The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-11 00:00:00

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LONDON:
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 11141.

It might have been expected from the com-
ments of the Tories that the result of the elec-
tions, so favourable to them, would at
once have
restored confidence to agriculturi and trade, and
at once have revived natio.-ao
prosperity. Ac-
cJrding to them, the f.,-.id of the Whig Ministry
should be the be: nning of the national happi-
ness, but yet no signs of its approach
are On the contrary, every day
brings more gloomy accounts ; and • Whigs,
Tories, and Radicals, in the manufacturing dis-
tricts, agree in saying they never saw trade so
bad. As if to spite the Tories, commercial
failures, and almost unexampled manufacturing
• distress, have set in, as the Tories are yelling with
exultation at their own success. The rising sun
of an harmonious Legislature—Peers and Com-
mons being one—and of a strong and united Go-
vernment, combining the caution of PEEL with
the fervour of STANLEY, and the administrative
talents of GRAHAM, backed by the military re-
putation of the Duke of WELLINGTON and the
legalaetunen ofLYNDH unsT,supported, too, by the
trading
knowledge of ASHBURTON, and the diplo-
matic skill of AEERDEEN, far from clearing up
the horizon, has only made the whole atmos-
phere look dark and murky, as if a great storm
were at hand.

We can account for this; to the Tories it must
be inexplicable. Though the
in office during the last eleven
Whigsyears,
Tory av epolicy
has on too many p
n
prevailed, and caused all
the mischief we now
suffer, or are threatened
with. Restrictions on trade, the Corn-laws,
high discriminating duties on sugar, the timber
duties, are all Tory regulations ; and if some
Whigs objected to the removal of them, the
Tories to a man vehemently opposed
it. They
cannot forget, and we believe the public have
not forgotten, that they threw out the two mea-
sures brought forward by Colonel SALN,,,y
and
Lord SYDENHAM, to allow foreign corn to be
ground in bond, as they opposed and defeated
every other measure to lessen the restrictions on
trade. Whatever, therefore, might have been
the inclination of Ministers, it is clear that on all
que,:tions of free trade they would be deserted by
the landlords of their party, and they, therefore,
had no alternative but to acquiesce in the laws
they could not overturn. They never had the
power to repeal the Corn-laws. At present
the authors of all the mischievous restrictions
on our trade are coming into office; they
are in a considerable majority; and hence
that bankruptcy, gloom, and alarm which
have rapidly extended since the returns were
known, and which are only, we are afraid, the
heralds of those greater convulsions- which will
attend or follow the seizure of the Government
by the Tories.
However much statesmen may talk about the
effect of laws and government, and however
eloquent the clergy may be about the fallen na-

ture of man and the necessity for more religion,
the fact is, that the evils of society are all eco-
nomical or pecuniary, and not to be cured by
any cunningly contrived statutes, or any amount
of preaching. Starvation is not to be remedied
by coercion, unless it proceed so far as speedily
to terminate the life which has become almost a
burden; but in the present condition of the
community, too many lives must be taken to
make this a feasible undertaking for any modern
HEROD. Religion will not fill men's bellies, and
they must be fed before they can be taught.
The two nostrums, then, of more law, or more
Government, and more Church, to cure our
present wants—which are hunger and destitution,
low wages, little employment, and scanty profit
—whatever may have been their efficacy in other
times, are now utterly valueless, and to rely on
them in the present danger will be imbecile
quackery.
The hulk of the people are already sick of the
law and the Church, which, existing for their
protection and comfort, give them neither. Of
what use are they, if they do not secure the
people meat, clothes, and fire? 'Without these
they cannot live, and these they have not. It
will not do to say they have no right to them ;
for if they have no right, what right have the
law-makers and parsons to possess them in abun-
dance? We know that there is a great repug-
nance to enter into a discussion of the rights of
the different classes, and more particularly of the
rights of property; but these kinds of discus-
sions are now forced on the people by the vast
distress of the industrious classes, and the opu-
lence of those who pretend to protect them and
provide for their welfare. No right will long be
safe or respected in such a condition of society,
and the sooner men make up their minds to lay
aside their squeamishness and look our present
danger full in the face, the sooner it will be sur-
mounted.

We had occasion to remark on Wednesday, in
an article on a " Passage of the Edinburgh Re-
view," that, fast as the population has increased
since the Revolution, the wealth of the commu-
nity has increased much faster. But all that in-
crease of wealth has somehow or other been mo-
nopolized by the law-makers, by the clergy, and
by some few favoured and protected classes,
while the bulk of the labourers are worse off
than were their ancestors, if that be possible, in
respect to the great necessaries of life, meat,
clothes, fire, and shelter. The following passage
from Mr. J. ASHTON YATES' letter to the land-
owners and farmers of Carlow confirms this view,
and points out some of its consequences on the
present condition of trade :
Had a more liberal policy prevailed in the councils of
the nation towards the working classes,—had the Go-
vernments of this country been more intent on raising
the condition of their own subjects by education and
economical and financial reforms, than upon sustaining
the ancient systems of feudal domination throughout the
other States of Europe, it is probable, that we should
not at this moment have been so dependent as we now
find ourselves upon foreign countries for the consumption
of a large portion of the cottons, woollens, hardwares,
&c., which we now produce. It is owing principally,
therefore, to the low condition in which our workmen
live, that we are subject to those frequent revulsions
in trade, which bring want of employment and great
privation to the poor, followed by great losses and
dangers to the rich and middle classes. For nothing
is more clear than that in proportion as you raise the
character and condition of the people, you inspire the
desire and the power to increase their comforts and en-
joyments—and that when these improved habits are ac-
quired, the exchange of their labour and ingenuity for
superior clothing, food, and lodging, is continued with
equal advantage to the labourer and the landowner—to
the farmer and the capitalist—to the artisan and the
manufacturer. The best consumers of the produce of
our looms and our mines, as well as of our fields, are our
own fellow-subjects ; and greatly indeed do those per-
sons err, who conceive that it is by keeping low wages
and a degraded condition of the workmen, that the trade
and agriculture of the country are to be made to prosper.
But different principles have prevailed ; and those who
still maintain them, point to our great advancement in
all the arts of civilization, as well as to our steady pro-
gress in population, as proofs that the system works well.
They might as well adduce the vast growth of population
and the increase of cultivation in Ireland, as proofs of
the goodness of the system ; and that the Irish pea-
sants must necessarily be very prosperous and happy,
because they pay high rents for the bog lands, which
they formerly eut for fuel without paying any or the
most trifling rents. It is admitted, that the owners of
the land have been enormously enriched, that their re-
venues are three or four times greater in proportion to
their acres, than in any other countries ; even their
stewards and agents, their servants and drivers, have
become potent ords of the soil—by their prudence and
ingenuity not unfrequently changing places with their
employers ; and it is also true, that by the same sys-
tem, rich manufacturers and merchants have arisen
in numbers from the ranks of the operatives and over-
seers of the trading community, whose children, becom-
ing lords of the soil, have vied with the nobles of the
land in splendour and power, and at length become Lords
of the ascendant by the same talents and perseverance
which first raised their families out of their low estate.
But the sad reality still remains, that the condition of the
bulk of the working classes, especially in agriculture, is
worse than it was, both in England and Ireland, previous
to this great advance in our national wealth, and the great
increase in the value of the lands.

Now it will become those gentlemen who
bawl for more law and stroeger Government and
more Church, to show that the suffering people
have not done their duty, and that the law and.
the Church have. What is the duty of the
working classes? To sustain and nour: *ri
community ; and most admirably 1
the
formed it. The amount of ave they per-
itational wealth has
gone on increasing:
have been suc` • •- oe number of persons who
-aimed in absolute idleness, or in
what is
called unproductive occupations, has
be
_en vastly and wonderfully augmented. All
the other clashes, the owners of rent, the pos-
sessors a tithes, the recipients of taxes, the re-
ceivers of profit and interest, have all been
amazingly enriched, and that part of the social
task which is appropriated to the industrious
people has been skilfully, vigilantly, and unex-
ceptionally performed.

What is the duty of the law-makers, of the
Executive Government, and the Church? To
guide, protect, comfort, and instruct the indus-
trious classes. Have they done their duty as well
as the industrious classes have provided for them?
They have not. They are enriched; they
wallow in opulence and ease ; and the industrious
classes are doomed to penury, ignorance, and
great distress. It is unnecessary to go into de-
tails, useless to trace out the individual acts by
which the result has been-brought about, the
plain, unanswerable tact is that the law-makers
and the Clergy have claimed for themselves the
office a protecting, instructing, and comforting
the people; and the people are neither protected,
instructed, nor comforted. They want the
common necessaries of life, and their distress is
rt complete proof that the ruling elapses have
grossly neglected their duty to the working
classes, who so amply provide for them.
Some unthinking, unobserving Tory scribblers
would have the world believe that the distresn of
the people is the consequence of the extension
of commerce. But the person least acquainted
with the laws of nature is aware that the greater
the number of any phenomena embraced in
any rule the less is the chance of flue=
tuation, and the more steady and undeviating the
rule. Why should not this hold good of com-
merce, and fluctuations decrease as trade ex-
tends? That, in fact, is the natural course, and
trade only fluctuates beyond the fluctuations of
the seasons—which are neutralized in proportion
as trade includes the whole earth, the average of
all being perpetual and undeviating fruitfulness
—because it is limited, restrained, and perverted
by Tory and other ignorant law-makers. This
alleged cause of distress is one of the pretexts
by which the Tories seek to hide from the in-
dustrious classes the wrongs they do them.
Some persons seem to suppose that the right
of Property stands in the way of the people, and
is the cause of their distress. If that be so, it is
the duty of the law-makers to alter the right of
property, for it behoves them, above all things,
to protect the industrious classes. The funda-
mental idea of a Government is that of one
man keeping watch and ward, while an-
other provides food and clothes. The whole
of the cumbrous contrivances of modern
Governments have properly no other object than
to protect the producing classes while they are
engaged in their toils, and in the enjoyment of
their produce. If the right of property, as
established or sanctioned by the law-maker,
stand in the way of the Government performing
that great and chief duty, the right of property

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