The Sun.
London, England, 1846-02-11 00:00:00

would enable them to obtain food at a reasonable rate. In
fact, so far from low prices of grain causing low wages, the
very contrary is the result. If food is at a reasonable price,
our manufacturers can compete more successfully with their
rivals in the foreign market, the demand for labour conse-
quently it:creates, and till the amount of population exceeds
the supply, wages must rise, while the necessaries
life are comparatively low. But tkat is only a
part of the result that may be anticipated. Another would
be the shortening of the hours of labour, and thereby do
away with legislative interference between master and em•
ployer, generally so injurious to bah. On this subject Sir
.JAMS GRAHAM said:—" I deprecate as much as any man
he too great interference of the Legislature witfi respect to
these laws of employment; but I will say that it would be
one of the most blessed and happy days which England
•ver saw, when a mutual agreement would be made in con-
sequence of a change in the law, which would render a less
tmount of wages necessary for securing the comforts of
rife. I say that it would be one of the happiest days that
ever England saw when there would be a mutual agree-
ment without legislative interference between the employers
and the employed to work for shorter hours, and that such
a day will come I most sanguinely hope." There is a third
point of view, however, of still greater importance. Every
humane person shudders on reading the account cf the tens
4' thousands confined in our gaols for offences against pro-

perty, laments the demoralisation caused by such frequent
commitments, and many despair ofdiscovering any remedy for
such frightful evils, though it is a fact about which there can be
no dispute that nearly all these offences are committed from
poverty and want. It is rare to hear of a person in easy
circumstances, even though his education be most defective,
committing offences against property : a gaol for him is really
a place of punishment, while the miserable, those starving of
cold and hunger, can see it in no horrors, and view it rather
as a place of refuge. No punishment which humanity would
endure can deter such wretched beings from committing
crime. It is want chiefly that leads to this frightful state of
society, and with what countenance, then, can these pre-
tended friends of the farm labourers, and similar
classes oppressed with poverty, oppose a measure for
increasing employment, while at the same time it
renders the necessaries of life more accessible to
the very class described as the objects of their
pity, and diminishes the amount of crime? The returns pre-
sented by Sir JAMES GRAHAM leave no doubt of the fact, for
they show that, during three years, when prices of grain wei e
low, there was a diminution of about one-fifth of the com-
mitments as compared with other years when the prices
were high. The remarks of Lord WORSLEY, from
whom we expected better things, hardly deserve
notice. Of what use is it, on a question of such
vital importance to read long extracts from "Hansard ?" Can
anything be gained by proving that Sir ROBERT PEEL and
Sir JAMES GRAHAM at one time entertained opinions different
from those they new profess? The very same charges
would apply to Lord JOHN RUSSELL, to Lord LANS
DOWSE, to Lord MORPETH, and to almost every leading
statesman. The man who does not change his mode of
action with his opinions is a hypocrite and a knave. The
man who changes his policy in accordance with his opinions
displays real honesty, and leaves no doubt of the fact in tha
public mind, when, in place of gaining personal advantages,
he is actually a great loser by such conduct. Lord Wonsuty,
to make good his point, should prove that Sir JAMES
GRAHAM'S estate will be rendered more valuable by the abo
lition of the corn-laws—that he and Sir ROBERT PEEL de-
rived a great advantage from resigni►ig office—and that the
most tempting of all rewards is the abuse of friends.

Hitherto our attention has been principally directed to the
et ceteras of the gi eat political struggles which are at the
present moment illustrating this session of Parliament—our
reflections have been successively restricted to the considera-
tion of one or other if the " postures" which tend altogether
to make up the present commercial and legislative
tableau. We have separately particularised the vent us
paroxysms. of recrimination, or sulkiness, or obsti•
nacy, or rancour, or stupendous dullness of compre-
hension, in which the delegates and the supporters
of the Central Protection Association have at different times
and in different places indulged. We have commented, and
that not without the assistance of a very considerable share
of patience and of moral resignation, upon the meetings
.tonvened in divers agricultural and manufacturing districts
and the orations there uttered for and against the remarkable
and comprehensive measures proposed by the Chief
Minister of the Sovereign, sustained by the acqui-
escence of his colleagues, and animated by the cordial
co-operation of the Opposition. We have at one
moment transcribed into our columns the bold, the dis-
passionate, the self-sustained and self-reliant arguments ad-
ranced by the most enlightened statesmen of this generation—
the Premier, Lord J. RussieLL, Lord MORPETII, Mr. COBDEN.
and the like : at another we have quoted as curiosities (both of
literature and logic) the discursive fribbles and unconscionable
platitudes with which such chivalrous but unealculatiag per-
sonages as his Grace of RICHMOND, or Mr. FERRAN)), have
frittered away their own time and that of their supporters.
By proceeding in this graduated but requisite manner, we
have been compelled, in the average, to descend to a minute
and detailed examination of occurrences, and have found
ourselves enabled only in casual and abrupt intervals to take
a wider survey of the grand question at issue. In a moral
sense, the multitude have during several months been
struggling forward in one unanimous and irresistible body
towards the golden gates of free trade, which have swung
open before them

" With the sound

Of symphonies and dulcet tones."
At this particular stage of affairs, however—while the
formality of a debate is enabling each individual in

the Lower House to express either his personal dis-
sent or approbation of the schemes propounded by Sir
ROBERT, we would for an instant step aside from the impetu-
osity of the current, and take one general though brief survey of
political men and political measures as they are now situated.

Out of doors we perceive a confusion, or rather an amalga-
mation, of parties—Whip and Conservatives, Tories and Ra-
dicals, Liberals and Chartists, High Churchmen and Dissenters,
no longer clashing in thought, in purpose, or in action, as
they have done from a period actually immemorial ; but
flinging the last shreds of their diseensience to the winds, and
dovetailing their various theories into one great, practical and
consistent object. To employ a figure of speech, the founda-
tion-stones of the British Constitution—the people—are no
longer broken up and scattered about in disorder, without
either strength or symmetry—that groundwork is
(so to speak) at the present moment tessellated—formed
out of variously coloured and heterogeneous parts,
yet constituting, in spite of this apparent obstacle, one, com-
pact, solid, and symmetrical whole. We find factions
nullified, and, as far as the majority are concerned,
political acerbity abolished ; we perceive those persons com-
bine their efforts in all kindliness and brotherly sympathy
who were animated but very recently towards each other
with sentiments only of the bittere,4 malevolence.
We see peace where there was formerly animosity—
hopefulness where there was only pertinacity of hatred.
Within the doors of Parliament the spectacle is no less re-
markable in every imaginable respect—our allusion being
mainly directed to the House of Representatives. Never, in
the records of that august assembly, did a more strange
complication of opinion exist. So conspicuous is this fact,
that there is no one but what must acknowledge
the present distinction of the Ministerial benches
and the Opposition benches as a farce of uncommon richness
in humour. The Prime Minister's position is most enviable
at this instant, as far as full and permanent popularity are
concerned ; the responsibility of his office has, for once,
been exceeded by the amount of benefit which
that office enables him to effect. He achieves the
greatest and the noblest deed a statesman can ever
by possibility achieve, by confessing .his former errors
and not only explaining the causes which had conducted him
to this discovery, but endeavouring by every faculty of his
intellect, and by every tittle of his self •ccmmand, to repair
the evils which he had formerly been instrumental in sus-
taining. In addition to this phenomenon of legislation, we
observe in that Chamber of Senators the Anti-Minis-
teilausts cheering on the Ministry with their very
hearts in their voices, and the anti-Oppositionists
themselves becoming virtually the members of Opposition.
Nor is there an absence of analogy in the present efforts of
the two divisions of Parliament : the Commons are aiming
at an eradication of the pernicious cause, exclusive protec-
tion—the Lordiare making efforts to remove the effect, the pre-
sent destitution in Ireland : the exertions in the Upper House
are but applications for the existing exigencies of the more
gigantic and prospective measures now agitated in the lower
House. While these vast reforms are being perfected, we
cannot but regard with some degree of commiseration that
blind and incorrigible obstinacy in the protectionists which
incites them to raise a clamour of the most impotent an-
tagonism against the popular will—conduct only equivalent
to the selection of a fool's cap and bells to an eternal crown
of laurels.

We have received Madrid papers of the 3d, but they con-
tain no news.
The three per Cents. closed at 33 for cash, and 33% at
00 days; and the Five per Cents. at 23% at 60 days.

The latest intelligence from Algiers in the Paris papers is
of a gloomy character. ABD-EL-KADEE, taking advantage
of the calamity which befel General LEVASSEUR'S division,
had suddenly made his appearance in the province of Con-
stantine, at the bead of two thousand horsemen at least, and
had committed razzias on all the tribes in that quarter who
11-.. d submitted to the French. A letter from Setif, dated
the 29th of January, which appears in the .41.9eri, leaves no
doubt of the fact, and of the consternation which it had
caused in that quarter. " Ann EL• KADER," says the
writer, "has just come upon us like a thunderbolt. In his
march from floghar to Foum-Onad-el-Djenan, he mercilessly
t.espoiled every tribe that had not previously sent him tokens
of submission. The Ouled-Blesselem, a tribe c f the sub-
division of the Setif, have been attacked. The Colonel of
the 19th has just set out with 1,500 men, to proceed to
the Medjana. All the disposable forces of the subdivision,
French and native, were got together to form this column.
—P.S. It is affirmed that ABD-EL KADER is at the head of
two thousand horsemen at least, and that he has with them
effected a considerable razzia on the Ouled-Sidi-Aissa-Mara-
bouts, who exercise the religious sovereignty over the greater
part of the old beylick of Titteri." The unfavourable
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