The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-18 00:00:00

23,500,0001, to which the total customs revenue of the

United Kingdom amounts.
Value of produce that enters and leaves the ports
roughly estimated at 80,000,0001.
2,000 merchants and brokers have their counting
houses within half-a-mile of the Exchange.
100,000 houses of business, to half of which shops are
attached.
All the details upon the same gigantic scale.
Water Companies, 237,000,000 of hogsheads per year.
Gas Companies, 10,000,000 cubic feet every 24 hours.
Ale and Porter, 2,000 of barrels.
(A.D. 1839.)

Smithfield cattle, 180,780 ; sheep, 1,403,400.
70,000,000 of eggs annualy from the Continent.
Its paving and sewerage, 500,0001. at least.
Newspapers, 30,000,000 of stamps (per annum).
Steam-boats, 100,000 passengers daily (in pursuit of
business or health).
1,000 miles of railway, completed (47,000,0001.), and
59 canals (14,500,0001.), connect it with the most distant
ports.)
Monthly business transacted by London bankers
through clearing-house averages 75,000,0001. (It has
been as high as 87,000,0001.)
He had gone into these details, because he thought
that they would convey a more precise idea of the
extent and greatness of London than any general de-
scription.—(Hear, hear.) Now he would ask, what
a drop of water in the ocean was the custom of the
aristocracy, however rich and numerous, compared
with the movements restlting from such a trade as
this ?—(Loud cheers.) What a singular delusion it
was to suppose that those gentlemen, amiable and re-
spectable in their position in life, created that great-
ness which they came to share—(Hear hear).—
because it was they who attracted the landed owners
by making London what it was ; and it was not
landed owners who made London what it was for
them.—(Cheers.) This was explained on a principle
extremely simple, and as old, at least, as the days
of Rome. Mr. M'Culloch spoke of London as Seneca
spoke of Rome. He says that the very magnitude of
London was the efficient cause of its great increase.
The greater the city became, the greater scope
there was for the exercise of every talent and
the gratification of every taste, and the more power-
ful were the motives by which it attracted all indivi-
duals, whether a.piring or idle, virtuous or profligate,
grave or gay.—(Cheers) These were the causes of
the greatness of London, and it was this greatness
which attracted those birds of Paradise, whose gilded
plumage adorned their streets and parks every day.
—(Hear, hear.) But the tradesmen of London should
recollect that they had not to deal with the landed
owners generally, but with the landlords also, who
possessed three or four thousand a-year, who would
not venture upon a house in town.—(Laughter.)
How small a number then did they consist of; and
then they must subtract those landowners who spent
their money in Paris and Rome, and in the Holy
Land, and which they could much better spend at
home.—(Cheers.) The people of London, therefore,
must see that the pickings of the Duke of Northum •
berland's liveries, and the wax candles of Devon-
shire House, were nothing compared with what they
paid for their bread—(Loud cheers)—because they
must recollect that if the corn-laws were repealed,

it would be a direct gain to their merchants,
their bankers, their fundholders, amongst whom
28,000,0001. were distributed ; their public an-
nuitants of every kind, their professional men,
their artists, their clerks, and all those who, after
having spent an adventurous life abroad, came back
here to enjoy an old age of comfort and of quiet ; not
to mention their operatives, of whom he would speak
by and bye,—would be all direct gainers.—(Cheers.)
The result to them would be immediate and immense.
He did not wish to weary them with dry details, and
he had much rather quote another passage from
" Sam Slick" than have recourse to dry political
economists. They were aware that Sam Slick
wrote a work detailing his impressions on
coming to England ; and he says that nothing
struck him so much, or gave him such a vivid
idea of the enormous and incalculable wealth
of London as the continuous line of equipages which
he saw on Ascot-day. That was before the Great
Western was opened. It was this, he says, which
created in his mind the idea he had of the wealth and
power of London, because the sight of them sug-
gested the reflection to him, where they all came from,
what supported this magnificient display of wealth ?
He then says (introducing carriages speaking)
" Australia keeps me—(Laughter) —China keeps
me—Botany Bay keeps me (Great laughter)
—Canada keeps me—Nova Scotia keeps me—
white bears keep me (Great laughter)—and every-
thing on the earth, and under the earth, throughout
the whole world keeps me, for all the wealth of the
world is tributary to British enterprise and British
skill"---(Great cheers)—and yet there were some
wiseacres who within three years really thought
that nothing but the custom of some two or three
thousand landlord's made London what it was, with-
out ever taking into calculation the additional price
which they were obliged to pay_ for their bread.
By this system, the people of London were mulcted
to the amount of at least 431,5571. And this asser-
tion was proved by the returns made upon this sub-
ject up to the 13th of March last. Ile had already
alluded to this question, as if it only concerned
London, but he thought he should also speak of it
so far as the landed interest was concerned. In
speaking of the landed interest, he should premise,
first, that although his estate was not a large one, yet
that still his interests, and those of his children, were
deeply involved in this question. All he wanted was,
to come to a right conclusion upon the bearings of
the subject.—(Hear, hear.) Being brought up as
one of those who were interested, he thought that
protection was necessary for the agricultural interest,
and he shared in the errors of his class ; but since his
education he saw matters in quite a different light,
and he wished that others would take the same means
of informieg themselves. He thought, if others were
to take the same cue to information which he did,
they would very soon come to a conclusion such as
he did with respect to the difference between the
relative positions of the English squire and
the German grandee.- They would find, that
what established the superiority of the former
over the latter was the persevering industry,
and the magnificent and persevering enter-
prise of the English people, by which they were en-
abled to pay higher prices, by taxation, for every
article they consumed. He could not see how 1,000
acres of land in England could be rated at a higher
intrinsic value than the same compass of land on the
Continent, except by the industry and enterprise of
the people. Ile certainly liked his own interest—in
fact he would plead guilty to selfishness, and, there-
fore, he could not account for persons drying up the
sources of their own wealth, fur experience had
proved, that if those restrictions which now
existed upon the commerce of the country were
abolished, the people would be in a much better con-
dition than they were at present.—(Cheers.) Eng-
land had got the start of the other nations of the
world in manufactures, and why did they not keep
it ? Why, simply because their commercial tariffs
and restrictions prevented that interchange of com-
modities which God destined between the nations of
the earth, and, in consequence, those countries were
now opposing them. They were now acting upon
the same false principles as those which induced the
passing of the American tariff, and the enactment of
the Zollverein in Germany. He contended that, by
the abolition of all restriction, interests of all classes
would be advanced, and consequently those of the
landlords. Mr. Ashworth has shown that laud which
in 1672 (in a district now a manufacturing one)
only brought according to the county rates, a
yearly rental of 1691., was, according to the
same authority in the year 1843, producing a
rental of 93,9161. per annum. He was shown an in-
crease of 54,388 per cent., and to what did that in-
crease owe its origin ? Vhy, it was the fruits of
combined science, capital, and industry, with which
the soil of Lancashire had nothing to do, but which
the energy and industry of the oppressed and taxed
classes had brought into existence. If in the year
1815 this restrictive law had not been enacted, the
landlords themselves would have been wealthier, and
the condition of the great mass of the people much
better, their domestic comforts more amplified, and
the capacity to discharge their social duties far be-
yond the present state of things. He denied that the
law as it was at present established at all protected
the farmer, or gave him assurance of a steadiness in
the price of corn. The highest authorities could be
adduced to prove that the wages of the agicultural
labourers had neither been kept up, nor increased by
the operations of these restrictive duties. His Hon.
Friend had stated in the House of Commons that
, the usual pittance of an agricultural labourer in any
of the counties of England did not exceed 7s. a week,
and he gave data to prove this assertion ; yet when he
threw down the gauntlet his challenge was refused,
and the Government denied him the opportunity of
proving facts through the medium of a Select Corn..
mittee of the House of Commons, for the purpose of
inquiring how those restrictive duties affect the agri-
I cultural interest and the tenant-farmer. In reply to the
request of his Hon. Friend to appoint this Committee,
Mr. Gladstone acknowledged that the object of the
motion was good ; but still he should refuse it, be-
cause it, carae from a auspicious quarter.—(Cheers
and laughter.) The Government tacitly acknowledged
that, notwithstanding an inquiry into this question
was most desirable, yet that they were so impressed
with a sense of the delicate susceptibility
of the " Agricultural Nervous System," and so
anxious to follow up the conditions of their compact
with the Duke of Richmond, that they were
compelled to refuse any inquiry. And on just the
same ground Lord Stanley, the other night, refused a
just and equitable • motion made by Mr. Hutt ; but
Mr. Gladstone, in his reply to his friend, Mr Cobden,
made use of a word against which they ought—all of
them—to enter their protest.—(Hear, hear.) He
talked of a compact.---(llear, hear.) Now there
never had been any compact made with regard to the
corn-laws ; the scheme of corn-laws last introduced