The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-30 00:00:00

lutnArt C
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I.I)ND ON, IVEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1844.

The late public meeting of the
roused
Anti-Corn-law
the
League at Manchester, while it has the bile
of all the Monopolist journals, has had
effmect of
of
wringing the following reluctant acknowledgment
its great moral influence from the Morning Post, in
answer to a flippant remark in the Herald, that it
was fast declining in public estimation :—" Our honest
Contemporary has, within these six months repeat-
edly proclaimed, that the League had died a natural
death. Not only, however, has its spirit been
without intermission active in the economical

policy of our Conservative Ministers, but the
League itself—the extinguished League—the League
which, according to the Herald, all men despised and
had abandoned—is once more openly in the field of
agitation. The leaders of the Conspiracy have made
their influence felt in more than half the Borough
Registration Courts in the kingdom ; and they are
now preparing to wrest from landowners that pre-
ponderating power which they have hitherto exercised
in counties. Does the Herald deny that the
League possesses the power of multiplying, almost
withotit limit, forty-shilling freeholders in a ma-
jority of English counties ? No, our worthy
Contemporary may not venture to deny that the
dead' League is more full of vitality than ever, nor
that the power of the landed aristocracy of England
totters on all sides." This unequivocal testimony to
the fast increasing political influence of the Anti-
Corn-law League is the more valuable, as proceeding
from a journal which has always been conspicuous by
its uncompromising hostility to the principles of Free
Trade. From the first establishment of the League
down to its last great meeting at Manchester, who so
decided as the Post in its opposition to it? Who treated
it with such supercilious contempt? Who threw
such unmitigated ridicule on its proceedings? Who
so warmly repudiated the notion that it would ever
be able to gain a settled influence over men's minds,
or become a really dangerous antagonist to Mono-
poly ? Not two years—nay, not six months—since,
nothing could be more loftily contemptuous than our
Contemporary's language, when speaking of the Anti-
Corn-Law League and its members. Mr. COBDEN
was a mere vulgar, uninstructed cotton-spinner—a
man of one idea, and that one a humbug ;
and, as for Mr. BRIGHT, he was a political
quack of the first water, who supplied by impudence
what he wanted in ability—a long-eared Ignoramus
worthy only to bray in Brobdignag, or play the part
of a Professor in SWIFT'S flying island of Laputa.
Talk of such men—the Post used to observe in its
most tranchant style—ever gaining an influence over
the mind of the community, or giving a shake to the
proud fabric of Monopoly The idea is perfectly
preposterous, and can be seriously entertained by
none but fools and madmen ! Such was our
Contemporary's language but one short year ago,
or even less. But now, how changed his
manner—how crest-fallen his spirit—how meekly sub-
dued his tone The Confederacy that he once des-
pised, he has at length learned to treat with deference.
He now dreads what he formerly ridiculed. Messrs.
COBDEN and BRIGHT have ceased to be mere brawl-
ing, uninfluential quacks in his estimation. He now
discovers that they are men of tact—of energy—of
perseverance—" the undoubted authors"—we quote
his own words—" of the clamour for agricul-
tural improvement, and of the conversion of
England into a corn-exporting country ;" and if they
be inconsistent and self-contradictory, " it may not be
impossible"—urges our Contemporary in their de-
fence—" to point out self-contradictions on the part of
other public men not less startling than those which
Messrs. COBDEN and BRIGHT have found so profit-
able." Here is a change of sentiment with a ven-
geance ! Not a mere partial reform, but a regular
revolution, in opinion ! But we are far from de-
siring to blame the Post for this alteration in its tone,
as regards the League and its members. On the
contrary, we respect our Contemporary for his can-
dour—for his manly, though, doubtless, reluc-
tant, surrender of a prejudice in obedience
to the promptings of common sense and jus-
tice—for his acknowledgment of the increasing
power of the Anti-Corn-law Confederacy and the
decreasing power of the ltlonopolist landholders.
We fear, however, that it must have been with an
exceedingly wry face that he bore the above testi-
mony to the influence of the Leaguers in the Regis-
tration Courts ; and sure we are that he must have
twisted and twirled and wriggled, like a half
skinned eel in the hands of a fish-wife, before he
could have brought himself to speak— we
here again quote his own words—of the
" mighty progress which the League is making!'
" Mighty progress !" The expression is a striking
one, but not in the slightest degree exaggerated. The
League is making " mighty progress ;" and the day
is not far distant when Sir ROBERT PEEL—true to
his favourite system of expediency—will cry Peccari
at its dictation, and yield submissively to its autho-
ritative demand for a Repeal of the Corn-laws.

If it be true that no difficulty, not involving
moral or physical impossibilities, is invincible, Mr.
Thomas ATTWOOD may live yet to witness the legis-
lative adoption of his long and fiercely denounced
currency doctrines. Sir R. PEEL, we apprehend,
will discover it to be rather a more laborious matter,
next session, to provoke a " derisive cheer" against
the worthy ex-Member for Birmingham, than he
found it to be on bringing forward his Bank Charter
Bill a few months ago. The best clap-traps—the
most cleverly seasoned or adroitly disguised—are de-
tected, at last, in the House of Commons, as well as
at other theatres; and they who have used them the
most freely and successfully are the most certain
objects of commensurate resentment and disgust with
the audience which detects them. The elaboration
of the disguise is not permitted fo excuse the decep-
tion. The "pilula" nauseates, despite the careful
observance of the instruction, " volvetur aurato folio"
—(incredible as such perverseness may appear .to a
bullionist)! At the reassembling of the House of
Commons next spring, the Premier will attempt, in
vain, to play off, on the "men of Birmingham," those
carefully studied bursts of ingenious wonderment at
other folks' wrong-headedness, which they who read
Sir ROBERT best, term his "Joseph Surfaceism."
The alarm, indignation, and energy of the Scottish
banking and commercial public—powerfully repre-
sented in Parliament, and arrayed against the pro-
posal (to the attainment of which the Premier has
listinctly pledged himself) for subjecting Scotland to
the disaster and ruin consequent on the infliction of
his gold-equivalent scheme ;—these feelings are too
intense to be whistled down by his sorry jokes, or
his uncandid allusions. Mr. ATTWOOD, on the other
hand, may enjoy the honest consciousness of having
been amongst the earliest detectors of the fraud of the
Currency Bill of 1819, whereof this last is avowed
to be the complement, and of having given to the
whole scheme upon which these enormous sacrifices
to the Usury power of the kingdom have been
hazarded, his unqualified and uncompromising oppo-
iition through all good and evil report. He may
claim, too, the honour of having rallied round him a
large school of proselytes, although these may not
concur with him in all his views, or carry them to
the same extent. In the present movement of the
Scottish bankers, and the invaluable exertions and
tracts of the " Society for the Emancipation of In-
dustry," he must find indications of responsive
opinion on one of the most vital questions which
can occupy the public mind, that are calculated
to compensate him for much of that ungenerous
criticism and rancorous disparagement which he has
experienced at the hands of influential public men, of
far less practical acquaintance with that question, and
far less honesty of purpose in dealing with it.
Mr. THOMAS ATTWOOD has just republished in the
Aforning Post a letter, in which he proposes " some
real remedies," as he emphatically characterises
them, " for Irish distress and disturbance." He
suggests the introduction into that country of the
Jersey tenure of land, of which, he says, that it is
undoubtedly the wisest and the happiest in the
world. If you could prevail upon a single Irish
!andlord to divide a few thousand acres of land into
;mall allotments of five, ten, and fifty acres each,
_wilding upon them decent cottages, and letting them
ipon perpetual transferable rents, estimated in bushels
,f wheat, of oats, or of potatoes, convertible into
noney according to the varying average prices at the
county town, you would be instrumental in setting
n motion a vast Conservative principle, which would
promote the riches of the landowner and the comfort
and welfare of the tenant and labourer equally. The
Imdowner would secure for ever a fair and just rent,
and when the tenant found that all his improvements
would thus become his own, he would quickly ac-
complish wonders in the state of cultivation. The
landowner might at all times convert his transferable
rents into money by sale in the markets, which
would ensure him more than the present value of his
theleav course
o fileplraoofeeds, in his printed letter, to indicate
dr.emie.diTesheheriew?suialdtuprreesincruibset
rectify
rcttihfye
the currency in that country as well as in England.
2. . must pass a law to limit and
restrain power
o' the ower
ejectment exercised by Irish landlords on
their
tenantry. 3. Ii must facilitate the means of draining

the Irish bogs on a great scale, like that projected by
Mr. Nl:gm°, the engineer. 'With regard to the effect
of the first of these measures, he holds that "it
would at once make the currency balance the rents
and obligations which it has to discharge, and the
labour which it has to employ, which state of em-
ployment and its wages would be about the same as
they were on the average of the ten years closing the
last war." As to the second, he shows that the opera-
tion of the law of Jersey (which will not permit the
ejectment of a tenant, save by his own consent, so
long as he "pays a fixed stipulated corn-rent, con-
verted into money at the market prices of the day"),
is this, that it " makes all improvements the property
of the tenant, as they ought to be, and protects the
tenant in the enjoyment of the legitimate fruits of his
own industry." Upon the third remedy he contends,
that upon Mr. NINIMO'S report that the drainage of
the waste lands of Ireland, about 3,000,000 out of
5,000,000 of acres being worth that process, at the
expense of 11. per acre, would reclaim, at 201. the
acre, which would then be their value, land to the ag-
gregate amount of 60,000,000/. sterling, and provide
an incalculable mass of employment and amount of
wages for the Irish people. The letter (which we
reprint) will well repay the reader's perusal.

The Madrid journals of the 22d instant contain a
great many rumours, and stories of plots and con-
spiracies, for which there may be some good founda-
tion, for it would be singular if the Spaniards, who
look upon a pronunciamiento followed by a rebellion
as matters of amusement, should allow the old Con-
stitution to be smothered without raising even one
cry in its behalf. The Heraldo publishes a letter
from Valladolid, which asserts that a conspiracy has
been discovered in that town, the object of which
was to proclaim the Constitution of 1812,
and to prolong the minority of the QUEEN
for four years, and that the conspirators, most
of whom were military men, bad been arrested.
The northern provinces were also said to be in a
most unsatisfactory state. Carlist refugees were
constantly entering the Spanish territory in spite of
the authorities. It was added that 25,000 muskets
were ready to be introduced into Navarre, upon the
breaking out of the first disorder. A letter from
Perpignan of the 19th states, that orders were given
on that day for the formation of a cordon upon the
frontiers. It was said that Senor SALAMANCA had
bought the palace of Buen Vista from the the Prince
of PEACE, for four millions of reals. It is intended
for the future residence of MARIA CHRISTINA and
MUNOZ, when their marriage' is acknowledged. A
dotation of four millions of reels per annum and the title
of Majesty are to be confirmed to the Queen-Mother.
On the 22d an indictment was brought against the
Espectador journal, for a libel on the Government,
when a verdict of acquittal was returned by eight votes
against four. This will give an additional impulse to
the determination of NARVAEZ and Co. to put down
trial by jury. The decision was loudly applauded.

The Three per Cents. closed at 26 3-16 at sixty
days ; Five per Cents., 20 at sixty days ; Passive
Debt, 6 cash.

M. GUIZOT'S paper, the Globe, has at last spoken
out without reserve on the new Spanish Constitution.
It adopts it altogether, and sees in it one great beauty,
a twin-likeness not to the French Constitution of
1830, but that of the present. The French Foreign
Minister evidently had a large share in the labour of
reconstructing the edifice, and we hope it will do him
credit. The Spanish people are so lost to all sense of
real freedom, patriotism, and honour, that other States
begin to look upon them with an apathy bordering on
contempt, and regret no experiment that can be tried
to put down insurrections without an object, and re-
volutions which, as they follow each other, only
become more fatal to free institutions. The Globe
thus winds up an article in defence, evidently infer-
ring, and possibly with truth, that the Spaniards
prefer slavery to freedom :—" It must not be supposed
that we are of opinion that no Constitution is neces-
sary in Spain, merely because that country is Monar-
chical and Catholic. She must have a Con-
stitution, but it must be Monarchical and
Catholic ; Catholicism must be declared the
religion of the State, and the sovereignty,
of the people must be expunged from the Consti-
tution. Has the Spanish Government gone too far
in this course—has it really proposed an unreasonable
Monarchical reaction ? Persons who entertain such
an opinion cannot have read the Bill. The sove-
reignty of the people is effaced, and, as the basis of
the Constitution is given, the unanimous will of the
Monarch and the representatives of the nation. Such
are the expressions of the preamble. Can anything
be more moderate ? Is it not rather French than
Spanish ? The Government consents to a life peerage
in a country in which the institution of hereditary
nobility is still in its force. This also is more
French than Spanish. We comprehend, besides, the
reserve of the Spanish Cabinet in its reform of the
Constitution. It has been anxious to give effect to
French ideas, whilst it was acting for old Spain. It
has had an eye to the future. The reformed Consti-
tution is still in advance of the nation, but it indi-
cates the object to be attained by the nation, and to
which, without doubt, it will attain. If there should
be any tumult in Spain in consequence of this reform,
we may be sure that the people will have nothing to
do with it. Agitators will have laid hold of the
reform as a pretext to satisfy their ambition. The
people will not fire a musket for their own sove-
reignty ; they would sooner do so for the sovereignty
of Don CARLOS."

The Carlist Quotidienne takes a very different
view of the affair, and in the same spirit which ani-
mated the Jacobite ballads of Scotland, proclaims
that there will be no peace in Spain till CARLos is
installed in the Escurial :

" The men, who at this moment think they can re-
establish a monarchical Government in Spain by en-
deavouring, to efface from its Constitution the principles
of revolution, are undeceived in the most striking manner
even by the very factions who are contending for power.
To men who have shouted Long live Narvaez I' other
men reply with acclamations of Long live Espartero I'
and should Espartero set his foot on any one point of
the Spanish territory, he would find partisans and draw
to himself troops, and a new Pronunciamiento would at
once put in jeopardy both reform and reformers. In
what position then is the monarchy in a country where
its Constitution and its Government are thus at the
mercy of two rival influences—where the sword of two
warriors, superior to the sceptre itself, must decide the
destiny of the State? We have :Ten amongst ourselves
formerly in the times of minority and regency conten-
tions of ambition between our great men ; but the Con-
stitution of the State was never shaken, and every one
knew that on the day when the King should take the
reigns of Government into his own hands, the moral
authority of his royal rights would at once restore peace
to the country. In Spain the monarchy, although at
its majority, is without its due power, because in that
martial country the disastrous attempt of combining
usurpation with the distaff is being tried. In Spain, at
this moment, the real Sovereign is Narvaez, to-morrow
it may be Espartero, and nothing but civil war can be
the consequence of this perpetual rivalry. One is not
less revolutionary than the other, and for both the
sword is the ultimo ratio of Government. In a country
where the passions are so easily inflamed, where adven-
turous and warlike men are always so prompt in having
recourse to the terrible arbitrament of trial by battle,
law and justice must interpose between the champions
who are contending for power. Now justice protests
against the will of Ferdinand, and the royal right, as
regards both Narvaez and Espartero,
.is not at Madrid,
but at Bourges."

The Senate, as will be seen from the following
telegraphic dispatch received at Paris, bas made quick
work of the address :

" MADRID, OCT. 25.

" The discussion on the address was terminated this
morning in the Senate. The paragraphs of the project
of the Committee were adopted almost unanimously."
_ _

The following are miscellaneous extracts from the
papers. The Presse says :

"It is known that when M. Guizot received from the
hands of M. Martinez de la Rosa, the Spilnish Ambassa-
dor in Paris, the Order of the Golden Fleece, several de-
corations of the Legion of Honour were given to the
Ministers and other important personages of Spain ; bqt
in this number M. Martinez de la Rosa was not included,
although he was certainly not less entitled to it than
them. This omission can only be explained, by sup-
posing that the Government imagined that the Grand
Cordon Rouge of the Order of Christ of Portugal, which
M. Martinez de la Rosa wore at the time of the inves-
titure of M. Guizot, was that of the Legion of Honour.
" The Governor of the Island of Bourbon opened the
session of the Colonial Council on the 20th of May last.
In the speech which he delivered on the occasion, he
announces the intention of making an experiment of the
system of free labour in the colony. Ile says The
relations which are about to be established at the ex-
tremity of the East, by a representative of the King,
will enable you, I hope, to call in the use of free la-
bourers in, aid of your agriculture, and augment its
wealth and activity. With your enlightened co-opera-
tion, I feel a conviction that I shall accomplish the diffi-
cult but Talc able work of the establishment of the system
of hired labourers on firm bases.' It had already been
reported in Yrance that it was intended to hire labourers
in China and. the East Indies for the French colonies.

"The Belg ian Minister of Finances has just presented