The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-24 00:00:00

THE CORN-LAWS.

On Saturday, a deputation of between thirty and forty
gentlemen waited upon the Lord Mayor with a requisi-
tion signed by upwards of 500 names, that his Lordship
would be pleased to call a meeting of the constituency
and inhabitants of the city of London, to take into con-
sideration the propriety of petitioning Parliament for an
alteration in the present Corn-laws. Amongst the de-
putation we noticed Mr. Travers, Mr. Fearon, Mr. Dillon,
Mr. R. Taylor, Mr. Ashurst, Mr. William Pritchard,p.
Mr. Foster, Mr. Hutchinson, Mr. Greig, Mr. Heppel,
Mr. Norris, &c.

Mr. FEARON having presented the requisition, the Lord
Mayor went into the next room to consult the Town
Clerk, and soon afterwards returned, and stated that he
was happy at all times to afford the greatest facilities for
the expression of the public feeling and sentiments, and
that he would grant the request of so large and respect-
able a body. He thought he was bound to say, how-
ever, that his view on the great subject of the Corn-laws
was decidedly opposed to those gentlemen who waited
upon him. He was the farmers' friend, and he appre-
hended that if the Corn-laws were repealed, that exten-
sive class of persons would be actually driven to the
workhouses. He fervently hoped that the meeting
would not engage in anything calculated to pauperize so
meritorious a body of their fellow-subjects.
Mr. FEARON declared, that if the gentlemen present
contemplated any such result as the reduction to pauper-
- ism of the farmers, or any other class of their country-
men, they would use all their exertions for the adoption
of a course directly opposed to that which they were
now pursuing; but he apprehended, without meaning to
give any offence, that his Lordship took not only a mis-
taken, but an exceedingly narrow view of the question.
They (the deputation) were the friends of the farmer in
the best sense of the word. All interests were necessa-
rily linked together, and one interest could not be de-
pressed without inflicting injury upon all. He looked
upon the question to be one in which the entire trade
of the country and the support of the existing popula-
tion were involved. Peace was said to be the
great civilizer of mankind—it was the great equa-
lizer too. The continuance of monopolies and the
continuance of peace were wholly irreconcilable. Eng-
land had taught other nations in manufactures to fight
her with her own weapons, and unless she relaxed
in prohibitory laws they would cease their commer-
cial intercourse with her. Germany, Belgium,
Switzerland, and even France, were in some degree
becoming her rivals. He might add the United
States. The trade of England with the old countries
of Europe had greatly declined in consequence of her re-
fusal to take their produce, and her exports kept up their
present amount by the increase of her colonies, the open-
ing of the Brazil connection, and other new markets.
Now, he begged to be informed by the Lord Mayor how
was the deficiency in the revenue to be supplied without
increased pressure upon the people. His Lordship had
said that the shopkeeper depended upon the farmer, and
the farmer depended upon the Corn-laws. He begged
to remind his Lordship that the whole depended upon
our trade. England could not shut up herself from
foreign connection, and if the Lord Mayor's views
were carried out, the millions of workmen who were
called into existence by our manufactures would
place the property of his Lordship and the property
of all other men of substance in the greatest pos-
sible jeopardy. The shipper was the customer of the
manufacturer ; the manufacturer was the employer
of the workman ; the workman was the customer of the
little shopkeers, and the little shopkeepers were the
customers of his Lordship and other large dealers, and the
whole were the supporters and customers of the agricul-
turists. As a man having a stake in the country he felt
the deepest interest in the success of the measure to
which the requisition called his Lordship's attention,
feeling assured that its denial would tend to impair the
national energies, lessen the security of property, and
place the masses of the working population in a position
alarming to every friend of his country. But if it was
carried we should not only sustain our present position,
but a new course of greatness would open upon England.
It was well known that in the great cotton manufac-
tories the men worked no more than four days in the
week—his object was to enable them to work the whole
six days.
The LORD MAYOR—You must not misunderstand me ;
lam not hostile to the manufacturers. I have had a
great deal to do with the manufacturers, and supply them
with the oil which they use in the prosecution of their
labours.

His Lordship then appointed next Tuesday week for
the consideration of the question of the Corn-laws in the
Guildhall, and the deputation left the Mansion-house.

"SIR ROBERT PEEL'S VICTORY.
" Another such victory, and we shall be ruined."—
Duke of Wellington's Despatches.
The long debate ended at last in a majority of thirty-
six monopolists against the Ministry. Rights of sugar,
rights of timber, rights of corn, all sorts of rights were
respected, except rights of the people; and all sorts of
dangers were deprecated by the alarmists, save danger
of starvation and ruin, Sugar men, coffee men, timber
men, corn men, ail sorts of horse-leech men, joined in
the cry—" Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" and, for a
time, they have triumphed.
But we are mistaken if Lord John Russell is the man to
be put down by a coalition of class-interests, however for-
midable. The country have waited, and waited in vain, for
an exposition from his rival of that grand scheme of policy
which was to heal the wounds of the State, and to throw into
the shade the unstatesman-like remedy of the Ministry.
Sir Robert Peel avows he has none to offer. This he
tells us in language so equivocal, that the most opposite
sections of his party are each persuaded that, he has
pledged himself to their particular views ; while, in rea-
lity, he has contrived to leave himself free on all the
points of sugar, timber, and corn. The time for alter-
ing the sugar duties is not yet come, according to his
notions ; but he thinks slavery is no impediment in the
way. A fixed duty on corn he will oppose, but some
alteration might possibly be made in the sliding duty.
These admissions, with many protestations of adherence
to the principlejof free trade, leaves him, as he presumes,
at perfect liberty to trim his sails to any wind that
blows, and to claim to be the man on whom the mantle
of Mr. Huskisson has descended, or the bosom friend of
the Duke of Buckinghain, just as the popular feeling
may show itself more or less strongly in the interim.
There can be no great wisdom or ability in conduct
like this. On a momentous occasion like the present,
we did not expect a statesman to cavil at the inconsist-
encies or official errors of his rivals—to turn to account
the arguments of the wrong pamphlet relied on by his
opponents, or to put his whole trust in Hansard—but to
grapple with the mighty reality of things. From many
smooth-shaven Respectabilities and Plausibilities, we
might expect such things, but not from a
." proximate
premier," called upon in a great crisis to decide a change
in the whole policy of the empire.
Not only did the monopolist leader not meet the ques-
tion like a statesman, he did not meet it at all. As Lord
Palmerston reminded the House, he did not utter a single
word about the Brazilian Treaty, or the United States of
America, and Germany. He argued the question as if
our foreign trade was flourishing, as if our deficit were
purely temporary, and as if there were little or no dis-
tress in the country, although in certain districts the
people are glad to eat carrion to sustain life. Sir Robert
Peel cannot shut his eyes to the fact that we must either
sacrifice our monopolies or our foreign trade. The lives
of our surplus millions depend upon the latter ; and as
we can neither expatriate our people, exterminate them,
or pass the ploughshare over London, Manchester, and
Birmingham, as prayed for by the Quarterly Review, we
must find employment for them. There are some ques-
tions, like those of the Sphynx, which a statesmen now-
a-days must solve on pain of being devoured, and he will
find the corn monopoly one of these. If the Tories re-
fuse to speak out there is a way to make them by mo-
tions, as Mr. Charles Buller hinted. Let Ministers once
force their slippery antagonist to commit himself in fa-
vour of direct taxation or against free trade, and he is
lost. The country is in no mood to put up with a Mr.
Facingbothways as its ruler.—British Queen.

THE SHOREHAM ROAD.-- The Shoreham
Road Bill went into a Committee of the House of Lords on
Tuesday, when, after Council had been heard at great length,
it was determined to introduce a clause enabling the Railway
Company to lay down rails and cross the read on a level, and
also to strike out the clause prohibiting the erection of a gate
mares Brighton than Hove. As the latter is a money. clause,
it is neesssary that the Bill should go back to the Commons ;
and as the trustees will not do this, the result is that the Bill
will be abandoned, and the road will be left in its present
wretched state. Though it was a somewhat unusual course
for the Lords to introduce the clause giving the Company
power to lay rails across the road, it serves the trustees per,
fectly right. They were offered the most liberal terms by the
Railroad Company for the use of the road—no less than ld. on
every ton of goods, with the understanding that the can iages
should be drawn by horse-power, and never make the transit
before sun-rise or after sun-set. These terms the trustees
refused. Why? Because they wanted a round sum to be
paid down, that they might payoff their dividends and get out
of the mess in which they find themselves. However, they
have overreached themselves and are deeper in the mud than
than ever ; for we have heard that it is intended to renew the
prosecutions, which were only suspended in order that an
arrangement might be made by the trustees with the Railway
Company, which doubtless will now go to Parliament and get
for nothing that right of which they were denied the fair pur-
chase.—Brighton Herald.
FUNERAL OF THE LATE J. T. B. BEAU-
MONT, ESQ.—On Saturday the remains of the late John
Thomas Barber Beaumont, Esq., F.G.S., F.A.S., were
removed from his late residence in Regent-street, for
interment in the cemetery constructed by him at Mile-
end. The mourning-coaches contained J. A. Beaumont,
Alfred Beaumont, and Henry Beaumont, Esqrs., sons
of the deceased • Sir Henry Pym, M.P. ; Sir Richard
King, J. G. Boc:th, Esq. ; and other immediate friends.
For nearly two hours previous to the interment, Beau-
mont-square, Mile-end, and Alfred-street, &c., along
which the funeral passed, were lined with well-dressed
persons, anxious to pay a mark of respect to the memory
of the deceased gentleman, who was highly esteemed by
the inhabitants of the district, in which he possessed
large property ; and the shutters of most of the shops
and houses were closed upon the occasion. On arriving
at the cemetery the body was conveyed into the chapel,
and the coffin was consigned to the tomb opposite the
chapel, prepared by ordr of Mr. Beaumont previous to
his death.

We regret to learn that letters have just been
received in town from Italy, which announce the sud-
den and serious illness of the Countess of Coventry.
Her Ladyship, with her only daughter Lady Holland,
is sojourning at Rome, and whilst taking an airing in
the vicinity of the ancient city, her Ladyship was at-
tacked by a coup de soleil, at least it is so supposed, from
the suddenness and seriousness of the attack. Lord
Holland, who was making a short excursion, was at
Pisa at the time of the occurrence, and was sent for
express.

Lord Brougham has left Naples on his return
to London. The Lords have this session been glad enouph
that the " schoolmaster was abroad." When he comes home
he wild find the School it a gad uproar.—Prighton Herald.

CORN-LAWS, OR NO CORN-LAWS.
Although as a step towards justice we should rejoice
to see Lord John Russell's proposition for substituting a
fixed duty of Bs. a quarter on wheat, for the present slid-
ing scale, carried ; yet, believing a tax on food, be the
amount never so small, to be as contrary to humanity and
to the welfare of the nation, as it certainly is to the
Word of God, we should never have rested satisfied till
the trade in that great necessary, without which man
must die, was made perfectly free with every nation of
the world. That it must, spite of every opposition, even-
tually become so, we have not, nor ever had, the smallest
doubt.

We are not in the habit of quoting the opinions of
Tory Lords, and of calling upon the people to be guided
by them; nor would we, on slight occasions, wish our
readers to follow the standard of the Earl of Winchilsea
rather than that of Earl Fitzwilliam ; but on so important a
question as whether' our bread shall be taxed—how-
ever lightly—or not taxed at all, we cannot allow the
emphhatic declaration of the former nobleman—all Tory
though he be—to pass unheeded, or to be lost to memory
merely because he happens to be a Tory. It has already
been extensively noticed, but we should not be doing the
cause of the people justice, if we did not pointedly bring it
before them, and call upon them to act on it. Speak-
ing in the House of Lords on the Government plan
of substituting a fixed, for a fluctuating scale of duty on
Corn, the Earl of Winchilsea thus expressed himself :
" In God's name, let us all rise, let us rise in this House
and in the country to a man, and let the higher classes do
their duty to those who are beneath them, to the lower
and poorer classes—let us allow any tax to be
,placed on the land, but never let us submit to a tax on
bread." We trust his Lordship's advice will be followed,
not only by the Lords, but by the people, and that they
will " rise as one man," and show the monopolists that
they will no longer " submit to a tax on bread." The
people have not forgotten that so odious was a tax on
bread considered, that in 1815, when it was imposed,
the Houses of Parliament were surrounded by soldiers
with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets to prevent the
people from wreaking their vengeance on those who vo-
ted for the accursed tax ; nor have the people forgotten
the Manchester massacre—that it was at a meeting
called to petition against the bread-tax that the field of
Peterloo was dyed with their blood. Let a dissolution
of Parliament come when it will, in a day, a week, or
a month, the cry of the people must be—No bread tax.
Let them assemble in front of the hustings, and tell the
candidates, whether they be Whigs or whether they be
Tories, that they shall not be returned to Parliament
unless they will pledge themselves to oppose any and
every tax on food. Let them do this and the day is
theirs.—Wilts Independent.

COWES, ISLE OF WIGHT.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.

SERIOUS ACCIDENT.—As Mr. Thomas Blake, brewer,
and Mr. Thomas White, ship-builder, were returning
from Yarmouth on Tuesday evening, in aphmton, the
horse gibbed, and upset the carriage, throwing the gen-
tlemen out with great violence, and so seriously injuring
them that they have been since confined to their beds,
but we are happy to say no bones were broken, and that
they are proceeding favourably..
The churcwardens of the parish of Northwood, as in
duty bound, have been exerting themselves to obtain
signatures to petitions in favour of the present Corn-
laws ; the one resident in Cowes succeeded in obtaining
17 names in three days ; but in that time one against
these prohibitive laws was got up, and 100 signatures
soon affixed to it, not only with the names but the resi-
dences added.

There is a queer story from Newport, in The Sun of
the 18th inst., of the Radical Members for Newport op-
posing the disfranchisement of 40 or 50 Conservative
electors of that borough, when their return to Parlia-
ment would be secured thereby. We are of opinion that
the declaration, or decision, of a score of Revising Bar-
risters, that part of Cowes was in the borough of New-
port (curious thought it is), would not go far to prove that
the houses occupied by the electors were the property of
the Corporation of Newport : if it did, how is it that all
the houses in Newport that give votes do not belong to
the Corporation ? The whole paragraph is a very lame
affair ; no attempt is made to contradict the statement
which appeared in The Sun of the 13th inst. ; indeed
that could not be contradicted, as it was only a descrip-
tion of the different clauses as they stood in the Medina
Company's Bill. As to the inhabitants of Newport
wishing (the Company wishing) to alter their river, they
have the same right they have to alter any of their roads
—but not at the expense of their neighbours ; and if there
is any monopoly, it must be that of the Company, who
wish to put a perpetual toll on all the goods landed at
Newport, &c„ say on potatoes 3s. per ton, cranberries
3s. per barrel, other articles in proportion, being six-
times what is charged in other ports. How the poorer
inhabitants are to be benefited by this tax remains to be
seen—the trade is not likely to be improved certainly by it.
This country never looked more beautiful ; the white-
thorn, now in full blossom, clothes the woods and hedge-
rows in one sheet of white, and fills the air with its
fragrance. The town is particularly healthy ; with a
population of 5,000 we have had but three deaths in the
last three months, and our medical practitioners, for want
of better employment, are absent on visits to their friends.

MADEMOISELLE RACHEL,
Mademoiselle Rachel appeared on Friday night in a third cha-
racter, before the best house that her performances have yet at-
tracted. With the tragedy of Bajazet all who are conversant
with French literature are acquainted. Written and repre-
sented for the first time in 1672, only thirty-four years after
the seraglio intrigue which supplied the ground-work of its five
acts, it is justly considered one of the best pieces of that orna-
ment of the French drama, Jean Racine. Mdlle. Rachel enacted
the part of Roxane, which has been one of her triumphs at
Paris. In her second scene, at the commencement of the
long paasage,
" Je sais que des Sultans l'usage m'est contraire,"
there was some apprehension of her being indisposed, for she
stopped once or twice in a manner that seemed to denote pain,
and the prompter's assistance was very perceptibly required ;
but it happily proved but a very transient desertion of her ex-
cellent memory, and by the time she reached the third act she
was in complete possession of her wonted powers. Even in
the first two, which do not bring much into play the brightest
qualities that distinguish her, she took not a few opportunities
of displaying the extreme care and taste with which she studies
her text. It was, however, at the conclusion of the third act
that she won the great approbation so frequently manifested
again in the following scenes. One of her finest bursts of pas-
sion was where the letter of Atalide to Bajazet is put into her
hands. In this passion she gave the greatest satisfaction, as
well as in the concluding lines of the same scene. The man-
ner in which she uttered the command, " Sortez," when
Roxane indignantly dismisses Bajazet after her last appeal to
his affections, was also attended with much effect, following, as
it did, her skilful efforts to check the tumult of her mind.
On the fall of the curtain there was a universal call for her,
and she came forward amidst renewed plaudits. Among the
company present were their Royal Highnesses the Duchess and
Princess Augusta of Cambridge, and a considerable number of
persons of rank and fashion.

HER MAJESTY'S DRAWING-
ROOM.
LADIES' DRESSES.
HER MAJESTY.

Dress of white satin, the body and sleeves splendidly orna-
mented with diamonds and point lace ; the skirt elegantly
trimmed en tablier with point lace and roses ; train of rich sil-
ver tissue (of Spitalfields manufacture), lined with white satin,
and trimmed with roses. Head-dress, feathers, diamonds, and
lappets.