The Sun.
London, England, 1841-07-26 00:00:00

EVENING SUN

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS. '
!RON THE nATT.Y PAPERS OF SATURDAY.
GLOBE.—The Corn-marketis, in the language of the
trade, " creeping .up." Each successive market-day
brings an advance of 2s. per quarter ; and as there ap-
pears no indication of settled, seasonable weather, fears
begin to be generally prevalent that the crops will be
seriously affected both in quantity and quality by the
continued rains. Butchers' meat will also be yet dearer
in price by the great quantities of hay which have been
spoiled. Bread and meat, the main articles of consump-
tion for human food—the former essential to existence,
the latter to create strength for labour—are thus likely
to be for the next twelve months far above the average
prices, and consequently difficult of access to the poor,
even with sufficient employment at the ordinary. rates of
wages. But the prospect becomes more alarming when
viewed in connexion with the state of the labour market.
The weekly trade-reports from • the different manufac-
turing districts communicate the scarcely varied intelli-
gence of "no improvement." Distress exists to a dreadful
extent throughoutthe manufacturing districts. Thousands
of families in the principal manufacturing towns of the
northern districts, the seats of the principal staple pro-
ductions of the country, are reduced to a state of desti-
tution by want of employment. The demand for their
labour has gradually diminished, under the baneful in-
fluences of the restrictions which were imposed on
trade, for the imaginary benefit of the landed interest,
• until the evil has become general, and is rapidly ad-
eatieing in its progress to those results which were long
predicted as inevitable. Because these results
:ere, for a time, slow in their movements, and were
at intervals stayed in their march, and counteracted
by circumstances extraordinary in their nature, and
temporary in their duration, they were either sternly
lemed as the inventions of sordid interest, or laughed
et as chimerical—the dreams of dotage, or the pban-
tasins of insanity. Now that the elections are over, and
the ecstasies of delight in which the monopolists were
thrown be, their majority begin to subside, there are
evident indications of a lurking suspicion that the tri-
esmpa is likely to be followed by a drawback upon the
elories and the gains which were anticipated from it.
The most obstinate incredulity begins to be shaken ; and
the most inveterate sticklers for " protection to agricul-
ture," even though manufactures wither under its blight-
ing influence, begin to doubt whether the thing has not ,
;been carried too far. The accounts from the manufae-
taring districts, it is now admitted, are of a description
calculated to excite uneasiness. There is no reasoningwith
-Olinger. A starving man has a summary argument with
him who would attempt to convince him that he ought to
starve patiently. " Hunger," says the homely proverb, "will
~real: through stone walla" When men are driven to despe-
eation by starvation, not only in their oarn persons, but
in those dearer portions of themselves, their wives and
children, it is in vain to talk to them of the duty of su-
boraination to the laws, arid the necessity of patiently
`resigning themselves to the dispensations of Providence.
Wiehave invariably insisted, that it will be found impos-
afe to maintain the existing Corn-laws in seasons of
anmercial distress, arising, as that distress does, out of
e:ose laws, without endangering the public tranquillity
the security of property. IVescit plebs jejuna timere.
i bs and popular outrages are the necessary cense-
. uences of deficient food. 'Were the restrictions and
psohibitions upon foreign importation reduced, and a
moderate fixed duty substituted for the present
sliding scale, the supply of corn would bt regu-
eeed by. the demand, and its price would be
preserved from injurious and sudden fluctuations,.
which enable fraudulent speculators to tamper with the
eeerket, while the producers and the consumers become, in
ene. the victims of the system which is absurdly repre-
e !nod . as the protection of both. It is obvious to
era one capable of understanding the most simple
•esrangement of facts, that were corn allowed to be
need from abroad at a moderate fixed duty, the price of
an in a country so rich and industrious as England,
.7-enable Of producing manufactures suited to the wants
desires of every people, could neverrise to an seor-
•itant extent above the level of the surrounding markets.
When, therefore, prices rise enormously above this, their
e..tural level, as they are sure to do under our present
stem, whenever the home harvest is in any degree de-
aaent, the cause of the high price will be obvious to
tae whole world. Every one will see that the dearth is
net real, but artificial ; that the famine is the work of
_nese and not the visitation of Heaven. To assign such
eonsequences to the dispensations of Providence--dis-,
pensations which it would be unavailing to canvass, and
..impious to censure—is adding hypocrisy to cruelty : it
is the attempt of heart-hardening cupidity to conceal
the real character of its selfishness under the garb of
eietY ; and will provoke, as it deserves, the contempt
,: man, and the indignation of the great Being whom
i at once libels and insults. The suffering masses
i' the population are too well instructed in the
-awes of the distresses which they suffer, not to
eee that it is by the perverse policy of the Legis-
aseere, controlled and coerced by the landowners,
eet they are oppressed, and the means of their-exist-
,. eee compromised. Those who are prepared to defend
eteh a system must also be prepared to meet the coin-
Lotions and outbreaks of which it will not fail to be
411a.luetive. It is not in the nature of things that a
.t;t manufacturing population, like that of England,
-hould continue quietly to submit to a system which
;Arrows the market for their produce, and thus "de-
etives -them of employMent ; while at the same time
it compels them to purchase bread at a price so exor-
bitant as to force them to the confines of starvation.
But a deficient or greatly deteriorated harvest will
opetl the eyes of the farmers to the effects of the Corn-
:aws for the preservation of which the landlords com-
pelled them to vote at the recent elections with a rigour
Stever before exercised. A wet harvest would work
wonders in exposing the delusion of the " protection to
the farmers" afforded by the sliding scale ! A wet har-
vest would open the ports at a shilling duty ; and thus
_lie farmer be taught by the sharpest of all possible teach-
as—stern experience—that the system is unworthy of
eenfidence which is inoperative for protection when most
weeded. A prosperous manufacturing population will
always. be the best protection to the agricultural interest,
by consuming, in steady and constantly increasing quan-
teies, the different articles of agricultural produce. The
landowners themselves will eventually be taught, al-
:.hough, possibly, not until they also have purchased
•eisdom by calamity, that the state of things most likely
to be put in jeopardy, the property they have received
,rein their forefathers, is that which turns the trade in
fee first necessary of life out of its natural course.
STANDARD.—Our question—" Upon what pretence
'lo Ministers retain office in defiance of a vote of Parlia-
ment now ratified upon an appeal' to the people ?"
remains without an answer, or an attempt at an answer.
If any inconsistency could seem strange in the politics of
the Whig-Radical party, this obstinate refusal to meet
so plain a question would excite astonishment. It will
4-Pa remembered that upon the dismissal of the Whig-
Radical Cabinet in 1834 the Government was for
about a week or ten days conducted provisionally by
the Duke of Wellington, in attendance upon the.
return of Sir Robert Peel, absent in Italy, at the
time of the dismissal of Lord Melbourne and his
colleagues ;, and it cannot be forgotten with what affected
horror and indignation all the organs of the Whig-Radical
party denounced what they called the unconstitutional
anomaly of a provisional administration. But what is the
.anomaly of a provisional administration, compared with
the anomaly . of an administration conductins, the
• Government in defiance of a vote of Parliament ?
In what position is the Queen placed by such a • proceed-
ing ? Her Majesty is plainly treated as a cipher, or if
more, as the accomplice of her guilty advisers. But the
Queen is not a cipher—her Majesty is, and we trust ever
will be, the first power in the State ; not the sole power
indeed, but the first, and more than co-ordinate of either
House of Parliament. It is no abatement of her high
station and transcendent dignity to say that the consti-
tution confers this power with an expectation that it shall
be exercised in harmony with the deliberate sense of Par-
!lenient. Her Majesty is now placed in that exact posi-
tion in which, by the spirit of the constitution, she d
to
act for herself ; properly speaking, she cannot be said
to have any advisers in the crisis. The condemned
Ministers must not be heard to advise in their own.
ease. Her Majesty is,
therefore, left to the exer-
ereise of her own independent judgment--the only
counsel that has been offered to her is that of her Par-
liament, suggesting the dismissal of the men in office,
and that of the people echoing the voice of Parlia-
ment. How, then, can the most loyal and affectionate
construction of the retention of the - present Ministers
deny that the Queen disregards the advice of her Par-
}lament and the wishes of her people ? VP to the
• 19th of July it was impossible to interpose • the hype_
thesis that the people and the Parliament were at va-
riance, arid it might be said that the Queen could not
choose between them ; that hypothesis 'has, however,
been extinguished by Lord John Russell's admission
that the people have ratified the vote of the House
of Commons by " an overwhelming majority" at the
elections. Her Majesty can, therefore, now have -ato
difficulty—she now has to exercise her high function
with a full knowledge of the wishes of her loyal and
effectionate subjects. Were the Ministers loyal men—
honourable men—gentlemen we should not have to write
this at the present day. Before this they would have
. given to their Sovereign the grace of an early and ge-
nerous compliance with the wishes of her people ; but
that
they are not loyal and honourable men, or gen-
. I nnen, is proved by the whole course of their conduct
towards the Queen. They
began by charging her
‘XajestY as a writer of election squibs to serve their
. party ; when in difficulties they placed her Majesty and
her household between them and dismissal ; and from
first to last they have represented her as participating in
their own mean desires and meaner resentments, until
now, when they allow her to stand unconsciously her
part, in open and declared opposition to the expressed
wish of her Parliament and people , in short, they
have studiously laboured to incorporate. ei the Sovergn'
of the British empire as bound by the lowest ie-id
least respectable ties to the service of their party.
1T Queen Victoria is popular—and popular, we rejoice-to
say, she is in the highest degree—she owes her popu-
larity; altogether to her amiable and noble qualities,
and to the gallant and generous spirit of her subjects ;
for her Ministers have done all in their power to de-
grade her and render her odious; both as a Queen and
personally. The crowning effort in the war against
the Queen's influence and dignity is, howevresr,
. :he now retaining office. For this there is no a co-
. A (V.;y which the criminals dare to offer to iihe
public—none 'which they can dare to offer to the
Queen. They are dragging their unconscious Soverei
1
into a conflict with her Parliament and people. Th,l,y
are depriving her of the grace of acting as every mei n-
eer of the house of Hanover has acted in circumstane es
:similar to those in which her Majesty is placed—th ey
we presenting to her use the fatal Stuart preceden a.
This is their presenting
r—this is their claim to the charac-
ter of Theygentlemen will find, however, truth anal
loyalty will find their
IL
way
into the palace, despite of a
the wards rds set for their
exclusion
and truth once pr
nted to the clear and Powerful understanding of the
Queen, there can be no apprehension as to the result.
coiatnat.—There is, we believe, some hitch abaft

the Speakership. There ought not, however, to be
any. We are inclined to sneak as respectfully of Mr.
Shaw Lefevre, and to subscribe as frankly to the gene-
ral ability and impartiality with which he discharged
the duties of the post before, as any one, and f there
were no Conservative Member equally, or even better
qualified, we should be inclined to say, let well alone. ;
But such is by no means the case. A dozen Conser-
vative Members might readily be named equally, some
much better, versed in the law and customs of Parliament
than Mr. Lefevre, with the recommendation, and a strong
one it is, that as the majority of the House is decidedly
Conservative in opinion, the Speaker selected should be
one fairly representing that opinion. It should be recol-
lected,, moreover, that with the new Legislature Sir R.
Peel's plan, agreed to by resolutions of the late House of
Commons, for an improved mode of trying. and adjudging
upon disputed elections, will first come into operation.
Upon thisimproved system the Speaker is empowered to
nominate absolutely the first committee of the House which
constitutes a court of appeal in dernier resort, if we re-
member rightly ; and this committee, so nominated, is,in its
turn, empowered to select and appoint all other committees
for trying election petitions. As will readily be under-
stood from these circumstances the Speaker henceforward
will be invested with a juristiction and powers greatly
transcending those of all former occupants of the chair.
Now it is not to be endured that there should be a shadow
of a chance for the appointment on any committee of
such people as Sir George Strickland, for example, '
whose conduct on the Hilll election committee was no-
toriously such, that with Mr. Thesiger we should in-
fallibly challenge him if found on any jury, before
which a cause of our own was directed for trial. And
then the Lord Advocate and the Elliotts again ; who
can have forgotten the infamous Hawick case? One of
these Elliotts, we see, has the assurance, in a letter
in to-day's Times, to complain of the Lord Lieu-
tenant of Roxburghshire for, preserving the peace at
the late election. He talks abOut " indignation" at
" such crimes" as the employment of the military for
that salutary purpose. Where was his "indignation" at the
preceding election, when he and Lord Minto might have
seen, and did see perhaps, the Conservative voters thrown
into the river and treated with every violence and brutality
by the Elliot voters and tenantry ? Were he and his lordly
brother then " joking and laughing one moment, and
speaking seriously the next," whilst their own ferocious
mob was doing the business of the election for them ? No,
no, we must have no Stricklands, Rutherfords, or El-
liotts on Election Committees. Let them give place to
more honest and impartial men.