The Sun.
London, England, 1833-05-29 00:00:00

LONDON,
WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 29, 1833.

In another part of The Sun will be found a
report (from our own Correspondent) of the
meeting, held on Monday last, of the Northern
Political Union. Though this meeting was not
so numerously attended as during the progress
of the Reform Question, when it was nece-sary
to make an overwhelming display of moral and
physical energy, in order to bring the infatuated
ultras to their senses, yet still it was an impres-
sive meeting, if only for the character of the
speeches delivered, and ought not to be
without its effect on Ministers, who, em-
barrassed, as we have good reasons to
believe they still are, by the intrigues of an anti-
national faction, have not hitherto been able to
accomplish all they could have desired for the
promotion of the public weal. The Newcastle, like
the Birmingham, meeting, is a sign of the times
nearly, if not quite, as expressive as that feverish
crisis last year, when The Sun was in the con-
stant habit of conveying to all parts of the
country, the earliest and fullest intelligence of
provincial reform meetings, many of which could
muster their tens, and some their hundreds of
thousands.

The Morning Post has devoted a long ar-
ticle to-day to the laudation of Mr. HORSLEY
PALNIER'S speech at the West India meeting
of Monday, and to an endeavour, by rousing
the cupidity of different classes of the com-
munity, to excite a feeling against any plan
of negro emancipation. Our contemporary
tells the Manchester people of the cotton
checks they will no longer send to the
West Indies, the Yorkshiremen of the
woollens for which they will have no de-
mand, the Scotch of the cessation of the manu-
facture of Oinaburgs, and different manufacturers
of the other goods which will cease to be ex-
ported, if 11 .1 Government plan be carried into
effect. M. t: act is that the arguments used by
our contemporary, as showing this falling off in our
commerce, would apply equally well—and that
is not at all—to any plan that might be pro-
posed. We deny that we should suffer in our
commerce by giving freedom to the negro popu-
lation, or that the man-owners themselves would
in the long run suffer by it, any more than the
land-owners of England or of France have
suffered by their serfs ceasing to be
sold with the soil, like cattle. But supposing
that the negroes were to indulge themselves in
absolute idleness, after having worked sufficiently

to obtain a bare subsistence ; supposing that their
love of finery should be totally extinguished,
instead of shooting out into a still stronger
desire to possess all the comforts and luxuries
of life ; supposing that no labour is hired to cul-
tivate estates in the West Indies, and that in
consequence we should have to obtain our sugars
from elsewhere, and send our manufactures in
payment elsewhere, what eventual damage shall we
sustain ? Or if we do in the transition experience
for a short time a check in the demand for our
manufactures (which we deny will be the case),
what has it to do with the question of justice to
the negroes. A pretty kind of morality that
of our contemporary must be, to balance the pro-
fit and loss of injustice. The whole of his ar-
gument is just such one as we might expect
Gil Bias' Captain Rolando to address to his
comrades—" My friends, I am sure you must
all be as anxious as myself to turn honest, but
the inconveniences of restitution are so great
(under the plan now proposed to us) that I have
insuperable objections to it," &c. One thing our
contemporary ought to remember is, that if the
country will lose as much by negro emancipa-
tion as the planters, if it he a mutual sacrifice
on the altar of justice, it may be asked by what
right the planters-ask for compensation from the
country ? If the country is to suffer, the Post
advances a robber's argument, and the West
Indians have no claim to compensation. If the
country is not to suffer, then the argument
of the Post is nought. Our contemporary
may spike himself upon which horn of the
dilemma he pleases ; but our argument is,
that eventually neither the country nor the
planter will be injured by remedying the
foulest wrong ever inflicted by one body of men
upon another. We are, however, willing to
give the West India proprietors compensation
for what injury they may be proved temporarily
to sustain, in consequence of negro emancipa-
tion. But what, do they ask ? Their pro-
perty, like all other property in England, has,
by the operation of the same causes, been re-
duced in value within these twenty years,
fifty per cent.; like much property in England,
also, it has become burdened with mortgages,
and a great part of it, according to their own
confession, yields no profit whatever ; but they
want (as far as we can make out), to retain the
blacks in slavery, and in exchange for the nomi-
nal adoption of a plan of emancipation, receive
the whole value of their property at the rate it
would have sold twenty years ago! This
will not even be listened to, and unless the
advocates of West Indian slavery—we beg par-
don, the " gradual emancipators"—propose
something more definite to-morrow night, they
will be entirely put out of the question, and the
struggle remain between the Government and
Mr. FOWELL BUXTON and his partisans.

In another column will be found an article

from the Herald, more curious in some
respects than any of the very curious articles
with which our curious contemporary has for some
time past treated his readers. After a tirade
against all the liberal newspapers in the metro-
polis, for having urged the people to petition
for the legal object of a reform in Parliament,
and not having advocated the exemption from
punishment ofthe incendiaries of Bristol and Not-

tingham, who disgraced the cause of reform, the
good old lady of Shoe-lane, who, we do not mean
to intimate, is more ofa witch than Sir ANDREW
AGNEW is of a conjuror, reminds the people
that she is kind even to the worst of their pec-
cadilloes ; that even for the midnight burglar
and assassin, she can vent a little sentiment.
Having well scolded all stamped publications,
and of course established her own claims
to popular favour, our friend thus discourseth
upon unstamped publications :—" We have
been induced to make these remarks at
the present moment, from seeing in a weekly
paper—one of the cheap publications—one of
the specimens of untaxed knowledge—which
claims to itself the merit of being published for
the people,' the most nefarious advice given
to the working classes, to whom the cheap
sheet is especially addressed." That a journal
of the limited poli'ical knowledge manifested by
our contemporary should fancy itself hurt by the
' general diffusion of information, we can easily
imagine, and have not been surprised at its
wishing to keep up the monopoly which the
existing newspapers enjoy ; but that it should fall
into so glaring an inconsistency as to abuse its
fellow monopolists, claim credit with the
poor for doing so, and then sneer at
all cheap, untaxed . publications because
one has published an undefensible article, is cer-
tainly more than we expected even from
our Semi-Tory Semi-Whig sentimentalist. We
should have thought that an enlightened view
of his own interest would have shown our con-
temporary that the bestiway in which)he could
promote that interest, as well as the happiness
of the poorer classes, whom he pretends so much
to sympathise with, would be to advocate the
diffusion of cheap knowledge, to advocate the
breaking up of a monopoly, which we are con-
vinced is as injurious to ourselves, and all other
newspapers, as it is to the community at large.

In the letter signed 0. P. Q., which appears
in the Chronicle of this morning, the writer
makes allusion to the representation of CASI-
MIR DELAVIGNE'S new tragedy, entitled Les
Eifans d'Edouard, which, it appears, is now
being performed at Paris with considerable ap-
plause. " The drama," says 0. P. Q., " con-
tains manifest and palpable allusions to the pre-
sent position of the Royalist party in France ; to
HENRY the Fifth, to the Duchess of BERRY, to
LOUIS PHILIP, and therefore to the Revolution
of July. There is a child kept out of his Throne
(for that is the style in which men continue to
speak of thrones, as though thrones were pri-
v.te property, descending of right from father
to son)—there is an Usurper (for that is the
term still applied to those who derange this
established order of throne-descending, though
t be but for a moment)—there is an heroic
mother (which, of course, the Gazette applies
to the Duchess of BERRY, and to her exer.