The Sun.
London, England, 1840-09-04 00:00:00

LONDON:
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1840.

We copy from the Merthyr Guardian an article
en the Corn-laws, which would have escaped our
notice, but for the additional currency given to it
by insertion in a Metropolitan Journal. The ex-
torted praise of our opponent we accept with plea-
sure, and shall endeavour to show that we do not
deserve his censure.

First, with reference to our defence of the fiauds
in the averages, in which we are willing to admit
that we rejoiced, and of which we would encourage
the repetition, whenever the effect can be equally
beneficial. Accustomed to look to facts, we are
not frightened by words, and though the fictitious
sales which influence the averages do cheat the
law, or evade a barbarous enactment—do, we ad-
mit, lead the inspectors to make returns of prices
as real which never had any existence—yet they
are not morally a fraud, and no individual, we
believe, is wronged by them, whatever they may
be by the Corn-laws, to the fraction of a penny.
What are these frauds ? One merchant sells
another 20,000 quarters of wheat for 755. a quar-
ter, and the latter re-sells these quarters to the
same merchant, or sells them to: another, at SOs.
The..transaction takes place publicly in the market,
the checks of the parties are exchanged, it is recorded
in the market-books, and is entered in the returns
which are sent to the Government, and makes part
of the averages published in the Gazelle. It may
be true that in private these parties make an al-
lowance to one another which prevents either of
them from losing by the high price they have
given for the corn ; but such transactions are com-
mon in trade, and though often intended to enable
the parties to make a better bargain with other in-
dividuals to their detriment, are not held to
be reprehensible. But the fictitious sales in the Corn
Market are not intended to influence other bargains;
they have, as we before stated, no effect on the ac-
tual prices, and they cause detriment to no man,
except those who expect by the help of the law,
and trust to its not being evaded, to plunder their
fellow-men. The Government, we admit, is im-
posed on, the law is set aside, but the whole pro-
ceeding grows from that greater ordained general
system of fraud, the Corn-laws, and diminishes its
criminality. The mode of dealing with the ave-
rages, which is called fraudulent, lessens social evil,
and therefore is to be praised and honoured.
The Guardian says, " on the same principle the
felon might as well plead in mitigation of sentence
that his crime was the consequence of the laws
against housebreaking, or the robber assassin on the
QUEEN'S highway, that murder was the corollary
from the Divine command, thou shalt do no mur-
der." But the Guardian, in this observation, falls
into a very common, and yet a very palpable mis.
take. It supposes that it is by an Act of the Legisla-
ture that certain actions are converted into crimes.
and that without human laws, actions would have
no inherent characters of good or evil, constituting
one a crime and the other a virtue. To break into
a house, harrass the inmates, and steal their pro-
perty, is a crime, whether the human law be silent
or stigmatize the action. To import wheat from
all parts of the world to feel the people far from
being a crime, is at least as innocent, if not as praise-
worthy an action as any one of our daily avocations.
When the Legislature forbids and punishes house-
breaking, it enforces the law of nature, which
BLACKSTONE says is the foundation of all human
laws, and that none are of any validity if opposed to
it." 'When the Legislature forbids merchants to
import wheat, it violates a law of Nature. It
po.
forbidsr
that which Nature commands, and if it might
ceed on such a principle there is not a single human
action, though springing from our noblest affections
and most solemn and enlightened thoughts, which
it might not in like manner forbid, and so extinguish
the human race. To set aside or evade the cri.
urinal enactment, forbidding men to bring wheat
into the country, can by no process of logic be con-
verted into a justification of housebreaking, because
both actions are forbidden by the Legislature, for
the two have totaly opposite qualities, and one, like
every part of that vast commercial system which
unites together nations, is ordained by Nature,
while the other, by the same all-ruling power, is
prohibited and condemned.
--The Guardian, therefore, like many superficial
observers, confounds together good actions and bad
actions; because the stupid, the ignorant, or the
wicked lawgiver hag taken it on himself, equally to
forbid what Nature ordain., and what Nature pro-
hibits. In our opinion this view, far from encou-