The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-12 00:00:00

THE CORN-LAWS.

In accordance with the intention expressed in our
last, we now proceed to point out some instances whore
trades and classes have been grievously injured
by the Oh ect operation of the Corn-law. It would be
difficult, if not impossible, to select any trade, or any
class of men, whose means bare not been curtailed by
the operation of this law ; but we hare in our eye at
this moment two cases in which the facts are so well
withenticatA, that we prefer confining ourselves to them

for the present.
It is well known to most of our readers that the
parish of Rochdale is noted for its extent in mar:eh:a-
ttire of flannels, and the farmers in the neighbourhood
have, we doubt net, sent a large portion of their wools
to that quarter. Up to the year 1823 the manufactu-
rers of Rochdale found a market, and a constantly in-
creasing demand for their goods in the United Staters of
America ; and it is supposed that at least one-third of
their whole manufacture was exported to that country.
At this time there was regular and full employment for
workmen, and the weavers had their looms and other
machinery in their own houses, and carried on their
occupation surrounded and asssisted by the various
members of their families. It is probable that no part
of the country possessed a population more industrious
and more comfortable, and want was rarely known
in the dwellings of the sober and the provident.
The Anadthan Government, urged on by American
manufacturers, and by the farmers of the north, who
were irritated at the tefusal of Great Britain to receive
their produce in exchange for the vast amount of goods
they purchased from us, passed the Act which is known
by the name of the American Tariff; they laid very
heavy duties on English goods, particularly on flannels,
avowedly to retaliate upon us for our own restrictive
policy. The Eoglish Minister, then at Washington,
wrote home to his Government, to say, that the Tariff
could not pass if our Corn-laws did not exist, and that
the English Corn-law was the origin of the Ame-
rican high duties, What was the effect of this Tariff
upon English manufacturts, andeupon the town and
parish we have mentioned above ? The duties on the
common qualities of flannels were so high as to be
almost prohibitory, and the demand immediately fell
off, and the large and regular and profitable commerce
which the people of Rochdale carried on with tl:e pee•
pie of the United States, was destroyed at a blow.
Up to this time the flannel weaver bad been able to
earn, with moderate labour, from 18s. to 255. per week,
working in his own house, and comparatively inde-
pendent, and more as an employer than one of the
employed. %I hen the American Tariff passed, instead
of one-third of the goods made in Rochdale being sent
to the States, probably not more than one-twentieth
were transmitted, and the whole trade felt the shock.
A diminished demand for goods caused the demand for
labour to fall off, and when the labourers became too
many for the work to be done, as a natural and irre-
sistible consequence, wages began to fall, and in a very
short time the man who had earned from 18s. to 255.
per week with moderate labour, was only able to ob.
tein 165., then 145., then 12c. ; anti at this moment
his wages vary from Bs. to 12s. per week, with much
longer hours of labour, and with a far less certain and
regular employment.
Another bad effect was produced :—the competition
amongst so many manufacturers with a decaying trade,
brought profits down almost, and often quite, to
nothing ; and the manufacturers were compelled to
seek new means of producing more cheaply ; they
erected mils and filled them with machinery, and the
weavers who had hitherto worked at their own homes
were compelled, by the pressure of stern necessity,
acting upon employers and employed, to go into the
mills, and their tvives and daughters also were obliged
to go for a livelihood to the less agreeable, and in many
respects less favourable, description of employment
offered to them in mills.
There is a class amongst our aristocracy and legisla-
tors, of whom Lord Ashley may be taken as a type,
whose sympathies are keenly alive to the moral and
physical evils which arise from numbers of operatives
being assembled in large wnrkships and mills, and who
are ever disposed to vilify the employers, and to spend
their superfluous and spurious humanity on the em-
ployed. We can tell these men that the Corn-law, the
Bread-tax, which they support, is the engine by which
women and children are driven to the mills, and by
which they are made to work long hours to purchase a
supply of daily bread.
The American Tariff is the direct and legitimate off-
spring of the inhuman and suicidal Corn-law, and the
destruction of the flannel trade by the operation of that
Tariff has made it needful to rear mills and to invent
machinery, and it has torn hundreds of men, and their
wives, and their sons and daughters too, from the
homes in which they worked, and has forced them into
the vast buildings which those who employ them were
obliged to build, and in which they labour for a longer
period each week, and for a smaller amount of wages,
than they ever knew before the evil genius of monopoly
hail ground them to the earth I
But we have not told all the sad history of this
single instance of Corn-law oppression. When wages
were reduced as the demand for goods fell off, the
workmen vainly thought their employers might, if they
chose, arrest their fall ; they formed a Trades' Union,
subscribed funds, and when any attempt was made to
reduce wages, they turned out and struck work ; they
did more—they became a furious mob, furious at the
prospect of lower wages and diminished comforts ;
they marched through the town, forced all their felow-
workmen to cease from work, they took the shuttles
from the looms to prevent their working ; they broke
into mills, and threw the machinery out of the win-
dows, and destroyed it. Some of the leaders wore
arrested and sent to gaol ; an attempt to rescue them
was threatened, the crowd attacked the military who
guarded the prison, with :tones and brick-bats, the
soldiers fired, and same seven or eight human beings
were hurried into eternity, and others by the slower
process of offended law, were exiled for ever from the
land which refused to feed them.
But, notwithstanding all this train of evils, and this
sad catastrophe, work was not more plentiful, and
wages did not rise ; the Corn-law still disgraced our
code, and the American Tariff still refused to admit
the flannels made by English industry ; manufacturers
continued embarrassed for want of markets, labourers
were far too numerous for the work to be done, wages
drooped and drooped, the busy shuttle was more rarely
heard in hundreds of cottages, whilst in many others
it did not cease its ill requited labour till near mid-
night ; men, women, and children who, as happy
families, had worked together at home, were found
assembled in crowds at the mills, and uncertain em-
ployment, and lessened income, were working a fearful
and lamentable change in the moral and physical condi-
tion of the inhabitants of a large and populous district.
All this is but a type of what may be written of
many other towns and parishes. The Lords of Dear
Bread may thrive for a time on the ill-gotten gain of
the Corn-law ; but as a poisoned garment will it cleave
to them, and the curse of He even must rest upon the
wealth and the rental whose increase is born of wrong,
and nourished by the stvsat and fanned by the sighs of
the oppressed children of toil ! We may say with the
People's Poet,
•' Bread-tax'd Weaver, all may see
What that tax bath done for thee,
And thy children, vilely led,
Singing hymns for shatne'ul bread,
Till the stones of every sheet
Know their I:ttle naked feet."
—Leamington Chronicle.

The Observer of Sunday, Nov. 14, will give
all the sayings and doings connected with the birth of
the Royal Prince.• A Monday afternoon edition of the
Observer is regularly published at 4 o'clock, which is
best adapted for subscribers in the country and abroad.
The Observer of last Sunday, Nov. 7, which contained
14 of their long and wide folio columns of particulars of
the fire in the Tower, with engravings of the front and
interior when the fire was raging at its height, has been
kept on sale since Sunday, and may yet be had for a
week to come at the office, 170, Strand.

Lord Stanley, in answer to a deputation from
Scotland, assured the gentlemen who waited on him that
the subject of emigration wa3 under the serious consi
deration of her Majesty's Ministers.

SIGHT HaiEulAQßuieNenG.:--f Hanover, and their Royal
Highnesses Patronized by their
the late Princess Augusta, the Princess Sophia,
her Serene Highness the Princess Esterhazy, the Princesses
Mary and Roza, her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Bed-
ford, and their Graces the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the
majestiestheK ANDina
Dukes of Norfolk, Devonshire, Manchester, and Marlborough,
Marquises of Hertford, Londonderry, Sligo, and Thomond, Earls
and Kildare, Lords Hill, Cowley, &c. &c.
of Shaftesbury, Tankerville, Harewood, Powis, Bradford, Wick-
low, Verulam, Harrowby, Buckinghamshire, Meath, Somers, Ox
the above distinguished patronage to the Newly-
ford, Lisburne, and Ferrers, Bishops p of Exeter, Blandford,
the a nd
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