The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-29 00:00:00

EVI4-:NING EDITION.

bp a high price, puts an end to employment first
abroad and then at home.
It cannot be said that our manufacturers will
find an equal quantity of employment in supplying
our own agriculturists. Prior to the law, they were
supplied with all the manufactures they were able
WI willing to buy, and with all that they could
justly buy with their produce. TI).1.1 law by giving
them more of the manufactnte;s' produce, supplies
no more employinent. Toe taking away from the
manufacturers a !acre portion of their produce for
an equal quantiry of food is no compensation to
them for the u iminution of the foreign market. That
agriculture. is extended by thus limiting the manu-
facturers to the home market is not proved; but that
erhp'.orment is lessened in manufactures is a mat-
ter of fact. As employment is checked, the pro-
gress of population is checked, the demand for
fond is checked, and employment in agriculture is
checked. The effect of the Corn-:aw is,, therefore,
the reverse of that fancied by the Post,
It must be remembered that the ground is now
cultivated not for the sake of consuming, but of
selling the produce. It must be for the advantage
of the cultivators, therefore, to ;lave plenty and an
increasing body of customers. Without an in-
crease of customers there ven be no increase of de-
mand for agricultural 'produce, and no increase of
cultivation. To plr, a stop to the increase of em
Ployment in mar;ufactures, by impeding the impor-
tation of for.,a, is to stop the increase of the custo-
mers of the agriculturists, and to stop the increase
of cultivation. Instead, therefore, of augmenting
rtgricultinal employment, the Corn-law lessens it.
Fact% confirm the theory. Both manufacturers and
agriculturists, with every advantage of skill, great
Capital, and increasing knowledge, with unlimited
Manufacturing power, and with a soil only half
tultivated, with new inventions and new employ-
ments daily springing up in our manufacturing dis-
tricts, are plunged into great distress. Agricultural
labourers receive at most nine shillings a week,
and weavers not so much. Both classes are now
in fact starving, while in the United States, and
in various parts of Europe, food in abundance is
()tiered in exchange for our manufactures, but the
Corn.laws—tht barbarous Corn-laws, with a brutal
kid unwarranted tyranny, will not allow the ex-
change to
.be made.
The Corn-law obviously checks manufacturing
enn;:loymetit; and we have lived to see the best
tnntrived laws produce effects so totally opposite
10 what was expected of them, that we mistrust
those very much who tell us to expect from the Corn-
law any benefit whatever. Our mistrust is greatly
augmented when we find its advocates decrying
honesty, and mocking at all principles which stand
ill the way of the landlords' wishes. " Where
the interests of nations are concerned," says the
1)0st (meaning the rents of tke landlords), "abstract
Rules are madness ?" Who can measure the in-
terests of nations ? Are they momentary, of
this year, of ages, or are they eternal ? Do they
the.whole people, or only a class ? We are
free to confess that we know no means of ascer-
taining the interests of nations ; but we know that
this phrase is continually in the mouths of those
*lto arc intensely studying their own interest. The
faculties of man are adapted to promote his own
t‘elfare ; but to measure the interests of nations is
°4ly given to Him to whom all time is as one
ibunletn, and all space as one point. We distrust
those who..pretend to promote the interests of
:illtinns, and we retreat from them with apprehen-
o
n when they add that in promoting these in-
r".ts abstract rules are madness.

What arc abstract rules ?—the deductions of
t°ll)e individual mind ?—the crotchets of some ty-
rant ? No ; they are the gathered experience of
ages put into a few clear sentences. " Thou shalt
"ot steal ;" " Honesty is the best policy ;" " Do
!into others as you would be done untu ;"—these
re the abstract rules—the hoarded wisdom of ages,
'Phich, the Post says, must be set at nought to
promote the interests of nations. At the same
use it admits the propriety of the rules it will set
4t, naught. "We cannot dispute," it says, " the
‘l)atract reasonableness of the owner of any com-
modity taking it where be can get the most of
;11°tIler commodity in exchange for it. We con-
:33 the superior simplicity of the free-trade sys-
ttn." It is reasonable to .allow an owner of a
il°ll.ltriodity. to sell it,.where.he likes, or to do what
1! likes with his own. All the owners of commo-
I 'ties like that ; and the agriculturists and land-
:l:44 would resist stoutly all attempts to make
thela dispose of their commodities at places where
theY could not get a sufficient price for them. Why,
I en, should they violate, in the case of the menu-
.l4eturets, the abstract rule—" Do as you would be
`4)lte unto ?" The landowners violate that rule, be-
;llse they expect to gethigher rents by the violation.
Ilhey have despised the other principle of " Ho-
-I,4ty is the policy," though they begin to feel, we be-
e, that that it is so. They take a slice off the widow's
94f• and the orphan's cake by a tax ; they covertly
male the small loaf of the industrious labourer
r"ller still ; they, by means of a law, break the
t
°lmlttandment which says " Thou shalt not steal."
These are the sort of abstract rules, the funda-
111ental principles of morality, which the Post says
it
is madness to observe when the interests of na-
Illns are concerned. The thief and the murderer
eat, •
just the same when their own interests are con-
ttned• We agree with the Quarterly Review,
that
t nothing which is morally wrong can be (at any
or under any circumstances) politically right.
4astead, therefore, of its being madness, it would
he wisdom to act on the abstract rules which the
Post despises, and it is no better than roguery to
Bet them at naught. That the Corn-law is a vio-
lation of honesty and justice we have proclaimed
again and again, and that it does not answer the
expectations of those who, from a mere fancied ex-
pediency, have trampled the abstract rule, " Thou
°tall not steal," under foot, has been quite as often
Ilentonstrated. Being neither expedient nor just,
there can be no terms too strong in which to de-
tit:lance and hold it up to the withering indignation
°I all honest and humane men.

The agitation of the Chartists in Great Britain,
4.i'd of Mr. O'CONNELL for Repeal in Ireland ; the
demands of the Anti-Corn-law League, and the
;°nsiderable progress already made by the Leeds
tef°rm Association ; the new Association which
has
sprung up in Ulster, and the old .Associations
°f Dissenters in Scotland, which have warmed
again
into life, all tend to show that the bulk of
he people will not settle down in contentment, with-
Ut some great further reform. As Mr. MARSHALL
said at Edimhtugh, " they must have more power,
13,r they must have less."
of T
thhey must be enabled to
"IP themselves up out e dreadful quagmire of
Poverty and misery, in which they are plunged, or
they must be effectually fixed there without the
Dower to struggle for their liberation. Either a
complete despotism must be established, or there
'Mist be a great extension of freedom. To halt mid-
'o4), between China and the United States is iin-
D°ssible. The agitation getting up in many places,
aild on many subjects, forbids the hope of rest, and,
If Our statesmen are resolved to concede nothing
route to the people, they must prepare to renew in
England the coercion they were obliged to give up
In Ireland.
A great deal, however, will depend on the course
taken by the several parties who are now beginning
to bestir themselves. United, they are strong enough
tO Command their own terms ; disunited, and yet

' aggressive, they will only alarm arid provoke a
powerful adversary, who will crush them
singly, and secure a proud triumph for the
landed aristocracy and the State Church. At
present, we confess, we see no prospect of their
union. The Protestant Dissenters have, in many
cases, as strong a dread of the Irish Catholics as
the Churchmen, and to bring these two bodies to
act cordially in concert would be almost impossible.
Many of the Chartists look on the middle classes
who now propose to agitate for household suffrage
as their bitterest enemies, and they have declared
against that agitation as only intended to beguile
them from the Charter. The Anti-Corn law agi-
tation they have described in similar terms. Again,
the Anti-Corn-law League and the Reform Asso-
ciations, though their objects are not incompatible,
do not propose to run them down together. All
the different parties who are discontented, and who
are now agitating for some improvement or other,
though they are one and all opposed to some of the
exorbitant claims the priesthood, or some of the
exorbitant power of the landed aristocracy, have no
intention apparently of working together to obtain
their common end. In their disunion their opponents
find safety. They might, however, learn wisdom
from experience. According to the testimony of
all writers, liberty must be wrung by force from the
iron hand of power. It is always ready and wining
to crush those who excite its dread.

We should like, then; to impress on the seve-
ral parties and persons who are now forward in pro-
moting these several agitations the necessity of great
caution. They have no time to lose we admit.
Parliament will soon assemble, and if they are to
have any influence on its deliberation they must be
prompt in their resolves. Most of the objects which
they propose, save and execpt •Repeal, which ap.
pears wholly imptacticable,Land worse than useless,
are consistent with each other, and may be obtained
one after another, by agreeing as to which they will
first demand.

A settled and combined plan of operations
amongst all Reformers was never more necessary
than now. We see amongst them, however, no
master mind chalking out the course which they
should pursue, laying dOwn the great principles of
the future regulation of society, and pointing out
the gradual and practical means by which they
may be carried into effect. Dissenters justly de-
mand complete religious freedom, manufacturers
want flee trade, some want freedom of opinion,
others to be set free from the improper control of
property. Great are the struggles now beginning,
and it should be the business of influential men,
regardless of their own particular views and parti-
cular wishes, to deliberate how these struggles may
best be guided for the general and common
good. That measure whatever it may be—
Corn-law abolition, Household Suffrage, the
separation of the Church from the State—which
can be most easily won, and which will unite most
Reformers in demanding it, should be the first
thing set about. Be it what it may, to carry it
will render the attainment of the next object much
easier. We shall probably recur to this subject
again and again, before the meeting of Parliament:
at present we bid the Reformers out of doors to think
of the means of union, and they will be speedily
thereafter successful within the walls of Parliament•

The insidious and fatal inroads which certain of
the Bishops, but more particularly those priests
called the " Oxford divines," are making on the
purity of the reformed religion, have naturally
awakened the fears of true Protestants, and excited
anxious inquiries respecting the faith and doctrines
of the Puseyites. Many letters have been ad Ij
-
dressed to us on this
,important subject, some of
them for information, !otherS concurring in the
opinions re have given of the new sect that has
sprung up in the bosom of the Church, and justly
denouncing Pusey ism as more dangerous than open
Popery. Those who are still ignorant of the
fact that the Oxford divines, and a large body of
the officiating clergy, are anxious to be again re-
ceived into the bosom of the Roman Catholic
Church, will find some alarming information in
another column, under the head " What is
Puseyism." It consists of extracts from the
writings of a professing Protestant prelate, a
Bishop of Exeter, in the times of Charles
11., when both the Sovereign and his successor
were preparing the way ,for the restoration of the.
Catholic faith ; . and when, as now, a portion—

though a very inconsiderable portion—of the
priesthood were imbued with Catholicism. In all
the striking features of the Roman Catholic
Church, the doctrines of Bishop SPARROW mainly
agree ; confession, absolution, the ceremonies at •
the altar, the position of the priest, at one time
urning his face to the people, and at another to
this relic of Judaism and Popery, the Divine autho-
rity claimed by the Bishops, whereby they make
the Book of Common Prayer and the Canons, the
works of erring man, equally binding with the
Bible—these, and many more, arc so purely
Popish that Catholics, with all their skill in nice
religious distinctions, can scarcely perceive a differ-
ence. Nay, the main point on which the two re-
ligions are supposed to disagree is, for good reasons,
no doubt, at present left in abeyance. Were these
doctrines so alien to Protestantism cherished only
by a few fanatical monks in the sequestered clois-
ters of Oxford, the evil would be comparatively
small ; but when we find them adopted by many
of the working clergy, and above all when it is no-
torious that the Primate of all England winks at
these Popish proceedings, and a second Bishop of
EXETER is treading in the footsteps of Dr. SPA R-
ROW,-when we see the clergy of the Establish-
ment refusing Christian burial to all those baptised
out of the pale of the Catholic and Anglican
Church, when Bishops in the House of Lords de-
nounce the reformed Church of Scotland as no
Church, and claim for themselves and Popish pre-
lates only the hereditary right of succession to the
Apostles, with all their divine authority and in-
spiration, that man must indeed be morally blind
who cannot see the awful danger now threatening
to overwhelm the Protestant faith. This doctrine
of apostolical succession is of itsc:f pregnant with
mischief. It confers all spiritual power on the
priesthood, it rejects private judgment as regards
the great truths of Christianity—it makes the
priests the only interpreters of the Bible, since they
alone possess the gifts and graces conferred on the
Apostes by the Founder of our faith, and it is a t
the same time in direct opposition to one of his most
solemn commandments to all his followers, "Search
the Scriptures—they testify of me." Dr. M'CntE,
in his life of K Nox, thus denounces this absurd
claim to the gifts of the Apostles :—" The Papists
represented Kxox, and other reformed ministers,
as destitute of all lawful vocation. In the same
strain did many hierarchical writers of the English
Church afterwards learn to talk, not scrupling, by
their extravagant doctrine of the absolute necessity
of ordination by the hands of a Bishop, who de-
rived his powers by uninterrupted succession from
to invalidate and nullify the orders of
theall the Apostles,
reformed
ortied Churches, except their own ; a doc-
trine which has been revived in the present enlight-
ened age, and unblushingly avowed and defended,
with the greater part of its absurd, illiberal, and
horrid consequences."
With these rem-rks we leave the " extracts,"
which embody the mall of the Puseynes, to the
serious consideration of our Christian readers, hav-