The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-16 00:00:00

t tea Mbittion

THE FUNDS-(CI

:i i SING PRICES.)

BRITISI•
Bank Stock. 206
3 per Cent. Red ..... 100%
3 per Cent. Cons. ....—..... 101%
per Cent. Red .....
New per Cent............. 103
New 5 per Cent.-- ........
Long Annuities to expire
Jan. 1860............... 12 1-16
Oct. 1859............... 117.
Jan.
Indian 5t0ck........„...........
FOREIGI

i FUNDS.
Ditto Bonds £l,OOO — Pm
Ditto under £l,OOO '72 pm.
South Sea Stock

[Ditto Old Annuities ...

Ditto New Annuities ...

Ex. BRIJ, 1,0004 I)id 58 pm.
Ditto 500/. ..... 59 paL
Ditto 5ma11..„........... 59 pm.
'Bank Stock for Acct.... 209

Consols for Opg. ..... .... 10014
India Stock for Acct.... 28536

I FUNDS.
Russian, 5 per Cent....... —
Ditto, .....
Spanish, 5 per Cent , 1840 25
ilitto, 1841
Ditto, 1842........... ......
Ditto,
Ditto, 1844
Ditto, 3 per Cent ........».» 3.IU
Venezuela Bonds, 2 per Ct —
Freuch, 5 per —t —
French, 3 per Cent. ..... . —f
Exchange ..............».. —f —c.
Dutch, 2% per Cent
Ditto.ls per

Austrian, 5 per Cent —
Belgian, 5 per Cent 102%
Brazilian Bonds 89 4
Buenos Ayres, 6 per Cent
Cuba Bonds, 6 per Cent
Chllian, 6 per Cent
Colombian, 6 per Cent 1434
Danish, 3 per Cent
Greek, 1825, 5 per Cent —
Mexican, 5 per Cent ..... 984
Neapolitan Bonds,s per Ct —
Prussian Bonds, 4 per Cent —
ikruviark Bonds, 6 per Ct —
141prtuguese Bonds,s per Ct
HARES.
Birmingham and Gloucester (100 paid)...............9634
Cambridge and Lincoln, 134 paid. 2
Edinburgh and Glasgow, 50 paid
Ely and Bedford, 1 paid 1
Great Southern and Western (Ireland) 5 paid
Great North of Efnd, 100 paid
Great Western ( 'd)
Ditto Half Sha s, 50 paid

Ditto Fifths, 12 paid ......:..........«....»
Lancaster and Carlisle, 10 paid
London and Birminghani(Stock)
___ .

Ditto Quarters (`s` paid)
London and Brighton (50 paid)
London and Greenwich (12t. 15s. 4d. paid) :9%
London and South Western (411. 6s. 10d. paid)
London and Croydon
London and York 2% paid 4%
Manchester and Birmingham, 40 paid 52
Midland (100 paid) ....- 11234
Birmingham and Derby, .£lOO paid 833
Newcastle and Darlingron Junction, 24 paid 6O
North British, 736 paid
North Kent, 2% paid 2%
Norwich and Brandon, 6 paid
Ditto, New Shares, I paid
321( Richmond and West End Junction, I paid
houtE Eastern and Dover (33 25 4d paid)
Ditto New Shares (4 paid)
York and North Midland (50 paid) .....
Ditto Half Shares (25 paid) ......... 52
Ditto Extension
Boulogne and Amiens, 2 paid ..... .......... ...-
Orleans and Bourdeaux, 2 paid ........... ......
Paris and Lyons, %paid 3
Paris and Orleans2l2o paid) ...... ........
Paris and Rouen. 20 paid .................
Erratum in Saturday's list.—Read Paris and Strasburg 3
instead of Paris and Lyons.

LETTERS ON THE CORN-LAWS,
No. XI.
(From the League.)
TO MESSRS. E. MOSES AND SON.

GENTLEMEN,—You are, unquestionably, the most
renowned slopsellers in Europe. The eye always ad-
verts to your advertisements. Your shop-mark is on
the daily broad sheet of fame, as if it were only one of
your own blankets. The poetry of your puffs, and the
cheapness of your charges, are alike prodigious. Peel
and Russell rise and set with the session ; but you
are alWays above the horizon—the Ursa Major of the
Minories. " Custom" cannot " stale your infinite
variety." You are, indeed, a " commercial pheno-
menon."
But rivalry is threatened, and you must submit to
a comparison of claims. You are an " establish-
ment,' but my Lord Ashley dissents, and erects a
voluntary institution. His Lordship is a philantro-
pist ; and his love of man turns to hatred of Moses.
He charges you with taking undue advantage of the
need of needlewomen. Meetings are melted by his
picteires of your oppressions. It is said that, although
you rig the ragged, yet you starve the stitchers.
The world cries out that you are too worldly.
The Queen Dowager heads the hostile slopshop;
and the lists are up for contention of charity with
cheapness.
Messrs. Moses, father and son, I know nothing of
you, but the public notoriety that you keep a very
cheap shop and pay very low wages. Doubtless
you act on the principle of the Premier ; and when he
has a principle, it ought to be acted upon ; and,
if not by himself, there is the greater need that it
should be acted upon by other people. Doubtless,
I say, you act on the principle of the Premier, to
"buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dear-
est." But you do not, like Lord Ashley with his
corn, legislate for rendering dearer the market in
which you sell. You undersell your competitors,
and pull down their prices. He oversells his com-
petitors, and keep 3 their prices up to the consumer,
by a tax. You make a cheap market cheaper by
competition, and he makes a dear market dearer by
legislation. Thus fat, Moses, your Judaism is more
merciful than his Christianity.
No, replies his Lordship, for cheapness is the root
of all evil. At the Society for the Protection and
Employment of Distressed Needlewomen, last week,
his Lordship " wished to impress upon the meet-
ing, for he felt it very deeply himself, the very great
evil arising in all directions from that constant
and unceasing effort to get every single thing,
not only the common trumperies of life, but
even the, greatest necessaries, at the very minimum
of remuneration."—( Horning Herald report.) The
assembly cheered, ladies and all ; and in the name of
consistency let 119 one of them ever try for a bargain
again, but always inquire after the highest price when
they make their purchases. The mischief is, however,
less, it seems, of bidding low for the " trumperies of,
life," than for its " greatest necessaries." A curious
distinction. The wealthy, if their wealth be in land,
are the sellers of neccessaries and the buyers of trum-
peries. Pleasant doctrine for the fashionables of Willis's
Rooms, but hard measure for those who forego the trum-
peries of life, and, with a minimum of money, are advised
to be content with even less than a minimum of bread.
Moses, how does this bear upon your customers ?
Many of them must go with bare backs, did not you
cover them at the aforesaid" minimum of remunera-
tion." They must make shift without shirts, did not
~. you supply them cheaper thau his Lordship's charity
slopshop. Yours is the emporium for poverty-
stricken purchasers. It drives nakedness down a
degree lower in society. Sir Peter Laurie backs
Lord Ashley, and scolds people for buying cheap
stirts. This is cold work when the only alternative
is to remain unshirted. That must they do, unless
there were some such Refuge for the Destitute.
Your shop is as good as a charity, with an associ-
ation, and a secretary and reports and patrons.
Much better, Moses. You clothe the naked with-
out making beggars of them. They pinch their
bellies for the sake of their backs; out of the daily
bread which Lord Ashley helps to tax, they screw
enough for two shillings' worth of the " common
trumperies of life," foregoing a portion of its
" greatest neceesaries," and walk away with an un-
subdued sense of independence, not less satisfied than
if clothed in purple and fine linen, but less disposed to
rate Lazarus for obtaining the rags that stanch his
sores at a " minimum of remuneration."
But, then, you only pay 6d. for the making
of these 2s. shirts. Your needlewomen famish.
They wear out eyes and fingers, brain and heart.
Their privations are terrible. I will not blink that
part of the case. God foflsit. No, nor will I for-
get the fact that out of this fearfully earned 6d.
a day Lord Ashley and the landowners take 2d. by
their bread-tax. The broad-acred philanthropists
exact the 2d., and you, whom they abuse, pay the 6d.
It is "villainous low ;" but not so low as robbing
them of the 30 per cent. out of that miserable pittance.
That is by far the dirtier trick of the two, and the
most cold-hearted. They get little from you, those
poor needlewomen • but, were it not for you, would
they get anything ? You have not cleared the coun-
try of cottages. You have not obstructed the progress
of trade and commerce, and so diminished the amount
of employment. You have not enhanced the price of
food, and the terrors of the poorhouse. If you do but
little in mitigation, and that little for the sake of
business, still it is a mitigation. Lord Ashley says
lou should do more. Let him and the landlord
egislators do less, and your mitigation will grow
thereby. On what principle, and by what law, are
Jewish slopsellers bound to feed the poor whom Bri-
tish landlords have impoverished for the benefit of
their own rent-roll ? Answer me that, ye aristo-
cratical man-milliners of philanthropy, who talk of
charity and vote for scarcity.
The professed object of Lord Ashley's Society is
to raise the needlewomen's wages to 9s. a week. if
accomplished, the needlewoman may be thankful she
is not a Dorsetshire man : a man, with a family, la-
bouring on a farm. But let us see how this charity
works. It promises to raise the cost of making a
shirt to tho price for which you are now selling the
shirt. What, then, becomes of the poor purchaser
who can afford no more ? The Society ought at least
to tattoo him gratis. He is driven out of the market,
victimised by benevolence, made an example of, for
being an accomplice, after the fact, to the " minimum
of remuneration." There is another sort of result
likely to happen. The Ashley slopshop only with-
draws a third of the applicants from the general
competition. That vacancy will soon be supplied by
a rush from the hovels of starvation and the dungeons
of the poorhouse. The numbers of the destitute will
keep down wages. The Queen Dowager might as well
be patroness of a society for suspending the law of gra-
vitation. Mot a voice less will the " Song of the Shirt"
have in its dismal chorus. There will be quite as
many to bear the burdeir. The ranks will be
promptly filled up by remorseless necessity. Still
will " most unwomanly rags" hang loose upon the
wasted form ; the insufficient pay tempt to fraud or
prostitution ; and famine or suicide close the dreary
scene. More work is the want. Proportionate abun-
ritwe of employment, and that alone, can ensure ade-
I • sPef ilaitsseration. The valley of the Missouri
711ula my of food for all the meedle-women
i . ,:,4ifgritif jakitaik; and the roughly clad growers have
tt,7-,-- 44w,000- ii for their services. , 2
the
cord Ash-
4, - ---'7.1 .kiiigiolt-01 1 way to the repeal of
~,;: 'lliji--' crinds the faces of the corn
-laws.
rk---., - :, .. - ~. -
t... <-,,_ eels tii/te . oted heel upon their stomachs. De_
N..,'1/4- •- s r friends and save us from the selfish-
AieSse
Araept4l benevolence.
ifar