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

Cht

LONDON:
WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 1841.

The Marquis of LANsnowNE gave an important notice last
night in the House of Lords, namely, for a Committee to in-
quire into the rate of interest paid on promissory notes and bills
01 exchange. We hope that in the inquiry both the lenders
and the borrowers will be examined, so that light may be
thrown on the transactions of those who have certainly turned
to good account for themselves the partial repeal of the Usury-
laws.

The Drainage Bill was read a third time. Several additions
were made to it, and several amendments proposed, but Ox-
ford University was, at the suggestion of the Duke of WEL-
LINGTorr, exempted from the Bill. Birmingham was ex-
empted, on the motion of Lord LYNDHURST. Derby and
ether towns were not exempted from its operation. After
getting through the Bill their Lordships adjourned.
The Commons did not collect in sufficient number to make a
House, and stand adjourned till this day.

---
The Provincial Papers which we received yes-
terday assure us that the propositions of the
Ministers to reduce the planter's tax on sugar,
the shipowner's and Canadian's tax on timber,
and the landlord's tax on bread, are hailed with
delight, and will immediately find a correspond-
ing and great support. It could not be other-
wise. These reductions are the very things the
people have been justly clamorous for, and it
would betoken imbecility or fatuity not eagerly
to seize the good which is offered. Every where,
except where some sinister and corrupt interest
enchains men, they will get up meetings and
forward petitions to Parliament.
At present sugar is almost as much a necessary
of life as bread. Last year much fruit was
spoiled in consequence of the high price and
scarcity of sugar. At present there is again a
great show of fruit. The proposed measure of
Ministers will reduce the price of sugar nearly
to the Continental level, or probably not much
short of cent. per cent., and enable the fruit-
growers both to obtain sugar cheap for them-
selves, and get a good price for their fruit. To
all classes—for all are consumers of sugar, which
is extremely nourishing, and may be substituted
for other food—such an increase of the supply,
and such a reduction of price, will be an im-
mense benefit. All the consumers of sugar, all
the mothers of the empire who know how much
the health of children depends on nourishing
food, all fruit growers, we are assured, will
exert themselves to secure the great advantages
which the Ministers offer, and which they have
no chance, we are sure, of getting from any
other hands.

The people will not so readily appreciate the
value of the change in the, timber duties, though
that will spare a number of long voyages,
cheapen a most useful article, and save the lives
of many brave mariners, who now annually
perish in the timber vessels which are capsized or
wrecked at sea. But the advantages of the reduc-
tion of the Corn tax, they will readily be sen-
sible of. The fixed duty, low as it will be, will
reduce the price of corn to the continental level,
plus that duty and the expenses of bringing it
here, and will ensure a continual and steady
supply. The price of bread will fall in propor-
tion, more bread will be purchased with
the same money, employment will be
more abundant and steadier, and all will
be made happier by the change. Poverty
and hunger are the parents of many
crimes, and hunger and poverty will be lessened
by the Ministerial plan. All, therefore, who
live by industry, all who wish to see it properly
and justly rewarded, and men made virtuous and
contented, will at once bestir themselves to se-
cure the immense advantages of cheap bread as
well as cheap sugar.
We are not habitually given to trust too im-
plicitly to the Ministers, but their pre-
sent Plan is so much in accordance with
the principles we have espoused, and so
well calculated to promote further im-
provement, that we call on all our readers
to exert themselves to obtain for it complete suc-
cess. By so doing they may gain immense ad-
vantages for themselves ; by being supine or
sluggish they will ensure a continuance of the
landlords' bread tax and the planters'
To both those taxes the To • sugar tax.
Tories are pledged, and
will support them to the utmost. The Tories are
nearly all corruptionists, monopolists, and job-
bers;. hypocrites who plunder the people in the
name of the country, and in the still more sacred
name of religion. The sinews of their power are
cut from the hearts el the people. Vampire-
like they live by suckin' the strength and blood
of the nation. By withdrawing their nourishment,
by uniting one and all, fti-st to limit, and ulti-
mately to stop altoi;ether, the supplies t'
van!
drain from us by bread taxes, sugar taxe. n‘ly
whole host of otb.er taxes levied for tlair a'(l,
tage, we shall ¶.tarve them out of existence, and
again gather health, strength, freedom, and
prosperity.
Th

e
present Earl of RIPON, formerly Mr.
Funzittcx ROBINSON, was the parent of the
corn-law in 1815, which was so mon-
strous. that it'could not be executed, and after it
had been set aside in two or three instances by
Orders in Council, it was at length made to give

place to the present less monstrous regulation.
The enactment of that law, which was so bad
that it could not be executed, was opposed by the
people. Riots ensued—lives were sacrificed—
and human blood to this day lies heavy and
dark on the Government of which Mr. ROBIN-
SON was a Member, and on the Legislature
which, at its instigation, carried an imprac-
ticable law at the point of the bayonet.
But that Peer, who may probably sup-
pose that men have forgotten his deeds as he
changed his name from ROBINSON to GODBRICH,
and. fled from GODERICH to RIPON, was on Mon-
day night so sensitive on the score of character
that he pitied Lord MELBOURNE for his incon-
sistency, who has forsaken the vices to which the
other still cleaves through the many changes of
his name. He is, in truth, consistent in error and
mischief, and professes, as Earl of RIPON, the
same horror in 1841 for freedom and justice as he
professed in 1813, when human lives were sacri-
ficed to the barbarous and impracticable law de-
vised by him and carried into effect by the Par-
liament.

His reasoning on Monday night was worthy
of his history and his colleague in oppo-
sition. The great Peer, who will be handed
down to posterity as the inventor of the Kentish
tire, far superior to the steam-engine of WATT
or the safety-lamp of DAVY, joined the Earl of
RIPON in exclaiming against the injustice and
barbarity of taxing the people's bread. One
said such a thing was never heard of in any
country. The other summoned the Lords to
arm to resistit. Both professed the utmost horror
of a bread-tax, while the one was the inventor
and the other a supporter of a bread-tax so
enormous that it could not be levied, and both
now support a bread-tax at least four times as
onerous as the bread-tax which the Mi-
nisters propose to substitute for the pre-
sent exaction. To be sure the Lords pre-
sent laughed at both Peers, and, were it not a
breach of privilege, such a mighty chuckle would
have been elicited from the gallery as would

have for ever silenced both the orators. It
would have broken forth spontaneously, and would
have been as much superior to the Kentish fire
as the works of nature are to those of art—

thunder to a pop-gun, or the roar of the Nia-
gara to a cascade at Eastwell. But the respect
visitors bear to Newgate kept down the almost
irrepressible laugh, and now it is bursting
forth in all parts of the empire.

Did these Lords suppose they were playing at
conundrums, one asking " When is a tax not a
tax ?" and the other answering " When it is a
protection." Yes, a protection to them, and a dire
extortion from the people. But legislation is some-
thing ofmore importance than word-catching, and
they only exposed their terrible hypocrisy and
their terrible desire to delude themselves and
others, which latter is now beyond their reach,
when they called their 235. duty a protection,
and the 7s. or ss. duty to be proposed by the
Ministers a bread-tax. For their denunciations,
however, against all bread taxes we heartily
thank them, but they are guilty to a fourfold
enormity of the very crime they denounced in
Lord MELBOURNE.

That other great and potent lover of a bread-
tax which is not a bread-tax, the Duke of BUCK-
INGHAM, fancied he had made a deadly thrust
when he quoted against Lord MELBOURNE his
eloquent description of the effects of a struggle
to repeal the Corn-laws. But if the heavy Duke
is not wholly unconscious of what is going on in
society he would be aware that the struggle Lord
MELBOURNE fancied is actually stirring society
to its foundation, calling into question the right of
the Peers to their estates, and throwing doubts
on the whole right of property as it now
exists. It is dividing the people into parties, and
filling their hearts with the deadliest animosity.
Who can submit with patience to be starved to
death ? Cries of distress and threats of revenge,
the supplications of hunger and the imprecations
of crime, are resounding through the land. All
the dreadful evils which Lord MELBOURNE
sketched as the result of a struggle to repeal the
Corn-law, and which the Duke of BUCKINGHAM
quoted as a justification of his support of that law,
arc now continually engendered by its existence.
Who can look at any part of society and not
see it heaving with trouble and anguish ? Who
is at ease ? Not even the landlords, for they live
in dread of a change, because they are conscious
that their law is unjust, and dread the fellow-
men they trample on. We say nothing of their
starving labourers and serf-like tenants, who are
in a sad state of fear, dependence, and poverty.
Who is contented? Not even the priests, for their
rapacity cannot be satiated by anything short of
absolute mastership over the property and being
of the whole community. The only class which

appears at ease and contented, because honestly
thriving, are the lawyers. For them new courts

are to be opened and new Judges appointed.
Endless suits promise them endless fees. Swind-
ling, forgery, casting away ships—now common

occurrences—with fraudulent insolvencies and
bankruptcies, assassinations and murders, and
all the endless villainy that grows from a system
of legislation of which the main principle is
plunder, make a rich harvest for the lawyer
tribe. They thrive most when the community
is most in straits, and are now the only con-
tented class. If the Duke of BUCKINGHAM
would look into the world he would see, we re-
peat, that all the mighty evils he dreads from
repealing the Corn laws are actually inflicted on
society at this moment by that very law of which
he is the foremost champion.

Mr. WILSON, whose pamphlet on the Influence
of the Corn-laws attracted so much attention,
has published another short and able work on
" The Revenue ; or, What should the Chancellor
do ?" Though the promulgation of the Budget
on Friday has answered the question, as Mr.
WILSON himself answers it—that he should re-
duce, not increase, the taxes on articles of con-
sumption—there are several statements in the
pamphlet of considerable interest. Mr. WILSON
states that from 1821 to 1831 the population of
the whole kingdom increased at the rate of one
and a halfper cent. annually on the population of
1821, and he assumes that from 1831 to 1841 the
increase has been at least in the same ratio. The
progressive increase, we very much doubt, and
are much inclined to believe that the increase of
the population in the first six of the ten years
was considerably greater than in the last four
years. The census which is soon to be taken
will inform us of the whole increase in ten years,
but it will not inform us of the increase in every
successive year. In the absence of all pos;:Live
information on the point, we must state ;,hat we
look on the slow increase of consumption in the
last four years, the proof of which we are about
to quote from Mr. WILSON'S pamphlet, to be an
indication that the progress of population, in that
time, has been arrested ; while the comforts
of those who have been brought into life, or who
have remained in life, have been abridged.
Before copying Mr. WILSON'S observations 1.-fe
must make one remark. Population f•
given space does not increase by ar _in any
ber of human beings every ye-
- equal num-
,
of v-ears, but if it inerer
tf. ...,r through a series
-
-.ed 360,000 in the year
1821, adding that
.14,00%00G, the increase next
tinned, v-
year (night to '
of!, twevid'eti the same ratio con-
tion
,ry newt- 0,300 more; and so -
popula-
should go on increasing year after year
through the whole series till the increase in the
single year 1841, instead of being somewhere
about 360,000, should be somewhere about
are4l 0n1y2,000 We do not calculate to a nicety ; we
pointing out a principle which corrobo-
rates and enforces Mr. WILSON'S view, much
more than his own assumption of an equal in-
crease of population year after year. Accord-
ing to this statement the increase of the reve-
nue, so far as that depends on an increase of po-
pulation, ought to h
more in the year 18Zyteh than the
e nearlyincrease on en- floBu3r6t
.h
Assuming, however, With Mr. WIZ.. SON, that