The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-10 00:00:00

ettrli lattion

SUN OFFICE, Seven o'clock.

THE FUNDS=(C

OSING PRICES

BRITISI
Bank Stock
3 per Cent. Red.
3 per Cont. Cons 97i
311 per Cent. Red 1034
New 3i per Cent lO2
New 5 per Cent.
Long Annuities to expire
Jan. 1860
Oct. 18.59
Jan. 1860
FOREIGD

EI FUNDS.
India Stock ..
Ditto Bonds
Ditto Old Annuities —
Ditto New Annuities —
E_. Bills, 1,000/. lid 67 pm
Ditto 5001 69 pm
Ditto Small— 69 pm
Bank Stock for Acct —
India Stock for Acct —
Consols for Acct. ..
f FUNDS.

Al.:nail, 5 per cent Portuguese, 5 per cent. 75
Belgian 5 per cent — I Ditto, New Ditto
Braailian Bonds.— ...... 79 Prussian, 5 per cent —
B..ienos Ayres 6 per cent Russian, 5 per cent
ti per cent Ditto, Metallic .
Colombian, 6 per cent... 'Spanish, 5 per cent 2l
Ditto 1524 — Ditto, 3 per cent... 32,
Cuba Bonds, 6 per cent 93 Ditto, Deferred.... .. 13,
Danish, 3 per 2ent B6a French, 5 per cent. —f. . -
Greek, 1525, 5 per cent — lExehange ...... —f •
Mexican, 5 per cent 34} iFrench, 3 percent. —f. •
Ditto, 6 per cent. 1537 Dutch, 211 per cent. 55i
Paruvian,lB2s,6 per ct. 27 !Ditto, 5 per cent.... 1011
SHARES.
Birmingham and D.rby (100 paid)
Bristol and Exeter (70 paid) „,
Eastern Counties (23 paid) .....
Ditto Extension (Ps 4d paid)
Edinburgh and Glasgow (50 paid) . 59
Great Western (75 paid) ... 112}
Ditto Half Shares (50 paid)
London and Brighton (50 pa d) 45A
London and Blackwall (16113 s 4d paid)
London and Birmingham ( paid) ...... 2421
London and Guildford Junction ( 5 paid)... 6;
London and South Western (4116 s 10d pet) 774
Ditto Eighths (15s. paid) ••• _
London and Croydon Railway ( Trunk) ...
Manchester and Leeds (70 paid)
Ditto Quarter Sharos ( 2 paid)
Manchester and Birmingham (40 paid)
Midland Counties Railway (100 paid)
Nerwich and Brandon (2 paid)
Newcastle and Darlington Junctinn(ls paid`
Northern and Eastern (45 paid)
Ditto Quarter Shares (12b paid)
North Midland (100 paid)
Paris and Orleans (20 paid)
Rouen and Havre ( paid)
South Eastern and Dover (50 paid)
Ditto Scrip (25 paid)
York and North Midland (50 paid) ..
Ditto New Shares (21) paid)
York and Searboro' Branch (`24 paid)

62
691
10i

-SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
.GLOBE.—We know not whether Lord Devoi's
imperturbable negative on all remarks hazarded in
the Lords on the Irish Land Inquiry is to be taken
as equally pregnant with wise meaning as Lord
Burleigh's shake of the head; but that the Noble
and Learned Lord is wise in saying nothing of
his task at present is evident enough. For our own
part, though the language of doubt is injurious to
the prestige of newspaper infallibility, we had
rather say frankly that we do not quite know yet
what to think about this Commission, than come out
so strong as our formidable Contemporary the Times
did the other day—only to draw our horns in again.
The first and second articles of the Times have been
in curious and amusing contrast. The following was
the " thunder" of the Times in the first of these
articles :—" Here is the case Lord Devon has to
deal with :-.The peasant population of Ireland
are in pressing want of land to raise
food for their families. The immediate
possession of every given five acres out of
lease is essential to, perhaps, each one of some twenty
individuals, having wives and children. They bid
against each other, without exactly calculating the
produce of the land ; they have a right to do so—
a legal right. The landlord accepts the highest
offer, which also, without professedly calculating
the acreable value, he has an undoubted right to
do. We say nothing of the moral right of either
party—of the tenant to offer more than the land
will pay, or of the landlord to accept it. But:if
we must give an opinion on the subject, beyond
all question it is as dishonest in the tenant to offer,
as it is in the landlord to let the farm for, a higher
rent than can be fairly made of it. But the differ-
ence is this :—The tenant is compelled by the iron
hand of hunger—an excuse assuredly for deeper
crimes than an untenable promise under pinching
want ; whereas the landlord is not forced by famine,
and is not to be excused by purblind cupidity,
for demanding a rent which the most indus-
trious occupier could not pay—for which no
solvent tenant, and none but a perishing despe-
rado, would have the face to pledge himself. What
then happens ? The rents are not paid—eject-
ments are executed—the defaulting tenants are
ousted, the incomers murdered in their beds. Is not
this a true picture? Is anything exaggerated? And
musts the reality last for ever? This is what Lord
Devon has to deal with. Property is already out-
raged ; living men are sacrificed to the name of pro-
perty ; yet there comes in a vociferating lawyer—
Oh ! take care you don't touch the right of pro-
perty t' hold sacred every blood-stained clod; let
peasants by hundreds gasp in their own gore;
let them, Lord Devon, manure the wasted soil
with their bodies, but, above all things, protect
the full purse—prey upon the empty stomach?'
By yesterday the Times seems to have got aware
that it had grasped at a subject too big and hot to
handle, at least in the above summary style. Accord-
ingly it " aggravates its voice, and roars you like
any nightingale :"—" As for Lord Clanricarde's pro-
found surmise, that if not an inquiry into the land-
lord and tenant' question, ' it ought to be term?d one
into fixity of tenure,' we acquit Lord Devon of
being such a mountebank as to undertake a
grave examination into the merit of a thing
which, like fixity of tenure,' if it have any significa-
tion at all, must mean unblushing confiscation of
every landlord's property, and nothing else in the
world. Fixity of tenure must be perpetuity of tenure
—that is to say, if a tenant have his occupancy at
will, or for a short lease, this new talisman called
6 fixity,' is to transform a short term into a long one,
and the tenant into the owner of his farm." The
Times has evidently become wary of pursuing its
slashing style of Tuesday, about " the right
to live, original and inalienable, against the right
to possess, the creation of conventional society."
Every relation between men, excepting cutting each
others' throats, is the creation of society. What does
the original and inalienable right to live amount to in
the case, for instance, of the savage, %%ho has laid in
no store of provisions for the winter ? We remember
a description, in one of the recent voyages of Polar
discovery, of groups of starving beings gathering round
the travellers, who had made a cache of provisions
for their winter use. These savages tacitly recognised
"the right to possess, the creation," as the civili ed
Times calls it " of conventional society,"—even when.
it was exercised, as in this case, with inevitable inat-
tention to " the right to live, original and inalien-
able," in their own persons. Their supplications
were mute; they fitted famishing, but not raging,
round the food which they might not taste. In a
sound system, there is no opposition betty een the right
to possess, and the right to live. Indeed the former
arises from the latter. There would be no living if
there was no possession. Life would be reduced to
its most precarious and lowest terms. Society' has,
doubtless, an indefinite right to modify the tenure of
possession ; but, in doing so, it must have constant
reference to the stability essential to undisturbed pro-
duction, and to that unbroken confidence in law
under which only the means of production will freely
distribute themselves. We see what results even from
the partial impairing of that confidence in Ireland.
We see that the most attractive natural powers of
manufacturing production, and great cheapness and
command of labour—fail, however, to attract manufac-
tures to her shores. This is not now the fault of
England. All our home and colonihl markets—all
such channels of commerce as Belgium lost, when
she separated from .Holland, lie open to the sister
country, through the whole extent of the British
empire and dependencies. What prevents her profit-
ing by them ? What prevents her profiting by out-
Feta enviable to half Europe ? 'What prevents her
obtaining capital lavished (lately): on Illinois, or
Louisiana, or Mississippi ? Nothing but her
state of internal restlessness restlessness, a
misfortune, it may be, rather than a crime
—but restlessness which, whatever may he
the misfortune of its origin, has produced 'habits
which, most assuredly, the true friend of Ireland,
while he would remedy all evils which law can
remedy, would denounce fearlessly—not less fear-
Jessly than Dr. Doyle denouncedthom7than Mr.
O'Connell has denounced them in former times. Re-
peal of the union, if attained, or attainable, could
remedy the effect of these habits, which, of, course,
is felt most strongly in Ireland, but has tinctured our'
operative masses in England too (we refer,
others, to the habit of violence in Trades' amongst
-Unions,
which actually drives old manufactures out; and, unles
curbed, must necessarily discourage the rise of new`
ones, and which Mr. O'Connell himself has repeatedly
stigmatised with the strongest emphasis)—repeal of
the union, we say, could remedy the effect of law.
less habits in no other way than by bringing them
(the restraints of English power removed) fairly
to to head—curing agrarian and operative disaffec-
tion to law by letting loose its last extremes—
exhibiting, in short, in Ireland, one more popular
pargation of blood and fire—one more utter demo-
cratic revolution—to be followed—by the sort of
regimen that does follow, when those volcanoes burn out.
It is certainly not beyond possibility, that, some time
or other, English power may be unable to prevent
this Irish internal combustion. And Providence may
doubtless, in the end, educe good out of evil. But a
wise and far-sighted Government would seek strenu-
ously to obviate these extremites---not by one inquiry
or one measure—but by every measure within its