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

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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 'Sunderland which we yesterday published, it would
seem that a form of disease 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 la►vm 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 opprate 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-
erifice.s of domestic comfort and needful rest for that purpose ;
the scale of their wages shall 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 second 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 " eliding-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-
ereature'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 cmceived by the Poor-law authori-
ties that the pivot point is turned, and the prohibition duties
—on human sympathy—run 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 cheap bread, you must first
have exhausted your substance in purchasing it at the
dearest possible rate. Here again is a philosophy
of which, though taught by Sir ROBERT PEEL as "Emeritus
Professor," we doubt very much whether our Boeotian com-
patriots of the North can be bretioht to perceive either the