The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-03 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY MORNING, MAY 3, 1844.

SPIRIT of the. PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—lmagine for a moment the effervescence—
the Conservative indignation—if the actual breach be-
tween Ministers and the Directors'had taken place, int-
perante Melbourne!! It cannot be forgotten what a •
handle against the late Cabinet was made of the paltry
repuenancies of a Jamaica Assembly ; and bow uncon •
stitutional it was repre'ented to think of over-ruling the
interested resistance of a set of ex-slave-owners. On
the strength of that storm in a slop-basin, the Melbourne
Ministry in '39 found themselves in so slender a majority
as led them to resign office. To be sure the Duke of Wel-
lington said that he could not conceive why they should
have resigned; and therefore the veteran has the better
grace in the military attitude he assumes at present.
But it is very evident that the pretext on which Lord
Melbourne was then pushed to resignation had not a
thousandth part of the gravity of the " great fact"
which has now transpired. We have here no faction of
obscure planters, palpably biassed, and in the preva-
lent public mind of England probably in the wrong.
Here are twenty-four gentlemen, the elect of the most
important corporation in the world—nay, thirty—for it
is understood that the six ex-directors concur in the
same judgment—who, after exhausting time, and esa-
tience, and warning on Ministers, and this spoiled child
of theirs, have at length employed the power which
(known to all but Lord Brougham) had been always
vested in them. Now, we repeat, if this had occurred
under the Melbourne Ministry, how immediate and how
impetuous the inference would have been. th-tt these
Whigs could not act with any established and Conserva-
tive body in the State. This was
_the notion propagated
more industriously than any other; and the benefit of a
doubt was never allowed Liberal" Ministers for a moment,
whether they, or those who opposed their system of
policy, m;ght be wrong. While the Whig Government
was supposed to be estranged from the Northern Courts,
then, of course, Nesselrode or Metternich were the sole
hope of salvation fur Europe. When Northern Europe
joined them on Eastern policy, and France held aloof,
thee the all but irreparable ill became, of course, the lost
friendship of France. The first demonstration the new
men had to make was a very new one certainly for their
party. They threw themselves into the arms of France
and swore 'eternal friendship—to spite the Whigs—and
entailed more loss of confidence and misunderstanding
than ever with Europe. In like manner, the Whigs
were to be wounded through the sides of Lord Auck-
land in India; and in like menner, the intended injury
has had its recoil on the perpetrators. After boasting
I f French friendship, regardless of inevitable invidious
construction elsewhere, nothing would serve them, or the
vain man of whose vanities thy have now assumed all
the responsibility, but boasting of the glorious contrast
his Indian policy was to exhibit to the Whig Governor's.
When will these. men become duly sensible of the risk
and ridicule attendant on all this swaggering? When
will they become sensible that the effective, though
unfair weapon, of Oppesition is the most unsafe and
undignified possible fur handling in place? Dishonest
or.:s had done all words could do for them ; honest
deeds—deeds at least not in gross contrast with profes-
sions and policy—were now requisite to prove that
superiority to their predecessors, the verbal assertion of
which had ceased to have even the grace of faction.
Above all, and first of all, what was required of
Conservative Ministers was to work smoothly with the
powers, already established and organised, which they
had to work with. If the Whig Ministers, during the
reforms public opinion expected them to promote, had
fallen foul of Co-ordinate authorities, there would have
been nothing so surprising. Brit Conservatives, whose
great idol, Pitt, broke up the Whig party on this very
ground of quirrel—whose whose traditions and ante-
cedents have led them to support the East India Com-
pany, as one of those great bodies with whose stability
they were wont to affect alliance, and to set in contrast
wish the ephemeral factions, and crude innovations,
of popular assemblies—that Conservative Ministers
should be the first to quarrel with the Conserva-
tive aristocracy of British India—this is indeed a
most unheard-of and portentous occurrence. It is for
Ministers to explain how such a breach could have
taken place. The Duke of Wellington has committed
them to the responsibility of the whole of Lord Ellen-
borough's conduct. The whole power of the Govern-
tnent has been exerted in his favour with twenty-four
gentlemen, for whom even political malignity can-
not forge motives hostile to that Government. The
whole power of Government, the whole expediency of
Compromise, the whole ris'e of rupture (and that risk
is announced by the Minis:erial hacks as political
annihilation to the Company)—all this has been out-
weighed with the Directors by a sense of ditty the
most imperative to themselves and their ccnstituents
—for nothing short of such sense of duty can be sup-
posed for a moment to have prompted their act—an
act so maturely deliberated. The plea for Lord Ellen-
borough (whose case Ministers have made so completely
their own) put forth by the Duke of Wellington—that
the Directors could. not know the instructions under.
which he acted, is a plea Sir Robert Peel's caution would;
scarcely have suggested.. So far as it goes, indeed, It
may shift the responsibility for all . his- acts from
his own shoulders to those of Ministers—but it
leaves that responsibility a heavy weight where
it rests. For, are' we to suppose that Ministers
have kept systematically in the • dark the men
who held co-ordinate power with their own—on the
whole subject for its exercise ? To what purpose, then,
have repeated Acts of the Legislature confirmed that
power in the Directors ? Forsooth, that her Majesty's
Ministers may mock them, and pooh-pooh its exer-
cise, by the cool assertion that the Directors
cannot possibly know anything at all about the
matters, which nevertheless the law and consti-
tution have given them uncontrolled power to judge !
STANDARD.—They who remember that, of all the
London journals, the Standard stood alone in defending
Sir Francis Head's measures in Upper Canada, will not
suspect us of hostility to that gentleman or of any pre-
judice against him. The letter before us forcibly re-
minds us of the great difficulty against which, as his ad-
vocates, we had to contend, namely, his own proclama-
tions and dispatches. The ex-Governor is one of the
many persons who, if they are ever wise, must lament
the pains bestowed in teaching them to write. Gold-
smith describes the class pretty accurately. We have
but to insert the name of the late Governor of Upper
Canada to make it fit exactly.

" Here stands good Sir Francis, whose heart is a mint,
While the owner scarce knows half the good that is in't ;
The pupil of impulse, it drives him along,
His conduct still right, with his argument wrong;
Still aiming at honour, yet fearing to roam,
The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home.'
The 'argument of Sir Francis, as he has expanded
it suo more into a long letter, we understand to be
this the labourer has a property in his labour,
and his time is as much entitled to be respected
as any other property. Lord Ashley's proposal to limit
the hours of labour of women and children in factories
is an invasion of this property. This, garnished with a
considerable profusion of sarcasm arid illustration, we
take to be the whole sum and substance of Sir
Francis's argument. Now the first proposition is
one which we would be the last in the world
to dispute. The labourer's property in his time
and labour is absolute and inviolable, resting
upon the earlieSt and highest of proprietory rights.
ilere, however, closes our acquiescence with S'r Francis
Head, who, like other manufacturers of cant, abuses, by
misapplication, a sound principle. Lord Ashley's pro
position does not violate this principle either in form or
in substance; on the other hand, it augments the value
of property in labour, and casts a hedge about it.
As
_respects form Lord Ashley's proposition inter-
feres in no rospect with the labourer's property in
his labour. The labourer, whether man, woman,
or child—and to simplify the mrtantaattsert,he
them,
labourer of whatever sex or
make
inso
idistinctionr
eas mp
eocrit gs—the
age is left by Lord Ashley's proposition atperfect liberty
to employ the whole twenty-four hours in labour, so
long as the labour is prosecuted at the labourer's own
diicretion, and not at the command of others ; and, in
fact, one of the objects of the limitation of the hours of
labour in factories is to give to the labourer
more time to be employed at his own discretion—to
return to him a • part of that property of which Sir
Francis Head speaks, cf which he is deprived by the
power of wealth, and the cupidity of wealthy men. The
limitation dues not say "you shall not work more than
ten hours," but, " you shall not be forced to work more
than ten hours, as the alternative of not working at all,
that is, as the alternative of being robbed of your, w hole
property in your labour," so precious, and iustly.so pre-
cious in the eyes of the ex-Governer of Upper Canada.
Lord Ashley's proposition then does not, in form, violate
the right of property in labour. Let us next see whe-
ther it invades it in substance. The great function of
the law of a civilised country is to correct the abuses
of power, to protect the weak from the strong.
There is, however, a notion propagated with con-
siderable industry by those who profit by abuses,
that there •exists in society leo power but the power
of the law on one side, and the power of mere knavery
or brute force on the other hand, and, as a consequence,
that the law has no legitimate antagonists but cheating
and violence. The law, however, if it would equally
protect the rights of all men, has other antagonists—
honest, according to the fashion of this world; and meek
as if they all wore drab, as many of them do.
The power of money is certainly
,not, a dishonest
power, nor is it a violent power, but it is nevertheless, a
power quite adequate to crush the poor, and to destroy
the value of the poor man's property in his time and in
his labour, which we suppose it will be admitted is the
same thing as destroying the property itself. This, then,
is a case for the law to interpose—not to restrain the
poor man from employing h's labour as 'best he can,
but to restrain the rich neon from compelling him to
it in • •
employ
men, and uliimately to himself. As Sir Francis Head
is fond of illusirations, we will give him one. lie
has at least twice crossed the Atlantic and been
Governor of a colony, and he probably knows
something of the system of passage vessel. Now,
let him suppose a passage vessel short of
provisions, though with no more hands and passengers
on board than are enough to work the ship, working at
the usual rate of working. But the captain having
taken a degree in the new science, and swallowed Sir
Francis's doctrine of the right of property in labour,
calls half-a-dozen hands aft, and address' s them as
follows :---" Our provisions are short, and if I am
to feed the whole crew, I must reduce your daily
messes a trifle, but I will tell you how we may manage.
I will keep good guard over the store, and you working
each of you an extra watch or two, we may complete
the voyage without any reduction of our allowances; as
for the rest they may starve—and any one of you who
will not consent to work the extra watches shal
starve with them, for I warrant, in two or three days.
I will be able to bring those starving cbaps to work as
many extra watches as Iplease, aye, and to be thankful,
too, for half allowance." How would Sir Francis Head
approve of this mode of respecting " the labourer's
property in his labour ?" Would _ he, condemn