The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-02 00:00:00

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SUN OFFICE, Seven o'Clock.

SPIRIT of tLe PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF TIIIS DAY.
GLOBE—lmagine for a moment the effervescence—
the Conservative indignation—if the actual breach be-
tween Ministers and the Directors had taken place, ins-
perante Melbourne ! It cannot be forgotten what a
handle against the late Cabinet was made of the paltry
repugnancies of a Jamaica Assembly ; and how uncon-
stitutional it was represented to think of over-ruling the
interested resistance of a set of ex-slave-owners. On
the strength of that storm in a slop-basin, the Melbourne
Ministry in '39 found themselves in so slender a majority
as led them to resign office. To be sure the Duke of Wel-
linsston said that he could not conceive why they should
have resigned; and therefore the veteran has the better
grace in the military attitude he assumes at present.
But it is very evident that the pretext on which Lord
Melbourne was then pushed to resignation had not a
thousandth part of the gravity of the " great fact"
which has now transpired. We have here no faction of
obscure planters, palpably biassed, and in the preva-
lent public mind of England probably in the wrong.
Here are twenty-four gentlemen, the elect of the most
important corporation in the world—nay, thirty—for it
is understood that the six ex-directors concur in the
same judgment—who, • after exhausting time, and pa-
tience, and warning on Ministers, and this spoiled child
of theirs, have at length employed the power which
(known to all but Lord Brougham) had been always
vested in them. Now, we repeat, if this had occurred
under the Melbourne Ministry, how immediate and how
impetuous the inference would have been, that these
Whigs could not act with any established and Conserva-
tive body in the State. This was the notion propagated
more industriously than any other; and the benefit of a
doubt was never allowed Liberal Ministers for a moment,
whether they, or those who opposed their system of
policy, might be wrong. While the Whig Government
was supposed to be estranged from the Northern Courts,
then, of course, Nesselrode or Metternich were the sole
hope of salvation for Europe. When Northern Europe
joined them on Eastern policy, and France held aloof,
then the all but irreparable ill became, of course, the lost
friendship of France. The first demonstration the new
men had to make was a very new one certainly for their
party. They threw themselves into the arms of France
and swore eternal friendship-:-to spite the Whigs—and
entailed more loss of confidence and misunderstanding
than ever with Europe. In like manner, the Whigs
were to be wounded through the sides of Lord Auck-
land in India; and in like manner, the intended injury
has had its recoil on the perpetrators. After boasting
cf French friendship, regardless of inevitable invidious
construction elsewhere, nothing would serve them, or the
vain man of whose vanities they have now assumed all
the responsibility, but boasting of the glorious contrast
his Indian policy was to exhibit to the Whig Governor's.
When will these men become duly sensible of the risk
and ridicule attendant on all this swaggering? When
will they become sensible that the effective, though
unfair weapon, of Opposition is the most unsafe and
undignified possible for handling in place? Dishonest
words had done all words could do for them ; honest
deeds—deeds at least not in gross contrast with profes-
sions and policy—were now requisite to prove that
superiority to their predecessors, the verbal assertion of
which had ceased to have even the grace of faction.
Above all, and first of all, what was required of
Conservative Ministers was to work smoothly with the
powers, already established and organised, which they
had to work with. If the Whig Ministers, during the
reforms public opinion - expected them to promote, had
fallen foul of coordinate authorities, there would have
been nothing so surprising. But Conservatives, whose
great idol, Pitt, broke up the Whig party on this very
ground of quarrel—whose whole traditions and ante-
cedents have led them to support the East India Com-
pany, as one of those great bodies with whose stability
they were wont to affect alliance, and to set in contrast
with the ephemeral factions, and crude innovations,
of popular assemblies—that Conservative Ministers
should be the first to quarrel with the Conserva-
tive aristocracy of British India—this is indeed a
most unheard-of and portentous occurrence. It is for
Ministers to explain how such a breach could have
taken place. The Duke of Wellington has committed
them to the responsibility of the whole of Lord Ellen-
borough's conduct. The whole power of the Govern-
ment has been exerted in his favour with twenty-four
gentlemen, for whom even political malignity can-
not forge motives hostile to that Government. The
whole power of Government, the whole expediency of
compromise, the whole rise of rupture (and that risk
is announced by the Ministerial hacks as political
annihilation to the Company)—all this has been out-
weighed with the Directors by a sense of duty the
most imperative to themselves and their constituents
—for nothing short of such sense of duty can be sup-
posed for a moment to have prompted their act—an
act so maturely deliberated. The plea for Lord Ellen-
borough (whose case Ministers have made so completely
their own) put forth by the Duke of 'Wellington—that
the Directors could not know the instructions under
which he acted, is a plea Sir Robert Peel's caution would
scarcely have suggested. So far as it goes, indeed, it
may shift the responsibility for all his acts from
his own shoulders to those of Ministers—but it
leaves that responsibility a heavy weight where
it rests. For, are we to suppose that Ministers
have kept systematically in the dark the men
who held co-ordinate power with their own—on the
whole subject for its exercise ? To what purpose, then,
have repeated Acts of the Legislature confirmed that
power in the Directors ? Forsooth, that her Majesty's
Ministers may mock them, and pooh-pooh its exer-
cise, by the cool assertion that the Directors
cannot possibly know anything at all about the
matters, which nevertheless the law and consti-
tution have given them uncontrolled power to judge.
STANDARD.—They who remember that, of all the
London journals, the Standard stood alone in defending
Sir Francis Head's measures in Upper Canada, will not
suspect us of hostility to that gentleman or of any pre-
judice against him. The letter before us forcibly re-
minds us of the great difficulty against which, as his ad-
vocates, we had to contend, namely, his own proclama-
tions and dispatches. The ex-Governor is one of the
many persons who, if they are ever wise,
write.mu must lament
the pains bestowed in teaching them tohave
but describes the class pretty accurately. We
but to insert the name of the late Governor of Upper
Canada to make it fit exactly.
" Here stands good Sir Francis, whose heart is a mint,
While the owner scarce knows half the good that is in't ;
The pupil of impulse, it drives him along,
His conduct still right, with his argument wrong;
Still aiming at honour, yet fearing to roam,
The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home.'
The argument of Sir Francis, as he has expanded
it suo more into a long letter, we understand to be
this the labourer has a property in his labour,
and his time is as much entitled to be respected
as any other property. Lord Ashley's proposal to limit
the hours of labour of women and children in factories
is an invasion of this property. This, garnished with a
considerable profusion of sarcasm and illustration, we
take to be the whole sum and substance of Sir
Francis's argument. Now the first proposition is
one which we would be the list in the world
to dispute. The labourer's property in his time
and labour is absolute and inviolable, resting
upon the earliest and highest of proprietory rights.
Here, however, closes our acquiescence with Sir Francis
Head, who, like other manufacturers of cant, abuses, by
misapplication, a sound principle. Lord Ashley's pro•
position does not violate this principle either in form or
in substance; on the ether hand, it augments the value
of property in labour, and casts a hedge about it.
As respects form Lord Ashley's proposition inter-
feres in no respect with the labourer's property in
his labour. The labourer, whether man, woman,
or child—and to simplify the matter, we make
no distinction among them, important as the distinction
is in many respects—the labourer of whatever sex or
age is left by Lord Ashley's proposition at perfect liberty
to employ the whole twenty-four hours in labour, so
long as the labour is prosecuted at the labourer's own
discretion, and not at the command of others ; and, in
fact, one of the objects of the limitation of the hours of
labour in factories is to give to the labourer
more time to be employed at his own discretion--to
return to him se part of that property of which Sir
Francis Head speaks, of which he is deprived by the
power of wealth, and the cupidity of wealthy men. The
limitation does not say "you shall not work more than
ten hours," but, " you shall not be forced to work more
than ten hours, as the alternative of not working at all,
that is, as the alternative of being robbed of your w hole
property in your labour," so precious, and justly so pre-
cious in the eyes of the ex-Governer of Upper Canada.
Lord Ashley's proposition then does not, in form, violate
the right of property in labour. Let us next see whe-
ther it invades it in substance. The great function of
the law of a civilised country is to correct the abuses
of power, to protect the weak from the strong.
There is, however, a notion propagated with con-
siderable industry by those who profit by abuses,
that there exists in society no power but the power
of the law on one side, and the power of mere knavery
or brute force on the other hand, and, as a consequence,
that the law has no legitimate antagonists but cheating
and violence. The law, however, if it would equally
protect the rights of all men, has other antagonists—
honest, according to the fashion of this world, and meek
as if they all wore drab, as many of them do.
The power of money is certainly not a dishonest
power, nor is it a violent power, but it is nevertheless, a
power quite adequate to crush the poor, and to destroy
the value of the poor man's property in his time and in
his labour, which we suppose it will be admitted is the
same thing as destroying the property itself. This, then,
is a case for the law to interpose—not to restrain the
poor man from employing h's labour as best he can,
but to restrain the rich man from compelling him to
employ it in a manner directly injurious to other poor
men, and ultimately to himself. As Sir Francis Head
is fond of illustrations, we will give him one. He
has at least twice crossed the Atlantic and been
Governor of a colony, and he probably knows
something of the system of passage vessels. Now,
let him suppose a passage vessel short of
provisions, though with no more hands and passengers
on board than are enough to work the ship, working at
the usual rate of working. But the captain having
taken a degree in the new science, and swallowed Sir
Francis's doctrine of the right of property in labour,
calls half-a-dozen hands aft, and addresses them as
follows :—" Our provisions are short, and if I am
to feed the whole crew, I must reduat your daily
messes a trifle, but I will tell you how we may manage.
I will keep good guard over the store, and you working
each of you an extra watch or two, we may complete
the voyage without any reduction of our allowances; as
for the rest. they may starve—and any one of you who
Will not consent to work the extra watches {Shall

starve with them, for I warrant, in two or three days,
I will be able to bring those starving chaps to work as
many extra watches as I please, aye, and to be thani<ful,
too, for half allowance." How would Sir Francis Head
approve of this mode of respecting " the labourer's
property in his labour ?" Would he condemn
the legislative interposition of some bluff lieu-
tenant, who should happily step in from the
gig of a chance cruiser, with a "No, no, mate, this will
never do ; you must not overwork half your people, in
order to starve The other half. Divide the work and
the food fairly among them, as far as they will go."
Now, this is a very fair illustration of Lord Ashley's
proposal. It gives a much more ample exercise of dis-
cretion to all labourers in the exercise of their right
of property, and it gives value to that property in
the case of multitudes of others to whom the property is
now of no value whatever ; but of things the value of
which lies only in their use, the only real property is in
the value of the use. Sir F. Head's argument goes upon
the groundless and even ridiculous hypothesis, that
every labourer is at liberty .to work or to abstain
from working—the reverse is the fact, every man
must work or die, and the care of the Legislature
must be directed to protect him from the necessity
of working in a manner injurious to himself or to others.
Let men remember this, and the cant of the labourer's
property in his labour will do little harm. There is an-
other cant much employed upon this question with which
we wish to deal, but cannot afford the time, we mean the
necessity of protecting the profits of the millowners.
NOw we till the millowners that they cannot protect
their profits by any amount of cruelty to their
labourers. Their profits are 'governed by a
principle wholly irrespectiie of the labourer's time. The
demand for their production is finite, the capacity of
multiplying mills to meet this finite demand infinite.
But the mills will go on multiplying until the profits of
mill working shall be reduced to something very little
more than the common rate of interest for money. This
is the enemy who is eating up their profits, and will
destroy them altogether if they do not oppose him by
the only effectual obstacle, a short time law.

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.
(THIS EVENING.)

HOUSE OF COMMONS.
The SPEAKER took the Chair at the usual hour.
NEW MEMBER.

Mr. HuRsT took the oaths and his seat for Horsham.
The Hon. Gentleman was introduced by Mr. J. A. Smith
and the Earl of March.

The Bow Brickhill Estate Bill was read a third time
and passed.
The Newbury and Basingstoke Railway Bill was read
a third time and passed.
The Lords' amendments to the Norwich and Brandon
Railway Bill were agreed to.
The Lords amendments to the Great Western Railway
were read and agreed to.
Mr. BOYD presented 36 petitions from the North of
Ireland, praying for an Act to legalise Presbyterian
Marriages in Ireand.
Mr. S. CRAWFORD
.presented a petition from
Bridgewater, against a continuation of the war in India;
also a petition from Crediton, in favour of the extension
of Parliamentary reform; also a petition from the Lei-
cester Complete Suffrage Association, for redress of
grievances.
Sir J. Y. BULLER presented a petition from a place
in Devon against the grant to Maynooth College ; also
a petition in favour of the abolition of the duty on
foreign sugar ; also a petition against any alteration in
the corn -laws. _ _ _

Lord EBRINGTUN presented a petition from twenty-
nine solicitors at Plymouth, against the Ecclesiastical
Courts Bill.

Mr. COLVILE presented a petition for the aboli-
tion of the duty on policies of insurance against hail
storms.

Mr. YOUNG presented a petition from the north of
Ireland, praying for an Act to legalise Presbyterian
m arri ages.
Mr. DUNCOMBE presented a petition from the
parish of St. James, Clerkenwell, complaining of the
employment of the police in the collection of poor-rates;
also a petition for the amendment of the Reform Bill ;
also several petitions against the Masters and Servants'
Bill.

Lord ASHLEY presented a petition from Glasgow,
with 33,000 signatures, in favour of the Ten Hours' Bill;
also several petitions from other places to the same

effect.
Mr. BECKETT presented a petition from Halifax
against the Manchester and Leeds Railway Bill.
Mr. BRIGHT presented a petition from Oldham-
cum-Fell, praying that the 30th and 31st clauses of the
Factory Bill;might be expunged ; that children under
eight years of age should not be worked more than eight
hours a day ; and that there might be no restriction on
labour of persons above that age.
Mr. T. DUNCOMBE postponed the following return,
of which he had given notice for to day, for a fortnight—
Return of all moneys paid to Mr. Hodges, or any short-
hand writer or writers, for notes taken of the proceedings
in the Court of Queen's Bench, Dublin, previous to and
during or since the trial of the Queen v. O'Connell and
others ; also, a return of all moneys paid for any notes
taken of the proceedings at Conciliation Hall, between
the Ist day of August, 1843, and the present time.
Mr. 'WYSE postponed the following motion, of which
he had given notice for to-day, for a fortnight.:—For a
Committee to inquire into the allegations contained in
the petition, presented the 21st day of March, from the
members of the Repeal Association and others, respecting
the late State prosecution in Ireland.
Mr. GODSON, on the part of Mr. F. Kelly, postponed
for a fortnight his motion for leave to bring in a Bill
to provide an appeal in criminal cases.
Lord SANDON presented a petition from Liverpool
against the application of any money for the establish-
ment of a harbour of refuge at Holyhead.
UNION WORKHOUSES.

Mr. WM. EVANS, seeing the Hon. Member for
Berkshire in his place, wished to know whether it was
his intention to proceed with his motion with respect to
union workhouses ?

Mr. PALMER said it was not his intention to do so.

ART-UNIONS.
Mr. WYSE, seeing the Right Hon. Baronet the First
Lord of the Treasury in his place, wished to ask him
whether the opinion of Counsel, which had been deli-
vered to the Treasury on the legality of the Art-Unions,
could, without inconvenience, be laid on the table of the
House ?

Sir R. PEEL said he had no objection personally to
loyn felt an
the tabl objection
the
bourtlitihi
oenHs ooifi s
lawyers
e ni
aeirda
thought it a good rule, and he should adhere to. in
it He
produce
to ha:e
this instance. He did not apprehend that the Govern-
ment had any intention of instituting proceedings against
the Art-Unions. It did not rest with the Government
to institute such proceedings ; but he apprehended that
the Art-Unions were liable to be prosecuted by the com-
mon informer. These bodies had received the earliest
intimation as to the illegality of their constitution.
Mr. WYSE hoped that any measure for legalising the
Art-Unions would have the support of the Right Hon.
Baronet.
CHURCH-RATES.
Sir C. DOUGLAS put a question to the Hon. Mem-
ber for Finsbury, as to whether he intended to bring fur-
ward any motion respecting the petition he had pre-
sented, impugning the conduct of two Magistrates
in Warwickshire, with respect to a process for church-
rates. The Hon. Member had got the petition printed
and circulated, with the intention of making a motion ;
and he had not done so, though he had an opportunity
of doing so on Tuesday evening. He thought he bad a
right to complain, on the part of those whose characters
were censured, that he had not done so.
Mr. T. DUNCOMBE said the petition which he pre-
sented had impugned the conduct of the magistrates on
the subject of church-rates. He (Mr. Duncombe) be-
lieved that the magistrates had acted most illegally
in the affair. However, the present was not
the proper time for discussing the subject. The
motion relative to the matter stood for nest Tuesday
week, when'the Hon. Baronet would have an opportunity
of vindicating the conduct of those magistrates if he
thought fit.