The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-06 00:00:00

rt

LONDON:
FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 1641.

We learn from Manchester that the meeting
of Ministers.on the subject of the Corn-laws pro-
mises to be very useful and very successful.
Some hundreds of ministers, from all parts of the
kingdom, have written to the Committee to an-
nounce their intention to be present. To make
their assembling as useful as possible, a circular
Las been sent by the Secretary to all those gen-
tlemen who mean to attend, informing them that
They may serve the cause of humanity by bring-
ing with them facts carefully collected which are
calculated to illustrate the condition of the.
labouring classes. The following arc some of the
particulars to which their.-i,tpnt;or,
wugurs- parri-turscruguraurilinektk.STlVAßrid

unskilled labouiers.
Has the amount of their earnings been increased or
diminished within your experience, and how much ?
How have you found the demand for labour to be af-
fected by cheap or dear food ?
Have wages risen with the rise of the price of food,
and fallen with its fall, and in what proportion ?
Is the condition of the labouring population, as a class,
letter or worse now, as compared with former periods,
visithin your experience ?
What proportion do the poor-rates in your parish bear
to those of former periods ?
Refer to prison reports, and to reports of infirmaries,
fiispenaaries, and other charities, for statistics of the
state of crime, disease, and destitution in your neigh-
bourhood now, as compared with former periods.
If
.your experience lie in a rural district, state whe-
ther the wages paid to agricultural labourers are regu-
lated according to the number of children.
What is the state of the middle class:in your district,
such as the small trader, &c. ? Is their condition im-
proved or deteriorated now as compared with former pe-
Tiods within your experience ?
Have you perceived any connection between high and
low-priced food and an increase or diminution of the
funds of your religious and benevolent societies ?
Have you found any falling-off in the numbers of your
congregation in consequence of the distress occasioned.
by the high price of food ?
Has there been any decrease in the attendance of the
vi2holars at your Sunday schools, and if so, to what
cause do you attribute it ?
If these suggestions be well and widely acted
upon—and we earnestly recommend gentlemen
who cannot attend to send to Manchester all the
facts which they think worthy of notice—a vast
body of information of the most authentic kind,
Concerning the condition. of the industrious
clasges, will be collected by men who are placed
in the most favourable situation for acquiring ac-
4arate knowledge. We, however, would yen-
tnre to suggest that the inquiries should lie
quite as much into the moral as into the econo-
mical condition of the labourers. The " statie-
tics of crime, 'disease, and destitution," should
not be incidental illustrations, but the principal
'objects of inquiry in .connection with seasons of
plenty and scarcity. Tables of mortality, where
-any have been kept, and registers of marriages
properly examined, will thr
and births, if -
ow
muck valuable light on the effect of tbe. varying
prices.Of food.. -it will be useful also to ascer-
tain in agricultural- parishes, whether the sti-
mulus supposed to brie been given .by the
-Curn-lawa 1,434tt.1.11tare has- had the effect
bringing -.Aare land into cultivation, and
i4o of exterAdintt'eniFlovinent for agricultural la-
Nnuere, or of promoting improved 'husbandry,
and st) diminishing employment, while the
-rent of the landowners, if not the profit of the
farmers, has been much increased. Considering
The great outcry which the Pro-Corn-law men
Illwe made as to the Corn-laws producing ern-
pioyment fur agric labourers, a complete
of this point will be of considerable

11; or should the amusements of the people be
omitted from the investigation. In towns, those
flevisled places which the Tories want to have
defeaoyed, the population of which is exposed
every day to their false and calumnious accu-
to•ttions, a great progress has of late been made,
Jay nicans of mechanics' and literary institutions,
by museums, aad public exhibitions, in pro-
viding a great fund of harmless and rational
amusement for the industrious classes. Have
any such efforts been made to promote the im-
provement and happiness of the agricultural la-
bourers? What is the cultivation of their taste
as well as the cultivation of their morals ? What
effect on their mental improvement, on their so-
:cial habits, and on their civilization, is produced
by continually extending the arks e and' preserves
rthe landowners ? i!Oo the peasantry. learhfroM
their. adorned country-seats to acquire any taste
fix sculpture and painting ? Do their music.halls
send forth sounds, which improve the ear.and the

voice. of their toiling serfs Or is the state of
music and song--the amusements of an idle
how; and the solace of many of the lesser g.TiOfs
to which our nature is subject—Lruder aud'inot.e
vulgar amongst the agricultural labourers -4
En land, than in the whole compass of the
errilized world? From the little we know of
the amusements of e.,rietiltural labourers, and
the present state of tbefine arts amongst them,
• which, in contradistitieticintiotritleweehanicarts

arc taken under the exclusive patronage of the
Tories—we can venture to say, at least of the
peasantry of the North of England, that they
are, in all that concerns song, much below " the
rude Carinthian boor." The whole, condition
of this, we think, degraded if not unhappy race
of men requires to be known, and the whole of
that cannot be known unless their amusements,
and the state of the fine arts amongst them, be
included in the knowledge, and they be can-
Ousted on these points with the calumniated
town population.
• In rural villages the surveillance- of the
squire and the parson is complete. They cannot
complain there of dense masses of human beings
mocking their power, to examine and control
them in detail; and the whole world would be
much instructed, could it now be accurately in-
formed of the sort of man the squires and the
parsons—the united bread-taxers—have made of

the agriculturayabourer. We are afraid that
too few ministers will go from agricultural dis-
tricts to give the necessary information, for in
them the monopoly of instruction is even closer
than the monopoly of food. The aristocracy
and the clergy are responsible to GOD and their
country for the condition of the rural population,
and that is such that a Bohemian serf or a Ger_
man boor would be greatly degraded were he
converted into an agricultural labourer. We do
hope, therefore, that an endeavour will be made
by the ministers to ascertain the whole condition
of the agricultural labourer. and make it known
to the world.

An end was yesterday put, by the publication
of Lord JoHN RUSSELL'S Circu'ar Letter, to all

doubts as to the day when Parliament will as-
semble. On the 19th, the day fixed for the re-
turn of the writs, the Commons will meet to
choose a Speaker. On the ensuing Tuesday, we
believe, after the Members have been sworn in,
her MAJESTY, if her health permit, will open the
'Parliament far the despatch of business by a
Speech from the Throne, which will express
some sentiments relative to those measures of the
Ministers, to which the Tories will not assent.
We have heard that Mr. VILLIERS is likely to
move or second the Address, and ensure a hear-
ing for the Corn-law question; as well as make
that a prominent subject of discussion. The
Tories will move, it is supposed, an amendment
to the Address, and the debate on the subject
will probably last the -whole of the remainder of
the week, if not longer. At its close, a division
will show the relative strength of parties, and

thereupon, resignations will, it is supposed, im-
mediately follow, and the formation of a new
Cabinet. About September the 10th, Sir RO-
BERT PEEL, with his forces in order, will be pre-
pared, we presume, to meet the Parliament to
afk for a vote of credit, to pass a Bill to conti-
nue the Poor-law Commission for another year ;,
then lie will be ready to dismiss the gentle-
men to pheasant shooting, expressing his re-
gret that they have been summoned from
their genial and delightful pursuits on the moors
and the stubbles to the close and unhealthy at-
mosphere of the House of Commons. So will
be postponed till after Christmas all knowledge
of 'what Sir R. PEEL can or will do to restore
commercial prosperity, and so will the interest of
the nation, fool that the nation is to trust its
dearest interests in such hands, be postponed,
that the Legislature may enjoy the more gratifying
sport of hunting hares and shooting pheasants.
We take it for granted, that the present Mem-
bers will allude to no other measures in the

QUEEN'S Speech than those on which an appeal
was made to the people, and that the odium
which belongs, in many persons' estimation, to
continuing the Poor-law Commission will be
wholly left to the friends and patrons of the ,
Times. If Sir R. PEEL and his party choose
to continue that measure, let them do it, and let
not thec papers
v
have an opportunity hence-
.
_ t
hpeltz,vew Poor-law was ex-
f'"th of sayiu-h*g Th
squires, who must now
blame of the Times, and avow their responsibility
to the nation.

The doctrines of the free traders are either
stupidly misunderstood or wilfully misrepre-
sented by their opponents. What the free
traders require is the restoration to all men of
their natural liberty to buy and sell where they
like and when they like. They do not ask for
favour or affection for any branch of industry.
On the contrary, they condemn as loudly all at-
tempts to bolster up manufactures as to bolster
up agriculture. They say that such attempts are
an interference with the employment of capital
by individuals, and they have -learnt from their
great master, ADAM SMITH, to denounce that
as an act of sheer folly.

The opponents of the free traders, however,
represent them as aiming at exalting manufac-
tures and at depressing agriculture. They are
said to advocate excessive manufacturing. Now
really this is either a stupid mistake or
a wilful attempt 'to lead the public astray.
The free traders advocate and favour neither
one branch of industry nor another. They believe
that agriculture and manufactures are equally
essential to social prosperity as the two legs are
essential to the locomotion of the body. They
say, leave both to the fostering and protecting
hand of nature, and allow society, of the future
condition of which nobody knows anything, to
grow as nature dictates.

It is a remark of Mr. STEWART that the human
body is one of the last things man allows to at-
tain its full form; but we think man is more slow
in allowing the full development of society than
of the human body. The latter, however,
is complete in an immense number of in-
dividuals, and
children's he2.,15;'
when savages flatten their
or elongate their nostrils,
they ma-4-
imitate some, as they suppose, perfect
nr`,uel of the human form. No society, however,
has been complete. There is nothing like a'model
community upon which the meddlers with society
can form it. Now free traders want only that so-
ciety shall be released from the gyves and strait
jackets with which these meddlers, with greater
barbarity than ever a savage showed 'to the
human form, have sought to fetter society. To
represent free traders as pampering one branch
of industry and stealing another, is quite unwar-
rantable. They desire freedom and prosperity,
fair play, and justice fur all.

We call attention to a letter signed " Conser-
vator," which we copy front the Times. It ap-
pears in that Journal with all the honours of
leads and large type, and--strange and discor-
dant sounds for the Squires—it advocates a fixd'
duty on corn. In emphatic language it tellS;tlie
patronse it,friends of the Times that they must
give Commercial
or and
onmlercial Reform, and must speedily
g
there will be a convulsion. We hope
the Tories'will not neglect this solemn warning.

Edition Pr The Express received yesterday from
ris'
enabled us to anticipate in our Afternoon
all the really important news contained in the
French Journals of Wednesday. The dispute
between the Government and the late Munici-
pality of Toulouse is -degenerating into a mere
squabble, notwithstanding the efforts of the Op_
position Journals to dignify it with the name of
a Constitutional question.
Some three months ago a shoemaker of Montpel-
lier married a young woman of that town, and afterwards
brought her to Paris; taking a lodging on the sixth floor,
in the Rue, de la Boucheile. An evil spirit of jealousy,
which had taken possession of the man s mind even be-
fore the union, haunted him in his new abode, and induced
him to keep hiswife constantly under lock and key, pre-
ti ting.her Mil from contributing to their comforts by
.flgowing her ordinary occupation of getting up fine linen.
It happened thkt another native of Montpellier followed
thciii to Parisi and took a small wine-shop in the same
street. Here the shoemaker frequently resorted, and,
is o days ago, ventured to allow his wife to go for some
vinegar. The time required to get the liquor out of the
cellar, and perhaps some little gossiP about their fellow-
townspeople kept the wife longer on her errand than
the shoemaker thought necessary, and the jealous hus-
band at once converted the wine and vinegar-dealer into
an old sweetheart of his wife. Under this impression,
the infatuated man went to the wino-shop, and picked
quarrelaand his
it friends before with
bitesmre h
mister,
cor,butd ewasmmoiturt isny actneaaut

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