The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-26 00:00:00

AUGUST 26, 1841.,

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE

MANCHESTER CONFERENCE VINDICATED.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Sin—The General Synod convoked at Manchester fur
the consideration of our commercial economy, as it affects
the present -position of this country, is pregnant with im-
portant matter to all classes with respect to our home,
colonialyor foreign'relaticras: That it should therefore
.haVe'excited the animadversion's of the Times, and have
.prOvoked its malevolence, can in no wise be a matter of
astonishment to those who habitually watch the arbi-
trary, conduct and peremptory fiat of that usually able,
but.wayward and mischievous Journal.
A coarse .and witless report of the week's proceed-
ings has been furnished at intervals by their own
accredited Correspondent, as instinct with vulgar in-
ferences as it is indifferently inclined to facts,
and the whole preamble exhibits a malicious pre-
determination to misrepresent or censure what, in
its utmost efforts, it . could not repress. Every
calumnious observation that a corrupt ingenuity could
invent, or a wilful misapprehension supply, has been re •
sorted to to impugn the cAmsideration of a subject the bread
taxers dare not engage in, and to stifle the utterance of
truths it is their policy to decry and condemn. All this,
I trust, will be in vain. The character of the meeting—
the weight, situations, and influences of its participants—
will all tend to give at once a celebrity to the proceed-
irg3, calculated to strike deeply into the hearts of inte-
rested millions, and to put to defiance the low vitupera-
tion of a Journal set apart for no other purpose than as
a hireling to oppose every thing. that has a single ele-
ment of ,popular prosperity in it; of course, to the nar-
row interests of its proprietors, or interfering in even
the outer and more collateral possessions of a turgid and
luxurious aristocracy.

The time, however, I believe to be fast approaching
when those social enormities will be destroyed, when the
solicitation of thousands for relief to the common wants
of nature will be accompanied by a portentious reserva-
tion of outraged feeling, which, under the pressure of
famine, may break out into resistance, and demand that,
in the force of their desperation, which has been denied
to them in the fullness of their distress.

The frequent national appeals—aye, the very season
itself—seems almost to invoke an abrogation of these
most iniquitous Corn-laws : the aggregated testimony
of their impolicy from different countries, the biogra-
phical records of all great political economists of every
time and clime, are fraught with memorable objurgations
against any restrictive imposts upon-food for the people,
and it is only for the .pttisne and- pseudo economists of
t in the sustenance of their memorial and other
privileges, to project laws, which, by keeping up the
price of land, may hand down a crescent and improving,
rent roll to their heirs by primogeniture, with a con-
temporaneous security, that sinecures, or offices of
small need and great profits, are in store for the junior
branches when they require them, and all this whilst the
surrounding poor are experiencing present beggary, and
" Hope so long deferred " as indeed to " make the
heart sick.'

The state of the poor is in every way frightful. One
of the speakers at the meeting relates a conversation
with passing agricultural labourers, aeveral of whom
could not tell the price of meat per lb.; another, that he
bad not tasted animal food for two years, by
reason of his great poverty; a third, the father of six
children, that his family and himself lived for the most
part on potatoes, rendering the vegetable succulent by
" drinking part of the water they were boiled in !" What
a picture is here of miserable expedients to preserve life,
and all the result clear to a demonstration of an iniqui-
tous.law, made for the support of a small section of men,
and the increase of a wealth already monstrous to an
enormity. And all this is to be endured ! whilst Ame-
rica, with nearly her two millions'of acres of corn. grow-
ing land, is ready and willing to barter - the produce of
her superfluities for thecotton fabrics of Manchester, and
the mechanical commodities of Birmingham and Sheffield ;
but in consequence of restriction on one article of the inter-
change, this advantage is withheld,—the channels of im-
portation are closed, and, from the manufacturer to the
operative, they are on the road to beggary, without pros-
pect of improvement.
Let those, therefore, who heartlessly scoff at the want
of national prosperity, and declare instances of indivi-
dual destitution to be only the fate of things in great
countries—the influxes and the refluxes of the tide of
prosperity exciting either natural advantage or popular
discontent,—let them learn to be wise in time, and re-
flect upon the consequences of a bad harvest, greater
scarcity of food, increased penury, and perishing fami-
lies, where abundance should only be ; and all
this with the growing intelligence of a people
well informed of the causes of their gnawing
indigence, and independent of the thraldom and vassalage
of the landowner, who can only lord it over a few serfs,
whom not half a century of disseminated useful instruc-
tion has served to manumit them from feudalism, or
strike off the prejudices of our almost prirnative ignorance
of their own privileges as intellectual and responsible
beings. Let such scoffers, I say, beware of placing any trust
upon so hollow a philosophy. Above all, let them keep
their eyes steadily upon the cause, progress, and matu-
rity of the French Revolution, and bear in mind that,
however memorable for unrestrained atrocities those
times were—however deplorable to the philanthropist
the sacrifice of life and property—those times form a
close, and flowing prototype of our own in the arrogance
and sympathetic disregard of her " ancient regime" until
it grew past popular endurance—and that, if the general
resentment had stayed at the almost entire deportation
of an aristocracy, too oppressive to govern, and too re-
morseless to be kind, historians might have represented
the French Revolution as the result of a deprecated but
imperative resistance to powers which had outgrown
themselves, and by giant encroachments had become the
scourge of the nation to which they belonged, the spoiler
of every political and civil prerogative, and the wanton
contemners of all the reasonable obligations from man to
man, like distant clouds that look dark upon the ho-
rizon, and are hurrying up by the tempest to the me-
ridian ere they burst—lawful constraint will be fomented
by the agitation of the political hurricane into lawless
rebellion; and the flood=gates of natural resentment
once let loose, it will be well if that merciless oligarchy
—the people's rulers—be not engulphed irrecoverably in
the deluge, and become a warning and monumental
record of national immolation, to the misdoers of suc-
ceeding times. Yours, respectfully,
Liverpool, Aug. 23, 1841. ALCIBIADES.

INSOLVENT DEBTORS' COURT.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
SIR—It is high time that public atention should be
awakened to the constitution and practice of the In-
solvent Debtors' Court. In each respect it appears to
me to be peculiarly defective, and to call for an imme-
diate legislative remedy. The subject is one of great
iirlportance'te. both creditors and debtors, to whom the
decisions of the Court are too often equally' unsatisfac-
tory. The predominance of the agency of evil over that
of good is strikingly exemplified in its proceedings.
Numerous instances might be adduced in support of this
proposition, but then they would encroach too much on
your valuable space.
The Insolvent Debtors' Court can be regarded only in
the light of a Court of Equity, and ought to be governed
upon principles analogous to those of other Courts of
Equity. But it is tied down and fettered by the pro-
visions of a Special Act of Parliament. It is true there
is what is termed the " Discretionary Clause," * which
gives the Commissioners greater latitude, but under
which injustice is as often done as justice. No man can
possibly divine, when an insolvent steps into that Court,
when the issue of his case may be. The probability
is, the greater the knave, the greater the chance of es-
cape. An honest debtor cannot be certain he will not be
remanded ; and a rogue has many facilities to assist him
in getting off. In many cases, he has only to swear
lustily, and he walks out a free man. My experience,
it least, has taught me that such is too generally the fact.
If I were asked how the Court works, I should re-
ply, in the words of one of the Grave-diggers in Ham-
let, i.e., "It does well for 'those who do ill." Few per-
sons could sit in that Court for a single day, without
being struck by its anomalies and inconsistencies.
These are frequently particularly observable in Bail
cases. I submit that the duty of the Court on those
occasions is simply to inquire into the sufficiency of the
bail tendered. It has no right to dip into the merits of
the case, and to prejudge it. It has no right to antici-
pate what an Insolvent's case may be merely from a
glance at the schedule. Nor is it justified in interposing
unnecessary obstacles to the admission of bail. Now, I
have known the Court to be guilty of all those acts ;
I have known a case in which the Insolvent, although
the bail was acknowledged to be unexceptionable,
brought up three times before he was discharged, upon
the most frivolous pretext, for no other apparent object
but to increase the expenses, or to gratify the caprice
of the Chief Commissioner, •by whom the ease in ques-
tion was heard.
The chief characteristic of the Insolvent Debtors'
Court seems to me to consist in giving impunity to fraud
and discouragement to honest poverty. Not that such is
invariably the case—if it were the Conrt would be a
worse nuisance than it actually is—but this is its general
feature. It is notorious that the most flagrant delin-
quents frequently escape, laughing in their sleeves at
their own dexterity ; while artless, unsophisticated, well-
meaning, but unfortunate debtord, as often come under
the ban of the Court. If an insolvent be opposed, and a
" case," as it is termed, be made out against him, no
matter however trivial or insignificant it may be, no
Matter how vindictive may be the motives, or animus of
the opposinc, creditor, still it is a "case," and the un-
happy insolvent 6 is liable to a remand for any period not
exceeding three years, to be determined by the humour
of the Court, under the discretionary clause.
As an instance of the severity sometimes exercised
under this clause (or clauses) it may be mentioned that
it is only a short time since an aged man, nearly seventy,
in an ill state of health, and who had been already in-
carcerated for a period of fourteen years, was adjudged
to a further imprisonment of two years, a judgment
which will probably prove equivalent to confinement for
life. The case was certainly a bad one, but not worse
than many others, in which insolvents have been either
discharged altogether, or subjected to a much lighter re-
mand ; and the advanced age and ill-health of this insol-
vent might surely have pleaded in favour of a judgment
less severe.
Ido not impute corrupt or improper motives to the
Commissioners ; but it is quite evident that younger and
more vigorous intellects are required to conduct the
business of that Court ; and I have seen cases in which it
was difficult to divest oneself of a belief that the Court
had been warped by an undue bias. The purity of our
legal Courts should be like that of Caesar's wife, not only
unsuspected, but above suspicion.
There is one other point to which I must allude,
especially as I consider it, perhaps, the most important
part of the whole subject. Whatever abuses may pre-
vail, whatever grievances may exist, under the jurisclic-
tien of the Court, there is no redress—there is no appeal
from its decision. From all other Courts an appeal is
allowed to a superior tribunal, up to that of the Privy
Council, or House of Lords and why should there not
be the same right of appeal from the Insolvent Debtors'