The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-02 00:00:00

Tht

well off.

LONDON:
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1841.

Sir R. PEEL has recently reminded us of the
reputation once enjoyed by a certain ex-Secre!
tary of the Admiralty. No sooner did a dispute or
debate occur iu the House of Commons concerning,
however remotely, the department with which
he was connected, than the Right Hon. Gentle-
man was provided, it was said, with a letter or
memorandum, stating, on the honour of same
high and distinguished personage, the very
fact which was required to make out the ex-
Secretary's case. So Sir ROBERT PEEL, imitating
these tactics, comes down to tile House one day
with a story from some nameless Magistrate,
that Mr. HiNnnEY's statement is not true ; on
another, with a nicely selected piece of statistics,
touching savings' banks, which proves almost
unheard of prosperity since the ac-

cession of the Tories to office ; and on
a third, with a ' voluntary statement,
made by some high, but still nameless, autho•

rity in Manchester, that fever has died away as
poverty has increased, and that Manchester,
under the CAVANAGH procesS of going without
food, is increasing in health most remarkably.
Fever cases, according to Sir ROBERT'S name-
less correspondent, have diminished almost in
the proportion of 3to 1 compared to 1837. Sir
ROBERT, in fact, surpasses his quondam ally and
mentor, for he not only establishes a triumphant
case for his party out of these poor statistical re-
turns, but he triumphs, over common sense and
general notoriety. We look with much suspicion
at returns leading to such conclusions, and that
suspicion we must take leave to make good,
though our remarks should fall heavily on the
good sense or the honour of Sir ROBERT PEEL,
and degrade him to the level of tile veracious ex-
Secretary of the Admiralty, now standing calum-

niator of the Quarterly Review.
It strikes us as somewhat remarkable that Sir
ROBERT PEEL, or Sir ROBERT PEEL'S correspon-
dent, for they divide the honour betwixt them,
should have commenced with the year 1837,

comprising the period between June 1836 and
May 1837—that being, as is remarked by Mr.
TOOKE, "the last in a series of six successive sea-
sons, in which the produce of the wheat harvest
had fully sufficed for the • consumption of the
kingdom without the aid of foreign supply."
Why did not Sir ROBERT PEEL, Or Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S correspondent, if he wished to make a
fair comparison, tell us the number of fever pa-
tients that were admitted in the flourishing

years 1836, 1835, and 1534, so as to enable the
community to compare—the point at issue—the
effects of abundance and scarcity ? It is very

singular, if it be not designed, that Sir ROBERT
PEEL or his correspondent should not have said

one word about the fever in those previous years,
. .

when the people were supposed to be tolerably

Unfortunately, also, for, Sir ROBERT and his
correspondent, contemporaneously with the be-
ginning of the bad harvests came the first inter-
ruption to the American trade. It was in the
autumn of 1536 that the great Liverpool houses
got into difficulty, and from that time to the
present the trade with America has been com-

paratively languishing. Thus two causes com-
bined to make the fever statistics prior to 1837,

as a means of comparison with those statistics
since that year, of great interest; and we re-
spectfully ask Sir ROBERT and his anonymous
informer, why no notice is taken of the years

1836, 1835, and 1834.
It does not appear to us sagacious, even if it
be quite honest, to state such a naked fact as
Sir ROBERT PEEL stated, without mentioning

any qualifying or correcting circumstance. It

could not be unknown to Sir ROBERT PEEL'S in-

formant that, during the last five or six years, a

great deal of attention has been directed to im-
proving the health of towns. Exertions have been
made to lodge -the people better, to improve
drainage, to establish superior ventilation, and
though Sir ROBERT PEEL'S bungling legislation
has been a pre-eminent failure, producing infi-
nitely more harm than good, those who apply
the physical sciences do not fail in the same
way ; and the exertions made to improve our
towns have been, in a great measure, successful.
Manchester, under the new Corporation and new
police, has been by no means behind other towns,
and we believe we err very little in saying that,
with the exception of the metropolis, in no town
has there been more done of late to improve the
dwellings of the poor. Sir ROBERT PEEL ought
to have adverted to that circumstance, if he had
not wished rather to delude than instruct. A
wise man, aiming at truth, would have men-
tioned rt.A hireling, partizan of the landlords,casts
it aside, and dwells only on some figures as a
proof that the people are not so much a prey to
disease and death as they were.
We have seen it stated also, more than once,
that the number of Irish who immigrate into
England is annually lessening. Such a result
seems the natural consequence of the improve-
ment which is going forward in Ireland, and of
the slackness of enterprise in every part of Eng-
land. It is clear, when thousands of persons in
every town can find no employment, that there
can be no room for an importation of additional
thousands from Ireland, and no temptation for
them to come. We believe, therefore, that im-
migration from Ireland has not been so great
during the last five years as during the preced-
ing five years. Now the Irish, according to
Mr. M'Cum.ocn's statistical work, are " keep-

ing up, if they are not introducing, the fevers of
their wretched country into the heart of the
British cities." If the immigration of Irish,
therefore, be checked from any cause, one
source of fever is proportionably dried up, and
that immigation has been lessened since 1837.
In fact, according to all accounts, of late emi-
gration to a considerable extent has taken place
from the manufacturing districts, and if there
were no other circumstances to invalidate Sir
R. PEEL'S statement, the want of any correct
knowledge of the number of inhabitants at Man-
chester, in 1837 and in 1841 would make it
worthless.
But, limited and misleading as Sir R. PEEL
wished his statement to be, the comparison
between the number of fever patients in 1837,
799; and in 1838, the first year of a very deficient
crop and of much slackness in work, 1,372 ; and
in 1839, another deficient year, 1,040; and in
1840, 848—the number being almost double in
1838, one-fourth greater in 1839, and one-six-
teenth greater in 1840—really proves that the
dearth to which the Corn-law subjects the
people is a prolific source of disease. We have
pointed out several circumstances—the diminished
immigration of Irish, the improved habits of the
people, and the improved police of the town—
which should lead to a diminution of fever; but
what do we find coincident with deficiency of food
and slackened trade? Why, that the fever patients
increase from 799 to 1,372, or taking the ave-
rage three years subsequent to 1837, from 799 to
1,086. We should be astonished that the cautious
Baronet had quoted a statement which shows
that the starvation system he supports in-
creases disease, and, probably, also increases
deaths to the amount of one-third, were he not
so ignorant of all the accompanying circumstances,
or so blind to them, that he •was, completely
unaware of the bearings of his statistics. We re-
peat, that the increase of fevers between the years
ending May, 1837, and May, 1838, the first
year of agreatly deficient harvest and a declining
trade, is a severe condemnation_of that abomina-
ble Corn-law which in that year withheld food
and trade from the people.
But the very essence of the Right Hon. Baronet's
triumph was in the diminished number of fever
patients in the year 1810, 848, and 1841, 601, par-
ticularly during the last three months of the pre-
sent year, as compared to the number of patients
in the three corresponding months of the preced-
ing years. Alas, for his knowledge and his hu-
manity ! Does he expect to find, after decimating
the people—for the number of fever patients
who die appears to be at least one in ten—that
there will remain the same number to kill? Dr.
BOWRING showed that the mortality of the ma-
nufacturing districts has increased, and it is at
least whimsical of the Right Hon. Baronet to
exult at the diminution of the fever patients this
year, in consequence of the numerous deaths
from hunger and fever of the year before.
It is, we understand, a common fact, that,
after a disease has been extremely prevalent, as
fever was in Manchester in 1838, it falls in the
next few ) cars as far below the average as it had
suddenly risen above it. In 1838 the fever pa-
tients were nearly doubled, and it is in the cus-
tomary order of events that in the next few
years the number should diminish. This is hap-
pening at Manchester ; and Sir R. PEEL, anxious
to defend an iniquitous and inhuman law, ac-
tually drivels out his satisfaction, and the Tories
cheer him as he drivels it out, because previous
deaths and previous disease have deprived pre-
sent disease of its victims.
We look on such bald statements as that of
Sir R. PEEL, with unqualified contempt, Unless

statistics
.be enlightened by a knowledge of cir-
cumstances, they are valueless and Sir R. PEEL
took care to suppress all the circumstances which
could give his fever table interest and correct-
ness. Suppose it justified all he wished to infer,
would it follow that the people are not in deep
distress because the fever hospital is not
crowded with patiznts ? There are some years
particularly favourable to fever, others not. This
may be one of the latter. It is horrible enough
to find a statesman, who is bound to remove the
restrictions by which he crushes the enterprise
and stops the supplies of the people, shutting his
eyes and his ears to their demands and their
complaints; but it is ten-fold horrible to find him
endeavouring to persuade himself and others, by
the most puerile and contemptible arguments,
that there is no distress worth 'speaking of, and
that it would be wrong to put the Legislature to
the least trouble to correct it. Lord STANLEY
described Sir ROBERT PEEL as well knowing
how to dress up a case for the House but the
House and the country in this, as in many other
things, are completely at variance, and the case
which the House cheered as a triumph for the
Starvationists, appears to the country as their
ciniviction and execution.

We have received Madrid Papers of the 23d
ult. The Eeo del Commereio of that date con-
tains a bitter answer to an article which recently
appeared in the Journal des Debats sneering at
Spain, and accusing her people and Government
of ingratitude towards France. The following
extract from that article will show the sensitive-
ness of the Spanish people, and how little real
sympathy exists at bottom between the two na-
tions. We may add, that it quite delighted the
people of Madrid :
" We are called ingrates, and yet, through the family '
compact, cominglrom Charles 111., we were embroiled
in a disastrous war, which brought us to the necessity of
submitting, jointly with France, to the shameful peace
of 1763 ; we were by France, without previous know
ledge, involved in the United States war, concluded by
signing the humiliating peace of 1783. In both wars
cur naval forces were placed at the disposal of France—
not for defending our interests, but quite otherwise,
greatly to their prejudice. The French Government,
without our previous consent, despoiled us of the Island
of Trinidad, which it ceded to Great Britain by the
treaty of Amiens. The French Government sold the
Floridas to the United States, thereby openly violating
the terms of the treaty of cession we bad made. We
signed the ignominious treaty of peace of Basilla,
and the untoward treaty of San Ildefonso, and
our navy perished at Trafalgar, through the inexpe-
rience and madness of the French Admiral ; and we
signed the treaty of Fontainblcau, in order to satiate,
with the spoils of Portugal, the ambition of Napoleon. The
elite of our trcops were previously removed into Pomerania!
Lotus see what France has done for us. Behold on the
Madrid Prado the monument of the 2d May, as a perpetual
testimony of the treasonableinfamy and unexampledcow-
ardice of the French, who assassinated our fellow-citi-
zens in the most heartless manner. France surely does
not demand of liberal Spain a testimony of gratitude
for its invasion of Spain in 1823. If it requires
one, let it exact it at the hands of the satellites of the
Inquisition. As to the conduct of France towards
Spain since 1834, we have only to appeal to
the testimony of the opposition members in the Paris
Chamber of Deputies, who told the Minister of the
Crown ' your policy is a Carlist policy.' What Spaniard
can have forgotten the famous jantais' of that Ministry,
of which M. Salvandy, the recently appointed Minister to
Spain, formed part ? And, lastly, this very same ques-
tion of the Isla del Rey, in Port Mahon Bay, does it not
prove that Spain, forgetful of the security of its own terri-
tory, was still too condescending ? Yet the ex-Minister
Joubert, in the Session December 3, 1840, declared that
France aimed at the possession of the Balearic Islands."
The Funds improved on the 23d. The Five per Cents.
27+ for cash,", and 27 at 60 days are the closing prices,
and about 270,0001. sterling was done.

The whole of the Paris Journals of Thursday
have reached us. The breaking off of the nego-
tiations for a commercial treaty between France
and Belgium, principally on account of the
French iron monopolists, is severely commented
upon in several of the Liberal journals. Free-
dom of commercial intercourse is beginning
to find many able advocates in France.
The policy of sacrificing the interests
of a nation of conszmers in order to enrich a
handful of native producers is now very gene-
rally condemned. The starving population of
Paris can no longer be persuaded that the filling
a French belly with German beef would be a
ruinous measure, any more than the people of
Manchester can be made to believe that a British
stomach has an unconquerable aversion to French
brandy or a Spanish-grown loaf. The bulk of
the newspapers respond to the common sense of
the people; so that, whatever he the fate of the
present negotiations, we regard the doom of mo-
nopolies as sealed.
' The' Sud of Marseilles of the 27th ult. announces the
return of the steam-boat Dante, which sailed from that
port on the 21st ult. with the Levant mail, in consequence
of an accident to her machinery. The letters and des-
patches were returned to the post-office and were to re-
main until the Ist instant, "there being no other boat
ready for sea, and even were there one it would have
been useless to have despatched her, es she could not
have arrived at Malta until after the departure of the
mail from Syn.."
The following further particulars of the affair of the
British merchant who was maltreated at Sfax, are given
by the Semaphore of Marseilles, in a letter from that
place of the 24th ult :—" The agent of an English com-
mercial house having a difference with one of the re-
ceivers of import duties, was dragged into the Custom-
house yard at Sfax, and there cruelly beaten and stoned
by some Arabs ; the principal aggressor being a man
named Belhac, who, being at the head of the service, ought
to have restrained his subordinates. The Governor, Ra-
geb Ben Ajat, instead of doing immediate justice, as he
was bound, sent an account to the Bey of Tunis, repre-
senting that the Englishman had ill-treated the officers;
and he found plenty of witnesses to certify the truth of
his report, many being. impelled by fear, and others by
malignity, to affix their names to it. The British Vice
Consul demanded reparation, but Ben Ajat replied only
with insults; and without waiting for the answer from
the Bey, decided that the agent had violated the law, and
accordingly sent him to prison. After lying there four
days, the Englishman was bound with cords, placed on a
horse, and sent out of the town; but being met by some
Europeans on the road, he was rescued by them. All
those who were engaged in this release have taken
refuge under the British flag, where they still remain."
A letter from Ancona, 18th instant, gives accounts of
the fetes on the occasion of the vis;t of the Pope, who
made his entrance into the town on the 15th, an event
which has not occurred at Ancona within the last three
centuries. It was triumphal. The populace took the
horses from the carriage of his Holiness and drew him
to the Church of Santo Agostino, where he pronounced
a benediction on the peoples In the evening there were
grand fireworks let off in Piazza Grande, and, in one of
the halls of the Town• house, took place the ceremony
'of kissing the forehead of the Pope's white mule. His
Holiness was seated on a throne, his foot resting on a
red velvet cushion, and the mule was richly caparisoned
in the same colour with a cross of gold over the back.
All persons who entered left their hats and gloves in an
outer room, and knelt down three times before approach-
ing the steps. The Austrian Government paid a hand-
some compliment to Gregory XVI., in sending its stsam-
vessel the Mahmoudie to Ancona, and placing it en-
tirely at his command during his stay. The Pope,
availed himself of this attention, and in return bestowed
his benediction on the steamer, conferring upon it his own
name. This being done, his standard was hoisted at
the mast-head, and he took an excursion in it. In the
morning of the 17th, his Holiness set out for Rome.
On Tuesday, the Dukes d'Aumale and de Montpen-
sier, accompanied by Messrs. Delatour and Jannin, left
Compeigne ; and, earlier it he morning, the Pope's In-
ternuncio, te Minister of Public Instruction, and the
Count and Countess Mole, took their departure for Paris.
At one o'clock, Queen Christina, attended by her Lady of
Honour and two Chamberlains, alighted at the Palace.
At three, the King and Royal Family, with the Queen
Dowager of Spain, went to visit the ruins of the Cha-
teau de Pierrefont. The weather was extremely fine,
and`the King ascended to the summit of the highest
tower, and enjoyed the extensive and picturesque view
it affords. The Royal party, which was followed by
several other carriages filled with the invited guests,
did not return to the Palace till a quarter before seven,
where their Majesties were met by the Minister of Public
Works, who had just arrived. In the evening there
was a grand banquet in the Salle de Diane.
N. Guizot has returned to Paris from Compeigne.
The Dutch papers publish the following trait of heroism
on the part of the Dutch troops, during the late in-
surrection in Sumatra. The fort of Gogoer-Merlin-
tang, occupied by Sub-Licutenant Bonze, and fifty
men, was suddenly attacked by several thousands
of the insurgents. The little garrison defended them-
selves bravely with their bayonets, but several were
wounded, and their provisions being short, they were
exposed to the horrors of hunger. They held out
however for four days, when the officer in command re-
solved on evacuating the fort. Three of the garrison
were too severely wounded to be able to remove, and re-
mained, with a determination to blow up the fort as
soon as the rebels should have entered. Lieut. Bauza
and his men effected their retreat by dint of extraordi-
nary valour, whilst the rebels took possession of the
fort ; but the latter had no sooner entered than the three
men who remained set fire to their powder, and all who
entered it were blown up with the heroic and faithful
soldiers.
The Journal d 'lndre d Loire states that a journeyman
wheelwright, named Gamel, was arrested a few days
ago at Vouvray, on a charge of uttering seditious lan-
guage, and declaring publicly that he intended to go to
Paris to kill the King.
A grand dinner was given at the Belgian Court, on
Monday, in honour of the visit *of the Duchess of Rent.
During the stay of the King and Queen of Prussia at