The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-23 00:00:00

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LONDON :
FRIDAY MORNING. SEPTEMBER 23, 1842.

• We yesterday drew attention to the chief dis-
t;,lction between manufacturing and agricul-
tural industry, and patriotically endeavoured to
remneile the editors of the Quarterly Review and
the Post, together with the Rev. Mr. -MELVILLE
a,:id the other preachers against manufactures, to
their hard lot of being obliged to sojourn in the
midst of a manufacturing population, and daily
);hake use of its labours. A newspaper, a review,
or a printed sermon, is a manufactured article;
tiud, being fiJnd of our own wares, we are inclined
to think with our Correspondent, H. P., that a
!newspaper is one of the most refined species of

manufacture known. The paper on which it is
printed, even while blank and'unmeaning, is the
produce of a most ingenious process, carried on
to a vast extent by the CROMPTONS and DICREN-
SONS of our time, and the source of princely for-
tubes to the HOLLINGWORTHS and the WHAT-
MANS of a former day. When further manufac-
tured, and madeinstinct with meaning by the aid
of ingenious compositors, who come as punctual
to their business as the clock, and sent" forth to
the world by the help of a steam-press, it seems
to us, to say nothing of our own humble share, nor
of the share of numerous gentlemen who contri-
bute to its completion, to be a species of ma-
nufacture which almost may vie with Mr.
DYER'S card-making machine, or Mr. WHIT-
WORTH'S exact imitation on steel of the highest
dexterity of the fingers. Yet the literary gen-
tlemen we have alluded to, scarcely knowing
apparently that they are manufacturers, seeni

_ -
smitten with despair at the progress and success

of their own social craft, and can find no conso-
lation, but in dreaming of the solitary labours of
the husbandman. We hope we may venture

still further, to console these gentlemen, and the
community at large, doomed, like them, to be
manufacturers in spite of themselves, by briefly
pointing out other peculiarities and advantages
of manufacturing industry.
Next, perhaps, after the distinguishing facts,
that manufacturing industry is practised in com-
pany, agricultural industry in a great measure in
solitude, the most striking difference between
them is, that agriculture is carried on by little
help from machinery, and manufactures by great
help from the most refined machinery. In ma-
nufactures fixed capital, (which is another term
for instruments,) in a;riculture manual labour, is
the chief means of production. In the former
skill, in the latter rude toil, is the most conspi-
cuous element. In manufactures, therefore, the
waste and wear and tear of the human body are,
as the rule, preventedt—hough there are yet
many exceptions, because skill, as the Report of

the Sanitary Commissioners proves, is not car-
ried far en ough—while, in agriculture, all the
tasks are performed by muscular strength, and
the body is continually undergoing great fatigue.
In manufactures machinery works for man, in
agriculture he performs the task almost un-
aided. We consider that circumstance—would
the law-maker only allow us to exchange the pro-
ducts of our acquired skill and knowledge for the
produce of the wearying muscular exertions of
Polish serfs and American backwoodsmen, and
so spare our own busbandmen some of their ex-
cessive toil—to be a prodigious advantage for the
whole community. Other persons take a diffe-
rent view, and deem it a great degradation that
a man should have no other occupation than to
watch and guide a machine. On this point we
shall venture to quote a passage, though it be
long, from a letter which appeared in The Sun up-
wards of a year ago
Some of your Contemporaries, I am aware speak of
this dependence of man on man arising from division of
labour, and still more, they speak of the dependence of
man on the machinery he uses, as a great moral degra-
dation. The results contradict their assumption, and in
moral wealth as well as manual skill the manufac-
turers, practising new arts, are superior to the pea-
santry. They are the servants, 1 admit, of ma-
chinery, but the machinery is the result of mind, and
the servitude, rightly understood, is that of physical
power to intellect. A machine is in all cases the sub-
stitute for manual labour. It is the product of cool
calculating wisdom, the creation in moments of deep
thought, which in antiquity was called inspiration of
far-sighted men ; it substitutes, therefore, the delibe-
ration of the sage for the capricious, and may-be some-
times the drunken, irregularities of the hasty la-
bourers. While the hand varies in intensity and skill,
the mind-begotten machine is invariable and perfect
in its operations. Whatever it is appropriated to per-
form that it does excellently. In subjecting, therefore,
the workman to the operations of machinery, and
making him depend on that, it makes him the servant
of the noblest intellect with which God has endowed
his creatures. •

You will remark; too, that the inventors and makers
of this machinery become also its servants. It is the
offspring of their best and calmest wisdom, the result
of their most profound researches, and whatever the
passion or the caprice of the moment might dictate,
they are compelled to guide their conduct by the
creations of their own mind in its brightest 'moments.
They cannot get rid of their machinery, and are quite
as much slaves to it as their workmen.

To me, Sir, this opens a very grand view of society,
which, as far as I know, has not sufficiently attracted
public attention. The workman in the manufacturing
district is the slave, to use the Tory slang, of ma-
chinery; but the workman in the agricultural dis-
tricts, the soldier and the sailor, the bulk of manual
labourers, are the slaves, or the servants of capricious
men. They are governed by passion and uncertainty.
Machinery works with something of the regularity of
nature, and they who serve it serve at least a steady
master. The more machinery is increased, therefore,
the more intellect, which creates machinery, becomes
the guiding and ruling power of all the operations of
man's hand. The use of machinery is extending even
in war, and slaughter cannot be carried on without,
serving intellect. This process, then, is general in
society. More and more, year after year, does man
become the servant of that mind-begotten machinery
which works with unerring precision, and more and
more is he liberated from the dominion of passion
and caprice. The phrase, therefore, that man is a
slave to machinery, means that he is the servant of the
highest human intellect, and that its rule over society,
as the use of machinery extends, becomes every day
greater and greater.
According to that view, which we believe is
the correct one, the substitution of machinery for
manual labour possesses higher advantages than
merely sparing muscular exertion. It reduces
the most refractory wills under the dominion of
calm wisdom, and, in making man the servant of
machinery, makes him tractable, orderly, and
humble. Such is one of the essential and distin-
guishing characteristics of manufacturing in-
dustry. That it is carried on in our country too
much for the advantage of a few, and too little
for the benefit of the many, we admit and de-
plore. It shares that characteristic, however,
with all our political institutions, and is not on
that account more deserving of blame than the
Legislature, which has ever provided for the
welfare of the few at the expense of the many.
In truth this fault of the manufacturing system
is derived from our political institutions, and is
not inherent in it.

The Tory journals frequently reproach the
mastcr manufacturerswith neglecting their work-
men, or treating them harshly and cruelly, and
:hey appeal to the dislike exhibited by the
workmen for their masters as the proof of the
justness of their reproaches. It is, however,
much to be feared that the peasantry only want
an opportunity, which numbers have conferred
on the town population, to exhibit their dislike,
and something worse, of the upper classes. A
writer in the Morning Chronicle, speaking of the
more agricultural part of England, says:—
, I heard the resident gentry spoken of in terms
which the wildest Chartist never surpassed. In short,
at Cookham, at Woburn-green, at High Wycombe,
and every town and village I visited in that district,
the hostility of the labourers towards the local gentry
and many of the farmers was, to say the least of it,
expressed without reserve ; and in most cases it sounded
with a peculiar ferocity, inasmuch as those who uttered
their coarse sentiments used language of the coarsest
kind—language which I have certainly heard equalled
on a London cab-stand,or in a coal-heaver's tap-room,
but never exceeded in either. At Woburn, at Cook-
ham, and other places I was induced to inquire ra-
ther particularly into the character of the persons
whom I heard talking thus freely of the higher classes.
and I found that two-thirds of them or more
Were farm-labourers, the remainder being shoe-
pane, rmakers, blacksmiths, and millwrights.
ina -
Company of twelve of these persons'
only one understood the word machinery to
apply to a plough, o_ r any other implement of labour;
even the water wheels that moved the paper mills
were not admitted to be parts of machinery. They
applied the term
recent -tot i
prl
end
parts of the paper mills
whe eh o
d are
maehinenr iad existed in any other shape.
introduction but could not com-
p that some of
Chartist education, I soundedtim might have received a
them on that subject,
othriatny the name; but few of them undersvod
of
tehemcn e
nature of the Chartist
.a appeared rea dl nme.
evreer l
any
havedoctrines,
heard and a
ofmajority
morespirit ready to receive that or y' other doctrine
that would indulge them with the hopea- of levelling any
class better provided with the comforts of life than
themselves.

Hatred of the opulent classes, and a levelling
spirit, are as conspicuous in the agricultural as
in the manufacturing districts. Men who feel
themselves miserable believe themselves op-
pressed; and, notknowing how to obtain relief and

redress, will become sulky and ferocious. We
have good reason to believe that the same dispo-
sition exists in other parts of England as well as
in Bucks. The parsons will have a hard task to
eradicate such feelings, while the landlords will
find it no easy matter to prevent them breaking
out into disorder and violence. Falling markets
betoken abundance, in the land; and however
much the landowners may suffer from a reduc-
tion of prices and rent, they will, in the end, find
it the cheapest, as well as the most humane,
way to preserve the peace of the country, to
take instant means for directing a large share of
that abundance into the houses of the half-starved
peasan try.

The recent conduct of the metropolitan police,
as any one might have foreseen, has produced_ a
reaction, which manifests itself very visibly in
the Police-offices and at the Central Criminal
Court. Charges are brought every day against
parties for annoying the constables by some
marks of disrespect, and also, as they occasionally
swear. by knocking them down. The Magis-
trates, however, begin to he very cautious in re-
ceiving their evidence, and subject them to no
little inconvenience by cross-examination, and
by occasionally giving more credit to the simple
statements of the defendants, than to charges
made on oath. This has occurred in several in-
stances lately, and the result has been, that men
who were described by these public functionaries
as guilty of violent and unprovoked assaults have
been dismissed without even a reprimand. Juries
begin to decide in the same spirit. At the Central
Criminal Court yesterday a prisoner was tried for
" cutting and wounding a police-constable, with
intent to do him some grievous bodily harm,"
and though the charge was supported by a wit-
ness whci volunteered his services, and pointed
out the prisoner in the crowd as the offender, the
Jury returned a verdict of not guilty. He
was indicted a second time for a common
assault, and resisting a constable in the exe-
cution of his duty. It appeared that in this
case the prisoner was taken completely by sur-
prise. Neither he nor his advisers were aware of
the indictment till he was arraigned, and Mr.
BALLANTINE justly denounced the conduct of
the Commissioners in putting the prisoner on his
trial a second time without due notice; but the
attempt failed, and the Jury a second time re-
turned a verdict of not guilty. It was fortu-
nate that Mr. Justice WTGHTMAN was on the
Bench, for had a Judge of a different character
presided the Jury might have had some difficulty
in following what appeared to be their own con-
victions. " The verdict," said he, " must depend
on the point whether the prisoner was there
accidentally, as a quiet spectator merely ;
in which case the police had no right to in-
terfere with him." This no doubt is the law,
yet, in defiance of it, the police at some
of the late meetings arrested persons sitting
quietly at their own doors, brutally knocked
down others on the high road, and one respect-
able individual who, according to his solemn
asseveration, was entirely innocent until he was
unjustly assaulted, was convicted last sessions on
such evidence as that produced yesterday, and is
now working like a felon on the treadmill. The
public do not soon forget such deeds of injustice,
and Jurors, when they find their recommenda-
tions to mercy disregarded by the Judge, pro-
perly exercise the power entrusted to them by
law. This should be a warning to the Govern-
ment and their servants, the Police Commis-
sioners ; for if this new force is not speedily
placed on a better footing, it will become an in-
strument of evil, and be put down by general
acclamation.

The Tories, it should seem, have not yet reco-
vered from their astonishment and dismay at the
course of policy pursued by Sir R. PEEL during
the last session. The agricultural portion of them,
in particular, who denounce everything in the
shape'of free trade as a monstrous innovation on
the good old order of things, still continue to
harp with as much bitterness as ever on the cruel
sacrifices they have been compelled to make, by,
a Minister of their own choosing, from whom
they had a right to expect kinder treat-
ment. Mr. CONYERS, who speaks the sentiments
of a large section of the Essex Tories, hints
pretty significantly his suspicions that; the agri-
culturists have been duped and betrayed by
Sir ROBERT PEEL, observing, " I hope in what
he has done, we shall not feel ourselves injured
or betrayed;" and a Tory Contemporary re-
marks this morning, in still more explicit lan-
guage, "In the Income-tax, the Corn-law,
and the Tariff, the landed interests have been
called upon to make sacrifices, the amount of
which is unlimited and incalculable. The stub-
born truth is, that the measures brought fbrward
by Sir R. PEEL are not those which the Conserva-
tive electors were led to expect from him. The
constituencies throughout the country were influr
enced by the understanding that the Minister
would give full and adequate protection to home
industry ; but his official career has taken a di-
rection the contrary to what the fulfilment of
that understanding would dictate. Hence the
confiding electors have reason to complain of
disappointment." From these and other signi-
ficant indications that escape them from time to
time, it is evident that there are such serious
divisions and sub-divisions among the Tories as
must prevent them henceforth from acting toge-
ther with cordiality. A portion of them will, no
doubt, still continue to give a sort of sulky sup-
port to Sir ROBERT PEEL ; but the more obsti-
nate and energetic of the squad will most likely
draw off from him altogether; rally under some
new banner; adopt Monopoly as their political
Shibboleth ; and at some critical moment, when
parties are nicely balanced in the House,
fling their weight into the scale of Opposition,
just as they did on Sir H. PARNELL'S question of
the Civil List, when they coalesced with
.the
Whigs, and upset the Duke's Administration.
Of course, by so acting, they will be virtually
committing political suicide ; but the lessons of
experience are lost on fools.; and a discontented
Tory is the most headstrong and unreflecting of
animals, who will stick at nothing to gratify his
revenge. But however these Tory advocates of
Monopoly act—whether they make up their
minds to support or to oppose Sir ROBERT PEEL,
one thing is certain—namely, that they will be
able to inflict no very serious amount of mis-
chief on the country. They are a daily dimi-
nishing party, whose opinions find no echo in the
breast of the community at large. They are as
old-fashioned as the pig-tail which their favourite
Lord SIDMOUTH still, we believe, wears; and in
a few years will have become an extinct species,
like the Mammoth and the Iguanadon.

At the meeting ofthe Royal Mail Steam-Packet
Company, held on Wednesday, a very •full
Report was read of the expenses of the under-
taking, the cause of the failure, and the new
arrangements made with the Admiralty. It ap-
pears that the combination hitherto acted
upon, involved a steam service of 684,816
miles in the year, which was found too
extensive for the number of vessels em-
ployed (fourteen), and incurred an outlay, for
which the Government grant, and the other
receipts, did not afford at all adequate remu-
neration. They had, therefore resolved to limit
the number of vessels to twelve, and reduce
the steam service to nearly one-half;
or about 393,000 miles in the year. The saving
by the new system is estimated at 123,000/. per
annum, and the Directors anticipate that it will
be worked with such regularity as to recommend
the service to the favour of the Government and
thu public, and produce an adequate di-
vidend to the Shareholders. The expen-
diture up to the end of August, 1842,
including 733,0521. for building twelve ships,
purchase
and outfit of schooners and other
steamers,lB2,oool., and coals 105,0001., amounted
to 1,206,9331.
This is a grand undertaking, and
we trust the Proprietors will meet with that
support from the public to which such a useful
and rapid means of communication with the
Western world is entitled.

According to accounts from Madrid of the
13th instant, the Minister of Finance had dis-
missed three officers of his department, as un-