The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-15 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, APRIL 15, 1844.

from the Tory bar; which, at this moment, is
singularly devoid of talent. But we do not think
that Mr. THESIGER will add much to the strength of
the Government. As a debater he is a failure—as a
lawyer he is not above mediocrity—and why Sir
ROBERT PEEL chose him`to be Solicitor-General, to
the exclusion of Mr., KELLY, we cannot tell. The
giant mind of Mr. KELLY is as far superior to that of
Mr. THESIGER, as the stature of the latter is to the
former. But Cambridge was unsafe, in fact, cer-
tain to be lost, and PEEL'S majority, great as it is,
cannot bear reduction. Here lies the secret of Mr.
KELLY'S non-appointment. Mr. THESIGER is no fa-
vourite of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S. Ever since the cele-
brated Evesham Committee, in 1838, when CocK-
BURN, hereafter to be one of the greatest men at the
English bar, made the proud heart of THESIGER quail
before his talent and energy, in the presence of Sir
R. PEEL, who sat as Chairman, and unseated PETER
13ORTHWICK, TilEslGErt has been no favourite. And
in the House of Commons the perpetual we of the
Treasury side annoys a Premier who delights to say
/do this, /refuse that. However, Mr. THESIGER iS
now Solicitor-General, with a good chance for a
Judgeship at no distant day, and talent has been re-
jected in the person of Mr. KELLY, with the promise
that he shall have the next vacancy.

Sir ROBERT PEEL, who has now been three years
in office, has met with more defeats in the House of
Commons than any Prime Minister, during the same
time, that ever preceded him. Though he has, nomi-
nally, a majority at his back, which fills up the full
complement of three figures, considered in the good old
Tory days absolutely necessary to carry on business ;
though he has all the talent of the renegade Whigs and
Radicals, and is supported by the landed interest, the
moneyed interest, and the West and East India interest;
though he has all the Bishops and clergy, and mono-
polists of every shade—he is the most helpless Minister
that ever ruled the destinies of the country. His
Ministry has been called the " strong Ministry,'
but the history of his Cabinet only con-
firms the old proverb, " That there is nothing
in a name." If we except that beautiful measure,
the income-tax, and the New Tariff Bill, we are
not aware that he has done anything for which either
Tories, or Whigs, or Radicals, can thank him.
These were his own measures; but how has he sue
ceded in Bills which he entrusted to his new col-
leagues, and especially to the Home Secretary, Sir
JAMES GRAHAM? There is a fatality about every-
thing the once Radical Baronet undertakes, and this
is only the result which might be expected from the
just laws by which all human operations are
'governed. During his short reign in office he has
brought forward three important Bills,which have all
miserably failed; and what is the most disgraceful
feature in these defeats, they were so notoriously bad
that even the " three figures" had not the courage to
support them. The amendment of the Poor-law Bill
he was obliged to shuffle off till some more
convenient period ; the Factories Education
Bill was damned by the Dissenters alone; and the
Twelve Hours' Factories Bill bids fair to meet the
same fate, from the supporters of the " strong Mi-
nistry." ASHLEY, and FERRAND, and OASTLER are
up in arms against the Government, and neither the
RICHMONDS nor the BUCKINGHAMS come to their re-
lief. Another great measure has been introduced
this session, which far surpasses all the rest in im-
portance, and for that Sir ROBERT PEEL has also to
thank his new Whig-Radical allies. Lord STANLEY,
when out of office, introduced a Disfranchisement
Bill for Ireland; but the Whig Government, though
weak, was still too powerful for him, and after some
vain attempts to carry the obnoxious and most unjust
restrictions on the registrations in the sister country,
he was compelled to abandon it. The same measure
is now introduced in a new shape, and under
different auspices—under the auspices of a nobleman,
who should, above all others, have been saved from
such an odious task. Lord ELIOT went to Ireland
with the best prospects, for a Tory Secretary, of
success. He was believed to be a man of mild and
conciliatory disposition. He was regarded by his
party as too liberal ; but, nevertheless, a display or a
deception was necessary, and a deception is the result.
Ile has been made the instrument of Lord STANLEY
or Sir JAMES GRAHAM ; he has roused up an addi-
tional cry of indignation in Ireland against the
Government. Concession, said Sir JAMES GRAHAM,
had reached its utmost limits ; but to oppression there
is to be no limits. Twenty-five thousand county
electors are to be struck at once off the roll, with as
little ceremony as the old forty-shilling voters, and,
according to the showing of Lord Euor,without any-
thing like a proportionate compensation. The Bill is
exceedingly complicated, and of course is totally incom-
prehensible to the great body of the Irish people ; but
this naturally makes them look upon it with the more
suspicion, and leads them to the conviction that
while renegade Whigs are in office there is no salra-
tion for their country but in determined resistance.
Neither Sir ROBERT PEEL nor Lord ELIOT is re-
garded as the author of this obnoxious scheme. It is
traced to a different member of the Cabinet, and
that member has ever shown the most bitter hostility
to the sister country. Can any man then wonder
that a new impulse is given to the repeal cry, and
that Mr. O'CONNELL sets all the sufferings of im-
prisonment at defiance on the announcement of this
new outrage to his native land ? Sir R. PEEL solemnly
declared that the Reform Bill was not to be touched;
yet he allows a great inroad to be made upon it in a
quarter where there was the loudest complaints of its
defects. As a necessary consequence, the whole of
Ireland is against him. We are not aware that there
is one journal, or one party, or even the section of a
party, in that country that looks upon his administra-
tion with common forbearance. Catholics and Orange-
men and Presbyterians vie with each other in
denouncing the "strong Ministry." And does it
fare better in England? Of all the daily journals
published in the metropolis, only one solitary organ
raises iti feeble voice for PEEL. Never was there such
a shameful discomfiture; but it is a just retribution.
Renegades rarely succeed. Sir ROBERT PEEL took
as his supporters Lord STANLEY and Sir JAMES
GRAHAM, and to his sorrow he finds that he trusted to
a broken reed.

At the great Anti-Corn-law banquet, which took
place on Friday night at Liverpool, Mr. EWART
made some apt, ironical comments on the equivocal
conduct of Ministers as regards the question of free-
trade. " If profession is to be relied on," said the
Hon. Member, " the Premier is a free-trader, for to
borrow an expression from a candidate for the City
of London, he ' is for free trade in the abstract.' if
profession is to be relied on, the Right Hon. Secretary
for the Home Department is for free trade in the
abstract. If the President of the Board of Trade is
to be measured, not by the profession of his principles,
but by what he has already published, he, too,
is a free-trader in the abstract. These men only
want moral courage to carry out their prin-
ciples ; and. I must say if they would only
come forward with some comprehensive measure, such,
as a bold spirit like Lord CHATHAM would have pro-
duced, they would carry with them all the sympathy,
as well as support, of the present generation, and
would command the gratitude of all posterity." There
is sometimes, as has been shrewdlrobserved, great
virtue in an " if," and here is a decided case in point.
"If" the Premier, "like Lord CHATHAM," would
come forward with some "comprehensive measure,"
there is no doubt, as Mr. EWART states, that he
would be an inestimable benefactor to the existing
generation, and "command the gratitude of poste-
rity;" but alas that "if"—that chilling, insuperable
"if"—is a terrible. stumbling-block, and forbids
us to cherish the pleasing conviction. Sir
ROBERT PEEL, were his days to be lengthened
even to those of METUUSALEM, would never find it in •
his nature to project a measure that should in the
slightest degree remind his countrymen of a CHATHAM!
He would never, for instance, in the cause of the
people, beard the whole power of the Court and the
aristocracy ; he would never dare to throw himself on
the masses for support. Such a stretch of magnanimity
h far beyond his reach ; he is a mere conventional
Minister—the slave of precedent and etiquette; who,
if he move at all, must • move according to esteb-
lished forms and proprieties, and at the well-regulated
pace of a trained official, who has graduated in the red-.
tape school. Lord CHATHAM, though he wielded the
destinies of England at a period when the people -were
infinitely less powerful than at present, and the aris-
tocracy were infinitely more so, yet set the whole
body of the latter at defiance, JlO ruled in spite of
them. Sir ROBERT PEEL, on the contrary, truckles

unconditionally to rank ; a single frown from the
Dukes of RICIIMOND and BUCKINGHAM is quite suffi-
cient to scare him from his good resolutions; and he
makes it a point to strengthen his Cabinet by as many
aristocratic accessories as possible. Here is the great
secret of his lamentable vacillation on the subject
of free trade. Ile would be a free-trader
if he dared ; but the cold, stern, haughty eyes of the
aristocratic monopolists are on him, and he quails
beneath their glances, and is compelled to take refuge
in vague professions. "A free-trader in the ab-
stract !" Such is the Prime Minister of the first
commercial country in the world—a man who sees
the one great want of the age, who has more than
once timidly and indirectly acknowledged it, yet who
fears to act boldly on the convictions of his under-
standing ! Would a CHATHAM have thus humili-
ated. himself—thus acted in defiance of his better
judgment, at the command of men immeasurably
his inferiors in all the qualities of statesmanship?
We are by no means sanguine, when we bear in mind
the majority which the Premier has at his back ; but
we do hope shortly to see the day when he will not
only be a " free-trader," but a Minister also, "in the
abstract"—that is to say, supporting the interests of
the country, without fee or reward, except such as
his own conscience may supply him with, on
the front seat of the Opposition benches. At
the great banquet to which we have been
alluding, Mr. CoBDEN archly observed—" Some of
our opponents are not very learned. The other day
one of the free-trade newspapers in Ilerts, in an able
article on the Anti-League movement, spoke of the
defection from the right cause of Lord DACRE,
and quoted the well-known phrase, 'Et tu, Brute ! '
Next day a long letter came from his Lordship's
land-steward, denouncing the editor for calling Lord
DACRE a brute!" Ignorance like this is by no
means confined to the land-stewards of the mo-
nopolists, for we have read, of late, not a few
Anti-League speeches delivered by titled and wealthy
Protectionists, which abound in proofs of block-
headism quite as egregious as that which we have just
quoted, and which would really seem to have been
delivered with no other view than to exhibit in full,
luxuriant perfection, the amazingly long ears of the
speakers.

The time is probably not distant, at which, owing
to the improved machinery adopted in the collection
and arrangement of statistical facts, we may arrive
at modes of determining many political problems
of extreme interest, with more celerity and certainty
than have yet been attained, under less perfect
facilities, for arriving at authenticated economical
data. If the scheme and working of the New Poor-
law have effected no other good, they have, at lea:4,
by degrees, organised a test of singular efficiency in
estimating the relative increase, from time to time,
of the value of real property—and of its liabilities—
in England and Wales. And, inasmuch as, of such
liabilities, none is so extensive or so permanent as the
poor-rate itself, it is well that the fluctuations of the
amount of that charge can henceforth be measured by
an index, pari passu with the fluctuations of this value,
of which it is the common indicator. We can
scarcely form an adequate estimate of the enormous
importance of which such digested information must
prove, in future times, to those who may have under-
taken to trace the domestic history of this nation in
its social and civil progression, and of its agricultural
capital and rental more especially. They will not be
left to the task of deducing unsatisfactory theories,
by labourious and protracted investigations, pursued
through disconnected channels of very various and
Uncertain authority, into the obscure effect of a few
darkling hints or accidental allusions (such as the
modern commentators on SUETONIUS or TACITUS are
compelled to rely upon, in guessing at some meagre
particulars connected with the Imperial revenues, for
example, or the value and taxation of land under the
Empire—such as -TACITUS and SUETONIUS them-
selves were under the necessity of resorting to in
touching upon the same topics, in their rela-
tion to the earlier ages of the Itepublic). The
art of :printing will probably perpetuate to the
remotest posterity distinct, intelligible records from
which the future annalist may cull with the certainty
of correctness and authentication, the elementary
principles :and the statistical details of our wealth—
its investments and its administration.

We have already hinted that the returns con-
nected with the Poor-law Amendment Act will
not be among the least valuable of the contribu-
tions to history, which the practice of our
Legislature, in oidering all such documents
to be printed, will have secured to those who are to
come after us. We have just received a "Blue
Book" that will corroborate (we think) our an.
tieipation. It is entitled "A Return, showing
the total value of property assessed to the Poor-
rates, for the year ended Lady-day, 1840; with
'the amount of money levied for Poor-rates for
the years ending Lady-day, 1839 to 1842, on each
parish in England and Wales." This exceedingly
important paper appears to have been supplied for the
information of Parliament, on the motion of Mr. G.
PALMER. That gentleman is entitled to the thanks
of the having so shaped his mo-
tion,
because, country for
the"
summary "
or "abstract" into
which its explicit and well-considered terms have
permitted of the results collected being reduced, pre-
• seats, at one glance, on a single page, in six celumns,
the substance of the whole detailed reports- com-
prised in the subsequent 230 folio pagei,': from all the
many thousands of parishes comprehended within
England and Wales.
We have felt it our imperative duty,. in many arti-
cles devoted to that subject, to direct
public attention
to the fearfully deteriorated condition and prospects
of our industrial classes. It has been the endeavour
of these articles to point out the cruel, the invidious,
Position in which our monetary system has placed that
vast and meritorious community —to show that
the operation of such a system has been, and must
Continue to be, to exclude fr.,m theft; fair share of the
distributive benefit which all classes ought to derive
from the multiplication of production and its commodi-
ties, and the reduced prices of our manufactures, the
very body whose wonderful labour has mainly and
permanently achieved those national advantages,
from the benefit of Which they alone continue to be ex-
cluded. The Sun has repeatedly demonstrated that among
other effects of the Currency Bill of 1819, this produc-
ing body is made to bear, annually, the burden of some
thirty millions of taxation, which, on every principle
of common sense, justice, and policy, ought -to be
—and in the original contemplation of the Legisla-
ture it was clearly intended they should be—borne
by the rich or competent consumers. Finally, we
have warned our readers not to infer,• from the oc-
casional increased activity of trade in given localities,
and the consequent temporary action upon the
market for labour, that to that action any degree
of permanency might safely be anticipated ; or that
any considerable diminution of the grinding distress
now weighiag down our industrial community, could
be safely, calculated upon. We grieve to add that the
" Return" fatally confirms these gloomy forebodings,
so far as the increase of poor-rates may be taken as a
criterion of their truth. The total Annual Value of
the Real Property, assessed to the Poor-rate, 'for
the year ending Lady-day, 1841,. was (England
and Wales) 62,540,0001.; an enormous rateable
Capital no doubt. But, on the other hand,
the total amount of money levied for • Poor-
rates, for the years ending respectively on
Lady-day, in 1839, 1840, 1841, and 1842, in-
creased 'in the proportions indicated in the following
corresponding aggregates for these several years,
namely, 5,613,9391., 6,014,605/., 6,351,8281., and
6,552,8901. So ,that. the increased charge for the
poor-rate of all England and Wales, in 1842, was
nearly one million upon the same charge for 1839.
This is a disgrace, that on many accounts more than
countervails the increased productiveness of. the
Property-tax, •as will be evident to all who consider
how large a displacement of labour, and what multitudi,
nous sacridce of minute capitals must antecede the
addition of one million per annum to the poor-rates
of England and Wales alone ; besides the elements of
this inauspicious increase appear in the detailed re-
turns for the very manufacturing districts in which
trade is said to be most ..active. Can any facts more j
strongly affirm the soundness of the propositions we
have-advanced as to the inadequate wages of industrial
labour, and that overruling cause—the vicious prin-
ciples of our monetary system—which, whilst it exists,
will keep them still inadequate, and accelerate the
march of pauperism and misery.

Madrid journals <sf the 6th and 7th instant have

been received, but they bring no news. The Bourse
still remained closed on the 6th.

in the French Chamber of Peers on Friday, the
Duke de BROGLIE brought up the. Report of the
Committee on the new Education Bill, and read it at
length. The Committee agreed in recommending
the adoption of the measure, with a few slight altera-
tions, and the Chamber seemed to be of the same'opinion.
On leaving the tribune the Duke was loudly cheered.
The debate on this important measure was fixed for
Monday, the 22d, and a number of Members had an-
nounced their intention of speaking; among others,
MM. DUPIN, CAUSIN, DE MONTALEMBERT, and
BARRENTE. The Report extends to great length, the
reading of it havirg occupied the Chamber for two
hours, and is spoken of in high terms by all parties,
except those who side with the rebellious clergy..
The first paragraph, which lays down the principles
on which the Bill is founded, runs thus :
" In entering upon the examination of the project of law
submitted to their consideration, the Committee has found
two decisive questions solved :—The State gives and should
give instructions ; the State offers, to the public an instruc-
tion suited to their wants ; but the State does not exclusively
exercise the right of instruction ; private individuals • have
the right delegated to them ; what is done by the State may
be done by. every Frenchman, qualified by his acquirements
and his character. Such is the public right as laid down by
the Charter. It is the duty of the State to spread far and
wide the advantages of instruction, and to satisfy the solici-
tude of parents for the welfare of, their children."

In the Chamber of Deputies, on Saturday, Marshal
SOULT brought in a Bill for granting a sum of
6,880,000 f towards improving the fortifications of
Havre. On the same day AVLEDRU ROLLIN was to
bring on a motion, of which he had given notice,
relative to the dispatches brought by M. R.EINE from
Admiral DUPETIT Traouexs. •Up to the hour of
post, however, no discussion had taken place, owing
to the absence of Ministers. We are glad to find that
some of the Paris papers are showing a just indigna-
tion against the Court, though they nominally throw
the blame on M. GUIZOT, for conferring the Order of
the Legion of Honour on such men as BRAY() and
NARYAEZ. We extract from the Siicle the following
just remarks on this shameful prostitution of an
Order which Frenchmen had hitherto regarded with
such veneration :
" We refused before now to believe the news which we find
confirmed to-day in the dispatches from Madrid, and by the
testimony of our Ministerial papers. The Grand Cordon of
the Legion of Honour has been sent in the name of the King,
by M. Bresson, the Ambassador of France, to General Nar-
vaez and M. Gonzales Bravo. Thus our Government ren-
ders itself officially responsible for all the violerices by which,
these political adventurers had signalised their dictatorship.
M. Guizot ought, in fact, to feel a lively sympathy for a
Minister who has brutally practised in Spain the same sys-
tem of intimidation that he himself, it will be remembered,
glorified among us. It is not enough to characterise as the
French party, a party which, after having glided into the
rank of the Spanish Liberals, from whom it asked an asylum
on the ground of being an auxiliary and of amnesty, all at
once threw aside the mask, dismissed the Cortes, proscribed
the men whose plain dealing it had deceived, and multiplied
military executions, but the chiefs of that faction are to be
decorated with the Cordon that Massena, Ney, Brune, Da-
voust, Montebello, and their rivals in glory, paid for, with
their blood,, and acquired by scores of victorious campaigns.
To honour perjurers, to recompense servility—audaciously to
replace in the ministry of public affairs magistrates who had
been turned out of it'after a solemn investigation—these are
the acts which characterise the system."