The Sun.
London, England, 1842-11-09 00:00:00

11Itt tut

LONDON :
WEDNESDAY MORNING. NOVEMBER 9, 1842,

It seems by the " City Intelligence," that the
value of ships has of late very much fallen off.
Whitby and Newcastle built ships have fallen,
it is said, 3/. per ton within the last eight
months, and ships built in our American pro-
vinces have been sold here at 41. to 61. per ton
less than they cost. The shipping which eight
months ago was supposed to be worth '28,600,000/.,
is now estimated at only 11,440,0001., and as
much of it is mortgaged it is likely to pass, we
are afraid, from the hands of the present owners.
All the ports of the world, it is said, are crowded
with ships seeking freights at greatly reduced
rates, and few or none are to be had. The de-
pression, or rather the ruin which began in our
manufacturing districts, has now reached our
shipping as well as our agriculture, and all the
great producing interests of the empire are suf-
fering under the restrictive and the meddling
policy of the statesman who demanded and re-
ceived the enormous fee of Prime Minister to
cure all our disorders.

The shipping interest was distinguished for its
opposition to the reduction of the timber duties,
because it knew that whatever lowered the cost
of ship-building would reduce the selling value
of all the ships already built. What may be the
effect of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S alteration of those
duties, in conjunction with his various measures to
change the direction of commerce rather than to
set it free and enlarge it, we cannot calculate, but
no doubt the shipping interest is well aware, like
the agricultural interest, that its Tory friends have
greatly deceived and injured it. The shipping
interest will allow us to say that it deserves no
hetter, for it has long been generally Tory, and
the
advocate of those restrictions on trade which
are now injuring the shipping. The political
and commercial opinions of the shipowners have
helped much to lower the value of their own
property.

But a more efficacious cause of the fall of the
value of shipping than either the timber duties,
or the unsettling, without extending trade, is to
be found in the competition of the shipowners
themselves. Not only more ships have been
built, but great care has been taken to improve
their qualities. The introduction of steam navi-
gation, as we see in the competition of the Ameri-
can Liners, has tended to accelerate the voyan•esef
sailing ships, while it has enabled steam ships to
perform some voyages in one-third of the time
which sailing ships require. At present, for
example, the bulk of the trade is carried on with
Haniburgli by means of steam-vessels, which arc
about fifty hours in making the voyage out and
borne, while that used to require, on an average,
seven days at least. The alteration, too, in
the mode of registering vessels, has, no doubt,
tended to improve the qualities of all ships built
since the new law was enacted. Taking into
consideration the increase of steam-vessels, and
the various improvements which have been
made in sailing ships, and in navigating them,
we venture to state that two-thirds, or perhaps
half, of our registered tonnage now performs as
much work, or carries as many goods from port to
ports as the whole would, were ships now manawed
as they were twenty years ago. Notwithstanding
this great increase of efficiency, the number of
registered ships in the United Kingdom and the

colonies increased 444,047 tons between 1839 and
1841. This increase in the quantity of the ship-
ping, combined with its increased efficiency, in
the face of a much restricted and almost stag-
nant trade, is the chief cause of the want of
freight and the fall in the value of ships.
In the slang language of the anti-free-traders,

it will be said that the shipowners have over-
traded. They have produced a glut of shipping.
Thus the improvement in building and navigat-
ing ships, and the application of steam to navi-
gation, some of the proudest triumphs of human
skill, come by an erroneous policy to be the
misfortune, or even to be reckoned as the
faults or errors, of those who adopt or achieve
them. Bad men are those, according to this
theory, who facilitate navigation. At present
those who endeavour to improve agriculture
must share this reproach. The value of its pro-
duce has fallen, and notwithstanding cur people
are famishing, and notwithstanding the tendency
of population to increase, there is a glut of agri-
cultural produce as well as of shipping.. In
truth, what happens to the shipping interest
may be assumed as a type of what happens to
every producing interest. It is everywhere de-
sirous to produce as much and as cheaply as pos-
sible. The competition amongst its own members
introduces exertion and stimulates invention.
New contrivances, new machinery, new manures,
greater skill in draining ground, and in sailing
ships, continually tend in every branch of busi-
ness to produce every thing useful to man which
can he made by labour at a less cost. As ma-
chinery is improved, mills are multiplied ; as
ships are more easily navigated, the number of
them is increased; as the ground is better under-
drained, a greater breadth is sown with corn. Thus,
through every branch of business, competition
stimulates both invention and exertion, and all
the producing classes, without any exception,
continually labour to supply commodities at a
cheapening rate and more of them. There is a
universal striving to this end, and if it be not,
therefore, a law of nature that men should pro-
duce commodities as cheaply as possible, neither
is it a law of nature that streams should flow to-
wards the sea.

The theorists, however, those who convert the
proudest triumphs of skill into misfortunes,
maintain that it is a folly and an error to produce
commodities at a cheap rate, and they make laws
to prevent the accomplishment of that for which
all men in businessstrive. Corn-laws and similar
enactments in England, Tariffs in France, Ger-
many, and the United States, one and all, have
for their object to prevent commodities becoming
cheap and abundant. The trade policy of every
Government is in opposition to the struggles of
mankind. It defies the laws of nature, as a man
defies them who throws himself from a house
top, and is bruised and maimed for his folly.

When HENGIST and HORSA, or when any of
the other ancient German or Saxon Chiefs, led
forth, from the too narrow abode of their people,
some great swarms in search of a new home,
they obeyed the necessary tendency of society
in those days when art was little advanced, arid
the earth but scantily peopled. They were the
real leaders of men, and were willingly honoured
and obeyed as such. But modern Governments,
pretending to be the leaders or the people, set
themselves up in direct opposition to the tendency
of society, and will be obeyed by force. They
make barriers of themselves to prevent the pro-
gress of mankind, instead of leading them on. It is
the conflict between their restrictions, prevent-
ing the free exchange of goods between one na-
tion and another, and everywhere preventing
the increase of population and. wealth, which
causes a glut of shipping, a glut of manufactures,
a glut of agricultural produce, and which turns
the skill and ingenuity of man into curses. On
the one hand we have all the producing classes
everywhere striving to make commodities cheap
and abundant; and on the other, we have Go-
vernments, under the guidance °fa theory that
cheapness is an evil, striving to prevent things
becoming cheap. Everywhere, therefore, the
bulk of society in its practice, and legislation by its
enactments, aims at accomplishing contradictory
and incompatible ends; and the producers of every
description find their exertions foiled, and their
prosperity endangered.

Though there are many complaints of the ship-
ping being out of employment, we are pleased to
see by the last finance accounts that the number
of seamen had steadily increased from 191,282 in
1809, to 210,198 in 1841. As long as their num-
ber increases, we should care little for what ship-
owners might suffer in pocket; but they cannot
suffer without ultimately fewer seamen being em-
ployed. A more narrow-minded set of politicians
generally speaking, and a less generous race of
men, than the shipowners we are scarcely ac-
quainted with. We can never forgive them for
continually allowing their servants (the sea-
men) to be impressed without making one
honest, bold, and united exertion to put an end
to such an iniquity. Had they had the least care
for the men who had make them wealthy they
might, long ago, have put down that national
disgrace. But they are accused, and we believe
the accusation, of tolerating this abuse, because
it placed the seamen somewhat more in their
power, and somewhat at their mercy. They
would rather be served by men who may be en-
slaved, and therefore kept humiliated and de-
based, than by free men. Till they exert them-
selves to put an end to impressment—till they-
forbid it, which they have time power to do, we
shall lose no opportunity of reminding them of
their ungenerous conduct, and of recording their
dishonour.

MONOPOLY FLOURISHES IN THE MIDST OE
NATIONAL DISTRESS.—Bank stock, say the re-
ports from the City, continues to rise. Since the
beginning of the month it has got up from five
to six per cent. The stock is sought for, and
purchases are made, on the supposition, which
no doubt has its foundation in nds and winks,
and sly insituations of members of the Bank par-
lcoruera,sing
tha.t the profits
prrolfiiktseloyf.• Corporation are in-
issues of the Bank of England were Till t return,dually tehne.
c
h wchlarging, and those of the Joint s the
l
con-
tracting. The Monopoly Bank,
therefore,aarl y
an
has the exclusive privilege of borrowing
20,000,000/. from the public without paying
it lends nearly
interest on it, and large portions of whlictto the public on interest, is supplanting and stifling
other banks. Its business must increase as theirs
diminishes. At any rate its profits, compared to
the general profits of trade, are rising, and thus
this monstrous monopoly, the next usurpation of
our common rights which is, we hope, to be
abated after the Corn-laws are abolished, is
thriving amidst the general distress. Who shall
say that it does not thrive in consequence of the
distress ? Who shall say that it does not con-
tribute to cause the distress that it may thrive?
At least the Bank and all connected with it can
have no sympathy with the terrible misfortunes
suffered by the people, which reach not the char-
tered corporation.

INSTALLATION OF THE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER.—
The ceremony of installing Dr. Turton, the newly-
elected Dean of Westminster, took place yesterday,
during the morning service at Westminster Abbey.
At the conclusion of the first service the Dean elect
was led in by Dr. Dakin, the - precentor, upon
which her Majesty's letters patent, signed with
the Great Seal, were read by the Chapter Clerk,
and the usual oath having been administered by
Dr. Dakin, Lord John Thynne, the sub-dean, con-
ducted Dr. Turton to the dean's stall, where he con-
tinued during the remainder of the service. The
Psalms of the day were, by a curious coincidence, the
same as those read at the funeral of Dr. Ireland, the
late dean, it being exactly this day.two mouths since
Ins burial. The service was Dr. Cooke's, in G; and
the anthem " I was in the spirit"—Dr. Blow.

THE MASTER or THE ROLLS GOWN.— On the new
Master of the Rolls taking his seat on Wednesday, it
was remarked that his gown differed in some respects
(the workmanship, for instance, being much
more ornamental) from those usually worn at the
present day, How the circumstance occurred, we
understand, was this :—lt appeared that Mr. Black-
burne's robe=rnaker had failed in punctuality, not hav-
ing his gown ready for the opening day of term. His
Honour happening to mention the awkward position
into which he was thrown by this disappointment to
the Attorney-General, the latter begged him to make
his mind easy on the subject, as he would at once set
the matter right ; and so he did, by forwarding to
him the robe worn by his -grandfather, Sir Michael
-Smith, when Master of the Rolls, some 50 years ago,
and which had been ever since carefully preserved as
a sort of relic by the family.