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

e'btrti ,45.ottton

THE FUNDS-(C

OSING PRICES.)
FUNDS. .

BRITISI-
- Stock 208%
per Cent. Red .......
3 per Cent. Cons.
per Cent. Red
New 3% per Cent. lO3
New 5 per Cent.
Lang Annuities to expire
Jan. 12%
Oct. 1859 113:.
Jan. 1860

I Ditto Egnels pm.
Ditto under -£1,009 —
'South Sea Stock
Ditto Old Annuities
Ditto New Annuities
_ _ •••

Ex. Bills, I,OOW. 58 pm.
Ditto 5004
Ditto 53 pm
Bank Stock for Acct —
Consols for ()pg. ..... „ ION
India Stock far Acct —
N FUNDS.
. _

Indian Stock
FOREIG

Austrian, 5 per Cent
Belgian, 5 per Cent
Brazilian Bonds ........
Buenos Ayres, 6 per Cent —
Cuba Bonds, 6 per Cent
allian, 6 per Cent .....
Colombian, 6 per Cent......:
Danish, 3 per Cent
Greek, 18,5, 5 per Cent
hfezican, 5 per Cent
Neapolitan Bonds,s per Ct —
Prussian Bonds, 4 per Cent —
Peruvian Bonds, 6 per Ct —
Portuguese Bonds, 5 per Ct

Russians per Cent.......
Ditto, Metallic ......
ipanish, 5 per Cent., 1840 23
Ditto, 1841 .......
Ditto, 1842
Ditto, 1843. ..... .......
Ditto, 1844
Ditto, 3 per Cent 37%
Venezuela Bonds, 2 per Ct —
French, 5 per Cent.,, --t. —c.
French, 3 per Cent —f.
Exchange ........ —c.
Dutch, 2% per Cent
[Ditto,.s per Cent

SHARES.
Birmingham and Gloucester (100 paid) 9534
Bristol and Exeter (70 paid)
Cambridge and Lincoln, 134 paid 2%
Churnet Valley, 2 paid
Direct Northern, *4 paid
Eastern Counties (25 paid)
Great Southern and Western (Ireland) 5 paid
Great Western (75 paid)
London and Birmingham (Stock)
Ditto, Quarter Shares ( 2 paid) ..................
London and Greenwich (12t. I:Ai. 4d. paid) -
(411. 63. 10d. paid) 8234
Eighths
hatiihds SouthLeed(ls7e (70 paid) ............... .
Diito, Preference or Privilege, £lB 17s 2d paid 223(
L °
Manchester
3
pesatied7
mto Eai
Ditto Quarters ( 2 paid) ...
Manchester anti Birmingham
Ditto Quarter Shares, 2 paid k 5
York and North Midland (50 paid) —
Ditto Half Shares (25 paid)
Ditto Scarboro' Branch, 10 paid ...............
Ditto, Selby Scrip, 20 paid l2
Orleans and Vierzon, 2 paid.... .....................
Paris and Lyons, 2 paid
Rouen and Havre 10 paid 22%

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

PROM THE EVENING PAPERS OP THIS DAY.
GLOBE.--Those who placed credit in the state-
ments put forth by the journals of monopoly will be
somewhat surprised at finding the Anti-Corn-law
League in health and vigour. Notwithstanding
the repeated assurances of these venerable and verit-
able authorities, the League is neither dead, nor in a
state of collapse. Haring visited the provinces,
and aided in " fighting the battle of the Constitu-
tion in tie Registration Courts," its leaders have
returned to, and resumed their position in, the
metropolis. They last evening commenced their
" monster meetings" in Covent-Garden Theatre ;
which they have hired for the season, and where
various modes of carrying out the objects of the
Association, and of aiding its funds, will be put
in execution. A condensed report of the proceed-
ings will be found in another part of our paper.
Although we think it inexpedient
full exipedieenxttetnot ptuoshwhthicehprtiinle-
ciple of abolition to the
League is pledged, considerable benefits cannot fail to
accrue to the cause of free trade from constantly keep-
ing before the public mind the mischiefs inflicted on
the manufactures and commerce of the country by the
existing syteni of protective duties. The light which
the League has cast upon this important subject has
penetrated many of the dark places of the kingdom.
Public opinion on the subject has been influenced to a
degree which must in the end prove fatal to restrictions
upon the importation of human food. Opposition to
monopoly is no longer a passion ; it has become a
principle with the great body of the people. It is
not affected by a temporary suspension of the conse-
quences which result from the artificial restrictions
under which our statesmen, with a lamentable
" blindness to the future," place the means of em-
ploying and sustaining the great mass of the popula-
tion. The people have been taught to look to
the natural results of a pernicious system.
Thousands, wiser than their fathers, are now
able to distinguish between the natural opera-
tions of that system, and its accidental interruptions,
by circumstances which intervene to stay, for a
time, its baneful progress. Hence though the dis-
tress, which for several successive years had grown
and spread in the manufacturing districts, has been
greatly mitigated by the late good harvests, and
the openings for our manufactures which the recent
events in China have produced, it is plain that
through the existing system of high duties
this impulse . to trade will prove but tempo-
rary. The drain of Chinese silver to pay the amount of
compensation to this country for the expenses of the
war ; and the necessity which compels the payment in
specie for the opium—which, though prohibited by the
Chinese Government is still smuggled into the country
in large quantities—necessarily limit the means of
purchase of British commodities by the Chinese.
Were it not for our heavy import duties upon tea,
and other articles, the produce of the country, the
Chinese would exchange their goods for the fabrics
of this country ; and trade, upon the principle of reci-
procity, would flow without impediment in the
natural channels. Foreigners are availing themselves
of the errors of our commercial code. The last ac-
counts from China state that while the trade in many
descriptions of British goods was declining, the manu-
factures of America—the representative of which had
concluded a treaty with the Chinese Government—were
in increased demand. Had some demon been employed
to preside in the councils of this country, and to
prompt her rulers to measures for obscuring her
glory and crippling her energies, the end could not
have been more securely effected than by the system
which, as in mockery of the mischievous results it
works, is designated " Protection to British interests."
No wonder that Covent-gardan Theatre—capacious
as that building is—was last night crowded to the
ceiling by an attentive and highly respectable audi-
ence. It was not the attraction of mere novelty
which brought the multitude together. Many of
them had heard the same speakers expound the
same doctrines, and demonstrate the same results,
again and again. It was a public testimony against
the system of monopoly ; an embodiment of the
abiding conviction which pervades the public
mind, that the commercial policy of our Legisla-
ture is a false and ruinous policy, pregnant with folly,
and fraught with eventual ruin to every interest in
the country, and with inhumanity and misery to the
most dependent and numerous classes of the popula-
tion. The statements made by the Chairman of the
meeting as to what the League had effected in the
Registration Courts, and the prospects thus opened
to the cause of free trade at the next election, will be
a significant warning to the party in power to " set
their houses in order."

STANDARD.—The neglect of the commander of
the Basilisk to answer the salutes .offered by the
French authorities in Otaheite upon the Queen's
birth-day, cannot be explained with certainty until
we are in possession of the gallant officer's own ac-
count of his motives. It is, however, surely unneces-
sary to assume that any offence was intended by the
simple quiescence ascribed to Mr, Hunt. Many good
reasons, wholly unconnected with unfriendly feeling
to France, might have determined that gentleman to
pursue the line that he did pursue ; some of them
so cogent that we think the presumption would be
against him, had he taken a different course. Queen
Pomare was, we believe, on board the Basilisk—a
deposed Sovereign, a fugitive from her enemies ;
we will not say persecutors—certainly an unfortu-
nate exile, almost a prisoner. Now, as a mere
question of feeling, it was hardly free to the officer
with whom the fugitive had sought and found an
asylum to ostentatiously exchange compliments,
from the ship that carried her Majesty, with the
enemies from whom she was flying—more especially
as their compliments were commenced in a manner
altogether unusual, for it is not, as we are aware, the
practice in the French or any other service—it cer-
tainly is not the practice of our own service—to cele-
brate, by salutes, the birthday of a foreign Sovereign.