The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-28 00:00:00

mind that the course of the seasons cannot be changed,
will not bo changed to suit the caprice, the folly, or the
criminality of human legislation.—(Applause.) As we
have had before, so we shall have again, a change of
seasons; and when that change shall come, and if the
people of this country have not, in the meantime, be-
stirred themselves and shaken off this iniquitous impost,
I ask you, who can you blame but yourselves, and
where can you run for refuge, for your own folly will
have led you into danger, and by your own neglect alone
will you have allowed these evils again to come upon
you. You will again have to suffer those evils which
arise from the price of bread rising all over the country;
the consumption of the great mass of the people of all
kinds of manufactured goods will be greatly crippled;
you will have again a great exportation of gold, and a
great derangement of the monetary affairs 'of the coun-
try; you will again have numbers of merchants and
manufacturers going rapidly, week after week, into the
Gazette, you will again have shopkeepers impoverished,
and worst of all, you will again have the labourers of his
district, your honest and industrious artisans, plunged
into all that distress which we have lately witnessed,
and arising from that distress, discontent, dis-
affection, and a brutalising and barbarising of the minds
of the people, such as they have suffered from for the
last half-dozen years, and which they are now only par-
tially getting rid of.--(Applause.) It is impossible to
draw a picture too gloomy of that which we have already
seen in this district ; and it is much less possible to draw ;
a picture of that which must come. if we neglect the
power that we have in our own bands, to wipe away
these infamous laws. I am sure we have the power ;
the statements made by our Chairman to-night proves
that we have the power.—(Applause.) The Reform
Bill never has been worked by either the liberal or the
free trade party in this country.—(Applause.) It may
be a bad Bill ; it has flaws enough we all know ; it has
pit-falls many for us, and it has privileges far too many
for our opponents.--(Applause.) But fur all that, if we
will only work it, I am persuaded there is within it
enough of the popular principle to enable us to amend
it, if need be—(Applause)—and to do many other things
which we may think necessary for our welfare.—(Loud
applause.) Well, then, if there be a possibility of bad
harvests and bad times coming upon us again, I need no
other argument to convince you that it is necessary that
the agitation of the Anti-Corn-law League should be
contiuued.—(Applause.) lam not one who is in the
habit of apologising for our agitation, nor do I go,
" with bated breath and whispering nimbleness," to ask
my Lord this, or squire that, whether it be proper, or
legal, or constitutional, or asant, that the Anti-
Corn-law League should endeavour to repeal the
corn-law.—(Continued applause.) I urn sure, from
what we have seen in former years, and what we know
now, we have reasons sufficient to convince us, that if
ever the agitation of this question were a duty, it is a
duty now, and that if we were to let go of it now, we
should deserve all the calamities which the very worst
legislation which squiredom can carry on could possibly
inflict upon us.—(Applause.) Now, I charge the mono-
polist landowners with being the cause, the direct cause,
of the calamities which have afflicted this country for
some years past ; and I charge them also with being the
direct cause of the deplorable state of things in which
their own agricultural counties are now found.—(Hear.)
They will find it out by and by ; they will come and ask
to have the corn-law repealed some day or other, if we
don't force them to do it beforehand.—( Applause.) It is
a law which ultimately must bring ruin, and distress,
and embarrassment, and discor I around their own
baronial halls, as much as it can do in this densely popu-
lated county. These landowners are too ignorant to
legislate for trade.--(Applause.) Mr. Cobden, I think,
charged them with being so ignorant that they were not
fit to manage a chandler's shop.—(Applause and
laughter.) One of them did rise in his place in Parlia-
ment to protest against such a charge, and to assert a
higher character for the order with which he was asso-
ciated ; he said they were fit to manage a chandler's
shop. —(Great laughter.) Their ignorance is so great
in all matters of commercial policy, not only upon facts
but upon principles, that their selfishness runs them into
danger. But there would be no great harm to this
country from squiredom, if there were no men in this
district foolish enough to help them.—(Hear, hear.)
If there be a creature of an order which has never yet
been classified, it is a manufacturer in the cotton trade
supporting a squire in carrying out a law to starve the
manufacturer's labourers, and to destroy his trade.—
'Applause.) Anti yet there are some—a good many—
though in the south of England people cannot well be•
lieve it.—(Hear, hear.) The nioncpolist landlords them-
selves, when they passed the corn-law, never for an in-
stant dreamt that they should receive great support from
this district. They have their Buckingham, and manu-
facturers have their Birley.—(Loud applause.) Now I
would be the very last man in this room to say a sylla-
ble against any man who was acting at an election ita his
political character different from me, but acting accord-
ing to his honest conviction, and after moderate inquiry
into the question before him. But when I see a man
who, of all men in the world, one would think has a
direct interest in the well-being of commerce and manu-
factures, presiding, as I believe, this man did preside
over the election committee for the return of a person
pledged to oppose every step in the direction of free
trade, I do say that that man is a traitor to the order to
which he belongs—(Hear, hear)—and abandons his duty,
especially to the great mass of the labourers of' this dis-
trict, to a large number of whom he gives employment.
—(Loud applause.) It may be that this gentleman was
perfectly convinced that a fall in the price of bread
would involve a fall in the rate of wages, for I have
understood that during this week there has been a
procession of persons in his employ, discontented
with the present rate of wages, and seeking
for an advance, grounding their claim upon the in-
crease of business, and the improvement in business ;
thus proving that the statements of the monopolists in
this respect were wholly false.—(Applause.) I know
not whether this brings conviction to the mind of Mr.
Birley, or to any other of his class. I would hope that
they acted conscientiously in the courses that they took ;
but I do say that it becomes the duty of the free traders
of this country, who are five out of every six of the po-
pulation—(Loud applause)—l say it does become
us to mark with our reprobation the conduct of
any man, himself deriving his property and his station
from the commerce and the manufactures of his country,
and when an invader comes to besiege the town, that he
himself, traitor-like, by night, as it were, opens the gates
and lets in the enemy.—(Cheers.) The last time I was
in this hall I listened with extreme pleasure to a speech
delivered by Mr. Smythe, the Member for Canterbury,
himself the son of a nobleman, and heir, I presume, to a
Peerage, a speech from which the monopolist manufac-
turers of this district would do well to take a lesson.—
(Cheers.) He spoke of a time when a citizen of the
distinguished city of Mayence combined with others to
put down the spoliation of the barons, who lived upon
the banks of the Rhine—barons who, as he said, exacted
a toll upon the f-Irst necessaries of life.—(Hear, hear.)
Now, do you believe that there was a single citizen of
Mayence who turned out to fight on the side of the ba-
' roes? And yet the monopolist manufacturers are sur-
roun led by a body of men, nobles of this country—nobles
ho exact a toll upon the first
do not do it by pistol, musket,
nb by e
ecsos
au
rriteess ye, tlri
fuel
,y —w
hwo'
bayonet, or sword, but who do it by the not less power-
ful, far more subtle machinery of an Act of Parliament;
and when we are assembled here, men all of one order,
interested in nothing but the prosperity of the industry
of this district and of our country—when we are as-
sembled together for the purpose of protesting against
this invasion of our rights, and calling upon the whole
population to march with us, after us, or before us, to
re-establish our rights, then we find the monopolist ma-
nufacturer—and this one I have named the chief among
them—actually turning out from this district and siding
with the feudal barons, actually endeavouring to
strengthen the oppression which we are striving to over-
throw.—(Loud applause.) I often wonder why it is that
men are so willing to bow their necks to men who are
ornamented with stars and garters and titles—(Ap •
plause)—for I am sure the more I come in contact with
these characters, the more I come to the conclusion that
it is something far beyond this which constitutes true
nobility of character.—(Applause.) And there is not
any creature that crawls the earth to my mind more
despicable and more pitiable than the man who sacrifices
the interests of his own class, and of his own order, and
of his country, merely that he may toady somebody
who has a title to his name.—(Applause.) He should
recollect—

"-Title his ill-woven chaplet wears,
Full often wreathed around the miscreant's brow ;"
and that there are men in the: peerage of every country
who are greatly to be despised, as there are some worthy
to be honoured to the utmost, in whose hearts their high
rank has not driven away all sympathy with the rights
and interests of their fellow-men.—(Applause.) And
for whom is it that these men degrade themselves, and
make these sacrifices ? Why, for a class who don't like
us, the producers ; for it is no disrespect to the aris-
tocracy of this country to say that they don't like trade,
because it is not,,rioui that they valiur themselves chiefly
on the very lung period of ante during wnich their an-
cestors have not been connected with anything so sordid
as trade.•—(Applause.): They prove that they don't like
trade, because they make laws which shall cripple trade,
and keep it always, as it were, in swaddling-clothes, and
never let the infant become a youth, nor the youth a
man.—(Hear. hear.) And they are a class, also, of whom
it may be said, and I say it with grief, that however bad
the laws they pass in Parliament may be, the adminis-
tration of those laws in their own districts, where they,
reign predominant, is quite as bad as the legislation of
may la? sure that,
But there is a
I which they are guilty.—(APPlaus)
with
retributive justice—l heard Sir James Graham say that.
1 —(Loud applause.) And when men fail in their duty,
or violate great principles, they
some titre or other, they will be found out and punished
for it. In the southern counties, at this moment, how
deplorable is the state of Ointfs ! It is flOt of our
telling ; the eyidence etitnes from thetti,elves. It has
nit
chamberg,ine etlfir;heighAtubtei.zoirgnn.iffaywinteepargoacee:s (T)fhti,einzrianneicle-
offices proclaim it.—(Rear, hear.) Did not one Office
didissue a e
send down 200/. towards the fund for opening public
parks and walks in Manchester, with a letter in which
they complimented the people of Manche ter and the
working classes for the energy, zeal, and courage,
which, they had assisted in preserving property when in
danger of being destroyed by fire.—(Applause.) And
ether
rt time,ami
within a fortnight of that memorable letter, for I hold it
uthniiste insurance-offices to be memorable, and most creditable and honourable t
town—withinlee-effia fortnightees m eet not the
cular to all their agents in England and Wales—and
toogfet‘hh
believe, in Ireland—but certainly in England and Wales,
in in which they enjoin every agent to make especial •
in-
quiry before he insures farming stock, as to the
charac-
ter and circumstances of the person who wishes to insure.
—(flear, hear.) And what are the questions tot)
asked ? Is he a man who has received any threateninge
letters ? What a horrid state of society it must be, when
it is necessary to ask a farmer—has he received a threat-
ening letter ? What does that mean ?, Is there some-
body who is ready to burn his premises, and it may be, I
almost to destroy his life ? Again—has the man

who wishes to insure any steam-engine upon his
premises ?—any machine for thrashing his grain ?
Why, here you have your mills filled with
the finest machinery in the world ; and there is not a
working man in Manchester who believes that ho would
be better off if this machinery did not exist.—(Applause.)
But here, in the southern counties, if a man has a steam-'
engine on his farm, as they have in Scotland, or a thrash-
ing machine, which will thrash rather faster than a man
can do with a flail, he is held to be in danger of the destruc-
tion of his property by fire, from the ignorance and yin-
dictive spirit of the labouring population, and therefore
his property cannot have the safeguard of insurance on
the same terms, though heretofore farming property had
been insured at common risks, I believe at Is. 6d. pre-
mium upon 1001, which is the same as it is upon dwell-
ing-houses in this district, and they have no tax upon
their insurance as we have.—(Applause.) Now they
must pay in all cases, I believe, 35., and in cases where
there is any machinery upon the premises, not less than
55. per cent. Well, now, that is retributive justice.—
(Applause.) I am not blaming the farmers, except
that they have not had spirit enough to prevent this
state of things ; it is the landowners who are
chiefly to blame ; and to them public indignation will
be turned, and they will be asked, in a language
which they dare not disregard—How is it that
you have neglected the population about your
own estates, legislating in Parliament, e,t
without opposition, and administering those laws in
your own parishes paramount in authority, and ilet,-
posed ; how
.is it that in your districts such a lamentable
state of things exists ?—(Applause.) But for what has
been already alluded to, it would be impossible to explain
how helpless these unfortunate persons are. I confess, '
I pity them from my heart, as I pity all men who, from
ignorance, selfishness, or vice, get into a dilemma and
into a difficulty. They are in difficulties, and their help-
lessness, if it was not to be pitied, would certainly be
greatly to be laughed at.--(Applause.) What are their
remedies ? They propose to put down incendiarism by
giving the people gratuitous exhibitions of fireworks.--
(Loud It.plause and laughter.) I believe it was a pro-
fessor—Professor Henslow—who proposed this. And
there are a variety of others of a like nature. The
Honourable Gentleman then read some extracts from
an Aylesbury paper, showing the severe treatment of
poor criminals in the county of Bucks, and then pro-
ceeded :—And these are the men to whom lir. I3irley
and the monopolist manufacturers of this district are
looking up for an approving smile, and fora nod
from whom they would endure almost a very agony.
—(Cheers and laughter.) These men are thus" who
are helping to thin the slices three times it day for
these poor children and suffering parents. Oh, I do
wonder, after all the discussion we have had on this
; question, that there are men to be found who are not
heartily ashamed that they ever said a syllable in favour
of such an accursed system.—(Loud cheers.) He says,
"If ever a committee should sit on the distress of the
agricultural labourer"—but they took care last session,
when a committee was asked for, that they would not
have one—(Hear, hear)—" I would find them plenty of
cases in which single men, of thirty-seven years of age,
are only paid 6s. a week. I would prove that many
farmers only give 6d. a day to men of three and four
and twenty, who have worked from childhood with them,
and are known to be as useful as the best men they
have !" And so they are. In this book there are many
things of a similar description—many not suitable to
read in an assembly like this—but theie is one more
eattract I would read. He says, the agricultural labourer
is generally paid on the principle of giving him just that
amount of sustenance that will keep him from claiming
relief from the union house. "That as a dweller he .s
considered as an incumbrance on the soil, I think is but
a fair deduction from the fact of the pains taken to
diminish the number of dwellings. And when I com-
pare the trouble taken to get the best plans for stables,
cowsheds, and pigsties, and the money expended
in their improvement, with the little effort bestowed on
the improvement of the labourer's dwelling, I am forced
also to the conviction that he is the last living
thing upon the farm whose physical condition is re-
garded. And yet, he says, while it is allowed by all,
that the labourer is physically and morally oppressed,
" to take up his cause is, alas ! but to unite all parties
against you ; so much as a matter of course, are the
worst features of his condition considered, that you are
at once considered as a conspirator, both as against land-
owner and occupier, if you venture to speak a word in
his favour ; that he is pauperised from the low wages
paid him, demoralised by the circumstances that sur-
round him, as a matter of general conversation is allowed.
Make but the feeblest attempt to enforce his claim to a
better treatment, and you are at once set down as a pro-
pagator of dangerous ideas—one who threatens all man-
ner of evil—and you will probably be told that you have
some party motive or private pique at the bottom of
your philanthropy." It appears, by what he says
here, that it happens there much, as in this part of
the country, that if any man speak of those dis-
tressed, and presumes to interfere with the profits
or amusements of another class, then that class say
he is a dangerous man, and that the Association he
is connected with ought to be put down by law
Now, I have taken this pamphlet on these grounds : it
speaks of the county of Dorset ; it is given by a reverend
gentleman, an l a man not likely to have been readily
moved to take the course he has. And when we recol-
lect that there has been down in the neighbourhood a
Noble Lord who lays claim to feelings of philanthropy,
and who professes a desire to improve the state of the
working classes generally, there is something surprising
about these statements. I can appreciate the motives of
man who seeks to do justice any. where, yet I should
admire it more if it were not of that expansive character
which looks abroad for its ob!ects, whilst it never sees
the evils which exist nearer home.—(Loud applause.)
Mr. Bright concluded by saying, that if such was the
state of the agricultural districts after thirty years of
protection, surely this was not a time to abandon the
struggle in which they had so far advanced towards suc-
Cess.

Mr. BAZLEY. President of the Chamber of Commerce,
then moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Cobden and Mr.
Bright, and the meeting, after giving three enthusiastic
cheers, separated.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
F 1,031 THE EVENING PAPERS OF SATURDAI.
GLOBE.—We find that Mr. George Bankes has
been directing the attention of the Dorsetshire magis-
trates to Sir J. Graham's Bill for paying clerks of
the peace and of petty sessions by salaries, instead of
fees, and for regulating the fees in courts of criminal
justice, in language showing a very unnecessary
alarm for the interests of the fee-receivers :—" Public
attention had been excited by the great impropriety
of charging accused persons with fees on ac-
quittal. The nature of the question had been in
some degree mistaken, fur it had been supposed that
all parties accused were liable to these charges. Now,
that was entirely a mistake, because in charges of
felony no fees of that description were charged. It
was, however, by no means just that parties who had
been falsely accused (and they had a right to pre-
sume this of persons who had been acquitted) should
be subject to any penalty. But the clerks of the peace
ought not to be deprived of the emoluments which
their predecessors had enjoyed ; and consequently a
difficulty had occurred in the way of putting a stop to
a practice which had been reprobated by the magis-
trates of that bench so long as he could remember. It
was very necessary that such a Bill should be intro-
duced, and be had no doubt it would pass ; but it
was also necessary that they should look over it
with considerable care, because it was not just
that they should deprive clerks of the peace
of their fair and proper remuneration." The
children of Zeruiah are sure to take good care
of themselves ; and however natural it may be for a
Tory county Member to anticipate their wishes and
over act zeal in their behalf, we should think better of
him if he withheld all encouragement of a jobbing
opposition, too sure anyhow to arise, to so good an
object as that of Sir J. Graham's Bill. These fees, of
which Mr. Bankes pretends so much fear that clerks
of the peace may be unjustly deprived—fees taken from
defendants in misdemeanours—are illegal fees; pro-
hibited clerks of the peace are prohibited from taking
them by the 55th George III.; and their illegality
has been affirmed by Sir James Graham, on the autho-
rity of the Law Officers of the Crown, on Mr. Eseott
calling his attention to such fees being still demanded
by many clerks of the peace. "It was not just that
they should deprive clerks of the peace of their fair
and proper remuneration !"—This fair and proper re-
muneration being fees which are taken in violation of
law—as, if they were not illegally taken, they would
exist in violation of the plainest principles of justice—
from men acquitted on charges of misdemeanour, or
discharged for non-appearance of a prosecutor. Out,
we say, Mr. Bankes, upon such affectation of justice !
chat fees so indefensible, should continue to be
exacted by many clerks of the peace, contrary to law,
is only one of many instances of the necessity for a
more effective supervision of the amateur adminis-
trators of criminal justice at Quarter Sessions. A
Parliamentary return has been obtained by Mr.
Escott (whose persevering exertions to abate this
disgraceful practice deserve all praise) of "Fees taken
or demanded from defendants in misdemeanours by
the Clerks of Arraign and Clerks of the Peace in
England and Wales, at the last Assizes and two last
Quarter Sessions respectively." Put aside the
illegality of these fees ; and that they should
be wrung, legally or illegally, from poor men
as the price of regaining their liberty after acquittal
on a false charge, is enough to make Englishmen
blush for their country in which such practices are
permitted to exist. The same return shows an amount
of upwards of 1101. received by such fees in the two
last sessions in Somersetshire. We rejoice to see
that Mr. Escott, assisted by Mr. Labouchere, has
prevailed on his brother magistrates at Taunton,
at the sessions just concluded, to prohibit the clerk
of the peace from continuing any longer to take
these fees; and we trust other counties will follow
this example.
STANDARD.—We have long been of opinion
that one of the most urgent of necessary reforms is,
the improvement of the residences of the poor
in large towns. In hamlets and villages, and de-
tached cottages, there is, perhaps, little occasion
for the presence of the reformer; there the youth
grows up, and the man lives in the society of his
family, generally the best of moral schools ;
to transfer this advantage tq great towns, or
to provide a substitute for i
t, is a problem
not yet solved, though its solution, besides being
neccessary to the happiness of the poor, must exercise
an important influence upon society, through all it