The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-18 00:00:00

Altman t Ant

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 1845.

Another striking illustration of the severity with
which the law—or what is called the law—presses
upon the poor and the defenceless may be found in
the following paragraph, which we quote from a
Morning Contemporary :—" On Wednesday evening
a police order for the removal of all the fruit-stalls in
the Strand, and at the streets and courts leading
thereto, was carried into effect by policemen specially
appointed for the duty. No reason has been assigned
for the order, which is, however, justified by the
Police Act, and can be enforced at the caprice of any
inspector or other policeman." Now what earthly
occasion was there for the issuing of a peremptory
mandate like this, whose immediate effect must almost
necessarily be, to deprive several poor people—chiefly
old women who have no other means left of earning a
subsistence—of their sole remaining chance of keeping
out of a workhouse, which it is well known, they look
upon, and justly too, as the ne-plus-ultra of human
wretchedness ? Is it that the fruit-stalls are a public
nuisance ?—that they incommode respectable pedes-
trians who may happen to be passing to and fro from
the City or the West-end ?—that their homely, un-
sightly look is odious in the eyes of gentility, whose
optics are apt at times to be exceedingly fastidious ?
If the objection be that the stalls are a nuisance, how
is it that the order for their removal has not been
issued long since ? To our certain knowledge they
hare existed for years and years in the Strand, and
no complaint that we know of has ever been made
against them ; and such being the case, it seems an
act of the most wanton tyranny to remove them. In-
deed, a sort of prescriptive right may be pleaded in
justification of their continuance; but no, we are for-
getting ourselves ; prescriptive right to which the law
allows a certain validity when the interests, pecuniary
or otherwise, of the respectable classes of society are
concerned, is utterly without avail when those only of
the poor are concerned. Many an individual in the
upper or middle walks of life has been continued in
the possession of a property of questionable origin by
pleading this right in a court of justice; but it has
had no effect in preventing the inclosure of common-
lands, on which from time immemorial the labourer
had exercised the privilege of pasturing his pigs or
his geese ! Prescriptive right has been allowed no
influence in this case, but the strict letter of the law
has been enforced, no matter how great the hardship
and the injustice occasioned by it. But granting that
the fruit-stalls in the Strand are a nuisance, why is
the police crusade carried on against them exclusively?
Are they more annoying to the public than the showy
wares which are so ostentatiously protruded by the
shop-proprietors at least two yards on each side of the
passage in the Lowther and Burlington Arcades ? If
it be deemed expedient by the police authorities to re-
move the obstruction in the one case, even-handed
justice demands that it should be removed
in the other. But, alas ! in the former instance
the interests, such as they are, of squalid poverty only
are concerned, and these may be injured with im-
punity; while in the latter, it is the privileges of rich,
respectable tradesmen and the convenience of their
customers that are concerned, and these, in accordance
with the etiquette of police law, must be dealt with
tenderly. It will never be well with society till
these shameful distinctions between rich and poor are
wholly and for ever removed. Daily we see proofs
of the ruinous consequences attending them in the
increasing demoralisation of the labouring classes,
who, neglected and despised by those who should be
their guardians, advisers, and benefactors, too often
rush into evil courses out of a sheer feeling of despe-
ration. Wealth and respectability profess a well-
bred horror of the midnight conflagrations of SWING
and the lawless excesses of REBECCA, but they never
take into consideration how much of this mischief
may be owing to their own supercilious treatment
of the poor. They sow the wind, and then think it a
hard case if they reap the whirlwind. But expe-
rience has at length produced its natural effect on
the minds of the higher and middle classes of
society, who are now fast awakening to the necessity
of pursuing a different course of conduct to that
which they have pursued for years past towards the
labouring masses of the population.

The dire hostility displayed against England by
almost every writer in the Paris journals, forms a
singular anomaly in the history of the newspaper
press. With the exception of the Journal des Debals
and the Globe, not one admits that the Government
,)f this country and the people can perform one good
action, or conduct any negotiation or speculation in
trade in an honourable and straightforward way.
There is always some chicanery, some deceit, some
perfidy or brutality (we use their own phrase) lurk-
ing in secret, and all the malignity is directed only
Against France. Like lunatics, they believe their best
friends to be their bitterest enemies. The Presse,
the National, the Courrier Francais, the Consti-
tutionnel, the Commerce, the Quotidienne, indeed
every paper, whether professing Carlist, Ra-
dical, Republican, commercial, religious, or
infidel opinions, never loses an opportunity
of joining in the cry against the nearest neighbour of
France and her only ally. Like a spoiled child,
Young France is peevish, froward, and ungrateful to
her best benefactor. In every respect England has
performed for the last fourteen years, not to go farther
hack, the duties of a good neighbour. When the French
people by acclamation rebelled against inroads on their
constitution, defeated the troops of the despot in the
streets of Paris, and expelled the degenerate Bour-
bons, the joy displayed in this country could not
have been surpassed had " perfidious Albion"
herself been rescued from slavery. The Go-
vernment, even a Tory Government, willingly
and at once gave its adhesion to the new
dynasty, and Whigs and Tories have ever
since maintained the same principles and mani-
fested an anxious desire to be on good terms with
France. What other country has done the same ?
What independent sovereign but Queen VICTORIA has
visited Louis PHILIPPE ; and sanctioned, by his pre-
sence, the principles for which all these journals con-
tended ? Even at the present day, when his power is
consolidated, and France submits willingly to his
sway, the great continental states still stand aloof.
Austria, Russia, and Prussia have no communion with
the new dynasty ; they regard France and her ruler
with a jealous eye, and would rejoice to see a rival
placed on the throne. England is her only ally,
and without England she would be as completely
isolated as the little obscure, invisible, and unapproach-
able domain over which Dr. FRANCIA so long reigned.

Even in our foreign policy we consult the wishes
of the French nation. When Algeria was first occu-
pied, the French Government gave the most positive
and unequivocal assurance that the occupation would
be only temporary. It has since been declared per-
petual ; yet, though this important acquisition
threatens British possessions in the Mediterranean, no
objection has been raised against the change ; and
these ungrateful journals, so far from being satisfied
by this act of condescension, are eternally denouncing
England because her Consul at Algiers has not done
what he is not required to do by the law of nations—
taken out his erequatur. As if Spain were an appendage
isf France, we have stood by calmly while ESPARTERO
was expelled, the Constitution destroyed, and the
agents of Louis PHILIPPE installed as the des-
potic rulers of the country. Even on the most
tender point England has yielded to France ;
she has sacrificed ber missionaries in the
islands of the Pacific, and given up settlements
which had become sacred in the eyes of posterity,