The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-18 00:00:00

be known to many of them that he had come from
wandering to and fro on the earth, examining into
the feeling,'i and fallacies that beset different portions
of the community; and when he arrived he found
that, during his absence, they had got a new flight of
grasshoppers or locusts let loose upon them ; and he
felt desirous to discuss at leapt one of them that had

been laid before them that evening. He surmised
that nineteen out of twenty of those whom he saw
before him would not shrink from bearing the ho-

nourable name of British tradesmen.

They had been

told they had the custom of rogues. Itjti,a9 not he

that said it, but they. He had one searching question
to ask every tradesman there : would not the custom
of honest men do for them as well ? It was

not many years since they had horsemen with
splendid arms, displaying themselves upon the roads,
cavalry they were, and supported by a corps on foot.
These men robbed, but what they robbed they -spent.
Many a good bottle of claret did they purchase from
the innkeepers on_ the road-side, but he never heard

that the citizens of London maintained these to be men

of wealth, for when they caught them they hanged
them.—(Laughter.) That wan civic ingratitude.—
(Laughter.) Oh, they were bearing people those
citizens of London. They were patient, and patience
WAS a virtue. But virtue hail not always its reward
in this world. They of the popular side had some-
times been taunted with the misdoings of some of
their prototypes when they got the upper hand. One,
Mr. John Cade, for instance—(Laughter)—had been
often thrown in their teeth. Let them look at their
legislatorial Jack Cades of the present day.—(Laugh-
ter.) They had got a Jack Cade, who legislated for
them by virtue of his sitting as Member for East
Kent. What, said he ? He said " There shall be
no maiden married until she pay me her mar-
riage portion." Thank God three centuries had al-
tered one word in that speech. They vowed
with all humility in their hearts, and on bended
knees, that they recognised the mercy of that aristo-
cracy that had indulged them in that change. It was
their daughters' marriage portion that they were now
content with, and God be thanked for it, and the pa-
tience with which it was borne. Did it not come
home to the heart of exery father present—and nine
out or ten of those before him were fathers—had they
not considered that if they should chance to meet with
those losses to which every man in trade was liable, and
should death be added to those mischances, so that

they unexpected) left their families unprovided for—
had it not come home to their hearts what the result
might he? Might not she, the child of their affection
—one whom they had set before them and viewed as
though she were an angel sent from heaven—might
not she, when her parent
" Oppressed with everlasting sleep,
Can neither hear her sigh, nor see her weep"—

be sent forth togain her thankless bread by strtvingto
instil some portion of her own virtues into the young
scions of the aristocracy—perhaps for some rich
libertine to gloat upon? But all this was borne with
patience. Was there any one there, he asked,
who was not determined to arid his mite

towards the general stock of assault upon those
miserable fallacies by which they were at present
governed, in order that they might not be governed
by such for the future ? He regretted that there
were some persons in the north of England running
after those Jack Cedes to whom he had adverted.
They were offering to the men who oppressed them
to cut down the compensation for their labour, and to
allow them to further oppress them if they would
grant them a shorter period of suffering—if they
granted them a shorter number of hours per day ;
and not a shorter number of hours diiring the brief
period of their lives. They had perhaps before heard
the story of a Turkish frigate which sailed on a three
weeks voyage, with one weeks' water on board for
600 prisoners. The captain, Turk as he was, sold
that water to the prisoners. Those unhappy men
ernoloyed themselves by day, and also by night, in
their only species of manu acture —cutting tobacco
stoppers, which they would sell to the others, their op-
pressors, for draughts of water, to save their lives.
The Mufti. went round the deck, and said, we pity
you, we shall shorten your hours of labour in
cutting tobacco stoppers to ten hours a day.
Did they not suppose that these unfortunate men
called out to them, " If you love 113. take us under a
pump."—(Cheers and laughter.) The only thing
their commanders never meant to do. He for his
own part would not undertake to describe all the de-
grees of hybridization that might take place between
the two animals—knave and fool. But this he said,
that he did not believe the promoters of the Factories
Bill to be dishonest, because he had not. the proof be-
fore him; nor did he believe them to be honest, be-
cause he had not the proof before him. Meanwhile
his mind was in the condition of a sheet of white
paper on the subject, ,except that in one corner he
found it written, that in 99 similar cases out of 100,
dishonesty had been the rule.—(Hear, hear.) He
had told them they were governed by a miserable
system of quackery, and the Hon. Member for Dor-
setshire made it felony to drink small beer. If the
Hon. Member was at all honest, he believed that the
way to make men drink strong beer was to make it
felony to drink it small.—(Cheers and laughter.)
Why, the fallacies that they propounded were such
that any turkey-cock that would swallow them would
eat a crocodile.—(Laughter.) The Gallant Colonel
concluded by appealing to London, which had always
been foremost in the battle of liberty when it was
fuught amid bloodshed, not to be backward on the
present occasion, when, though no personal danger
attended the contest, there were yet great results to
be achieved for freedom. He tat down amid re-
peated cheering.
TheCumusurt introduced Mr. George Thompson
to the meeting, by a eulogistic reference to his
labours in the anti-slavery cause. He (the Chair-
man) could never see the difference between stealing
labourers and stealing the fruits of labour.—(Cheers.)
Mr. G. THOMPSON, after some prefatory observa-
tions as to the state of his health and the lateness of
the hour, said he was free to confess that he agreed
with his Hon. Friend who had introduced him to
their notice, that the question of free trade, including
the abolition of the corn-laws, as the most important
branch of that question, was equal in its magnitude,
in the solemnity of its aspect, equal as respected the
comfort and happiness of the human race, and much
more than equal as respected the stability,
as well as the honour, of the British em-
pire, to that great question which he had
had the honour of endeavouring to prorriote
in times that were past. If he had asked before that
man .should be free, he asked now that food should be
free.—(Hear, hear.) God meant all men to be free ;
he believed that he also meant all men to be fed.—
(Cheers.) He believed it to be a crime to steal the
liberty of man ; he believed it to he equally a crime to
diminish the quantity, to raise theprice, or to deterio-
rate the quality the food of man. And if, in addition
to stinting the amount, and raising the price of the
article, he found also that this corn-law, through end-
less ramifications, affected the amount of their wag.'s,
raised the supply of labour in the market above the
demand, threw thousands, and hundreds of thousands
out of employment, and left for those who were for-
tunate enough to gain employment but half what they
would be able to realise under other cir-
cumstances, and then sent them into the
food-market, and made them pay double the
price for their subsistence which they would
otherwise have to pay ; the corn-law then stood before
him as a tremendous robbery, as a sin on the part
of the Government against society, for whose benefit
they ought to legislate; and as an abrogation of that
charter which heaven in its beneficence had given to
man, that " of the fruit of the earth he should freely
eat," and that as seed-time and harvest, summer and
winter, never should cease, so man should never
be without the means, so far as the earth's
fertility was concerned, of obtaining that which
heaven
,designed when it made the earth
capable of yielding all that was necessary
for man and for beast.—(Cheers.) They were all
under infinite obligations to the Anti-Corn-law
League for this great travelling university, lecturing
and preaching upon the great distinguishing maxims
of political economy. There was only one thing which
he regretted when he came into that house,
and that was, that they were not always
compelled to. pay something at the door
when they entered it. • He would really put
it to their consciences whether, .when they came into
that house under other circumstances, when any other
company was performing —(Laug hter)—they received
more amusement or more instruction than when they
occupied the pit, the boxes, the gallery, and the stage
in consequence of the invitation of the Anti-Corn-
law League.—(Hear.) They had heard that night
an able and admirable lecture upon the political eco-
nomy of that question—for it was a politico-economic
question, and one of vital importance, not only to
their interests, but to the interests of society at large.
What was the great master principle of that system
of political economy which they were assembled to
propagate for, their own benefit, and that of the world
at large ? Why this was the distinguishing doctrine
which the League was travelling through the length
and the breadth of the land, to teach and to preach—
that every class of the community should he left to
its own free agency in the management of its own
commercial transactions, while those transactions
were in themselves honest and honourable; that there
should be no legislative interference, still less any
legislative control, and, least of all, any legislative
compulsion, in the hours of labour, in matters of trade,
or in matters of commerce. They must never give
up that principle.—(Cheers.) He agreed with the
preceding speaker that the corn-law was the key-
stone of the dark, gloomy, oppressive, consolidated
arch of monopoly, and that if they could pull that
down, those whom they had assailed and de-
feated on the question of the corn-law would
be their most sincere and energetic compeers in
accomplishing the destruction of- other monopolies.—
(Hear, hear.) Let them lay it down as a maxim,
sound and impregnable, that Government abused its