The Sun.
London, England, 1834-01-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

It requires the .skill and knowledge of a sci-
entific and ingenious man to make a watch, but
a child can take it to pieces--a savage can dash
it on the ground and destroy it ; so did it task
the wisdom and ability of some of the ablest
statesmen that England ever saw to contrive the
navigation laws, which created for this country
her unrivalled defensive marine, extended her
commerce to the extremities of the earth, and
gave her the supremacy of the seas. But pre-
tenders to political science, whose puerile am-
bition mistook destruction for improvement,
broke down in an evil hour what they never had
talent to construct—the bulwarks of our naval
dominion. They have signalised themselves by
the exploit in the same way that the destroyers
of nob!e works of intellect have in all ages been
signalized. Their names, if they live, will only
survive in the memory of the mischief which
they have achieved. They have saved themselves
from obscurity to deserve execration. Ihe
report of the Shipowners' Society, which we
published the other day, bears ample testi-
mony to the truth of the statements which we
have made, from time to time, of the distress
of the shipping interests, as well as to the
accuracy of the view which we have always
taken of the melancholy consequences of break-
ing down the navigation laws, which were pecu-
liarly adapted to our insular position, and under
the practical operation of which England rose to
a degree of maritime grandeur and commercial
prosperity of which the history of nations had
afforded no example. Having repeatedly ex-
posed the fallacies of those Doctrinaire politi-
cians and journalists who were accessory to the
destruction of the navigation laws, and who still,
in the teeth of bitter experience to the contrary,
contend that the abrogation of those laws was
beneficial to the shipowners, we will not insult
the understandings of sensible people by sup-
posing it necessary to refute those fallacies
again, although we see them daily put forth, in
desperate hardihood, by the Doctrinaire logi-
cians, whom the astounding truths of the ship-
owners' report have excited into a fretful activity,
which might appear ridiculous enough if the
subject did not carry sadness to the heart of
every real lover of his country. Every one re-
collects that some years ago the Doctrinaires
used boldly to take up their stand upon the
broad ground of having actually improved the
condition of the shipping interests by the demo-
lition of the navigation laws. With an un-
blushing coolness, which Ferdinand Mindez
Pinto might envy, they used to assert
that taking away the legislative protection from
the shipowners, while their legislative burdens
remained untouched, had increased their busi-
ness, and that they were, in consequence of it,
in a state of progressive prosperity. Every one
recollects the documentary evidence to prove
the flourishing state of our shipping interests
which used to be produced in the House of
.2ommons, and which used to satisfy the shallow
capacities of the majority of the people's repre-
sentatives, that the sweeping away of the pro-
tecting statutes had absolutely opened the sluices
which let in a new current of prosperity upon
...le State. The House used to ring with cheers
at the imposing calculations that demonstrated
to the satisfaction of the Doctrinaires the increase
of the trade of the shipowners, while their ships
were rotting in our harbours or navigated at a
loss. It could not be otherwise, for under the
taxation which presses upon our shipowners, and
the peculiar burdens they have to bear, they can-
not enter into competition with the shipowners of
cheaper countries without engaging in such com-
petition at a ruinous loss, notwithstanding the
existence of "reciprocity treaties,"which treaties do
not remove the disabling inequality that the
enormous weight of our taxation creates. The
abolitionists of the navigation laws being now
unable to resist the overwhelming mass of evidence
of distress—a continued and progressive distress
which the Shipowners' Society has adduced—
take another course, and tell those whom their
foolish theories have ruined, that they would
have been in a still worse condition if the na-
vigation laws had not been swept away. That
is, they would have been in a worse condition
by the removal of that legislative protection
which was necessary to counterbalance the in-
jurious effects of their legislative burdens—that
legislative protection beneath which the navy
of England rose from a contested dominion with
that of the little State of Holland to the magni-
ficent and undisputed Sovereignty of the Ocean,
while the commercial marine became the carrier
for the world, and so augmented our national
resources that, when contrasted with the small-
ness of this island, they made all which historians
have related, or even poets have fabled, of the
grandeur and power of other commercial nations,
ancient or modern, shrink into comparative in-
significance. All this commercial greatness and
power has been rapidly coming to an end since
the Doctrinaire politicians tried their rash
and absurd experiments on the sources of our
commercial prosperity. We entreat all who
wish really to know what results those ignorant
experiments have produced to read the report of
the Shipowners' Society. If it be right to judge
of the free trade by its fruits, they will not re-
quire other arguments to convince them that
those measures must have their origin in the
most consummate folly which have inflicted on
a great nation such dreadful consequences.—
Morning Herald.

In 1828—so says the Times of the Ist ult.
—in 1828 England did commit the baseness
of leaving ,the Turkish Empire to the tender
mercies of Nicholas, the Duke of Wellington
being fairly overreached. In our paper of
Monday last we made some remarks upon the
monstrous effrontery with which the most pro-
fligate of profligate journals attributes to the
Tories the policy which was in fact the policy
of the Whigs, and asserts the sagacity of the
Duke of Wellington to have been overreached
by the artifices which were only sufficient to
overreach the stolidity of Lord Holland. We
exhibited the Duke of Wellington earnestly in-
voking peace—Lord Holland furiously de-
nouncing war ; the Duke of Wellington af-
firming that the existence of Turkey as an
independent Power is "essential to the pre-
servation of that balance which it is the
interest of this country to preserve"—Lord Hol-
land hoping that England will not interfere " to
save the wasteful and disgusting empire of
Turkey from ruin." The Times does not say
one word in defence of the political discernment
of Lord Holland. We are going to try whether
it will be readier to answer for itself than it has
been for its patron. We shall show that the
Times in 1828 was " overreached" as Lord
Holland was " overreached ;'although the Noble
Lord does not share with the consistent Journal.
ist the ingenuity which impeaches others of •the
ignorance of which itself was so signally guilty.
Let us in the first place briefly recapitulate the