The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-29 00:00:00

Tte ,ufn.

LONDON:
FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1841.

In the Rouse of Lords last night the LORD
CHANCELLOR read her MAJESTY'S answer to their
Lordships' Address.

The Duke of WELLINGTON complained that
public notice had not been given of the time
when their Lordships were to go up with the
Address. Had he known it, he would have
attended.
The LORD CHANCELLOR informed their Lord-
ships that an indictment had been found in the
Central Criminal Coutvtagainst the Earl of CAR-
DIGAN for feloniously shooting at Mr. HARVEY
TucxErr. Their Lordships, on the motion of
the LORD CHANCELLOR, appointed a Committee
to meet on Monday to inquire into the practice
of the House on such occasions as that of a Peer
charged with a felony.
The Copyhold Enfranchisement Bill was read
a first time, on the motion of Lord BROUGHAM,
who announced that, after it was read a second

1

time, he should propose to refer it to a Select
Committee.

In answer to questions put by the Earl of H AD-
DINGTON, Viscount MELBOURNE stated that the
Ministers did not propoSe to
,introduce any mea-
sure for settling the disputes in the Scotch
Church, and they did, of course, mean to protect
those who obeyed the law. The Noble Earl in-
timated that the dispute might be settled without
any new law. Their Lordships adjourned.
The Commons only met at one o'clock to carry
up the. Address to her MAJESTY, and, on march-
ing in procession from the House, adjourned till
this day.

For many years the West India planters re-'
sisted all the efforts of. the humane people of
England, first to meliorate the condition of their
slaves, and then to abolish slavery. They
struggled pertinaciously to keep hold of the
whip, and flog men, and flog women, and flog
children, at their pleasure. They professed
themselves almost ready to fight for the privilege
of putting their slaves out of existence, whenever
it might suit their convenience. They obsti-
nately resisted Acts of Council and Acts of Par-
liament to improve the condition of their slaves,
or evaded them; and so insulted both the autho-
rity of the law, to which alone they owed their
safety, and the dictates of humanity. Gradually
the firm and persevering kindness of the people of
England overcame the short-sighted avarice of
the planters, and by successive exertions one im-
provement after another was compulsorily intro-
duced into the condition of the slaves. Finally
the peqple of England achieved emancipation;
and, when hey might, by simply withdrawing the
protective powef,. have commanded it, they gene-
rously gave the plan- !ers who had for many years
strenously resisted and :idiculed their philan-
thropic efforts, 20,000,000/. st.'
,71,ing, for little
more than a mere name.

The laws, be it observed, were not otherwise
altered to any great extent. No compensation
was made to the slaves; but a reward was given
to the slave-owners. The slaves by the neces-
sities of their condition, living where the land
is generally appropriated, and where a Govern-
ment is maintained by the troops of Great
Britain, became the labourers of their former
masters, who obtained their services on cheaper
terms, we believe on the whole, considering that
their masters were relieved from the obligation
of always supporting them, than they paid for their
services as slaves. At any rate, they have ob-
tained their services, and are still enriched by
their labour, while they have received 20,000,0001.
sterling from the people of England.
Nowhere has there been anything like an in-
surrection, nowhere have the former slaves
refused to work for reasonable wages, nowhere
has there resulted from this great act of the
British people anything but order, prosperity,
and public happiness. Never were any men
more favoured than the planters. They were en-
riched by our contributions, they are enriched
by the continued labour of their former slaves,
and they are protected by the power of the whole
empire.

These advantages, however, are not sufficient
for the planters. They labour und_r some old-
fashioned and absurd restrictions as to im-
porting food and clothing into the for-
mer slave colonies, except from England
and her dependencies ; and, with no other
earthly pretext or ground of justification than
this, which might be, and ought to be, abolished
to-morrow, they claim and receive a discrimi-
nating duty on all sugar not of their growth, of
about 4d. per lb., which enables them to put into
their pockets between three and four millions
sterling a year levied on the people of this coun-
try. For their advantage children, when they
eat cakes, puddings, and tarts, to make which
sugar is used—women, when they drink sweet-
ened tea—and men, however poor, who can find
no better breakfast than coffee made palatable
with sugar—all these are obliged to paythe plant-
ers, who already have so many advantages, and to
whom they have already given so much, about
4d. on every pound of sugar they use. There is
a similar tax on coffee,.so that the planters who
so long*condemnecl the Africans to slavery, now
ride on the English public, and enslave them by
the help of the law, as they used to flog- their
slaves in spite of the law.

We did hope a short time ago that there was a
probability of an end being put to this system,
but it has of late been again strengthened by
those who were the opponents of the planters
and are still enemies of slavery. The persons who
were most solicitous to promote the abolition of
slavery are somewhat naturally, but most mis-
trustfully, afraid of the results of their own work,
and many of them have now made common cause
with the planters against the tax-paying people
of England.
Some of them, like Mr. GURNEY, have visited
the emancipated slaves, they have been charmed
with their felicity, and they demand the conti-
nuance of the bounty exacted from the tax-
payers of England,—and the continuance of the
monopoly, lest the abolition of this injustice
should do injury to their proteges. They did not
so reason in the prosecution of their own good
work. They then disregarded all the represen-
tations of the planters, and, turned aside by no
expediency, went straight to the just and noble
object of giving freedom to the slaves. Now they
mistrust the principle of righteousness, and tell
the heavily taxed people of England that to do
justice to them would endanger the prosperity of
the West India planters, and probably ruin the
newly emancipated negroes.
They reason in this way :—" By abolishing the
discriminating duties, and by allowing the sugars
of Cuba and the Brazils to come into the country
at the same rate of duty as the sugars of our own
colonies, our planters would be so much under-
sold in the market that they would be unable to
keep up their cultivation, unable to employ their
negro labourers, and planters and labourers would
go alike to ruin." This train of reasoning has the
singular defect of keeping wholly out of view the
tax-paying people of England, for whose especial
benefit the Legislature is constituted and laws
made. At the same time it may, we think, be
doubted whether the consequences apprehended
by the abolitionists would follow.
We proceed on the supposition that the
planters shall be at liberty to buy their supplies
and procure their labourers wherever they
please, not introducing any kind of slaves nor
revivinc, slavery in any form. They will culti- ,
vate their lands by freemen in freedom, and
we affirm that the supposition of Mr. GURNEY
and his friends, that they will be beaten out
of the market by the labour of slaves working
in chains, is contrary to all experience. Were it
true it would be an encouragement to slavery, and
a condemnation of their own conduct in abolishing
it, which no argument could surmount. By
making the snpposition, they are false to them-
selves, and to their own ennobling principles.
They commit the palpable mistake of comparing
the produce of the slaves of the Brazils with the
produce of the former slaves of Jamaica. They
make no allowance for the growth of skill in
freedom none for division of labour, which
cannot extend in a state of slavery, and which
two elements of our own cheap production, when
they come into operation in our colonies, must
soon enable them to produce much cheaper
than the slaves of the Brazils and
Cuba.' We there ore say that the assumptions
on which the benevolent men who have effected
the emancipation of the slaves now seek to bol-
ster up a most injurious monopoly of a few plan-
ters against the people of England, have no foun-
dation in facts or in the laws of human nature.

They seem to us, also, to overlook the laws by
which wages are regulated. The argument which
they employ is that of our landlords—" Unless
You allow us to tax the community we cannot
employ our labourers, and they must starve."
Experience has demon •d that the re4ult of
the landlords' plan is ally to reduce the la-

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bourers to the lowest stage of existence. How
can it be otherwise ? It does not create a single
particle of capital for the employment of labour;
it only adds to rent, which is dissipated in extra-
vagance. It does not increase production, and
without an increase of production there can be
no increase of capital. The wages of the labour-
ers in the West India Islands will be determined
in a state of freedom, like the wages of other la-
bourers, by the demand and the supply of 1 tbour.
It is quite clear that the abolition of the dis-
criminating duties will not increase the number
of labourers. Will it decrease the demand for
their labour ? We believe not. The abolition of
those duties will compel the planters, who now
actually live on taxes levied on us, to bestow
more attention on raising colonial produce, and
on raising it at a cheap rate. It will compel
them to task their ingenuity, it will introduce'
amongst them competition with one another, while
they now slumber on in monopoly, but it will not
destroy a single crushing mill, nor root out a
single cane, nor allow a single sugar house to go
to ruin. Competition amongst capitalists is
another name for a brisk and increased demand
for labour, and, consequently, the abolition of the
discriminating duties would increase capital, and
increase, not diminish, the demand for the labour
of the free negroes. Mr. GURNEY and his humane
friends may rest fully assured that the planters
will not give the negroes sixpence a week
more than they can help, and that the wages of
the free negroes are not enhanced one penny by
the three millions sterling which the unjust law
for the benefit of the planters levies annually on
the people of England.
We see that some writers call the legal right
of the planters to be enriched at our ex-
pense, and to raise a large income from
holding land in the West Indies, pro-
perty; but it is no more property than the tax
on corn is property. We are not without ap-
--wehension that property itself will be much
endanger:?, to the great injury of the whole
community, by being perpetually confounded
with taxation, both by law-makers and public
writers.

We admit, however, that we have different
clients from Mr. GURNEY and his. friends. They
advocate the cause of the negroes, we the cause
of the suffering, sorrowing, and toiling labour-
ers of England. Nor can we believe
that we do not exhibit as much phi-
lanthropy in protesting against the sugar used
by the wives and children of our hard-worked
and half-starved people, being taxed to enrich
the owners of West India estates, as Mr, vit..
NEY by his imaginary apprehensions that the nice
plaintain and yam grounds of the well-fed glossy
negroes will go to ruin, if the iniquitous descri-
minating tax on sugar be not repealed. Let
us have our sugar as well as our corn,
without paying a heavy toll to the landowners.

The French Government, it is said, has been
obliged to interfere with. the publication of the
letters in the journals, attributed to LOUIS
PHILIPPE. It could not overlook these publica-
tions. Accordingly, on Monday, the France,
the Gazette de France, the Quotidienne, the
Echo Francais, the Commerce and the National,
were all seized at the Post-office, and the Editors
of these journals received notice that they would
be prosecuted for forgery and personal attacks
on the KING. If any journals had published
in England libels on the QUEEN, the Govern-
ment would not have been compelled to inter-
fere. It might have used its discretion. It might
have refuted the scandal through the medium of
some other journals, or it might have omitted to
notice the calumny. No harm would Shave been
done by its adopting either course, as prudence
might have dictated. But in France the Govern-
ment was obliged to proceed against these journals,
obliged to arrest them at the Post-office, and
obliged to prosecute the Editors before the Courts.
We wish to draw the attention of the public and of
statesmen, and very particularly we wish to draw
the attention of meddling statesmen, to the
source of the difference between the conduct of
the two Governments.

Of course it originates in the different laws of
the two countnel. In France the laic euu-4

fers on the Government a sort of supervising
power _over the Journals, or a quasi censorship.
It cannot, therefore, allow anything to be pub-
lished in them which provokes, as it may sup-
pose, resistance to the Government, or which is
supposed to be an insult to the King, or to the
Royal authority. Such is the consequence of the
exceptional laws of 1819, and the September
' laws, which the Republican Doctrinaire, M.
GUIZOT, with his friends, was one of the chief
instruments for passing. It is clearly the conse-
quence of that law that the Government is
obliged to interfere. If it were not, the
Journals would receive impunity, and the
lies would be circulated by authority. When
it interferes, the law prescribes its course
of proceedings, and having stopped the jour-
nals, it must, in vindication of its conduct,
prosecute the editors. It is clear, therefore, that
all these obligations are created and imposed on
the French Government by the law which gives
it power over the press.
It is also plain that power carries great duties
with it, and imposes great obligations. It was
meant as a protection and relief. Now, the ques-
tion for consideration is—does it effect that ob-
ject ? Are not the duties more onerous than the
protection is useful? We wish that the gentle-
men who so perpetually demand more coercive
laws would think of this. Every such law im-
poses obligations, and creates duties which did
not before exist, which the Gon of nature, under
whose dominion both kings and subjects live, has
not provided, and has not thought necessary for
the happiness of his creatures, and which are
restraints on freedom, impediments to action,
and clogs on the exercise of discretion.
It would seem that the one in question , is not
necessary, because the United States and Eng-
land prosper without any similar law. The
GoVernments in both countries are more secure
without such a law than the Government of
France with it. If no such law existed, every
man of reflection and of common sense would at
oace believe the denial of Louis PIIILIPPE and
disbelieve the assertion of the obviously factious
and obviously dishonest persons who have put
forth the letters. Nothing would give them cre-
dence, except the existence of a law authorising
the arrest of the Journals and the allowing the
letters to be published. Thelaw, by conferring such'
a power, gives validity to everything which ap-
pears in print. It undertakes to judge for the
public; the public submit to it—for the public re-
verences the law, although it enact the greatest
atrocity that ever disgraced human nature—the
public discretion goes to sleep, and every lie not
suppressed by the law receives the stamp of
truth. It is the law, therefore, which, by creating
the power, also creates the duty, and also creates
all the unpleasant consequences.
This is an illustration of a principle. A
similar train of facts may be observed of
a vast variety of enactments, well meant,
perhaps, but full of evil. Take, for ex-
ample, our licensing system. The power to
grant licenses imposes the duty to grant them,
and to grant them to proper persons. The law
thus makes the public authorities responsible for
the character of licensed tradesmen of all kinds.
A license is a legal sanction, and sets discretion
asleep. It does not serve the public, for it really
, contributes to impose on them ; it does not serve
the authorities, for it adds amazingly to their
duties, and must make them, if conscientious and
reflecting men, doubtful whether or not the du-
ties be properly performed. True, they may be
performed as the law prescribes, which may sa-
tisfy some consciences; but a law which substi-
tutes its hard and invariable rule—whieg is, after
all, only the dictate of some one man's judgment
unacquainted with the circumstances which ought
to decide the case—a law which substitutes its
own bard and invariable rule for the reason and

judgment of individuals under the influence of
circumstances, must be injurious to ' the commu-

nity.

We might quote further, as illustrations, our
Custom-house and Excise duties, which, giving
power to the Government to raise money by cer-
tain methods, impose on it the irksome duties,
alike injurious to the morality and prosperity of
society, of watching over the arrival and depar-
ture of every ship, and making it responsible for
the national commerce, and of interfering with
and prescribing every species of manufacture sub-
ject to Excise regulations, and so making it re-
sponsible for the national manufactures ; but we
have for the present referred to cases enough to
illustrate the general principle, and make men
doubt, we think, whether the powers created by
numerous laws, which impose corresponding du-
ties, not imposed on man by nature, are not
equally burdensome to the authorities, and
equally noxious to the people.

The nomination of candidates for Walsall is
expected to take place on Monday, and the elec-
tion on Tuesday next. We have therefore yet
time to say one encouraging word to the honest
and true electors. If anything can inspire men
with noble thoughts, and make them spurn all
low and base considerations, it is the conviction
that they are acting under the eyes of an intelli-
gent public, which expects such conduct of them.
We will quarrel with no man for his honest
convictions, however sorely we may lament
his error ; but the elector who, in such
a cause, gives a vote from bribery or fear, who
suffers respect for any individual to overmaster
his own solemn conviction of what is due to the
public, ought to be handed down to posterity with
the utmost disgrace. Care will, of course, be taken
to publish the names of the voters, and high
honour will be, bestowed on those who, surmount-
ing local and personal predilections, give an
honest vote for a public cause. We have no fear
for the result. We cannot conceive that the men
of Walsall will make the name of that borough a
bye-word to all future time. They are placed in
the front rank of one of the holiest contests that
ever engaged the zeal of patriots, and the
bulk of the nation cheers them on to victory.
Down with the bread-tax !is the emphatic rallying
cry under which they march to an assured and
glorious triumph.

The Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the
borough of Leicester have petitioned Parliament
to put a stop to the compulsory levying of
Church-rates upon Dissenters, and for abolishing
the Ecclesiastical Courts. That these Courts
have not been long since abolished is disgraceful
to the intelligence and the boasted liberality of
this country, They are part and paved of the
Star Chamber, and ought to have been swept
away with it. If we must have a connection be-
tween Church and State, let the connection be
complete. If we are to have but one Christian
code, let us have but one civil and criminal one.
With our pulpit uniformity, we have a right to
insist on uniformity in the administration of the
laws, and in the laws themselves, The Church,
in enacting and enforcing laws unknown to the
State—in claiming a right to exercise a separate
and independent jurisdiction over the minds and
bodies of men—annuls the connection between
herself and the State. She places herself above
the Constitution, and assumes the privilege of ex-
ercising a right to which the QUEEN, Lords, and
Commons, and the Judges in her MAJESTY'S
vil and criminal Courts, are alone competent.
Now, such a state of things cannot continue. If the
Church looks to the State to uphold, what she o,lls
her rights, she must appear in the ordinary courts
of justice to uphold and defend them. Her Courts
into which men enter as flies into the meshes of
the spider's web, to be blood-socked and de-
voured, must be swept from the face of that earth
whose soil they moisten with the tears of such
victims as the poor widow YOUNG. They are
neither courts of equity nor justice? but dens of ec-
clesiastical rapine and prelatical persecution ; and
nothing will tend more completely to alienate
the minds of the working classes of England
from the Established Church than any attempt
on the part of the priesthood to save them from
that extentrinatiotr to whith the voice' of public
justice has doomed. them.

How humble are the instruments with which
GOD sometimes works for the confounding of in-
justice! A poor shoemaker, a weaver, and a pen-
nyless widow, have broken the sword of spiritual
tyranny, irresistible by Prince or Noble since the
days of the Norman Conquest. What no com-
bination of lay Lords was ever able to accomplish
has been virtually effected by JOHN THORO-
GOOD, WILLIAM BAINES, and SARAH YOUNG.

The last Report made by the Directois of the
London and Brighton Railway, together with
the explanations made by Mr. HARMAN, the
Chairman, give a favourable view of the progress
and cost of this important line. The works have
been carried on with such spirit and success that
the line to Hayward's Heath will be opened by
Midsummer, and throughout the whole extent
by the folio-wing Autumn. It is satisfactory also
to find that the money required to complete the
works will not be more than two-thirds of the
sum anticipated at the last meeting, namely,
400,0001., in place of 600,000/. The Company,
on the opening of the line; will start eighty car-
riages, with twenty-two engines, and at the same
time be prepared to lay down more if wanted to
accommodate the numerous visitors that will
flock to this favourite watering-place, not only
from London, but from the heart of the king-
dom. A journey from Birmingham to Brighton
may then be accomplished in about the time now
occupied in going from London and, consider-
ing the vast population residing in the interior of
the country, within the same distance, it maybe
safely calculated that the traffic in that direction
will be greatly increased. We confidently trust
the misunderstanding with Mr: GOLDSMID, as to
the Shoreham Line, will be arranged without
legal proceedings, as we cannot see on what
principle of equity or justice, he can come for-
ward and object to any species of traffic what-
ever, after the price for the site of the station
had been accepted. He might as well make an
exception to, Chartists, Repealers, or any political
or religious sect not of his way of thinking, pass-
ing near his property.

The whole of the French Journals of Tuesday
have reached us. They all notice the seizure of
the journals on the previous day for the Piiblica,
doh of forged letters 'attributed to the King of
the French. These Journals will be prosecuted
both for the crime of forgery, and for an attack
upon the personal character of the Sovereign.

The Chamber of Deputies was occupied on
Tuesday with the Fortifications Bill. M. Gunor
supported the measure in a long and able speech.
M. GARNIER PAGES opposed the Bill, and proved
very clearly that following the examples of
fortified towns in Germany, cited by M. GUM);
would be to reduce Paris to a level with these
gloomy fortresses, in the cultivation of arts,
sciences, and letters. M. TRIERS followed M.
GARNIER PAGES, and was speaking when the
mails left for London. As reporter of the Com-
mittee he was in favour of the Bill. A summary
of the speeches of MM. GUIZOT and GARNIER
PAGES will be found in another part of The Sun.
M. THIERS, not having concluded the delivery of
his speech, we reserve any report of it till to-
morrow. _ _ .

The ablest opponent of the plan for fortifying,
or rather brutalizing, Paris, yet known to the
public has appeared in the person of Madame DE
GIRARDIN, the accomplished wife of M. E. DE
GIRARDIN,' for some time a member of the
Chamber of Deputies, and editor of the daily
journal La Presse. We regret that want of space
prevents us from transferring her brilliant expo-
sure of the consequences,' of surrounding Paris
with walls and fortresses, to our columns. But
we must find room for an extract or two. Hear
this lively and patriotic Frenchwoman :
With us this question is not only a political question,

it is a question of nationality, humanity, and spirituality ; 1
awl we view with terror a project which tends to stifle in !
Paris the naseo.r.t r.ign of in!elligeiA?.
A man of wit, M. Emile Deschamps, has said, " Of an
Athens you arc :ibout to make a Maubeuge." The re-.
mark is a charming and true one.
Be sincere : do you know of any fortified town in the
whole world where the mind works? There is none. Now,
la specialite, as traffickers say in our day, the Parisian
sperialite is the immense manufacturing of ideas ; Parisian
labour is a labour entirely intellectual. The other cities
track, apply themselves to politics or industry—Paris is the
only city that thinks. Paris is a philosopher; don't make
a soldier of it. Don't thrust it into an armour; it, heavy
euirass would embarrass its walks in ito reveries on the
destinies of the world. Don't put a helmet on its head;
ideas dread iron, and dare not arise beneath a heavy coif:
.feure. Bonaparte, who knew the helmet's effect on the
brain, never wore but a little bat. It is not a war of
France with foreign States that threatens. but a more ter-
rible battle, because it causes the loss of all others—a sul-
len and fatal struggle, a clandestine duel between violence
and reason, and between brutal force and thought.
Madame DE GIRARDIN next proceeds to show,
that to fortify Paris is to overthrow- the Consti-
tution, by proving it to be impossible that any
King could be otherwise than absolute in an at-
mosphere of saltpetre. To fortify Paris, and to
desire Loris PHILIPPE to remain a Constitu-
tional Sovereign, would, she contends, be about
as reasonable as to give a drum to a child and
bid him make no noise, or to open. a; cage, and
desire the bird not to fly out, because it is a
prisoner on parole. Madame DE GIRARDIN is
perfectly right. No monarch in a fortified capi-
tal, capable of giving laws to the nation by an
act of its mere volition, could resist the tempta-
tion of making himself absolute. With the
mounting on the last gun on the ramparts of
Paris expires the constitutional freedom of France.
This morning, at half-past twelve, Lord Granville went
in state to the residence of the Minister for Foreign Af-
fairs. When the Ambassador's equipage came to the
door a footman alighted to inquire of the porters if M.
Guizot was at home, and was answered in the negative.
The Minister had, in fact, just set out for the Tuileries;
Lord Granville immediately returned back.
I Ten minutes afterwards Count Appony, the Austrian Am-
bassador arrived, and did as Lord Grenville had done. As
he was crossing the Place de la Concorde, His Excel-
lency perceived the Prussian Ambassador, who was like-
wise going to the Foreign Office. The two carriages
drew up close to each other, and Count Appony doubtless
informed his colleague that M. Guizot was not to be seen,
for the Prussian Ambassador immediately turned back.
BERNE. J.N. 21.—The revolt having been suppressed
by the energy of the Government, the attempts of the re-
volutionary party show themselves in another manner.
A new Sarnian league is formed which proposes to attack,
by every possible means, the liberal course of the new
Vorort, or at least to create such embarrassments that
foreign diplomacy may have a pretext to interfere in our
affairs.—Le Commerce.