The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-05 00:00:00

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LONDON. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1845,

Sir ROBERT PEEL has attained to that age at which the
experience both of private and of official life is usually sup-
posed to leave the feelings of even the most buoyant-minded
among us sobered down to a tone of earnest seriousness. It

is not at sixty that men who have been accustomed—together
with the cares of power—to the gravity of deportment which

their burden insensibly generates, put off " the old man," and

bathe in the fountains of renovated youthfulness, till the old
, Absolutes come out young Rapids—with the wrinkles of
three score and ten exchanged for the smiles and vivacity of
one-and-twenty. There is no getting over the historical fact
that Sir ROBERT PEEL has enjoyed a Whittington-like
continuity of high place. Twice, Principal Secretary of State,
once Chancellor of the Exchequer, and now First
Lord of the Treasury, he must enter fully into all
the reasons which prescribe that decorum of
Ministerial demeanour, for which in general we have
given him full credit. Giving him that credit, we have
been content to overlook the half-dozen of bad jokes which
he is seduced into perpetrating at that period of every
session when the business is beginning to run off
rapidly. The important point is that this levity
should not be imported into the method of dealing
with business the most vital, the most exigent
that can occupy the attention of a statesman. The
eustentation of the people—the obviating, as far as
human foresight may hope to do so, the terrible
visitation of a winter famine these duties, we
take it, come within this category of all-important business.
Now, the actual presence of that wasting malady which has
so largely infected one of the principal sources of human sub-
sistence in these countries—the potato crop; and The appre-
hended results of that scarcity during the winter, which the
diminution of employment, the declining demand natural to
the season for industrial laboar ; and the enhanced price of
corn consequent on a very deficient grain harvest, and the
increased masses that the potato murrain will leave to be
supported on other nutriment—on cereal products of some
kind—do present an aspect of affairs well calculated to
awaken the most lively solicitude in every reflecting mind,
even among private individuals. How much more calcu-
lated, then, to impress on all who are charged with the admi-
nistrative powers of the Government the vastness of their
responsibility.
All over Great Britain, in every county of Ireland, the in-
fliction of the same disastrous scourge is felt; the machinery
needed for mitigating its severity, and remedying its conse-
quences, is everywhere attracting the attention and occupy-
ing the energies of thinking men. Landlord and tenant—
men of all, parties and pursuits—without distinction—are
giving their best consideration to this common object. Its
expression has found no more remarkable or impressive ex-
ponent, that we are aware of, than the " Memorial of the
Directors of the Chamber of commerce and Manufactures at
Manchester," addressed to Sir ROBERT PEEL. These memo-
rialists set forth the fact that the prosperity of the cotton
trade is identified with, or conditional upon the price
of food ; and that a scarcity of provisions has " invariably
been attended with a diminished demand for labour and a
reduction of the earnings of the working classes." After
adverting, in emphatic terms, to the fearful pressure already
experienced, and the still more alarming results likely to be
encountered in another month, from the cauees we have al-