The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-09 00:00:00

RAILWAY SUN

IS NOW PUBLISHING,
PRICE ONLY SIXPENCE.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Having intended to insert the letter of Civis, we said

nothing of it.
" A Clergwan of the Church of England to Sir James
Graham," and " An English Mechanic," shall appear
to-morrow.

HIGH WATER. AT LONDON BRIDGE THIS DAY.
intnutes after CI. Evening 43 minutes after G.

scinty, finds them without any surplus to fall
back on, and reduces them, as at present, to a
state of almost desperate famine. No supplies
can it get from any other country dependent on
it to take the corn which that country grows,
and therefore is it compelled to go a begging
and offer a large sum in gold to those who are in
nowise dependent on it for the means of saving
its under-fed and ill-supplied population from all
the horrors of an Hindostan famine. The Corn-
laws, far from enlarging the sphere of the na-
tional freedom, imposes on it an arbitrary- and
narrow restriction; as if the lawgiver should de-
cree, because his subjects cannot fly like birds,
neither shall they walk like animals.
Of the Government,—using that term in its
largest sense, as including both the Legislative
and Executive powers,—because it burdens both
with the onerous duty of providing for the nou-
rishment of the people. Hence the destitute men
of Wrexham justly and properly appealed to the
Magistrates to find them food. Surely they have
a better right to be fed than the landowner has
to receive rent, which must come from their la-

bour, and which the law is passed to provide.
They have a better right to be fed than the par-
son has to his tithes, which are the produce of
their toil. Hence, too, the Chartists have pro-
perly and justly demanded a thorough revision
of the Constitution, because they do not get well
paid. Their right to make such a demand arises

from an interference with their food and indus-
try, so that the Corn-law narrows and limits the
freedom of the Legislature, and compels it to do
many things it might otherwise abstain from
doing.
Threatened as it now is by the opposition
of a half-starved people, what liberty of ac-
tion has it either in respect to them or in
respect to foreign nations? What could it
do were the Americans to hang M‘LEop, and
half the people demanding repeal or a republic?
What can it do but devote its attention, and
tremble while it devotes it, to the commercial
distress and the state of the harvest? A few
days more cold weather—an angry storm—would
leave it no option, but compel it to abrogate its
own laws, or involve the nation in a bloody con-
vulsion. Even a lowering cloud makes the
Members of the Legislature and the Executive
Government tremble.

All that dependence is the consequence of the
Corn-laws, for if there were no such laws the
Legislature and the Executive would say—
" Storms are the breath of GOD, he gives or he
withholds as it seems good to him an abund-
ance to the earth ; and we, like you, suffer from
his dispensations." But now they cannot
say so, for the want of food, at which
the people repine, and for which alone they look
with anxiety to the weather, is caused by the
law, and the dearth which pinches them en-
riches the law-maker. He takes on himself, as
we have repeatedly observed, the awful respon-
sibility of providing for the subsistence of the
people; and under that responsibility, at this
moment, the Prime Minister-expectant totters
with fear and dread, and to no other subject but
_ _ _ _

that one can the Legislature attend. If this be
not sad and sorry dependence language has no
meaning; and this dependence, of the nation on
other nations, and of the Government on the
people it pretends to rule, is caused by the law
which is defended by the Tories, because it makes
the nation independent.

One of the results of the Census, already well-
ascertained, is a deterioration of the condition of
our people. Badly off as are the manufacturing
population, the agricultural population in most
of the southern and western counties is worse off;
but lower than them there is a lower depth oc-
cupied by the Irish peasantry, who flock over to
England and Scotland, and beat down the popu-
lation of Great Britain to their level. It is stated
of Glasgow, of Paisley, and of Manchester, that
the people are now worse lodged than they were
ten years ago. The influx of Irish into those
towns has had a disastrous effect on the condition
of the English and Scotch. Is this a just retri-
bution? Let us see.

What places the Irish in so low a condition,
economically speaking? The appropriation of
the land amongst a comparatively small body of
Protestant landowners, who have no sympathy
or friendly connection with the bulk of the
people. The further appropriation of the tithes
to a priesthood who do not teach the people,
and who have as little sympathy with them as
the landowners. Poor and degraded, without
any possible means of bettering their condition,
the bulk of the Irish peasantry cling with an at-
tachment almost unexampled to the priesthood
of their own faith and their fathers' faith. Re-
duced to a state of compulsory slavery by the
Protestant landlords and the Protestant priest-
hood 4 they have submitted to a species of volun-
tary slavery to their own priesthood, and are
doubly enthralled. Certainly, the lumper-fed
Irish, the two millions of paupers mentioned by
Mr. O'CoNNELL, are economically, if not morally
—for their warm-hearted affections have kept
them from being utterly debased--the most de-
graded people of civilized Europe. But it is
clear that the few tyrant landowners and
the usurping priesthood could not have in-
flicted, and could not now inflict, this sad de-
gradation on the Irish, were they not supported
by the people of Great Britain. In fact, it is
their power which maintains the compulsory
slavery of the Irish, and is the parent of their
voluntary slavery. Now, however, they are
degrading our population to their level, and thus
are the people of Great Britain justly punished
for their conduct towards Ireland.

At present the course of the retribution is
plain. The English and Scotch enable the Pro-
testant landlords of Ireland to clear their estates,
and the people, whom the landlords by their aid
thrust off the land, come hither to swell the
mass of our own poverty. We incite the cupi-
dity of those landlords, by giving them an ex-
clusive possession of our markets for grain. We
tax our people's bread to enhance the Irish land-
lords' rent ; to obtain as much of that enhance-
ment as 'possible, they try to consolidate farms,
and to produce as large a net surplus as possible.
On the one band, the price of the people's bread
is raised by the landlords' tax, and, on the other,
the wages of their labour is beat down by the
competition of the expatriated Irish, whom the
said landlords have excluded from their estates,
to get as large a share as possible of the tax.
The support, therefore, which the people of
Great Britain give to the oppressions of the Irish
landlords—the sanction they give, by their un-
resisting passiveness, to the Bread-tax, do now
much contribute to produce that poverty and
distress of which our people complain. They
suffer by their own fault, and it may be doubted
whether either individuals or nations suffer, in
u richlypho lddtehsee rvi
oppres-
sion g
majority of cases, without
the
T he poefotphlee olfriGshr,eafitießyritain
tolerate the Corn-laws,
have their reward in deterioration and
danecday.they.

Bow-street law will soon become as notorious
as Jedburgh justice, or Justices' justice. The
case of Mr. WIGHTMAN, reported in our paper
on Saturday, to which a Correspondent has very
properly called public attention, is an illustration
of this. A policeman assumes an authority to
drag a respectable citizen off to a station-house,
and, because he objects to go, he is fined ss,
That is Bow-street law. The police, like other
servants whom we hire and appoint to protect us,
are becoming our masters; and the Magistrates,
who should check their usurpations, compel us
to submit, by fine or imprisonment. Such prac-
tices have a tendency to correct themselves, but
they first inflict a great deal of discomfort on the
public.

The French Journals of Friday and Saturday
have all reached us. Their leading columns are
for the most part occupied with the affair of Tou-
louse, upon which however, they add nothing new,
either in the shape of fact or argument. The

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