The Sun.
London, England, 1841-02-16 00:00:00

Oic r§litt.

LONDON:
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1841.

The House of Lords stood adjourned over last

The House of Commons met at the usual hour,
aid roceived a considerable number of petitions,

me of which require to be specifically men-

ioned.

Mr. W. 0. STANLEY asked the Hon. Member
t)t. Carnarvon if he meant to impugn the Report
f the Dublin and London Railway Commission-
and was answered by• Mr. ORMSBY GORE, jun.,
hat he would take his own time and his own
ourse, but would give notice if he meant to make
. motion on the subject.

In answer to Mr. GROTE, Mr. LABOUCHERE
~thnitted that some inconvenience had been
caused to the wine and spirit trade, by the sus-
, -nsion of the negotiations with France, as to
the Commercial Treaty, but he hoped soon to be
enabled to state that the contemplated commer-
:al relations with France were completed.
It was settled between Sir E. SUGDEN and Lord
JOHN RUSSELL that the opposition to Sir ED-
' • ARD'S Bill for the Improvement of the Admi-
.):stration of Justice, should take place on the
going into Committee.

0.1 the Report on the Customs' Acts, for lower-
ng the duties on East India Rum, being brought
p, Mr. O'CormELL made a speech which is des-
iite of his usual clearness. His pictures of the
mines in India were indeed startling, but •we
now not how they will be increased by lower-
Lg the duties on Indian produce. The condition

,f India, however, and the tenure of land there,
-s much too large a subject to be so incidentally
tiiscussed. The Report, after a few observations
'by Mr. IToao, Mr. HUME, and Mr. EWART, was
veceived, and a Bill founded on it brought in and
ead a first time.
On the Report being brought up concerning
'Lord KEANE, Mr. EWART gave notice that he
would move, when the Bill founded on the Report
went into Committee, to limit the annuity to
Lord KEANE'S life. The Report was received.
The two Bills for the Administration of Justice,
brought in severally by the ATTORNEY-GENERAL
and Sir E. Sua DEN, were read a second time
without any discussion.
Two or three Bills were advanced a stage.
Lord ELIOT obtained leave to bring in a Bill to
-provide for repairing and rebuilding county
bridges, and the House adjourned.

We cannot suppose that the several Noble
"Lords who expressed themselves on Friday night
so solicitous to promote the comfort of the poor,
to improve their dwellings and purify the air
-which they breathe, can be less solicitous to save
them from hunger, or prevent them from starv-
ing. It is their doctrine that the people must be
vzomfortably fed and clothed, and dwell in healthy
louses, before they can feel the appliances of re-
ligion. Such doctrines are deserving of all praise,
.nod we wish to enforce them by some circurn-
stiwces mentioned in the debate, which did not
_make, we are afraid, that impression on the
House and on the country which they ought to
lave made, and which we must now endeavour
-to place as much in relief as possible.
The Marquis of NORMANDY quoted some
pars by Sir GILBERT BLA NE which described
a remarkable decrease of mortality in Manches-
ter, between 1757 and 1811. In 1757 it was 1 in
',5; hi 1770, 1 in 28; in 1790, 1 in 58; and in
1811,,it tota.sl in 74. This may at first appear an
exaggeration or a mistake, but when the nature
of the population at that time is considered, in-
.eveasing-, probably, with unexampled rapidity,
.ani fed by streams of healthy and vigorous youth

of both sexes, from all parts of the country, we
are not disposed to consider it either an exagge-
ration or a mistake, though such a ratio of mor-
tality could only continue were the like favour-
able circumstances to continue. The Noble
Marquis next quoted some returns of the present
time, and stated that now the rate of mortality
in Manchester is 1 in 31, or more than
twice as great as it was in 1811. What
must be inferred from these facts ? First,
that the progress of manufactures, which
the pastoral politicians of the Tory press
so vehemently condemn, is by no means fatal to
human life, for up to 1811, and for some years
subsequently, Manchester was rapidly increas-
ing, and was extremely prosperous; next,
that the stationary or decaying condition
of manufactures—for Manchester is not nearly as
prosperous and progressive in 1841 as it was
in 1811—is not favourable to life. The reader
will remember that in 1811 the country was
struggling with all the difficulties of war ; but it
was not till 1815 that a greater curse even than
war was inflicted on the manufacturer by the
Corn-law.

Glasgow, in which more care seems to have
been taken to preserve the records of mortality,
presents a remarkable increase since 1821. In
that year it was 1 in 39 ; in 1831, 1 in 30 ; in
1835, 1 in 29; in the last year it was 1 in 25.
What does this lamentable table prove ? An in-
creasing ratio of mortality. The accounts of
Manchester to 1811 prove that such a mortality
is not the necessary consequence of manufac-
tures. Whence then does it arise ? Clearly
from a deficiency of food. In 1811 we had
no Corn-laws, in 1821 they had not come
fully into operation, but in 1840 their fell
effects were unmitigated, and they increased
the mortality of Glasgow more than one-third,
as compared to 1821. They have increased the
mortality of Manchester, as compared to 1811,
more than two-fold. In the early part of the
period the resources of the country, the spring
which our majestic inventions had given to trade,
enabled it to bear up against the burden of the
Corn-law; but gradually that spring weakened,
the heavy burden, continued unabated, and
could not be overcome; the restriction in the '
supply of food could not be surpassed, and
the unheard-of mass of human slaughter,
through filth, poverty, disease, and hunger, accu-
rately described above, was, and is, the result. li
The horrors of the middle passage do not surpass
the horrors of the wynds of Glasgow, of the cel-
lars of Liverpool and Manchester, and of the
alleys of London ; while the mortality amongst
the slaves of Cuba and Brazil is, we believe, ex-
ceeded by the deaths in our manufacturing dis-
tricts. The Corn-law is a vast diabolical system
of painful murder, from the meanest and most
sordid motives, and its continued existence is an
equal dishonour to the suffering people who sub-
mit to it, and the benighted tyrants who enact it.
Our pastoral writers, who love to dilate on the
innocence of agriculture, and the virtue of feed-
ing sheep, just as their predecessors expatiated on
the virtue of roving in the woods and the wicked-
ness of dwelling in houses, will, of course, attri-
bute all the mortality to the occupations of the
people in towns, and point to the comparatively
small mortality of the rural districts, as a com-
plete proof that not the Corn-law, but the manu-
factures themselves, are the source of this cruel
extinction of life. The answer' is, look at Man-
chester while we had war and no Corn-law.
But if this Arcadian theory were correct, as a
manufacturing and town population came as ne-
cessary after an agricultural population as the
latter came after a pastoral and hunting popula-
tion, that is no reason why those engaged in agri-
culture, or who own the rent of land, should claim
a right to starve the town population out of ex-
istence to the extraordinary extent we have
stated.

We must, at the same time, remind our pas-
toral friends that the great majority of those who
are born in towns die in them, while a very large
number of those who are born in the country die
in the towns. In the country there is little or no
increase of employment for the people. Im-
provements in agriculture make fewer hands ne-
cessary. Young men and young women flock
into the towns for employment, and the surplus
population of the country swells the mortality
of the towns. The towns bear the blame
of the sins of the country, as well as their
own ; and certain writers are able to boast of the
superior healthiness of the country, because a
great part of the population born in the rural
districts do not die there, but in the towns.

The more we read of the debates in Parlia-
ment, the more we wonder at the hardihood of
the Members. " If," was the burden of their
Lordships' speeches on Friday night, " the
Legislature had known, fifty years ago, of the
great change which was to take place in the
relative number of our agricultural and manu-
facturing population; if it had foreseen
how the people were now to be huddled
tcgether in towns, exposed to sickness
and famine, it would have made very
different laws, and would. have provided
against these circumstances, and made the popu-
lation healthy, virtuous, and happy?" We can-
not, however, infer from the present wisdom of
the Bishop of LONDON and Lord ELLEN-
BOROUGH, either the possibility of the past wis-
dom of the Legislature to provide for the present
circumstances of society, or the probability that
its present wisdom will be commensurate to pro-
vide for the contingencies which will ensue fifty
years hence. On the contrary, we infer that at
the end of fifty years, should there then be a
Parliament sitting at Westminster, the Lord
ELLENBOROUGH of that day, were he tainted at
all with the modesty of the present Lord, and the
Bishop of LONDON of that day, had he any of
the humility of the present Bishop, will have
good reason to say, " if our predecessors had
known what we know, they would have made
very different laws, and taken measures to meet
the present state of society, so totally different
from ' what it was in their day." We cannot
ascribe to-the existing Legislature an atom more
prescience than it ascribes to its predecessors.
The knowledge which the present race of law-
makers have of the errors of their predecessors
seems to us to be very little consistent with over-
weening confidence in their own wisdom. Surely
they mean their laws to last for fifty years; but
if they mean them to last only twenty-five, or
only ten, and are unable to form the most remote
conjecture of what will then be the circumstances
of society, they ought to be extremely cautious
in their proceedings. Far, however, from learn-
ing any caution from the multiplied failures of
their predecessors, which they are called on daily
to try and correct, there never was a time when
they have proceeded with greater rapidity.
Since the peace, when their patriotism could con-
centrate itself on domestic concerns, it has
glowed with prodigious intensity, and its course,
as tracked by Corn-laws, PEEL'S Bill, Timber
Duties, Sugar Duties, Bank Charters, Legal
&c. &c., seems to us to have been
Tender clausei,
one almost undeviating, scorching curse. Whether
there actually is to be less blasting this Session
than heretofore we cannot say, but it has begun
to wear a milder aspect.
The Bill brought in by Lord NORMANBY is
dictated, we willingly concede, by the most he-
, nevolent intentions; but we cannot say that we
think its provisions wise. We shall probably
hereafter say something more of them; but we
cannot allow the occasion to go by without saying
that their minuteness is not at all likely to make
that a beneficial law in all places, and in all time.

Though late in taking the field the leader of
three-fourths of the people of England has at
length assumed a position on the Impost Duties.
Taking its cue from a phrase of Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S speech in. the debate on the reduction
of duties on East India rum, the Times yes-
terday stepped forward to advocate " the cause
of the consumers." We are right glad to see
these greatest advocates of the Tories, the one

by his tongue and the other by his pen, espousing
the cause of consumers, and thereby, if they
are consistent and true, throwing protection
and monopoly overboard. If they honestly
pursue this course, and consult the interest of
the consumers, whether Sir ROBERT PEEL and
the Times be in Opposition or in office we shall
be at their side. Let us now lay before our
readers some of the observations of the Times.

Sir Robert Peel observed on Friday night, in the course
of the debate on the proposed equalization of the duties
on East and West India rum, that he was himself
quite unconnected with either interest ; the only interest
he was concerned in was that of the consumers.' That
is the language which it befits a statesman to hold,
who is conscious that the political influence and the so-
cial condition of the nation depend upon the care and
wisdom with which the general prosperity of the commu-
nity shall be provided for, the multiplied and injudicious
restrictions of our cominercial tariff gradually removed,
and the basis upon which the charges of the State
must rest, enlarged by a prudent extension of the capital
and commercial wealth of the country.
These are the objects, without reference to. what are
commonly called politics, which claim the strongest poli-
tical interest. They are the end and aim of good le-
gislation, to which Reform Bills and Registration Bills
are at beat but means. They are the measures which
will realize some of these expectations of positive benefit
which have at various times been so madly entertained in
the fever of mere political change. They will do more
than anything else to allay the restless and menacing cla-
mour of unsatisfied wants, the misery of idleness, and the
envy of these reasonable comforts which a restrictive tariff
places beyond the poor man's reach.'
The latter portion of these remarks have our
cordial approbation. We have continually, in
our remarks on the Corn-laws, pressed for the re-
peal of that obnoxious law, on the ground that
it would give employment and prosperity to the
people, remove discontent from their hearts, as
well as want from their habitations, and make
them tense to yearn after great political changes,
of which the consequences must be doubtful.
To make just laws, or rather to repeal unjust laws,
is the true way to put an end to political agita-
tion, and stop the demand for organic changes.
We therefore quite rejoice to see the Times
taking up this view, and exhorting the Legislature
to remove the multiplied, injudicious restrictions
of our commercial tariff. The latter part of the
article in the Times so well enforces some other
considerations that we have brought before our
readers that we shall quote it.

" We have commented," sgys our Contemporary, "se-
verely cf late upon the French restrictive system, especi-
ally as regards the iron and coal which are indispensable
to manufactures, and which France does not produce in
sufficient quantities, or in such convenient combination, as
to enable her to supply her own actual wants. It is diffi-
cult to see how these same arguments, which everybody
admits to be very cogent when applied to the iron-trade
with France, are deprived of their strength when they are
applied to the timber trade with England.
Timber is even more essential to all the purposes of
life, public and private, manufacturing and mari-
time, to the house, to the mine, to the machine,
to everything we use and everything we buy, than
iron itself. Yet the present duly of 555. per load of 50
cubic feet on foreign timber acts as a bounty of 455. to
the timber of the British possessions; that is to say, that
the people of the United Kingdom pay about 225 per cent.
more than they need do for one of the most universal ar-
ticles of consumption ; they pay 225 per cent. more than
they need do for a species of raw material which enters
directly or indirectly into all kinds of manufactures; and
this enormous charge is taken from the revenue of the
people without being added to the revenue of the State.
These excessive timber duties force us to take an inferior
article at a higher rate ; they were imposed in 1810 as a
war tax, adapted to the peculiar relations in which we then
stood to several of the Baltic Powers; they arc a loss to
the revenue, and a burden to the country ; and their reduc-
tion would at once furnish us with additional facilities for
improving our relations with the north of Germany.
It is dialcult to say which grievance presses most hea-
vily upon the community of the two : whether it is worst
that the necessary customs'-duties on articles of general
consumption should be distorted from their legitimate
object as sources of revenue into means of prohibition,
protection, and loss; or that our trade should be checked,
our supplies curtailed, and our relations with other countries
impaired, by a catalogue of 1,000 imposts, which respec-
tively produce hardly anything to the revenue at all. But
an alleviation of the former duties is probably more easy
and more essential than the abolition of the latter. Let
a beginning be made. The revenue requires it; the
country calks for it. The reduction of the duties on colo-
nial produce, including sugar, coffee, and tobacco, from
the East as well the West Indies, would at once increase
the consumption of those articles here and abroad to an
amount only to be limited by the extent of the reduction
and the supply.
The reduction of the high duties now levied on some of
the chief articles of food, as butter, butcher's meat, and
bacon, would be a considerable boon to the working
classes ; and a resolute determination to remove the enor-
mous abuse of the timber duties would be no more than
is required of the Government by the great bulk of the
nation.

Our hopes of obtaining justice for -the people
are much strengthened by this language of the
most influential Tory Journal. Taking the lan-
guage of the Times, in conjunction with the de-
clarations.of the Bishop of LONDON, Lord ELLEN-
BOROUGH, and Sir R. TEEL, we feel convinced
that they would be compelled to support the
Ministers, and would carry many other Tories
with them, were Ministers to propose reasonable
measures of commercial and economical reform.
We cannot for one moment doubt their good in-
tentions, but they have wanted boldness. They
have dreaded opposition. Let them, however,
now lay aside their fears and appeal to the leaders
of the Tories and the heads of the Church, to sup-
port measures which will ensure to the poor
plenty of food, cheap clothing, and comfortable
dwellings. There is some reason to suppose, that
if they do not bring forward such measures, the
Tories will, and they will reap the harvest of free
trade, as in 1829 they reaped the harvest of tole-
ration, which had been sown by Whig statesmen
and Whig writers. Reports of a dissolution of
Parliament are rife, and probably Sir R. PEEL
and the Times are already appealing to the com-
mercial and manufacturing interests. We hope
that the Ministers will not lose the. opportunity
which is now in their power, and that they will
seek to recommend themselves to the town popu-
lation by at once proposing measures to abolish
the discriminating duties on timber, sugar, coffee,
and to get rid of those obnoxious imposts which
impoverish the people without enriching. the
Exchequer. For. a considerable time past the
Tories have on many occasions appealed to the
people ; they are now bidding for their support
against the Whigs, who appear to us to have no
time 'to lose. Let them take to themselvcs the
merit of abolishing the Corn-laws, and equalizing
the timber duties.

We have received files of Jamaica journals
to the 26th of December inclusive. On the
224, Governor _Sir-. CRARLE.B-111E.Tc4usF, _pro
rogued the House of Assembly to the Ist of
February. In his speech on that occasion the
Governor thanks the House for the extreme rea-
diness with which it granted the supplies—for
the zeal which it manifested in revising the cri-
minal code, and the law of debtor and creditor—
for the total abolition of the punishment of whip-
ping—for the liberal grants made to schools and
chapels of all religious denominations, Roman
Catholics included—and for in every way co-
operating with him to give effect to the instruc-
tions of her MAJESTY'S Government. Sir C.
METCALFE appears to experience none of
the difficulties experienced by his predecessor
in keeping the Legislature of Jamaica in order.
He is, in fact, as popular with the whites as Sir
LIONEL SMITH was with the coloured race.
Among the most important Acts of the last
Session was one for levying duties on nearly every
description of imported or exported goods, to
meet the expenses of the Government. We
quote from the schedule of the Act such items
as may most interest our commercial readers
Duties on Go ds imported :
Sterling,
For every barrel of wet salted beef, pork, or tongues,
not exceeding 2001 b, and other casks in propor-
tion
Hams, bacon, dried.heef, dried tongues, dried and
smoked salmon and cheese, at the rate per cwt 0 3 0
Fur every barrel of pickled fish 0 1 6
For every firkin of butter
For every firkin of lard
Fur every box of smoked herrings. ............ 0 0 3
For every barrel of wet salted salmon
For every box of tallow candles, 61bs weight • 0 1 0
For every box of wax or sperm candles, 561bs weight 0 2 6
ces, or barley 0 0 3
0 0 9
FFoorr
eevveerryybboosxhrolfofsopaeasp,
,fibe6lbanss.
,wcaleigahvant
Fer every 100 cwt. of biscuit or bread
For every barrel of wheaten flour, 961bs 0 1 0
0 1 0
0 0 3
For every 1,000 bricks
On every cwt. of sugar, the produce of any British
On On
everye very
cwt.c cwt.
of
ff
sarilete
plantation ........................ ......
For every cwt. of coffee, the produce of any British
1 0 0
plantation
And after those rates for any greater or less quantity of such
goods respectively.
peas
ahneidn p
pg
earl barley—at the rate.of five percent.erfumed oils ; drugs of all sorts and
On all oils, not
resins; split
on the value.
On
hin wares, an,
vemryercdheascrirdipisteie, pi
nranroittaptrioevni,oussulyppelineus.,
clothing, and
goods,eff e aws