The Sun.
London, England, 1826-02-25 00:00:00

rTHE TIMI3.]

The interest which is felt for the poor Suffer-
ing silk weavers, and which every man not demi.
lute of humanity must continue to regard their
distresses, has been turned to good account by
some of the masters in Shat branch of trade. On
occasions like the present, it is of the first im
portance that truth should be told without dis-
guise; for nothing can more contribute to prolong
and aggravate every evil we complain of, than the
giving currency to unfounded representations of
its causes, its extent, or its probable remedies.—
It was long ago stated by us, that the existing de-
pression of the silk-trade was not the come.
quence of any act of Ministers, and could
with no degree of fairness be ascribed to
the substitution of a tax for a prohibition._
The manufacturers themselves participated in the
confidence with which Ministers foretold the
good etrects of the altered system, and abused
that confidence by the headstrong rashness with
which they forced up, through immoderate pur.
chases, the price of raw silk all over the world.
Mr. iluskisson, on Thursday, clinched that ques.
(ion by his quotation of the Macclesfield adver-
tisement, which held out golden prospects of em.
*puma to no less than 5,000 new hands : so'
eager were the manufacturers to swell their ope.
rations beyond the utmost conceivable limits of
any known consumption to sustain them. Having
thus, though undesignedly we acknowledge,
created a glut, and next—its inevitable sequel
—a stagnation, the manufacturers throw their
poor journeymen out of work ; and turn.
lug found upon Parliament, exclaim, it See
" what your shocking law for importing fortign
" silks has done for us ! How it has ruined the
" masters) and famished thousands of the la-
" bourers!"—Let us ask, first, Is a stagnation in
the commerce of the country peculiar to the silk
trade at this moment ? Are we.not assured, on
the contrary; by grave Members of the Levitt-

tire on both sides of the House, that all branches
of manufacture, and all descriptions of commerce,
are actually suffering the most unexampled pres-
, sure ? Could they all be affected, then, by the
apprehension that in July next French silks
will have to encpunter a duty of SO per cent. on
their introduction to the British market ? If so,
the cotton, anti woollen anti iron traders, ought
to petition ford Liverpool,--not for a loan of
Exchequer Bills, but—for a repeal of the silk
duty bill passed lasilsession, and for a new pro-
hibition of manufactured silks. But we ask,
secondly, is the existing distress of the silk-
trade a new occurrence in this country ? Did
the trade always flourish during the Saturnia
regna of the prohibition ? For if not,—if, on
the other hand, long periods of suffering are
known to have arisen within our own recollec-,
Lion, a return to prohibitory laws will present
no guarantee for the future. We can allege,
therefore, that in the year 1815 and ISI6, a de-,
grce of misery was experienced by the poor]
weavers, and of loss by their emp.oyers, beyond
all comparison more protracted, extensive, and
severe, than any thin, that has recently afflicted
either. The Spitalfields Charitable Society was
instituted in the year 1811, to relieve the
wretchedness which there then prevailed among
that useful and justly pitied class of our
fellow subjects. In the subsequent years
1815 and 1816, another and more dreadful crisis
of destitution arose, the cruel scenes and heart-
breaking details of which are not merely recorded
in printed statements which we have now before
us, but are fixed in the recollection of those
benevolent beings who devoted their services and
fortunes to the succour of the miserable.