The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-21 00:00:00

xtt +

LONDON
THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, IE4I.

We are sometimes 'reproached with speaking
harshly of the landed gentlemen, and with attribut-
ing to them Impmper motives. One of their lead-
ers, however, , nom we used to consider, before he
saclificed tom, party his understanding as well as his
consistency, a very clever clear-headed man, will
bear 'HS out in all that we have said against the
11P.ded gentlemen. The amount of our reproaches
yeas been that they have sought to enrich themselves
utterly regardless of the public welfare. They have
made a law to raise rent, which ruins trade and
atarves the people. Now this is what Sir JAMES
GRAHAM said to the landowners in 1826, in his
pamphlet entitled " Corn and Currency," when he
had yet lingering about him some of the Ingenuous-
neis of youth, and some of the honesty of a man
who has never been in place
Since the year 181.5, when the prohibition of the im-
portation of foreign corn, excepting at a fixed price
was first substituted for a protecting duty, your con-
stant and avowed object has been to raise the price of
agricultural produce in this country greatly above the
level of the continental markets ; the obvious effect of
this has also been to raise the rate of wages, and to re•
drace the rate of profits. By the rise of wages the
labourer ;caws T.Ol because, when corn is dear, all
the articles of first necessity are also dear. There•
fore, though his wages be increased, his real reward is
not greater ; but by the diminution of profits, every
class of productive industry is deeply injured. For on
all bands it is allowed, that profits Lill as wages rise,
and the capital of a nation is but the accumulation of
P.le profits of its inhabitants. Rents, however, are
raised by high prices, which force inferior soils into
cultivation ; since the lower the degree of fertility of
the worst land in tillage, which yields no rent, but eel),
reimburses the cultivator—the higher on all land of
superior quality, is the extra profit beyond the ordinary
return of capital, when expended on the worst. This
extra profit is rent, or, in the words of Mr. Mill,
•' rent 'Dormice in proportion as the effect of the capital
suce.asaitaly bestowed upon land decreases." High
prices, therefore, by increasing rents, benefit the land-
lords, but they confer no advantage on the labourer ;
they are an injury to the productive, and a tax on the
Wrproductivo classes of the community.—P. 10.
Sir JAMES GRAIL AM, then, distinctly charges the

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landowners with continually endeavouring to raise
prices that they might raise rents ; and he distinctly
avers that raising prices does not benefit the la-
bourers, and diminishes profits to the injury of the
capitalists. He charges the landowners who made
the law with making it for the purpose of putting
pelf into their pockets. He shows them that they
do this at the expense of the capitalists ; he proves
to them that they injure the manufacturers by so
doing; and Sir JAMES GRAHAM is now one of the
foremost advocates of that Corn-law which he de-
monstrates to be downright plunder and rascality.
It is a received axiom in political economy, that
capital is saved from profits. Very rarely is capi.
tal saved from rent, and still more rarely from
wages. But capital is at present the means of
giving employment to labour. Sir JAMES
GRAHAM, in the passage we have quoted, proves
that the attempt of the landowners to raise prices
lessens profits. Of course, therefore, it lessens the
means of saving, it lessens capital, it lessens the
means of employing the people, and it lessens
wages. All these are the avowed consequences of
the Corn-law, which Sir JAMES GRAHAM now
supports. He therefore, and those who act
with him, support the tax on bread, we conclude
designedly, to obtain the ends of curtailing profits,
lessening employment, and injuring manufactures.
In another part of the same pamphlet we find
him setting forth, at considerable length, the im-
moralities of a manufacturing population. They
are described as dissolute and idle, working two or
three days in the week, and living in debauchery
during the others. They are said not to be, like
the agricultural labourers, attached to their masters,
and not to be loyal to the Throne. Turbulence and
revolution are described to be characteristic of them.
Such being Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S opinion, and
the opinion of his class, in which Sir ROxERT
PEEL, as Sir JAMES GRAHAM shows by a quo-
tation from a speech of his, shares, and they having
passed, and now maintained a law, which lowers
profits, injures capitalists, and limits manufacturing
employment, are we not warranted in concluding
that the landowners, knowingly and designedly, aim
at the limitation or extinction of our manufactures
by the Corn-law. They wish to restore the supre-
macy of the landlords, and they endeavour, by
means of a law, to realize that wish.
The desire which one of their supporters lately
blurted out to destroy half our towns, thus
becomes of ominous importance, because it is con-
sistent with the plans and designs actually pursued
by those landowners who support the Corn-law,
though they want the candour of the Reviewer to
avow their object. What he said, however, expresses
their long and steadily pursued project. The ma-
nufacturing population is a new population, it car-
ries with it the germs of great political changes,
inimical to the supremacy of the landlords and
the clergy ; and therefore have these two classes,
knowingly and wilfully, combined to make and sup-
port a law which shall check the growth of manu-
facturing population, and secure their own power.
We distinctly charge them with that, and affirm
that our charge is proved by the language and
conduct of Sir JAMES GRAHAM.

If this be an approximation to truth—and the
outcry raised against Sir R. PEEL by the advo-
cates of the bread-tax, when he last Session said a
word in favour of manufactures from forgetfulness,
shows that it is=the manufacturers are extremely
foolish to bring before the Parliament evidences of
their own decay, in order to induce the Parliament
to relinquish the law. That is the very thing the
law was made to effect, and the more they com-
plain the more they delight the landlords, and the
more they confirm them in their resolution to main.
tain the bread-tax. On the same principle, we
begin to apprehend that what we thought the
strongest argument against the bread-tax, namely,
that it annually stalls Imiltitmloc.r.iit of, Plciqtenre.
utlzy .tiu mole .ILLUII-1 r commends the maintenance
of the bread-tax to the Conservatives and the
Clergy. It would seem from Sir JAMES GRA-
HAM'S remarks, that he and the rest of the sup-
porters of the bread-tax, have long been aware of
this effect, and on account of it cherish and preserve
the law. Our legislators, being chiefly landowners,
entertain an aversion for the manufacturing popula-
tion ; they ask with a sneer, as did Lord ASHBUR-
TON, if the whole land is to be covered with Man-
chesters and Birminghams, and they have taxed
the bread of the people to prevent it.

Parliament is about to meet, and those who
compose it stand arraigned before the public of high
crimes and misdemeanors against the country.
The language of accusation, not confined to one
journal, has resounded throughout the land. It has
been placarded on the walls of Walsall, and boldly
used in the agricultural districts. Extortion, robbery,
and murder are all ascribed to the law. Such lan-
guage is wholly incompatible with respect and
willing obedience. How can the Legislature re-
pel it ? How can it stifle the voice of public
complaint ? Privilege, vast though it be, is unequal
to the task. Truth cannot be suppressed even by
files of soldiers. The charges and accusations can-
not be answered by the SPEAKER'S warrants. Yet
they must be repelled, or the Legislature will be
irretrievably damaged in public estimation ; its
power will he shaken, and the political fabric
founded on it will crumble to dust. There is but one
way to retrieve its character, and throw off the
charge with which it is branded, but one way to
save the authority of the Legislature, and pre-
serve our political institutions, but one way to
appease the discontent of the people, and reconcile
them with the law-makers, and that way lies
through the total and immediate repeal of the
bread-tax. The landlords may point to their
pockets—we tell them that interests far dearer to
them, and dearer to us all, than any pocket in-
terests, are at stake, and that if they delay much
longer to do justice they will ruin the empire.

We have on several occasions dwelt on the im-
policy or folly of the Legislature meddling with
banking, with the circulation of promises to pay,
and with currency, which it .obviously does not
comprehend. How can it ? The art of banking,
with all its consequences, is of yesterday's growth,
and is still in a state of rapid development. A
science of astronomy we have, because the objects
to which it relates are permanent, but a science
of banking we have not, and cannot have, be-
cause the thing is not yet complete. It is, there-
fore, sheer folly in the ignorant gentlemen who
meet at Westminster, and in the equally ignorant
and equally presumptuous gentlemen who write
pamphlets, to be extremely anxious to lay down
laws for banking.
Many specimens of this folly have been laid be-
fore the public, such as the Bank Charter, making
a body of interested merchanttshatthethepromise
regulator
to
the currency—the enacted lie,
pay is an actual payment—the restrictions on pri-
vate banks—and the sweeping away of small notes.
Banking in all its branches and consequences, in-
cluding the issue of promises to pay on demand, is
one of the common businesses of life, like selling
tea and sugar, or making hats and shoes ; it is a
porti
vcn
trade,ono.fies ;
like exporting woollens and im-
portingand if the Legislature may attempt
to regulate the business of banking, including
the issue of promises to pay on demand, we
cannot see a single reason tvliy it should not
regulate every business even that of the
scavenger and the milkman—in the whole
empire. To be sure that would be impossible,