The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-13 00:00:00

~~~ ~a~~,

LONDON:
TUESDAY MORNING. SEPTEMBER 13, 1842.

We find ourselves, with a feeling of shame
and indignation, engaged in a defence of the
manufacturing industry of the country of WATT,
ARKWUTGRT, and .DAvv. But no person, we be.
lieve, can read the Tory journals without a con-
viction that this defence is necessary. Day after
day, and week after week, the manufactures of
England are vilified as if they Were the causes
of poverty and pestilence. They are derided,
too, in the names of humanity and benevolence;
and because they have not made all those opu-
lent, ter at least prosperous, at all tones, whom
they have snatched from destitution and death
in the agricultural districts, the law is suppli—
cated to visit those who carry them on with re-
straints and penalties.
Experience has taught those who have at-
tended to her lessons, that the interference with
a manuflicture, as in the cases of glass, malt,
brewing„ &c., fbr the manufacture of which the
Excise prescribes the rules, invariably impedes
its success. All business is engaged in for profit;
where competition is excessive freedom, is neces-
sary to ensure profit; manufactures, therefore,
require perfeut freedom ; but, despite these les-
sons of experience, the Tory writers continually
demand restrictions on manufactures. The blind
leading the blind is a feeble illustration of their
presumption. They are the blind, insisting that
those who can see shall follow their groping
steps, and encounter all the mischances to which
their want of vision will subject them.
The latest subject to which they have directed
their attention, under the auspices of that en-
lightened legislator Mr. FERRAND, is the truck
system, or the payment of wages in goods, and
the Tories are vehemently indignant with those
manufacturers who insist on the workpeople they
employ buying at their shop. Some of them
pay their work-people in goods instead of
money, and certainly fleece the labourers to a
very considerable extent. For their avarice
and extortion, which is unfeeling and dishonest,
d man, can make an excuse. They are un-
ti6ubtedly very much to blame, though they

lj
3Y
•"11ly.inatate the landlords and the clergy. Ex-
-1'14,4 lortion is unhappily the practical rule of life in
..our society. It neither begins nor ends wth the
'1419n nufacturers. It is as plainly perceptible in
4'113/38411e. 'Civil List, which is really paid. to support
1" The aristocracy, and in the revenues of the
/71,41„.... Church bei/4 wholly engrossed by the priest-
, -hood, to the grievous injury of education and of
fdt 'the poor, as in some manufacturers of Bradford
• cotopelling their people to take cloth instead of
moneyfor their wages, and so paying their
workmen twenty or thirty per cent. less than
they .ought to pay. The manufacturers who
fleece their useful labourers in that manner are
not to be exeuse.ii by the similar conduct of other
. classes, and we-are not sorry to see the Tory
• journals reprobating a vice in the former which
they applaud in the latter.
ror us it is not enough to join the Tories in
condemning such extortion; we should like to
. know how it is that the extortioners amongst
the master manufacturers are enabled so to treat
• their workmen, notwithstanding the workmen
are sensible of it, and notwithstanding the law
has been sharply directed against such practices.
We gave the solution of this problem
yesterday,
'4" ' when we said that " the prior condition of the
people threw into the hands of the factory owners
a mass of helpless labourers entirely dependent
•;1" on their will." Let any one look at the evidence
'
41.1 eJe •• „
2a.r. .ek.ita.X.Nes Committee has collected,
and he will find almost every page is studded
'with paragraphs like these
" It apPvars very plainly that the maneacturers have
tlte,nTen under their own power, and can do what they
*Ol think proper with them, whether good or bad." " The
limufi*,:i•worknien dare not inform against the masters; they know
that Ale master wollla tarn them off." " The men submit
it, becawle they know they cannot better themselves."
" They .:.annot get orher-situations." "If the men insisted
on hein7 paid in wages, they would have been dis-
charged."
We could quote scores of such statements, all
tending to proye that the labourers are coin-
.`:.lpLetely and helplessly at the mercy of the rims-
Tbe masters are tempted, by the posses-
' 1104 of reawcv, into the comm ission of dishonesty;
and. with • a complete dominion over their men,
anti a :Treat temptation, they probably deserve
pr :Ise for their forbearance more than censure
for their .3--cess.

„pier Cs mtempqraries, however, take advan-
,e of the. truck system prevailing in some ma-