The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-28 00:00:00

ENGLAND.

Bank of England £19,503,000
Private Banks 5,488,661

Joint Stock Banks

SCOTLAND•
Chartered and Private Joint Stock Banks 2,743,795

IRELAND.

Bank of Ireland
Private and Joint Stock Banks 2,002,7d4

Total
Bullion in the Bank of England £9,801,000
J OHN THORNTON.
Stamps and Taxes, Oct, 28,1842.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
GLOBE.--The Post, the other day, chuckled
in the discovery that the amount of wages paid
in the manutheturing districts had decreased in
the fifteen years succeeditrr the year 1815. We
have not at present verified the Post's figures;
and we do not exactly remember them ; but the
argument from a decreased remuneration of;
labour in our manufactures in the fifteen years
succeeding the enactment of anti-commercial
Corn-laws—the argument from such a phe-
nomenon against the removal of its cause—is
well worthy the Post. Why, what did the late
Sir Robert Peel predict from the enactment of
the Corn-laws ? Precisely such effects as the
Post fancies it can somehow charge on free
trade, or turn into matter of abuse against
masters, and against machinery. When the
landed interest of this country enacted Corn-laws,
it did, in effect, this. It constituted itselt the sole
effective and constant employer of labour. For
as we have said before, the power of employing
labour is co-extensive with the power of feeding
it. It; therefore, the landlords, from that time
to this, had continued able to feed all our la-
bourers, they would have continued able to em-
ploy them all; and would have employed them
all, so long as they could buy foreign luxuries
in exchange for the products of their labour.
The landlords would have been the effectivepay-•
masters of the labour of the whole population,
and would have taken, of course, the lion'sshare of
its products; leaving master manufacturers and
operatives a sufficient share to induce them to go
on working. This is what the landlords may have
expected as the effect of the Corn-laws. A mo-
nopoly of the supply of food—a monopoly there-
fore of the effective demand for labour—the land-
lords, in effect, the great exporters of mant(fae-
tures, and consumers of the imported luxuries.
Now this might have gone on prosperously, but
for one little disturbing cause. The landloAs
might have continued the main effective em-
ployers of labour ; they might have kept in em-
ploy all the labour of the country, and had the
lion's share of its returns. But that this should
go on quietly and• prosperously, it was indispensa-
ble that the landed interest should continue able to
feedfully all the labourers. We have their own con-
fession that they cannot do this. Then what is the
meaning of their Corn-laws? This is their
meaning. (We do not charge the landed int—
' rest, as a body, with perceiving it. We do not
believe them capable of perceiving anything
very clearly, and we hope they are not ; for the
less their stupidity, the greater their guilt.)
This is the meaning of Corn-laws passed by a
landed class, which can't feed all the people.
We will extort by scarcity prices which a market
welt stocked would not give us. We will feed
at high prices those who can pay them. Those
who can't pay them may remain unfed. Yes,
this is the meaning, and the only meaning, of
laws to keep corn out, passed by a class which
does not grow enough to feed us at home.
STAN DARD.—An article appears in this
day's Morning Chronicle under the title " The
Great League Fund," a designation which, we
presume to mean the fund of " The Great
League," for, as the party confess themselves at
present somewhat out of pocket, they can
scarcely speak of their pecuniary resources as
the " Great Fund of the League." The League
talks of closing the markets of the world against
us; of an axe laid to the root of our national
prosperity ; of embarrassments, misery, &c., all
caused by our restrictive policy ; as if that
restrictive policy were only of tire date
of yesterday, instead of being of the age of at
least a century and a half—in truth of a much
greater age. Why, if the markets of the world
arc closed—which they are not—they must have
been open before they were closed, and the rest ric-
i Live SySSICHI it must have been drat opened them.
If commerce is now embarrassed, commerce must
have existed prosperously before it could suffer
embarrasment ; and if the industry of labourers
r 1 Iwurers
i now
in a degree paralysed, it must have been
; at one time or other
s
healthy and active; and com-
merce and industry ',lust have enjoyed this
prosperity and healthy activity under the restric-
tive system, unless he are to look bark upon
gulplrl of greatly more
Ithhaenru loleryentirise. N‘l'iltille ien the great-Learue talks
of an axe laid to the root of national prosperity,
It lies that the axe has been lately
a submission, it talks
if it
Ire means
say
nonsense if it refers to the axe that has been
less foi centuries.
resting harm We are not now

going to reason with such people, but we would
remind them of a somewhat uncouth word
which their practice has naturalised in our vo-.1
cAulary. They have before now heard of gluts.
Now '' a glut" is just the thing to close mar-
kets, while it operates, to embarrass commerce
and to paralyse industry; and when we find
the exports of a country multiplied twofold,
while its population has increased less than
one third, and all this accompanied by
that plethora of money of which our
Contemporary the Morning Chronicle com-
plains, we must think that the disease is rather
the effect of a glut than of any cause, that has
been sleeping innocuous for centuries. If the
great Leaguers tell us that the increase of popu-
lation makes the increase of produce necessary,
we remind them that the increase of produce
has not only greatly outrun the increase of popu-
lation at home, but still more outrun the increase
of population abroad. If they speak or a
money-sacrifice as accounting- for the excess
of produce, we point to the confessed plethora.
These two symptoms are decisive of the
true nature of the. ailment; it is a com-
plication of gluts, a money glut at home—a
glut of goods in the foreign market, all the result
of the rabies eanina for gain, combined with a
constipated retention of what is gained—a pro-
fessional
malady, which from analogy to the
"pictor urn Cholera," we may call the Dyspepsia
Harpaginum, or " League evill." From the
League's statement it appears that two thousand
lectures have brim delivered and five million
tracts distributed at an expense of'loo,ooo/. This
statement is worthy ofa short calculation. What
is an Anti-Corn-law lecture worth? This, to be
sure, is a question of some %uncertainty, for men •
differ widely as to the proper price of a fancy ar-
ticle. Were we to pronounce upon the absolute
value of the articles delivered for lectures as
literary 'compositions, we should rate them
very low indeed. Such coulA be easily
had at a pound the dozen among the less fortu-
nate votaries 01' letters Ivith which London
abounds. But as most of the lecturers have, Eke
Mr. Acland, acted as " penny-a-liners" for the
public press, it seems proper to allow them
soinethinl2; at the rate of their fernier profession,
though it is one in which they have failed—say,
then, one pound per lecture, which we honestly
affirm to be liberal pay; but be generous and call
it two pounds, or prodigal and go to five ! tinder
this head of lectures, then, we have, upon the
liberal hypothesis,. two thousand pounds, upon
the prodigal hypothesis, ten thousand. As to the
tracts, there can be no difficulty in tanking
an estimate. A tract of four octavo pages of
average print, where a great many are taken,
can be sold for one jitrthing ; five millions of
tracts of four octavo pages would come to about
5,00 Ci. .1-Jere, then, we have the terms of the
great League's account with the goad-natured
people who have subscribed 109,000/.
Money received XIOO,OOO
Lectures

Tracts

5,000

Balance £85,000
What has become of this balance? It is not our
part to play Ji eepli Hume to " the great
Leaguers,' but certain events have occurred
within the sphere of their exertions which justify
a little general curimity as to the expenditure of
such a sum as _'5,000/. A lavish outlay by some
one after a greavrahery has, before now, led to
the detection of the thief, and a lavish outlay by
parties of questionable character upon the very
eve of an insurrection may, in like manner,
conduct to its authors. During- the progress
of the late disturbance, which has resulted in
the exposure of 300 foolish persons to the
penalties of the law, as welt as in much
other mischief, there was frequent mention
among the insurgents of funds mysteriously pro-
mised, and mysteriously supplied. Now these
voce ambiyucv concurring with the sudden,
stiinge, and unexplained disappearance of such
a sum as eighty-five thousand pounds from the
funds of the League, surely require to be ac-
counted for. For ourselves, we have no doubt as
to the real destination of the greater part of this
large sum, and we are, therefore, pretty confi-
dent that the " great Leaguers" will not give
any account. To conclude, the League have by
their own confession reaped little beyond an in-
surrection, and the imprisonment of sonic 300 of
our fellow-citizens from an outlay of 100,0001.;
and this is a poor plea for asking 50,0001. more.

CRIMINAL COURT.-THIS DAY.)

OLD COURI'.

CHARGE OF RAFE.—Robert Pring Snell was in-
dicted for having committed a rape on Ellen Matilda
Singleton.
Mr. Doane conducted the case for the prosecution,
and Mr. Payne defended the prisoner.
From the evidence for the prosecution, it appeared
that the-prisoner was a married man, residing in the
Cambridge-road; that hi.; wife had hired the prose-
cutrix, a girl of about 16 years of age, of rather weak
intellect, as a servant ; that after the girl had been
in the prisoner's service four days he had taken
advantage of his wife's absence to ply the girl with
beer and spirits until she v as nearly intoxicated, and
that then he had committed the offence with which he
was charged.
The prosecutrix was subjected to .a long and ri-
gorous cross-examination by Mr. P.A.YNE, on the part
of the prisoner, and her deposition before the Magis-
trate was put in and 'read, which differed in some
points from the evidence she had given in Court. Her
evidence was corroborated in many points by other
witnesses.

Mr. PAYNE addressed the Jury for the prisoner,
and contended that it would be unsafe to convict any
man of such a critne'on such unsatisfactory testimony
Mr. DOANE replied.
Mr. Justice ERSKINE summed up, and the Jury
found the prisoner Guilty.
Mr Justice ERSKINE in passing sentence on the
prisoner, told him that if the law had remained in its
former state he would most probably have been left
for execution. Fortunately for him, however, an
alteration had been made in the law. The sentence
was, that he be transported beyond the seas for the
term of his natural life.