The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-12 00:00:00

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LONDON:
THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 1341.

" The heavens rain repeal" was announced a
week ago. Since then the weather has become
worse. We have had a great deal more rain with
heavy wind. The corn has been laid in many
places where, ten days ago, it was looking as fine
as possible. Whole fields, and even large dis-
tricts of wheat have been beaten down. The wet
has made it begin to grow from the ear. Wheat
rose yesterday '2s. per quarter in the London
markets, and the supply was scanty. It will rise
again, we fear, next market day, and bread will
follow the same course. The rational hopes of
the public a week ago were poor and stunted, but
now they are completely blighted and at an end.
"The very heavens," says the Non-Conformist,
" frown upon Toryism, rebuke its presumption,
and threaten to crush its power." But our State-
church preachers, who see a miraculous interpo-
sition of Providence when some frail sinner who
goes forth to enjoy himself on the Sabbath
meets with a misfortune, will see nothing
instructive to Tory statesmen, whom the
Church is bound to enlighten and restrain,
in this unseasonable weather. The landlord's
will regard it as a matter of course, and never
dream, however palpable is the national distress,
in conjunction with the Corn-laws and with a
bad season, that the latter may be influenced by
their enactment. Though they call themselves
very religious, they will learn nothing from the
heavens speaking to them in wind and rain ;
they will say that wet and windy summers are
in the order of nature, and that the season would
have been equally bad, whether Corn-laws had
existed or not. Nay, they will go further, and
abuse the Anti-Corn-law party for taking advan-
tage of &u unfavourable season to excite a pre-
judice against them. Yet, if we are not mis-
taken, it may be shown, without supposing the
age of miracles to be revived, or that the land-
lords are worthy of a special 'interposition of
Providence to save them, that the evils of the
wet season are caused by their law, and ought
to be looked on by them, if they had a just
sense of all-pervading power, as a warning
against continuing, their injustice.
The certain consequence of that law is to limit
our population very nearly to the resources of our
own country, and the certain consequences of
allowing free scope to the energies of mankind,
would be a great increase of population. Not
to urge that this increase of population. might
have, as clearing away the forests of America
has, some influence over our climate, and being
in the order of nature, may be required to cor-
rect or compensate some peculiar state of the
atmosphere, which those who control popula-
tion cannot control,--it is quite certain that the
increase of the people would tend to extend the
demand for meat, and as corn can be bet-
ter imported from a distance than cattle,
the proportion of pasture lands and green
crops, relative to white crops, would be
increased. In that case the people woulddepend,
so far as our wet climate were concerned, more
than at present on green food for cattle than on
wheat, and a wet season, instead of making us
dread starvation, would fill us with joy from sup-
plying an abundance of food for our cattle. The
people, drawing the large portion of their sup-
plies of meat from our own island, owing to the
peculiar nature of cattle, and the adaptation of
our climate to rearing and fattening therm, and
looking, more than at present, to other less humid
climates for their bread stuffs, they would not
find, as at present, a wet season to be a sourcu of
poverty and sorrow.

Without supposing any deviation from the
order of nature, it appears to us that, accordini;
to its regular and ordained course, a cold wet
season like the present, destroying the harve.st
or making it late and scanty, may be said to ad-
monish the landlords of the evils theyare causing.
They would have no terrors forour people, did they
look principally to England for meat, and were
they sure of obtaining a large portion of their
bread stuffs from an earlier and a warmer cli-
mate. We will not say, strange as it may seem,
that the Corn-laws may not cause a wet season,
for we know not that some connection may not
exist between climate and population; but we will
say that the Corn-law turns a wet season, which
might be a blessing, into a curse. That a lam
which arrests the progress of pop may
have some influence over climate, isulation not harder