The Sun.
London, England, 1847-02-04 00:00:00

intattin _sltutt

LONDON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1847.

On presenting two petitions from certain growers

of malt in Linlithgow and Dalkeith, Lord STANLEY
availed himself of the opportunity to throw some im-
pediment, if possible, in the way of the Government,
by inveighing against the Ministerial measure for
the admission of sugar in the operations of brewing
and distillation. The Noble Lord appeared to protest
against this proposition simply for the purpose of
indicating his continued adherence to the obsolete
principles of Protection. There was no necessity for
this parade of pertinacity. The imperviousness of
Lord STANLEY'S mind to the convictions which, to
other men are inevitable, from the combined argu-
ments of reason and experience, is thoroughly com-
prehended by the mass of the population. It needs
neither such observations as those uttered on Tuesday
night in the Upper House by Lord STANLEY, nor such

demonstrations as the memorable whitebait dinner o'

last season, to convince us of the obstinacy of
the Noble Leader of the Protectionist Oppo
sition. There is an insurmountable barrier—
a sort of moral chevaux-de-frieze—between the
Noble Lord and the free-trade movement—the
alternate cross-bars of the chevaux-de-frieze being hi 3
egotism and his ambition. Every sensible observer
of the fluctuations of our statemen will acknowledge
at once that nothing short of a political miracle can
remove the scales of agricultural prejudice from the
eyes of Lord STANLEY, or pour the light of true com •
mercial knowledge into the wilful darkness of his

judgment. Even if the flourishing state of our na-
tional revenue, and the increased prosperity of our
native and colonial agriculturists, and the improved
condition of our labouring classes, and the extended
comforts of our shopkeepers and manufacturers, at-
tested at this moment the advantages of free trade,
Lord STANLEY would still require some preternatural
transmutation of his whole nature before he could
avow himself a conrert to the doctrines of mercantile
freedom. The whole individuality of Lord STANLEY
would be annihilated in the change. He would be
metamorphosed into somebody else by the abandon-
ment of all his old and cherished phantasms.
Like RIP VAN WINKLE on awaking from
a trance of years, Lord STANLEY would
be bewildered as to his own identity. Who does not
remember the exclamation of RIP VAN WINKLE--
" I'm not myself; I'm somebody else ; that's me
there!"—pointing to a neighbour. Inevitably, Lord
STANLEY would find himself in a state of incredulity
quite as extravagant as that imagined by WASHING-
TON IRVING. He would behold himself surrounded

by the manifestations of the blessings consequent upon

an emancipated commerce, and be loth to credit his
own stolid loyalty to the cause of protection. That
would be inevitable, supposing the advantages of free
trade could be obtained at a bound, instead of gra-
dually and progressively. As it would be out of the
course of all nature, however, to realise the benefits of
the new system suddenly, Lord STANLEY must cun-
tinue the same pertinacious upholder of the monopo-

list creed. He must wait for the miracle we speak of

.although the Noble Leader of the Protectionists
endeavoured to disguise his objections to the proposed
admission of sugar into distilleries, under the plea of

it; being calculated to injure our colonial cultivators
of sugar and our native growers of malt, the mssk
‘N as too transparent to screen his real purpose. The
ist of Lord STANLEY'S objections amount, in fact, to
the advocacy of those old principles of monopoly
,Ahich were finally exploded by the Legislature
(luring the course of last session, and which have
been cleansed from our commercial code. Allow the

introduction of sugar to our distillers, and permit at
the same time the gradual reduction of duty upon
sugar grown in foreign plantations from 21s. to 145.,
xo as to be upon an equality with our colonial pro-
duce, and what will be the consequence ? Why, ex-
claims Lord STANLEY, the consequence is ob-
vious ; the facilitation of the purchase of foreign
sugar will naturally and necessarily deteriorate
the interests of our colonial planters, and the extended
employment of that commodity in distillation will
prove equally prejudicial to our growers of malt.
The proposition, we will admit, is plausible enough at
a superficial glance, but its sophistry vanishes 'upon
a closer examination. It is reported that grain is
now so far reduced, and the duty upon sugar still con-
tinues so considerable, that there is no inducement
whatever to our distillers to forsake their system of
extracting saccharine matter from malt for the pur-
pose of obtaining it directly from sugar. Besides
this, the argument of Lord STANLEY against the dimi-
nution of the duty upon foreign sugar to the amount
levied upon colonial sugar, is nothing more than
a revival of the old Protectionist howl. Because
it suits the purpose of the discomfited mono-
polists, they altogether throw into the back.
ground the ob.ect of the Administration in intro-
ducing this measure in reference to the employment
of sugar in distillation--that object being to afford
brewers and distillers a substitute for malt whenever
a panic has so far acted upon the corn-market as
to carry grain up to the enormous price of 70s.
or 80s. per quarter. That is the grand
intention of the Government, and that is the inten-
tion which Lord STANLEY and his followers would
misrepresent as a wanton interference with the inte-
rests of our English growers of malt and of our
colonial cultivators of sugar. The logic of the Pro.
tectionists has become too threadbare, however, to
cover their insidious attempts with anything like
decency.

We have zealously advocated the interests of Ire-
land on all occasions, to the best of our ability ; we
have urged the adoption of all such measures as may
be calculated to afford relief to her suffering children,
or to be beneficial in any respect to the Irish gene-
rally, or to any particular class of Irishmen, unless
some great principle of national policy, or national
justice, should be infringed on, or violated by the
concession. When demands, unreasonable in them-
selves, and in direct opposition to the reco,;nised
principles of legislation, are made, it becomes our
duty, as public journalists, to expose the fallacies of
which they are founded, and to enter our protest
against the evil precedents of again recurring to ex-
ploded doctrines and vicious principles.

The session of 1846 was remarkable for the total
abolition of monopoly, and what has been most
improperly termed protection. Class legislation
received its death-blow; and we could scarcely
have supposed that gentlemen, who were arrayed in
the ranks of the free-traders in their glorious con-
flict and triumphant victory, should be found seriously
pressing upon the attention of the Government the
propriety of preserving for their own exclusive
benefit a taxation, not for the purposes of re-
venue, but of protection, amounting almost
to a prohibition, and practically creating
a monopoly in an
article of very general
consumption. Yet such has been the conduct of the
Irish distillers, and such would be the result, if any
weight were given to the arguments of the gentlemen
forming the deputation from that body, who waited
on the Secretary for Ireland on Saturday last.
The object of that deputation was "to represent