The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-01 00:00:00

tenin As

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 1845

The opening of a new year—a solemn event to all
endowed with faculties of reflection and who exercise
those faculties in a right spirit—gives us the oppor-
tunity of saying a few words respecting the year which
has just passed away, and that which but a few
hours since broke upon us in the silence and solitude
of midnight. Ini casting a retrospective glance over
the political proceedings that took place in 1844, if
there be no very great reason for congratulation,
neither is there for discouragement nor despondency.
The important public questions of education,
of the condition of the labouring poor in the
manufacturing as well as in the agricultural
districts, of free trade, of legal and ecclesiastical
reforms, of the adoption of a more liberal and conci
liatory system of policy towards Ireland—if these
important questions have made no very marked pro
gress during the somewhat drowsy twelve months
that have just expired, yet it is consoling to reflect
that they have in no respect retrograded, but, on the
contrary, may be said to have advanced slowly but
surely towards the successful issue that ere long
awaits them. In fact, though the year 1844 has on
the whole done its work but languidly, yet it has
done a certain amount of work whose bene-
ficial character has yet to be fully appreciated.
It has been a year of preparation for future good
rather than of actual performance of good. It has
been breaking the ground for its successor—fitting
the soil and sowing the seeds which are destined to
bear fruit in due season. The destitute and demo-
ralized condition of the labouring classes of the popu-
lation have been brought before the attention of the
community in an infinite variety of ways ; public
sympathy has been actively awakened in their behalf;
an opinion has been generally expressed in no une-
quivocal terms that their case can no longer
lea neglected with impunity; and we confi-
dently trust that in the session which is now fast
approaching some decided measures will be adopted
for their relief, and 1845 complete the good work
which 1844 has commenced. Again, as regards the
question of free trade. Here, too, progress has been
made, though not perhaps to such an extent as could
have been desired. The great Anti-Corn-law
League—the embodied expression of a people's
wants and wishes on one of the most momentous
subjects that can interest them—has kept alive the
desire—we might add, the determination—for an
unshackled commercial system ; and despite the
innumerable obstacles that have been thrown in its
way by the selfishness, the cupidity, and the un-
deniable influence of the 'monopolists, this popular
Confederacy has never once lost ground, but
throughout the past year maintained its proud
position unshaken. It has still many difficulties to
surmount. The prejudices of some, and the keen
sense of self-interest in others, are not to be beaten
down in a day ; but events are working in favour of
the League—which the Herald of this morning, by
the bye, after having-pronounced it to be in articulo
mortis, has just discovered to be as much alive as
ever it was—and nothing but strenuous perseverance
is wanting to enable it to achieve a full and perfect
triumph. Slow, indeed, but sure, has been the pro-
gress which the question of free trade has
made in the year 1844, but henceforth
its advance will be considerably accelerated,
and in the coming session we doubt much
whether our expediency Minister will use the same
decided language respecting it that circumstances
gave him a pretext for using in the past session. As
regards the system of policy to be pursued towards
Ireland, we cannot longer permit ourselves to doubt
that this, too, from necessity, will be wholly different
to what it has hitherto been. The declarations of
Sir R. PEEL in Parliament, made towards the close
of the last session, are, so far as they go, exceedingly
encouraging on this point, and the evident dis-
may and perplexity of the Irish Orange party are
an omen of still more cheering import. On the
whole, therefore, when we look back on the past
year and forward to the present, we feel that we
have much more cause for hope than for despondency.
Events are fast hurrying to a crisis. The compara-
tive languor and apathy that have prevailed in the
public mind for the last twelve months cannot be of
much longer duration, but must inevitably be suc-
ceeded by a vigirance—an activity—and a determina-
tion that will compel the Premier to put an end to
that miserable vacillating system of policy that has
so long characterised his Administration.

We cannot refer to the police and assize intelli-
gence in the last week's file of our journal, without
mingled feelings of gratification and of shame. Gra-
tified in the highest degree we have indeed been at
the concurrent testimony of all the Metropolitan
Police jurisdictions to the important moral improve-
ment in the habits of the poorer classes, which must
be inferred from the almost total absence of night-
charges arising out of that inebriety and riotous
bearing that have long been considered the certain
accompaniments of the Christmas festival. Nor has
our satisfaction been less in its intensity or its purity
at the noble responses which in so many parts of the
kingdom have been made by the wealthy and en-
nobled to those urgent appeals to their Christian
charity and benevolence which the Press has, at this
period of privation, suffering, and distress, been
strenuously preferring on behalf of the scores of
thousands among our more destitute and friendless
fellow-creatures, whose title to the consideration and
pity of their more fortunate brethren is founded on
the triple ground of community of country, religion,
and institutions. In the midst of their domestic
misery, in their social degradation, under the grind-
ing pressure of their wants, they have respected
these sacred ties with a patience, a constancy, a good
faith, a forbearance such as we solemnly believe have
never been rivalled in the case of the poorer and
humbler communities of any other European King-
dom. The possessors of that property which, gene-
rally speaking, has been so sacredly respected under
grievous temptations and desperate distress, demon-
strate by such timely donations and such extensive
hospitalities as we have had to record within the last
three or four days, at once their good feeling and
their good sense. There is a kindliness, a charity to
be exercised, beyond the compulsory demands of the
law for the sustentation of the parochial poor. On
all hands we hope to see the dictates of these genial
influences, during this inclement season, as exten-
sively acted upon by our competent gentry and more
Opulent aristocracy, as the benevolent beginnings we
recur to would seem to warrant us in anticipating.
So much for the causes of our recent gratification.
With pain we now address ourselves to one of the
multitudes of instances in which what i 3 called
"Assize justice," but which would be more fairly
and truly termed "Squire-made statute-law," seems
to go out of its way to invent cases of a sufficiently
puerile and trumpery character to invest its decisions
with the strongest title to the contempt and derision
of the public. At a Petty Sessions in the country
last week, a wretched woman, in a condition of mise-
rable poverty, was charged by a small .farmer with
the offence of having picked up, in a neighbouring
wood, one whole faggot of loppings, such as at this
season of the year are commonly cut and collected
into bundles for consumption or sale. The husband
of the woman, and another party, confirmed the ac-
count she gave, in the teeth of the assertion of the
farmer, namely,. that at the hour in which the offence
alleged against her was laid as having been com-