The Sun.
London, England, 1842-02-10 00:00:00

titt a§Altt.

LONDON!
THLIZ6I)A Y. FKI;UUARY 10, 1842.

Intense interest was yesterday excited about
the House of Com►uons, and in all concerned
with the Corn-laws, to hear Sir ROBERT Pm L's
plan. The House itself was filled in every part
before five o'clock, and its purlieus were so much
crowded, that the lobbies and passages were
cleared, to the great annoyance of several repec-
table persons, by the SPEAKER'S orders. Mr.
CURTEIS laving declined to bring forward his
motion concerning Mr. ELTON, no other business
was transacted than what concerns-the Corn-laws.
A great many petitions were presented against
the laws, between four and five o'clock, and at
five minutes past five, Sir ROBERT PEEL began
his statement.

His speech was generally plain, confined to
facts, and arguments destitute of the usual clap-
traps, but overloaded with words. It was not
calculated to make an impression on the House.
It excited no cheers from his friends, and only
a little derision from his opponents. We never
knew him make so many mistakes, and when he
concluded, expressing. no confidence that his
measure will be carried, it seemed as if he an-
ticipated a defeat. He spoke till a few minutes
before eight, and evidently failed to please the
landowners, while he did not gain the commer-
cial classes.

After Sir R. PEEL had resumed his place, 'Mr.
COBDEN rose and denounced the proposition as
an insult to the suffering people. The Corn-law
Conference also held a meeting, and passed a re-
solution, that the measure of Ministers, " far
from holding out a prospect of relief, is an
insult t.) a patient and suffering people."
They added—" That it is an indication that
the landed aristocracy are destitute of all
sympathy for the poor, and are resolved,
if permitted by an outraged people, to persist
in a course of policy which will involve the
destruction of every interest in the country."
The immediate result of the trimming Ministe-
rial proposition, therefore, is to exasperate the
disease it was intended to cure. Sir R. PEEL
does not differ from other ignorant pretenders to
a knoWledge of the healing art.
The amount of his proposition may be stated
in a very few words. He is to make no al-
teration in the mode arid manner of taking
the averages, except to cause the returns to
be looked after by the Excise, and to increase
the number of towns, now 150, from which
the 'returns are to be made. He rejected the
notion of taking the return from the sales of
the growers. He said not one word about
other provisions than the grains which are
usually embraced by the Corn-laws, and, repu-
diating a fixed duty, he confines his alterations
entirely to the sliding scale, which he preserves.
He is to alter that scale thus :
At present, the duty on wheat at 50s. and
under 51s. is 365. Bd., and it increases Is. for
every Is. the price of wheat falls. Sir ROBERT
PEEL proposes when the price is under 51s. the
duty shall be 20s.,and shall never be further in-
creased however low the price may fall. By the
present scale the duty falls Is. fur every Is. the
price rises, till it reaches 675., when the duty, then
205., ceases to slide, and leaps irregularly till it
ends at ls. when the price reaches 733., and so re-
mains. Sir ROBERT PEEL proposes that the duty of
20s. when the price is under 51s. shall fall as the
price rises, till it reaches 535. Then he introduces
a resting place in the scale, and the duty remains
18s. till the price reaches 555. As the price rises
ls. above this, the duty falls ls. till the price reaches
675., when there is another 'resting place, and the
duty remains at 6s. till the price has got up to
6944 The duty then again falls ls. as the price ,
rises- 11-> till the latter reaches 755., when the duty is ,
to cease latogether. I
Sir nowt%
*t•Paitz. praises the plan as i

likely to
67s.,leiniti
produce a greater. steadiness of price.
By avoiding the
jumptillagbovoe it v of
the present
scale, when prices reach
certainly enable the merchant to count with
more certainty on his market. It will probably
satisfy Mr. CRIPPS, by permitting him at time: to
bring returns from the United States. But this
is its only merit. Men will endeavour still to
evade the duty though the temptation will be
somewhat lessened, and the bulk of the corn
imported will be hereafter, as heretofore, at the
lowest duty. The consequence will be that the
average price under Sir ROBERT PEEL'S scale
must be 755. before corn is- imported, whereas
now it is imported at 735., paying ls. duty.
We understand why a resting place is intro-
duced at 675., but we know no reason for intro-
ducing another at 555., except it be for uni-
formity. Sir ROBERT PEEL boasted of his duty
not increasing beyond 205., which is mere idle
talk, for the duty at that rate now is completely
inoperative, and the higher duty might just as
well be 100/. as 20s. He wished, he said, that
the price of wheat should be generally between
545. and 585., 'and he kindly proposes a
duty on it at that price of 165. Bd. In
fact Sir R. PEEL'S plan is the poorest alteration
we have yet seen proposed in the Sliding Scale.
It was, accordingly, at once justly treated as a
mockery by Mr. COBDEN. In ordinary and
prosperous times it might have done, but to pro-
pose it now is like offering a perfume to
a man at the point of death from
starvation. But not only is the scale a mockery ;
the speech which introduced it was a bitter,
biting insult to common-sense, and to the
starving people. Sir ROBERT PEEL, as the agent
of the landowners, had the extraordinary pre-
sumption to stand up in the House or Commons,
and contend that the distress of the people was
not caused by the unjust legislation of which lie
is the advocate. He sought to throw thAlatue,
which properly belongs to bad laws, on the strug-
gles of the manufacturers to keep themselves
from sinking under the weight of his mischievous
legislation. His petty alteration in the sliding
scale might have been laughed at, as an ind.‘x
to the mean mind of Sir R. PEEL ; but when all
around hint is groaning with agony, from the -
determination of the aristocracy to destroy the
liberties and appropriate the property of the
people by law, it is more, we believe, than
human nature will bear, to have this man using
his talents to exonerate the aristocracy and throw
the blame of the mighty mischief they have
caused, on those who are honestly and honour-
ably seeking to paid a living for themselves, and
to find employment and bread for others.

It was terribly insulting, also, to hear Sir
PEEL introduce an elaborate, and yet unfounded,
comparison between the labouring classes in
England and Prussia, contending in substance
that the former ought to be contented, because
they are not worse off than the latter. Why
did he not refer to the immense deal of wealth
which our labouring classes produce more than
than the labourers of Prussia, of which the
proof is the great number of persons who are
maintained in idleness and opulence by tin it
labour ? His statistics were both false and in-
sulting; for the great number of our middle
classes, and the domestic consumption of the
agricultural classes in Prussia, which cannot be
brought into the account, renders the ave-
rages of consumption, which he quoted, as
worthless as his new scale. Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S speech, worse than his trifling alteration,
was a cold-blooded insult both to the suffering
manufacturers and the still more suffering work-
men ; and it will make a profound and general
impression, unfavourable to the aristocracy of
which he is the organ.

The debate in the Madrid Cortes threatens to be in-
terminable. On the 31st ult. it had been twelve
days under discussion, and yet the talking was
going on as furiously as ever. With the excep-
tion of some spicy personalities, applied to the
memory of dead Kings, and the character of living
Ministers, nothing could be duller, or less generally
interesting than the debate. The funds were without
change on the Madrid Bourse. The Five per Cent;.
tvere at 321 for cash.

The French Republican Journals are delighted wit

the accounts published of the reverses sustained by the

British troops in Affghanistan. The National in parti-
&liar sets no bounds to its joy. Haughty Albion,
licking the dust on the theatre of her past glorit s
is to our Gallic Contemporary a most delightful
spectacle. In the very idea he riots in the franticjoy of
gratified revenge. Our doom he considers as sealed.
If the Anglo-Indian Government make war on the
treacherous Atighans, it will do so with an empty
treasury and ruined credit ; and when the tri-
butary Princes find us engaged in hostilitit s
at such a distance they w ill throw off our yoke, implore
the aid of the golden-footed Monarch of Burmah, and
at one blow prostrate our seeming colossal power in In-
dia. On the other hand, the National is satisfied that if
we abandon Cabool we lose our newly-aCquired intluetwe
at the Court of Teheran ; disgust the Government of
the Ptmjaub ; place Aden in peril ; re-establish the
sway of Russia in Herat ; and, by giving the native
Princes such a striking proof of our weakness, provoke
all the dangers which we were endeavouring to escape.
Now we shall say nothing, either of the good taste or
the good feeling displayed in the views set forth by
the National upon this question. Among honourable
men of any country there can be but one opinion about
them. A handful of gallant officers, one of them an
honour to the laud which gave birth to a
BURNS, a SCOTT, and an _ABE RC ROM BIE, were at-
tacked in a defenceless state by wretches pretending.
to be their friends, and brutally murdered. This is done
in a country some thousands of miles distant from any
territory subject to the British sway, and on the
appearance of the sad narrative in an Indian Journal
transmitted to France, the organ of the Ultra-Republi-
cans, in the very Capital, gloats over it as a delighftil
manifestation of the decline of British power in Asia !
It was not thus we recorded AED-EL-KADER'S passion
for the erection of pyramids of French heads in Afric.l.
But enough of this subject. We propose no more than
to acquaint our readers with the mannerin which any ac-
count of reverses sustained by us in any part of the worli
is received by a portion of the French Press. Nor do
the Ultra-Liberal Journals stand alone in this respect.
The organs of legitimacy are equally indecorously ran-
corous in the expression of their joy at the deplorable
events which took place in Cabool.
There is quite a dearth of political news in the French
papers of Monday. The following extracts from ahem
are of some intorest
The Chamber of Deputies was summoned for Monday at three
o'clock, to receive a communication from the Government. This
communication is the presentation of a project of law on the iron
rhilway,

The Globe of Belgium publishes the following news :—" We learn
today from a person who is so situated as to be able to give the
most correct information, that the accession of the Grand Duchy
of Luxemburg to the German Customs Union, has at length been
agreed to by the King of the Netherlands. M Rochussen, the
Dutch Minister of Finance, has been to London to take the ratifi-
cation of the treaty to the King of Prussia. The following are the
terms in which the ratification on the part of the Grand Duchy is
said to be expressed.

" The Treaty is concluded for the term of one year; if at the
expiration of that year the King Grand Duke should think fit to
cancel the engagement, he is not to oonclude any Treat) with an-
other party till after the lapse of four years delay from the day ix
which he signifies his renunciation of the present Treaty."
The Courrier Belge confirms this news.—Constitutionneh

The National announces that M. Chapais de Montaville, will,
en Thursday next, bring forward in the Chamber of Deputies, the
following proposal :
" Thenceforth the 24th Article of the Law of the Ist Law of
the 17th May, 1819, shall be as follows :—The printers of writings,
the authors of which shall be prosecuted by virtue of the present
law, and who complied with the obligations prescribed by the 2d
head of the law of Oct. 21, 1841, shall not be liable to prosecution
merely for having printed these writings, unless they have acted
willingly (sciemment), as is stated in Article 60 of the present code."
However, the printers of daily journals can never be considered
as having acted wittingly.

BOURSE—PARIS, MONDAY, FEB. 7
r I trst Highest Lowest Lest
Price Price. Pric... Prier.
Prencn 5 per Comb ....... .... 119 13 ... 111. 20 ... Ili/ 10 ... 119 15
4.% per Cente. lO7 25 ... 107 23 ... 107 :15 ... 107 25
. per Cents lO3 ... 1' 3 ... 103 ... It 3
3 per Cents BO "80 ... 80 ... 80
Loan .........
'lank of Orance
Lathtte Sank LOOK Stares 1015 ...1015 ...1015 ...1015
5,0001 Shares 1030 ..,503e
mut() ...50:30
rolcian Bank
Belgian 5 per Cents.
S per Cents., 1840 1054
... 104.
...
105% ... 105%
iparpsh Active =s4 ... 25% ... .25,4 ... 2:0i.,,
Passive B% ... 5% ... 5% ... 5%
New Deferred
Neapolitan 12%
11.17 80 —. !b7 80 ._ 107 .0
_. ,u 7 70
ioanni -. .• *I% ••• 104 y 6 ... 104% ... IN%
RAILWAY sHAREs.
St. Germain .................. 8g49e2 50 ...
... 13`2.1 ......
340 890 ......
34893
rs Veailles. IL li
LB
Rouen•• 520 ... 525 ... 517 50 ... 520
Urietns . 565 ... 570 ... 565 ._ 570
Strasburg to Bale, 212 50 ... 232 50 ..
23. i
25 .»231 25

WIGAN MEMORIAL TO THE MAYOR.-
The Tories, in the true spirit of the party, refused to a man,
to sign the late memorial, soliciting the Mayor of Wigan to
call a public meeting, for the purpose of considering the best
means of alleviating the distressed condition of the poor. This
is pure Toryism--ptwo different rofessing sympathy and practising it are
things.—Liverpool c