The Sun.
London, England, 1845-05-28 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1845.

The dispatches published in Tuesday's Gazette, rela-
tive to the operations in Sindc, are highly honourable to
Sir CHARLES NAPIER and the little gallant army under
his command. It is a singular fact that this able officer
has been successful in every plan for defeating his ene-
mies, and tranquillising that important district. The
malevolent press of India has been compehcd
to acknowledge his merits ; his opponents in
this country cannot find one fault, and the
praises bestowed upon him by Sir HENRY
lIAR-
DIRGE, the Governor-General Elect of the India
Board, are equally flattering with those so willingly
given by his calumniated predecessor. Here is the
tribute paid by a discriminating judge and skilful warrior •
After announcing the complete success of the expedition,
the Governor-General says:—" An operation of this na-
ture demanded, on the part of the General, the utmost
prudence, skill, and foresight, and on the part of the
troops, the greatest fortitude in enduring the fatigues
and privations to which they were exposed. These
qualities, which prove the merit of a commander and
the discipline of the troops, have been displayed by both
with characteristic energy. Every officer and man in
this short but arduous campaign has shown that there
are no difficulties which discipline cannot surmount under
able guidance."

On Monday evening Lord JOHN RUSSELL brought
forward his promised series of resolutions, which, though
nominally limited to a review of the condition of the
labouring classes, embraced a great variety of Other
topics. These topics were, many of them, of an interest
almost equally extensive to such as the Currency, the
Corn Laws, and Free Trade. His speech also embraced
a searching inquiry into the condition of educkion
among the people generally ; but this subject is so legi-
timately connected with any attempt to consider the con-
dition of the poor, that we should not venture to discuss
the one without the other. From this description of
Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S speech, our readers will readily
understand that it would not be vary practicable to con-
dense such observations as we may desire to offer upon
it, within the limits of a single article. Sir JAMES
GRAHAM passed this well-merited eulogium upon it ;
that in Justice to the Noble Lord he felt bound to say
that anything more worthy the great subject it dealt
with, or more comprehensive in its views than the
speech of the Noble Lord, he had never heard in
that House. It was totally devoid of all party
feeling, or any acrimonious assertiow. To this
high praise it was certainly entitled ; and from
that very conviction we are as anxious to parti-
cularise its snore prominent merits as to express with
caution, and all the respect due to such a gifted speaker,
the occasional points as to which we find ourselves un-
able to arrive at the same conclusions which he has re-
corded. Impossible as it will be on the present occasion
to do more than throw a comprehensive glance over the
general effect of this admirable address, owing to the
pressure of much matter of immediate interest, we
cannot refrain from expressing the gratification
we have derived from the indications this
speech everywhere abounds with, of a deep and
anxious solicitude for the welfare of the in-
dustrial classes. Lord Joiirr RUSSELL speaks like
a man alive to the wrongs which this invaluable class of
the community have long endured, and bent on a vigor-
ous and chivalrous effort to retrieve them from their
pressure in future. On the question of the course to be
taken in providing for the general education of the poor
we are proud to find his Lordship concurring in a prin-
ciple we have so lately argued in relation to that point.
He expresses broadly his conviction that any mea-
sures for the moral or intellectual improvement ot
the poorer classes, to be attended with success, must be
preceded by adequate provision for their physical im-
provement, and especially of their food, subsistence, and
lodging. h certainly does appear a romantic com-
mencement of any scheme of popular amelioration—
where the distress to be remedied is extensively diffused
and of the most sordid and disorganising character, and
its causes .I,mbedded deeply in by by-gone errors of po-
litical legislatio2 and social usages—to grapple with the
choice of abstract
crinciples to be adopted in the
discipline and training
men's minds, whilst their
bodies are exhausted by inb:.
fition, suffering, and
disease. What are class books and interestinf
lessons in light or instructive liter.; lure to
them, whilst they themselves are starving, and tn.:
families are sinking around them, under the double
pressure of want and domestic misery? With regard to
the Noble Lord's statistics of wages and prices, in their
reciprocal relations to one another, we cannot entirely
concur in the results which he draws from hi:
own premises. Into that larger question, how-
ever, we will not now enter ; and we forbear, fur
the present, from contesting, as we should feel
bound and prepared to do, the Noble Lord's views
of the action of the Bank Restriction Act of 1797, at the
time, and ever since, on the wages of labour and the con-
dition of the labouring population. It is with all sub
mission no sort of proof that the present wages of la-
bour are not greatly below a fair remunerating, or even
a bare living standard in some of the largest branches of
agricultural and manufacturing employment, that it
appears from Mr. Dent's tables that wages are much
the same now, with corn at a moderate price,
as they were in 1801, for instance, with corn at,
the famine price of 115 s. per quarter. It is clear
that the Noble Lord omits out of his calculation the
enormously increased burden of indirect taxation now
borne by the labourer, and the consequent reduced
amount of necessaries and all other consumable articles
which the same nominal scale of wages now represents.
The consideration of this incident in the condition of in-
dustrial labour in this country—of the operation upon
it of the altered standard of currency established by Sir
R. PEEL in 1819, and of the corn-laws, we must defer
to a future but early opportunity. Connected with the
question of corn-laws, we cannot deny ourselves the
pleasure of noticing the manly and candid language in
which the Noble Lord acknowledged the discrepancy
between his present convictions touching the expediency
of a graduated scale of protecting duties. We shall
speedily recur to them, and to his argument in favour
of a fixed low duty of 45., 55., or 6s. per quarter.

Whilst public opinion on this side of the Tweed ap-
pears to be much divided as to the merits of the Lord
Advocate's new poor-relief legislation for the kingdom
of Scotland, it may be expected that we should recur to
a subject which we handled at some length on the occa-
sion of the. Learned Lord bringing in the Bill in ques-
tion. But we should be sorry to throw impediments
in the way of any measure having for its object the
mitigation of those evils which the Scottish poor have
too long been left ,to encounter, with means almost in,
conceivably inadequate to procure them the means of
even the most meagre and attenuated subsistence. The
disclosures,—for his instrumentality in bringing
which under the notice of Parliament we think the
Learned Lord has scarcely received from some of our
contemporaries his due raced of praise,—the disclosures
which have' been made of, the destitution in, which a vast
community of the people of Scotland habitually dwell,
are
scarcely more appalling from the amount of personal
misery which they exhibit, as forming the social lot of
so many of our fellow-creatures and subjects, than they
are startling from the economic phenomena they reveal.
The condition of the poor of Scotland becomes an ob-
ject of deep but painful interest, when one reflects upon ,
this remarkable fact, that although the development of
agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial prosperity
in Scotland, within the last half century, is scarcely to
the example of any other nation within
tbhee :ae surpassedera,b
and the same interval of years ; her un-
developed,
thatd,or h
at least
al nonoinmtprieovaedlmroesst a scandalources,are stillto
theso
extensive