The Sun.
London, England, 1841-12-14 00:00:00

SAY OF MEIVS

AND

i3ttiqtr Opinion.

" Who runs may read."

roF.]proN.

Letters from Lisbon of the 7th instant announce the
arrival in that capital of the Austrian Minister Baron
Marechal, and M. Huhner, Secretary of Legation. The
Pope's Nuncio had not arrived, but was daily expected.
Lord Howard de Walden, the British Ambassador,
communicated to the Portuguese Government a note ad-
dressed by Lord Aberdeen to the Regent of Spain, re-
minding his Highness that England, as the ally of Por-
tugal, could not permit any invasion of her territory.
The Court was delighted at this, and the promulgation
of the account of interference so generous, stilled for a
moment the clamours of the press against England.
PUBLIC OPINION.

The Times has a leading article on the subject of the
Derby Conference, which seems to have given it no slight
uneasiness, as appears by the following passage :—" No
doubt the difficulties of legislation very speedily vanish
before a financier who proposes to relieve the pressure of
taxation upon one-half of a country by shifting that
taxation upon the other half, in addition to the taxation
which this other half had to bear already. This is easy
work ; and at such a rate Mr. Cobden would make as
good a first Minister as Sir Robert Peel. Perhaps this
was the inference which Mr. Cobden sought to establish.
But presumptuous rashness is not the worst of his offend-
ing. He is answerable also for the crime, and there can
hardly be a more heinous one, of uttering those presump-
tuous and rash effusions to a population who, if his own
account be true, are in a state of unexampled distress,
and therefore naturally in a temper of irritation and
excitability. If the evils he alleges have any existence
(and we are far from denying. that amid all the exagge-
rations of this subject there is still, unhappily, but too
large a proportion of truth), is it to a starving mul-
titude that a Member of the Legislature ought
to appeal upon the philosophy of taxation, and the
adjustment of the doctrines of political economy ?"
If the opinion laid down in the above passage is to be
considered as sound doctrine, then nothing can be more
signally improper—nothing more injudicious—than to
state the truth to the poor and destitute. It is the duty
of all wise men and good citizens to keep them as much
in the dark as possible respecting the causes of their
sufferings, and the abuses which aggravate their distress,
least, by enlightening them on the subject, they might
inconvenience the Government by insisting on redress !
Such is the doctrine laid down by the Times, and excel-
lent Tory doctrine it is; but the people at large repu-
diate it as false, hollow, and selfish.
The Chronicle remarks, in reference to the wretched
condition of the poor in Ireland :—" We have in Ireland
a specimen of the tender mercies to be expected from a
legislature of landowners when they are allowed to have
it all their own way. They have had it all their own
way with a vengeance in that unfortunate country. The
landlords conceive it quite a matter of course to retain
the peasantry in abject misery, and, when the fit takes
them, turn them out by hundreds to beg their way t--)
this country, or die in ditches at home. There is not a.
spot in Ireland where a poor man can say, the law gives
me a right to remain here. The landlord is all in all."—
Here is the great secret of Mr. O'Connell's influence. He
is the legitimate creation of the landlords and Orange-
men in Ireland. Between them both they have raised
him to his present elevation, and there they are likely
enough to keep him. In O'Connell the oppressed Irish
poor find a voice whereby to express their wrongs ; and
when redress is denied them with scorn and contempt, in
him they find an avenger.
The Advertiser says—" Some months ago we endea-
voured to prove,'in a series of articles, that the Corn-
monopoly is essentially a question of humanity and reli-
gion, as well as of commerce ; and that, consequently,
Christian ministers were not only justified in throwing
their weight into the scale, in opposition to the mono-
poly, but that they were bound by the obligation they
owe alike to the Creator and their fellow-creatures
to bring all their energies to bear against it.
In arguin on the religious bearings of the question,
we principally dwelt on the fact, that as it is one of
the lcadininjunctions of the New Testament to feed
the hungry and to clothe the naked, and as the obvious
and admitted tendency of the Corn-laws is to withhold
food from the famishing, and clothing from the naked,
it necessaril became the duty of every Christian, but

mak
especially of every minister of the Gospel, to make
every effort to procure the extinction of the bread mo-
nopoly. Circumstances, however, have since then
transpired, which place the religious bearings of the
Corn-law question in a still more striking light. It is
now ascertained beyond the possibility of denial or doubt,
that the effect of these abominable laws is to prevent
myriads of religiously-disposed persons from attending
any place of Christian worship on the Sabbath day."—
If this be the case—anti we have little doubt that it is so
—then we have a right to expect that the whole army of
saints, headed by the Agnewites, will enlist under the
Anti-Corn-law banner. If they have any respect for
consistency and principle, they will do so as a matter of
course. They are indignant and hostile enough with
the law which enables poor apple-women to sell fruit on
Sundays ; how much more indignant then—how much
more hostile—ought they not to be with the far more
oppressive law that prevents the poor from attending to
their religious duties on the Sabbath ! We claim the
religious world as our allies in this just and righteous
warfare against the Corn-laws.
It is evident, by the following extract from the Post,
that the recent addresses of Lords J. Russell and Pal-
merston are still rankling in the sides of the Tories.
Their ill-concealed uneasiness is a proof that the faction
by no means think themselves strong in their present
position:—" The noble ex-Secretaries for the Colonial
and the Foreign Departments are by this time, we sus-
pect, anything but proud of their smart replies to Ply-
mouth and to Bridgnorth. It is, at all events, evident
enough that their friends who instruct the public' in
the newspapers find the task of defending these ex-
Ministerial replies a very heavy and difficult one. • The
perseverance, however, with which they labour at it is
commendable. The blunder which the ex-Secretaries
have made is that of throwing truth overboard, in so open
a manner that every one of ordinary observation and
recollection must perceive what they have done. In be-
coming shameless themselves these ex-Ministers forgot
that they could not make others absolutely forgetful."
We quote the following from the Herald:—" The
principles avowed by each of the parties engaged in the
controversy touching the eligibility of the Pusey candi-
date for the Oxford professorship are now broadly de-
fined. None can mistake, who are not vs ilfully blind to
them. It is true, indeed, that Lord Dungannon, a little
while ago, was 'ignorant of the existence of any
party in the Church of which Dr. Pusey could be con-
sidered to be at the head.' We suspect his Lord-
ship has since been amply satisfied upon that point.
We are only sorry to perceive that a similar igno-
rance still exists in the same quarter as to the rela-
tive forces of Puritanism and Romanism in their
hostility to the Established Protestant Episco-
palian Church.' His Lordship's letter of the 10th inst.,
which we republish from a morning journal, neither recti-
fies the error of the position assumed by the noble M. A.
in his former manifesto ; nor is it calculated to procure for
him much credit, with any party, by reason of his un-
called-for demonstration against, what he terms, the
self-styled evangelical party. If the Noble Lord be as
sincere as he is vehement, in his unmeasured deprecation
of the essential doctrines and leading principles of the
Church of Rome, as enumerated in the second paragraph
of his letter, we venture to tell him that he cannot give
any assurance to that effect which will be so satisfactory
or so emphatic, as to record his vote against the Pusey
candidate."

MONEY-TIVIDp-comanratcm.
The number of paper mills throughout the kingdom
amounts to about 300 ; of these only 120 arc in operation.
At Maidstone, where papers is the staple manufacture,
only 23 vats out of 51 are used, and out of seven ma-
chines only one is at work.
The river Wandle, at Mitcham, is not surpassed by
any river in the kingdom for its pure waters, which never
freeze, and are the best in the world for calico-printing.
InilBl6 and 1817 there were 17 printworks on the stream,
employing 1,200 persons ; now there are only six, and
no more than 300 persons. In 1820 there were 12 print-
works, employing 1,920 persons, whose wages amounted
to nearly 3,00(1. a week ; now the wages do not average
more than 250/. per week.