The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-05 00:00:00

EVEN ING EDITION.

LONDON:
TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, li4l.

The. Revenue accounts, which are made up this
evenini, will show, we believe, a favourable
comparison with the corresponding quarter of last
year. We are unable to give any particulars.

Some of our Contemporaries exult very much
rt the extinction of Chartism, and the quietness
of the people. If such were the fact, and
we have before us evidence in Chartist meetings
and publications that it is not, we shou!d
regard it as more significant of ruin than pros-
paity. The worst state of the public mind is
political apathy, It is generally followed by social
atrophy, and is a disease much more to be dreaded
than political discontent. Down-trodden as are the
bu'k of the people, living under laws made only to
scourge, and rarely or never to protect thcm, plun•
tiered on all hands in the name of the law by those
who pretend to be their friends and benefactors,
made to bear all the evils of society, and denied
trauA of its advantages, if they were to be continu-
ous), passive and contented under such injustice
they would consecrate the system by their sanction,
give it permanent life, and ensure at no distant day
the decay of the empire.
The results of political agitation and political
apathy, as we may trace them in time United
States and in Italy, are worth a moment's attention,
ja reference to the contradictory views tic have just
stated.

In the United States an election ha, just come
to an end, which has roused into activity
every full-grown man in the empire. The people,
we are told, have toiled as if their salvation de-
pended on the issue. They have called each other
all manner of hard names, and have worked them-
selves up to a pitch of v.o'ence amounting ahnost
to &frenzy.: Nu doubt, n their eagerness, they
have abused and calumniate I each other in a very
manner, most offensive to di awing.
unneio hbourly
room patriots. The ordinary and customary-
what our 'Tories call the can-
method of vilifying,
naille, or the mob, or greasy artisans, is in
the United States somewhat changed, and there
being uo canaille or mob in that country, the Bil-
lingsgate of party is promiscuously and generally
shared. In Enrope the upper classes, and the
press of the upper classes, have long had, except
under temporary ebullitions of popular feeling, a
monopoly of this kind of language, and the bulk of
the people, degraded into slavery, have also been
contumeliously taunted with their misery. In the
United States this monopoly is destroyed. There

general equality diffuses pretty equally even the
power of abuse, and some of that insulting lan-
guage is now and then addressed to the upper
classes, which in Europe is reserved for the poor,
and almost exclusively applied to them. Now this
may be very grating to aristocratic feelings, but
what in America is the concomitant, or the result ?
The society is unexampledly prosperous and unex-
ampledly tranquil. Never before in the world—
never through the whole extent of the history of
man—if we except China, with the internal history
of which we are not well acquainted—were there so
many as from four to.fourteen millions of human
beings in the same neighbourhood, who, for so long
a period as the inhabitants of the United States,
since their revolutionary war, have lived to-
gether in concord without worrying each other,
or worrying their neighbours. We do not forget
the war they were obliged to carry on against
Great Britain, we do not overlook the irruption
of a portion of them into Texas, nor their en-
croachments on the Indians ; but taking these into
consideration we affirm, as the prosperity of the
United States has been unexampled, so have been
their internal tranquillity and external peace. That
is the accompaniment, if not the result of political

agitation.
In the States of the Church, to take the example
of the most quiet people of Italy, and a people
completely controlled, as some amongst us wish
our people to be, by a Puseyite priestho.)d
and an arrogant aristocracy, there has
heathy been any political agitation amongst
them since the days of It lENZI. The French Revo-
lution roused them for a little while, but it was only
to make them sleep afterwards the more soundly.
Their fields are accordingly like those of a slothful
man. The Government is undisturbed, the country
is neglected. Population makes no progress, agri-
culture no improvement. Navigation is almost un•
heard of, though a sea-coast and navigable rivers
be!ong to the Papal States. The only arts which
flourish are sculpture, painting, music, architecture,
and others of the same kind, which contribute to
the enjoyments of the opulent or the purposes of
devotion. But even these seem now to fail and
fade, wanting that healthy support which is derived
from an increasing and prosperous population. The
people are civil and obsequious, all that ouraristocracy
wish to make our people. They are a nation of
servile artists and valets. Foreigners are received
with smiles and bows, and their money and their
custom are eagerly sought after. With an abundance
of smoothness, civility, and courtesy, neither pro-
perty nor life is particularly safe. Assassination is
not unfrequent, and banditti flourish in companies,
making the roads unsafe, and setting the law at de-
fiance. Gentlemen and ladies are carried cff to the
mountains, and must be ransomed ; vehicles are
are stopped and plundered on the highways, and
travellers are obliged to fight for their property and
their lives. If the active virtues slumber, villany
seems always awake. Such are the results of a
priestly paternal government, and of the people
being in a state of political apathy.
Is this the condition which our political
writers, enamoured of political quietness, wish
for England?? If the spirit of political agitation be
not kept alive, and the tyranny of the aristocracy
and the priesthood be permanently successful here
as in the Papal States, to that we shall come. Al-
ready there are numerous classes who prefer ease to
freedom. Our youth are growing up like Italian
boys, delighting in cigars, theatres, and music. The
arts, which mark a nation's decay rather than its
prosperity, sculpture, painting, architecture, are
successfully cultivated. Obsequiousness is recom-
mended, and rough, but honest language, such as
I prevails in the United States, is stigmatized as the
greatest vice. While cupidity and Atheism pre-
vail amongst our upper classes as in Italy, here, as

gion is assumed, and everything approaching
to free public discussion, is put down by pro-
secutions as blasphemous libels, or by the intol-
erance of the hypocrites. If our Government pur-
sue the same course as that of the Papal States,
were it to be successful, and were our lovers of quiet,
and the bayonet to attain their wishes, and put an
end to all political agitation, what could be expected
for England but the fate of the Papal States? The
ancient mistress of the world now owes much of
her remaining and little prosperity, much of her mo-
dern glitter to the annual visits of Germans, French,
and English, to study and admire the memorials of
her former greatness. Far off be the time when in like
manner the inhabitants of the United States shall
repair to London chiefly to study and admire, if
there be then anything left here for admiration, the
monuments of our departed greatness. But that
time will come for our descendants, as it has come
for Rome, if our present system of ruthless oppres-
sion and ruthless plunder of industry in the honoured
names of law, government, and religion, shall be
consecrated and preserved by the perfect submis-
sion of the oppressed.

Our news yesterday from Walsall was good.
Mr. G. SMITH, the Chairman of the Anti-Corn-law
League, stands on the Liberal interest with every
prospect of success. Notwithstanding the tem-
porary alienation which may be caused in some of
Mr. LYTTELTON'S friends by his retirement, there
is not a single elector of Walsall favourable to the
Liberal cause, which includes a repeal of the Corn-
laws, who will not labour with all his heart and all
his soul to secure Mr. SMITH'S return. Nor will
there he wanting on the part of the League any exer-
tion wh'cli can lead to succesF. A great cause
is at issue, the cause of freedom, for he is surely a
slave who cannot buy his bread where he pleases,
—the cause of honesty, for surely it is dishonest in
the owners of the soil, already secured an ample
maintenance without toil, most greedily to add to
their wealth by taxing the food of the poor, and the
cause of our country, the peace of which is endan-
gered by the continuance of such unrighteous legis-
laiion. If any elector, in ignorance of what is
at stake, have been beguiled into promising his vote
to the immoral, iniquitous advocate of the bread-
tax, the duty he owes to his kindred and country-
men, the duty he owes to justice and to GoD, com-
mands him to withdraw such a promise and vote for
Mr. G. SMITH. This is not an ordinary contest
between two individuals ; it is a contest between the
principle of right and wrong, of light and darkness,
of good and evil, and every honest man is bound not
only to vote, bt,t to exert himself to the utmost to
put down the wrong, in the person of Mr. GLAD-
STONE, and support the right in the person of Mr.
SmITII. Walsall will become a bye-word throughout
the whole of the manufacturing districts if it elect
a Corn-law advocate. The word Renegade will
Le banished from our tongue, and the word Wal-
sailer substituted for it. " Base as a Walsaller" will
be, a proverb, if the borouQ,li now sells the cause
of honesty, of justice, and of the people to the
bread-taxing Tories.
Mr. GLADSTONE and his connections, the vast
gains of his family by slavery, the enormous tax
they levy annually on the people by the dis-
criminating duties on sugar, their attempt to revive
slavery in tie persons of the Hill Coolies, must be
well known at Walsall, and to Mr. GLADSTONE's
opponents. They, we are assured, will not allow
him to pass himself
off on the borough for any
thing but what he is. The
~LADSTONES are
amongst those persons for whose behoof at this
moment more than 2d. is levied on every pound of
sugar the people consume. The planters and the

landowners have a common interest, and make
common cause; and no person can be surprised that
a GLADSTONE is the patron of slavery at home,
slavery abroad, and plunder, by means of law,
everywhere. In rejecting Mr. GLADSTONE the
electors of Walsall will give a heavy blow to the
tax on sugar, levied for the benefit of the Deme-
rara and other planters, as well as to the accursed
, tax on the bread of the nation.

A report prevails that Lord HILL is to retire
from the Horse Guards. We are not surprised
at this, because the conduct of the Noble Lord in
the case of the Earl of CARDIGAN, has made his
retirement a matter of necessity. Though we
have recorded the instances which have latterly
come to light of the Noble Earl's conduct, we
thought it wholly improper to make any remarks
on them, because Lord HILL and the Horse
Guards had fully justified all the proceedings of the
Noble Earl, and taken all his delinquencies on them-
selves. The Horse Guards encouraged back-biting.
The Horse Guards approved of a Colonel issuing
public orders to prevent his officers writing to him
on private affairs. The Horse Guards eagerly seized
hold of the slight indiscretion such tyranny hurried
a younger officer into, organized a Court-partial,
and so dismissed him the service. For the honuur
and for the future good discipline of the army—
that gentlemen may feel even commonly at their
ease, and safe from insidious, unmanly, misrepresen-
tations—it is necessary that those who have approved
of Lord CARDIGAN'S conduct should retire from
the Government of the army.

For Lord HILL, as a brave and good officer, w►►o
while in command of a portion of the army, was
universally beloved, we entertain a very high respect;
but as the Commander-in-Chief he seems not to
have followed the dictates of his own good heart
and solid understanding. He has acted as if he
were not independent. By meaner and much less
worthy men he has apparently been made the in-
strument for corrupting the army to aristocratic pur-
poses. The same baneful influence which has predo-
minatedin the Legislature, has cast its cold shade over
the military, and the honoured name of Lord HILL
has been the screen by which all popular rays have
been intercepted. It is no longer consistent with
our manners and ways of thinking, to have the
aristocracy usurping all honour, and moulding all
our establishments to its views. The army is paid
by the whole nation for the common defence, and
it must not be converted, by such appointments as
that of Lord CARDIGAN, after he had been dis-
missed, and by such deference to his arbitary
pi o-
ceedings as the Horse Guards have exhibited, into
a mere plaything or pension giver for the aristo-
cracy. Lord HILL has lent his name to that
vicious system, till the abuses have become flagrant,
and therefore the report prevails that Lo►d HILL
is about to retire.

We direct the attention of our Protestant readers
to a letter, signed "An Anglo-Catholic." It is
written by a clergyman of the Established Church,
who candidly admits himself to be a Puseyite,
subscribes to " Bishop Sparrow's Rationale," from
which, on Tuesday, we gave lengthened extracts,
and who, as far as we can judge, is as staunch a
Roman Catholic as DANIEL O'CONNELL, or the
POPE himself. We neither nickname nor revile
our Correspondent, or any one of the sect, for his
conscientious belief ; we have no wish to convert
him, and least of all to persecute him, for any
doctrine he may entertain ; but we must be per-
mitted to enter our protest against the. conduct of
those Churchmen who hold livings from which Ro-
man Catholics were ejected on account of their
faith, and who at the same time profess the same
faith under a different name. Between Puseyism
and Popery there is but a stop, and the Oxford

ward to the day when they shall make that
step, and be received into the bosom of the
HOLY FATHER. Two paragraphs in the letter
convey unexpected and joyful information. The
Puseyites, it appears, contemplate the expediency of
separating themselves from the State, and the prac-
tice of pastoral visiting has become common among
the clergy of the Established Church. The latter
circumstance is quite new to us, for though we
were aware that a certain portion attended to their
duties, we know, like our Correspondent, from ex-
tensive observation, that a vast proportion of the
English Clergy were more occupied in fox-hunting,
in canvassing at elections, in performing the duties
of laymen at the Quarter Sessions, and in making
violent political harangues at public dinners, than
in attending to the great duties to which they were
appointed—visiting the sick and the dying, and mi-
nistering to the wants of the needy and distressed.
The former circumstance, also, has something of no-
velty in it, and when accomplished, but not till then,
we will give credit to the new sect for disinterested
motives and sincere religious feelings. The candour
and kindly feelings with which our Correspondent
writes convince us that he is in earnest, but hisopen
defence of the new sect only adds to our conviction,
from other circumstances, that the Protestant faith
is in imminent danger, and that unless her MA-
JESTY, as Head of the Church, or the Houses of
Parliament interfere, the English Church will
shortly be brought into the dominion of the POPE
and his intriguing and worldly-minded Cardinals

Mr. O'CONNELL, in the name of the Repeal
Association, has addressed a long and carefully
written letter to Lord CHARLEMONT, in reply to 3
communication lately made by his Lordship to the
Repealers, wherein he expressed himself hostile to
their favourite panacea for all Irish grievances. In
this letter Mr. O'CONNELL has done little more
than repeat the various arguments which he has
urged from titne to time in favour of Repeal, and
which in substance amount to just this—first, that
the " masses iu England," if not decidedly inimical,
are at any rate indifferent, to the interests of Ire-
land, and that were the case even otherwise, still
they have no power to befriend her ; secondly,
that the majority in the House of Commons which
professes to be well disposed towards her, "is
exceedingly restricted," and upon the important
question of STANLEY'S Bill, " has been repeatedly
against her ;" and thirdly, that the " Anti-Irish
enmity in the House of Lords is perfectly trium-
phant, nor is there the slightest hope of diminish-
ing or mitigating that hatred." These are the
chief points of interest in Mr. O'CONNELL'S let-
ter. As for the other matters of which he treats,
we may dismiss them without a word, for they re-
fer in part to the proceedings of the last Irish Par-
liament, for which the great majority of our readers
care little or nothing ; and in part, to the " com-
mercial advantages" which would ensue to Ireland
from Repeal—a theme which it will be quite time
enough to discuss, when there exists the slightest
probability that that measure will become the law of
the land.

! ,
With regard to Mr. ()TON NELL's first hypo-
thesis—namely, that the English masses are indif-
ferent to the interests of Ireland, we again repeat,
what we have of,en told him, that such is not the
case. There may be a noisy body of political
fanatics who are so—men of but one idea, and that
a wrong ono, who can think, speak of, look for-
ward to, nothing but the realization of their own
engrossing crotchet ; but the sound, intelligent
majority of the People take unquestionably a warm
interest in the welfare of Ireland. And this they
do front no chivalrous or libe-