The Sun.
London, England, 1834-02-06 00:00:00

ties of Suffolk and Norfolk are themselves the causes of
the demoralization of the labourers. They would not let
well alone. They took it into their heads that they
could interpose with benefit between masters and labour-
ers, which no set of men can do. We do not attribute
bad intentions to the landowners—we only lament that
the law ever invested them with the power in their ma-
. gisterial capacity of throwing the country into confusion-
, When men have been deprived of their independence,
they naturally believe that they are justified in placing
everyinconvenience, real or imaginary, to the account of
their superiors. A case has occurred in Buckinghamshire
of magisterial interference with overseers, quite sufficient,
alone, to demoralize the labouring population of a whole
county. There never will be peace in the country parts
of England till magistrates are deprived of the discre-
tionary powers they now possess, and the poor laws are
executed on some known and uniform principle. Suff 1k
is called, by way of distinction, the County of Parsons.
Now we cannot help thinking the Church Establish-
ment is singularly ill-adapted for its chief purpose— that
of instructing those who stand most in need of it, the
labouring poor—when we thus hear of combinations and a
bad spirit among the labourers of a county in which there
are so many clergy. We fear the 'Squire's mansion is too
powerful a rival for the cottage of the labourer with the
English clergyman. The clergyman should know the
character of every labourer in his parish ; he should be
his friend and adviser, one to whom he might unburden
himself in all his difficulties. We believe that, in many
countries of Europe, especially Catholic countries, the
priest is still considered by the poor their best friend and
counsellor. In Scotland, of which the clergy were sprung
from the peasantry or little farmers, and not gentlemen
born, as the phrase is, an intimacy of the same endearing
kind used to exist between the minister and his humble
flock. From the time that the gentry of England began
to throw their sons into the Church, which, according to
Warburton in one of his letters to Hurd, was about the
middle of last century, the clergy have gradually become
of a class too far removed from the people. They are
often most benevolent gentlemen, but they are without
the knowledge of the manners and habits of the people,
which a parish clergy ought to possess. We remember
once reading in a book, written by a Venetian gentleman
who had served the Republic in a military capacity in their
Dalmatian provinces, now belonging to Austria, that, see-
ing the waste state of the country, he asked some of the
landholders why they did not set about improving it ? They
told him that the peasantry were refractory, and resisted
all attempts at improvement. Why don't you introduce
among them, he said, the sober and peacefully indus-
trious labourers of Lombardy ? They laughed—but, on
being pressed, told him that the attempt had often been
made, but that the strangers were always murdered, and
it was impossible to protect them. On this the memoir
writer remarks, that the change in the mind of man must
precede other improvements ; and that the moral man
can only be changed by time and assiduity. In Suffolk
and Norfolk, however, the change had been wrought ;
the people had long been models of good order; and yet
even the appearance of the country bears evidence of ex-
cellent properties in the labourers. It is not a little that
could have drawn such a people into improper courses.
We remember the Rev. Mr. Brereton says that the
universal discontent of the labourers was the first thing
that struck him when he first obtained the living of Little
nissingham, Norfolk; for it is curious that there is little
dissatisfaction in towns, and that the discontent is always
in the ratio of the interference of Magistrates. The fol-
fiwing description of Suffolk, from the pen of the most
successful describer of English country life, William
Cobbett, in his last Register, will serve to show what
an excellent people the Suffolk labourers must have ken
before the 'Squires made them the subjects of their
experiments:—
" Reader, do you know anything of this county of Suffolk ?
It is the crack county of England. It has a parish church in
every three square miles, or less; it is the best cultivated,
most ably, most carefully, most skilfully, of any piece of land
of the same size in the whole world ; its labourers are the most
active and most clever; its farmers' wives, and women em-
ployed in agriculture, the most frugal, adroit, cleanly, of any
in this whole world; it is a county of most frank, industrious
and virtuous people. Its towns are all cleanness, neatness,
and good order. What, then, can these things take place in
such a county, without any assignable cause ? There must be
some cause. We often hear of the negligence, carelessness,
wastefulness, idleness of the people, as being the cause of their
poverty and misery. Three years ago, I went all over the
county of Suffolk. Ido not say, nor pretend, that I went into
even a majority of the parishes; but I could not have gone,
through less than two hundred out of the five hundred parishes,
but I never shut soy eyes, except when I do it for the purpose
in order to go to sleep. I not only rode along the roads from
town to town, but I went out into the villages, which it has
always been my delight to survey. There is one distinctive
mark of carefulness and neatness, and that is unbroken win-
dows ; windows where the place of glass is not supplied by
paper or rags; and I could take my oath that I did not see
(and I looked very sharply for it) one single instance of this in
this county of Suffolk. Why, it is a county of corn and cattle,
the far greater part of which is produced by manual labour ;
for it is an arable county. It is a county of plentiful produce;
a county in which the labours of the people produce, I dare
say, seven times as much as they consume."—Morn.Chronicte.

Last night's proceedings in the House of Commons de-
rived an interest which, if not altogether unprecedented,
was certainly unusual, and in some respects painful, from
the course adopted by Mr. O'Connell, in demanding ex-
planations on the subject of Mr. Hill's charge against Irish
Members, brought forward in the speech of that Learned
Gentleman which be delivered a few months agn at Hull.
Whether the House of Commons was the plaice wherein
to raise a discussion on such personal topics, may, we
think, be rea'onably doubted; and there is, we suspect,
more than one individual who now regrets either that the
question was stirred at all, or that it was not put an early
and immediate stop to by the House at large, or by the
authoritative voice and decisive interference of the Speaker.
It would at least be unbecoming, and might lead to results
which all must deprecate, were we to dwell much on the
details of such transactions. No feelings are engendered
in their progress amongst the parties immediately impli-
cated but such as (except in very rare instances) it
would be the wish of every humane and manly mind
to allay. No reputation can by any subsequent remarks
of persons not directly interested in such quarrels be
raised above or sunk below that level at which it was
fixed by their course and issue at the moment when they
were formally terminated; and for the satisfaction of
whatever anxiety, or mere curiosity, may have been now
excited by our allusion to the names of Lord Althorp and
Mr, Sheil as the principals, while Mr. O'Connell was the
accessory, in the affair of last night, we refer to our Par-
liamentary intelligence. One ob.ervation only we shall
venture to make, and in doing so, it is not our desire to
overstep the sobriety and modesty of the language em-
ployed by the Speaker in his estimate of Lord Althorp's
conduct. Never did that high-minded and unassuming
nobleman entitle himself to a larger share of the confi-
dence, esteem, and admiration of his friends and country,
than by the sturdy and inexorable manhood, the stern
truth, and calm, straightforward dignity of his whole de.
meanour, from his first answer to Mr. O'Connell's first
inquiry down to his frank rejection of the last plausible
compromise offered for his accommodation, had such a
thing been worthy of him, by his well-meaning, but not
well-judging, friends. The business was concluded by a
mutual declaration that nothing which bad passed should
lead to further consequences.— Times.
Amongst many reasons for rejoicing in the Parliamentary
proceedings of last Tuesday night, there was one circum-
stance which the commercial, the manufacturing, and ge-
nerally indeed, the intelligent population of this country,
must look at with extreme regret and apprehension—
namely, the announcement by Lord Althorp that the Go-
vernment were averse to bring forward any meaeure for a
repeal or amendment of the corn laws, and that his
Lordship and his colleagues were equally resolute to with-
hold their concurrence from such a measure, should it be
proposed by members not in connexion with them. The
country, therefore, if it hopes to shake off the burden of
that execrable impost, must not depend on his Majesty's
Nlinistas,—it must rely upon its own unanimity, perse-
verance, and energy. The country must act far itself, and
must, if it can succeed by no other means, compel the Mi-
nisters, and their landlord colleagues, to treat the
ma.s of Englishmen with justice and humanity, to
make employment more plentiful, and bread more
accessible to the poor. Can anything equal the infa-
tuation of those who attempt to vindicate the expe-
diency of corn laws by pointing to the distresses of the
agriculturil interest? If a corn law had any real virtue,
would not the fruits of it he discoverable in the prosperity
lof the landlord, the farmer, and the labourer? If a parti-
-1 cular medicine were boasted of as a specific, would nut the
~, practitioner who employed it, being a rational or an ho-
nest man, refer fur proof of the healing properties of his
nostrum to the sound and satisfactory state of the patient
whom it had recovered ? What shall we say to him who
advertises a certain diet as the most wholesome and nutri-
iious in the world, and illustrates its excellence by adding
—" Here is a man who has tried it for 20 years, and see
to what a wasted and dying condition it has brought
him !" What do the landlords and their dupes, the farmers,
want ? Is it more protection ? is it a more strict mono
poly? is it a prohibition of foreign corn, absolute and
tot el ? At this time of day they will haidly say so. Will
they remain as they are, and let the distress oh which they
unceasingly complain accumulate into perfect ruin ? If