The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-29 00:00:00

PUBLIC OPINION.

I We find the following in the Chronicle:—" It is
tolerably clear that the great Tory landowners have
been applying the screw to Sir Robert Peel. The
time is fast approaching when it will be known
u hether he will be allowed to consult the welfare of
the country, or whether he will renounce the 'princi-
ples he professed last session, and become the passive
instrument of a short-sighted and mistaken avarice.
We say short-sighted avarice, for on what can agri-
culturists depend for prices but the ability of con-
sumers. If the returns from foreign trade fall off, the
manufacturers have less with which they can go to the
market for food, and prices must come down. Prices
were high during the war, because the manufacturing
population received high wages, and rapidly increased
in numbers. There was no hindrance to importation,
for the duty was nominal, but prices remained high
here, because the people were able to pay them. had
the scarcity, which continued for some years after the
beginning of the revolutionary war, occurred during
a period of unprosperous trade, a great part of the
population must have been fed as paupers." '
In reference to the state of affairs in Spain, the
Times observes :—" Itis the first wish of t 4 Brtish
Government to see the- whole policy of the Spanish
Cabinet continue to bs conducted on those fixed prin-
ciples of international truth and justice which can
alone maintain its moral dignity and establish . its
claim to the whole support .of Europe. England
ceases not to express her readiness to afford to the
fullest extent all the support which she has already
given to Spain in various former eMergencies to that
support site attaches but one condition—namely, that
Spain will act on principles which England may her-
self avow. She espouseS the cause of Spain, not for
the purpose of establishing British influence in the
Peninsula, still less for that of offering a captious and
irritable resistance to the supposed designs of France,
but with 'the hope that her alliance may tend to check
unwise councils at home, and to ward off aggressions
from. abroad. With these views, the present Go-.
vernment of this country has nothing to fear from a
comparison with those who make their artificial en-
thusiasm for Spain the cloak of their own political
passions, and who have even stooped to the propaga-
tion of statements as false as the• imputations they
profess to draw from them."

The Herald thus alludes to Lord Manners's late
Puseyite pamphlet :—" It is pleasant and gladsome to
have the attention diverted from the squabbles of
party politics, controversies about tariffs and customs
duties, disquisitions on cheapness, and discussions on
pauperism, to the consideration of happier and more
joyous means of national improvement which are to
be found in the observance of those holidays which
our forefathers rejoiced to keep, and in the restoration
of those sports and pastimes for which England was
once so famous. Lord John Manners has caused this
diversion, by his agreeable little essay, entitled e A
Plea for National Holidays,' reprinted in Monday's
Herald, and we thank him for it. If Lord John be
a Puseyite, his Puseyism has taken a very delightful
turn ; and the realisation of his object would again
make the Church of England the church of the poor.
For just as Puritanism, Calvinism, and democracy
have soured the temper, injured the manners, and
deadened the kindliness of Englishmen, have the
happiness of the people the brotherhood of all classes,
the generous and confiding connection and dependence
between employed and employer, and, above all, the
affectionate regard between the priesthood and the
people, declined. If Puseyism will aim at the revi-
vification of old English social feelings, respectful
loyalty, and veneration, every sound• thinking and
right Judging man in England will willingly accept
the appellation of l'useyite."
The Advertiser has the following remarks on the
working of the new Insolvent Act :—" It is highly
expedient that the creditor shall enjoy the best means
of obtaining the payment of his just demands, which,
in other terms, may be stated to be the recovery of
his own property. The present law, while it affects
to facilitate this object, causes the dissipation of the
debtor's substance in unnecessary expenses preparatory
to going into the Court; and in his subsistence while
prevented from pursuing that business by which alone
the debt could be paid. In addition to this positive
loss for the profit of a third party, unconnected with
the principal transaction, that is, the attorneys, the
creditor, in above nine cases out of ten, has to pay the
costs of the action and arrest. It is not possible to
conceive anything more iniquitous, that is at the same
time so ridiculous, as this procedure for the recovery
of debt. The law is so far inefficient, considered as
a measure for obtaining justice in the recovery of pro-
perty from a man who declares himself insolvent,
that the dividends declared from this source do not
amount in the average to one farthing in the pound. The
creditor, therefore, obtains nothing; but in order to
place the debtor in a state of imprisonment, he is
obliged to undertake a process at law, of which
the expenses fall upon himself, and add to the original
loss. At the same time the debtor, in order to pro-
cure his release, is obliged to expend money on the
third unconnected party, which, with the charges of
his subsistence in a state of inactivity, might have
gone toward liquidating the debt. The powers of the
Commissioners of the Insolvent Court are contrary to
the Constitution of the country, and detrimental to
the interests of both debtor and creditor. By com-
mitting the decision of cases to these persons, both are
deprived of the benefit of the trial by Jury, under tho
direction of a competent and independent Judge ;
while the law which regulates bail, inflicts a term of
imprisonment considered unnecessary in criminal
eases, the adjudication of which is of greater import-
ance to the community than civil transactions. It
places the debtor in a worse situation than a criminal,
and by its absurd requisitions as to the kind of bail
to be accepted, has, the ekct, in very numerous in-
stances, of preventing debtors from pursuing their
occupations, from the success of which the creditors
might entertain hopes of recovering the whole or a
portion of the property sunk in the debt. This is the
only fjoUrt in Europe in which property is not
deemed a sufficient representative of property, and in
which the recovery of the value of a thing lost is pre-
vented by the refusal of its equivalent in favour of a
doubtful pledge of appearance. These are but a few
of the arguments which have been urged at different
times for a revision of the laws of debtor and creditor;
but any one of them is sufficient to cause a man to
admire, at the. force of that professional prejudice
which maintains that a system disfigured by iniquity
and monstrous folly, is well enough, and requires no
correction. A fellow-feeling for the only party who
benefit by the plunder of both debtor and creditor,
may reconcile some men to toleratq any species of
abuse; but if we may judge from the sympathy ex-
pressed for poor prisoners in.general, an expectation
prevails that Lord Cottenham's promised motion for
the abolition of arrest for debt should receive Pal-Ha-