The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-17 00:00:00

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LONDON :
SATCRO kY MORNING SEPTEMBER 17, 1842.

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Trade is a little improving in the manufactur-
ing districts; and where employment is to be
. bad the Turn-oUts are gradually but sulkily re-
turnivg to their work. Accounts received last
night .frook Lancashire, state that the cotton-
boot weavers in Blackburn and its vicinity, and
the hatters of Oldham, were in full employ-
, ment. We regret, however to learn that
at Ashton-under-Lyne, Staleylnidge, Hyde,
and Stockport, work is very slack, and
there is but little abatement of the bad
feeling on the part of the operatives against
their masters. Our hope at present is, that the
late news from the United States will revive our
sinking trade before the winter sets in, other-
wise the prospect before us would he indeed
dreadful. While the weather is fine, and the
people can subsist in the open air, upon the
smallest allowance of food, we may expect to
hear comparatively little of their sufferings. But
the case will be widely different when frost and
snow covers the ground, and when danger of
starvation by cold is added to the horrors of
hunger. In the mean time, the Government
appears to take the whole affair very coolly. It
does not seem as if Sir ROBERT PEEL thinks of
providing any remedy for an evil, which is
hourly growing more gigantic and more terrible.
As regards the operatives themselves, such of
them can get work are acting cruelly towards
their families, and very wrong as regArds their
masters, in not accepting the wages which the
latter tender to them, and returning to their
employment. By remaining idle, they dis-
hearten and impoverish their employers, and
ruin themselves. Wages must ever be regulated
by the demand for labour, and the profits of in-
dustry—not by combinations to regulate them by.
a fixed monetary standard.

Peace with all nations, but especially with the
people of the United States,. ought henceforth to
be the prevailing maxim in the political system
of England. There is no nation in the world
which can gain less, and which may peril more,
by war, than Great Britain. Fortunately at this
moment we are in a singularly favourable posi-
tion for giving more stability and vitality to the
pacific principle than during any period since the
close of the great European struggle which
closed the meteoric career of NAPOLEON. The war
.4Otion in France is rapidly decreasing both in
numbers and influence ; Spain is more than
friendly to us, because she knows that the British
/finance is. essential to her independence ; we are
on as good terms as we are ever likely to he with
Portugal ; Austria and Prussia regard us with
something bordering upon affection ; The Porte
fears and respects us ; and Russia knows that she
must lose more than she can gain in a contest
with the only rival whose hostility she really
dreads'. Then on the other side of the Atlantic
the mighty swarm from the parent hive is amain
heartily reconciled to us—ao• •
.alo acknowledges in
England the only parent worthy of so
ing a race. Whatever conflicts, therefore, Eng-
land in Asia may engage in, there can benodoubt that by proper management England in
Europe may avoid all hostile collisions with I
er
neighbours, and henceforth devote all her
ener-
gies to the extension of her trade, the improve-
ment alter arts and manufactures, and the bet-
ter government of her people. Peace and Trad.
Societies ought to be formed in all our large
town,.., and ,•verything done to e:evate the public
mild to a full compreliensi,m of the duties o!
Government. One of the great sources of popu-
lar error is the regardin4 Government as a sort
of abstraction—an intangible something which
controls everything without being itself con-
trolled by anything-. Now, there never was a
greater delusion. Remove the external form:,
the threl appearances, and there are few Go-
vernments in the world conducted upon prinei
pies so sound, so honest, or ever so recondite,
as those which govern the policy of a petty cor-
poration. The wheels within 'wheels arc often
clumsy contrivances;. and, what is more, they
arc frequently put in motion bythe most trifling
and oven accidental circuinslanoes; The Govern
ment of England is quite is iniicli a C;olieriimeat
of clerks as of statesmen; and though this pro.

duces a tolerable uniformity of system, that
system is not based upon any sound principle.
Now, every improvement in the system of the
Government is for the especial advantage of the
working classes. They constitute the foundation
of the social edifice. The weight of every burthen
finally rests upon them. If wars are carried on,
it is they must fight the battles of their
country, and whiten the Waterloos of
the world with their bones. Neither honours,
nor dignities, nor the spoils of conquered
provinces, are for them. All abuses,
all excesses, all crimes on the part of the Execu-
tive, are sure causes of increase of suffering and
privation to them, and of wealth and honour to
the aristocracy, and all connected with them.
On the other hand, a just and pacific Govern-
ment cannot exist without benefiting the great
mass of the people. Hence a policy of peace
must ever be, as regards the people, a sound
policy in an old country like England; and hence
our desire to see it now advocated as an article of
the national creed by the whole of the British
Press. The time for it is peculiarly favourable,
and we sincerely trust that advantage will be
taken of it by real Reformers of every creed
and party, to advance what all who reflect must
feel to be the real interests of the human race.

The middle classes are getting uneasy about
the Income-tax. Sir R. PEEL, as collector-
general of the obnoxious impost, is by no means
the favourite he used to be in the Tory coteries.
Even the Post no longer thinks him the clear-
headed methodical statesman that his friends
were in the habit of telling the world he was.
His taxation schedules are puzzles for the
cobweb brains of the most erudite black-
letter lawyers; and as to the merchants, they
are ready to die of absolute bewilderment. As
the lawyers are the last persons in the world to
profess ignorance of what they are expected to
understand, they are employed by everybody
who can afford a fee to fill up schedules.
In this way the Income-tax is the creator
of another tax, fully as obnoxious in it-
self. We are therefore not surprised to
hear a good deal of grumbling in all quarters,
with here and there the expression of a dogged
determination to resist it altogether. On the part
of persons engaged in trade the injury which it
will inflict is incalculable, and in that quarter we
are prepared for a general outcry as soon as the
Premier's army of collectors make their appear-
ance. The storm which is now brewing will
then burst in earnest. The late strike will be
nothing to it. PEEL'S puzzles, as we may deno-
minate the Income-tax papers, are now only
simply bewildering, but the case will be differ-
ent when they come to be practically unravelled.
The Income-tax is not a question of simple
taxation only. It is one of its great grievances
that it is also a question of national perplexity.
Nobody knows what to do about it, or in what
way to prove that he ought not to be affected by
it. Now, granting it was necessary to tax the
people, what possible branch of the public ser-
vice is benefited by puzzling and bewildering
them ? The Chinese and the Affghans will not he
conquered the sooner for JOHN BULL being in
such a quandary as not to know whether he
stands head or heels uppermost, while making a
compulsory confession of the value of all his
goods and chattels to the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer; and if they will not, why put him to
this mental torture, and exhibit him as a fool to
the whole world? It is worse than an injury—
it is an insult to the common sense of the middle
classes. They are saddled not only with
a most obnoxious, inquisitorial impost, but with
endless legal expenses, because the Government
chooses to employ boobies with no more brains
than bats to draw up income schedules.

Three members of the House of Represen-
tatives at 'Washington have addressed a letter to
the PRESIDENT of the United States, praying his
Excellency to solicit from the British Govern-
ment the liberation of upwards of a hundred
American citizens, now suffering in Van Diemen's
Land the penalties of joining in the rebellion in
Canada. To this letter the Secretary of State
has returned an answer to the effect that the
PRESIDENT will lose no time in complying there-
with, and that Mr. WEBSTER would himself
urge Lord ASHBURTON to press the subject upon
the consideration of the British Government.
Such an appeal we sincerely trust will not be
made in vain. The honour and independence of:
the British Government has been sufficiently
vindicated by the transportation of these prisoners
to a British penal colony. For the purposes
of example no good can be gained by a further
prolongation of their punishment ; whereas their
liberation at the present moment will be appre-
ciated as a national compliment by every State
in the Union. We can afford to spare a few
rogues, and not be thought a jot too merciful
either. By all means, therefore, let them be
given up as soon as their liberation is prayed
for by the Federal Government. Should they
find their way back to the neighbourhood of
Navy Island they will be in no humour for join-
ing another invading expedition. On the con-
trary, their experience of the unpleasant conse-
quences of rebellion will be profitably taught to
their quondam sympathising associates.