The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-05 00:00:00

entire new branch of business, and their wages,
till the year 1837, were comparatively high.
Latterly, the wages of power-loom spinners have I
declined, but forty years ago tlieirart was scarcely
known, and, till a recent period, their wages were
nearly double the amount obtained by any ordi-
nary unskilled manual labour which was pre-
viously in existence. The case is the same with
engineers, gas-fitters, machinists, and a whole tribe
of new artisans, who, till the decline of trade, in
1837, were much, and still are, somewhat better
paid than any artisans previously in existence.
In such trades as shipwrights, house-carpenters,
bricklayers, tailors, sail-makers, shoe-makers,
printers, and seamen, the rates of wages are as
it were fixed at so much per day, or month, and
has not, we believe, been lowered for many years.
_ _

At the same time, the price of nearly all kinds
of consumable commodities, even of bread, in
spite of the landlord's terrible monopoly, has
sunk since ISIS, so that, comparing the rate of
wages with prices, it has rather risen than de-
clined. The individuals of the trades may not
get full employment ; they may be, and are just
now, many of them, out of work, but the rate of
payment, when they get employment, remains
much the same.

To all these classes must be added the shop-
keepers and master-manufacturers, whose wages,
as is evident from the fortunes they have made,
have increased enormously during the last forty
years. In conjunction with the improvement in
their condition, and in the condition of various
classes of artisans, the previous condition not only
of the English agricultural labourer, sup•
ported as a pauper forty years ago in
many counties out of the rates, but of
the . Irish agricultural labourer, who has
come,within these forty years freely: into com.;
petition with the English labourer, must be
retnebibered. Looking at all these'circumstances,
verified by statistical data, we have,
no heSitiatiOn in saying that the rate of wages,
as a whole—and not taking only the wages of
agricultural labourers and hand loom weavers—
has increased as well as the amount. A sad and
disgraceful thing it would be for the Government
were it not so. The incomes of the landlords, of
the clergy, of all the officers 'of State, have been
much increased, and, severely as the present
condition of the labouring classes condemns the
Government, it would have been ten times
more to be condemned if all their vast skill and
exertions had in nowise tended to improve their
own condition.

We hold the assertion of our Contemporaries,
therefore, to be quite untrue, both as regards the
amount and the rate of wages. But both the
rate and the amount, it must be remarked, have
been raised and kept up only by those successive
improvements in machinery and successive
discoveries, which have called the new and well-
paid arts into existence. The poor, wretched,
unfbrtunate agricultural labourers and hand-
loom weavers, are as bad off as possible, and the
only means by which their condition has been
at any time improved, or can be improved, is
to draft off the hands from those employments
into the new employments which science, art,

and enterprise, continually introduce. For
them to be successful they require to be free,
and to give new employment to the people it is
necessary that the law-maker remove all his
shackles from trade.

The journals of the manufacturing districts so
abound with accounts of meetings to promote
the repeal of the Corn-laws, that it is impossible
for us to notice all of them, much less insert the
reports. There have been, for example, nume-
rous and enthusiastic meetings at Huddersfield,
Halifax, and Kendal. Meetings are in progress
at Glasgow and Leeds. It is especially refreshing
also to notice, that while the zeal of the League
and its friends redoubles, the country gentlemen
are in various places declaring that the tenants
can only obtain remunerating prices by the town
population being able to purchase agricultural
produce. They are sensible that the introduction
of foreign produce under the tariff has had little
or no effect on prices, and some of them, as Mr.
ViriirrsronE, M.P. for Bridgenorth, has taken
pains to prove that to the conviction of the
farther. In general, they are fast adopting Sir
ROBERT PEEL'S dictum, that manufactures and
commerce must flourish in order that agriculture
may prosper. From the general spirit evinced;
we are sure that the Parliament will next assem-
ble under very different feelings from those enter-
tained last session; and that the country gentlemen
will be favourably inclined towards free trade, if
they be not ready to grant all which the League
demands.
From the reduction of prices, the fall of rent,
and the increase of pauperism, the country gen-
tlemen begin to see and feel that they have little
chance of preserving their property unless they
can restore the prosperity of the country. The
m ode in which the distress in the manufacturing
din riots comes home to their pockets—the only
mesans, apparently, of making them feel—was
well described by Mr. C. WOOD, at the Halifax
meeting, on Tuesday last, and we shall quote his
remarks to show the country gentlemen that the
invasion of paupers from the 'manufcturing
.dis-
tricts, with which th ey were long ago threatened
by Mr. COBDEN, has actually taken place :
Those (said Mr. Wood) who, like himself, lived in
those parts of the country less rensote from the seats
of manufacture, were much more sensible of the evils
the Corn-laws entailed upon them than those who resided
in more distant parts. But he was glad :mf having this
sipportunity of saying to that assembly thot the agri-
csilturists were beginning to see that t:seir inte-
rests were inseparable from those of the nsanufac-
turing community.—(Hear, hear.) That which
ope_mtQd prejudicially upon the manufacturers,
Would; before long, tell most perniciously upon the
agriculturists.—(Cheers.) The distress among the
labouring population of the manufacturing districts
was extenaing in no slight degree to the agr:culturaf
districts, arul directly in consequence of the distressof the forineg- class. Ile sat weekly at the Boa." 1-1 of
sGoumaerdtihaiirtis3,a, torDiobnrctyasmteril,eas
fpruortnelynaagliif-aicxti.ltulrvalhdyisltvlctt,
man happened
wwas the
every day?
inquiry- ay
AHecraespe replies,
came. I
aliVn hao
spinner,
n_t
ehri:-
from the neighbourhood of Ilusdtdoeprpsefidel;di?n',
~WlThat
have you come for ?" he is next interrogated.
children,hy
the mill which I worked at has
myself, and wife are thrown out of employment, and
we are driven back to our own native parish to be
maintained by you farmers of the parish."--(gear.
The next case came. `r Who are you ?" inquires the
Board. "lath a slithberfrom Leeds; the mill has stopped
or begun to work shOrt time, inconsequence of which I
have been tart of employment for the last two months,
as long as I possibly
caonudl
dh.av
ea:en tiai as
:0d
hthopyefafoinritlYiSin Leeds now, as far
as we could make out, and I am come here to my
parish for relief."—(Applause.) This was not a case
which occurred once .a week, but twice, thrice, and
four or five times a day.—(Hear' hear.) Thus were
the agriculturists suffering directly from the distress
of the manufacturing population.7—(Hear, hear.) How
were they in the agricultural districts to be relieved
from this pressure ?—(Hear, hear.) What were
they to do with the manufacturing labourers ?
They might understand the gear of a mill, but
they might understand nothing about the gear
of the spade and the harrow, and might be
utterly useless at the tail of the plough.—(Hear,
hear, and laughter.) Nothing could relieve the
agriculturists from this pressure but improvement in
the trade of the manufacturing districts.—(Applause.)
And he must say, that he looked to improvement in
trade, not as the best, but as the only means of re-
lieving the agriculturists from depression. But what
'was the price of agricultural produce at this moment?
Everybody knew that the price of stock and corn was
lower than it had been for years. Was anybody so
weak as to attribute it to the importation of corn and
cattle under the new tariff? Did anybody suppose
that the introduction of 1,500 or 2,000 head of
foreign, and very inferior cattle, had produced the
reduction in the price of meat ?—(Hear, hear.) Why
the farmers themselves did not now believe that the
induction of this miserable cattle had clone it.
Mr. C. Wools, let us add, is for a total repeal
of the Food-laws, and for an immediate repeal,
if that can,be obtained with the assent of the
landowners. That is a condition always Contem-
plated by the League. To this end, it sends
about lecturers and publishes tracts. It has
never aimed at compelling, but always at con-
vincing, time landowners; but, as it knows that
when their own interest is concerned, they are
rather a stolid and stubborn race, the League has
endeavoured, by arousing and enlightening the
people at large, also to work on -their fears.
Circumstances have aided (the League, or rather

- -
justified its doctrines and foresight, and have en-