The Sun.
London, England, 1846-02-14 00:00:00

" It was Mr. HUSKISSON'S opinion that the existing corn-laws
could not be upheld with the existing taxation, and at the
same time increase the national prosperity and the public
contentment." But Mr. WARD had not even then finished his
flagellation of the farming interest gentry. They were to
be scourged again before be had finished his harangue: the
cat- whip had to be fresh leaded and fresh knotted, and a
few final stripes administered to the obdurate back of
that obdurate personage, Monopoly. In this climax of
castigation the Member for Sheffield almostentirely restricts
himself to one, small, solitary, taunt, but that taunt at that
eleventh hour was about the bitterest, smartest, and most un-
bearable they could well have received under all circumstances.
He observed that the peculiar burdens upon land had been
repeatedly harped upon by the opponents to Sir R. PEEL'S
present policy, but these burdens had only been spoken of, "the
truth was the agriculturalists could not prove the existence of
those burdens." This is no novel retort, we grant : almost
the same epithets have been employed of late by a score or
two of free-trade orators ; but it was the time and the place,
in the present instance, that imparted to those few and simple
words a sting of the most scorching and intolerable
acuteness So much did they, indeed, goad and lash
the anti-Ministerial gentlemen, that they cried out
together with the torment. Their cry was, "We
can !'i but it is a cry only tantamount to an universally ac-
knowledged criminal putting in a plea of " not guilty,s,
merely for a vexatious delay. The delay, however, in this
case will be most transitory. The enemies to the pro-
posal of the Prime Minister have nearly every
one of them been foaming plentifully at the
mouth, but with that foam their meagre residue
of strength has evaporated : and not an insignificant portion
of their own party have withdrawn an opposition which is so
ostensibly impotent, and so manifestly unjust, declaring al-
most in the very phrases used by Mr. WARD, that they gave
their " cordial support to the Ministerial proposal, as being
the salvation of the agricultural interest." The solemn as-

surances made by Lord LLNCOLN to the Nottingham-
shire electors was indeed anything but rash or precipitate,
when he declared to them that the spirit of oue-sided protec-
tion will be dead before many days have elapsed. In the
heart of the people it is already among the bygones : in the
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heart of the people free-trade is already the law of the land.

Madrid papers of the 6th have been received, but they
bring no news of interest. General NARVAEZ bad recovered
from his late indisposition, and was able to attend the
Chamber, and take part in the discussion on theelectoral law.
The Three per Cents. closed at 33 1.16 at sixty days, and
the Five per Cents. at 23 7-16 at 60 days.

The French Ministry, finding the Chamber of Deputies
inclined to support their measures, are resolved to get
through the heavy business of the session with the utmost
dispatch. The Secret Service Money Bill, presented some
days ago, was subsequently sunmitted to the different Com-
mittees fur investigation, and adopted almost without discus-
sion. Timns, BILLAULT, BERaYER, and the more violent
of the Ministerial opponents, seeing they had no chance of
thwarting the Bill in the Committees, seven of which con-
sisted of Conservatives, absented themselves. The next
question brought before the Committees was the Bill of M.
ST. PRIEST, for reducing the interest on Three per Cent.

Stock. Four voted for entertaining the Bill, and five against
it ; but as the consent of three of the bureaux is sufficient to

warrant theiotroduction of a Bill, the question must be debated
in the Chamber. The Government, however, are still op-
posed to the scheme, and as the Chamber of Peers will sup.
port them by a large majority, it has no chance of being
carried into effect this session. The Deputies had passed the
Adulteration of Wine Bill by a majority of 151 to 88.
Tie Epoque, a Government paper, contains the following
paragraph! In the summer there will be formed a camp
near Toulouse, where the regiment of the Duke DE MONT-
PENSIER is in garrison. On this occasion the Infanta LOUISA
of Spain, accompanied by a part of the Spanish Court, will
,:owe and return the visit paid last summer by the French
PRINCES to Pa.Lpeluna. In the spring the Prince DE Jour-
VILLE will take the command of the Mediterranean fleet, now
under the orders of Admiral PARSEVAL DESCIIENES." It
thus appears the Duke DE MONTPENSIER is determined to
press his suit to the young INFANTA.
A letter from Berlin announces the death of Baron DE

BoLow, ex-Minister of State. A malady, which he had
contracted of late years from excessive application to busi-
ness, and which forced him to withdraw from public affairs,
sooner than his time of life would seem to demand, was the
cause of his death.
The Three per Cents. closed on the Paris Bourse on Thursday at
841'. 80c. ; the Five per Cents., 123 f. 35c. ; the Orleans Railroad
shares, 1,2871'.50c.
Rouen, 1,022 f. 50c.; Havre, 717 f. 50c. ; Avignon,
987 f. 50c.; Vierzon, 700 f. ; Bordeaux, 645 f.; Boulogne, 550 f.
Troyes and Montereau, 450 f. ; Basle, 251 f. 25c. ; Northern, 766 f.
25c. ; Fampoux, 4401'. ; Dieppe, 470 f. ; Spanish Three per Cents.,
3834 ; Spanish Domestic Debt, 33.
The following are the quotations for other lines :—Paris and
Lyons Definitive, 625 f. ; Paris and Strasburg, ditto, 557 f. 50c. ;
Tours and Nants ditto, 594 f. ; Lyons and Avignon (Talabot), 512 f.
50c. ; Ditto (Lecointe), 505 f. ; Ditto (Compagnie Merldionale), 503 f. ;

The public cannot forget the speeches made by Sir
CtIAULES NAPIER on the abuses in that department ;
they cannot be blind to the fact that most of the young-men
brought up as apprentices on board our ships have no induce-
ment to remain in the service for which they were especially
intended ; that many go into the merchant service, or into
the American navy, where they get better pay ; and that the
greater portion of the sailors who man the fleet of England's
great rival are natives of this country. Thus the main arm
of the United Kingdom is weakened by disease at the very
source of life—we have ships of every class in abundance
and _to spare, admirals in still greater -numbers, and every
department, except one, full to overflowing. W here patronage
prevails there is no lack of hands; but where there
is little or no patronage where the interests of
the sailor should be consulted, and the best men
that money and rewards can obtain should be found,
we find only poverty and destitution. Should war break out
with America, an event very prcbable, sailors to man our.
fleets could not be obtained without the press-gang, an
instrument to which these rulers of the navy cling
as if it were the only salvation of the country.
Men are thus torn from their lawful and peaceable occu-
pations by the most cruel of all despotisms, hurried on board
a Queen's ship, there to be treated as outcasts, and not al-
lowed again to touch their native land till they sell them-
selves as slaves. But these are only a few of the grievances
which such men as PEEL, and F.l.LENnonouctr, and
Rolls would eradicate, and the public, therefore, can
feel no surprise that they are met by the
fiercest opposition from Sir GEORGE COCKBURN,
Admiral Bowr.Es, and the other admirers of the present ruin-
ous system, which they all regard as a model of perfec•
Lion. This is only one instance, among many, of the diffi-
culties with which a Reforming Government has to contend,
but nothing great is ever accomplished without difficulty,
and the fact, we
:trust, will only .be a further
inducement for • the • Government to persevere, and
maintain at every-hazard their new appointments.. Sir G.
COCKBURN is a man of high character, and a respectable
officer, but his time is gone by ; he is above seventy years of
age, he is imbued with all the erroneous notions of his earlier
days, and is therefore totally unfit for the present crisis. He
can well be spared, and Sir R. PEEL, who has already effected
such important revolutions, in defiance of powers that would
have deterred less daring minds,-is not to be frightened by a
worn-out clique of old admirals, or be compelled to submit
any longer to a system which threatens the security of the
British empire. There are plenty of good officers fit to sup-
ply the place of Sir GEORGE COCKBURN, and we know of no
better substitute than the captor of Don AftoirEt.'s fleet, the
hero of St. Jean d'Acre—the gallant Sir CIIARLESNAPIER.

Within the brief interval already occupied by the discus-
sion upon the proposed free-trade measures the fallacy of
just representation in the House of Commons has, indeed,
been most conspicuous. Party advocates, upholders of class
interests, and in some instances mouthpieces of their own
banking accounts, have successively risen to address the
House--professedly in the cause of national prosperity—
but actually for the purpose of enabling themselves still
to gorge their own purses from the poor man's larder. In
exposing this mock philanthropy, as it was again advanced
by Mr. Scorr in last night's debate, Mr. WARD acted boldly
but bitterly. Instead of permitting the former gentleman
to swallow that very poisonous bolus, his own opinion
with its pretty tinfoil covering, Mr. WARD stripped
the gilding off with a few cutting sent6nces and
crammed them again down the other Member's throat. It
was a pleasant punishment to the spectators, because it was
a punishment so richly merited, especially after the school-
boy violence and urchindike irritability with which Mr.
SCOTT attacked Sir R. PEEL. And be it remembered, this
same wonderfully calm and wonderfully philosophic
Mr. Scorr attacked the Right Honourable Baronet
fur, what he was pleased to call, hi desertion
from the ranks which he had hitherto marshalled so skit
fully, while—(most consistent corollory !)—admitting that
the proposed measures were only an extension of the system
hitherto adopted by the Conservatives. In reference to this
latter admission, Mr. WARD justly stigmatised the consum-
mate doggedness with which certain nominal politicians plod
forward upon some plan which modern facts have long
proved to be an intolerable grievance—their eyes willingly
bandaged up. With perfect accuracy did he remark .
" legislation must progress. The laws of England are not in-
fallible !" All history goes to corroborate this declaration, ;
all experience, ancient and modern, forms an exemplar of its
justice. That man must be a very zany who would main-
tain
otherwise. He must be something little short of pur-
blind, who would pick from the Commentaries one of those
renowned passages of eulogium upon British legis-
lation uttered by good Judge BLACKSTONE—and wear
it, so to speak, upon his forehead as the morale
of his political care er. This was not indifferently
insisted on by the Hon. Member for Sheffield, while at the
same moment he pelted a few good-humoured sarcasms at
the two (nominal) representatives of Liverpool, Sir H.
DOUGLAS and Lord SANDON, who, in the words of the Hon.
Gentleman, " had committed to the most stringent mono-
poly the greatest commercial town in the empire." Much,
in fact, does it behove that vast constituency
to investigate this very unsound position of things ; and to
be henceforth more chary in the selection of spokesmen. That
great stalking-horse of protection, Mr. HUSKISSON, from
whose vast shadow the agricultural monopoly gentlemen
have been shooting their extremely blunted_arrows of argu-
ment (?) was not forgotten last evening by
Mr. WARD ; and a fine expression in point did
he produce from a speech delivered by that
celebrated statesman, on the 25th March, 1830. The lan-
guage used by Mr. Husrussosi has been latterly masticated
with much relish by the protectionists. We rather conjec-
ture they will find in the paragraph alluded to a very hard
and unexpected bone, which, in the midst of their pleasant
mouthings, will snap off a few of their teeth. Here is the mar-
ceau—for the anti-Monopolists it will be a toothsome one:—
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