The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-19 00:00:00

Whie

LONDON :
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 1841.

The speech of the Rev. Dr. ATKINS at the
opening of the Anti-Corn-law Conference at
Matschester, embodies a very frightful, but a
very correct picture of the state of this country.
Arrived, as England is, at the highest pinnacle
of greatness in arts, of glory in arms—abound-
ing, as she d ws, in enormous masses of un-
wieldy wealth--srolling, as she is, in the. most re-
fined and expensive luxury—extending, as she
does, her sway stud her commanding- moral in-
fluence to the remotest nations; it is a fact as
true as it is lamentable that thousands of the
most useful class of her subjects are at this
moment in a state of utter and absolute starva-
tion. With wealth enough in England to pur-
chase the fee-simple of half the world, it is de-
plorable to think of the masses of human beings,
not only in the manufacturing districts but in this
great metropolis, whom hunger is hourly
sweeping into a premature grave. Let the
philosopher who would wish this subject to
sink into his soul, take a walk any day in the
week from Charing-cross to Cheapside. At every
step he will survey right and left of him heaps
of gold, and of silver, and of precious stones,
and piles of bullion and countless wealth, in all
the various forms in which luxury causes it to be
consumed. When he has surveyed all this, and
marvelled at the riches of the men who purchase
and revel in these luxuries—who feed out of
gold and silver dishes, and drink out of gold and
silveincups—who ornament the liveries of their
lacqueys, and the harness of their horses, with
preciOus metals—lot him turn into any of the
countless alleys and lanes running out of his
main path, and contrast, with what he has seen,
the sights of human suffering and degradation
which will there arrest him at every step. Let
him pass through Shoreditch, and explore the pur-
lieus of Drury-lane and St. Giles's, and if what he
beholds fills him not with horror, there is little
human about him, save the form. Here he
will find once strong, and still industrious men,
reduced to the condition of walking skeletons;
women once innocent, perhaps virtuous, in whom
the hunger of the body had killed the soul; and
wretches dying with want, whom the crumbs
from the table of the rich man's menial cast
heedlessly to dogs, would restore to health.
Whence this wide inequality in the condition of
English society? We •answer, in a great mea-
sure from party legislation—from the robbery by
Parliament of one class to elevate another. The
landlords make laws to suit themselves at the
ex:sense of the working classes. What their
aucestors did in the feudal ages at the head of a
gang robbers, they do by means of an Act of
Parliament--viz. plunder those too defenceless
to resist then!. Of all descriptions of Par-
liamentary robbery,. that effected by the Corn-
laws is the most wicked and the most detest-
able. In other robberies, the property is as-
sailed, here the life is attacked. And after wit-
nessing, the deplorable misers caused among the

poor by the high plice of food; aacr learning
the ravages of diseaze Produced by b:td and in-
efficient quantities f diet, ran We arrive at any
other conclusion than that there 'laws are most
prodigal in the exti,::tion of ? The eloquent
statement of the Rev. Dr. AnciNs upon this
point cannot be too serious7.y reflected upon :
"What, he would ask, was the present state of the

British Empire ? This country, possessing within itself *
inexhaustible resources, whilst it was the richest in the
world, was, in one sense, also the poorest. Its popula-
tion, instinct as it was with ardour, and unrivalled for
its industry, was unemployed and in want. Looms were
silent—manufactories were closed—commercial men
looked at each other in consternation and despair !
What was the condition of the poor artisans and pea-
sants ? Their lank arms hung idle by their sides—their
grim visages were pallid with privation and care—and
their worn forms exhibited but the skeletons of men.
What is the cause of such a state of things ? It was to
be found in the laws which prohibit the" exchange of
labour for food. Our population see abundance in the
countries around them, hut they are debarred from en-
joying it. Like the poor disciples of a poorer master,
they shake their tattered garments and say, " Gold and
silver have wa none, but we will purchase your corn by
our industry." It was to put an end to such an unwise
and unnatural system as this that they were assembled—
to put an end to it, not by violence or clamour, but by
means equally scriptural and constitutional. The
moral atmosphere was charged with thunder-clouds. If
the tempest burst upon the country, it would carry
desolation in its track."

The moral atmosphere is indeed charged with
thunder-clouds, and woe to those foolish, self-
confident legislators who provoke the bursting
of the tempest. What effect the Conference now
sittingatManchester may have upon the councils
of Sir ROBERT PEEL and his friends, we pretend
not to say; but we know that the effect upon
the country will be immense. But it NI ill by no
means serve as a conductor for guiding the storm
innocently over the heads of the Tories,
if they persist in withholding bread from the
mouths of a famishing people. Of this fact we
warn them to rest entirely assured.

The distress in Paisley has reached to such an
extent—the prospects of the manufacturers arc
so utterly hopeless, that a numerous body of the
most valuable operatives of that once flourishing
town are addressing the Crown, the Cabinet, and
the country, for the means of clothing them, pre-
paratory to their expatriation to Port Philip or
Sydney. The misery must be indeed great, and
locally irremediable, which compels whole fami-
lies to exchange the familiar scenes of childhood,
the pleasant trysts and haunts of youth, the old
hearth hallowed with ancestral foot-prints, and
the old church-yard, rendered sacred to me-
mory and teeling by ancestral ashes—those
siient but impressive witnesses of the best reso-
lutions and the reciprocation of the holiest affec-
tions—for chance home in the last resting-place
of the violators of the laws of GOD and their
country. A tree cannot be uprooted without
suffesire,s Without the greatest care in the
tramsplantation it perishes. The roots of a fa-
mily strike far deeper in the native soil than
those of the largest tree. They extend over
hills and dells ; they derive life and nurture
from streams, moors, mountains, lakes, old ruins,
and older traditions. Poverty inflicts no pain so
great as when it tears up these roots, and casts
man forth like a weed upon the waves of the
world, indifferent where he may find a spot into
which be may be transplanted. And yet to this
lamentable pitch of wretchedness have a large
body of the industrious operatives of Paisley
come. Nor does their misery originate in any
fault of theirs. In no part of the United King-
dom are the operatives a class more moral, more
intelligent, and more industrious than in Paisley.
If they have taken a more prominent part in past
political movements than their fellow-workmen
in other districts, it is because they were
always somewhat in advance of public opinion.
Though for the most part self-taught, they did
not rest satisfied with a smattering of political
knowledge. They established trades' libraries,
organised courses of lectures, and encouraged,
to the utmost of their means, experiments in
science. But neither their knowledge, their
skill, nor their industry,
.could save them from
the starvation effects of the Corn-laws. The
markets for shawls and cottons became gradu-
ally more restricted in those countries whose
corn we refused to purchase, as they, in retalia-
tion, were obliged to manufacture shawls and
cottons for themselves. First, prices declined;
next, manufacturers were obliged to put their
men on half time; and at last employment
ceased in a great measure altogether. The
wealthier classes in the vicinity of Paisley, so

Isubscriptions, and employment upon the roads.
But to the industrious, self-depending operative,
the bread of charity, in whatever form doled
out, is always bitter, and the poor working peo-
ple of Paisley, finding from the triumph of
the Tories on the Monopoly Starvation-law
that hopes of improvement in their con-
dition can no longer be entertained, call
upon their country for the means of covering
them with the necessary raiment for a decent
and civilized appearance in New South Wales.
Weary of dependence, and hopeless of amelio-
rating their condition at home, these poor people
are eager to seek in other climes the means of
earning an independent subsistence, and, as they
well and touchingly expressit, " of freeing their
native country from the burden of supporting
them, and of contributing to the extension ofher
MAJESTY'S Colonial Empire." Their prayer will
surely meet with attentive ears and open purses
on the part of that branch of the oligarchy of
the country who support the Corn-laws. Cal-
culating, as they short-sightedly do, their gain by
the extent of the poverty among the manufac-
turers, they will surely not refuse to assist in
expatriating those whom they have, by starvation,
made heart-sick of their country.
Hopeless indeed is the condition of that coun-
try, for whose miseries emigration is the only, or
even the best remedy ; but as no other can at
present be applied with such expedition in the
manufacturing districts, it is a work of !mercy to
assist in promoting it. We could better spare
any class of our fellow-subjects than those inge-
nious artizans who have produced the bulk of
our wealth, and who will carry away with them
those arts which will sooner or later render the
colonies the formidable commercial rivals of the
mother country; but as we would not see them
perish with hunger and nakedness, it becomes a
duty to contribute to the procuring the only imme-
diate remedy for distress so deep and so urgent.
With the strongest desire not to dry up the
fount of charity in any quarter, by regarding a
question involving the fate of a deserving but
unfortunate body of operatives in a party point
of view, or attempting to turn it to mere party
purposes, we deem it a duty to impress upon the
British people how completely it demonstrates
the necessity of a radical change in the com-
mercial policy of this country. It is all very
well for the agriculturists to call for protection,
Protects
bat when what
coat encetys,
th theme involves
the ruin, the men
expatria-
tion by charity of thousands of honest
and industrious artizans, only a wicked and pro-
r it to
at the
fiigate Legislature could consent
e:el exclusively grant
ant
them. To protect one class
expense of the lives of another, is nothing short
of murder. Is it just or reasonable to leave the
landed oligarchy in possession of the
high
rents of which the Corn-laws plunder the
people, that they may have money to
squander in gambling, in keeping . racing_
studs, in maintaining an army of powdered lac_
quryq, and in corrupting the poor voters by
bribes at elections, while thousands of indus-
trious, sober, and intelligent operatives are
obliged to appeal to the country for the clothing
necessary to defend them from the inclemency
of the weather in a voyage to Sydney ? A thou-
sand times we answer, it is neither just nor rea-
sonable. This cry of the poor for bread will
reach Heaven, and evil will befal the wicked
and selfish men who, to increase their own wealth,
continue the accursed taxes upon food.

We anticipated yesterday the news contained
in the French Journals of Monday. The fol-
lowing details of the riot at Bordeaux, from the
31e;;u».ial Bordelais of the 14th inst., are suffi-
ciently interesting to claim insertion in our co-

" Disturbances, of which it is impossible to appreciate
the true character, took place here (Bordeaux) in the
night of the 12th inst. Some say that they had their
origin at the theatre ; others assert that for some days