The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-15 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.-SUN OFFICE, 'MARCH 14.

THERMOMETER, LOtieSt, 34 ; Highest, 43 ; Noon, 41.
BAROMETER, 29.96.—W1ND, S.
NOTE.—The number 32 on the Thermometer denotes the
freezing point, and 55 temperate. In Barometers fair is
-usually placed opposite 30, and rain at 29.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE TIES DAY.
Morning 28 minutes after II Evening .. 0 minutes niter 0.

necessity for any tunnel at all, and would have con-
tinued that portion of the railroad by a much more
convenient curve, and at a considerable saving of
expense, or have approximated it to given points,
which it would have been most desirable, on every
account, that it should have been brought nearer to,
than it has actually been left. Besides, any
one who will examine a map of Great Britain, in
which are traced the several lines of railway
already executed, or now in course of construction,
will perceive at a glance, that for want of a pre-
concerted scheme of radiating lines, from one or more
great centres, converging ultimately in the metropolis,
as their common point, some of our principal rail-
roads, having their termini in London, approach each
other so nearly at certain stations in their respective
courses as to be within sight and hearing of each other.
The necessary inference from this vicinity of two lines
is, that remoter, and perhaps more important, districts of
country, are deprived of their fair participation in
the benefit and accommodation of a travelling rail-
way. Anything like preconcerted scheme, whilst it
might have allowed ample latitude for choice between
numerous given lines of projection, would surely
have obviated the practical anomaly of two being
run, at some distance from London, within five miles
of each other.

Any reform of these matters is, of course, im-
practicable as to railroads already complete, or near
completion,—and in whole, or in part, in actual
working. But with regard to such as are the im-
mediate objects of the resolution of the House of
Commons of the 4th of March, namely, new and
competing lines, we are strongly disposed to think
that some such comprehensive, matured, and
efficient system of control, limited to the particulars
we have indicated, should be immediately applied.
In justice, indeed, to the existing railroads, the Di-
rectors of which cannot be blamed if they have not
conformed their lines to some plan which might have
been more advantageous to the public, but which
was not formed for the adoption of the Com-
panies referred to, when they began the works
they have with so much spirit and energy
constructed, and so magnificently administered—
some such guarantee from actual, though it may not
be in technical strictness, illegal, encroachment by new
lines, should be assured them. The great objects to be
secured, however, are the public benefit and accom-
modation. If we could imagine that such a Go-
vernment contract as we advocate could not be
exercised without entailing some degree of vexa-
tious, or inquisitorial, or unwarrantable inter-
vention with the unfettered appropriation of private
capital, in legitimate branches of application, we
would be the last to recommend any interference
on the part of the Legislature or the Executive. But
(as we took occasion in a former article to remark)
the Irish government of the Marquis of NOR-
MANEST—or, in justice to the admirable official
talent and vigilance of Lord MORPETII, we should
rather say the Noble Secretary of that Lord
Lieutenant has supplied us with an encou-
raging and signal example of the pern►a-
nent advantage which the community may de-
rive in the matter of railroads, from the previous
cases, investigations, and ordinances of public func-
tionaries and servants of the Crown, who will under-
take to watch the growth, and direct the early
progress, of such undertakings, not merely out of a
conscientious desire to discharge to the uttermost the
demand of official duty, but from their love of
national improvement for its own sake.

We resume to-day our eomments on the speeches
and proceedings of the Harleston (Suffolk) meeting,
held on Wednesday, the 4th instant, and spe-
cially referred to in our leading article of Monday
last. 'We then concluded by quoting a remarkable
passage in the Chairman's speech, in which he showed
that, pending the operation of the Corn Bill of 1815,
and the prohibition of foreign wheat when the price
of wheat here was under 80s. per quarter, the ruin of
the tenant-farmer and the labourer commenced; and
yet that in the same period, namely, in 1819, the
Parliament passed PEEL'S Currency Bill. We have
before shown the excessive cruelty, on both the pro-
ducer and the labourer, of a law which, ditninishing
the circulation in the ratio of the amount paid by the
country in taxation—or nearly so—left the cost of
taxation unrepresented in those depreciated prices
c'‘uld obtain wnen value was deter-
mined by a gold standard exclusively. So thehm-3.en
of that taxation cost was iniquitously transferred from
the consumer, by whom it was the meaning of the
Legislature that it should always be ultimately borne,
to the ill-paid producer or labourer. So the robbery
(for this is not too strong a term) annually committed
by the system of currency established under PEEL'S
Bill—(which compels the farmer and the manufac-
turer to take only the natural or gold-measured prices
for their produce and their goods ; and leaves the
wages of the labourer and the artisan minus, in effect, ,
the amount annually abstracted from them by taxa- '
tion, which they ought never to have paid ; or, rather,
for which the scale of those wages should have ade-
quately compensated them)—amounts to not less
than 30,000,0001. wrung from the hard and honest
hands of famishing industry ! But Mr. TAYLOR, on
the occasion of which we are speaking, completed
this picture of spoliation. "Notwithstanding this
law," said he, " which was to guarantee the farmer
80s. for his wheat, prices kept lowering till 1822,
when wheat was 435. 3d. per quarter, on the year's
average ; little more than one-half the price contem-
plated by the framers of the Act of 1815. Need I
remind you how many farmers are ruined at this
period.? The state of things, at that time, ought to
have warned the farmers never again to rely on a corn -
law for protection,—and it ought still to warn them."
To be sure it ought. Do they want further evi-
dence to convince them of the futility of such
protection" as that on which they would, it
seems, again rely, in so many of our agricul-
tural districts ? Let them mark what follows :
" In the seven years, 1815 to 1822, the average price of
wheat never reached 80s. per quarter, except in 1817
and 1818"—and those were very bad seasons. This
law having failed in effect, in 1823 a new law was
called for by the clamour of agricultural distress ;
and by this new law, importation—when wheat was
below 70s. per quarter—was prohibited ; when above
70s. importation was permitted at a duty of 17s. per
quarter. This corn-law was not less ricketty than
its predecessors. It fell to pieces when left to " walk"
—and work—alone. The landlords and tenants,
who flattered themselves, that whilst their bantling
could keep its legs, they would be secure of 70s. per
quarter for their wheat, discovered that, during the
whole term, from 1823 to 1828 (in which latter
year that profound invention of landlord-legislation-
magic—the "sliding-scale" talisman, was first set
up), the average price never touched 70s. at all !
That the price per quarter, in two only, out of
those five years attained even 605., whilst in 1823 it
was actually so low as 51s, 9d. " Great imports,"
(Mr. TAYLOR sensibly argued) "did not produce these
low prices ; for the imports, during the same period,
did not average 300,000 quarters per annum." If
these statistics fail to convince the agriculturists of
the folly, the mischief, the absurdity of all at-
tempts to work a statutable protection to home-
grownsauwcectlahhoeueantart,—no reasoning of our's can ope-
rate,emainforbeardconvictioner o f t ;o
his
followdt e we shall, on
t throughhe tanTdAYeoa
restilnigr.
well-
reasoned precis of corn-laW history. But we cannot
take leave of him without quoting the pithy remark
with which he closes his review of this quin-
quennial period—(lB23-1828). " The landowners,
however, during the time, were getting high
rents, set according to Act of Parliament price
of corn, NOT its market value." This is admira-
bly put. It -is " a great fact." It suggests an
impressive moral lesson. The landlords are
now reaping a fatal harvest of distrust and
discontent—of estranged relations between them-
Selves and their tenant-farmers—of leases thrown
on 'their hands, and lands deteriorating through in-
solvent cultivation—of which harvest the seeds were
sown by their own reckless selfishness ! How (as
honest men, we are disinclined to ask, for we would
not. over-hastily impugn their moral integrity, but)
as reasonable or consistent men, could they dream of
exacting high rents of those who held under them, when
the Currency Act of 1819 had crippled, from one end
of England to the other, the tenant's means of raising
even a living profit—a means of mere subsistence ?
How could they set high rents when the contracted
issues of the Bank of England, and therefore of all
had taken from those who were to
provincial banks,

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