The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-22 00:00:00

years, in several of which the harvests were re-
markably deficient, the average price of wheat
was 595. per quarter. In the eighteen weeks of
I Peel policy the average price is 625. ld. per quarter.
And in these weeks of suffering, so extended as
to be properly called national, the amount of
direct bread-tax, levied under Sir Robert Peel's
Bill, has been very nearly one-fourth of the total
amount of duty collected during the last fourteen
years.- And thus it is that the poor are provided
for, when in point of starvation,- by the " happy
novelty " of Peel policy. These are amongst
the "singularly satisfactory results" which have
already occurred, and which so delight the heart
of the Quarterly Reviewer. We shall speedily
resume our analysis of his panegyric.
HERALD.—The Chronicle yesterday por-
tentously announced that a treaty was upon the
point of being concluded with Hanover, by which
the Stade duties were to be increased. Admit-
ting such is the fact, what does it amount to ?
That class interests will suffer slightly, where
general interests are advantaged. In lieu of an
arbitrary tax upon property, according to the in-
terpretation
of the imposer, we are to have now
an ad valorem duty of one-eighth per cent. upon
all articles of merchandise. We are firmly per-
suaded that a public benefit will accrue thereby,
instead of the '" flagrant wrong" threatened by
the Chronicle; and, as regards the revenue of
the King of Hanover, we question if it will be
affected in the slightest degree by the change.
Whatever may have been the substance of Lord
Palmerston's speech at the close of the session,
respecting this dreaded "concession," the quasi
merit of its discovery was at any rate not his.
His Lordship was not even the pump-handle of
the question, but simply the spout. The well
was dug by his protege, the .late Commissioner
Ward, and however brackish the water, it be-
hoved Lord Palmerston to discharge it. When
the subject of the Stade duties was first discussed
the then Minister far Foreign Affairs had never
even heard of the Castle o Brunshausen, and
his only resource was to send somebody into the
north to try and learn something about it.
With the information thus hastily obtained and
crudely digested Lord Palmerston began to di-
plomatise. Luckily we have been -spared the
result.

ADVERTISER.—We learn • from private
sources of information that the farmers are in a
state of the utmost consternation. They are
haunted with the fear that before Christmas the
price of wheat will be as low as forty-five shil-
lings per quarter ; iu which case, with their pre-
sent high rents, they see nothing before them
but inevitable and irremediable ruin. Their
apprehensions, we have no doubt, are well-
founded. They persisted in clamouring for a ,
sliding-scale in preference to afixed duty, and '
the operation of that scale has, conjointly with
the excellent and ample harvest, produced a
state of things which they are led
.to regard as
the necessary prelude to. their .ruin. Let us not
be misunderstood. We do not mean to say that
with the eight shillings fixed diity, proposed by
the Melbourne Ministry, there would not, with
such a harvest as the present, .be . as great a fall
in prices as that to which we have referred as
likely to take place before Christmas; but we
mean to maintain—and no advocate of the.
landed interest will venture to gainsay our
position—that if a moderate fixed duty
had been substituted for the sliding-scale,
the landlords would have . been compelled,
as a measure of prudence for themselves, to
have made a material reduction in the rents
of their tenants, in which case the fall in
prices would have been in a great measure, if not 1
wholly, counterbalanced. AS it is prices fall
with a vengeance; but the tenants must continue
to pay—that is to say, if they can—the same
rents as when prices were thirty or forty per
cent. higher. Hence the effects of a fall in prices
flit! solely on the farmers; the.landed oligarchy,
whose vassab; they are, have ingeniously con-
trived, by means of the sliding-scale jugglery,
to escape the consequences of reduced prices
altogether. We are gratified to learn that the
Anti-Corn-law League are not inactive specta-
tors of the present state of, things among the
farmers. They are about to send Anti-Corn-law
lecturers into the agricultural districts. The step
is a wise one, and the time selected singularly
seasonable. The lecturers will proselyte the
farmers to the principle of Corn-law abolition in
thousands. There are whiSpers of an intention
on the part of the landed interest to interdict the
entrance of Corn-law lecturers among the farmers:
Let them make the attempt if they are so dis-
posed. We shall then see whether the Consti-
tution of England or a mere handful of oligar-
chists he the victorious party in the contest.
POST.—We are told that the only means of
restoring and insuring happiness to the people of
England is to keep the great factory establish-
ineuts in full activity—to increase the proportion
of the whole population which is dependent for
subsistence on the operations of these establish-
ments—and if, waiving for a moment the discus-
sion on the merits of the system, we ask how
this factory predominance is to be achieved, the
answer is, by making the people consume foreign
instead of home grown corn. The general or
exclusive consumption of foreign Wheat is said to
be the sure method to maks our manufacturers
as flourishing as the most ambitious of them
could wish to be. So argue the section of poll-
ticians who profess to be the Most philosophic,
the most enlightened, the most liberal. They
say to us give up growing food for yourselves— •
throw yourselves on foreign countries for a sup-
ply—and foreigners, in return, will take and pay
for as much of your cotton, silken, and woollen
goods as you can make up for them. But it is
indispensable that you depend on them for
bread. Without this manufacturing pros-
perity is an impossible dream.
_While England
continues a self-supporting nation—whileEnglish-
melt persist in eating their own bread—the ma-
nufacturing interests never will, and never can,
be in any other than a depressed and ruinous condi-
tion. Foreign corn and factory prosperity mean one
and the same thing—they are inseparable, iden-
tical, and one cannot,, exist without the other.
This is a convenient way of solving the problem
'of national polity. Unfortunately, however, it
will not bear the test of one moment's thought
and inquiry. Experience dyes not confirm the
theory—it contradicts and disproVes it. Take a
period in which the manufacturers were on-
fessedly prosperous—the years, for imitative, be-
tween 1832 and 1836. To these years the oppo-
nents of the Corn-laws are In the habit of refer-
ring as to a period when the millowning interests
were in a state of high prosperity. . Never were
there so many factories open i never so many
workpeople employed in them, Never were
larger fortunes made by those whose only notices
of duty are concentrated in the pursuit of money-
makine.. But in these halcyPa days of factory
extension what was the extent of corn importa-
tion ? A mere cipher. No foreign wheat was
admitted. We were consuming time produce of
our own fields, and yet the factory masters throve
and fattened. They grow in wealth and power;
they found markets for their goods abroad,
though not on the termsof taking wheat in return.