The Sun.
London, England, 1841-09-14 00:00:00

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LONDON:
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1841.

The noblest actions are those for which men
ought to expect no other reward than the testi-
mony of a good conscience. Whatever exceeds
the every-day standard of patriotism or self-
denial is sure to be ridiculed as preposterous, or
sneered at as hypocritical. A superficial observer
of what passes in the world, would have supposed
that the transcendant efforts made by England
to put down the inhuman traffic in slaves would
have obtained for her the gratitude of every
Christian State on the face of the globe. In this
measure she could have no self-interest. She
wag destroying a most lucrative branch of the
traffic of her own merchants—she was unsettling
the whole frame-work of society in her numerous
and thriving colonies—she was placing in peril
role' vested interests—she wss crippling her own
commerce by raising enemies among the African
Princes, who sold their subjects into slavery—
and she was expending large sums annually in
the support of a fleet employed in the pro-
tection of the African race. Here, instead
a the selfishness usually common to mercantile
States is exhibited an excess of generous hu-
manity without a parallel . in the history of na-
.tions. And yet the part which we have taken
an
the immense expenses which we have in-
curre .-I in the suppression of the slave-trade, has
brought down upon us a load of odium greater
than was ever visited upon a people accused of
the blackest crimes. We have been villified by
the French, traduced by the Spaniards, scurri-
JouslY abused by the Portuguese, threatened by
rile people of the United States, and, last of all,
stioluatised as tyrants and bullies by our old neigh-
friends the Germans, for the excess of
boars and
Y
sevcritwhich we have felt it necessary to em- I
• ploy in the represssion of this infamous traffic. '
The recent seizure of two Hamburgh vessels, the
Louisa and the Echo, on suspicion of being en-
gaged in the slave-trade, is actually denounced
in the Gazette
Upper Germany as a " faithful
picture of the indignities to which a powerless
tag
the service in is exposed." From the very nature
of
which the officers
charged to suppress the slave-trade are engaged,
of op
i pression will
it is to be expected that acts
occasionally take place ; but it s too bad to
charge either the Government or the people Of
this country with defending,
much less encou-
raging, them. If such acts are brought under
the cognizance of our Courts of Law we can as-
sure the good citizens of Hamburgh
that there
will be found British Juries and British Judges
prepared to give a just and impartial verdict
against the wron,-doers. The Times, which
yesterday called attention to this subject, inti-
mates that the soreness with regard to England
is aggravated by Prussia, with a view to provoke
the Manse towns to join the German commercial
'league. We believe this is true enough. The
following extract from the article in the Times
will be gall and wormwood to those twin agri-
cultural nestors in office, KNATCHBULL and
BUCKINGHA3I:— •

The origin of a jealous feeling towards England in
commercial matters is no doubt traceable to our so-called
protecting duties, which formerly met our Continental
neighbours in every branch of industry with which they
sought to effect exchanges. Its growth, however, and
recent acrimony are mainly attributable to the writings
officially and semi-officially published during the last ten
years. The Whig Ministry, unable to produce a satis-
factory plan for modifying the Corn-laws, created and
nourished an agitation from abroad against them with-
out taking the trouble to inquire what other results be-

sides the one desired might accrue from such a state of
things.

SO the Times has yet the honesty to denounce
our heavy import duties as "so called " protec-
tive, and to intimate that the Tories must modify
the main cause of German commercial jealousy—
the Corn-laws. But the Times knows very well
that the Germans never sought a modification
of our Corn-laws. The Germans, like the Times
itself before it ratted upon this very question,
denounced the Corn-laws altogether as injurious
to them, and ruinous to us. The Germans de-
manded their abolition; and but for the Tories,
now constrained to hear the odium of the praise
of the Times, the late Ministry, backed by the
starving millions in this country, would have
abolished them, and thus inflicted a death-blow
upon the commercial schemes of Prussia. How
these Tories can have the face to glance at this
question is to us among the most wonderful in-
stances of incredible impudence.

Lord Howicn's speech to the Electors of
Sunderland on Friday last—which will be found
in another part of The Sun—is one of the
most able attacks on the Starvation Cabinet that
has yet been made by any of the supporters of
the late Ministry. The Noble Lord is not a man
who makes any secret of his opinions either of
men or things. He has no confidence in the
new Cabinet, and he not only says so, but gives
his reasons for having none. After fifteen
years of a Parliamentary life he is of
opinion that " Sir ROBERT PEEL has shown
himself most lamentably deficient in that fore-
sight and judgment which are the essential qua-
lities of a reai statesman." Of Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S colleagues, and more especially the Duke
Of BUCKINGHAM and Sir EDWARD KNATCH-
CALF (we beg the Right Honourable Gen-
tleman's pardon, KNATCHBULL), he regards
the mere enumeration as enough to fill
every honest Reformer with distrust. But
it is especially upon the great question of
the Corn-laws that we are delighted to find the
Noble Lord entertain sound and liberal views.
He does not peddle about protection, because he
knows that while the Corn-laws are ruinous to
the manufacturers, they are positively injurious
to the farmers themselves. We recommend the
monopolists to reflect deeply upon the following
passage from the speech of the Noble Lord :

As one deeply interested in the continued prosperity
of the landed interest, with which my personal interest
is entirely bound up, I have uniformly held that it is
most mistaken and short-sighted policy for ourselves to
adopt this selfish system of excluding the competition
of foreign corn from our markets; I think the justice of
this opinion has been proved by the result. I remem-
ber-since this Act was passed, nearly half of the years
which have gone by have been years of agricultural
distress. I know in the years 1833, 1835, and 1836, a
large proportion of the time of the House of Commons,
was occupied by the consideration of complaints.
and just complaints, of agricultural distress. If I look
on the other side, I also see the law which in many years
worked most disadvantageously for the landed interest,
working still more so for the manufacturing and com-
mercial interests. Can- any man doubt the stagnation
of trade of which you have cause to complain at this mo-
ment in this town—can any man doubt the difficulties
by which all the great branches of industry are encum-
bered, arise very much from the consequence of bad har-
vests, aggravated by the existing Corn-law—a law which
seems carefully and studiously devised for the purpose
of filling all classes with vain expectations which are not
to be realised.

In some instances the Corn-laws may have
encouraged an ignorant agriculturist to offer a
higher rent for land than he otherwise would
have done, and thus the landlord has profited,
but in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred
the only gainer has been the gambling specu-
lator. Thus, with all the boasted wisdom of the
CASTLEREAGHS, the ROBINSONS, the WILBER-
FORCES, the CHANDOSES, the RICHMONDS, and
the KNATCHBULLS, we have been, from 1815 to
the present day, injuring the agriculturists, and
ruining the manufacturers of Great Bri-
tain, to enrich a set of gamblers, whose
profits are always increasing as the public
distress becomes more general. The hun-
ger and destitution of hundreds of thou-
sands are the stakes for which they play with
the game always in their hands.
But Lord HOWICK'S speech at Sunderland is
suggestive of another question, second only in im-
portance to the repeal of the Corn-laws. It has
for some time struck us as a matter to be de-
plored, that the bulk of the working-classes, in
whom the Tory policy of the Whigs generated
an almost universal distrust of public men, are
without any leader capable of doing justice to
their feelings, making known their wants, and
enlisting their sympathies in any measures
undertaken to ameliorate their condition.
In Lord HowiCK, we think we can dis-
cover many of the chief requisites for assum-
ing a position which would give him a more va-
luable political influence than that of any other
man in either House cf Parliament, DANIEL
O'Cox-NELL, perhaps, only excepted. The Noble
Lord occupies at this moment a distinguished po-
sition before the country. Having in a great mea-
sure withdrawn his support from the Whigs,
when he found them truckling to the Tories—
having deserted his friends rather than abandon
one jot of those liberal principles hereditary in
his noble family--he now stands before the
country with an undamaged character chal-
lenging that confidence which the bulk of
the people have withdrawn from most of
the leaders of the Whig party. We do not
know whether Lord HowicK may feel disposed
to place himself at the head of the suffering peo-
ple, but we are persuaded that no other leader
could be found better qualified to arrest the
growth of that infidelity in the honesty of public
men which is rapidly spreading among the in-
dustrious classes in England and Scotland.

We are glad to see that the borough of Man-
chester is to hold a meeting on Thursday next
with a view of memorializing the QUEEN not to
prorogue the two Houses of Parliament till they
have entered into a full consideration of the corn
and provision laws. Manchester only does its
duty, and its example, which, as the promoter of
the Anti-bread-tax League has already been of
commanding influence, will no doubt have many
imitators.

The people there do not move till they are
compelled. The deep distress of the hand-looni
weavers and others of the working class is already
but too well known t') the public. At a great
meeting held at Manchester on Wednesday, to
hear Mr. CURTIS, the free-trade missionary from
the United States, who has come hither to ex-
plain to us the advantages which we should de-
rive from a free trade in corn with the United
States, Mr. COBDEN referred in the following
language to the distress of the middle classes :
A good deal has been said, about the working class here
and I like, in a popular meeting of this kind, to address
the working class, for the majority always consists of
them. But my opinion is, that there are two other
classes in this district, who at the present moment are
just as much entitled to sympathy as the poorest work-
ing men in the town. I speak of the middle class, and
the upper class too. The middle class in this town, I
venture to say, from my own experience, are suffering as
much in mind, body, and estate, as any class in her Ma-
jesty's dominions. And well it is that it should be so ;
well it is that the capitalist is suffering in a commen-
surate degree with the working-class, if but to teach us
what we did not know two or three years ago, that
society is but a series of links, and that you cannot in-
jure one but almost as quickly as electricity itself it per-
vades the whole chain.—( Hear, hear.) Yes, gentlemen,
I believe you have had proofs yourselves that the misery
and sufferings of this country are not now confined to
the working class. I think I have seen, in the suspen-
sion of operations amongst the capitalists, and in the
increme of bankruptcies, proofs enough that the disease
has reached a little higher ; and this, I tell you candidly,
is one of the symptoms which I rely upon as encouraging
the b:dief that these laws, these monopolies, will not much
longer be allowed to remain to the disgrace of our statute
book, to ruin our capitalists, and to starve our operatives.
—(cheers.)
If it be true, as we believe it is,r ththaattlttlehe micldle
classes are beginning to effe
capi-
talists are going to dies geayuitetheaerttathine utipiaptetrhcelaslaswess
are not thriving, it
which cause their sufferings, and theAdmlainwiss:
tration which insists on preserving those
will be most seriously attacked, and ultimately
destroyed. Laws are intended to promote the
public welfare, and when they fail to do this,
being of themselves evils—when they
injure great
masses of her MAJESTY'S subjects—they will no t be