The Sun.
London, England, 1850-02-21 00:00:00

SLAVE TRADE.

Sir E. BUXTON presented a petition from tho county
of Cornwall, in the island of Jamaica, praying the House
to exclude the produce of slave-encouraging states from
British markets.

JUVENILE OFFENDERS.
Mr. M. MILNES obtained leave to bring in a Bill
for the correction and reformation of juvenile offenders,
and the prevention of juvenile offences.
ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION.
Sir MONTAGUE CHOLMELEY said he had in-
tended to have asked leave this evening to bring in
a Bill to enable the Ecclesiastical Commissioners,
and ecclesiastical bodies, sole and corporate, lessors
of estates held for a term of years or on lives,
to commute their interest therein for an annual
rent charge (either fixed money payment or corn rent),
and to appropriate, at their discretion, the whole or a part
of such payment, for the augmentation of the livings of
the parish in which such estate is situated. Since, however,
he had given notice of his intention, he had seen the re-
port of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in which certain

recommendations were made to the Government, on the
matters which the Bill he contemplated embraced. If
the Government intended to bring in any Bill this ses-
sion, founded on those recommendations, he (Sir M.
Cholmeley) would rather leave the subject in the bands
of the Government, who were much more capable of
handling it than he was; and, if such was their inten-
tion, he would withdraw the motion.
Sir GEORGE GREY said the Government had it in
contemplation to bring in a Bill partly founded on the
recommendations of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners,
and which he thought would embrace the objects of the
Hon. Member's motion.
AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS.—ADJOURNED
DEBATE.

Mr. DISRAELI presented petitions from several
places inJfitickinghamshire, praying that the petitioners
might be placed in the same favourable position as the
rest of their fellow-subjects.
The orders of the day were then proceeded to, when
Mr. A. STAFFORD said that he had been exceed-
ingly pleased in finding that the Ministry of the day had
not refused their sanction to the complaint which
had been made respecting distress in the agricultural
districts. Still more was he pleased when he found
that the two questions which had forced themselves
upon the public mind—namely, the existence of the dis-
tress and the continuance of it—had been publicly re-
cognised by the men in power. The existence of the
distress was not denied, and the necessity for its reduc-
tion bad been acknowledged by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.--(Hear, hear.) That Right Honourable
Gentleman had declared that the only relief that
could be obtained by she agricultural classes could be
derived from no other source than a rise in prices.
He thought that the Right Hon. Gentleman opposite
or ed them acme explanation, at least of the advanced
stage at which cheapness ceased to be a blessing and
becomes a curie. He had charged this side of the
House with deceiving the farmers with holding out dc-

lusive bores to them of a return to protection. He
thought that such an accusation came with
a very ill-grace from Gentlemen on that side
when they were for the healing up the... farmers'
wounds, by foretelling a :rise in prices; from gentle-
men who were in the habit of valuing everything by
its cheapness, it was something new to hear them fore-
tellingiprosperity in consequence of a rise inprices. The
Right Honourable Baronet had taunted his Hon.
Friend with not introducing the subject ot the law of
settlement into his resolutions, but his Hon. Friend (Mr.
Disraeli) was quite willing, if the House went into
Committee, to adopt any resolution which might be
thrown out with reference to the law of settle-
ment, but he must remind the House that any
alteration which might result in their statistics would
rather astonish Honourable Gentlemen opposite.
He must say, and be did so with great :regret, that
when the Secretary for the Home Department brought
forward the small number of paupers in the agri-
cultural districts as an argument why no consider-
ation should be given to the claims of the
landed interest, he, in his high position, offered
a very poor inducement to the employers ot

. . -
labour in those districts to continue the system which. at
great inconvenience to themselves, they had continued,
in order to diminihh the amount of pauperism in their
respective parishes. He certainly could not imagine
that they gave an opportunity to an officer of the Go-
ernment by making those exertions to say that
they disentitled themselves to the consideration
of their claims.—(Hear.) They had been exposed to the
competition of the whole world, and had been told that
it was to the interest of every one to buy in the cheapest
market and to sell in the dearest; and when they be-
came distressed in certain districts, by acting on the
principles laid down by the Legislature, and by trying to
get the commodity of labour in the cheapest market, the
Right Ron. Gentleman (Sir George Grey) seemed
wholly oblivious to those great principles, and declared
that wages had been unduly reduced. That Right Hon.
Gentleman had, in fact, conceded the whole argument to
them, and he thought, after the statement made by the
Hon. Member for Surrey the other night he would be
convinced of his inconsistency, if not of the dangerous
nature of the principles he advocated.—(Hear, hear.)
The Right Hon. Gentleman said the criminal returns
were highly favourable, and quoted a charge of the
Learned Recorder, in which mention was made of the
extent of crime prevailing in the metropolis in 1849 as
compared with 1848, and showing that there had been a
large decrease in the former years. He doubted, however,
whether the Learned Recorder would draw the same con-
clusion from this which the Right Hon. Gentleman had,
for in 1848 the Chartist disturbances made the criminal
offences higher than they otherwise would have been.—
(Hear, hear.) But a Scotch return had been put into
his hand which showed an increase rather than
a decrease in crime. It was a return for
the county of Dumfries, which represented that
in 1845 the property stolen only amounted to
2321. 135., while the amount stolen in 1849 reached to
8351. Now, if the Right Hon. Baronet had a right to
draw conclusions from one return, surely he had a right
to do the same from another; and the Right Hon. Ba-
ronet ought to see, from this, how very little statistics
can bear upon the real merits of the case.—(Hear,
hear.) The Honourable Member for Manchester

folloWing the Right Honourable Baronet, quoted the
criminal returns for 1836 at 20,000 as the lowest, and
for 1847 at the lowest, but the Hon. Gentleman should
have remembered, when he did so, that in 1836
we had a stringent corn-law, while in 1847 free
. trade was in full operation, and if any con-
, elusion, therefore, was to be drawn from that
it was one that would militate against his side.--
(Hear, hear.) The Hon. Gentleman also told them that
when corn became remunerative crime increased, and if
they were to draw anything from that argument, it was
simply that corn ought not to be grown at all except at
a loss. The Hon. Member for Manchester on Tuesday night
adopted a tome which he (Mr. Stafford) must say, if he
intended it to be the charmer's voice, to lure Hon. Mem-
bers to vote with him, was the most extraordinary pro-
duction he had ever heard. Whatever professions of qua-
pathy might be shown on the Ministerial side of the
House towards the sufferings of the agricultural
class, the Hoe. Member for Manchester did not disguise
that he cordially hated the agriculturists.—(Laughter.)
He (Mr. Stafford) firmly believed the Hon. Member
hated them both individually and as a class. When the
Hon. Member said he was not the farmers' friend, he
could understand from the cheers which that ex-
pression elicited on that (the Protectionist) side of
the House, how cordially they believed him.—(Cheers.)
But he (Mr. Stafford) would like to know whose friend
the Hon. Member for Manchester was? How angry
ought the Hon. Member to be with every man who
wished untaxed windows in his house, and who wanted a
repeal of the duty on paper. Ile (Mr. Stafford) would
charge the lion. Member for Manchester with for-
getting now what he furmerlyisaid of the agricultural po-
pulation, when he designated them a hard-working class.
If there had been any objection to going into Committee
it must have been entirely removed by the speech of the
Member for East Lothian, who speaks so well when he
does speak that the whole House regretted that he spoke
so seldom.—(Hear, hear.) This was not the first or
second time that `this subject had been brought before
the notice of the House and the public. Ricardo, Mac-
culloch, and all the writers on political economy, had ,