The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENII.G PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—The question of Land Allotments to the
:abouping peoile has not, we think, been yet fairly
considered under all its aspects. \Ve observed re-
cently that it might be considered as a mode of part
payment for labour., It is a circumstance which
never should be left out of recollection, that, till
lately, the payment of agricultural labour formed a
large item in p:risk rates. No doubt the system
was a vicious one ; but it arose out of real difficul-
ties. Those difficulties recur on its abolition ; and
the question is what new means can be found for
meeting them. The late Lord Winchilsea, in a Re-
port to the Board of Agriculture in 1816, made the
fallowing statements, which appear to us to throw
light on the present question, as well as on the past
state of things, from which we have not yet escaped
in their consequences. 1 fis Lordship, speaking of the
Causes which oppose all attempts to better the
labourers' condition, mentions, as one great cause, the
dislike which the farmers, in general, have to seeing
the labourers rent any land. Perhaps, he continues—
" Oae of the reasons for their disliking this is, that
the land, if not occupied by the labourers, would fall
to their own share ; and another, I am afraid is, that
they rather wits to have the labourers more dependent
upon them ; for which reasons they are always desirous
of hiring the house and land occupied by a labourer,
under pretence that by those means the landlord will
be sure of his rent, and that they will keep the house
in repair. This the agents of estates are too apt to
give into, as they find it much less trouble to meet six
than sixty tenants at a rent-day, and by these means
avoid the being sometimes obliged to hear the wants and
complaints of the poor. All parties therefore join in
persuading the landlord, who it is natural to suppose
(unless he has time and inclination to investigate the mat-
ter very closely) will agree to this their plan, from the
manner in which it comes recommended to him ; and it
is in this manner that the labourers have been dispossessed
of their cow-p ures in various parts of the midland coun-
ties. The mount the farmer obtains his wish he takes
every particlethe land to himself, and relets the house
to the labourer, %ho by these means is rendered miserable;
th&poor-rate increased ; the value of the estate to the
lallflowner diminished ; and the house suffered to go to
decay, which, once fallen the tenant will never rebuild,
but the landlord must, at a considerable expense. Who-
ever travels through the midland counties, and will take
the trouble of inquiring, will generally receive for an-
suer, that formerly there were a great many cottagers
who kept cows, but that the land is now thrown to the
farmers ; and if ho inquires still farther, he will find
that in those parishes the poor-rates have increased in
an amazing degree, more than according to the average
rise throughout England."
These statements, which seem to us to bear strongly
on the present position of this question, bring the
withdrawal of land from the peasantry in close con-
nexion with the rise of poor-rates. The same logic of
facts would seem to show that the withdrawal of
money from the parish should be followed by the re-
storation of the previous " land privileges:' It may
be true that the peasanes character has been altered as
well as his condition ; and that the peasant who kept a
cow may now be imagined, in many districts, almost
as fabujelus in his attributes as one of the Littlemore
Englishaints. lgevertheless, the possibility of cow-
keepieg is not, ittppears, extinct; for Mr. Grev and
the Rev. W. S. Gilly assure us that it still subsists
in the North of England ; and that not only cows
are kept on tl cottage allotments, but that the cot-
tage tenants kFep themselves off the parish. However,
we do not present the north of our island as a la-
bourers' Utopia ; nor do we assert that the " hinding
system" would be all-sufficient to restore " a bold pea-
santry." We believe that, in the southern districts, a
peasantry of a very different character has grown
up in many places under the old Poor-law, and is
pinched under the new. The provident virtues were
rendered useless and objectless ; and the improvident
vices show their fruits. The system of allowance in
aid of wages was introduced to palliate the effects of
a real revolution in the state of the cultivators of
the soil, produced by war-prices, changed habits, and
agricultural speculations. The palliative was a
quack-medicine, doubtless; it was not the pure
milk from one's own cow ; parish provisb
for families was a sorry substitute for indivlg
dual prudence in entering on marriage; and parish
pay had no principle of growth in it for the resources
of its recipients—though it had for their numbers.
Still, while agricultural speculation was ascendant,
and the tide of prices rising, the system could
go on. But when the tide had turned, and the
old parish practices were abandoned, it became
imperative to seek some substitute. The land, and
property on it, still remain, in the last resort,
chargeable with indigence. It is clear that it must
either make an effort to throw off the population
supposed redundant, or an effort to enable that po-
pulation to keep itself above indigence. The throwing
off method has been most in favour—emigration the
most " familiar word." But emigration is exceed-
ingly costly ; notwithstanding certain quack pro-
mises to the contrary. Emigration is exceedingly
inadequate to transplant any great " surplus" from
tile soil. Can the supposed " surplus " be
put in the way of keeping itself where it is ?
One reply to this question is extension of freedom to
buy food with labour. This was long withheld, and is
now only imperfectly conceded,—for the sake of those
agrioultural speculations which have revolutionised the
state of bhe peasantry. But it has appeared of late
that agricultural speculation can neither support its
own pauperism in idleness, nor set it all at work on
sufficient wages. Yet, somehow or other, sup- i
port must be furnished. Commerce is one aid ;
are not allotments another ? Agricultural capital,
it is said, is insufficient to carry on the extent
of cultivation it undertakes to the high pitch to
which it might, and ought to be carried. Well,
but one grand portion of agricultural capital are
the labourers' hands and arms. There is a sort of
absurdity in those lying idle because agricultural
capital cannot use them. They are themselves capital.
The only indispensable pre-requisite to the operations
of tbis capital is the supply of food to the labourers in
whose hands and arms it consists. But that is im-
perative by law already. To say that men, who must
be fed, cannot work to a profit, is to talk idly.
They can, at all events, work to a diminution of loss.
But is it true that these manual capitalists, supplied
with a field to work on, cannot work profitably? The
farming speculators, by their own account, cannot
cultivate the land as it ought to be cultivated. So
far as that is true, so far they are not its natural and
proper holders. The lakd has been viewed too ex-
illusively as an object of moneyed speculation and
monopoly. It ie, however, someth'w else than this,
and something more. It is a grannational instru-
ment of production—an instrument pledged by posi-
tive
law to the national support. That any given
class of capitalists cannot operate to suit their account,
is only a fresh proof of the necessity of calling in aid
those who can. It is a gross absurdity to assert, in
one breath, that the land would take much higher
cultivation, and to assert, in the next, that the best
Lite of national capital would be to make advances
out of it for the expatriation en masse of the culti-
vators !
STANDARD.—We are conscious of no rancorous
feeling to the Cabinet of 1835. On the other hand,
hmakg done our part, however inconsiderable that may
have been, in depriving them of the opportunity to
pursue their evil course, and having witnessed their
ignominious expulsion from office, we could willingly
forget that England had ever been disgraced by
such a Government—assured, as we are, that a
repetition of the stain must remain for ever im-
possible. The indulgence of this forgetfulness is net,
however permitted to us. As always happens, the
malice of bad men proves too strong for the restraints
of prudence ; and we are reluctantly compelled by
the demands of justice—of justice to ourselves as well
a 3 of justice to others—to recur to what posterity will
consider the most odious of the crimes of the
late Administration—the construction of the Court
placed round the innocent and unsuspecting Queen,
at horl'aceession to the throne, at the age of eighteen
years! This is a topic upon which the bitterest
enemies of the Melbourne Ministry might expatiate
with pleasure; but it is one which we see revived
by the retainers of that Ministry with an astonish-
ment qualified only by a recollection of the
rage and heedlessness of malice. The writer,
whose rash ill-will has forced us back upon
the hateful topic, charges the Standard with
having taken part in the denunciation of the
Melbourne-formed Court The charge, like every
other ebarge ever brought against this journal by the
same writer, is false. We took no part in the denun-
ciation, cordially as our feelings sympathised with
it ; on the other hand, we exerted ourselves
earnestly to restrain the public indignation, because
though we knew and felt it to be just, we
remembered that there are classes of crimes, to
name which in the presence of a young and inex-
perienced woman is an offence ; and because we had
full coilficlence that the native good sense and ad-
nimble education of the young Queen would carry
her, even in a corrupt Court, through the danger
of misconstruction the only danger to which
her pure and lofty nature could permit her to
IN. exposed. As we foresaw, so has it proved ;
the Queen has passed happily through the
danger spread round her. But is the guilt
of ilioee who spread the snares lessened by the vir-
tues of her for whose feethey were set ? Are we
the less bound to honour the men who, though un-
necessarily;.
}, ‘
..!ecesarily,.: and at the risk of offence, raised the
t : leaping voice for her proteeion because the beloved
---
`---,- ---,object of their care has -Pro'veal herself worthy
-J . ' - df such ready and absolute devotion. The time
-;: K ---- !jai rived when we can, without scruple, render
, .:. -----;_,.?7ps to these truly loyal and devoted subjects
,;, fi
/ : --- . ' •.. Of 1 Queen. The exemplary and honoured jwif:,
1- li:1 ~,,14 y mother, can now look back not only with
1 ° `la' cpla ency, but with pride, upon the dangers of mis•
- a
ril cjconstruction to which her treacherous servants ex-
' posed her inexperienced youth ; of pride not only in
her own faultless course, but of pride also in the
noble people who reposed upon her prudence an
unbounded confidence, while they abhorred those