The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-02 00:00:00

Obientils

LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 2, 1844.

In the Lords, the Sugars Duties Bill was read a

second. time.

In -answer to a question from the LORD CHAN-
cELr ,OR, Lord CaiurnELL said he would move the
Mir d reading of the Libel Bill this day.

A discussion took place on the motion for the third
'reading of the Bishoprics of St. Asaph and Bangor
Bill, during which the_...Duke of NEWCASTLE in-
'formed the LORD CHANCELLOR that he had been
guilty of an unworthy manoeuvre to get rid of the
Bill. The third reading was consequently postponed,
and the Bill was referred to a Select Committee.

t'n the Commons, after the presentation- of peti-
tons, Mr. BRIGHT put a question, of which he had
given notice, to Sir JAMES GRA.IIAM, whether he bad
any objection to lay before the House the corres-
pondence which had taken place between the Lord-
Lieutenant of Lancashire and the Government, re-
lative to raising a new corps of yeomanry for the
southern division of that county. Sir JAMES GRAHAM
did not state whether the correspondence would be
produced, but intimated that the application for
raising a body of yeomanry in the neighbourhood of
Rochdale had been communicated to the Earl of
Many, who had no objection to it, and her MAJESTY
had accepted their services.
In answer to a question from Lord PALMERSTON,
relative to the occurrences which had taken place in
Morocco, Sir ROBERT PEEL said her Majesty's Go-
vernment had given such directions as they thought
necessary to insure full information, independent of
foreign Powers, and to gotect British interests.
Mr. Ross gave notice that on Friday next he
would move fin- all papers and correspondence rela-
tive to the re-appointment of Mr. O'Datscom. to the
.magistracy in Ireland.
Sir Ronear PEEL gave an outline of the business
for the remainder of the session, which will be found
briefly stated in the Parliamentary report. It will be
seen:, from this, that a vast number of Bills are yet to
be ciarried, or attempted to be carried, and that the
grouse-shooters have little chance of being able to
attend i. 43 their duties in Parliament.
The Wish Registration Bill then formed a subject
for lrngthenecl conversation. Sir ROBERT PEEL had
intimated that he would move the second reading,
solely for the purpose of discussing the measure, but
as etery speaker seemed to be against him, he gave

up the Bill for the session. Mr. T. DUNCOMBE had
the merit of quashing this dastardly attempt, first
broached by Lord STANLEY, to diminish the Irish
franchise.
The Unlawful Oaths-(lreland) Bill was passed
through Committee.
The Prisoners' (Scotland) Bill also went through
Committee, and the House adjourned at Half-past
Eight.

At the great public meeting, which was held yes-
terday in Covent-garden, on the important subject of
" Justice to Ireland," the kindliest and most earnest
feelings of sympathy were manifested in behalf of
Mr. O'CoNNELL and the other " conspirators " now
imprisoned in Richmond Penitentiary. " What,"
asked Mr. DUNcoMBE, who took an active part in
the day's proceedings, " what was the question they
were met to discuss ? They had met to consider the
treatment which Ireland had experienced for many
years, which had nearly driven the people of that coun •
try to desperation, and the result of which would un-
doubtedly before this have shown itself in acts of vio-
lence, and the destruction of property, if it had not
been for the energy exerted in the cause of pacifica-
tion by that individual; whom a contemptible
Government had thought proper to incarce-
rate." This apt allusion to the imprison-
ment of Mr. O'CortNELL, for no worse crime
than having exerted all his energies " in the cause of
pacification," and laboured to repress rather than to
stimulate the passions of his countrymen, while he
encouraged constitutional agitation, was received
with loud cheers by the meeting, who could not but
feel that, by the imprisonment of the Hon. and
Learned Member for Cork, a direct blow was struck
at the right of free discussion. Upon precisely the
same principle that Mr. O'CoNNELL was tried and
found guilty of conspiracy, might Messrs. COBDEN,
BRIGHT, WILSON, and the other Members of the
Anti-Corn-law League be put upon their trial, though
the result, we suspect, would be very different here
to what it was in Ireland, for we doubt much whether
any English jury would be found so far forgetful of
what they owed to themselves and their country, as to
record a verdict of guilty against the League
agitators. As yet, the right of free discussion is still
respected among us, though how long this may be
the case, if Sir J. GRAHAM is still permitted to con-
tinue in office, and the Conservative Government re-
tain their present majority in the House of Commons,
it is impossible to say. If we do not keep the strictest
and most jealous watch on the proceedings of Minis-
ters—and Heaven knows they are such as to
require all our vigilance—the case of Mr.
O'CONNELL to-day, may be that of Mr. DUNCOMDE,
Mr. COBDEN, or any other popular leader to-
morrow. An arbitrary Government seldom stops
when once it has commenced a system of
encroachment on the rights of the people; but having
made a first false move, perseveres in its wrong and
tortuous course with extraordinary inflexibility of
purpose. Colonel RAWDON puts this matter on its
right footing when he observed—" He did not know
but that by the new construction of the law of con-
spiracy, the Hon. Member for Finsbury might be
proved as great a conspirator as DANIEL O'CON-
NELL; for if Government took the present meet-
ing, and put to ,that the dinner which Mr.
DUNCOMBE attended the other day not far from
Covent-garden on the same subject; and if they
were to put this meeting and that speech, and one
dinner and another speech together, they might, under
this new law, get up a very good case of conspiracy,
and the Member for Finsbury might be indicted,
found guilty, and imprisoned." However absurd and
ludicrous, this is precisely the manner in which Go-
vernment acted towards Mr. O'CoNivELL. Finding
that they could not hope to convict him on the strength
of one speech or one meeting, as was the custom in
the olden days of Toryism, the bright —not to say
original—idea struck them of lumping all his oratorical
iniquities together, so that that might appear illegal
in the mass, which, singly considered, was perfectly
in accordance with the constitutional law. Ac-
cordingly he was found guilty, not of having
preached sedition at Mallow, at Cork, at Gal-
way, at Tara, or at Mullaghmast; but at all these
meetings collectively ; his crime consisted, not so
much in the quality, as the quantity, of his Repeal
speeches ; and he is now suffering imprisonment in
Richmond Penitentiary for having attended up-
wards of a score of monster-meetings, when, if he
had attended, say but half-a-dozen, the law would
have held him perfectly harmless ! Such is the
spirit in which the Constitution—or what is called
the Constitution—is vindicated in the sister-coun-
try ! But this is nothing new, for whenever
the Tories have been at the head of affairs, their
system of Irish legislation has invariably proved that
there is one law for England and another for Ire-
land ; and what dare not even be attempted here, may
be practised with impunity there !

Since the first announcement of Sir R. PEEL'S ill-
omened—and now, all but matured absurdity—his
notable scheme of Banking Reform—we have en•
deavoured, from time to time, to awaken public at-
tention to the melancholy condition of productive
industry in this country. We have shown, in suc-
cessive articles on the growing evils and deficiencies
of our monetary system, how the fatal legislation of
1819, which legitimated and fixed at a certain defined
price gold as the " standard of value"—(ourselves not
being answerable for the vagueness or ineptitude of
the terms adopted by the bullionists)—has worked
out all the disastrous consequences predicted from its

operation by those who denounced it in Parliamen!
five-and-twenty years ago. We have shown that the
effect of making gold of a certain cheapness, by law
has been ever since to reduce the remuneration cf
labour on a scale commensurate with, or even lower
than, the diminution of prices. We have shown that
since a gold standard struck natural or gold prices
only for the productions of the loom or the products of
agriculture, there was no margin for that charge which
should represent the cost of taxation pending the
growth or the manufacture of the commodity. We
have shown how, in addition to this, another cause
has operated to limit the power of giving remunera-
tive wages in the crippled action of capital, invested,
whether in land or in manufactures, through the fear-
ful contraction of the general currency consequent of,
the application of the metallic screw. We have shown
how these depreciated prices and profits have so pre-
judiced the condition of the industrious operative and
labourer, that their masters have been compelled to sa3
to them—" To enable us to pay you even these reduced
wages, you must work for them during a longer portion
of each day. To enable us to keep our mills at work,
our lands in cultivation, you must extend your daily
labouring hours from twelve hours to sixteen or eigh
teen." And, finally, we have shown, that from the
hundreds of thousands—we might fairly say from the
millions of producers—who live by their daily labour,
thus inadequately paid, and thus cruelly protracted ;
your system of a gold currency and natural
prices, under an annual taxation of .50,000,000/.,
has annually snatched at least 30,000,000/.
in the shape of taxes charged upon articles indispen-
sible to their subsistence, instead of taking that sum,
as the Legislature clearly contemplated, from the
wealthier consumer, off whose shoulders you have
shifted the burden. Thus, then, the condition of
labour in this country is that it is underpaid, de-
frauded, and overtaxed. In the meanwhile, the im-
provements of machinery, and the amount of produc-
tion, have gone on, pari passu, to an extent which the
world has never before witnessed. But by all thi:
increase of necessaries, in the shape of articles of sub-
sistence and raiment ; and of luxuries, in the
multiplication of conveniences, comforts, and
elegancies—the producing classes, by whose
hard toil such increase has been elaborated
are nothing benefited. They starve in the midst of
plenty. They perish, surrounded by countless ele-
ments of succour. Au usurious monetary system,
which
gives everything to already-realised capital
that can ensure its rapid multiplication—provides no
means of distribution to the indigent millions. As
hats, and coats and gowns,
and stockings and shoes
become cheaper, because more abundantly produced,
the meritorious artisans,
whose ill-requited industry
sets the producing machinery in motion, sink lower
and lower in the scale of destitution—become more
and more unable to possess themselves of such articles.
If the case stood thus, with regard to manu-
facturing labour and its -products, it is noto-
riously no better—perhaps, it . is worse—in
respect of agricultural labour, and the pro-
ducts which that realises for the landowners. The
landowner, in his turn, points, on the one hand, to the

only prices the farmer can realise for his Cereal pro-
ducts, bread stuffs, &c.—on the other, to the burdens
of tithe, poor-rate, county-rate, &c. ; and, if bis pro-
perty be encumbered, to his mortgages, the interest
upon which, for advances made in a " depreciated
currency" with high prices, he has now to pay in an
artificially enhanced money—in gold. " With such
reduced rents, and lowered prices, and heavy bur-
dens," he says, " I cannot pay you remunerating
wages." Now, agricultural protection is getting as
much out of public endurance as manufacturing pro-
tection; so that for this state of things protection is
rarely ever suggested, as a remedy. What is to be
done ? _

In the meanwhile the desperate incendiary is at his
suicidal and devastating work. In 'Essex, Suffolk,
Hertfordshire, Norfolk, the midnight destroyer—
goaded doubtless to desperation and to crime by the
wrongs of poverty, and the cravings of want, the
claims of helpless infancy, and the misery of his
home—is committing to the flames the garnered
harvests of former years, or the means and appli-
ances necessary to get -in that which is next to be
gathered. What sentiments can more powerfully
excite his frenzied despair than the bitter conscious-
ness of his own willingness and ability to work, con•
trasted with the hopeless destitution which alone
will follow upon his labour, where masters and
landlords are equally straightened in their present
means, and in despair of their future chance of bet-
tering them ?
The new banking law of Sir R. PEEL presents
aspects fatal alike to manufacturing, commercial, and
agricultural enterprise. In carrying out to their
full extent the hitherto dormant mischiefs of the Act
of 1819, and in aggravating the intensity and
enlarging the sphere of action of those evil influences
it had already developed, the Bill now pending before
Parliament will be deplorably signalised. It will add
the guilt of lighting up a hundred incendiary fires in
districts where its baneful propositions are about to
ensure the ruin of the unfortunate agriculturist, who
may no longer look for temporary accommodation or
sympathy in his honest struggles against adverse
seasons or accidents—to that long catalogue of
ills, in which the memory of Sir ROBERT
PEEL and the Currency Act of 1819, will be asso-
ciated to posterity as the proximate causes of the
distress of our labouring population at various in-
tervening periods, and at the present moment. We

- -
'aye enormous wealth, the most magnificent revenue

in the world ; a commerce whose parallel has not
arisen in the history of mankind. We are supreme
among the nations, and the business of Time, himself,
seems to be but to develope, year after year, our new
and uncalculated resources for the increase
of our opulence, and the consolidation of our
power. We are in profound peace with all
the world ; and yet, in the centre of an imperial do-
minion, the metropolitan home of our greatness, as
well as in the provincial capitals of our commercial
and agricultural greatness, we have widely-spreading,
accumulating, unarrested poverty and discontent.
That poverty is of the most afflicting and most abject
character. This discontent manifests itself in the
most insidious, and the most open forms. What can
be the cause of these phenomenon, moral and political ?
Are these gifts of Providence, and these happy acci-
dents of nature, to be neutralised by some radical vice
in our monetary system, that Sir ROBERT PEEL'S
autocracy may not be shaken in the House of Com-
mons, nor his financial imbecility be recognised
and denounced without it ?

Madrid journals of the 24th ult. have been received,
but they bring no fresh intelligence. _Advices from
Barcelona of the 25th state that the four Ministers
arrived at that place on the previous day, and that a
Cabinet Council had been immediately held, but the
result was not known.

The Madrid Bourse was closed on the 24th.

We find, in the Paris Moniteur of Sunday, a long
and rather curious article, setting forth the impover-
ished state of the KING'S private finances, and urging
the necessity imposed upon the State, by an Act
passed in 1832, to make provision for the younger
branches of the Royal Family. It appears from this,
that on Louis Pnimera's accession to the throne, his
family estates, by virtue of a Royal Ordinance issued
by Louis XIV., became annexed to the domain of
the Crown. The appanage of the ORLEANS family
was thus alienated, and the younger Princes became
Deprived of their claim on the eventual succession ;
and this opened to them, at the same time, a claim
for compensation, inasmuch as, in 1832, when the
civil list was settled, there was a special article by
which provision should be made for the younger sons
and daughters of the KING, in case the private domain
should be inadequate for that purpose. The article
then shows that the whole amount which the KING
received in 1825 (5,000,000 f.), as an indemnity, in
virture of the law passed in that year, had been ab-
'orbed by the completion and embellishment of the
Palais Royal ; and so low have his finances at
times been, that, he had been compelled to
accept pecuniary aid from his sister Madame ADE-
LAIDE, yet to supply the charges imposed upon him as
a King and a father, the ICING has been and is forced
to contract debts which, from day to day, increase,
which encroach upon his private domain, hitherto the
sole patrimony of the Princes his younger sons, and
the Princesses his daughters. The article thus con-
cludes :—" In order that this grave question may be
suitably submitted to the examination of the Cham-
bers, good citizens and all just and sensible men must
be enlightened as to the truth of the case, and assist
themselves in clearing that cloud of gross errors and
perfidious falsehoods so carefully raised to deceive the
country with regard to rights and facts. It was often
said in France, If the KING knew it.' The KING'S
Government says now, Let the country know it
France will not permit that the Royal Family should
not preserve, under our constitutional monarchy, the
rights and station legally guaranteed to the family of
the Duke of ORLEA.NS."

The discussion on Railway Bills still continued in
the Chamber of Deputies. On Saturday the lines
from Orleans to Vierzon and Chateauroux were voted,
and on Monday the discussion was to commence on
the Strasburgh line.
The trial of the murderers of M. CADOT, the banker,
at Pointoise, was again adjourned on Saturday till
next day.