The Sun.
London, England, 1841-07-21 00:00:00

c~~ ,s ~a~a~t,

LONDON:
WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 1841.

It is laid down as a principle by Tory writers,
and acted on by Tory statesmen, that it is proper
and wise in the ruling classes, and, in fact, the
great duty of a Tory Government, to resist the
tendencies of society. This is not merely a
theory, it guides the actions of Tory statesmen.
For them it is enough to say that such is
the tendency of society, to make them think that
it is their duty to resist it. If this be a well-
founded theory, good may result from their ex-
ertions; but if the theory be erroneous, nothing
but mischief of the worst character can be ex-
pected to ensue from the Government being
placed in the hands of men who, on this vital
question, act on a false assftmption. It is of great
present practical importance, therefore, to ascer-
tain, if we can, from the nature of society, what
are its tendencies.

Let us first observe that this notion of Govern-
ment is directly the reverse of that which in-
duced our ancestors to follow their leaders when
they spread themselves over Britain from Ger-
many. The tendency of society then was for
people to swarm off. or migrate, and HENGIST
and Hoasa, with the other chiefs, were the
agents, not to control or resist this tendency, but
to carry it out. At what period the Government
changed its character, and became the antago-
nist of the popular desires and popular wants,
it would now be too long to trace; but we believe
it will be found to have been gradually assumed
as a usurping aristocracy separated themselves
from the people, came to dread the democracy,
and framed the laws and the Constitution ex-
clusively for the preservation of their privileges.
Next let us notice that this Tory theory of
Government is contradicted by experience. The
progress of society is towards Civilization. It
retrogrades not. The increase in wealth, in
knowledge, in skill, in humanity, is not less con-
spicuous since the Norman Conquest than the
increase of the population. Ships, roads, canals,
commerce, with all the fine and useful arts, at-
test the progress of modern society. How can
it be supposed, when such is the result, that the
tendencies of society are to evil ?

We may say, too, that in every age these re-
sults have been obtained, less by means of Go-
vernment than in spite of it. Our canals and our
commerce, our steam-engines and our railways,
are in no sense the direct product of royal or
aristocratic will, or even of royal or aristocratic
protection. In truth the middle classes, by
whom in the main these improvements have been
achieved, grew into power and wealth in spite of
the governing aristocracy. For many years the
Tory principle of opposing the tendencies of so-
ciety prevailed in the national councils, and in
,opposition to this.principle these results were ac-
complished. We have seen the Tory Govern-
ment successively obliged to give way to the
tendencies of society towards humanity and tole-
ration, It was compelled against its will
to mitigate the penal code, and abolish the
slave trade, and it was compelled to abolish
the Test Act, and grant Catholic Emancipation.
Thus experience contradicts the Tory theory;
but in spite of experience the Tories still main-
tain that the tendencies of society are to evil,
and that it is proper and wise in the Government
to resist and oppose them. They act on this er-
roneous theory, and in proportion as they are
be the mischief they will inflict on
the community.

-vvvL

We may, however, establish the' fallacy of
their theory, fiy looking at the nature of society.
To State a trite fact, in order to begin at the
has been created male
and female. From their unioti gPfitig§ s filthily,
_ln time there arc many families, and they coin_
pose a tribe or nation. Man is a gregarious ani-
mal; he lives in company ; his faculties are
adapted to that state of being; his skill and
power, by acting in concert, are increased much
more than in the simple ratio of his numbers;
and the union of families, from which these ad-
vantages flow, is society. Human society, there-
fore, wholly independent of any positive insti-
tutions, is a great natural fact, such a fact as the
existence of a community of bees ; it exists in
conformity to laws of nature, and is governed by
them. Since man has kept any xecords of his
;own existence, he hasexisted in society, which
is as much a part of the material universe, and
is as iivich governed by general laws, as the
-- ; -
Delpg thus founded iu natural laws, not in

&cheme,,,s of kings and hi,:ril:lators, the same laws
procrrest chief, per-
r,
h.;ps the only, great phy:,;ical eha::?•e in Society;
the parent, of many eiLtnges indk iduals, the
increase ofd gritaatiOu., By and with that in-
crease, division of labour, one -great source of
skill, and of augmented prodne'tive power, which
begins in the different employment of the sexes,
extended;is knowledge. is enlarged, arts are
o ;lied forth, and civilization expanded. Whatever
subordinate consequences may ensue, however WV.'
rious and oscillating may be the causes of these
improvements, sometimes one predominating and
then another, such is a rough and brief out-
line of the course of society from the beginning
of time till now. Wars have ensued and checked
the progress; pestilence has arisen and desolated
the fairest spots of the earth; but the same laws
which first ordained them to be peopled have re-
peopled them, or carried the stream of society in
some other direction. Man, and the laws which
regulate his existence on earth, are as lasting as
the earth ibself. From the beginning till now
the main tendency of society has been to increase
and to improve; and it is a false and most mis-
chievous error to assume the reverse, and to form
or seize a Government with a view to act on this
error.

We must assure our readers that we have not
attributed to the Tories any principle they do not
maintain; and we must repeat, with all sincerity,
and all the zeal at our command, that this is a
great practical question for the present
moment. The Tories are ready to carry out
their false theory by the strong hand. They
see the democracy growing in intelligence and
piwcr ; they see manufactures, or skilled, labour,
in the natural progress of things, superseding
in a great measure unskilled labour; they see,
in consequence, the skilled labourers, and those
who employ them, surpassing in wealth the less
skilled labourers and their employers, who own
the land, and who were once pre-emineut in
society. They regard this natural progress, the
result of the same natural laws which established
society in its commencement, as an evil ; and
they take office, claiming it by a sort of divine
appointment, resolved to put a stop to all that.
The outcry of the Tories is against the increase
of skilled labourers, who use machinery. From
Lord ASHUURTON, to the writer in the Herald,
they want to stop the tendency of society to in-
crease and congregate in towns.

We know not -why that present tendency
should be evil any more than those past tenden-
cies which have gradually conducted society
from the savage to the civilised state. We
know, however, that it is prodigious presump-
tion in the Tories to affirm the tendencies of so-
ciety are evil, and to claim a right to check
and control them. A single branch of the oak
assuming to prescribe to the whole tree when it
shall put forth its leaves, and when it shall ripen
its fruit-- a few drops of the ocean assuming to
give laws to the tides—some one star of superior
splendour assuming to regulate the movements
of all the starry host,—none of these at—ma-
lous ambitions are more anomalous or more ex-
travagant than the Tory pretension of opposing
and stopping the progress of society. We repeat
that society is a natural fact, regulated by natu-
ral laws; and that the Tories might as well un-
dertake to govern the seasons, because they may
be at present unfavourable, according to our
limited views, as to resist and control the ten-
dencies of society.

If it be the case in England, as we yesterday
pointed out, that the law enables the opulent
and the powerful to wreak their vengeance on
such of the lower classes as endeavour to oppose
their will, it is also the case in Ireland to an
extreme degree. There the people, outraged
and insulted by a dominant aristocracy and a
dominant sect—the law and the Government
being avowedly constructed to promote sectarian
or Protestant advantages—much more frequently
than the people of England break out into acts
of violence, and seek the gratification of revenge
in spite of the law. In Ireland the landlords,
who have made the law for their own advantage,
and who have within our own memory rendered
the law of ejectment more stringent to serve
their purposes—in Ireland the landlords turn the
people out of house and home by scares and
hundreds. They have a regular name for this
process, and call it " CLEARING." When a land-
, lord expects to improve his revenue or enlarge
his farms, or intends to make some other dispo-
sition of his land, as his caprice or his interest
dictates, he ejects scores of human beings from
the soil their fathers had made fertile by their
toil, and dooms them to emigrate or to perish.
.The Protestant landlord in Ireland having this
legal power, by which he can coerce and even
exterminate a refractory peasantry, may, by the
help and the instrumentality of the law, gratify
the utmost malignity of his heart. Nobody, we
suppose, will contend that he is not as liable to
be influenced by all the evil passions of our corn..
mon nature as the peasantry he tramples on,
and nobody will say that he will not use the
law to gratify them. When he wants to punish
DENNIS O'BRIEN, it would be extreme folly
for him to go behind a hedge and shoot at
DENNIS, or waylay him and break his head with
a cudgel. He has a far safer and surer means to
obtain his end. He sends DENNIS a notice to quit.
Or if DENNIS does not happen to be his own
tenant, though it is only his own tenants with
whom he is very likely to come into unpleasant
conflict, he can probably set a brother landlord
in motion fur a good cause, and procure the ex-
termination or expatriation of DENNIS. By due
course of law DENNIS is obliged to leave, or his
cabin is unroofed, the walls pulled down, and
DENNIS sent forth a wanderer over the world.
By means of the law a landlord can doom his
opponents to die a lingering death of cold and
starvation, which is probably, whenever such
malignity exists, more gratifying to him than
the sudden and easy death causer' by a pistol
shot. Now the landlords no doubt think them-
selves very cunning fellows in thus making the
law the instrument of their safe vengeance, but
let them not halloo too soon, but see the forest
of evil in which they are yet plunged.
DENNIS, or Some of DENNIS' friends, or some
persons who fear similar treatment, knowing that
they can get no protection from the law which
is the instrument of the landlord's will and the
landlord's wrath, and having no other means of
satisfying their injured feelings, slink behind a
hedge and seek revenge by committing murder.
This is a most diabolical act, but in our estima-
tion not more unjustifiable, in the present state
of our society, than the act of the
landlord, who gratifies his love of
vengeance by making the law the instru-
ment for exterminating his tenants. Far from
obtaining his object, the Irish landlord now
lives, and has for years lived, in insecurity'; his
home is unsafe, and his property depreeiated.
This is not a fancy portrait, but actual facts. The
law, in all that concerns the relations of landlord
and tenants—it may be impartial enough in
questions between tenants or landlords exclu•-
sively—is made to promote the landlord's pur-
poses, and is the mere instrument by which his
lusts and his arbitrary will are gratified at the
-ensc of the tenantry. In turn, the peasantry,
exeludeo.' from any benefit by the law, disregard
it, encl. make a law for. themselves, which they
also execute whenever they have the power.
It is for us a matter of regret that. this state of
the law is continually overlooked by our Tory
Contemporaries, who make it a crime in the
tenantry that they do not love and reverence
this instrument of the landlords' tyranny as much
as the landlords themselves. The Tory Journalists
do what is still worse. Keeping this state of the
law entirely out of view, they go on, day after
day, selecting and dressing up, to excite the
abhorrence of the English, every act of violence
which the DENNIS O'BRIENS of Ireland are
guilty of, in despair of obtaining redress from
the landlords' law, administered by landlords.
They esraggerate every outrage of every descrip-
tion committed by the Catholic peasantry, and
nourish against',
do their best, clay; after day, to