The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-10 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY, DEC. 10, 1867,

The annual Exhibition of our Agricultural So-
cieties affords a convenient opportunity for the
county and borough members to express their
opinions on public affairs. Such a chance has just
been seized upon by Mr. CAVE, Vice-President of
the Board of Trade, at the meeting of the Steyning
Agricultural Association. The member for Shore-
ham remarked that of late he had been going at
high pressure, and from the account which he gave
of his proceedings, his audience must have been
properly impressed with the conviction that
the life of an Englih Minister, even if he
hold a subordinate position, is not all holi-
day. First, said Mr. CAVE, he had been
required to go to Paris to negotiate a convention
concerning our fisheries, and this was a matter in
which his constituents naturally felt a very deep
interest. Such a convention has long been needed
by the fishermen of Shoreham ; and the new ar-
rangement by which they are empowered to fish for
oysters during six weeks in the year more than for-
merly, and by which many antiquated and trouble-
some restrictions are abolished, could not be other-
wise than welcome to them. Coming to his own
more ordinary business, Mr. CAVE gave a half
humorous, half pathetic picture of its multitudinous
labours. " Everything," he said, " which no other
department liked to tackle was thrown upon the
Board of Trade. It was a Board not only of
trade, but of agriculture, and was concerned with
harbours, ships, commerce of all kinds, railways,
and commercial treaties." Certainly in a country
like our own this gives a pretty wide range, and
instead of wondering that Mr. CAVE should have

been forced to speak 85 times in one session, we
may rather be surprised that he did not speak
oftener ? If he has to account for everything
remotely affecting commercial interests, which goes
wrong on land or sea, from the defects in the new
sewer at Barking Creek to the cause of collisions
in mid-ocean, he will have enough to do.
A subject more properly demanding his attention
could hardly be passed over at a public meeting.
The relative positions of labour and capital, at the
present moment, are doubtful and unsettled, and
are seriously affecting trade. Trades' unions, said
Mr. CAVE, had been invented in order to en-
able workmen to get what they considered sufficient
wages, but sometimes it was impossible to pay
wages enough to enable an article to be made
without some improvement in machinery. The im-
provement in machinery enabled the manu-
facturer to make higher profits, and conse-
quently to pay better wages, but this improvement
the unionists will not agree to. Both in agriculture
and in manufactures machinery is objected to by
ignorant people as the workmen's enemy, instead of
being, as it is in truth, his best friend. It enables
the ernp!oyer to gain a higher rate of profit, and
therefore to pay his workmen a higher rate of wages.

1.1o:.e than this, it empowers the manufacturer to
keep pace with the competition of the day. The
employers of labour in other countries, hampered
by no such restrictions, and gaining every year in
mechanical skill and scientific knowledge, press closely
on our track, even iu those departments of industry
which we consider especially our own. The evil
influence of Trades' Unionism is felt too in another
way, in the superficial and imperfect work now
often detected in articles of English manufacture.
Formerly the name alone was guarantee for the
solidity and character of the workmanship ; now,
thanks to the rules which forbid a man to put his
heart into his work and fine him if he does it " with
his might," English contract work often will not
ben. scrutiny. Could anything, asked Mr.

CAVE, in speaking on this subject, " ho so uu
fair and so antagonistic to improvemcn

as the system which declared that a good
workman should get no better wages than
a Ltd workman ?" 11 this system were main-

tained, many trades, he said, must be driven from
the country ; and we must remember that is the
opinion-of no mere theorist, but of a man whose
official position and former experience have given
him wide and varied commercial knowledge. It is
their perception of this fact which makes the leaders
of the unions so anxious to establish international
trades unions, so as, in Mr. CAVE'S words, "to
create the same dead level all over the world." In
this laudable attempt they are not very likely to
succeed ; but we are glad to find a member of the
Government expressing himself so decidedly against
them.

Amid the many strange things of the present
day nothing is more astonishing than tho infatua-
tion which possesses some people to call the new
state of things in Prussia by the name of liberty.
In the Chamber of Deputies, yesterday, a letter
was read from Herren KR UGER and OIIBMANN, re-

Casing to take the oath of allegiance to the Con-
stitution, and hence their seats were declared to
be vacant. Count BISMARCK made a long speech,
in the course of which he said that the Government
concurred in the resolution that the Budget should
be assumed by the North German Confederation.
It appears that it ii intended to convert the Fru:,
sian Ministry for Foreign Affairs into a Foreign
Ministry for North Germany. However, the
wily statesman contrived to find objec-
tions to the subsequent part of the ques-
tion namely, that Prussian Legations and
Consulates within the territory of the Confede-

;ion should be abolished. Of course, he put the
•esponsibility on others, and said that it was an
iwkward thin:: to do on account of " wounding

nastic suseeLtibiliti,..s." It wa3 rogard for their

Federal allies that the Prussian Gove,nrnent had
not interfered in this matter. "We will wait till
the right of the several States to have separate
foreign representatives Hi ems and falls into our
hip." We never hear anything of the holey or
expediency of waiting until it conceits other
people besides the Berlin Cabinet, mud their
affairs, and views, and wishes. Directly any
ether interest is at stake the case is very different,
and there are many considerations to arrest atten-
tion and impede progress. As for the intimation of
the Count that the KING would speedily agree to
the desired change that does not go for much,
because it is always easy to change one's mind at
the last, and suggest other schemes. Count Ms-
miEcit was quite in his airs on this occasion, and,