The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-17 00:00:00

LETTERS ON THE CORN-LAWS.
No. XI.
(From the LPti,rue.)
TO MESSRS. E. MUSES A XI) SOS. •
GENTLEMEN,—YOU are, unquestionably, the must
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 bllipkets. 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 horizm—the Ursa Major of the
Vineries. " Custom" cannot " stale your infinite
variety." You are, indeed, a " commercial pheno-

men•-ei."
But rivalry is threatened, and you must submit to
a corryarison •of claims. You are an " establish-
ment," but my Lord Ashley dissents, and erects a
voluntary institution. His Lordship is a philiantro-
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
pictures 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
h;ts 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 keeps 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 far, 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."—(Morning Herat! report.) The
assembly cheered, ladies and all ; and in the name of
consistency let no 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 ofmoney, are advised
sto be content with even less than a minimum of bread.
• Moses, how does this bear upon your customers ?
Meay 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
shirts. '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-
atioa, and a secretary and reports and patrons.
Much better, Moses. You clothe the naked with-
out making beggars of them. They pinch their
. beUres 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 necessaries," and walk away with an un-
suiselued 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 terrib!e. I will not blink that
part of the case. God forbid. No, nor will I for-
g-stthe fact that out of this fearfully earned 6d.
, witty 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
.lood, 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
you should do more. Let him and the landlord
legislators 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-
.gratioal map-milliners of philanthropy, who talk of
piiarity and vote for scarcity.
The professed object of Lord Ashley's Society is
to raise the needlewomen's wages to 9s. a week. If
accorriplished, the needlewoman may be thankful she
is not a Dorsetshire man : a man, with a family, la-
bouring on a farm. But let U 3 see how this charity
works. It promises to raise the cost of making a
shirt to the 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 dawn wages. The Queen Dowager might as well
be p itrones3 of a society for suspending the law of gra-
vitation. Not a voice less will the " Song of the Shirt"
have in its dismal chorus. There will be quite as
Many to bear the burden. 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-
dance of employment, and that alone, can ensure ade-
quacy of remuneration. The valley of the Missouri
would grow plenty of food for all the needle women
of Great Britain; and the roughly clad growers have
plenty of occasion for their services. My Lord Ash-
ley cannot see his way to the repeal of the corn-laws.
He thinks Moses grinds the faces of the poor, and
keeps his own booted heel upon their stomachs. De-
liver us from our friends and save us from the selfish-
ness of sentimental benevolence.
One word more, not peculiarly for yourselves, but
for the whole class of tradesmen to which you be-
long. There is no reason why any of that class
should be dispensers of charity in the disguise of
wages. Ignorant or hypocritical is the outcry
against labour being purchased at its market price.
Individually, you must purchase it, or you may
shut up shop. What good would that be to the
poor needlewomen ? But, Moses, remember you are
men as well as slopsellers. Those whoseefingers ache
over your shirts are stitching their own shrouds.
Misery toils in your cheap factory. You ought
not to have done with it, when you have paid
its wages. The employers of the poor are their
natural protectors. Unfairly have the tables been
turned against you ; but not altogether without fault
on your part. You should have been the foremost
to expose and denounce this state of things, and
the system by which it is produced. Your inert-
ness, your disregard of the wants and rights of the
toiling poor, has allowed the authors of the wrong,
the taxers of their fool, the obstructors of employment,
to come forward as their patrons, and point towards
your heads the thunderbolt of public indignation for
inhumanity which should have fallen on their own.
You and they are thus juggled into the wrong places.
they should be in the dock, and you in the witness-
XIX. Why do you not tell Lord Ashley that he, and
nis class of monopolist , legislators, have wrought
this shame in the land? Why were you not first in
the field clamouring for justice? Why did you
wait fee the wretchedness, of which you had know-
ledge, to be found out and laid at your own door by
its finders and its makers ? Why have you handed
over the poor to the care of courtly Cades and
andy demagogues. Retrieve your blunder. Leave
not this sore disease in the body politic to be tam-
pered with by legislative empiricism. Demand of
Lord Ashley that he helps to untax the needle-
women's bread. Claim emancipation for the giant
Industry, who, when
ti free, will feed all his sons and
daughters:
pin yourselves for such a demonstra-
tion of public o as
Como
forward,
a wiser policy
on the Government. though late,
for the sake of those who depen°dwara'
amends for past indifference, whetheYr°urearodr makeonly
seeming. Win the blessings of intelligent
titude, instead of the curses of misguided ii7nra-
o-
ranee. By your zeal, your votes, your remon-
strances, be earnest for trade; more trade; and all
whom trade feeds ; the widow and the orphan whom
it supplies with work and shields from starvation. It