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London, England, 1841-07-26 00:00:00

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LONDON:
MONDAY, JULY 26, 1341.

We cannot comprehend why the Tory journals
object to the Ministers retaining office till after
the Parliament has met. They appealed from
the condemnation of the old Parliament to the
constituency, and they can only know the deci-
sion by the vote of the new Parliament. To
retire before the Parliament makes known to
them the answer of the constituencies, is as bad
as carrying a cause into Court and not waiting
fo hear the verdict of the jury. The Tories
blame them because they are not frightened out
of Court by the pleading of their adversary. To
give up without meeting the Parliament, would
be a craven acknowledgment of guilt.
The presumption, according to the returns, is,
that the policy of the Ministers will be con-
demned by a large majority. But who can be
sure of that? Who can answer what may happen
between the present time and the 19th of August?
The weather has of late been most unfavourable.
More rain, more cold weather, destroying the
hopes of the harvest, might make the boldest
Corn-law advocate quake .for the peace of the
country, should he, under such circumstances,
on the meeting of Parliament object to
take the Corn-laws into consideration.. The
last accounts from the West Indies, too, are
by no means favourable ; and were the prices of
sugar to rise rapidly during the next four weeks,
who shall venture to predict how much of the
horror which Lord SANDON, Sir ROBERT PEEL,
and Sir CRAY GRANT professed last Session at
the admission of slave-grown sugar would dis-
appear ?

But putting all such contingencies out of the
question, by what means can we tell the opinions
of the Members of the new House of Commons
except by their votes ? It is not sufficient that
a man is called a Tory, or that he has abused the
Ministers on the hustings, to conclude that he
will vote against their measures in Parliament.
All assumptions and conjectures of this kind,
founded on speeches, rumours, reports, however
valid for newspaper arguments, are not a pro-
per basis for the conduct of Government ; and be-
fore the Ministers resign, because the elections
have gone against them, they must have legal
proof of the fact by the votes of the House of
Commons. _

On one of the last days of the Session Sir R.
PEEL gave up his'opposition to a vote of credit,
on the promise given by Lord JOHN RUSSELL
that the new Parliament shoUld be speedily as-
sembled. It is plain, therefore, that Sir ROBERT
PEEL, calculating, as no doubt he did, on a ma-
jority, expected that the Ministers would meet
Parliament, and would not resign their Ministe-
rial life to any less noble hands than those of the
douse of Commons, and certainly not to the
ignoble hands of newspaper editors. What Sir
R. PEEL expected, and what the reason of the
thing commands, Ministers will do. They will
take the first opportunity, they say, to demand
the decision of the House of Commons, and
having heard it, if that be against their
policy, they will resign. To give up from any
unauthorised conjecture as to what the decision
of Parliament will be, would be unworthy of
their dignity both as Ministers and men.
Our readers must see with some pleasure the
alarm which the announcement of Lord Jowl
RUSSELL, that he means to ask for a clear and
decided judgment on the policy of the Ministers,
has created amongst the Tories. Every day,
every hour they are kept from office, is a greater
torment to them than the sight of food to a
famishing man which he
dare not touch. Every
day they are afraid may snatch the untasted
cup from their lips, and they will know no peace
till they are in possession.

They are aware that the question now at issue
is not some shadowy, intangible, unprovable
matter like the future government of India, or
the growth of Jacobinism, or the glories of war,
or the blessings of the Constitution, in which cases
prejudice stands a fair chance of triumphing for
a long time over reason. The Tories know
that the question at issue is something like
whether two and two make four or only three,
and they know that whenever the .sum is
worked out, the decision must be that it is four.
They look with political horror at the feverish
state of the grain and money markets, because
they know that events are working against them,
and that every day which developes the effects
of our legislation, developes a truth inimical to
Tory doctrines.
We have for a lout,-'time been stunned by the
Tory Journals Nitneeulot of gies on the•great capacity
and admirable judgment
n
Sir R. PEEL; we doubt
;Ic;r justice more than ever, when we see him

Amongst our extracts from the Weekly Papers
we insert the observations of the Spectator on
" Clerical Anti-Corn-law Agitation," in reply to
our remarks of last Monday. We know not why
ti
our Contemporary calls those a lecture, for e
meant to argue the question ,' and one of e
strongest parts of our case, the conduct of t e
Catholic priests of Ireland, who must engage in
secular disputes, our Contemporary omits to
notice.

We agree with the Spectator that Reformers
have seriously complained of priests sitting in
Parliament; but while they sit there we repeat
that our Contemporary's opinion, however cor-
rect as an abstract proposition, does not apply to
our society. As long as that practice is con-
tinued, and as long as ours is a PROTESTANT State,
founded on religious and sectarian principles, it
is idle to talk of priests not bring,ing religion to
bear on secular subjects. They do frequently, and
will ; and till the State cease to be united with
the Church, we shall look with some suspicion
on) every condemnation of other priests than
those of the State Church for meddling with se-
cular affairs.
But our strongest reason for dissenting from
the Spectator on the point in question is, that we
cannot degrade the Corn-laws into "a question
of pounds, shillings, and pence." It is a ques-
tion of morality and of political science. Those
laws reduce the people to poverty, and
annually starve many out of existence. They
withhold food from the people. At this moment
the people cannot touch a grain of the many quar-
ters of wheat which we hope are in bond, without
paying the enormous duty of 235. Bd. per quarter
in order to keep up the price of wheat. In all
the papers of the United States which reach us
we find accounts of the abundance of provisions
there, accompanied by complaints that the
owners cannot send it to supply the wants of our
starving people, willing and able to purchase it.
The laws, then, actually keep food away from the
people, and inflict on them hunger and death.
When our Contemporary describes such laws as
a question of pounds, shillings, and pence, he
makes us assert that he has not mastered the

subject.
Further, those laws, by a round-about means,
filch away the property of the bread eaters, and
give it to the landowners. The Legisla-
ture _ has no right whatever to make such
laws. It is bound equally to protect the
property of all. It has no more right to
take the smallest fraction of the smallest
coin of the realm from the pocket of a hand-loom
weaver to swell the rent of the Duke of Bucx-
INGHAM, than it has to cut off the head of that
weaver as a trophy to grace the gates of Stowe.
The Corn-laws strike at the root of all law, and
may well engage the attention of Christian mi-

nisters anxious to preserve peace and order in

society.

It is_under such aspects as these, and not as a
question of—more or less—a few pounds, shillings,
and pence, that the Dissenting ministers pro-
pbse tO consider the Corn-laws. They are stig-
matised as robbery—they are a gross violation
of the right of property; and, having arrived at
'that conclusion, we can no more discuss, them as
a question Of pounds, shillings, and pence, than
we can say that the guilt of highway robbery
depends on the amount taken by the robber.

Our Contemporary says, "If the supporters
of the Corn-laws advocated them, knowing—be-
lieving them to be calculated to impoverish the

community and distress the poor, they would be

fair objects for the clerical battery proposed to

be opened upon them." We thank our C ontem-

porary for the admission,
,because we charge
the supporters of the Com-laws with knowing and
believing that they have these effects, and with

maintaining the Corn-laws because they believe
they have these effects. We boldly charge the
Corn-law makers with knowingly endeavouring

:o starve the manufacturing population out of

existence. We must believe that the law-makers

are aware of the effects of their laws, and such
being the effects of the Corn-laws, we assert that
they are designed.

But moreover we have heard Lord ASHBUR..
TON, with our own ears, speaking on this subject,

rail against converting the whole land into a
workshop. We have heard him and other Noble

Lords object to covering the empire with manu-

I facturing towns. We have read too—as who has
not?—in the Quarterly Review, the Standard, the
Morning Post, and the Morning Herald, re-
peated denunciations of our town population.
They are stigmatised as all that is vicious. It is
ssid that the empire would be as well without
them.
It
has been suggested that the half of
our might be razed with advantage. It is
tatoohecofCniasotr;n-alanlavnl so° Opinion amongst the advocates of
that the town population grows
the cTdy
aw
know
increase ingly and wilfully su therefore, with know-
papnortfing th em, in order to pre-
vent the growth of manufactures
actures and the increase
of towns people.
that the process by
which the growth ahnne_
areand preventedd death
a th ;
an isd
through squalid misery, famine,
we charge the authors andad
maliciously advocatesen-
deavouring, of the
Corn-laws with knowingly n
by those laws, to impoverish and
starve the manufacturing population, Why else
do they withhold food from them ?
We believe that the Dissenting ministers
who have called the Conference entertain the
same opinions. At any rate, they know that
such are the effects of the Corn-laws ; and we
shall not, at present, say another word on the
subject, because we regard the admission of our
Contemporary as a full justification of that Con-
ference which he has condemned.

The Tories make it out that hei MAJESTY is
tteated as a cypher, because the Ministers do not
resign at the bidding of the Tory Journalists. At
the same time she is impudently spoken of as an
"accomplice" in the " guilt" of the Ministers.
We suppose the Tories will next demand, should
the Ministers not immediately resign, that
she be dethroned for daring to allow the
Whigs to keep out the Tories. 'The arrogance
of the rampant faction already surpasses the de-
cencies of common life, and sets all loyalty at
defiance.

Of all the outrageous proceedings of the Police and
the Police Magistrates (and they are of every clay occur-
renee) the case of Mr. WILLIAMS is the most atrocious.
To state the circumstances will be sufficient to rouse

perilling his reputation and Government on such
an assertion as that two and two make three. He
really makes such an assertion, when he boldly

affirms that keeping food froin the people does
not cause want and distress. .He was a contemp-
t tible politician, however skilful a debater, when
he stood out against the Dissenters and against
the Catholics, and he was made utterly con-
temptible by his defeats; but it is tenfold more
contemptible to stand out against the hunger of
the people, and peril his reputation in resisting
the demand for food. This is not sagacity, it is
ridiculous and contemptible folly.
But it is said that nobody knows what Sir R.
PEEL will do. We know, however, what he will
not do, if any faith can be placed in his reiterated
opinions. He will not admit sugar, the produce
of slave labour, into our market for consump-
tion ; he will not abate the tax now levied by
the landlords on the bread of the people ; and
be will not abate the discriminating duty on tim-
ber not brought from our colonies. He will not,
therefore, relieve the people. He is pledged to
tax them and starve them for the monopolists.
He is.pledged to keep the price of sugar high,
and the quantity short. He is pledged, what-
ever.thay be the seasons, to keep bread dear and
the people hungry ; and a man who has so
pledged himself, aiming to be the Minister of
this great commercial country, in which all the
striving of inventive genius, and all the exertions
of mechanical skill, are directed to make all
things cheap and plentiful, is not a sagacious
man ;he is no better than a ninny. The Tories
are sensible of the dangerous ground on which
they tread, and are extremely anxious to obtain
a firm footing by getting hold of the Government.

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