of the same kind of defect seems to belong to
the advocates of free trade; they have injured the com-
merce and revenue of the country by their measures, and
now, instead of applying themselves to the business of re.
storation, they keep running after the false scent which
led them astray eighteen years ago. Thus Mr. Porter,
whose theories are as much in favour of free trade as
ever, but who finds it necessary, as a constructor of
tables, to state facts, as well as to promulgate theories,
acquaints us that the average annual exportsnrly twenty
to the
whole of Europe were less in valuo by nearly
per cent. in the five years from 1832 to 1836 than they
were in the five years which followed the close of the war.
Now, in the five year's that followed the close of the war
the old commercial relations with Europe were in exist-
ence, and, except on the other side of the Atlantic, the
old navigation laws of England were in full force. But,
in the five years from 1832 to 1836, the new system in-
troduced under the Ministerial auspices of Mr. Huskisson
was in force, and what is called " free trade," or a consi-
derable approach towards to it, prevailed to a muchenore