The Sun.
London, England, 1846-05-28 00:00:00

TEE SUN, LONDON, TRURSDAY EV:W4ING, MAY 2B, 1846.

SINGULAR CASE AT GUERNSEY.

THE TURN-OUT OF TRADES.

; vhigt
hc atshsee s ,
ctuhsetno,m
ers beware
fierate turn-outs, or mere experimental strikes. So long
si 4,000,000 of paupers are waiting to be employed, and
capital can live without food, the inevitable result must
with,
by
nsoir.
of etfhe tamcappeirtianlgiswt,
be signal discomfiture. If they will venture on the ex-
periment, let them wait until the corn-law is repealed,
and the new tariff passed. The nation will have
50,000,0001. a-year more to spend on manufactures ;
Iforeign trade will also be extended, and the much
!greater cheapness of all the necessaries of life will
enable the labourer to sustain a turn out for a much
longer period, at a time, too, when universal commercial
activity will render his assistance more indispensable.
In the existing stagnation of trade, when the supply of
labour is greater than the demand, common sense will
[show him the necessity of postponing his action upon
the market to a more convenient season, when greater
intelligence and more ripe advice may at least convince
him that his wisest policy with 4,000,000 of competitors,
ready and eager to jump into his shoes, is to let sleeping
dogs lie, to know when he is well, and to keep a good
place when he has got it.—Dispatch.

(From the United Service Gazette.)

The labourer and the capitalist, in the most logical
sense, represent the same thing. The property of either
is identical ; and the terms by which it is known, ac-
cording as it is possessed by the one or the other, are
convertible. What is capital, but the labour of yester-
day ? and what is labour, but the capital of to day ? It
is capital that pays for labour, and it is labour that gives
profit to capital. Of all worldly things, the labourer
should reverence capital, help to accumulate it,
and strain every nerve to increase its profits. Money is
capital, and capital is money. The labourers' wages are
thus paid by capital. The more capital there is in com-
parison to the supply of labour, the higher must wages
become—the greater the supply of labour in proportion
to capital, the less will labour be remunerated :
and, therefore, where there is less money than
there are men, money will be of the greater value,
and men of the lesser. Hence, in all poor countries
labour is cheap, and in rich countries dear. In Ireland,
where, men are more abundant than money, wages fall
to 6d. ; in England, where there is more money than
men, they rise to 2s. 6(I. ; in America, where there is
more land than ploughmen, they reach 4s. What unre
deemed blockheads, then, must those men be who, in
their stupid cant, think they serve the cause of the work-
ing men by emptying the vocabulary of Billingsgate
bfyorwlahboosue r enterprise,;
or w h
uponskill
at hn adt
acel
taisysi t
yo
ahge e
se oamr
em uf
onui
ntyd'
with tongue set in cheek, and knowing wink, endeavour,
in inflated bombast, to inflame ignorance to madness
against the only hand that can help it, at the biddirg
of a Stanhope, the signal of the Morning Post, or tie
bribe of Bentinck, or the foolometry of Bond-street.
If all capital were exhausted in wages, where would
there be employment for the next generation of la-
bourers ? To melt all profit down to wages is less an
injury to the employer, than a robbery of the industry
of our posterity, in order to pamper the labourers of
the existing generation. The sooner capital is ex-
hausted, the earlier must employment cease—the more
profit labour produces, the greater is the temptation to
embark capital in the extension of employment, and the
higher consequently must wages become. It is equally
evident that the higher profits and wages are, or, in
other words, the dearer the commodity is which is
produced, the less it will be bought, the demand will
fall off, and with it, of course, both wages and pro-
fits. It is a self-adjusting process, requiring neither
combinations amongst masters, nor strikes amongst
men. If wages encroach on profits, capital ceases
to employ labour, and wages fall—if profits encroach on
wages, more capital 15 tempved so cuiLtAvlz in the trade,
the demand for labour increases, wages rise, and the
balance is re-adjusted. In the silk manufacture, which
is protected by a duty of 30 per cent., neither profits
nor wages are higher than in the cotton trade, which is
unprotected—the monopoly only tempted more capital
to compete with that already embarked, and induced
more weavers to enter the trade. Even the corn laws
have done nothing for present profits in land. As rents
rose, capital sought investment in the soil, until three
per cent. has become the average profit of landholding.
Let us not be misunderstood. Our labours in the cause
of the repeal of the combination laws, are better
guarantees of our sympathy with the working classes,
than any mere hollow professions or empty asseve-
rations. As to the perfect moral and social
right of labour to strike for more wages, there
cannot be two opinions among sane men. The bakers
strike against the public for a rise in the price of bread
—the farmers at Mark-lane carry back their wheat, or
hold" it, if the price does not suit, which is just a
turn-out against the millers for a rise in grain. The
tallow, er tea, or sugar merchants, refuse to sell, and
strike for a rise in the gains on their respective specula-
tions ; and the working man, a merchant of industry,
who takes his skill, his ten fingers, his labour to
market, instead of bread, or wheat, or tallow, or sugar,
is of course quite entitled to bring those home again if
the price does not please him, and strike for a rise in the
profits of labour, as other merchants turn out for
a rise in the profits of capital. But, as public
instructors and guardians of popular rights, bound
to do equal justice betwixt masters and men, and much
more, to protect the weak and peaceable against the
violent and the powerful, we must, once for all, declare
our inextinguishable detestation of all monopoly, whe-
ther of labour or of profit—of all tyranny or dictation,
whether of masters and men against esch other, or,
worse still, of men against men—of all invasions of the
perfect liberty of every subject of the State, whether
capitalist or operative, to " do what he likes with his
own." By effecting the repeal of all protective duties en
domestic production, the class of capitalists have mani-
fested a spirit of justice worthy of all imitation ;
and by the abrogation of all the privileges of mu-
nicipal corporations, and throwing open every
branch of trade, commerce, and manufacture, to
every subject of the realm, instead of confining their
pursuit exclusively to guild brethren and freemen of
chartered companies, the middle classes have done all
that was possible to recognise the commercial equalities
of citizenship. Can this be fairly said of the class of
operative artizans ? Have they thrown open their re-
spective crafts to the equal competition of their fellow-
countrymen ? Have they abandoned their pretensions
to a monopoly of labour ? We have seen notices posted
upon many factories, prohibiting any man from seeking
work from the master, without previous liberty from the
hands to do so. To say nothing of their dictation to-
wards the employer, what is this but a deprivation of
the right of their fellow workman to dispose of his
labour in competition with their own ? In nearly every
trade the journeymen pass stringent rules, to prohibit
masters from taking more than a certain limited number
of apprentices. But if agricultural labourers earn only
14d. a day, and the batter, or carpenter, or bricklayer,
or tailor, can get ss. for the latter to say to the
former, " We shan't admit you into our trade, or permit
your sons to be taught as apprentices to it," is to commit
a double wrong, by preventing a peasant from improving
his own or children's condition, and by rendering it im-
practicable for agriculture to relieve itself of that glut of
labour which reduces its wages below the means of sub-
sistence. We speak, as we have always spoken, without
either fear or favour. We have waged an exterminating
warfare with the exclusive privileges of corporations,
the tricks of trade, the iniquities of protected manufac-
tures, and the monopoly of landocrats. It is now time
that we should also remind those who have not yet
cleared their minds of the prejudices of the protective
system, and of the stupid crotchets and inflated nonsense
of mouthing, itinerant patriots, that of all oppression the
most cruel, and of all dictation the most intolerable, is that
which is practised, not by the poor against the rich, but by
the poor against the poor. What right has one poor man to
say to another that is poorer, " You shall not be suffered
to ask leave to work?" or one class to tell another, " You
shall not be permitted to learn the mysteries of our craft,
because we claim the privilege of keeping the employ.
ment it affords entirely to ourselves?" How shall those
denounce masters, who go from factory to factory, for-
cibly to prevent the hands from any longer following
their avocations ; march up the lines of railway to pro-
hibit labourers from earning their bread, under penalty
of the most dreadful imprecations, meet importations of
workmen from the south at the pier, and threaten them
with murder, if they dare to accept of em-
ployment, or cast vitriol in the eyes, or cast lots for
perpetrating the assassination of those who only desire
peaceably to earn their daily bread ? There is a reign
of terror in Ireland—and exterminating warfare of the
poor against the poor—an atrocious system of dictation
to the orderly and well-disposed, by the turbulent, the
idle, and those who allow liberty only to themselves.
Let us have none of that in honest, free, right-minded,
intelligent England. We have defended men from the
oppression of their masters. We are also determined to
protect men from practising tyranny against each other.
We have said that voluntary strikes are perfectly justi-
fiable ; but we must also add, that in our whole expe-
rience, we never knew them to be wise. What turn-out
ever ended substantially in gain to the operative ? From
first to last, the war of labour against capital has termi-
nated uniformly and inevitably in favour of the latter. A
great amount of money has been spent, wages lost, and
profit prevented from being realised, to the loss of all,
and the final humiliation of the labourer, by the reduc-
tion of wages, conseqcent on the destruction of employ-
ment. Cork, Dublin, Limerick, have lost large and lu-
crative branches of trade and manufactures, and Ireland
nearly all its mineral commerce, by strikes. Spitalfields
has driven the silk trade to the north by dictating an
Act of Parliament rate of wages to the capitalist. The
trade of Sheffield is rapidly leaving it by the in-
sane tyranny of the artisans. How can it be other-
wise ? Capital owes no allegiance to any soil or trade,
or manufacture. It cannot be bullied out of its own
terms. It will do what it pleases, and go where it

A judicial occurrence has recently taken place in the
Island of Guernsey, which we feel it a duty to visit with
what we conceive to be well-merited censure.
It depot of
th
tlseen2o7ythal,
named
Court for misdemeanour, and near the close of the trial
appears
Thomas that
Curry, apri
was vate of
arraignedthe before
witnesses were called to character. One of them was the
captain of the soldier's company—Captain Cole, who
spoke favourably in defence of the accused. One of the
jurats of the Court in giving judgment on the case, said,
" He found in all the cases brought before the Court,
that the officers gave a good character to the accused.
These gentle men perhaps only looked to the qualities of
the men as soldiers, but certain it was that they gave
good characters to the worst men. Fossey, of the 48th,
was one of the worst men in the corps, and yet he re-
ceived a good character from his officers ; and so it was
in almost every case which occurred. He therefore could
allow no weight to the testimony which had been given
in favour of the prisoner."
A more glaring piece of absurdity, in utter mockery
of law and justice, it has seldom been our lot to contem-
plate ; and though the matter ought to be canvassed in
calmness of spirit, yet it is almost impossible, whilst pe-
rusing such gross and insulting remarks, to refrain from
giving free vent to indignation. The Learned Jurat no
doubt considers d himself perfectly safe upon the bench
whilst uttering his totally unfounded calumnies upon brave
and bottom able officers of the British army. Caps. Cole
could not refuse to come forward and give his testi-
mony, and to whom are the privates to look for kindness
and protection if it is denied to them by their superiors?
But it would ba monstrous to suppose that a gentleman
over whom such restrictions prevail should falsify his
oath, his honour, and his veracity, to screen the guilty.
Captain Cole holds her Majesty's commission, and must,
consequently, be esteemed a man of firm rectitude, on
whom the imputation of a falsehood would be destruc-
tive to character—he speaks on behalf of the prisoner,
and Justice Midas Dobre t coolly insults, not only him,
but the entire British army, from the misnomered
" judgment-seat." We scarcely know in what terms to
speak of this totally uncalled-for indignity upon gentle-
men infinitely superior to the individual who presumes
to perpetrate it. With this and other glaring facts
before their eyes, the Government at home cannot fail
to adopt some measure for cleansing the Royal Court ;
for it is monstrous that a Jurat should decide that the
received evidence of good conduct from the officer of a
prisoner, given on oath, shall have no weight whatever
in the judgment he purposes giving. A writer iu the
Guernsey Advertiser of the 18th effers the following
remark:—

MILITARY HONOURS.
HbyothNis OtimUe RinfSor.
def(ifbthe
(From the Times.)
The army of
spirit in which its services have been acknowledged
grateful nation ; and the troops are now displaying tr
vanquished country or bringing home to their own shoreas
the honours and decorations which have been the due reward
of their conduct and courage. Our own tribute of admira-
tion to this army has been neither scantily measured nor
tardily paid. In the absence of information, we augured
nothing but success from the known character of the soldiers
and their chiefs; and when the first shapeless rumours were
tortured by our contemporaries into tidings of that disaster
and defeat which their ill-omened forebodings had predicted,
we combated, by argument and inference, the credit
and currency which ill news can always too readily
command. It is not in any invidious or ungracious
spirit that we now advert to the subject. Our remarks, we
are quite certain, will but embody the sentiments of nine-
tenths of our readers, and give expression to thoughts and
feelings which half the nation must have involuntarily ex-
perienced. It is in itself no slight consequence of the obdu-
racy which has refused to the Peninsula veterans the rec4m-
, pense of a riband that at the recurrence and results of every
successive victory—of every event which should be the
' signal of universal joy—a body of British soldiers should
be forced into a recollection of their own unheeded
services, and a vast portion of the public into an unseason-
able sympathy with their unmerited neglect. It would be
begging the question at issue if we were to endeavour to
collect from precedents what particular achievements were
entitled to decorations and what were not. It seems both
rcanvnabt. and up,,,ssry to conclude that the intrinsic
merits of the troops should have the forenios-, pls.go in con-
ferring a claim to such rewards; and instances are not want-
ing, either in our own history or that of the French, where
honours have awaited even the unfavourable issue of a
struggle in which success, though not commanded, has been
deserved. The intensity and duration of the conflict, the
character of the enemy, the nature of the quarrel, the mag-
nitude of the stake at issue, the critical exigencies of the
period, are all considerations which may be fairly added to
those of the personal prowess of individuals or detachments.
A less equitable criterion, perhaps, is taken from the advan-
tage attending the event, hen the gratitude of the
nation is measured by the benefits acquired, and
not by the efforts which acquired them. But, whatever
conceivable standard be assumed, we hold it as beyond
all question or denial that the veterans of the Pe-
ninsula are incomparably better entitled to a comme-
morative decoration than any soldiers whom the last
four generations of Englishmen have seen. From the day
when Marlborough was superseded on the Scheldt to the day
when Sir Arthur Wellesley landed at Mondego-bay—a dis •
tance of a century—England fought no great war. If by
such title is implied a desperate struggle between two
mighty nations, systematically conducted with all the art of
strategy and all the force of discipline through a series of
complicated campaigns up to a triumphant issue or an
equitable compromise, modern England has known but two
such—the war of Marlborough in the Low Countries, and
the war of Wellington in the Peninsula. The title cannot
be bestowed on our faithful adherence to Maria Theresa, on
our escape at Dettingen, or our efforts at Fontenoy ; nor on
our honourable diversions in favour of Frederic 11., on the
subsidies we advanced, or the commander we lent him at
Minden ; nor on our grapple with Montcalm in the savage
wilds of America, or our captures of Quebec or Montreal;—
no, nor on our conquest of Hindostan. The bravery, and
perseverance, and success of the nation may be abundantly
illustrated from such transactions, but there is no prominent
chapter in English history for the great Prussian war, or
the great Austrian war, or the great American war. None
of these contests called a body of British soldiery into being
which stepped forth at a stride, and at once took place above
every other. Such a feat was never performed but twice.
In 1696 we were sneered at by Louis and Villeroi, and in
1796 by Napoleon and Cannot. Ships we might certainly
manage, but as to land-fighting the English were a cipher.
Marlborough and Wellington arose, and in 1713 and 1813 our
troops had fought their way through the armies of the first
military power in Europe to the very frontiers of its terri-
tory. In the coalition against the giant usurper England's
blow was given in the Peninsula. The records of that war
are the records of our share in the delivery of Europe; and
it is for no less a service than this that a token of acknow-

TO THE EDITOR OF THE GUERNSEY ADVERTISER.

Sir,—Junius, in one of his letters to Chief Justice
Mansfield, has the following note :—" In one of them
(referring to a political trial of the day), Judge Aston
had the unparalleled impudence to tell Mr. Morris, a
gentleman of unquestionable honour and integrity, and
who was then giving his evidence on oath, that he should
pay very little regard to any affidavit he should make."
Thus spoke the indignant Junius, of a corrupt judge.
After a long lapse of years, it has been reserved to a
Jurat of the Royal Court of Guernsey, to adopt the
"unparalleled impudence" of Judge Aston;—Mr. Jurat
Dobree has had the ambition to earn for himselt this un-
enviable distinction. Upon the trial, which has just taken
place before the Royal Court, of a soldier of the 27th
depot, Captain Cole, to whose company the man be-
longed, was called as a witness for the defence. Captain
Cole's sworn testimony was favourable to the character
of the accused soldier ; but Mr. Jurat Dobre.!, dis-
regarding alike the sacred office of the Judge, and
the sanctity of an oath, dared to proclaim, from the
judgment seat, that " He could allow no weight to the
testun,:my which had been given in favour of the pri-
sciner." Captain Cole's testimony was in favour of the
soldier, and, for this special cause, Mr. Jurat Dobree
presumed to cast discredit upon a British officer—q qual
in rank—equal in honour—and equal in integrity, to
any one of the jurists of the Royal Court of Gurnsey.
A greater and more unjustifiable indignity could not be
put upon any gentleman ; and no judge would so betray
himself, if he felt the sacred, and responsible attributes
of his office, and also if he felt what he owed to his own
honour. To mark more strongly the partisan spirit of
Mr. Dobrea, as a judge, he went back, without right or
necessity, to an old case of a soldier of the 48th depot,
formerly quartered in Guernsey, with the sole motive,
that he might cast an insult and indignity upon the
officers of that regiment, not now in this island. Mr.
Dobrsia, from political hostility, has deeply compromised
the honour and character of the judicial institutions of
this island ;—he has struck a blow, fatal for the in-
tegrity of the Royal Court of Gurnsey—fatal it may yet
prove—to its future existence as a judicial body.
" Judges," says Lord Bacon, " ought to be more advised
than confident. Above all things, integrity is their por-
tion and proper virtue."
Guernsey lately saw the testimony of an abandoned
woman—a self-convicted felon—eagerly courted and
implicitly credited; by Mr. Jurat Dobree and others, in
order that—through this polluted witness—they might
strike at the innocence of a soldier, then under trial for
an alleged petty offence. Upon this disgraceful woman's
evidence, the Royal Court of Guernsey found this inno-
cent soldier guilty, and sentenced him to imprisonment
upon bread and water. The result was announced with
a shout of triumph in the Guernsey Star, whose unprin-
cipled editor is the acknowledged hireling of the faction.
The injured soldier was soon proved to hay( been inno-
cent ; and the Chief of the Court—the Presiding Judge
on the trial—felt it his duty to represent the case to the
Crown, and her Majesty immediately commanded the
soldier to be instantly set at liberty.
England will now hear, with one indignant feeling,
that, while the Royal Court of' Guernsey implicitly re-
ceived the testimony of a polluted witness, in order to
convict an innocent soldier, a Jurat of the same Court
has openly, and from the Bench, attempted to cast dis-
credit upon the testimony of a British officer of the
highest honour, because this officer's evidence was fa-
vourable to an accused soldier. These are now facts in
the history of Guernsey, and few will think that they
reflect honour upon the administration of justice in this
dependency of England.
Identified with the British army by past recollections
and associations, I know its honour. The honour of
British officers stands firm and erect before the world,
and bids a proud defiance to those who attempt to tar-
nish it. lam not personally acquainted with Captain
Cole, or any of the officers of the 27th Depot ; but the
army feels that they support and uphold the honour
and character of British officers ; and Captain Cole, I
have no doubt, feels that the indignity cast upon him
by a Jurat of the Royal Court of Guernsey, equally in-
volves the honour of the British Army ; and I am con-
vinced he has considered it his imperative duty to the
service to bring the conduct of Mr. Jurat Dobriee under
the notice of the Head of the Army in this island, with
a request that it may be submitted to her Majesty's Go-
vernment. The honour of British officers may be safely
entrusted to General Napier, who is honoured by his
Sovereign as one of her most gallant soldiers—a soldier
sans peur et sans tache ; and Sir James Graham is not
the Minister who will permit an indignity to be un-
justly cast upon the army.
In a former letter I expressed an opinion that the
course of events passing in Guernsey would, at no dis-
tant day, call forth the power of the Sovereign, and of
the Imperial Government and Legislature. That opinion
has not been unjustified. It is now certain that her
Majesty's Government have issued a Royal Commission
to inquire into the several institutions of Guernsey, more
especially the constitution of the judicial tribunals, and
their administration of justice ; and it may be safely
. .

ledgment has been now asked and refused. It is not for a
battle or a siege that the reward is required, for the passage
of a stream or the capture of a convoy. It is for seven suc-
cessive campaigns, the least of which would supply a battle
equal to any that has ever been blazoned on a medal; the
poorest of which would show a siege such as Vauban
never dreamt of; and the shortest of which, besides its
prominent and deathless glories, witnessed such unrecorded
instances of bravery mid sufferings as the Gazettes of years
could never comprise. A comparison between this great
war and any other of the achievements usually re-
ferred to is impossible to be drawn. It can supply a parallel
to any one of them without suffering by the omission. Take
any seige or battle, or advance or retreat, or attack or sur-
prise—take any exploit which has either claimed or carried

off' a decoration or reward, and you may match it, step by
step, from any campaLn of the Peninsula war. Nothing ap-
proaches it but the campaigns of Marlborough. In these—
in their bloody battles, in their desperate stormings, in the
successive overthrows of the bravest French marshals, and
the defeats of the choicest French troops, in the gloomy com-
mencement and the triumphant close—there is a very re-
markable similitude. But such resemblance or rivalry
exists nowhere else; these two contests stand alone. Next

in rank are unquestionably the battles of India; but the
subjugation of Hindostan is not a fair subject for comparison.
It was a mighty contest, but not a great war. Even if
the campaigns of Clive and Coote could be connected with
those of Lake and Wellesley—even if the work had been
achieved in seven years, by a single army, and that
an English one—it could hardly be called so. There
was no well-matched and worthy foe for the British soldier
—scarcely for the British-drilled Sepoy. Few of the early
victories would be memorable, but for their momentous re-
sults and the strange disparity of the force by which they
were won. No partiality can represent Dhoondiah or Holkar

as a Soult or Massena. - The mighty enemy was not in the
inhabitants, but in the country. This region and this cli-
mate our troops subdued; and we should be the last to dis-
parage the merit of the conquest. Nothing could have a
greater effect in elevating and ennobling the soldier's cha-
racter than some of the incidents of this Asiatic warfare.

The Indian soldier was an European in a country where
that birthright gave him precedence above millions. The
Indian officer directed districts and gave law to princes at
an age when other ensigns had hardly learnt their
facings. If, personally, the foe was often unworthy of
his bayonet, yet this fugitive and wily adversary was in-
trenched behind the most formidable bulwarks of nature.
There was the night march and the ceaseless chase,

through steaming fol-:ests and scorching sands, over the deep
ravine and the deadly jungle. Before a road could be
trodden it had to be made. Fullarton's movement against

Seringapatam, when we first shook our swords at Tipiioo in
1783—Lake's unrivalled cavalry march upon Furruckabad—
and Smith's famous chase of Meer Khan, when our harassed
dragoons in one month rode over 700 miles of the roughest
country in the world—are exploits without a parallel in their
way. Even the hot and eager rush of Crauford's division to
get in time for the bloody glories of Talavera cannot match
them. We shall not be accused, we are sure, of any incline-
nation to depreciate the Indian army, or any remissness in
advocating its claims; but in postponing them to those of
the Peninsular veterans we are doing it neither injury nor
discredit. We are not for robbing one army to reward an-
other. Lord Hardinge and his troops have well won their
decorations. A riband at the breast is no exorbitant re-
compense for fair savage battles, even though the Seikh re-
doubts and the Sutlej were not like the bloody ford
of the Urumea or the fiery breach of Badajoz.
But could nothing be done for the best service
of all? Could no unappropriated combination of
colours be found—no square inch of riband spared—
no dangling bit of metal devised—to intimate that
the bearer had fought his way through a girdling chain of
forts and armies from Cadiz to St. Sebastian; that he had
seen the backs of Massena, and Soult, and Suchet. and Junot,
and Marmont, and Victor; that he had hunted King Joseph
and his half million Frenchmen from Spain, and carried the old
regimental colours over the borders of France—compensating
the while his want of supplies by his sagacity and courage,
and learning his way as he went along? For it was in the
Peninsula that these men were formed. The host which
" could go anywhere and do anything" was not carrid into
Spain, but was made there. The history of the British army
is almost identical with the history of this war. It was here
that the different regiments earned that individuality of re-
nown and character which gives to their otherwise meaning-
less numbers an historical life and a local habitation. Some
few corps had already made steps towards this position—
the 12th and 56th at Gibraltar—the 76th and 78th
in Central India—the 39th as far back as Plassey.
But it is in the records of these wars alone that the
regiments, and brigades, and divisions assume so memorable
a familiarity of aspect; it is from the Peninsula almost ex-
clusively that their titles are traced, and their nobility de-
rived. The war which gave a history to the army, an im-
mortality to the regiments, and a character to the soldier, is
not permitted to give a riband to the survivors. And why?
Is it because others would ask if these • were listened to ?
Does a repudiation of one debt carry with it a quittance
from all others? Is a denial of every obligation the most
reputable mode of avoiding the discharge of any? Would
an act of honourable honesty be so very dangerous a prece-
dent? But the 'argument is not less unsound than unseemly.
It is extravagant to assert that there are any claims which
even approach these in magnitude. Where are they to be
found ? The campaigners of Egypt and America may have
a claim as against the soldiers of Amoy and Gwalior, but
none against the men of the Peninsula. If a medal were
asked for Barossa, or a badge for Fuentes d'Onor,
stand might then perhaps be made for Aboukir and
a
d
Bladensburg. But if Fuentes d'Onor and Barossa 'had
never been trodden by Englishmen, there would still
be the great Peninsular war. It is useless to appeal to the
usages of the War-office in the days when these exploits
were achieved. Such customs might have been a warrant
for circumscribing the rewards at the time, but are none for
withholding them now. If medals had continued the ex-
clusive perquisite of commanding-officers ever since the peace
of Paris, there would be less reason to repine. But it was
unfair to change the entire system of honours without regard
to existing interests. It was unjust to place survivors and
successors upon an unequal footing. Of the two courses, the
denial of all decorations till the undecorated race of veterans
had passed away would have been the more consistent, and
the less ungracious. To have left all alike without a recom-
pense would, at the worst, have been but adhering to a cold
and unthankful precedent. To depart from that precedent
on a less imperative occasion—to give to the con-
querors of the Seikhs what is still withheld from the
conquerors of the French—and to range these con-
trasted warriors in the same ranks—is an act of galling in-
justice. Has the claim been too long deferred ? But even
if a plea which is deemed disreputable in a court of bank-
ruptcy he admitted in a court of honour, in this case it can
be overthrown. The claim cannot be statute-run, for it has
repeatedly been urged in the interval. Nor is there any
judgment or enactment which fixes the limitation of a na-
tion's liability to a period of thirty years. Statues for deeds
of as old a date are erected daily. tis barely a twelve-
...

trusted that the British Parliament will make such
organic changes in the constitution of Guernsey, as are
demanded by the advanced intelligence of the age—
changes much wanted, in order to secure to the middle
and lower classes the possession and protection of all
their just rights, and wake their interests no longer
subservient to any privileged class. Guernsey will then
be appointed to take its proper position amongst the
other dependencies of England.
F. HAMILTON,
Formerly Captain and A. D. C. to Sir J. Hope.
Guernsey, Feb. 16, 1846.
The feelings expressed by Captain Hamilton are
echoed, not alone by the army—they are taken up by
the English press, and the British Parliament. A most
unwarrantable indignity has been offered to every officer
holding her Majesty's commission ; but we already see
the day of well-merited retribution approaching. Her
Majesty's Government will vindicate the honour of
British officers, and will teach Mr. Jurat Dobrea and
the Royal Court of Guernsey, that they will no longer
be suffered to insult honourable witnesses with impunity.

likes, and has this great advantage over its assailants,
that when it is idle it does not need to be fed. It
may, indeed, be possible to prescribe the conditions on
which it is to be employed, but it is not possible to com-
tpieolnist.s ermrp, lsouymmee
tnot ,
dictate
it
at
tde o etso notit, aacnc
de p
towf
ions
see cnos
bdl
y
steal out of the dictator's company, and join a less re-
stricted speculation. Meet it everywhere with fetters on
its use, and it will noiselessly emigrate to some freer at-
mosphere. Arrest it, if it be possible, on its flight, and
it will altogether evaporate, and leave labour without
employment, and its suicidal tyrant without wages.
Strikes in such a country as this ! Are there not four
millions of Irishmen starving on sixpente a day, and two
millions and a half totally without employment ? Are
there not a million and a half of unemployed English
and Welsh paupers in our union workhouses ? Are
there net two hundred thousand Scotch "able-bodied
poor ?" Here are upwards of four millions of the people
ready to fill up any gsp, or to rush into any port of in-
dustry that will shelter them from the storm of poverty.
Until they are all absorbed into the labour market, fairly
paid workmen who strike for a rise of wages, infallibly
bring an old house about their ears. Colliers strike for
a rise on 3s. 6d. a day, and large importations from
Ulster instantly displace the recusants, and create a re-
dundancy of labour. Weavers strike in Manchester,
and Mr. Muggeridge draws hosts of emigrants from
Wilts and Dorset to jump into the shoes of the Lanca-
shire operatives. Liverpool bricklayers and carpenters
strike, and shoals of underpaid workmen from Devon-
shire are glad to get the wages which the local hands
despise. British navigators turn out, and a whole
colony from Ireland cheerfully accept of re-
muneration, amounting to seven or eight times what
they can earn at home, and so permanently supersede
the malcontents, when they offer to resume their
work, they are . not accepted. Let this system of
strikes go on long enough, and the wages of the skilful
artisan will sink to the level of those of the hodmen, and
the
ya
lower
beatwu
er
r, thatpro
profits
t a
s glut
be.
m
those of the highest-paid districts will equalise themselves
with those of the Tipperary serf, or the Dorsetshire
ploughman. Force up wages in any trade, and
down
ndsuehthae
price thugshreartivweasgweisllarrea,pti be held out to
hd
inducement to employ capital in the trade
diminishes,
the
come
ll
demand for labour consequently falls,
itcri mmi . ai;
sthi supply
ese: a
tt'
hhoee
fh operatives
and wages come down. Where, of course by moderate
wages, profits increase, capital is called into the market,
employment enlsrliot end WWI mount. Lev the work-