The Sun.
London, England, 1850-02-04 00:00:00

MONDAY

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE
BRADFORD REFORM ASSOCIATION.
Sir,—Oo Friday night there was the repetition of one
of the scenes for which past Houses of Commons }save
been famous, on occasion of your representative's
insisting on stating the case of the Bradford manu-
facturers and operatives, as he was engaged to do by
what had passed at his last visit to your teen.
At the same time it is but justice to say, that there
were evidences that the progress of the age has made
its way in this direction as well as others. The dif-
ficulty of being heard, it is true, was such as, though
tolerably experienced in the kind of thing from ser-
vice with the League, I never remember equalled
except in the meeting of the representatives of the
League with the Chartists in the Town Hall of Bir-
mingham in February 1844. But the noises were
all human. Neither ass nor cock lift up their voices in
the agricultural ranks. For all signs of the march of
intellect, let us be duly thankful.
Not to repeat without necessity, I will' refer you to
the best report that circumstances would admit cf, in
the columns of Saturday's Sun. My business now is
to impress on you, and on our friends in still more
extensive manufacturing communities with whom I
have no doubt a constant and lively sympathy is
maintained, the importance of two or three leading
points ; and I do it with the confidence of one who
has not been altogether unsuccessful in times past, in
pointing out the road to present liberation and to
future safety.
The first point I want to impress, is the importance
of keeping up the habit and practice of Public Meet•
ings, for the purpose of examining with deliberation
the questions which the constitution and practice of
Parliament are not adapted for entertaining. If cer-
tain propositions connected with the preservation of
your rights and fortunes, turn Parliament into a
whirlpool, it is in the calm shades of the Free
Trade Hall, and your own Temperance-devoted
building, that the discussion must necessarily be
carried on. Or if the simple fact were that the
Parliamentary vessel overflows, it would be an out•
rageous policy that would think of blaming our at-
tempt to preserve the over-runnings.
The second point is, that the question the Protec-
tionist party cannot bear, to be presstd with, is that
of justice. Pinch them there, and like an unsound horse
they cough. We have what in military language is
called, felt the enemy, and ascertained the point
on which he is most jealous of being ap-
proached. It utterly breaks down their patience to
ba asked, why* manufacturei or operative of Bradford
should not as well call for a twenty years' tax of twenty
shillings a quarter on home-grown corn as the means
of increasing the quantity of his goods which shall be
exported to pay for corn, as the agriculturists demand
a tax of the same nature or a return to it. But
there are circumstances in their case which claim your
commiseration. They have unhappily been born to
the belief, or have imbibed it from the instructions cf
their fathers, that they have the same right to your
property and labour which a proprietor in South Ca-
rolina thinks he has' in his negroes. There are ex-
ceptions ; but the irrational are perfectly intractable in
their insanity. They may disguise it as they please,
but your genuine Protectionist honestly believes that
if all the Orchidaceous plants of South America are
collected at Crow Nest, it is so much clear robbery
of what ought to have been handed over to the
agriculturist body ; and that if the hospitalities
of your Mayor approximate to those of his metropo-
litan elder brother, it is only the result of the same
moral obliquity. You cannot set right the under-
standings of your adversaries, except by effectually
resisting them.
My third point is to try to throw light on the road
to such resistance. The Protectionists are loud and
incessant in their assurances that they will persevere
till they get back again. Ask then, on what their
actual strength, and with it their chance of getting
back again, depends. It depends, among other things,
en this ;—that there is an organization by which Man•
chester with its fourteen thousand constituents, and
the Tower Hamlets with its fifteen thousand, and you
with your four thousand if it is grown to so much
since the last election, shall each send to Parliament
the same number of votes as a little agricultural
borough with three hundred. Put the case, that
all the constituencies sent a number of representa-
tives proportioned to their numbers, but the law
was that in any contest between the commercial and
the agricultural interests, fifty votes in one lobby
should only count for one in the other. Fancy that
it was the duty of the Speaker to say, on a division
in the success of which you were interested, " The
Ayes to the One-per-head lobby, the Noes to the
Fifty," and you will see the full deformity of
the system which applies the same rule under a dif-
ferent aspect. As sensible men, will you continue
this, when, like Bunyan's Pilgrim, you " have the
key called Promise in your pocket." If the operative
classes would drop the delusions of a visionary
Socialism, which has filled Europe with blood
and tears when every country in Europe
might at this moment have been in the en-
joyment of constitutional governments, and instead
of that apply themselves to a hearty junction with the
Free Traders for bringing the representation to some-
thing like a fair position for the interests of the differ-
ent classes of the industrial community,—and if your
wealthier classes would use the calm which in-
creased comfort has induced in the minds of
those in their employment, in pointing out
the strong interest employers and employed have
in pulling down the stronghold of those who are at
this moment riding round }our borders and swearing
that half of every morsel which goes into the mouth
of a Bradford labourer is theirs and they will have it,
—a force of united opinion might be produced,
before which it is the avowed necessity of all parties
in this country to bow. You must drive your
adversaries farther, or they vow and protest
that they will drive you. I want to see the leaders and
the men go together. The Free Trade notorieties are
the ready-made guides. The men are the operative
classes, who, if they will not move on this most in-
viting of occasions to preserve the feeding of themselves
and families, will leave me nothing to request of them
but that in the season of their repentance, they will
record that their representative did the duty of an
honest man in doing his best to point out to them
the way.
If your representative is told he should have risen
earlier, he will probably reply, that he rose five
times, and what could man do more ?
On another opportunity you shall receive more in
elucidation of our position.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
London, Feb. 4,1650. AN OLD REFORMER.

(From the 1-Ifrald.)
PROTECTIONISM.
Present of Country party ... •••
Tell _rs ••• •••
Pairs ...
.414. Awes
Present 'Whig Protectionists ...

FREE-TRADERS.
Whigs and. Radicals present «.Tellers ..
Pairs ... ••• ..• •••
Peelites
Desertions from Country party

INFORMATION for the MILLION.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
Sir,—ln your paper of Tuesday evening, Jan. 29,
there is an article headed " Drinking," from Eliza
Cook's Journal.
I have always been an admirer, and am so still, of
whatever comes from her pan, especially in the pre-
sent case, where she clearly establishes the insane and
unnecessary prrotice of drinking,—the more so as she
proves to a demonstration that drink, with its villan-
ous
an b
compounds,
brings on premature death.
W more beautiful than where she says,
"Drink destroys man's self-respect, eats away his
moral character, makes him powerless to resist the
insidious approaches of vice, saps the foundation of his
spiritual being, ruins his health, brutalizes his intel-
lect, impoverishes his family, desolates his home, and
spreads a moral pestilence throughout society:'
In one part of her letter I respectfully beg to set
her right (also the public), where she says commercial
men treat their customers; this is very seldom the
case (there may be a few honourable exceptions), but
it is a well known fact in the commercial world,
generally speaking, that customers treat the commer-
cials. There is not much thought of a commercial if
he is not up to the scheme of selling a few articles,
in the course of taking his order, at a price sufficient
to make both of them drunkthat evening. Who pays
for it? of course the shopkeeper, and what is worse
the shopkeeper loses twice as much the next day, not
being fit to attend to his business from a bad headache
occasioned by the rillanous compounds put into the
liquor by the innkeeper, so as to have double profit,
not caring about the life of either the commercial
or shopkeeper. Meantime I beg to assure Miss
Cook that the commercial men of the present day are
not the abject wretches she thinks them ; they are
very much reclaimed from what they used to be
twenty years ago ; at that time they used to swim in
whisky, brandy, and gin, but now they float lin a
more pure and intellectual atmosphere,
and are becom-
ing every day more and more enlightened, so as to be
an ornament to society—a benefit to the State and
their fellow-man (Cobden to wit)—so much so that
in a very short time drinking will altogether be
banished from their minds.

I recollect being told of an occurrence once taking
place in Berkshire of a commercial asking his cus-
tomer to take a pipe with him in the evening,—this
was one who forgot to lay on a little additional profit
in taking his order; he never forgot that pipe, nor
never will, it cost him about 6s. or 7s. ; as for the pipe
and tobacco it was nothing, it was the trimmings that
did the mischief (the whisky and brandy that fol-
lowed) ; he bas assured me that ever since that he
would not run the risk again of even asking his
father to take a pipe for fear of the consequences.
PAUL PRY
Of the new school, who dislikes either arsenic,
whisky, or brandy—the one is certain death,
the others, in the villanous compound state yon
get them, produce the worst of all deaths—a
lingering one.

PREFERMBNTS.—The Lord Chancellor has pre-
santed tha Reverend Charles Moldy to the rectory t.,f
Taplow, Bucks. His Lordship hes also presented the
Reverend Joseph Willey to the vicrage of Drax, York-
shire; and the Rev. Thomas Hill to the Perpetual ca-
mpy of St. Trinity, Afinorieo.

EVENING, PEBRAJARY 4, 1850

PROTECTIONIST ANALYSIS OF
THE DIVISION ON THE All. DRESS.

Absent of Country party, without pairs
Country party supporting Government ~..

,ENT witsrour PAIRS.
Hall, Colonel (unavoidably
absent at Windsor
Castle)
Lennox, Lord A. (ill)
Lockhart, Major
Macnaghten, Sir E.
Newry, Lord
O'Brien, Sir L.
Pennent, Colonel
Pigot, Sir R.
Robinson, G. (ill)
St. George, Christopher
Sidney, Alderman
Stephenson, B.
Vesey, Hon. J.
Vivian, J. E.
Vyvyan, Sir R.
Wegg, P. F. R.
West, F. R.
AGAINST A3IENDMENT.
Johnstor, Sir J.
Legb, G. C.
Monsell, W.
Pakingt n, Sir J.
Plowden, W. 11.
Pugh, D.
Reid, Colonel
Sandars, George
Sandars, J.
Stuart, 11.
Turner, G.
ES WHO VOTED FOR THE
>MEET. -
Grattan, H.
Harcourt, G. G. (Peelite,
Heathcote, G.
Pusey, P. (Peelite)
Sadleir, J.
SUPPORTED GOVERNMENT.
Lindsay, Hon. Colonel
Lockhart, A. E.
Mackinnon, W. A.
Mahon, Viscount
Martin C. W.
Mure, bolonel
Owen, Sir J.
Palmer, Roundell
Peel; flight Hon. Sir R.
Peel, Colonel
Peel, F.
Smythe, Hon. G.
Thesiger. Sir F.
Villiers. Viscount
Wellesley, Lord C.
Wortley, Right Hon. J. S.
Young, Sir J.

THE MAGAZINES, &c.
BLACK WOOD.'
Oliver Goldsmith furnishes a beautiful theme for a
biographical paper, prefixed to the miscellaneous con-
tributions in the February number of Blachwood.
Regarding Mr. Washington Irving as the best, be-
cause the least discursive, biographer of Goldsmith,
the magazine writer pens upon his recently re-written
Life a genial and most agreeable criticism. Nothing
can be in more excellent taste than this able and
fascinating review—throughout earnest, discrimina-
tive, and judicious. The exceptions drawn to the argu-
ment of both Mr. Irving and Mr. Forster, to the effect
that our author was a fop less from any innate vanity
than from a painful consciousness of his own personal
deficiencies, are the most ingenious, but it appears
to us the least ingenious, too, of all the adverse com-
ments on those two generous and intelligent bio-
graphers. That a theory so kindly should excite
the spleen of any reviewer is to us matter for
astonishment, and splenetic assuredly the annotations
are, upon those divisions of the two performances.
The estimate given of the personal character and in-
tellectual capacity of Oliver Goldsmith, by way of
induction to the notice of his wayward and chequered
career, is conceived in a very different temper,
and is altogether admirably accurate The portraiture
of his unpropitious youth, the account of his dullness
at school and college, the record of his eccentric and
improvident manhood, are all excellent. But most
excellent of all is the mention made of his untimely
death at 46 years of age, and the deep affliction felt
by all his loving friends at his departure. Beautifully
has Washington Irving penned this portion of his
narrative, telling us how Burke, "on hearing the
Ir.news, burst into tears ;" how Sir Joshua Reynolds
" threw aside his pencil for the day, and grieved
more than he had done in times of great family dis-
tress ;" how Dr. .MaDonnell "wept bitterly at the
intelligence ;" and how Dr. Johnson " felt the
blow deeply and gloomily." Then it is, moreover, that
we hear with tender admiration that there was beard
the "lamentation of the old and infirm, and the sob •
bing of women" on the stairs leading to the poor dead
poet's chambers in the Temple, while the reader's
heart melts within him at that charming but affecting
incident of the coffin-lid being unscrewed to cut off a
lock of Oliver Goldsmith's hair at the request of a'
lady, a particular friend—that lock of his hair being
treasured to her dying day by the beautiful Mary
Horneck, the Jessatny Bride I Two delightful
magazine papers follow this admirable biographic
sketch of Goldsmith, the one entitled the "Siege of
Dunbeg, or the Stratagems of War;" the other
headed "Agrippa d'Aubigne and Madame de Main-
tuon." Every artist in England should turn to the
subsequent contribution—being a most judicious,
careful, and intelligent criticism on the recently
published memoir of William Collins, Royal
Academician. The preliminary remarks eulogistic
of the style of Georgio Vasari are to us most
agreeable, seeing that that glorious biographer has
ever been numbered among our especial favourites.
"Tho Green Hand" drags its slow length along,
without affording any apparent token of its approach-•
ing termination. After another elaborated exposition
of the evils of free trade and the advantages (!) of pro-
tection, Blackwood, in a huge appendix of 122 closely
printed pages, gives verbatim et seriatim the opinions
expressed by various journals upon its previous dis-
quisition on " British Agriculture and Foreign Com-
petition." The article and its cumbrous supplemen'
demand more than a merely passing consideration.

_BENTLEY'S. MISCELLANY.
The present number of Bentley opens with the
three first chapters of the second book of Mr. Robert
Bell's admirable novel "The Ladder of Gold," a
work which is destined to hold a permanent place
among the English classics as the best portraiture of
the life and manners of the English people during the
first half of the nineteenth century that has yet been
given to the public. Without the exaggeration of
Dickens or the caricature of Thackeray, Mr. Bell
is equal to either as an appreciator and delineator
of character, manners, and customs, and superior to
either as a describer of out-of-door scenery. In these
chapters Richard Rawlings, the hero, ascends various
steps of the ladder of gold ; having married the
widow of Ragglee, and succeeded to the shop, he
soon after acquires a great increase of pro-
perty in consequence of the death of the uncle
of his wife at Tours, to which city he goes to reap
the rich succession. He travels to Paris with a cer-
tain Mr. Tom Chippendale, a shrewd London attorney,
who directs him to an agent at Tours, a Mr. Sloake,
an Englishman, and this gives occasion to a delight-
ful little episode, which reads like an unpublished
fragment of Sterne's. On his return to England
Richard Rawlings invests certain sums of money,
under the advice of Mr. Chippendale, from which he
derives a large profit. " The first taste of gold-
breeding experience," lays our author, "is like the
taste of blood," and we are, therefore, not
surprised to find that Richard Rawlings dis-
poses of his shop, takes a "residence," and becomes
money lender on a large scale. The scene in which
" he transacts important business" with Lord Yalta-
line, is one of the most admirably-finished pen-and-
ink pictures ever drawn. This scene, and the scene
of the departure of the Rawlingses per coach from
Yarlton, are the subjects of the two illustrations of
Bentley fur the present month. The "Ladder of
Gold" is followed by a dry and humorous Yankee
story, showing "how Simon Suggs raised Jack," and
Maxwell begins the" Biography of Richard Raffety,"
a gentleman whose further acquaintance we mach
desire to cultivate. Mr. S. D. Huyghue, a gentle-
man who was employed in Canada under the Boun-
dary Commission, contributes an interesting ac-
count of a winter passed in the back woods
of Canada, and Turtini's ;Familiar" gives us
a pleasant biography cf Frederick Chopin.
" Old Times, by Captain Blue Anchor, R.N.," of
which we have here the first number, promises well.
" Le Potage de Caporal" is one of the best yarns that
has been spun for many a long day " The Souve-
nirs of Versailles, St. Cloud, Neuilly, and the
Tuileries," also promise to be of much interest. No
buildings are so rich in legends of love, intrigue, and
crime, as the palaces of the Kings of France. The
present paper, entitled the " Galerie de Bourbon,"
gives a thrilling history of the poisoning of the Dau-
phin, the father of Louis XVI., by the Jesuits (of
which body he was a member), in revenge fur his
alleged inability to prevent the expulsion of the order
from France. There are several other interesting
papers in Bentley besides the usual admirable
review of the current literature cf the month.