The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-24 00:00:00

Vit
9ittit
•

LONDON:
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1841.

Contributions, it appears, have been received
from Ame:lCa, to aid the Anti-Corn-law League,
which places. the Corn-law in a fresh light. It
is no longer .a mere English question—it is not
even a European inestiou—it is a question
which -concern::: 'the whole family of civilised
man, and all future time. It is a question be-
tween aristocracy and democracy; and the grow-
ing democracy of America is making common
cause with the democracy of Europe. It is no
longer me?ely a pecuniary question, or a ques-
tion of comcierce, or even a question of life or
death, but a question of high morality, by
which the char ucter of the present actors on the
stage of life wi.l3 be stamped or branded in all
after ages.

We have some-tne3 thought that we would
appeal to the better feeling-A of the aristocracy,
that we would place before them the pining,
suffering poor—the rak':ged, toiling, and half-
nourished women, who, call titled ladies their
sisters and fellow-countrywomen, and who have
not nouriahment fn. Their infants—the hungry,
crying children, of the towns, and the half-
starved, industrioaa workmen,—with our sus-
pended manufactOales, teeaiiug with greater
th wonders an ever were recorded or imagined
ill antiquity—our 'halting, and .decaying com-
merce, which shares that universality ',vide!' is
characteristic of the .Supreme Being; and, asking
the aristocracy to look- at all these, also appeal
g•enerosity -whether they could,
to their for any
0-ratification
of their own, peril these mighty in-
risk of adding one-thousandth
terests, or run the
part of a gh-lin to the heart-rending distress of
But such appeals, by us at least,
must people.
must be made in %Ilia,. and we tura to a sterner
view, suggested ,- -Le Mail morel and historical
uestion has now assumed,
character which the q
t desire, we I ;no a- they
The aristocracy -
r
do desire, to have a flit. place in *sto • but let
' of this: age will
us inform them Villa the history
- DE TOCQU
be written by the democracy . M.
E-
VILLE asserts, and appears to have proved,that
e destined, in spite
the demccracy,.are every wher
•
of aristocratic laws, to triumph in the end. Who-
ever takes a large Tiew of society, and traces the
gradual rise of the -.aiddle classes, the gradual
c•
emancipation of the 'lower, and the radual ab-
sorption of the aristocracy into the others, and
whoever considers that Con creates no aristo-
cracy but the aristocracy of talent, which is op-
posed to a mere pAitical and pecunia. aristo-
cracy, must be convinced that M. DE T -OCQUE-
VILLE is correct. Look at the gigantic demo-
cracy across the A.tlantie, and look at tile effect
it has Lad in i yearS on the -people of
Europe, and as:: what will be its eff,2ct, fifty
years hence,whea population is sixty millions !
Democracy must taimnph, and that at no distant
day. Democracy win, hereafter, write the his-
tory of Our time;. NVl:at will it say of the Eng-
lish landowners?.
With what features will it transanit them to
posterity? They are fond
of
fame, desirous of
the world's homage ; let them cast forward their
glance, and ask what will 1- oe said of
them by a
democratic historian? We are unable to sketch
them, but we imagine that
- n such an histprian will
describe them as a compound of vile sordidness
heartless avarice, and base i ngratitude ; claiming
power to protect the people, and
betraying them
to enrich themselvea; as • -
amtamed in noble

Circumstances now lead men to discuss this
great question, which seems latterly to have lost
ground in theory as well as in practice. BEN..
TH AM—whose denial of natural rights led him to
make the Government decree and decide con-
cerning all things—and his disciples, have found
more willing ears in Courts and Houses of Par-
liament than SMITH, whose practical observa-
tion of the mischievous consequences of nume-
rous commercial regulations, and beautiful ex-
tension of the principle that what an individual
found for his advantage could not be injurious
to nations, led him strongly to advocate the
principle of let the people do for themselves.

It is, unfortunately, a fact that the disciples
and followers of SMITH, not being recluse stu-
dents like him, but men plunged in the affairs
of the world, engaged in commerce, Mem-
bers of the Legislature, writers for newspapers
and for bread, or active aspirants for high legal
honours, have in their practice forgotten the pre-
cepts of their ma3tor, and have perverted the
natural science of the production and distribu-
tion of wealth, which he cultivated and taught as
a philosopher, into an instrument of government.
The doctrines of BENTHAM, and the practices of
SmiTH'sfollowers, have almost banished from the

public mind the theory as well as the practice
of letting the people do for themselves. It is

plain, however, that the time is coming, if it be
not come, when this theory must be revived, and
when the practice of doing everything for the
people must be diligently examined, and the
boundaries of legislation defined and enforced by
a power superior to the Legislature.

It is worthy of notice that the principles laid
down by the heads of the starvation party perco-
late through all their inferiors, and petrify their
sensibilities. Even City Correspondents, in
whom we might expect to find a decent love of
liberty, are as much inclined to be tyrannical
as the most rigid follower of the iron Duke.
The City article of the Morning Post, yester-
day, for example, contained tho following pas-
sage, which should be read as a piece of news,
as an intimation that the Exchequer bill ras-
cality has been long known to the notables of
the City, and as a proof of the petrifying nature
of Tory principles :

In August, last year, the exploits of Mr. Rapallo be-
came a matter of notoriety. Ile was actively engaged in
the outfit of Louis Napoleon's expedition against a
friendly Power, and, if we are correctly informed, it was
at the time privately intimated to Lord Melbourne by
letter that if search were made at his (Rapallo's) office,
documents would be found of a most alarming descrip-
tion. Consulting his personal ease alone, Lord Mel-
bourne paid no attention to the communication, and
hence it is that the consequences of the Exchequer bill
fraud fall on his successors.

The paragraph may be a tissue of falsehood,
but the truth it tells of the mind of the writer is
palpable and certain. He would have had the
Prime Minister send a police officer to examine
RAPALLO'S desk, at the suggestion of a pri-
vate, and probably an anonymous, letter. That is
a terrible tyranny. The letter could only have
been thrust into the fire, and had Lord NlEL-
noun-tiL attended to such a sneaking communi-
cation he would indeed have been deserving of
severe reproof. Such a mode of proceeding as is
recommended by the Post would be spurned by
the merchants of London as extremely dan-
gerous. Should Sir ROBERT PEEL, on private
and secret information, send the police to ransack
the desk of a single stock-broker, the merchants
of London would soon repent the support they
had given to the Tories.

The correspondent of:Lord MELB
ever lie might have been, knew, weE are livnifleo;
nequ r
tbi
oi
al
x,: TiJiaNuitEioe:,..a
from the Post, all about the
fraud in August, but he made no co'
on the subject, except in such a way as he must
he sure could not be noticed. If there be any
such man, lie has been, let us inform the Polt,
a participator iii the crime. He kept the secret,
and permitted the great fotgery to be success-
fully carried on, never, for what he knew, to be
detected. Such a matt ought to be known ; and
we call on the Post to produce the author of the
assertion that Lord MELBOURNE ;yas informed,
by letter, in August, that some strac'e secrets
might be learntby breaking open Mr. IT,Ap.
desk, and then the public will probably lay its
hands on another party to one of the greatest.
frauds that was ever concocted.

We have advices from Madrid of the 15th
inst. That city was exceedingly tranquil, and
the increase in the deposits in the Savings'
Banks proved that the people had unbounded

splendour by the willing toils of,adm'iring subor-
dinates, and rewatding them by stiatehing the
morsel of food from their mouths, and, for their
own sensual gratification, dooming them to po
verty, famine, disease, and death; as uniting in
themselves all that is cruel and dishonest of
the feudal, and all that is mean and mercenary of
the commercial systems; and as being the authors
of the most worthless, diSmal, and suicidal policy
that ever outraged human nature. Something
like,tliat, but written with words of fire, will be
the character branded on the aristocracy ofEng.
land- by that democracy from whose stern justice
they cannot escape, Better were' it to ,have,on
name in the records of dim world than to he
scribed in them with imperisbahW ignominy.

The present condition of society is provoikiwg
a discussion into first principles, and compelling
men to fall back on the rights they derive from
nature. independently of the discussion on the
great principle of Dbedience, which has been fairly
opened up, and will iog followed out in due season,
a commencement has been practically Oren to
the discussion of another most important ques-
tion, namely, the extent td which Governments
should extend the sphere of their operations,
Strange as it may seem, thougli Governments
have been so long established, and tiipugh their
acts have been repeatedly examined, no wrlters
nave yet laid down with accuracy the honn,
darks within which Governments should confine
their laboars. What can best be done by indi-
viduals, by com'panieti, cr must be done by the
power of the whole co7ninunity Melded by
Government, is nowhere ciened anti ,34 t!°
chiefs of a Government are arribit::'us or !leg"'
gent, so they interfere with every form nfilti'l• an
business, or allow individuals to pursue their own
course. Between these opposite and extreme
systems of let the people do for themselves and
do fbr them, the limits at which a Government
can or cannot act with advantage are not defined,
and must now be discussed.
Till lately England was considered to be the
model of system of letting the people do for
themselves ; and philosophical writers on the
Continent, such as M. B. CONSTANT, M. SAY,
Madame DR STAEL, W. SCHLEGEL, &C., were
wont to point to our canals, our roads, our ma-
nufactures, our machinery, our agriculture, our
commerce, our noble mercantile marine—all the
results of private enterprise, uninterfered with,
as proofs that the system of letting the people do
for themselves was infinitely the most advan-
tageous. France, particularly under the Impe-
rial regime, was considered a model of that sys-
tem which would do everything for the people;
and her one great and little-used canal, her
great military roads intersecting the country,
while every other means of communication was
neglected, her splendid and well-ordered Court,
with every little hook and peg of-a gigantic Ad-
ministration surveyed and fixed in its proper
place, while her manufactures and her commerce
were most slovenly, imperfect, and limited; her
splendid national monuments, and her want of
all useful tools, even to a common knife, were
always quoted to show that the system of doing
everything for the people by the Government
was most mischievous in its results. Latterly,
however, that knowledge seems to have vanished
from amongst, us, and England, conquered by
the arts of France, whom she conquered, has
bowed her head to this mischievous slavery.
Under the influence, we regret to say, of pseudo-
Liberals and Doctrinaires, as well as of mar-
tinet military Tories, she has retrograded to
French ignorance and French presumption, and
is now continually acting on the French system
of allowing the people to do nothing for them-
selves, and of doing everything fur them, except
paying their taxes.