The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-16 00:00:00

One word more, not peculiarly for yourselves, but
for the whole class of tradesmen to which you be-
long. There is no reason why any of that class
should be dispensers of charity in the disguise of
wages. Ignorant or hypocritical is the outcry
against labour being purchased at its market price.
Individually, you must purchase it, or you may
shut up shop. What good would that be to the
poor needlewomen ? But, Moses, remember you are
men as well as slopsellers. Those whose fingers ache
over your shirts are stitching their own shrouds.
Misery toils in your cheap factory. You ought
not to have done with it, when you have paid
its wages. The employers of the poor are their
natural protectors. Unfairly have the tables been
turned against you; but not altogether without fault
on your part. You should have been the foremost
to expose and denounce this state of things, and
the system by which it is produced. Your inert-
ness, your disregard' of the wants and rights of the
toiling poor, has allowed the authors of the wrong,
the taxers of their fool, the obstructors of employment,
to come forward as their patrons, and point towards
your heads the thunderbolt of public indignation for
inhumanity which should have fallen on their own.
You and they are thus juggled into the wrong places.
They should be in the dock, and you in the witness-
box. Why do you not tell Lord Ashley that he, and
his class of monopolist :legislators, have wrought
this shame in the land? Why were you not first in
the field clamouring for justice ? Why did you
wait for the wretchedness, of which you had know-
ledge, to be found out and laid at your own door by
its finders and its makers ? Why have you handed
over the poor to the care of courtly Cades and
dandy demagogues. Retrieve your blunder. Leave
not this sore disease in the body politic to be tam-
pered with by legislative empiricism. Demand of
Lord Ashley that he helps to untax the needle-
women's bread. Claim emancipation for the giant
industry, who, when free, will feed all his sons and
daughters. Bestir yourselves for such a demonstra-
tion of public opinion as will enforce a wiser policy
on the Government. Come forward, though late,
for the sake of those who depend on you, and make
amends for past indifference, whether real or only
seeming. Win the blessings of intelligent gratitude,
instead of the curses of misguided ignorance. By your
zeal, your votes, your remonstrances, ignorance, and
sufferings, be earnest for trade; more trade; and all
whom trade feeds ; the widow and the orphan whom
it supplies with work and shields from starvation. It
is the duty which belongs to your position in society.
between selfish lawmakers and injured millions. You
who make the lawmakers can unmake the misery,
Up to your duty, or both Jew and Gentile amongst
you must bear the curse of Meroz.
A NORWICH WEAVER BOY.

PRIVY COUNCIL.-(THIS DAY.)
(Continued from our Afternoon Edition.)
THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF GUERNSEY.
Mr. ROEBUCK concluded his arguments on behalf of
the Crown, and in support of the course pursued by the
Lieutenant-Governor.
Mr. WADDINGTON followed on the same side, and not
having concluded at four o'clock, when their Lordships
rose, the further consideration of the case was adjourned
till Wednesday next, at ten o'clock.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OP THIS DAT.

GLOBE.—We intimated last week that an anxious
wish prevailed among the Liberal members of the Ox-
ford Convocation, that in dealing with Mr. Ward and
his book, the heads of the University would avoid two
things. Conceding that it was due to truth and honesty
that some steps should be taken to mark with suitable
ignominy the attempts now making to reconcile subscrip-
tion to Protestant articles with the advancement of the in-
terests of priestcraft, we expressed a hope—first, that there
, would be no repetition of the imp,ropriety and folly of
submitting theological differences to the arbitration of
those sagacious critics, the majority of Convocation; and
secondly, that in vindicating its consistency, the Board
should avoid adopting extreme measures towards the un-
fortunate disciple of the Littlemore Pope—of whom we
may truly say,:on his own confession, "non sponte suit."
We have now before us the actual statute, which ap-
peared on Friday last, and which we understand was
assented to by a large majority of the Oxford Board of
Heads, and we think it has sufficiently guarded against
both the evils which some had apprehended. No at-
tempt to submit theological opinions to an incompetent
tribunal is made, nor is it proposed to deprive the author
of " The Ideal Church " of any pecuniary advantages
purchased by his non-natural profession of conformity.
The first of the two Statutes proposed, after reciting
certain passages of the work, in which (to quote the
author's own words) he proposes to show " how the
dry wording " (which Dr. Pusey would call the literal
sense) " may be divorced from the natural spirit" of the
Articles of the Church, " how their prima facie mean-
ing may be evaded, and the artifice of their inventors be
thrown 'Sack and recoil on themselves," and after quoting
farther his avowal that "in subscribing the Articles, he
renounced no one Roman doctrine," signing them in "
non-natural sense, proceeds to remark, that whereas
the party notoriously reputed in the University and
believed to be the author, had obtained the degrees of
ILA. and M.A. on the faith of a subscription which he
cancels by his present avowals—he be required to an-
s wer to the charge of having published passages incon-
sistent with good faith, and be degraded from the privi-
leges attached to those degrees. The second statute is of
more importance, and is rendered, it seems, necessary by
the following circumstance :—A statute is already in ex-
istence entitling the Vice-Chancellor to summon before
him a member accused of heresy, and to require him to
purify himself by subscribing to the 89Articles. Most per-
sons will recollect the not very decent sarcasm of the Vicar
of Leeds in his Church Dictionary, when he stated that
an Archbishop of the Church of England had purified
himself from the suspicion of heresy by signing the
Articles on his appointment to his see. Dr. Hook,
however, was a good judge of his own friends; and so the
Hebdomadal Board seems to think—for the new statute
proposes to add to the subscription a declaration that the
party subscribing does so in the sense in which they
were "pritnitus editi," that is, in 1571, when the impo-
sition of the articles as tests was first made by the joint
authority of a Synod and of Parliament. This is a
plain and intelligible proposal. If you take a pledge,
take it without equivocation or mental reservation—
take it in the sense in which it is meant—in the sense
in which its imposers put it—or—support those by your
example of refusal who object to subscription altogether.
We have no time now for further remark, but shall
return to the subject, which, between this and the day of
Convocation (February the 13th), will, we anticipate,
engross much of public interest—and involve the recon-
sideration of the whole subject of tests. We hear that
the Tractarian section of the Oxford Convocation are
disposed to abandon Mr. Ward to his fate—provided they
can eject the second statute, w hieh provides a check to
their own practice.
STANDARD.—A great deal of noise has been
made about a few bags of Venezuelan sugar imported at
Liverpool. This noise has been made on the ground
that the sugar is slave-grown—with how much
reason the sugar is said to be slave-grown will appear
from the letter of our old and valued correspondent,
Mr. M'Queen. Mr. M'.Queen, who has visited
Venezuela three times within the last ten years,
and who knows more of the commercial geography
and statistics of the tropical countries than any man
alive, has brought home with him all the, public docu-
ments of Venezuela, as well as of the other countries
that he has visited, and has been kind enough to place
the Venezuelan papers in our hands. We prefer,
however, to the labour of translating these voluminous
documents, to avail ourselves of Mr. M'Queen's own
letter. That letters tells that the territory of Venezuela
—a territory as large as France—has a population
under 900,000, of whom, notwithstanding that slavery
has been long abolished by law, about 30,000 (one in
thirty) are in a state of qualified slavery, for this sole
reason, that the Republic has been hitherto too poor to
buy out the liberty of all its slaves, though having made
the provision it was able to do so. No slave, however, can
be born in Venezuela, for all are born free. No slave can
be imported; and even the remnant of the slave population
that lingers, notwithstanding large annual redemptions ;
and manumissions cannot be transferred from master to
master—the thirty thousand slaves—one in thirty of the
population, are thus almost necessarily employed as house
servants, or in the cultivation of gardens and small farms,
and, from the nature of things, cannot be em-
ployed in sugar grounds. The Venezuelan sugar,
therefore, is neither slave-grown, nor the produce
of a country attached to slavery. All the world is
not as rich as Great Britain, and able, like her, to buy
the freedom of the negro; but the Venezuelans are doing
the best they can to imitate our example, and therefore
deserve all the encouragement that we can give them.
Unfortunately, however, we have little opportunity
to encourage the sugar trade, for the country produces
little sugar, and it costs a dollar the hundred weight to
carry it to the coast. To compare Venezuela in any
respect with slave-trading countries, like Cuba and the
Brazils, would be the grossest folly as well as injustice.

GENERAL NOTT.—We lament to learn that Major-
General Nott, now residing at Carmarthen, amongst us,
is so seriously ill as to create apprehensions of his ulti-
mate recovery. The severity of the weather during the
past week, it is believed, has been the chief cause of re-
lapse.--The Welsizman.
THE FISHERIES.— Immense quantities of soles
(says the Eastern Counties Herald) are weekly imported
into Hull and dispatched by railway. One day during
the past week 57 paekages, weighing together five tons,
were dispatched by train for the London market; and
the day preceding, four tons had been forwarded to the
same destination. Contrary to the general rule, that
when we have large exports, Hull is ill-supplied with
fish, the opposite is now the case, for the fishmongers
have their stores abundantly supplied with the best.
The take is extraordinary. One vessel consigned to the
old-established house of Wilson (late Askew, Todd, and
Johnson), delivered on Monday last 2,040 pairs, the
actual fishing for which had only occupied twenty-four
hours. From 50 to 70 vessels, from Yarmouth, Rams-
gate, and other ports, may daily be seen upon the fishing
grounds at sea off Yarmouth. By making Hull, the
fishermen have their produce much earlier in the market.
All that is landed in Hull on one day, before five o'clock
in the afternoon, is in London early in the morning of
the next day ; besides which two or three days are
saved in every voyage by coming to this port instead of
Itamsgate.
THE HAGUE, DEc. 13.—The accounts received to-
day
of the state of the rivers, announce that they are
for the most part entirely frozen over, and passable
on foot. The navigation in all is
m' terrup, ted.