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

another case from the same party which was still
stronger. Here was another bill for 491. 17s. lid.
It passed through several hands, and at
length it obtained the endorsement of the
Sheffield Banking Connally. It was this
proved that it went to Sheffield to pay for some arti-
cles which had been sent abroad from that town.—
(Hear, hear.) Now here was another case-2451.
for 140 bags of carraway seed—all from Rotterdam.
There was another for 1251., having several names on
it, and last of all the endorsement of Mr. Leo Schus-
ter, a foreign merchant of the highest respectability,
carrying on business in Manchester, and who
shippel goods from Manchester to the Continent.
Now what had been the effect of the reduction of
the duty ? Before it took place there was no trade
in that article. What they consumed was grown
chiefly in Kent and Essex. It was used only, or
chiefly, by confectioners. There had been an im-
portation of 100 tons. The price had not fallen in
consequence, but carraway seeds were now applied to
several other purposes, and especially in manufac-
turing processes, to which they were not formerly
applied. It was evident that the goods which went
out in payment of these seeds would require ship-
ment. In short, that the alteration was an unmixed
good to the industry of this country, and a complete
refutation of the absurd and childish fallacies which
the landlords were constantly preaching up to their
tenants. Whilst upon this subject, he would refer to
canary seed, an article with which most of the boys
had doubtless been familiar. Canary seed was used
in this country to the amount of 10,000 quarters an-
nually, and used, he believed, almost exclusively for
the feeding of birds. The duty under the old tariff
was 60s. per cwt.—a duty entirely prohibitory. The
duty under the new tariff was 4s. per bushel, also
entirely prohibitory. Nearly all the canary seed
used in this country was grown in Kent.
Sir Edward Knatchbull, it was affirmed, as represen-
tative of Kent, and a Cabinet Minister, had, through
his overwhelming influence, protected the native in-
dustry of the men of Kent—resisted the threatened
inroad upon its agricultural prosperity—and pre-
vented the reduction of the duty on canary seed.
That seed was bought chiefly by hand-loom weavers,
journeymen tailors, shoe-makers, and ethers in various
parts of the country, by men who worked in their
own houses or shops, and kept birds to 1-guile their
toil with song.—(Cheers.) This magnanimous states-
man used all the influence which he possessed as a
Cabinet Minister to raise the price „if the food of
these little innocent canary birds, ankh:to some ex-
tent, injured the men who worked at The businesses
to which he had referred.—(Cheers.) Now he (Mr.
Bright) believed that all the other fallacies which
these men had propagated might be disposed of with
equal facility.—(Cheers.) The principles of free
trade were so simple that no unbiassed man could
hear them and hesitate to admit their existence.
Everything around him—everything recorded in
history—everything which he saw in the arrange-
ment of the universe—everything which came within
his own cognizance--everything which prompted
him in his own heart—told him that the principle of
free trade was that which Providence intended to
direct the world, and not the impotent, mis-
chievous, and imbecile system of monopoly
which they were then endeavouring to overthrow.
They asked that the wide world should be their work-
shop and their market ; and they were persuaded
that public opinion was rolling on with a power
and a rapidity which nothing could now stop—
(Hear, hear)—and that that princple must in conse-
quence very soon be adopted by the country, and
from this country its adoption must quickly
spread to every civilised country in the world.—
(Hear.) The land-owners, by infringing on that
principle, had got themselves into almost inextricable
confusion. They made paupers by thousands, they
rendered life and property insecure—they desolated
the homes of thousands of the population, over whom
they ought to be guardians, and of whom they ought to
be the defenders.—(Cheers.) They had themselves ac-
knowledged a, law which gave to the pauper the right of
a maintenance from the land on which he was born ;
and when those paupers multiplied to such a degree
that their rents were threatened, then those land-
owners quarrelled with the law they themselves had
made, and the principle they had adopted ; and they
endeavoured, by means unreasonable and harsh in the
extreme, to prevent paupers coming upon them for
support. They were about to pass a new poor-law,
which, whether it were just or unjust, would be ut-
terly impracticable as a measure sui,ted to the great
amount 0. pauperism in this country ; for the Com-
missioners were compelled, from time to time, to relax
the stringency of the law in particular localities, and
now the Government itself was preparing to make
considerable relaxations. But if the tide of pauperism
were not checked in some way, this new Poor-law
Bill would be found quite as bad as the other. Those
men of whom he spoke knew well enough what was
right, but they would not go to it. Like a man in
the mud, who the more he struggled the deeper he
got, they kicked about in all possible directions, and
they set up a false scent for the people to run after.
They spread fallacies the most childish, and affected
to believe them themselves. They did all that for
the purpose of saving themselves for a time from that
which was at last inevitable—an honest, wise, and
just course of policy.—(Cheers.) Why, some time
ago the Prime Minister had not hesitated to throw
out some insinuations as to machinery being in some
sort injurious to the people, and the cause of manufac-
turing distress. That charge at all events could not
be brought forward in proof of agricultural distress.
—(Hear, hear.) But they had now got upon the
scent, that if the people worked less they
would be the better for it. To show the fallacy of
such a position, he need only instance the cotton
trade, of which the whole world was the market.
Five-sixths of the cotton produce of this country was
sent abroad, and he should like to know how their
new law could affect calicos in foreign markets.
Mr. James Deacon Hume, an authority held in the
highest estimation by both Sir R. Peel and Lord J.
Russell, in writing in 1834, declared that the distress
of the manufacturing classes arose from their being
compelled by natural causes to seek foreign markets
as sellers of the goods they produced, whilst they
were prevented by artificial causes from going into
those markets as buyers of the goods they wanted. He
showed that the agriculturist had the advantage of
selling his goods at home, in a market insufficiently
supplied, whilst the manufacturer constantly sold
his goods in a market which was always
glutted ; and from all he wrote it-;4 appeared
clearly that the last two or three hours per
day of the toil of the working man was imposed
on him by the monopolies which the landowners
created by those burdens, which, if the Legislature
were wise, just, and honest, they would immediately
remove.—(Hear.) In the manufacturing districts of
the north there was a disposition to work shorter
hours, and they would work shorter time when it was
possible for people to live, and trade to be carried on,
with a shorter number of hours, The young men in
shops were insisting on the closing at earlier hours,
and in Manchester the young men in warehouses
compelled their employers to close their ware-
houses one afternoon in the week, and was it
possible, that whilst such alterations were
going on in the midst of a factory population,
the operatives there should not think of having some
relaxation from the protracted hours of toil and atten-
tion to labour ? There was not a population in this
country to which the landholders owed more—there
was not a population which deserved more perfect
justice from a landowning Government—there was
not a population which had given more to the re-
venues of the country, or had more increased the
rentals of the landowners, than the working men of
Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. He
thought it a principle which no man could dispute,
that interference with free labour ought to be at-
tempted with the greatest possible caution, or it
might lead to inextricable embarrassments. He
thought that there could be no law in this country
for the purpose of fixing the maximum and
minimum of wages. If they were to fix
wages as they were in Dorsetshire, at 6s.
or 7s. per week, he should not like to fix them for
the county in which he lived.—(Hear, hear.) What
they ought to do was to try the strength, the virtue,
and the efficacy of every known good principle, be-
fore they had recourse to any " tinkering" and tam-
pering with principles acknowledged to be bad.—
(Hear, hear.) They had that principle set forth, as
he had stated, throughout the world. He was one of
those who were persuaded that free trade would do,
for all the working classes in this country, all that
which the most benevolent and humane man desired ;
and he believed that it would throw down the
barrier which was now upreared between benevo-
lence and humanity, and the objects on which
those virtues would exercise themselves. He was
persuaded, from the condition of the population
amongst whom he lived, and from the temper
and disposition of the manufacturers, that there would
be in those districts a state of harmony and good
feeling—a condition of prosperity and general com-
fort, uncle's; a system of perfectly free trade, such as
never yet existed in this country; and he believed
had never yet been seen in any part of the United
Kingdom.—(Cheers.) They asked of the Legisla-
ture that they should no longer presumptuously
interfere between the laws of nature and of Provi-
dence and the industry of the people over whom they
ruled. That principle was gaining ground every
day; and not only in the metropolis but in the most
remote towns and villages every day added to their
ranks intelligent, energetic, and hard working indivi-
duals who would stand by this struggle to its final
issue. He believed there were some distinguished
individuals from foreign countries present that night,
and ne said in their presence, that the principle of
the corn-law had been long scouted from every coun-
try but this; and there was not an intelligent foreigner
who would not•point out the corn-law as the worst
stain on the legislation of any country ; and with all
our enterprise, patriotism, and virtue, it must be a