The Sun.
London, England, 1834-09-16 00:00:00

now existing in those quarters, the duty and policy of
strengthening our dominions in the East Indies be-
comes ten times more imperative ? and can any one fail
to see the immense advantages to be derived, both on
the grounds of policy and humanity, from a steam
communication with our Eastern possessions, by means
of the Red Sea ? And yet will the country credit it,
that notwithstanding, during the last three years, the
greatest exertions have been made in India to mature
plans and raise money for the ensuring a steam com-
munication with England, nothing whatever has been
done by the Government here to assist in completing
this undertaking, the advantages to be derived from
which are self-evident to all, save the present able Se-
cretary for Foreign Affairs, and his colleagues ; and
the importance, we had almost said necessity, of which
is by no means diminished by the fact of the foreign
policy of the last few years having so materially dimi-
nished British power and influence throughout Turkey
and Persia, and we fear we may add, throughout the
whole of Europe ?—Morning Herald.
We have abridged from the Scotch Papers accounts
of various Meetings and Addresses in honour of the
Lord Chancellor and Earl Grey on their visit to that
country, preserving the most remarkable passages of
the speeches delivered by the two itinerant Statesmen
upon these occasions. The speech of the Noble Earl
at Coldstream is, as might be expected from him, ele-
gant and gentlemanly, full of commendations of the
Reform Bill, and of happy auguries as to the benefi-
cial consequences it is likely to produce. With respect
to the Lord Chancellor's eloquence, now that he is
once more north of the Tweed, we cannot say that
the specimens we this day present are by any means
worthy of his reputation. He is constrained, affected,
and vulgar. Labouring strenuously to seem indif-
ferent to public animadversion, and, if possible,
still more strenuously to efface the impression
created by his recent speech at Inverness, he la-
mentably fairs in both of his two imcompatible objects.
We recommend the various harangues of the Noble
and Learned Lord to the perusal of our readers, as
examples of pure, unadulterated nonsense. We should
willingly have withheld this expression of opinion,
could we have done so with any regard to our own cha-
racter for judgment and integrity ; for we are not by
any means disposed to disregardthe strong presumption
in favour of the amended character and present good
disposition of Lord Brougham, afforded by the esta-
blished character and undisguised purposes of those
who are at present in the daily habit of repeating
all that we used to say, to the prejudice of his Lord-
ship, when the fiercest of his new assailants never
thought themselves so well employed as in admi-
nistering to him the daily and weekly doses of
that flattery in which they now tell us he so inordi-
nately delights. Being thus favourably disposed
towards the Noble and Learned Lord, we could not
read without grief and mortification his declaration at
Aberdeen, that Lord Althorp and himself were, of
all his Majesty's late Ministers, the two who most
wished to avert the calamity of Lord Grey's resigna-
tion. We wish the Lord Chancellor had not uttered
these words. They go far to destroy all the hopes
which we were beginning to entertain of him. It is
now abundantly clear, notwithstanding all that the
journals of the movement can say about his Lordship's
conversion to Toryism, that he is yet a stranger to
that most essential of Tory feelings and principles,
the love of truth. But we suppose it was thought
prudent to present a peace-offering to the late Pre-
mier, no matter at what expense, preparatory to ap-
pearing in his presence at the Edinburgh Meeting.—
Morning Post.
We called the attention of our readers, and contem-
poraries, yesterday, to an important fact, now proved
beyond the possibility of contradiction, connected
with the past administration of the Poor Laws ;
namely, that the amount of the tax levied upon the
industrious portion of the people of England, for the
support of the ignorant, the dissolute, and the lazy,
was, according to the latest returns, on the increase, as
stated by the Poor Law Commissioners in their Re-
port, and not on the decrease, as alleged by those who
opposed the passing of the new Act ; and we now

return to the subject, not for the purpose of simply
re-stating that highly-important fact, but for that of
expressing a hope that those who may think that they
descry greater evils under the new than existed under
the old system, would compare the past with the pre-
sent before they decide, and not allow their judgments
to be biassed, or their minds to be led astray, by the arts
of vulgar prejudice, or the representations of disap-
pointed vanity. This warning it is the more necessary
for us to give, and the public to keep in mind now,
because, while there is, on the one hand, an evident
determination, on the part of certain of our contempo-
raries, to make the most of every case of apparent
hardship which may appear to spring out of the work-
ing of the new system, it is impossible, on the other,
that the introduction of the new system should not oc-
casion much heart-burning and jealousy, vexation, dis-
appointment, and occasionally hardship. No great
change was ever made—no extensive reform ever ef-
fected—no new invention or improvement ever intro-
duced, which was not, in the first instance, produc-
tive of some portion of evil or of suffering, or of a
change, momentarily, for the worse, to fewer or more
persons ; but these partial evils ought to have no more
weight with the public in judging of the new
system, than the cries of the patient whose
limb is being amputated, upon the surgeon, in
order that his body may be saved. They ought, as
they deserve, to meet with sympathy and mitigation ;
but the sympathy must not check the progress of re-
form, nor mitigation assume the appearance of a re-
turn to ancient practice. Having put our hand to the
plough, we must proceed cheerfully forward ;—not
lamenting at every step the useful plants which we
cannot avoid tearing up by the roots, along with a
multiplicity of weeds which obstruct the ploughshare ;

but cOnsidering that our labours must be productive of
a richer harvest than could otherwise have been pro-
duced ; and that if the field had remained untilled, it
would have only brought forth briars and thorns—
thistles and tares. Let but the past operation of the
poor laws from the fatal enactment of the 9th Geo. I.
be considered, and the future prospects held out by it
fairly compared with those which we have a right to en-
tertain from the amended Act, when it has come fairly
into operation, and we fear not the result, upon any
unprejudiced and well-cultivated mind, of any case, or
any number of cases, of alleged misery or distress,
which may be brought forward by the -enemies. of the
new system, as its product. What was that opera-
tion ? Need it be told that it was of the most bane-
ful and most mischievous, as well as alarming, na-
ture ? Did not committee after committee, from the
year 1817 downwards, including especially those of
1822, 1824, and 1828, report, one after the other,

that owing to the mal-admiiiistration of the poor laws,
the agriculture of the country was in the lowest state
of degradation—the poor-rate most alarmingly on the
increase—and the labourers themselves not only re-
duced to a minimum of wages, or rather to a mini-
mum of subsistence, but become ignorant, dissolute,
ferocious, lazy, and brutalized beyond any power of
description ? Were not their reports borne out, most
fatally in 1830, when, goaded on, on the one hand,
by want, on the other by a thirst for revenge, and by
an ignorance of the real causes of their distress
which reflects the greatest disgrace on this en-
lightened age and coulitry, the peasantry rose
like demons of evil, and scattered dismay and
terror throughout almost every county in Eng-
land ? Was not the awful incendiarism of that
period—the houghing of cattle, and the destruction of
sheep—proved in the evidence taken by the Poor Law
Commissioners to have been brought about, directly or
indirectly, by the mischievous operation of the Poor
Laws ? Nay, is it not on record, as matter of fact
not admitting of dispute, that while large tracts of land
had been all but abandoned to the poor, because the
rate necessary for their relief could not, along with
the cost of tillage, be raised from them, much more
was on the eve of sharing the same fate ?—the popu-
lation at the same time growing in iniquity and degra-
dation, in proportion as the means of relief were easy
and ample—lncreasing in numbers and in the absence
of all just pride and natural affection—living to eat, in-
stead of living to work—and caring not what the mor-
row might produce to themselves and others, provided
the wants of to-day were supplied ? Such a picture
of misery, of degradation, and of crime as the country