The Sun.
London, England, 1842-07-21 00:00:00

especially on such a vital commodity as corn. To make
such, restrictions was to legislate for the purpose of
making the kingdom yoorcr, for they had the same
effect as an hostile army preventing the entrance of pro-
visions into a beleagured city. Their direct operation
was necessarily to impoverish the kingdom ; let them
only look at the question in this broad light, and surely
they would come to the conviction that of ail madness,
that of legislating on such principles was the most ab-
surd and ridiculous. There was a Constant wtiste and
consumption of the commodities of a country, and to
prevent the importation of them was to produce a state
of things under which the nation must become poorer
and poorer.
Mr. HOLLAND HOOLE (Boroughreeve of the town of
Salford) then addressed the meeting. He said he had
been sent up for the special purpose of accompanying
other gentlemen to a meeting of merchants in the City,
which would be granted to them that day. He was a
large manufacturer, or at least he ought to be one, but
he was sorry to say that at present his works were
stopped. He would ask them under what conditions
could a man occupy premises, and employ 700 or SOO
men, when he could not even realise the expenses of his
establishment, and pay the chief rent and local taxes
of the place he occupied ? Such was the fact at pre-
sent, and perhaps he was singularly fortunate in being
able to stop his works without the total destruction of
his trade, which must be the case with the
majority of persons engaged in the same business, in
cotton-spinning. He looked forward to the winter with
great apprehension, not only on account of the great in-
, crease of misery it must produce amongst the people,
but fur the strong probability that outbreaks would oc-
cur, which would extend themselves over all the manu-
facturing districts. He believed that the exertions of the
League had contributed much to the preservation of the
peace of' the country, as well as to advance the cause ;
and the people were still waiting with some expectation
of benefit as to the result. It mattered not by what Mi-
nistry these changes were effected, but he felt morally
certain there was no other prospect before them butruin
if some great and important change were not made in
their commercial system. By his office in the town of
Salford, he was enabled to make observations of the state
of the people better than many other persons, and he
could assure the meeting that their condition was
frightful. [A short conversation ensued, during which
Mr. Hoole stated, that he had abandoned all idea of re-
newing his working till some great change had taken
place.]
The CHAIRMAN announced the receipt of two sums of
101., and IL, from " A Friend of the Cause," and
" A.B.C."—(Applause.)
Mr. Alderman CHAPPEL, in referring to the statement
of Sir R. Peel, respecting machinery, detailed an inter-
view he had with the Right Hon. Baronet at the Home-
office in 1835, when some disturbances were apprehended
in the manufacturing districts, on which occasion
Sir Robert Peel declared, with great feeling,
that " machinery should and would be protected."
How different was that language from the language
lately held by Sir R. Peel—language which seemed to
show that he wished to cater to the vicious taste of those
who were anxious to throw the odium of the present
awful distress upon the improvements which had been
effected in our machinery. He had lived in Manchester
for the last .50 years, and he had been in business there
for the last 40 years, so that he must know something of
the state of trade in that town. The branch of business
to which he had served his apprenticeship, and which he
since carried on, was the manufacture of fustian, which
was one of the staple manufactures of Manchester.
Between the profits made in that trade in days
long gone-by and the present time, no comparison could
be made. At the period when he had entered upon
business, the profit upon the best quality of fustains was
Is. a-yard, the profit upon those of the second quality
was 10(1. a-yard, and the profit upon those of the third
quality was Bd. a-yard. But a mighty change had since
taken place, and the profits were now but is. upon the
piece. Their goods had formerly been manufactured
by band-work ; but they had for some time employed
the power-loom. His own machinery had cost him
neatly 33.0001., but he did not believe it would now sell
for 8,0001. A party in his neighbourhood, who
had lately become a bankrupt, had a mill, the
the machinery of which had cost 40,000/. That machinery
had been valued about a year and a half ago at 22,000/.;
but it was sold the other day, and did not quite realize
7,000 i. Another party, who had also become a bankrupt,.
had a mill filled with excellent machinery, which ten
years ago had cost 6,0001., it was sold the oilier day for
1,5001. He had lately had a communication with the
Manager of -a Joint-Stock Bank, who gave it as his de-
cided opinion, and in that opinion he himself entirely
coincided, that if the manufacturers and mill-owners
of the country were to sell their mills, machinery,
and stock at as a high price as possible, there was
not one in five of them who would be solvent..
He had himself been always decidedly opposed to the
practice of reducing wages. He considered that practice
attended with two great evils ; first, it deprived the
working man of the means of purchasing goods ; and, in
the second place, it knocked down the value of all the
stock the manufacturer had en hand. No sooner was a•
redaction made in wages than it became known to pur-
chasers, who insisted on a corresponding diminution in
the price of goods. lie had himself taken, in the year
1840, a large amount of stock at a reduced price, expect-
ing to make a profit, but he had subsequently sold it at
a loss. The last time he had taken stock, namely, at
Christmas last, he had hoped that trade would revive,
and that he would make a large profit ; but he found he
had been greatly deceived, and he had sold it at It loss of
from V; to 10 per cent. He had of late reduced his
hands by one-half, and he should have stopped
his mills altogether were it not that he had a
considerable number of workmen living in his cottages,
for whom he wished to find some employment. He
was a Director of the Birmingham and Manchester
Railway Company. At the time they were, about to
open the line to Crewe ; they wanted about sixty clerks,
porters, and watchmen, and for those situations they had
upwards of 1,200 applicants, independent of private
applications to individual Directors. Those applicants
were in general men of good character, and of the con-
' ditiou to which they were reduced some opinion might
be formed from the fact of their having made those ap-
plications. He had been informed by a friend of his
engaged in the distribution of soup tickets to the dis-
tressed operatives, that on Monday morning the crowd
of applicants was unparalleled, and some of them had-
come to the door to wait for relief on the preceding
Sunday night. He could state as a fact, that some of
the ministers had lately visited a family of eight in
number, all grown up, who had but one bed and one room,
and that one room a cellar. Now, he had no hesitation
in saying that such a state of things must affect even
the murals of our population. Young people of various
classes could not thus be mingled together without
danger to their moral character ; and for his part, he
was persuaded that twenty years of prosperity could not
repair the injury done to the character of our people by
the distress of the last few years. He was himselt con-
nected with a Sunday-school, and though the expenses
attend'ng it were very limited, the contributions for its
support had so diminished that he was afraid it could
not continue to be carried on. The late annual collec-
tion had not realized one half the usual amount. Again
they had a dispensary and a penitentiary which_ were
nearly brought to a stand for want of funds.—(llear,
hear.) Altogether the town was in a most de-
plorable state. It would move the hardest heart
to see the number of persons once in respectable
circumstances now depending on precarious and charit-
able relief. He begged to state, as another indication of
the general decline of the trade in Manchester, that he
had learned that morning that a mill adjoining his own,
which employed seven or eight hundred hands, had
stopped. He had himself a few thcusands pounds left ;
when that was done he must stop working his mills,
and those he now employed must go out of employ ; for
the goods they now sold were not enough to pay wages.
lie was sure nothing but the pressure from without
would force the Legislature to attend to their complaints.
—(Loud cheers.) He was the last person in the world
who would wish to excite people to break the law, but
from what he knew of the situation of the country, and
of the trade of the country, he feared the worst. I:very
market was glutted, Mr. Smith, from Canada, had been
with bins recently, and had bought forty pieces of goods.
He ought to have bought four hundred or five hawked.
That gentleman had told him that he could buy goods
10 per cent lower in Canada than he could in England.
Another person who used to take a great quantity of
,goods, now desired that none might be sent out, because
he could buy them lower than they could be sent out.
If' Sir Robert Peel judges of the prosperity of the country
by the amount of exports, his judgment must be a most
erroneous one.—(Cheers.) On many of the goods sent
out, the manufacturer would never get 15s. in the pound
back again. Every piece of goods which left this country
without leaving a profit behind it, took part of our soil
away, and if that state of things continued the country
must ultimately go.—(Cheers.)
Mr. FINCH, in addition to his statements re-
specting iron made yesterday, stated that in the Staf-
fordshire district there were 150 blast furnaces,
of these only 74 were now in blast. These furnaces em-
ployed from 150 to 200 persons each, so that from
12,000 to 15,000 persons were thrown out of employ in
consequence. Many of the iron mills in Staffordshire
were only in work three days a week. As an illustra-
tion of the complete prostration of the iron trade, be
would just state that in 1833 he was selling bar iron at
11/. per ton, and this week the price was 5 guineas. A
gentleman who had had great experience as an exporter
of iron, had told him that lie could not
upon a single part of the globe where he could sell iron
at a profit.
intended to put his finger
HtAOlßamttAenNdhaa‘m'illegetiannt;
and dealers at the London Tavern, the Conleicm.a, -
ofountchel hoantd slle
merchantsi.),ela,t
de s
journed until to-day at eleven.

A letter from Cologne, July 10, in the German
!Lurnal cif Frankfort, states that the only topic of con-
versation in that city was a duel which had taken place
between an officer and a Catholic priest. The former was
wounded in the head.