The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-09 00:00:00

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LONDON. TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 184 t.

The Moral ng Herald has put forth the Ca..,t (w€
presume) of a series of articles intended to
rebut certain fallacies which it declares are
4. echoed and re-echoed by the Anti-Corn-
law League agitators and free-traders." Thee
Fallacies it assumes to be the allegations indulged in
lbd -steal parties, " that if the United Kingdom took
'freely and without restriction the agricultural
.produce of other countries, they would, with equal
certainty and liberality, take her manufactures in
return." And again, that "no country can be great or
powerful, or wealthy, prosperous, and happy, but a
manufacturing country, and that it is, consequently,
the duty of legislators and lftislation to attend to ma-
nufactures alone."

With regard to the first of these propositions (neitl er

he must show that the manufacturing interest does not
su:'ply the largest, but are, indeed, the indispensable
market for the agricultural produce of a country. If
it be true that that market, or consumption, is pro-
vided by that interest, what the Herald terms " a fal-

I:tcy" remains—like the League itself, -" a great fact."
Hut in perusing the remainder of the article from which
o c are cuoting, we are reminded of its definition of
agricultural produce." We promised to recur to
this, and here it is :—" The following are the articles,
the produce of the soil—agricultural produce—

wLich this country takes from foreign nations.'

Well, what, among other products, do we find
enumerated under this very comprehensive heading,
cinbracing, it seems, "everything that is the produce
if the soil, cultivated by the labour of man ?" Why,
actually these :—" Speller ! quicksilver! iron !" In

‘N hat country these "oracles " of Arabian tales, these
ferriferous and argentiferous lands, cropped alter-

nately with sugar-canes and several ores,

" in situ,'

at the surface, are to be found, the Herald does not tol

u'. Some arable El Dorado territory he must mean,
because he is precise in showing that these are "pro-

duets of a soil cultivated by human labour." We might
otherwise have supposed he meant to write "products
of the earth below the surface" cultivated by man. But
the soil " referred to, wherever it be, has more than

a Guano power of forcing production. This soil is
further stated to grow "skins and hides," and "furs."
To the last, at any rate, we must object, in lirnine, as

ally sample of "agricultural produce ;" and the Herald
,A ill snake but little way in the future progress of its

- -
Anti-League argument, if the other data, upon which
it is raised, involve such false designations of things as

tZ: S.

When men who have once occupied eminent public
station depart from among us, we are naturally led
to consider what were the merits, the talents, or
the measures by which that station was attained. In
eases, even, where a long season of retirement has
elapsed since they quitted their public career, and
where death has overtaken them in the privacy of
domestic seclusion, this sort of consideration forces
itself upon the minds of surviving contemporaries ;
but where the defunct has expired in actual duty—
dropping out of life from the very ranks, as it were,
of official service—the matter is one that irresistibly
challenges some such retrospect of the history of his
public life.
Within thTs last category, it is our lot to record the
case of the Right Hon. Lord ABINGER, late Chief
Baron of the Exchequer, who was struck by a mortal
ilness whilst attending to his judicial duties on cir-
' eu,t, and expired, after a few days' confinement, yes-
terday afternoon. As Mr., and afterwards Sir JAMES
SCARLETT, he was for a long course of years prior to
1835 (when he was created Baron ABINGER),
distinguished member of the House of Commons. Up
to the period of Mr. CANNING'S Administration,
formed in April 1827, his Lordship had been, avow-
edly, a Whig. He sat with the Whigs, he voted
ssith them ; he was, for the most part, a warm oppo-
nent of the Governinent of the Earl of LIVERPOOL,
:hich, established in 1812, endured until Februlry,
1827. In April of the latter year, Sir JAMES ScAn-
LETT succeeded Sir CHARLES WETHERELL, as At-
`ot•ney-General to Mr. CANNING'S Government ;
inil he occupied that office, beyond the Pre-
.n:cr's demise, under the Earl of RIPON'S
Administration, until January, 1828, when he re-
igned. In May, 1829, however, the Duke of
WELLINGTON being Prime Minister, he was a second
time appointed Attorney-General, in the room of his
'ormer predecessor, Sir C. WETHERELL, who, also,
had been a second time appointed, on the demise of
• r. CANNING, and had retired on his Grace's taking
office. Sir JAMES, in his turn, once more give up this
I:stinguished office on the coming in of his former
political friends, in November, 1830, under Earl
GREY. In December, 1834, when Sir R. PEEL re-
eived the seals of the First Lord of the Treasury, Sir
J.sszEs SCARLETT was appointed to the Chief Barony
.)fthe Exchequer, and in the following year he received
his peerage. From this brief review of his official

wi public career it may be surm:sed—and the sur-

nise would. be but too well-founded—that the de-
cease] judge was neither a very pure Whig, nor
a very decided Conservative—that he who
was ostensibly the confidential legal adviser of the
generous-principled, the liberal-minded, the English-
spirited CANNING, could not have really filled the same
position, and frankly discharged its relations, to that
Minister—of far inferior capacity and character—who
had trodden, so to speak, over the mighty form of
his deceased, but more illustrious colleague, into the
vacant seat of power. The truth of history reqaires
us to admit that the Parliamentary career of the late
Lord ABINGER was of a nature fraught with signal
mischief to the influence of great constitutional prin-

ciples. It tampered with some of the dearest rights
of popular freedom. It vacillated between the love of
office and the loyalty of party. For we are not afraid to
avow our deep conviction that no more salutary con-
trol can be devised to insure political morality in
public men, than that profession of political faith
which is vulgarly called the declaration_ of party. It
assumed to be founded, and ought to proceed, on
the mature examination of such elementary principles
as are essential to the guarantees of private rights
and public liberty. This is an end, in which all good
and patriotic men must at all times concur. The
true means to that end may be, at any time, a subject
of legitimate and conscientious difference and dis-
pute among them. But they who, upon examination
and conviction, have once determined that the popular
tendencies of Whiggery are the most nearly
identified with the spirit of our Constitution, I
and the social and political advancement of the
empire, cannot, without incurring grave suspicions
of their sincerity, turn round upon such principles of
action, and record their adhesion to a Government
founded on high Tory maxims of government. Now,.
no man can deny that there was all this amount of
discrepancy between the liberalised—we might call
it the emancipated—policy of Mr. CANNING'S Go- 1
vernment, as contrasted with that of Lord LIVER-
r:OOL, and between the Government of the Duke of
WELLINGTON and Sir R. PEEL, as collated with that of
CANNING. We remember, that on the odious
•' Six Bills " of Lord CASTLEREAGII'S introduction,
which were insolent, but insidious, irrrasions of the

rights of free discussion, of public meeting, of
public petitioning, of personal immunity,

of which is stated, by the bye, with much regard to
fairness, or much care to avoid exaggeration in the
terms of their statement), the Herald remarks that a
careful examination of the whole of our imports would
show "that we take scarcely anything else ex-
cept agricultural produce," meaning, by agricul-
tural produce, everything that is the produce of the
sod cultivated by the labour of man. To this
definition we shall presently crave attention.
The Herald is indignant that it should yet be
commonly imagined, and " loudly repeated, that this
country either takes no, or but very little, agricultu-
ral produce from foreign nations." With regard to
the second proposition, the Herald threatens to re
turn to it more at length in a day or two. We shall,
therefore, await, with some curiosity, the more elaborate
argument which our Contemporary promises on so
curious a topic. It adds, "We shall show this point
bears upon our commerce with the United States es-
pecially, and also the value of agricultural property
and produce in this country, as compared to that in
trade and manufactures. We propose also to show
the same things as regards the United States of Ame-
rica, where the contrast in every part will be shown
to he equally striking in the vast preponderance of
agricultural over foreign trade and manufactures.
Yet no one will gainsay the fact that the United
States is a great country."
In the meantime we beg to remark, that, if the Anti-
Corn-law Leaguers hold that other countries, " if we
would import freely their agricultural produce,
would, with equal readiness, take our manufactures in
return ;"—they do not assuredly mean to say that this
either would, or could happen, without previous mo-
difications of our own antiquated and mischievous
fiscal system. Even the boon that we should extend
to the foreigner, by taking his corn off hl3 hands,
uncharged with the existing monopoly tax upon it,
would not indemnify him fur all the disadvantages of
gemral trade with a country that overwhelms the fo-
reign customer by " customs' " duties, on so many of
his commodities,- that seem to have been imposed with
no other purpose but to effect their virtual exclusior
from our ports. So much for the first of the " folio.
des" denounced by the Herald. As fur the second,
our Contemporary seems to overlook the fact, that, be
fore he can establish a negative to it,—even in the ex.
ample he cites, subsequently, of the United States,-