The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.I
FROM VIZ EVENING TAPERS OF TESTERPAY.
GLOBE.—The Provincial Journals which have reached
• us during the la.st week, and especially those of Saturday
and yesterday, are full of most convincing proofs of the
joy with which the movement of Ministers, in order to
effect an extension of trade with foreign countries, by a
relaxation of the laws by which it has been restricted, has
been hailed by the great mass of the people. The usual
modes of expressing satisfaction witN a measure before
the Legislature, and a determination W afford its authors
all the aid which it can derive from public meetings and
petitions in its favour, have been taken. In the course of
the present week we shall see, not merely the table, bu
the floor, of the House of Commons covered with pethions
for the adoption'of th epl an to relieve our declining.commerco
and to supply our sufferingmnnufacturing population with
the means of obtaining bread by their labour which the
Government has announced, and which the parties in-
terested in monopolies have combined to defeat. The
powerful interests identified with the monopolies
with which the proposed change in our commercial sys-
tem will interfere are, of course, uniting their energies
to destroy this last hope of the miserable masses,
compelled to purchase the essential articles of human
food at a price which forbids their obtaining them in
quantities sufficient for their support ; while that very
system of prohibitory duties excludes the products of
their labour from foreign markets, and thus leaves them
but half employed ; or compelled to tax their powers of
labour to an extent beyond the limits of endurance for
wages below what will procure a sufficiency of food. This
has of late been; to a fearfully increasing extent, the
condition of tens of thousands of our suffering country-
men. Their hope is in that Being whose " tender mer-
cies are over all his works," but whose benevolent pur-
poses are accomplished by human agency. In the hour
of their extremity amelioration and ultimate remedy are
placed before us in the comprehensive scheme of the
Government. The scheme attacks the monopolies in
which the commercial distresses of the country had
their origin. The parties interested in these monopolies
trust in their wealth and influence to counteract the pur-
pose of the Ministers. The Tories, whose political sys-
tem is opposed to change, and who hope to obtain office
by the aid of a few members who have supported the
general policy of the Government, but will vote against
their plan of finance, either because they are personally
interested in the maintenance of monopoly, or are under
the influence of a philanthropy which mistakes its aims,
are elate with joy at the prospect of obtaining the ob-
ject of their hopes. They will succeed, if prompt and
determined demonstrations of popular support be not
afforded from every.part of the kingdom.
STANDARD.—Mr. Grote's reasoning proceeded alto-
( gether upon the necessity of free trade to the interests
of the consumers, throwing on one side all moral and
patriotic considerations. It may be permitted to us, who
. have been from the first opposed to the doctrines of the
school of Mr. Hnskisson, who, however, never went so
far as the present Ministers (with his pro Corn-law
speeches), to remind our elder readers that we many
years ago demonstrated the fallacy of the free
trete doctrines, by showing that, carried to their
full exte-'it, they must lead to the trade in blood—must
completely Otinguish every quality which goes to con-
stitute apatriot of Christian. We were laughed at for the
extravagance of such xi deduction, and told that the moral
principle and the spirit of I.:1. nate patriotism would always
present insuperable barriers—ao-so they will, we trust,
as regards the British nation. Big, it is plain that
Whig-Radical Ministers and philosophic?" Radicals—
the persons who laughed at our folly—rekct such
restraints now ; and now it is our turn to smile. it
is not, however, on moral grounds only that free
trade ought to be an objeet of suspicion to prudent
men. Free trade gives the reins to a spirit of
gambling which, like all gambling, ruins millions
in the succession of its fluctuations, and rarely
fails to ruin a nation which indulges in it in the end.
We hear a great deal of the impolicy of the Corn-laws,
causing an excess of cultivation, and in some years a re-
dundant supply ; but no one thinks it necessary to
speak of the impolicy of encouraging over-manufac-
turers. Yet the mischief of over-manufacturing is the
greater, as for once that the demand for grain has failed,
the demand for manufactures has failed a dozen times ;
while the multitudes thrown out of employ by what is
called a stagnation of trade, is tenfold greater than the
number thrown out of employ by a too abundant harvest.
Now, if such evil is unavoidable even under the present
system, what bounds can we fix to the constantly recurring
calamities that must be anticipated from an absolutely
free trade ?
COURIER.—The Ministerial trumpet has now been
sounded through the length and breadth of the land for
one good week with as much of soul-stirring effect as a
penny whistle. The people will not march through Co-
ventry to such a puny rappel, and under the Ministerial
banner. And yet the Chronicle does manage to achieve
and record its one or two glories. As, for instance,
to-day it commemorates an heroic epistle from Messrs.
G. L. Jackson and Son, ship-owners, of the appropri-
ately classic region of Water-lane, in which those
worthy persons take leave to dissent from the course of
the great body of the shipping interest, which
has so energetically thrown itself into the breach
against the destructive assault on all interests by
the Government. Messrs. Jackson, in consequence,
request their names to be erased from the books of the
Shipowners' Society, which, for anything we know, may
peril the existence or lead to the dissolution of that
powerful body, as it may bo taken for granted, although
we may chance to be ignorant of the fact, that the great
names of Jackson, like those of Baring, are a sort of
convertible terms for comprehending all that mighty
mercantile marine, whose flag proudly waves on every
sea and on every coast, " from Indus to the Pole." To
this renowned letter from Water-lane moreover is ap-
pended a post-scriptum, in which, like that of a fair lady,
lies all the sting or marrow of the missive. Further,
moreover, to grace the show and swell the progress of
triumphant free-trade revolution throughout the coun-
try, the Chronicle has hit upon the happy expedient of
dividing the reported proceedings of such meetings,
public or hole and corner' as may be held, into two
separate portions, of which the first is given one day
and the latter part another. By this economical pro-
vision a small stock of agitation may always be kept in
hand to bh doled out, but not wasted, in succession.
Accordingly, to-day we have the lengthy second part
of a Liverpool gathering, the first of remittance having
been duly honoured yesterday, in which, oddly enough,
the only man or speaker who figures at the meeting,
who is the whole meeting, and nothing but the meeting
(save one), is a person of the euphonious name of Corden,
believed to be an Alderman of that name, not even a Li-
verpool but a Manchester man. This, again, is a thrifty
way of getting up a makeshift of popular demonstrations.