The Sun.
London, England, 1842-07-22 00:00:00

4.1 tot :Thuitt4

LONDON :
FRIDAY MORNING, JULY 22, 1842.

Another • debate on the condition of the people,
hich" occupied the House of Commons till nearly
half-past one o'clock, was caused last night by
Mr. T. DUNCOMBE. The object of the Hon. Gen-
tleman's motion was to obtain an assurance from
the Government that it would call Parliament
together in October or November, if the measures
recently passed should not relieve the distress
of the people. The debate was almost all on one
side. Only Sir JAMES GRAHAM and Sir ROBERT
PEEL spoke to the question Boni the Ministerial
benches, and neither of them made an effective speech.
Lord PALMERSTON, on the contrary, wound,up the de-
bate in a speech which will be for some time remem-
bered by the Tories, particularly by Mr. GLADSTONE
His cutting eloquence, and the more impressive facts
stated by the Members for the manufacturing dis-
tricts, failed to convince the House, which decided by
147 to 91 that it would not vote for an Address to
the QUEEN, that it would not disturb the
Members in, their grouse and pheasant shoot-
ing, and that the people must help them-
selves, for the Parliament will not help them.
We hope the people will take the hint. Never did an
assembly o wantonly repudiate the power which the
people ask it to take. It will not govern and guide
the people, and they must, therefore, govern and guide
themselves. Starve they must not, and we hope will
not ; and as the Parliament will not give them
relief, they have no alternative .but to reject-that
power which rejects their prayers, and relieve them-
selves. They can do that peaceably and certainly, if
they do not lack courage and independence. GOD
helps those who help themselves.

The Corn Averages published yesterday state the
duty to be the same as last Thursday. As the
markets have begun to fall, and as the weather con-
tinues favourable, it seems unlikely that the average
prices will go higher, and the holders of foreign corn
in bond must either introduce it at an Bs. duty, or
hold it over in expectation of a higher price and a
lower duty after Christmas. It is in truth stated by
commercial authorities, that these holders are doubtful
whether they shall lose more by paying the duty and
bringing it into consumption at the present and
declining prices, than by holding it. Many of them
will probably be unable to hold, and must,
as the least evil, sell for what they can
get. Even large capitalists are likely to reflect
that good and bad seasons generally run in
triplets or quartets, that a succession of good seasons,
which seems now beginning, may be expected, and
that they are more likely to lose than gain by holding
over. The result will probably be, that under the
new law, as under the old law, all the corn that is in
bond will be poured into the market contempora-
neously with our own harvest, and should that turn
out abundant, will bring down' prices very con-
siderably.
Supposing the corn now in bond to be entered for
home consumption, it will pay an Bs. duty, while,
under the old law, it would have been subjected, at
present prices, to a duty of 225. Bd. The consumers
will be so far benefited by the change; whether Sir IL
PEEL'S agricultural friends will thank him for
the change time will show. It is possible,
however, that under the old law the averages 'night
have been returned much higher; they might even
have reached 735., and the duty would have fallen
to i. We cannot tell how the speculators might
have worked the old law, but the promise of an early,
and probably a good harvest, would have had the
sante elect of keeping down prices under the old as
under the new law. In fact, it is not the change
in the law, but the peculiar season, which
keeps down the markets and the averages.
If we could suppose that under the old
law speculators would have so worked the returns
as now to bring in corn at a nominal duty, while
under the new law the duty is Bs., it would then
follow that the new law has given the Government
480,0001., and taken that sum additional from the
consumers or from the dealers. It has rendered the
N P much Jess profitable to the latter, and by
INTfie ,
diminishing their motives and means to import, may
tend ultimately to curtail the supply and raise prices.
It is plain from the uncertainty which now pre- •
vailsin the corn trilde, that the new law, has done no-
hmg to lesseik; is hazards. Those who, a few
ticks ago were. culating on making large
SUMS,
- i"4-

_..

are very likely to lose them. The trade in food,
therefore, which ought to be steady, is, in fact, as un-
certain as ever, and only gamblers will engage in it.
The last accounts from the United States represent
the harvest there as extremely promising. At the
meeting between the Anti-Corn-law Conference, on
Tuesday, and the City gentlemen, Mr. ASHWORTH
said that last September, while our people were
starving, food, which had been sent to New Orleans to
exchange for English goods, was lying rotting on the
quays, because it could not be taken in exchange for
English goods, in consequence of the Corn-law. It
is plain, therefore, that the Corn-law in last Septem-
ber, and its effects last September; resemble its effects
in every other month of the year, kept employment
and food from our people, and so kept down popula-
tion. They were limited to that supply of food
which the Corn-law allowed to be brought in. Now,
however, comes an abundant harvest here, and an
abundant harvest in the United States ; food will be
pressed, as it were, on the people, and they will have
nothing to give for it. It may be expected, there-
fore, that prices will fall considerably, and such a fall
will, it is plain, be the consequence of the Corn-law,
which would not allow the people in by-gone years to
increase up to the supply of food which they
could honestly command. When the Corn-law
ruins the farmer, the folly of his own injustice will
come home to him, and he may then, perhaps, practi-
cally and effectually learn the simple truth, that
" honesty is the best policy."

Alendicity in England is becoming quite frightful.
Between it and the law there is a continual contest ;
and we have to inform the public, that mendicity has
obtained the victory. It has set aside the law; it has
overturned its authority. It has overruled the enact-
ments of the proud and potent (query, impotent)
Parliament of England, and reduced it into subjection,
as it were, to beggary. We will quote the proofs
from a useful article in the last Number of the Edin-
burgh Review.

It is well known that the law of England has, time
out of mind, been extremely severe against vagrants.
The existing Vagrant Act, which " consolidates,
amends, and repeals the prior statutes relative to va-
grants," renders idle and disorderly persons who will
not work, who wander abroad and trade without a
license, who beg or gather alms, liable to be arrested
and sent to hard labour for one calendar month.
Rogues and vagabonds who are incorrigible vagrants,
as well as persons guilty of other offences, are liable
to be punished with imprisonment and hard labour
for three calendar months. Incorrigible rogues, who
are a degree worse than incorrigible vagrants, are
liable to be imprisoned and sentenced to hard labour
for a year, and to be whipped. This is a very
stringent law against vagrancy, and we have every
day examples of the police Magistrates severely and
summarily punishing vagrants by sending them to
prison.

In spite of this law, however, the writer in the
Edinburgh Review gives abundant reason to be-
lieve that in England there are at this moment
not less than 150,000 persons living in a state
of practical vagrancy, " looking in one form or
other to alms for support." He shows from various
examples, both of the actual gains of individuals, as-
certained by inquiry and watching them, and of their
expenses, that a beggar family nets from 3s. to 4s. 6d.
per day. But, taking the average to be 551. a year,
and taking six individuals to constitute a begging
family, making the number of begging families to be
25,000, the vagrants levy a total sum of 1,375,0001. a
year, at least, on the public. That is taxation not
only without law for its warrant, but taxation in
spite of the law, which the law has strictly forbidden,
and has done probably all in its power to suppress.
This evil has forced itself on the notice of the Poor-
law Commissioners, and they have caused a pamphlet,
which describes the sort of vagrants most generally
known, and cautions people against alms-giving, to be
extensively circulated in the agricultural districts, but
the evil is increasing.
" Undoubtedly (says the Reviewer) it is a vast evil that
in a moral, Christian, and enlightened community there
should be thousands who prefer, from generation to ge-
neration, mendicity to labour, and crime to honesty. But
this is an evil which belongs to all states, and which we
cannot see any possible means of extinguishing. The
evil which is now greatly afflicting the Eglish counties,
and especially the agricultural districts, is the increase
not so much of hereditary and permanent beggars, as of
persons who are really destitute, and who, in default of
sufficient food, firing, and clothing, come to the resolu-
tion to " travel," and earn their bread by walking from
morn to night over amazing distances, and begging by
the way."
In spite of the Vagrant Act, therefore, vagrancy is
carried on to a vast extent, and is rapidly and fearfully
increasing. Why it increases, and how the law comes
to beset aside, the Reviewer thus explains :
" And what is the reason that the Vagrant Act is in
the agricultural villages, and increasingly in towns and
village districts, a dead letter ? How is it that the
English farmers offer yet more frequently than ever
their barns and their stables to the mendicant poor,
supplying them with clean straw or hay ? How is it
that when the Vagrant Act declares that all who
wander abroad and beg, or gather alms, or cause their
children to do so, are to be deemed idle and disorderly
persons, and may be arrested, brought before a Magis-
trate, and convicted, that in the agricultural districts
such an expedient is hardly ever resorted to ? How is
it that when the Vagrant Act declares that every
person who wanders abroad and trades without a
license is an idle and disorderly person, yet in
the agricultural districts he is never treated as such ?
How is it that gipsies, though rogues and vagabonds,
under the same Act, as well as fortune-tellers, and per-
sons living is barns, carts, and unoccupied buildings,
without giving any good account of themselves, are not
yet arrested ? The reason is obvious. There is such a
mass of real misery and destitution in the agricultural dis-
tricts that neither the nobility, clergy, gentry, nor Ma-
gistrates will enforce the Vagrant Act against occasional
and nOn-hereditary mendicants." " The Magistrates of
England have been blamed for not exercising greater
severity towards all vagrants. But if all the idle and
disorderly persons spoken of by the Vagrant Act were
conducted at this moment before the English Justices of
the Peace, they would soon be unable to provide prisons
and asylums for even a tithe of the number."
At present, then, the misery of the people is so vast,
and the number of vagrants so great, that the law is
completely set aside. It is a dead letter, or worse,
for it inflicts numerous penalties without restraining
the evil. It had better be taken from the statute book,
and not left there the memorial of a power impotent
to cope with the evils it creates. The people would
not then rely on the useless law for protection, and
seeing that it has deceived them by promising to put
an end to vagrancy, they would look this overwhelm-
ing evil in the face, and would most likely find
courage and skill to conquer it. Such a mass of
vagrants is now spread over the country, that they
make the once delightful and secure vales of England
neither safe nor pleasant to dwell in. Agricultural pro-
perty and sporadic dwellings, hedge rows, woods,
and barns, are difficult to guard. Every inch of
ground there is not, as in the streets of
the metropolis, constantly lighted and watched by
some living eye ; and the nobility, clergy, gentry,
magistrates, and farmers, live under no inconsiderable
awe of the mass of wretches they will not allow to
get an honest living. Fearing the vengeance of
the vagrants, they dare not carry the law into effect,
or treat them with harshness and cruelty.
Our Journal, yesterday and to-day, has supplied
some striking proofs of the increase of vagrancy in
the metropolis. Yesterday it recorded the fact that
between forty, and fifty able-bodied vagrants be-
sieged Islington workhouse, and compelled the autho-
rities to provide them with a night's lodging. It has
become, it seems, a common practice for vagrants to
collect in scores, or hundreds, and make an " hos-
telry" of the workhouse. The master of the St. George's
workhouse stated yesterday, at Union-hall, that
upwards of 200 persons applied for admission to sleep
there the preceding night, and one of them being
refused, because there was no room, he deliberately
broke the lamp over the gate, and so secured himself
a night's lodging. Yesterday, also, three persons
were examined at Marlborough-street, charged with
in Hyde-park, and the constable said that
sleeping
between fifty and one hundred young females
slept there of a4onight. Of the three persons
examined, one was a boy who came from a
place in Gloucestershire to seek for employment; the
two others were young women, who had neither
home nor friends. Such is the condition, we are
afraid, of many thousand young girls; and were Com-
missioners to inquire into their conduct and condition,
it would be found somewhat more terrible, disgusting,
and immoral than that of the collier girls whom
Lord ASHLEY apparently wishes to drive into desti-
tution and vagrancy.
In every part of our society, in the collieries, in
the metropolis, and in the agricultural districts, we
find evidence of the condition of the masses being
most sad and most degraded ; and the increasing
plagues of mendicity and pauperism, in spite both of

the benevolence and the severity of the legislator,
really should make him pause in his insensate career
of attempting to regulate the industry, the occupa-
tions, and the subsistence of the people.
Of the causes and cure of the increase of mendicity
and pauperism we cannot now say one Word ; we
shall conclude by quoting a passage from the Review,
and by expressing a hope that we may be able at a
future day to return to the subject :
"It is a deplorable fact that the English agricultural
poor, who have large families of very young children, live
much better as beggars than they do as labourers. Eight
or nine shillings per week will not support a man
with a wife and five children." " No English agricultural
labourer migrates for the purpose of begging when they
receive 15s per week wages. Very few migrate for
begging from the agricultural districts when the wages
are 12s. 6d. or even 12s. But when the English la-
bourer's wages decline from 12s. to 10s. 6d., and then
fall to 9s. or even to 75., the labourer has only three
courses to take—to starve on his wages, to enter the
union, or to beg. In five cases out of seven he prefers
mendicity. The great reason then why mendicity on
the part of English agricultural labourers is increasing
is, that wages are not high enough for the price of provi-
sions, or the price of provisions is not low enough for
the wages of labour." " But besides the agricultural
destitute labourers, who will not enter the unions, and
who, if they did, would render further buildings all over
the land for their reception immediately necessary, the
Irish emigrants, and the English manufacturing poor have
to be taken into the account. They have been incorrectly told
that the agricultural poor, and the agricultural districts,
are not so badly off as the manufacturing poor, and the
manufacturing districts, and so they migrate as beggars
from the north to the south. They migrated to the
north for work ; work has stopped, labour 'is not de-
manded, and now they return from the north to the
south as beggars. The agricultural poor become beggars,
because on the wages they receive they cannot live.
The manufacturing poor migrate as poor, because they
have no wages at all. Thus the tide of mendicity and
misery rolls on, and threatens a vast augmentation. for
the future."

Thus we see that the want of employment, lo*
wages, and the high price of food, are reducing the
people of England, under our protecting laws, to the
condition of the poor of Ireland ; and if we go on as
at present, the three million paupers there will be
matched by six million paupers in England.

The annual Parliamentary grant of 8,9251. for the
support of the Roman Catholic College at Maynooth,
gave rise, in the House of Commons, on Wednesday to the
annual evening's vituperation of the Roman Catholic
priesthood. The calumniators of the Catholics, last
night, were Mr. PLUMPTRE, Mr. BATESON, Sir. G.
11. SMYTIt, who has never gone out of mourning for
Catholic Emancipation, and that old pink of Orange
Magistrates, Colonel VERNON. The array of names
is not overwhelmingly formidable for rank, influence,
or intellect. Immaculate must be the system which
would fail to array against it hundreds of such oppo-
nents. Lord CLE3IENTS with great good sense observed,
that if half the time and trouble which were bestowed
upon the conversion of poor Roman Catholics, were be-
stowed upon the education and instruction of poor Pro-
testants in Ireland, a most desirable result would be ob
mined. This fact is notorious to all who are acquainted
with Ireland. There thousands of Protestants are left in
the most deplorable state of ignorance, while the whole
influence of the Kildare-street Society is brought to
bear upen the conscience of some old woman, with a
view to induce her to swallow a bowl of mutton-broth on
Friday I Happy is the travelling missionary, who can
report that, by the temptation of a pair of brogues, or a
new wallet, he prevailed upon a mendicant Papist to
abjure counting his beads, and fasting when he could
find anything to eat. The "dear man" is looked
upon by the Society as a saint—as an apostle,
expressly called to promulgate the Gospel among
the idolatrous Papists of Ireland, and as every ap-
proach to perfection brings a higher salary, the
candidates, upon such terms, find the business of Papist-
converting far too profitable to think of devoting any
part of their time to the instruction of their ignorant co-
religionists. The Hon. Baronet the Member for Col-
chester, drew a revolting picture of the obscene course
of education in Maynooth. It is very surprising that such
a course of youthful instruction should produce the most
zealous and moral priesthood in the world; and yet,
strange to say, such is the known and universally ad-
mitted fact. But the course of education in 'Maynooth
was defended by Lord ELIOT, as being the same as that
which prevailed in all Roman Catholic Universities.
The Noble Lord added, that in no place was there
greater purity of morals than in Ireland, among
the people whose daily conduct was influenced
by the advice and example of the Roman Ca-
tholic priesthood. We ought to feel grateful
for the forbearance of the Irish Members upon this
occasion. We were somewhat apprehensive that they
might retort upon English hypocrites the course of edu-
cation pursued ut the English Universities, and the state
of morals among our own people, as detailed in the evi-
-1 dente recently submitted to the House of Commons by
Colliery and Mining Commissioners. It would puzzle
Sir H. INGLis to hold out, as examples to others, a well-
paid State priesthood, thousands of whose flocks are
proved to have arrived at ripe maturity without ever
having heard of GOD, or the great scheme of Chris-
tian redemption. The opportunity was a tempting one ;
and, looking dispassionately at the question, we must
say that the Irish Members manifested as much for-
bearance as good feeling and good taste in not availing
themselves of it.

Something, however, ought to be done to prevent
these annual exhibitions of sectarian, anti-Christian in-
tolerance. The Roman Catholics are justly becoming
disgusted with these foul attacks upon their faith, and if
they be repeated from year to year the grant will be re-
fused, and thus the Government will lose all right to
control the supervision and inspection of the education
of the Roman Catholic priesthood. Many of the Irish
priests already protest against the grant ; the Liberal
Irish papers treat it with contempt ; and even Mr.
O'CONNELL himself has become indifferent to it.
Sir ROBERT PEEL is fully aware of this, and has
acknowledged its importance by previously apprising
the Roman Catholic hierarchy that, but for the great
distress of the country, he would increase the grant to
Maynooth, and that he would do so next year, if in'
office. This, after all, is the great point to consider,
viz., Is the right to superintend, and to some. ex-
tent direct the education of the priesthood of
seven millions of subjects, worth the paltry sum of
eight or ten thousand a-year ? Is the devotion of that
priesthood, in a country where they are all-powerful, and
where the laws derive their ant hority from mere brute
force, worth such an outlay on the part of the British
Treasury ? Lord ELIOT acknowledges that the Ro-
man Catholic priests exerted themselves most meri-
toriously and strenuously in assisting the Government
to put down the disturbances in Tipperary. In
fact the priests are the most efficient constabulary of
the kingdom, and yet the bigots in the House of Com-
mons, to the number of forty-eight, voted last night for
breaking the only link in the chain that binds them to
the English Government. Bigotry and folly are always
closely allied, but never nearer than when it seriously
proposed to withhold the paltry grant made to the
Roman Catholic College of Maynooth.

There is very little news in the French Papers, and that
little is entirely confined to the Regency question, to
which the majority of English readers are become indif-
ferent. 'We quote from them what miscellaneous gossip
they contain :

A letter from Naples of the Bth says that the squadron of
Admiral Hugon was to sail on the 10th or 12th for Palermo.
King Ferdinand had been on board' the Ocean (the Admiral's
ship). All the vessels of the squadron fired a grand salute of
all their guns on the occasion.
The Duke de Broglie has arrived at Neuilly, where he waited
on the Duchess of Orleans. Our readers will recollect that it
was the Duke de Broglie who went to Schwerin to receive her
Royal Highness and accompany her to France.
The house to which the Duke of Orleans was conveyed
after his fall has been purchased by the civil list for 110,000 f.
A letter from Brest of the 19th says;:—" The new Maritime
Tribunal appointed to decide a second time on the fate of Reivo,
Viarma, and Ripoli, implicated in the affair of the Packs, has
just condemned them to hard labour for life. The first tribunal
had sentenced them to imprisonment only. The three prisoners
had again appealed.—Gazette de Tribunaux.
A letter from Constantinople, of the 29th of June says:-....
" Yesterday the Turkish steamer, the Reschid, set out for
Syria with troops. It is given out that they are to take the
place of the Albanians, but we know that this is not the case,
and that the Porte intends, on the contrary, to increase the
number of these irregular troops."
The Porte has just adopted a measure respecting the printing
offices, which bears the stamp of the spirit of reaction which
prevails in the actual policy of the Government. A memoran-
dum .was delivered yesterday to the several legations interested
in the question. That delivered to M. Mavrocordato, the
Greek Minister, requires the suppression of several Greek
printing-offices. The Minister means to protest against this
measure, We hope that M. de Bourqueney will not carry his
systematic deference for the Porte so far as to sacrifice to its
caprice two French printing-offices, the suspension of which is
also demanded, and which, however, have not given grounds,
by any abuse, for the vigorous measure.— Commerce.
BOURSE—PARIS, TUESDAY, JULY 19.
First Highest Lowest Last
Price. Price. Price. Price.
French 5 per Cents 117 35... 117 35... 117 '20... 117 30
4 per Cents. lOl 50... 101 50... 101 30... 101 30
3 per Cents 77 35... 77 35... 77 20... 77 25
Bank of France. 3175 ...3177 50...3175 .. 3177 50
Laflitte Bank I,ooof 1015 ..1015 ...1015 ...1015
5,000 f 5035 —.5035 —.5035 ...5035 -
Belgian Bank 772 50... 772 50... 772 50... 772 50
Belgian Fives lO3 ... 103 ... 103 ... 103
1840 lon ... 1034 ... 103 i ... 1034
Spanish Active 22 ... 22 ... 22 ... 22
Passive
Portuguese Fives 274 ... 271 ... 274 ... 274
Neapolitan... lO5 80... 105 80... 105 80... 105 80
Roman ... lO3l ... 1031 ... 1031 ... 103/

The Three per Cents. were done at Madrid on the
12th inst., with the Coupons attached, at 211 cash, and
21i at 60 days. The Five per Cents., with 11 Coupons
attached, at 294 cash, and 30 304 at 60 days.