The Sun.
London, England, 1847-02-03 00:00:00

awning 241 At

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1847,

On presenting two petitions from certain growers
of malt in Linlithgow and Dalkeith, Lord STANLEY
availed himself of the opportunity to throw some im-
pediment, if possible, in the way of the Government,
by inveighing against the Ministerial measure for
the admission of sugar in the operations of brewing
and distillation. The Noble Lord appeared to protest
against this proposition simply for the purpose of
indicating his continued adherence to the obsolete
principles of Protection. There was no necessity for
this parade of pertinacity. The imperviousness of
Lord STANLEY'S mind to the convictions which, to
other men are inevitable, from the combined argu-
ments of reason and experience, is thoroughly com-
prehended by the mass of the population. It needs
neither such observations as those uttered last night
in the Upper House by Lord STANLEY, nor such de-
mlndrations as the memorable whitebait dinner of
last season, to convince us of the obstinacy of
the Noble Leader of the Protectionist Oppo•
sition. There is an insurmountable barrier—
a sort of moral chevaux-de-frieze—between the
Noble Lord and the free-trade movement—the
alternate cross-bars of the chevaux-de-frieze being his
egotism and his ambition. Every sensible observer
of the fluctuations of our statemen will acknowledge
at once that nothing short of a political miracle can
remove the scales of agricultural prejudice from the
eyes of Lord STANLEY, or pour the light of true com•
mercial knowledge into the wilful darkness of his
judgment. Even if the flourishing state of our na-
tional revenue, and the increased prosperity of our
native and colonial agriculturists, and the improved
condition of our lab-mring classes, and the extended
comforts of our shopkeepers and manufacturers, at-
tested at this moment the advantages of free trade,
Lord STANLEY would still require some preternatural
transmutation of his whole nature before he could
avow himself a conyei t to the doctrines of mercantile
freedom. The whole individuality of Lord STANLEY
would be annihilated in the change. Ile would be
metamorphosed into somebody else by the abandon

merit of all his old and cherished phantasms.
Like RIP VAN WINKLE on awaking from
a trance of years, Lord STANLEY would

be bewildered as to his own identity. Who does not
remember the exclamation of RIP VAN: WINKLE—

" I'm not myself; I'm somebody else ; that's me
there!"—pointing to a neighbour. Inevitably, Lord
STANLEY would find himself in a state of incredulity
quite as extravagant as that imagined by WASHING..
TON IRVING. He would behold himself surrounded
by the manifestations of the blessings consequent upon
an emancipated commerce, Itnd be loth to credit his
own stolid loyalty to the cause of protection. That
would be inevitable, supposing the advantages of free
trade could be obtained at a bound, instead of gra-
dually and progressively. As it would be out of the
course of all nature, however, to realise the benefits of
the new system suddenly, Lord STANLEY must con-

tinue the same pertinacious upholder of the monopo-
list creed. He must wait for the miracle we speak of.
Although the Noble Leader of the Protectionists
endeavoured to disguise his objections to the proposed
admission of sugar into distilleries, under the plea of
its being calculated to injure our colonial cultivators
of sugar and our native growers of malt, the mask
was too transparent to screen his real purpose. The

gist of Lord STANLEY'S objections amount, in fact, to
the advocacy of those old principles of monopoly
which were finally exploded by the Legislature
during the course of last session, and which have
been cleansed from our commercial code. Allow the
introduction of sugar to our distillers, and permit at
the same time the gradual reduction of duty upon
sugar grown in foreign plantations from 21s. to 145.,
so as to be upon au equality with our colonial pro-
duce, and what will be the consequence ? Why, ex-
claims Lord STANLEY, the consequence is ob-
vious ; the facilitation of the purchase of foreign
sugar will naturally and necessarily deteriorate
the interests of our colonial planters, and the extended
employment of that commodity in distillation will
prove equally prejudicial to our growers of malt.
The proposition, we will admit, is plausible enough at
a superficial glance, but its sophistry vanishes upon
a closer examination. It is reported that grain is
now so far reduced, and the duty upon sugar still con-
tinues so considerable, that there is no inducement
whatever to our distillers to forsake their system of
extracting saccharine matter from malt for the pur-
pose of obtaining it directly from sugar. Besides
this, the argument of Lord STANLEY against the dimi-

nution of the duty upon foreign sugar to the amount
levied upon colonial sugar, is nothing more than
a revival of the old Protectionist howl. Because
it suits the purpose of the discomfited mono-
polists, they altogether throw into the back-
ground the object of the Administration in intro-
ducing this measure in reference to the employment
of sugar in distillation—that object being to afford
. .

brewers and distillers a substitute for malt whenever

a panic has so far acted upon the corn-market as
to carry grain up to the enormous price of 70s.
or 803. per quarter. That is the grand

intention of the Government, and that is the inten-

tion which Lord STANLEY and his followers would
misrepresent as a wanton interference with the inte-
rests of our English growers of malt and of our

colonial cultivators of sugar. The logic of the Pro-
tectionists has become too threadbare, however, to

cover their insidious attempts with anything like
decency.

f Ire
We have zealously advocated the interests o
land on all occasions, to the best of our ability ; we
have urged the adoption of all such measures as may
be calculated to afford relief to her suffering children,
or to be beneficial in any respect to the Irish gene-
rally, or to any particular class of Irishmen, unless
some great principle of national policy, or national
justice, should be infringed on, or 'violated by the
concession. When demands, unreasonable in them-
selves, and in direct opposition to the recognised
principles of legislation, are made, it becomes our