The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-14 00:00:00

(51ttnins

LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1844.

Notwithstanding the boasting tone held by the
Agricultural Protection Society on its formation at
the commencement of the year, it has made up to the
present period but a sorry fight against the Anti-
Corn-law League. Its energies have evaporated in
mere words. Its roar—as Bottom, the weaver, would
say—has been that of " a sucking dove." When
first instituted, it confidently announced its expecta-
tions of being able to storm the League entrench-
ments—beard Mr. COBDEN in his " pride of place"
—and recover all the ground that had been lost
by Monopoly during the last four or five
years. But, instead of this, the Protection So-
ciety has done little or nothing. It has indeed
" kept the word of promise to the ear," but it has
broken it "to the hope." Not a single blow more
serious than might be given by a lady's fan has it yet
inflicted on the Anti• Corn-law League, despite the
formidable array of Dukes, Lords, Baronets, and
Squires, that grace its muster-roll. Why is this ?
What occasions this humiliating failure on the part of
the self-vaunting Protection Society ? The answer
may be given in a sentence. The common sense
and right feeling of the community are against it. In
vain it distributes tracts and pamphlets by the
thousand—in vain it makes speeches by the score—
its written and its oral eloquence alike fall
still-born on the public mind. "Wisdom crieth from
the housetops, and no man regardeth her." At a
meeting of this ill-starred Society, which took place
yesterday in Old Bond-street, Mr. MILES read the
first Annual Report of the Committee which fully
bears out our views of the deplorable condition of
the Protectionists. Notwithstanding the ingenious
attempts made to conceal it, a tone of humility—we
might almost say, of despondency—breathes through
this Report, which satisfies us that the Society has
failed in all its efforts to extend the sphere of its own
influence, and rouse the popular feeling against the
League. Mark, for instance, the crest-fallen
spirit in which it alludes to the important
question of the Registration :—" Since the
recess, our opponents have by their own showing in
a great degree abandoned their itinerant lecturing,
and have mainly directed their exertions towards in-
creasing the votes of their particular party, thus turn-
ing the Anti-Corn-law League into one Registration
Club for the whole country. The fourth rule of our
Societ3 mo.t strictly prohibits our contesting
this ground with them ; nor can we regret it,
believing that if not the letter of the law,
at any rate that the spirit of the Constitution regards
the electors of every county and town as fully able
to choose and control their own representatives in the
House of Commons." Now who cannot see, through
the affected scrupulousness that pervades this passage,
evidence of conscious weakness ? The Protectionists,
forsooth, have too much respect fcr the forms of the
Constitution to dream for an instant of tampering
with the Register ! The League may do so if it
pleases, but the Protection Society is influenced
by a far loftier far more considerate far
more patriotic spirit ! It will agitate in accordance
with the forms of constitutional etiquette, or it will
not agitate at all. No, it will abandon the cause of
Monopoly;altogether, rather than swerve one hair's
breadth from what it deems to be just and decorous
Most conscientious agitators • But do the Protec-
tionists really believe that the people. at large
will give them credit for such
willpurity and disinte-
restedness ? Not they. They detect at once
the hypocritical cant about their regard
ni
h of
for the
varnish Constitution, notwithstanding the fine
worde.with which it is covfq.ed. Is it indeed frnm men
combined together in such a selfish cause as that of
Monopoly, that conscientiousness is to be expected ?
Are the best friends to the Constitution to be found