The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-08 00:00:00

u°' tionn c ;. int

LONDON, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1844.

A few weeks ago all the daily and weekly Tory
journals—with the sole exception, if we remember
rightly, of the Post—were hugging themselves in the
pleasing conviction that the Anti-Corn-law League,
if not absolutely extinct, was at any rate in the last
stage of decrepitude. " It has seen its best days,"
said the Herald. "It is dying by inches of an
atrophy," remarked the Standard. " It is the mere
ghost of its former self," observed the John Bull.
Then followed a series of arguments in each of these
party journals, whose main object
was to prove that
it was very unlikely, if not wholly impossible, that the
Ideague could ever regain its former strength and in-

fluence, inasmuch as the majority of the people had at
length seen through the humbug, and were determined
no longer to give it countenance of support. Of
course, all that portion of the eomtnUnity who cling
to the principles of. Monopoly, were delighted with
these statements, and perfectly ready to accord them
the most implicit credence ; and we can imagine
the delight with which their Graces of RICHMOND
and BUCKINGHAM must have chuckled at the idea
that the object of their bitterest hostility and their
worst apprehensions for four or five years past, was
reduced to so low an ebb, as to excite only their
contemptuous pity and ridicule. But, ;10, in the
midst of all these rejoicings on the part of the
Monopolists, the " untoward" fact transpired,
that the League—the exhausted, crippled, dying
League--was in better health and spirits than
ever ; that it had held a public meeting in Manchester
of a more important character than had ever taken
place there ; and that while it was so charitably
supposed by its enemies to be, like JERRY SNEAK'S
wife, on " its last legs," it was in reality working in
secret with a vigour and activity hitherto unknown
to it ; and had succeeded in securing an influence in
the Registration Courts, which, in the event of a new
election, would enable it to return at least thirty
additional Free-traders to Parliament. Before the
Monopolists had fully recovered the shock of this
astounding intelligence, which must have come upon
them like a thunder-clap, another " great fact" trans -
pired—namely, that the Anti- Corn-Law League had
" taken Covent-garden Theatre for the next season at
a rent of three thousand pounds !" This does not
look as if it were about to give up the ghost. There
are no symptoms of decline or decrepitude here. But
the truth is, the League never has been in a declin-
ing state. It has never, even for a moment, lost its
hold on public opinion. It has never once relaxed
in zeal and perseverance. When it was to all out-
ward appearance the most quiescent, then it was the
most energetic. From the very first hour of its esta-
blishment down to the present time, its influence over
the popular mind has been steadily on the increase
and now it may be said to wield a power in no re-
spect inferior to that of the great Birmingham Asso-
ciation which carried the Reform Bill. Would
this be the case if the principles which it ad-
vocates were founded in delusion ? Impossible.
John Bull though apt at times to be
run away with by strange fancies—is in the main a
sound, long-headed fellow, who never dreams of
giving a systematic, continuous support to that of
which his reason disapproves. Irishmen may be led
astray by their impulses, but Englishmen are not to
be stirred, unless their movements be sanctioned by
the promptings of their cool and sagacious judg-
ment. Had the Anti-Corn-law League been the
mere specious humbug which its enemies represent
it to be; had its views been the mere crazy specula-
tions of a set of impracticable theorists, it never
would have known so long a term of existence as it has
done ; its first year would most probably have been its
last, for the public would have found out its hollowness,
and treated its pretensions with contempt. But the
League is powerful because the principles which it
upholds are sound. Its influence is on the increase,
because the more they are canvassed, the more its
views are found to be in accordance with justice and
common sense. In plain truth, it gives lucid and
forcible expression to the one great want of the age
—Free-trade, which means neither more nor less than
extended trade ; the privilege of employing the re-
sources of industry and enterprise to the best advan-
tage; of giving fair play to all and showing favourit-
ism to none ; of quickening the spread of intelli-
gence and civilisation by bringing the remotest
ends of the earth into closer and more har-
monious connexion with us than has hitherto
been the case. As barbarism follows in the train of
war, so civilisation follows in the footsteps of com-
merce. Now the League is the great advocate of
unlimited extension of commerce ; hence the secret of
its moral influence—hence its unrivalled popularity
among all the thinking, humane, and patriotic mem-
bers of the community. As the founder of this noble
Confederacy, Mr. COBDEN has established claims on
the respect and gratitude of his countrymen scarcely
inferior even to those of the conqueror of NAPOLEON.

It is not without great regret that we feel our-
selves again compelled to advert to a subject which
unhappily supplies but too frequent a text for cen-
sure and disgust. The treatment of the poor of this
country is a matter to which it is idle for some fas-
tidious and short-sighted persons to complain that the
Press is in the habit of devoting too large a share of

its attention. There is no question lying so closely
at the very root of our domestic prosperity. There
is no principle of decay which, if not eradicated, or
at least reduced and controlled in time, can operate
more certainly or awfully to the destruction of the
magnificent social edifice that free and equal institu•
tions have been the chief agents in erecting. By thest
its bases have been laid and consolidated. Our vast
commercial opulence has but extended and enriched
the superstructure, and if still further to beautify
and protect this latter we diminish the supports
which have been provided for the poor—in the original
plan of the fabric, and the additions subsequently
made to it—we diminish in proportion the stability
and safety of the whole work. Now, the tendency
)f all our modern legislation, and the administration
of magisterial justice, too palpably incline to the
vindication of the rights of property, and the protec-
tion of wealth at a large sacrifice of that tenderness
and sympathy for the position, the privations, the
feelings, and, above all, the personal liberty of the
poor, which a more humane, and therefore en •
lightened policy, would studiously manifest on all
occasions.

In our paper of Tuesday evening we gave reports
)f two cases in which this habitual disregard of the
feelings and position of the poor was remarkably ex-
emplified. They furnished a fitting pendant to those
examples of Game-law good sense and humanity to
which we have so recently directed public attention.
On Monday last the Coroner for Middlesex held an
inquest on the body of the poor man who had long
occupied a small cobbler's shop at the corner of South
Molton-lane, Davies-street, where, after having car-
ried on the business in former years, on a large scale,
of a boot and shoemaker, he earned, in the decline of
his life, a precarious but honest subsistence. Here,
unhappily, he had fallen into arrear for a few weeks'
rent, for which his landlord, some Whitechapei
broker, on one day last week came to distrain. Ii
the report is to be relied on, the broker must have
been a ruffianly specimen even of his discreditable
fraternity. "He not only took what small amount
of goods the deceased had, but actually tore his
apron off from him, took his tools, and even the job I
he was at work upon out of his hands, and his spec-
tacles from his face. This broker also took away his
coat, but subsequently returned it, on the deceased
consenting to give up the key." The sequel is soon
told. Stung to madness by the illegal and brutal
violence and cruelty of the broker, the poor, broken-
down tradesman, who had borne up manfully
against all the previous reverses which had ensued
upon his " better days "—brooded for a whole day
over this last overwhelming calamity, and—hanged
himself!

We fear this case is but one of a class. We desire
to know how it is that the authorities in whom such
appointments are, conceive themselves justified in
granting licenses liable to asch extensive and in-
tolerable abuses, to men of a class in society so
generally degraded both in character and calling as
these brokers ? They are the " obscene harpies" of
the most dirty and noisome purlieus of the law, in
its worst perversions from the guardianship of right
and justice to the perpetration of all violence and
fraud. If the rich were to have been the probable
objects of the attentions of these distraining brokers,
does any man suppose that legislation would not
have provided much more ample grounds and securi-
ties for the protection of their property and rights,
by committing such powers to very different hands
from those which are trusted with the right of
tearing the poor ?" Mr. WAKLEY recommended
the son of the deceased to bring his action against the
man SKINNER, who had distrained on his father.
Alas ! what are the probabilities that this action can
be sustained by the son or his friends, in the absence
of funds for such a purpose ?
At the last Special Session of the Justices of the
Bromley Division, a number of the most destitute of
rate-payers were charged with the offence of not
having paid up their rates, amounting, respectively,
to 3
some ags e"dn
5 , dailinda6
infirm
Iwn
oraul all
women,
who h
cases,
d t parties,previously
paid for many years rates and taxes, were directed