The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-23 00:00:00

tent—we have not that very first and the foundation
of all liberty, the liberty to work freely and to enjoy
in security and unplundered the fruits of our own
labour.—(Applause.) And what is the most extra-
ordinary part of the business, we have been argued
into the belief that this very infraction of our liber-
ties was a benefit conferred upon us by a paternal and
protective Government. There can be no doubt that
multitudes of people in this country have believed that
the protective principle had something in it likely to
increase national and individual benefit ; and the
same belief is in operation now to some extent. We
are not to suppose that the men who are in favour of
the corn-law are necessarily dishonest men. I believe
there are landlords so extraordinarily stupid as still
to believe the corn-law is beneficial to the land,
and not injurious to manufactures—(Applause)—
and it would be hard for me to assert that all the persons
in our town—and there a few of them, middle-class
men and manufacturers—who support this protective
system, are dishonest in their views. I believe many
of them are honest in what they do ; but I believe
they cannot be honest and intelligent if they support
a law so wicked and mischievous as this.—(Applause.)
But amongst the working classes this principle is
now held to a very great extent; and there are found
in all towns of the kingdom combinations to exclude
their own order from certain privileges, in certain
trades ; and there are many regulations which, how-
ever injurious to trade and to the employers of labour,
are more so to the labourers themselves. This I only
mention as a circumatarca arising from the very
same spirit, the very same mistake by which protec-
tive statutes and enactments have crept into the code
of this and every other country.—(Applause.) I be-
lieve no man has ever yet been able to assign any
cause for the late period of depression but the recur-
rence o(bad harvests, and the existence of a corn-law
preventing us from removing the evil effects of those
bad harvests.—(Applause. We have trade now com-
paratively Posperous; for a period there has been a
better profit to manufacturers generally, and far more
employment and considerably better wages for the
workmen and I have no doubt whatever, if the shop-
keepers of this town were to meet together and com-
pare notes, they would find universally that, contrast-
ing their business now with what it was three years
ago, other circumstances being the same, their busi-
ness had greatly improved, and that they had fewer
debts in their books than they had at that period.
—(Applause) I was speaking the other day with
a gentleman who lives, or is often engaged in
pusiness, in a part of this town where he has the op-
portunity of seeing people passing to and from a large
establiihment for the sale of furniture; and he said
he had noticed, for suites months past, an amount of
business going on at that shop and warehouse which
he hall not seen for years before. We all know that
three or four years ago the pawnbrokers were the
people who were doing all the business ; in some
towns there was more poverty than the pawnbrokers
could live upon.—(liear, hear.) Now those things
which bed gone to the sign of the three halls are gra-
dually making their way back again to the cottages
of the working people.--(Applause.) And when we
consider how much there is in all this, how much
there is in the improvement of trade of all that is im-
portant to a cuintry and a people, I think we shsll
not judge light!y or unwisely in considering this
(oration to he at this moment the most important that,
can eng.!ie the renl:on or intelligent and reflecting)
men.—(Applaus.) No N, whet is meant by ire prove-
ru. ent in trade ? :;-ople think that it means that
manufacturers are gett. more profit. Wei!, it does
mean CIO, and a gre!lt dc al more •; it mcaes that the
vorkpoor,le are hettor r.n,pl-yetk and gating better
witg,s; it means that now and then a man v.ho is an
over-looker in a factorycr a "vk OrliSh fp is finding the
means to set up for him,-oh; and that is one of the
finest things that can ha fund in any country. It is
just one of those things that are never found in the
agricultural districts ; but it, is found here every day.
—(I-lean.) But it means a great deal more than this.
Improvement in trade means that there is a saving in
human lire; not that men are not cut off by the hand
of the executioner, or by the sword, but that they are
not cut off' by the band of famine—(flcar, hear)-
-tvhich is about the most ruthless, most relentless, and
morzt cruel of all modes of disposing of the human
race.—(Loud applause.) It may not have come within
your observation, htt from the returns made by the
registrar•general, T3Fc[trs that the mortality in the
ifistrict is very gre::i-iy diminished since the period
cf high prices of v. heat ; and it has been observed in
Frvice, as well as in this country, and I believe it

will ►.• e observed in all countries where any accurate
statistical account is kept, that just about in propor-
tion as the price of the staple articles of human food
rises, just in that proportion the human animal sinks,
decays, dies, and ultimately must become extinct.—
(Hear, hear.) I have here an extract from the regis-
trar's report for the district which he calls the north-
west division, and I'll read you the number of death!,
which were registered in 1840, when prices were very
high, when there was great stagnation in trade,
and great distress, owing to the very high rate of
:food, and the number registered in 1843. It is as
;follows :

1840. 1843.
Bolton
Bury 2,170
Rochdale
Preston 9,637
Blackburn
Wigan 9,144
Prescot 1,155
Manchester
Ashton . 4,873

26,196 23,334
" Tien :s a difference, in the deaths, of 2,862 indi-
viduals in one year, in nine districts only of the one
hundred and fifteen comprised in the return. What
can be the cause of this A sufficient answer to us
may be found in the words of the worthy registrar
slur Little Bolton—` that it is chiefly owing to the im-
proved condition of the working classes.' It is a
great and convincing fact of the murderous effect of
the famine laws, and restrictions upon trade." But
this involves a consideration of much higher import-
ance than whether manufacturers get little or great
profit. Who are the individuals, those 2,862 indivi-
aivale, whom this return proves to have fallen victims
to these laws ?—(Hear, hear.) Not the indivi-
duals who passed the law; not lords, not rich men,
rot people in comfortable circumstances; they are of
a different order altogether—men whose only inhe-
ritance is the strength of their arrn and the intelli-
gence of their head—the working class of this coun-
try.—(Loud applause.) Old men and old women,
ssvho might have lived years longer to watch the pro-
ress of their families, are cut off and hurried to the
g •
ra st by this law.—(hear, hear.) Aye, and many a
poor unfortunate child, who came into existence
during that disastrods period, which might otherwise
have lived to have blessed its parents, has been taken
to its grave, even those parents blessing God that he
bad removed it from the misery it was likely to
share. And these men, who ttlk about State policy,
and about expediency, and about the burdens upon
land, and mortgages to be paid, and marriage
settlements upon daughters—(Applause)—if it could
ever enter into their minds that horrors like these
were being perpetrated in every district of this
country, their inhuman law doing its working, and
doing it most faithfully, I ask you what must be the
character of those men if they could resist the fer-
vent call made upon them, by the united working
people of this country, for the abandonment of this
system, and the liberation of the industry of this
trampled and :insulted nation ?—(Loud applause.)
But there is another point to which I would refer
you. The people of this country are of an order who
will not sink down and die without making an effort
to save themselves. It is said " the mighty camel
dies 'neath heaviest load ;" but man was not made
for an end so ignominious and contemptible as that.
--(Applause.) The people of this country will
,travel all earth before they will die of starvation in
their own country ; and, driven by excessive penury
to seek a refuge in foreign lands, they find that bread
under the Republican Government of America, which
their own paternal Government denies them at home.
--(Applause.) I have here a return of the number
of persons who have emigrated from this country
since 1838:-
1838 ........... •
1839 ....... .. •
1840
1841
1842
1843

33,222
65,207
90,743
118,502
128,344
57,212

Total
How does it happen that all these facts come together
and corroborate each other ? They are not picked
out of returns prepared and got up by the members of
.the Anti-Corn-law League, but from rt,turns fur-
nished by Government.—(Applause.) Arguments
are as plentiful as blackberries in the season ; you may
go to any district, agricultural or trianufacturin:4, and
I declare it is impssible to fix on any point, or get
hold of any statistks but what will conduct to
the same conclusion ; they all condemn this infamous
law.--(Applause.) The llon. Gentleman referred to
'f3e circumstances under winch these emigrants left,
an observed that it was not like the sons of aristocrats
goicx- to make the grsnd tour ; they tore thomselves
away titan associations as strong as any men felt, and
for whg-i That th-nitel,es their ehi:dre-a
.obtain a .-nahttenance He had seen an emigrant ship
leaving the dock at Liverpooi, all weeping on hoard,
anti the it friends onshore equally at taLitrr
thei:lnst leave of them. it was often reMarked that
Enoitthmen who had gone to America s l'o bitterly
of their own emintry ; but when it waA remembered
I;that they had been I.,,rced away by the Government,
glr,l saw the very whcitt for which they pined
Iceke,,4 up in bond in Liverpool, could it be won.
,3 red That they kit W:;
~land with a malediction
in their n.•cnth!., t0,,5e,1; in;' iivi under a mere just
r`7l,CL't to erinx, in 1826-7,
Governmern,