The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-09 00:00:00

\Ott

LONDON :
FRIDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 9, 1842.

The Essex Herald compliments us by saying
that our attempt to persuade the farmers, in re-
fixence to its statement of pauperism being on the
increase, that the Corn-laws were the causes of
their distress, was " adroitly and skilfully made."
That journal is, however, more complimentary
than correct. It required no great degree of skill
or adroitness to connect the present condition,
both of farmers and labourers, with laws which
obviously destroy the increase and the prosperity
of their best and richest customers. We cannot
repay the compliment by saying that the Essex
Herald has shown adroitness and skill in its
attempt to prove that those laws have not caused
the present lamentable condition of both farmer
and labourer; it has only displayed great igno-
rance or very bad faith.

What can the public think of a journalist who
asserts " that the last harvest was below the ge-
neral average, and below the average (harvest
Qy.) of 1841," in order to throw the blame of
the present condition of the agriculturists on Sir
ROBERT PEEL'S puny alteration of the sliding
scale ? We must refuse to credit any public
statements if the produce of the wheat-lands
throughout England and Scotland in 1842,
taking both quantity and quality into considera-
tion, was not nearly one-third better than the
hiirvest of 1841, and than the average of the
harvests since 1838 inclusive. Why, the whole
empire, both in Parliament and out of Parlia-
ment—aye, even the pulpits—have resounded
with praise of the harvest of 1842 and for a
journalist now to make a contrary
-assertion for
as obvious purpose, is more a proof of reckless-
ness than of ignorance.
If the harvest were not, as we described it, a
decent one, what reduced the price of wheat ?
Not Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Bill, for under it the
necessary supply of wheat has been introduced
at a duty of Bs., which under the old law was
generally introduced at Is. What has ruined
ale speculators in grain, but the unexpected,

early, and good Larvest? They strove all in their
power to keep up prices; they kept their corn
out of the market as long as possible, and
scarcely a grain was introduced till the markets
were rising. But when it was ascertained that
our own produce was larger than usual—when
prices, in consequence, could not be forced up—
when they had begun sensibly to fall, then the
importers introduced the foreign wheat at a
much higher duty than it was ever before
necessary to pay on the hulk of the foreign
supply. It seems to us that the ruin of the specu-
lators in foreign grain, and the fall of price be-
fore their wheat had passed the Custom-house,
fully demonstrates that the common reports of
the harvest were correct, and coufirm the opinion
we have expressed of our opponent.
We believe the harvest was not even decent
on the clay lands of Essex, the farmers of which
had to bear all the expense of a costly system
of cultivation and high rents, while they could not
secure themselves from the competition of the
farmers of other parts of the country, whose crops
were excellent. But while they are grumbling
at their short crop, the farmers of Haddington
are rejoicing, according to Mr. GEORGE HOPE,
the author of a prize essay published by the
League, " in a most abundant crop of the finest
quality." The present laws subject the

tenants to certain outlays, while the harvest is
always a contingency. Those whose crops suc-
ceed are, at the best of times, barely remune-
rated, while those whose crops fail are utterly
ruined. The Essex farmers promised rent for
the present year, and were at an expense of cul-
tivating the land, tantamount to wheat being 60s.
per quarter; it has fallen below 505., their crop
is short, the law did not destroy the harvest of
the farmers in the north, nor keep it out of the
market, and the Essex farmers are nearly ruined.
The law, by increasing the expense of cultiva-
tion and raising rents all over the country, while
it cannot secure equal crops for every farmer,
was and is the cause of the distress of the Essex
farmers, which makes them dismiss their la-
bourers.

We need not add one word to remind our
readers that those laws, by destroying the pro-
perty of the manufacturing classes, have made
even a short harvest abundant, in relation to
their means of purchase, and have caused
that fall in price which is felt as an injury to
both farmers and agricultural labourers. Neither
do we require to notice the statement that the

present distress is caused by a partial abandon-
ment of the system of protection, for the decay
of the agriculturists far exceeds the amount
of that abandonment, and began before that could
have had any effect. The whole mischief has
been caused, as Mr. GREG has shown in a pam-
phlet published by the League, by the Corn-laws
inducing the Elmer to promise rents and incur
expenses, which the price of wheat, except in
years of scarcity, will not enable him to pay.

The Bengal Hurharu of October 11, says,
hat the official reports of the deposition of the
Hill Coolies returned from the Mauritius de-
clare that some Coolies say they would rather
break stones than work in the cane plantations;
others complain of
.being cruelly treated by the
overseers, of having been beaten, imprisoned,
and deprived of their rations for the most trifling
offences. It adds that not one in a hundred
have returned to Bengal. The Mauritius, it is
concluded, is very fitr from being the Coolie
Eldorado described by interested persons. This
statement is of considerable importance, both in
relation to our duties un sugar, which are con-
structed to give a heavy bounty on the so-called
pee Coolie labour in the Mauritius, and depress
the slave labour of the Brazils—a subject which
will again be agitated when Parliament assem-
bles; and in relation to Lord STANLEY'S notable
scheme to tax the labourers of the Mauritius to
import Hill Coolies in order to beat down
the wages of their own labour, which
we brought under the notice of our readers on
the 17thult. Lord STANLEY did not carry his plan
through Parliament uninformed of the certain
oppression of the Hill Coolies, which he was pro-
inotiner. To be sure the -Noble Lord, with that
overweening confidence in his own wisdom which
always distinguishes such petted children of for-
tune, was, and no doubt still is, quite certain that
the nice regulations nu had devised would be
mare to prevent all the evil consequences of the
cupidity to which he was giving a legal sanction,
By such immeasurable vanity, which refuses to
take council from experience, and persists in
supposing that it can achieve by some paper-
orders what all previous statesmen have failed
to accomplish, blacks and whites are at all times
made to suffer. Mr. HoeG, who opposed Lord
STANLEY, thins remonstrated with him :
What !, thirty or forty thousand of the natives of
In is torn by force, or beguiled by fraud, from their
'loans, transported to a distant island, where, from
the nature of the soil, labourin the field is severe in
the extreme; there, handed over to taskmasters who
extorted from them work beyond what their frames
were physically capable of enduring—while their
finnilies, abandoned in .India, were languishing in
misery and destitution. And the system which in-
duced those frightful calamities to be again resorted
to, without the specification of a single precautionary
measure (at least as regarded India) that had not be-
fore been tried and found unavailing.
Mr. HoGG's remarks are fully confirmed by
the Bengal newspaper; but in spite of all his
remonstrances, and in spite of all Li; flicts, Lord
STANLEY, as Mr. HOGG justly observed, sup-
ported on one side of the House measures
which he had opposed on the other." The Noble
Lord's superabundant confidence in himself was •
in fact sufficient equally to overcome all regard
for his own consistency and all respect for trhat
is due to the labourers in the Mauritius and the
Coolies in India. Notwithstanding this addi-
tional testimony to the enslaved condition of
the labourers forced or beguiled from
India to the Mauritius, and of the in-
sufficiency of all regulations to cope with the
avarice of planters, endowed both with the.
political power and the land of our colonies, we
shall no doubt be told with much earnestness
still to rely on the wisdom and precautions of
Lord STANLEY to prevent all mischief in future.
We shall be called on to continue thepresent,orper-
hapssotne mitigated, bounty on the cultivation of
sugar in our own coloniosby some scheme of forced
labour, now contemplated, miscalled free im-
migration from Africa or India We place
no reliance whatever on any such regulations, and
therefore we conclude that the only way to put
an end to such oppression as occurs in the cane
plantations in the Mauritius, and we have no
doubt in our other colonies, is to put an end to
the enormous bounty which
.esoniecultivation
is nowti
given
of
n
discriminating sugar du
that commodity in our own colonies.

---
REMISSION OF RENT.—We remember that we were
severely taken to task a few years ago, by more than
one agricultural Correspondent, for speaking of the
tenants as paupers, and dependents on the landlords..
We hope they will excuse us for repeating the state-
ment. We hear numerous instances of their in- '
ability to pay the runt they have contracted to pay.
We see accounts of this Rector at his tithe audit, and
that landlord on his rent day, remitting 10 or 20
per cent. of his claims. The Sussex Advertiser, for
example, tells us that Mr. Courthope, of Whiligh,
has remitted 20 per cent. on all his tenants' rentals.
What is this abatement of a demand, this forgiveness
of a sum promised and due, this acceptance of a re-
mission of a claim which cannot be met, but a proof
of dependence and of pauperism, which ought not to
be the condition of the industrious and intelligent
yeomanry of England ?

FATAL ACCIDENT ON BOARD A. WEST INDIAMAN
—Yesterday an inquest was held before Mr. C. J.
Carttar, at the Unicorn public-house, Greenwich, on
the body of James Smith, aged 65, a seaman onboard
the London, of London, West Indiaman. It appeared
by the evidence that, on Monday last, as the London
was proceeding down the river on her outward bound
voyage to Jamaica, when the deceased was standing
on the foreyard, handing a rope to another sailor, his
foot slipped and he fell on to the windlass-chain with
great violence. He was taken on board the Dread-
nought hospital-ship, where he died in about an hour
after the accident. Mr. Botley, the assistant-surgeon
of the Dreadnought, deposed that, on a post mortem
examination, he found that the liver had been crushed
into the cavity of the chest, one of his thighs, legs,
and wrist were also broken. The Jury returned a
verdict of " Accidental death."
In consequence of the very reduced prices of grain,
several of the publicans of Bath and Bristol have re,
duced the price of beer one Penny per quart.—Bath
Chronicle.