The Sun.
London, England, 1840-03-13 00:00:00

subject ; from which it is to be inferred that war is not ,
to be declared, and that it is expected the exhibition of I
force will bring Mr. LIN and his Emperor to terms.
It may be inferred, too, from a cautious answer given
by Lord JOHN RUSSELL to Mr. AGLIONBY, that the
LORD CHANCELLOR is to introduce a Bill for consti-
tuting two new Judges in Equity.
Some other interesting conversation took place, for
which we refer to our report.
Lord ELIOT, after a short debate, carried a mo-
tion against Sir F. TRENCH, by 136 to 86, that the
Bude Light had not been fairly tried ; that the pre-
parations for giving it a fair trial after Easter be com-
pleted in the recess.
On the motion of Mr. SLANEY a Committee was ap-
pointed to inquire into the circumstances which influ-
ence the health of large towns.
Mr. HUME obtained returns to show the increase of
beer-shops in Monmouthshire and the amount of punish.
went in the navy.
The report of Mr. BAINES'S resolutions concerning
First Fruits and Tenths was thrown out by 54 to 46.
We expected nothing else. It was only a temporary
triumph, which the Tories suffered the Hon. Gentle-
man to gain. To provide for the religious instruc-
tion of the people by the revenues of the Church
would be contrary to the tenor of their whole poli-
tical existence. They and the priesthood use the
Church to take money from the people, and we should
have no priesthood, so says the Rev. SIDNEY SMITH,
were the Clergy not allowed to revel in the spoils of
those funds which our pious but erring ancestors meant
to devote to the religious instruction of the people.
The Horse-racing Bill was committed, and the
Mutiny Bill read a first time. At a Quarter to Seven
the House adjourned.

At a pro-Corn-law meeting, held at Stratton, in
Cornwall, on last Friday, a Rev. Mr. RUDALL
appeared as the advocate of the starvation laws.
In our Journal yesterday we published the commu-
nication of Dr. PYE SMITH, to the Secretary
of the Corn-law League ; and the Dissenting
Clergyman heartily joins the League,and
says "it appears highly proper that petitions
from Christian congregations to the Legisla-
ture should be set up. If any general
measure of that kind could he put into progress,
I would immediately propose it to my congregation,
and I have no doubt of its being adopted."

This contrast between the Rev. Mr. RUDALL
and Dr. PYE SMITH may be taken as an index to
the conduct of the great bulk of the State-paid
priesthood, and the ministers who depend for sup-
port on the voluntary contributions of their congre-
gations. The former, with some rare exceptions, like
that of Mr. SPENCER, are in league with the
country gentlemen to pinch and starve the
people ; the latter unite with the manufacturers and
the great multitude to demand a change in the
most un-Christian law that ever was enacted. The
motives of the Dissenting ministers cannot be
impugned ; the trifle they would gain by the abo-
lition is so small that they can have no interest
in it except what flows from the desire to see the
people prosperous, virtuous, and happy. The in-
come, however, of the State-paid parsons depends
on the price of grain. They tremble for their rent-
charge ; and they vote for starving the people from
motives as purely sordid and selfish as those of the
andlords.
If there be only ten quarters of wheat to supply
the wants of 100 people, its price will be consider-
ably higher than if there were twelve or twenty quar-
ters. If by Corn-laws, therefore, the price rises
Ito 80s., and the tithe-owner has one of those
quarters to sell, or is to receive as a rent-
charge
the price of one, he will have Bs. If, by
the abolition of Corn-laws, a plentiful supply
of corn which pays him no tithe be brought
in, and the price of wheat falls to 405., he still
having only one quarter to sell, or to receive the
price of one quarter, will get only 4s. Thus the
tithe-owners quite as much, if not more than the

landowners, hive a direct interest in maintaining
the Corn-laws. Just in proportion as the price
rises from excluding foreign corn, so is the tithe-
owner enriched—just as the price falls from
admitting'foreign corn is he impoverished. Hence
the State-paid, tithe-fed parsons have one and all a
strong pecuniary motive for upholding the starvation
laws, and therefore they uphold them.
It will be in vain that they conjure up reasons
to prove the contrary, and assert that they wish to
benefit the people ; nobody who knows the power
of interest to suggest thoughts and bias the mind
will believe them. Their motives must be sus-
pected, and their religious doctrines and teaching
will share the suspicion which their advocacy of
the Corn-laws will throw on their sincerity.
To the people at large the same facts suggest a
consideration equally important, though of a

. .
different character. The paying a priesthood by
tithes is obviously a bribe for them to
give, as far as they can, the sanction of religion to
legal plunder. The endowment encourages dis-
honest teaching and dishonest conduct, and to es-
tablish a priesthood paid by tithes, is like hiring a
mercenary army to devastate our homesteads.

One of the assertions with which the Rev.
Mr. RUDALL and the bribed advocates of the
Corn-laws endeavour to cheat their own minds
and the minds of their hearers is, that if foreign
corn be brought freely in, our own land will go out
of cultivation. Why should it ? The expense of
cultivation will be reduced to the full extent of the
reduction in the price of corn. The whole real
necessary expense consists in the payment of labour
of one kind or another, and how the reduction in the
price of labour could make the land go out of
cultivation we cannot imagine. The real ef-
fect of the abolition would be certainly
to make the farmers give a greater quantity of corn
for labour than at present. More food would be
generally offered for labour, in consequence of the
competition ; and the farmer would have to give
more, but he would take that quantity from the land-
lord's rent and the tithe-owner's rent-charge.

We admit to Mr. RUDALL that the owners
of rent and of tithes would suffer from
the abolition ; but they constitute at most
one-fiftieth part of the population, and their
interest must give way to the command-
ing interests of the other forty-nine parts. Perish
rent ! perish tithes I say we, if they be put into
competition with the public prosperity and with the
progress of the Nation, and let the people live. To
what a fearful combat do those who put up rent
and tithes as the obstacles to supplying the people
with food expose them. To tell the starving people
that rent and tithes prevent them having food, is to
spur them on to struggle for the annihilation of
the landholders and the priesthood.
We must add that we do not believe cheap
corn will cause the land to go out of cultivation.

If corn will not fetch in the market what it costs to
grow it, it wiN not, we admit, be grown ; but corn
is sure to raise its own market, and the selling price
of it can never be for any length of time below the
cost of production. In 1835 and 1836 corn was
grown at a great cost, and sold very cheap, a little
less was probably, therefore, sown ; but what dis-
tricts of England were deserted and left untitled ? In
those years all the outgoings of the farmer, rent,
tithes, &c., were formed on the scale of prices sup-
posed to be established by the Corn-laws ; all his
income was measured by harvests more abundant
than mouths, under our restricted system, could
consume. Prices fell nearly cent. per cent., and
yet no great portions of England were throvm out
of cultivation.
Nobody expects that the free importation of
foreign food will reduce the price of wheat below
the averae of 1835 and 1836. Why, then, should
the farmers suffer the land to go out of cultivation,
when their
outgoings as well .
Of all the as their income will
be regulated byfl an approximation to natural prices ?
as-
sertion that the land
assdertions that are made by rent-
owning landlords,e
the farmers and the leafbEounrgelr
tithe-owning priests, the as-
asntdo
gwoilloubet souffferedb)
cultiva-
tion, because of the free importation. of food from
abroad finds the least • justification onfrom experience.
Such a thing never did happen, and never will
happen.