The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-28 00:00:00

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SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—The motion brought forward last night, so
ably and dispassionately, by Mr. Hutt, has tested the
sincerity of the Cabinet declaration, that the colonies
are henceforth to be treated as English counties. Let
us hear not another word of the policy of founding new
colonies to trade with. Let us hear not another word
of devoting public means to supporting settlements,
which, some day or other, are' to prove the
best customers for our manufactures. . The best cus-
tomers for our manufactures are those who will give us
most for them. The Minister of Trade, and the
Minister of Colonies, each told the )House last night that
there is a landlord in the path, who will not hear of our
colonies giving corn for cottons. Ever so distant a
prospect of that calamity would create a land panic.
Yet, confessedly and notoriously, the difficulty in
trade with new countries is to get returns. Confessedly
and notoriously, returns in grain would, very generally,
be the most welcome. Confessedly and notoriously,
what we spin cottons chiefly for is food. What new
countries would give food chiefly for (after supplying
themselves) would be cottons, and other manufactures.
It is this description of exchange that creates the
whole reciprocity of interest between old and new
countries. It is this which is the most difficult to
establish between them ; because it is most difficult
to get enough from new countries for our exports.
Hence the whole system of holow credit, of in-
flated speculation, of paper or land bubbles in the
money market. The efforts of those interested in
new countries is to direct thither a flow of wealth
from the old one. The effort of wise government ought
to be to encourage their means of returning the wealth
they drain. All else is ephemeral delusion—capital
goes abroad, indeed, but it comes not back again. A
most unhappy, corrupt, crafty character is engendered,
where life should be most simple; and (as Mr. Murray,
we think, tells us of Port Philip) " colonial "
is the oniy epithet which is thought necessary
to characterise any stroke of over-reaching in business.
And then we amuse ourselves by satirising the " colo-
nial" character after we have formed it ;—after we have
fostered, by our credulous advances, and contracted
policy, the very vices which inevitably spring from teach-
ing men to borrow, without teaching them how to pay
again—nay, throwing absolute obstacles in the way of
the sole payment they can make ! Such was long
our American policy—though the United States, to all
valuable intents and purposes, continued the most im-
portant colony we had, and might so have continued,
had we encouraged her agricultural interest to look to
England for a free market. What did we do instead ?
Encouraged the growth of paper, instead of that of
corn. Inflated that immense wind-bag, which American
cultivators now view as their worst nuisance. Engen-
dered enmity (for your insolvent debtor is your enemy)
instead of securing friendship (for your steady cus-
tomer, who looks to you for your custom, is your friend).
And now we see factories building in the United States,
instead of wheat growing for us—rivals establishing,
instead • of customers established, as they ought long
since to have been—and we shall probably again (when
burnt fingers are a little forgotten) see English capital
drained to feed American competition. The capital
goes, the people stay—as many as cannot go
after it. Those who can, take off their little
capitals after the large- one.; and last comes " Syste-
matic Colonisation," with its flying machine for the
masses. We know that capital has light wings to fly
wherever speculation sends it ; we have learned of late
that a new volatile principle is discovered, by which the
millions of men can fly on the wings of the millions of
money ; and if the machine could only rise off the
ground again, after its late heavy falls, there is no doubt
it might navigate air to any extent, and transplant na-
tions like thistle-down. We have encountered the ire of an
acne dainnee of the Colonies-Flying-Machine school by
anticipating from Lord Stanley precisely the decision
Lord Stanley last night uttered. It is now manifest
that the talk of identifying our colonies with our counties
was an empty boast—that, as regards the vital article of
subsistence—the article of all others which forms a
subject of the most natural trade between old countries
and new ones—we will not admit the notion of any
regular trade with our colonies—first, because that trade
would be of no consequence to us now, and secondly,
because the landed interest believe it would be of too
much consequence hereafter. Now we consider, as the
mover considered, both these grounds of rejection as
grounds for assent. If the colonial corn trade is of no
present consequence, the landlords have no pretext for
present panic. If it is of future importance—then it is
of future benefit to the colonies and the empire.
STANDARD.—Our readers will, we are assured, ap-
preciate the considerations which dispose us to treat ra-
ther of the general subject, than of the details of Monday
night's debate in the House of Commons. The Ministry
is the best that the present generation of Englishmen
has seen ; but upon the question discussed on Monday,
it is altogether wrong in our opinion, in the opinion of
its best friends, and, as we are convinced, in the
opinion of the great majority of the nation ; but when
we see our friends seriously in error, it is no doubt
our duty, in the first place, to givo our humble exer-
tions to withdraw them from their mistaken
course ; but no less are we bound to abstain
from exposing and ,magnifying those less . -import•
ant lapses into which a great original error ' sure -to
~ - ,
lead. Meanwhile we must not overlook t gratitude
due to men like Lord Ashley and Sir Rober nglis, who
embrace the rightcourse, and prove their ability to defend
it with vigour and with spirit ; they, however, would
scarcely accept as the fitting testimony of gratitude a se-
vere and uncandid treatment of temporary antagonists,
whom, for their general conduct, they respect as much as
we do. The question debated so much and so earnestly
during the last ten days would seem, at first sight,
to be thoroughly understood ; but, may we be pardoned
for saying it, neither the Parliament nor the public is,
in our judgment, as yet in a condition to decide upon it
with any approach to certainty, so far as the commercial
considerations are concerned. The moral question
—the question of humanity—is indeed quite clear,
and from its plainness, and the peremptory
duty which it points out, we suppose it has happened
that Lord Ashley and others have thought it unneces-
sary to refer to the consideration on the side of com-
merce ; but as all the objections come from this side it
ought not to be wholly neglected, as it has been.
If the whole commercial view had been fairly taken,
the whole subject would have been ex-
amined in its integrity, and not, as it has been,
partially, and in the detail of capriciously selected in-
stances. In dealing with such a matter we cannot
generalise our information enough, but the vice of our
present system of political knowledge lies in this, that
while we are all for practical generalisation, we rarely
generalise in the collection of proofs. One or two ex-
amples are thus made the foundations of a system:
this is remarkably the case in the matter before us.
What is the question in issue, considered as merely
a commercial question ? The distribution of the hours
of labour in manufactories, with reference to the pro-
portion between the hours of labour and of rest.
Now, surely, the first step in the investigation of
this question would properly be the amount of the
hours of labour necessary during some period,
which might be called a fair manufacturing cycle.
We suppose five years will not be thought either
way very far from such a cycle. Of this information,
however, both the House and the country are, up to the
present moment, altogether destitute, though it might be
easily obtained. The number of mills employed in
manufactures is, if we are not mistake; returned by
the factory inspectors, as well as the number of
labourers employed in these mills—but to the nura •
ber of hours, or days, or weeks, or even months,
during which each mill has been at work, we have no
clue whatever, and here is the ground upon which we say
that the House of Commons is not in a condition to de-
cide the commercial question. Lord Ashley, and they
who support his Lordship, say that into that ques •
tion they will not enter. They stand upon the
moral ground and the ground of humanity, as para-
mount, and they are right. They are, however, an-
swered by a plea of commercial necessity ; but surely
it lies upon those who advance that plea to esta-
blish its validity, by showing that all the time they
claim for labour is necessary to support the manu-
facturing system of the country. Unless they do
this their resistance is an insult to common sense,
no less than to the moral and humane feelings
of the people. Let, then, some opponent of Lord
Ashley move for returns of the mills and mill labourers
of the manufacturing districts during five years, and for
the number of hours in each year in which each mill
has been at work, a return easily obtained from the
factory-inspectors, and one which must be decisive
of the whole commercial question • for if it should
turn out that the mills have, on the whole, wrought less
than twelve hours a day for the 1,555 working days of
five years, it is plain that, commercially, the twelve
hours a day are not necessary; and if it should turn out,
as we believe it would, that the mills have not on the
average worked six hours a day for the five years
of the cycle, it must be quite manifest that
ten hours daily labour must be sufficient. Our
conviction, the result of careful inquiry, is, that
the mills on an average of the whole do not
work six hours ; and we are more confident in that
conviction, because, though we have more than once
asserted it, and shown its bearing upon the question
now in issue, no one has yet ventured to contradict it.
This assertion we shall repeat until some opponcint of
Lord Ashley calls for the returns to which we have
referred, and those returns prove that we are in error.

MONEY MARKET and CITY NEWS.

CITY, TUESDAY EVENING.
TIMES.—The premium on gold at Paris is 14 per mile,
which, at the English Mint price of 31. 17s. 100. per ounce
for standard gold, gives an exchange of 25 50k; and the
exchange at Paris on London at short being 25 671, it follows
that gold is 0.68 per cent. dearer in London than in Paris.
By advices from Hainburgh, the price of gold is 435} per
mark, which, at the English Mint price of 3/. 17s. 140. per
ounce for standard gold, gives an exchange of 13 10k; and
the exchange at Hamburgh on London at short being 13
it follows that gold is 0.40 per cent. clever in London than in
Hamburgh.
The course of exchange at New York on London is 1081
per cent. ; and the par of exchange between England and
America it follows that the ex-
change
23-40!igpaienr nscteEnt7gland ; but the quoted ex-
change at New York being for bills at sixty days' sight, the
is being 109
cent
interest must be deducted from tb e above difference.

FANCY FAIR UNDER THE THAMES.—This fair
was continued with great spirit throughout the whole of Tuee—
day. The decorations of the Interior of the Tunnel, and,
the general arrangement of the stalls, are excellent. Tues-
day and the day before the number of visitors which the fair
attracted was almost beyond credit. In addition to the fair
in the Tunnel, there is something very like one outside, at
the Rotherhithe entrance, consisting of ginger-bread-mut.
stalls, exhibitions of tumblers and mountebanks, and a. dis-
play of the illegitimate drama, in the shape of "Brewer's
Pavilion Theatre," which was well patronised by the visitors
to the Tunnel. The extraordinary fineness of the dayoerues-
day caused quite as great an influx of visiters as an the
day previous. The fair finally closed last night, at. eleven
o'clock.