The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-08 00:00:00

connected with trade, &c., will occupy the at-
tention of Parliament, or that objects connected
with trade, besides the measures for equalising
the income and expenditure, will occupy the
attention of Parliament ? If the latter be, as we
presume, the meaning which her MAJESTY'S Mas-
ters wished to convey to the Parliament, why did
they say, and other objects connected with
trade, &c., as if the measures for equalising the
public income and expenditure were also objects
connected with trade ? As the sentence stands,
the meaning is, that " measures for equalising
the public income and expenditure, and for
equalising other objects connected with trade,
&c., will occupy your attention," which is as
sheer nonsense as ever a Minister penned, and
that is saying a great deal.
The Ministers meant to be vague, and they
have made themselves fools. They should have
been more brief, and they would have been
equally vague, without being ungrammati-
cal. They ought to have substituted for the
words, "and other important objects connected
with the trade and commerce of the country,"
the words, "with the state of trade.' The whole
would then read thus, "The measures which it
will be expedient to adopt fur the purpose of
equalising the public income and the annual ex-
penditure, with the state of trade, will ne-
cessarily occupy your attention at an early
period after the recess." Supposing the
meaning of the sentence to be that sonie of
the laws interfering with trade are to be taken
into consideration, in conjunction with measures
for equalising the revenue and the expenditure,
we can only conclude that the Tories have al-
ready resolved to adopt the very course they
turned out the Whigs for proposing.
The Speech expresses " deep concern at the
distress which has prevailed in the manufactur-
ing districts for a considerable period," implying
that it does not now prevail; and it promises,
not to take measures to relieve it, but to pre-
vent the recurrence of that distress. To• the
thous rid complaints, then, which have been
poured, and are still pouring, in from the ma-
nufiicturing districts of now-prevailing distress,
the Speech of her MAJESTY'S Ministers gives
a solemn and positive contradiction. The Mi-
nisters do not believe the representa-
tions of the people , they believe that the
statements of present distress are all fudge; and
their "deep concern" is for the distress which has
prevailed during the Whig Administration, and
which has disappeared since the Tories took office.
s;ir ROBERT PEEL and his friends rely on those
proofs which he and we have adduced, that the
mortality was greater in tie terrible years 1838
and 1839, than in 1841. In those years the
Whigs, in conjunction with the Tories, obsti-
nately refused to relieve us by repealing the
Corn-laws, or by altering them; and now they
are told from the Throne, by their quondam
allies in resisting our claims for relief, that dis-
tress existed in their Administration, and the
public knows they took no means to remedy it.
The " deep concern" which Sir ROBERT
PEEL feigns for the distress which pre-
vailed under the Whig Administration will
not cover his head with grey hair, nor plant
a furrow in his cheek. We happened to see
him, as he passed through the lobby of the
House of Commons yesterday, and a more
smiling, jocund-looking gentleman, for a man
deeply concerned for the distress of a nation, it
is impossible to behold. It is quite plain, from
his speeches in Parliament, as well as from his
gait and countenance, that he is in exuberant
spirits, while he speaks of his " deep concern."
In fact, he has become the wit of the House.
NERO fiddled while Rome was burning—Sir R.
PEEL jokes while the people are starving. Nay,
he seems to joke because they are starving, and
he uses their distresses to imply a severe sarcasm
against the Whigs. He may glorify himself by
a comparison with them, but there is some-
thing in the world besides Whigs and
Tories, arid mankind will not see in the
faults of one set of statesmen proofs of
the merits of others. Some of our friends
expect a large and generous policy from
him—we do not. He is a great actor, but not a
great man. He can manage the House of Com-
mons—he does not comprehend the nation. He
is a mere political machine, which is wound up,
and therefore goes by the square. As the ser-
vant is not greater than the master, as a machine
is not superior to its maker, so cannot Sir Ro-
BERT PEEL surpass the RICIIMONDS who have
made him, and his policy will be no other than
what they dictate.

On Saturday we noticed in our Parliamentary
Summary the language used by Lord WHARN-•
CLIFFE in attacking the Marquis of NORMANBY
for not supporting the Mansfield Magistrates in
particular, and the Magistrates generally, in all
their actions. A closer examination of the de-
bate on that occasion leads us to think that it is
worthy of being again brought under the notice
of our readers.

In the month of August, 1839, a Mr. TJNWIN,
a Magistrate, of whom we shall say as little evil
as possible, as he has now to reckon with the
GREAT JUDGE, but who was described by the
Marquis of NORMANDY as a gentleman who
loved to execute the law himself, and would
rather take a poacher himself than commit
the duty to other hands—Mr. UNWIN com-
municated to the -Magistrates that he had
certain information that in many houses arms
were concealed for treasonable purposes. The
information was derived from a man named
EPHRAIM SILLS, who was not produced on
the trial, lest, as wasisaid, he might prejudice
Mr. UNWIN'S case, and who was described by
one witness as unworthy of belief. The Magis-
trates to whom the information was given on
oath doubted whether they had the power to
search houses for arms, but Mr. UNWIN issued a
warrant to search the houses of several persons in
Mansfield for arms. He went himself to
execute the warrants, and searched, amongst
other houses, the house of Mr. BROYAN, but found
no arms. He searched, at the same time, for other
things. He appears to have ransacked Mr.
BROYAN'S daughter's bureau, as well as other
places, for papers, and finding some, he is said to
have exclaimed, " These are what I wanted;"
and he seized some letters from Mr. PITKEITH-
LEY, and an address from the General Conven-
tion.wrapped round a stocking. thisviola-
tion of his " castle," as a poor Englishman's
house is figuratively called, Mr. BROYAN brought
an action against Mr. Usrwisr, and notwithstand-
ing the protection which the law throws round
Magistrates, and the impediments it places in
the way of correcting them, and notwithstand-
ing the known leaning of all the Judges to favour
men in authority, a verdict, with nominal da-
mages, passed against Mr. UNWIN. Such is a
brief outline of the facts of the case, and we
cannot see how the Home Secretary was
called on in any way to interfere, or suspend the
due course of law, in order to protectp.ir. UNWIN.
But the excuse made by Mr. UNWIN for his
too much zeal was, that Lord J. RUSSELL had
issued a circular letter on May 7, 1839, to the
Magistrates, directing their attention to the fact
that the people were arming, and pointing out the
means of seizing the arms. The Judge, Lord
DENMAN, said that the circular did not justify
Mr. UNWIN'S conduct; but it is obvious that the
terror of the people, felt by the Home Secretary,
and the zeal he displayed, gave a fillip
to the terror and the zeal of Mr. trxwix,
and made him overstep the bounds of law.
Dreadful was the alarm throughout the land
then on account of the Chartists, and intern-
p-rate the exertions of all the ministers of th-
law, from the police at Birmingham to Mr.
UNWIN at Mansfield. Such results, when
Chartism was dying out, should teach Home
Secretaries that even their zeal may outrun dis-
cretion, and work fearfully through the zeal of
their too willing understrappers.
The Marquis of NORMANDY did not see in
Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S circular a defence of Mr.
UNWIN'S conduct, and when applied to he re-
fused to allow the Home-office to undertake

Mr. UNWIN'S defence. For not undertaking'
that defence, the Noble Marquis was exposed
to the attack of the Duke of POIZTLAND, and
the vituperation of Lord WHARNCIFFE, the Pre-
sident of the Council. What the former might
have said is lost to the world, because the Noble
Duke appears to be not much of an orator, but
the latter went the length of reproaching the
Marquis of NORMANDY with having been in
fluenced in his conduct by the same sort of
feeling which he had manifested in Ireland—
a disposition against the country gentlemen and
Magistrates, for whom the President ofthe Council
claimed almost complete impunity. In fact, the
language of the Tory Minister, as reported in the
Times, is the circumstance which makes us refer
fo this case. After scolding the Marquis of NOR-
MANBY for not being as arbitrary and ill-disposed
towards the people as the Tories—after making
it out that the Home Secretary should support
the Magistracy both in Ireland and England,
whatever freaks of oppression they might be
guilty of, the Lord President of the Cou;;cil
came to the conclusion that the Magistrate:
should, in some cases, be exempt from the con-
trol of the law. These are the words reported
to have been used by the Lord President of the
Council, one of the guardians of our rights, and
one of the paid protectors of the people :
" For his part, he was clearly of opinion that
in some cases (such as that, of course, of break-
ing into a poor man's house and taking away his
papers without any authority) Magistrates could
not discharge their duties if they were to be
confined with undeviating precision to the strict
letter of the law."

Oh, no ; where Chartists and democrats are
concerned, where persons combine together to
get rid of landlords' tyranny, to throw off a
Bread-tax, or recover from their grasp the repre-
sentation of the people, these Magistrates are to
be licensed; they are not to be confined by the
law ; they are to act on their zeal, however exu-
berant; on their suspicions, however false and
exaggerated; and on their personal caprice ur
personal spite, however unworthy. Whatever
the County Magistracy may do to poachers and
Chartists, they are to be defended; and when
they trespass on the law, which is made as much
as possible to suit their convenience and serve
their purpose, kest then the law, which in all
other cases is to be rigidly adhered to and strictly
enforced, is to be relaxed or suspended, that
their conduct, however brutal, may go scot free.
That, we know, is the general practice, and that
is now time doctrine openly broached by the Tory
Lord President of the Council, one of the highest
tribunals, and he one of the highest Judges, of
the land. But such practices and such doctrines
have already brought contempt and hatred on the
law of England, and have made its Legislators
and its Magistrates a bye-word amongst the na-
tions.

But the cream of the practised and meditated
injustice is- yet to come. After this Magistrate
had most scandalously violated a poor man's
dwelling, and behaved in a way which would
have disgraced even a policeman in Ireland—
after the law, when appealed to, had so vindi-
cated Mr. BROYAN, as to condemn the unjust
Magistrate in costs, his Grace the Duke of
PORTLAND submitted a motion to the House of
Peers for an address to her MAJESTY that she
would order Mr. UNWIN'S expenses to be paid
out of the public treasury, for that was the ob-
ject of the Noble Duke, though the words are,
" take Mr. 13-NwlN's case into gracious conside-
ration." The motion was indeed informal, and,
as Lord WHARNCLIFFE said, dangerous to the
stability of the Government, and therefore it was
withdrawn; but let the reader just consider to
what all this must come, if one Peer maintains
that a Magistrate is to be upheld who violates
the law, and another, when he has by
accident fallen under its lightest visitation, pro-
poses to reimburse him, and perhaps reward him
out of the public purse. One JOSEPH BROYAN,
as the Duke of PORTLAND contemptuously styled
the victim of Mr. UN WIN'S unscrupulous zeal,
representing under that designation, however, all
the labouring classes, is to have his house broken
into, his every drawer ransacked, his things
strewed about, the privacy of his dwelling and
his family violated, and JOSEPH BROYAN is
to pay by the taxes all the expenses to which the
oppressor is put. Such proceedings are mon-
strous, and if the Peers and gentlemen of Eng-
land think that they are not observed by and
known to the people, and have not their due
effect on their minds, they are grievously mis-
taken. The lower classes, we beg to assure the
Duke of PORTLAND, Lord WHARNCLIFFE, and
the whole tribe of Tory law-makers and Magis-
trates, do actua►ly bleed when they are pricked,
do feel and will resent injuries whenever they
have the power. Their minds have now gathered
in " one drop of time" centuries of wrong; long-
nursed indignation is intensely concentrated and
compressed ; and how soon a fearful explosion
may take place no man can tell.

The war-cry against England is evidently
about to be renewed in the French Journals.
Those last received scarcely deign to conceal
that in keeping up her naval armaments France
has no other object than to pick a quarrel with
us. Unfortunately for the repose of the world
some of our Tory Contemporaries are playing
the game of the French war faction. The Times,
which, under its new management, appears to
sail before every wind that blows without either
chart or compass, has recently indulged in a
series of bigotted and altogether most unjust
attacks upon the moral and religious character
of the French people, which we are not sur-
prised to find are producing immense mischief in
Paris. Whoever may be the writer of these
articles, we can tell him that he has incurred a
fearful moral responsibity. The French people
will not suffer themselves to be branded with
the vilest epithets with impunity, nor will a
vindication of their moral worth be confined to
an attack on Printing-house-square. But to
meet the question on the writer's own narrow,
polemical ground,—ls it by insulting the moral
and religious feelings of the French that the
writer in the Times hopes to make them better
Christians and better citizens? Does he expect
then) to become devout Christians because he
denouncesthem as a nation of infidelsand atheists?
Does he hope to make them better subjects
by gravely asserting that they are only to be go-
verned by the sheer applicatiati of brute force-?
Or does he himself really believe that in a
country where an army of half a million of men
can be kept in subjection by an appeal to the
sentiment of individual honour, a Government
might not exercise the most extensive sway with-
out recourse to the repressive laws so vainly had
recourse to by Louis PHILIPPE ? If he does
s:)berly believe this, he cannot too soon abandon
his attempts to influence public opinion against
the French. He is but indifferently qua-
lified to treat of questions which require so
much delicacy in the handling as the state of
moral and religious feeling among a people so
sensitive to everything like insult or abuse as
our Gallic neighbours.
Independently of Tory provocations, we are
not altogether surprised at the sudden change
in the tone of the more moderate Paris Jour-
nals. M. TRIERS is now returned from Ger-
many, and having nothing at present to do, may
be expected to etr.ploy- himself in reviving the
old outcry against England. The Germans
treated him so handsomely that he cannot make
up his mind to the shamelessness of abusing
them ; and so he attacks us without mercy.
The provincial riots, occasioned by the expense
to which M.THIERS put the country, have not di-
minished his influence with the editorsof the Paris
press, a.nda noisy anti-English faction in the Cham-
bers. One thing only about the mattersurprises us,
and that is, that M. THIERS, who never before
adhered so long to one opinion, has not by this
time become a partizan of the British alliance.
But for the opposition he met with, and the loss
of power and place which he incurred, we are
quite sure that he would by this time have been
ready to sacrifice every ship in commission to
the slightest wish of Lord ABERDEEN, or whoso.