The Sun.
London, England, 1846-06-26 00:00:00

te I ling

LONDON, FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 1846.

TREE TRADE TRIUMPHANT,

The Corn-law Repeal Bill and its pendant,• the
Customs' Duties Bill, were each read a third time
last night in the Lords without 3 division. Sir
ROBERT PEEL may, with truth exclaim—

"lixegi monumentum sere perenniss."
Free trade is now a- great fact, acknowledged
even by those who have been hitherto its most
strenuous opponents, and who, having fought the
battle (if protection, manfully and fairly, as long as
there was any chance of success, finding that the
ground they sought to maintain was no longer
tenable, have, instead of uselessly continuing the
contest and opposing the wishes of the people by
irritating delays, gracefully yielded to the clearly
expressed opinion of the country, and suffered the
Bills to be read a third time without a division.
Never has the admirable adaptability to circum-
stances of our glorious constitution been more clearly
exemplified than in the present instance. Seven
years ago there were seven corn-law repealers
in England. They intrigued not with po-
liticians, they appealed not to popular prejudices,
they meddled not with parties—they appealed to the
reason of the reasonable—and in seven years, without
popular commotion, without official influence—by the
mere force of argument—those seven men had
brought over to their opinions seven millions—had
so formed, and guided, and directed popular opinion,
as to become irresistible, and to make it necessary
for the Minister, whoever he might be, to carry out
their principles ; and, ere the words which we are
now writing shall be read in the extreme provinces
of the United Kingdom, the principles of free trade

-

will be written in indelible characters on our statute-

book ; the resolutions of those seven men of Man-
chester, who met seven years ago (with the hearty
concurrence of our gracious QUEEN) will have be-
come the law of the whole British empire. Honour
to the SOVEREIGN who thus studies and ministers to
the permanent advantage of the great body of her sub-
jects. All honour to the Minister who has nobly dared
to confess that he was formerly wrong, and, having
discovered his error, has coute qui coute renounced
it; and, by carrying out the gracious intentions of
his SOVEREIGN, earned for himself the eter-
nal gratitude of the suffering misses of his
fellow-countrymen ; but, above all, honour to
the glorious League, which has peacefully, constitu-
tionally, and legally begun, continued and completed,
this great, this philanthropic work.

On Thursday,
the 22d of January, Sir R. PEEL, in
his place in Parliament, as a representative of the
people and Minister of the country—with his own
past protestations full in his memory, and the open
and violent hostility of friends and foes before him—
dared to confute the one and to confront the other,
and, boldly speaking of the people's wants, boldly
propose the measures they required. That
speech was received with heartfelt joy by,
the many, with bitter and acrimonious indig-
-1 nation by the few. It was stamped by the fiat
of popular approval, and history transmits it to the
applause of posterity. On Thursday, the 25th of
June, after a five months' unequal and ineffectual
opposition, those glorious measures received the last
award of the Legislature—they are now the law of
the land ! The "Je le veux" of the SOVEREIGN has
ratified the will of the people—monopoly is no
more ; and the spirit of faction weeps over
the dearest of her children. Faction weeps,
while free trade triumphs—while the mighty
multitude hail the mighty measure; and
they hail it not alone for itself, but for the great
things which shall follow in its train. The corn-
laws are abolished—and something , more than the
corn-laws ; free trade is triumphant, and something
more than free trade. 'We have now seen the down-
fal of class-legislation, of party prejudice and fac-
tious despotism ; a nobler, a higher system
of legislation is at hand—and the people know this,
and shall they not triumph ? The mind of the mul-
titude is in this unanimous, and while they rejoice,
and while they feel that to themselves is the glorious
achievement virtually due, yet they forget not those
through whose immediate agency their long struggles
and enduring hopes have been crowned with the ulti-
matum of success. Theythank the SOVEREIGN, who from
the throne spoke of their long-desired measures; they
thank the Parliament, by whom their interests have
been truly represented ; they thank the Peers
for their cordial concurrence with their de-
sires ; but, above all, as was declared last
night by their chief spokesman, they thank the
Premier for his patriotism, his perseverance, his
self-sacrifice. And sincerely as Mr. COBDEN,
sincerely as any, do we also tender our earnest thanks
and congratulations to Sir ROBERT PEEL. We

thank him for the benefit he has conferred upon the
country, we congratulate him on the glory he has
acquired for himself. He has triumphed even though
he has fallen. Though now compelled to relin-
quish his position, it has not been held in
vain. For five months he has held office
as a free-trade and as a popular Minister, and that
brief and eventful period has set the seal to his tiile-
deeds to fame. Whether he again resume his official
post, or whether he remains only a representative of
the people, time only can declare ; but no
time can rob him of the popularity he
has acquired as the Minister who dared
to sacrifice all things—position, place, and
party—for the interests of his country. The
vindictive and acrimonious attacks with which he has
recently been assailed are tacit confessions of the
efficacy of his reforms, by proving their hostility to
the egotist spirit of faction. As the head of the
strong Censervative party, Sir ROBERT once
held an apparently 'high position : by oppos-
ing its prejudices, undermining its iniquitous
strongholds, dividing its elements, and finally
by bringing against it the power of the people,
that party he has destroyed! Without supporters
and without adherents, the once great chief is almost
alone—he is in a minority, but is he less truly
great ? Can any of his real friends regret his recent
conduct, his recent sacrifice ?—will they not rather
join with the people in proclaiming—
" Ilia greatest glory was that hour
Of self-upheld, abandoned power ?"

The majority of Seventy-three against the Minis-
terial measure, called the Coercion Bill, has consum-
mated the destiny of the present Government. Me-
morable henceforth in our Parliamentory history will
be the 26th of June, 1846, memorable, as immediately
antecedent to the dawning of that day on which the
prophecy of Sir ROBERT PEEL was fulfilled to the very
letter—the day on which his great political difficulty
was proved in literal veracity to be Ireland. A strenuous
effort to meet the exigencies of that problematic island
constituted the last act of his Administration. It

would be infinitely ridiculous to impute to the Prime
Minister any but the most disinterested motives in
propounding a policy so generally obnoxious through-
out the sister country ; it would be ridiculous,
because by so doing no additional emolu-
ment and no superfluent celebrity could in
any manner accrue to himself; because such
a proceeding would, moreover, only facilitate the
pettish recrimination of his personal adversaries,
while it afforded them a sort of neutral leverage for
the subversion of his Cabinet ; because, in fine, so
many more agreeable questions might have been
selected as the cause for his retirement, had a seces-
sion from office been the coveted acquisition.
Nevertheless, while we accord to the Ministry the
credit of disinterestedness, we must acknowledge
ourselves incapable of discovering the particular
exigency which in the present month should demand
an interference so authoritative with the social go-
vernment of Ireland as the Coercion Bill. When
this measure was originally introduced to the notice
of Parliament—namely, some eighteen or twenty
weeks ago—when the highways and homesteads of
five Irish counties were sodden with the blood of
homicide ; when devilish assassinations were inces-
santly perpetrated—sometimes under the shadow of
twilight, sometimes in the flagrant eye of noon,
sometimes within the august gloom of midnight;
when murder, and arson, and agrarian tumults ran
riot in those afflicted provinces—it did seem 1
to us not only advisable, but absolutely
necessary, so to nerve the arm of Irish
administration as to arrest the progress of insubor-
dination, to chastise the miscreants who were thus
placing the lives of the community in jeopardy, and
to assure the safety and the tranquillity of the inno-
centaltogether
masses. A monster evil desolated certain por-
tent of Ireland—the ordinary powers of law proved
extraordinary
iopiower was requisite to
pkntorvigour. In ancient
endue the
times this salutary
ill:a:bele
Cession
eradicating that evil—some
suljection for thewipthur';:n,u(lalfl
ensuring ulterior free-
resorting to present
(tom merged itself into the office of Dictatorship. A
statutory dictatorship was at that period
necessary
to Ireland : we then maintained the existence
did the
Noble Lord the Member for the cf y
of that necessity ourselves—of London, and
a number of other representatives who have subse-
quently recorded their votes in opposition to the
Coercion Bill. We conceive, indeed, that what was im-
peratively demanded at the commencement of this
session is not called for at the present moment ; and
this because the virus of Irish criminality has ex-
hausted itself during the protracted and pernicious
wrangling of the Protectionist orators. llad the
Coercion Bill been carried into operation immediately
after the assembling of Parliament, we are satisfied
that the lives of many unfortunate victims to agrarian
outrages would have been preserved, and that a consi-
derable
moral benefit would have been con-
ferred upon the Irish multitude generally. It
would have awed the rioters into instant sub-
mission—it would have warned them by
an awful retribution from any future revival of their
villanies, and it would likewise have impressed the
more harmless inhabitants with the conviction, that
if the Government was ready to wreak its vengeance
upon those citizens who were not amenable to the
Constitution, it was ready "alsO to protect the help-
less and to foster the loyal. Now, however any such
interference with the domestic habits of the people .