The Sun.
London, England, 1834-04-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Deeply do we regret the spirit of combina-
tion which exists at the present day among the
working classes, and which has been so exten-
sively embodied in what are termed " Trades'
Unions." All such combinations are productive
of mischief to the interests of trade and of
society at large, and seldom, indeed, do they
work any thing but evil to the combinators
themselves. We cannot, however, shut our eyes
to the fact, that the present -almost universal
spirit of confederacy which exists among work-
men is but the re-action of labour against the
cupidity of capital. The modern race of paliti=
cal economists, who regard the great mass of
-mankind as mere machines to produce wealth
ft r a monopolising few, have set up the great
Idol, Mammon, under the more philosophic
name of " Capital," as the god of all human
adoration. In all their publications, from the
ponderous " Cyclopmdia' to the Penny Ma-
gazine, they boast eternally of what capital can
effect by human and material machinery in the
accumulation of wealth, without ever thinking
it worth their while to show bow the mass of
mankind are benefitted by so much wealth being
gathered into the coffer.of a few. For our own
part, we are so far hardened in our philosophical
heresy as to avow the opinion that it is the dis-
tribution of riches, not their accumulation 'that
benefits society and makes a nation rich. „ The
despotism of unlimited monarchy is not so bad
as the despotism capital ; the former is chiefly
felt by higher classes, and the petty tyrants that
surrour...d the Throne ; but the latter oppresses
tlyz, great mass of society and "grinds the faces
f the poor." It is a mean vulgar, sordid, tyranny
—that to cheapen its manufactures for the market
would reduce men to the state of the cattle of
the field, and accept children of tender age in
sacrifice, as this Christian country has but too
long and two recently witnessed, with the insa-
tiable voracity of Moloch. Still, trades'
unions, though opposing a vicious system of
monopoly and accumulation, are themselves bad
things ; under the notion of extending protec-
tion to workmen against the cupidity of the
capitalists, they exercise a tyranny of their
own. They rely on the intimidation and terror
which united numbers moving towards one ob-
ject in a menacing manner can inspire, rather
than on the power of reason, and the efficacy of
moral force. They are also bodies so organised
as to be easily susceptible of those impulses
which may hurry them into actual violence,
although no violence may have been originally
premeditated. Government, we are told, is re-
solved to crush these unions, and the sentence
passed upon the unionists convicted at Dorches-
ter of administering unlawful oaths is a demon-
stration to that effect ; certainly a more sincere
one than any of the Palmerston demonstrations
against Holland or Russia ; but will it be as
effective as it is sincere ? We believe not, and
we will give our reasons. In the first place a
government that encouraged political unions for
their own party purposes, and appealed to the
congregated numbers of those menacing unionists
as au argument for the intimidation of their
political adversaries, unsheathes with a pecu-
liarly ill grace the sword of severe justice to
punish trade unionists. Again, if the govern-
ment were pure enough to come into Court
against them with clean hands, it is not by
straining the law to get them within its
net, or by punishments of excessive severity,
that it can attain its object. As to the strain-
ing of the law, with all due deference to
judicial authorities, and notwithstanding the
dictum of Mr. Justice Lawrence, in the case
of the King v. Marks and others, we cannot
resign the opinion that the Act of the 37th
Geo. 111., cap. 123, passed at a time of great
political excitement in England, was intended
by the Legislature to apply only to oaths ad-
ministered for seditious purposes ; more espe-
cially as the preamble of the act expressly de-
clares the mischief to be remedied was the ad-
ministration of seditious oaths. It says—
" Whereas divers wicked and evil-disposed
persons have, of late, attempted to seduce
persons serving in his Majesty's forces by sea
and land, and others of his Majesty's subjects,
from their duty and allegiance to his Majesty,
and to incite them to acts of 2nutiny and sedi-
tion, and have endeavoured to give effect to
their wicked and traitorous proceedings by im-
posing upon the persons whom they have en-
deavoured to seduce the pretended obligation of
oaths unlawfully administed." Here nothing
but the administration of oaths to promote sedi-
tious purposes is contemplated' or glanced, and
in the enacting clauses we think it would be
difficult to show satisfactorily that the remedy
has been extended to a mischief so much
more extensive than that mentioned in
the preamble as to include the oaths
administered by members of Trades' Unions.
But supposing the men convicted at Dor-
chester were clearly guilty of a violation of
this law, is the severe punishment inflicted on
them either just or politic ? It is not, in our
opinion, just, because we think those men erred
in ignorance, and a law so little known became
a snare to their feet. Now though the maxim
is ignorantia legis neminem excusat, yet it is
only just and reasonable that ignorance of the
law should be taken into the account as an
extenuating circumstance. Again, the punish-
ment is not politic, because it is calculated to
excite the public sympathy for the offenders.
The offence is obscured by the apparently vin-
dictive character of the penalty exacted, and all
the benefit, all the moral influence of the ex-
ample is lost. Public opinion has spoken out
so strongly on this subject, through the medium
of the press, that ministers now seem to shrink
from the responsibility of refusing all mitigation
of so disproportionately severe a sentence, and
they throw the blame on another quarter. The
Guardian says," It appears that the poor mis-
guided men of Dorchester are to be really trans-
ported. The thing is so odious, so universally de-
cried throughout the kingdom, that the Ministers
have endeavoured to escape from the obloquy
by throwing it on their Royal Master. Can
any thing be more cowardly or more disgraceful ?
They, forsooth, wish the sentence commuted ;
' But,' say they, the King will not consent.:
It is not the first time that they have acted thus.'
We recollect when the execution of a man named
Druitt, about two years ago, for a crime no
longer punishable with death, excited the asto-
nishment of all London, the blame was thrown
the next day by a ministerial paper upon the King.
But the maxim of the Constitution is that the
King acts only upon the advice of his responsi-
ble Ministers. We believe the imputation
thrown upon his Majesty to be in both cases
utterly groundless. If William the Fourth does
not exercise the Royal prerogative of mercy in
any case in which it ought to be exercised, it is •
not from want of the principle of clemency in
nimself, but because he is constrained rather to
suppress his own kindly feelings than to act I

against the opinion of his ministerial advisers...--
Morning Herald.
On looking over the last number of the
Quarterly Review, we find an article meant to
be in support of the Corn Laws, which sets out
with a quotation or two from the Times of last
November and December, the tendency. of which
is to warn those concerned, that if both corn
laws and poor laws be not peacefully amended
by legislative authority, their alteration will be
forced through some more perilous agency from
without, in spite of the recognized authorities
of the realm, and perhaps to the overthrow of
all respect for them and for our most valuable
institutions. Proceeding, as we have done, with
an examination of the above article, from an
unfeigned desire to extract information though
out of the most unpromising sources, and even
to search for materials whereby to test the
soundness of our own long-cherished opinions
with regard to the nature and consequences
of the cone laws, we are forced in despair to
relinquish all such fond speculations. There
is no novelty in the arguments of the Tory
writer ; there is nothing curious throughout
his article, but the absence of all high or
comprehensive views, whether of policy or eco-
mony, in connexion with this important sub-
ject, unless we make another exception in favour
of the ' skill with which the most pressing na-
tional interests are yoked to the vilest drudgery
of party, and the most upright and honoured
individuals in the community dragged upon the
scene from no apparent motive but that of load-
ing them with virulent abuse. One of the
stock objections to a repeal of the corn law is
the " enormous" loss which it would entail
upon the English landlords. Now what is this
assumed loss, be it ever so enormous, but the
precise measure of the tax which they have by
means of the existing law extorted from the
great body of consumers for the maintenance of
their own monopoly? The Quarterly reviewer
asserts, that shortly after the peace, on the
unrestrained admission of foreign grain, fifty
million pounds were struck off from the gross
revenue of the agriculturists, occasioning,
through the fall of wages and of prices gene-
rally, a diminution of profit and income to
every class of the community. Now is not this
a most egregious folly ? If prices fell, did the
buyers lose by it ? and buyers, we presume,
form no small portion of the community. If wages
fell, did employers suffer by it ? and among em-
ployers we take for granted may directly and indi-
rectly be enumeratedall classes, not excepting the
lowest. The truth is, that if there existed at
that day half a dozen statesmen of equal saga-
city and integrity as Lord Grenville, the corn
law could never have been carried. Had one
such man of enlightened and penetrating spirit
been found in the Cabinet of 1815, he would
have persuaded those of his colleagues who
were not downright official vultures, to break up
the Government rather than deal such a death-
blow to the commerce of Great Britain. During
the war, while the corn trade was free, two
powerful causes conspired to make us the ma-
nufacturers of the whole world. 1. That the
war demand for corn all over the continent of
Europe brought the cash price of it here and
abroad so near an equality, as, combined with
superior skill, to enable our manufacturers to
produce their goods at lower prices than the
continental workmen. 2. That the means of
transport by sea were almost exclusively in the
hands of England. But when peace came,
what followed ? Ist. The war contributions
and purchases of agricultural produce on the
Continent were put an end to, and by conse-
quence the advantage derived from that cause
by our manufacturers altogether ceased. 2d.
The capture of foreign merchantmen upon
the ocean by British cruisers terminated also
—that is to sav, the other great protection
to the foreign consumption of our commodities
vanished. What then, we ask, ought to have
been the policy of an English statesman ? He
ought to have said, " The fall in the price of
foreign grain is a godsend to British industry.
It is the only source from which we can expect
a counterpoise to the cessation of those advan-
tages which our maritime superiority gave us
over foreign merchandise ; it is the means by
which we may still be enabled to continue during
peace the same amount of manufacturing pros-
perity which the nature and fortunes of the
late general war had created. It is a gift from
Heaven, let us enjoy it and be thankful." Such
ought to have been the sentiment of an Eng-
lish Minister—such the spirit of his legislation.
But this would not suit the owners of the
rotten- boroughs. "We have thriven through-
out the war," said they, " from the same great
cause which aggrandized the manufacturing
interest, viz., the rise of war prices on the
continent, and we will now take care that on
the cessation of that cause the manufacturer
alone shall suffer, while we go on to thrive at
his expense ; the same prices which rose natu-
rally during war, we will keep up by unnatural
means during peace, and England alone, of all
the countries in the world, shall know nothing of
the alliance between peace and plenty." But there
was one essential element of their own prospe-
rity which the landlords, in their covetousness,
had forgotten. They never calculated how im-
portant to their prosperity had been the im-
mense and progressive demand for corn arising
from the growth of British manufactures during
the war, and the rapid increase of the town
population of this kingdom. They never suf-
fered themselves to dwell upon the facts so
powerfully stated by Earl Fitzwilliam, illustra-
tive of the mode in which commercial capital
invites the agricultural producer to market, sti-
mulates the culture of the soil, and raises the
rent of the landlord. We are told for ever that
the home consumption of manufactures is the
most beneficial to the capitalist of Leeds and
Manchester ; but not a word is breathed by the
Quarterly reviewer about the transcendant value
of the home consumption when applied to the
grower of beef and corn in Essex. The whole
scheme of the landlords is a rank monopoly,
and it is advocated by a string of wretched fal-
lacies. Of these the favourite seems to be that
England is essentially an agricultural country,
and that the landed interest ought to be pre-
ferred before all others. Why, how is England
an agricultural country, save in the sense in
which all countries are more or less agricul-
tural ? Holland itself is an agricultural
country, in so far as corn is grown there.
But can any region be properly called
agricultural which produces other things in
greater abundance than corn ? England, for
example, has for the last thirty years imported
corn, as Holland has done, thereby proving that
she cannot grow enough for her inhabitants.
But England, on the other hand, has not merely
supplied her own population with all descrip-
tions of manufactured goods, but has invariably,
during a much longer period than thirty years,
exported them for the use of every nation in the

world. Let us ask, then, ought a people to de-
rive their naive from the properties in which
they are deficient, or from those in which they
abound ? And is not England essentially and
peculiarly a " manufacturing" country,- as con-
tradistinguished from one whre tillage was pre-
dominant ? But the manufacturers have not
the iniquity to say, " because England is more
commercial than agricultural, therefore consult
our interests in preference, and in detriment to
those of the owners of land." They ask for
nothing but equality ; they are willing, they are
eager, to liberate the land from such taxes—
(are there any such P)—as press on it more
than on other interests ; they are even—until
God shall send the landed aristocracy sense
enough to see where their own advantage lies—
willing to pay a considerable, provided it be a
definite, duty on the importation of foreign corn.
But the manufacturers are not men to be
trampled on and laughed at ; and the advocates
of corn laws treat them as if they were deserv-
ing of both.--Times.
It will be seen by a paragraph which we have
taken from the Cambridge Chronicle that a very
considerable number of the resident members of
the Senate of the University have published a
declaration expressive of their opinion upon the
question of admitting men who refuse to sub-
scribe to the articles of the church to academic
degrees. The opinion put forth in this decla-
ration, we need scarcely say, is decidedly ad-
verse to that conveyed by the petition which,
with so loud a flourish of trumpets, was pre-
sented by Earl Grey to the Rouse of Lords,
and Mr. Spring Rice to the House of Com-
mons.- The latter was signed, it will be recol-
lected, by sixty-one members of the Senate ;
the former has already received the signatures
of 101. The latter was. carefully got up, and
the names appended to it canvassed for most
anxiously in Term time, when all the colleges
were full ; the former has received its almost
double number of prompt and eager sub-
scriptions during the vacation, when all the
colleges are nearly deserted. The letter
was stamped with the authority of men
who, however eminent for scientific attain-
ments, and valuable aids and light to the
University as a school of science, have
no claim to be considered as better judges than
other persons of what appertains to its moral
and religious discipline -; the former has received
the authoritative impress of numerous indivi-
duals with whom moral and religious discipline
generally, and the most efficacious and salutary
form of its application to the University of
Cambridge, must have been the subject of fre-
quent and anxious study. But there is, in ad-
dition to all these, yet another point of contrast
between the petition and the declaration, to
which we allude, without intending the least
disrespect towards the gentlemen whose names
appear in the whig petition, and only because it
is a point which, considering the general infir-
mity of mankind, cannot, we fear, be justly
admitted, in estimating the value of opinions pro-
ceeding from considerable bodies of men. The
petition expressed an opinion which was known
to be agreeable to the actual dispensers of
the immense lay and ecclesiastical patronage
of the crown. The declaration expresses an
opinion diametrically opposed . to the views,
wishes, and purposes of those with whom every
self-seeker must naturally be anxious to stand
well. We think the world will not be much at
a loss to decide which of the two documents is
the more valuable as an authority. The
anxiety manifested by Dissenters from the
Church of England to be admitted to the
honours of Oxford and Cambridge conveys a
tribute of approbation to the course of study
and the system of discipline now established in
those institutions so ample and unreserved as to
justify the charge of inconsistency against those
who thus, in the same breath, proclaim the
value -of the existing system and labour to
abolish it in favour of another. Not being
ourselves Dissenters from the Church inca-
pacitates us, perhaps, from entering into the
feelings of the Dissenting body ; or, for what
we know, it may arise from some unfortunate
peculiarity in the structure of our mind ; but
the fact is certain, that, after repeated efforts, we
have been wholly unable to realise to our ima-
gination the idea of a conscientious Dissenter,
in combination with that of a father sincerely
anxious that his son shall pass several years of
that period of life, when the mind is the most
istuisstcreupottiibol o
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of Oxford
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or Cambridge, faithful and affectionate sons of
the church as they generally are, and that he
should pass these years of youthful study, tinder
this guidance, stimulated by the hope that the
wreath of academic triumph may at last be
placed upon his head by venerable dignitaries
or zealous assistants of the Established Church
of England. We believe that as conscientious
Dissenters we should feel considerable misgiv-
ings in launching any son of ours upon a career
from which we could not but apprehend danger
to the faith that, upon the supposition, it must
have been our earnest endeavour to
instil into
his mind. Nor can we divest ourselves of the
notion that this feeling must .be very general
among conscientious Dissenters. It will be
deemed very illiberal, no doubt ; but we may as
well at once confess, that this train of thought
has led us to suspect that those who cla-
mour so loudly for the admissibility of their
sons at Oxford, and for privileges at Cam-
bridge greater than they can at present en,loy,
are not sincere and conscientious dissenters from
the church. The course they are pursuing is
natural enough in men who are indifferent or
hostile to religion altogether, or who pursue po-
litical objects under the mask of conscientious
nonconformity ; but in men who have separated
themselves from the Church of England, or
who refuse to join her communion upon princi-
s
pnloets
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which, it is no reproach to them to say, cor-
responds but little with the baeneral frame of
their minds or the general character of their
deportment. The Times, naturally enough;
adopting an idea which the prayer of the dissen-
ters expressly suggests, asked the other day whe-
ther the whole kingdom was to be forced into the
Church, or banished beyond the precincts of sci-
ence and of classical learning ? Is it the inten-
tion of the dissenters to admit that everything out
of Oxford and Cambridge is beyond the -pre-
cincts of science and of classical learning ? Are
science and classical learning unknown to the
dissenting body at this moment ; and do they
despair of acquiring any intimacy with either,
unless permitted a passage into its temple
through the magnificent vestibule of the Church
of England Universities ? If the dissenters are
ready to make this humiliating acknowledgment,
an acknowledgment unworthy of them, since it