The Sun.
London, England, 1845-04-10 00:00:00

What was the cause of this difference, in
the very same week, between the condition
of the English and Scotch agriculturists ? It
could not be the new tariff, or the Canada Corn
Bill, or the new corn-law, for these affected the
Scotch as well as the English agriculturist. The
Reit Lothian farmer and the Essex farmer were, in
this respect, precisely siiiiilarly situated.; and the
Essex farmer had this advantage, that he had a richer
soil and a better climate than the East Lothian. He
had also a better market; for, by means of the rail-
road, he could bring his p-oduce to the metropolis,
the best market in the world, within half an hour.—
(Laughter.) And yet the Essex farmer was in
a miserable, impoverished, whining state.—(Cheers.)
And why were the farmers of Scotland in a state of
such great comparative prosperity ?—(Hear, hear.)
One of the reasons of this prosperity of the Scotch
farmers over the English was, that they had long
leases of their farms at a grain rent, added to which
advantages they had the others—those bestowed by
nature, education, and the kindness of their natutal
protectors—namely, skill, intelligence, capital, and
industry ; and these were the reasons whyi the farmers
of Scotland were prosperous, while those of Essex
were not so, though possessing so many more advan-
tages of clime and soil over their Highland neighbours.
—(Hean) These were facts that should hold good
until they were disproved ; but who could disprove
them ?—(Hear.) Yet this was a boast of the Scotch
over the English farmer that need not exist if the
disatility imposed on the latter by the law be only
removed.—(Hear.) Put the English fanner—the
farmer of Essex—on the same footing with Scotch
farmers, and he would be abl: to accomplish quite as
much.—(Hear.) But this the English farmer never
could do, this improved and improving farmer henever
could be, while he permitted himself to be treated as
the down-trodden slave—to have the burden kept
upon his back—to be dealt with as the weak and
puling child, instead of the upright, independent
man.—(Shouts of applause) Hitherto, Englishmen
had been treated as if they were inferior to Scotch.
men in intellect and intelligence, and they would
deserve a continuation of such treatment if they
bore with it.—(Hear, hear.) What he (Mr. Cobden)
and those who acted with 117 m wanted was, to raise
the English farmer from the state of degradation
that had been forced upon him by law; and if those
men only felt and appreciated the nature of their
true position, it would not be long before they would
be easily able to recognise in the League those who
had their real interest at heart.—(Cheers.) He did
not think that there at all existed that distinction be-
tween the farmer and the manufacturer that had been
imagined. He conceived that the farmer should be
in the same position as theartisan in the town, and the
same remedy that gave relief to the one should also re-
lieve the other ; and he trusted that the time was not far
distant when the farmers would be identified with
the inhabitants of the towns in this one common
cause for the advocacy of free-trade principles.—
(Hear, hear.) Heretofore the farmers had been
placed in a false position, from the fact of their hav-
ing joined the landlord class in hostile array to the
working classes, under the mistaken and most erro-
neous belief that the interests of both were not iden-
tical.—(Hear, hear.) But this error was fast disap-
pearing, and he did hope that he would ere long, and
before the League had had many more meetings,
have the pleasure of hearing that numerous, indeed,
were the names of those who had followed the ex-

ample of Mr. Haughton and Mr. Lattimore.—(Loud
cheers.) He (Mr. Cobden) congratulated those gen-
tlemen and the friends of the League upon hearing
those gentlemen had enrolled themselves in so good,
so noble, and so just a cause. They, as well as those
who had long advocated the cause of free trade,
were able to boast that they had never acted• towards
the landlords in any other than a fair spirit, though
the landlords could not say the same for themselves.
—(Hear, hear.) Yet though the working classes
had been shut out from the enjoyment of all those
benefits which it was in the power of the landlords to
confer, the latter should not have to say that they
were kept out from the free•trade men • but they
were always ready to receive their aid in the advance-
ment of this great moral struggle.—(Hear, hear.)
But whether they joined them or not, the League
would never change their principles—(Hear, hear)
—they would go on steadily and perseveringly, and
when they had at length arrived at the consummation
of their labours, which, beyond all doubt, could not
be far distant, it would then be acknowledged by all
parties that they had, by their perseverance in this
great and mighty struggle, achieved a great
and tremendous triumph.—(Loud cheers.) It was
not by ignorance of the duty they were called upon
to perform that they could achieve this triumph ; but
by acquiring and promulgating a thorough know-
ledge of those facts and arguments that spoke so
strongly in their favour ; facts which were not de-
rived from any class or any country in particular, but
which were applicable to, and should affect, all classes,
all countries, and in all times. The Hon. Member
sat down amidst deafening and prolonged cheering.
Mr. W. J. Fox next presented himself, and was
received with loud and continued plaudits. He com-
menced by saying that, now that those meetings were
about to be suspended for a time, in order to give
place to other modes of disseminating the an-
nouncement of the progress of their cause ;
and as the topics of the day in con-
nexion with the free-trade principle had,
here and elsewhere, been continuously and
amply discussed ; it seemed to him not to be unde-
sirable that the general principle on which the League
had been founded, and above all, the objects, the
achievement of which it had in view, should be passed
in review before the meeting.—(Hear, hear, hear.)
They had assembled here to-night for the purpose of
being reminded, that it was essential to keep ever in
view the great truths by which their efforts had
hitherto been guided, and by a close adherence to
which they could alone expect success would crown
their efforts.—(Hear, hear.) Founded in truth and
justice, as their cause was, they had gained many
converts to it ; and there could be no doubt but that
it would eventuate in a most signal triumph.—(Hear,
hear.) And, however varied might be the opinions of
those who concurred with them in some points, and
differed from them in others; still it should be ad-
mitted that the League were not a political or party
body of men.—(Hear, hear.) They were not
a body of men who advocated one line of
argument to-day and another to-morrow, but they
were men who belonged to all phases of politics and all
classes of society.—(Hear,:hear.) The bond of their
union was based upon principles as solid and lasting
as those of the British Constitution, as enduring. as
time, and as certain of success as was the inviola-
bility of the maxim that " truth was omnipotent and
must prevail."—(Loud cheers.) The principles on
which the League was founded were as simple, yet
as true, as any proposition in science ; there was no-
thing in them calculated to entangle or embarrass
the most sincere and earnest mind. One of those
principles advocated the justice of the axiom that
the working people should sell in the dearest market,.
and buy in the cheapest—that they should assist
their neighbours—and that the exigencies of the
State should not be met exclusively from the earnings
of the working classes.—(Hear, hear.) These were
the principles of the League, and they were so
plain and explicit that nobody could deny their
truth, except some few who, in the mortification they
felt, declared that they took more to heart their own
cause than the cause of the people.—(Cheers.) Now,
on the other hand, some of the most eminent men of
the day had laid down as just, and had advocated as
inviolable, the principles he had enumerated.—(Hear,
hear.) A. gentleman from the United States, who
now sat near him, had put into his hand a document
which had just issued from the press in that country,
and which advocated the same cause that the League
did, with this difference only, that here in England
the farmers advocated the cause of the landed interest,
while in the United States they did the direct con •
trary.—(Hear, hear, and cheers.) One passage iu
this book put him in mind of the story of the fig-
growers in Columbia. In that country it was at one
time imagiued that the fig would grow there as luxu-
riously as in Turkey, provided that " some protection
should be given to native industry "—(Laughter)—
" and if it were, America would be found to be even-
tually the greatest fig-growing country in the world,
provided encouragement should be given to native in-
dustry in this particular, in order to enable certain
parties to cultivate the soil to such an extent as that
they could grow figs "—(Laughter)—or, in other
words, if a war should break out, in which America
should be compelled to act on the defensive, those
who laughed at her for attempting to grow, under
" protection, " that which belonged to their soils,
should say, "Oh, a fig for America."—(Laughter
and cheers.) However, there was some hope for the
future in the fact that there was to be no figgery in
England—(Laughter)--and if there was not, then
the only difference that existed in this respect be-
tween England and America was, that in the latter
country the people had declined the cultivation of a
luxury, while in England, a class had refused
an abundant supply, on fair terms, of one
of the first necessaries to human existence.—(Cheers.)
In fact, the principles on which the League was
based were as old as political economy itself, and,
therefore, the arguments in favour of the new doc-
trines of protection could not stand good against
them ; and, therefore, to deny their truth would be
to deny the truth of the political economy doctrine
(not that he should wonder at such art attempt, for
the hardihood with which such assertions were made
now-a-days was proverbial.)—(Laughter.) But, in
fact, the principles of the League were not only as old
as those of political economy, but bore a date coeval
with that of the first order of things, and were as true
in their object, and as harmonious in their organisa-

tion, as that system of the movement of the heavenly
bodies planned and directed by the Great Creator of
the Universe, who first harmonised the order of the
heavenly bodies—who had created the zones,
frigid and temperate who had given to
the enjoyment- of men those countries of
the Rhine and the Rhone, and their pro-
ducts of luxury and necessity, in order that men
should live to bless so beneficent a Providence.—
(Loud cheers.) The principles of the League were
those which advocated the advancement of free trade,
and therefore he hoped they would prevail.—
(Cheers.) But he should here allude to an article
he had seen in one of the London papers, in which a
hope was expressed that New York and other towns
of the United States would he bombarded, awl sug-
gesting a plan for such a proceeding.—(Cries of
" Oh, oh.") They were angry enough when the
hot-headed young Prince de Joinville thought that
Brighton might conveniently he bombarded. Messrs.
Peel and Polk had been talking like two blustering
boys about the Oregon territory. And what was
that territory that was talked of ? There were some
;350,000 square miles of it, of which we claimed a
barren 100,000. What were they worth ? What
was all that land worth, without man upon it, his
industry, and products ?—(Cheers.) Why, the
Oregon territory was a desert. It. was the Sahara
of America—the Botany Bay of the red man's
banishment. There ore (continued the Hon. Gentle-
man) now upon it some few hundreds of Indians
and half-castes connected with the Hudson's
Bay Company. There are a certain number
of squatters from the United States, and then
there are Indian tribes there, who rejoice in such
names as " Flat-head," " Slit-nose " awl " Pointed-
heart." The buffaloes are the lords of the soil, un-
less the game-laws of the Indians shall make it other-
wise. It is a territory of no value, and to quarrel
about this ? Why, you might just as well be in-
vited by Peel and Polk to fight about the mountains
in the moon.—(Laughter.) Let man have some-
thing to do with it—let those who can find no pro-
fitable home go there and use their labour in the
cultivation of the soil, and as the numbers increase,
and a stimulus is given to exertion, it will soon
become valuable, and when man has occupied it, when
industry has then driven its car of peaceful conquest
about the borders of that vast land—when towns have
risen, and cities with their thronging numbers—
when the Rocky Mountains are tunnelled, when rail
and canal have united the Atlantic and the Pacific,
when the waters of the Colombia swarm with steam-
boats, then will be the time to talk of the Oregon ter-
ritory ; and then, without a regiment or line-of-battle
ship, without bombarding any town whatever, free
trade will conquer the Oregon' territory for
us, and will conquer the United States
fur us, as far as it is desirable, either for us or
them, that there should be any conquest what-
ever?—(Loud cheers.) Free trade will establish
there all the insignia of conquest. The products of
that part will come here, and we shall send the re-
sults of our labour there in return, and there will
scarcely be a labourer that will not bear on his back,
to his very shirt, the livery of Manchester. The
knife with which he carves his game will have the
mark of Sheffield on the blade, as testimony of supre-
macy ; in every handkerchief which waves on the banks
of the Missouri will be waving the English banner of
Spitalfields.—(Cheers.) Why they will be con-
quered—for they will work for us, and what can the
conquered do more? They will grow corn for us,
and they will grind it and send us the flour for our
use. They will send us whatever they can produce,
and that we want, and there would be no necessity
for putting our hands in our pockets in order to pay
a governor who is for ever quarrelling with the re-
presentative of the people, or for soldiers to bayonet
the multitude.—(Cheers.) There is nothing on
earth worthier the name of empire than
this. It is a noble kind of dominion
—less degrading both for the one party and the
other, but less degrading than any sovereignty that
rules over men by armies. But it is not only from
nation to nation that the uniting influence of the
principle extends, but from class to class, where the
alienation is perhaps sometimes greater than amongst
those who dwell in the most remote latitudes. We
have very much need of the application of this
principle to this country, as may be seen in the ex-
perience of the last three years. Let there be two
or three bad harvests in succession, so as to send up
the price of corn to such a price as it attained some
years ago, and what becomes of the prosperity
of which there has been so much boast. It is for us
to look in time to the prevention of a recurrence of
those tremendous calamities which have already oc-
curred, and, in our prosperity, I confess that I see
reason, abundant reason on every hand for further
exertion to mitigate the amount of' wretchedness with
which that prosperity is likely to be attended. For
in this metropolis what is the condition—l will nut
say of hundreds only—but thousands and thousands ?
What is the state of the habitations of the poor ?
Nobody would live in a hovel that could hire a decent
house. I met, a short while since, with the report
of one of our religious societies—the City London
Mission—the Spitalfields Auxiliary of that mis-
sion's report, at the commencement of the
present year. The book, after alluding to the
illness of one of the missionaries, goes on to say that a
second missionary was shortly after seized with an
virulent attack of fever. Another of these cases oc -
curred from visitations, not from visiting a particular
infected room, but simply from continually inhaling
malaria in an undrained district. A third missionary
wss in a bad state of health, by which he could only
make his visitations at limited periods, as was the
case with the fifth and the sixth missionary, and the
seventh missionary, in Spitalfields, was entirely laid
up for a period of eight weeks. That illness oc-
curred in spite of every precaution which was taken,
for no missionary was received into the mission who
was not in the prime of life, and who could not show
that he was in a good state of health. Here, then,
is the plague that requires to be stayed.
I know that there are propositions for sanatory legis-
lation • but all the sanatory legislation in the world
will be useless if you do not mitigate the poverty
that is locked up in unwholesome situations. You
are only touching the outward symptoms of the dis-
ease, without improving the condition of the sufferers,
and you drive them into yet closer habitations.
You keep them in pestilential courts and corners,
and you give them no amendment to their condition.
The missionary who makes this report makes the fol-
lowing statement :—The extreme poverty and fre-
quent destitution of the Spitalfields population pre-
sents further difficulties in the way of their instruc-
tion ; for when the cravings of hunger are in-
flicting pain on the bodies of the people,
they are naturally indifferent to such matters. Very
many are familiar with these circumstances ; and
when the missionaries speak to them of religion,
while they are wanting bread, think that he is making
game of them. One missionary found, during the
severe weather of the last winter, a poor woman very
ill, without a particle of fire, with scarcely an article
of clothing to cover her person, and literally perish-
ing for want, and lie dared not direct her attention to
the Saviour, or the Bread of Life, until he had first
saved her from starving, by furnishing her with the
bread that perisheth.—(Hear, hear.) The case of
that woman is in a curious way, but most un-
consciously on the part of the writer of the
report, connected with the assertion that has been
repeatedly put forth by the advocates of the League.
How came the poor creature in such a condition, so
that to speak of religious matters under the common
simile of food was looked upon as a mockery ? The
rero:t then tells us that the woman was a widow,
aged 36, and was by trade a chair-bottomer and
lucifer-match maker. She had one child thirteen
years of age, and one married daughter. Her husband
died about twelve years since, leaving her with three
small children, one of whom shortly afterwards died.
For the first six years she comfortably supported her-
self and family by slop-making, but at the end of
that time wages were reduced, and eventually she
was thrown out of work and a distress for
rent followed; and for five weeks herself
and family had to sleep in a cupboard.
For six months previous to the report the utmost shed
had earned in one week amounted to 3s. 6d., and
sometimes it was only 2s. 6d., out of which she ad
to
no
pay
the date.
Forthe
ef.or
Trehnatt.
poor Roman
isl,emreageuelestst yohuerr
husbandattention
twelve
winter
eyfelaBrs447wo—hetnhatht
the missionary
isetie•nelevhrey
six years after that she supported erfs3iuelfanrdasnhfderrofmamily
the price of corn was J . Bd.,
The twelve years bring
psues backttohtehne y5e2aer.11813d2.: whenth
465. 2d., then 395. 4d., then 48s. 6d., and then
55a. 10d. That was for the firstsix years, when this poor
woman managed to maintain herself and family in com-
fort single-handed. But, says the missionary, wages
at the end of that time were very much reduced, and
then followed the distress for rent, the seizure of the beds
and the starvation that happened. In 1837 and 1838,
when the distress commenced, the price of wheat had
risen to 645. 7d. a quarter ; in 1839, 70s. Bd. ; in
1840, 665. 4d.; and in 1841, 645. 4d. There is the
lhiistytoirnyoonfe theca
sseu, ffe
andrin gt
hoe f
nt
ahbi pry
ri
in ot
hmea noT htehre—a tbhi e-
comfort of six years, and the misery of six years fol-
lowing. Well, there are men such as Sir R. Inglis,
who support similar societies to this I have referred,
who talk of cold-hearted and muddle-headed econo-
mists who go to the root of the evil under which this
poor woman laboured. They are cold-hearted and
muddle-headed because they do not look at the outward
system merely, because they do not take a superficial
view of the causes of the poverty and distress which
exist amongst the population of this metropolis, and
of the country at large. I cannot dismiss this report
without adverting to another case, and fur a very dif-
ferent reason, One of the missionaries relates the case
of a woman who had been out of work for some time;
the superintendent made an order that she should
have a shilling a week for six weeks, On her being
informed of this she expressed her thankfulness for the