The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
VRON !CILE.EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—It is certainly the most extra-
ordinary fallacy that ever was sought to be
palmed on the British public, that colonial trade
is our all-sufficient, nay, even our sole profitable
export trade; and that conveyance en masse of
labourers " to a wilderness, as valueless as the
wave which broke on its shore," is the true
and infallible recipe for disposal and em-
ployment of our people. Why should the
word colony thus exclusively. fascinate our
views of commerce? What is a colony? Is
it a place whose inhabitants are only permitted
to trade with us ? This was what we tried to
make our American colonies in the last century.
We prohibited them from exporting wool, or
woollen manufactures, on the penalty of the loss
of the ship employed, the goods found, and five
hundred pounds in money besides. An Act was
paSsed in 1732, forbidding the sending to foreign
countries by land or water carriage of any hats
made in the colonies, and fixing the numbers of
apprentices that master-hatters might employ.
An Act was passed in 1750, declaring colonial
iron-mills and forges to be " nuisances, and as
such, to be " abated." The North American
Review observes, that " it may be, that this ex-
treme care of the six furnaces and nineteen
forges, then possessed by New England, was
necessary ; but as Old England was un-
able to furnish for export, as far down as
the year 1767, more than eleven thousand
tons of iron annually, Americans of the pre-
sent day can imagine some little excuse for the
very grave offence of making at home what could
hardly be procured abroad." The North Ame-
rican Review points out what is worth remark-
ing, that the rupture between England and her
colonies appears to have, in reality, arisen from
a question of commerce, quite as much as of
taxation. " There is very fair reason to
believe that threepence in the pound was
resisted as much from the apprehended
loss of the colonial tea-trade with the
Dutch—carried on in contravention of the
laws of navigation and trade—as from any other
cause. The value of the tea consumed in all the
colonies was set at three hundred thousand
pounds sterling annually. The English East
. India Company, backed by the Ministry, grasped
at a monopoly of the supply ; and the change of
policy which reduced the duty from ls. to 3d.
would have enabled them to obtain it; inasmuch
as their tea could then be afforded at as low a
price as the smuggled, and was considered better."
It grieves us much to reduce " A glorious revolu-
tion" to a sort of Peel-Tariff squabble ; a squab-
ble resulting from something very similar to the
late partial lowering of the coffee duties. Such
however is the American Reviewer's account of
its origin ; and strange surely is the passion of
restriction, wherewith we have infected our
oldest colonists, when we find this very
American Reviewer • almost recommending
the revival of the old navigation-laws system
against us, by enforcing which we lost our colo-
nies. So infectious—sci vivacious—is the selfish
spirit which prompts anti-commercial policy. The
North American Review has got a notion that
England rather than America, has profited by
abandoning the navigation-laws. "In the
opinion of men of no mean sagacity, its operation
[that of the Treaty of the 3d July, 1815,1 has
proved more beneficial to the shipping of Eng-
land than to our own; but had it included the
same stipulations for our free and permanent trade
with the British possessions in the Western He-
misphere that it does for intercourse with the ter•
ritories of the Crown in Europe and Asia, we might
be satisfied with it." Much good indignation is
wasted by the American Reviewer at the re-
=lining restrictions on trade with our colonies;
and not till he has exhaled it all, does he vouch-
safe. to admit that " the new tariff of Sir R. Peel
shows that this inequality is no longer to exist;
but its termination makes no compensation for
the past (11), nor have we any pledge that
the former system will not be renewed. ?"
Cool that from an organ of a people who have
just been barring out a moiety of our exports.
Our present colonial policy appears to be reversed
from that of the last century. Instead of attempt-
ing to compel our colonists to submit to have
everything scarce and dear wherewith we did not
happen to be able to supply them cheaply and
plentifully, we are taking precisely that same
asinine burthcn on ourselves for their benefit.
And so far from enforcing on them reciprocal
treatmentofour products, we allow them to import
foreign manufactures at lower duties than Canada
levies on ours.. We allow Jamaica to have American
provisions at far lower rates than she claps on
Irish ones l—and we allow the West Indians
cheap foreign sugar, in requital for their starving
our market with scarce and dear supplies of that
of colonial growth. In Canada, the Morning He-
' raid stated the other day, " the Crown has sur-
rendered its inheritance, the wastelands, to the dis-
posal and control of the Provincial Legislature; the
mothercountry has guaranteed a loan of one mil-
lion and a half, to complete those public works ne-
cessary to the development of the colony's great
resources; the Imperial Parliament has lowered
the Customs' duties which it levied in Canadian
ports, has reduced the import duties collected at
home on the staple productions of the province—
wool and grain to mere droits de balance, and
has given its sanction to the policy enunciated
by the Chief Minister of the Crown, that hence-
forth Canada must be treated as an integral
portion of the empire." To say nothing of our
vast expenditure in fortresses and military esta-
blishments ! Well—here is a colony, thanks to
us, one of the most lightly taxed countries in the
world. Here is a colony, which we choose to
make the sole channel of our American corn
trade. Here is a colony which we say (and
we more than keep our word) is to be
placed exactly on the footing of an Eng-
liSh county. Truly a thankful and complaisant
English county we have of it ! We tell our Mi-
,nisterial colony-fanciers, that all their exclusive
favours to Canada are doing nothing but people a
new region with commercial restrictionists. How
.can it be otherwise? Are they not lisping our
own lessons after us ? Are we not setting up
amongst them precisely that machinery of jealous
regulation which, if they once acquire a taste
for, they will turn one day against ourselves !
STANDARD.—The Irish State trials natu-
rally enough occupy the attention of our Con-
temporaries; we have copied IrOmn the Times an
able article upon this subject, against one pas-
sage of which article we must respectfully offer
a protest. The pass:mge to which we allude is
the following :—" W by, these Irish func-
tionaries cannot so munch as get a jury
together; a simple process one might ima-
gine, under the guidance -of a direct Act
•of Parliament, without subjecting them-
selves to a challenge of the whole array."
Now, in justice to " Irish functionaries," it must
be said that neither can' English functionaries
'so much as get a jury together, &c. &c. &c.,
" without subjecting themselves to a chal-
lenge of the whole array." The right of dial-
'lenge to the array is the same in both coun-
tries, if men are so profligately impudent as to
`make challenges which they cannot sustain ; the
only difference is that in England men will
not make such groundless challenges, merely
ud eaptandum; in Ireland, they do make them.
Surely, our Contemporary must have seen in the
proceedings in this case up to the present time,
_enough to satisfy the most scrupulous that soli-
citors of the repeal class will do things in Ire-
. land,' to which the least respectable members of
. the profession in England would scorn to descend;
' or, to use our Contemporary's strong language,
. such things as " the most foul-mouthed igno-
ramus of an English pettifogger would not
venture upon." And having seen those things
our Contemporary ought to have hesitated to be-
- lieve, that" the array" of the Dublin panel was
' justly challengeable, merely because such a person
'as Mr. Peirce Mahony threatened to challenge
-.it; but if the array is not justly challenge-
: able what becomes of the censure of the
Irish functionaries? Whether Mr. Pierce
Mahony will proceed a step further in
fol .i I Rment. of his threat, we of course
icannotipretend to guess. The, must we say it,
'• culpable facility of the Irish Court of Queen's
ljdtttin in receiving frivolous objections, no doubt
'bads out toitim encouragement to em
itrtiflec of delay, and we cannot helpl employ every
addinge'e
• that. the facility of some of the English jour
- ,pals to adopt and to exaggerate every charge of
t 'neglect or blundering made aeraiirt " the I • rmsa
•
flin6tionarmes,l)
In holds out still stronger eneou-
ragenient. the matter of time speeial, jury
panel, the Irish Attorney-General 'has nothinc,
to ;it would be, indeed, a grave crime on his
•part-to totichr-it up to the day of striking the
.reduced The Clerk of the Crown has as
little to clif with the panel as the Attorney-Ge-
neral, and we have the happiness to know that
. , ore able, upright,- or high-minded public
..servant does not live in her Majesty's domi-
,,nions than the gentPman who fills that
• offrie in Ireland. .I%P. Bourne, the Clerk
-of the Crown, the list from the High
..Sheriff, who is a very. honourable man, and, we
p
believe, a liberal iaolilics, and the High She-
riff receives it from the Recorder, the well-
known. Mr. Shaw, a person whom nobody will
suspect ofcom promising hi msel f in order to accom-
inodate Sir Robert Peel's Government. Where,
then, has been the blundering or the dishonesty
which can afford grounds for challen.ging the
al.ray 1 we at least require something more
'than the dictum of Mr. Pierce Mahony, however