The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-26 00:00:00

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LONDON:
TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, IE4I.
Lord

STANLEY, it appears from his letter to Mr.
at 14:1180N TENNENT, which that gentleman read
tic."' Belfast Protestant meeting, is fully deter-
e I:'eti to go on earning for himself the hatred of the
:iv"' Catholic population.
n'en'die Noble Lord is obstinate in his desire. Some
would feel a little abashed by opposition—it
bitil Provokes Lord STANLEY'S zeal. It fires his
it;°d d and makes him charge anew. He has been
is the Irish do not need his services. His answer
th..-"l'e knows better. They say they want some-
-11
'?g else he insists on forcing his nostrum down
c!r throats.
Generally it is supposed that a
4_4,10n is to be governed for its own benefit, and
I:cording to its own views. No such thing, says
\\°,,rd STANLEY, it must be ruled as
pleases me.
".4t I call right and justice must be right and
. ; and my right and
.my justice shall be the
\vat '°r the Irish, whether they like it or not.
" to me is the opinion of the nation ? In
'll a bold confronting of a people's
,;(:,oinething almost will—there
grand, almost satanic, as _Mu-
ll
IN has drawn Satan, and we are almost tempted
off to admire the wild monomania under which the
15 Lord goads the Irish into unrelenting hatred.
ad. the little pettifogging regulations, the little
ill'tulents of registration and franchise, which he
nti
hls Orange clique dignify with the ennobling
euri
°f right and justice, had any resemblance tog
fr -
trdri freedom of opinion, freedom of worship, or
°nl of trade, we should honour the enthusiasm
th.tOrd STANLEY; but when we see the miserable
tt3eets to which all his zeal is directed, we can only
Vet the saddest misapplication of great talents,
,f‘rihd the strangest perversion of noble words. Of
Imat, eQusequence is it, in a national point of view,
ea
or not a few Irishman, more than the nu-
thell.l" unjust law enfranchises, vote for Members of
'lolls° of Commons ? Oh, they commit perjury'
them
they ; the law commits perjury, which tempts
)yher4. t° practise that as the only means by
IV4 they cm exercise the common right: of citi-
_

We cannot expect that the landlords should em-
brace the doctrines of free trade, when they are re-
pudiated by the Liberal Journals. Nor can we
hope that Ministers, though urged by some of their
friends, will take any step to remove commercial
restrictions when their supporters out of doors cla-
mour for new restraints. In general we have had
no abler helpmate in enforcing the repeal of the
Corn-law, and no more enlightened advocate of free
trade, than the Morning Chronicle, but every
now aHd then something appears in that
Journal more hostile to free trade than

the writings of the Herald or the Post. In fact,
the latter is, on money matters, almost a free trader,
and is a convert to the best principles of political
economy, before that science was degraded into a
jumble of subtleties by a short-sighted, but clever
financier. The Chronicle, however, in its lucubra-
tions dated from the City, is the most determined
enemy we know of to free trade in money. Our
Contemporary seems to be divided against himself.
He knocks down restraints in his leaders, and puts
them up again in the next column. Yesterday, for
example, he said :
Under the system of freo banking and competing is-
sues, so strenuously supported by some writers, we
should find the verification of the proverb, " that which
is every man's business is no man's business ;" and gold
i❑ this country would soon be reckoned among articles
of vertu—scarce and curious. There cannot be much
doubt that things would come to this end by the means
of an issue of paper money, checked by no other instru-
ment than that of weekly exchanges between the banking
establishments. The Crown and Parliament MUSE have a
real right of interference and control in the operations of
the Bank of England ; and, that as the Bank notes
are issued as a representative of coin, the nation
has a right to see, through responsible officers appointed
by the Crown, that their convertibility into coin is se-
cured by the retention of an adequate quantity of gold
in the coffers of the issuers. The abrogation of the pre-
sent system, however, by the substitution of a free trade
in paper money is quite another affair. It would be a
regular jump in the dark, and no one could tell the con-
sequence.
The people of this country will not run the risk, they
like to look before they leap ; and we are satisfied that
after taking a proper glance of the precipice they will
draw back at once, and firmly refuse to destroy them-
selves by the attempt.

What is this but the advocacy of the inter-
ference of Government with the exchanges of all
things, and consequently with the whole course of
trade ? What is it but a total want of a reliance
on the private pursuits of individuals, as the best
means of securing public prosperity, such a reliance
being the main pillar of free trade ? What is it but
a setting up of the dictates of the Legislature above
the discretion of individuals in the management of
their own concerns, which ADAM SMITH showed
was the height of folly ? The regulation of the
exchange is no man's business, but it is the busi-
of dealers in bullion to send it where it is most
valuable ; and whether the Government interfere or
not, they will always, if allowed, make what pro-
fit they can on such transactions, and so regulate
the exchange.
To have a free trade, too, in paper money, we
are told, would be a jump in the dark, and no
one could tell the consequences. That is just
what the landlords say when we ask for free trade
in corn. Every abolition of a restriction must be
a jump in the dark. Every law is. To trust to the
private interests of individuals must always be, for
the Legislature, a jump in the dark, for it cannot
regulate them. The supply of provisions for the
metropolis is, for the Legislature, a jump in the
dark, but the provisions are supplied. According to
the new doctrines of the Chronicle, to trust to the
merchants, manufacturers, and bankers of the empire
would be a jump in the dark ; but till that jump be
made, and till the Legislature learn to mistrust it-
self, notwithstanding the perpetual clamour of half-
ignorant people for its unceasing interference, and
learn to trust the private -interests of the people,
things will not go well int England. We regret
to see our able Contemporary fighting in this man-
ner the battle of the landlords and all other restric-

ons, who have the wary ant of experience for

their system, for they have unhappily seen it, and
can well say that to set trade free is to take a jump
in the dark.

Nothing can save the man who is so unfortunate
as to have in himself a mortal enemy. It is pre-
cisely the same with a nation. Nothing can pre-
vent the ruin of a country intent on ruining itself.
In therefore endeavouring to place prominently be-
fore the French people the incalculable evils which
will flow from a perseverance in their absurd deter-
mination to change the capital of European civili-
zation into a bastioned, turreted, and loop-holed
fortress of the thirteenth century, we have an im-
pression, almost amounting to a conviction, that we
arc performing a very fruitless, as well as a very
thankless office. As one of the avowed objects of
the walls is to enable France to set England the
more readily at defiance, we are prepared for hav-
ing interested motives imputed to us by all parties.
We begin, then, by stating at once, that the advice
we give to the people of France is not disinterested.
As a commercial people, we have a very deep inte-
rest in promoting the physical prosperity of France,
and therefore it is as much our interest as our duty
to oppose any scheme of the French Government
or the French people, calculated to arrest the pro-
gress of the national welfare. As an arm of na-
tional strength, the walls have no terrors whatever
for us. France would not be a jot more formidable
in a war with England were her capital surrounded
with a triple wall of brass an hundrod feet each in
thickness, th an she is at this moment. Our battle-
field is the sea ; and if an English army has paraded
the streets of Paris in the well-earned character of

a conqueror, it was under circumstances which, in
all human probability, can never occur again ; but
which, did they occur, would have precisely the
same result, were the fortifications of the capital
ten times as extensive as M. TRIERS proposes to

make them.
But there is little chance of persuading a people
inoculated with the madness of faction to listen to
the dictates of sober reflection, and upon the ques-
tion of the fortifications of Paris, the bulk of the
French people appear to be actually mad. " Give
us but walls," shout the Liberals in full chorus, from
M. ODILLON BARROT to M. TIMERS ; " Give
us but walls," echo the courtiers and legitimists,
"and we fling to the winds for eight years to come,
all care about canals, railways, roads, bridges, and
all other agricultural and commercial improve-
ments. For our darling walls we are willing to
sacrifice everything. What care we for lagging in
the rear of Europe instead of marching in the van
among the pioneers of popular prosperity, whe❑ we
have walls to defend us from enemies which we have
yet to make, and who when made can never pene-
trate so far into our territory as to catch a glimpse
of them ? Half theimoney spent in building walls

and forts, would cover the face of France with rail-
ways, and thus in the event of a war enable us to
transport our troops and the requisite munitions for
a military campaign to any point of our frontier
threatened by the enemy; but railroads, though thus
useful as ministering to our passion for military
glory, do not so exclusively remind us of war as
loopholed-walls and towers, and therefore we ,prefer
placing walls between us and the foes of France.'
It is only a strong sense of public duty that can im-
pel foreigners to attempt to save:a people thus bent
upon their own destruct;on. But as France can-
not offer to her starving population, asking for
bread, the stones forming the walls of Paris, without

exposing the rest _of Europe to the direful conse-

quences of their famine and despair, it is the duty
of honest journalists to place the question before
them in its true light.

Society is now in the very whirlpool of change.
Nothing is stationary. Theworld is undergoing a series
of experiments the most momentous, the most wide-
spread in their results, and the most extensive in
their modifications of human thought and action,
that ever influenced the destinies of mankind. The
invention of gunpowder did not make a greater re-
volution in the art of war, nor did the discovery of
printing more completely change the previous mode
of communicating written knowledge, than recent
discoveries in the power and application of steam
by land and water is destined to alter and improve

the individual, social, civil, and national character
of the whole people of Europe. Now, no great
member of the European family of nations can fall
to leeward without inflicting deep injury upon
others. No nation exists for itself, still least of
all a nation so central as .France. Therefore in

putting herself out of the path of improvement sihe

not only ruins herself, but she injures the pros-
perity of her neighbours. And that she is putting
herself out of the path of improvement cannot be

denied, seeing that the Finance Minister, M.
HUMANN, honestly and distinctly stated that

France had to choose between walls and all other

commercial and agricultural improvements. If the
walls were built, he told them plainly that they must
be content with the walls, as the Government

would have no money to spend in making railways,
improving canals, and erecting bridges.
But as regards France the most important point
remains to be stated. It is a singular instance of
either the corruption or the blindness of the
Press, if not of both, that of the Paris daily

Journals, the Commerce is the only paper that pro-

resses to see, in the fortification of Paris, its true

object—namely, to place the republican mob of the
capital entirely at the mercy of the Government.

The average distance of the proposed forts round

Paris, from the centre of the city, is 5,000 metres

(a metre if: three feet three inches and a half En-
glish measure), whereas it has been ascertained

that several towns, and Antwerp among the num-
ber, have been most-:destructively bombarded at
6,000 metres distance; Should, therefore, the po-

pulation of any of the faubourgs manifest any dis-

position to kick up a revolutionary dust, the Go-
vernment will be able quickly to lay it, by throwing

a few shells from the nearest fortress. This will

quickly extinguish the glory of the barricades, by
making it a matter of the utmost indifference to the
Government whether they blockade the streets or
leave them open. Build the walls, and we shall

heat. no more of mob-made and mob-banished kings.
The system of centralization will be then complete,
for the guns of Paris will govern France from
Calais to Marseilles. Their voice will travel

quicker than the telegraph, however bright the. at-
mosphere. When danger whispers fear has long
ears ; and from the mouth of these guns only sounds
of danger to liberal France will proceed. It is la-

mentable to see a nation in chains under any cir-
cumstances, but if there be an occasion calcu-

lated to make us distrust humanity itself, it
is when we behold a people voluntarily forge
fetters for themselves, and even go so far
as to fasten them upon their own limbs.
This is the case with France now in cla-
mouring for fortifications. She courts the yoke
which will destroy her independence. Her jour-
nalists are constantly reminding us of the disgrace
offered her by the Allies in 1814. The Allies, in
their proudest hour of victory and the deepest of
her humiliation, never thought of inflicting upon
her a wrong equal in magnitude to that which she
is now in the act of doing to herself. They dreamed
not of compelling the genius of arts, letters, and
commerce to seek an asylum elsewhere by proposing
to surround Paris with walls and fortresses. Had
they done so, we would have been at no loss to account
for the mortification which Frenchmen generally
feel in alluding to that memorable event in their
history. But it was reserved for French tyrants
and their parasites, and for French pseudo-liberals
of the Republican school, to put the despot's hook
in the nostrils of France by degrading her capital
from being the centre of European civilization and
the stronghold of European freedom into a mere
fortress, where the most limited freedom of word or

action can only exist by permission of the military

Governor.

We are told in private communications from
Walsall, that Mr. SMITH'S prospects are improving
every day. The enthusiasm of the people has been
roused by the numerous addresses sent to them from
all parts of the country, and by the spirited appeals
which have been made to them. They feel that a
great cause depends on their votes, and casting aside
all minor considerations they are prepared to make
any sacrifices which may be demanded of them to
ensure success. The Carlton Club foresees defeat,
and begins to regret that it has not offered to the
acceptance of the electors some man of more weight
and of better known liberality as to tzade tha❑ Mr.
GLADSTONE.

Mr. SMITH, who has started on tfhe Anti-Corn-
law interest, is a gentleman well known to the pub-
lic. He has been from the first Chairman of the
Anti-Corn-law League. He sucscecded Mr. G.
WOOD as President of the Chamber of Commerce
of Manchester.. The men of Walsall may be sure
that he was not nominated to these two important
places by his townsmen without possessing great
merit. In fact the memoir of the Chamber of Com-
merce on the currency, and which was chiefly his
production, and his evidence before tl ►e Committee