The Sun.
London, England, 1842-07-26 00:00:00

is dearth, sorrow, agony, and crime, from continuing
them._ How long does the Legislature, which comes
bafore the nation in such colours, count, let us so-
lemnly ask, on receiving the respect, the love, the
obedience of mankind?

It was truly said by the Earl of RADNou last night,
that their Lordships were about to pass the Colliery Bill
to put an end to immorality, as the law puts down a
disorderly house. So the Earl of DEVON said that the
practice of women working in a colliery with men-
almost in a state of nudity, must have a direct and
immediate tendency to promote vice and im-
I morality. Is not this inference of the Noble
Earl, and of the supporters of the Bill, more a
suggestion of some prurient imagination than a
reality ? The Commissioners have riot adduced a single
fact to prove that the naked collier lads and lasses
are more immoral than than the well-dressed youth
of both sexes in the metropolis, or than the well-fed
and carefully clothed servants of the Peers. The se-
verity of the toil, and the danger to which both par-
ties are continually exposed in the pits, assure us that
sexual immorality must he there the rare exception,
not the rule. If their Lordships had read the Re-
port they would have observed ;the age of puberty is
much retarded in the collier children, which is a
complete contradiction of the assumption that the
passions are excited by the nudity of the people.
" In estimating," says Dr. S. SMITH, in a note to page
195, " the influence on the physical constitution of great
muscular exertion constantly enacted during the period
of childhood, one further result of it deserves especial
notice, namely, the retardation of the epoch of puberty.
Attention was first drawn to this result during the ex-
amination by one of the Commissioners of some young
persons at a thin seam coal pit in Yorkshire, in which
the work was particularly laborious, and the pit more
than commonly wet and dirty. The young persons who
came under observation were stated to be various ages,
from fourteen to eighteen, and one case wis nineteen.
Ou a careful examination of them, the Commissioner
found that, with the exception of the teeth, which had '
developed naturally, there was not present a single sign
of puberty. The same was subsequently found to be the
case with great numbers of young persons examined
specially with reference to this point, in many pits in the
neighbourhood of Wakefield and Halifax, and a similar
retardation, though not in so great a degree, was ob-
served in girls."

With all deference, therefore, to the Earl of DE-
VON, and the gentlemen who have made such a great
outcry about the immoralities that are practised in
narrow gutters, and against coal-walls under ground,
where the man lies on his side, working a pick, in a
:nose constrained and irksome position, we believe
that the public have been deluded and cheated by the
false inferences of an unchaste imagination. Naked-
ness is not immorality. The colliers do not wantonly
expose their persons ; they are constrained, by the tem-
perature of the mines, and the nature of their occu-
pation, to work almost naked ; and it is incorrect to
infer from that that they must be immoral. We be-
lieve they are as moral as the best clothed people in
the empire ; and the law that is passed to interfere
with their occupations, as if they were a violation of
morality, is based on a wrong foundation.

A parson of the name of MELVILLE, whom Mr.
MILNER GlnsoN represents as in close connexion with
several of her MAJESTY'S Ministers, as advising them
probably on religious matters—giving them abso-
lution possibly for the many sins they commit against
the people, evidently soothing their consciences by his
opinions, who is represented, too, as one of the most
e!oquent parsons of the day, has, according to Mr.
MILNER GIBSON, said—
That the tendency u hich of late years has been so
largely exhibited in this country—the tendency to the
exchanging an agricultural for a manufacturing popula-
tion—to the gathering the people into dense masses, for
which it were almost hopeless to attempt providing
means of Christian instruction (even if the frightful de-
mands upon strength and upon time allowed of their
being used, supposing them provided), that this tendency
is amongst the most fatal that was ever encouraged, and
is but likely to continue, working out an increasing and
even irremediable disaster.
We hope that Mr. M. Ginsort has reported incor-
rectly of the parson, for certainly a greater display of
impious ignorance we have rarely met with in any
passage of a parson's discourse, which, considering
the impious language habitually used by parsons, is
saying a great deal. We apprehend that Mr. MEL-
VILLE will not deny, whether he consult the Scrip-
tures, or trace the history of man, that it is a command
of Gon, that the human race should replenish the
earth. He cannot deny that the law of population is
as much a part of nature as the law of gravity. It
is the consequence of this law that men multiply on
the earth, and, multiplying on the earth, they must
become crowded, or gathered into dense masses, and
yet the parson says, perhaps supposing himself in-
spired, that this natural and inevitable consequence of
the law of Gon is the most fatal tendency that was
ever encouraged. It is at least certain that it haS
taken place all over the world, except, perhaps, in
wretched Ireland; and from Pekin to Manchester, as
the people have multiplied, they have been gathered
into dense masses.

The reasons are obvious. As men multiply, division
of labour and skill increases. A comparatively small
and ever-diminishing portion of society suffices to
provide the raw material of subsistence for the whole
In the progress of society less and less labour is re-
quired to provide food. There can be no doubt
whatever that the agricultural productions of England
have much increased, as the manufacturing towns
have grown up ; and no doubt whatever, that those
increased productions do net require an equal in-
crease of hands to provide them. There is only a
small increase of agricultural population. There has
been no exchange, then, of an agricultural for a manu-
facturing population ; but the latter has grown up
additional to the former, and the dense masses have
both provided a market for the additional agricultural
produce, and have found employment and food, and
have so kept in existence, as they have absorbed into
themselves the ever-increasing spare hands of the
agricultural districts.
The skilled labour which grows up in every society
subsequently to agriculture, does not require, like
agriculture, a large space for its operations. On the
contrary, the smith, the tailor, the wheelwright,
the spinner, the weaver, the iounder, the collier, &c.,
all working with and for one another, save time and
save labour by living close together. They must
communicate with each other. The weaver gets his
yarn from the spinner, the spinner his machinery
tiom the wheelwright, and the smith—now called
the engineer—who must be at hand to repair it;
and the smith fixes his furnace or forge as near as he
can to the collier that he may get fuel as conveniently
as he can. Then the crowding together of men into
masses, which this parson impiously derides and
vilifies, is the necessary and inevitable consequence
of that increase of population which the ALMIGHTY
has ordained.

We do not exactly know the sense in which Mr.
NIELvILLE uses the phrase, " even if the frightful
demands upon strength and time allowed," but he
cannot surely mean that the congregating the people
into masses makes any additional demand on the par-
ion's strength or time to ',teach them. They are im-
mediately accessible to him, while he must travel
miles through an agricultural community to get as
many hearers as he may find in one workshop in Man-
chester or Birmingham. Gathering men into masses
makes it easy and cheap to dispense amongst them
all kinds of instruction; and though Mr. MELVILLE 1S
obviously a most ignorant and unreflecting person,
he cannot possibly mean that the gathering the
people into masses adds to the difficulty of teaching
them, and adds to the labour of the parson, though
we know that it adds vastly to his wealth.
What we believe Mr. MELVILLE means is that the
" demands on the strength and the time of labourers"
in manufacturing districts, make them Unable to pro-
fit by Christian instruction. Ifut they profit by
1 other teaching. The bulk of the manufacturing po-
mlation are much better informed on most things
than the bulk of the agricultural population. They
Are much more accessible to teaching than the pea-
santry. Their time is not so fully occupied. That
invaluable machinery they work with often requires
but little attention. They can converse, and some-
times read, while they are at their labours. I 1 Air.
NIELVILLE mean, therefore, that the masses in the ma-
nufacturing towns have neither time nor opportunity
to profit by religious teaching, he shows himself pro-
ibundly ignorant of their condition. _ _

We'adrnit that they do not love Mr. MELVILLE'S
Christianity. They are shocked at the idea of a Lord
Bishop. The immense wealth of the parsons, who
,tdvocate, like Mr. MELVILLE, the continuance of the
starvation laws, while they preach poverty, offends the
:rood sense of the workmen. We admit that they are,
to a great extent, not followers of the Church. They
see that the whole life of the State parsons gives the

lie to their doctrines, and they cannot believe. The
unbelief in priesteraft, arising from the shrewdness
which grows up amongst masses, is, as Mr. INlELvimx
allows clearly to be seen, the source of his antipa-
thy to the town population. He will not have
a town population in the land. He objects
to the people living in dense masse3. He will
thwart the ordinances of GOD, he will deride and
vilify the work of creation, because the new town
population is not servile, and will not consent to be
priest-ridden. Rather than not have slaves, the
priesthood, speaking by Mr. MELVILLE will starve
the people.

All parties are obliged to admit that Mr. ROEBUCK
has clearly established all the charges of bribery and
corruption advanced by him, when moving for his
Committee, against the boroughs of Harwich, Not-
tingham, Lewes, Reading, Penryn and Falmouth, and
Bridport ; and the bitterest opponents of the lion.
and Learned Gentleman are compelled to acknow-
ledge that he has done so less offensively to indi-
viduals than was supposed possible from the na-
ture of the investigations upon which he entered.
Mr. ROEBUCK exhibited throughout the greatest
firmness, as well as the greatest moderation. The
taunts and jeers by which he was constantly assailed
appear to have no more ruffled his temper, than water
would the plumage of a swan. Strong in the cause
he had undertaken, and sure of his ground, he felt,
or appears to have felt, that the greatest vengeance
which he could take upon his assailants, would be by
drawing up a Report, in which personal feeling would
find no place, and in which something like an excuse
would be found for the conduct of persons who had
treated him with marked discourtesy and dislike.
" The inquiry," in the language of the Report, " was
not a judicial one; the Committee were not called
upon to decide upon The legality or illega-
lity of the proceedings of any party, or
upon the guilt or innocence of the transac-
tions in which any of the parties implicated were in-
' volved in connexion with the alleged compromins
and bribery practised in the boroughs comprehended
in the order of reference. They understand
their duty to have been to elicit and lay before the
House, faithfully and clearly, all the facts of
the several cases, rather with a view to expose
the evils of a system, than by any direct expression
of their own opinion to inculpate individuals, or di-
rectly to lay the foundation for any legislative enact-
ment with respect to the particular boroughs in ques-
tion." The just and proper inference from this is,
that Mr. ROEBUCK did not consider the system of
corruption, which he exposed in the case of the six
above •mentioned boroughs, at all confined to them,
and he is quite right. Bribery has become the rule,
and purity the exception, in nearly all the
smaller boroughs in England, Wales, and Ire-
land. The whole system is one of fraud, of
collusion, of corruption, of perjury, of drunkenness,
and of vice. Nor is bribery confined to the boroughs.
In one shape or other it prevails everywhere. What
are the Corn laws but bribes to the great agri-
culturists ? Brewers are bribed by imposing
a prohibitory duty upon foreign wines ; cattle-
rearers are bribed by a heavy import duty on meat ;
and landlords are bribed by every device to maintain
unjust monopolies and high rents. This is the result,
in a great measure, of the narrowness of constituen-
cies, which places it in the power of wealthy
candidates to buy off, at nearly any price, the
whole of the electors. Deeply reflecting men in
reading this. Report, cannot but feel a powerful sense
of national humiliation. Religious men will find in
it much to abase their spiritual pride in the efficacy
of the Established Church as a repressor of the
most corrupt practices, on the part of her
professed children and champions. They will
find the rich, the powerful, the well-informed,
and the externally pious aristocracy of wealth and
sanctity leagued and banded together for the unlawful
purpose of imprinting upon the soul of some poor
ignorant wretch the burning brand of per-
jury.. They will find the WALTERS, the BERES-
FORDS, the BAGSHAWS, the Tory ATTWOODS, and
such other heroes of Anglican orthodoxy, pouring
corruption like a tide over every constituency in
which electors are to be found ready to sell their
country, their souls, and their GOD for a handful of
sovereigns.

The Journal du Havre, a French Paper, states that
according to the late3t accounts from the United

States the harvests there are so abundant that after

supplying the wants of the inhabitants there will re-
main for exportation six millions of barrels of flour,
each barrel weighing two hundred pounds. Now
were England to abolish the Provision-laws this flour
would be sent to this country, partly, to pay the State
debts, and partly to exchange for Yorkshire broad-
cloths, Sheffield cutlery, and Staffordshire earthen-
ware, thus giving employment to an immense number
of our starving poor. On the part of the United
States too, there would be an end of the proposed
Tariff, which threatens to throw two-thirds of our
future trade with that country into the hands of
smugglers. We shut our ports against the staples of
the United States, wheat, barley, beef, pork, butter,
hides, wool, and timber, and yet express surprise at
the blindness of the Americans in retaliating upon us our
miserable system of commercial policy. That system
is everywhere shutting the ports of the world against
us. It was shown by Lord PALMERSTON, in the de-
bate last week, upon Mr. DUNCOMBE'S motion; that
our restrictive system for benefiting the landlords at
the expense of every other class deprived us of a pro-
fitable and constantly increasing trade with Sweden,
Prussia, the whole circle of the German commercial
union, and we might add of Spain, Portugal, and, to some
extent, of Belgium. The question now is, shall we
abandon that system and give life to our people, or
adhere to it, and kill them off by starvation ? The
Americans offer them abundance of food in exchange
for their manufactures. Operatives of England, how
long will you submit to see your children dying with
hunger around you, to gratify the avarice of men who
have the cruelty to shut out from you the food which
the nations of the world are willing to exchange for
the productions of your skill and industry ?

There is no political news of interest in
he French papers, especially as the Regency
question excites no interest on this side of the
Channel. The Duke of MONTROSE presided at a
public meeting of the British residents in Paris on
Saturday for preparing an address of condolence to
the KING 011 the lamented death of the Duke of
ORLEANS. The meeting was most respectably at-
tended, and an address unanimously agreed to.
A letter from Mostaganem, of July 21*, in the Con-
stitutionnel, states that A bd-el-Kader lately appeared sud-
denly in the midst of the tribe:, of the Ouled-Chegara,
who have submitted. He was recognised by some Arabs
who were guarding their flocks, and who immediately
took to flight, spreading everywhere the alarm, that the
Emir was come to ravage their tribe. Before they had
communicated their alarm to the Kaids, the Emir arrived
in the Dollars, and asked to see the Chief, Sidi Ould•
Abd-Allah. lie immediately came forward, and was
surprised to find in the mouth of his ancient master
words of kindness and friendship. Without appearing
offended by the submission of the tribe, Abd-el-Kader
inquired if they were pleased with the French alliance.
He added that the will of Arbi, the name by which the
Arabs designate the Most High, ought to be respected ;
that the Prophet had appeared to him in a dream,
to recommend him to leave some repose to his
children, in order to re-commence the struggle at a later
period, with a greater chance of success ; that, conse-
quently, the war would cease in every quarter, and that
he authorised his faithful tribes to profit by the aid which
the Christians were simple enough to afford them ; that,
as for him, he was protected by the Most High, and
could repair every where withmit escort, and free from
danger. He then asked to see the Chief's children, and
courteously saluting those standing round, he turned his
horse's head to the Cheliff, exclaiming, " It is on this
side that will first resound my cries of war ;" then dis-
playing that dexterity which has gained him the title of
the first horseman of the Regency, he caused his horse
to take prodigious bounds, and disappeared.
A letter from Ricey .(Aube), July 13, states that
on the preceding day the electric fluid passed through
the house of M. Gerard-Verdin, of that place, but with-
out injuring any person. It entered by a wire, which
was attached to a tube placed outside on the chimney, to
prevent smoke. It passed through the rooms below, and
entering the salle-a-manger, where the cloth was laid,
and where Mme. Gerard-Verdin was arranging th.
dessert, passed through the wall above the glass, and
covered this lady with plaster and dust. The time-piece
on the chimney was not stopped, or injured. The moment
after the master of the house came into the room, and
was astonished and nearly suffocated by the smell of
sulphur. The electric fluid, pursuing its course, next
entered a neighbouring house, where it slightly burnt the
calf of the leg of a man named Buot, though without in
any way injuring his trousers.
On Sunday as some persons were walking in the
plain between Vaugirard and Petit-Montrouge, they
heard the report of fire-arms in the direction of the

'l` This date must be wrong.