The Sun.
London, England, 1842-04-16 00:00:00

(At

LONDON•
SATURDAY MORNING, APRIL 16, 1342.

Some persons seem to suppose that they ought to
approve of the tariff, because many of the agriculturists
disapprove of it. If no other reason can he assigned in
its favour it ought to be given up. It never can be for
the interest of one class in the community to injure
another class, and we have always, in advocating the
total abolition of the Corn and Provision-laws, been sin-
o .rely convinced that such a measure would benefit the
farmers. The tariff, on the contrary, will, we believe,
not benefit them ; nor do we think it Is ill confer much
benefit on any class of consumers ; and, therefore, we
cannot eagerly join in the demand for the tariff at any
price, because the farmers complain of it.
The principal feature, as far as they aro concerned, is
the permission to import live cattle at a certain rate of
duty, and a reduction of duty on meat. when imported.
Now the injustice of this towards the farmers is that it
will diminish their gains and not diminish their charges.
The abolition of the Corn-laws would diminish their
charges more than it would diminish their gains. They
employ little or no labour to rear cattle. " A looker in
Romney. Marsh," says Mr. ELLMAN, " is perhaps the
only mun'employed on a thousand acres of land." There
will be for the farmers, then, no reduction in the cost of

producing cattle, while the Legislature proposes arbi-
trarily, not justly, to lower the price of cattle in the
market.

There is another consideration which affects the land-
owner rather than the tenant. Under the Tithe Com-
mutation Act, the tithe has been commuted into a rent-
charge, the amount of which is annually determined by
the price of wheat, barley, and oats, for the preceding
seven years. Now, a reduction in the price of either of
these species of corn would lower the rent-charge ; but
reducing the price of meat can only have such an effect
indirectly; and this part of the tariff, therefore, will
confer an undue advantage on the tithe-owners. It is
one of those covert means of transferring property, though
it be only to a small amount, from one class to another,
which the Legislature has no right whatever to adopt,
and against which every man, who respects property,
ought to protest.
The reduction too, in the price of cattle ought to be
taken in conjunction with the great reduction which has
been made in the protecting duties on spring corn. In
the House of Lords last night the Duke of CLEVELAND
presented a petition from Shropshire against that reduc-
tion, and we think that Sir R. PEEL by this part of his
Corn-law has really sacrificed the growers of oats in
Ireland and elsewhere to the growers of wheat. Thus,
while he has diminished the Irotecting duty on wheat,
at the price at which it is usually imported, by a scarcely
appreciable quantity, he has reduced the duty on barley
from 12s. 4d. to 55., or 140 per cent., the duty on oats
from 9s. 2d. to 35., or 200 per cent., and the duty on rye,
beans, and peas from 16s. 9d. to 65., or 170 per cent.
Now either the present law must have been grossly dis-
proportionate in the amount of protection it afforded to
the cultivation of the different grains, or Sir 11. PEEL'S
law is. In either case we have a proof of the ignorance and
inefficiency of the law-makers. At the same time the great
alteration proposed by Sir R. PEEL is a manifest injury
—on-his own abominable principle of settling prices, and
affording protection equally to different classes—to the
growers of oats, barley, and rye, as compared to the
growers of wheat.
There is a still further consideration. These inferor
grains enter but little into the consumption of the people,
except in Ireland and Scotland, and some parts of the
North of England ; and, consequently, the reduction in
the price of them will only affect wages in Scotland and
Ireland. It is one of these changes, therefore, that will
have little effect in reducing the charges of the farmers, and
a considerable effect in reducing his gains. The alteration
may probably lead also to the increased consumption of
rye, barley, and oats, for food, and our people will fall
back, in consequence of its comparative cheapness, on
the black bread, which, as uted by tho Germans, is such
a bugbear to the Tories. If it be desirable to encourage
the people everywhere to subsist on wheaten bread,
rather than on rye and barley bread, the great reduction
i.; the duties on spring corn will have a contrary effect.
If these alterations in the Corn-laws and the tariff
were to have all the beneficial effects which Sir
11. PEEL and his partisans ascribe to them, we should
still oppose them as parts of an erroneous and unjust
system. Sir R. PEEL has said more than once that the
alterations in the tariff will reduce prices and benefit all
classes, without injuring any one. It is his duty, then, as
a legislator—he is bound, by the strongest objections—to
propose those alterations without coupling them with
an oLnoxious income tax. He, however, offers these ad-
vantages, which he is not justified in withholding—
which, to withhold, would really make him out a
malicious wretch, instead of a beneficial states-
man—as a bribe to allow him to fix an income
tax on the whole people, and they are, unfortunately,
willing to accept the bribe. What they ought to de-
mand as a right they consent to receive as a boon, and
for that give up something more valuable than what they
receive.

According to the latest edition of his tariff, the new
timber duties are not to come into operation till Octo-
ber, which will save half the sum he calculated on
losing by the alteration of the duties, or 300,000/. We
believe, too, that some of his scribes, by a clerical error,