The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-31 00:00:00

and he hoped the motion would he as-

sented to.
Mr. ESCOTT agreed in what had fallen from the
Honourable Gentleman as to the merit which was due
to the Right Hon. Gentleman for the zeal which he ma-
nifested in promoting the love of the fine arts in this
country. He wished to know from the Hon. Gentleman
whether the decision of the Committee with respect to
the artists who had been solicited to execute works for
the Houses of Parliament was final ?
Mr. WYSE said that the Committee had selected cer-
tain of the artists whose works seemed to be the best, to
execute certain works, but the Committee bad taken
care not to bind themselves to take any one of the pro-
ductions of those artists.—(Hear, hear.)
Sir T. FREMANTLE did not think the House was
now in a situation to come to a proper decision on this
important subject, and to vote an address to her Majesty
upon a motion of which no notice had been given. lie
thought the Right Hon. Gentleman would do better to
withdraw his motion, looking at the state of the House
and the period of the session.
Mr. AGLIONBY thought it would be better that
Hon. Gentlemen should be dismissed at once by the
Speaker. The Right Hon. Gentleman had not given any
reason why the motion should not be allowed to pass, ex-
cept the late period of the session and the state of the
House. He hoped the same reasons would prevent the
Government from pressing certain Bills which they had
declared th•Ar intention of passing.
Lord ELIOT did not think that the Hon. Gentleman
bad dealt fairly by his Right Hon. Friend the Member
for Buckingham. His Right Hon Friend objected to the
motion because no notice of the motion had been given,
and he had urged that the lateness of the session and the
state of the House were reasons why the motion should
not be pressed.
Mr. HUME would advise his Right Hon. Friend to
withdraw his motion, and to give notice on the subject
for next session. The honour of the country required
that the state of art should receive the serious attention
of the Government.
Mr. WYSE consented to withdraw his motion, which
was accordingly done.

SLAVE TRADE.
Mr. FOSTER moved for the following addition to
the return. moved for by Viscount Palmerston, on the
16th of The number of slave vessels arrived
in the transatlantic States since 1814, their names,
description (as brig, schooner, or ship, &c.), masters'
name?, tonnage, armament, number of crew, national
flag., whether empty or with slaves (whose number to be
sta..ted), the loss by death on the voyage, from what part
O,F Africa arrived, the length of passage, awl date of ar-
rival, so far as these particulars are known to her Ma-
jesty's Government : also, the number of suspected
slave vessels departed from transatlantic ports since
1814, their names, description, masters' names, tonnage,
armament, number of crew, national flag, whether empty
or with cargo, and what cargo, to what alleged destina-
tion, and date of departure, so far as these particulars
are known to her Majesty's Government."
An RON. MEMBER then moved that the House be
counted, when there being only Thirty-seven Members
present, the House adjourned till to-morrow at Twelve.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—Mr. Baron Alderson observed, in the
course of one of the late trials in Suffolk, when he
heard that the prisoner Lankester, who stood before
him at the bar charged with burning a stack of wheat,
had justified such an act, by saying, it would make corn
dearer and wages higher, "This is certainly a. new
and very strange application of the doctrines of po-
litical economy." This remark of the Learned
Judges convinces us that he is not in the habit
of reading the doctrines of political economy put
forth by certain organs of landed " protection."
We do last know whet:ier those journals are fa-
vourites in the beer-shops of Suffolk, as well as on
the breakfast-tables of Mayfair. Indeed, we must in
candour say we are disposed to imagine they are not.
Otherwise we should be compelled, however reluc-
tantly, to trace a moral complicity between their pre-
cepts and Lankester's practices. There is no doc-
trine which the public instructors in question have
been more anxious to propagate than the doctrine
that farmers ought not to look to increased powers
of production for profit ; and indeed that the more
they produce, the worse it is likely to be for them-
selves. They hare disdainfully scouted the notion that
the native agriculturists should feel themselves bound to
create abundance, in consideration of such protection
as they enjoy. They opine that the farmers should by
no means give ear to Liebig ; that they should by
no Means study to increase their products and thereby
lower prices ; that, in fact, the latter are exclusively
what they ought to consider their Palladium ; and that
a rate of prices satisfactory to themselves it is the whole
duty of the Legislature to secure them. How far be-
yond this doctrine are the deductions from it for which
Lankester was convicted ? The most consistent organs
of monopoly think abundance, entailing cheapness,
the great evil to be discouraged and deprecated.
So thinks Lankester ; so he expressed to his ad-
miring
associates on the treadwheel. " While on --the
treadwheel (says the Chronicle Suffolk correspondent),
Lankester made such disclosures to some new friends
whom he met there, as led to his being accused
of incendiarism. The superintendent of the treadwheel
was sitting, as they thought, fast asleep. But, if his
eyes were shut, his ears were open, and he heard the
jokes which were perpetrated at his expense, together
with the doctrines of political economy promulgated by
Lankester, as also an account of the practical applica-
tion of those doctrines. Laukester had not only
been able to trace much of the misery of the
present times to the introduction of machinery ;
he was convinced, and tried to convince others,
that cheap corn was the greatest of curses to
the English labourers. He knew of no means, he
said, of raising the wages of the labourers, but by rais-
ing the price of corn ; he knew of no way of raising the
price of corn but by making it scarce ; and he knew of
no way of making it scarce so readily as to burn the
stack-yards. He was therefore in favour of burning
stacks, though greatly opposed to those who set fire to
barns and houses ; and if the witnesses and jury are
right in what they have said and doue, he, to carry out
his principles of encouragement to native industry, and
thorough out-and-out • protection to agriculture,'
set fire to at least one stack with his own hand."
It is not every one that, like Lankester, has the
noble daring to work out principles to their conse-
quences. - The Times has suggested the New Poor-law
as the raison suffisante to the Suffolk incendiaries. This
is ingenious and plausible, and lesser minds than Lan-
kester's might be satisfied with the hint. But that com-
prehensive intellect was not to be limited in its range to
aught narrower than the scope of the whole theory of
apricultural protection.
To him had Heaven with bounteous care assigned
Energetic nature, and a shaping mind,
The shape taken by Lankester's speculations was
not haranguing at county meetings, nor subscribing to
protection societies—but limiting agricultural " over-
production" by lucifer matches. The impulse of the
gentlemen of the Eastern counties (according to Mr.
Wodehouse), when they can't stand attacks on their
interest any longer,—is to charge somebody else with
incendiarism. Lankester's impulse, in the same
region, has at least greater directness and dash about
it. , It is, namely, to commit incendiarism himself.
But a prophet has no honour in his own county. The
presentment of the grand jury described Lankester's act
of incendiarism as " malicious." They should have de-
scribed it as mistakenly protective ; and with that fel-
low-feeling which marks class-interests, they should
have recommended to mercy the practical enthusiast for
their own economical doctrines. At least some token of
sympathy, surely, 0 Suffolk squirearchy, might have
been afforded to the ill-fated translator of artificial-price
doctrine into fact—
Doom'd the long isles of Sydney Cove to see—
. A martyr to his crime—but true to thee.
STANDARD.—The debate in the House of Com-
mons last night upon the Irish Charitable Bequests Bill
presents new proof, if new proof were wanted, of the im-
possibility of satisfying the demands of the Irish po-
litical Roman Catholics by any concession short of abso-
lute dominion. The purpose of the Bill is to facilitate
Roman Catholic endowments by certain changes in the
law of charitable devises ; and by the appointment of
a Commission, of whom five Commissioners are to' be
Roman Catholics. Whether this change in the law is
such as Protestants ought to approve of is a question
open to debate; but that it ought to be gratefully
accepted by Roman Catholics, no rational man will
dispute ; nevertheless, Mr. O'Ferrall, Mr. Shell, Mr.
Wyse, Mr. Bellew, Mr. M. J. O'Connell, and Mr. Dillon
Browne made a great outcry, because, forsooth, the
titular bishops—whom Mr. Wyse indecently and ille-
gally called the prelates of " the Church of Ireland"
—had not been consulted, and because none of
these persons are to be ex officio Commissioners.
Now what has that to say to the law ? If the law is
oth?rwise a good law, what matter who was consulted in
forming it, or by whom, supposing them honest men,
it is to be administered ? The Commission is to be
a tribunal for the determination of questions of title
to property. And are we to be told that tribunals
are to be constituted by popular or by party election ?
If this principle is once admitted, we can hardly
quarrel with Mr. O'Connell's arbitration courts.
Cases or Roman Catholic property of all kinds, testamentary as well as
Majesty's
cases, come before the
Protestant judges of
of civil law. Yet it is not dejniteyd'srurts of equity and
omtm ist justice
judges.isha What
impar-
tially administered by these Protestante
possible objection, then, to a
protestant
of charitable
bequests, if it were exclusively stant. ; above
all, what objection to such a Coraßemmission when
five of its members are to be
lies'? But, says Mr. Shell, we object totCatilteo ?;
Commissioners, whether Protestant or Roman
Ca-
tholic, being laymen. Here the cloven foot peeps out.
The Romanist Bishops want to establish themselves
somewhere as a legalised tribnnal, an authorised corpo-
ration, well knowing that if they obtain that footing
they will soon make good more ground. It is upon
this' consideration they make a complaint of not
being consulted ; and upon this consideration
they demand to be placed, ex officio, in the admi-
nistration of the law. These persons forget, however,
that though the State recognises their orders from their
church (in which we think the State very wrong),
wherever they may happen to be found, the " security"
law of 1829 distinctly forbids them, under a penalty,
to 'claim a local jurisdiction, even in things
spiritual, anywhere within her Majesty's domi-
nions. The Legislature, in granting them local
,„,,,4arisdiction in matters merely temporal, would therefore
r• 0 ‘, 'Flotr;violation of its own ordinances. It is
worthar-Q ibie;rvation that none of the British Members
who y au port the Romanist party could find
frOlittei VotO\sog h them last night, and even Mr. Joseph
r ilatne
,fiofh" e and voted against them. Considering
ielrtakits.etn mere temporal arrangement, and not
s>tt!l vnn le, we have no objection to offer to it,
rejoice at the manner in which it has
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