The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-22 00:00:00

Our gracious QUEEN, uninformed of the senti-
ments and wishes of her people, is about to make
an appeal to them. Tell her no falsehood ; con-
ceal from her no facts; answer her honestly and
plainly, by sending none to Parliament but anti-
monopolists, that her nobles and their friends
and allies have most sorely opprersed and
shamefully maltreated her faithful people.
When she knows their wishes, when she is made
sensible how deeply they have been injured, she
will make common cause with them against
those who would oppress her people and tyran-
nise over her. If her appeal be answered with
the voice of truth, she must and will be on our
side, and the QUEEN'S name is a tower of
strength. Men and women of England, now or
never; do your duty honestly and energetically
to yourselves, your children, your QUEEN, and
your GOD; and leave the issue of the great con-
test, which you are solemnly invoked to begin,
in His hands who disposes of empires.

We see by the Votes of the House of Com-
mons that a considerable number of petitions,
against any alterations in the Corn-laws, is pre-
sented, but each petition is signed by very few
persons. They are in general presented by some
High Churchman and Tory, such as Sir ROBERT
INGLIS, the Member for the University of
Oxford, Mr. PAKINGTON, or Sir THOMAS Ac-
LAND. Many of these petitioners come with pe-
titions for Church Extension, from which circum-
stances we infer that the clergy of the Esta-
blished Church are the real manufacturers of
these prayers for the continuance of the bread-
tax. There is no doubt that they are actively
engaged in bolstering up that tax, and nothing
that we may say can add, we believe, to their
hostility. We do not, however, understand their
policy in uniting with the landlords, and so
bringing on the Church all the animosity which?
the people must necessarily feel for the cause of
poverty, hunger, and starvation. The clergy-
man should be the poor man's friend, but he
unites with the landlords, makes himself the
enemy of the poor, and causes the Churchto lose
all hold of the affections of the people.
It is a favourite maxim of Sir ROBERT INGLIS
and the High Church party that the Dissenters
have acquired their houses and lands subject to
Church-rates; that they gave so much less for
them on account of the rates; and therefore Sir
ROBERT and his friends say the Dissenters are
unjust for wishing to increase their property by
throwing off the tax. The same argument holds
good as to tithes. The great majority of the pre-
sent race of landlords have acquired their pro-
perty subject to sharing it with the Church. In
fact, the landlords when they purchased the land
purchased only nine-tenths of it, and gave so
much less for it. They are not owners of the
whole but only of nine parts, and the tenth part
belongs to others. We are not defending the
institution of tithes, but they seem as valid
ground to the landlord as the ownership of the
soil, and the landowners have no more right to
complain of not having the tenth part which
they never purchased or inherited, than Lord
WiNctitisEA has a right to complain that Sir
EDWARD KNATCHBULL'S estate does not belong
to him as well as his own.

At the same time the landowners do complain
of it, and what is more, they maintain the Corn-
laws, in order to relieve themselves from tithes,
or take from the people an equivalent in the
shape of a bread-tax, for that which never be-
longed to them. So general have their doctrines
on the subject become, that our readers will have
seen in our extract yesterday, from the Journal
des Debuts, that the French paper, in speaking
of our Corn-laws, Justifies what it calls protec-
tion for agriculture against foreign productions,
on account of the landlords having tithes to pay.
Mr. RICARDO advocated a fixed duty on the
same account; and the writer, whose pamphlet
we referred to ten days ago, avowedly takes up
Mr. RICARDO'S opinions. In the same manner,
Mr. HODGES defended the Corn-laws a few nights
ago in Parliament, because the tithes still
exist, though they had been commuted, which,
however, put an end to many incidents of tithes
injurious to the landlord, while it still left him
merely minus the tenth part of the estate. The
argument, therefore, that the landlords should
tax the people's bread, because they are subject
to the payment of tithes, means that they are to
wring from the people by law an equivalent for
that tenth part of the produce of the land which
never belonged, and does not now belong, to them.
They might as well tax our bread because they
have to pay jointures and annuities to their
dowager mothers and lady sisters.

We are aware that the clergy, whose income
in part depends on the price of corn, have a
trifling interest in keeping up the Corn-laws, but
we are surprised that they should make common
cause with the landlords, who treat the claims of
the clergy as an incumbrance from which they
compel the people to relieve them. They admit,
by supporting the Corn-laws, because the land
has to pay tithes, that they have not as good a
right to them as the landlords have to their
estate. To us it seems as if the landlords made
a cat's-paw of them, or they made a cat's-paw
of themselves to drag the landlords' chestnuts
out of the fire. Be the cause avarice, ignorance,
or sheer folly, the bulk of the clergy, we believe,
make common cause with the landlords in their
endeavours to uphold the bread-tax.
We thought that the Church was unpopular
enough without affixing on it this additional
stigma. It stands in the way of popular educa-
tion; it stands in the way of general harmony
and unanimity; it is openly opposed to perfect
freedom ; the Catholics and Dissenters are op=
pressed in its name ; it is considered a pub 4
nuisance; and now the landlords represent 4,
and the clergy confirm the landlords' representar
tion, as the cause of the Corn-laws. They ai*
kept up, it is said, to enable the landlords to pay
tithes. For the sake of the Church, bread fis
and the
the
Churchpeople thes t a r
ry
ee
ldi i
nS' ow b ti he ri
Cinlatudrechd,eaanrd

it professes to teach, and the morality which it is
_ _

supposed to inculcate, are made odious by being

associated with the accursed bread-tax.
If it be curious to see the clergy lend them-
selves to this manceuvre of the rent-owners, the
conduct of the latter towards the Church is as in-

consistent.- They represent it as essential to the

peace of society. V They look to the priesthood as
a moral police to enforce obedience and teach

duty. They rely on it,- they say, for
samethepreser-
,
vation of order. At the sae time they hold it up
to public odium by asserting that the detestable
bread-tax is levied in order to enable the land,.
lords to pay the priesthood. Their conduct is ar7

the people, and they have made common cause I._;
to attain their object.
Let every town, therefore, every hamlet—
let the inmates of every hotise, rise against the
continuance of these cursed monopolies. This is
truly "not the cause of faction or of party ;" it
is as truly a national cause. It is the cause of
honesty and morality against plunder and vice.
It is the cause of every man and every woman in
the empire. It is the cause even of the oppres-
sors and monopolists themselves, for they would
be as much benefited by abolishing these mono-
polies as were the planters, who no longerlive in
dread of the labourers as they lived in dread of
their slaves, by the abolition of slavery.
Every man, every woman, and every child, is
interested in gaining a victory for truth and
righteousness over falsehood and wrong. All
who love and honour virtue ; all who wish to
open paths for enterprise, and give a free scope,
as GOD has given, to talents and industry ; all,
who wish to see abundance on the earth, and the
people easy and happy ; all who wish to see
youth well occupied, and maidens likely to be
married, should now, and at once, strenuously
exert themselves to influence the coming elec-
tion. They should everywhere secure the defeat
of those who withhold bread from the poor, who
curse the people with dearth, and annually starve
many hundreds, or even thousands, out of
existence.