The Sun.
London, England, 1842-11-12 00:00:00

Punzac OPINION.

The Times has the following comments on a letter
which appeared in the Morning Chronicle :---" There
are some signatures of which people are wont to speak
as noms de guerre; but there are others which in
spirit, though not perhaps in law, amount to forgeries.
Of this latter class is the signature appended to a letter
on the late appointments in Bankruptcy and Lunacy,
which was published in an Opposition paper of Wed
nesday, with the subscription, ' A Retired Judge.
Any reader, seeing those words at the foot of a lette
about legal appointments, and not himself possessing
the little, the very little, acquaintance with the pro-
fession which would suffice to satisfy him that the
letterwriter is wholly, utterly, and ridiculously igno-
rant of the matter he writes about, would suppose
that the Retired Judge' must be some eminent and
venerable person, who having, in his prime of life,
administered justice in some of the Courts of West-
minster-hall, had now retreated to the repose of
privacy, and was proving his gratitude to his liberal
country by endeavouring to protect her judgment-
seats from the approaches of the unworthy. The
reader, defrauded into this conjecture, would he
able to find but one individual answering the descrip-
tion assumed ; for the Lords Brougham, Cottenham,
and Campbell, though they are not now in possession of
office, most certainly do not regard themselves as
having retired from it. There remains, therefore, we
believe, only one person whom the signature would
fit; and it is hardly possible to conceive a grosser
libel on that truly learned and estimable man, than
to have written him into the false position of being
supposed for a single moment to be the author of this
remarkably gross and dull invective against some of
the most respectable gentlemen in the profession of
the law. If a scribbler has an impulse upon him to
put forth some left-handed, thick-headed, illegitimate

lucubration, and wants a name to tack to his non-
sense, let him suit himself from the common sources,
with some such appropriate designation as Sccevola,
or Crassus, or Spurius ; but let him not vouch his
venom with a signature which can be ascribed but to
one man, and that a man of knowledge, understand-
ing, and manners."
We quote the following remarks from the Post:—
"Commerce is a prodigious creator of wealth: com-
merce has been a mighty engine to make Britain the
richest of nations. What we owe to commerce it
were idle to descant on. All that its warmest wor-
shippers claim for it we readily admit, and say, that
without its aid England would not be at this day the
fizemost of first-rate Powers—without its aid there
would not exist in this country the heaped-up hoards
of limitless affluence, at which foreigners gaze in
mute amazement. And yet in this fair land, teeming
with the golden fruits of commercial enterprise, hived'
with its men, by tens of thousands, who have gained
fortunes in traffic, we hear of the despair and destitu-
tion of millions—of the millions but:for whose industry
the fortunes would not have been gained, nor the
commercial enterprise enabled to work to its objects.
Whence is this ? It is not that the State is
poorer—not that our wealth has left us. We are
richer now—there is more of the luxury of opulence
amongst us, than at any previous epoch of our his-
tory. But millions of the people are physically dis-
tressed, morally depraved—are unfitted and indis-
posed for the duties of Christians, of good subjects and
citizens. In a Christian land the people in myriads
are unchristianised. In a land once famed for the
loyalty and contentedness of its inhabitants, the plaints
of destitution and the clamours of disaffection ring
ceaselessly in the ears of the great. We can point to
a cause of this. It is the mistake made by us in act-
ing as if men's passions—their avarice, their selfish-
ness, their ambition, and vanity—May be left to right
themselves—to cure, of their own accord, any mis-
chief they may have inflicted on the members of the
community against whose material comforts they were
brought to bear."
The Herald, speaking of the present high price of
bread observes :—" Legislative interference to regu-
late retail prices is a most hazardous experiment ; and
though there might have been most powerful reasons
against the abolition of the Assize of Bread, those ar-
guments will, we fear, be found inapplicable as justi-
fying the re-imposition of that mode of regulating the
cost of the quartern loaf. The attention of the richer
and well-doing to their bakers' bills would have a
powerful influence on the price charged to the poor
man ; if the head of every respectable family
would refuse to pay Bd. or 9d. a loaf when 7d,
is a remunerating price, his poorer and humbler
neighbour would be very much obliged to
him. For so long as the wealthy will submit
to high prices, the poor must, and whenever a family
consents to use adulterated or badly-made bread,
it causes scores of its inferiors in point of station to
oonsume a baked compost wholly devoid of nutrition,
if not positively unwholesome. Although then doubts
may be entertained as to the wisdom of re-establish-
ing an Assize of Bread, it is we suggest most desir-
able that every authentic meals be afforded both to
the rich and the poor of contrasting the average
prices of bread and flour with the average price
of wheat, and this could be very easily accomplished
by extending the machinery now used for collecting
returns of the sale of grain. The publication of such
comparative statistics weekly or monthly in every
town where there is a corn market would bring under
the notice of its wealthier inhabitants any excessive
charge for bread or flour—and the knowledge thereof
would soon reduce the excess to moderate profits."
The Chronicle says :—" Sir Robert Peel has once
more publicly proclaimed his adhesion to the princi-
ples of Free-trade. The object of our policy,' he
said, at the Guildhall banquet, is to encourage the
demand for labour, and to extend the commercial
prosperity of the country.' Significant words !—We
trust, that in the Prime Minister's mouth they are
full of meaning. We hope that they are the index •
finger, pointing not so much to the past as to the
future—not so much to the results of the last session,
as to what is projected or projecting for the one that
is coming. kor assuredly to rest satisfied with what
. he has done, is but to cross the Rubicon, aid then to