The Sun.
London, England, 1845-10-18 00:00:00

trientiP nit

LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1845.

The public must have read with satisfaction many speeches
made at agricultural meetings during the present autumn.
That class bigotry, and cry fur protection, the violent denun-
ciations against the League and the Whig Ministers, the bur-
dens on land, and other notes of lamentation and despair have
almost entirely disappeared, and the landlords now exhibit
themselves in company with other rational people, who know
that if they do not help themselves no others will
help them. At the meeting of the Chertsey Agri-
cultural Association, held on Thursday, these symp-
toms of change were more than usually conspi-
cuous, and, among others, we have great pleasure in
adverting to those with which Colonel CIIAL-
LONER'S speech abounded. It contained so much good
sense, and showed so much liberality, that no apology is re-
quired for giving the following extract from it :—" He had
told them on former occasions that they must not rely upon
what they termed protection—they must rely upon them-
selves, and they might rely upon it that the time would
come when they would have none, and would be compelled
to depend upon their own exertions. It might be next year
—it might be ten years; but they might depend the time
would come ; and he called upon them, therefore, to be upon
their guard, and not be taken by surprise, if they were told
some morning that next year there would be no corn-laws.
He had no fear that even then they would be able to
cultivate their land profitably, if they exerted them-
selves. He had been recently in Scotland, and he saw land
which formerly only produced five sacks of corn an acre,
from which five quarters were now thrashed. Supposing,
therefore, that the former quantity fetched 605., the farmer
would be better off, with the increased quantity, if it only
fetched 40s. He therefore declared that he had no fear that
if they were deprived of the benefit of those enactments
which they considered a protection, that they should still be
able to cultivate the land with sufficient profit to themselves,
give good wages to their labourers, and a remunerating rent
to the landlord." This speech would have done honour to
Mr. COBDEN ; but what adds to its importance is this—it
was listened to with great attention. No serious objection
was made to it—at least as far as regarded the present
mode of levying the duty by the operations of the ruinous
sliding-scale, Mr. BRISCOE simply remarking, that landlords
as well as cotton-lords were manufacturers, and if one class
was protected, all should be protected. However he was
prepared for such a result as that anticipated, and when
protection was withdrawn, he " would be happy to give his
tenants leases by which the rent should depend on the prices."
The sliding scale at all events is completely given up, and
we may, therefore, reckon to a certainty that this anomaly
in our system of legislation will speedily be erased from the
statute-book. The landowners find that so far from being
benefitted by this invention of the Tories, they have
suffered by it to an enormous extent. It has served
only schemers —persons who have purchased foreign grain
and placed it in bond till they could take advantage
of the market, and pour it in, when the fanner owing to the
pressure of circumstances had been compelled to dispose of
his whole year's produce. High prices then benefit rot him
nor his landlord, the rent cannot be paid and this wicked
eeheme for keeping up prices and starving the poor,
recoils with righteous vengeance on the heads of its
eoncoctors. We know not what the few months
that intervene between this and the meeting of Par-
liament may bring forth, but, judging from appearances, we
may anticipate a great rise of price in the necessaries of life.
The potato crop has failed both here and on the continent.
The quality of the grain is inferior to that of the
average, thong!' the quantity is said to be large.
In some of, the smaller continental states the exportation
of agricultural produce is prohibited, and in case of scarcity
England must therefore trust to the districts around the
Black Sea, and the United States of America The distance
of course raises the price of the article; besides, our system
of corn-laws has checked the cultivation of grain in
those regions, and unless we are saved by an order in
Council for admitting grain free, the country may be
afflicted by both famine and pestilence. We know, however
what a firm and resolute Ministt r would do under similar cir-
cumstances, for Mr. CANNING set the example; but even such
an order may not 'avert the danger. Our blessed corn-
laws have checked the supplies ; the duty at the present moment
is the least evil, for while there might have been bread
enough and to spare, we are not certain that a supply can be
had sufficient to relieve the wants of the population. This
only shows, however, that the time is come for settling
this long-agitated question, and we confidently trust that
another session will not he allowed to pass without the
adoption of measures which shall protect us against such a
frightful calamity.

Every Englishman who has studied, however cursorily
the constitutional history of his country, must feel so strongly
that the first principle of its permanency—the breath and
being of its existence—is the independence of the judges of the
land of the Crown, that he may well be excused if he apply
the presence or the absence of this principle as an universal
test of the vitality or the unsoundness of every other consti-
tution. The tenure of the judgment-seat "durante bend
placito," at the pleasure of any authority, sets that authority,
by necessary inference, above the law. The notion of that
indifferent, unbiassed justice, which is the bond and the
security for all personal and all public rights in any social
system, and anything short of which is but a mockery of
law, and the scourge, instead of the protection of a people;
such a nction, coupled with the existence of a superior
power that can control dr! x:tiort of such "justice," is a
s9lecisin. The liability to an influeoce which can, at any
\
time, extinguish its operation is fatal to the primary object
and condition of its creation. What fate or destiny is to
some of the religious systems of mankind, justice embodied
in law represents in any scheme of goer nt as
not
despotic. It is the one supreme and all
purely
controlling power