The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-29 00:00:00

LONDON :
SATURDAY MORNING. OCTOBER 29, 1642.

There are rumours in the City that the Cha--
cellor of the Exchequer, that wonderful juggler,
corttemplai;:s reducing the Three-and-a-Halt' per
ConN., and by waving his finance wand striking
off 1,00,000/. a year from the public charge.
Such skill will make renowned through all
ages, and the great natiowl services of the
Right Hon. HENRY GOULBURN S7lll be held up
to encourage the valuable exertions of public
men. Again, he will be able to say, as he said
before, pointing to a similar reduction, " 'Twas
I that did it; I saved the country a million a
year; and while you, Mr. HUME, were peddling
about a few pounds, I sustained public credit; I
raised the public funds ; I was enabled to lower
the interest of the debt; and I lessened the pub-
lic charge more at one stroke than you have
lessened it in the twenty-five years that you
have been looking after what you could save by
depriving poor pensioners of their,pittaaice, and
stopping the allowance of half-pay nffiers.” Some-

thing to that effect I as been said before, and will
'be said again. It will be received, we are afraid,
as important and cherished truth by a great num-
ber of persons, who will conclude that Mr. GOUI,
BURN has richly earned his own pension. They
may probably be disposed to vote him a statue
in St. Paul's, by the side of JENNER, as one of
the benefacters of the human specks.
We do not deny that, if the reduction of the
interest of money were the natural consequence
of the impossibility of finding employment for
capiMl, the reduction of the interest of the debt
would be a praiseworthy undertaking; but we
must, though the task be invidious, try to strip
the Right Hon. Gentleman of the glory he is
assuming. How is he able to reduce the debt?
By money being plentiful a:id interest low. What
makes
money plentiful and interest low? Stag_
nation of trade, the inability to employ capital
advantageously in any branch of business. In-
terest depends on profit, and when profit is low,
interest, as the rule, will be low ; when profit is
high interest will be high. Thus it is, because
profit is low, because trade is stagnant, because
men can make little or nothing of their capital
by embarking, in agriculture, manufactures, or
commerce, that the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer will be able to sa‘e the public a million.
a year, or reduce to that extent the incomes of
the persons who now hold the Three-and-a-
Half per Cents.
But what makes trade stagnant and profit
low ? The Tory Corn4aiv, the Tory anti-com.-
mercial system, which excludes foreign commo-
dities, and have invited other -countries to act on
similar anti-trade systems. Sir R. PEEL, during
the last session, consecrated the enormities of
our anti-trade system, which he ought to have
swept away, by a freSh Act of the Legislature.
his measures have contributed to lower
prices, they have stifled enterprise. Mr. GouL-
nunN, therefore, the smirking Chancellor, is one
of those who have caused, by impeding trade,
that low interest of money, of which he is, ac-
cording to report, to take advantage, in,ordei to
obtain a glorious name in the history of the
country.

If the Three per Cents. were down to 65 or 70,
because men could make six or seven per cent. on
money by lending it t~ persons in business—if
profits were 10 or 12 per cent., and if it were im-
possible for Mr. GOULBURN to execute his pet
project of again reducing the interest of the
debt, then all the persons engaged in business
would be flourishing. They would want labour,
the labourers would be highly paid, the peo-
ple would be again well off, and many mil-
lions a year, by the increase of people
scud of business, would be added to the
national resources. if the public charge
would remain the same, the ability to bear it
would be so wonderfully increased, that the
saving to be made' by Mr. GOULBURN might be
wholly disregarded. But the great addition to
the national resources, by increase of profits and
extended commerce, would be made by indi-
vidual labourers, farmers, merchants, and manu-
facturers, whose prosperity would reflect no
glory on the Chancellor, while the reduction
of the debt—though it be, in filet, nothing more
than the exaction from the holders of the Three-
and-a-Halfs of a portion of their present re-
ceipts, and does not add one farthing to the na-
tional resources—is the deed exclusively of the
great financier himself, and will hand him,
covered with laurels, down to posterity. So, fbr
the vain glory of the Chancellor of the Ex_
chequer, the real good of the public is to be
sacrificed. That .the debt may be reduced, in
order to give honour to Mr. GOULBURN, in-
terest is lowered, profit is lowered, thousands
are thrown out, or are kept out, of employment,
and the whole community suffers all the evils of
a stationary or declining condition.

The paragraph which we quoted yesterday
froM the Seventh Report of the Inspectors of Pri-
sons, relative to the great fall in the value of pri-
soners' labour between 1341 and 1834, deserves
more prominency than we then gave it. The
statement is that last year the clear earnings of
each prisoner, though they were more indus-
trious than ever, was of the value of only 21.,
while in 1834, or seven years prior, when trade
was good, the value of the -earnings of each pri-
soner was 8/. In 1838 they were of the value of
61. This case is extremely important, because the
priSoners did not work for masters who redoced
'their wages as they extorted more work from
them. They performed only .a certain portion of
work each day, their over work being entirely
voluntary, but because the value of labour fell in
the market as trade slackened, and the price
of wheat rose, the value of their labour fell too.
It fell, it appears, in the enormous proportion of
three-fourths, and if the value of free labour fell in
an equal proportion, what a prodigious deal of
suffering must our patient labouring classes have
gone through? Talk of the effect of the restoring
the gold standard reducing the value of property
30 per cent., talk of abolishing the Corn-law and
lowering the value of land 10 to 20 per cent., or
even 50 per cent. ! what is that to the 400
per cent., if we may use the phrase, which
the value of labour has been beaten down
by restrictive legislation ? Can those who
pompouSly and 1 solemnly dilate, day after
day, when Parliament is. assembled, about
the injustice of lowering . the artificially raised
price of corn twenty per cent., or who are almost
thrown into convulsions at a proposal to diminish
the income of the clergy ever so little, answer
to themselves, answer to their own consciences
and their.GoD, fur lowering the value of the
labourer's produce by the laws from 160 s. to 405.?
This case is extremely instructive, because
that reduction of value took place in the face of
rising prices, and it must therefore be a complete
extinguisher for all the flickering Will-u'-wisps
about high prices keeping up the value of labour,
which our Tories, as they have decomposed into
Whigs, have emitted, to the delusion and
astonishment of the gaping Tory public. The
reduction in value, too, occurred last year before
Sir R. PEEL had meddled with the Tariff, and
mocked us with a pseudo reform of the Corn-
law ; and the most inveterate opponent of free
trade cannot ascribe it to any relaxation of re-
strictions. The reduction is recorded of last
year, though it is plain that it did not then
begin ; it began with the scanty supply of foOd,
and the high prices of 1837-3, showing clearly
enough that high prices and a -short supply
of food reduce the value of the labourer's
pn
or o
tduh-teecl
oane i;
it dtgeojuesesr
ned
;nooitutt
broughtci
rsteiu w
ts e
en
statement
ee mco
forward
eevrniddteeodtroicasot
uopopouip, by
e
no
public
i yee
aCos3;tst
officer, the record of a public institution, arid,
like. ITHURIEL'S spear, it dissolves at a touch a
vast mountain of anti-free trade falsehoods.

ITerrific combat with poachers—five men of a
side fighting in the woods of peaceful England
by moonlight, armed with bludgeons and guns_
all wounded and bruised more or less, one
killed—a verdictof wilful murder returned against
five men, and four of them committed to prison
to take their trial : such is the heading and out-
line of a narrative which we insert in another
part of The Sun, from the Chester Chronicle.
How long are such scenes to disgrace this civi-
lised and Christian country? How long are
midnight combats and murder to he risked, for
the amusement of that class who 'will not. allow
the people to feed themselves ? How long are
preserves of game and a monopoly of food to
be placed in the same hands who at once re-
duce the peorAe to hunger and 'tempt them into
4 )(fences, by offering them an easy means of
supplying their wants? Far be it from us to
palliate or excuse, in the least possible degree,
the atrocious crime which has been committed.
We ,z1.,.?10r bloodshed, and therefore do we vehe-
mently condelL, q' both the system which leads to
it, and the men who ak:'/ruiltY of it.
It is cruel, it is very iihjix;:; to reduce the
people, on one hand, to a state of secx-starva-
don, and, on the other, to nourish and maintain
great quantities of wild • animals, by Silting:
which the people can sustain life. Preserves
an-4 Corn-laws are incompatible- If food muse
be supplied exclusively from unr own soil, every

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