The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-31 00:00:00

mittee of Supply, Mr. ROEBUCK brought the state
of Canada under the consideration of the House, but
made no nugion.

Lord STAiLEY replied at great length, and de-
fended the conduct of Sir C. METCALFE.

After speeches from Mr. HUME, Mr. C. BULLER,
Lord J. RUSSELL, and Sir R. PEEL, the subject
dropped.
The report of the Committee of Supply was brought
up and agreed to, the other busine is was disposed of,
and the House adjourned at a Quarter to One o'Clock.

So, Sir JAMES GRAHAM is going to make another
inroad upon thelibertY of the English people. The
gambling-booths at Epsom and Ascot, as they have
been called, are abolished. There is to be no more
roulette, no more pitch and toss, no more stick-
throwing, no more thimble-rigging. The Derby
Dilly is about to establish a new era, introduce a great
moral reform among the middle and lower classes,
and make this country a model for virtue, honesty,
and sobriety. For several years, in almost every
. public-house throughout the empire, small sums have
been subscribed, solely, with perhaps a few excep-
tions, for amusement, and rational amusement too, in
order to raise a fund, which may be spent on the con-
clusion of the principal races, possibly not more than
four during the season. Nothing like gain,
or unfair play, or robbery was attempted.
These little " re-unions," to use a French
phrase, were attended by the most respectable
tradesmen of the neighbourhood, they were con-
ducted on fair and honourable principles, they were
looked forward to with as much interest as the Derby
or the St. Leger by Lord GEORGE BENTINCK, or any
other Lord, and we believe not one in ten thousand
ever suffered by them. It appears, however, that
these pastimes are too aristocratical; they follow
closely in the rear of CROCKFORD'S, and WHITE'S, and
fifty other clubs, frequented by the virtuous upper
classes ; and the Derby Dilly, a section of the new
moral government, have resolved to put them down.
A feeler to this effect has been sent forth, we believe
at the instigation of the Home Secretary, in these
words :—" It is the intention of Government to adopt
measures for the immediate suppression of racing
speculations. Arrangements are about being made
with the magistracy to carry this intention
of the Government into effect ; for which
purpose the police authorities will receive
instructions to give notice to publicans that if they,
for the future, permit lotteries' or sweepstakes'
to be held, they will not only subject themselves to
heavy penalties, but, by permitting them to take place
on their premises, such an illegal proceeding will en-
danger the licenses of their respective houses."
The already oppressed publicans are thus to be
made the first victims. The new police is to be let
loose upon thousands of the most respectable
class of the community who frequent their
houses; they are to be, prohibited from taking
any interest in the national sports of the
country, purely for the sake of preserving their
morality ;an despotic law is to be carried into
effect by men who vote black white, who change
their political principles, and break the most solemn
pledges, to suit their own selfish interests. If the
people of England submit to this tyrannical inter-
ference, they deserve to be slaves. Is not the law
strong enough ? If any hotel keeper forms a scheme
for robbing his customers, cannot he be reached by
the ordinary course of legal procedure ? Why should
all the innocent, as well as the guilty, be subjected to
the same punishment? This is the law of the Emperor
Nfcnolas and MEHEMET Au, and if Englishmen
ret?tain, passive under this new moral system, they
will soon become as thorough slaves as the serfs of
Russia anithe fellahs of Egypt. But the despotism
or tha scheme is only equalled by its inefficiency.
Can 'Ms ordonnance of the Home Secretary put
down these sweepstakes ? The thousands that take
an interest in them will assemble in some other
manner, and they will take vengeance on this
meddling, hypocritical, and do-nothing Government,
by an increased interest in these harmless amuse-
ments. The Whigs, by their foolish Police Act,
alienated many of their best supporters, and paved
the way for their downfal. The moral Government is
imitating their example, and will meet with the same
fate. The men who have adopted and rejected
almost every political principle ; who have winked
at the Exchequer robberies; who have screened all
the great delinquents in the Custom-house thefts,
because they belong to their own class ; the men who
make the most solemn pledges on the hustings, and
as solemnly break them in Parliament, are, forsooth,
to be the censors of the most honourable men of the
community—the middle classes. Their time, how-
ever, will come, and, if the system is continued, they
will find it at the next election. This cruel inter-
ference with every actiditi of common life is exciting
dire hostility against the upper classes. They imagine
they are creating, like Mr. OWEN, a New Harmony,
while they are creating elements for their own de-
struction.

At the weekly meeting of the Anti-Corn-law League
which took place on Wednesday night in Covent-garden
theatre, after Earl DUCIE, who was in the chair, had
addressed the audience in a speech replete with useful
statistical facts all tending to show the ruinous im-
policy of the bread-tax, Mr. HOLLAND, a gentleman
from Worcestershire, bore personal testimony to the
rapid progress that the principles of free trade were
making in that county; and added—in reference to
the recent establishment of monopoly institutions—
that " through the means of these institutions the
farmers had been taught to think, and not only had
they learned to think, but also to act for themselves.
Living among farmers as he did, he really believed that
since the existence of Protection societies, and through
their becoming so rife, the free-traders had gaine3 con-
verts among the agriculturists of Worcestershire." These
remarks fully bear out what we predicted in The Sun,
when we first heard of the establishment of monopoly
institutions. We then stated that these institutions
would serve no other purpose than to increase the
spread of free-trade principles, if only from the detec-
tive reasoning of their chief pamphleteers and speakers,
and their shallow and obviously selfish appeals to the
passions and prejudices of the agriculturists. Far
better that the Protectionists had kept a still tongue
in their heads, and contented themselves with the
exertions of their Conservative majority in Parlia-
ment; the rottenness of their favourite system of mo-
nopoly would not then have been made so obvious
to the generality of reflective people, as it now is ,
but they could not deny themselves the pleasure of
entering the arena of controversy, and getting up
an agitation on their own account, by way of coun-
teracting the efforts of the League ; and now, as
might have been foreseen, their superficial argu-
ments, false statistics, fabricated facts, and angry
appeals to the prejudices of the agriculturists, have
recoiled on their own heads. The farmers—vast num-
bers of whom are no longer the obtuse dolts that
they were twenty yeara ago—have seen through
their motives and fathomed their profoundest rea-
sonings ; and the consequence is, that the engi-
neer is literally " hoist with his own petard."
When a party has notoriously little or nothing to say
for itself worth attending to, and can put forth no other
plea in its favour than present power, the wisest
thing it can de, is to preserve a sort of dignified reserve
and taciturnity ; to avoid everything that may pro-
voke a close discussion ; and to trust for the main-
tenance of its system to the power that it may possess
in Parliament and elsewhere. The Protectionists
seem, at length, to be awakened to a conviction of
this truth, for we no longer find them attempting to
rouse the country in their behalf by dint of sophis-
tical speeches, and still more sophistical pamphlets :
but they are wise too late ; the mischief is already
done; they have shown hundreds of agriculturists,
what they did not know before, the utter rot-
tenness of the foundation on which the mono-
poly system is based; and it is of little
use to shut the stable-door when the steed is
already stolen. Mr. COBDEN, who took just
the right view of the South Lancashire elec-
tion, and whose observations made a deep im-
pression on his audience, told an emi-
nently characteristic anecdote of the high-minded
independence-of a certain body of electors. "In the
contest of 1837," said the Hon. Member for Stock-
port, " he had been at an inn where there were sitting
a number of persons decorated with ribbons of the 1 .
colour of the Whig party—blue, that of STANLEY and
TOWNELEY. A shrewd countryman, who was in the
same room, 'observed that at a future election they
would wear other colours. Since that time
the proprietor of the land upon which those
independent electors were tenants-at-will, had