The Sun.
London, England, 1845-02-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT of th.-! PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM TITE EVENING PAPERS OP YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—Lord Ashley says—in anticipation that
the corn-laws will be thrown in his teeth—that " if he
believed the repeal of the corn-laws would place these
much suffering thousands of their fellow-creatures in a
condition of comfort, and keep them in it, he, in spite 0,
all his predilections, would vote at once for their entire
abolition." We do not doubt the sincerity of his Lord-
ship's assertion ; but we doubt whether he seizes exactly
the point of view in which alone the corn•lavvs would be
objected to his regulative proposals by any reasonable
opponent. We have never, for our part, undertaken to
sly that no regulation of infant labour was necessary ;
though we have frequently declared ourselves against in-
terference with that of adults. And when the condi-
Cons of adult labour have been stated to be widely
unsatisfactory, we have affirmed that no direct regula-
tions about them could render them otherwise—and
that the defect must lie in the demand existing—or
wages available—for labour. It is as affecting these
that the policy of Food-Restriction has, by ourselves
and others, been held to render nugatory the policy of
Employment-Regulation. For example, if a hedger and
ditcher, in Lord Ashley's neighbourhood let us say, in
Dorsetshire, is seen to be seeking piece-work with the
greatest anxiety, and doing it at the lowest rates, in dear
years—the dearth of corn is deemed to have some con-
nexion with the excessive toil of that man. Regulation of
the hours of hedging and ditching, it is not imagined
would materially mend the matter ; and would only
alter it by dividing employment (already scarce salli-
merit fur one man's wants) between two or more. In a
word, if it is dearth of subsistence that stimulates this
over-toil, no regulation (that does not increase the
supply of subsistence) can prevent the consequence of
dearth showing itself in one shape or other. The shape
of extreme toil is that which is chosen by those who
can find work. That may be forbidden, in this or the
other instanr.e—but extremity of some kind must be
suffered ; and extreme toil will, after all, not be pre-
vented, without inspectors for every cottage, every fie:d,
every hedge and ditch. Turning to manufactures—
slackness of demand, competition of workers, readi-
ness for over-hours, will in like manner show them-
selves. The plague of dearth is at the root of all
—men or women do not volunteer intense toil
from love of suffering. You undertake to stop the
intense toil. In the great proportion of cases (cases,
namely, outside the walls of factories) you cannot stop
it. In cases in which you can, it may happen that you
stop the power of snaking up orders, of dispatching
shipments—of competing with unrestricted employers
in foreign markets. If you do this—all you do is to
force capital to fly from the seats of your distressed
labour. If you stop short of doing this, you stop
short of doing great mischief—but in any case yon stop
short necessarily of cutting up the misery by the
roots. The Anti-Corn-law advocates, with reference to
measures like Lord Ashley's for regulating employ-
ments, assume that the corm-laws do produce periodical
dearth of subsistence, slackness of employment, and
consequent lowness of wages, and over-work. They
assume that those only who are distressed to live are
likely to distress themselves by toil ; and they infer that
no remedy, which does not touch the former distress,
can ever meet the latter. All this, of course, proceeds
on the assumption that we are right in our theory of the
corn-laws. That assumption granted, there is nothing
unreasonable in bringing it to bear on there Time-Bill
questions.