The Sun.
London, England, 1826-04-24 00:00:00

CMORNING IIItRALD.3

One of most striking abuses and defects of the
law, as practised in thus country, is the facility with

which it can be made the instrument, in the hands of
low or needy practitioners, to suit their own purposes
of gain, totally without reference to any interests what.

ever of their supposed employers.. It would not,
we belifi've, be going top far, to say that fully_one-
forth of the actions at law, and no small proportion of
'suits in equity, are commenced. for no other purpose
but to put costs into the pockets of attorneys, where
the clients have nothing upon earth to expect or •do
`with the matter, farther than sometimes lending their
.:awn vindictive feelings to the still baser propensities of
these sworn ministers of justice. The Press is pecu-
liarly the object of this system of oppression ; and
instances arenot wanting where actions are brought in
,the names of persons apparently respectable, with the
view of extorting money to pay their attorneys' previous
demand,;, which such persons (some puffing, philan-
thropists perhaps) had no other means of dis-
4harging. in a :recent- instance actions have been
brought .successively against the proprietors of seve-
daily papers for a supposed libel in an adver-
,:tisement, relative to some quack medicine ; and
though, from Ow good sense and integrity of the Jury
in the first case, only nominal, damages were .obtained,
..the. parties, nothing daunted, proceed in other suits--
not with the most distant hopes of greater success in
point. of damages, but solely with the view, as may be
fairly inwined; to'which we have. before alluded. It
is.n6t.sohTly with the vie* of 'sheltering nurselves, or
tbe public Press alone, from the consequence of such
pcoceedlngs, that ~ye draw the attention of Our readers
to it, but to put the public in general on their guard
against a nefarious practice, of which every man in
tioeietfis liable by turns to become the victim ; and to
cell upon Judges, as those which we 'allude to have
recently done, to defeat, as fir as they are 'able, a sys-
tem fraught with such . abuse and oppression. .:God
Egibid that the avenues of justice should ever be closed
against the honest claim and wrongs of any man ; but
justice• itself is libelled and disgraced when it is per-,
Milted to be the instrument of extortion in the hands
of worildt,ss and unworthy members. It is by the
j#int.efferts of Juries and of the Press that such a
stern "can alone be met and defeatedll : it is the in-
-111444 of the latter to do its duty, and we have the firm-
.

est confidence, from what has
,just passed in the in-
stance we allude to, that the former will not be want-
ing in theirs.

We cannot imagine any earthly reason for the groat
'precipitancy 'with which Ministers seem inclined to
urge the close of the present Session of Parliament,
and with it its dissolution. They certainly must see
with different eyes from those of the generality of man-
kind, if they think they perceive in the present mo-
ment any thing which points it out as peculiarly
auspicious for an appeal to the people, or for the agi-
tation and turmoil of a contested election. At any
rate, there can be nothing so tempting in the particu-
lar period as to furnish a reason why the dissolution
should take place at the risk of postponing for
another year the important subjects which are
thus cut short by this hasty proceeding. It surely
would be better, both for the character of
Parliament, as well "as for the general good of
the country, that such Bills as Mr. Peel's for the
Reform of the Criminal Law, and those arising out
of the Chancery Report should have passed this Ses-
sion, instead of being postponed, with the chance that
there always is of postponement and abandonment
amounting to the same thing. AS a matter of policy,
too, we think it would have been both just and pru-
dent that the Parliament should have closed its la-
bours with the eclat which the passing of such mea-
sures would have afforded. As it is, the general elec-
tion will not take place under the most favourable
circumstances, except in one respect—viz. that the
strong Anti-Catholic excitement which existed last
year now no longer continues. But though the people
will come to the poll with feelings less exasperated
upon the subject, we would not have the Catholics
deceive themselves by imagining that in the
result the elections are likely to be one jot more
favourable to them than they would have been
had the dissolution taken place, as it was expected to
have done a twelvemonth ago. Though angry feel-
ings have in a great degree sobered down and sub-
sided, we believe they have so settled down, as far as
the feelings of the mass of the people are concerned,
into a strong and rivetted conviction against the Ca-
tholic Claims ;• and we strongly suspect that the new
Parliament, whenever it assembles, will not add, upon
the balance, a single vote in their favour. After all,
the approaching election will in all probability pass
over, for the most part, more quietly than any which
has been known. Money, which is the sinew of all
contests, is not at this moment over plentiful ; and
even were it otherwise, there are very obvious reasons
which would render any very lavish expenditure of it,
under existing circumstances, foolish and imprudent
in the extreme.—(/bid.)

[THE EERESENTATIVE.]

Mr. Whitmore has had the satisfaction of making
a very elaborate speech on the Corn Laws, and the
thinking part of the public have the satisfaction of
knowing that this very complicated and disputed ques-
tion is at rest for the present year. We have always
felt that the application of the protecting, in opposition
to the prohibitory system, to the home production of
this staple of English existence, was a question not to
be decided upon the ordinary and received principles
of political economy. According to that exact science,
it can never be the interest of a country to compel the
production within itself of a commos'Aty which can be
obtained from another country, by exchanging a smaller '
amount of labonr; employed on some other article.
This is true in regard to commodities, the abundance
or scarcity of which is indifferent to the maintenance
of people, but as the interruption of inter-national
commerce is almost an inevitable consequence of the
state of mankind, the supply of this staple artiele,, upon
which that maintenance depends, should be rendered, as
far as possible, independent of ontingent.disturbance.
The effect of the present Corn Laws, which go be-
yond mere protection, and approach prohibition, has
been, to keep the poorer soils,, which came into culti-
vation during the war, still employed. Let a reason-
able protecting.duty be imposed—and let the impor-
tation of foreign corn become:a branch of regular, and
not periodical, conimerce—these poorer soils must be
abandoned, and the market become, .proportionately
dependent upon that oornmerce for supply. It appears,
from Mr. Jacob's researches, that the effect of our Corn
Laws has been to throw much land in the countries
from whence the English Market was . partially sup-
plied, out cultiVation that much distress and de-
terioration of property have been the consequences.—
This is, doubtless, very lamentable to those countries,
and to the European philanthropist: The impo-
verished land-owner, whether his name be Czar-
-torinsky. or Lethbridge, 'is equally an object. of
compassionate consideration ; but, as Englishmen, in
despite of the obloquy which the confession may draw
upon us, we will say that the conversion of arable
land into• pasturage,. in Poland or elseivhere, and all
its attendant reductions of rents, are to us matters of
secondary consideration ; nay, ifthe cultivation' of poorer
English soils has been the, cause, we must add, that
we have so much national selfishness as scarcely to
.deplore' the occurrence. It was impossible, however,
for a benevolent-minded man, like Mr. Jacob, to
have witnessed the falling off in the value of insky
and nosky- property, and the consequent -discomfort
to the princely proprietors; without
,sympathy: Such
sights mortalta pectora iangunt, and the feeling,
that this scene of extended Northern distress had
been produced by a selfish exclusion ,of foreign corn
froth: the English market, was, indeed, most pitiful.
'Conversion from the prohibiting system would be
the consequence ; while the gratitude of Northern
Europe, and the approbation of philosophers, would
present ample sources of consolation for the reproaches
of the unenlightened land-owners of England. --
A protecting duty of thirty per, cent. has'been con-
sidered necessary, to secure the supply of the home
market to the silk-Manufacturer. It such be. the
amount of protection required for a commodity in
which there seems no sufficient reason for permanent
national inferiority, What must be the extent of pro-
tection necessary to the home production of an article
of .indispensable consumption, and. ,in the growth of
which there 'is a permanent
.and national inferiority?
That the system of averages is vicious, in operation, if
not in principle, has been sufficiently shown ; the com-
plete: exclusion of foreign corn, except in seasons of ab-
solute scarcity, is a proposition not to be entertained ;
and the Modified admission is the only alternative.—
In our opinion; corn, cheap, as referred to Conti-
nental prices, cannot be grown in England, without
an abandonMent of the poorer soils, which would not
bear the expellee of cultivation, unless protected
frOni foreign competition. Their abandpment ap-
pears to Lis- a serious evil, and .we sincerely hope, that
whenever the -question is taken up by the Ministers,
the permanent interests of the - nation at large will not
receive less protection than the silk manufacturer has
met with, on the snbStitution of the protecting for the
prohibiting system of eomuiercial intercourse.