The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-12 00:00:00

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LONDON:
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1841.

It has frequently been a theme of exultatioth
with the Tory Journals that the Chartists wern!
against the Liberals; and not unfrequently, we.
believe, the Tories have bribed a mob to inter. •
rupt the public meetings of the enemies of the
Corn-laws. They will come, we further believe,
to repent alike of their exultation and their en-
couragement. A report of a public meet-
ing for the Propagation of the Gospel, at-
tempted to be held at Norwich last Thursday,
which we borrow from the Norwich Gazette, a
Tory Journal, will prove to the Tories that the
instructions they have given will be profitably
acted on against themselves. No SYDNEY
SMITH, lecturing on a troubled qnestion of poli-
tical economy, was interrupted; but the Lord.
Lieutenant of the County of Norfolk, surrounded
by the clergy and the elite of the diocese, and
attended by many ladies, all assembled together
for that long and much-lauded purpose of pro-
moting the propagation of the Gospel, wa; pre-
vented from even opening a meeting, and was
forced, with the clergy and ladies, to retreat pre-
cipitately from St. A odrew's Hall. The meeting

was broken up ; the people, who will probably be
called heathens, could not tolerate the propaga-
tion of the Gospel while they were starving;
they exclaimed against feeding slaves and pay-
ing slave-owners, while they were in want of
food; they demanded more bread and less
Bibles ; more pigs and less parsons ; and they
drove away discomfited, though probably not
ashamed, the men who, pretending to be minis-
ters of CHnlsr, have leagued with the land-
owners to oppress the poor.
We deem it right to say that the language is
probably exaggerated, in order to paint the op-
ponents of the parsons in as black colours as
possible to the rest of the community. Making
allowance for that—believing that the words were
not so coarse as reported—enough remains to
show that the spirit which now animates the
multitude is essentially and decidedly hostile to
the clergy and the aristocracy. Will the latter,
then, while they pretend to govern the multi-
tude for their own good, dare to coerce the mul-
titude, and cut them down openly if they resist
being starved by law ? We are afraid that the
Tory Government will. It is made as strong ai
it can be for the purpose of sustaining our pre-
sent starvation, murderous laws; and, after the
sentiment recently avowed by the Lord Presi-
dent of the Council, seeing also that there are

two soldiers in the Cabinet, we believe that the
Tory Government will be prompt in repressing
every expression which it dislikes, however just
may be that expression of popular indignation.
The people must be well aware that in this
country, with unwritten laws, with Magistrates
who belong to the class of bread-taxers, with
Judges prone to strain as well as make the
law, legality depends entirely on the arbitrary
will of Magistrates and Judges. The people
must not conclude, therefore, when they act
from the honest promptings of their own hearts,
when their woe breaks out in the just but
strong language of wrath, that the Magistrates
cannot punish them by the help of the law.
Law and justice are totally distinct ; and they
must be prepared, though they act strictly
ithin the bounds of justice, to be visited, per-
secuted, punished, and coerced, in the name of
the law.

The men who pass laws to take a penny from
every poor man's loaf to put into their own
pockets, which at the same time put an end to
employment, and prevent poor men from having
the means of earning a loaf, are not, the people
may well believe, such ninnies at the business of
law-making as not to surround themselves with
all the protection which law can give them.
Consequently, if any of the people propose to act
as the men at Norwich acted, they must be pre-
pared to encounter all the terrors by which law-
makers have ever sought to subdue and awe the
multitude into slavish obedience. They will,
it is to be feared, act now, as they generally act,
from mere impulse, without calculating the cost,
or organizing any means of success ; and, like
their forefathers, it is to be apprehended, by at-
tempting to recover their freedom, they will only
strengthen the hands of their oppressors.

Their impelling motive speaks out as plainly
as their words. They are hungry. Some of them
get only five dinners between Easter and Mi-
chaelmas. They declare, from personal expe-
rience, that they are worse fed than the slaves
of the West Indies. They are flogged, as they
express it, in their belly, while the negroes are
only flogged on their back. Their whole soul
is bent on having some food ; and more food,
we believe, they will have, or they will rush on
the armed bands of the aristocracy, and there
find a less painful death than the daily dying to
which they are now exposed.
" There is great distress (we are told by a Cor-
respondent) amongst the weavers and labourers
in this city. There are 314 persons in the work-
house,-and the average weekly cost for main-
tenance, per head, is two shillings and threepence
halfpenny There were 2,021 tickets issued for
out-door cases of relief for the week ending the
2d October, amounting to 2681. Bs. 6c1., and in the
corresponding periods of last' year 'there were
only 1,766 cases, and we have an awful prospect
for the winter."

Awful prospect indeed ! and the Tories have
taken all the awful responsibility of such a
condition of society on themselves, and have
assumed the tremendous and awful responsibility
of continuing at this time the starvation laws, with
as much smirking, smiling, self-complacency, as
if they were so many dancing masters, solicited
to preside at a hal pare. Their modest assurance
perfectly self-satisfied, while the heavens are
louring, and the big black tornado is gathering
around, while the distant thunder growls, and
the streaked lightning only as yet faintly shows
the coming danger, while they obstinately keep
aloft all the gew-gaws and flying kites of aris-
tocracy, and will take no means to save the State,
is one of the most alarming signs of the times.
They are accustomed to deal with Parliament as
a little girl deals with a doll. It is the creature
of her will. It walks when she moves it, puts forth
its legs and arms, opens its eyes, answers ques-
tions, plays at school, just as its little mistress
likes, and she is not more absolute master of it
than the Tory Ministers are, for the present, of
the Parliament. For them, as for her, the
doll, or the Parliament, is the whole world;
and, more childish than the child, they are easy
in toying with the great affairs of mankind, b(-
cause they fancy that in ruling the Parliament,
Sir R. PEEL'S doll, they are ruling society.
They are fatally mistaken ; and if the flashes at
Norwich, and the louring clouds spreading in
other directions, do not make them quake at
their own arrogant presumption, it will go hard
for England.

A man who once gets a crotchet into his head
is as sure to live and die with it as with his head
itself. There is Lord WESTERN, for example,
who still insists, in a supplement to his Letter
to Lord JOIIN RUSSELL," that " the Currency is
the grand master grievance which he wishes the
members of the Manchester Chamber of Com-
merce to rivet their attention upon." Now the
currency has really come to play a most insig-
nificant part in our affairs, for it has been re-
duced fully one-half since 1817, and the lesser
quantity carries on a vast deal more business
than the greater quantity did in 1817.
All that the law does touching the currency
is to give a monopoly of the issue of promises to
pay within a certain district to the Bank of Eng.
land, and to fix an arbitrary price for gold,
making it the standard, so as to raise our
standard and lower our prices about four per
cent. in comparison with those countries which
use a silver standard. Both these are foolish and
mischievous acts, but no man, not currency mad,
will believe that such paltry, inefficient, com-
paratively uninfluential circumstances, can have
produced the stoppage of our trade, the ruini of
our manufactures, and the wide-spread distress
which, even according to Sir R. PEEL, has
now prevailed for a considerable time.
' The defectke state of the currency does not
starve the people, but the Corn-laws derange
the currency, as Mr. COBDEN forcibly points out
in a letter to Lord WESTERN, and produce all
the evils growing out of that derangement which
Lord WESTERN asserts is owing to a gold
standard. His panacea for our distress is in an-
other Bank Restriction Act, to carry us through
the same vicissitudes •of temporary prosperity,
national bankruptcy, and the permanent degra-
dation of the people as the other. His Lordship
is as enthusiastic in favour of unredeemable
promises to pay, as ever was Mr.InvING for the
unknown tongues, or Mr. OWEN for his new plan
of society.
The Noble Lord says :
" Protect the Bank in administering to the commer-
cial wants of the country ; distress would vanish, the re-
venue recover, all would again be alive. It is as neces-
sary now as when Mr. Pitt threw hii shield over the
Bank, why should it occasion alarm ? The Bank would
be just as solvent with closed doors as it is in its present
state."

We turn over to the next page, and we find
the Noble Lord asserts :
" I will only submit one further opinion to your consi-
-

*Publishtti by Eidg-way.