The Sun.
London, England, 1841-09-13 00:00:00

is, the more security is given to all the institu-
tions which rest upon it.
Nothing but the most excellent government on
the part of the few can justify the withholding
political rights from the many. The rich aristo-
crat who would deny the electoral suffrage to an
artisan or a labourer, ought to be able
,to say
to him, "In what way could your condition
in life be better than it is ? We, who govern
you, have provided for you an abundance of em-
ployment, and a ready remunerating market for
the proceeds of your industry. By a moderate
share of toil, and a proper attention to economy,
you can support yourself and your family de-
cently, comfortably, and independently. There
are schools in abundance, for the education of
your children, where good morals are instilled
into their minds without any ' attempt to
unsettle their peculiar religious principles by a
system of soul-kidnapping called proselytizing.
You are called upon to support no institution by
which you do not, more or less, benefit; you
are taxed to maintain no church whose tenets
you do not believe. We give you peace and
plenty; freedom of body and mind ; we afford
you the means of educating your children intel-
ligently and virtuously; and we endeavour in all
respects to set you a good example; for what,
therefore, do you seek an extension of political
rights?" Can any of those who would oppose
the extension of the suffrage in Great Britain
address such language to the people ? Can they
even, by any stretch of the imagination, point
out in what way the condition of the bulk of the
working classes could be worse than it now is,
had the whole business of legislation been left
to the most ignorant among them for the last
quarter of a century ? Could they be worse
than without work, without food, without rai-
ment, without shelter, and without hope of im-
provement? Could they, by any contrivance,
have inflicted greater misery upon themselves
than the combined wisdom of their Whig and

Tory rulers has done ? These are common
sense views of this question, which those who
claim the suffrage are quite capable of taking; nor
will any ridicule attempted to be cast upon

them by the middle classes weaken their force
in the least. Our Whig friends would do well to
reflect upon them. To desert the people in their
struggle for an extension of the franchise, would
be, to borrow a metaphor from the late Lord
CASTLEREAGH, to turn their backs upon them-
selves. Unless the people find sympathy from
the classes now above them, and are brought by
justice and kindness to amalgamate their influ-
ence with theirs, the time
,will come, and that
quickly too, when, with their growing intelli-
gence, and their growing sense of estrangement,
they will form a power in the State capable of
controlling both the Crown and the aristocracy.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL, who has written so ably
of the origin of the French Revolution, ought
to have reflected upon this, before propounding
to the country his finality doctrine.

Lord HowicK's speech to the Electors of
Sunderland on Friday last—which will he found
in another part of The Sun—is one of the

most able attacks on the Starvation Cabinet that

has yet been made by any of the supporters of
the late Ministry. The Noble Lord is not a man
who makes any secret of his opinions either of
or things. He has no confidence in the
Cabinet, and he not only says so, but gives
reasons for having none. After fifteen

years of a Parliamentary life he is of
opinion that " Sir ROBERT PEEL has shown
himself most lamentably deficient in that fore-

sight and judgment which are the essential qua-

lilies of a reai statesman." Of Sir ROBERT

PEEL'S colleagues, and more especially the Duke

of BUCKINGHAM and Sir EDWARD KNATCH-

CALF (we beg the Right Honourable Gen-

tleman's pardon, KNATCHBULL), he regards
the mere enumeration as enough to fill
every honest Reformer with distrust. But.
it is especially upon the great question of
the Corn-laws that we are delighted to finfl the
Noble Lord entertain sound and. liber .d. views.
He does not peddle about protection, 'oecause he
knows that while the Corn-laws dre ruinous to
the manufacturers, they are -eositively injurious
to the farmers themselves. We recommend the
monopolists to reflect (leeply upon the following
passage from the speech of the Noble Lord :
As one deeply ;.nterested in the continued prosperity
of the landed interest, with which my personal interest
is entirely bound up, I have uniformly held that it is
most mismken and short-sighted policy for ourselves to
adopt this selfish system of excluding the competition
of foreign corn from our markets; I think the justice of
this opinion has been proved by the result. I remem-
ber since this Act was passed, nearly half of the years
which have gone by have been years of agricultural
distress. I know in the years 1833, 1835, and 1836, a
large proportion of the time of the House of Commons,
was occupied by the consideration of complaints.
and just complaints, of agricultural distress. If I look
on the other side, I also see the law which in many years
worlAed most disadvantageously for the landed interest,
Nvurking still more so for the manufacturing and com-
mercial interests. Can any man doubt the stagnation
of trade of which you have cause to complain at this mo-
ment in this town—can any man doubt the difficulties
by which all the great branches of industry are encum-
bered, arise very much from the consequence of bad har-
vests, aggravated by the existing Corn-law—a law which
seems carefully and studiously devised for the purpose
of filling all classes with vain expectations which are not
:o be realised.

In some instances the Corn-laws may have

encouraged an ignorant agriculturist to offer a
higher rent for land than he otherwise would
have done, and thus the landlord has profited,

but in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred
the only gainer has been the gambling specu-
lator.
Thus, with all the boasted wisdom of the
CASTLEREAGHS, the ROBINSONS, the WILBER-
FORCES, the CHANDOSES, the RICHMONDS, and
the KNATCHBULLS, we have been, from 1815 to
the present day, injuring the agriculturists, and
ruining the manufacturers of Great Bri-
tain, to enrich a set of gamblers, whose
profits are always increasing as the public
distress becomes more general. The hun-
ger and destitution of hundreds of thou-
sands are the stakes for which they play with
the game always in their hands.
But Lord HOWICK'S speech at Sunderland is
suggestive of another question, second only in im-
portance to the repeal of the Corn-laws. It has
for some time struck us as a matter to be de-
plored, that the bulk of the working-classes, in
whom the Tory policy of the Whigs generated
an almost universal distrust of public men, are
without any leader capable of doing justice to
their feelings, making known their wants, and
enlisting their sympathies in any measures
undertaken to ameliorate their condition.
In Lord Hovvicx, we think we can dis-
cover many of the chief requisites for assum-
ing a position which would give him a more va-
luable political influence than that of any other
man in either House of Parliament, DANIEL
O'CONNELL, perhaps, only excepted. The Noble
LTA occupies at this moment a distinguished po-
sition before the country. Having in a great mea-
sure withdrawn his support from the Whigs,
when he found them truckling to the Tories—
having deserted his friends rather than abandon
one jot of those liberal principles hereditary in
his noble family--he now stands before the
country with an undamaged character chal-
lenging that confidence which the bulk of
the people have withdrawn from most of
the leaders of the Whig party. We do not
know whether Lord Howicx may feel disposed
to place himself at the head of the suffering peo-
ple, but we are persuaded that no other leader
could be found better qualified to arrest the
growth of that infidelity in the honesty of public
men which is rapidly spreading among the in-
dustrious classes in England and Scotland.

A tolerably long, and by no means a sprightly
correspondence, respecting the operation of the
commercial treaty with Turkey, ratified the
16th of August, 1838, has just been presented to
the Houses of Parliament. It consists of the
Reports of the Consuls and Vice-Consuls in
Turkey, Syria, and Egypt, to the following three
queries, addressed to them by Lord PALMER-
STON, through Lord PONSONBY, bearing date the
the 16th
of April, beinglB4o , about a year and