The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-12 00:00:00

CHARLES PELFIAIII 'VILLIERS

(From Pencillint's of Politicians.)
" Give us bread; for why should we die in thy pre-
sence?—for the money faileth-"—Genesi; xlvii. 15.
The time for arguing about tic Corn-laws is now hap-
pily past. A man might as well argue against gravitation,
or dispute the existence of the satellites of Jupiter, as at-
tempt to deny the fact that the Corn-laws arc an instru-
ment of evil granted by the Legislature to a few hundred
•of country squires, and used by them to inflict famine
upon millions of their fellow men. The nonsense which
was once talked about the interests of sgticalture, and
the danger of depending- for food upon foreign soils, has
now assumed its proper form of intrinsic absurdity. It
is repeated, indeed, but no man who uses it, and no
man who hears it, is deceive i by it. Within the last
ten years it has fallen from an argument to a jest.
To talk to a man of such things in the present day
would be like repeating the nursery tales that frighten
infants, with the hope of terrif)ing adults—to talk of

old Bogie in order to frighten a grown man. Not through-
out the tens of millions of laborious creatures which people
these islands, not among all our hives of industry, not
among all our dense and sweltering swarms of human life,
not throughout all the compressed masses of shivering
starvation is there a single hapless being who does not
know that whatever may be the horrors of his state, one-
half of these, at least, is caused by the devilish invention
which forces him and five hundred others to suffer in order
that. one squire may riot. Not a mother hears her chil-
dren cry for bread, when she has no crumb to give them,
but knows that the anguish that wrings her soul is the
very coinage of these Corn-laws ; not a squalid famine-
stricken father, who has denied himself the sustenance
that nature requires, and sees, nevertheless, his wife
growing faint and haggard from scantiness of food and
agony of mind, but knows that for all this misery he has
to thank the Corn-laws. Not a family that have to
work like horses, in order that they may starve
only by degrees, but know when their insufficient
modicum of bread is measured forth that there is a glo-
rious golden harvest of plenty pressing upon our shores,
and rotting in our custom-house granaries, from which
they arc only shut out by the ignorant fears of the squires,
that if the multitude were fed, their luxuries might be re-
duced. Take a single instance of a famishing family ;
mask the sinking hopelessness of the mother, the
thoughtless cries of the children, the stern despair of
the father—looking around upon misery he has no means
of alleviating, and upon children whom he knows arc
growing up only that they may succeed to the inheritance
of that same wretchedness which be now feels, and sink
at last into the same pauper's grave which already yawns
athwart his path. Take a family such as this, and mul-
tiply the instance by thousands, and then imagine, if the
mind is large enough to imagine it, the mighty volume of
the curse which rises hourly to the throne of the Great
God of the Universe, and challenges retribution upon the
destroyers of their kind.
History affords no parallel—the experience of men can
recall no semblance of similitude—the policy of empires
the most rotten, and tyrants the most wanton, can furnish
no precedent for a single instance of starving the many,
for fear some luxury might be wanted to a few. - Yet we,
in a country which, by a bitter irony, is called " free and
hippy England," have this infernal invention in opera-
tion among us with all the uniformity and potency of a
regular system, and monthly hecatombs of human victims
are sacrificed in silence to this Moloch.
Charles Pelham Villiers, member for Wolverhampton,
is a man who has thrown himself, heart and soul, into this
cause, and a man who, if his perseverance is equal to his
ability, may be confidently pointed out as the man who is
destined to bear it onward to entire success. This is the
sort of Reformer that I like. Not a dreamy theorist—
not an ambitious or a discontented crotchet monger—but
a hearty, useful, practical Reformer, pitting himself against
some well-known and ever-acting abuse, pointing the bat-
tering-ram against it, gathering the multitudes by whom
it is propelled, shaking the deeply-rooted monstrosity by
the vigour, rapidity, and pertinacity of his blows, and
bringing on, minute by minute, the good time when the
strong edifice of tyranny shall vibrate—shat totter—and
shall fall; and when the people shall rush in at the
breach, and feast upon the plenty which it held within its
greedy keep.
Villiers is an honest man, an able man, and, I think, a
judicious as well as a persevering man. In the House of
Commons he has not certainly that weight or standing of
which, for the sake of the cause he advoca'es, I could wish
to see him in the enjoyment. With a good figure, an ex-
cellent voice, and no lack of zeal, he still is, perhaps for
want of practice, but a mediocre speaker. Master of
more words than any other rrisn in England—for he is,
perhaps, the most fluent proficient in the languages of
Europe that we could produce—he is often at a loss for a
word; and when he is trying to show the corn-tax eaters
around him, that it is their interest as well as that of the
people, that wheat should be plentiful instead of scarce, I
have often heard him sneered at for halting at a word, by
men who would have to stutter all their life time if they
were required to produce an idea. This, however, may
probably be attributed to want of practice and confidence,
for I have heard him speak a great deal better upon the
hustings ; and when I remember that before he suffered
himself to be put forward as a leader upon the. Corn-law
question, his addresses to the House were always of a most
Spartan brevity, lam inclined to hope that this is a defect
which he may yet overcome.
Gallant, uncompromising, and daring as is Villiers'
conduct in the agitation with which he has so closely
connected himself, he is nevertheless a man of highly
cultivated intellect, of literary taste, and of aristocratic
connections, being closely related to three Earls, and the
grandson of an Earl of Clarendon. Villiers very early
in life adopted that profession which in England, and
indeed in all countries, both ancient and modern, has
been the resort of men who have been stimulated by
ambition, or prompted by a consciousness of talent.
He writes barrister after his name ; but, like many
others, he has been seduced by the strong excitement of
political contention from that dull and dogged plodding
which can alone lead to success in that particular branch
of the law to which he has applied himself. Whether
Villiers does ever venture to unfold the mysteries of
some real property case, before the Lord Chancellor, or
whether he ever condescends to pocket two guineas for
moving for an cader upon some unopposed petition, before
the Master of the Rolls, I have no means of knowing. It
is possible that while he agitates against the Corn-laws he
is not neglectful of his profession ; for being as yet only
about five or six and thirty, he is quite a juvenile in West-
minster Hall, and cannot be supposed to have arrived at
the distinction of bing " a promising young man," as men
of 41 or 42 are generally designated when they are found
to be creeping into practice. With this, however, I have
nothing to do. I find him an energetic, an able, and the
honest Representative of a numerous and well-informed
manufacturing constituency. I find him fighting heart
and hand against the most monstrous curse that was ever
endured by a free people. As such I esteem him, and as
such I present him to the British people for encourage-
ment and honour.

1841.—The following
Governors and Directors of 11
year ensuing :

is the house list of the
Le Bank of England, for the

FOR GOV:
Sir John Henry Pell
William Cotton. Esq

MINORS.
ly, Bart., Governor.
1., Deputy-Governor.
.ECTORS.

FOR Dr

Robert Barclay, Esq.
Edw. Henry Chapman, Esq.
Henry Davidson, Esq.
Chas. Pascoe Grenfell, Esq
Abel Lewes Gower, Esq.
Thomson Hankey, jun.,Esq.
John Oliver Hanson, Esq.

James Morris, Esq.
Sheffield Neave, Esq.
Geo. \Varde Norman, Rg,
John Horsley Palmer, Esq.
James Pattison, Esq.
Christopher Pearse, Esq.
Henry James Prescott, Esq.
Charles Pole, Esq.
Sir John Rae Reid, Bart.
Win. R. Robinson, Esq.
Wm. Thompson, Esq., and
Alderman

John Benj. Heath, Esq.
Kirkman D. Hodgson. Esq.
Charles Fr A. Huth, Esq.

Alfred Latham, Ecq.,

James Malenlmson, Esq.
Rowland Mitchell, Esq.
Toe election for Governor and Deputy-Governor will bo
held at the Bank on Tuesday, the 13th of April, and for
Directors on Wednesday, the 14th of April, from ten
o'clock in the forenoon till four in the afternoon.
WESTMINSTER VERSUS MANCHESTER.—In
Manchester " the poor have not the means of taking care
of their children, their whole time being taken up in
providing their families with food, and that of the
coarsest kind."—[.l. B. Smith, Esq., as reported in the
Anti- Corn-law Circular, February 25, 1841.1—The con-
sequence that the children arc allowed, and probably
actually encouraged, to steal, and the amount of juve-
nile delinquency from this cause has very much in-
creased of late. This is owing to the high price of pro-
visions and the low rate of wages. In Westminster,
however, " they manage these things " otherwise, if
not " better." There they burn the superabundant
children. It appears from the following extract from
Mr. Bactleley's annual report of "'London Fires," in
the Mechanics' Magazine, that during the last year no
fewer than one hundred and three children have been
killed cif in this manner ; immeliately, by fire—remotely,
by the Corn-laws r—" It appears that during the last
twelve months, no less than 103 children have been burnt
to death in that district (Westminster), chiefly owing to
their parents leaving them alone in a room with a fire in
it." They " are generally the offspring of the working
and poorer classes of society, whose business takes them
from their homes, and many of whom are obliged to leave
their children without care or protection, white themselves
go into the sticets to procure the means of subsistence."
In these two instances we have the Malthusian doctrine
illustrated, that vice and misery arise when population ap-
proaches the limits of the means of subsistence? But who
limits the means of subsistence? Nature? No; Man
Man starves his fellow-creatures, and then vice and misery
arise among them --Anti- Corn-law Circular.

It will be recollected that the subject of affording
to the population of the vastern part of the Metropolis the
healthful arlyantages of an open park was last year !motel
We think we may now announce that steps are being
taken for the accomplishment of that desirable object. For
some time past a gentleman connected with th e lepart-
ment of a Noble Lord, to whom the inhabitants of the
metropolis are already so much indebted for extending the
means of public recreation, has been employed in survey-
ing and laying down plans of a large plot of ground in
the vicinity of Limebouse, which it is considered may be an
eligible site for such a park. Many difficulties must of
of course present themselves to the completion of this ob-
ject, but we trust we are justified in stating that the ar xious
desire of the Government to carry out this salutary pur-
pose will met with no insurmountable obstacle.—Sunday
Paper.