The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-27 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1844.

From articles published in the Trinidad Standard,
and other colonial papers, we perceive, with regret,
that gloomy apprehensions are entertained by our
colonists with regard to the prospects that open to
them, in connexion with those reductions of the
duties on foreign free-grown sugar and coffee, which
are to take effect in the month of November next.
When Mr. MILES'S proposition for a countervailing
reduction on the import duties on our own West
India sugars, &c., was under the consideration of the
Legislature, we discussed the general policy of the
Ministerial measure too largely to render it expe-
dient for us again to treac of it. But we cannot
shut our eyes to the grave consequences of
any legislation, however sound in principle, or
just to the fair claims of the British consumer,
which are to flow from an Act of the Imperial Legis-
lature in this instance, if the Trinidad Standard he
right, to our possessions in the West Indies. The
Trinidad journal certainly compresses a very serious
dilemma into the following observations :—" Allowing,
always, for his, perhaps, not yet established presump-
tion that, in order to enable our own colonial pro-
duce to compete in the English and other markets
with foreign produce, favoured by these reduced
rates of duty, it must absolutely be produced by our
planters at a cost considerably less than that which it
now incurs." But here is the dilemma. The cost of
production has been already lowered to its minimum,
under the existing scale of protecting and discrimi-
nating duty. Reduce this scale of duty on
the competing of foreign produce, and it
will require, to realise any profit whatever
on the British, that the expense of producing
it should be materially lessened. But if the minimum
rate of remuneration for which the needful labour
can be got, in Trinidad, for example, has been
already established and acted upon, any less rate of
wages will fail to command that amount of labour
without which this produce cannot be raised at all.
Again, if under the present minimum rate of wages,
the crops realise prices which barely suffice to keepso
the planters going, a higher scale of wages would
absorb all profit, or rather, so certainly entail the loss
of the capital engaged in the transaction, that the
lands themselves will be allowed to run out of culti-
vation. This is shortly the argument of the colonists.
The Trinidad Standard says—
"lt is to be presumed that hitherto the employers
have never given higher wages than they could possibly
help—that the rate of wages is reduced to the lowest
figure to which they could bring it under the existing
circumstances of the colony. how the proposed reduc-
tion of expenditure is to be effected, therefore, we cannot
conceive, unless it be made to hinge on the alternative of
abandonment of cultivation altogether, or some other co-
ercive measure. We fear that the painful alternative re-
ferred
to will unhappily force itself upon not a few from
the pressure of circumstances and the total impossibility
to withstand the ruinous competition to which they will
now be exposed."

Now, we agree with the City Correspondent of a
Morning Contemporary, that " it cannot be supposed
that Governr;lent would wittingly go the length of
converting her MAJESTY'S West India possessions into

barren and useless wastes. A due regard for the wel-
fare of the emancipated blacks is alone sufficient to
guarantee the colonies against the indulgence of a dis-
position so detrimental to their interests." But there
are other reasons, of high political expediency, which
will very obviously preclude our Government from
any notion of throwing up that footing we have so
long possessed on the Antilles and on the American
main. We cannot afford, were the former to become
a chain of barren rocks to-morrow, to relinquish a
chain of island posts from whence we in some sort
command the Gulf of Mexico, the coasts of the
United States, and no inconsiderable portion of the
seaboard of South America. To abandon Trinidad
would be to sacrifice one of the most fertile and im-
portant of these posts. If this alternative, then, is to
be dismissed without being dwelt upon for a moment,
it will be for Government to devise some remedy—
efficient, extensive, and immediate—for a condition of
things the more discouraging, inasmuch as it is thus
simply and fairly stated by a journalist resident on the
spot. The evil, which is felt to be so near at hand, is
the more appalling, inasmuch as it is not to be
treated as if it might prove only a temporary visita-
tion, and one, therefore, to be endured under some
reasonable assurance of being speedily withdrawn.
If the cultivation of Trinidad, or any other of these
important colonies, be once allowed to run out, and
the soil to return to fallow, it is certain, from the ex-
hausting nature of the crops it has been made, during so
many years, and under such powerful and forcing pro-
cesses, to raise, that a protracted and ruinous interval
must elapse before it could be put again in heart,
again reclaimed from its original tendency to
the rank exuberance of useless vegetation, or again
sufficiently cleansed and turned to be fitted for the
usual course of its tropical husbandry. These con-
siderations, too, are wholly irrespective of the enor-
mous amount of waste, decay, or deterioration of
machinery, mills, boiling-houses, &c., &c., from which
the enormous capitals now invested in them can reap
any returns only through the sustained activity of
their operations. The remedy required, as we con-
ceive, is that which we have so often pressed upon
her MAJESTY'S Ministers, the solemn duty of extend-
ing to our West Indian colonies, without those illi-
beral, coarse, nay, fatal drawbacks, which have
hitherto formed the subject of complaints at once so
well founded and so unnecessary. Let the immigra-
tion of free labour from any quarters, so that it be
efficient, be encouraged, under some plain, unvexa-
tious, intelligible, systentof control and appropriation.
Give to the Coolies of Bengal and others, who are
anxious to carry their labour and their industry
Thither, the amplest and most facile means for doing
so. To the colonists leave the fullest benefit of that
market of coloured free labour, in which, as in all
other markets, competition will determine the legiti-
mate wages of labour. The lands will be cultivated,
the crops raised and collected, prepared and exported
on terms far lower than those which the planters
are now compelled to provide for, whom we have
righteously denuded of all compulsory authority over
prtedial labour, without providing any means,
hitherto, commensurate with the deficiency our own
act has thus occasioned, of voluntary or emancipated
labour. By giving expansion and protection to some
such improved scheme of immigration, we doubt not
that the just interests of the planters might be con-
sulted and improved, without compromising the title
of the home consumer to cheaper prices ; and without
infringing, by one line's breadth, on that sacred
circle of emancipation, which the British Legislature
has traced around the expatriated and heretofore
enslaved races of negro labourers throughout the
wide circuit of her transatlantic possessions.

In the press of other matters claiming our early
attention, we have found but little time, hitherto, for
the perusal in detail of Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S Bill
" for the better regulation of Medical Practice
throughout the United Kingdom." But we have
mastered its contents sufficiently, to pronounce an
opinion upon its general bearings, and to be enabled
to indicate some features of palpable inconsistency,
unfairness, and inexpediency. The Bill, in its pre-
sent form, is certainly one of the worst specimens of
the excess to which the genius of central legislation
may carry its advocates. In their laudable endea-
vours to abolish the evils of that partial, interrupted,
and local law-making, which has so much marred
many institutions derived from our ancestors, that
were of the very wisest kind in princi-
ple, they are apt to produce a species of
mischief at the least as much to be de-

precated. From a scheme, defective by the num-
ber of its jurisdictions or the conflicting character of
the powers which these exercise, they are prone to pass

to a system, more or less impracticable from the limi-
tation of its faculties, to a range of operation by no
means co-extensive with the multiplied and varying,
demands on their exercise, and only to be set in mo-
tion from a single centre. The result of these sacri-
fices to the one element of consolidation may be de-
fined, in a word, as a defect of adaptation. There are
infinitely more demands, or more classes of demands
to be met and satisfied than machinery, of this centra-
lised character, can adequately treat. But the Bill
in question has more specific vices, besides this ge-
neric one.

Its enactments are tyrannous as well as invidious.
They throw a degree of imputation on the skill,
competency, and character of vast bodies of a liberal
profession, who will vainly plead against the requi-
sitions of some of the clauses before us, touching pro-
bationary examinations in some cases, certificates in
others, &c., &c. ; the best of testimonials, supplied by
the terms of their professional experience and prac-
tice, and the esteem and confidence wherewith they
are regarded by their patients and connexions. The
capital error of the Bill appears to us to be this—
that it proposes, for the future, to treat with indiffer-
ence, or absolutely to reject, the positive evidence of
merit and theoretical knowledge, implied by the
previously-passed examination of the successful can-
didate for a diploma or professional status in medi-
cine, or surgery, (under the practice which
has for many years past obtained in London) ;
and to substitute in place of this qualifying title a
new species of certificate of registration, to be granted
by the clumsily-contrived councils, the creation of which

would appear to be the real and paramount, though
but incidentally avowed, object of this Bill. From
one or two circumstances of prima fcicie suggestion,
as the Bill is printed, we should infer that Sir JAMES
GRAHAM must promise himself a long tenure of office.
Thus, it is carefully stipulated that " the Secretary
of State for the Home Department shall be President
of the new Council ;" and again, that " he shall be
empowered, from time to time, to nominate one of the
members of the Council appointed, as aforesaid, by
her MAJESTY, to be Vice-President of the Council."
Here are two of the favourite, besetting, aims of all
Sir JAMES'S measures in his official capacity, developing
themselves even in this embryo of a Legislative Act,
which cannot be born till next session. Sir JAMES'S
vanity and love ofpower are to be tickled by the occupa-
tion of the President's chair; his love of patronage to be
gratified by the nomination of some toady, probably,
whose hand even now perhaps is dimly traceable in
the concoction of the Bill—to that of Vice-President.
What business with, or relation to, or affinity for, the
presidency of a medical board (unless it be an indo-
mitable passion for opening letters) a Home Secretary
of State can find in himself, we are quite at a loss to
determine. The preceding clause, 9, may perhaps
furnish some clue to this puzzle in clause
10. By clause 9, the salaries of the mem-
bers of council and other officers are to be
detertnined by the Treasury. Qy. ? Will the
president rank as a member of the council ? Will
the Treasury, in that case, overlook the " equitable
claim" of their good colleague, the Home Secretary?
The author of " Corn and Currency" must have
fretted his very soul out, under the compulsory though
silent sanction he was compelled to give to the
Premier's, monster-blunder, his Bank Charter Bill.
In the course of his new medical studies, possibly the
notion of a presidential salary may have flitted before
the forecasting mind of Sir JAMES in the type of an
emollient lenitive." But we will not travel further,
on the present occasion, into the detail of the clauses.
A medical friend complains to us, with much show
of reason, that the general scope of the preamble it-
self is distinctly and most iniquitously favourable to
the success of medical empiricism and quackery, and
is signally calculated:for the discouragement of regu-
larly educated and duly qualified practitioners. It
withdraws the protection hitherto afforded to the
public from the reckless audacity, the mischievous
ignorance, and the unhesitating presumption of the
former class of medical "professors." By repealing,

at one swoop, all the salutary restrictions heretofore im-
posed upon them, inadequate as even they have proved
for the purposes of a sufficiently stringent control—
' the health and lives of the public have been set up as
a free mark, as it were, for their fatal experiments.
But Sir JAMES (who certainly has no reason to be
well pleased with his present standing in their estima-
tion) distinguishes between the public and the public
servants. The "gentle public" are to supply open, un-
restricted, moor-shooting to these unqualified gentry,
who may wound, or bag, or scare, or destroy just as
many victims as they please. But the army, the navy,
the East India service—public hospitals, infirmaries
for the poor, &c.,—these are street preserves,
into which the empirics, who are thus let loose on
society at large, may by no means trespass. Enough
for them, we should suppose, that they are left, by
implication, the honour of being doctors of the public!
What guarantees are to be exacted from those gra-
duates who, under subsequent clauses, are to qualify
before the new board, as licentiates in medicine and
surgery, or as surgeons, after rigorous examination,
we find shadowed out in clauses 13, 14, 15, 16,
&c. But they who are still to be authorised
to practise—on the public—minus the honours,
advantages, and emoluments accruing from the
registered certificates of which they will be
deficient, for aught that we can see to the contrary,
will not be troubled for any guarantees at all as to
their education, skill, or proficiency ! They may deal
with the most complicated diseases of the digestive
organs, although the previous extent of their medical
or pharmaceutical education may have been limited
to ascertaining the different intensities of a solution
of an ounce of Epsom salts and an ounce :of jalap ;
their experience of cerebral sensitiveness, to the vary-
ing effects of an ordinary narcotic draught, and a
concentrated preparation of morphine. The utmost
amount of their physiological researches may not
have possessed them of the important distinctions be-
tween muscular contraction and vascular irritation ;
but they will deal, at a moment's notice, with cases of
organic derangement that may require all the patho-
logical learning of a second HUNTER to detect, or all
the surgical skill and precision of a BRODIE
or a LAWRENCE to operate upon. Now it is
very certain that nothing has more tended
to improve and advance the medical sciences—to
extend the range and instruct the enterprise of opera-
tive surgery—than those more modern restrictive Acts
which have been passed during the last seven or eight
reigns with the avowed and wholesome purpose of dis-
couraging the irresponsible practice of incompetent
empirics. The education which it was, by reason
of those Acts, incumbent on the regular practitioner to
acquire, has necessarily become a very expensive and
elaborate one. The vast amount of talent, care,
and research which has been devoted, year
after year, to perfect this scheme of edu-
cation, has prodigiously facilitated the most re-
markable and precious discoveries of modern days, in
all the higher branches of chemistry, of anatomy,
physiology, and surgery, and therefore, in the appli-
cation of therapeutical agents. But in exact propor•
tion to, and coincidently with these advances in the
great march of all medical science, have been the
increased sacrifices of time, money, and application,
the additional severity of intellectual discipline and ex-
tensive study, which medical students in all classes have
made and given to the completion of their curriculum.
By what magical sympathy is Sir JAMES GRAHAM
induced to give to quacks,—who have little or nothing
of this preparation, these qualifications, that
knowledge, those laborious studies—to justify their
empirical practice—the advantages, the legitimate
advantages, that should justly and exclusively remain
with men who have adequately prepared themselves
for the able and conscientious discharge of the in-
valuable and most responsible duties to society, which
it is the honourable privilege of their profession to
render ?

We have received Madrid journals of the 19th inst.
The QUEEN, with her mother and sister, was ex-
pected to enter the capital on the 20th. According
to the Heraldo, the Moors were busily engaged in
repairing the fortifications of Tangiers, which were
said to be defended by fifteen hundred infantry/
while there were four thousand cavalry around the
town. The English Consul had returned from Gib-
raltar and resumed his official duties.

The Three per Cents. were done at 27 1-16 for
cash, and 27+ at sixty days ; and the Five per Cents.
at 20i at sixty days.

We regret to find, from the Paris papers, that the
same hostile feeling towards this country still pre-
vails, with little prospect of abatement. On the pre-
sent occasion we admit that the French have grounds
of complaint, but they ought not to confound the
feelings of one anonymous and indiscreet writer with
those of the whole English nation. To impute any-
thing like cowardice to the French people, only shows
a want of common honesty, a wilful departure from
truth, and a malevolent spirit. Ninety-nine Eng-

lishmen out of a hundred admit the bravery of the
French to the utmost extent; and, if proofs were
wanting, it is :only necessary to look back to the
great victories gained by their armies, not under NA-
roLEort only, but under every French General, over
the best troops of almost every Continental State.
The editors of French papers have no occasion to re-
but the charge, and they would have acted wisely
had they treated it, as it deserved, with contempt.
The details given in the telegraphic dispatch from
Marshal BUGEAUD are very meagre. He states that
800 of the Moors were killed on the field of battle,
but does not give the number, of the French killed,
nor any idea of the forces under his command. This
battle, unfortunately, will only render peace more diffi-
cult. It will make the French desirous of further suc-
cess, and exasperate the fanatical Moors. No addi-
tional intelligence had been received from the French
squadron, though accounts from the south of Spain
announce that the firing of cannon had been heard in
the direction of the Straits of Gibraltar, and that
Larache, and some other small places along the
coast, had been bombarded. A letter which ap-
peared in a morning Contemporary, stating that the
Emperor of MOROCCO had acceded to all the de-
mands of the French when the Prince de JOINVILLE
commenced the attack on Tangiers, has called forth
remarks from several of the papers. The
Journal des Debats which has access to
authentic information denies the statement.
" We know not," says that journal, " if this letter
be authentic, but in any case it is a tissue of errors
more evident the one than the other. Every one now
is aware that the EMPEROR refused four out of the
seven conditions submitted by Spain ; and as to what
concerns the reclamation of France, it is only neces-
sary to remind the reader that he demanded the
missal of Marshal BUGEAUD, whose presence on the
frontier no doubt was very galling to him. There-
fore, either the letter in question is apocryphal, or
the person who wrote it was singularly misinformed.
We have reason, on the contrary, to believe, that the
reports of the English Consul himself contain conclu-
sions quite opposed to him, and it was only after being
convinced the EMPEROR was seeking merely to gain
time, that the Prince de JOINVILLE resorted to sum-
mary measures. It is also right to observe, that the
news received a short time previous to the action of
the 6th, announcing as certain the conclusion of an
accommodation, was communicated to the French
Consul at Gibraltar by the English Governor, and
thus transmitted to the French Government; and,
nevertheless, the news did not emanate either from
the Commander of the French squadron, from the
Consul-General of France, nor, as we believe, from
the English Consul-General."
The French Funds were more firm on Sunday. At
TORTONI'S considerable business was done, when the
Three per Cents. were quoted at 80f. 70c., having
risen about 35 centimes since Saturday.

ANOTHER MONSTER Tnanar.—The cheap Sunday
excursion train on the London and Brighton Railway,
on Sunday last, exceeded in magnitude all the other
monsters with which this railway has of late teemed.
No less than 78 carriages, containing 2,123 passengers,
left London-bridge in the morning, and after spending
the day in Brighton, returned in the evening. In order,
however, to avoid the inconvenience experienced on
former occasions from the delay in providing a large
number of passengers with accommodation, the train
was divided into three portions, each of which was dis-
patched as soon as full. By this arrangement the earlier
part of the train was in Brighton before the time an-
nounced, while the rest were not more than half an hour
behind time • whereas, on the previous Sunday, the
whole number were delayed upwards of two hours
and a half. The passengers spoke highly of this ar-
rangement.