The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-11 00:00:00

OJ' Itent'ug 4,-- nit

LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1845.

From all parts of the United Kingdom accounts continue
to pour in of the hopeless and very frighful condition of the
potato crop. The murrain, in various types, displays itself
with a degree of intensity only aggravated as the season for
pitting or storing advances to its close. By the accounts
from ISunderland which we yesterday published, it would
seem that a form of disea,e more hideous than the mere
generation of fungus and parasitical excrescences of a vege-
table nature is now becoming apparent. The potato is
found, in this state, to be infested with myriads of minute
red worm, the larvse of which are deposited throughout
the whole superficial texture of the bulb. It is melan-
choly to reflect how large a proportion of the
hardy and industrious population of those colliery and
shipping districts of which Sunderland is one of the principal
ports will be condemned, from poverty and other causes,
during the winter upon which we are now rapidly verging,
to subsist, largely, on a root thus infected with noisome cor-
ruption. For, on the too favourable supposition, even, that
employment may be found for this industrial community
throughout that inclement quarter to almost as great an
extent, and on equally advantageous terms, as at present ;
those " other causes" will operate with baleful effect against
their chance of obtaining more wholesome and nutritious
food. In any case they will have to contend against the posi-
tive evil of reduced and really inadequate wages to which
" competition," in all the departments of agriculture, mining,
manufactures, and commerce have been gradually but sternly
subjecting the whole industrial labour of Great Britain. This
is the first difficulty which will interpose itself to their pro-
curing sound and salutary food. It may appear very strange
to them—it will be felt very hard by them—that though
they may find the market of employment open to them, and
may manfully set themselves to the most laborious occupa-
tions, working over-hours, and making all imaginable sa-
crifices of domestic comfort and needful rest for that purpose ;
the scale of their wages sl:all be utterly unremunerative ; or,
at any rate, be controlled by a perpetual tendency to diminish
rather than to increase. Their astonishment and
disappointment will only prove that they are no
more capable of appreciating the merits of Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S tampering with our monetary system, than we are.
The secand difficulty in the way of their getting at better
food—that is to say, good bread instead of diseased potatoes
—is also the more formidable one. The cruel, the wanton
the wicked operation of the existing corn-laws does not per-
mit to poor men that modification of the penalty of poverty,
which they would realise on being but half-starved. The
exigency of the " sliding-scale" is—like the test of qualifying
misery prescribed by the New Poor-law—absolute, ab-
ject destitution. When there is not corn enough in
the kingdom to stop the saucy mouth of famine, Sir
ROBERT'S sliding-scale slides down as glibly as the
marking slider on the scale of a " ladies' shoema-
ker's " foot rule. When the balance of parochial
economy trembles between the expenses of a famishing fellow-
creature's removal " to his parish," the fees incident to a
magistrate's " order of removal," and the charges of con-
stables and conveyance, with the sequents of the coroner's
inquest and the undertaker's bill, in the event of death before
granting out-door relief or receiving the sufferer into the in-
firmary of the union, it is csnceived by the Poor-law authori-
ties that the pivot point is turned, and the prohibition duties
—on human sympathyrun down to that line on the
" scale," which open to them not the out-ports, but the por-
tals of the poor-house. To entitle you to be fed, you
must be all but beyond the power of feeding. To
give you a claim to eat ,chop bread,, you must first
have exhausted year substance in purchasing' it at the
dearest possible rate. Here • again is a philosophy
of which, though taught by Sir Roam= PErr.-as "Emeritus
Professor," we doubt very much^whether our Bceotian com-
patriots of the North can be brought to peroeiYO either the

beauty or the advantages. How vexatious for the Premier,
who has allowed a dozen Cabinet Councils, within little more
than as many days, to be summoned, assembled, adjourned,
re-assembled, and dismissed, with no more practical results
tpan those of a dozen remarkably bad lacifer matchez,
vainly ignited and contemptuously thrown away ! Our
deficient corn harvest is not to be supplemented by
foreign importations. Our pestilence-smitten potato crop
must not be replaced by sound corr. The throes
of coming famine are not yet sufficiently convulsive. We
suffer, but are not yet frenzied. We complain, but we shall
go on some time longer—perhaps--without raving. So, there
is still no " Order in Council" for opening the ports. The
" sliding scale" continues to fall, by a necessity, inherent in
its bwn construction, as irresistible as the law of gravitation.
It is admitted on all hands that its touching that point of de-
clension at which it becomes neutralised or extinct would,
under existing circumstances, avert an incalculable amount of
present privation and suffering, and an unknown ex-
tent of future misery, from the devoted heads of
millions of our poorer fellow-creatures and country-
men. To linger at the penultimate stage is to perish
of inanition on the very borders and within sight of
plenty. But the Prime Minister will not allow
even the SOVEREIGN to accelerate this consummation. He
has inflicted upon the whole empire, for the last quarter of a
century, the curse of dear money. He seems resolved now,
upon perpetuating, if it be possible, or maintaining, for as
long a term to come, the curse of dear bread. No Minister who
was not interested, as he is, in this dearness both of the ene
commodity and the other—as a large money capitalist and a
large landowner—could have endured for one week
the contemplation of the working of his corn-law
and his money legislation. The former he has based upon
the principles of that rule which COCKER and WALKING-
!TAME have denominated "simple (i. e. self)
.interest.',
The latter he seems to have framed on no higher elements
than those of " vulgar fractions." The one is an exempli-
fication of the most obtuse prejudice—the other, evidence of
the most exploded prepossessions of modern European states-
manship. But the time is at hand at which the popular
voice will vindicate its own demands in the name of com-
mon sense and common humanity. All ministers of expe-
dients ultimately succumb to principles. The Premier's
public career has been a succession of dramas, of which the
plot was always founded on the attempt to set up an expe-
dient, and the catastrophe the establishment of the rightful
principle. He has yet to "go through " the denouement of
his tragic farce of " The Gold Standard ;" and the public have
yet to be edified with the downfal of his usurping Cur-
rency Bill of 1819, and its progreny of 1826 and 1844,
and the restoratiop of the rule of legitimate money.
In reference to this matter of the currency, we postpone for
want of room some further remarks which we propose to
offer in confirmation of an able exposition of sound monetary
principles that we had yesterday the pleasure of transferring
to our columns from those of a Contemporary. But, in ad-
dition to the observations we submitted in our yester-
day's impression on the still' increasing drain of bullion
from the cellars of the Bank, and on the Bank's weekly ac-
count, as published in last Friday's Gazette, we desire to direct
the reader's attention to these facts. That account showed a
decrease in the weekly circulation of 149,0001., and the de-
crease in gold store (helping it out by taking credit for
1,685,0001. of silver bullion) to 304,0001. ; so that to-
gether- the two items of decrease amounted to
453,0001. But, on the other side, one class of
deposits had last week increased from 8,930,1341. to
9,099,7371.; a difference In the,. amount of their banking
floating capital of 169,6031. Their " Rest" had increased by
12,3201. ; their "Public deposits" by 163i3961.—t0tal of in-
crease on. hese items, 345,3891. Now,inreference to the com-
bined operation of deposits' locked up, and circulation re-
duced, and bullion, stores diminished, this, account represents
a pressure on the public circulation equivalent to the sum of
the actual aggregate of the heads of decrease, and that of
the items of increase, to the extent of which latter the com-
mercial public has always a right—under the automaton ma-
chinery adapted by Sir ROBERT PEEL to the action of the
Bank of England—to expect to be benefited. Here we
verily believe lies the secret of Sir ROBERT'S aversion
to an Order in Council, opening the ports to foreign corn.
He knows that the gold bullion would flow out of the
country upon the same tide on which the vessels that
had brought the consignments of grain would sail
down the river on their homeward voyage, with return
cargoes, not of manufactured goods—which at present you
cannot persuade the foreigner to take in exchange for wheat
—but with your vainly hoarded sovereigns. It must, how-
ever, come to this. The Premier is already convicted of
having been run away with by two enormous fallacies. He
must make up his mind to enter a double record of his politi-
cal failures by promulgating two Orders in Council. The
one will repeal his sliding-scale; the other must repeal his
Currency Bill and " its complement." Government taxation
paper, or Bank of England small notes, must be formally
called into circulation ; and in this way only can we hope to
escape the horrors of impending; scarcity with scarcity prices,
and the convulsions of a monetary panic, which nothing but
persevering in our present suicidal monetary system could
make inevitable.

It is a generally received opinion, and admitted by impa-
tial Frenchmen themselves, that France with her present
limited commerce, and with no colonies that deserve the
name, can be only a second or third-rate naval power.
The Chambers may vote any sums they please for building
ships of war; France may possess the finest docks in the
world, and the finest vessels, but money cannot make
sailors, and without an ample supply of able and skilful sea-
men, men accustomed from youth to the hardships of the
ocean, and deterred by no danger, the most powerful navy in
the world would in the space of two or three years' war,
become only a useless incumbrance. It was the trade
of Holland, employing so many merchant vessels,
that first raised that small republic to a great
naval power, and its strength in that respect has decreased
exactly in proportion as other states have become more en-
gaged in the carrying trade. These are chiefly England and
the United States of America, who, probably, have larger
commercial navies than any other ten
,states in the world.
Some of the influential men in France begin to view the
question in this light, and to place no confidence in the
Strength of a French fleet till a new system is adopted, by
which the navigation laws shall be altered and colonies
formed as nurseries for French seamen. The Prince DE
JODIVILLE seems to be partly of that opinion,
and is compelled, therefore, in the meantime, to
look to steam-ships, and other modern inventions,
as the only grounds for security against the vast
resources of England and the United States. But a
steam navy is at best but a doubtful arm of defence. Steam-
ships are of great use in rendering assistance to a fleet; they
are excellent for bombarding towns, and as privateers would
be unrivalled, but without a vast proportion of large sailing
vessels, manned with good seamen, they could make no fin-
pression in a great naval fight. The French journals, there-
fore, that call out for increasing the naval power of the
country are directing the attention of the Chambers to this
important subject, and urging, as they have for years done,
the Goverment to lose no time in adopting great
measures for rendering the navy really effective. A
long article on this subject, as we stated yesterday,
appears in the Flotte, in which a comparative view is taken
of the actual strength of the English and French navies, and
in almost every respect superiority is given to the former.
The following analysis of the English fleet is thus
stated : Three-deckers afloat, 19, carrying from
120 to 104 guns. Two-deckers afloat, 32, carry-
ing from 90 to 70 guns. Frigates afloat, 54, carrying
from 60 to 36 guns ; and corvettes, brigs, &c., 95, carrying
from 26 to 10 guns. The French actual naval force is
given as follows :—Three-deckers, 4, with 120 guns
each. Two-deckers, 19, carrying from 100 to 80 guns.
Frigates, 28, carrying from 60 to 40 guns; and other small
vessels 65, with 30 to 10 guns each. The total tree of
each nation, including vessels building, is reckoned as fol-
lows :—English, 282 ; French, 161. After stating the man-
ner in which this force of vessels of the line, frigates,
and brigs is divided, numbering those armed, the
advance-ships, and the reserve, the Flotte makes
the following remarks :—" The three deckers and the
vessels of 92 to 78 guns are in perfect order. The 23 of 70
to 76 alone are ant of repair; nearly the whole of them re-
quire repairs, and that of an important description, pro-
bably for one-third of them. They are the oldest vessels of
the British navy. They are ordinarily when armed employed
upon distant stations. Thus then, should England wish to
make a great demonstration of her maritime force, it must
be evident to those who are acquainted with the English
arsenals, and the power of the Admiralty, that within a
month after the orders should be dispatched from London
the 28 vessels and 6 advance-ships might be joined to the
15 vessels and 15 armed frigates, making a total of 43
vessels, of which 12 three-deckers and 21 frigates would
be furnished in time of war with the best sailors. What
could France do if she wished to contend against this
powerful fleet ?, To the eight ships and 12 armed frigates
she might join four ships and four frigates afloat, and arm
promptly enough five ships and five frigates in ordinary.
These vessels ought to have their materiel complete ; but such
is the penury of our arsenals, that it is frequently necessary
to take from the ships in ordinary the exchanges indis.
pensable for the armed vessels. Admitting then, that a
these vessels weremtmhiwielt,endrfitcee
month after the declaration of war,
com-
pletely ready to go to sea, we should have 17 ships and 23
frigates to oppose to 43 ships, 12 of which are
three-deckers, and 21 frigates." This is a striking difference
in point of numerical force, but the difference is still greater '
in the qualities of the combatan's. The sailors of both na-
tions are equally brave, but mere bravery without other
qualities. cannot obtain victories, and supposing, with the
Prince DE JOLNVILLE for a moment, that by some accident the
.French fleet should obtain over the English a great victory,
it would be equal to a defeat. One-half possibly of the goad
perhapse
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fully manned and equipped, to which the French had no
adequate force to oppose. The writer comes to the conclu-
sion, as stated in The Sun of yesterday, that before France
can compete with England she must have maritime
commerce and colonies. The former, certainly, she may in-
crease by abolishing foolish monopolies, by encouraging other
nations to trade with her on liberal terms, and by some alter-
ation of her navigation laws. But colonies cannot be created
in a few years—a century would be required, and even then,
theYreneh, to make them useful, must change their whole
system of colonization,

The only intelligence from Madrid, of the 3d instant, poe.
sesaing the slightest interest relates to the public funds, which

have been rising for some time. °t the journals ret4b
to the circumstance as a proof ( the grov /lug credit of the
Government, and we hope it is not fount' Led on some other
shallow foundation, brought about' by a ompany of jobbers.
The funds have not only risen, but pi. great deal of business has
been done. The note to the offichal bulfe tin gives the fol-
lowing prices :—Three per Cents.„ 30/4 fur cash, and 371 for
time, and good business done; Five per Cezits., from 251/1 to
25%.

The accounts received at Paris from'the Freuch Ambas-
sador at Constantinople, are considered highly favourable.
It appears from them that the Ottoman Porte had yielded
to the demands of Baron DE BOITRQUENEY for satisfaction,
relative to the murder of the Fran ch priest and the in demni-
ties to the convents which had suffered from a late po'oular
commotion. The supposed murderer is to be brought, w,qh-
out delay, to Constantinople, to undergo his trial ; all the
French subjects who had been obliged to quit the Lebanon
are to be reinstated in. their establishments, and compensation
is to be made to the inmates of the convents of Abey and
Solima. This is considered a• great triumph on the
part of France. These results are thus given in the Journal
des nebate:—"We have received news from Constantinople
of the 23d Oct., and are
,happy to be able to state, that the
differences which have arisen between the Porte and the
Ambassador of France have been settled, and that entire
satisfaction has been given to the demands made by the
Baron DE BOURQUENEY. The Ambassador had demanded
the punishment of the murderers of Father CHARLES, a priest,
placed under the protection of France, who was massacred in
the Lebanon, in the month of May Last, and had also pro-
tested against the order given by CHEKIB EFFENDI,
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Coins nissioner of the Porte
in Syria, for all European subjects to quit the moun-
tain. :The Baron DE BOURQUENET had given
,in an
ultimatum to the effect that French subjects should
be immediately replaced in their establishments, and
that an indemnity should be granted to those who had been
compelled to quit them, in consequence of the refusal of pro-
tection—that the Sheik HAMOUD should be summoned to
Constantinople, and that he should be tried for his conduct
in the events of May—that the guilty parties should be
sought out, and that the port should pay indenanitie.s for the
sack of the convents of Abey and Solima, and that the officer
who commanded the detachment of troops present at the
sacking of the convent of Abe} be punished. This ultimatum
has been accepted entirely by the Porte. The necessary
orders were sent to CHEICID EFFENDI two days after, and
M. BOUREE, Consul of France, started immediately for his
post, to watch over the execution of these orders." It also
appears, frbm accounts of the same date, that some important
changes have taken place in the Turkish Ministry.
RESCHID PACHA, now Ambassador at Paris, is recalled
for the purpose of being placed at the head of the Cabinet
with the title of Minister for Foreign Affairs. This is ad-
mitted on all hands to be a good appointment. SA.RIM
EFFENDI, at present ambassador iu London, goes in the
same capacity to Paris, and CHERIE EFFENDI, the late
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and at present commissioner in
Syria, goes as ambassador to London. BAHR' EFFENDI, the
secretary of the embassy in Paris, remains in Paris in the
meantime as Charge d'Affaires.
We extract from the Semaphore de Marseilles the follow-
ing curious paragraph :

" We have been assured that a letter written by Abd.el-Kader,
and forwarded to Paris by General Cavaignac, had struck terror into
the beart of an ,august personage, and sadly -complicates the em.
barrassments of the • situation; The Emir is said to have declared
that during the last ten years be had constantly-held in his hands'
the lives of the prineei and generals who had fought in Africa;
that be had under his orders 1,200 fanatics, ready to suffer martyr".
dons, who were most anxious to repeat the scene of Yleber, :and
purify themselves in the blood of the Christian generals; that he
had hitherto restrained the religious ardour of these sectaries of
Mehemet, but that ih future be should' be guided by the attitude,
which' Prance woUld assume towatds'him. It is Added that at the
moment when this alarming notification reached Paris, the Depar.
ture of the Duke of Montpensier had been agreed in council, but
that the tears of the Queen caused it to be adjourned."

A good deal of business was done, both at TORTONI'S and
the Boulevard des Italiens, on Sunday, when prices had con-
siderably improved. The Three per Cents. were done at 82f.
15c., and. the Five per Cents. at 117 f. 45c. Some business
was likewise transacted in Spanish Stock, the Three per
Cents. selling at 34 for cash, and 354 and 36 for time.
The following are the prices of shares at Marseilles and
Lyons :

MAlmmum, Nov. s.—Marseilles and Avignon, I,ooof. ;
Vierzon, 740 f. ; Boulogne, 580 f. ; Bordeaux, 662 f. 50c.
LYONS, Nov. 7.—Marseilles and Avignon, 982 f. 50c. ;
Paris and Orleans, 1,170 f. ; Paris and Rouen, 995 f. ; Orleans
and Vierzon, 723 f. 75c.
BUSINESS DONE IN FOREIGN RAILWAYS AT THE
LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE, Nov. 10.

Anglo-Belgian
Boulogne- and Amiens
Bordeaux &Mediterran
Bordeaux and Toulouse
Do. & Cette (Espeleta)
Do. ( Mackenzie's)
Central of Spain ..

,uxembourg
Madrid and Valentia —
Namur and Liege
North Jamaica ...
Orleans and Vierzon
Orleans and Bordeaux 10%
OverYssel
Pari?&L7ons (Laffitte) 21,

Ceylon .

Djmerara

Dendre Valley ...... ...
Dutch Rhenish 7%

Dieppe & Paris j.;;Ci..
Dijon and Mulhouse ...
East Indian
Fampoux & Hazebrouk
Grt Northern of France
(Laffitte's)
Ditto (Rosamel's): 3
Do. (Le Boeuf)
Do. Pepin le HaHenn —
Great Paris and Lyons —
Great Western Bengal
Great Western Canada 31/2
Jamaica S. Mid. Junction
Do. North Midland...
Do. Extension
Jersey
Louvain and Jemeppe 2l/2
Lyons and Avignon 2 4