The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-24 00:00:00

The hopes of the Conservatives are at present
based, it appears, on the fact that our country-
men are a religious people. For our parts, we

are not aware that an irreligious people ever
existed. Men may mistake the objects of wor-
ship, but worship has, and ever will have, a fast
footing in the human mind. Such a general fact
as that men are religious, is an equally solid foun-
dation for the hopes and systems of every other
politician as those of the Conservatives.
But the Conservatives assert that people in-
heriting old traditionary ideas of devotional reve-
rence, can never sink into servile abasement, or
be dissolved in helpless anarchy. In what
countries are such ideas more cherished than
Italy and Spain ? Yet one of those countries is
completely and servilely abased, and the other
has only escaped from such abasement to plunge
_ _

into revolution, and has not yet extricated itself
from anarchy. That country of Europe in which
old traditionary ideas of devotional reverence
seem to have least hold of men's minds, and
where, at the same time, the Church is one of
the poorest of Christendom, is Germany, which
flourishes in peace, and her people have, in a

great measure, maintained their independence.
It is eminently Conservative, without being en-
thralled by old traditionary ideas of devotional

reverence. From such facts we see nothing in
the respect entertained amongst us for traditionary
ideas, similar to that entertained in Spain and Italy
to justify any hopes that we shall escape either
abasement or anarchy if our seculae legislation
do not assume a new character.

As well as a religious people, the English are
unquestionably a money and rank-loving people,
and it happens somewhat curiously that their tradi-
.

onary ideas of devotional reverence are con-

tinually and strongly fortified by the great wealth
and princely rank of the hierarchy. How much of
the vast respect which the people profess for the
Church is due to its endowments, and how much
to its Christian character, would puzzle the best
algebraist of the age to calculate. No metaphy-
sician could analyse the compound motives. We
at least would not undertake to say, unless we
knew all possible ramifications of family in-
terest
and family hopes, how much of certain re-
cent exhibitions of exuberant zeal might spring
from a reverence for religion, and how much from
the homage which the bulk of men pay to such an
immense reservoir of emoluments. Of one thing
we are quite certain, that our people have neither
respect nor reverence for poverty; and were
the Church to be poor, like the Apostles, and the
Apostles' divine Master, they must change their
character entirely, or all reverence for the Church
would disappear. Fortunately for its dignity, and
for the preservation amongst us of old tradition-
ary ideas of devotional reverence, not only has it
managed to keep together large revenues, but,
with laudable diligence, it has continually in-
creased them. Duly sensible of the source of
their power, the clergy cultivate the growth of
their wealth with commendable zeal, being sure
that as long as they hold some six or eight mil-
lions of the annual produce of industry, they may
command the homage of a people who possess,
with many virtues, an unbounded admiration for
wealth and rank.

We drew attention about a month ago to the
nature of the offences for which country gentle-
men, arbitrarily and summarily, send the un-
happy and degraded peasantry—once, possibly,
but not in our recollection, their country's pride—
for two or three months to Houses of Correc-
tion. The Wiltshire Independent, of Thursday,
supplies us with another list of the persons com-
mitted to the Devizes House of Correction. In
it we find these, with other cases :
Edward Hillier and Isaac Long, the younger, for
two months each, for maliciously breaking twenty-
two panes of glass in the windows of the Melksham
'Union 'Workhouse ; Isaac Long, the elder, for two
months, for having assaulted and beat Samuel Rutty,
of Steeple Ashton ; Jacob Thursh and Alfred Davis,
both of Brinkworth, and Edward Walker, of Somerford
Parva, for two months each, for destroying game in
the respective parishes; Jonah Merchant, for three
weeks, for a breach of the game laws at "West Ashton ;
John Howell and Solomon Parfit, for two months
each, for destroying game at Maiden Bradley ;
George Cousins, for two months, for destroying game
at Highway.
To us, writing with all due respect to field
sports, it seems a shocking perversion to rate the

iberty of a human being at no higher. value
than the liberty of a partridge. For snaring a
hare an immortal being is shut up in gaol.
Gentlemen kill partridges and hares by the
score, and the same thing which they practise
as a savage amusement, is punished as a great
crime in the poor, when done by them to sus-
tain life. There is rivalry, apparently, betwixt
them. The poor desire to live, the gentry to
sport; and as the latter make the laws they
othfe fi omr
imn
ies rh
nf ogr t
hs
rt a ianmi nogs e
ml i
ef en ta. t
Yetthe
chance
I England is described as the land of liberty, in
which justice is equally meted out to all. The
laws, too, are said to be the same for the rich
and the poor, though one man is honoured for
killing scores of wild birds, and another man is
sent to the treadmill for killing a pair. The
gentlemen of England cannot, however, escape
the penalties of such conduct, and they find
them in being surrounded by men, of which this
•
is one of the newest descriptions :
I can assure the members and friends of both the
Church and the aristocracy, in all earnestness and
sorrow, that among the labouring population there is
a deep hatred, daily growing stronger, a bitter anti-
pathy, expressed as often as they dare express it,
against the gentry. Let no one treat this assurance
lightly. A personal investigation of the cottages,
the furniture, and the food of the rural labourers
throughout several counties, and conversations with
the families at their firesides, or in many cases at the
place of the cottage where a fireside should have been,
but was not, has given me sure and sorrowful proof
of this hostility. * * *
A Member of the present House of Commons hear-
ing that I was pursuing my inquiries into the state of
agriculture, and the condition of the labourers in the
south, sent an invitation to me to call on him at his
country seat. I called ; went over part of the estate,
and conversed with him on various matters relating
to the objects I had in view. " Here," said he, " those
men you see at work, are all of them as ignorant and
debased as can be. They seem to have lost their
self-respect, if ever they had any. In fact, we have
four times more people in this and the next
parish than the landowners can find em-
ployment for and they are starving—literally
starving—many of them don't do more than two
or three days' work a week, at an average through
the year, and all of them are poachers and thieves.
Look at this man who works with the hatchet—do
you observe him, the next to the ash tree ? That
man was, about this time last year, in a very low con-
dition ; he had no work, and he is no hand at working
—none of them are ; they have never been used to
steady work ; the-
y were the nursings of the old
poor-law, and being a surplus population, they
never will be any better. That man I met
again when I came down from London this
season, and he was looking much better
than I had ever seen him ; there was a marked
change for the better in all his appearance, and I
said, how have you been getting on ? You
seem improved since I saw 'feu last.' And how do

give on this subject, and will give none till the 1
Parliament assembles. Till within a few days of
that period, he will not have made up his own
mind to any other point than to keep on trial
PEEL'S Corn-law for a session or two longer.
Revolutionists will not be displeased should
Sir ROBERT PEEL be successful. The public
distress, the want of trade, and the want of em-
ployment—the consequences of the existing
Corn-law—are placing all the errors of our
system in bold relief. They hive made the ne-
cessity for a Poor-law for Scotland apparent.
They have, at the same time, demonstrated
that the Poor-law of England is inadequate,
and cannot •be fully carried out. They have
done the same for the New Poor-law in Ireland.
They have made the tenure of land there the
subject of public discussion, and have brought
the most powerful of the journals to be the ad-
vocates of the people and opponents of the
landlords. They have doubled the atrocities of
our system of summary convictions, and of our
Game-laws, and have made them odious to the
public. The longer the famine-laws are con-
tinued, the more salient become all the enor-
mities of our political system; and all revolution-
ists, we believe, pray that Sir R. PEEL may, for
his own character and honour, obstinately adhere
to his own law.