The Sun.
London, England, 1834-03-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

It has been a general observation within the last
two days, that the (Haste on Mi.. Hume's corn law
motion was one of the dullest and most tiresome
which have occurred for many years in parliament.
For this, two reason; may be assigned-Ist, That
discussions on commercial policy are seldom suscep•
tible of much vivacity or decoration. 2d, That on
the corn question, affecting so deeply every interest
in the state, nothing of importance could be said
which has not been already, and repeatedly, written.
Another circumstance perhaps may be cited expla-
natory of the flatness with which this great question
went off, viz.—that those speakers on both sides of
the house who usually succeed best in commanding
the attention of their hearers took no part in the
discussion. Mr. Stanley, Sir Robert Peel, and
others, were silent. We have often laboured to con-
vince the tenantry and yeomanry of England how
grievously they had been duped by those of the
landed proprietors who represented the corn
tax to be one in whose maintenance the former
classes of our countrymen were substantially
:nterested. It is said pertinaciously by the landlord,
that the tenant would lose " all remuneration of his
abour" were the corn tax to be repealed ; while the
proper formula of the complaint ought to be, that
without a corn law the landlord could not exact the
same amount of rent as the land now yields him.
Is it, then, the manufacturers of England who are
to pay the rents of the aristocracy in the shape of
a tax on their daily bread ? The landed proprietor
answers gravely, " Yes, for otherwise I cannot pay
,he interest on my mortgages, and shall be utterly
ruined." This brings the question to a short
issue. When, owing to the rise of prices during
he war, the rent of land was doubled and trebled,
the landlords of England were raised to a degree
of affluence which they had never anticipated, and
of which it depended on themselves to make the
proper use. They ought to have seen that the
cause of this sudden growth of their property,
without any exercise of industry or trouble on the
part, was transient, and would cease or subside
when the war should terminate. That was the
time, therefore, for the landed interest to retain the
wealth which it acquired—the time to consider the
war profits as an increase of capital, not of income
—to pay off mot tgages previously incurred—and to
provide for children, without trusting to a precarious
futurity. But how did these gentlemen employ the
unlooked-for benefit ? They leaned upon it as a last-
ing accession of property, as a fixed principle in the
nature of things, not liable to accident or change;
they were encouraged by it to fresh and more un-
restrained expenses —to larger settlements —to
bolder mortgages; and all went on well until the
peace came, when they awoke from the delirium—
found it was but a dream ; and in their despera-
tion, 'rather than face the creditors whom they
feared they could no longer satisfy, and the ruin
which their blind improvidence had earned, they
wheeled round upon the people of England, and
told them, " You shall perpetuate for us in
peace, and at the national cost, that agricul-
tural prosperity, which our own war policy had
forced and pampered. You, the nation, shall pro-
vide for our younger children. You shall discharge
the interest of our mortgages, maintain our equi-
pages, and pay our enormous and unnatural ren:s.
Though the foreign market for your manufactures
be closed against you,—though your profits sink to
nothing,—though thousands of artisans be relegated
to the parish,—though, in addition, our own la-
bourers receive half their wages from the pauper
funds,—though corn be raised by a prodigality of
labour from sods which nature destined for the oak,
the larch, or the sheep-walk,—though bread may
be had for 4d. the quartern loaf within a week's sail
of the British harbours,—you, the mass of the
people of England, shall pay 4d. for half a loaf,
that our monopoly may endure for ever." Now let
ns ask, is not this the precise language of the
'Squires, divested of all mystification about the in-
terests of " the farmer," " the tenant," &c. ?—and,
next, was anything so audacious or so iniquitous ever
before uttered by man ? If a bankrupt agricul-
turist can thus flay the manufacturer alive, had riot
the bankrupt merchant, who invested capital and
formed rash engagements on the strength of his
own stupid confidence and forgetfulness of what
was coming, an equal right to demand from the coun-
try the means of paying his creditors 20s. in the
pound ? What is the corn law but an annual
and gratuitous transfer of tens of millions of national
revenue to one order of men throughout the coun-
try ? Whltt but an enlargement of the pension
list, until it embraces the whole landed aristocracy
of England ? If the country gentlemen apostro-
phize the change of currency, the fall of prices, and
the national debt, as grounds on which they have
a right to demand indemnification in the form of a
monopoly of the grain market, and the universal
tax on manufacturing industry for the benefit of
those idlers who possess the soil, let us just inquire
to whose votes in both houses of Parliament is it,
that we owe the vast burden of the national debt ?
For whose prodigious profits were thole enormous
prices of all produce, which enhanced the magni-
tude of each successive loan ? Was not the whole
period of the long twenty years' war a season of
immeasurable riches to the landlords ? And is that
worst political evil of a war—the difficulty of pur-
chasing the necessaries of life—to be prolonged
after the war had ceased, for their exclusive benefit,
because they shut their eyes toa fact of which every
King's speech, at the opening of a session, and
every resolution.of either house of Parliament might
have reminded them,viz., that the signature of peace
was the predestined hour for a return to metallic cur-
rency, and that loans and contracts, and high prices
and high rents, must then meet their natural
death ? Such oppression, it may well be exclaimed,
was never practised upon any people as that of
wrenching cheap subsistence from the poor man's
hand, and driving him to seek for it where it is
most difficult of access. It is a glaring outrage
upon the first duties of humanity, and a sin against
the bounty of Providence. We have hitherto urged
the repeal of the corn law upon the single argument
of justice, and on that we stand. The tax on bread
is a tyranny, to which no human society ought to be
subjected. Opinions may differ as to the rise or
fall of prices after the repeal of this tax : if they
do nut fall, the landlords have nothing to deplore—
if a fall is to be the consequence, we are now a
trampled nation. The principle of the corn law is
indeed unaffected by either of these results. Yet
there are one or two probabilities approaching to
moral certainty, which ought not to be overlooked
with a view to the interests of the parties who
conceive themselves to be most concerned in th.s
question. Mr. Hume in his opening speech pointed
out the immense increase of town population which
had taken place since the year 1791, the last year
in which England had exported corn. Hence, it
is no mystery why she should latterly have never
failed to draw part of her consumption from foreign
soils. Are not the landlords, therefore, satisfied that
the agricultural produce of the United Kingdom falls
annually short of the home consumption ? Have they
ever for the last 30 years even once been able to
raise corn enough for the demands of the whole
population; and that even with all the stimulus and
security which a heavy impost could furnish ? Their
corn duty, therefore, amounts to this—that after in-
suring a sale of every pound's worth of corn which
they.can grow upon their own properties, they refuse
to that portion of their countrymen whom they are
themselves unable to feed, the privilege of procuring
food in any other part of the world without paying a
tax for such an exemption from famine. It not
fair to argue from the assumed approximation of
foreign prices to those of the English market,
arising out of a repeal of the corn law, that be-
cause the price here would not fall much, there-
fore our manufacturers would not be largely
benefitted. What our manufacturers com-
plain of, is not so much the positive price of
bread, as the difference of price to whiehtheyaie
subject, compared with the foreign manufacturers.
Whatever brings the English cost of production