The Sun.
London, England, 1841-06-01 00:00:00

Ztt othtu.

LONDON:
TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1841.

It is most cheering for the enemies of mono-
poly to find the Tories complain of agitation.
Lord STANLEY began the complaint, Sir R. PEEL
followed, Sir J. GRAHAM came next, and yester-
day the Times adopted the same cry. „When the
Tories complain, the Ministers are doing what
they ought and their complaints should only
stimulate continued agitation in a larger
measure.

If the Tories respect and confide in the people,
al they say they do, what is the meaning of
their complaint of agitation? The more the
people are agitated, the more they- are roused,
the better it must be for the Tories, if their cause
be a just one, and they be rooted, as they say, in
the affections of the people. The complaint,
however, implies distrust. It says, more clearly
than if the Tories spoke it aloud, "We are
afraid of the people,—we know that we are
their oppressors,—that we have deluded, cheated,
humbugged them ; for GOD'S sake do not expose
us, do not say that we have used the name of re-
ligion to gloze over political frapd, that we have
plundered and enslaved them under the pretext
of promoting social order; do not rouse their
fury against us by convincing them that religion,
and true social order, are opposed to Corn-laws,
monopolies, and all kinds of delusion and slavery."
That is the true meaning of the Tories when they
deprecate agitation on the subject of the Corn-
laws. They know that their cause is unjust, and
that they can only succeed by keeping the peo-
ple quietly and passively ignorant.
They had no objection to agitation when they
thought, two or three,, years ago, that the
Church of England was beloved by the
people, and that it was only necessary to
awaken them to its great merits to retrieve
for it dominion over their hearts and minds.
To obtain ascendancy for the Church, agitation
by all kinds of means, 'by public meetings, by
large subscriptions, by great collections of noble-
men, by gatherings of silly women and sillier
men, by preaching and praying, was unsparingly
had recourse to. Then Standards, Times,
Heralds, and Posts, throughout the empire,
deemed agitation in the name of religion a most
holy thing, and their pens were employed daily
in promoting the success of the holy agitators of
Exeter Hall. They had Protestant meetings
and Protestant operative meetings ; they had dio-
cesan meetings, metropolitan meetings, and parish
meetings; neither Sir R. PEEL, Lord STANLEY,
nor Sir J. GRAHAM ever uttered a word against
clerical agitation.' 'The scheme was a signal
failure. The priests got, we believe, a little
money, and made a few dupes of the wealthy
and the titled, and there the agitation ended.
The Church sank deeper than ever into the mire,
and its patronage of the murderous Corn-law will
not help it out.

At present, an agitation for a far more important
object than building of churches and enriching the
priesthood is begun—an agitation to fill the bel-
lies of the hungrypeople, and relieve them from
want; .an agitation to set them free from the
oppression of a most sordid tyranny : and now all
those who were so forward in promoting the
priest agitation, cry out against agitation, and
proclaim aloud that to rouse up the people to
consider what is due to them, is to unchain a
powerful enemy. "Take care," said Sir ROBERT
PEEL, " how you appeal to the people, for you will
invoke an ally who will be yourmaster, not your
slave." There spoke the true Tory ; there spoke
the genuine aristocrat. He dreads the people;
he hates the people, because lie knows the sys-
tem he supports has debased and enslaved them.
lie knows, too, that it will fall of itself to decay
the instant the people become acquainted with
its deformities.

The part we have taken on the Corn-laws
from the first, and the countenance our opi-
nions have obtained from the public, make it
proper for us, we think, to submit a few further
observations on the subject of a fixed duty, be-
fore that subject is discussed in Parliament. We
are bound, whatever may be the immediate results,
to maintain our principles and our consistency.

The proposed Bs. duty on the admission of fo-
reign corn may be considered under two charac-
ters—as a protection to the landed interest, arid
as a tax levied solely for the purpose of obtaining

a revenue.
In the first character, that assigned to it by
Lord MELBOURNE, we repudiate it altogether as
totally unwarranted, and as having all the im-
moral attributes of the sliding scale. Under that
aspect we will not discuss it. In its own nature
it is iniquitous, an abominable species of class
legislation, the plunder of the industrious poor
by the idle rich, and just as worthy of condem-
nation as the present system. We are only sur-
prised how any men proposing to deal with this
important question, and at all aware of its
character, can at this time take on themselves
the guilt which now belongs to the Legislature
of a former period. Why should the Whigs, by
proposing such a law, absolve and exonerate the
Tories? A fixed duty for protection is a fixed in-
justice, and we are on principle as decidedly op-
posed to it as to fluctuating duties.
It is said by some of the opponents of Corn-
laws, that the Ss. duty is a fair compromise be-
tween the capitalist and the landlord. But what,
in this business of compromise, becomes of the
labourer? Has industry not its rights? Ought
they not to be most sacred in the eye of the law ?
Does political society not exclusively exist to
give protection to property, and is any property
so sacred as man has in his own labour, or, ra-
ther, is not that the very source and foundation
of all just property ? Why should the ca-
pitalists and the landlords combine to
tax industry Bs. per quarter on its bread ?
It is properly, and, we think, most justly, con-
tended that the wages of labour depend on sup-
ply and demand. Clearly the supply of fbod will
be much limited by the eight shilling duty.
Clearly time demand for labour will be diminished
in the same proportion, and that will give
the combined capitalists and landlord an advan-
tage, and a species of monopoly to that extent
against the labourer. For the eight shilling
duty, therefore, the labouring classes cannot be
expected, and ought not, to contend; and we
conjure the capitalists, who are not at present
much in favour with the industrious classes, to
take heed how they sanction this proposition—
how they enter into an unholy league with the
landlords, and how they take on themselves such
a large share of the landlords' guilt.
The argument is, that the laud is more bur-
dened than capital. The just way of equalizing
the burdens, is to reduce the burdens on land,
or to add to the burdens on capital; but with a
singular disregard of others, while they com-
plain bitterly of injustice, the compromising capi-
talists propose to equalize the burdens, not by
taking a larger share on themselves, but by
allowing the landlords to plunder the consumers.
We are sure that the League, the gentlemen of
Manchester, the great movers in this Anti-Corn-
law crusade, can be no parties to this proceeding;
we are sure the ministers of religion through-
out the land will not countenance it;
we are still more confident that our labouring
classes will take no part in inflicting this op-
pression on themselves, if they do not steadily
and sturdily resist it; and we do hope, therefore,
that the Ministers, and a 11 (Anti-Corn-law
party, will at once denounce protection, and de-