The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-21 00:00:00

You say that you can only join the free trade
F cause, as sustained by the League, when it is "ad-
vocated in terms which are not at variance with tha
laws of God enjoining peace and good-will to man."
If your requirement only related to the principles
on which the League is founded, and the objects at
which it aims, nothing could be more reasonable.
In that case, I venture to affirm that your immediate
co-operation may be challenged. But if your re-
quirement extend to all the speeches and writings of
individuals, then nothing can be more unreasonable.
You are requiring perfection of humanity ; and
making the absence of perfection the excuse for not
helping the effort for improvement. No large asso-
ciated body can stand such a test, whatever be its
objects, or whoever its supporters. There is no mis-
sion to the heathen or charity to the poor, no work
of truth or mercy, in the language of whose sup-
porters you may not find some taint or flaw, and
so justify yourselves for passing by on the other
side. You thus exonerate yourselves from all useful
service. You claim permanent leave of absence from
the warfare of good against evil. You plead a letter
of license from the labours of benevolence. And,
strangest of all, the very terms of your fancied ex-
emption are taken from the precepts by which it is
most emphatically condemned; the commands for
practically evincing that universal love which would
leave no grief unsolaced, no wrong unredressed, no
want unrelieved.

Might not some of your charity be well bestowed
on those whom you deem too fervent in a righteous
cause ? You allow them to " denounce every oppo-
nent as ignorant." There has been little of rebuke
employed which such leave does not cover. Is igno-
rance a virtue in a legislator ? Is it excusable, when
he is surrounded by the means of knowledge ? Does
it not become a fearful sin, when the interests and
lives of millions are dependent on his using his powers
wisely ? Should he be coaxed by soft words into
contentment with his pernicious blunders ? Is cha-
rity so enamoured of Barnabas, that it must needs
unchristianise Boanerges ? Have not both their
work in the world ? And would Felix ever have
trembled before Paul had the apostle only told the
tyrant how much he loved him ? Can we, in Chris-
tian sincerity, and consistently with moral integrity,
call bad things by good names ? Is there no dif-
ference between the righteous and the wicked—the
friends of the poor and their oppressors—those who
would secure to labour the full amount of its earn-
ings, and those who make laws to lessen that amount
and fill their own pockets ? Love the sinner as
much as you will, but do not hide from him that he
is a sinner. You can do him no greater mischief.
It is worse than being " angry with the wicked
every day.'
Is not your charity offended on the other side ?
Do you observe no falsehood, no calumny, no vitupe-
ration, on the part of monopoly ? Is the bad cause
purer in its proceedings than the good cause ? If
not, your disapproval, extending in that case both to
means and ends, must needs be much stronger than
your disapproval of the League. And yet your con-
duct tends to support, in preference, what you most
disapprove. For when the question is of repealing
an existing law, the motive, as derived from public
opinion, is exclusively formed by those who speak
out against the law. The quiescent are acquiescent.
Their silence tells for support. Their inaction is a
sanction. Not showing themselves for change, they
are reckoned as being against change. This is your
inevitable predicament. You become responsible for
the prolonged mischiefs, abhorrent to your principles
and feelings, against which you do not protest. The
muster-roll of monopoly includes all who do not erase
their names by some act of adhesion to the opposite
principle. Can you rest till you have done this ?
When one looks at the titled and wealthy sub-
scribers to the League, the notion of a " masked de-
mocratical movement " for " pulling down the aris-
tocracy " is almost too absurd for notice. Doubtless,
many members of the League have their democratical
partialities; as you, ladies, have your aristocratical
partialities. No political creed is imposed by the
League ; nor by the opponents of the League either,
who have from the first been not very scrupulously
anxious to enlist the extreme democratical party in
their cause. It is not by the League that any subsi-
dised alliance has ever existed with the .Feargus
O'Connor Chartists, the physical-force democrats.
And if there be anything democratical in the present
plan for extending and purifying the county consti-
tuencies, it is only that sort and degree of democracy
which our Governmental system has sanctioned and
presupposed for centuries. The power to be thus '
called into action has been, however dormant, the
people's privilege from the days of the despotic
Tudors. The mission of the League is merely to
make this part of the Constitution a reality. It
brings a " great fact" out of a dormant but conse-
crated principle.
There is some truth in your distinction, though it
is rather fine, between the aristocracy and the land-
owners.:Practically, the two classes are identical.
But it is not as an aristocracy that the majority of
our legislators tax the people's food ; they only do it
as traders in land and the products of land. You
may also be correct in thinking that the results of
corn-law repeal have been sometimes, and by some
advocates, overrated and utopianised. It would be
very strange were it otherwise. Results so natural
of this species of struggle for an immense good, ob-
stinately withheld, may be much more easily
and rationally accounted for than by your hypo-
thesis of the middle classes deluding the poor; an
hypothesis which serves to show how the extreme of
charity towards the selfish wrongers of others may
slide into the extreme of uncharitableness towards
the injured party.
I have thus endeavoured to avail myself of what
appeared to be your invitation to discuss certain reli-
gious objections to active co-operation with the League.
Their religious character entitles them to a respect
which could not else have been felt for difficulties that
tend to render all extended co-operation for redress of
grievances impracticable, and so to prolong the mi-
series which man inflicts on man by the abuse of
power and authority. The inertness of a portion of
the religious public on this question is a phe-
nomenon which you deserve thanks for helping
to explain. Explanation cannot justify it. Even
by passiveness and silence to encourage those who
grind the faces of the poor, and abridge their
pittance of daily bread, is a virtual renuncia-
tion of the gospel. To leave the industrious under
injury, and the helpless unaided, when protest and
exertion may serve them, is not doing as we would
be done unto. There is no love in the allowance of
wrong, even to the wrong-doer. We should bear
and forbear with the mistakes of those who are
striving to obtain redress, as well as with the mis-
takes of those who refuse redress. The corn-laws
are a demonstrated source of vice, wretchedness,
crime, disease, and death. The path of Christian
duty is most plain. The League affords oppor-
tunity for the discharge of that duty. It thereby
enhances the obligation, and devolves upon all a
deeper responsibility. Deepest of all should that
responsibility press on those who make a religious
profession. Neglected opportunities of good are
the sternest of accusing spirits. Nor will they be
silenced by carping at those who improve such oppor-
tunities earnestly, if not always (in your opinion)
unexceptionably; and who have, by their zeal, been
pioneers to clear the highway, through a wilderness
of ignorance, error, and indifference, in which Chris-
tian principle, moral duty, and human feeling, enjoin
you to unite and advance. There is yet time to
" enter into their labours," and accelerate their pro-
gress to the great result. To woman, as well as
man, applies the admonition emphatically uttered by
the Rev. J. Burnett, at a Covent-garden meeting of
the League—" Let every one solemnly charge his
(or her) own conscience with the high duty and
sacred obligation of carrying out this work to its full
and final completion."
A NORWICH WEAVER BOY.