The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-04 00:00:00

&,btr ition

TilE FUNDS-(CLOSING PRICES).

BRITISH FUNDS.
Bank Stock . *** ............ Indian Stock pm
3 per Cent. Red — 'Ditto Bonds ........ ..... •87 pm.
3 per Cent. Cons. .....
3% per Cent. Red
New 3)4 per Cent....
New 5 per Cent. ......
Long Annuities to expire 1 Ditto 5ma11..........._ pm.
Jan. 1860.-- .... ... Bank Stock for Acct SOI
Oct. 1859 ,Consols for Acct....-. 991,i
Jan. 1860 lndia Stock for Acct.... 293 Y,
FOREIGN FUNDS. '

Austrian, 5 per Cent ......... i Portuguese, 5 per Cent —
Belgian, 5 per Cent — Ditto, New Ditto
Brazilian Bonds — Prussian, 5 per Cent .........
Buenos Ayres, 6 per Cent — Russian, 5 per Cent. 1173
Chllian, 6 per Cent .....
Colombian, 6 per Cent ..—. 15% Spanish, 5 per Cent Wi
Ditto, 1824 — Ditto, 3 per Cent 36 it
Cuba Bonds, 6 per Cent 93 Ditto, Deferred l6
Danish, 3 per Cent ........... French, 5 per Cent.......122r 7sc.
Greek, 18 5, 5 per Cent — Exchange .. ... ..... ...„. —f• —c-
Mexican, 5 per Cent .—.„ — French, 3 pe;Cent. --E —c•
Ditto, 6 per Cent., ma
Peruvian, 1825, 6 per Cent 3l Ditto, 5 per Cent lOO%

SHARES.
Bristol and Gloucester (3f) paid)
Chester and Holyhead ( 5 paid) 7%
Great Western (75 paid)
Ditto Half Shares (50 paid)
Manchester and Leeds (70 paid) ll2
Ditto Half Shares (. 0 paid)
Norwich and Brandon ( 2 paid) 7%
Newcastle and Darlington Junction (15 paid)
Paris and Orleans (20 paid)
Paris and Rouen (20 paid): ........ .. ....... -....„ :6%
South Eastern and Dover (50 paid) ........ .........„ 35%
Strasbourg and Bale (14 paid) ll3/4

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.
STANDARD.—The Quarter's Revenue, as we
stated yesterday, will be made up this evening, and
we understand that the year's account will show a
very considerable increase in all the main branches
of revenue. The quarter's -account will exhibit
an increase, as compared with the correspond-
ing quarter of last year, on every item of revenue,
thus testifying a progressive improvement in the
commerce and trade of the country, and the con-
dition of the several classes of the population. On
the year we understand the revenue will ex-
ceed that of the year ending sth April, 1843, up-
wards of one million five hundred thousand pounds ;
it probably will be nearly two millions. On the
quarter, as compared with the corresponding quarter
of last year, the accounts, as at present made up, show
an increase in the Customs of upwards of 300,0001.
In the Excise the increase is from 40,0001. to 50,0001.

The property-tax remains much the same. There is
an increase in the Post-office returns, the stamps, and
in every other branch of the public revenue.
GLOBE.—" We are assured," says the Times of
this morning, "on unquestionable authority, that the
rumour current yesterday on the subject of the meet-
ing at Sir Robert Peel's is wholly without founda-
tion. The dismission did not turn at all on the Fac-
tory Bill, nor was there any threat of dissolution."
The " child at Limerick" being the "killed," and the
" report contradicted," we turn from the Times facts
to its theories on the Factory question. The Times
takes Sir James Graham to task for the following

passage of his speech on that question :
" I will now pass -to another argument hardly less
terrifying—the argument that a e have now arrived at a
new social state—(Loud cries of " Hear")—such as to lead
to a departure from all fixed principles which have
hitherto guided the wisest men on the subject ; that
we must meet this new social state by a new scheme of
legislation on this matter, and that whereas all men
have hitherto held that interference with the market
of free labonr was unjustifiable, or only to be justified
in a strong exceptional case, this rule must now be in-
verted and legislative interference must be general;
there must be no limit, excepting not even the necessity
of the case, but even the possibility of the case.—(Hear,
hear.) . . . I say a more dangerous course
has never yet been opened to the view of a legislative
assembly. Within the last forty-eight hours I have seen
sin expression used, to which, on the whole, I am willing
to give my assent—that this is the commencement of a
Jack Cade system of legislation."
To this the Times replies, that the Poor-law
Amendment Act (upheld by Sir James Graham, for
which effcnce the Home Secretary seems to have
succeeded Lord Brougham as the Times' " whipping
boy") was founded on the same argument which Sir
James objects to—that we had arrived at a new social
state
On the very supposition that we had arrived at a
new state of things—that cur increasing population
burdened the land, and that our increasing trade and
commerce afforded an opportunity for relieving the
land of that burden—the very persons now so old-
fashioned and timorous did ten years back, either as
principals or accomplices, perpetrate the New Poor-law—
the greatest social revolution England has yet seen, and
the greatest break into existing law, and rule, and prece-
cedents Yet when this new state of things, thus created,
imperiously demands to be met in its turn by new mea-
sures—when the most prominent necessity of the day is
protection of labour—our statesmen suddenly affect a
constitutional horror of novelty. Nothing is too new
when the landlord or the capitalist asks them for relief;
but when the millions are at their feet, then, For hea-
ven's sake,' they say, ' let's have no novelty.' Thus do
they ride and tie with protection and political economy,
with novel emergency and legislative precedent."
According to the Times, then, the New Poor-law
created a new state of things—and thereby created a
necessity for new measures of" protection for labour."
'Those who supported the New Poor-law are incon-
sistent in refusing to support these new measures.
Presently, however, the Times discovers that the new
state of things is "not of our making,"—not, there.
fore, of Sir James Graham's making, nor the New
Poor. laws ;—and that those who supported that mea-
rare were right in their view of the circumstances on
-which they founded it :
" Such is the present exigency. A new power cf
nattlye has suddenly started up in the midst of us, as if
it were a mighty river suddenly gushing out of the
earth, or a new order of existences, half brutal, half
rational, with which we suddenly found ourselves
allied. The whole nation feels its benefit ; in
&Jury its aid ; but the labourer its competition. At
the same time our population has fearfully increased
tar beyond our natural capabilities. These changes
are not of our making ; Heaven has sent them. We
eunnot close our eyes to the fact. Though we
trisd to reject the fact as a whole, still we
should be obliged to encounter it in a thousand de.
liws. The disorders of the country are new. Their
symptom are anomalous and monstrous, if we look only
to what has been before. The learned practitioner can-
not find them in the old works of pathology ; or, if he
thinks he has identified the new with the old, is set right
at last by the discovery that he has made some fatal
blunder.. A vast and friendless population, driven
through the most miserable straitness of life, thronging
toed crushing, and treading on one another, pass be-
tween the Scylla of excessive working and the Charyb-
dis 4sf destitution. Where shall we find the like of this
in history ? Then, why are we to insist on the neces-
sity of a legislative precedent, if there be none exactly
so the purpose ?"
The Times, then, subscribes to the opinion that
.4 our population has fearfully increased far beyond
our natural capabilities." how does the limes har-
tmonise this opinion with its other opinion (implied
'by its support of the old poor-law practice—for the
prineiple of poor-law relief still subsists—nor is there
anything uprecedented in unions of parishes, nor in
union-workhouses)—the opinion, namely, that it is
the duty of parishes to enable every man to live com-
fortably on his native spot—to make good t o every man
from public funds any deficiency of support which he
can derive from his hereditary mode of industry, unless,
on this theory of parochial obligation, the Times' poor-
law talk is meaningless. But this theory of pa-
rochial obligation is untenable, if it is true (as the
Times also thinks), that " our population has fear-
fu:ly increased far beyond our natural capabilities."
To Juarantee support to the labouring people in
their ,ssative parishes, and their old employments,
is to set on the presumption that they have not
" incretwel beyond our natural capabilities." But
the Times .say they have. We can tell the Times that it
has a battle -to fight for its own consistency before it
is in a positio,i to take up the cudgels against Sir J.
Graham's. Le,:Wing the 7 imes to reduce to harmony
as it can its own clashing propositions, we take that
one of them which we think true—that our people
increase beyond our merely internal resources—and
we pursue no further, for the present, the plain ad-
vantage this gives us against an adversary who is
incessantly clamouring for the right of labourers,
wherever they are born, there to be main-
tained from those resources— for migration is usually
.necessary to take advantage of other resources
—those, namely, supplied by manufactures and com-
merce. We leave the Times, for the present, unmo.
lesto:1 in its elf-contradictory statu quo on that
/point, We make use of its admission solely as it
tears on the factory question. What is the inference
as regards that question, from the admitted increase
of our population far beyond our natural capabili•
ties ? • Is it not that we are to that extent (a
large extent, by the showing of the Times) dependent
on foreign demand, and on foreign returns for our
manufactured products? (When we say foreign,
we include colonial, which Lord Stanley treated as
:foreign, on Mr. Hutt's motion.) Is the inference rea-
sonable that we can afford to tie our hands, and to
slacken our machinery—that we can afford to produce
less for demand, just in proportion as we want more in
supply? It is not perhaps wonderful that so large
a section of those politicians should legislate to limit
our means of buying, who have legislated against our
.having the things we want to buy. As well play for
*nothing as work for nothing. A restrictive Time Bill
may be not an unnatural pendant to a restrictive corn-
law. But ever so many restrictions will not make
one liberty. Short hours are not cheap bread : and
short bread involves long work toall who are so happy
as to get it.

The Aberdeen Steam Navigation Company's steam
alit, City of Aberdeen, arrived on Tuesday forenoon, with
213 fat cattle, and a large cargo of general goods; and the
mme
la nun..'it the Duke of Welling arrived, with 274 cattle, the
tier ever shipped by one vessel ; the latter princi-
rgest fair.. The whole arrived in tine order, and
Pally for Bam
Com any'snew remises at 257 Wa
waliediashoreb.,4 6PP' ' PP