The Sun.
London, England, 1842-05-18 00:00:00

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LONDON :
_ 'WEDNESDAY MORNING, MAY 18, 1842.

The proposed duty on exported coals, to which we
adverted on Friday, is a specimen of the instability
of our aristocratic legislation. In 1834, a similar
tax was repealed to encourage trade ; and now, when
that negation of law has succeeded, when the trade
has flourished from the absence of a tax, as was an-
ticipated, the Legislature proposes, in 1842, to undo
all that its predecessor did only eight years ago. Can
any legislation be more unstable ? Every alteration
nearly of the tariff plays fast and loose in like manner
with some portion of the people's property, and leaves
us with the conviction that similar changes must
again be made. The distinguishing and disgusting
feature of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S measures is,
that they offer something to every class, to make it
acquiesce in some species of spoliation, of which, by
those very measures, it is made the victim. Such a
general attack on property, bribing men, as it were,
with their own stolen goods to be instrumental in
plundering other men, when made by an aristocratic
assembly, is what Mr. MACAULAY understands, pro-
bably, by security and stability of property, which an
infusion of democracy into the Legislature would an-
nihilate for ever.

The change in property, however, caused by Sir
R. PEEL'S numerous proposal changes in the cus•
toms duties, instead of first abrogating the giant mo-
nopolies, is not, in our apprehension, the worst effect
of his measures. The worst effect is their tendency
to create and perpetuate division. To the farmer
he offers a pretended boon of paying half as much
income-tax as other people pay, and to those who
pay the full taxes, he offers, as a reward for their
submission, cheaper living, by cutting off a slice
from the farmer's profits. To the bulk of the people
he offers- an exemption from the Income-tax, and
obtains their support, to throw it exclusively on
three or four hundred thousand persons. It
is frequently said of society that the in-
terest of all its members is identical. Sir
R. PEEL has the great merit of disproving that
dogma, and of showing all classes how they can prey
upon one another, by means of laws artfully con-
trived. In the present circumstances of society, a
wise Minister would have .been especially careful how
Le added to the sources of discord between the classes.
Sir ROBERT PEEL seems to be desirous to show
how skilfully he can augment our dissension. If our
lot has all been cast in the same boat, it cannot be
denied that our present helmsman has directed all the
clew to pull different ways. Hence the labourers and
others rejoice at the Income-tax, and the landowners
rejoice that they shall still be allowed to plunder all
the consumers of bread, including the labourers.
Sir R. PEEL will not be a'lowed, however, even by
h's own friends, to have everything his own way. He
hi.s encouraged rapacity, and he cannot escape its
remonstrances. He has fostered those monopolies
which prey upon the people, and they do not choose
quietly to relax their gripe of the national industry at
his solicitation.

" It is a great aggmvatio3," (says a " Memoir on the
Colonial Timber Trade,") " of the evil now impending
01 er the Colonial and shipping interests, to find that
tl e infliction is announced as a relief, and the effect pre-
d• eted as a benefit—([low well they understand Peel !)
and, perhaps as a greater aggravation, it may be
ded that the calamity has originated from the quarter
;lama suspected, and will now at last be accomplished
by the very hand to which they have hitherto looked
vath gratitude for haying- protected-them so long."
Eris old friends, therefore, those whom he has

trained up to political depredation, do not like his
schemes. They have no objection to his bamboozling
the labourers, the farmers, and the shopkeepers, but
they warn him not to stop the. supplies of his own
protegees. It certainly appears by the pamphlet that
they have been admirably protected for a very long
time by the hand which now proposes to take some-
thing from them. The consumption of timber in the
kingdom is now 1,500,000 loads annually, and the
discriminating duty is set down in the pamphlet
at 21. ss. a load, which makes a good round
sum of 3,375,0001., which the country pays
per annum to encourage our North American
timber trade. Having expended such a vast sum of
money, year after year, for many years, we cannot
be surprised that our exports to our North American
provinces have risen to 3,000,0001. a year, and the
tonnage employed in our imports thence exceeds
800,000 tons. Nor can we be surprised at this pic-
ture of prosperity, owing, as the pamphlet we have
quoted from says, to the timber trade :

"This last New Brunswick Province may be fairly cites;
as an example of the effects of the protective and colo-
nial system, and, particularly, of its application to the
Timber Duties ; having, in consequence, advanced from
a handful of Loyalists, by whom the colony was first plant-
ed in 1783 to its present very flourishing state of population
and trade. The former have increased since 1824, from
74,176 persons to 157,562, in 1840 ; and the latter, during
ten years, from the value of 483,5451 (of imports) it
1829, to 1,435,447/ in 1839. Qf the seventeen million:
of acres which New Brunswick contains less than fivt
hundred thousand have yet been reclaimed from tht
native forest, which covers the whole country beside.
The number of mills there built for the manufacture o
deals is 574, the value of which is estimated at 500,0001.
and the value of other property there invested in the
timber trade is considered to be of a far greater amount.
Of that colony's exports, the value of all native articles,
not of wood, amounts only to about 75,000/ The ship-
ping owned there exceeds 90,000 tons. And the export,
thence give yearly employment to 2,605 ships of 381,577
tons, and 17,313 men. Almost the whole of which track
and navigation is
.purely British, and_with the Britisl
dominions, and, principally, with the United Kingdom.
And as there is scarcely any part of the world where si
small a population could by their industry, under its ex-
isting protection, be more profitable to the manufactures,
trade, and navigation of the United Kingdom ; so also is
there no position where to plant and foster an enterpris-
ing, loyal, and powerful colony seems more useful to the
security and prosperity of the British Empire."

Neither can we be surprised when such is the sum
annually distributed amongst rotten-ship owners.
land-jobbers, lumberers, merchants, &c. &c., and such
its results, that the recipients of the 3,375,0001. a
year, should raise an earnest outcry against the
statesman, who has stated " that above all things we
should avoid doing any injury to the Canadas," and that
our relations with Canada were such as to require
the utmost caution. That is much too large a sum
to give up quietly ; and we must admit that the mono-
polists are ill-treated by their friends. Only on Friday
last, Lord STANLEY was expatiating, with quite as
much unction, and quite as little reason, as the author
of the pamphlet, on the advantage of an exclusively
British trade, " which is all in our own hands ;" and
he and Sir ROBERT PEEL will both find, when they
come to carry their tariff through the House, that
the monopolies they have nourished, and the
prejudices they have strengthened, will be
brought to bear against themselves. They will
not easily extract the money from the grasp of those
whose monopoly they have long upheld as extremely
beneficial to the public. Without saying one word
in favour of the North American timber monopolists,
whose plain object is to continue a heavy tax on the na-
tion for their own advantage, we must express our un7
feigned satisfaction at seeing the Premier badgered by
the corrupt interests he has nourished ; and, much as
we desire to see the timber trade set free, we shall not
regret-if Sir ROBERT PEEL be defeated on the point
by his own dearly beloved friends. Their political
dishonesty is a match for his, and they bid fair to
overcome him by his own weapons.

The Times of yesterday says, in reference to parish
apprentices doomed to the mines

" That one case came before the Sub-Commissioner, of
a child so apprenticed to a collier working in a thin pit
at Thornhill before he was quite five years old.' Nor
would this poor creature, by name Thomas Townsend,
have been brought back to the workhouse, had not its
grandfather interfered, and its friends threatened an in-
formation to the Poor-law Commissioners."

From that passage it follows that these Commis-
sioners have the power, and have sometimes exerted
it, of regulating the age at which pauper children
may be apprenticed out of workhouses. When those
children are orphans, the strong interest which the
Guardians have in lightening the pecuniary burdens
of the Union, may induce them to commit much in-
justice ; and in such cases a central authority like
that of the Poor-law Commissioners, may be advanta-
geously exercised for the protection of the chil-
dren. We infer from this instance that it has
been so exercised, and undoubtedly it ought
to be, unless their authority have been given
them never to :protect but only to curb the
poor. For all the orphans bound apprentice out
of workhouses at the age of six or seven, since the
Commissioners have had the control of them, the
public will hold them to be responsible, and we
trust that they will consider it to be their duty to
take those orphans under their especial protection.
Parish apprentices are bound only by the authority
of the Poor-law, and for the mode in which that is
administered, the Commissioners at Somerset House,
and the Home Secretary, have to answer. In such
cases, the cruelty is not parental, it is legal.

The fire at Hamburgh has shown how powerful is
the sympathy by which all the family of man is natu-
rally united, and that it requires a kind of political
drilling into national and exclusive habits and preju-

dices to become inimical to- one another. Fortu-
nately for the result, Hamburgh, as far as politics are
concerned, is neutral ground. It is a cosmopolitic
city. It is inhabited by men of all nations and all
creeds. With no hesitation, therefore—nay, with an
alacrity which convinces us that Sovereigns can act
from generous impulses, and adopt a wise policy from
very common motives—assistance and succour have
been poured into Hamburgh from all the surrounding
States. The subscriptions, too, spontaneously begun
in France, in England, in Belgium, demonstrate that
the people feel like their rulers, and, now that one
branch of the great family is overtaken by a misfor-
tune, that all are brethren. Such a lesson will not be
thrown away, and an appeal, in after times,
to this common feeling of brotherhood, may
stay the devastation of war. Why should those inflict
calamities who think it is virtue to sooth and relieve
them ? The general subscription for Hamburgh is an
epoch in the moral history of mankind.

MEMOIR OF REAR-ADMIRAL
DIM VILLE,
THE CELEBRATED NAVIGATOR.

Jules Sebastian Cesar Dumont D'Urville, the cele-
brated navigator, who, with his wife and only son,
has met with so untimely and disastrous a fate on the
Versailles Railroad, was born on the 23d of May,
1790, and was consequently, at the time of his prema-
ture departure, at the age of 52. The place of his
birth was at Conde-sur-Noireari, in the department
of Calvados, and he commenced his naval career early
in life, undertaking his first tour of circumnavigation,
in 1825, being then in his 35th year.
In January, 1827, M. D'Urville was the discoverer
of the island which bears his name, and whose exist-
ence he fixed positively. It is formed of that portion
of land, which terminates at the Cape Stephens of
Cook, and which is divided from the mass of Tavai-
POunamou by the basin of Courans. This island is
high and mountainous : the coast barren, and very
steep and rugged on the side which turns westward
towards Lake Tasman ; its aspect, however, is much
better towards the Admiralty bay; and it has some
pleasant spots. It measures eight miles from north
to south, and a little less from east to west. "The
officers of the Astrolabe," says our modest navigator,
in this account of his own discovery, "desirous of
perpetuating the memory of their ,Captain, wished to
have his name attached to this part of the discoveries
of the voyage, and he thankfully acceded to this mark
of esteem on the part of his brave comrades," "La
denomination d'lle d'Urville," continues he, " pourra
done rester a cette terre jusqu'a l'epoque ou I'on con-
naitra
le nom qu'elle a recu de ses habitans."
Point D'Urville, which is also called after him,
lies according to the observations Of M. Jacquinot, an
officer of the expedition,y in 1Q 24' lat. S. and 135 Q
271 long. E. It forms 'a low point, jutting out very
much into the sea, and formed by the extremity of
the land, forming part of New Guinea.
M. D'Urville, in his last, expedition chiefly followed
the track which had been pursued by Weddell, who
had preceded him in explori9. these seas. Ile was no
less guided by the labours of other excellent naviga-
tors who had proceeded before him in much the same
course. Among these, Capt. Cook, in 1775, had
penetrated, among other points of the globe, into these
regions, but had kept himself in a higher latitude
than that pursued by D'Urville, and who, indeed,
found himself barricaded in the parallel of sixty
degrees by the immense, obstructive ice-blocks,
in the vicinity of the Sandwich isles. Brans-

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