The Sun.
London, England, 1844-06-28 00:00:00

.i.... t rialtiS Ari-i-113

LONDON., FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 1844.

The Bishop of LONDON presented upwards of
ninety petitions ;to the House of Lords against the
Dissenters' Chapel; Bill, and expressed his film con-
viction 'that the ariendments made in the Commons
would not dO away with the mischievous tendency of
the measure. It is a great rarity to find the Wool-
sack deserted by the bench of Bishops.
Lord BROUGHAM .pottpined the second reading of
the Privy Council Bill fill Monday. This Bill has
been so Joni in 'abeyance, that the public thought it
was given u,o.
The. Marquis -of CLANIIICARDE moved for certain
returns relatia se: to the manner in which the Poor-law
Commissioner:bad carried out the Act for providing
reliCf,-to the vt=in 'retinal
'"teri few ukirds from the Duke of WELLINGTON,
the ag.' reed to, and the House adjourned.
In the-Cormugigi alrief discussion took place re-
lEive*the z%‘.l kembers to vote on Bills in

ments, and neither Mr. GLADSTONE nor Lord STAN
LET could refute them.

After speeches from Mr. WARBURTON, Mr. BRIGHT,
Sir ROBERT PEEL, and Lord JOHN RUSSELL, the
Bill was read a third time.

The House went into Committee on the Bank
Charter Bill, when the principal clauses were agreed
to and the House resumed.

The Dissenters' Chapels Bill was postponed ti
to-day.

The House adjourned at Half-past One.

After two nights' discussion, remarkable for no speech
of any particular moment, with the exception of that
delivered by Lord Homes on Tuesday, who gave
utterance to some weighty and significant truths,
which will not be speedily forgotten by those who
heard, and those who read them, the debate on the
corn-laws was last night brought to a close, when
the majority against Mr. VILLIERS'S motion was 204.
This, it must be confessed, was a large majority,
but when we come to consider the constitution of
the present House of Commons, how completely
it has surrendered its independence into the hands
of Sir ROBERT PEEL, and how imperfectly it
represents and gives expression to the wants
and wishes of the vast mass of the people, we
cease to be surprised at the triumph of the monopolist
party, and are only the more confirmed in our con-
viction that these sort of triumphs cannot be of long
continuance. The League has no reason to be dis-
mayed by the result of last night's division ; rightly
considered, it has not in the slightest degree thrown
back the cause which that great national confederacy
has so much at heart, but will even have been pro-
ductive of good, if it shall be the means of stimu-
lating the free-traders to still further exertions. They
must now see, that for some time to come at least,
they have little to expect from Sir ROBERT PEEL and
those who act according to his bidding. He told them
distinctly last night—and in case there should be any
misapprehension of his meaning, he twice repeated
the assertion that it was not his intention
to make the slightest alteration in the pre-
sent corn-law. " I prefer the principle of the
Bill of 1842," he said, "to the principle of the
Bill of the Noble Lord, and I have only to repeat
the declaration which on the part of her Majesty's
Government, I made at the commencement of the
present session, that we do not intend, and that we
have not intended, to diminish the protection which
the existing corn-law gives to the agricultural in-
terests." In these few, but emphatic words, the
PREMIER clearly throws down the gauntlet of defi-
ance to the League, and dares them to do their
worst. He will not advance an inch nearer to them
in the way of conciliation or compromise, but
will maintain the position which he now holds.
But not only this, in the conviction of his own
strength, and the inability of the League to grapple
successfully with him and force him to change his re-
solution, he actually taunts Mr. COBDEN and some
other free-traders who supported him the other night
on the Sugar Duties, with the vote which they gave
on that occasion. " I hope," he sneeringly observed
—and no man sneers with such a smiling, well-bred
bitterness as the Premier—in reference to the empty
state of the Opposition benches, at an early period of the
evening, " I hope that the assistance which the Hon.
Gentleman and his friends gave to me at my benefit the
other night, has not been the cause of depriving
them of a fuller audience." It is thus Sir R. PEEL
acknowledges and repays the services which Mr.
COBDEN—most ill-advisedly, as we must say—ren-
dered him a night or two since on a question in which
the Government were most deeply interested, and on
which, otherwise, they must have sustained a most
humiliating defeat ! Henceforth, we suspect, the
Hon. Member for Stockport will be cautious how he
applies his shoulder to the wheel, in order to lift
the State-waggon out of the mud, seeing that his as-
sistance is taken quite as a matter of course, and is re-
paid only by a quiet supercilious indifference. We have
said that Lord Howicx.'s speech was the only really
remarkable one that was made during the discussion,
It was indeed eminently so, if for nothing more than
these important truths :—" All experience proved,"
said his Lordship, " that if justice were too long
withheld, more than justice would be demanded, and he
thought there were significant symptoms abroad tha

we were not far from that end. It was true the Go-

vernment was all powerful in that House, but he
_ _

should look with alarm to any sudden or violent dis.

turbance of the political institutions of the country, and
he warned the House that theirfoundations were sapped
from the moment when the persuasion became general
that those in whose hands power was placed, perverted
that power to their own benefit, to the oppression of
the rest of the community. That persuasion was fast
gaining ground." There is much more truth in
these remarks than it would suit the convenience of

Sir ROBERT PEEL and his Conservative tools i(7.1

allow. The existence of Chartism, so general among
the operative classes, if not quite so noisy as
it has been ; the discontent of the agricultural
classes made manifest in the wandering va-
garies of SWING, who, ,we believe, has now, with
the torch in his hand, paid a visit to every county in
England :—these, to say nothing of a hundred minor

ones, are significant symptoms, which indicate the

deep and growing discontent of the masses with the
system of class legislation, and prove, also, that that

•
false and purblind system of legislation is, of neees•

city, drawing, slowly indeed, but surely, to a close.

We perceive that the Marylebone Vestry has set a
becoming example to other similar bodies in the
metropolitan districts. It has manifested a consistent
and spirited resistance to the most un-Christian and

eminently un-English mania of the Right Hon. the
Home Secretary for pulling down the existing prisons
of our capital, and re-constructing them expressly
with a view to adapt them to the purposes of soli-
tary confinement, on his " model plan." Our readers
are aware of the reckless spirit of innovation in which

Sir JAMES GRAHAM has pressed upon the county and
municipal magistracies, throughout the kingdom, the
adoption of his favourite " silent system nostrum."
He has urged it month after month, day after day,
utterly "regardless of the expense" (as Mr. GEORGE
Roams would say) which his project may entail on
the locality it is to be inflicted upon, and still more
regardless of the feelings of those unhappy victims
who are to be experimented on by the terrors of that
system. The objections Which the Marylebone Vestry
have expressed to the plan regard the jobbing cha-
racter of that plan ; its immoderate expense ; the
inequitable distribution of that expense ; and, above
all, the stupendous inhumanity of the punishment
itself. On all these grounds we earnestly exhort the
magistracy of this kingdom to resist, by every con-
stitutional means that may be available to them, the
baneful application of the Government on this subject.
And first, as to the character of "a job" attaching
to the scheme for which Sir Jeuss so ostentatiously

which they had a direct interest. Mr. ESCOTT cited
a variety of instances against such a right, and moved
a resolution to that effect. After some remarks, how-
ever, from different Members, the motion was with-
drawn. As there seemed to be some doubt, however,
whether the standing orders of the House applied also
to Committees, Mr. GLADSTONE moved that the rules
of the House relating to the votes of Members having
an interest in a question applies to Members in Com-
mittee. The resolution was adopted.
Mr. COLQUHOUN gave notice, that on the motion
for the third reading of the Dissenters' Chapels Bill,
he would move that it should be read that day six
months.

In answer to a question from Mr. M. GIBSON, Sir
JAMES GRAHAM Ea:d Le did not think it advisable to
appoint a Special Commission to inquire into the
causes of incendiarism in Essex, Suffolk, and Nor-
folk. A number of persons were already in custody
charged with the crime of incendiarism, and as the
ordinary assizes would commence in a short time, all
the circumstances would be inquired into.
Sir ROBERT PEEL, in reply to a question from Mr.
'VYSF, said that after the Counsel for the Crown had
made their statement in the House of Lords, relative
to the writ of error on the Irish State Trials, the
motion of the lion. Member should come on upon a
Government day.
Lord ELIOT, in answer to a question from Mr.
Ross, said he had received no information from the
Lord Chancellor of Ireland that Mr. O'DaiscoLL had
been reinstated as a Magistrate of Cork.
On the motion, that the Sugar Duties Bill be read
a third time, Mr. HAWES briefly addressed the House,
for the purpose of showing that slavery existed in
Java and China to as great an extent as in Brazil and
Cuba. Mr. P. M. STEWART expressed similar senti-