The Sun.
London, England, 1840-03-31 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, Tl_TEsp 1, mARCH 3L, Ip4o.

into convulsions, and might, under present circum-
stances, end in the dismemberment of the empire.

We rejoice to see Lord ASHBURTON, night
after night, working himself up into a rage against
the Corn-law agitators. He is fairly caught in the
toils of ALEXANDER BARING, and, foam and fict
as he may, he wilt be dragged in them through the
country as a cutious monster for a public show.
Last night the old merchant and new landowner
found out, contrary to the complaints of every class
in the country, that there had been of late years of
prosperity. When ? Was it in 1835, when the
agriculturists were half of them bankrupt, and when
Mr. CAYLEY, in the name of the landowners,
threatened almost rebellion, unless the Legislature
did something to relieve them ? Or was it in 1836
and 1837, when the abundance of 1835 had set
speculation on foot which ended in the American
crash ? Lord ASHBURTON must have been asleep
if he do not know that the country has been tossed
from side to side, from stagnation to over-trading, now
bewildered with its load, unable to move, and again
toiling and panting with exertion, so thatit has been
for years in a most uneasy economical condition.
It has been carried through this troublesome time. by
successive abolitions of taxation, which year after
year has set loose some of the energies of the
people, and enabled them to bear up against the re-
maining taxes imposed for the State and imposed
for the landlords. Now the State can remit no more
taxes, and now the combined load of the State and
the landlords is crushing the nation.

Lord ASHBURTON last night, too, broached a
new doctrine. Admitting that prosperity had existed
under the Corn-law, the Noble Lord said that if it
were accused of causing distress, it ought to re-
ceive credit for prosperity. What influence had
it, let us ask, in causing the ingenuity of our
manufacturers, or the skill of our artizans ? Is
the Corn-law the parent of the steam engine,
and is the increase of our commerce owing to
a statute which annihilates trade? That a re-
striction on industry promotes prosperity, which is
natural to man, is a perfectly new doctrine, which
ALEXANDER BARING, when he presented the pe-
tition of the Merchants of London for free trade
in 1820 would have indignantly scouted, though it
be worthy of the imbecility of Lord ASHBURTON.
There-has been, we admit, alternations of distress;
the agriculturists have suffered at one period, and
the manufacturers at another. A fertile season in
England has allowed the population at one
time to go a-head, and at another, an un-
fruitful year, has starved them down to the quan-
tity of food our own land could provide for
their subsistence. In the language of ALEXANDER
BARING, on February 22, 1815, the regulations
of the selfish landlords have "cut down our popula-
tion to suit our corn, instead of regulating the
supply of corn by our population." " They have
not lengthened the bed to the man, but they have
shortened the man to the bed." Then the Mer-
chant knew that there was no limit to the perse-
verance of human industry, to which he then as-
cribed that prosperity he now ascribes to a law which
cuts down our population to our corn. Then the
Merchant described it as an " absurd principle," " to
force what gentlemen called an independent supply,"
though now the Lord is for maintaining this absur-
dity,and for cutting "down the population," to suit the
landlords' pocket. Men and women of England, we
use Lord ASHBURTON'S language when we tell you
that the Corn-law " cuts down population," that
is, in homely English, murders infants, and the aged,
and the weakly, not by that process of painless
extinction, recommending which raised such a well-
deserved
censure against " MA Rcus" last year,
but by the slow, lingering, and painful process of
starvation. If the propositions of MARCUS made
the blood boil, and the heart throb—what ought
the practices of the land-owning law-makers to
cause, who carry his beastly propositions into actual
effect, as asserted by Lord ASHBURTON, in a most
revolting and cruel manner ?
When we said yesterday that Lord MELBOURNE
did not understand this question, it was from a
conviction that he has never considered it under the
new aspect in which Mr. BARING exhibited it as
" cutting down the
.population." From the. mo-
ment that the indignant*
denunciations in The Sun
of the Corn-laws, tonna an answering echo in Man-
chester,Edinburgh, and Leeds, the Corn-laW ceased
to be a question of economical science, and be.
came one of stern morality. It admits of no com-
promise, it will tolerate no middle course. It is a
question of right or wrong, and though the
deductions of political economy—though sta-
tistical researches—though observations on the
currency, confirm the moral view, and supply
an admirable illustration that justice and
expediency always go hand in hand, from the mo-
ment that the question was taken up on moral and
religious grounds, the observations of experience
and the deductions of science might confirm, but
could never thwart or impair, the fervent and wide-
spread conviction that those laws ought to be to-
tally and immediately repealed. Who, when a ques-
tion of murder is under consideration, suffers his

judgment to be swayed by the intruded consi-
deration
.of whether the murderer got a jacket
more or less by his crime ? The Corn-
law repeal has become a great moral question for
our people, and the poor considerations urged by
Lord MELBOURNE prove that he has never sounded
its depth. Let him consult the proceedings of the
Delegates yesterday—let him ponder over the lan-
guage of Mr. BROOKES, and he will become sensi-
ble that the Corn-law agitation can only terminate
in the extinction of the law, though the Ministry,
and the Aristocracy, and the Church perish with it.