The Sun.
London, England, 1848-07-15 00:00:00

betning

LONDON,ISATURDAY, JULY 15, 1848.

A very erroneous impression has been engendered
by the development of free trade as a system. It is
imagined by many that our mercantile interests are
opposed to our agricultural interests, that the manu-
facturers of cotton and the manufacturers of corn are
sworn and irreconcilable enemies, that the factory
labourer of Manchester and the farm labourer of
Lincolnshire are beings whose pursuits are incom-
patible the one with the other as the pursuits of
fellow-countrymen and contemporaries. No one can
have the fool-hardiness, however, to entertain such a
preposterous notion any longer after the enthusiasm
which on Thursday evening greeted the toast pro-
posed, at the great meeting of the Royal Agricul-
tural Society, by the Earl FORTESCUE—that toast
being
" AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES, ♦ND COMMERCE."
It was a most felicitous combination of words—words
symbolical of the three enormous sections of this
industrial community, upon the prosperity, enter-
prise, and harmonious alliance of which the glory,
the nationality, and the constitution of Great Britain
are immediately dependent. And it was a felicitous
circumstance that this fraternal toast should have
been proposed under the shadow of that glorious
old minster which the American Ambassador (Mr.
BANCROFT) eloquently apostrophised as " the most
stupendous monument ever reared by the genius, the
delicate taste, and the religious sentiment of our
ancestors," that it should have been proposed
at an epoch when, according to an allusion
made by the same distinguished citizen, " the tree
of peace is so firmly rooted into the soil of these
islands that its boughs only rustle in the breeze of
the stormiest revolutions," and that, above all, it
should have been proposed in Yorkshire, that im-
mense county, which, in the words of the Earl Foa-
TESCUE, " comprises within its bosom. the varied
manufactures of the West Riding, the shipping and
commerce of Hull, and the fair and fertile fields of
Hulderness and Cleveland !" Under this auspicious
and appropriate coincidence of time and
‘locality the
triune toast of " Agriculture, Manufactures, and
Commerce," acquires a very peculiar and attractive
significance.
Within our recollection we cannot for a long time
past call to mind a more interesting and, in a
social point of view, a more important demon-
stration than that which the day before yes-
terday crowded the venerable precincts of the
city of York with " a living and moving panorama
of the industrious English of to-day." It was a spec-
tacle racy of this old historic England—this England
which has ripened in its maturity under the warlike
pomp of the Romans, and the maritime audacity of
Scandinavia—which was not effeminated by the pre-
cocious civilisation introduced from Normandy, and
which, amidst all the vicissitudes of conquest
and rebellion, has preserved even to our own
day the evidences of its Saxon origin in its
robust and masculine nationality. It was well
to be reminded of this at a crisis of such peculiar im-
minence ; and it was impossible that we could have
been more forcibly reminded of it than by the assem-
blage of such an association as the Royal Agricultural
Society. We will assert at once that, to our think-
ing, the interest and importance of the demonstration
in question was very materially enhanced by the pre-
sence of the illustrious Consort of our SOVEREIGN,
the young Prince whose amiable disposition, whose
conspicuous intelligence, and whose largeness of heart
have endeared him to every right- thinking patriot
in the length and breadth of England. If we
wanted any corroboration of the sincerity which
appeared to characterise the noble speech in which a
very few weeks back his Royal Highness the Prince
ALBERT advocated the rights of the labourer—that
speech which quickened the whole pulse of the popu-
lation by the eloquence of its earnest simplicity—we
should find sufficient testimony of its truthfulness in
the remarks uttered on Thursday evening by the
same august personage. In the course of the address,
in which his Royal Highness proposed as a toast,
" Success to the Royal Agricultural Society of Eng
land," the Prince Consort observed, that " agricul-
ture, which was once the main pursuit of this like
every other nation, holds even now, notwithstanding time
development of commerce and of manufactures, a fun-
damental position in the realm." That sentence contains
a golden truth, a truth which we would see ap-
preciated among all classes of our enterprising
population. We would see the minds of our farmers
and of our manufacturers, of our artisans and of
our field-labourers, of our corn-makers and of our
cotton-makers disabused at once and for ever of that
blundering idea that the establishment of free trade
must necessarily lead to their estrangement. Away
with the old bugbear which teaches that emancipa-
tion of commerce is the annihilation of agriculture !
which asserts that the diminution of the Customs'
duties must inevitably lead to the insolvency of
tenant-farmers ! which declares that the yeomen
and the traders of Saxon England have
not derived their existence from the loins
of the same ancestors ! Now that the cause
of so many heart-burnings has been long since
settled, let all chafferings and hagglings, let all ill-
blood
and rancour, let all jealousy and contention be
forgotten, off hand, in a manly spirit, and, while the
rest of Europe are convulsed with revolutions, let the
people of England be one in heart and in hand, de-
voted, unanimous, resolute, and enthusiastic, in their
determination to promote the national happiness.

We really cannot discover any sufficient grounds
for the mystery maintained in some of the public de-
partments, and more particularly in the Colonial
Office, with respect to a certain class of documents,
which may not perhaps be very important in them-
selves, but which acquire an extraordinary interest
from the attempted concealment. Curiosity is one of
the strongest passions of our infirm natures, and men
who would not take the trouble of cutting the leaves
of a blue book in which those documents had been
inserted, will eagerly seek for information if there is
any the slightest appearance of a desire to withhold it
when there are reasonable grounds for its production.
John Bull hates what are termed " State secrets."
lie cannot understand the refined diplomacy of his
continental neighbours, but desires a fair and candid
exposition of naked facts, that he may himself be
enabled to judge how far the public officials are
justified in the line of policy they have adopted, the
course they have pursued. Let there be but a single
hint of suppression, of garbled reports, or of extreme
secresy being attached to any public matter, and his
attention is immediately arrested, his sympathies
awakened, and he cannot be contented until an open
and unreserved revelation is made of the subject-
matter in dispute.
We do not mean to assert that the greatest possible
reserve should not sometimes be maintained, in order
to conduct the public business efficiently. There
may be confidential communications which it would
be extremely wrong to publish, unless, indeed, they
have been so far acted upon that any individual has
been thereby prejudiced without further proof or
investigation. For instance, we believe that it is cus-
tomary for every governor of a colony to forward
periodical reports respecting the character and official
ability and conduct of every subordinate officer under
his control and direction. It would clearly be most
unreasonable to suppose that any such subordinate
who might fancy himself to be aggrieved by a com-
munication of such a character should be entitled to
demand a copy of that confidential dispatch so long as
he may be retained in the service of the Crown. But
I
should he be dismissed from his situation in con-
sequence thereof, and cast upon the world, with