The Sun.
London, England, 1826-09-07 00:00:00


Afirtifters, by those of their measures which bear directly
on tyre currency, and through it upon a certain portion of
the trading( classes, have raised some murmurs against their
own policy, which, we trust, they will have the wisdom to
disregard. The apparent object of the King's Government
has lately been to reduce the circulating medium of Eng-
land within such limits as would fairly correspond with the
real wants of her commerce, that commerce being measured

by the number of sales and purchases which were culled
for by actual consumption. The purification of the cur,
rency was a natnraj step towards the extinction of that
species of credit which had not represented substantial
property, or promoted useful industry, but which had been
concocted between two descriptions of men,'neither of
which had any thing, or at least not much, to lose, and
who therefore traded, as may he said, " on velvet." One
speculator -made enormous quantities of cotton .or other
goods' for which there was no natural demand, but for
which he forced a temporary demand, by sellin them for
pricesworthless none butworthless articles could-be manu
factured, or none but 'foals could think of 'being remune-
Wed. His fellow or correlative speculator engraved and
signed whole cart-loads of paper promises to pay gains of
toomly an hundred times greater than he possessed. Ile
accommodated his calico friend with its many of these
written promises as the other wanted, taking equivalent:—
that is, nihilo-valent—promises in return ; and m. this bar-
ter of reciproCal rubbish, the paper, desperado had a good
deal the Lest of it, inasmuch as lie bade sort of security

viz. the stock in hand at the calico man's work-shop, for a
part, however small, of his debt ; whereas, he of the cotton.
.mill.had not the shadow of a prospect that his banking
petrol) would pay a shilling of the notes with which lie
obliged his customersi Thus, on side, forced sales at low
prices were thrown upon the public, of goods for which
the unfortunate spinners, weavers, &c. were hardly paid
such, wages as would keep them from perishing; and on
the other, the. lame paper of the mock banking companies
assumed the uttrilmws of the.King's coin; Was diatnbuted
in wages, was dispersed over the country, generating new
portions rd diseased confidence every day, encouraging
fresh adventurers in the bank system, pressing itself on all
classes of speculators in all the diversities of manufacturing
antic commercial business, positively raising the price of
bread, lowering comparatively the wages of labour, main-
taining rents unnaturally high, and banishing the precious
metals. We do not say that Ministers have conducted
skilfully each experimental measure by which they hoped
to accomplish a salutary change in that most corrupt
system. But for the end itself, we' have from the first
moment at which it came under discussion, stood forward
to recommend and to applaud it. There is no chance that
articles of any description should have their real value de-
fined or comprehended, when they arc paid, for in a cur-
rency, the amount, and consequently the worth, of which
depends upon the audacity or. cupidity of 1,00Q individuals
in as many quarters of the kingdom. It is impossible that
honest merchnots or tradesmen, anxious to make a fair pro-
lit by their goods, and to leave a decent fortune to their
children, shoola be able to exist in competition with ad-

venturers,' who look not beyond the flashy bustle, of the
hour—.-eonuriencing paupers, aiming only to appear for a
flirt! like rich or thriving men, but without a serious
thought of ever becoming so; anticipating carelessly their
exhibition in some not very distant Gage/le,: and ending
us they had started--paupers. We say broadly, that if it
has been the design of Ministers to attack these two
branches, of illegitimate and destructive commerce, they
merit the support of every wise man in the community.—
They have but applied the caustic to the fungus, and
have le.t the sound flesh to the healing course of nature.
The branch bunks, • of which Government has • been

strongly recommending the list: and extension to the Bank
of Englund, van, we hope, under the principles which are
likely to regulate them, not conchtee to the obstruction of
Any fair or profitable industry. They are not to allow any
credit accounts. This will probably be a general role,
not rigorously enforced in cases of justifiable exception ;
but one by which the besetting vice of over production
must he, in a great majority of instances, very sensibly
and usefully checked. Upon the whole, when we look at
the degree in which the manufacturing population has
heen foreed forward and multiplied, by that eagerness of
avarice to which the paper system was so perniciously sub-
servient, and at the 'circumstances through which revul-
skins in trade have not only been so much extended, but
•been aggravated into a mass of sufferings the most afflict-
ing to the human race, we are not afraid to express a wish
-,treasenable, perhaps, in the ears of those Who reason
about their fellow creatures no otherwise than as " instru-
ments of production"--,that England were .someWhatless
of a smoky workshop.—somewhat more of a nursery for
hardy peasants—than for the pale, precarious, and helpless
multitudes by which the heated atmosphere of our over-
grown manufactories is peopled, and through whom the
least thietnation. Of a foreign market is visited in the
dreadful shapes of turbulence, fever, and famine, upon
this Country.— Times.
We refer our readers to an account in another column

of the proceedings at the 'Salisbury Petty Sessions, on
Tuesday licit, as affording a specimen of the process by
which ;the poor of England are daily manufactured into
criminals. A number of men, women, and children, had
invaded the woods of the Earl of Pembroke, at Gravely,
for the purpose of gathering nuts, which the poor through-
out the country have almost every where been in the habit
of doing time out of mind. A board forbidding the pm-
tiee haul, _however, been put up, though it seems most of
the parties alleged they did not know of the notice. The
Magistrates deeming this invasion of the Earl of Pon-
' broke'S'property no moral offetiee, fined' the parties only
Gd. each, but then the expellees of the information •
amounted to nine shillings--a formidable sum, indeed, to
persons out of employment, ttad receiving • only front the
parish allowance. The alternative is imprisonment ; and
thus we have at once a crowd of recruits for our felon po-
pulation. If the people of the agricultural districts had
not been reduced to this wretched condition, under the.
abuse of the. Poor Laws, and the re-aetion of Irish mis-
govermnent on liiigland, they might still bear up, us they
did in better day., against the occasional putting in force
of some.of the numberless laws ' imposing penalties for
what are often,. as in the above ease, ?tot moral rfenees.
To suppose that they can steer clear of constant Mime-
tio»smf the laws is absurd, beetuise' as we have already
observed, there is' hardly an act against which a penalty is
not denounced in some sleeping or waking statute. A
person who is. n. the receipt of good g *Il es will not' of
,.curse, a11OKr himself to be imprisoned for the non-pay-
ment'of a trifling penalty, and nine or tell shillings of
fees. Hence, when the -labourers were not paupers,the
vexations to which they were oeeasionafly exposed may be '
. said to have pressed Nhtly On them. But it is nnw far.
otherwise with them. Ile who is wholly. without property
its without the means of paying lin.e.st and it
,shouid he
derstood that a fine,
however small, i0, in reality a sentence
of impritionment. The problem of preserving ,order in a
population of paupers is, in reality, very difficult. Where
a population generally, is in possession of property, fines
and penalties forth a most efficient instrument in the hams
ilveziomne't of offer ;
of the Magistrate. But, with paupers, you have to choose
between complete, impunity, end the evo
dery of all degrees into criminals. You i
through the pocket, and you must have constant recourse,
to the lash, imprisonthent, and the tread-mill, and these
soon come to be' disregarded, and frequency of. punish.
' tient extinguishes shame. We are far from saying that
the Earl of Pembroke has not a right to preserve his nuts,
w theirs to be
however generally his neighhool's.IPaY -° „
taken by the poor; hot say, that the Earl or Pembroke
can only in such a neighbonthood put the law in force, by
breaking down the barriers 'which form the best safeguards
of the rich... Tile time is fast approaching, when the pea-
santry will be utterly unassailable by Secondary punish-
ments, and when the gentry will deeply repent their having
wantonly sported with those feelings of honest pride, the
'eitlitence.of which in the poor forms the best security for

the persons and property of the rich. They may cover
the face of the country with prisons and houses of cony-
tion,:litit these will form but a poor substitute for the prin-
eiples which they have extinguished. The spirit of the
labouring classes (for we will not call them poor) was
strikingly evinced in several districts of the country, yet
exempt from the abuses practised under the Poor LaU,s,
wheit they were subjected to severe trials by laws the most
oppressive, and the most unjust in principle ever pasied by
an unthinking and unfeeling Legislature. 'We allude to
the different laws for raising militia, armies of reserve, &c.,
p'assed during the late war, which were, in fact, laws for
taxing the poor beyond their share for the . exigencies of
the country. Though the demand for men raised the
price to an extraordinary height, we know that in many
parts of the country, the labourers drawn to serve almost
always provided substitutes, the price of which they con-
trived to pay. The sacrifices and exertions these men
made were surprising; and a heart4ending spectacle it
was, to see the poor man, after having, by several years'
savings, obtained furnitnre anti a cow, forced to sell them,-
and even to pledge his future earnings for the deficiency.
But with a population possesSed of some property, and
with the pride which the possession 'of a little property
never fails to give, how easy is it to maintain order.
When it becomes necessary to restrain their transient
ebullitions, or to correct them :for their offences, ample
means are always at hand, without reducing them to the
level of the criminal, and sending them to abodes from
which they emerge initiated in the most nefarionti arts.—
MOrning Chronicle:

Whether the Companies, which have been established
here, for the purpose of carrying on, extensive mining
operations in South America, have been conducted pru-
dently or imprUdently, we have not the means of ascer-
taining; but there his nothing chimerical or visionary in the
principles on which they proceed ; and, from the amount
of capital which has been invested in them, and the num-
ber of persons whose interests are more or less connected

with their success, they may be considered as public Insti-
tutions, whose.proceedingwought to be made the subject
of fair observatIon. We are not among those who deem a
Joint Stock Company to be, in its very essence, a nuisance,
or an absurdity. How many of our own Institutions are
of that nature ? How many of the great works, which
contribute to our comforts and to our prosperity, have
hien accomplished, and are still maintained by Joint Stock
AssoCiations ? There are sonic operations which a private
purse cannot with prudence venture upon ; and to that
class of spbculations mining must often belong. Prom the
very nature of mining operations there must be frequent
a great outlay of capital, before any return can be expected.
The period of that return cannot, in any particular instance
be anticipated with much certainty; and several successive
trials may turn out unprofitable, though the result of a
great number may, on the whole, be very beneficial.—
The want of economy, which is too apt to characterize
Joint Stock Companies, is, undoubtedly,- a ganger to be
feared ; but, in cases of this kind, it is more than court-

terbalanced by other advantages; and the mischiefs of it
may always be, to a considerable degree, checked by pru-
dent regulations. 'Whether the Anglo-Mexican Mining
Association, whose embarrassments have of late attracted
so much notice, hal, been deficient in economy, and wise
management, we do not presume to say. There may be
ground of suspicion ; but whether the Directors might or
'might not' have acted with more prudence, of this we are
sure, that the conduct of the Shareholders is not such as
beComes men who must be supposed to have entered into
a splendid project with the purpose of carrying it on ac-
cording to the plan which was laid before the.public.—
New Times and Representative.

Saint James's-street presents at this time a melancholy
proof of the progress of luxury and vice among the higher
ranks of society, and above all, of the degrading progress
of that thirst for gaining which levels all distinctions, and:
sinks men who are otherwise qualified to shine in life, often
below the baseness of the. optimum' felon. Two large re-
i,eptacles of the kind to which we allude, are in the act of
being pulled down for the purpose of being enlarged ; one
of them, that den of infamy and pollution, where more for-

tune and character have bCen sacrificed than in any similar
temple of corruption with which the country has ever been
cursed. This, we must admit, is a mortifying result of the
pains the press has been at to stem the torrent of vice, and
iiflords too convincing a proof of its power over thoselfish
and unsocial propensities of mankind. However, nil des-
perandum will still be our motto and our principle; and
the increasing power of the hydra will only induce us to
redouble our -efforts to crush and to defeat it. Without
confining our observations to this sink of infamy alone, we
should say that the:club mania of the present age carries
with it any thing but. a favourable augury among the signs
of the times. Not that we would be understood to object
to associations of men for social purposes, more especially
if they combine literary or other.rational pursuits. But,
unfortunately, with one or two exceptions, the fashionable
clubs of the present day are devoted almost wholly to
gaming, in some or all of its various shapes; and are places
where the young are initiated in vice, and where the more
advanced in life close their days in utter disregard of
the social,, moral, and religious feeling. Anxious and
careful as the managers mid keepers of inoht of: these
Places are to conceal their goings on from .the prying
eyes of the world, they must be destitute of common
sense if they imagine that. they can effectually do
so. : In fact, they live over a mine, to which losers,
cast-off servants, and -various other grades of connection,
can at any hour apply: the match; and there is, in fact,
no doubt, but that large sums of money are continually
paid to hush and silence those whose .disclosures would
he of an awkward nature. For ourselves, warring as we
do against the system, we have hitherto abstained froM
directing the powers of the press against individuals ; but
at the same time, if the system will not fall under a general
attack, it must be dealt with 'hi detail, and we will then
show these people that we know more of their proceedings
than they have probably-given- Inv credit fora If we have
abstained from telling the customers of a banking house.
which of these hells one of its junior„ partners frequents,
or the Bishop of, London, at which- of them more than
One Reverend Divine spends his sabbath-days, and his
week-day nightti—if we have forborne to tell the ne-
glected wife, or the heart-broken mother, where the
worthless husband and the son are passing in Wino, and
splendour the hours which at home are devoted to mi-
sery, anxiety, and want—it is not because we could not
do so, but from a fear that the pang we should inflict
would reach the innocent,
,and not the guilty, and in the
hope, which we do nor yet abandon, that public shame
and general censure would in time put an end to the
means of pursuing courses so fraught with individual ruin
and national disgrace. A corroboration of the anti-social
nature of clubs has of late been furnished, in a way to
which we can of course but slightly allude. It is, how-
ever,,indisputably true that the greater number of persons
Whose names have come before the world in the most de-
testable forms, have been members of one or more of these
-societies; so true is it, that any symtem from which the
presence of that sex is. excluded Whose influence engen-
ders &very right feeling, is liable, in its very nature, to
render men the hate, 'the scorn, and outcasts of the coin-
munity..-4tiorning Herald;

-Mr. John Wilks, jun., who has been so
much be-
fore the public lately, for his shares in concocting and
conducting the Bubble Companies, and who has also
been returned by the Borough of Sudbury, to adorn
the new _House of Commons, had the following ad-
vertiganient published sometime ago on the cover of
the Jt:vangelical Magazine :--." Mr. John Wilks,
first respectability, lias a v '
jun. hiving received into partnership a solicitor of the
, scanty inhis o c
larticled clerk, vilio may board and lodge in his family,
and receive the benefits of moral and rdigious super-
intendance. Premium 3501. Apply to Mr. John
. . ffi )c for an
Wilks, jun., solicitor, 39, New Broad-street."—Bury
Gazette.