The Sun.
London, England, 1840-11-17 00:00:00

nu*
Zin

LONDON:
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1840.

We are glad to see that discussions on the Corn-
laws, provoked by the distress and misery of the
people are again reviving. The apprehensions o f

war are passing away, and the people can now at_

tend to their own interests. With Cambridge
Elections, African Slavery Abolition, and Dio-

cesan School and Education Societies, Church Ex-

tension, &c., &c., the bulk of the people have no-
thing to do. Let then) stick to the abolition of

the bread tax—let them insist on first being relieved

from the enormous grievance—that gigantic legisla-
tive fraud—and all other desirable things, an extension
of the franchise, a diminution of the arrogance
and powcr of the priesthood, a snubbing of the
aristocracy, an increase of morality, power, and
happiness amongst the peaple, will infallibly fol-
low. Mr. COBDEN, at the late meeting at 1301-
ton, to which we yesterday alluded, made some ob-
servations which we quote, in order to show the

lower classes the right feeling which prevails
amongst some of the middle classes :
" The last speaker had told them of tht lumber of
empty houses in Bolton, through the badnes, of trade,
but who could tell the amount of misery which must
have been endured before those thousand homes were
emptied of their inhabitants ? What sorrow, and care,
and hunger, and disease, before all that amount of deso- ,
lation could have taken place ! Where were the in-
mates of that thousand homes now ? Many of them
were no doubt at rest from all their troubles, and of
those still alive what was their existence but a living
death, crammed—potted, he might almost say, in the
damp, miserable, close, and unwholesome dwellings, in
which they had been forced to take refuge.—(Cheers.)
If such was the state of things in Bolton, let them not
imagine that they were worse off there than in other ma-
, nutacturing towns. In Manchester, Stockport, ani
Oldham, the same misery existed ; and if the labouring
class were exposed to such privations, was it not plain
that the middle class must be suffering also ? Where
there were a thousand empty houses, there must be dif-
ficulty in collecting rents."

Tbere is under the Corn-laws, then, a process
going on of starving out the manufacturers, of
dooming them to slow and lingering death, by
hunger, while the landowners are elevated. To
preserve the superiority of the latter, overshadowed
by the new arts and new wealth of the industrious
manufacturers, is the design of the Corn-laws. Yes,
we boldly and openly state that those who made
and those who uphold the Corn-laws, particularly
the priesthood, deign to starve out of existence the
manufacturing population. Here is one proof of
it which may be added to the many before adduced
in this Journal. The same writer in the Quarterly
Review who proposed to raze half our towns, has
also the following passage, which derives half its
force for our argument from the circumstance that
it is quoted and praised by the Morning Post, a
Journal which defends the plunder of the people by
the landlords :
What was it that converted a plain, unlettered, but
not unhappy or unrighteous peasantry into the fermenting
poisoned masses of Manchester and Birmingham ? What
has hurried on society into this downward fearful career
of degradation, and brought upon us this appalling curse
of a demoralised, licentious, unchristian, Socialist, Char-
tist, Thtiggist, manzVacluring population, swelling Elie
a wen every day, and eating like a cancer into the
heart of this great country ?
The manufacturing population then, is a cancer,
a wen, and must be extirpated, which is to be
effected by the laws which starve the people.
Surely it is as effectual, though it be a less merciful
way to get rid of our manufacturing population, to
refuse them food, as to guillotine them, or to cut
them down by grape shot or yeomanry. To starve
them, and to starve them out by all that misery
which Mr. COBDEN describes, is the nefarious ob-
ject and design of the Corn-laws. And what have
the fermenting and poisoned masses of Manchester
and Birmingham done? Of what have time manufac-
turing population been guilty ? Swelled the power
and the resources of Great Britain incomparably
beyond those of any other State. Increased the
wealth of the landlords, till land is sold in
the manufacturing districts—not by acres, but by
so many guineas the square foot. Added enormous!)
to the wealth of the priesthood, whose tithes and
revenues have been multiplied ten-fold beyond the
when only plain unlettered pea-
ssuanmtrg'
yi' ewerent okttilmowwn in the land ! For these services
the gratitude of the priesthood and the landlords
to starve them out of exist-
is shown by attempting
ence. They have, however, been guilty of one
enormous offence. It is described by the Qrtarterig
Reviewer, who thus accounts for the growth of the
poisoned masses of Manchester and Birmingham :
It was, first of all, the spirit of Dissent. Long in;

fore Dissent assumed its name—a name which Chris-
tians of old, even the most free and most presumptuous,
would have denounced as self-condemnation, the spirit
was working within the Church. It made men slight
antiquity, fight against the authority of the civil power,
trifle with poitive institutions, trust to themselves, to
their own arm, and their own understanding. It pro-
fessed to explain every thing. It allowed of no mys-
teries. It thought more of rousing men's feelings,
and
governing their minds, than of simply enunciating truth
committed to their keeping by God. It engendered
factions, brought together turbulent men in different
countries, and formed everywhere a nucleus of rebellion
against lawful sovereigns. It taught men to fight
against law under pretence of religion and conscience,
in order to save their money—to revenge themselves
against forced insult—to shake off, as they call it, a do-
minant power, and establish their own power instead.
That is the sin of sins. The manufacturing popu-
lation do not hearken to priestcraft—they question
the authority of psuedo holy men—they inquire
into the meaning of their assertions—they prefer
the dictates of their own senses to the assertions of
the priests—they are disobedient. They do not
honour the landlord, nor worship the priest. This
is the sum of their offence, and for this they arc
to be starved out till they are so weak, and the
allied landed and priest interest is so strong, that no
man will dare to question the Divine power which
is claimed by the priesthood. Well might
Mr. BROOKS say at Bolton—
" Let men first do justice to themselves and their
country at home, and then begin to look for suffering
and slavery abroad.—(Cheers.)"

Yes, we must have justice at home before we go
out a knight-crranting against the lesser crimes of
other people. When the Corn-laws arc considered
as an avowed means to starve out of existence those
manufacturing classes who have so largely contri-
buted to their country's greatness, a more diabolical
enactment, a more diabolical slavery, does not exist
on the face of the globe, and it becomes us to direct
all our energies first to get rid of that terrible social

crime.

The Standard of last night, has some sensible

observations on the political aspect of Europe, some
of which will be found amongst our extracts from
the Evening Papers, and to which we arc well
pleased to give additional currency. Our Contem-
porary sets forth the aggrandisement of the popu-
lar influence, and praises the change, which is the
fruit, of the discussion of national questions. In
the following further brief extract, he pursues the

subject, and bids us hope f►om the popular in-
fluence a permanent cessation of war :

The change is remarkable ; and as it involves conse-
quences greatly beyond the sphere of curious specula-
tion, us optimists, by conviction and by habit, we look
to those consequences with sanguine hope. War never
was, never can be, the interest of a nation, though war•

has been too often the passion of tyrant monarchs,

tyrant oligarchies, and tyrant democracies—all and each
agents perfectly distinct from what can properly be
called " a people." The restoration of the paramount
influence in government to the several " peoples" of the

civilized world, therefore, seems to be a commencement

of the trial of the great problem whether the world may
not remain permanently at peace.

In our estimation that is right thinking. War
.s not for the interest of the people. Aggrandise

,he " people's" influence, therefore, and you en-

sure peace, is now the doctrine of the Standard,

and it is also the doctrine of the Radicals and the
Chartists. Not now for the first time, nor for the
hundredth time, have the Liberal Journals main-
tained that there would be no war but for the si-

nister interests and power, unworthily exercised, of
monarchs and aristocrats. Not only now, but

months and years ago, have the Radical papers

nsisted that the best and surest way to preserve

peace was to extend the power of the people, to

.elease them from restraint, and let them follow out

the love of commercial enterprise and commercial
gain, which GOD has implanted in their hearts,
and which peers and kings, fancying them-
selves wiser than GOD, have supposed that they
could control and regulate better than the AL-
MIGH TY. The atheistical lovers of Corn•laws
have hitherto found an advocate in the Standard,
which it must cease to be since it has become so
sensible of the virtue of popular influence.
There is another deduction from this doctrine,
novel for the Standard, which we must impress on our
readers, and which perhaps may be thought worthy
of notice by the Standard. Peace, as opposed to
war, is a condition of virtue and happiness ; war is
a condition of misery and crime. But peace, ac-
cording to the Standard, in which we fully agree,
is promoted and preserved by the influence of the
people, of the multitude as opposed to indi-
viduals ; whence it follows that the influence of the
multitude, or, as the Standard calls it, '' popular
influence," promotes virtue and happiness. We
thank the Standard heartily for the Tory testimony
in favour of the many against the few, in favour of
the democracy and against the aristocracy.
Of course the logical Standard will also accept
the religious consequences of its doctrines. The
priests, of whom it is generally supposed the Stan-
dard is a worshipper, proclaim aloud the sinfulness
of man, and jump to the conclusion, in which they
have too many followers, that as men increase sin
must necessarily increase. Hence, in thorough and
complete contradiction to the facts, the incessant
diatribes poured out by the parsons and their fol-
lowers about the wickedness of great towns. The
increase of the European population for the last
three centuries has been chiefly in town population
with that increase morals have been improved,

crimes of violence have diminished, and civilization
has gone hand in band. At the same time, pro-
ceeding on the dogma of the sinfulness of
man, the priest patty has never ceased to
pour out its anathemas against the increasing vice
of the age, caused by the increase of the people.
Their doctrines, taken in conjunction with the des-
tined inci ease of population, present so shocking a
futurity for the human race, that, independently of
being contradicted by facts, they so impeach the
goodness of the ALMIGHTY, that people shrink
back from them with abhorrence. In opposing
such monstrous doctrines, henceforth we shall find
a powerful auxiliary in the Standard, who is sud-
denly awakened to the truth, that to increase the
people, and to increase the popular influence, is to
secure peace and virtue. It will not, we hope,
when the purposes of :the priesthood arc to be
served, turn round, and denounce the influence
of the multitude, or popular influence, as the source

of war and crimes.
The plain consequences of the new doctrines of
the Standard make us quote them with pleasure,
and we are especially willing to use them to en-
force some observations we made a few days ago.
On Wednesday and Thursday we advetted to some
capital errors, we think, in the policy of Louis
PHILIPPE ; we pointed out the particular circum-
stances which make France dangerous to the rest
of Europe, and we insisted on its being the duty
of European statesmen to find some more hunnAne
and efficient means to lessen that danger than
armies and military blockades. We insisted on
the propriety of Louis PII IL IPPE concrliming his
people, or governing them on popular instead of
imperial principles, and on other rulers inviting
France to extend her commerce, and so amalga-
mate her people with the rest of Europe. Rut all
these arguments receive additional strength if we
regard
Europe
a eass a commonwealth of nations, in
wlmuch bound by friendly means to
eachu
promote the interest and well-being of every other,
as the separate States of the Commonwealth of North
America. Kings and Ministers may still be enemies,
may still be jealous of each other's glory, may still have
personal dislikes, and personal quarrels, but the
people have no such feelings, and no interest in
checking the growth of. each other in commerce and