The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-19 00:00:00

f- ,11

LONDON:
WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1841.

-
In the Lords last night, the Marquis of BREADAL-
BANE, on presenting petitions its favour of the Minis-
terial propositions, declared his approbation of them.
That the enemies of free trade are also the foes o!
liberty, and the dire foes of Ireland, is plain by the
Earl of WINCHT!'NA presenting petitions, in conjunc-
tion, to preserve the Corn-laws and to exclude the Ca-
tholics from Parliament. The bigots know that
they must starve the people to attain their object.
After a few more petitions had been presented against
the Poor Alms by our indefatigable friend Earl FITZ-
WILLIAM, their Lordships adjourned till Monday next.
Wednesday is a usual holiday, Thursday is Ascension-day,
Friday is kept as the Queen's birthday, and therefor('
their Lordships will not meet till next Monday.
In the Commons the adjourned debate was again re-
newed by Mr. SIIEIL, and brought to a close, after
a series of superior speeches by that gentleman,
Mr. 'TERRIES, Mr. VILLIERS, Mr. C. BULLER, Sit
ROBERT PEEL, and Lord PALMERSTON, at three o'clock
when the House divided. We shall only say now o:
Sir ROBERT PEEL'S speech that it was completely
jejune and unsatisfactory, so far as his determination
vote with Lord SANDON on the Sugar Duties went,
though he gave a slap to the Manchester Chamber of
Commerce—clear and explicit, on the subject of the Corn-
laws, in which he will make none, or but some petty al-
terations of a few pennies in the sliding scale—vigorous as
a personal defence, and as a personal attack on th(
Ministers, for he provoked some hearty laughs against
the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER seated on ar
empty chest, and fishing for a budget in bottomless defi-
ciencies—but sadly unsatisfactory for the country as tc
what he would or could do in the present difficulties.
He made rather light of them, admitted commercial dis-
tress, but thought it might blow over as credit ii
America recovered. The Bight Hon. Baronet spoke foi
nearly two hours and three-quarters, and rivetted the at-
tention of the auditory through the whole period.
Lord PALMERSTON gave an admirable account of the
policy which the Ministers have zealously pursued ir
suppressing the slave trade and slavery ; and In
showed that the Ministerial plan of lessening
commercial jealousy would enable the Government
more effectually to suppress the slave trade. We recom-
mend his admirable speech to the attentive perusal of at
the anti-slavery men. The Noble Lord clearly
down the basis of the Ministerial policy as hostile ti
monopolies, and advocated in the boldest language the
noble doctrines of free trade.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL explained that he shouk
take no second debate on his resolution, but only
a division. He repelled Sir ROBERT PEEL'S attackon the Ministers for holding office contrary t(:
the spirit of the Constitution, after they had lost
the confidence of the country, and proved by his
language that the Ministers have deeply con-
sidered their situation, and have fully made up
their minds to bring forward the Corn-laR
question and then dissolve. With reference
to this question, the Noble Lord made some admirable
remarks, to the effect that Providence, by its universal
bounties, had made all mankind the partakers of the
same heritage, and by
distributing plenty at one
time to one country, and at another time to
another, had provided against a general dearth,
and for the general fellowship of mankind. The
Noble Lord concluded by emphatically telling the House,
in words which will find an echo in every heart, that if
the people suffer from want of food, it is not to be
attributed to Providence, which is ever bountiful.
but to bad and unjust laws. The Nobi,
cause of free trade arid honest policy, in contra-
distinction to restrictions and roguery, is n(Th
fairly launched, and we trust will come speedily to z,
safe -haven. The Noble Lord spoke for a few minutes
only, and the House then divided. On the motion for
the Speaker to leave the Chair,
Ayes 2Bl
Noes 317
......................................
Majority in favour of Lord SANDON'S resolution —6'6
Lord JouN RUSSELL'S resolution, an amendment cm
LCId SA1(1)01,7'", was then put, and negative-4 without a A

division, and Lord SANDON'S resolution agreed to ; so
that the Tories have resolved that the starving people of
England shall not have cheap sugar, lest that, perchance,
might work some injury to unborn Africans. The House
having come to this wise decision, adjourned unt
Thursday.
Mr. T. D

trszcomnE's speech on Monday night
has roused the fury of the Tories. Till we read
the remarks of the Post and the Standard we
were not sensible of its great value. Scenes
similar to those he described are familiar to us.
We have continually laid before our readers
afflicting accounts of the destitut tof our popu-
lation at Bolton, in the suburbs of London, and in
our manufacturing and agricultural districts.
Mr. DUNCOMBE'S speech did not, therefore, make
the same impres'sion on us that it made on our
Tory Contemporaries, who are filled with dread
at having such facts promulgated in Parlia-
ment. We heartily thank them, therefore,
fir attracting our particular attention to Mr. T.
DUNCOMBE'S speech, and for enabling us tr„ s-
sure our readers, on the authority of those Tory
Journals, that it is an excellent speech, and that
it deserves their attention and approbation.
The attempt made by both the Post and the
Standard, to deduce from Mr. DUNCOMBE'S re-
commendations to the Legislature to look at
home, an advocacy of the slave trade, or an en-
couragement of slavery, such as was supplied
through many years by the Tories, is merely
silly. The English now sanction no slave trade, and
they have ransomed the slaves at a great price.
When General TARLETON resisted Mr. CLARK-
SON, the English carried on the slave-trade, it
was sanctioned by the Legislature, and they held
many hundred thousands of our fellow-creatures
in bondage. General TARLETON and the Tories
advocated tli% continuance of those enormous
crimes, and they insisted that the English should
not wash their hands of the guilt. Mr, DUN-
COMBE merely says to the Legislature '‘ You are
bound to look to your own people, who are starv-
ing; whatever you can do to relieve them you
ought to do; your discriminating duties on sugar,
established in favour of slave-grown sugar, and
maintained to enrich the former owners of
slaves, weigh heavily on your own people,
and I call on you to take off some of their bur-
dens." If the consequence of that should
be at some distant time to give encouragement
to the slave trade--which we deny, the guilt of
that will be on the head of those who practise
it, not on the Legislature of England, which
merely relieves its own subjects. Who can tell
that such will he the result? Who will believe
Dr. LUSHINGTON and Sir FOWELL BUXTON,
seeing that they have been continually deceived ?
Who can suppose that evil will come of doing
good ? If the Tories entertain such a supposition,
we can only say that they are as sceptical
and impious as they are hypocritidal. Small,
very small, is the part the wisest man can see of
the consequences of his own actions, and we
never could or should do right, if the possibility
of evil resulting at some remote time and place
were to prevent us doing at every moment all the
good in our power. To reduce the sugar duties
will be a great benefit to our own people ; it is
doing right to them, and let us trust the issue to
Providence.

The Common Council of the City of London,
which generally has the honour, of leading the
way in great political and commercial move-
ments has unfortunately come in last in the dis-
cussions on the three great important questions
which now agitate the entire country. We will
•not quarrel with them, however, abour the delay,
as the independent Members have at last de-
cided justly, and defeated all the influence
of the LORD MAYOR, six Aldermen, and
fifty-eight monopolists. The Ministerial mea-
sure for repealing the Corn-laws was carried
yesterday by a majority of sixteen, and a peti-
tion to that effect was adopted without opposi-
tion. We trust that this demonstration will be
followed by a full meeting of the Common Hall,
and that the citizens of London will take part
with the other Corporations throughout the
country in putting an end to .a
system of re-
striction and monopoly which threatens the em-
pire with the most direful consequences.

The persons who have advocated the abolition of slavery,
and the suppression of the slave trade, on high moral
prineiples, will discover, from an attentive perusal of Sir
R. PEEL'S speech, that he throws those principles alto-
gether overboard, and throughout advocates only worldly
expediency. They will remark, too, that his notions of
worldly expediency are borrowed from the com-
pany he keeps, and that his pretended regard
for the negro means regard for the profits of the
West Indian Planters. He would not alter the
sugar duties, lest he might injure the capital of
the ci-devant slave-owners, and he insisted on depriving
the negroes by cunning means, well understood
and practised by the landowners here, of their
freedom, and of making them sugar cultivators.
He mocked at Mr. C. BULLER'S picture of negro
happiness, and thought only of protecting wealthy
planters. Thd Quakers, and other philantrophists, must
now see in what manner they have been beguiled by
the Tories into supporting, at the expense of humanity
and justice, the owners of sugar estates.

A Public Meeting of the Electors of Marylebone is an-
nounced for to-morrow, on which occasion Sir eILiRLES
NAPIER—the hero of Acre—will address them as a can-

didate for the representation of the borough, in the
:vent of a dissolution. That the gallant Commodore
will be enthusiastically received by the meeting, is cer-
tain—Ahat he will succeed in the object he proposes to
himself, is, we firmly believe, equally so. • The Mary-
,ebone electors must be fully alive to the importance of
:laving such a man for their representative. 'He is no
trimming politician—no discreet waiter on the chapter
of accidents—no bigotted partizan—but a Reformer in
the strictest and most comprehensive sense of the term.
In a word, he is a man of action and decision, as prompt
to serve his country by his vote in the Senate, as he has
already served it by his sword in the field. Such a man
is the one of all others most wanted in the present crisis.
The exigencies of the time require that we should have,

not lukewarm, but strenuous, Reformers in Parliament.
Sir CHARLES NAPIER is one of this class—that a con-
itant, sleepless watch should be kept over the interests
if the people. Sir CHARLES NAPIER is the very man
exercise this incessant vigilance. As he has already
assured us, in his public speeches, he is sprung
from the people, and is exclusively for the people.
fie has no interests incompatible with thtir:—
no feelings but such as are kindred with their own.
'He makes common cause with them, and is ready to sink
r swim with them. We say nothing of those glorious
naval achievements which have rendered his name im-
mortal, for we feel assured that the Reformers of
Xtarylebone are fully sensible of the honour of
been represented by a man who, in the short space of
a few hours, obtained a decisive victory, in a spot where
NAPOLEON—the Great Captain of the age—sustained,
after weeks of labour, as decisive a defeat That
the Tories may oppose the Gallant Commodore
V every means in their power is not improbable ; but
forewarned is forearmed, and we feel satisfied
that they will miserably fail. As regards the Reformers,
we trust that no one will be rash enough to enter the
lists against Sir CHARLES NAPIER ; for by so doing, they
will only be inflicting damage on the cause they profess
.o serve, without in the slightest degree furthering their
own views.

We have only space to direct the attention of our
readers to a letter addressed to Lord JOHN RUSSELL,
which will be found in another part of The Sun, pro-
posing a substitute for our present indirect and inefficient
iystem of taxation: Every proposal of this nature which
aas common sense for its basis, is deserving of the most
ierious consideration. Mr, JOHNSON'S plan is not to be
rejected because it appears simple ; for, strange as it
may appear, -simple and obvious truths are the very last
.which men in a social state ever think of embracing.
Whatever is intricate or inexplicable the bulk of .man-
' 'iind are always ready to regard as profound ; and thou-
>ands of the supporters of a system of indirect taxation
Are so, because they have never been able to comprehend
it. The object of a system of indirect taxation is always
to plunder the people without their knowing it. By
means of it a Government always picks the people's
pockets in the dark. Now a property-tax, in some shape or
other, if imposed on equitable principles, would be juster,
simpler, and produce an immensely larger revenue to the
,ountry-. Some such measure as Mr JOHNSON proposes
will soon become inevitable. An alteration in the mode
of taxation must take place ; in proportion to the all
comprehensibility of the advantages of the proposed
change, shall be our confidence in its soundnessand dur-
ability.

The Corn-law agitation in and has extended to
Franet4 although as yet it is coaned to the J0i14284,

I Writers of every shade of political opinion in France
sympathise with the bread tax abolitionists. It is true
that same of them question the purity of the motives by
which t4e Ministtrs are actuated. The Journal des
Debuts and the Constitutionnel, for instance, who have
never forgiven Lord PALMERSTON and the Whigs for
signing the Treaty of July, insinuate that the British
Cabinet, in conceding a measure which could not longer
be withheld from the country, was influenced only by a
love of place. As journalists, it is not with the motives
but with the acts of public men that we have to deal.
If the acts of a Government be patriotic, we feel no in-
clination to analyse the secret and propelling springs of
such acts. The following is an extract from an article in
the Debate :
We are of that bady who think that the Corn-laws have run
their time. In our slays, when people look on liberty as a se-
rious matter, every privilege or protection, whatever may be
the term, which affects food, and which seizes on the population
by the entrails, cannot be maintained; and it is for this reason
that we are impatient to see our own Administration yield to
its own liberal notions on the question of foreign cattle. But
it is not less true, thst when a Ministry like the English Cabi:
net, through a selfish feeling of personal safety, flings an irri-
tating question into the midst of the constitution, at the risk
of giving it a shock, it misemploys the duties of Goverment;
and if Lord Melbourne and his colleagues had no better means
of entering on the question of the Corn-laws than this, they
ought not to have undertaken to resolve it, as such a duty clearly
did not belong to them.' Their hour had struck, and they ought
to have yielded their places to others.
Now if the Corn-laws must be abolished—and the
Debuts affirms they must—their abolition will come with
a better grace from the Whigs than the Tories. The
Whigs were the only Parliamentary opponents of the
Corn Bill of 1813, and some members of the present
Cabinet were known to the country to be always unfa-
vourable to a tax upon food. The Tories were the au-
thors of the Corn-laws ; they struggled tooth and nail
to uphold them for a quarter of a century, and were they
now to come into power nothing short of the appearance
of a civil war, which would shake England to its centre,
would compel them to relinquish their grasp upon the
throats of the half-starved millions. We have only
room for a short extract from:: -r Constitutionnel upon
this question :
The Corn-laws, in fact, it may be asserted, furnish the third
part of the opulent patrimonies of the English aristocracy. It
was not sufficient for the 600 patrician families, who govern
England, to possess nearly the whole of the soil on which
20,000,000 of souls exist. They desired to add to the profits
of this vast territorial monopoly an artificial increase, resultihg
from the avaricious combinations which they were able to get
formed into law. It is well known that in France the Govern-
ment of the restoration, wishing to imitate the English Go-
vernment, at least on its worst side, also arranged the taws on
corn so as to suit the interest of the landed proprietors. One
of the first acts of the Revolution of July was to reform these
enactments, and establish a system in favour of the con-
sumer. The reduction of the corn duties is calculated,
above all, to produce a moral effect, and hence it was na-
tural that the modification of these laws, which are in fact the
base of the sec ial existence of Great Britain, should be the
crnsequence of polit!cal reform. Parliamentary Reform was the
means, but economical reform the object. The Tories have
precipitated, by their opposition to all political measures, a so-
cial measure, of which they would wish to• adjourn the execu-
tion indefinitely. The Whig Cabinet have made, it cannot be
denied, a party weapon of that which ought to be a resolution
dictated by a spirit of justice. We must not, however, reduce
to too small proportions this decisive act of the Ministry. The
situation of the Cabinet furnished the occasion, but not the
cause. The cause of such a determination is more important
and more elevated. It is to be bond, not in the necessities of
the Cabinet, but of the country,"
The sufferings of France from the Beef monopoly is
exhibited in a subjoined extract from the Gazette de
France, from which it appears that indifferent beef is ten-
pence per pound in Paris, and that the poor are driven to
the necessity of feeding upon horseflesh ! France could
have an abundance of cheap and excellent beef but the

importation of cattle is prevented by the monopolists'
beef tax !

The great number of workmen and soldiers collected round
the capital. by the fortifications, have caused a very alarming
rise in the price of provisions. • The Journal La Presse says—
" Some of the officers of the Octroi seized, a few days ago, an
enormous quantity of horse-flesh ; inquiries made by the police
in most of the petty eating-houses in the capital, have led to
discoveries of an equal afflicting nature. It is known also that
it is not uncommon to see unhappy fathers of families go by
night to the laystalls of Montfaucon, to pick up the unwhole-
some provisions, the putrified fish which the police have caused
to he thrown in that place, and to feed on that unwholesome re.
fuse. Such facts, we do not hesitate to say, are a disgrace to the
country in which they pass, and the most terrible condemna-
tion of the Legislature which governs it. The price of meat
at Paris has reached the enormous sum of a franc the pound,
and yet the trade is in greater distress than it ever was before.
This exorbitant price threatens to increase in consequence of
the accumulation of a hundred thousand workmen and soldiers,
in consequence of the works on the fortifications. At this
rate butcher's meat cannot he obtained by the workman
and mechanic, it is a luxury reserved exclusively for
the rich, and for criminals condemned to imprisonment. The
consumption per head, which in 1789 was 68 kilogrammes, is
now only 47 kilogrammes, notwithstanding the immense in-
crease of private fortunes." Thus the fortifications are not yet
erected, and the inhabitants of the capital are reduced to eat
horsesflesh. What a prospect does this hold out to us ! Ga-
zette de France.

It seems certain that M. Guizot has taken some steps to mo.
pit.), the Ministry, and that they have failed. He wished to
get Messrs. Dufaure, Suzet, and Passey to enter the Ministry,
in order positively to secure to himself the support of that
fraction of the left centre which is represented by those three
names, and the support of which is indispensable to the majo-
rity ; he has been refused. This refusal gives a fatal blow to
the already precarious existence of the Guizot-Soult Ministry.

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