The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-21 00:00:00

PART tECOND.

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LONDON:
THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, IE4I.

We are sometimes reproached with speaking
harshly of the landed gentlemen, and with attribut-
ing to them improper motives. One of their lead-
ers, however, whom we used to consider, beforc he
sacrificed to party his understanding as well as his
consistency, a very clever clear-headed man, will
bear us out in all that we have said against the
landed gentlemen. The amount of our reproaches

has been that they have sought to enrich themselves
utterly regardless of the public welfare. They have
a law to raise rent, which ruins trade and
min v • the people. Now this is what Sir JA AI ES
10 - 111 said to the landowners in 1826, in his
entitled " Corn and Currency," when he
i .
;',4fik • ngermg about hims 1:: of the' ingenuous-
I- •

ness of youth, and some of the honesty of a man
who has never been in place :

Since the year 1815, when the prohibition of the im-
portation of foreign corn, excepting at a fixed price
was first substituted for a protecting duty, your con-
stant and avowed object has been to raise the price of
agricultural produce in this country greatly above the
level of the continental markets ; the obvious effect of
'his has also been to raise the rate of wages, and to re-
duce the rate of profits. By the rise of wages the
labourer gains nothing, because, when corn is dear, all
the articles of first necessity are also dear. There
•
fore, though his wages be increased, his real reward is
not greater ; but by the diminution of profits, every
class of productive industry is deeply injured. For on
all hands it is allowed, that profits fall as wages rise,
and the capital of a nation is but the accumulation of
the profits of its inhabitants. Rents, however, are
raised by high prices, which force inferior soils into
cultivation ; since the lower the degree of fertility of
the worst land in tillage, which yields no rent, but only
reimburses the cultivator—the higher on all land of
superior quality, is the extra profit beyond the ordinary
return of capital, when expended on the worst. This
extra profit is rent, or, in the words of Mr. Mill,
" rent increases in proportion as the effect of the capital
successively bestowed upon land decreases." High
prices, therefore, by increasing rents, benefit the land-
lords, but they confer no advantage on the labourer ;
they are an injury to the productive, and a tax on the
unproductive classes of the community.—P. 10.

Sir JAMES GRAHAM, then, distinctly charges the
landowners with continually endeavouring to raise
prices that they might raise rents ; and he distinctly
avers that raising prices does not benefit the la-
bourers, and diminishes profits to the injury of the
capitalists. He charges the landowners who made
the law with making it for the purpose of putting
pelf into their pockets. He shows them that they
do this at the expense of the capitalists ; he proves
to them that they injure the manufacturers by so
doing; and Sir JAMES GRAHAM is now one of the
foremost advocates of that Corn-law which he de-
monstrates to be downright plunder and rascality.
It is a received axiom in political economy, that
capital is saved from profits. Very rarely is capi-
lal saved from rent, and still more rarely from
wages. But capital is at present the means of
giving employment to labour. Sir JAMES
GRAHAM, in the passage we have quoted, proves
that the attempt of the landowners to raise prices
lessens profits. Of course, therefore, it lessens the
means of saving, it lessens capital, it lessens the
means of employing the people, and it lessens
wages. All these arc the avowed consequences of
the Corn-law, which Sir JAMES GRAHAM now
supports. He therefore, and those who act
with him, support the tax on bread, we conclude
designedly, to obtain the ends of curtailing profits,
lessening employment, and injuring manufactures.
In another part of the same pamphlet we find
him setting forth, at considerable length, the im-
moralities of a • manufacturing population. They
are described as dissolute and idle, working two or
three days in the week, and living in debauchery
during the others. They are said not to be, like
the agricultural labourers, attached to their masters,
and not to be loyal to the Throne. Turbulence and
revolution are described to be characteristic of them.
Such being Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S opinion, and
the opinion of his class, in which Sir ROBERT
PEEL, as Sir JAMES GRAHAM shows by a quo-
tation from a speech of his, shares, and they having
passed, and now maintained a law, which lowers
profits, injures capitalists, and limits manufacturing
employment, are we not warranted in concluding
that the landowners, knowingly and designedly,aim
at the limitation or extinction of our manufactures
by the Curn-law. They wish to restore the supre-
macy of the landlords, and they endeavour, by
means of a law, to realize that wish.

The desire which one of their supporters lately
blurted out to destroy half our towns, thus
becomes of ominous importance, because it is con-
sistent with the plans and designs actually pursued
by those landowners who support the Corn-law,
though they want the candour of the Reviewer to
avow their object. What he said, however, expresses
their long and steadily pursued project. The ma-
nufacturing population is a new population, it car-
ries with it the germs of great political changes,
inimical to the supremacy of the landlords and
the clergy ; and therefore have these two classes,
knowingly and wilfully, combined to make and sup-
port a law which shall check the growth of manu-
facturing population, and secure their own power.
We distinctly charge them with that, and affirm
that our charge is proved by the language and
conduct of Sir JAMES GRAHAM.

If this be an approximation to truth—and the
outcry raised against Sir R. PEEL by the advo-
cates of the bread-tax, when he last Session said a
word in favour of manufactures from forgetfulness,
shows that it is—the manufacturers are extremely
foolish to bring before the Parliament evidences of
their own decay, in order to induce the Parliament
to relinquish the law. That is the very thing the
law was made to effect, and the more they com-
plain the more they delight the landlords, and the
more they confirm them in their resolution to main.
tain the bread-tax. On the same principle, we
begin to apprehend that what we thought the
strongest argument against the bread-tax, namely,
that it annually starves multitudes out of existence,
only the more strongly recommends the maintenance
of the bread-tax to the Conservatives and the
Clergy. It would seem from Sir JAMES GRA-
HAM'S remarks, that he and the rest of the sup-
porters of the bread-tax, have long been aware of
this effect, and on account of it cherish and preserve
the law. Our legislators, being chiefly landowners,
entertain an aversion for the manufacturing popula-
tion ; they ask with a sneer, as did Lord ASHBUR-
TON, if the whole land is to be covered with Man-
chesters and Birminghams, and they have taxed
the bread of the people to prevent it.

Parliament is about to meet, and those who
compose it stand arraigned before the public of high
crimes and misdemeanors against the country.
The language of accusation, not confined to one
journal, has resounded throughout the land. It has
been placarded on the walls of Walsall, and boldly
used in the agricultural districts. Extortion, robbery,
and murder are all ascribed to the law. Such lan-
guage is wholly incompatible with respect and
willing obedience. How can the Legislature re-
pel it ? How can it stifle the voice of
public
complaint ? Privilege, vast though it be, is unequal
to the task. Truth cannot be suppressed even by
files of soldiers. The charges and accusations can-
not be answered by the SPEAKER'S warrants. Yet
they must be repelled, or the Legislature will be
irretrievably damaged in public estimation ; its
power will he shaken, and the political fabric
founded on it will crumble to dust. There is but one
way to retrieve its character, and throw off the
charge with which it is branded, but one way to•
save the authority of the Legislature, and pre-
serve our political institutions, but one way to
appease the discontent of the people, and reconcile
them with the law-makers, and that way lies
through the total and immediate repeal of the
bread-tax. The landlords may point to their
pockets—we tell them that interests far dearer to
them, and dearer to us all, than any pocket in-
terests, are at stake, and that if they delay much
longer to do justice they -mill ruin the empire.

We have on several occasions dwelt on the im-
policy or folly of the Legislature meddling with
banking, with the circulation of promises to pay,
and with currency, which it obviously does not
comprehend. How can it ? The art of banking,
with all its consequences, is of yesterday's growth,
and is still in a state of rapid development. A
science of astronomy we have, because the objects
to which it relates are permanent, but a science

of banking we have not, and cannot have, be-
cause
the thing is not yet complete. It is, there-
fore, sheer folly in the ignorant gentlemen who
meet at Westminster, and in the equally ignorant
and equally presumptuous gentlemen who write
pamphlets, to be extremely anxious to lay down
laws for banking.
Many specimens of this folly have been laid be-
fore the public, such as the Bank Charter, making
a body of interested merchants the regulator of
the currency—the enacted lie, that the protnise to
pay is an actual payment—the restrictions on pri-
vate banks—and the sweeping away of small notes.
Banking in all its branches and consequences, in-
cluding the issue of promises to pay on demand, is
one of the common businesses of life, like selling
tea and sugar, or making hats and shoes ; it is a
portion of trade, like exporting woollens and im-
porting wines ; and if the Legislature may attempt
to regulate the business of banking, including
the issue of promises to pay on demand, we
cannot see a single reason why it should not
regulate every business even that of the
scavenger and the milkman—in the whole
empire. To be sure that would be impossible,
gigantic as may be the ambition of the Legislature ;
and tterefore we conclude that it ought to leave
every business alone, including the modern and yet
incompletely developed business of banking.
One of the arguments for interfering is to secure
responsible banks for the public. The Legislature
has been anxious to have large and wealthy concerns.
Private banks, banks set on foot by individuals,
have been discouraged by the law, and sneered at
by writers. It having been the object of our legis-
lation to secure wealthy banks, let us call the atten-
tion of the public to a proof of its failure to add to
the many others already on record. We quote the
following passage from an article by Mr. GILBA RT,
in the last number of the IVestminster Review :

The numerous banks in America are not the result
of free trade, but are the result of the Acts of the Le-
gislature. The State Legislatures have thought proper
to give a large number of charters, and of course there
is a large number of banks. Had the charters been
fewer, the banks would have been larger and more re-
spectable. The number of banks in England, too, have
been the resultof the interference of the Legislature. In
the renewal of the charter of the Bank of England in
1708 it was enacted, that no other bank having more
than six partners should have the privilege of issuing
notes. As the growing trade and wealth of the coun-
try required banks of some sort, and as banks having
more than six partners could not be formed, a great
number of banks, each not having more than six part.
ners, rose into existence as they were required by the
increasing trade and wealth of the country. Hence,
instead of having a small number of large banks, we
have had a large number of small banks.

If we look to Scotland, where banking has been free,
we find that the total number of private and joint-stock
banks is only twenty-eight. Banking has been free
beyond fifty miles from Dublin for the last fifteen years,
yet throughout that district there are only five banks of
issue, with the exception of the Bank of Ireland. In
England, where there has been, as we are told, a frenzy
in their favour, the joint-stock banks of issue are only
ninety-one, and probably they would have been less
numerous had not the law excluded them from London.
The capital which has been embarked in a number of
small local banks would have been invested in large
London establishments, and the place of the local banks
would have been occupied by branches of the London
banks. From these facts it seems fair to infer that
some of the small joint.stock banks and many of the
private banks will, in the course of the next twenty
years, be merged in larger establishments. The sup-
position that unlimited freedom of banking would lead
to the establishment of an inconvenient multitude of
banks, is wholly unsupported by the testimony of ex-
perience.

If chartering the Bank of England, and limiting
the number of partners, have had the effect of
preventing the establishment of solid and large
banks with numerous proprietors, having branches
in the country, the intention of the Legislature has
not been realised ; and in this, as in many other
cases, we find that the busy haste of the lawmaker
has far exceeded his wisdom.

The Supplement to the Malta I imes of the 6th
instant has the following important news from the
East :

By the arrival of the French steam-packet Tancrede we
have received advices from Constantinople to the 28:h ult.
from Smyrna to the 29:11 ult., and from Egypt to the
26th ult. The news from Constantinople is very impor-
tant, but may be given in a few words :—The Porte re-
quires Mehemet Ali to give up the Turkish fleet—to re-
duce his army and navy—to proclaim the Hatti Scheriff—
and then the Sultan will most probably reinstate him in the
Pachalic of Egypt, and cede to him its hereditary posses-
sion for his family. Admiral Walker has already left
Constantinople for Egypt, to take possession of the fleet.
Our Correspondent from Alexandria says—" that all
communication with Syria is cut off by the desert, and that
there is mach doubt as to the real position and move-
ments of Ibrahim Pacha. It is said ho has 37,000 troops
under him in pretty good condition somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Damascus, on which City be has leviod
very heavy contributions. Mehemet Ali had asked Ad-
miral Stopford to communicate pith his son to announce
to him the cessation of hostilities, and the Admiral had
kindly placed at his disposal the Hydra to convey the
letter."

We like not this form of dictating terms to the
PACHA, nor ought the Four Powers to permit it.
Having been invited by the Porte to interfere be-
tween the SULTAN and his vassal conqueror, and
having pledged themselves to certain conditions in
the exercise of that interference, they are bound to
fulfil them in the spirit in which they were made. To
talk of the indecency of preventing the SULTAN
treating one of his own subjects as he pleases is a
farce, now that the reduction of that subject to a
condition in which he can be the object of Impe-
rial vengeance has been the act, not of the Porte,
but of Foreign Powers. The SULTAN left the settle-
ment of the dispute between himself and M E LIEMET
ALI to the Four Powers. They, on behalf of the
SULTAN, offered conditions to MEHEMET ALI,
which, not being able to refuse, he;has accepted. The
principal of these conditions was that, on restoring
the fleet and evacuating Syria, the SULTAN would
grant him the hereditary administration, civil and
military, of the Government of Egypt. It now
appears that after MEHEMET ALI shall have given
up the fleet and evacuated Syria, the SULTAN will
consider about giving him the Egyptian Paclialic.
This will not do. When MEHEMET ALI
has complied with the terms proposed by the Four
Powers the hereditary administration of the Pa-
chalic of Egypt is his, not as a matter of Impe-
rial grace and clemency, but as a right. That'
right he derives from the convention made between
him and the representatives of the Porte, the Com-
manders of the British and Austrian blockading
squadrons. It would, therefore, be infamously un-
just, on the part of the Four Powers, to suffer the
Porte to violate the terms of that engagement.

" The transition from the school to the col.
lege," says Dr. Johnson, " is, to most young scholars, the
time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty,
and happiness." This is true; but it is a hope seldom
realized. Men look back too often with envy at the plea
sure of their early academical days, rather than with self.
congratulation at being freed from them. A public
school is, however, not always a happy place : it is so only
to the independent in fortune, while to those whose cir-
cumstances are narrow, it is an abode whose self-denial
and mortification are severely felt. A new novel, exhibit.
ing in powerful colours the contrast between the lives of
two students in the same college, and teeming with the
strongly-marked incidents of their after career, is on the
eve of appearance, entitled " The Schoolfellows."

EAST SURREY ELECTION.—The death of
Capt. Alsager has occasioned a vacancy for East Surrey.
A Liberal candidate will be in the field, and one who de.
serves and will obtain the support of the Reform interest.
The electors are therefore called upon to withhold their
promises, and to prepare for an active demonstration of
their strength, as essential to success.

The Earl of Verulam is about to erect a chapel
of ease to St. Michael's Church, St. Alban's, a place of
worship at the extremity of that pariah being much wanted.
The Hon. Miss Grimston has liberally contributed 5001.
towards the endowment of it, and the Vicar, Lord Fred.
Beauclerk, D. D., at the bead of a Committee, is actively
engaged in promoting this laudable object.

SINGULAR BAPTISMAL NAMES.--Jonathan
Collins, cotton spinner, at Heywood, has lately caused four
of his children to be christened in the following names,
at Si. Luke's Chapel, Heywood :—First, John Jonathan
George; second, Martha Maria Hannah Victoria; third,
Sergeant Hall Oliver Cromwell ; fourth, Camereska
Albert Napoleon Louis the Twelfth,

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