The Sun.
London, England, 1834-01-27 00:00:00

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LONDON,
MONDAY EVENING, JANUARY 27, 1834.

The turn which affairs are taking in Spain,
and the alliance which exists between England
and France, open a brighter prospect to the
friends of liberty and rational government than
any which has been exhibited to the world from
the remotest ages. Indeed, there is no period
of history that can at all be compared to it,
whether we consider the independence of the
States, the system of representation, or the
growing education of the people. France and
England, from the similarity of their modes of
government and institutions, have formed a
virtual, if not declared alliance—the accessio❑
of Spain alone was wanting to form the most
powerful confederacy of free states known in the
history of mankind. Though a severe contest ,
may be anticipated in the spring between the ,
contending parties, and some time must elapse
before she can shake off the trammels of super-
stition and the chains of despotism, yet, on
looking at what she has effected under
much less favourable circumstances, there
can be no doubt as to the final result.
There is hardly, indeed, any future event on
which we might reckon with more certainty than
the regeneration of Spain. The enemies of
reform derive great aid from their wealth, from
their long possession of power, and from the
stupid superstition of a certain portion of the
people ; but these advantages are infinitely
counterbalanced by the natural love of freedom,
the increasing intelligence of the age, the feel-
ings excited by Royal despotism and ecclesias-
tical tyranny, and above all by the bright
example and friendly regard of the two countries
adjacent to Spain, and forming an impenetrable
barrier between her and the enslaved regions of
the north. The slightest glance at the state of
Europe in 1820, when the Constitutional
standard was raised at Cadiz, and its state in
1834, will show the vast preponderance thrown
into the scale of Constitutional Government.
Austria was then trembling for the fate of her
Italian provinces, where the longings for a Con-
stitution prevailed as in Spain—the broken pro-
mise of the King of PRUSSIA was still fresh
in the memory of his disappointed subjects—
and France, the neighbour and ally of Spain,
had an army officered by the adherents of
the existing dynasty, on the frontier—
threatening every moment to take part in the
quarrel, and deliver over the devoted leaders to
the tender mercies of FERDINAND. England,
notwithstanding the generally liberal policy of
CANNING, was controlled by the party who had
for the last fifty years resisted all Constitutional
reform, and remained utterly passive, while the
French army, backed by all the other Powers of
Europe, traversed the Peninsula, and made pri-
soners, or drove into exile, the men whose chief
object (however clumsily they went about it)
was the establishment of a charter like that which
the French Sovereign had granted to his own
subjects. Russia remained, and is now the
inert load pressing down the energies of
freedom in every country where her might could
be felt. Independent of all these circumstances,
many of the friends of Constitutional Govern-
ment in Spain, remembering the frightful scenes
of the French Revolution, and dreading the
visionary and wild schemes of certain leaders of
the party, kept aloof, and preferred even their
enslaved state to political regeneration, accom-
panied with the risk of similar consequences ;

yet, with all these disadvantages, the Constitu-
tional cause was triumphant till it was put down
by foreign force, and if triumphant with such
odds against it, what rational doubt can exist of
its failure now ? It is hardly necessary to turn
to the other side of the picture. It is familiar to
the most careless observer. All the predictions
of bloodshed and ,anarchy which were to spring
from reform in England and France have been
signally falsified, and the internal peace and friendly
relations of the two countries have reassured
the most timid./ No foreign power will now be
suffered to interfere in the quarrel, and we may
therefore confidently look forward to the day
when the institutions of Spain shall be placed
on a similar footing with those of England and
France, and the three countries form one vast
community in the West, having for its boundary
a line drawn from the North of the British Isles
by the Alps to the Straits of Gibraltar.

There is no fresh intelligence of moment
from Spain. The change of Ministry had
excited, as was to have been expected, a pro-
found sensation at Madrid, though the excite-
ment was of a satisfactory character, and augured
well for the popularity of M. DE LA ROSA.
Accounts from Bayonne, of the 20th inst. men-
tioned that the insurrection in Navarre was
making a very alarming progress, and that the
QUEEN'S troops were much harassed by un-
availing marches and countermarches. There
was some gossip again at Paris respecting the
probability of a speedy change in the French
Ministry, though nothing public had transpired
to give the rumour any appearance of likelihood.

If we had consulted history, possibly the
restraining corn laws passed in, and since, 1815,
might not have been made. Towards the close
of the reign of Queen ELIZABETH, consequences
resulted from restraining corn laws similar to
those which have been experienced in our times.
In the year 1596, a judicious paper was drawn
up by a magistrate of the county of Somerset,
preserved by STRYPE, and adverted to by
HUME in an appendix to the volume which
contains the history of the reign of ELIZABETH,
in which the author says, " forty persons had
" been there executed in a year for robberies,
" thefts, and other felonies ; thirty-five burnt in
" the hand ; thirty-seven whipped ; one hundred
" and eighty-three discharged ; that those who
" were discharged were most wicked and des-
" Aerate persons, who never would come to
" good, because they would not work, and none
" would take them into service-; that, notwith-
" standing the great number of indictments, the
" fifth part of the felonies committed in the
" county were not brought to trial ; the greater
" number escaped censure, either from the su-
'' perior cunning of the felone, or the foolish
" lenity of the people ; that the rapines
" committed by the infinite number of
" wicked, wandering, idle people, were in-
" tolerable to the poor countrymen, and
" obliged them to keep a perpetual watch on their
,‘ sheep-folds, their pastures, and their corn-
", fields ; that the other counties in England
" were in no better condition than Somerset-
" shire, and many of them even in a worse ;
" that there were at least three or four hundred
" idle vagabonds in every county who lived by
" theft and rapine, and who sometimes met in
troops to the number of sixty and committed
" spoil upon the inhabitants ; that if all the
" felons of this kind were assembled, they would
" be able, if reduced to good subjection, to
" give the greatest enemy her MAJESTY has
" a strong battle ; and that the Magistrates
" themselves were intimidated from executing
" the laws upon them : and there were instances
" of Justices of the Peace who, after giving
" sentence against rogues, had interposed to
" stop the execution of their own sentence, on
" account of the danger which hung over them
" from the confederates of the felons." The
exportation of corn had been prohibited by the
34th of Edward 111., c. 20, and the Ist of
Philip and Mary, c. 3; and restrained by the
3(1 of Elizabeth, c. 5, s. 26, 13th of Eli-
zabeth, c. 13, and the 33d of Elizabeth, c. 7,
s. 22, to which the above consequences are
ascribed by HumE. They serve to account for
the numerous acts passed in the reigns of the
TUDORS for the encouragement of tillage, ren-
dered unprofitable by the impossibility of export-
ing its produce, and for the number of acts passed
in those reigns relative to the poor, deprived of
work through restrictive corn laws, long before
the abolition of the monasteries to which these
acts have been ascribed.

Three years and a half ago, corn ricks were
burned, and farmers in England are now obliged
to watch their farm-yards as countrymen were
obliged to watch their sheepfolds and corn fields
in the time of Queen ELIZABETH. The
burnings here were preceded by burn-
ings in France, in the spring of 1830,
owing to a similar cause, for France has a worse
corn law than we have. She has not only pro-
hibited her subjects from dealing with other
countries in corn, but she has divided her king-
dom into four parts, and she does not allow any
one of those divisions to trade with the others in
corn, until the price in each reaches a certain
amount. The burnings took place in Nor-
mandy, which is an agricultural province.
Normandy raised corn to no purpose if she could
not sell it ; and the poor people thrown out of
employment, because the farmers did not employ
them to raise grai❑ which they could not sell,
burnt the grain already raised, in order to com-
pel the farmers to employ them to raise more.
So here, our agricultural labourers, being thrown
out of employment by the operation of the corn
laws, have acted in a similar manner. Crime
has confes'edly increased greatly of late years in
England ; its increase has been ascribed to every
cause but the right one. Idleness is the parent
of crime. The corn laws have been the cause
of distress as well as idleness, and distress pro-
duces crime. In order to remove crime, dis-
tress, and idleness, the operation of the present
corn law, which produces them, must be taken
away ; and as the law now begins to bring in.