The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-01 00:00:00

a

R THE EMANCIPA-
TION OF INDUSTRY.
ADDRESS.
The time has arrived when active measures must
be taken for the protection and relief of the industry
of the country, unless we are prepared to surrender,
without a struggle, the comfort and happiness of all
the productivg classes.
We have long waited for some party in the State
to arise, who would propose to rescue our suffering
people from the cruel bondage in which they are held by
laws passed, as we have reason to believe, without the
knowledge of their consequences by those who passed
them. Partial efforts have been made, having refer-
ence to class, age, or sex. The Anti-Corn-law
League would free the manufacturer from the
oppressive burden of a corn-law which throws him
out of all chance of engaging in fair competition
with the cheaper-corn-consuming manufacturers of
the Continent. Some benevolent individuals have
exerted themselves greatly to protect children from
undue toil in the unwholesome atmosphere of mills
and factories. Successful efforts have been made to
withdraw females from the degrading and demoralising
labour to which they are subjected in mines and
collieries. Rival parties are anxiously endeavouring
to promote the moral and religious education of the
children of labourers and mechanics, in• the hope
that a better spirit, superior moral habits, and a
higher degree of intelligence may be cultivated in
the rising generation, than are manifested by their
fathers in the present. But these evidences of dissa-
tisfaction with existing thingS, and of a laudable de-
sire to correct the evil, are all limited to a con-
fined sphere of action They are insufficient to
meet the exigencies c f the time—to destroy that
many-headed ascriste I which lays waste our un-
happy country. We hoped to have seen- some great
principle advanced, which should combine these iso-
lated desultory plans for relief in one general design,
to secure the universal advantage of the common-
wealth.
Disappointed in this, we turn to our fellow-eoun-
trymen of every degree, and ask them to join us in
forming a society which, entertaining no schemes. of
private advantage, but devoted solely to the public
good, hopes, by the corrective aid of the Legislature,
to remove the evils which an unfortunate act of
legislation has created.
Our principles of action are few, plain, and ineQol.•
trovertible: We acknowledge the great law which
governs man's condition on earth—that he must earn
his bread with the sweat of his brow ;—but we refuse
to add to the primeval curse another of man's crea-
tion, that, because we have incurred a great debt in
carrying on wars for the security of the property of
the rich, and the preservation of the homes of all,
whatever property a poor working man might acquire
shall be taken from him to pay that debt, and he shall
have no home left him worthy of the name. We ob-
ject to the labouring man being burthened with the
task of providing all that wealth which others, who
do not work, enjoy at his expense, while they allow
him, in return for unremitting toil, less food and
clothing, worse shelter, coarser and harder fare, than
a West India planter allowed his slaves, or an Eng-
lish farmer gives his, horses. We are desirous of seeing
the industrious workman partake of some of the be-
nefits of those improvements in machinery which have
hitherto added so wonderfully to the luxuries of
the rich, but have sunk the poor ,into deeper poverty.
Of what value is the steam-engine if it does not
lighten the labour, abridge the hours of toil, increase
the comforts, and heighten the enjoyments of the
great majority of the human family ? We will exert
ourselves to obtain for all working men a fair share
of the advantages derivable from our various me-
chanical improvements, so that every hard-working
Englishman may become possessed of greater com-
forts than men of his class formerly enjoyed. To ef-
fect this, we shall urge that higher wages be given—
wages not merely increased in numerical amount, but
able to command a greater quantity of every useful
and necessary article. We pledge ourselves to prove
that this is attainable with' the greatest facility, de-
pending for the extent of its beneficial action solely
upon a vote of the Legislature.
To the manufacturer we propose to ensure taxa-
tion-prices • and in this respect we go beyond the
Anti-Corn-law League in our intention to provide
for his welfare. Our measures will procure his relief
not only from the pressure of the corn-law, but from
the pressure of every tax which operated to his disad-
vantage ; so that he will be free from all the fiscal
charges which at present militate against his ability
to produce goods for export at as cheap a rate as other
manufacturers in comparatively untaxed countries.
Having no fears of the consequences of a free trade
under a wholesome monetary system, we avow our-
selves able, in carrying out our views, to relieve all
the springs of industry in this country from the
burdens cast upon them by the greatness of our debt
and the weight of our annual taxation.

The agiliculturist is equally entitled to receive
taxation prices for the produce of his land. Why
should a farmer be less worthily remunerated now
than he was in the days of the Tudors and the
Stuarts ? Why should he have received a price for
his corn during the late war proportionate to the
amount of the taxation of the country, and since then,
with as heavy taxation, have had a continual decline
in his receipts, taking the average of seven or ten
years, though they have been partially upheld by a
corn-law ? For more than 150 years before the e,s:-
tablishment of the Bank of England, and while the Go-
vernment of the country exercised its proper preroga-
tive of issuing all the taxation money of the realm, the
price of wheat at Eton College was ss. 6d. per
bushel, and all this time the taxation of the country
was less than two millions a-year. For the next
century, from 1697 to 1797, while the Bank of Eng-
land furnished a circulating medium which inade-
quately represented taxation, the price of wheat at
Eton averaged only ss. 3d. per bushel, and for the
first sixty-four years, only 4s. 6d.; yet, during this
century, the annual taxation was gradually raised to
twenty millions. After 1797, when payments in gold
were suspended, the taxation was raised to more than
fifty millions a-year (not including property or income
tax), and the price increased as taxation increased,
till, for the fifteen years ending with 1819, wheat
at Eton was 11s. 9d. per bushel. We hava now a
taxation of more than fifty millions, and the price
of wheat on the general average is about 6s. per
bushel. What will it be when the corn-law 1.%
abolished or converted into a low fixed duty ?
The corn-law is not objectionable as giving toe
much protection to the agricultural interest; its fault
is its partial character. But some will say, Is not
the manufacturer also protected against foreign compe-
tition in this country by duties on imported goods ?
Nominally he is, but not really; because he makes
more goods than are required for home consumption,,
which goods he sends abroad in exchange for suc.la
articles as we import—without which exchange vre
could not have them—and all such exports are nkee.g.
sarily sold abroad for untaxed prices. Nova as he
would not sell them for so low a price 4brrjaci, if he
could obtain a higher price at home, it follows that
the foreign price becomes the governing price
of the home market, and so all protection is
lost. Whenever the farmer complies with the wishes
of those who urge him to increase, by management
and skill, the produce of his land, lie will become an
exporter, and his prices will sink, like those of the
manufacturer, to the continental level. There can
be no effectual protection for either class, except that
which may be obtained from the employment of a
tax-representing paper-money.
To producers of all kinds, whether agricultu-
rist, manufacturer, artisan, or labe;urer, we say,
" Believe not those who telk you that if
all commodities rise in Pelee, all producers
will relatively be in no better ce
:odition than they were
before." They are self-intrasted or unwise persons
who make this remark. Ey adding taxation to na-
tural or gold prices,that portion of the indirect taxes,
which cannot be borne by the productive classes in
their productive capacity, will be carried on till it is
paid at last by the consumers, whether industrious or
idle, in the degree in which their property is fairly
chargeable with taxation. It is calculated that more than
thirty millions annually are wrung from the hard earn-
ings of the poor, by means of extra toil and increased
privations, which nature cannot long endure.—lf to
this extent alone the poor are relieved, and the rich
are made to pay the taxes they consented to bear
when they were imposed, but which the adoption of
gold payments at a fixed standard has relieved them
from, and fixed cruelly and unjustly on the poor
man, it will be a gratifying result well worth the
struggle.

Let all who are dissatisfied with the condition to
which they are brought, and the further injuries they
have too much reason to dread, join us in endeavour-
ing to obtain a return to Government. Paper Money,
which is capable of doing justice to all classes of pro-
ducers,—which will give a price for corn at all times
proportionate to taxation, at all times remunerative
to the grower, ivithout being unfair to any class of
consumers.

The Society proposes to procure ale consent of the
Legislature to the repeal of the Currency Act of
1819, which has wrought all this wrong and misery,
and to recommend an issue of Government paper to
the amount of our annual taxation, being a return
to that ancient system of Exchequer money, under
which this country flrJurished from the reign of
Henry I. till the reign of Queen Anne—a
period of 600 years. Under this system, when
it Was less perfectly acted upon during
,o::
late war, our country was made happy at, " tb,4
and respected abroad. Under this system: u.Y
good providence of God,
" It was once merry Englapd,
And it shall be 'so
Office of the Society,
1 44
y,22,lTB'arl:ament-street,
February

The Lord Mayor of Dublin, and a deputation from
the Corporation, arrived last evening, for the purpose
of presenting an addrs to her MArgsry.