The Sun.
London, England, 1840-04-04 00:00:00

NEW STRAND THEATRE.

SHOOT the WIZARD of the NORTH, Impossible ! !
Public patronage is the great proof of merit, and if this be
admitted, then the patronage received by the Wizard of the
North stamps his exertions with an identity that proclaims to
the world his wonderful Necromantic powers—he is the
ONLY INVULNERABLE WIZARD.

On MONDAY, and every evening during the week, he
will exhibit his Cabalistic Wonders of seeming-supernature,
concluding with his original and indefirable

GUN DELUSION,
which will prove his apparent Invulnerability, without danger
to himself or his audience.
Doors•open at Half-past Six ; commence at Hal:-past Seven ;
und terminate at Eleven.
Boxes, 23. 6d. ; Second Price, Is. 6d. Pit, Is. 6d. ; Se_
fond Price, Is.

HIQH
WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE TO-MORROW.
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LONDON:
SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 1840.

In the House of Lords the Royal As:7ent was given
by Commission to the Mutiny and several other A
considerable number of petitions for and against the
rise
to were again presented, though they gave n'e,
to no discussion, except on the
part of the Earl of
GALLOWAY, who denounced Corn-law agitators as re-
volutionising, the country at the expense of the landed
interest.
Their Lordships only sat till Six o'Clock.
In the Commons, Lord Jour; RUSSELL stated, in
answer to Mr. PAEINGTON, that he had not taken the
Law Officers' opinion whether the thirty days for which
the Canada Clergy Reserves Bill must lie on tire table
before it receives the Royal Assent, includes the
holidays, and his Lordship added that he did not
mean to take any advantage, or to advise the
Crown to give its assent immediately the thirty
days had elapsed. In answer to another ques
tiOn. ,Qf Mr. PAKINZTON, Lord JOHN RUSSELL
'stated that the Governor-General of Canada had given

tl e Royal Assent to the Appropriation of Property by
the Monks of St. Sulpice, in Montreal. in virtue of a
clause in the Act of Parliament, introduced by the
House of Lords for the preservation of seiemorial rights.
The Sheriff was ordered to attend the House the 6th
of May instead of the 6th of April.
The Opium Committee was nominated.
The debate on the Corn-laws was resumed by Mr.
BROTHERTUN, who took the religious view of the ques-
tion, and condemned the laws as unjust, inhuman, impo-
litic, and contrary to religion.
Mr. VERNON opposed the motion, and endeavoured
to show that Mr. VILLIERS was wrong in his statistics.
Mr. GREG spoke for, and Mr. ORMSBY GORE
against the motion. Mr. BENETT denied that wages
were 6s. in Wiltshire ; they had been Bs. and were
now 9s.
The only speech, however, of importance was that of
Sir R. PEEL. The Right Hon. Baronet did not profess
to go into the whole subject,but only to reply to arguments
advanced in favour of the motion, which he said were
three, that the Corn-laws had occasioned the late dis-
turbance in the monetary system ; that they had caused
great fluctuations, and that they had caused the decline
of our commerce and the diminution of home consump-
tion. The Right Hon. Baronet made a very poor de-
fence of the Corn-laws on the first point, his defence
merely amounting to some assertions, borrowed from
the report of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce
enil Mr. JONES LLOYD'S pamphlet, that other causes
had conspired to produce the derangement in the
Money Market. On the second point Sir ROBERT was
more elaborate, but even less successful. His main
argument was, that no legislation could prevent fluctua-
tions in the price of food, which was the consequence of
variations in the seasons ; and he attempted to prove
that variations had been greater under other laws than
under the present law. They were all bad. To make
the comparison correct, it should be instituted with a
country having the same extent of trade, command of
resources, facilities of communication with all the world,
as we have, and enjoying, as we have enjoyed, unin-
terrupted peace. Unless Sir ROBERT PEEL can show
that there have been less fluctuations under the present
Corn-law than ever were known before, he does not
prove enough—and this he did not prove. But if laws
cannot prevent fluctuations, why make a Corn-law for '
that purpose ? The charge against the present law is,
that it was made to prevent fluctuations, which is im-
possible, and it has not done it. On the third point,
Sir ROBERT was more successful than on either of the
others, and proved that no actual declension had yet
taken place in our foreign trade or home consumption.
Again, however, he did not prove enough. There is
a natural prosperity in society which increases in an
accelerating ratio, and if that is not now more rapid
than in former times, the Corn-law is to blame. Sir
ROBERT pronounced a splendid eulogium on free-trade,
demolished the arguments for a fixed duty, for both of
which feats we are grateful, and resisted the Committee,
because the real object of the motion was to obtain a
total repeal of the Corn-laws, to which he could not
assent in the present artificial and complicated relations
of this country. He did not say a word of the distress
or the discontent of the people. He did not deny
the injustice of the bread tax, but he has so little con-
fidence in virtue, he is so mistrustful of justice, though he
passes dreadful penal laws to enforce their observance
on the people, that the Right Hon. Baronet wili not
act on them, and prefers the interest of the landlords
and the artificial relations of society. He sneered, too,
—the religious Baronet who is for Church Extension—
at the religious view of the question, as it all religion
consisted in obeying and fearing the Priests. At one
o'clock, the Right Hon. Baronet, who spoke for nearly
two hours, finished, and Mr. WARBURTON moved
that the debate be adjourned till Monday next ; the
Tories said Monday se'nnight. After some little bawl-
ing on' both sides, and a few words from Lord JOHN
RUSSELL, the House divided on the question that the
debate be adjourned, which was negatived by 245 to
129 ; on which Mr. WARBURTON moved the adjourn-
ment of the house, which was carried, and the House
adjourned at Half-past One o'Clock.

In our Summary yesterday we alluded very briefly
to Lord MoRPETH's speech, which particularly
deserves the attention of the public. The Noble
Lord is the heir to great landed property, and like
the WESTMINSTERS, the FITZWILLIANIS, the
RADNORS, and SHARMA N CRA WFOr, DS, he se-
parates himself from those landed proprietors who
insist on filling their coffers by taxing the bread of
the poor. In taking this right path the Noble
Lord by his remarks proved that he took it from
right principles.

If he was not prepared," he said, "to consent to
some alteration in the Corn-laws, be could not conscien-
tiously put up that petition, which all wore instructed to
use., for their daily bread. He thought that the whole
scope and tendency of the present law was at variance
with the spirit and scope of the ordinary dispensations of
Providence, who bad given the productions of the earth
for the benefit of all its creatures."

In a passage which we yesterday quoted from the 1
Quarterly Review, blasphemy wa, described as •
worse than murder. .That the Corn-laws kill many
bodies there can be no doubt, and if they be, as
Lord MORPETH says, at variance with the scope
and spitit of the ordinary dispensations of Provi-
dence, they are a great system of practical blasphemy,
and, according to the Quarterly Review, must kill
many souls as well as bodies. Be the theology
of the question what it may, there can be no doubt
that the Corn-laws thwart and impede the fulfilment
of the command to replenish the Earth, as well as
the command for nations to live in peace, and are
properly reprobated, by Lord IVIoRPETH, as con-
trary to the spirit of religion.
There is another part of Lord MORPETH's
speech which deserves public attention :
" 'fever there was a cry," he said, " raised to heaven that was
founded in justice it was that in which the people of the
country celled upon the Suereme Legislature to take
measures for facilitating the access and increase in the
quantity of food in the country, and the weal of its hard-
worked and ill-fed population."
That passage, besides being a justification of
agitation, bespeaks a spirit in the Noble Lord which,
if it generally pervaded our legislators, might per-
chance, if anything could, re-inspire the population
with respect for, and confidence in, the Legislature.
Our class law-inakers, however blind they may be
to the fact, are sapping and undermining the foun-
-1 clations of cur political fabric. The best system of
legislation rests on a doubtful basis, but a system of
class legislation, of making laws to enrich one class
—and that the least worthy of wealth—at the ex-
pense of other classes, is an abomination
which carries with it no other obligation but
' that of resisting it. To resistance class legislation
is necessarily leading and necessarily provoking the
people, and if anything can' arrest a progress so
fatal to the ultimate peace of the empire, such sen-
timents as those of Lord MotteeTH may. By
his conduct he best serves his own class and his
own order.
We are glad to see that the Anti-Corn-law
Delegates duly appreciate Lord MORPETH'S lan-
guage, and are as sensible as we are that the Noble
Lord, by still clinging to a fixed duty, does not
follow out his own principles, which are as hostile

to that as to the iluctuatino. scale.

A fixed duty,

INT have always contended, would be very inju-
rious to the farmer, by depriving hirn of th possi-
bility of expoi Ling the smallest part of his produce
in very fertile seasons, till the price had sunk to what
would be for him a ruinous depth. A duty gradually
t o vanish, year after year, would, till the vanishing
process were at an end, paralyze agriculture, and
be: injurious to all connected with the land. There
i no mode so just and so safe for all parties as
totally and immediately to abolish the taxes on food,
and allowing, or even, if necessary, compelling all
Those whose pecuniary contracts may be altered by
the alteration of the law to revise them. With
.Lord MortPETH's benevolent, just, and religious
sentiments we have no doubt that he will, by and
bye, come to this conclusion, and be as desirous as
we are to abolish totally all the taxes levied on
Food of every kind, which are not levied exclusively
for the sake of the Revenue, and to supply the
rieeetsities of the State.

dignity L rd
tAosn speak,BU RT O
inN t
hdide Hu
notthinkoseo
r it
Peers, o f
Anti-Corn-law Delegates as a Joint-Stock Com-
pany of Agitators. The Tory journals have
beneath
thehis
sounded the same note. The Delegates are de-
scribed as getting up a sordid artificial agitation to
answer their own purposes. We think it due to
those gentlemen, therefore, without condescending
to take particular notice of the ribaldry, conceited
to be wit, with which they are assailed, to remind
the public of some of the circumstances which led
.to their agitation.

The harvest of 1858 was a very short one, and
tl.ne price of wheat rose as high as 88s. per quarter.
The harvest of 1839 was not better, though the
supply of foreign wheat, and the very inferior-
quality of much home-grown wheat, have
pre-
vented
the average prices of last winter from being
so high as those of the preceding winter. No
writer, though he may be as ready to coin falsities
as the Editor of the Standard, will presume to say
that the Delegates contributed to produce those
two calamitous seasons.
Those reasons have been combined with great
distress and great discontent amongst the masses.
The agitation for the repeal of the Corn-laws was
not the cause of either the distress or the discon-

tent. Both existed in the summer of 1838, and
when we first began in that year to denounce the
Corn-laws, we were accused, in common with other
writers, of wishing, by promoting a Corn-law agi-
tation, to draw away the people from their fiercer
agitation for the Charter. The language of the
Spectator and other Radical journals, was that the
Corn-law agitation was a tub thrown out to the
whale by the Whigs, and the people were exhorted
not to go for a repeal of the Corn-laws, but to
unite and demand the Charter. Our opponents
were much more successful with the people than we
were ; Corn-law repeal was derided, and the Con-
vention formed. The Corn-law agitation of 1839
was feeble and unsuccessful, but the distress and
the discontent widened and deepened.
Parliament, in its wisdom, at the same time
refused to institute an investigation, though most
earnestly invited by the most intelligent of our
manufacturers. The people lost their patience as
their food grew less, and the germs of insurrec-
tion were scattered over the community. Out-
breaks actually took place, or were threatened, in
most of our manufacturing towne, which the Corn-
law delegates deplored and firmly resisted. Had
they wished to promote agitation for its own sake
—had they any ulterior objects in view, as their
enemies allege—what could have been more-easy
for them than to have nourished the Charter agita-
tion—to have united themselves with the Chartists
to have organized and tempered their movement,
and made themselves formidable to the aristocracy?
They might have commanded their own terms.
They might have given the law to
the landowners. Far from so acting, they stuck
to the Corn-law agitation, forced on them as that
was by their own decaying trail?, and the distress of
their workmen ; and, to the utmost of their power,.
they discouraged the Charter agitation. Do the
Tories, do the Aristocracy, reproach them with
this ? Foolish Aristocracy ! the agitation for the
repeal of the Corn-laws, which was neither hastily
nor lightly taken up, has probably saved them from
destruction, and they ought to be filled with grati-
tude to the Corn-law agitators. Their agitation
was founded in necessity ; it grew from the obsti-
nate and profligate adherence of the landlords to
wrong ; it aims at a noble and a just object, and
will, we are sure, never be laid down till the Corn-
laws be totally abolished.

To lose sight of the interest of his country in the gra-
tification of his revenge—to exhibit his zeal for the fac-
tion he has joined by foully vilifying the party he has
betrayed and deserted—are among the necessities to
which the abandonment of principle dooms the political
apostate. Even the wretched shreds of his former rc-
puta•ion he is himself compelled to fling to the winds,
that he may enter the arena destitute of all that made
him before appear respectable in the eyes of the world.
What was best and wisest in his former public conduct
—what was truest and soundest in the principles which
ne held, in the doctrines which he advocated, and in the
measures which he supported—he is compelled, by his
disgraceful and unhappy position, to be the first to exe-
crate, if fortaing the link of his connection with the
party he has deserted. Look, by way of illustration, et
the conduct of Sir JAMES GRAHAM upon the
China question. The apostate ;Baronet does
not profess to care a straw about the interests affected
by the conduct of the Government either in England,
in India, cr in China. if he did he would propose some
remedy. Bat Sir JAMES is to propose a vote of censure
upon the Government, on the alleged ground that Mi-
nisters could have prevented hostilities with the Celes-
tial Empire. To avoid the possibility of misconception
upon this point, we quote the motion as it is entered
among the notices of motions, printed by order of the
House of Commons :

" That it appears to this House, upon the consideration
of the papers relating to China, presented to the House by
command of her Majesty, that the interruption in our corn-
mcrcial and friendly intercourse with China, and the hosti-
lities which have since taken place, are mainly to be attri-
buted to the want of foresight and precaution on the part
of her Majesty's present advisers with reference to our re-
lations with China, and more especially to their neglect
in not furnishing to the British Superintendent at Canton
powers and instructions calculated to provide against the
growing evils arising from the contraband traffic in
opium, and adapted to the novel and difficult situation in
which the Superintendent was placed."
Let us examine for an instant the moral effects
of this vote, if carried. In the first place, it
would not prevent the effusion of one drop of blood
which may be shed in the war with China. This is
self•evident from the fact, that long before the vote
could be known at Canton, the fighting part of the bu-
siness will be over. But.if it would neither prevent nor
modify hostilities now, it would sow the seeds of future
strife by exoneratine. the Chinese Government from
all blame, and affording it a Parliamentary jus-
tification for subjecting our merchants and the
Representative of our Sovereign to still more
shameful indignities, of which it wou'l'd not be slow to
make a terrible use. So far, them, as regards the hu-
manity of the motion, nothing can be worse ; so fur as
concerns it patriotism, nething can be more remote from
that virtue.

If blame is attributable to the appointment of a
Superintendent of the Trade with China, by whoni was
that appointment rendered imperative upon the present
Ministry ? Why,a by the very Government of which
Sir JAMES GRAHAM was himself a member—by the
Government which abolished the East India monopoly,
and regulated by Act of Parliament the form of con-
ducting the trade at Canton. To pretend that the
Government could do more than appoint a Superin-
tendent—to argue that h:s conduct was to be as con- i
scantly controlled by instructions from the Cabinet at
home as if he were a Governor of one of the West India
Islands is too absurd to be listened to for a mo-
ment. Such a Superintendent could only be lett to
exercise his own discretion, subject to an observance of
a few guiding principles. His immense distance from
the scat of his own Government, the Cabinet of which
was liable to be every day changed, and with every
change to adopt opposite views of foreign policy, and
his intercourse with a people whose peculiar habits ren-
der inapplicable any change of system, demonstrate the
absurdity of fettering the exercise of the Superinten-
dent's discretion. S.r JAMES GRAHAM WAS therefore a
party to the creation of an office, the person
which, from the very nature of his functions, the )tight
Hon. Baronet knew co Government could control, and
yet he is to move a vote of censure upcn Ministers for
not having controlled him ! The appointment, it is
true, might have been an unfit one. Tee intention
of the Legislature most undoubtedly was, that the
gentleman appointed to superintend the trade
with China should be a person properly qualified for the
faithful discharge of the most onerous functions. But
whether the appointment of Captain ELLIOT was or
was not the best that might have been made, Sir
JAMES GRAHAM was One of those who silently ac-
quiesced in the Ministerial propriety of making it ; and
it is now too late in the day to call it in question. We
are ourselves uo admirers of the conduct of Captain
ELLIOT. Indeed we think be has demonstrated his
total unfitness for filling such an office. But this
neither we nor the Government could have known
without the trial he has had. Experience acquired
in any other service or in any other part of the world
could no:. have availed him here. Lord AUCKLAND
has proved himself one of the ablest Governor-Genera:s
that ever set foot in India, and yet what appointment, I
when it was first made, appeared less defensible on the
ground of his Lordship's past experience ?
Had Sir JAmEs GRAHAM wished to prevent a war
with China, 1:e would have brought on the motion of
which he has given notice, when the news of the rup-
ture with that country first reached England, so as to
prevent the Government from sending out vessels of
war to redress the injury sustained by our merchants,
and to exact reparation for the insuit offered to our
Sovereign. But the political JUDAS cunningly waited
till hostilities could not be prevented, and now makes
his appearance, not as the champion of peace—not as the
advocate of negociation—but as the tool of faction, to
cast a stain upon the honour of Great Britain, and to try
to obtain for the Tories, almost starved in opposition, some
chance of sharing among them any plunder which
may accrue from the Chinese expedition. Could
they only get into office, the war would be quite a God
send to the Tories. Instead of lasting for a few weeks,
as it is only likely to do now, they would keep
it going on for a quarter of a century, always taking
care to packet the plunder themselves, and to charge
the expense upon the taxes and the credit of England.
It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that the
House of Commons and the country should see this
Tory trick in its true light. It is, farther, of the in-
most importance that the effect of being deceived by
such a trick should be well weighed, especially us re-
gards its influence upon our future relations with the
Celestial Empire. Any resolution or vote come to
now, condemnatory o( the conduct of the Government,
will most assuredly be regarded by the Chinese as an
approval, not only of the opium seizure, but of the effec-
tual means taken, so contrary to the law of civilized
nations and to the rights of humanity, to effect that
seizure. The consequences of such an impression
would be indeed deplorable ; and in a very short time
would leail to a war, horrible from the bad passions
which feelings of revenge would enlist on all sides.
To prove, as regards the Ministers, that the war with
China is just and necessary—as far as any war can be said
to be just or necessary—it is only required to call attention
to the fact, that so sudden was the collision that it was
quite out of the power of the Government to have fore-
seen, much less prevented it. Even Superintendent
ELLIOT was made a prisoner by surprise, it never having
entered into his bead that the Chinese authorities
would have dared to violate the person of the Repre-
sentative of the Sovereign of Great Britain to enforce
• tn
custom-houseaiitoone persono
r regulation.
party.T
Nor
t he
surpriseo
a c
:Tot were astonished, as were every one of the pre-

tenders to a Chinese second-sight, who have assailed the !
conduct of Lord MELBouttNE's Government upon thi,. I
question. Nor was this other than natural, seeing that
for thirty-night years the traffic in opium had been ab-
solutely prohibited by the Chinese Government, and
that during the whole of that period it had continued
to flourish by the connivance of the Chinese authorities,
front the EMPEROR at Pekin to the lowest Mandarin
on the Canton River. Every succeeding Governor of Can-
ton, for the whole'of that long period, entered upon his
office by denouncing the opium traffic only to ascertain the
amount of bribe by which the dealers were disposed to
purchase his connivance. At last matters came to that
pass that a regular arid invariable tax was levied upon
every catty of the drug, and a moiety of the produce
thereof as regularly handed over to the Imperial Trea-
sury as the duty upon tea and the Imperial poll-tax.
Under such circumstances the conduct of the Commis-
sioner LIN did take not only all parties in England, but
all Europe by surpr.se, amounting, as it did, to one of
the grossest violations of the law of nations that ever
was perpetrated. For ourselves we think the war with
China needs no defence ; but as there are some who
think otherwise, whose prejudices their good intentions
incline us always to respect, we shall show the advisabi-
lity of it before Sir J. GRAHAM shall have an opportu-
nity of venting his spleen against the Whigs at the 'ex-
pease of the honour and the sllety of England.