The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-03 00:00:00

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LONDON:

SATURD MORNING, SEPTEMBER 3, 1842.

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As might have been expected, the present
condition ofour manufacturing districts excites a
great deal of a:tention abroad as well as st home.
We wish we could say that either there or here
an enlarged and philosophic view were taken of
this important subject, which, foreseeing the
future progress and condition of society, might at
once instruct legislators how most safely and
easily to guide it to the haven which it must
reach. It is quite plain, too plain to need
any proof; that the present condition of our
great manufacturing population was neither
foreseen nor provided for by any scheme of
legislation. No statesman called into being,
or organised by his regulations, that vast
portion .of our productive community. It
has grow❑ up, as it were, in the course of
nature, and will continue most probably to grow
hereafter as heretofore. What is required,
therefore, is, as much as possible, to take a
Pisgah view of its future condition, and make our
present legislation as much as possible in accord-
ance with that.

Journalists, at least English journalists, en-
gaged in the daily and turbid dissensions of par-
ties, cannot undertake such a task. Nor do we
believe that our statesmen, who are always
strugglin for party superiority, can ever success-
fully prosecute it. Properly speaking, it is the
business of philosophers—of the great masters of
thought; but we are not aware that amongst those
who now deservedly rank high in that character,
any one has stepped forward to lay down a chart
of the necessary course of society, and pilot us
out of our present difficult and dangerous position.
Knowing at least the pretensions ofourneighbours,
the French, to the character of philosophers, and
knowing, too, that all other nations are as deeply
interested in the solution of this problem as our-
selves, we turned with some hope to their
,pro-
ductions, but have only met with disappointment.
The article which we copied from the (Jourrier
Francais two days ago, though clever, was ex-
tremely shallow, and neither went to the source
of our disorders nor suggested a remedy. The
Journal des Debats, in a much more elaborate
article, speaks of the late disturbances "as
the symptoms of deep-seated internal disease,
which is beyond the reach of laws." It quotes,
at some length, Sir ROBERT PEEL'S " bitter ex-
pressions of despondence, and avowal of power-
lessness," which escaped from him on the last
day of the session, and concludes thus :
All the exertions of the Government will not avail in
preventing England from continuing to glide down the
descent she has entered upon. This great country is
enduring the penalty of its own excesses. It is stagger-
ing, and must fall from the intoxication produced by its
successful industry and speculation. Still infatuated
with the traditional idea that it is destined by Providence
to manufacture for the whole universe, and have all na-
tions as tributaries to its industry, it piles up produce
upon produce without reflecting that rival nations have
gained instruction in its own schools, and are raising up
manufactories against manufactories. England accelle-
rates the motions of its machines without listening to the
low and distant echoes of its own steps, repeated on
the distant shores of its competitors.
Now we totally dissent from this philosophy of
the Debats, which, in truth, instead of being
borrowed from the deep wells of original thought,
is merely the reproduction of some of the out-
pourings of our ignorant Tories, dressed up in a
terse, epigrarnatic style, and therefore quoted by
them as a pleasing echo of their own voices. It
is a narrow and false view to . suppose that
England cannot continue to grow in greatness be-
cause other nations learn her arts. It is an error,
and almost a blasphemy, to say that England
is staggering and must fall from the intoxication
produced by her successful industry. Successful
industry never yet made a nation either stagger
or intoxicated, and the Debats does France an
injury, startling her back, if possible, by such an
overcharged description, from imitating Great
Britain's hitherto eminently successful career.
Our neighbours, we fear, envy even more than
they admire us, and have-tried, we believe and
hope in vain, to injure our industry, while they
elevated their own. We understand that
their
law to keep out English linen yarn has failed,
and that such is the superiority of our 'workman-
ship, that our manufacturers still undersell those
of France in their own market. The Debats,
animated with a national spirit, is but too happy
to borrow from our Tories their gloomy and un-
patriotic misrepresentations of the manufacturing
industry of England.

We have not found, then, in the French
journals, the least explanation of the present
condition of our country, and more profound re-
searches and more extensive political experience
than fall to their lot, will be necessary to eluci-
date this important subject. The prominent
facts are legible enough ; their causes and cure
are what we require to know. With great co-
lonies growing up in every quarter, offering us
more extensive markets than ever the imagina-
tion of man conceived, with the vast continent of
America, both North and. South, rapidly be-
coming full of people, all of whom demand our
assistance and offer us assistance in return,
with the whole world aln lost at peace and open
to our commerce, man casnot foresee the cessa-
tion or diminution of an ever-increasing market
for our produce, would our own Legislature only
permit the people to reap the rich harvest which
kind Nature has bestowed *on their industry.
The fate of nations, even more securely than that
of individuals, is given into their own hands; and if
Great Britain must continue, al ; the Debats says,
to glide d.ovvn to decay, we mad rest assured that