The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-09 00:00:00

early, and good harvest? They strove all in their
power to keep up prices; they kept their corn
out of the market as long as possible, and
scarcely a grain was introduced till the markets
were rising. But when it was ascertained that
our own produce was larger than usual—when
prices, in consequence, could not be forced up—
when they had begun sensibly to fall, then the
importers introduced the foreign wheat at a
much higher duty than it was ever before
necessary to pay on the bulk of the foreign
supply. It seems to us that the ruin of the specu-
lators in foreign grain, and the fall of price be-
fore their wheat had passed the Custom-house,
fully demonstrates that the common reports of
the harvest were correct, and confirm the opinion
we have expressed of our opponent.
We believe the harvest was not even decent
on the clay lands of Essex, the farmers of which
had to bear all the expense of a costly system
of cultivation and high rents, while they could not
secure themselves from the competition of the
farmers of other parts of the country, whose crops
were excellent. But while they are grumbling
at their short crop, the farmers of Haddington
are rejoicing, according to Mr. GEORGE HOPE,
the author of a prize essay published by the
League, " in a most abundant crop of the finest
quality." The present laws subject the
tenants to certain outlays, while the harvest is
always a contingency. Those whose crops suc-
ceed are, at the best of times, barely remune-
rated, while those whose crops fail are utterly
ruined. The Essex farmers promised rent for
the present year, and were at an expense of cul-
tivating the land, tantamount to wheat being 60s.
per quarter; it has fallen below 505., their crop
is short, the law did not destroy the harvest of
the farmers in the north, nor keep it out of the
market, and the Essex farmers are nearly ruined.
The law, by increasing the expense of cultiva-
tion and raising rents all over the country, while
it cannot secure equal crops for every farmer,
was and is the cause of the distress of the Essex
farmers, which makes them dismiss their la-
bourers.

We need not add one word to remind our
readers that those laws, by destroying the pro-
perty of the manufacturing classes, have made
even a short harvest abundant, in relation to
their means of purchase, and have caused
that fall in price which is felt as an injury to
both farmers and agricultural labourers. Neither
do we require to notice the statement that the
present distress is caused by a partial abandon-
ment of the system of protection, for the decay
of the agriculturists far exceeds the amount
of that abandonment, and began before that could
have had any effect. The whole mischief has
been caused, as Mr. GREG has shown in a pam-
phlet published by the League, by the Corn-laws
inducing the farmer to promise rents and incur
expenses, which the price of wheat, except in
years of scarcity, will not enable him to pay.

The Bengal Hurkaru of October 11, says,
that the official reports of the deposition of the
Hill Coolies returned from the Mauritius de-
clare that some Coolies say they would rather
break stones than work in the cane plantations;
others complain of being cruelly treated by the
overseers, of having been beaten, imprisoned,
and deprived of their rations for the most trifling
offences. It adds that not one in a hundred
have returned to Bengal. The Mauritius, it is
concluded, is very far from being the Coolie
Eldorado described by interested persons. This
statement is of considerable importance, both in
relation to our duties on sugar, which are con-
structed to give a heavy bounty on the so-called
free Coolie labour in the Mauritius, and depress
the slave labour of the Brazils—a subject which
will again be agitated when Parliament assem-
bles; and in relation to Lord STANLEY'S notable
scheme to tax the labourers of the Mauritius to
import Hill Coolies in order to beat down
the wages of their own labour, which
we brought under the notice of our readers on
the lithult. Lord STANLEY did not carry his plan
through Parliament uninformed of the certain
oppression of the Hill Coolies, which he was pro-
moting. To be sure the Noble Lord, with that
overweening confidence in his own wisdom which
always distinguishes such petted children of for-
, tune, was, and no doubt still is, quite certain that
the nice regulations HE had devised would be
sure to prevent all the evil consequences of the
cupidity to which he was giving a legal sanction.
By such immeasurable vanity, which refuses to
take council from experience, and persists in
supposing that it can achieve by some paper-
orders what all previous statesmen have failed
to accomplish, blacks and whites are at all times
made to suffer. Mr. HOGQ, who opposed Lord
STANLEY, thus remonstrated with him :

What thirty or forty thousand of the natives of
India torn by force, or beguiled by fraud, from their
homes, transported to a distant island, where, from
the nature of the soil, labour in the field is severe in
the extreme ; there, handed over to taskmasters who
extorted from them work beyond what their frames
were physically capable of enduring—while their
families, abandoned in India, were languishing in
na:sery and destitution. And the system which in-
duced those frightful calamities to be again resorted
to, without the specification of a single precautionary,
measure (at least as regarded India) that had not be-
fore been tried and found unavailing.
Mr. HOGG'S remarks are fully confirmed by
the Bengal newspaper; but in spite of all his
remonstrances, and in spite of all his facts, Lord
STANLEY, as Mr. HOGG justly observed, sup-
ported on one " side of the House measures
which he had opposed on the other." The Noble
Lord's superabundant confidence in himself was
in fact sufficient equally to Overcome all regard
for his own consistency and an respect for what
is due to the labourers in the Mauritius and the
Coolies in India. Notwithstanding this addi-
tional testimony to the enslaved condition of
the labourers forced or beguiled from
India to the Mauritius, and of the in-
sufficiency of all regulations to cope with the
avarice of planters, endowed both with the
political power and the land of our colonies, we
shall no doubt be told with much earnestness
still to rely on the wisdom and precautions of
Lord STANLEY to prevent all mischief in future.
We shall be called on to continue the present,orper-
hapssome mitigated, bounty on the cultivation of
sugar in our own colonies by some schemeof forced
labour, now contemplated, miscalled free im-
migration from Africa or India We place
no reliance whatever on any such regulations, and
therefore we conclude that the only way to put
an end to such oppression as occurs in the cane
plantations in the Mauritius, and we have no
doubt in our other colonies, is to put an end to
the enormous bounty which is now given by the
discriminating sugar duties on the cultivation of
that commodity in our own colonies.

A Morning Contemporary speaking of the
present state of Ireland, makes the following
remarks :—" Crime has opened its winter cam-
paign earlier, and in greater force, than usual.
In Tipperary, murder, with its train of minor
offences—such as destruction of property and
brutal assaults on persons—stalks abroad; through-
out Cork, there is an organised and tumultuous
confederation against the payment of poor-rates;
in Longford, Ribbonism, with its threatening
notices and armed marauding parties, is prepar-
ing for more active and dangerous demonstra-
tion ; and there is generally throughout the south
of Ireland a passive resistance to the obligations
of the Poor law." Discouraging as are these re-
marks, there is unfortunately too much truth
in them. The Herald is guilty of no ex-
aggeration. Agrarian disturbance is rife in
many parts of the south of Ireland ; discontent,
as usual, is the rule, and content, the exception,
in that most combustible quarter, of the sister-
island;—in a word, pacification is deVeloping
itself after the orthodox Irish fashion, by nightly
hill fires, tumultuous gatherings of the peasantry,
house-breakings, house-burnings, shooting at
landlords behindhedges, and bringing them down,
like crows, at a long shot; and by those thou-
sand other sprightly but irregular contrivances,
by which the Irish peasant is in the habit of
are.sil The
showing'
dissatisfaction with things as they
inference—the inevitable inference—
to be drawn from this discouraging state of affairs
is, that the Tory Government, despite its boasts,
and promises, and affected impartiality, has
as yet done little or nothing towards the restora-