The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-22 00:00:00

in order to blister the land with more churches and
more parsons. It is on the part of the Tories, there-
fore, a gross infringement on public liberty to class
the agitation for the repeal of a law as a crime, and
invoke a punishment on Mr. O'CoNNELL:
We grant that Mr. O'CONNELL'S proceedings
are very mortifying to the Tories, and not pleasing
to many of the Whigs. We readily concede that
all the unjust and cruel Protestant landlords, and
all the odious sinecure Protestant priests of Ireland,
regard his conduct with dread and abhorrence.
We can comprehend that the waspish and bigoted
ex-Secretary for Ireland, who, when he was there,
could not persuade the Irish that insults and kicks
were kindness, and who has, ever since the Coer-
Act, been justly regarded by them
as their most insidious and determined
opponent,—we comprehend that he may be
overflowing with wrath because the Irish will not
be quiet while he endeavours to tie their hands and
feet, to put a gag in their mouths, and pick their
pockets in the name of religion, while he would flog

mon

them for grumbling at his petty tyranny,—we can
comprehend that the truculent, ex-Whig Secretary
for Ireland, who was always a thorough Tory in
his heart, and is now properly ranged with the To-
ries, should be extremely angry that Mr. O'CoN-
NELL is successful in rousing the Irish to resist
the new coercion Lord STANLEY is preparing for
them. But with all deference to the lovers of Tory
rule by chicane and terror, we cannot believe that
to organize resistance to the mischievous schemes
of the Tories is either sedition or rebellion. W e

are not favourable to repeal ; Mr. O'CONNELL

is ; and the determined manner in which the Tories
are now going to work to injure lreland, justifies
him, with his vievq, in rousing his countrymen by

that magic word.

If, however, the agitation for repeal be sedition
and treason, what name does that conduct deserve

which provokes it ? Tory writers and Tory states-

men continually make attacks on the Catholics of
Ireland, as if they were alien enemies and something
worse. Nothing is too calumnious for the Tory
Journals to write of the people and their priests,
and nothing is too arbitrary for Tory statesmen to
propose. They dare not send artillery against the
Catholics ;they try the safer method of crushing them
by a slow working enactment. It is easier, they have
found out, to burke liberty by pretending to protect
her, than to slay her by violer.ce, and they are pur-
suing the former insidious course. They have
been detected ; the Irish have been roused against
them ; and they call out, therefore, sedition and re-
bdllion. Their perseverance in deadly hostility to
the people of Ireland, which is the main cause of
the agitation, is far more worthy of the name of
sedition and rebellion than Mr. O'CoNNELL's agi.

tation for repeal.
Some of their organs announce that an amend•
ment will be moved to the address, should the
speech from the Throne not contain a condemnation
of the repeal agitation. We cannot believe that
any Tory of the least weight will propose any such
thing. It may possibly be done by Mr. BRADSIrAw
or Colonel SIBTHORP, but the statesmen of the
Tory party have felt so long the bitterness of disap-
pointment from declaring open hostility to one-third
of the empire, that we apprehend they will neither
move nor support any such amendment. For the
same reason the Ministers will not be so impolitic
as to clothe themselves in the filthy cast-off rags of
the Tories. The speech will say nothing of repeal
agitation, and the Tories will not, we believe, sup-
port an address to the Throne, censuring Mr.
O'CONNELL'S agitation as sedition and treason.

The duty on a quarter of wheat continues to be
265. Bd., while the average price is 60s. 6d. That
sum is a measure of the public odium which the
Corn-law calls clown on the farmer. There are
the figures, and the public denounce with justice
the selfish men who in the midst of a rigorous
winter, when wheat costs 60s. 6d. apparently levy
on it a duty of 265. Bd., and so raise the price to
that extent.

Is it, however, a fact that the agriculturist is be-
neflted to the lull amount of the odium heaped
on him ? Does he levy, or does he receive, a pro-
tection of 265. Bd., when the price of wheat is
60s. 6d. ? This seems to us an important question
for the agriculturists, and if they wil! do us the

favour to attend to us, and we have their interest
much at heart, however strongly we detest the
conduct of the grasping landlords, and the hypo-
critical priesthood, we shall endeavour to prove to
them that the law which starves the people puts a
most grievous cheat on them.
In that part of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S speech
which we quoted the day before yesterday, he bor-
rowed and confirmed Mr. TooKE's statement
" that the average duty actually paid on the
9,297,493 quarters of foreign IA heat insportecl
and entered for home consumption since thopresent
Corn-law came into operation, up to the sth of
December 1839, is under ss. sd. per quarter."
That sum therefore, in fact, has been the real
amount of the protection which the Coru•law has
conferred on the farmer, through the whole series
of years between 1828 and 1839.
But every body knows that the great bulk of the
corn imported in the last year paid only a nominal
duty. There were not less, we believe, than
1.500,000 quarters so imported ; and, if r.,e in-
clude them, the average of the period, to 1841,
will be somewhere about 4s. 6d. The longer the
law is in existence, the more skilfully will the ave-
rages be worked to suit the purposes of the capi-
talist; and the average of twenty years from 1828,
could the law be continued so long, would dwindle
into almost nothing, and prove that it gave the
agriculturist no protection whatever.
When the price is 605., the law means to give
the agriculturist a protection of 265. The actual
protection afforded him during eleven years has
been ss. sd. per quarter. Now, what has been
the average price during that time ? Not 70s. nor
60s. ; but 565. ld. We repeat that the averacre
price of wheat since 1828 has been 565. ld., and
the average duty levied on 9,297,493 quarters
has been only ss. 5d., while the law has professed
to impose a duty of 265., when the price is at 60s.
The law, then, is a lie and a cheat, and the land-
lords who have made it have most grievously gulled
and deluded the n•otking agriculturists.
The law says that when the price of wheat is
605., foreign wheat imported shall pay a duty of
26s.8d.,and, believing that, the farmers have agreed
to pay rents in proportion. We appeal to practical
farmers. Did any man in the kingdom, during the
last eleven years, hire a farm and agree to pay
rent, on the supposition that the price of wheat
would be 56c. ld., and the duty on foreign wheat
ss. sd. 2 We are certain he will answer that he
hired his land on the supposition that wheat was
to be kept by the law at a price above 605., and to
insure that a duty was to be levied of 263. Bd.
when wheat was at that price, increasing as
the price of wheat fell. But the price and the
duty have actually been the sums we have stated,
and to the extent, above that price and that amount
of duty, which the farmers have calculated on, they
have been cheated by the law. The hatred it has
provoked against them has been as twenty-six—the I
benefit it has conferred on them has been less
than five.

This view of the actual operation of the law
through long periods demonstrates the perfect im-
potency of the Legislature to attain its own Inds.
It has gone a long way to ruin our manufactures,