The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-17 00:00:00

in 0 Miag nt

LONDON, FRIDAY, :JANUARY 17, 1545.

Those who attended the public meeting of the Anti-
Corn-law League on Wednesday at Covent-garden
Theatre ; who beheld the vast numbers that were
present, filling to an absolute overflow every part of
the house from the pit to the slips in the upper gal-
leries ; who marked the deep interest which was
taken in the proceedings by the audience—the
• delight with which they listened to the
cool, sagacious, matter-of-fact reasoning of Mr.
COBDEN, and the glowing, eloquent declamation
of Mr. Fox ; those, we say, who attended
the League meeting last night, and observed the
striking effects produced on the hearers by the various
talents of the speakers, will at once be convinced of
the "great fact" that this imposing confederacy is so
far from having declined in popular estimation—as
the organs of monopoly assert that it has—that it
holds at the present moment a more conspicuous posi-
tion than ever, and is more efficacious for good than
it has been at any one period since its first institution,
now some six or seven years since. What a tri-
umphant answer is the crowded meeting of Wednesday
to the calumnies of those who have been constantly
asserting for the last six months that the League
is in a state of decrepitude ! Decrepitude ! Why,
it was never in a more healthy—flourishing—vigorous
condition than it is at the present moment! The
number of its members have increased—its resources
have increased—its moral influence has increased— 1
and in like proportion its means of doing good have
increased. A season of prosperity would—its
enemies declared—give it its death-blow. Well, the
season of prosperity has arrived—the busy hum of
industry is again heard in the manufacturing districts
—yet the League still lives and thrives--
still acts as a bugbear to the disap-
pointed and panic-stricken monopolists ! Even
the so-much vaunted Protection Societies, which were
supported by Dukes and Lords, and Squires with-
out number, and which were instituted for the ex-
press purpose of putting down the Anti-Corn-law
- League, have served only to increase its moral influ-
ence, and add to its popularity with all the right-
thinking classes of the community. The hostility of
the monopolists has tested its efficiency as an instru- 1
rient of public good ; and the reasun of this is ob-
vio,as. The cause which the free-traders advocate 4
one wkich is essentially based on truth. On this
point Mr. MILNER GLUSON justly observed—" Any

cause which is not based on truth has no principle
of cohesion in it, and any combination to support
such a cause becomes split up into fragments, and is
scattered to the winds. There is no bond of union to
hold men together for any length of time in support
of any great cause but truth; and when we see a
great society like this holding together year after year,
and assembling together constantly, as we are now
assembled, it is a convincing proof that the cause
which we advocate is the cause of truth and of
justice, if the experience of past times is to be
trusted on the subject." Had the different Protec-
tion Societies the same sacred tie that binds the mem-
bers of the League together with bonds of one com-
mon brotherhood, they would not lee harassed by divi-
sions as they now notoriously are. The strong in-
herent conviction of the justice of their cause would
unite them as one man. But they have no such con-
victions to quicken their zeal and conduce
to their unanimity. They know that they are
banded together for purely selfish purposes,
and that the truth is not in them ; hence they
are perpetually differing from each other, and while
one local Protection Society sets its face against any
interference with the registers, en the maudlin, hypo-
critical pretext that it is unconstitutional, another is
all for active interference, and for fighting the League
with its own weapons. The institution of these mono-
poly confederacies has been so far from doing injury,
that it has been of the utmost possible benefit to
the free-traders, for it has been the means of showing
the deplorable weakness of the one party, numerically
speaking, and the robust strength of the other. Ex-
cept for the Protection Societies, from which their
advocates expected so much, we never should have
known how deeply-rooted the Anti-Corn-law League
was in the good opinion of the community, and how
well qualified it was to bear the brunt of whatever
opposition the self-interested monopolists might think
proper to bring against it.

" The Game-laws," we are happy to find, appear to
be attracting in all quarters that degree of attention
which supplies the best guarantee that they will not
be much longer tolerated in their present form, or
endured under their present administration. It is not
a bad beginning in the work of their modification or
repeal which the correspondent of a Morning Con-
temporary suggests—namely, that game preserves
should be rated, by the proper parochial authorities,
to the poor-rate, according to the computed annual
value of their game product. But the finest case
to be made against these laws, we were always sure
would be supplied by any advocate for their main-
tenance who could be brought to commit his views
and his arguments to paper—and print them. In this
point of view we deem Mr. GRANTLEY BERKELEY
eminently entitled to the thanks of the public ; for he
has just published "A Pamphlet in Defence of the
Game-laws, in Reply to the (their ?) Assailants; and
on their Effects upon the Morals of the Poor." In
endeavouring to arrive at any sound judgment on the
expediency or inexpediency of upholding such a code
as that which comprises the laws relative to the pro-
perty in, and protection of, game, it has always ap-
peared to us a preliminary of importance to get at
the real animus with which game-preserving country
gentlemen really regard—first, their title to that
property ; secondly, its relations to general principles
bearing on the moral and social condition and rights
of their fellow-creatures. We were curious to learn
whether gentlemen of large landed estate, in their
passion for preserving game, really postponed the
consideration of what might be due to the feelings,
the wants, and the temptations consequent on those
wants of their poorer tenants or neighbours to the
paramount object of securing partridge, pheasant,
and hare from liability to destruction—by uncer-
tificated hands. We were not uninterested about
ascertaining whether, in this age of universal cant,
the sacred cause of religion would be impressed into
the service, even, of the Game-laws. On these and
other such points Mr. GRANTLEY BERKELEY has cer-
tainly enlightened, if he have not satisfied us. To
Mr. BERKELEY we must concede the praise of being
much in earnest with his subject; but, had he par-
ticipated in the long nap of the Seven Royal
Sleepers, or the fifty-seven years' unbroken slumber
which PLINY pronounces EPIMENIDES to have en-
joyed, he could not have bee's, upon again awaking,
more behind the spirit and intelligence of his age,
than he has shown himself to be in his notions of the
status of the English labourer, or hind. Mr.
BERKELEY clearly regards him in the light of a mere
serf. He would have drawn up, we should say, had
he been a contemporary of our Norman Princes, a
most acceptable memoir to the hunting Conqueror,
on the extreme utility of the newly afforested dis-
trict for the King's deer and other game, and
" beasts of venery," for whose accommodation—and
his own—a country of thirty miles in compass,
largely sprinkled with towns, villages, and home-
steads, was laid waste—their inhabitants turned out
houseless and ruined on the world, and six-and-
thirty churches levelled to the ground. To judge
from the lachrymose affection with which he deplores
the relaxed protection that that very forest now ex-
periences, he would have been eloquent indeed, seven
hundred and sixty years ago, in pleading the in-
valuable advantage to the kingdom of the Monarch's
enjoying his pleasure and his sport, at any price, and
in showing how grossly the Saxon ceorles of that day
misconceived the case in supposing themselves at all
aggrieved, or that their interests were prejudiced by
the institution of a royal preserve on this rather ex-
tensive scale. But we really fear that Mr. G. BERKE-
LEY is not alone in thus projecting his epitome of the
merits of our Game-laws for the year of Grace 1085
instead of the year of our Lord 1845. He is but the
spokesman of a class. The truth seems to be, that
game preservers are so utterly selfish, so absurdly
selfish in the attainment of their one great end of se-
curing to themselves and a few bidden guests the ex-
clusive luxury of this particular class of sport—the
bringing down with their own guns the feathered and
the furry denizens about whom they have spread a
protection, rigorously and wantonly severe, against
all the rest of the world, that they never suffer their
purpose to be ruffled by such unsportsmanlike re-
morse as Am men would feel at being instrumental
to the temptation which our Game-laws hold out to
various classes of the community, the old as well as
the young—the well-disposed equally with the pro-
fligate—to dishonesty, to violence, and to the most
fearful crimes. Your strict game-preserver, the
capacity in which Mr. BERKELEY seems desirous most
emphatically to record himself to posterity, has no
eyes for the ruined peace of peasant families; no ears
for the wailings of wives and families whose husbands,
brothers, and sons, are torn from their humble hovels
to expiate their offences against the sacred majesty of
game, or the polluting atmosphere of the county gaol ;
no misgivings about the fate of innocent offspring
thus deserted and left to destitution, disgrace, or
death—as the cue may be—by the committal (if their
natural protectors—for, it may be—a first offence ; for
an ebullition of that natural and uncontrollable excite.
ment to pursue and destroy game which in the squire
indicates " thorough-bred" sporting " strain," but
in the peasant is that last excess of vicious propensity,
known to the rural ethics of country gentlemen,
which they call "the inveterate love of poaching."
The pamphlet of Mr. G. BERKELEY might be
worth analysing if we should be really justified in
assuming that there are many English gentlemen
time of day, can gravely imagine that
who, at ;,;;;s
they may, with impunity, strain the distinctions of
caste between the gentleman ;-,ed the labourer, the
game-owning landlord and the small te;',:nt-
farm er,
to the extent which this Honourable Member ven-
tures to attempt. But on sober reflection we cannot
believe that Mr. BERKELEY is more likely to find
many abettors of his extravagant notions upon land-
lord prerogative, than he is to be extensively con-
firmed in such conclusions as these, which we extract
at random from his pamphlet :—" .... So far from
having a demoralising tendency, or of (?) being in-
jurious to the welfare of the lower classes, the Game-
laws are founded on sound and rational principles,
and have a beneficial effect in regard to the pro-
prietor, the tenant, the yeoman, and the poor."—
(P. 5.) "I have observed in each of the places I
have rented a great improvement in the conduct and
habits of the labouring population when the Game•
laws came to be enforced, and idle, poaching inclina-
tions restrained; the wholesome fact having also
been placed before their eyes that it would be their
interest as well as their duty to cease from the pur-
suit of game both by night and day. The hitherto
systematic Sabbath-breaker returned to his church,
and I have heard it from his pastor's lips that he had
never seen the man so frequently an attendant on

Divine service as he had since my arrival at the
house."—(P. 14.) For our part we do not see
much to marvel at in this sympathy between the
opinions of the parson and the squire—on such a
topic. But we find more difficulty in accounting for
the trip which Mr. BERKELEY makes in his eager
chase after proofs of his favourite theory, that the
strict enforcement of the Game-laws eminently con-
duces to the strict observance of the Sabbath. He
says, in describing that facilis " descensus Averni "
by which his poacher graduates from the evening
relaxation of merely accompanying a friend in the
small-poaching line to see him knock a rabbit over,
to a degree entitling him to a fellowship—with resi-
dence, in Newgate, that—" step by step, the man be-
comes a Sabbath-breaker—a fault declared by crimi-
nals in Newgate to be the origin of all their crimes.
Instead of going to church, he takes his gun or
mare," &c.— (P. 23.) But, alas ! the poor labourer is
not the only Sabbath-breaker. Elsewhere, to write,
" .... My brother, Mr. MORETON BERKELEY, de-
tected a man in the act of beating for game, with a
lurcher, on a Sunday, during the time of Divine
worship."—(P. 32.) Why was not Mr. MORETON
BERKELEY there, attending that worship ? Is Sab-
bath-breaking part and parcel of the reserved privi-
leges of the game preserver ? Perhaps the gentle-
man was ill that day, and taking a calm contem-
plative walk through his covers, to muse on doctrines
he could not enjoy the happiness of hearing. Alas !
he had a desperate affray with this poacher, knocked
him down, and captured him. And since the man
" was knocked down by the common policeman's staff,
which my brother carried in his pocket," we fear we
must infer that this was a malice-prepense occupation
" during the time of Divine worship" on the part of
Mr. MORETON BERKELEY. We must suppose him
more given to catching poachers on Sundays than to
hearing prayers. But woe to " the min of six days'
labour who was tempted to desecrate the Sabbath."
—(P. 35.) For such an " unpreserving" miserable
offender, neither, like Mr. G. BERKELEY, "a game
preserver on his own lands," nor "in the administra-
tion of the law, as a county magistrate, over the
estates of others" (p. 6), nor yet " one of us, the
country and landed gentlemen" (p. 48)—to presume
to break the Sabbath is a strong proof that "he must
have been inflamed with the beastly dregs of the pot-
house," instead of having "got himself up" on a
breakfast of kidneys stewed in champagne, or on a
devilled fowl washed down with milk punch.
We quite enter into all the intensity of Mr.
BERKELEY'S reflection on the murder of a
certain gamekeeper by a poacher, that, " in-
stead of the dread of the severity of punish-
ment consequent on capture leading to the deadly
aim, the eye that glanced along the barrel of that
gun was"—what ?—" bleared by the baneful fumes
and libations of the beer-shop." The beer-shop, in-
deed ! Why cannot men, bent on desperate purposes,
decently carouse beforehand in a carpeted private
room, over a magnum of SNBYD'S finest claret, at the
tip-top hotel of the neighbourhood—instead of pre-
senting themselves in gentlemen's preserves reeking,
from a Tom- and-Jerry shop, and with their eyes dis-
ordered by the combined pollutions of beer and
tobacco. But we will add, without a word of further
present commentary, Mr. G. BERKELEY'S summary :
—" The Game-laws are to be regarded as laws
founded on sound and rational principles—doing good
to the community instead of harm."—(P. 77.)

Madrid journals of the Bth instant have been re-
ceived, and bring the long-expected budget of Senor
'Mow, the Finance Minister. Strange to say, this
ingenious financier not only keeps within his means,
but has even a surplus. He estimates the total
amount of the revenue at 1,259,635,353 reals, about
(12,596,0001.), and the expenditure at 1,205,522,688
reals, leaving a surplus of 45,112,665 reals. He then
proposed that the Government should be authorised
to proceed to the arrangement of the domestic and
foreign debt, and to apply to the interest of it, not
provided for in the estimates, the surplus of the pro-
duce of the rents and public contributions. He may
talk of the Government proceeding to the arrange-
ment of the domestic and foreign debt, but how is the
arrangement to be made ? We believe at the present
moment he has not the means of paying NARYABZ'S
troops, and satisfying the greedy claimants on the
civil list. He can find means only by borrowing
from Ow bank of San FERNAND°, at a rate of inte-
rest which in time would ruin a solvent state.
This miserable financial statement had no effect on
the Funds.

The Three per Cents. closed at 30 13-16 for cash,
and 316 at 60 days; the Five per Cents. at 22i for
cash, and 23i at 60 days ; the Floating Debt at 78
at 60 days; and the Coupons at 26i at 60 days.

The chief topic of discussion in the Paris papers is
the attack made by Count MoLE on M. GUIZOT
in the Chamber of Peers. We referred to it yes-
terday, and could see little from the outline of the
speeches that merited public attention, and on reading
the speeches, as given at length in the French papers,
we can come to no other conclusion than that the
war commenced by the coalition (for there is a coali-
tion, however MOLE may deny it) is a mere war of
words. There is no serious charge, no real accusa-
tion, no tangible ground of blame brought forward by
the ex-Minister against his opponent. MOLE is as
much attached to the English alliance as GUIZOT,
only he would take care not to offend French
" susceptibility " by showing it. He thinks the
occupation of Otaheite a bad speculation, and
so does the Foreign Minister. France declares against
the treaties of 1831 and 1833, respecting the right of
search, and they must be replaced by some other
scheme for checking the slave trade. This is exactly
what M. GUIZOT says, and confirms his words by
his deeds. He has opened a negotiation with Eng-
land : England has not repelled his overtures. On
the contrary, she has entertained them, and Commis-
sioners have been appointed by both parties to devise
other means for ensuring efficaciously the repression
of the slave-trade. What other steps could the leader
of the Opposition take ? He would not be so mad
as to abrogate these treaties by a vote of the Cham-
ber. He knows there are two parties to a treaty,
and that it cannot be legally or honourably dis-
solved but by mutual consent. This is M. GUIZOT'S
object, and whatever remarks Count MOLE may
make for particular purposes, he could adopt no
other step if he were installed in office with a carte
blanche from his Royal Master. In fact it is an
intrigue from beginning to end. The opposition has
been raised by a coalition of heterogeneous materials,
and MOLE is trying to eject his opponent by the very
means which he himself so loudly denounced when
he was the sufferer. " The Minister of the 15th of
April," says the Journal des Debats, " is not obliged
to feel much friendship for M. GutzoT. But are the
Chambers to serve as an arena for the indulgence of
private passions ? No. Whatever Count MOLE may
say, he has committed an act of opposition. Ile has
raised the flag under which all parties are about to
range themselves. A victim of the coalition of 1838,
he is in his turn the chief of a new coalition, com-
posed, like the first, of the most discordant elements.
The speech of Count MOLE is nothing but the mani-
festo of the coalesced parties. This will infallibly be
the general impression. We respect too much Count
MOLE, not to tell him candidly that it is ours. What
motive can have induced him to speak ? Otaheite ?
But during two years the Chambers and the journals
have been occupied with discussions on Otaheite, and
Count MOLe remained silent. It is full time to pro-
pose the evacuation of Otaheite, unless it be one of
the articles of the future system of Count MOLE,
when he shall be Minister with M. BILLAULT. The
right o ch? If Count MoLe does not believe it
possible to obtain frnm England a modification of the
treaties on the right of search, hi might have said so
sooner. His long experience might have ha 4 pro-
bably sufficient weight with the Chambers to have
prevented theta from engaging themselves and the
Government in an impossible undertaking. Should
Count MOLE become Minister, he would abandon
the negotiations opened by M. GUIZOT ! He would
say to the Chambers—' You have repeatedly and
solemnly expressed a desire to see our commence re-
placed under the exclusive superintendence of the
French flag. This wish is but a chimera. With-
draw it ! Disavow yourselves! Nothing is left for us
but to continue to execute the treaties of 1831 and
1833 until the entire &Haul of the slave trade!'
Is this to be another article in the Ministerial pro-
t;ramme of Count MOLE ? Shall we see M. BIL-
LAULT sustaining it in the Chambers ? The evacu-
ation of Qtaheite, and the abandonment of the nego•
tiations reiativeto tLe 4g4 of Search question, are
apparently what we are to gain by the dismipo Qf