The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-25 00:00:00

EVENING SUN

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM TEE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.

GLOBE.—Considering the strength of our cause, and
of the evidence which presses from every side, and from
every part of the country. in support of it, we really
must almost confess to feel a sort of humiliation in ob-
serving what an amazing deal is made by our adversa-
ries of the smallest crumb of fact, fit for their purpose,
that happens to fall from our table. What astonishing fel-
lows our Tory Contemporaries would be, if they had but
a good cause ! But perhaps the monstrous deal which
they can make of the slightest argument for a bad one,
would render them too convincing in logic, too over-
whelming in rhetoric, if They had but those weapons
and magazines at command which the truth furnishes.
" Works may have more wit than does 'em good ;
As bodies perish from excess of blood."
The Flemish painters acquired their astonishing
skill in perspective from the necessity imposed by the
want of aids to a picture which bold scenery gives. In
like manner, our Tory Contemporaries exhaust their
art to give colour and character to the worse than
Flemish flats of Pro-Monopoly advocacy: It is not
Tory Contemporaries seemed to regard it, as they
studiously abstained from saying a word about it,
And were indebted to us, after all, fir the wel-
come news that it was without foundation)--yet
it is not a fact which our views- would have led
Us to regard, on reflection, as probable. It is our manual
labour, unaidsd by machinery, that is chiefly under-
surprising they should have learned to make much of a
little. And much, indeed, do the Post and Standard snake
of the faCt which we furnished them—that the East India
Company have not be. n giving large orders for cloth is
Belgium. Although tile fact, if true, would have
been most striking and startling (and so indeed, our
sold on the Continent.. And though we are far from
saying that the same thine.° is not happening also to
more skilled branches (as, for example, the manufac-
ture of fire-arms, and other articles, in which Birming-
ham and Sheffield have been used to consider themselves
unrivalled, as Leeds and Manchester in their depart-
ments of cloth and of cotton), yet our readers are
aware that we have rather regarded the ruinous depre-
ciation, and forced sales below their value, of our goods
in foreign markets than the prospect of being outbidden
in cheapness. That prospect is indeed neither remote
nor visionary ; it is already realised in many articles,
and will be in many more. We may mention as a fact
which is within our knowledge, that French paper has
been exported to an important colony of this country, at
a profit of 80 per cent., after paying 6 per cent. extra
duty. It is quite impossible. that productive industry
should be burthened as it is in this country, ?vithout these
effects taking place, while the rest of the world remains
at peace, and at liberty to exercise the arts of peace in
fair competition with us.
STA NDARD.—Year after year manufacturers and
tern buyers have rushed madly on in anticipating, and
the anticipated time has unhappily arrived. Now, what
remedy can be proposed ? To enlarge trade—that is,
further to extend the field of such desperate specu-
lation. Why, the effect would be merely "to pile upon
new runs" upon a mere tremendous scale—to have ten
Manchesters and Glasgows painfully suffering instead of
two. If, as we have been told by the Anti-Corn-law lec-
turers, the country is now within six months of anarchy,
What must be our condition, with distress five or six-
fold extended and aggravated? Whatethen,is the.rernaly?
We acknowledge the difficulty of answering the question,
but the difficulty of finding a remedy is no apology for
feeding the disease. We, for ourselves, must once more
quote M. the Count Saint Aulaire. It is in states-
manship as in- medicine. The cure is effected
most surely by causing the patient to last longer than
the malady. We must not try to get rid of an inter-
mittent, by turning it into an acute, fever of a fatal
type. As long as there is no direct control of
over-trading which the Legislature can apply, and we
confess we can imagine none, the evil must be left to
correct itself by periodical chastisement; but mean-
while the resources of the nation must be protected
from being squandered in commercial gambling, and
:the labouring classes guarded from suffering by mis-
conduct, in which they are , not participators. These
.objects can be secured only by an efficient Corn-law
and a liberal provision fof• the poor, institutions, too,
which must operate as constant, though moderate re-
straints upon the spirit of commercial
_gambling.
A vast amount of the present distress may indeed be
ascribed with reason to the new Poor-law, -which has
enabled hard-hearted landlords and farmers—for they
when bribed in the same way can be just as hard-hearted
as millowners—to force agricultural labourers into the
manufacturing districts, and thus aid the spirit of over-
trading.

MONEY MARKET and CITY NEWS.

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY,

TIMES.—It is understood that the Spanish Commis-
sioner, M. Borrajo, had an interview to-day with the Chair-
man of the Committee of Spanish Bondholders, and
officially assured him that the money for paying the divi-
dend on capitalised arrears of interest was already here,
find that the delay in giving publicity to the contem-
plated conversion is owing to certain formalities in the
preparation of the instruments not having been gone
through, and to the non-arrival of the other Commis-
sioner, who is, however, daily expected from Paris. It
was this that had the favourable influence on Spanish
stock.

The journeymen confectioners, who hold their meet-
ings in Alderagate-street, and whose object it is to
get rid (if the present anomaly in the duties on manu-
factured sugar, continue their operations, and have
been- actively employed in getting up memorials
to the President of the Board of Trade and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer. They have sent us spe-
cimens of manufactured sugar, which are so far curious
that they show the variety of shapes which sugar is
made to assume, in order to pass off as confectionery at
the Custom-house. Formerly a kind of black sugar was
in vogue, and this, in combination with charcoal, was
the prevailing method of carrying on the fraud ; but
now this plan seems to be abandoned, and the sugar
comes over in the shape of acidulated drops, which com-
pletely deceive the eye, but contain no acid whatever,
and a candy, in large pieces, of which, we are informed,
one man could make 12 cwt. per day, and which
can be converted into refined sugar, fit for use, at a most
trifling expenditure. Thee various shapes, to
which, by turns, the manufacturers of the Channel
Islands are obliged to have recourse, show that it is
not quite fair dealing on their part ; and that, de-
fective as the law is, they are resolved to
adopt every expedient to evade its provisions and elude
the vigilance of the Custom-house officers, a fact which
would operate against them in case they should think
themselves entitled to a compensation upon the law being
altered. At the same time no vigilance on the part of
the officers will ever be sufficient to prevent the injuries
to the revenue when the material is susceptible of such
endless disguises as sugar, and the only effectual remedy
will be to impose a duty on the confectionery which shall
deprive that from the Channel Islands of all advantage
over our own, and thus, while protecting the revenue, do
an act of justice to our operatives.
A pamphlet has just been printed "On the Case
of the bona fide holders of the Repudiated Ex-
chequer bills," the object of which is briefly to state
the law and facts of that case for the consideration
of Parliament, with the conviction, which the author
shares with all other impartial persons who have re-
flected on the subject, that in enforcing the claims of
the bona, fide holders justice and sound policy con-
cur. . Most of the authorities he cites have already been
before the public from time to time, but the arrange-
ment of the whole in a concise form is very useful. One
of the best points the author raises in favour of the
holders is, that during the whole six years of the circu-
lation of the fraudulent hills the forgery was never de-
tected nor even suspected till the discovery of the dupli-
cate bills forced from Smith by his confession. During
-this time almost. every banker in London, as well as the
Bank of England, must have had some of the bills in
their hands, the Government took them for the funding,
and surely, if the acuteness of these bankers, as well as
of the Bank and the Government, was foiled, it is too
much to insist that the present holders should have, been,
clear-sighted enough to detect the fraud. The question
of the bills will gain a new interest at the approaching
Session of Parliament, and, when it will be of greater
practical utility, we may perhaps return to the notice of
this pamphlet.
CHRONICLE.—Our correspondent may rest assured
that the people of this country will never rest satisfied
now until a moderate fixed duty is substituted for the
sliding scale, and we therefore deem it unnecessary to
offer any opinion upon the expediency of his suggestic.al,
which in truth is intended to get the better of a flue-
tuating duty by means of an option to the imriorter.
'The clear and simple plan of doing so is to fix the im-
port duty, so as to give fair play to all.
The rumour regarding the Ministerial 'measure of
Corn-law reform, which we announced at some length
this morning, has produced no small sensation, and the
main part of the plan, that of taking the returns from the
principal market towns of the LT&.ted Kingdom, from the
growers only, seems to be looked %Apotion all hands as likely
to be authentic. The employ meat of the district officers
of Excise, as the returniri officers, is looked upon as
removing one of the ehie," obstacles to the proposed im-
provements in the sys.„,,of taking the averages, as any
increase of patrona';;e and expense in the machinery will
thus be obviated.,. On the Corn Exchange to-day the
affair was in FIJMOSt every body's mouth, and created a
very generF,4 movement. Some parties say that the pre-
cise rang', of the modified scale is not to be from 15s. to
ss. as a, maximum and minimum, but from 645. to 545.
or 564., with a 2s. fall of duty for every rise of ls. in the
average price, the maximum range of duty to be 20s.
sad the minimum 4s. per quarter. We need only repeat,
mat these rumours, now becoming more strong and
'apecifie every day, are to be taken only by the friends of
free trade as the hander riting on the wall, which foretels
the downfall of the fortress of monopoly. They should
only lead the friends of commercial liberty.to more de-,
terruined and powerful exertions:
:SUN.—A moderate business was transacted to-day in
the public securities, confined however almost entirely
to real transfers, the jobbers and others evincing but
little disposition to enter into speculative operations.
rrices were maintained both for the Funded and Un-
funded Debt. Consols for present transfer have been
quoted 89* to 891, and for the Account 89i to 89i
Exchequer Bills were done at the improved premium of.
Saturday, viz., 17s. to 19s. ; and East India. Benda reached
13s. premium. New Three-and-a-Half per Cents. were
at 98 to 98i;
Reduced Three-and-a-Half per Cents.
at
/
99
Account.
99 and the Three per Cent. Annuities at 89*
* 4 ;
to 89i. The only bargain in Bank Stock was at 168 i
..!.
for lndia Stock was not dealt in.
It being now clearly ascertained that Senher Borrajo
has the money for the dividends on the Capitalised
Stock, some parties anticipate an improvement in the
value of the Spanish Bonds. To-day, however, there
was not much doing either in them or the other Foreign
Stocks. The Active Spanish Bonds closed a shade bet-
ter for the Account, viz., at 25 to 251, but for Money
were quiet at 25. Portuguese Stock went lower, the
decline being from 34 to 33j, and 33k for the New Five