The Sun.
London, England, 1850-03-28 00:00:00

labourers at home instead of overrunning England.—
(Hear, hear.) Perhaps when Lord John Russell
hears of this determination he may scout it and turn
it into ridicule. I warn him that the Duke of Bed-
ford put down the hair tax in England by wearing
cropped hair, when hair powder was almost as gene-
rally worn as cotton is now. In France they scarcely
manufacture cotton at all. Woollen lace is now chiefly
worn in Paris. Light woollen fabrics are used by
them for summer dre,ses, and for curtains, and heavier
woollen goods for winter. Some few months ego an
announcement came from America that there was to be
a short crop of cotton ; that raised your wool 3,1. per lb.
Let 200 meetings of farmers take place throughout
Great Britain and Ireland, and let them pledge them-
selves to form a wool league, and before' next
clipping time the price will be raised a further Gd.
per lb. %nen you employ your labourers now
throughout Great Britain and Ireland, let the cry
be " Wool for ever—you shall wear no cotton ;."
and encourage tradesmen who scout cotton, who do
not allow it to enter into their shops.—(Applause.)
What farmer of you who farms 100 acres of land
would wear a cotton shirt if he were told he should
pay 100/. a year for wearing it ? Why, as soon
would I wear a perpetual blister as a cotton shirt.—
(Laughter and applause.) Now, before I leave this
question I ask you, farmers of the Pontefract polling
district, to consider well the power you have in
your hands. When you return home discuss this
question with your wives and daughters ; say, of
what are your clothes composed ? You'll have a
short limit to cotton. Your grandmothers did not
wear cotton. They wore wool and Eeglish flax.
It is only about 70 years since cotton has been in-
troduced into this country as a great article of trade
—and where are we ? Why, it is cotton above, cot-
ton below, and cotton everywhere.—(Applause and
laughter.) You have been reminded that you are re-
presented now by Free-traders. Why, farmers of
Pontefract, the tradesmen of Pontefract exist by you
alone. If they seed Free-traders and enemies of your
interest to Parliament why should you support them P
—(lean) Let Mr. Milnes remember that he made
an eloquent speech in favour of protection to willows.
—(Hear.) Let him remember that he came here
and was introduced into Parliament by talking protec-
tion ; but if he remains a free-trader where are you ?
I would sooner pick a torpid serpent from the high-
way and place it in my breast to warm it into life
and vigour than vote again for Mr. Milnes.—(Cheers.)
Look after it, farmers of Pontefract, and throughout
Great Britain and Ireland, the agricultural districts
have returned, as they almost unanimously will at
the next election, Members to sit in Parliament who
will vote for protection ; make them pledge themselves
that if the cotton lords wish to keep up the present
great naval and military establishments at Hong-
Kong, in order that it may be able to sell their
cotton, that at least they shall pay the expense.—
(Hear, and applause.) Let them strike out the whole of
the expense that we have to pay for the establishment
at Hong-Kong, with Dr.Bowringas the Chief Commis-
sioner. Ah, he is a cunning doctor—l watched him
in Parliament fur years, and I knew he had his
price. And remind your Members that 4,000,000/.
a year are now expended in keeping up the military
establishments in the colonies—colonies which once
were to Great Britain a support, but which are now
used to stab you to the heart and to destroy the
agricultural interest of England.—(Hear, hear.)
They merely exist now for the use of the cotton
lords, that they may send what they call their surplus
production to the colonies and elsewhere. It shall be
greatly increased very soon, if you will followimy ad-
vice.—(Hear, hear, and cheers.) A few words as to
the conduct of Ministers during the last few years.
"The qualification of the Prime Minister of England
now is that he shall be possessed of a cotton soul.—
(Hear, hear, and laughter.) Honour, honesty, in-
tegrity, are never thought of. Cotton and base
apostacy are all that are required now to make a
Prime Minister of this kingdom. Every other inte-
rest is pooh-poohed away from Downing-street
when they go to complain. The agricultural inte-
rest say, " We bear more than our proper burdens—
for God's sake save us, or we perish." " Oh, but look at
the cotton districts—how flourishing they are. We
cannot do anything for you. We are very sorry in-
deed. Good day, Sir; good day."—(Laughter and ap-
plause.) Well, the shipping interest goes and says,
0 You are going to destroy our prosperity." " Sorry
Sor you ; we have really a deep sympathy for you ;
but the cotton districts are very peaceable. There
are no outbreaks. We cannot do anything for you.
We must keep Lancashire quiet."—(llear, hear.)
Dien go the West India interest and make long
complaints. "Oh, we admit you have complaints;
we are sorry to see you in such a position. Cannot
he helped. It is a lamentable case, hut we cannot do
tnything for you ; for if we did the cotton-spinners
of Lancashire would close their mills and tell their
hands to go and riot. We are obliged to keep Lan-
cashire quiet."—(Bear.) This is a true picture. It
is the way in which England has been governed for
the last 25 years, and I ask you if you will submit to
it any longer ?—(No, no, and applause.) Tnis is
lone for 600 cotton-spinners in Lancashire who dare
not hold an open meeting for fear their own people
should go in and oppose them. What are these men ?
They are men who turn their counting•houses into
their church ; their ledger is their Bible, and their
money is their god. They are men who spin slave-
grown cotton ; they insist upon sweetening their tea
with slave-grown sugar; they daub their calicoes,
to defraud the public, with slave-grown flour
paste; they
.work their women factory slaves
15 hours a-day in an atmosphere more destructive
to human life than the climate_ of Sierra Leone ;
they are only prevented from working little children
to death by a stringent Act of Parliament.—(tlear,
near.) They are themselves slaves of the devil, and
(luring the last seventy years the cotton trade of the
country has destroyed ten times more human beings
in England than the cholera has destroyed in the
havingwhole of
goneE u rop, e.—
through(,leagdeinotglemen,
some hear.)
of Nthoew,
inte-
rests of this country, it is my intention to address my.
Iwhiathr'
self to the labourers. And I call upon the labourers
of this country to pay due attention to what shall now
fall from my lips. I have fought their battle for
twenty-five years and more. I have spent thousands
in their service, and never received one sixpence as a
hired agitator.—(Hear, hear, and applause.) I can
have no object but that of their welfare. I employ a
few of them, and those I do employ I give more
wages to than others , but as a friend who has stu-
died deeply their interest for twenty -five years I call
upon them to listen to me.—(Hear, hear.) They
may fancy now that all is sunshine. Alas! the sha-
dow of desolation is fast approaching. The cheap
food which they are now consuming is but the final
denier of labour's due reward. Truly may they say,
" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we starve."
Yes, free trade is nothing but a heartless competition.
It is, indeed, true what Alderman Brooks said to me,
that " we are all for ourselves in this world"—
among Free traders.—(Hear, hear.) They shake off
the awful responsibilities which attach to them as
Christian men, to observe the rules, the laws, and the
regulations laid down in that holy book the Bible;
they live as if the world was made fur them, and as
if there was to be no future state. But let those
labourers now listen to me. Where are the poor,
wretched needlewomen of London ? There were in
the days of protection some 4,000 or 5,000 of them.
Three years of heartless competition has increased
their number to 30,000. The trade which free
trade has destroyed in this country has deprived
them of employment.—(Hear, bear.) Listen to
what Lord Dudley Stuart said the other day
in the House of Commons. Surely no man '
can be a more rampant Radical than he is. lie pre-
sented a petition from 2,000 or 3,000 journeymen
tailors of London, complaining of the grievances
felt by the men from the masters giving out their
work to the most wretched and destitute persons
and paying them miserable prices. Why, that is
free trade—buying in the cheapest markets and sel-
ling in the dearest.—(llear, hear.) The next is a
petition from the factory workers, demanding pro-
tection for their labour.—(Rear.) And, oh ! what a
sight has free trade made for Ireland. It is awful to
contemplate it. 200,000 farmers have already fled to
America. 100,000 labourers have sought shelter in
Great Britain, deprived of the means of existence at
home, ready to tear this cheap food out of your months,
and to struggle even to death to get employment in-
stead of you. I have been residing two months in
East Lothian. Oh, it is a fearful sight to behold that
once fruitful land. You cannot travel either high
roads or bye roads without meeting three or four
parties of destitute Irish, without sufficient clothing
to cover them.—(llear.) A medical gentleman et
Haddington informed me that three years ago he
knew every Irish person there, whereas now ose
quarter of the population is Irish. Now the farmers
are catching at straws to save themselves from ruin.
They are turning off their old Scotch labourers and
employing the Irish. They must do it or go to the
workhouse. Who can blame them for it? If any
of you were to fall into a river you would catch at the
first straw to save you.—(Hear.) I attended a meet-
ing of the board of guardians the other day at Keigh-
ley, and the relieving officer stated that he had re-
ceived information that 114 Irish labourers had come
to live in the cottages there. Why, so fearful is the
competition in my own neighbourhood, that I was
told the other day that 17 unmarried men and un-

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC:JOURNALS.
TIMIS.—We ask /or five minutes' attention
while we do our best to improve an occasion. We
cannot indeed say that its occurrence is unparalleled,
or that it is never likely to be repeated, but the ex-
ample is at any rate the most extraordinary yet sup-
plied from a tolerably extensive assortment. People
will confess, we think, that they had yet to learn
what a concern could be brought to by irresponsible
management on one aide and unreasoning confidence..
on the other. The Caledonian Railway is a line con-
necting the three important stations of Carlisle, Edin-
burgh, and Glasgow, and draining by means of its
tributaries some of the remotest districts of the north.
Its affairs have been entrusted to the management of
a certain body of directors, on whose ability, integrity,
and judgment the most implicit reliance was placed
by a numerous and intelligent proprietary. For a
very long period indeed all insinuations to a contrary
effect were indignantly rejected, and the suggestions
of a few malcontent shareholders were overwhelmed
arid lost in the resolute acclamations of their
brethren. At length the truth began to
dawn ; the directors were superseded by a fresh
election, and as these lines meet the reader's
eve this morning the new administration will be
communicating to their constituents the verithb'e
state of affairs which on their acces,ion to office they
found to exit. For the benefit of our constituents
we will go through the same process, although the
task pre.ents some difficulties from the inadequacy of
common arithmetic to represent the very peculiar re-
sults of the calculation. In fact, though we have
had a fair amount of practice lately in estimating un-
productive properties, we are almost at a loss for
appropriate expressions of the values before ns. Com-
pared with the Caledonian Ittilway the rental of the
New Forest shows a creditable profit, and Mr. Dela
field's estate might be said to yield a handsome com-
petence. To begin with, it is only by an algebraical
sleight of hand that the general purport of the
balance •sheet exhibited—that is to say, the proportion
borne by the income of the company to its outgoings
—can be intelligibly represented. It seems that the
ratio in question does not admit of expression in
what theological disputants term a " naked
verbality ;" but is obtained by the well-known
mathematical process of augmenting invisible
quantities in order to bring them under the
operation of ordinary rules. If, therefore, for calcu-
lation's sake, we increase the receipts of the Caledo-
nian Railway by 30 per cent.—a result not really
very probable, as the permanent way is still imperfect
—and diminish its working expenses by 8 per cent.—
a contingency less unlikely, seeing that its engines
have been seized for debt, and that no more coke is
procurable upon credit—we shall learn that the con-
cern may be expected to yield a gross annual lest of
28,5891. This statement, however, is far too favour-
able to be maintained. The phrase of " less than
nothing" conveys no adequate idea of the property in
question. The negative assets of the company are
claimed by a swarm of competitors ; and, though It
is difficult to appreciate the value of the object thus
sought, we are gravely told that several companies
are clamouring to establish their own interest in this
desirable concern. Its liabilities, moreover, are
yearly on the increase. It was a favourite practice
with the late directors to buy up or take leases of all
rival lines. Thus in the single 1111 nth of Novem-
ber, 1343, three new purchases were made, each of
which averaged a guarantee of 7 per cent. on the part
of the Caledonian Company, although it was unable at
that moment to meet its own current obligations. In
particular there was the Clydesdale line, now paying
not quite the whole of its working expenses, which
eligible property was secured to the Caledonian share-
holders by the cleverness of their directors at a coat of
a 6 per cent. guarantee and 50 per cent. bonus upon its
capital. Guarantees of the same kind to the Greenock
Company and the Barrhead Company w ill shortly be
coming into operation, and so promiscuous indeed have
been the attentions of the proprietary that they are
likely to be sued for breach of promise by half•a-dozen
other lines These transactions were devised to secure
the Caledonian in a monopoly of traffic against all in-
convenient rivalry, and the judgment which presided
at the negotiations may be inferred from the fact that
at this moment its receipts are vitally endangered by
the impending competition of the Nithsdale line. So
much for a broad general prospect of the company's
affairs. As regards the chances of creditors, it is an•
nounced that the income of the last half-year, after
snaking all allowances for curable disorders of
management, would be too little by about 50 per
cent. to meet the first class of guaranteed or pre-
ferential claims, and would show an actual deficiency
of upwards of 5,0001. even if the liabilities to other
lines were left undischarged. No supposition, in
fact, short of total repudiation could bring the con-
cern into a state of solvency. Touching the item
termed " cash in hand," or ways and means at pre-
sent existing, the new directors report that they find
the treasury absolutely empty, from which extensive
store they have to meet bills to the amount of
74.0001 immediately due, while no provision
wnatever has been made for the accruing interest
on debentures, for rents leng overdue, or for other
claims upon the company. Even the Queen's
taxes have fallen heavily in arrear, and the general
stores of the establishment have been left to take
care of themselves. We can only sum up these
disclosures in a series of paradoxes. After so many
years Working the company have got nothing ; they
are likely to have less. There are scores of squab-
biers for all they have,
and as many more for all they
have not. The ultimate expectancy of the original
shareholder is a quantity which nobody attempts to
symbolise. We admit that this is an extreme case,
and not exactly to he represented as a fair specimen
of railway Properties. Still it is no more than may
be the lot of any company under the same managE-
ment ; and this management is nc other than that for
which the adversaries of a Government audit ate so
desperately battling. In
fact, the ex•directors of the
Caledonian Railway enjoyed in an eminent degree
that confidence of the shareholders which is so speci-
ously appealed to. They met their constituents fre•
quently ; they propounded their schemes in full
meeting ; they were supported by the majority