The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-05 00:00:00

_
e

LLOYD'S SHIPPING.
BLOCKADE OF ALICANT AND CARTHA-
GENA.
(Copy of a letter received at Lloyd's.)
Spanish Consulate-General, 37, Old Broad-street.
April 4, 1844.
Sir,—l have just received a circular from his Excel-
lency the First Secretary of State to my august S6Tt2-
reign, in which he communicates to me, that as the
fortress of Alicant is now subject to the- legitimate
Government of her Majesty, the blockade has been
raised, and confined to that of Carthagena, along the
coast comprehended between the " Cabo de. Pala' and
" Cabo Tinoso." .
I remain, Sir, your very obedient servant,'
• .(Signed) JOSE MARIA BARRERO,
Spanish Consul-General:
To Wm.-Dobson, Esq., Secretary, Lloyd's.

LONDON, APRIL 4.—Wind this day at noon, light
southerly breeze and fine.
DEAL, APRIL 3.—Wind S.W.—Arrd. Helena, Smith, Africa ;
Pauline, Jansen, Cuba for Bremen ; Abeona, Amsterdam for
Curacoa.

TEIGNMOLTII, APRIL 3.—Sld. Spectator, St. Andrew's. .
PLYMOUTH, APRIL 3.—Wind variable.—Arrd. Plym, Ma-
laga, after striking the Dragstone. Sld. her Majesty's steamer
Black Eagle, Ireland.
PENZANCE, APRIL 2.—The Ada, Camonyof and for this
port from Newport, struck on the Sharks Fin; within the
Longships yesterday, during a thick fog, and sank in deep
water ; crew saved.
LIVERPOOL, Arrar, 3.—Wind Northerly, light.—And.
Brilliant, Frodsham, Rio de la Hale (4th ut.); Doris,
Honduras and Savannah; Glenbervie, Charleston; Black-
aller, Newfoundland.
SCARBOROUGH, APRIL 3.—The Ino, from Stockton, to
Rouen, and Union, of Faversham, were in contact: last night
off Flamborough Head, when the former received damage to
her stern. . .

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM IHE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
S I'ANDARD.--!-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 wilt 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 discussion 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 u 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
an 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 offence 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 our 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-
cedent. 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, th 3 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-
sure were right in their view of the circumstances on
which they founded it :
" Such is the present exigency. A new power of
nature 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.,
dustry its aid ; but the labourer its competition. At
the same time our population has fearfully increased
far beyond our natural capabilities. These changes
are not of our making ; Heaven has sent them. We
cannot close our eyes to the fact. Though we
tried to reject the fact as a whole, still we
should be obliged to encounter it in a thousand de-
tails. The disorders of the country are new. Their
symptoms 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
and crushing, and treading on one another, pass be-
tween the Scylla of excessive working and the Charyb-
dis of 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
to the purpose ?"
The Times, then, subscribes to the opinion that
" our population has fearfully increased far beyond
our natural capabilities." How does the Times har-
monise this opinion with its other opinion (implied
by its support of the old poor-law practice—for the
principle 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 to 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-
fully increased far beyond our natural capabilities!'
To guarantee support to the labouring people in
their native parishes, and their old employments,
is to act on the presumption that they have not
" increased 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 position to take up the cudgels against Sir J.
Graham's. Leaving the Times 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•-
meree. We leave the Times, for the present, unmo-
lested in its self-contradictory statu quo on that
point. We make use of its admission solely as it
bears 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 affbrd 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 to all who are so happy'
as to get it.

MAUNDYTHURSDAY.—Yesterday being the Thursday
next before Good Friday, it is called Maundy Thursday.
Maundy is a corruption of the Latin word mando, to com-
mand. This is the day on which the. Saviour commanded Ws
disciples to " love one another."