The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-30 00:00:00

,

414 VF. lb< 1 N F. DIT 1011 Z.
•••••••0

51/1141, ti4xcite the discontent and disloyalty of the atisto-
tracy and episcopacy ? It is the actual mis,.try of
the.ponr, and not the telling them they ate un-
..ttstly tieated. which makes them disloyal and dis-
contented. It is not the hattshorn which restores
the fainted patient to consciousness, and makes
him sensible of his pain, while it enables him to
take restoratives, which is the cause of his misery,
but the disease which suspends the action of the

ti

vital powers.
For twenty years, says the Times, there has
been a warfare on tire rights anti comforts of the
poor, If it had said for twenty-five years. which
is the date of the Corn-law, it would have been
within the mark. The beginning of the peace,
when the aristocracy could no longer make war
abroad, is about the commencement of their warfare
on the poor at home. For a large portion of that
time the Tories were in power, and they certainly
strove, while they made this warfare on the people,
to conceal from them the hand which crushed
them. They practised one species of mercy. They
drugged the poor with the opiates of ignorance
and priesteraft, and so made them insensible to
their fitters. They knew they could not tie their
•: hands and draw their teeth as long as the poor pos-
.:, sesstd the faculties with which the ALMIGHTY
• has endowed them ; and they made it their especial
work to deaden the sensibility—to dull the intellect
of those they intended to oppress. They could not
plunder the people of their rights and comforts
without degrading them, and they consistently did
both. No person ever justly accused them of sharp-
ening the mental perceptions of the poor.
But the Times does the " sharpening of their
mental perceptions" an injustice, when it accused
that of causing their discontent and disloyalty.
On the contrary, their long submission is owing
to their sharpened perception. They have
take❑ lessons from experience, and have set even
those who have made war on their rights and
comforts a bright but unfollowcd example of for-
bearance. When before in the world did so nume-
rous a body of men—and a body of men conscious
of their power—submit with so much patience to
an,incessant ,warfare on their rights and comforts ?
Their ancestors, ;the men of England prior to the
French Revolution, -rude, ignorant, and impatient,
would have broken their chains on the heads of
those who made a warfare on their rights and com-
forts. The people bare now learnt that violence
is not the way to redress injuries ; some few of
them have sometimes broken into outrage, but the
mass abide their time, knowing that there is a GOD
who will take vengeance upon their oppressors.
Never since the world began was there an almost
entire nation of ill-used men who have been for
'tn9re than twenty years so contented and so loyal
as the people on whose rights and comforts a small
minority have, by means of laws, made an incessant
warfare.

Tile Times attributes part of the evil to manu-
facturing competition, which, it says, has taxed
the industry of the people and reduced their wages.
It is lamentably ignorant. The result of manu-
facturing competition is to produce commodities
cheaply, and of course to supply the labourers as
well as all other classes abundantly. It is not the
produce of manufacturing skill which the people
require, for that is abundant and cheap, but food,
which, in opposition to all the course of nature, to
all the struggles of genius, to all the useful inven-
tions of time-honoured skill, all of which tend
to multiply and to cheapen the necessaries
and co►►veniences of life, has been expressly
made dear and scarce by the landlords'
bread.tax. But if it were otherwise this ma-
nufactUring competition is unavoidable. It grows
from time present circumstances of society, and as
the law-makers cannot put an end, to that, why do
they prevent a competition in the production of food,
`which would go far to remedy all the imaginary
evils of manufacturing competition ? One great
part of society they admit their inability to control,
and yet with a fool's hand they arrest another part
of the machinery, and throw the whole into terrible
disorder.

Though the Radicals are extremely weak in
Parliament, having in one House scarcely one re-
presentative, and in the other only very few, in the
country their party embracing the majority of those
who, from a good cause, are discontented with our
present institutions, is extremely numerous. 'To be-
come powerful, however, they must be united ; and
how to bring about the union of the greatest num-
her of them, is the problem which ought now to
engage the attention of liberal politicians.
It is a fact, which admits not of the smallest
.•
doubt, that our political institutions require reform.
They are stationary—society is progressive. Men
can only learn their effects by considerable experience,
which is summed up in physical and moral good
and evil. Tine, however, is required before ex-
perience clearly informs the understanding of the
source of good or evil. At present, evil, both
moral and physical, predominates in our society to
',44,4-?t,_ an alarming extent. Great masses of the
munitv' are in a sad condition of physical de-
privation, and crimes of various kinds are
4
1111- and increasing. All pnrtics agree in

'`~ r . ~..

merous
this, for'there is a general demand for a more ex.
tensive police or more repressive laws, and a gene
ral and ostentatious show of contribution to relieve
distress. But, institutions arc intended to extirpate
both physical and morarevil, or reduce them to the
minimum ; and consequently the existence of much
physical a'ad moral evil in society, is a convincing
proof that, our institutions do not answer the object
intended., and therefore require reform.
It will not do to shelter them under the assertion
—whether based on the theory of Mr. MALTIIUS,
or the biblical theory of the origin of sin—that evil
• ia, natural to man, and is not therefore to be
charged on institutions, because those who require
society to support and obey institutions affirm that
that they prevent moral and physical evil. To as-
sert that they cannot prevent it is to cut political
. obedience up by the roots. All institutions are
constraints, and they arc supported by taxes. In
themselves they are evil, they are borne with for the
sake of the greater good which is to accrue from
them ; but if when great evils overtake society it is
said that institutions arc not to blame, and that re-
forming institutions cannot amend the matter, that
there is an overruling cause which sets at naught
all legislation, then, as institutions on that assertion
arc purely evil, not merely ought they to be re-
formed, but they ought to be wholly swept away.
That conclusion, however, cannot be adopted, and
to secure the foundation for political obedience even
Conservatives must admit that our present social
evils arc caused by our institutions, and that they
require reform.

Nor is there on this point any practical differ-
ence of opinion, though there is much difference as
to what the reforms ought to be. The Conserva-
tives, alarmed at the growth of political knowledge
amongst the people, conceive that they are not
enough under constraint, that time press is too free,
that the people are not burdened enough, that they
require to be more closely watched ; and their re-
forms tend to extend the police, to place the press
under more restrictions, to put down cheap publi-
cations, to build more churches and enlarge the

power of the clergy, to restore the patriarchal
•
power of the feudal chieftains, and, if necessary, to
burn down half our cities. All parties, in short,
agree that our institutions are defective, and that to