The Sun.
London, England, 1842-05-24 00:00:00

THE SUN, LON

stances, they might have some advantage, either in the
home or in the foreign market, is what in both cases
would evidently be most to their advantage. To lay a
new tax upon them because they are already overburdened
with taxes, an*because they already pay too dear for
_the
necessaries of life, to make them likewise pay too dear fur
the greater part of other commodities, is certainly a most
absurd way of making amends. Such taxes, when they
have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to
the barrenness of the earth and the inclemency of the
Heavens, and yet it is in the richest and most industrious
of countries that they have been most generally imposed.
No other countries could support so great a disorder. As
the strongest bodies can only live and enjoy health under
an unwholesome regimen, so the nations only, that in
every sort of industry have the greatest natural and au-
quired advantages, can subsist and prosper under such
taxes. Holland is the country in Europe in which they
abound most, and which, from peculiar circumstances,
continues to prosper, not by means of these, as has been
most absurdly supposed, but in spite of them.
England, as we have just shown by the compari-
son, has, since Dr. SMITH'S time, taken the lead of
Holland in this ruinous career, and now far surpasses
it in the amount of taxes levied on the people. In'
spite, however, of the warnings and admonitions of
Dr. SMITH, Sir ROBERT PEEL is pursuing his dis-
tempered course of adding to the national burdens,
mocking us with a pretended relief, while the cause
of our distress is excessive taxation. We may, like
other criminals, flatter ourselves that we shall always
escape, but the whole course of human experience
proves that this is a delusion, and that punishment of
an appropriate kind as assuredly waits on the folly and
the guilt of nations and individuals as water flows
from a higher to a lower level. When we read pas-
sages like that we have quoted from the great teacher
of the best social science, pregnant with wisdom, and
know that he never hesitated to denounce legislative
meddling with "the employment of stock and indus-
try in the way the people judge most advantageous to
themselves, as a manifest violation of the most sacred
rights of mankind," we can but mourn over the
degradation of this noble science in the hands
of those who seem to us to have undertaken
to expound without comprehending it. Satur's
science never formed, perhaps, a part of the
popular knowledge—it never was really in-
grafted into the hearts of the people, and became part
of their being, and we cannot on that account believe
that society has retrograded concerning it. On the
contrary, society has made on this point prodigious
advances, and whatever may be the case with the
Legislature, has gone ahead even of Dr. SMITH. At
the same time, it is apparent that the strict verbal
logic of MILL, the arithmetical precision and pro-
portions of RICARDO, and the mere statistics of Mr.
M'CULLOCII have degraded the noble social science,
to which SMITH, be it remarked, gave a more signifi-
cant name than political economy, to the level of their
own much humbler pursuits. He is a contemplative
philosopher who essays, however short coming may
be his efforts, to grasp the whole phenomena of sta-
ciety, and detect the natural laws which determine its
progress and its welfare ; they are engaged with a
pedantic verbal logic, which never gets beyond its
assumptions, with the calculations of a loan contractor,
who can see nothing but a balance of profit and loss,
and with masses of details, which bury the under-
standing under a load of profitable books. In his
hands, therefore, the science, of national wealth was a
guide to nations ; in theirs, it seems degraded into the
handmaid of political tricksters, and would-be despots.

We regret to see by letters from Hamburgh, that
her MAJESTY'S subscription for that devoted city,
which is strictly a personal subscription, and comes
from her privy purse, is spoken of slightingly and dis-
paragingly. It is compared to the more magnificent
Subscription of the Emperor of RUSSIA of 9,0001., and
regarded, therefore, as unworthy of England's
QUEEN. We must remind the inhabitants of Ham-
burgh that the Emperor of RUSSIA'S gift is as the
head of the Government, that of her MAJESTY is a
gift from a private person. The British Government
can give nothing but by a vote of Parliament, and,
in the present condition of our own .people,
that is not to be recommended. The EMPEROR neeC.:l
no such sanction. The great distinction, therefor::,
between the two sums is that the 9,0001. sent by the
Russian EMPEROR is the',gift of the Government of
Russia—her MAJESTY'S gift is that of a private, but
enalted, person.
Let us further observe, • that Russia will probabiy.
not contribute much more by its merchants 17.n,1
citizens, while England -has already subscribes not
less CIL:, twenty thous-and pounds, and probably
double, or p.:::rhapsfiye times that amount will he
collected. We trust that by thee- fevrtemarits
have placed her MAJESTY'S subscription, as compared
to that of the Emperor of RUSSIA, in a proper light
before the citizens of Hamburgh. Her MAJESTY, in-
' stead of disapprobation, deServes great praise for her
prompt and spontaneous contribution.

However dark the doings, under the illegal operation
of.' the truck system, which Mr. FERRAND'S Committce
may bring to light, they will not tell stronger agair.3t
the manufacturers that the Report of the Commissiono:s
of Inquiry, as to the condition of the poor people in the
mining districts, does against the great landed aristocracy.
The very opening of this huge record of aristocratical oI:-
pression is enough to make any man shudder whose
heart avarice or dissipation has not ossikied.

_ .
which way we may, there is not a ray of hope to comfoi.t
us in wading throught this terrific folio. We find old
young, married and single, male and female, indifZerently
in these districts,—without education, without religion,
without morals, without even a knowledge of the exist-
ence of GOD, or a belief in a future state, toiling like
beasts, and revelling every leisure hour -in the grossest
sensuality. While tls_e children of Lord LONDONDE3aY
and Lord LONSDALE have troops of menials to wait u9on
and carets them, while they are provided with horses
exercise and amusement, and the ornaments of the Un:
versities for their instruction, mark how the child
of the poor collier upon their estates is " dragged"
up to a precocious manhood. What say the aglicultural

abhorrers of manufacturing tyranny to the followinf;
graphic description of the life of the little " Trapper,"
which vie extract from Dr. MITCHELL'S Report ? The
child has been three years tit ork, be it remembered,
for his father cerried him to the mine at five years old.—
The little trapper of eight years of age lies quiet in bed.
The labours of the preceding day had procured sleep. It is
now between two and three in the morning, and his mother
shakes him, and desires him to rise, and tells him that
his father has an hour ago gone off to the pit.
Instant he starts into conscious existence. He turns
on his side, rubs his eyes, and gets up, and comes to
the blazing fire, and puts on bis clothes. His coffee,
such as it is, stands by the side of the fire, and bread is laid
down for hies. The fortnight is now welladvanced, themoney
all spent, and butter, bacon, and other luxurious accompani-
ments of bread are net to be bad at breakfast
till next pay-day supplies the' means. He *en fills his
tin bottle with coffee, ant takei a lump of bread, and sets
out for the pit, into which he goes down in the cage,
and walking along the horsewty for upwards of a mile, he
reaches thebarrow-way, over whinh the young men and boys
push the trams with the tubs on rails to the fiats, where the
barrow-way and horse-way meet, and where the tubs are
transferred to rolleys, or caxriagesdrawn by horses. He
knows his place of work. It is inside one of the doors
called trap-doors, which is in the barrow-way, for
the purpose of forcing the stream of air, which
passes in its long, many-wiled course from the down shaft
to the up-shaft of the pit ; but which door must be opened
whenever men or boys, with or without carriages, may wish to
pass through. He seats himself in a little hole, about the
size of a common fire-place, and with the string in his hand ;
and all his work is to pull that string when he has to open
the door, , and when man or boy has passed through,
then to allow_ the door to shut of itself. Here it
it is his duty to sit, and be attentive, and pull his
string promptly as any one approaches. He may not stir above
a dozen steps with safety from his charge, lest he should he
found neglecting his duty, and suffer for the same. He sits
solitary by himself, and has no one to talk to him ; for in the
pit the whole of the people, men and boys, are as busy as if
they were in a sea-fight. He, however, sees every
now and then the putters urging forward their
trams through his gate, and derives some consolation
from the glimmer of the little candle of about forty to
the pound, which is fixed on their trams. For he himself
has no light. His hours, except at such times. are passed
in total darkness. For the first week of his service in
the pit his father had allowed him candles to light one
after another, but the expense of three halfpence a-day
was so extravagant an expenditure o
ut of tenpence, the
boy's daily wages, that his father. of course, withdrew
the allowance the second week, all except , one or two candles
him, seated
in darkness in the morning, and the week after the 'mance was alto-
gether taken away ; and now, except a neighbour kinder than
his father now and then drop him a candle as he passes,
the boy has no light of his own.
hours own. Thus hour after
hour passes i
anw-ay,
nothing of the ascending or descending sun. Hunger,
however, though silent and unseen, acts upon him, aandbe-
ale butbnwe whatls
nf arethe Frasrthto?
He
knows
he
be-
takes to his bottle of coffee and slice of bread ; and, if desirous,
he may have the luxury of softening it in a portion of the water
in the pit, which is brought for man and beast. In this state
of sepulchral existence an insidious enemy gains upon him.
His eyes are shut, and his ears fail to announce the approach of
a tram. A deputy overman comes along, and a smart cut of his
yard-wand at once punishes the culprit, and recalls him to his
duty ; and happy was it for him that' he fell into the hands of
:he deputy overman, rather than one of the putters : for hisfist would have inflicted a severer pain. The deputy overman,
moreover, consoles him by telling him it was for his
good that he had punished him ; and reminds him of
boys, well known to both, who, when asleep, had
fallen down, and some had been severely wounded,
and others killed. The little trapper believes that he is to
blame, and makes no complaint, for he dreads being dis-
' charged; and he knows that his discharge would be attended
with the loss of wages, and bring' upon- him the intligea-
I lion of his father, more terrible to endure than the mo-
t mentary vengeance of the deputy and the putters all