The Sun.
London, England, 1846-08-17 00:00:00

2int4

LONDON, MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 1846.

Another instance of the purblind policy. of the
protectionists was afforded by Friday's proceedings
in the HOUSQ
ofof Commons. Owing to the singular
iu
circumstanceunrst PACHA having directed an
e, xamination gone
thelnto of the provisions of' the
receilt Corn withview of considering its
of E bearings on the produce a very serious
error was detected. Its effect gypt'
is,
that the duty upon
rye, peas, and beans is regulated
which was never intended, and, by
on
duty upon the former is rendered c, thats on barley,
quently, the
double what it
was meant to be by the new law, and maybe actually
higher than it stood under the old. The attentio of
f
the leading merchants in the City having bean drawn
to this error, or inconsistency, they immediately took
energetic steps, under the auspices of the LORD
MAYOR, for obtaining,. :the sanction of Parliament
before the end of the session, to the removal of this
unintentional hindrance to the importation of foreign
rye, peas, and beans. The most eminent frms con-
nected with commerce in foreign grain were con-
sulted upon the subject, and they admitted that the
law as it stands at present would be productive of
roost serious inconvenience, and they came to this
unanimous opinion, notwithstanding that their politi-
cal op,inions were widely different. Mr. VILLIERS,
aCCPraiiii:lY, took the preliminary steps on Friday

- _
night in the liouse for bringing in a short Bill,
to remedy the blunder, and in the course
of a short and business-like speech he expressed an
opinion that Lord GEORGE BENTINCK would not
take advantage of the error, but allow him to go into
Committee and propose his measure. Mr. VILLIERS,
however, found himself deceived in this impression.
The Member for Lynn made no secret of his delight
at the discovery, acknowledged that nothing could be
more ridiculous than the mode of regulating the
prices of peas, beans, and rye by that of barley, and
concluded by threatening the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer with the most virulent opposition, should he
attempt to effectuate the bond fide intentions of the
Legislature, and give to the people the full benefit of
the commercial change for which they had so per-
severingly struggled. Here is high-minded state-
manship ! How lofty in their views, how immaculate
in principle are the protectionist leader, and his
generous coadjutors ! " Though you, the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer," exclaims the Noble Lord,
in effect, " will not condescend to consider the ad-
vantage to the revenue, nor retain an error at the
sacrifice of keeping faith with the public, yet we,
the monopolists, regardful only of what concerns our
pockets, will pertinaciously cling to a law manifestly
ridiculous, and will defeat you at this advanced
period of the session by a mechanical opposition,
should you dare to wrest from us a benefit to which
we are morally disentitled." Such is the finishing
and graceless stroke of the protectionists in the
memorable session of 1846. Badly as they stood
before, they have, by this mean proceeding, ren-
dered themselves completely bankrupt in character.
Mr. VILLIERS and the Government were, under the
circumstances, forced to abandon the hope of rectifying
the corn-law till next year. In the meantime the
country will not be slow to remember the disgrace-
ful tactics by which they have for the time been
deprived of a considerable boon.
We gladly turn from this discreditable scene to
another of a more grateful character. Mr. HUME
again essayed to carry his motion for throwing
open to the public on Sundays and holidays
the British Museum, the National Gallery, and
similar public institutions. He gave some interesting
statistics, which proved the yearly increase of visitors
on week days to public places of recreation and in-
struction, since they have been thrown open, to be
very large, and also that it has been attended
with a marked improvement ifl the conduct and
morals of the people. Lord Jonrt RUSSELL expressed
his approval of Mr. HUME'S object, but considered
the question had better be left in the hands of the
trustees of the different institutions. The motion
was ultimately withdrawn, We have every confi-
dence that the Premier, as one of the trustees of the
British Museum, will not fail strongly to recom-
mend that its doors should be opened in the way de-
sired, and that his advice will be acted upon. 31 is
not only, in our opinion, a moral right that the la-
bouring classes, who are pent up six days in the
week, should have access on the Sunday to the great
repositories of the wonders of nature and art, which
are maintained at the public expense, but we are
convinced that no more conducive means could
be adopted towards elevating their minds,
and redeeming them from the vicious courses
of drunkenness and immorality. We are sur-
prised at the sickening cant of the late Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, who conceived an ac-
quiescence in Mr. IJUME'S motion would amount to a
desecration of the Sabbath. Such puritanical sen-
tences may be all very palatable to his academical
constituents, but we can scarcely believe that he con-
scientiously harbours such narrow-minded conceits.
What constitutes real art, but that which most closely
resembles nature ? If you are to prohibit the poorer
classes from contemplating the varied products of
nature, accumulated from all parts of the world, and
the wonderful efforts of the art of man, himself the
noblest work of GOD, upon the bigoted assumption
that the Sabbath is thereby desecrated, you might
with equal consistency reproach the man who would
stop to survey with delight any beautiful landscape
that bis eye may chance to light upon during
his Sunday's walk. We have ouCived the day when
our reason is to be warped by such hypocritical
puerilities. This ascetic imbecility is really moro
fit for derision than serious argument, and so we dis-
miss the subject, convinced that ere long the benevo
lent and philosophical wishes of Mr. HUME Will br
fully realised.

Mr. HUME on Fridy night ca:led the attention of the
House of Commons to a petition which he had a feu
days ago presented from the colony of Van Dieman',
Land, praying for a representative government.
The Hon. Member avowedly brought forward this
subject with the view, if possible, of obtaining a
statement of the intentions of the Ministry, as it would
obviously be impossible, at this advanced period of
the session, to introduce any new measures respecting
that colony. In this respect the Hon. Gentleman
was gratified by the declarations elicited from tht
Premier and the Under-Secretary for the Colonies.
The Prime Minister unhesitatingly avowed his opi-
nion that, generally speaking, the representative
constitution ought to be introduced further into our
colonies, but stated the difficulties that intervened to
prevent the introduction of one general measure for all.
The wide differences that exist in the habits and feelings
of the population of our different dependencies—some
of them being inhabited chiefly by Englishmen, while
others having been obtained from foreign powers,
the great mass of the inhabitants are still natives of
the countries to which their settlements originally
belonged ; others again being of the nature of gar-
risons, where the greater part of the in-
habitants reside only for a time, obviously
require that each colony should be dealt with
by itself, and that a mode of government
suited to the peculiarities and the wants of its people
should be maintained therein. We have also had
the statement of the Under-Secretary, the organ of
the Colonial department in the House of Commons,
" that the representative form of government was
the best, and that wherever there were good elements
for establishing it, it was not only the bounden duty
of the country, but also its intere t, to esta-
blish that form of goverment." This is, in-
deed, pleasing intelligence. We are assured
that henceforward the just and equitable principle
of self-government will be fully recognised in
Downing-street ; that, as far as practicable, our
colonies will be dealt with on a footing of equality,
and that measures distasteful and obnoxious to the
great body of the people will no longer be forced
down their throats, to suit the whims or caprices of
officials, perhaps wholly ignorant of the ob-
jections thereto, and how injurious they may prove
to the interests of the people who may be obliged
to adopt them. Had this course been adopted when
the American people expressed their dissatisfaction,
that great nation would, in all probability, have still
remained united to the mother country ; the blood
and treasure that was expended in the vain attempt
to keep down the energies of a mighty people re-
solved on freedom would have been saved, and
both countries :would have been connected by the
ties of mutual advantage, on a footing of
perfect equality. 'The great principle that
taxation cannot exist without representation, must
ever be kept in vievv—that a people can only be legally
taxed with the assent of their representatives.
Whenever, therefore, any sum of money is attempted
to be raised from a people on any pretext,
or by any means whatever, the representative
form of government must be extended to them.
We may, therefore, hope that early in the ensuing
session charters will be granted to the seventeen
unrepresented colonies, or good and sufficient
reasons stated for their being withheld for a season
The case of Van Diemen's Land is peculiarly
hard. There are no less than 35,000 free colonists,
almost all of them settlers from the mother
country, without any representation, taxes to a
large amount levied, and a portion of that
taxation in a single day trebled in amount.
The distress and misery suffered by the
inhabitants consequent upon the mismanagement of
the Home Government are of the most fearful descrip-
tion, and what ought to be one of the most promising
fields for the enterprise of our hardy emigrants, so
deterioraed, that emigration thereto from this country
has practically ceased. Much of this evil may be
attributed to the fact of its having been selected as
the depot for our convict population. A small num-
ber of that class might advantageously have been in-
troduced into a country where there was an inadequate

supply of free labour, but the energy and industry of
the free population has been checked by-the extraor-
dinary numbers sent out ; and they have also been
most inequitably saddled with the expenses of the
support and maintenance of an enormous police esta-
blishment, rendered necessary by the criminal cha-
racters of so vast a body. Their well-grounded
complaints require immediate consideration, and
the adoption of remedies calculated to meet
the mischief. We are, however, assured that it
is at this moment receiving that consideration,
that it is occupying the closest attention of the able
and talented nobleman at the head of that depart-
ment. It is now universally admitted that the
sending of a large number of convicts to one place
has been a signal failure, and that the first thing
must be to remove at least a part of the difficulty
arising from the preponderance of a convict
population. If this be done, and the policy
announced by the Premier be fully carried out,
we may look forward confidently to a vast im-
provement in the condition of the people of
that country. We also consider, that without re-
ference to the state of Van Diemen's Land, that policy
will be of great benefit to the mother country. It must
be borne in mind that transportation now forms the
chief of our secondary punishments—that it has
been substituted for that of death in a vast number of
cases, and anything that makes the public too
familiar with the mode of punishment, and makes it
regarded with less horror than would otherwise be
the case, must greatly take away from its efficiency
as an example, as a thing to be avoided, and
which will have the effect of repressing crime.
It must also be considered that the sending out of
each convict occasions a considerable expense to the
nation, and that a great saving may be effected by
doing so only in cases of the most serious and aggra-
vated crime. By this means persons subjected
thereto will be really punished, and we shall no longer
hear of applications by those who have committed
some petty offence to be sent out of the country, and
the granting the application being looked upon as a
great and valuable boon.

Alarming intelligence is now, unhappily, pouring
in daily respecting the spread of the dreaded potato
disease throughout the midland counties of England
and in various quarters of Ireland. Unless some
active and immediate measures be adopted by the
Executive, we fear the most calamitous consequences
will develop themselves. A feeling of panic is, ac-
cording to the most authentic information, alarming
the imagination and increasing the despondency of
the poorer inhabitants of the districts afflicted with the
infection. Considerable derision has hitherto been
cast upon those who were credulous enough, towards
the conclusion of 1845, to entertain the most lugubri-
ous apprehensions of starvation, of contagion, of in-
subordination, and of a terrible decimation of the
multitude, in consequence of an accidental decay
in a certain description of vegetables. From a mor-
bid attachment to a fallacious principle in commerce,
they endeavour to continue those rumours of the de-
ficiency in food which was declared to have resulted
from those principles being carried into operation.
They overlooked the immense importance of those
vegetable crops to a population subsisting almost en-
tirely upon tubers ; they closed their ears to the la-
mentations and supplications of the sufferers ; they
accused Sir ROBERT PEEL of employing a poetical
exaggeration for the purpose of tampering with the
judgment of Parliament, when he pictured to the na-
tional representatives of Great Britain the malign
phantom of famine threatening to curse these
islands with her presence, and the phantom also of
"that pestilence which follows famine." Even during
the past fortnight the common sense of the public has
been insulted by a repetition of this frivolous scepti-
cism. Those who have insisted with so much of ar-
rogant confidence and self-sufficiency that their dis-
credit of the reported destitution in the skter country
has been justified, inasmuch as none of those calamitous
consequences have transpired such as were or:ginally
predicted, have overlooked the earnest labours of Go-
vernment, and the activityof many unhired philanthro-
pists, by which alone the condition of the sufferers has
been ameliorated. But for the exertions of an extra-
ordinary commission of inquiry, and for the admirable
,nd spontaneous co-operation of individuals, the
mortality must have been infinitely greater, the epi-
demic must inevitably have assumed a more fatal cha-
racter, the meal-bins of the peasantry must have been
altogether void of provisions, and dangerous senti•
ments of discontent and insubordination have been
propagated by the very intensity of the penury. On
.-he contrary, quietude has been preserved in the
afflicted neighbourhoods, the immediate necessities of
the labouring classes supplied both by the importation
,f cheap and nutritious commodities, and by en-
gaging upon national works the thousands who had
hitherto remained without employment. In the ex•
ertions thus made by the late Administration we
recognise a noble and judicious example for the
guidance of its successors. Let a spirit of emulation
be once instilled into a Ministry, and advantages
cannot but redound to the community under its pro-
tection.

That much was really accomplished in behalf of those
who were most grievously affected by the deficiency
of last year's potato crop, and that the principal pro-
portion of that assistance is traceable to the interpo-
sition of the Government under Sir ROBERT PEEL.
no one can for a moment doubt who has examined the
official statistics issued upon this particular. In tes-
timony of the accuracy of this assertion, we may be
permitted to enumerate a few circumstances attendant
upon that interposition. Foremost amongst the endea-
vours to compete with the ravages of the potato pestilence
must be mentioned the expenditure of 185,4321. 7A.
7d. upon the importation of Indian corn and oatmeal.
for distribution at a moderate charge. Then there
was an additional gratuity of 67,9111. 10s. entered
as donations from the national revenue, in aid
of subscriptions made by Relief Committees. A sun,
of no less than 452,7271. 14s. Bd. was likewise granted
for works to be executed for the relief of urgent
distress. Another amount of 133,5361. Bs. 3d. was
placed at the disposal of the proper authorities in
case of any emergency. Again, there were 2,2101.
appropriated to extraordinary instances of destitution
not otherwise calculated. For the requisite offices
and expenses of the Relief Commission 2,8231. 9s. ld
were reserved ; while for the purpose of facili-
tating local inquiries 7,840/. w, ere additionally
advanced. To estimate the advantages whicl,
must by necessity result from such laudable
munificence, we should examine their substan-
tiated effects in the improved social disposition of
the populace, in the wholesome activity of a com-
merce hitherto afflicted with sluggishness, in the
diminution of infectious disorders, and in the firmness
of the markets. One fact will, however, be sufficient
for our present object, namely, that 44,121,57411b5.
of Indian corn and oatmeal have been by this
generous assiduity imported for the starving po-
pulation of Ireland since last November : in other
language, a quantity sufficient to afford sustenance
to 490,240 persons daily during three months, rating
the consumption of each individual at 11b. per diem.
Such are the simple products of this interference on
the part of the late Government—such are the mast
important details of their interposition. Heartily
do we trust that a spirit of emulation will be infused
into the members of the present Cabinet, seeing
that the aspect of the approaching► winter is any-
thing but propitious, and that the horrible con-
tagion, which formerly alarmed the community,
while it rendered a wholesome article of nourish-
ment either excessively detrimental to health or
absolutely poisonous, is beginning to re-appear,
if possible, with threefold virulence.
So numerous and disheartening are the descriptions
of this most calamitous blight that we are baffled in
endeavouring to cull the most important. In War-
wickshire the disease has manifested itself as vio-
lently and as generally as in Tipperary. 'We are
assured by very credible informants that the pesti-
lential appearance of the fields in the former
county is beyond the belief of all but an
eye-witness. Within the soil the tubers are
discovered to be shrivelled and pulpy; the leaves and
stalks, very recently of remarkable luxuriance and
verdure, are now sodden upon the ground in a mass of
vegetable putrefaction. Nor are these the only con-
comitants of the desolation :—.an insupportable stench,
together with a pestiferous vapour, produced by " a
species of fermentation among the diseased roots,"
rises from the fields in question, carrying with them
the embryos of infectious maladies—insomuch that