The Sun.
London, England, 1826-10-04 00:00:00

or THE MIMIC .TOMNAtS.

• Mr. Whit More's pamphlet, on which we made some
observations yesterday, coutaiu a large portion of
useful matter for reflection, mune especially to the
• ikfrieulturA interest, the members of which it appears
to have been a leading object with the ituthor to en•
lighten, and at least to neutralize, if he could not fully
convert them. " Whether, says Mr. Whitmore,
".I understand my own interest or not, I will not de-
' cide ; but as a . landed proprietor, I hesitate not to
that it is not advanced by high prices, when,
with those high prices, a principle of fluctuation is
introduced.' It is not merely that high price brings
with, it an increase in the cost of every article cif con-
tiumption,—which of itself constitutes an important
feature in this question,—but that the accident of high
rice cannot be secured for a series of years, nor,
Indeed, for a second harvest. What then follows?
A fall of price, and with it a complete tumble .of•the
agriculturists from the various • pinnacles of hope or
enjoyment on which they had perched themselves in
the more prosperous seaon. rhe-tel!ant cannot make
up' his rent, nor the landlord'discharge his tradesmen's
Abatements of rent must be agreed to---short
of the necessity—because granted with repugnance by
the landlord, and unequal to relieve the tenant from the
pressure of " engagements already contracted." So
that a long course of adversity is almost sure to result.
-• • high prices foster high hopes, and stimulate hazardous
• agricultural speculations. Low prices discourage all
.hope, and ruin the speculator's who have acted on them.
Fresh bargains are then made for land, under this in-
. ordinate depression of price and spirit, as far below the
real value oflanded property, as a few years before they
were above it. A bargain made between two finer-
chants for goods usually terminates in a single ;trans-
action, and affects only the disposition of one lot or
Cargo of merchandise whereas an agreement for land
extends of necessity to a series of years, and in a state
of the law which produces extraordinary fluctuations in
the value of agricraitural produce, amounts in fact to a
• system of gataing the most dangerous, because the
least amenaidie to rational calculation. On the ten-
d,ency of a corn monopoly to the establishment of a mo-
nopoly in other articles, and on the multiplied inis-
ctuels proceeding from all such unjust preferences, Mr.
Whitmore makes time following sound and powerful
observations :
" A monopoly in corn leads. to monopolies in other etticles'; it
is the plea always used in favour of restrictions upon commerce,
and it is conunonly urged successfully. When the majority of the
legislators are monopolists, they cannot but look with a favourable
eye on the monopoly, system; every increase of that leads to an
accession of allies to their darling portion of it ; indeed, they who
maintain reetrictisne upon one branch of comment to be a la.
Copal benefit, can ;hardly, with any riemblenice of consistency,
deny that it is equally beneficial when applied, to other objects.—
Crime begets erbium; no lese sure does monopoly create monopoly.
Monopoly, I again repeat, derives its advantage solely from the
nation wherein it exists ;5 to be of any value: it must rob Peter to
pey Paul, and both Peter and Paul reside in the same country.—
'l,fere, again, it is not a simple transfer; the common effect of
monopoly is to deaden exertion, not to stimulate to greater effort.'
Peter is robbed, not that Paul may he more rich, but more idle—
or that he way waste his strength in producing that which might
he Purchased much better awl cheaper from borne one else. Thus
it is that all numnPheadi.:.nitrish national wealth, but they also prre
mice a. more permante,.4 „ffeet by retarding the accumulation of capital
s" it. is in that. accumulation that national wealth consists. None
produce th!4 effect more than the monopoly in corn ; it raises the
Pelee' ~(labour, and diminishes profits from whence such seem
wlalstion proceeds. But neither is flue all the evil : if profits
tre redtWed at, hems by a high price of cone in vain will you at-
rempt to prevent capital seeking for itself a more beneficial em.,
ployment elsewhere. The difficulty of transferring it from one
part of the world to another is not greet, and private interest is
too sharp-sighted to be long blind to its own advantage. This is
a fearful consideration, The wealth, the power, the credit of
the country, are all at issue. in such a case; and to no interest is
this of such momentous import as to the agriculturist. Land has
`no wiega, as riches have, wherewith to fly to ether regions; it
must remain and await whatever of weal or woe betides the na-
- than. 'The possibility, too, of preserving high prices is clearly
contingent upon the poseession .of capital employing a large
popuiation ; thence proceeds the demand, and without time
demand, we know well, price rennet be raised. It were an act
little sliOrk of insanity to run any risk upon this subject.
Neither is it a simple but a compommil inducement we bold
out' to capitalists to seek employmneut elsewhere; in pro-
portion 41 our price is raised by the exclusion of foreign
corn, we diminish its cost to .foreigners. Great Britain is in
this, as in all other things relating to commerce, the grand
regulator of the world ; if her markets are open to foreign
eerie ifs trice is generally reined,---if closed, it falls as generally,
and that is, in a great measure, the secret of the very low prices
abroad, • at which time agricultural. interest is so much alarmed.
What is the result of this? why, that foreign manufactures are
established in eompetitien with our own,—that ships are built by
fereigeers, and Manned and victualled by foreigners, to the exclu-
lion of those of British build. The ship-owners complain
loudly of this
.; they, as usual, cry out against theories, against in-
novation. 'they inVoke the ,pirit of the old navigation laws, and
conceive that to the changes which have taken place in them their
distress is to be ettributedreeciumges positively forced upon us,
and without which we should have exposed our commercial marine
to infinitely greater harard—but they omit to remark, that, with
such a system of corn ;ewe as ours, their interest must be One
of the heat to safer. The trade of ahipebuilder derives little
or no benefit from machinery, which counteracts fore time the
effect of cheap labour,--all with them is manual labour and food.
Let us take warning by the effect we have produced in this inte-
rest : deservedly one of the most cherished by Englishmen, be-
cause ministering to our must constitutional and most efficient act
of power. Other interests will soon suffer equally,—with English
capital and English skill, English machinery can soon be erected
in the United States of America, or Germany, or ,Poland, and
then, ssibeir perhaps it is too late, we shall awake from bur fit of
obstinate blindness and torpor, but awake only to contemplate the
peril
of our situation, and the advantages we have so wantonly
thrown 'away."
It is impossible, within our limits, that we should
-accompany Mr. Whitinore through all the details 'of
fact, arrnent and illustration with which he has
his Isork. The case against the existing
corn-laws, .we lick! to be complete and unassailable.—
Their injustice to the bulk' of the coniumunity—their
inefficaoy as a protection to the landed interest—nay,
their destructive teralency to both branches of which
that interest is composed—and the utter ground-
lessness of those alarms which have: been excited
by the prospect of a regulated trade in corn, these
did not require, in the minds of impartial and
reflecting men, such vigorous testimony to their truth
and importance its is afforded by the pages of Mr.
Whitmore.
The honourable Gentlemun,Trowever, inhis suggestions for a cure, admits some heresies which
to accede, to. Its scheme of
we feet' it impossible
ice involves the revi -
graduated duties, for instal ace, or
continuance rather, of the iiwit.ohl(e,raibi,i,isle,
whaytsetiTe,:i
its
averages---whirls ally person,
progress and operation, must deprecate as an evil
more perhaps
than commensurate to that which
it affects to remedy. A freetrade, with a low duty,
—that ought to be the 0
• f every active mind lc
the- kingdom, and until we have achieved it, there wit.
be'nothing solid in our financial or commercial state
While we are on this subject of a free trade
iu corn
Ministers
it may be as well to record our hope that
will not inflict upon, the law by which its free( oin
professes to be guaranteed,- the Sallie species 4 para-
ding for
lysis,' which other Acts of' provi

4 'The eseeptunui to this doctrine are few in number, con.
sisting chiefly of productS, which, like certain wines, are in high
request, and tan he grown only in particular situations. lan
notaware that any of the products of Great Britain come withii
this exception.

liberty of commerce with roreign nations, have suffered
from orders in Council and' Treasury regulations, frit-
tering away whatever is:most definite and wholesome
in the acts of the Legislature itself. Some such inter,
ference has displayed itself in the practical arrange-
meats of the trade ; and as for the recent order,
by which all intercourse between our West Indian
Colonies and the. United States of America has been
deliberately broken up, we have only to expreis our
anxious hope that nothing more may arise from it
than diplomatic fencing or asperitp—Times.
We have repeatedly called the attention of our
readers to the abuses and cruelties which are practised
with impunity, both in public and private mad-houses.
-Certain persons--those probably who profit by these
abuses, or some of their friends, would persuade the
public that the greater part of these are without foun-
dation, and have been fabricated by madmen or worth-
less servants. They represent the utter improbability
of such wanton cruelty as has been ascribed to sonic,
and particularly to the nearest relations of the persons
confined, and seem to think it impossible that such a
system could exist for a moment, while all those
asylums have visiting physicians or surgeons, and are
under the 'superintendence of the College of Physicians.
Experience, however, proves that actions which would
appear to some improbable, are frequently practiced,
and that a public body, like that of the College of
Physicians, is not a sufficient safeguard against the
villainy of interested individuals. file investigation
which took place at Liverpool last year Showed that
abuses could creep into establishments of this kind,
notwithstanding all the laws and regulations made
against them ; and the numerous private letters which
we received on the occasion, from individuals who had
either suffered from the wickedness of their frisends, or
who had witnessed the sufferings of others, left no
doubt in' our minds that great abuses did exist, and
that the chief cause of their concealment arose from
the mysterious manner in which these establishments
are conducted, and the absolute ignorance of the pub-
lic regarding the real state of the inmates. The inves-
tigations which have taken place at a Police-office will
open the eyes of those who were blind to such
abuses, and stop the mouths of the interested few
who advocate the excellence of the present system.
The plot appears to have taken its rise from in-
terested motives, as plots of this kind generally
do, and to have been conducted in a manner
calculated to lull the suspicions of the most in
credulous. A female is chosen as the victim. Her
husband—the person whom every one would sup-
pose interested in her welfare, procures the as-
sistance of two or three mad-house-keepers, who sur-
prise her in her own house, bind her as a lunatic,
and hurry her off to a private asylum, where she is
confined among lunatics for the night. The integrity
of the keeper alone led to the disclosure.. We are
only surprised that she should have been admitted at
all Rho a house kept by a gentleman of this descrip-
tion. No person, we believe, can be legally confined
in a lunatic asylum without an order from a Magis-
trate, founded on the opinion of a physician or surgeon;
yet it appears that she was not only admitted here, but
confined till next day without inquiry. Such treat-
ment might have driven ,persons of a nervous
and irritable temperament to madness, and the
interference of the keeper afterwards would have been
without avail. It is probable, indeed, that the attempt.
is generally made on persons of this description, and
that the success of the plot screens the actors from pu-
nishment. But even without admitting this to be the
case, and supposing the keeper would have accepted a
bribe, we can hardly see what, security an unprotected
female of the soundest inteWcts can have against such
a conspiracy, so long as the public are excluded from
all knowledge of the internal management of these
places. She is carried off, perhaps, by her nearest re-
lative ; sha is guarded by mad-house-keepers, and, in
such circumstances, the inure earnest and . violent
her cries and entreaties in passing along the streets,
the niore she would convince those to whom she
appealed that she was in the state represented, and
when once immured in such a place, wetly weeks and
months, and even years, might elaPse, before the visit-
ing physician discovered her, or accident brought
friends to her. relief.. We are far from regarding this
occasional visit of the physician as a security against
abuse ; and we sincerely hope that some other checks
will be provided against it. The present investigation,
and the trials which will probably follow, will, no
donbt, have beneficial results. It is a subject that
interests the public at large, and that requires strict
investigation. We have made these remarks without
any fastidious scruples about prejudging the question
or influencing, the minds of Jurymen, because wa are
convinced that the more it is discussed, and the better
they are acquainted with the real state of facts previous
to the trial, the more likely will they be to return a
just verdict.--Morning Herald.