The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-03 00:00:00

not the opponents; but we are decided enemies
of the Government adding to its duties by
undertaking to apportion labour and capital
to land throughout the vast dominions of
the British empire. Our Government is already
notoriously inefficient to perform the immense
duties imposed on it. Our criminal law is a cruel
blunder. Our civil law is-an undigested mass of
anomalies and confusion. Our administration in
all its branches is at once costly and worthless.
It abounds with idlers who engross large sala-
ries, and over-worked subordinates who are under-
paid. If any chairmaker's apprentice had at his
first trial made such a wretched abortion of a
three-legged stool as our Government is, for all
useful purposes, he would have been at once
turned out of the shop, and told he would never
earn salt to his meat. To place on such an in-
efficient, weak, and yet costly instrument, the
additional and most onerous duty of apportioning
labour and capital to land, as is now demanded
by some pretended Liberals, seems to us one of
the most extraordinary follies that ever
cupidity or overweening vanity engendered.
For the Government, which is so incapa-
ble of now performing the duties imposed on
it, to seek this additional and most onerous
duty, is a more mad ambition than, ever was
nourished by any of the conquerors of man-

kind, from ALEXANDER to NAPOLEON. CO

ceiving that our Government has already a much
greater number of duties to perform than it can
perform well—considering, also, that the appor-
tioning of labour and capital to land is no part of
the duty of any Government—we object most
decidedly now, and shall object at all times, to
the Government, be it in the hands of what
party it may, presuming to interfere in any way
with the distribution of capital and labour.
By the Tory Journals a great:outcry was made
against the Whigs when they were obliged to
take up the Corn-law question for making that
a party question ; but not a word escapes
from the virtuous and immaculate emigration--
mongers at the Tories taking up emigration as
a party question. Not a step did they ever
befbre take in the matter; but now, when it will

serve their party purposes, and may, perchance,
weaken the just demands of the people for a re-
peal of the Corn-laws, they are about to take it
up, and a whole ho3t of Weekly Chronicles and
Spectators make common cause with the Jour-
nals of the vilest and most unscrupulous faction
that ever cursed a country, in praising this party
move as the height of patriotism. We are not
so blinded, nor so bribed, by any particular
interest, and we denounced the emigration scheme
from the moment it was propounded, and,shall
continue to denounce it as a sly scheme of the
culprit monopolists to postpone the day of reck-
oning and the day of punishment. If the mind
of man have not lost its love of justice, and
have not ceased to do homage to truth, that day
will inevitably and speedily overtake them.

We borrow, from the Carlisle Journal, a para-
graph descriptive of the present condition of the
poor of that town, which the Journalist remarks
is within a short distance of Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S
property, who is at this moment, he further says,
raising his rents from 20 to 30 per cent. In ordi-
nary cases, what rent a gentleman asks for his
land is to the public a matter of utter indiffe-
rence. It is a mere bargain between two indi-
viduals, with which the public have no more to
do than with the price of tallow or hops ; which
in general, however, the dealers make known.
We should hold it, in fact, under ordinary circum-
stances, to be an impertinent intermeddling with
private concerns to direct the public attention to
the rent which any gentleman asks for his land;
but at present, when rent is raised, as Lord STAN-
LEY admitted, by a tax on the people's bread--:.
when Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S rent is increased
by the bread-tax levied on his starving
neighbours when that same Sir JAMES
GRAHAM is a vehement supporter of the
law which ordains this unrighteous tax—
when he is a member of the Cabinet
that has been constituted to preserve this flagrant
iniquity—and when his case is an exact coml.
terpart of that of most of the members of the
Cabinet, and most of the members of his party—
we feel bound to notice it, and bound, if we can,
to rivet public attention to the individual fact,
and the general facts to which it is an index.

Sir J. GRAHAM, a member of the Cabinet, is
raising his rents and increasing his income, while
his neighbours are starving, and starved in order
that his rents may be raised. Sir J. GRAHAM'S
case is also the case of Lord STA NLEY. lie gets
at present higher rents by the rise in the price of
food, which stints and starves his neighbours in
Lancashire. Sir JAMES GRA II AM'S case is also
the case of Sir ROBERT PEEL, Sir EDWARD
KNATCHBULL, the Duke of BUCKINGHAM,
the Duke of WELLINGTON, the Earl of ABER-
DEEN, the Earl of RIPON, and probably every
member of the Cabinet. One and all of them
have raised, or are raising, their rents in conse-
quence of the high price of corn caused by the
laws they passed, and they have been consti-
tuted a Cabinet to preserve. Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S
case is also the case of every landowner who has
a seat in the House of CJmmons, and contributes
to make the laws. All England is a common
neighbourhood, and every landowner is now
raising, or has raised his rents, by levying a tax on
the bread of his starving neighbours. Sir JAMES
GnAnAm's case, who is now raising his rent while
hisstarving neighbours are obliged to pay him a tax
on their bread, let it not be for one moment for-
gotten, is the case of every landowning legislator
in the empire.

A great question is at issue between the people
and the landowners. This statement makes it
perfectly plain that the landlords benefit by the
bread-tax, and the landlords in the Cabinet and
in Parliament decide in their own favour against
the people. No man, however virtuous, is a
proper judge in his own cause. In such a case
no man is unbiassed, and all the assertions and
arguments of the landlords must be liable to sus-
picion. A Corn-law, made or modified by them,
never will command the confidence, and we
doubt whether it will long command the obedi-
ence, of the people. We are quite sure that no
Corn-law they can make will deserve to be
obeyed.
"When the rise of rent on the one hand, and
the starving people on the-other, are considered
to be the two great elements of the landlord's
judgment, it must be also remembered
that the starving people are called canaille
by the law-making landlords and their friends.
They are called the swinish multitude, and are
continually spoken of, and continually treated as
if their feelings, and even their lives, were of no
manner of importance. Weighed against a rise
of rent, the whole of the so-called mob of Car-
lisle are not, in the landlords' minds, worth a
moment's consideration ; and the conduct of the
bread-taxers, for many years past, justifies us in
asserting that, if they could raise their rent by
starving the whole of the inhabitants of Carlisle,
they would not hesitate to starve them. As long,
therefore, as any Corn-law shall be enacted by
the land-owning Legislature, whatever it may be,
it never will satisfy the people or settle the ques-
tion. It is in the nature of things that our pre-
sent Legislature can only settle it by totally abo-
lishing, the Corn and Provision-laws.
It is worth further notice, that while Sir
,lES GRAHAM'S neighbours are starving, and he
is raising his rent, he is also running about feast-
* and enjoying himself, without having a word
to bestow, Cabinet Minister as he is, on the
sufferings of his starving neighbours. His occu-
pation on last Tuesday was, we are told, to quiz
the answer of Lord JOHN RUSSELL to the Ply-
mouth Address. We have read the quiz, and
however praiseworthy it may be as a party
Iration, as the speech of a Cabinet Minister, now
raising his rents while his starving neighbours
must pay him a tax on their bread, it is worthy
of this paragon of bread-taxers. He is thoroughly
satisfied with himself; his conscience is clear
because he is a Cabinet Minister, supported by
a consideraMe majority of monopolists. He
could boast, notwithsanding the oppression of
the bread-taxers, that under great privations,
which lie imposes, and which he refuses to re.

iieve, the patience of the people of England had