The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-13 00:00:00

enemy, described as fixed in the earth, till at'
the proper time they moved forward as one man, and
achieved the greatest victory of this or any other age ?
The men who belonged to that class whom Lord
ASHLEY wishes to protect. It is needless to advert to
the tens of thousands engaged in our manufactories, or
to their skill and perseverance, and patient endurance,
because these are known to the world, and to them
the country owes much of its wealth and power.
That class has never been treated as rational beings.
The Legislature has taxed them and oppressed them,
and has laid all the heavy burdens on their shoulders;
it has made them pay a duty of 100 per cent. on tea
and sugar, and many other necessaries of life; it has
taxed the very staffof life for the benefit of the legislators
only, and when they assemble to complain or pray for re-
lief, they are put down by guns and bayonets. There
is no sympathy between the high and low classes.
Those who have power use that power with a strong
hand, and instead of consulting for the good of men,
and women, and children, who contribute to their
wealth, their only object seems to be to keep them
under ; to pass laws for protecting the rich, and to
oppose those which are intended for the relief of that
class who have no voice in the Legislature. Lord
ASHLEY, to his honour, hay taken up this cause, and
we trust he will live to reap the reward. If some
of his plans are not the best that can be devised, he
has one great and lasting merit—he has awakened
public attention to the subject—he has secured one
half of the House of Commons In his favour—
he is getting up meetings every week on the
subject, and he may rest assured he will soon find
many followers. In another part of the paper
will be found an account of an interesting
meeting held on Saturday, at which he presided.
Several noblemen, one bishop, many clergymen, and
Members of Parliament were present, and lent their
aid in a forming a plan for the benefit of the lower
classes. A committee was appointed, and to
the honour of the higher classes, at least fifteen
noblemen were appointed members. The sub-
scriptions, too, were large. Lord ELDON,
sprung from the lower classes, subscribed
2001., Sir THOMAS BARING, 1001., Mr. R. B. SHE-
RIDAN, a name celebrated in the annals of the country,
1001., and a large number besides subscribed accord-
ing to their means. This is a good beginning, and
holds out bright prospects. This is a triumph for.
Lord .ASHLEY, greater than the most splendid vic-
tories; and we fervently pray that he may have firm-
ness and health to persevere in his noble purpose till
he earns the greatest and most consolatory of all re-
wards, the blessings of those " who are ready to

"No one, we suppose," says the Herald of this
morning, in reference to Friday night's debate in the
House of Commons, on the Factories Bill, "No one,
even of the warmest adherents of the long-hour sys-
tem, will attempt to deny that the adherence of
Government to that system, however conscientious,
has inflicted the most serious injury on the Conser-
vative cause that it has sustained since the last grand
mistake in 1829. That injury, too, is wide-spread,
and consists of many parts. One of these, and by no
means a sliglat one, is the deterioration of the cha-
racter of the House of Commons. This is too often
the forerunner of some hazardous organic change."

Our Contemporary then proceeds to comment o
the late speeches of that consistent couple, Messrs
LIDDELL and GALLY KNIGHT, and adds :—" No two
speeches of such brevity were ever before fraught
with so much loss and damage to the party to which
the speakers belonged." There is a world of truth
in these remarks, and what adds to their significance
is the singular fact that they are put forth by a
journal which is a staunch supporter of that very
" Conservative cause" which it now frankly and
boldly insists has been seriously injured by the ob-
stinate tenacity of the Government on the factory
question. The mischief inflicted by that Government
on Toryism, and more particularly on " the cha-
racter of the House of Commons"—which House,
however, so far as we can see, has not of late
years had much character to lose—must,
indeed, have been great and undeniable, ere
the Herald would have dreamed of alluding to it
in such strong, emphatic terms. 'We respect our
Contemporary for his manly candour, and we cor-
dially subscribe to every one of his observations.
His allusion, in particular, to the deteriorated charac-
ter of the House, is true to the letter; for not a man
of any reflection but must acknowledge that by its
vacillating conduct on the factory question, the Im-
perial Senate has greatly lowered itself in public esti-
mation. But three short weeks since it was carried
away by a sudden paroxysm of humanity ; so great was
its benevolence—so ardent its sympathy with the
sufferings of the factory women and children, that
the awe in which it habitually holds the Premier
was laid aside ; and, despite his frowns, protestations,
and even menaces, it had the boldness to decide
against him, and even leave him in a minority. Such
was the bold, independent demeanour which the House
of Commons maintained not quite three weeks ago.
But since then a complete change has come over it.
It has had time for reflection ; it was " drunk "—to
use Mr. GALLY KNIGHT'S appropriate phrase—when
it decided in favour of the overtasked factory opera-
tives ; but it is now " sober," and being so, it feels it
its bounden duty to repudiate the claims of the poor
and the helpless, and to stand by the interests of the rich
and the influential. Its humanity, like ROB ACRES'
valour, has fairly oozed out at its finger-ends, and it
is once again the obsequious slave of the Aladdin
Lamp—in other words, the ready, submissive tool of
that conjuror, Sir ROBERT PEEL. True, its final de •
cision is not yet made, but every one, endowed with
the slightest observation, can foresee which way the
debate on Lord AsuLET's clause will terminate
every one can foresee that. the House will most egre-
giously stultify itself ; and that the Conservatives,
more especially, will rush, in breathless haste, to
follow the consistent—the enlightened—the high-
minded example set them by those twin political
luminaries, Messrs. GALLY KNIGHT and LIDDELL.
And all this wholesale tergiversation is to take place,
because, forsooth, the Premier will have it so! and
because—more and more humiliating still—if the
House persists in being consistent, the Home Secre-
tary will feel it his duty to retire from office, and
cultivate, like another CINCINNATUS, his garden at
Netherby ! To think that the threat of a GRAHAM
quitting public life should be sufficient to scare a
British House of Commons from the broad, straight,
obvious path of duty—of consistency—of common
sense—of humanity !We look upon this as one of
the most inglorious and humiliating " signs of the
times" that has been manifested for many years.

Before entering upon an examination of the resolu-
tions submitted to the House of Commons, by Sir
ROBERT PEEL, in connexion with the terms on which
he will propose the renewal of the Bank Charter, and
of the speech with which he introduced them on
Monday last, we are desirous again to call the atten-
tion of our readers to some important and significant
facts in the present aspect of the country, on which
the Right Hon. Baronet observed a very guarded
silence. It did not consist, we can readily imagine,
with his purpose of exalting the merits of a currency
measured by a gold standard of value, to notice the
facts to which we are about to recur. They were
too palpably indications of its immediate and disas-
trous effects, under and with the aid of the enact-
ments of a statute like the Currency Act of 1819, to
have been introduced upon the canvas which he spread
before the eyes of the House, and tricked out with
such showy but unsubstantial tints. Nevertheless, to
enable the public at large more accurately to ap-
preciate the fixed and baleful shadows which the
existence of these facts throws over the actual face of
affairs, we shall briefly recapitulate these phenomena.
The first and most important of them is—the
anomalous state of a vast majority of our industrial
Population. This community, as we lately remarked,
is composed of two great sections ; the one, in em-
ploy, at wages generally inadequate to the demands
of mere physical subsistence for the toiling artisan or
' labourer and his family ; the other, out of present
employ, and with little or no prospect of soon ob-
taining any in the districts wherein they have been
reared, or the factories and mills in which they have
worked. The second fact is the confirmation of this
deplorable aggregate of pauperism, coupled with that
nonf its progressive
of
ssive aggravation, which is afforded by
the Returns of Poor-rate Assess-
ments levied in England and Wales in the successive
years 1839, 1840, 1841, and 184/ The third fact
consists in the result of a comparison between the
accumulating amount of those assessments, and that