The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-06 00:00:00

fPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
(From the Globe.)
Chartism," says the Herald, "has nown cut of
the, alienation which tile I\icw Poor-law has produce:l
between the poor and the rich." The word Chartism
eattinly is new, but the tiling is of indefinite antiquity.
The leadinz, points of the Charter were embodied in
a declaration signed by Wiilium Pitt in his uncoil-
vc-ted state, and the practical principles were exem-
plified by the followers of Vat Tyler, the Jacquerie
and 'the 2.1,-:•)ster Anabaptists. Teat those who have
lio:hing to lose should find some comfort in being-
t.aght 'hat the law of nature allows them to help
l-tcim;;:ices from the stock of those who have, IS not
,rT;..is;n4—and rogues will be found to teach it so long
, the tutor's fees are paid. The law provides for the
relief of those who are destitute ; if it takes one man's
iiiont,y to gibe to another, who can do without it, that
is done by law which the Jacquerie did by force.

word upon the Herald's remedy for Chartism—
the removal of ignorance. In this we agree ; but deny
',:rat the Whig Radicals, or her Majesty's Attorney-
ieoeral, are the men " who seek in the felon's dock for
• :e best defence of society—who consider the hangman
be the great moral teacher of men, who place their
1. ith in ball-cartridge and bayonets, and look upon her
:`+liijosty's red coats as" the best bulwarks of social life.
Their creed is, we have shown a recent instance of its
roingied crime and folly—' cut down, shoot, gibbet
Chartism.' " Toe Herald, citing the case of Frost, says,
" Correct and educate." We have never seen much grace
in the grown gentlemen who have been taught to dance,
even when willing to learn ; and we do not know any pro-
ccsa by which the Whigs could have taught the New-
port rioters their duties. The leaders had grown up to
be middle-aged men under Tory rule. The Whigs,
on coming into office, found them such ; and we do not
think that when marching down the street at Newport,
even the Herald would have placed so much reliance
the most orthodox teaching as on the ball cartridge.
However that may be, the putting down a ruffianly
m3b,:even at the expense of some loss of life, when
othervZise the lire% and properties of unoffending parties
would be sacrificed, is not peculiarly a Whig prac-
tice, and we trust that it will be resorted to, in case of
necessity, by whatever party may hold the Government.
Our Contemporary has yet one more vituperative word
to apply to his opponents, which is " unchristian." So
the Poor-law Amendment Act is a Whig and unchris-
tian measure, supported by the Duke of Wellington and
the Bishop of London. If trees are to be judged by
their fruits, according to the Herald the Lord Spiritual
and the Lord Temporal are Whig-Radicals and Infidels.
(From the Courier.) _

It is matter of sufficient notoriety, and on all occa-
sions made a standard reproach by the opponents of
both, how little of sympathy apparently exists between
the press representing Conservative opinion among the
public, and the leaders or members representing the
Ccnse► vative party in the Legislature, upon the one most
special subject of the Poor-laws. The almost exclusive
advocacy and odium of the more unpopular side of most
public questions has usually been the fate of that Press,
from whose cause and course leading legislators have
been seen to separate themselves on the day of trial,
sheltering their apparent abandonment, or deviation,
from before understood opinion or resolve under a plea
of the expediency of compromise in some cases, and of
an overruling necessity arising out of some peculiar emer-
gency in others. Fairly to speak, the political position
has not unfrequently been such in the extraordinary times
we have lived in, as on many occasions to justify the
validity of these pleas, as least in a considerable degree.
The Poor-law question, however, is eminently one in
which the Constitutional Press and Parliamentary leaders
smod in somewhat reverse order ; for the former,
for once, is left in the exclusive monopoly of the
popular side, whilst the latter swayed too readily in the
;irst instance by dishonest reports of low ministerial
agent?, to the prejudice of the poor, misled besides by
c.eunomical considerations, of which the value at best
was doubtful, as reposing on assertions alone, and in-
fluenced perhaps also by the mistaken however loudly
trumpeted assumptions of middle-class sentiment, were
found co-operating either actively or by acquiescence in
the enactment of new Poor-laws, and have since been
4c,ln passive spectators of their baneful operation, as if
nebamed to retract error or unable to repair it. This
dissonance of action and feeling between Conservative
statesmen and the Conservative press has been a
source no less of discouragement and weakness to the
cause than of exultation to the Government and its new
Poor-law satellites, who profit by and can exist only upon
its continuance. Disunion in the councils is not the means
of success to an end. Experience has now been carried
far enough to force conviction of the unconstitutional and
most unwholesome tendency of the new Poor-laws on
minds the most prepossessed, and the time, we appre-
hend, should now be approaching, when a remedy must
be applied of poteqcy equal to the virulence of disease
generated. and the laws themselves in their present
shape swept from the book of statutes, or essentially
modified.