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

SUN,

SIR ROBERT PEEL'S CORN AND
TARIFF BILLS.—PUBLIC MEETING IN HULL.
On Monday last, a very nurneronsty-attended meeting,
convened by the Mayor, was held in the Town-hall, to petition
the House of Lords to pass the Corn-bill. The meeting had
been called by his worship in pursuance of the following requi-
sition :—" To the Right Worshipful the Mayor of the bo-
rough of Kingston-upon-Hull.—Sir,—We, the undersigned
merchants, shipowners, tradesmen, and other inhabitants of
Kingston• upon-Hull, most earnestly request you to call a
public meeting of the inhabitants of this borough, to be
held at the Town-Hall, on an early day, to take into con-
sideration the propriety of petitioning the House of Lords in
favour of the repeal of the corn-laws, and other measures
for the establishment of free-trade, lately brought before
Parliament by her Majesty's Government.'
After the several resolutions had been submitted to, and
approved of, by the meeting, and a petition to the Lords
agreed upon,
The Rev. JAMES Asructr.r., rector of Althorpe, Lincoln-
shire, on rising was received with loud cheers, and, after
some other remarks, thus proceeded—lt is often urged, as
an argument against free trade, that it would create a mutual
dependence upon each other between the different nations
of the earth. Now to me, as a Christian man and a Chris-

tian minister, the power to create this very dependence is as
high a recommendation as any other which trade possesses,
to enlist me in the effort to make wider its borders. It
means, when translated into plain English, that trade is the
best peacemaker, and the best security forleeping the peace
between country and country which it is possible to conceive.
And I begin my address to you with this trite and threadbare
remark, because, after one of the free trade meetings which I
attended, at the town of Hull, I was taken to task on this
very point by the then Ministerial organ, the Morning Herald,
which, after dealing out to me a general rebuke for publicly
avowing my sympathy with your sacred cause, went on to
call my attention to a passage of holy writ which, it said,
would, if well considered, draw me to very different con-
clusions on the subject from those which I previously held.
I must confess that I was somewhat startled at an effort to
persuade a minister of religion that he ought to be
an advocate of a state of things which would allow
a nation to go to war at any moment on the shortest
possible notice, and much more so to find it
alleged that the authority for making him such was to
be looked for in the page of Scripture. Has the writer of
such an almost impious appeal ever asked himself what
war is ?—(Hear, hear.) Has he ever, even in a passing
thought, contemplated all its attendant horrors—fire
and sword, blood and massacre, the shrieks of the dying
and the tears for the dead; the wife widowed, and the child
orphaned, with violence and rapine in the front, and pesti-
lence and famine in the back-ground of the hateful
picture, all so terrible to think of, and so much more
terrible to witness, that the great hero of modern
times, our own laurelled Wellington, has been heard to
exclaim, "that next to a battle lost, the most dreadful thing
in the world is a battle gained?"—(Hear.) Bat I turned
to the passage pointed out to me by my critic, and found it to be
that famous one in which the sacred writer informs us that
a quarrel having sprung up between King Herod and the
people of Tyre and Sidon, the latter were anxious not to
push things to extremities, but to remain at peace, " because
their country was nourished by the king's ceuntry."—
(Hear, hear.) It is impossible to say how light makes its
way into the human intellect; but from the very same pre-
mises I arrive at exactly au opposite conclusion to that laid
down by the great Mentor of the press, and see in his argu-
ment against the dependence-created by trade, a most glo-
rious and striking instance of its blessed and peaceful
influence to check the evil passions, and control the
pride and wrath of man. Here were two nations about to
plunge into war and all the horrors which have been depicted.
Angry feelings had grown into angry words. The sword was
to be drawn, and blood was to flow, until the delirium being
over, a lucid interval should return, and both parties be left
to regret their folly, and weep, in tears of bitterness and an-
guish, over the sad and sorrowful consequences which it had
brought upon them. But at this crisis trade stepped in with
its mediating power, andhushed the rising storm.—(Cheers.)
It reminded the men of Tyre and Sidon, whatever wrong had
been committed, or provocation given by those who held sway
over them, that there were people as well as rulers, and that
the happiness and interests of the one were as worthy of a na-
tion's care as the pride or ambition of the other.—(Hear, hear. )
Its voice prevailed. Peace resumed its smiling aspect, and
all-triumphant commerce continued to run on in its accums•
tomed channels.—(Loud cheers.) I only wish, when I look
back at this striking proof of the mighty influence of trade,
that we also were bound by a good commercial treaty to
keep the peace with all the leading nations of the world.
A good commercial treaty, for instance, between France and
England, and a thriving trade between the two countries,
would have given the people of both a better occupation a
year or two ago than to be watching, as they were, for daily
excitement in the news from Morocco or the far Pacific.—
(Cheers.) Neither would the Oregon question ever have
grown up into such a dangerous bone of contention between
us and the United States, but for the perpetual feeling of
hostility which monopoly keeps up between the two nations.
Give them an unshackled trade, and the spirit of pugnacity
on both sides of the Atlantic will fly before the superior in-
fluence of the genius of commerce.—(Loud cheers.) But to
pass on from this part of the subject, every speaker on the
question of the corn-laws must feel that he can add nothing
new to the arguments which have been again and again
brought forward, and exhausted in the protracted discussion
of it. There is, however, one point of view in which it has
been less looked at than in any other, namely, as it is pecu-
liarly and especially the working men's question.—( Hear.)
First of all, in advancing to the consideration of it in this
light, I cannot help expressing my satisfaction at the better
and, indeed, thorough, understanding of this most important
subject which has made its way to the popular mind during
the agitation of the last four or five years.—( Hear.) Before
that time the working classes were too often the dupes of in•
terested teachers who made them believe that dear bread
caused high wages, a doctrine which, if properly and fully
carried out, would lead to the reductio ad absurdum that a
famine was the real and short cut to health and wealth and
prosperity. But they know better than this now. Since
the question has been so vividly foreed upon their minds,
they have taken notes and watched its working for them-
selves, and have thoroughly learned, what even Mr. Hudson
admitted the other night in the House of Commons, that
labour is no exception to the rule which settles the price
of every article according to the supply and demand
for it.—(Loud cheers.) But I said that the question of
the corn-laws was peculiarly and especially the working-
men's question. I repeat, emphatically, that it is so.—
(Cheers.) They are always the first and the greatest suf-
ferers in a season of scarcity.—(Hear.) I can tell you from
my own experience and recollections how it affects them ; and
what has been,,may be again, should the Lords rashly throw
out Sir Robert Peel's free-trade measure. I was, in the
earlier part of my clerical life, the minister of a large parish
in the manufacturing districts, and it was my misfortune,
during the time, to witness one of thoseperiodical stagnations
of business which the working of monopoly from time to time
brings upon the country. We had been enjoying an unusual
season of prosperity. The people had employment,
and they were satisfied. The sound of industry was heard
in every cottage. Happiness and contentment were written
on the countenances of the inmates, while the smiling cherub
faces which played around the door, told that, if they were
not pampered by the food of luxury, they were nourished by
the hand of plenty.—(Cheers.) Every house had its appro •
priate stock of furniture, and, as often as the returning Sab-
bath or holiday proclaimed d cessation from labour, there
was an improvement of attire about the people which' it was
delightful to behold. But this state of things was not to last.
The demon of corn-law approached, and the pestilential
breath of the destroyer was at once felt. The blast of desola-
tion came. A commercial shock struck at the very centre of
the prosperity of the country, and the whole fabric of hope
and anticipation fell before it. Mills stopped working; fac-
tories discharged their hands. The voice of industry was
heard no more. The look of happiness and contentment
gradually disappeared from the countenances of the poor, and
was replaced by the hollow cheek, the sunken eye, the care-
worn brow, by every symptom which could speak the in-
tenseness of their misery. Hunger and starvation were in the
faces of their children. It is true that both public subscriptions
and private charity were actively at work all this time ; but
what can they effect when a whole population is starving and
crying out for bread ?—(Hear.) One portion of furniture after
another was parted with to procure the means of subsistence
—first of all, the clock and chest of drawers in which the
wife had felt no little pride and pleasure—then the tables—
the chairs—the very bed itself—the clothing, too, all shared the
same fate, except such tattered rags as the cold might search
through at every inclement blast—and so the torrent of misery
rushed on, until the dwellings which just before might be
likened to the cottage of content, became no better than
the fearful picture of the Cave of Famine in Churchill's
poems—
" Where half-starved spiders prey'd on half-starved flies."
But, perhaps, the most melancholy feature of all that melan-
choly period was to witness the fearful struggle of honest
English independence in the minds of some of the people
before they could bring themselves to accept the relief offered
to them. I shall never forget the case of one poor man whom
I bad long known and remarked for his industry and steady
habits. Thinnerand paler and more care-worn he grew every
day; but he never complained. He never asked assistance.
He never told or confessed to the actual misery and wretched-
ness of his family at home. Heaven help hire, poor soul
He had no occasion. The whole story was written upon
hi:. countenance as plainly as in a book open before you.
Often and often did I press him to go with others for a share
of the food which was distributed so many times in a week
out of the fund raised for that purpose, until one day, I recol-
lect, when 1 urged it most strongly upon him, he turned from
me to hide the tears which started into his eyes, as, using a
Lancashire word which means "starved." he said, "No, sir,
lam not clemmed ' enough for that yet." At the moment,
I stood before that man with a respect which I had never felt
for a fellow-mortal, and frequently since, as I have thought
of that trying period, and. the events by which it was marked,
my memory has recurred to the evil augury which Sir Walter
Scott makes Marmion draw for Scotland at the sight of
Douglas weeping at the King's rebuke :
" Oh ! let such tears unwonted plead
For respite short from dubious deed ;
A child may weep a bramble's smart,
A maid, to see her sparrow part,
A stripling for .a woman's heart;
But woe awaits a country, when
She sees the tears of bearded men."—(Hear, hear.)

And how long is the nation to be kept liable to such convul-
sions, to such social earthquakes, as we may well call them ?
What is going to be done now? Is, as it is whispered by
some of the most desperate of the monopolists, the Duke of
Richmond or Lord Stanley, about to form an administration
of country gentlemen? When the Swedes complained to
Charles the Twefth of the grievances by which they were
afflicted during his absence at the head of his army, he re-
plied that, " If they troubled him any more, he would tend
one of his jackboots to rule over them." Well, a government
of topboots would be next door to it. But, suppose them in
the saddle, boots, and spurs too, what would they do?
Would they attempt to maintain the statu quo. Or, even in
their case, finding that to be impossible, would iey have
a dream of another compromise, another sliding of the
sliding• scale, another " much ado about nothing" specimen
of the Indian jugglers' legislation? But this will not
do. There has been too much of this sort of work already.
We are met here to protest against having any more
ost
it. One has given us a corn-law, and another has given
a corn-law, and one has tampered with the trade the
e
country, and another has tampered with it, u
patient is in danger of miserably perishing
from the dosing
s
and counter-dosing which it has had to endure fromnl d
the pooro
many
different hands. In "Bentley's Miscellany, for December,
we read of a quarrel between the Town-Council' and Magis-
trates
of some borough about the appointment of a surgeon
to the gaol. Each claimed the right, and each exercised it,
and lo " two puddings smoked upon the_ bond," or rather