The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-03 00:00:00

the Poor-law Amendment Bill, and were occu-
pied with that during the remainder of the even-
ing. The Committee reached as far as the 30th
clause, and the House resumed.
Mr. LABOUCHERE obtained the appointment of
a Committee to inquire into the laws affecting
joint stock partnership. The House adjourned
at a Quarter to One o'Clock.

We were yesterday expressing our surprise,
to a London tradesman, that shopkeepers did
not take an active part in procuring a repeal of
the Corn-law; and we attributed their negli-
gence to indifference or apathy. " They are not
indifferent," was the reply ; " they are well aware
of the evils of the Corn-law, but they are afraid
of losing their customers. They do not know,
by engaging in the repeal of the Corn-laws, that
they may not affront some of those who deal with
them, and rather than run that risk they stay at
home and acquiesce in what they think wrong."
We believe that is a tolerably correct and la-
mentable description of London tradesmen.
We instantly thought of Mr. CURTIS'S balance
sheet, and we concluded that the men who are
generally afraid of losing a customer must be,
however fair their outside, approximating to his
uneasy and insolvent condition.
Our acquaintance, in these few words, described
a sad state of mental degradation and slavery !
A tradesman dare not bestir himself on a great
political question, lest he offend a customer. Has
the landlords' and priests' tyranny percolated
through all classes, and must no man act on his
own opinions unless he have first obtained their
sanction? The Chartists are above this mean-
-Less. If their opinions be erroneous, they have
the courage to express them. With all their tur-
:nilence and errors, they are honest and manly.
They leave their bread-winning occupations, fear-
, less of consequences, to give effect to their views.
They are noblemen, in our estimation, com-
pared to the timid, apprehensive beings who
will not exert themselves to put down what
they acknowledge to be a grievous wrong.
The Corn-law involves, as several clergymen

Ind Dissenting ministers have proved, the prin-
ciples of religion. For oppressors to tax the
bread of the poor, is denounced by Scripture.
To lay a burden on one class fbr the benefit of
mother, strikes at the root of allegiance, by
naking the law an instrument of oppression. It
deals. unequally with the people, throwing
the heaviest burdens on the weakest shoulders.
rhough the law is the operating power, which is
supposed by some persons to create right and
wrong, it, in fact, commits a grievous theft. It
;teals from the poor. The law is accordingly
lenounced as a robbery. The continuance or
Abolition of the law concerns, then, the principles
if morality as well as religion. The inhabitants
if the metropolis cannot answer to their GOD,
their country, and their offspring, for allowing
he Corn-law to continue.

We doubt whether they are fully alive to its
effects on their own welfare. They are afraid

e gentry would hal-e less to spend if
_ _ . . .

the law were abolished. This is an idle fear.
What the gentry spend is not the gold
.vhich changes hands a score of times in
t few days—nor bank-notes which, made at
?leasure, are only worth anything as the
representative of value—but the produce of land
Ind capital. Now there would not be a grain of
.vheat less grown, or an ox the less fattened,

because the Corn-law was repealed, while there
would be a great increase in the production of
other wealth. The gentry then, if we include
ander this term all the owners of capital, would
'lave more to spend, because more would be pro-
luccd.
But if it were not so, the gentry are in a man-

ler bound to maintain a certain state. In many
rases their expenditure is determined by their
rank, almost as much as by their income, and they
would struggle to keep up the show and splen-
lour to which they have been accustomed.
Moreover, the expense of living would approxi-
mate in England to the expense of living on the
Continent, and the shabby-genteels, who are now
lriven abroad, would return home for the sake of
,3conomy. That less would be spent, therefore,
wen by the landed gentry, because the Corn-
law was repealed, seems an idle fear. Sooner
than part with their splendour, the gentry would
,nortgage their estates, and though they might
Beggar their descendants, they are not likely, by
Frugality, to impoverish their tradesmen.
But if there be nothing to be feared from the

repeal of the Corn-law in the the agricultural, is
there nothing to be hoped from it throughout the
nanufacturing districts? New works would every
where be undertaken, new hands would be em-
ployed, and new enterprises begun. There
would be a great and an increasing demand for
engineers, architects, millwrights, founders, spin-
ners, turners, cutlers, and all the thousand
artizans who are engaged in manufactures.
Their increasing number would extend the de-
mand for shipwrights, seamen, captains of ships,
book-keepers, clerks, &c. &c. Not only would
there be a great demand for the production of
traders and professional men of the metropolis,
but there would be a vast many openings in bu-
siness which their children might fill, and they
would be able, much better than now, to provide
for their sons, and to bestow their daughters in

marriage.
At present, notwithstanding the prodigious
advantages we possess in our noble untenanted
colonies, every family is hampered, every class
is uneasy and constrained. From the humblest
labourer to the highest profession, all ranks feel
a painful difficulty to provide suitably for their
children. If that difficulty were not, as we be-
lieve, wholly done away by the abolition of the
Corn-law, it would undoubtedly be much lessen-
ed. Englishmen, for their skill,would be in greater
demand than at present in all quarters of the
world ; and it is impossible to conceive or de-
scribe the vast accession which would accrue to
the national happiness and the national morality,
by lessening the difficulty of providing for
offspring. Of that great improvement the com-
paratively well-educated and skilful inhabitants
of the metropolis would have a full share.
Their interest, therefore, as well as their duty,
commands them to exert themselves to procure
the repeal of the Corn-law.
It is said that tradesmen should not engage in
politics ; but why then give them a vote, and
make them responsible for its exercise, and for
the conduct of their representatives? Such an
excuse is idle, for the preservation of our freedom
depends on the watchfulness and exertions of
the Pe9Ple•
c power,
Government is naturally _an en-
and can only be kept in check
byroaching
the popular will. Our Government has
never, till the present Ministers came into office,
conceded anything till it was compelled. To
say, then, that tradesmen are not to attend to
politics, is to say that the liberties of the people
are at once to be surrended as a prize to 'the
Whigs and the Tories. That it is irksome to
leave their homes, or neglect their business, and
perform the duty of the Legislature, we can rea-
dily believe, but such is the condition of hu-
manity. The wisest and best rulers are not to
be trusted, unless they be made continually to
feel their responsibility to the people by the ac-
tive interference of the latter. The people must
either have no rulers, they must become slaves,
othretiirleryulmeiust s
nwatchfullya
neax e
sometimes
t hem se l vee sx tpor ke
expressly
dictate their conduct.
Those who preach the emasculating doctrine
that tradesmen have no business with politics,
forget
.that it is by'the power of the people laws
are made an sustained. They neither make,
nor execute themselves. The law is only the
expression of the public will enforced by the
public arm. For the existence of the laws,
whether they be good or evil, the people are
responsible; and as long as the citizens of
London, or any other place, are passive under
the continuance of the Corn-law, they are as
much guilty of starvinc, their poorer fellow-
creatures as the Members of either House of
Parliament. In the case of an unjust law, it is
strictly true of all the inhabitants of the
empire—" he who allows oppression, shares
the crime." The Corn-law is as much
carried into execution by the hatters and shoe-
makers of the strand, as by the Dukes of Bucx-
INGHAM and ItictimoN o, and they are as much
to blame, unless they exert them elves to pro-
cure its repeal, as those Noblemen.

---c-

Mr. NEWMAN has addressed a letter to the
-isihop of OxFoRD which appears in another