The Sun.
London, England, 1842-02-21 00:00:00

O n nit*

LONDON!
MONDAY XORNING, FEBRUARY 21, 1842.

When we reflect on some of the statements made by
the brews taxers, and analyze their meaning and bear-
inV, we are tilled with contempt at the poor intellect of
those who make and those who credit them. We feel
something like indignation too that they should have the
audacity to suppose that the public can be bamboozled by
such transparent nonsense. We will take, for example,
Sir ROBERT PEEL'S crack statement, the corner-stone
of all the legislation on the subject that land here is sub-
jeot to peculiar burdens, and therefore requires to be
protected against the produce of other lands, not subject,
it is falsely asserted, to such burdens ; ana that it has
been so protected for 150 years, during which great and
mighty interests, measured by the annual production of
50,000,000 quarters of grain, have grown up under the
shade of the protecting law.

We will pass over the inquiry which a just legislator
would institute, whether land has not here many ad-
vantages, such as no other land possesses, before he, on
the ground taken up by Sir R. PEEL, presumed to
make a law limiting the supply of food. We regard as
such peculiar advantages the vicinity of an immense, a
„ wealthy, and a productive manufacturing populpAion_a
great command of manure—unequalled fexilities of
transport—cheapness of materials of whie'.a the mass of
agricultural implements are made ; •.,nperior skill and
ingenuity in making them, and grer..c command of labour;
so that no particle of a harvest, for want of- hands,
ever need be lost, while in many of the half-
peopled countries of the north of Europe, of which we
are told to dread the competition, much is frequently
lost for want of hands and means to gather it in. We
pass by all these circumstatices, though every one of
them ought to be investigated, before a law be made to
ensure the produce of e;dr own land a price in the market
corresponding to its, supposed cost, and come at once to
the consideratio,, of the two circumstances on which the
protection is founded, viz., the payment of tithes and
the 14TZdens of the land.
Taking the first as a ground of protection, all Scotland
is nearly tithe-free; but the land of Scotland is equally
protected with the land of England. The land in Ire-
land in nearly the same condition; at least, the burden
of tithe on it scarcely amounts to one-tenth of the tithe
of the land of England. Tithe of agistment there has
been wholly abolished. In England, too, as Mr.
Arkin'Ens stated on Friday evening, nearly one-half of
the land is tithe-free, and the landowners are, in
he, the owners of the peat majority of the
••
. tithes. Now, if the assertion that the payment of tithes
forms a valid ground of protection be anything but a
mere pretext,
a flimsy veil hung round a profligate rob-
bery, expecting to conceal it, surely it is unjust, on the
very principle stated, to extend that protection to all
and to make it equal for the land
land wholly tithe-free,
of England and Ireland.
Again, the land it is said, is burdened with rates ; but
counties are. very unequally burdened. Agricul-
tural counts like Sussex, where the Duke
• of Iticnmora, presides, and Bucks, where the
pattern of righteous landlords holds sway, are much
heavier burdened than the manufacturing counties of
Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. • Is it not
Monstrously and scandalously unjust to fix & protecting
price on all the food, imported, and so raise equally the
price of all grown at home, in order to enable the land of
Olissex and Buckingham to bear the burdens, while it